He stared out of the window, unsmiling, a pair of glasses in his lap. The
once proud walls, and perfect grounds were gone; instead, the wreckage of a
clash between two indominitable powers was all he surveyed.
He looked around, with eyes unseeing all that lay before them. The room was unsullied, pristine, magically resurrected, but all that had come to pass made it macabre, wrong. It was wrong that it should be like this, unbroken, when nothing would be right, unbroken again.
No tears in his eyes, he had passed to a stage where no tears could be called. They had been shed, hundreds, thousands of tears, an ocean of salt that could not wash away the stain of blood that dirtied the ancient castle.
Of course it had been Hogwarts. Nothing but Hogwarts could have represented the side, and the Order more valiantly, nothing could be hated more by them. It was a symbol; a physical strength that proved light had overcome darkness, again, and again. But in with the light, a few shades of grey had swirled and spiralled with the brilliant white, and allowed such things to happen, he thought ruefully. Salazar Slytherin, his serpents arching on a banner of bright green was trodden beneath a stampede of evil; he was not dark enough, yet he had poisoned Hogwarts forever.
The bench he was sat upon was hard, and old. So many had splintered into shards in the conflict, broken by magic, and the weight of men and women, fallen in the hardest battle, the battle for destruction. He traced a swirling pattern, a twisting knot, an imperfection in the wood, so like a drop of bitter death in a place of peace. Diluting the beauty of it, but then adding to it, making that which still retained it's sweet perfection that much brighter.
He uncurled, the glasses still held in his hand, his eyes dim. Screams, and voices rang in his ears; he'd spent the night clutching his head, trying to hush them. Flashes of harsh, green light, he'd hate the colour forever, threw the scene into sharp relief, and the stench he remembered also. He smelt it now, acrid, and vile. Bodies. He smelt the odour of death, and his stomach retched.
And the face. The inhuman, foul face, that haunted his dreams, drenched his nightmares, chasing away life with a sneer. He had that face imprinted on his brain. He looked down at his hand, feeling his wand, slim, and light in his hand. The touch of his fingertips against the whirls in the wood, the grain of the branch. He knew it as he knew the contours of his face. He blinked. It was there, resting in his palm, innocently, awaiting his bidding, his wielding of it. It could do nothing without him, but a single word from his lips, and sweetly, it would relinquish the wonders, or despicable horrors he could conjure.
He thought he wouldn't be able to do it. Sweat, icy, had beaded on his forehead, and eyes wide, and afraid, had stared back at him in the glass. Not afraid, he corrected, terrified. He had been scared witless.
He had thought he could not call death to his side.
He shouldn't be able to. Seventeen was young, far to young to toss fortune's dice, and play the wicked game. But he had. More power than he'd dreamed, summoned, had played a hand that day.
And the Order of the Phoenix lay in the dust, bright hopes tarnished.
It could not truly be called a victory, because how could victory devise from that? Speeches had been made; he'd spent them in a blur of pain, and suffering, death rattles repeating in his brain, about the Order dying, and the world 'rising like a phoenix from the ashes'. How could anything rise from such destruction?
He dropped his gaze, and in a familiar dance, picked his way through bodies no longer tossed aside. Arthur Weasley, and Percy, George. He had seen them, heart sobbed for them, but all it had done was make the green eyes more determined. They had not died in vain.
But they had. They with so many others, teachers, ministry officials, even plain old children like himself, had been slaughtered on a mission to stop the one thing that could make the world worse. Something few believed possible.
The attacks, after his fourth year, had started fairly soon. People close to the Order, people like muggleborns, and muggles themselves. People the Ministry dismissed as 'coincidental'. He remembered well the summer after fifth year, Arthur Weasley's transformation from the muggle loving Ministry official, into someone who had lost utter faith in his job, and the industry. He could not operate, and had quit.
'Molly, they're doing nothing. Nothing! All those people dead, Hogwarts will be under attack soon enough, and Fudge.he doesn't care. His precious career.all those trials in the old days.." Mr Weasley trailed off. Molly looked at him sadly, and watched him.
"I can't do it. I'm no use, anyway, not to the Order. I'm better outside, than polluting what we have within. I can't pretend, anymore, not to care, to dismiss it." He looked at them, all of them, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, the twins, Percy, and sighed.
"I can't pretend the deaths don't matter. That he doesn't exist."
He looked listlessly about him, the Hall itself coming into focus. The way it was. Now. The ceiling had cracked in a hundred places, the once magnificence of it had faded, all that was left was a faded painting of a dim summer sky, and shimmers at the corners, that showed what was left of the once vivid induction into the fantastical world of spell casting.
