INFINITY
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: The constant destruction and chaos brought about by the war was like a suffocating blanket that never lifted. 'Kill one to save one' – those five words caused not only blind panic within the wizarding community but also a sense of hope for muggle-borns targeted by Voldemort. After all, if you had the chance to save yourself, even if it meant at the expense of someone else, would you take it? HG/DM
CHAPTER ONE – Infinity
There is nothing in this world is infinite. No one thing can outlast the general order of life. There'd be no surviving natural selection should you be the organism with the unfavourable trait. The dinosaurs were decimated after all in one giant sweep. And evolution will not slow down for the lethargic mouse. No, for the presence of infinity would mean no mortality. And mortality, my friends, is how the world works.
- Thomas James Bradley, inventor of the Bone Crusher Curse, 1987.
Everywhere there was blood. It clung to the walls as if it were a part of the adhesive and pooled onto the muddy ground in waves. It was what they had intended, a grotesque impression deigned to last a lifetime in memory. It would. They wanted to reorganise the wizard hierarchy to ensure they held the definitive influence. That was just an excuse, however, to drive their thirst for blood. They already had the control and power to suppress all others.
The attack had been vicious, quick and premeditated. In other words it had been a Death Eater operation.
With her mouth gaped open in shocked horror, Hermione regarded the mutilated corpses that were scattered around the Muggle village. They held more of a resemblance to discarded litter then to human beings. Their clothes were torn as if they had been put through a paper shredder and their limbs were either barely attached to their bodies or had some grotesque displacement. Scorched faces stared back emptily at her; millions of memories doused by the curses that had ended their lives.
Buildings were still burning, a testament to how long ago the attack had transpired, and there was so much screaming that she could scarcely hear her own thoughts. Not that she had many besides 'oh Merlin!'
There were no death eaters present. There was no fighting. Only dead bodies and burning buildings remained. It was the aftermath.
And above it all, above all of the destruction, the burning and the chaos, roared the Dark Mark. Perhaps the most grotesque image of them all.
Hermione was suddenly thankful that Harry had been called away on a secret mission for the Ministry. With the attacks escalating over the past few months nobody felt the anguish or took responsibility as he had; and the Daily Prophet had done everything but aid Harry with his burden. The article that stirred up the most unrest ("Potter Abandons Our Side") was written by none other than Rita Skeeter. Yet even when the report was labeled "madness" by the Minister himself it did nothing to diminish Harry's guilt. Hermione desperately wished that she could take the heavy burden from her friend, if only for a little while, but she knew she could not. It was not her prophecy. The heavy weight was not transferable to her shoulders, no matter how much she willed it.
Ensuring that her feet were well aware of the precarious danger they were in, Hermione concentrated on making her way towards Ron without stepping on any terra mei - a wizards equivalent to a land mine. To Hermione they were another example of a wizards interpretation on a muggles invention - another piece of evidence that should be diminishing the increasing prejudices in the wizarding community. In the book 'Wizarding Warfare; Our History', however, it was claimed to be the creation of Benjamin Earnst, a famous wizard who produced masses of weapons for the 1896 War against the Trolls. A falsity that would serve to fuel such narrow-mindedness.
.. Not that she was particularly proud to claim terra mei as her ancestors creation.
"It shows that it is humans in general who are their own worst enemy, wizards and muggles alike." She murmured as she knelt behind a protruding piece of macrocarpa - perhaps once belonging to a highly fashionable door - where Ron was currently situated. Its splinted wood reminded her of the disfigured bodies she had passed.
Ron barely acknowledged her; instead he kept his eyes focused on something that she could not distinguish over the tall piece of wood. Before Hermione had the opportunity to see what was capturing his attention Ron asked about Harry.
"Harry is not here." Hermione replied. As she did so, she performed a confuto spell to ensure that their conversation could not be overheard by unwanted ears.
"I know that." Ron snapped. His face was pale and covered in grime. "I meant did you find out where he is?"
Hermione sighed. "He covered his tracks this time. I found no traces of apparition or…"
"So we have no idea where he has gone." It was a statement, not a question. Hermione was not surprised by his terse or short tone. They had previously discussed their strong dislike of Harry going off by himself without any knowledge of where he was. While Harry proclaimed it was necessary to keep them both safe, they had both disagreed profusely.
"He'll be safe. He always is."
"It's escalating Hermione. It's getting more brutal, more dangerous. Harry needs other people. He can't do this by himself."
"I know that. But it's a mission from the Ministry. What do you think Harry should do? Not take it?"
Ron's silence was an answer in itself. She knew he believed that the Ministry had done nothing to aid them in the war. It was a dangerous proclamation – one that could see him imprisoned if it was heard by the wrong ears. A lingering silence presented itself then between the two friends.
