Dear god, what have I done? There are tears in my eyes. TEARS, PEOPLE!
So, here you are, the unexpected and unanticipated yet-you-know-you-all-wanted -it sequel to my smash hit, Accio Potter! Enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!
(Mostly written under the influence of 5 cups of tea. You have been warned.)
…
"WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" the ever-insightful Ronald Weasley bellowed out, and everyone else in the over-crowded room started screaming and yelling and stomping their feet for the third time that morning since the meeting had started. Arms flailed, hair was torn out, and Hermione Granger, hair bushier than usual, groaned and facepalmed for what felt like the hundredth time that day. Calmly and carefully sidestepping a body that went flying past her and into the wall, she jumped up onto the long table of the Burrow, instinctly ducking a plate that zoomed in her direction. She raised her wand into the air and muttering a quick, harsh spell.
BANG!
The sound of cannon fire was rent through the air, smoke exploding from the tip of the wand, and everyone was suddenly quite still.
"For Merlin's sakes, people! Show some dignity!" she shouted, and everyone tittered in their places, looking ashamed at themselves. Several wands lowered, the people with their hands around other people's necks loosened their grips, while the one or two people who had cowered on the floor or under chairs with their arms over their heads sniffed the air with hopeful expressions. "Okay, first things first: can someone please shut Ron up!"
There was a slight shuffle, in which Bill Weasley, who happened to have Ron in an unforgiving headlock, performed a Silencing Charm. Ron's response was an mutinous look in Hermione's direction, which she ignored, and a struggle against Bill's muscled arms, which was useless.
"Thank you, Bill!" Hermione cried, with a great amount of relief, "Now, if everyone would please listen to Kingsley, again, maybe we can just make some sense out of this."
"Yes, um, thank you Miss Granger," Kingsley Shacklebolt supplied in his deep, ever calm voice, as he patiently pried his robes out from the hands of a startled-looking Nymphadora Lupin and straightened them. He took a second to gather himself, before once again addressing the room at large."As Mr Weasley did indeed point out, the situation is extremely dire, but it is no reason to panic. What we need at the moment is for everyone to remain… calm. "
There were mutinous looks all around at this."How can we possibly be calm at a time like this!" One of the Weasley Twins called, a crazed, unhinged look in his eyes. Nods and murmurs of agreement met his comment, while fingers itched around wand handles and other various instruments.
On the inside, Hermione was in vehement support of Fred or George's statement. Her best friend, the only hope they had of defeating Voldemort, had been snatched from right in front of her! He was dead, and with him went everything they had been working for! Now they had nothing, absolutely nothing! THIS WAS NOT A TIME TO BE CALM!
But on the outside she was the picture of patience and logic, virtues which she was infamous for. In response to the looks, she lifted her wand threateningly, and said in a venomous but clear voice, "Perhaps now would be a good time for everyone to find a seat, don't you think?"
There was a full five seconds in which blank looks were sent her way, and there were many shifting glances all around, at least until she barked out, "Now!" with a biting ferocity that sent everyone scrambling. She herself jumped neatly off the table right into a free chair, where she settled, waiting with raised eyebrows.
By the time everyone stilled, all of the chairs were filled around the table and everyone else was situated on kitchen appliances in a large circle around it, or else standing and looking rather uncomfortable for it.
There was a deathly silence.
"Soooo… what are we going to do now?"
Later, and only under the somewhat useless threat of death did the asker of this question reveal himself to be one Neville Longbottom. But at that moment, nothing else mattered as chairs were upturned and the riot once again broke out. This time, Hermione decided to ignore all pretence of common sense and with an angry, "Oh, I give up!" that probably went unheard, she began letting months of frustration flow out of her by grabbing her chair and violently beating the person nearest to her with it, which ironically happened to be Ron. He, still under the Silencing Spell, could do nothing more than whimper and bat feebly at the wooden legs as they crashed down upon his body.
With no one to stop it this time, the panicked outbreak of senseless violence continued on, with spells flying, punches being thrown and blood being spilt, until Mrs Weasley's kitchen more resembled a battlefield than anything else, pots and pans and rubble littered all over and the ceiling half caving in. Within half an hour, the clashes had dwindled to the occasional thump of a fist half-heartedly hitting flesh and the groaning of the fallen. There were bodies everywhere, many passed out from exhaustion and heinous injury while others twitched between awareness and unconsciousness. There was not a person in sight without an injury of some kind, whether it was cuts and bruises or an ugly mutation from a stray curse. The dust began to settle.
By this time, Hermione had managed to end up in the largely intact walk-in pantry, having naturally evolved from hitting Ron with a chair to snogging him senseless on a bag of flour. So when at last everything was quiet and the last person stilled, passing out on the mutilated remains of a splintering chair, she finally found it safe to emerge, patting her hair down in a daze-like fashion and stepping over a great many things to get to the middle of the room.
"Well, shit," she cursed, surveying the ruin around her, "We're screwed, aren't we?"
"You're just working that out now?" a disembodied voice supplied, following the statement with a desperate laugh which turned into a painful spluttering. She later found out that this had been Neville as well.
From outside there was a sudden cracking sound, followed by several other similar noises, and then the stomping of many feet and suddenly several black robed figures burst through the broken doors. Hermione swivelled around and raised the wand in her hand, but it was more of a reflex than an actual defensive action. She was quite surprised to find that she just didn't care that much anymore.
"What the hell?" One of the masked men exclaimed as they all stopped dead, surveying the destruction with open mouths.
"You lot are a little bit late, you've missed all the action, now. These idiots have already done all the work for you," Hermione told the Death Eaters, throwing her wand away and gesturing towards the ruined kitchen and the strewn bodies in one move. She gave a laugh, a devilish witch-cackle (ironic, seeing as she was a witch) and threw back her head, her body convulsing slightly. To the men who stood before her, she must have looked quite insane at that moment, eyes rolling, hair dishevelled and blood on her clothes.
