PROMPT: Like the flower that grows in the crack of the sidewalk, she blossomed in the midst of battle, tempting and dangerous.
Originally a response to a summer of challenges on Granger Enchanted, may it rest in peace.
Beta'd a good while back by the lovely AuntieL, who also beta'd Insidious and the vast majority of everything else I wrote for GE. Thank you, Auntie!
He watched her as she advanced, her wand clutched tight in her hand, lips forming Latinate derivations of intent and desperation. Hex after curse after jinx after spell after shield – she cast them all with precision and a power that belied her small frame. When her lips did not move, when she cast silently, the brightest, deadliest sparks of spellfire arced from her wand to her targets.
Those targets fell. If they would rise again, he could not be certain.
He remembered tormenting her in Potions, calling her by a word that would never again cross his lips – the word carved so cruelly by his insane aunt into her arm. He knew she was a good witch, a good woman, but she was now as terrifying as Aunt Bellatrix.
How could this pocket-sized warrior be the same frizzy-haired know-it-all he had tormented for six years?
The changes in her were deep, and yet they were completely superficial.
Hermione Granger was a bleeding-heart Muggleborn witch who wanted everyone to be free and magically equal – pun intended, in his mind. Unfortunately for her, that wasn't going to be a reality, ever. Hermione Granger left badly knitted hats out for House Elves, wanted centaurs and Goblins to have wands, and generally screwed up the natural order of things according to, well, pretty much everyone. And the crazy bint didn't stop those things, either. She'd do it again tomorrow, if the war were over by then. She was made of marshmallow goo and rainbow-sweet thoughts.
Hermione Granger had been starved while she was on the run with the Misbegotten Duo, tortured by his insane aunt, and burned by hexed gold in a Gringotts vault. She had ridden a hippogriff and a dragon. She had helped to free the unfortunate Sirius Black, keeping him from a Dementor's Kiss only to damn him to death through the Veil at the Department of Mysteries. She had fought Voldemort, Bellatrix Lestrange, and a host of others over the years. She was made of steel and rawhide.
Hermione Granger had been the top student in every subject, every year – including Defense Against the Dark Arts, the only class in which she ever struggling, she beat out the naturally gifted, if only through pure determination to be the best. She brewed the most technically correct potions. She flicked and swished the most precise charms. She transmuted museum-quality versions of whatever it was MacGonagall wanted in Transfiguration. She could map the stars blindfolded – she'd even demonstrated such in one Astronomy class, drawing seven constellations perfectly from memory while blindfolded with Ron's tie, though why she'd had to prove it, he couldn't recall. Her rune translations were impeccable, and her warding so tight an ant's butt couldn't squeeze past them. She was made of nothing but a brain with a mouth attached, the better to annoy him with.
And yet.
To watch her now, he could see every part of her coming together into some sort of indomitable force, a kind of will that he didn't think really existed.
She was glorious.
She was everything beautiful.
She was the one woman he ached for – and he only now discovered it in the midst of battle.
He was on the wrong side.
His son. He had to find his son. Spells were crashing and sizzling all around him, screams of pain, howls of anguish – it was every battlefield he had ever known. He had known too many.
Nothing mattered. Not the old friends of his – he had been such a fool! – not the children of those friends fighting and falling, not the cry of the wounded, not the possibility of his own death. Only his son mattered. Only finding his son.
Was that? Yes! A flash of blond hair, so bright against the smokey sky and black robes of the Death Eaters. Not Narcissa – hair was too short. That was Draco, his son. His most important child. His only child. His everything.
How had he been so stupid? How had he done this to his family, to his son?
Narcissa was a grown woman, and had been when he married her. She was no innocent – no Black was ever innocent – and she had known the consequences of following the Dark Lord and what would happen if he fell. His son, though, was an innocent, in so many ways that he and his wife had never been.
Too often, too long, he had shielded Draco, and that damage, along with his arrogant mouth and foolish pride – how he loathed himself at times! – were going to cost him everything.
His son.
He ran across the field, not caring if he were stung by slicing hexes or burned by dark spells. He had to reach his son.
His son...who was not casting anything but shield spells.
No – there! A flash of dark purple and a scream from … Was that Rowle? Had Draco just hexed Thorfinn Rowle? A brother Death Eater?
Why had he done such a thing? Was he mad? Was he suicidal?
