The Question
By Polydicta
Albus Dumbledore was right to fear what Harry Potter could become, and when someone kills his lover, Hermione Granger, he will move Heaven and Earth.
Disclaimer:
All fiction is derivative and fan fiction doubly so. I make no claim to own any part of any of the following, all I have done is an attempt to put together the elements in a novel fashion, using words and ideas like Lego ™ bricks.
There is no money involved – all I do is to share what I do for my own amusement.
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The Question
Albus Dumbledore was worried. Seriously worried.
His instruments had told him how powerful Harry had become.
Yes, the boy had been moulded in the furnace of adversity, shaped on the anvil of combat, hardened in the forge of grief and now tempered in the comforting warmth of love.
For all that he had been through, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived was still as passionate and wild as his father and godfather had been at his age, with a capacity for love that gave the old mage hope for the future.
Albus Dumbledore needed just another three or four years of relative peace for Harry to be the perfect weapon: skilled, powerful and yet restrained. Right now his restraint was all down to one factor, the person of Miss Hermione Granger.
At that moment, not far from him, events that would shape the world were occurring. Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were getting married.
Not for them the grand wedding, not the small ceremony in the forest. No, for this pair the ritual was as old as Eve, witnessed by the Sky and the Earth, and any secret life that happened to be near at hand. They had simply promised to be with each other forever. They sealed their promise with a kiss. A kiss which rapidly became something more.
.
Albus Dumbledore felt the ripple of magic and smiled that there were young people still who did what young people did. Such is the joy of old age.
Tom Riddle's latest Death Eater witnessed the young couple's tender kisses, and he saw those kisses become gentle, tentative lovemaking. He, faithful fool that he was, rushed to report this news to his master.
And Voldemort was pleased.
He sent for his favourite Lieutenant, Lucius Malfoy.
"Lucius … " he hissed. "Bring me the mudblood Granger. Alive and unspoiled. With her as bait, I shall break the boy. Take your time and get this right, Lucius. I wouldn't want to lose you from my service."
.
Three months later, a carefully executed plan had delivered both Hermione Granger and Harry Potter to the Dark Lord's new lair deep under the mountains of Wales.
"Well done, my faithful servant, you have done as I commanded and more."
"The boy was a happy accident, Lord."
"Very happy, Lucius. Very happy indeed. Now, to the entrée. Bring them both forward, bound and gagged."
Two iron cages were wheeled from a side-chamber. One contained Harry the other his lady.
"I told you that you were weak, Harry Potter, and now we shall see how weak you are."
He pointed his wand at Hermione. "Crucio!"
Her screams rebounded from the walls carven from the living rock of the mountain, and Harry began to glow with the furious magical storm within him.
There was a flash and the death eaters were blasted by the shrapnel of the bursting iron of Harry's cage. He strode across and reaching through the bars, grabbed Hermione's hand and apparated.
.
"Avada kavadra!"
The green bolt hit Hermione as they disappeared.
.
The following morning, the caster of the curse, the Death Eater, known as Nott, awoke to find himself nailed to the wall of the cavern. The tattered ruins of skin hanging from his body. His screams woke everyone in the tunnel complex.
Later, the Dark Lord received reports of strange weather enveloping the mountain under which they sheltered. Death Eaters who tried to apparate or portkey out were returned, agonised, horribly mangled and disfigured, and yet seemingly unable to die.
The howling darkness closed in around the mountain, pressing closer and darker until the very rocks of the earth shuddered with the forced being unleashed.
Fell voices were heard on the tempest, punctuated by the thunder-stroke's exclamations.
"I have had enough of the magical world. Let them die, it is they who cast my heart into darkness. I curse them for what they have done, their malice, their stupidity, their idle selfishness, their bigotry. Let them die who wished ill of an innocent woman!"
The column of blackness grew, the mountain was ground to dust and reformed anew in a different form. Many wizards and witches died across the face of the world, torn to shreds by the storm that a bereaved teenage mage had unleashed. Muggles who sympathised with Voldemort in their heart of hearts, too, were torn asunder.
The storm relented. At last, the sun shone on the towering obsidian peak that had been the Dark Lord's last hide out, his tomb. A midnight obelisk to mark his passing.
Atop the glistening black spire sat a lone figure, black haired, bespectacled and holding the dead body of his beloved Hermione.
A final tear trickled down his cheek. He looked up to the rising sun and, with all of his dying strength he screamed one word.
.
.
WHY?
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Unthinkably far, far away, many, many millennia later an astronomer saw the distant main-sequence star, an orange dwarf, explode.
Instantly, his mind produced one question: "why?"