Chapter One

May 18th 2001

Running. Always running.

"Harry! Look out!"

And fire. The fire that burned relentlessly, devoured whole villages in its anger. Fire that raged from the wands of cruel, vindictive men; that snaked through grass, clung to every structure it hit like vines of the sharpest roses. It consumed and it destroyed and -

"Harry!"

Her voice was growing hoarse from the crying.

First, she had cried a Battle Cry. Strong, fierce Hermione: the brains of the Golden Trio. How could she not hold that confidence inside, that they were the Good and so they would win? They would fight for the Light, make their sacrifice, but they would win and that would be all that mattered.

But then she had cried for them to just look out! A curse from behind, or falling masonry, or a dark creature pouncing– the attacks came from all angles and no one had warned her that they would be this unprepared.

It was carnage.

So then she had cried out of grief. Not for long – there was never time to breathe these days, let alone mourn every lost soul – but she had holed herself into the corner of their tent for just the one night. One night to remember the faces of every Hogwarts student caught in the crossfire. Every Weasley cut down in the Burrow Massacre. Just the one night.

Harry had sat beside her, silent, letting her claw into his side and lose herself in the softness of his t-shirt. He had been there to help keep her from toppling over the cliff edge, lost to the insanity that lurked behind her eyes. Always her sounding board, her link to reality.

And he always had been; without him, where was the hope that they would still win? Where was the hope that she might one day feel... something? He soothed the numbness, that one night, with calm hands on her back and face set in determination. Her brother in all but blood. Her brave, brave, foolish brother.

"Harry, come on!"

There were only a handful of the old Order left fighting now. They were the last stand, marching on for all they believed in, a smouldering need for the losses to be worth it. It could all be okay if the death and the destruction could just mean something. Anything. Just let it mean something.

And yet –

"No! Nonononono," she howled. "No, no Harry!"

The smoke had appeared from nowhere. It choked the air, blinded them against the onslaught. The attackers were everywhere and nowhere all at once. One by one, they appeared from the shadows, huge hulking figures in pointed hoods, silhouettes against the hazy white of the burning air around them.

Somewhere to her right a wall had caved in. The crash of rock on rock disorientated her a second time but then – yes, no, was it-?

She found him sprawled on a rare patch of grass, arm cocked at a gruesome angle.

"Hermione," choked Harry, his voice so faint it gave her chills. "Run. Please run."

His leg was... it was hard to tell, exactly. The onslaught had thrown everything into disarray and she clung to the hope that this was all in her head. That Harry hadn't been jammed into the pavement by a particularly vicious chunk of masonry. That the darker soil beneath him wasn't tarred in his blood.

She shook her head, swallowing down a sob. "Not without you." And she crouched in closer, close enough that he could see nothing but her eyes as she ran a hand through his hair.

The flames were getting closer, so close now she felt the air thick and heavy pressing down on them. Panicked, she tried to cover her nose with her shirt but she had seen too many battles and not enough water. She retched at the metallic tang from her collar.

Dark bodies marched forward, wands raised, curses tearing forward to clear a path through to the Boy-Who-Lived. Hermione's heartbeat echoed around her ears, a pulsating drum-beat drowning out the snarl of fire catching on the threads of the rest of their ragged crew.

Then Harry was pushing something into her hand. The trinket was cool against the scraped flesh of her palm. Soft silk like a balm; the heavy feel of something precious and metal and no, she wasn't letting Harry away with this. Not now. Not yet.

"I'm not leaving you," she scolded, but it came out more fearful than anything. Hermione fell back on her heels to catch her breath, letting go.

Her stomach turned as she got another look at Harry. In just those few minutes, his skin had taken on a sickly grey tone, marred with blood splatters from wounds reopened in the downpour.

It was his eyes that frightened her the most though. His usual glimmer was gone; – too quickly. Even the look of panic was sinking away, replaced with defeat.

Harry groaned. Coughed. Groaned once more, quieter now.

Thunder cracked the sky above them, strong and so loud it must have cleaved the world in two.

"Love you, 'Mione."

The sky blazed white for a single moment, then red, then perhaps pain, then black.

A whirlwind caught, hurling debris high into the air. Hermione thought she might have seen bodies within the storm, but she couldn't be sure. She wasn't sure of anything just then.

More colours. Everywhere a new shade, dark and yet dazzling all at once. The gale whipping fast and hard around their cowering forms. Hermione couldn't get her bearings, could barely feel the bauble digging into her hand.

In the confusion, she grasped onto what she knew. Harry was gone; that she could feel in the emptiness in her heart. Her best friend, her hero, her only family – it was gone. And so was any chance they had in this godforsaken war.

Another swirl, this time a striking gold against a backdrop of fire. And was that -? Flashes of green – an unmistakeable green. At what? Her? Harry was dead. She was as good as. The storm would see to that if the fire didn't get her first. Shooting at a walking corpse was just absurd.

This was terror far greater than that she'd been living through since the war had began. This was a caricature of the nightmares of every little girl, a world tipped on its head and throwing a tantrum for it, shrill and incessant and just make it stop! Hermione wanted to scream.

But she didn't. Because the Death Eaters were shooting at her. Her. The last one standing – albeit in a field of the corpses of her friends and drenched in the blood of her brother. Her.

And they kept missing.

So she laughed.

The flames lapped at her toes. The wind teased at her hair. And she just laughed.

Arms wide, head tilted to the sky, she greeted each boom of thunder with the same harsh crow of mirth because this couldn't be happening, couldn't be real.

A blaze of green shot past her calf, the heat of it stirring something deep in her abdomen.

The storm gathered itself, preparing for its final cry. As one, the shadows raised their wands toward her.

From somewhere far far away, a reedy voice cried, "The last Potter will not die!"

And then Hermione Granger was no more.

A/N So that's the major character death taken care of (Harry). Now onto the story, which will be angsty but also a fair bit happier than the heavy stuff in this chapter. Updated at least once a week. Reviews appreciated, replied to and, er, kindly requested with a bribe of cupcakes...?