Author's Notes: I know, I know... a WAY more tragic than the kind of stuff I usually write... But please read and tell me what you think (if i totally suck at it, don't hold back!)
Anyway, I wasn't sure if I should make it PG or PG-13 but, whatever, here goes...
You Have No Idea...
It was a place he'd been at several times before. Too many times. He hated it. But he was there for a reason.
He ignored the sound of the thunder that was threatening to break into a terrible storm, and ignored the old, dirty, cracking stones he was walking between.
And he ignored Hermione's advice about not coming here.
Not that he wanted to be there. One might even say there was no reason for him to (no real reason, anyway). But he wanted to see it.
Harry continued walking, not really knowing where exactly it was, but instead hoping to stumble upon it. It'd be a miracle if he found it, though, between the rows and rows of them and the darkness of dusk hiding the one he was looking for.
"Harry! Harry, please, I don't want to be here, let's go!"
He didn't even look back to look at her. He just shook his head and kept walking, staring blankly ahead.
Finally, he saw it. Among the hundreds of gravestones there, he found the one of the largest ones there, the one with a serpent engraved near the top of the stone with an emerald for an eye. Near the bottom, of course, was the name, put on the stone in gleaming dark green marble.
Figures he'd want to show off, even in death.
Harry quickened his pace and focused only on that tomb, once again ignoring Hermione. She, of course, didn't know what was going on and was a bit confused when Harry hurried off, but followed quickly after him nonetheless, hugging her coat around her tighter, though at following his eyes she knew exactly what he'd found and walked faster still. Harry obviously hadn't noticed, for all his attention was directed at the serpent-top stone, until finally he was standing over the grave of Draco Malfoy.
He stared at the grave for a moment, trying to make up his mind as to what he wanted to say, regardless that Malfoy wouldn't even be able to hear him. Harry just had to get it out, yell it all out, so loud that Malfoy would, in fact, be able to hear him from wherever the hell he was.
"You have no idea," Harry uttered quietly, in an almost deadly sort of way, "how glad I am that you're dead."
Harry could feel his teeth clenching in fury, and spat on the ground Malfoy was buried under. Before he could stop himself he was tilting his head back and cackling crazily. Anyone who had seen him would have thought he was mad. He was. And this was him being tame. Then he abruptly stopped and returned to his serious face seconds before he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around to face Hermione, who looked almost as if she were about to slap him.
"Let go of me!" Harry yelled as he shook his shoulder free of Hermione's grasp. She was actually rather strong. Harry had to peel her hand off.
"Harry, you said you'd control yourself! Look at yourself!" Hermione cried desperately, as she clung on to Harry again.
Harry tried to shake free a little more until he gave up. He looked at Hermione.
"Don't pretend you don't want to laugh at him too, Hermione," Harry said in a serious tone. "Don't act like you don't want to spit on his face too."
"Harry, you're acting crazy--"
"Am I!" Harry yelled. Hermione pursed her lips together as if she wanted to cry, but held back. "Look at me, Hermione, and tell me you don't wish you were the one to have killed him!"
"I don't Harry! You might, but I don't!" Hermione screamed back, her face eerily lit by the lightning every few seconds. "Now either calm yourself down, or--"
"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly. He repeated it twice. Hermione lowered her hand from his shoulder to his elbow until it finally slipped all the way off, and then Hary knelt down over the grave. "But I just wish... Everything he did... I mean, I can't believe--"
"I know, Harry," Hermione said, a little more calmly, and a little more able to contain her tears. She just didn't want Harry to say it. "I can't either."
Harry looked back down at the stone. He wanted nothing more than to rip the ground apart and pull Malfoy out of there, having been buried alive, and find him alive... just so Harry could kill the slimy Slytherin himself.
Draco Malfoy had, just a few weeks prior to his own death, ruined Harry's life. The little bit of life he had left in him was destroyed that single summer night alone. Hermione was brave, Harry thought, to have been able to control herself as she did even though her life was also changed forever that night.
It was all a blur. Harry could hardly the details of how it began. But he wouldn't forget what had happened that had made that night the worst in his life.
