Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. He, and all his characters are the property of J.K. Rowling. About one year ago I began my epic, Her War, detailing a war taking place in the depths of China. Now, I take my pen to England. Same plot. New Salvo. Lets get kickin'.

His War

"Every night he shows me. Every night... I... see. Even if I die, I'll fight my way up from hell to bring him down with me. On my eternal soul I swear I will stop him. I swear it."
- Harry Potter

Prologue
The Nightingale Witch

Everything started going downhill. We'd like to not say why, but inside we all know it. He died, and Voldemort rose to power in near an instant. I blame myself, probably more than I should, but I suppose it's no matter now.

The wizarding world had fallen, and muggles scampered like flies. The Dark One's hand waved and both groups fell like straw huts under a tsunami. I know how powerful the Dark One became. I fought him myself. In fact I was the only one besides Dumbledore who managed to hurt him, before He came back. And I barely stubbed his toe... all my endless study and for what? It was all for nothing. I confess that during those days near the end I sunk into a bit of the darker magics myself. Without Him... well. I never believed the prophecy. When even Dumbledore gave up all hope, I did not. Because unlike him, I didn't believe in prophecy. And look at me now...

When hope seemed lost I dove into my books. And when they weren't enough, I dove deeper. The Chamber of Secrets was not accessible to one without the tongue of the snakes. I had to get... creative to gain entry. And what I found gave me power. Power that, in the end, was useless. I'm not the chosen one. I'm not Him. I wasn't born as the seventh month died. The prophecy was true, and the power the dark lord knows not, was never found. At least, not until He came back.

In the end, I fell too.

I only survived because the Dark One was impressed with me. And... Well, look at me now.

Look at me now...

Arna Granger twitched as she fingered the handle of the desert eagle sticking out of her left pocket. She was feeling particularly trigger happy, and being cooped up for so long had done little for her state of mind.

Sighing, she let the handle go, swathing a hand through her charcoal brown hair. Sweat trailed her brow as it had for days on end, but there was little help for that in this tiny place. Sweat lingered on them all like an old friend begging for money. Or perhaps shelter. That was even worse in this day and age.

Glancing around the room at her companions, seven excluding herself, she noted that they were equally nervous. Twitchy as she was, even. Young Scerlet, a strollup if Arna had ever met one, had happened upon their hideaway by chance and had escaped the foul beams of the outside world by the merest centimeter. The girl was young, no older than Arna's own daughter would've been now. A school girl, worse a slutty school girl, she'd proved herself to have almost no value to this little group.

Early on anyway...

Not many months had passed since Arna had witnessed the turnstring tear through a wizard's protego with a magicked sword to slice out his eyes in righteous vengeance. Yes. Scerlet had become one of the most bloodthirsty of their little group in the months that followed Lord Voldemort's rise to power.

She still shuddered when she remembered that. The image was no more gory than some of her own had been, yet it struck a harsh cord in her conscience when she witnessed what this war had made of children. And Scerlet was not the most dangerous member of their little group. Not even in the top three.

Fat Dursley. Heh, well the geezer wasn't so fat anymore. Honestly, in the months their group had been together before they'd taken refuge in this cesspool of boredom the man had thinned out quite nicely. She could admit he was an attractive man, if only the thoughts didn't make her feel so damn guilty.

His son and wife had been dead for two years. Amazing what that sort of thing could do to a man. When she'd first met him with his child, Dudley and wife Petunia in tow she'd thought he and his family would be a hindrance to their movements. And boy, had she been right. They'd hindered. And they'd died for it. Only Vernon had survived and by the sheerest of luck at that. Life and death situations really brought out the best in a man, and he hadn't been afraid to dive back for the ones he loved. He just hadn't been fast enough...

Now the man stood coolly; one of only two here who could manage the emotion. He had a double barrel shotgun, loaded with bullets magically capable of passing through most regular shields and if not killing outright, then at the very least a stun would inflict the victim. A clip of extra magazines hung around the strap that covered his otherwise bare chest. Muscles that had once been layered in fat now decorated his stomach and biceps, along with the small girl Emily who was held gingerly in the man's other arm.

Emily was a cute one, she was. So very young with a soul brighter than any. Her parents had been killed almost a year before. And Vernon, bless the fool's soul, had run through the curses of those mad wizard bastards to save her. From a freezing house...

...And god damn her if that wasn't the day the fat old man had graduated to badass in her opinion.

