Hermione was out to sea, with not one single person to throw her a life preserver. Because you can only be saved by people who have the sense to recognize that you're drowning. And to everyone else, Hermione was flailing in a kiddie pool, dramatic in three inches of water, because not one person considered the loss of Draco Malfoy to be particularly concerning. But to Hermione, there was hundreds of miles of dark, deep, shark-infested waters stretching to the horizon in every direction, and she was going under. It enveloped her and she caught herself wanting sometimes to go back to the time before Draco Malfoy. To be eleven years old and spend two more minutes on the platform saying goodbye to her parents, so she didn’t run into that nervous blonde eleven-year-old boy, and he didn't grow up to become the man that left her alone with no lifeguard. 