He wasn't sure how the Death Eaters had shown up there. The meetings for the Order were, after all, secret. Harry had arrived later than everyone else, he and Ginny having dropped baby Ronnie off with Mrs. Weasley. But when he got there, he regretted even getting up that morning.
There were already bodies on the floor, though it was almost impossible to tell which ones were actually dead, injured, or just faking, just to get someone close enough to attack. As a reflex, Harry instantly stood in front of Ginny, and plunged into his pocket for his wand, just in time to shield Ginny and himself from an oncoming flash of pink light, which missed them and hit a bush instead, which shriveled up at contact with the pink light.
"Run, Ginny! Run!" he'd yelled at her. He remembered seeing the most frightened look on Ginny's face. When she did nothing, he yelled at her again to leave, to hide, anywhere. She'd looked reluctant, but did as she was told.
He hadn't meant to yell at her, but what was he supposed to do? Considering her... condition... that was no place for her.
Harry returned to the present and punched the ground. He had to suppress the urge to stab Malfoy's grave, to burn it, to destroy the ground he was in, and make his body suffer. He'd gotten off so easily. Harry, on the other hand, had to deal with what happened that night six months ago forever. Then again, so did Hermione.
Harry turned around to see Hermione staring right back at him from another grave, then cross her arms and slowly walk around the surrounding ones. Harry guessed she couldn't bare to stay where he was.
Poor Hermione, Harry thought. She'd suffered so much too. Harry turned back to the stone he was kneeling in front of and said just loudly enough for a nearby rat to hear, "You just had to do this to her... you sadistic bastard."
Harry remembered it all. Once he saw Ginny turn back, he turned to face the nightmare ahead of him. The battle between the thirty or so Death Eaters, Malfoy among them, and the members of the Order had only just begun. Yet, there were already enough dead to end it. But the Death Eaters weren't quite done yet.
All around him, Harry saw people in masks and familiar faces throwing curse after curse, being hit, and falling to the ground. He began shooting hexes almost aimlessly just to shield himself. That's when something caught his eye.
While normally she would have left him with Mrs. Weasley, Hermione thought it was okay for her to take her one-year-old boy, Stephen, to an Order meeting. He was hardly any trouble at all, and she'd thought the newborn, Ronnie, was a handful for Mrs. Weasley already. That was a mistake, as she was trying so hard just to make sure Stephen wasn't hit, crying desperately for Ron to help her, but he was too busy with a duel...
With Malfoy.
Harry hadn't heard anything before: "Don't be ridiculous, Weasley! The Mudblood goes first!"
"No!" Ron had yelled. Hermione had hardly had any time to react so she'd just gone with natural instinct and held tightly onto crying Stephen, just before Malfoy raised his wand.
Harry could almost have imagined Hermione as Lily Potter at that moment, and could almost see his mother doing what Hermione was. He would have done something if the infamous Barty Crouch Junior wasn't blocking his way with his sick face and a wand at Harry's throat.
"Avada--"
Ron didn't have time. So he did what he knew he had to.
"--Kedavra!"
Harry punched Crouch out of the way.
And turned to his right just in time to see Ron fall to the ground.
"NO!"
"RON!"
Harry could feel the lump in his throat at that horrid memory. He cursed the the tomb once again and punched the ground several more times, like some little child. With serious anger issues.
Looking back at Hermione, who, at this point, was only a few feet farther away than before, Harry noticed she must have been recalling the same thing. Her eyes were misty.
Harry sighed a sort of cracked sigh, and once again looked at the serpent at the top of the tombstone.
"You have no idea," he whispered violently, "how much you hurt my best friend. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO STEPHEN!"
Stephen would never again see his daddy. Ron would never get to see Stephen grow up. Harry had never been more infuriated. He'd never wanted so badly to kill someone. To kill Malfoy.
The hottest fire straight from hell was burning in Harry's veins at the sight of Ron's white body lying on the ground. Harry screamed in rage as he charged toward Malfoy, and yelled at Hermione to take Stephen and hide.
