The Queen of Middle-Earth | Aragorn & Hermione

chapter 19

If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn't, then it was never meant to be. – Unknown

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"Aragorn told me he had opened the locket by accident." Harry explained with the letter in his hand, when the three wizards were sitting in the kitchen around the table, whereon the necklace lay. They were extremely hungry, sadly there was nothing eatable to find anymore in the kitchen, because it had been empty since several years, so they had planned on hunting, but before they left, Hermione had asked Harry how he knew about the letter.

"He said that he is sorry, but he just had to see what is inside." Harry continued. "After reading it, he decided to give it back the moment you would decide to go home, because he wanted you to take your decision on free will, before reading it. He must have thought that this could change your mind about leaving and that I could talk you into staying, that's why he assigned it to me."

"You really didn't know about the letter, Hermione?" Ron asked, gazing at the locket.

"No." She replied, looking at her two best friends. "I never knew that it was a locket." Her eyes returned to the jewel."

The wizards looked at the necklace in silent, they didn't know what else to say. Hermione sighed, just when she wanted to get up to leave and hunt, they heard people talking in the main square of the palace. They exchanged surprised glances and got up slowly, walking towards a window, from where they could see the castle square. Hundreds of women, children and old men were walking towards the entrance of the building. More than fifty horses were dragging stretchers with wounded lying on them, while some of the men of Rohan that were still capable of walking were carrying injured soldiers on their shoulders. Hermione spun around and ran downstairs to open the gates with Harry and Ron in tow. They ran through the crowd, helping the people with the wounded. Hermione gave the bottle of Dittany to Harry, who she told to heal as many as possible, while she showed the people, where they could sleep and stay. A few women were making stew in the kitchen for everyone, while Ron and the others helped looking after the invalids and damaged men and boys, since Harry only had given the healing potion to the fatally injured persons, due to the small amount of the liquid.
It was already late at night, when Hermione ran into someone she knew. "Sam!" She ran after him through the corridor, when she had seen him walking past her.

"Hermione!" He walked towards her happily, seeing she was alright. "Where have you been?" He asked curiously.

"We've been fighting the wizards." She replied slightly indifferent. "Where are the others?" That was the more interesting conversation in her opinion.

"Wait, you what?" Sam's eyes widened. "Have you defeated them?"

Hermione sighed, "Yes, we have. They are dead."

"WHAT?!" Sam was now laughing, loudly and everyone turned around to see what he was laughing about. "They are dead? All three of them?" He looked at her like a small child, who had just heard that Santa Claus was coming.

"Yes."

"Have you heard?" The Hobbit was now jumping around, excited. "The wizards are dead! They have defeated them, the war is over!"

At first a murmur spread through the hallways and people stared at her, but then it turned into cheering and people ran excited through the castle, informing everyone about the news. A few hours later everyone had heard about the wizards' demise.

"You really did it, you really defeated them?" Boromir appeared beside her, when she was watching the people in the square from a window, jumping and dancing around, blissfully. Even the injured soldiers were smiling mostly, when they were awake.