Others too resided here. Marly, the only wizard among them, had been the key to their minimal success. A mediocre wizard at best, the man, well boy really, had been a fourth year Hogwarts student when this had all begun. A halfblood, and sickly most of the time, the wizard had shown bravery that few others could compare to. Despite his youth, the boy had been a potions prodigy. Raised by muggles, he'd always been curious about the possibility of magical weapons...

He'd made them. And he'd used them the night that... that...

'No Arna. Doesn't do to think about that. Doesn't do at all.' The woman thought bitterly. Her own past might have been worse than Dursley's. His child had died a clean death. Hers...? No. Best not to think of it.

Instead she turned her mind to the science. It had become her purpose since this war had turned her so bitter. Once she could remember a time when she lived a happy life as a dentist, with a dentist husband. She'd had a wonderful and bright child. A girl who would one day make the world a place that shined brighter than it ever had. Or... so she thought.

When that life had been ripped from her, she turned her studies into weapons. Her profession might have dealt with teeth, but she knew the body from years of biology classes slammed into her mind. That, and her daughter had owned a collection of thousands of books on magic. A collection that she had raided.

What use was a Protego shield against poisonous gasses? What help was the Dark Flare Barrier, when a bullet contained a tickling charm? Stupefy couldn't stun a man who was pumped full of magically enhanced epinephrine. Even the dreaded Crucio could be blocked by someone with CIPA. Or rather, couldn't be felt. And magic could induce that most wonderful of symptoms...

'Let me tell you... if you want to scare the shit out of a death eater? Let his Crucio hit you and start laughing. That'll fuck em' right up.' She thought with a bitter laugh.

She had not found a way to block the Avada Kedavra. The only defense against that one was run. Light how she wished she could find a single book that discussed those two curses. The only knowledge she had of them had been gleaned from first hand experience. Not the best way to learn when those were involved.

All her efforts had borne the meager fruit of Wizarding ruin. She'd succeeded in killing her targets and lived to tell the tale countless times already. And the purebloods who had started this whole war had labeled her 'Terrorist.' They called her and her vigilante group scum, and mudbloods and muggle fiends. The wizards and witches who lived under their Lord Sovereign Voldemort... They feared her. They had taken her husband. Destroyed her daughter. Destroyed her world, and waged a war that cost thousands of lives, wizard and normal alike. And for retaliating... they feared her.

Her meager science. Her attacks on the Wizarding world that the Dark Lord had overtaken...? They had done what? Killed several death eaters, and a dementor or two? Phaw. What use...?

But none of them could stop. What else did they have? No one here had much else to lose. Antonio, an immigrant from America who barely spoke the language without bastardizing it to hell, had been the owner of a Toilet Paper company once. To the best of her knowledge he'd been a founder of the company, and he'd had... secretaries. Pretty, well paid, secretaries that did much more than file his papers. In a kinder world she would have found the man sickening. But he had paid those women, despite his perverseness.

Voldemort had slaughtered them, because of something as stupid as blood. As stupid as who had been born with the lucky ability to manipulate the Ethers...

Milo acted like a kid, though he was actually almost ten years older than Marly. Near enough to Arna's own age, in fact. Dark of skin, he was probably in his late twenties. The man currently fingered a pilfered M16 that only he among them was capable of wielding effectively. A member of Her Magesty's troops for almost seven years, the man had returned home from service only to discover his family had been slaughtered two weeks previously. Not believing the propaganda that a bad gas leak had blown up his family's home of four generations, the man had dug deeper. And that had led him to the magical world... and to her.

He was the brains behind her tactical plans. Together, she, Milo, Vernon, and Antonio had probably taken more lives than most death eaters could claim.

Still an utterly useless gesture. Their entire team was a useless gesture. She'd created this guerrilla force to stop the magical takeover by a madman, and named it AVALANCHE with the hopes of saving what was left of this once great nation.

Their hopes were in vain... only now did she understand just how slim their chances of success truly were.