Hermione, crying like Harry'd never seen her cry before, looked like she was about to go insane, but one look at Harry told her to listen, and she ran as fast and skilled (avoiding the rainbow of spells headed in all directions around her) as she covered Stephen and hid somewhere.
But Harry could still hear her screams.
Harry had his wand out, and prepared to strike. He didn't want to kill him. Yet. At least not with magic. He wanted to kill Malfoy with his bare hands, but first...
"CRUCIO!"
The look on Malfoy's terrified, shocked face as he screamed in agony at the effect of the Cruciatus Curse was priceless to Harry. He'd give anything to stare at Malfoy's twitching body and hear his miserable pleas for mercy forever, but something cut Harry off.
A Death Eater Harry didn't recognize hit him with a blocking spell, and stopped Harry in his tracks. Then the hooded man lifted his hand in the air as if seconds away from finishing Harry off, when suddenly the Death Eater had tackled from behind by Seamus Finnegan, who clung onto the man as Harry got up and searched for Malfoy.
Seamus was dead two seconds after Harry left.
Harry couldn't help himself. He felt as if he was about to lose his mind.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA," Harry yelled as the sprinkles turned into a slightly heavier shower, lightning lighting up the dark cloudy night every few seconds, "HOW MANY OF MY FRIENDS...MY FRIENDS YOU KILLED THAT NIGHT!"
Hermione broke down.
It had been Malfoy to, once again, kill someone that night. Upon seeing that his fellow bastard was in trouble trying to defend him from Harry's wrath, he yelled the first curse that came to mind, that he'd so quickly gotten used to, and killed the Irish Gryffindor.
The rest of the night was all about finding Malfoy for Harry, but he never did. So many flashes of light to avoid, so many friends to try and save, so many hysterical shrieks, so much going on through his mind... Every once in a while, usually while Harry was fighting off a Death Eater, he caught a glimpse of Malfoy, almost every time in the process of another murder, somewhere a bit too far for Harry to go without getting distracted with something, and every time, when he finally made his way to where Malfoy had been standing, he was gone.
And the nightmare had only begun.
Harry got up and kicked the ground in frustration at having made Hermione cry. He forgot about the cursed grave for a second and walked over to where Hermione was and hugged her, like a brother would, as he finally calmed down and tried to keep Hermione from getting even more upset. She squirmed a bit but finally gave in and sobbed into Harry's shirt as lightning stuck once again.
"Oh, Harry..."
"I know, Hermione," he hushed, "I know."
There was so much mist, so much fog, it was almost impossible to see anything. But by the end of the night, there were so many dead bodies lying on the ground that even a blind person could have seen it. The image was that strong.
Oh, and the blood. There had been so much blood.
In between all the confusion and disparity going on, it was hard to tell what was happening. A person could be shouting in victory at killing someone one minute, and dead the next. In was so confusing, some people weren't even sure the wand they were holding was even their own. That's because when someone dropped their wand, they were screwed. Any wand anyone could find, they'd pick up and keep, just in case. So whenever someone was left without a wand, their only option for protection was resorting to Muggle means. So much blood was shed as many were punched, strangled, even stabbed, and so on.
By the end of the night, there were so many dead bodies lying on the ground that it was hard to tell which side had won, if at all. Harry didn't care about those like Goyle that were hanging on to dear life hopelessly. What tore his heart apart was seeing Seamus, Cho, Padma, Kingsley, Tonks, all lying dead. Poor Neville looked as if he was about to die of misery as he cried over Luna's body. She'd been left so badly she was unrecognizable.
Harry'd been left so badly injured he couldn't move. He was lying on the ground, barely conscious, when he heard this horrible sound of the evil side's victory. If it was a victory.
"Do you know why we came here, Potter? He just wants you to know. He wanted to show you that he's still watching you. The Dark Lord doesn't want you to forget about him. Wants to remind you that he's here, and he's stronger than ever. REMEMBER: HE'S STILL HERE, AND HE'S READY, ANY TIME!"