The tables were gone, and stones were scattered from the dais where the long teachers table had sat, where Snape had glared at him in times gone past. No need. There were no students left in the castle to teach, those who had not been killed were traumatised. Would never be the same. And hundreds of them had fallen. A handful was all that remained of the cheerful, loud roomful of first years to seventh years.
"Harry," he turned. She stood there, watching him, and he stared at her, almost blinded by the images crossing his mind. Begging him not to go, arguing with Ron, sorting out the Potions part of the Philosopher's stone.
"Harry," she sighed. Hermione watched her friend turn towards her, slowly. She looked around. Officials had tidied the Great Hall, made it clean, and obliterated the blood that had carpeted the floor. She knew she was lucky to survive, one of so small a few. He was so thin, so tired, he looked more like he had when he was thirteen, fourteen than a seventeen year old student in his final year. But then, she supposed, he wasn't. And it wasn't his final year, it was the school itself. Hogwarts wasn't closing. The doors would remain always open, but it needed repairing.
"Harry, come back to the hospital wing,' she said softly, breaking the trance he was stumbling under. He looked up at her.
"I." the harsh sound of a voice not frequently used anymore. He'd grown so silent in the months leading to it. So quiet. Never speaking of the pain that would occur. That he had witnessed now.
"I can't. They're up there. They all want to know.what it was like," he said helplessly. "And I can't. 'Mione, I can't."
Her heart broke at the nickname, something he hadn't used in a long time. Their circle was broken, the three, and would never be the perfect bright band of gold holding them together again, in times when squabbles over ball dates had seemed important, but Ron would recover.
"You don't. Who's made you feel as if you do?" she said fiercely. Hounding them mercilessly, the press. Skeeter, the wretched woman, in the lead. Her nose to the ground, tracking through the piles of dead, a story.
He just moved towards her, footsteps loud on the stone flags. She stared down, at the solid grey they had always been, and fleetingly saw them, as they had been that night, dark crimson with a river of blood.
"I'm coming," he said quietly, and lapsed into the silence, listening to horrors Hermione couldn't imagine. She would always regret not being by her friend's side, but she hadn't been. She'd survived, as friends, and those who felt as relatives had died.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was the next morning she'd discovered what had happened. Only that which could safely be said was a last link with Gryffindor, and Slytherin. She dropped to her knees, her hand covering her mouth, as silent sobs racked her lithe frame. Her screams rang hollow in the old building, and those who were left rushed to aid her. And stood beside her, gasping in pain at what lay before.
Bright winter sunshine, cool, and watery, flooded the room, reflecting off the pale walls, as what was real faded into what existed only in the mind. A pair of bent, and battered glasses lay on the bedside table, honest, and dignified, but unbroken. The hospital corners Madam Pomfrey still kept with long training were tucked in the corners of the bed, but the crisp blankets were rumpled, and the wand lay tossed on the soft white sheets, as a boat on tempest tossed waters.
The cries were muffled, and she got up, strangely calm, wiping the liquid from her face. Tears shed easily, not without pain.
Outside, in the sunshine, she'd blinked, and pushed past the reporters hounding the grounds, bounding like hunters after a kill, and ignoring the futile attempts to gain a story. She dropped onto the grass, by the lake, a crumpled piece of paper curled in her hand. One final, slow tear coursed down her cheek, as she cried for the Boy Who Lived, now, the Boy Who Died.
'Mione,
Everyone is saying we lived, we came through it. Ron is alive, his dad isn't. It doesn't seem right that voldemort, who was only alive because of me, should die, and so many others, and I should remain. I told you before I went in, that I wouldn't survive. Told you to run. Told Ron to run. But I did.
All the rest of you, you're pushing through a screen, into the sun, again. The Phoenix is dead, but there're still people willing to fight against the darkness. But I'm not. I'm still there, 'Mione. I can't seem to get out. I don't want to get out. He killed my mum, my dad, everyone who meant something, even Sirius.
They keep asking for my story. Telling me I'm a hero. I'm not. I'm just me, always praised for something I didn't do. My mum and dad were the heroes, and they're dead.
I'm sorry for it. But I have to. I'm not really right, not here. Not now. Not anymore. I've always had Voldemort looking over my shoulder, and I can't make it right, not now.
Goodbye, Mione.'
A/N: Kudos to the fantastic Kalina, without whose gems of stories, I would never have written this. Really, it's kind of based on her's, but mine was a 'what if he survived, but didn't really'. Her stuff is a lot better than mine, way better. But mine is lil' me fighting out, and if you have comments, critisim, then pass it on.
