A long shower relieved any remaining aches in her body. She tilted her head back under the spray and thought back on the memory of Ron she'd unintentionally broken open. Horcruxes. And casualty rates. And Ginny.
It always came back to Ginny.
Ron. He'd looked so gaunt. So ground down by the war. His hair had been streaked with grey even though he couldn't have been more than twenty-two. She'd forgotten those details. She'd forgotten how the war had eaten him; how physically the stress had manifested in him.
He'd planned missions with Moody and Kingsley. He'd taken his talent for strategy and wizard's chess and learned how to apply it to war. He'd been so proud the first time Kingsley had approved one of his strategies.
It had taken time for Ron and Harry and DA to accept that the war would be long. They thought the magical communities would rise up in support of the Order. That having witnessed Voldemort's defeat during the first wizarding war would imbue the Wizarding World with confidence in the power of Light.
But Voldemort had learned from the first war. He was more clever, wary, and cunning than he had been the first time around especially after the missteps of the battle at the Department of Mysteries. He limited his reign of terror to Muggle-borns, half-blood families and blood traitors. He seized the Ministry early and had the Order of the Phoenix labeled a terrorist organization. He had Dumbledore killed in the Headmaster's own school by a sixteen year old boy.
Any confidence the Wizarding World might have had in the power of Light was quickly smothered. Muggle-borns and half-bloods were a fragment of the wizarding population. It was easier for the established magical community to simply choose to keep their heads down and leave the Order to fight Voldemort alone.
It was difficult to fight a war as a terrorist group.
Even if you had money, going to Diagon Alley and accessing a Gringotts vault was hard. Ministry identification became required for buying anything, food or potion supplies; and buying large quantities drew suspicion. A person could be sent to the hospital after a battle but any injuries sent to the Spell Damage ward required St Mungo's to contact the DMLE; injured members of the Resistance were charged with terrorism, placed under arrest while convalescing and disappeared into one of Voldemort's prisons upon release from St Mungo's.
The Resistance was not prepared for how decisive Voldemort's initial sallies would be. They hadn't stockpiled. They hadn't put enough people into hiding and many that they did try to protect they'd failed to hide carefully enough. There was always some goodbye people thought they could get away with before they left, some small hint that Death Eater torture proved capable of dragging out from neighbors.
The pride Ron experienced when his strategies were used quickly faded as he discovered it was almost impossible to devise a skirmish without casualties. People were not reusable pieces on a chess board; when sacrificed they died. Horribly. And even if you did everything possible strategically to protect them, they didn't always do as instructed or predicted. And even if they did, the enemy didn't.
Ron tended to take every death and injury as his personal responsibility. The lustre of heroism and the envy he used to have for Harry vanished. War quickly sobered him and the understanding bonded him and Harry even more closely together; mending any fractures his past jealousy had created over the years. They became united in guilt, determination, and idealism. Closer than brothers.
There had been little room left for Hermione.
Hermione sighed and dropped her head down, feeling the water slide down her cheeks. Her lips twisted and trembled as she thought back to Hogwarts.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione: the inseparable trio....until Dumbledore's death, when Hermione had chosen potions and healing over drilling defensive magic with Harry and Ron and the rest of DA.
Her days were spent studying healing under Poppy Pomfrey. Her nights were spent studying potions with Snape. Her friendships fell to the wayside. Even her grades slid.
She had little time to devote to drilling defense spells. Everyone was studying defensive magic. No one else seemed to be worrying about injuries or how to counter curses. Or about being able to make the potions needed to heal injuries.
For a month following the Battle in the Department of Mysteries Hermione had taken ten different potions daily in order to repair all the internal damage from Dolohov's nonverbal curse. She had been lucky to have survived it.
When Dumbledore died only a few months later, she had felt keenly aware of how vital a role healing and potions would play in whether the Resistance would survive the war long enough to win it. But she was the only one worrying about it. Everyone regarded her as paranoid. Hospitals were a neutral territory; if anyone needed healing, there would always be St Mungo's to turn to.