After a while Ron turned tired, somber eyes on her. "I was here you know, when the attack broke out."
"What?" Hermione blanched. "But the Ministry only knew about it five minutes ago."
"I know." Ron said. "I sent them the anonymous tip." He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "But the attack happened so fast. Nobody could have got here in time to stop it."
Her mind was awhirl. Had Harry known about the attack? Had he send Ron here? It seemed unlikely that Harry would send Ron, however, given the precarious situation.
"I'm glad you weren't there to see it," Ron said suddenly, snapping her attention to him like a lightening bolt. "The attack I mean." He was looking over the tall piece of wood again but she did not need the eye contact to feel his pain. It was radiating off him. "It was... it was a bloody massacre." Ron looked hard at her then and she felt as though she'd been stabbed. Twice. "Nobody deserves to die like that." His face was pale – perhaps even more so then when she had first seen him.
There were so many things she could have said to comfort him and yet she felt there was so little to say. If the sight of the remains of the attack had made Hermione nauseous, she could only imagine what it must have been like to be a part of it.
"How?" She managed to question after what seemed like minutes passing yet was only a few seconds.
Ron appeared to understand what she was asking. "I got a message from... someone. They said to come here." Ron scrubbed a hand over his face, again, and then ran it through his dirty, red hair.
Hermione's eyebrows knitted together contemplatively.
"Don't Hermione. Don't sit there and try to work this all out. I cannot tell you even if you guessed."
More secretes. It was bad enough that Harry was keeping everything from her, but now Ron too? She knew that they did so mainly to protect her but that fact alone only served to anger her further. She was an asset to them – she had proven that many times over. Enough was enough. She was sick and tired of them risking their lives – putting themselves in more danger – just to ensure that she was out of it. "You could have been killed Ron! Do you have any idea what that would have done to me? To Harry? To your parents? To -"
"You think I don't know that? You think I wanted… to come here?" Ron interrupted, his hands flailing around in the air as he spoke in rushed frustration. Frustration that she knew was not solely directed at her comments but to the whole situation in general. To the attack; to the war. "I told you Hermione, I came here for someone. He wanted me to… protect something that he said was valuable to our side. Something that could swing the pendulum our way. I had to come here."
"And what was that?" She snapped. "What was so precious that you'd put your life in danger for?"
Ron sighed. "I told you Hermione. I can't tell you."
Hermione moved to stand up but Ron grabbed her wrist halting the action.
"Hermione, please." Ron croaked. "I…"
It had been many years since Hermione had last seen a tear in Ron's eye. In fact, so long that she could not remember what it had been over. But when the tears began leaking down his freckled cheeks, in a painful silence, the loud shouting of Aurors barking orders around her and the screams of surviving Muggles seemed to disappear instantly. Ron was an Auror, a part of the magical elite task force. He was trained to function as a soldier in direct combat with the darkest of wizards - to be in situations where the choice was to kill or be killed. And he had faced his share of those situations.
These tears had to be a product of something much more...
Her head swam with the possibilities: Did Harry say something? Had Ron failed to protect what he was assigned? A sudden thought struck her. She began to peer over the fallen macrocarpa.
"I need you to go." He unexpectedly demanded. The effort he put into those five words were evident even to her. An effort that seemed to sap his energy with each progressive word.
And she was suddenly unable to move, unable to speak, to smell, to hear, or to breathe. It was as though she had been hit by a Petrificus Totalus cast by Voldemort himself. The only thing that remained was the horrible realisation that there was blood.
A lot of blood.
How she had failed to notice it before she knew she'd question for the rest of her life. The blood seeped through his jacket and must have continued to run down his chest like it would do to a door panel. It was heavy, and it smelt of copper. The slow welling of it pooled onto the ground and reached her knelt leg. Somehow it got on her hand. She rubbed her fingers together mechanically.
It was warm and sticky.
It was Ron.
She looked up at him and noticed how he was clutching his chest tightly with one hand and was leaning heavily against the weight of the wood. But he smiled - a slow grin that didn't quite reach his eyes and was obviously painful to do so - and she knew that he did it for her. A bad attempt at feigning comfort. It was the 'I'll be okay look' that was so obviously a lie.
How had she not realised he was injured? How had she not asked? She had been too preoccupied with the surroundings around her – the death and destruction – and then with the conversation itself. It was so characteristic of her, she thought, to over-think things rather than to look directly in front of her.
"R-," Her tongue rolled around the sound. "Ron I can," Get a grip Hermione! He does not need you losing your mind now. "I need to get you out of here."
He either did not hear her comment or was opting to ignore it. "Hermione," He stopped, gasping for breath. She could feel a wave of panic rising inside her as she watched blood pool in the junction between his lips. How had she not noticed his laboured breathing? His difficulty talking? Was it that he had been fine before or had she just not noticed?"Percy is over… he's over there. I need you to bring him back. I need you to take him home and get out of here."
