It's a cold, dark room, befitting a cold, dark night. The war rages fiercely, soldiers fall, children are buried, but life carries on. There are only two options: living, or dying. You can live and still be dead, but can you die and still live? General consensus says no, even if you're a ghost. Your meaning ends when your body renders up your quiet soul, no matter how loudly you lived or how fiercely you fought to keep it.

One thing the side of the Light has vowed to do is to not forget to honour their fallen, they who have given a life to save countless others. But war is busy, frantic, when Death comes to pay her respects, and Death rarely has much to say. The Death Eaters are perfecting new and painful ways to dispose of their 'little problems', and more families wish for answers of how those they loved left them.

And so this is what Hermione Jane Granger does; when all is said and done, and the Ministry leaves their dead in a cold, pale marble room, Hermione sits with them.

There are no ghosts that walk the floors; it is rare that a ghost appears at a sudden death, and as for the other victims... many wished for Death before she came to guide them home. There is only Hermione, with dark circles 'round her eyes and a growing collection of scars, to keep the dead company before burial rites can commence.

The number of funerals grows every day. Exponentially. The dead are silent, but with much left to say.

Everyone leaves her alone as she sits in near the Veil, appearing to be deep in thought, surrounded by makeshift beds for those who have crossed the Great Divide. She sits and thinks, and they wonder- does she hear things issuing between those thin, ragged strips that cover the surface? When she lights a pale blue fire and sits in her chair, they wonder- who would want to sit with those since passed on, in the silence that only the dead can know?

They think it a bit morbid, but Hermione Granger has her reasons.

Once everyone leaves, she gets up and changes behind a sheet, putting on a well-worn and heavily patched robe, dark green and heavy. She always leaves her hair down, and firmly shuts and locks the door to the room, with only corpses and the Veil for company. Taking tea with Death- that’s how Luna describes it. Having a drink with an old, familiar friend.

But once she’s locked the door, Hermione does not have tea, nor does she have biscuits. She has work to do.

She approaches the first corpse. A woman, one she’s never seen before and will never see again once the prone body is taken from the room and sent to the cemetery to be buried. This one has painful gashes all over her torso, and the face- once beautiful- is ashen and slightly contorted. A fresh corpse, then. A little warm, perhaps, but that is neither here nor there. That’s not important.

With wand clutched firmly in her hand, Hermione whispers something and slowly moves it over the woman’s cold face until it relaxes. Then with gentle fingers, she closes the woman’s eyes, while looking at the piece of parchment that accompanies the body. Elisabeth. Elisabeth Jeffe, aged 24. Pure-blooded, Hufflepuff, engaged to Christopher de Luca, aged 31. Hermione ponders, wonders if she’d ever talked to Elisabeth before as she begins to silently wave her hand and close the torso wounds. Slowly, surely, the tears stitch themselves up, until there is naught but mild scars, easily covered up with a simple cosmetic charm. She takes out a pen- some Muggle habits are worth keeping- and scratches a name on Elisabeth Jeffe, aged 24 years', parchment.

She walks over to the next corpse. Burke Christmas, aged nine years. These are always the hardest, but little Burke, he died quietly, with little to no pain. With a spare cloth, Hermione wipes the mud from his clammy skin, cleaning him as she murmurs softly. Not a prayer to a God, if one still exists and cares, or a whisper of anger over the fate of a child. When she’s finished cleansing the body, she moves on. Nothing to write on his parchment, and the thought both relieves and agitates her greatly.

Back and forth, forth and back she goes, wiping off mud and blood and dirt and grime, closing cuts, tears, and gaping holes. For one old man, she creates an artificial arm for the one bitten clean off. For a teenage couple, she repairs the matching rings they wore on their right index fingers. Slowly, painfully, she fixes what was broken by uncaring hands and uncaring enemies. Sometimes, she has to rush and find a bucket to vomit in, but she examines each corpse carefully, taking notes, sometimes breathing benedictions to the dead, a kind and caring word or three. Everyone, she believes, should leave this Earth with the knowledge that someone will remember them, and that someone cares. Even if that someone is an eighteen year old witch with bags under her eyes, wrinkles that don’t belong on a teenager’s face, and a bad limp in her right leg.

They find it rather weird, sometimes, the living. That a bright, pretty young thing would willingly spend hours locked up in a stone and marble room with dead people. Hermione has her reasons, and before the end comes, they will understand, she hopes.

It is the last body. After Elisabeth and Burke, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Cornelia Smythwick, Alice Longbottom, Eddie Black, Li Soh, Thomas Crane, and all the others, there is but one left. A small, slight body, with shiny black hair and huge brown eyes that entranced many a boy at school.

Padma Patil.

Hermione bows her head for a moment, taking a breath, steeling herself, before placing small, rough hands on that smooth, waxen brow.

She’s sorry. Oh, so sorry. This one is difficult. Because it’s a classmate, someone she respected, and because Padma’s death- though heroic enough to qualify as Gryffindorish- was also painful. Her full lips are twisted, and the look of panic and sorrow in her once bright eyes seem to linger. It’s hard for Hermione to remember hearing her laugh, or lecturing her wayward twin, or anything remotely normal, when her body is contorted in unnatural positions and her hands are clenched. In rage or pain, Hermione does not know.

She examines the brighter Patil twin carefully, even as she slowly works her magic and settles her into a more peaceful repose. Carefully checking hex marks, bruises, and every single brutal fingerprint left on her tan skin, Hermione double and triple checks the once warm flesh, before nodding. She picks up Padma’s parchment and writes one name down- Yaxley. She knows his handiwork all too well. Yaxley for Padma, Kingsley, and Elisabeth. Travers for Crane and Li. Others, currently unknown, but Hermione records every last damned detail into a notebook for reference. Time of death, cause of death, perpetrator, possible reason for death.

They think her slightly mad, but Hermione Granger is on a mission.

Every night is spent in this room, going over every single person brought in, Dark, Light, or Neutral. Every detail is jotted down, every little thing noted.

When the families come, she will give what information she has, what she can give without further breaking a mother’s heart or destroying a husband’s spirit- that, she must leave for those who do survive, for they will need it before the end comes. But for herself- and for the ones whose bodies she tends before their burial- she keeps every single, solitary detail, for the day when Harry triumphs over evil and those of the Dark who remain can be brought to trial.

She gives their deaths a meaning, a purpose, a reason. She keeps their lives going even as they are brutally and efficiently extinguished.

She will be their memories at the trials. When it comes time to begin judgment, Hermione will tell their stories to those who must choose, and to those who choose to sit this war out and hope that it will pass. War only passes for those who die before the finale. It’s only fair, or so she supposes.

Perhaps she is morbid, and weird, and mad. She doesn’t know- doesn’t particularly care-so long as she remembers that she is doing the right thing. This war will pass, eventually, and good will prevail over evil. It’s the nature of the world- she’s just one more cog in the machine in the great wheel of life.

As she closes Padma’s eyes for the last time and goes to leave the room, she ignores the fluttering of the Veil and the voices that intrude from the other side. That’s not her purpose. Those are the voices of those whose stories are over.

For those with things to say, but who can no longer speak, Hermione is the voice of all who still have a story to tell.