All around her she could see nothing but destruction. Bodies of her friends, fellow scholars, professors strewn around her haphazardly, broken, bloodied, the fear and bewilderment of their last thoughts reflected in their glassy eyes.
Throwing herself against the nearest wall confronted by the possibility of being caught alive by the packs of Death Eaters now roaming around the halls searching for survivors, wheedling every last child from their hiding places only to destroy them with a quick flash of emerald light, she found herself unable to catch a breath, the grief she had been attempting to hold back through fear of becoming distracted from her primary goal, battling the forces of evil that had this night arrived from the blackness of muffled whispers and dark rumour at the threshold of this magical sanctuary to maim and kill, rape and pillage; threatening to pull her under.
A look of complete shock could be seen to be etched upon her face, drained of blood though shining with perspiration, she could feel its permanence as she clenched her jaw then, closing her mouth which she realized had been hanging open most likely for the better part of the night since the siege had began and the attacks had been mounted from all corners.
Undiluted adrenaline had been running through her veins constantly since the point at which she had realized the severity of the situation and she could feel its icy burn now in her fingertips as she clung to the chalky wall. She had not realized the severity of the situation until far into the night, her Gryffindor pride had taken over at the very beginning and had told her that everything would be fine, the Order would come and save the day, pushing back the forces of evil to the point at which they would break and until then the valiant Dumbledore, unopposed in magical ability and heart would stand tall. Now everything had fallen away from her, there was no hope now only questions and unrelenting fear of what the magical world would become now with the larger percentage of the magical adolescence, the next generation of witches and wizards wiped out in one night of carnage fuelled by prejudices and bloodlust. She could not begin to fathom how this had began, Hogwarts from what she had read and had come to truly believe in the past years was meant to be utterly impenetrable, and yet here she sat amongst the rubble.
This was not the right time, nor indeed the right place at all to ponder these thoughts and yet true to her exceptionally inquisitive nature and unable to comprehend how Hogwarts had been allowed to be breached to such an extent, she thought back to the beginning of the night when her life as she had known it for the last six years had fallen to bloodied pieces around her.
Flashback
It had been late when she had decided to retire, the library was empty and had been so for the better part of the evening, mostly she thought, due to the fact that it was a Friday night and according to one of her many sources as Head Girl; the Ravenclaws, contrary to the popular belief that they were stuffy, big headed and overly studious, had acquired a large quantity of fire whiskey and were now along with the majority of the sixth and seventh years from every house, in the throes of the rowdiest most drunken party that Hogwarts had ever seen in its hundreds of years in existence.
Normally as it was her duty to do so she would have reported the existence of the party to a senior member of staff, however in the past couple of months she had begun to see a subtle change occur in herself and had began to loosen her desperate grip on the rules, as a result she had decided that letting this one slide would not do any harm and could perhaps see the others of her peerage acknowledge that the fastidiously uptight Hermione façade was beginning to slip a little. She had not opted to join in with the others though even when invited by both Harry and Ron, the change she had seen in herself had not extended to a sudden social flourishing just yet and so clinging to her trusty tomes she had trudged through the deserted corridors of Hogwarts to Gryffindor Tower where she climbed into bed awaiting the arrival of those others who resided in her dormitory and were undoubtedly smashed, with a content smile playing upon her lips at the thought of the magical life she was privileged enough to live here.
She did not stay awake long enough to see her friends stumble through the door, her eyes weary from the amount of reading she had done by wand light before in the dark recesses of the library, and when she awoke then, shocked from her slumber by the sound of explosions and high pitched shrieking coming from beneath her. She could see then as her sight adjusted to the murky light of the dormitory that none of her friends had arrived back as their beds showed no sign of disturbance, the sheets as crisp as they had been this morning when starched by the Gryffindor house elves.
She stumbled from her bed, her body uncoordinated from the deep sleep she had been forcefully awakened from, forgetting her slippers she winced at the chilled flagstone upon the warm soles of her feet as within the window directly across from her bed she saw illuminated grossly against the night sky, the mottled green invading the perfect symmetry of the stars, a symbol that widened her eyes and struck dead the rhythm of her heart as she finally realized through thoughts jarred by fear and hazy from the depths of sleep what was going on below her this very night, a sight that had been burned upon the lids of her eyes as she slept and had pervaded her worst nightmares since her first glimpse of it in the wild fields of the World Cup nearly three years ago; the Dark Mark.