'I watched that bastard take a magically enhanced bullet to the head. I watched his head cock back, and I saw the blood spray...' She thought grimly, still trying to believe what her own eyes had shown her. Not only had she seen the power of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, she'd challenged it directly. She'd murdered him. Point blank with the gun residing in her very hand. The plan had been fool proof, and had gone off almost flawlessly. She had managed to get into the unholy bastard's presence, cloaked in disilusionment charms that Marly had learned from Arna's daughter's books. She'd gotten right behind him, and placed the barrel of her Desert Eagle straight against the creature's forehead. Within the barrel resided a bullet powered by all the hatred the young would-be sixth year wizard had. A bullet empowered with the Avada Kedavra curse. She'd pulled the trigger without preamble or words. An assassination. For what the bastard had done to her daughter, to Marly, to Scerlet... Vernon and the boy hero Harry. He'd not even deserved to be assassinated. For what he'd done to the world, he deserved so much less...

'...And I saw him turn back; I listened to the sound of his snake-like neck craning back into place, and watched him start laughing.' She shuddered as the memory came unbidden to her mind. Months ago now, and she was still fucking terrified. Honestly she still didn't know how the hell she was alive and uncaptured. Muggle smoke bombs. Could wizards truly be so easy to fool?

A sense of hopelessness had settled over all of them after that. They had ceased all operations. They had stopped killing death eaters. They had stopped everything. Everything save for the endless running. Because... if a bullet to the head, with the darkness of the Avada Kedavra stored within, and backed by speed greater than sound couldn't even phase the Dark Lord... what could?

"Only a Miracle." Arna murmured.

"Arna you've got to talk sometime... We know whatever it was you saw's got'cha scared. But we can't just hide in this silo forever. Where running low on provisions. We need a plan. Arna, we need you!" Vernon Dursley's voice broke the silence with the bluster of a man that should be twice his size. The tone sounded a bit silly on his tongue. Watching her intently, the man chanced a glance towards Emily and gave her a placating smile to assuage the worry in the young girl's eyes.

"Vernon, I... Just wish you could've seen. It's so hopeless..."

"Don't be sad, Mommy." Emily piped up with an innocence that only a child could emulate. The poor thing didn't remember her real parents. Three years old and intensely blond hair, the small child was already a trained master in the fine art of using the jon. And, much less importantly, already showing signs of magic. Arna wished she could be happy for the girl. But remembering her own daughter, so long ago, left a rotten taste in her mouth. Her daughter had once had magic. Her daughter had once been a happy girl like little smiling Emily. No longer.

No longer.

"I... I'm not sad, Emils. Just angsting a bit," Arna joked, edging a bit of humor into her tone to appease the girl. Then she turned her eyes back to Vernon. "Don't mind me. We won't be here more than a few more hours. Just because we failed once doesn't mean I'm done... you old prune." The lie came easily to her lips. She'd given up hope some time ago.

But there was always light. Vernon grinned a naughty grin at her, and it lit Arna's tiny little world. God did send small favors it times. If it weren't for this war... if it weren't for the small abandoned three year old in the man's arms, held just as gingerly as the shotgun in his other, Arna thought she might fall in love with him. Bloody hell she might've already fallen. They'd both had similar pasts after all. Horrifyingly similar. She'd lost a husband and daughter; he, a wife and son.

They might be among the last group of non magical people in Britain and she had found a man to fall in love with. God's small favors...

"Angsting by youself? Oh do contribute. God knows this dump could use a bit of humor." The man added with a smirk. Humor. It was the only thing that kept them going sometimes. A little band of miscreants trying to save Great Britain. One erased Dark Mark at a time.

"Oi!" Milo piped up from a chair in the kitchen a little ways down the hall. "My silo ain't a dump, ya 'ere!"

"Is too, is too!" Piped the little Emily from her place in Vernon's arms and the man guffawed.

"Emily seems to disagree, Milo." He bragged, egging the dark skinned man on with a fading laugh. Vernon had never been one to shy away from a good joke, and the man seemed to get a strange sort of joy out of tormenting the ex soldier. Milo tolerated it with a grudging act, but they all knew Vernon and he had become very close friends. It was always an added delight when Emily joined in on their little games.

This world needed little lights.

"Emily!" Thelma, the last of their little troop peedled in her croaky elderly voice. "Vernon, you must start teaching that girl her manners! You know Milo went through alot of trouble to get this place in working order and-!"

"Can it! Windbag!" Vernon insulted her, in the way that each of them had grown in jibe at the others. His tone still had a playful glint, his eyes alight with laughter that Arna could not revel in. The old woman had trouble keeping from cracking a grin at him herself, but she managed keeping her tone firm in light of the smile on his face. A smile that still held hope. He hadn't been there to see the bullet...