The only reason Harry hadn't attacked Malfoy before that was because he could barely move. But before he was finally able to reach his wand, Malfoy, who had, no doubt, been the organizer of this living hell, and the few remaining living Death Eaters vanished into thin air, leaving those lying on the ground groaning, barely able to shout things like, "Don't leave without us... TAKE US WITH YOU!"
They all died soon after.
Harry finally managed to calm Hermione down the most he possibly could. She cried so long as so hard, it was almost reminiscent of what happened that summer night, right after the battle was over.
He held her as they made their way back to Malfoy's tomb as he thought, No... this is nothing compared.
It was true. Harry'd never seen Hermione like the way she was. She trembled as he was finally able to come out of her hiding place with little Stephen cradled in her arms. She sobbed so hard as she slowly made her way to where Ron was lying, and broke down when she collapsed on the floor, making Stephen start crying again. She cooed at him, though she herself looked insane as she sat in a fetal position, rocking her baby and herself back and forth by Ron's body, crying hysterically.
Harry couldn't bear the sight of it all. He cringed as he slowly got up, with the intention of walking over there and helping Hermione (though he knew there was really nothing he could do, for he wanted to let himself collapse as well and cry with her) and try to be strong, but somewhere along the process he noticed something. Something he should not have been seeing.
Far off, somewhere near where the bodies ended, was a young lady lying on he ground. Harry felt a little woozy, especially considering the many others crying near a loved one at the moment, including poor Remus Lupin, but knew exactly who that was.
He knew he wouldn't be able to handle it. He knew he should have just walked away. He already knew what he was going to see, and it was better not to see it. But he had to.
As he scrambled across the field of bodies, nearly tripping on several corpses, unintentionally stepping on Katie Bell's, hearing the many cries similar to Hermione's, he came nearer and nearer to the one he knew was going to tear his insides apart, and surely kill him.
The girl's long hair was in the way, so as Harry knelt down beside the body, he had to turn the body around and pull her long red hair out of her face only to see Ginny Weasley's cold dead eyes, wide-open, staring right back at him.
He'd killed her. DRACO MALFOY HAD KILLED HALF OF HARRY'S HEART!
"YOU BASTARD!"
He'd told her to get away. He'd told her twice. Why hadn't she listened?
Harry would never know.
Harry'd cried out to the skies above as it started to rain, making Ginny's still face look like a white rose shining with morning dew. His shaking hand slowly lowered itself to touch Ginny's face and ran down all the way to her barely popping belly.
He'd never been more miserable, and he would have killed himself, right then and there, with his own wand, until he realized that would have been selfish.
Why deny Malfoy, or Voldemort, a worse death by his hand?
And why give Malfoy the satisfaction before getting to torture the hell out of him?
And then there was baby Ronnie. He couldn't leave him and orphan. He'd rather suffer the rest of his life at the fact that he'd never see Ginny's smiling face again rather than get off easy and leave baby Ronnie all alone without either of his parents.
That exact moment, he swore to himself that he would never rest until he destroyed Malfoy, and the brains behind every operation, Voldemort. He would die trying to kill them before giving up.
After all, he'd killed Ginny... and the two boys she was carrying in her.
Their names were going to be James and Sirius. And they died with her. Harry's two sons had been mercilessly murdered before they had even taken their first breath.
Ronnie would never get to meet his little brothers. He'd never get to see his mommy again. He'd never even get to see his uncles, for, Harry'd learned later, that asshole managed to kill every one of the Weasleys that night. Every. Single. One.
Except Mrs. Weasley, who, at the moment, had no idea what was waiting for her to discover.
At this point, Harry no longer had any control of himself. He didn't care anymore about ripping the ground apart as he savagely struck the ground and pulled out soil and weeds with every retraction of his fist, yelling like a madman as he did so, leaving Hermione helpless to stand and watch as her best friend went insane.
But Harry was almost always angry since the night of the attack. The only time he wasn't, when Hermione came to think of it, was when he was with his son. Little Ronnie made Harry so happy. He was Harry's heart, all Harry had to live for, just like Stephen was Hermione's heart, her only sunshine.