If the Dark Lord found out …
Ah. There it was. There was the answer. The brown-haired girl – at least he hoped it was a girl. Yes. When she turned, he could see the swell of her breasts under her shirt, though she was skeletally thin and really not remarkable in her looks.
Except in her casting. She moved like a Dark dancer, a creature of spellfire and magic, brought to this mortal plane specifically to work her magic in war – magnificent creature! Oh, now this one would be his son's mate. This one would be the one to carry a new generation of Malfoys into this world, to make their name new again.
One after another, he saw his brethren fall to her wand.
If they would rise again, he could not care.
She turned – held her wand up … NO! Not Draco!
No...
No, she wasn't going to cast against him. Draco's lips moved. Her head nodded. Draco took his stance against her back, protecting her from her blind side.
Even now, even surrounded by the dead and dying, the fighting and failing, Lucius Malfoy smiled.
He had found his son, and his son had found a mate.
Yes.
All would be well.
His feet carried him to the young soon-to-be-lovers.
He took up a post next to his son on her off-wand side. Lifted the wand he had stolen from Dolohov's corpse.
Lucius Malfoy, for the first time in his life, cast in defense of the Light.
He didn't care.
His son was safe.
And his son's chosen mate was magnificent in her battle.
Narcissa Malfoy searched frantically among the fallen. No, no, no, no...all of these had dark hair, or the wrong blond.
She was searching, hoping, praying for her beloved son.
Her husband, well, he was capable of looking after himself. He was no fool, knowing they would never stay out of Azkaban now, but if she could keep her son from that fate...
Her son. Her beloved boy. Her darling baby. Her only child – not for want of trying.
Where...where...another fallen robe, hood high, mask in place – no. Not him. Not him.
Thank Merlin. Thank Circe. Thank...whatever out there loved her son as much as she did.
Please let that something or someone not be Death.
Narcissa looked around, lost in the smoke and haze of battle, of flesh on fire, of screaming, of groaning. She sank to her knees again and again, seeking, but not finding.
She stood, stumbled to the next fallen Death Eater, and checked for the distinctive blond of her son's hair. Time after time, fear choked her as she reached a chalky, trembling hand out to tear away mask or hood. Time after time, relief threatened to carry her away on a black roll of not him.
A full circuit around the school, and she could not find him.
Then, suddenly, a flash of blond – another, longer – there! Her husband and her son, standing with another, casting protections, casting shields.
Was that Bella?
No.
Her hair wasn't right, her stance too pure. Her wandwork too clean. Bella muddied her spells horribly, and this one was an artist, as precise in her wandwork as a virtuoso violinst is with fingers and bow.
Why on earth would Lucius and her precious Draco protect this mousy little thing, so painfully thin and not at all pretty?
An acid yellow hex flew from the woman's wand, followed by a darkly gleaming purple and a brilliant blue – and she knew.
Draco had found his beloved.
Narcissa walked over to the three, stood beside her son and her son's lover, and, for the first time in her life, put her love for her son over everything else inher world. Even the Black family.
She cast beside the young woman, her own dance of death and pain shielded by her son and her husband.
Yes, this girl danced well to the music of battle.
For her son's sake, she hoped that translated to the bedroom as well.
There she was. There was the miserable little Mudblood bitch who had defied his Lord and his wife, refusing to answer questions and receiving Bella's wrath in return.
There she was, bane of his Lord's existence, second only to the little fucker who just wouldn't die. There. Surrounded on three sides by blonds – and …
No.
Wait.
She wasn't surrounded on three sides by blonds. She was guarded on three sides by blonds. And Narcissa was casting with her.
TRAITORS!
All of them.
Even the Mudblood bitch who refused to admit she had stolen her magical birthright somehow – she was a traitor to magic itself.
He hated traitors.
Pettigrew had betrayed the Potters because he was weak and pitiful, stupid and slow. His betrayal, like so many, was born of fear.
Snape had betrayed Dumbledore, but that was on the Dark Lord's orders, so he couldn't be upset about it, really. His betrayal, like so few, was based on true loyalty and the ability to blend in with the enemy. If one must betray, or be betrayed, this was the best kind. There was no pain, no tears, just duty – and duty had no sweethearts.
But there.
There was a betrayal in action.
There was a young boy claiming by protection of his own and his line a future wife. A sweetheart.
The most sickening betrayal of all came from one for "love" – as if that ridiculous emotion actually existed. His Bellatrix was a proper wife, a proper whore for him in their bedroom, a proper lady in the presence of their Lord, a proper Death Eater who revelled in the agony she inflicted upon the deserving. Draco, though, wasn't man enough, wasn't wizard enough, for a wife like that. He had to go and choose a Mudblood.