"I will not can it, you oaf!" The old woman barked, her knoby finger poking the man's mostly bare chest through the magazine of bullets draped across his shoulders. "You will apologize! How would you feel if you spent an entire day preparing a shelter and your guests called it a dump?"

"It is a dump, Thelms." Milo called from his chair down the hall, contradicting his earlier indignation in light of the laughs. His voice held the sound of munching. Probably scarfing down some more of that four-hundred year old popcorn they had pilfered from the remains of a gas station. Honestly Arna couldn't tell how the man stuffed it down. But when there was nothing else... she supposed she would have to deal with that soon herself.

Their food supplies were running low.

"Shut it you!" Thelma replied heatedly. "Vernon Dursley, you will apologize. And you will too Missy. As for you Milo!" She called again turning her voice down to the ex soldier. "You won't accept their apology because they don't deserve it."

"Yes Ma'am." Came back a half hearted reply. Milo was playing with his guns again. He'd probably barely caught two words.

Vernon, Emily, and Milo all shared a snicker of laughter between Thelma's rage. A smile reached Antonio's lips, Scerlet seemed delighted, and even Marty, still recovering four months later from the energy it had taken to place an Avada Kedavra curse into a bullet, could not hide a grin. The whole situation almost felt like...

Like...

Family.

Somehow she felt like an outsider now. Because she knew the truth. They fought an enemy that could not die, in a war they were doomed to lose. It hurt. Too much of a burden for one soul to bear. Yet too harsh a truth to lay on the shoulders of others. As she smiled outwardly, inside she wept, for the deaths that awaited them.

The ground suddenly shook, and their laughter faded instantly, replaced by tension thick enough to be molded into dough. Someone was at the door. Someone had discovered them. Worst of all, it seemed someone was battering the metal construct down. Thrice damned bludgeoning hex!

Vernon let the small girl down to the floor and gave her a sharp, curt nod, which the three year old understood with perfect clarity. The girl scampered away towards the backroom. A small little half trapdoor hidden inconspicuously by floor tiles lifted, and the girl climbed down in. Fear was in her eyes as she crawled out of Arna's view, but she couldn't worry about that. Little Emily was safe. Probably.

This had been their last resort. No escape. And none of them would surrender, lest Emily be found and captured. Here...

Here was where they would probably die.

Old Thelma's visage grew dim and she addled her way to the back room to hover over Emily's trapdoor, her small machine pistol at the ready. Marly followed almost on her heels, his wand out and a determined look on his face, despite his sickly visage. Thelma was Marly's grandmother. A muggle herself, as his parents were, he'd been the first wizard of their family, and same as herself, his family had been shocked when they'd gotten their first Hogwarts letter.

His parents were dead now. It was only through that hatred that Marly had been able to replicate the Avada Kedavra curse. Seeing so many enemies use it had imprinted the wand movements to memory, and the words were very hard to forget...

She pulled out her handgun, and faced the door, just as it shook again, the entire underground fortress seeming to rumble with the power behind the magics surely being used outside.

"Well Arna... this is probably it." Vernon said limply, his voice taking on a defeated tone as he cocked his shotgun.

"...Aye." She stated, a depressed tone to her voice. They'd fought a good fight, but they could only run for so long. How much could they do against an immortal? The best of muggle and magic had been leveled against the Dark Lord, and they had proved ineffective. They had hardly even daunted him.

Their time was at an end. Arna could only hope little Emily somehow remained safe. And in her heart, pray for her own daughter...

...No matter what she had become.

The silo rumbled more heavily this time, but instead of an all over feel, the shaking was concentrated on the great doors fully now. There was no doubt. They'd been found. It was saddening how unsurprised any of them were as a sense of resignation seemed to take them all in.

"This, ah... This is probably my last chance to tell you. May my dear Petunia forgive me. Arna, I love you." The man said it with a casual grace that belied the butterfly that suddenly erupted within her stomach.

He was six years her senior!

Damn attractive for it.

Bollocks! He was married with a child!

Both deceased. He's a widow.

She was married with a child!

Widowed as well. Child might as well be dead.

Her mind fought and battled and raged, indignation warring with attraction dueling with outright giddiness. But somehow her words had filed right on where her brain had become a washed up mess. "Old Prune," she affected playfully, despite the tense situation. "I love you, too."