Grabbing her wand she went into a seeming autopilot, running to her bed she pulled on the jeans that worn today she had left pooled at the side its side and hastily slipped on the first pair of shoes she stumbled upon in her journey through the room to the door, a pair of purple tennis shoes that had been bought by Ginny on one of her idiotically frivolous shopping sprees in Hogsmeade a few weekends ago and had been loaned to her in an attempt to sway her from her regulatory robes and patent Mary Janes.
Her head spun with the rush of panic that swept through her in that moment as she thought of her friends; Harry, Ron, Ginny, Luna, Neville, more akin to her family in this world where her real family did not really fit in, wasting no more time she flew from the room and from the tower in record time not knowing who or what awaited her in the vast expanses of Hogwarts that she now knew was under attack from Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
Some hours later the battle had been fought hard and fast and all the knowledge that she had trusted to help her when times like these came to pass instead of physicality, garnered from the books she relentlessly devoured, had been worthless to her at the most important moments as she struggled to force the incantations from her mouth only to be thwarted by time and the experience of the Death Eaters in such matters. She had watched as everyone she knew, cared for, loved – fell to the ground, dead.
The walls around her were crumbling and the roar of screaming spells echoed around her constantly as she counted how many she had seen maimed, tortured, murdered. She had missed death by inches herself more than once tonight. Antonin Dolohov was thirsting for her blood it seemed incensed by her escape from him two years earlier in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. It was not her magical knowledge that had saved her from his clutched, no, it had been Ron who had saved her then with a well aimed and forceful punch from behind that left Dolohov spread-eagled on the floor, unconscious with an impressive lump forming upon the crown of his head.
She had been reassured in her hope then as he arrived to protect her wand less yet with his brawn thankfully adept, she had fought doubly hard then alongside him as they were faced with round upon round of intense fights for survival and the chip, chip, chipping away of their resolve as they saw each and every dead face.
They came upon him then, Harry, his glasses askew spattered with blood and his face twisted in icy resolve he held in his arms the broken body of Ginny, her crimson hair contrasting with the scarlet blood that had congealed upon her white lips and hearing the anguished scream erupt from her own throat she watched Ron slump to the floor and Harry bow his head tears flowing freely from his lifeless eyes, numb from the realization that his greatest love was dead before she turned and fled from the scene unable to process this last plunge of the dagger into her soul.
They had died there, both captured, tortured, Ron murdered by hooded minions as he fought with valour alongside Harry and Harry himself as he tried to fight back against the Death Eaters for their defilement of Ginny's body, taunted then eventually killed by Voldemort himself.
End Flashback
She felt great pain then, greater than she had ever felt in her life, as she crawled through the chaos of magically induced horror into a nearby broom cupboard that she prayed would protect her from discovery while she succumbed to the tumult of feelings she was now experiencing. Quickly as the guilty tears began to fall she realized that the pain she had felt so acutely a moment ago and was now experiencing to a more numbing degree, was her heart once so full of love and passion for life, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces as an unimaginable film reel of the most hideous nature broke through her resolve and relayed itself through every fibre of her being.
Memories, faces frozen forever mockeries of youth, last cries of agony and the magic light of the Avada dancing across the hall in her periphery vision as hidden behind a statue she watched her best friends murdered. In that minute everything was too much for her and in reaction to the overwhelming torment she collapsed, unconscious to the cold, hard floor of the hidden room.
In the distance a student miraculously alive amongst the magical apocalypse stumbled through the mass of destruction, his feet dragging, grey eyes hooded with the weight of the all consuming guilt upon his shoulders; as he was grasped bodily, beaten all the while by the taller man behind him. Seventeen and fully grown the boy was a shadow of the man he had been as he allowed his brutal punishment, his penance for being unable to do as the Dark Lord himself had asked in repayment for his father's betrayal seventeen years ago, for being unable to at the final crucial moment, murder Harry Potter. The Dark Lord had done it himself of course but that had come after the boy who lived had went on the run and had to be found defending himself within a near fortress. Much unnecessary blood had been spilled this night and it was his fault.
...
Draco Malfoy anticipated death for this latest failure of the Malfoy family, wished for it instead of this guilty weight pressing down upon him at the sight of the innocent children he knew need not have died. His father reviling him for his weakness and yet fearful for their lives, pulled him through the massacred halls of the shell that was now Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry, he was as yet to experience true pain it would seem.
With every second that passed the pair, the son unknowingly the father in full knowledge, came closer and closer to the broom cupboard where the vulnerably unconscious Hermione Granger now lay, came close to their discovery of her.