The author does not claim ownership to anything relating to Harry Potter in the slightest save for a copy of each book.
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"Before me nothing was but things eternal,
And I endure eternally.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
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The sky is gray today, she thinks. The world is dying, she thinks.
It began exactly one year ago.
A year…
She finds it hard to believe that only 365.242199 days have passed.
She knows the exact amount of time down to the hour since it happened: 8,765.8128. She knows because she has counted.
She could tell you in minutes, if you like, but she thinks it would probably get a bit redundant.
June 23, 1998: Harry Potter Is Dead.
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named Conquers Wizarding World.
The headline of the front page of the last issue of the Daily Prophet. She remembers thinking it sounded terribly melodramatic at the time; now she knows they said too little.
The Last Battle began on a bright Tuesday at 9:07 in the morning. Harry Potter was killed by Lord Voldemort 46 minutes later. She remembers this because The Dark Lord threw back his head and laughed as he stood over the prone body of The-Boy-Who-Lived.
She has had a lot of time to count.
The Resistance—yes, by then it had been a fitting title for the failing Order—fell apart. With Harry Potter gone, victory seemed as foreign as hope.
Poor, dear Harry…
She had loved them all and one by one they killed them. Avada Kedavra, over and over again. It is ingrained in her memory like a chant, so many voices ending so many screams.
She was saved, a mercy only few others received.
Saved? Mercy?
She, the brains behind The Order of the Phoenix, was spared death because of her intelligence. It is strange, she thinks, that something she had been ridiculed for in her school days saved her life that day.
They thought she could be useful to Lord Voldemort.
That, she reminds herself, is not what we call him anymore. Now he is "King and Savior of Wizards."
He calls himself a savior because he has killed half of the wizard population, she thinks disgustedly, because he has "cleansed" the society of "dirty blood." She remembers that in the Muggle world there are laws against genocide and racial cleansing, and the thought makes the ache in her chest grow worse.
Because she is the last survivor of Potter's Fallen Trio she has been given the privilege of serving the King himself. Each day she looks defiantly into his red slits of eyes and inhuman face, full of jagged white planes and angles, and each day she is punished for it. She is not supposed to look at him.
And still they do not kill her.
If she were stronger and braver she would do it herself. They have taken her wand, but there are other ways. Each night they chain her to the wall like an animal, and if she was a better person she would wrap the chains around her neck and watch her vision go dark at the edges and then finally black rather than serve him. She is sure that Ron or Harry or Ginny or Lupin or anyone else from before would have been braver and stronger than she is, and still she can't do it.
She has given up. And they know.
They treat her as if she is a member of a lower species, dirty and repulsive to look at. Her eyes went blank a long time ago. The new king looks at her kneeling before him and she sees him smile coldly—they know she is broken. They know that living as she does now is a far more painful punishment than death.
Every now and again she will catch a glimpse of something familiar. Most often it is a shock of white-blond hair and the tall, lean figure of a boy she once knew at school or the aquiline nose and billowing robes of her old professor. She knows that she should feel hatred, an urge to kill them as they killed her last friends one year ago. Instead, she feels a surge of excitement and relief. Something normal. Something from before. Something she recognizes.
The world is hardly recognizable anymore.
The King and Savior of Wizards lives in what used to be Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She refuses to compare this crumbling, bare, cold building with the majestic castle that was her home for seven years. Dementors suck the light and warmth away. Cruelty and death deplete its magic.
She doesn't even long for those she has lost anymore. Books mean nothing to her. She no longer values knowledge. All of the knowledge she once had they have used, forcing her to create potions and spells and formulate plans that she knows they use for torture and malice. She finds that she doesn't really care anymore.
She exists. She floats from task to task without seeing, her face empty.
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Today she hears her name spoken from the lips of another human being for the first time in 8,768.3 hours.
Granger.
She closes her eyes for 4.7 seconds, letting the familiarity of those two syllables wash over her. They never call her by her name. Then she steps aside and waits for the boy with the white-blond hair she once hated to pass.
Now, she doesn't feel anything. Now, she doesn't hate.
Malfoy, she says in response. She still refuses to call them "master." Master Malfoy, she is supposed to say. Master Snape. Miss Lestrange. Master Nott.
But he doesn't pass. He stops and looks at her and she looks back at those cold gray eyes in secret defiance. He doesn't sneer. He doesn't punish her.
Come with me, he says. He grabs her elbow and leads her away. She flinches at the touch. No one touches her now except to hurt her or shame her.
She has seen this boy—man now, she corrects herself—she has seen this boy looking at her differently than the rest. He alone remembers that she once had strength, that she once could render The-Boy-Who-Lived silent and cowering with a glare. He remembers that she hit him once, a long time ago. She made him bleed.
They walk for 1.2 minutes, and she counts each of the seconds almost without thinking about it. It has become a habit by now, counting. She started counting 2.46 days after the end of the world to keep herself from weeping and had never stopped.
He leads her into a room. The old Charms classroom, she thinks. There are even some desks still intact. She sits in one of them and he still doesn't punish her for her disrespect.
But he knows. He knows that she is trying to provoke him. He looks at her with something that seems like pity in his eyes, but she knows better.
How may I serve you? She asks with a voice that is long dead.