Hermione did not know where 'there' was referring to but she remembered the way Ron had earlier been unable to transfer his attention from something over the macrocarpa and deciphered that there would be the best place to start. Still, she was torn between fulfilling her friends request or ignoring it. He desperately needed the medical attention. Yet she knew that Ron would not be willing to leave until she found his brother.
Hang on Ron, just a little longer, she willed her friend.
Slowly she gathered herself and rigidly stood from behind the wood - her knees cracking from being locked in the one position for too long.
"… They're making them… ahh, bloody hell it hurts!" Hermione still did not know what curse, or curses, had hit him. "They're turning on each other…"
"The death eaters?" She had to keep him talking. Her desperate search for Percy was coming up short.
He looked up at her and whispered, "Have you… not been listening to me?" Hermione noticed that his lips now held a bluish tinge to them as if their usual redness was being sucked out like a squeezed orange. This was happening far too quickly. She could not think straight!
She had to make a decision. With all the lifeless bodies scattered on the ground Hermione could not see Percy anywhere, so instead she crouched back down beside Ron.
Calling for bandages was a waste of time as any efficient spell caster would now lace their curse with anti-healing charms. It was a newly developed spell addition that could only be reversed by a highly skilled healer. If she remembered correctly it was a Parkinson creation.
"The muggleborns," Ron resumed his weak monologue. "Kill one too save one…" Hermione was barely listening, she was too distracted by indecision, but when Ron went silent her ears picked up on everything. His pitiful gasps as his lungs attempted to inhale what little oxygen it could and the clawing scratch of fingernails against wood as his back arched involuntarily. He was trying to grasp for some leverage to keep himself seated upright.
"Ron -"
"Hermione," A stern voice interrupted her, one she recognised as belonging to a Ministry Auror named Martin Learly. He was tall, aged a few years older than her, and had sandy-blonde hair that contrasted starkly against the three-day shadow that ran along his chin. He seemed to hesitate, as if reluctant to continue the conversation, and with his next words she understood why. "I'm sorry Hermione but we've found the body of Percy Weasley. We're thinking of taking him back to St Mungos along with the few remaining survivors we've found."
She realised that from where he was standing Martin was unable to see Ron. She looked over to her right in Martins direction and finally saw Percy. His long, red hair was sprawled out like tentacles over his face and his body was twisted in so many angles that she just knew he was dead. It looked like it had been painful - excruciating even. She wondered if Ron has seen his brother's demise.
She supposed so.
"Tell them…" Ron seemed to rouse suddenly with the mention of his brother. "not to notify… mum and dad." He said weakly.
"Ron…"
"Please." He coughed, spitting blood.
"Martin please do not inform the Weasley family. I'll be right behind you… I have Ron with me."
"Is he…"
"He's fine." Hermione lied.
Martin seemed to hesitate. "Is he bleeding?"
"Yes." Hermione replied.
A look of worry flooded across the young Auror's face. It was not a surprise; both he and Ron had gone through Auror training together three years ago. "Try a subsisto cruor spell." Martin offered quickly, kneeling beside Hermione. "My mother researcher's anti-healing charms and is looking into possible spells which may have off-setting effects. It hasn't been accepted by the Ministry yet or even..."
"Do it." Hermione interrupted, shifting a little so that Martin could get closer.
"I'm not a healer... I can't guarantee..."
"Try it!" She shouted almost hysterically.
Martin took out his wand and swiftly said, "Subsisto cruor." A jet of blue light shot out from his wand and hit Ron in the chest where it appeared most of the bleeding was stemming from.
Hermione did not realise she was holding her breath until Martin suggested that she should breathe.
"It seems to have lessened the bleeding a little." Martin told her. "Do you have a Portkey to St Mungo's?"
Hermione nodded, unsure she could trust her voice any longer.
"Okay, I'll see you there then." He placed a hand on Ron's shoulder tentatively. "Hang in there mate." He said, and then he was off.
"Ron," She had to repeat his name sternly a few times before his eyes fluttered back open. "Stay awake." He was deteriorating fast.
Hermione rested a hand on Ron - whose cold skin threw her into a panic – before taking out and activating the Portkey. The world then spun and twisted around her; a blur of sound, colour and roaring wind all combining together in the familiar nauseating occurrence experienced when using a Portkey. When it finally stopped Hermione could have cried in relief when they landed directly in front of a cluster of baffled witches and wizards. Hermione noticed that they were all wearing lime green robes with the embroidered symbol of a crossed bone and wand.
They had arrived in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Five seconds later Ron was being carted up to the fourth floor, home to victims of spell damage.
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