Her mind was appalled with her words, not even realizing they had unwilling slipped from her mouth for a few moments, but the grin on his face made the whole situation worth it. Happy smiles appeared on the faces of those around them. Smiles of dead, wishing for a fond and swift journey to the world beyond Smiles... as they bared their guns at the door, prepared and waiting for their final battle.

"Yay!" Came an excited squeak from beneath the tiles, bubbling out from the back room, the girl unable to contain her emotion. No one could blame her. Thelma didn't even scold her. Little Emily voiced the emotions of all present with her happy coos. She didn't understand what was to come... How could she?

A final resounding crash, and the metal bent inward, jarring loose from the mechanic crankshafts that held it. As if pulled by a massive vacuum, the loosened door was sucked away, sliding into the air as if it were a pop-tab and tossed miles into the distance, letting sunlight crash down upon the eyes of the final members of the rebellion. What few members there had ever been...

"Fire!" Milo cried.

And bullets hailed. Her handgun stung her fingers as each shot into the disembodied figures on the other side of the door rung in her ears. The shotgun in Vernon's hands pelted at the barrier that arose before any bullets could make it through. Shock tinged Arna's thoughts but there was nothing for it.

'So they found a way to counter the magic enhanced bullets. Well, we were doomed anyway. Might as well go out with a bang...' Arna thought as she undid the pocket where her last resort lay.

"STOP!" A woman's voice called, dim amongst the blaze of colorful bullets pelting the shimmering blue barrier. But at the same time, horrifyingly familiar. The voice tugged at Arna's memory like a fishing hook, latching onto her tongue, but she couldn't place it.

Arna reached into the belt of her pants pouch and pulled out one of the three remaining grenades during the sparse moment where the guns clicked their final rounds, reload needed. She didn't plan to use it... yet. But if it came to it, her finger was on the clip.

Without warning Arna felt the ground beneath her go wobbly. Then a tangible wave of air seemed to blast her off her feet. She flew, slamming into the hard metal wall with a grunt, and sliding to her bottom wearily. Dazed, she looked around to find her companions in similar states of disarray.

Smoke blotted the doorway, dredged up from the sizzling impact of magical bullets meeting impenetrable barriers. She herself had the most versatile gun, and she scrambled for it, the Desert Eagle sliding into her fingers from its place on the floor just as she watched a figure materialize through the smoke, shimmering barrier shining around her.

Arna's eyes widened, first in horror. Then, anger.

She stood, leveling her pistol shakily against the black suited woman, her left finger hanging on the clip of her grenades. Her hands trembled as she struggled with her own conscience, the barrel of her weapon aiming down the abomination before her.

The creature, a girl it had been once, whose face swam with black shadows, slithering like snakes beneath her skin. Her body was covered with a skintight suit that showed a form of beauty that none could deny, but anywhere skin was exposed, the real heart of the black witch slithered visibly in the form of those shadows. Her fingernails showcased the monsters living inside her; the short brown hair of a girl who once cried in her arms about being teased at school, now stood before her in all her palpable darkness.

Not even the Dark Lord himself had drawn more innocent Muggle blood. It was said, whispered in rumor and hearsay in the dark corners of society where even the death eaters shut their mouths and closed their eyes for fear of knowledge they did not wish to know, that the Black Princess was a mudblood herself. It was whispered that the Nightingale Witch was the child of muggles.

The whispers were true. The dark witch's real name was as much taboo as that of Tom Riddle. In the time since the Dark One's pet had lost her humanity, the world, both wizarding and muggle, had forgotten who she was. What she had been, and all the good that she had once represented. But Arna never could. Never in all her life could she forget the small child who didn't fit in. Who loved to study with all her heart...

The Nightingale Witch.

Hermione Granger.

Author's Notes: This little snippet is the beginning of an entirely new venue. Her War is not done, nor dead. But In my desperate attempt to escape this unbearable writer's block that has descended upon me, I give you this. The parallel to Her War, this fic's scope is going to hopefully be as epic and just as entertaining.

Wish me luck in escaping my insufferable writer's block, as I'm dying to get out of it. Hopefully chapters will start spilling a bit quicker from now on again, but more and more I'm being drawn to writing my own book. I'm getting a long way done, so in the near future, keep a look out on the bookshelves for Array's Ring. It'll be a while yet of course but this little project is growing in scope and size by the day.

So I guess that's all! Don't forget to Leave a Review!

Till Next!
MB