Disclaimer: Hogwarts etc belongs to JKR.
AN: This is pretty much redone. I wanted to continue but it was just too poorly written. Chapters one and two have now been gutted, reshuffled, rewritten and stitched back together for your enjoyment.
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Prologue-
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not
with a bang but a whimper."
-T.S. Elliot – The Hollow Men
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That night never ended for her.
Her fingers still clutched that thin strip of vine-wood, still felt the deep thrumming of its dragon heartstring core. Her mind still whispered those spells, the stunners and curses that kept her alive, still whispered in Latin she no longer understood. Her feet still felt the leaves turn to grass underfoot; her shoulders sometimes ached still from the tug of long-distance apparation.
There'd be a call behind her on the street and it would be his shout, she'd be tensing and diving and leaping up to yell out another curse before running and running until he caught her and the world swung off axis and she was rolling over some other ground, waiting for an opening in which to drag him back. And then she'd blink, and she'd be standing outside Waterstones frowning at a fruit-seller across the street. It hung over her like an endless déjà vu.
That night she'd seen ancient power, she'd seen death and fire and magic and grey clouds on a clear night sky and he'd looked at her through tears that bridged the gap carved by blood.
She'd seen him.
For years he'd thought of himself as Harry Potter's great archenemy. He'd dreamt of the day in which he'd throw the hero to the floor, prove his superiority. And he'd honestly believed he was better than him.
But he was wrong. She'd always known it; Harry Potter had only one nemesis, and he was not and never would be Draco Malfoy. (That final battle crushed many hopes and dreams.)
For all his fantasies, Malfoy got no closer to Harry than Hermione got to Voldemort. For all his pureblood sensibilities he found himself matched with an equal and in the heat and fury of the fight he tore into her as she did to him. (It did that, you see, this war, it produced animals, shredded a person to the core of what made them them. Leaving only flesh and soul and that great burning need to live.)
He'd dream of heroic takedowns, but from age thirteen, in a ringing slap and words of loathing, he'd found his true nemesis. And at age eighteen, with burning hellfire and the blazing swords of angels they'd fight to the death.
It ended there. She remembers.
The great rush, that endless rush of sound and force and light that streamed through them, that left them panting in the dirt.
And the faces, confused, crowding around as the pain set in. Muggles; they'd seen nothing.
That night had been white; she sees it still in her wide eyes in the mirror, sees it still on a cloudy day, sees it still in winter's snow and in the glare of a white sheet of paper. The world had ended and there had been white. White noise, white pain, white snow on the ground. Even his hair, his hair had been white and glowing weakly in the darkness. White light; it began and ended at nothing.
She remembers that light on the horizon, growing and growing, its speed lost to her - and then a sudden blackness; it tasted like bile as it clawed its way through her soul. She remembers emptiness, in her heart and his eyes; an emptiness that threw them together as it tore them apart. She remembers his madness and her grief, and then that long, hard trek back to somewhere they could recognise (but never, they realised, again call home).
They'd known the answer before they'd even found the question. (What? Why? How?) (The death of magic.) (The war is over.)
That night they'd died. Obituaries published and parents dressed in black.
The world had wept. (But it wasn't for them),
And somewhere, somewhere dark and leafy in the shadow of mountains a group of muggles gasped in worry and horror.
"Are they dead?"
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