"You. Mudblood. What has happened here?" One of the number had stepped forward and was jabbing an index finger in her direction.
"Oh, you know, just panic tearing us apart, making us destroy ourselves," she giggled in response. "So much violence. I tried to get them to stop, you know, but no! They wouldn't listen to me!" Her hysteria was mounting now, so much so that she needed to clutch at the heavy wooden table to support her legs. It was all so funny, really! Harry was dead, murdered by Voldemort, Ron was passed out in the pantry, covered in flour and blood, and from the corner of her eyes she could see Ginny's waterfall of orange hair sticking out from under an upturned cupboard. Remus Lupin was draped across the stove, Kingsley had found himself hanging by his legs from the roof from what looked like a spider's web, Mr and Mrs Weasley had long since fled and several other poor victims had gotten themselves stuck in a massive quagmire of green goop in the middle of the floor, no doubt one of the Weasley Twins inventions. So very, very, funny it all was! All of it!
"Check to see if anyone's still alive," the chief Death Eater ordered, and all his minions began fanning out, scrambling through the rubble and bending over bodies. One of them made a grab at Hermione and latched onto her arms, and she didn't resist beyond a feeble swatting of her hands as though he were a fly. "Take her to the Dark Lord," was all she heard, before her arms were bound together with some rope and she was bundled outside into the sun
In hindsight, Hermione really should have better than this. She should have tried to escape, to make a heroic bound for freedom, but at that moment, she really was so far south of caring, she'd hit the South Pole and fallen off the edge of the Earth into the nothingness of space. It was with a morbidly cheerful heart that she caught one last sight of the Burrow before she was whisked away by Apparation.
Logically, she should have realised that the fight had carried on from the kitchen and to the rest of the house, but this fact had so far escaped her, though the evidence was clear now; an entire chunk of the first floor was missing, with more of the mysterious green goop oozing out through broken windows on the second floor. Everything above the third floor was alight with a magical bluish-purple flame that sent horrid clouds of orange smoke furling into the air while all around there was littered yet more bodies of the people she had once called friends. This sight, far from sobering her, made her giggle all the harder.
With a rough twist, the Death Eater then pulled her into oblivion, through the familiar suffocating tube of Apparation before they both emerged, Hermione gasping for breath, in the shadow of a familiar building: Malfoy Manor, tall and imposing. The place of her recent nightmares.
It was then she was none-too gently shoved through the black gate and into the house and back into that dreaded drawing room, the fireplace once again casting creepy shadows across the walls and a silent audience awaiting her. Rough hands pushed her to her knees in front of the familiar robed, skeletal figure.
"Hey, Voldy! How 'ya doing?" she asked cheerfully, the biggest smile she could muster under the circumstances stretched across her face. Her reward was the scandalised look that flashed across the snake-man's features.
"You dare disrespect me, you filthy-blooded waste of magic?"
Hermione put on a thoughtful expression, playing it for all that it was worth, before answering with a rather blunt, "Yes. Yes I do."
Voldemort's face turned murderous, and then was schooled into a snarl-like smile, his lips twitching and his red eyes gleaming. "Very well, then. It looks like you'll be going the same way as your… friend. Are you going to beg for mercy like he did, girl?"
Hermione actually snorted at that, her chin rolling onto her chest. "You and I know very well that Harry didn't beg for mercy, and neither will I." It's the most serious statement she's made in a while.
Hermione then met Voldemort's eye with an unwavering defiance, to which he leaned forward, a very prominent twitch in his lips the only sign of his anger. At this point, Hermione could see very well why this man was feared by so many, the boiling anger hidden by such a calm demeanour; unfortunately, however, Hermione was so far away from caring by now that she'd reached the other end of the Solar System.
"I'm going to kill you," Voldemort whispered in her ear.
"Oh please do, put me out of my misery."
With that, the Dark Lord leaned back into her sight and seemed to consider her for a moment, with a horrid fascination. There was a collective intake of breath from the other occupants of the room when he finally raised his wand and snarled out the incantation.
Surprisingly, the last thing Hermione Granger thought of in her mortal life was kissing Ronald Weasley on a sack of flour. She died grinning.
…
"What. The fuck. Just happened."
Unsurprisingly, there was no response to this question due to the similar more silent reactions from the other dead people beside him, and Harry shut his mouth just as Hermione popped up through the clouds beside him.
"Hermione, what the hell-?" He had no time to finish, as Hermione had, without warning, swung back her fist and clocked him right in the face. Being already dead, he was thrown to the ground solely because of surprise and momentum, without injury, and could only stare incredulously up at the towering frizzy-haired witch.
"That!" she cried, "Was for leaving us!" Then she threw herself down upon him and hugged him senseless.
"I didn't exactly have a choice," he managed to choke out through her hair. He was soon helped back to his feet by a laughing Sirius and James Potter. Everyone's attention turned to the new arrival.
"I can't believe you called him 'Voldy!'"
"I can't believe you hit Ron with a chair!"
"What the hell came over you?"
"Are you mad?"
"A chair! Brilliant!"
"Seriously though, what the hell happened to you?" Harry asked over everyone else, "It's like, I die, and suddenly everyone turns into lunatics! What's up with that?"
Hermione opened her mouth to reply, possibly with a smart-arse comment, but she was soon cut short by Remus Lupin, who popped up through the clouds next to Sirius.
"Hi," he said a little sheepishly with an awkward. "Yeah, the world has pretty much gone to hell down there."
…
SLEEP TIME FOR ME.