With Good Intentions

Their first contact not initiated by conflict or confrontation came as she moved through the Great Hall to identify the remains of her friends, remains being a literal definition of the flesh laid respectfully on cloths transfigured from whatever lay about.

She’d come by the table where they sat wearing worried looks, uncertain if they should stay among the victors or absent themselves to somewhere else in the world. Their indecision, Hermione recognized immediately, stemmed from their lack of somewhere to go. Most Malfoy assets in Europe had been seized the minute Voldemort crashed into the stonework portico before the front gates of Hogwarts and Kingsley Shacklebolt took control of the Ministry. Noting their discomfort and their absolute abandonment by the so-called “Fighters for the Light”, Hermione looked after their basic needs — food, a blanket (transfigured from her own meager jacket) and a few kind words. As she’d tried to explain to the incensed Weasleys:

“I will not treat them like those Death Eaters treated me at the Manor. Or have you forgotten that Ron, Harry and I would be dead if not for Draco’s lie and Harry would be a corpse in the forest  without Lady Malfoy’s!?”

“Don’t be stupid, Hermione!” Ron pushed back, desolate at Fred’s death, “those tossers were saving their own necks!”

“And how is that different from leaving Harry and me to find the last horcrux a-lone, hmm Ronald?”

She’d watched Draco’s descent into terror and she’d seen portions of Snape’s pensieve memory.

Her formidable intellect told her nothing was as black and white — as clear cut — as it’d been when she was a child many years ago. That reality informed the behavior of this Hermione.