He doesn't speak for a long time and watches her still with the look that seems like pity but actually isn't. She finally lowers her eyes because she is tired of being defiant for so long.
Granger. He says her name again. Hermione.
DON'T.
Please don't call me that, she says.
Why not? He looks confused.
It hurts too much, she says, and turns her face away.
You'd rather I call you Mudblood? Bitch? Potter's Whore?
Yes, she says, and asks again: How may I serve you, Master Malfoy?
She calls him master now because he is still looking at her like she is maybe not an animal.
Hermione, he says, his voice forceful now, what's happened to you?
I'm afraid I don't understand, Master Malfoy.
There is a frustrated color in his cheeks now. It's like… it's like you're fucking dead, Granger.
She doesn't stop. She doesn't think. She doesn't hesitate. She only responds: I serve the King, now, and he prefers that I act as I do. How may I serve you, Malfoy?
Quit this sycophantic bullshit, and tell me what's bloody wrong with you! He is shouting now.
Do you really want to know?
Why do you care? She asks, her voice a little sharper now.
This question is hard for him, she can see. He swallows. Because… because you're something from before that doesn't have anything to do with all of this, he says, his voice very quiet. Because if something happens to you that part of me will disappear and I don't want to believe that how we live is the only thing that is left for us in the world.
She stares at him.
Finally she says, You've grown up, Malfoy.
We all had to, Granger. What's wrong?
If you don't know you obviously haven't been paying much attentionthis past year, she says.
After a moment he says, Enlighten me.
She takes a very deep breath and begins to speak.
Everyone I loved in the world is dead. I serve a murderous megalomaniac and create more ways for him to hurt people because he orders me to. The world is falling apart and only those who he deems as "pure" survive. I wish that I could kill myself but I'm not strong enough. Shall I continue, Malfoy?
It is the most she has said in 8,768.33 hours and her head whirls from the effort. Time stands still. She forgets to count.
No, he says with the softest voice she has ever heard him use. After another moment he says, I wish I could help you.
Feeling sorry for a Mudblood? Her voice is very cold.
Feeling sorry for a fellow person with unfortunate lineage, he corrects her.
She snorts rudely before she can stop herself. Given up on bigotry, then? She asks frostily.
He says only that things are different now than he imagined they would be. She lets loose a disturbing and empty laugh and asks him what he had expected. He doesn't reply.
They are silent for a while. She watches his wand hidden in the folds of his robe.
You could do it, you know.
Do what?
Send me to them, she says very faintly, a gleam of hope in her eyes.
He looks horrified and backs away from her as ifthe way she is thinkingis contagious. Merlin, Granger, he murmurs.
Please, she says simply. She is begging now.
Why? Why do you want this so much? Surely death isn't… He trails off and tries to look less sickened by her proposition.
What? Better than waking up every morning knowing that the freak I am forced to serve killed everyone I love? How can you call the way I exist living? Come on, Draco… Don't act duller than you actually are, she says, her voice rising as she pleads for him to have the strength that she lacks. She calls him by his first name because he is her savior. He takes out his wand but holds it loosely at his side, his face very panicked.
I-I don't know if I can…
You've killed before.
Not like this.
She waits patiently, her face serenely open. This is not death, she assures him, this is release. This is freedom.
She can see sparkling wetness in his eyes and feels tears track down her cheeks, her jaw, her throat. He points his wand at her and his hand trembles.
Thank you. Thank you, she whispers.
He breathes the two words and as if from a distance she watches her body fall to the floor of what used to be Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She sees her savior, her liberator, fall to his knees beside her and take her hand. She knows that the King and Savior of Wizards is in his throne, watching the torture of a muggle woman. She gazes at the dying world through a haze of light.
And then she sees them. They hold out their arms to her and she falls into their embrace, tears of joy and relief spilling from her eyes. They welcome her into a place with life and no darkness.
Freedom.
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"We climbed up, he first and I behind him, far enough to see, through a round opening, a few of those fair things the heavens bear. Then we came forth, to see again the stars."
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Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed this little one-shot and didn't let you depress you too much. I certainly enjoyed writing it.
What can I say? The impulse to write something in the post-Voldemort victory era came to me at three o'clock in the morning last night (today, actually), so I did. This might explain the strange choice of style and subject matter. Hmm.
I'm sorry if the lack of quotes was a bit confusing. Every once in a while I like to shake things up a bit. If you were intrigued by this story, by the way, I might recommend another of my fics, "Italian Oil Painting," which is similarly written but far more poetic and full of similes and metaphors. It is a Pirates of the Caribbean fic, though, and if you're more into HP go for "The Third Law." Yes, I am advertising, if you were wondering. Yes, I am shameless. Yes, I am coping with it.
The quotes come from The Inferno by Dante Alighieri. Everyone in the world should read this poem (yes, it is a poem). The first quote is part of the inscription on the archway at the entrance into hell. The last quote, as you may have guessed, is the last stanza of the whole work.
I am one of those people who believes Draco Malfoy is not all vindictive spoiled brat (I hear groans of "not one of those again" in the background). I don't think he is as cruel as, let's say, his father. I don't think he has it in him to kill someone in a non-battle scene, as supported in HBP. Hermione, however, was asking for it, for want of a better phrase.
Have fun reading! Let me know what you think!