They were both, at the moment, with Mrs. Weasley. Poor Mrs. Weasley had nothing left. Her husband and every one of her children died. She'd always loved Harry and Hermione as her own flesh and blood, but really, her grandchildren were all she had left.
She loved Stephen and Ronnie so deeply. She also loved Bill's daughters, Rochelle and Molly, so much, but hardly ever saw them since they lived with Fleur in France. Those adorable little strawberry blondes, three-year-olds, Hermione thought, were such Weasleys. While they had Fleur's brilliant blue eyes, they had more of Bill's physical features. As for their behavior... Perhaps Bill's werewolf bite had effected them in some way, but one could swear they were looking at mini-female Fred. Or George. Those little girls were a mischievous pair, they were.
Too bad Fred and George would never get to teach them their many tricks, or share their wildest secrets with their nieces.
Harry's cries broke into Hermione's thoughts.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA," he gulped, "HOW MUCH I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! WITH EVERY LAST BIT OF MY SOUL!" he yelled, giving up on digging Malfoy out.
"You are such... an IDIOT! Voldemort didn't give a damn about anything you did, he has plenty of other followers! He didn't care who the most faithful was, the most loyal... HE DIDN'T CARE! You just weren't valuable to him anymore, you know!" he continued to scream at nothing, Hermione crying into her hand as she stood beside him. "He used you for what he wanted, and got rid of you! SIMPLE AS THAT! You weren't even that powerful a wizard, you know! That's why you were only good for this one thing! And you know what? I BET HE'S LAUGHING AT THAT RIGHT NOW! I HATE YOU!" I only wish it could've been me who killed you!" Harry cried. "I only wish it could've been me..."
There had actually been a time when Harry thought it was possible that Draco actually had a heart, back in their sixth year, when Harry could see in his eye that Malfoy couldn't kill Dumbledore, that he didn't really want to. It was just an order he'd gotten from Voldemort, just like this had been. Except this time, he didn't hold back. And it was up to Harry to live with it now.
"You know why I came here today, Malfoy?" Harry asked, a bit more quietly now, as the lightning became stronger with each strike. "I'd heard that Voldemort killed you... I had to come here and see it for myself," he gulped again, "and laugh in you FACE! You idiot... I only wish I'd been the one to kill you... but don't worry, it's not over..."
"Harry..." Hermione pleaded to leave.
"No," Harry snapped, "he has to know how badly he ruined my life. He may be dead now, but there are still ways to get revenge," he said, not shouting anymore, Hermione thanked.
Harry yelled out one more time and decided he couldn't take it anymore. He made his left hand into a fist and smashed it into the gravestone in front of him, not giving a damn about the pain he felt as he retracted it and felt the blood run down his hand, but had left nothing but a few cracks into the stone. Harry fell hard onto his knees as the light shower turned into a full-on storm, lightning hitting harder than ever, providing the only source of light in the sky with the grayness of the clouds blocking any light from the sun to the earth. The thunder was so loud, but Harry's voice was louder as he screamed at the top of his lungs, with all his might:
"YOU HAVE NO IDEA... HOW GLAD I AM YOU'RE DEAD!"
"Oh, Harry... Don't do this..."
"HA! YOU'RE DEAD! YOU'RE DEAD...!"
There was nothing Hermione could do as Harry went into hysterics, laughing like a maniac. Anyone who'd seen him would have actually thought he was drunk, or more accurately, downright insane. The sad part was, this was as sane as he was going to get.
Hermione stooped down and held onto Harry. He'd laughed so long and so hard she wasn't exactly sure at what point Harry's crazy laughter had turned into sobs.
But she cried with him.
Author's Notes: Wow... even I'm kinda surprised with myself. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea at first. Not my best work, but this kinda came to me in a dream. A really really weird, sad dream, and the idea for the story popped into my head and I wrote it. But whether you loved it or hated it, whether it broke your heart or broke your brain, made you wanna cry or made you wanna puke, was one of your favorites or a total piece of crap... I'd like reviews please! If it was cool, I might write a sequel or something. If it toally sucked... curse the moment I wrote it!