Traitor.
Blood Traitor.
Oathbreaker.
Stupid little fucker would simply have to die.
His Bella would get to play with the girl, then, after Lucius and Narcissa were punished for letting their boy-
No.
No.
NO.
NO.
NO NO NO NO!
There. At the Mudblood's feet.
That dark, curly hair – some said her hair was going grey, but he couldn't see it – that beautiful body...
His Bellatrix.
His wife.
His world.
Dead.
At the feet of a worthless little Mudblood bitch.
Rage flooded through him. His vision went hazy red.
With a roar that he knew all could hear – they couldn't, but his mind was so far gone into him that he was incapable of any other perception of reality – he pointed his wand at the little bitch.
He cast.
She cast.
Narcissa cast.
Lucius shielded.
Words poured from him as he denounced the Malfoy traitors, the Mudblood, their betrayal of the Dark Lord.
He kept casting.
So did the three who faced him.
In the end, it was Hermione's hex that caved in his chest, sent him crashing to the ground, the light in his eyes slowly fading as he drowned by inches in his own blood.
There he was, the last one in their section of the field.
Hermione's spells flew fast and furious, no pause for breath in between – no verbal casting at all. The last bludgeoning hex hit home – he was done.
Hermione turned to thank the Order members who had fought with her so well – stopped when she saw the distinctive pointy, pretty faces and white-blond hair of the Malfoys. Swallowed. Managed to say… something. She thought it might be an expression of gratitude.
She would never be sure what she said, but she did know what she answered when Draco asked her to be his wife.
She said yes.
She accepted the Malfoy signet from his finger as her engagement ring.
Later, she would wonder what kind of madness let her enter into an engagement in the middle of the final battle of the war – the kind of battle that left one side utterly destroyed and the other merely decimated.
But she said yes.
Draco kissed her then.
Hermione let his lips move over hers, felt something strange and pleasant stir inside her.
The contract, verbal though it may be, was now completely valid and she would have to marry him.
She would not regret it.
Neither would he.
All of that would wait – the future was waiting for them on the other side of this war.
And war was over there.
She went.
He followed.
They left Rodolphus Lestrange choking slowly in his blood, not worried about any desire he had for revenge.
He was helpless.
Dying.
He watched as she fought with her soon-to-be husband at her back, her now-committed future parents-in-law at her sides. Lucius was purely casting defensive magics, as was Draco.
That was as it should be.
A wizard's shields were stronger in battle than a witch's.
A witch's spellfire was stronger in battle than a wizard's.
It was why the wizards went to war and the witches stayed home.
The best warriors did not fight on the front line. The best warriors stayed home to defend the heart of the army from the enemy.
These two witches fought now.
They danced spellfire.
They dealt death.
They glowed.
She glowed.
Like the flower that grows in the crack of the sidewalk, she blossomed in the midst of battle, tempting and dangerous.
In that moment, he loved her.
She had killed him, but he loved her for it.
He would never have her, and so he loved her for giving her this vision.
She was beautiful in her righteous fury. She was magnificent in her war.
No matter that he had scoffed at love, ignored it, ridiculed it as the creation of the weak to Confund the strong – no matter that his wife had been glorious in her own way as she cast.
Rodolphus' epiphany occurred as he lay dying. He loved a witch. He loved the witch who had blasted him into this.
He loved her. Would love her forever.
As his sight slowly faded, he rejoiced that his last sight would be of the woman he loved, performing the Dance of Battle, her wandhand casting spells of power and death and love.
Yes, she was beautiful in her Light.
His vision faded to black, and Rodolphus Lestrange knew no more.
"It was the oddest thing," the Healer trainee said to his superior after gathering the dead from the eastern side of the school.
"What was?" the busy Healer asked, half-ignoring his pupil in favour of checking off yet more remains claimed by families or cadet branches for burial.
"Rodolphus Lestrange. His chest was caved in, he had a dozen hexes active – all of them quite painful – when he died, but he was smiling. A happy smile, not a 'you'll get yours' like we've seen on so many others. He was happy."
The Healer shrugged. "Maybe he saw that bitch of a wife of his waiting for him."
"Maybe," allowed the trainee. In his heart, though, the trainee would never accept that easy answer, wondering what it was that could make a man like Rodolphus Lestrange smile lovingly as he died.