He looked around, with eyes unseeing all that lay before them. The room was unsullied, pristine, magically resurrected, but all that had come to pass made it macabre, wrong. It was wrong that it should be like this, unbroken, when nothing would be right, unbroken again.
No tears in his eyes, he had passed to a stage where no tears could be called. They had been shed, hundreds, thousands of tears, an ocean of salt that could not wash away the stain of blood that dirtied the ancient castle.
Of course it had been Hogwarts. Nothing but Hogwarts could have represented the side, and the Order more valiantly, nothing could be hated more by them. It was a symbol; a physical strength that proved light had overcome darkness, again, and again. But in with the light, a few shades of grey had swirled and spiralled with the brilliant white, and allowed such things to happen, he thought ruefully. Salazar Slytherin, his serpents arching on a banner of bright green was trodden beneath a stampede of evil; he was not dark enough, yet he had poisoned Hogwarts forever.
The bench he was sat upon was hard, and old. So many had splintered into shards in the conflict, broken by magic, and the weight of men and women, fallen in the hardest battle, the battle for destruction. He traced a swirling pattern, a twisting knot, an imperfection in the wood, so like a drop of bitter death in a place of peace. Diluting the beauty of it, but then adding to it, making that which still retained it's sweet perfection that much brighter.
He uncurled, the glasses still held in his hand, his eyes dim. Screams, and voices rang in his ears; he'd spent the night clutching his head, trying to hush them. Flashes of harsh, green light, he'd hate the colour forever, threw the scene into sharp relief, and the stench he remembered also. He smelt it now, acrid, and vile. Bodies. He smelt the odour of death, and his stomach retched.
And the face. The inhuman, foul face, that haunted his dreams, drenched his nightmares, chasing away life with a sneer. He had that face imprinted on his brain. He looked down at his hand, feeling his wand, slim, and light in his hand. The touch of his fingertips against the whirls in the wood, the grain of the branch. He knew it as he knew the contours of his face. He blinked. It was there, resting in his palm, innocently, awaiting his bidding, his wielding of it. It could do nothing without him, but a single word from his lips, and sweetly, it would relinquish the wonders, or despicable horrors he could conjure.
He thought he wouldn't be able to do it. Sweat, icy, had beaded on his forehead, and eyes wide, and afraid, had stared back at him in the glass. Not afraid, he corrected, terrified. He had been scared witless.
He had thought he could not call death to his side.
He shouldn't be able to. Seventeen was young, far to young to toss fortune's dice, and play the wicked game. But he had. More power than he'd dreamed, summoned, had played a hand that day.
And the Order of the Phoenix lay in the dust, bright hopes tarnished.
It could not truly be called a victory, because how could victory devise from that? Speeches had been made; he'd spent them in a blur of pain, and suffering, death rattles repeating in his brain, about the Order dying, and the world 'rising like a phoenix from the ashes'. How could anything rise from such destruction?
He dropped his gaze, and in a familiar dance, picked his way through bodies no longer tossed aside. Arthur Weasley, and Percy, George. He had seen them, heart sobbed for them, but all it had done was make the green eyes more determined. They had not died in vain.
But they had. They with so many others, teachers, ministry officials, even plain old children like himself, had been slaughtered on a mission to stop the one thing that could make the world worse. Something few believed possible.
The attacks, after his fourth year, had started fairly soon. People close to the Order, people like muggleborns, and muggles themselves. People the Ministry dismissed as 'coincidental'. He remembered well the summer after fifth year, Arthur Weasley's transformation from the muggle loving Ministry official, into someone who had lost utter faith in his job, and the industry. He could not operate, and had quit.
'Molly, they're doing nothing. Nothing! All those people dead, Hogwarts will be under attack soon enough, and Fudge.he doesn't care. His precious career.all those trials in the old days.." Mr Weasley trailed off. Molly looked at him sadly, and watched him.
"I can't do it. I'm no use, anyway, not to the Order. I'm better outside, than polluting what we have within. I can't pretend, anymore, not to care, to dismiss it." He looked at them, all of them, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, the twins, Percy, and sighed.
"I can't pretend the deaths don't matter. That he doesn't exist."
He looked listlessly about him, the Hall itself coming into focus. The way it was. Now. The ceiling had cracked in a hundred places, the once magnificence of it had faded, all that was left was a faded painting of a dim summer sky, and shimmers at the corners, that showed what was left of the once vivid induction into the fantastical world of spell casting.
The tables were gone, and stones were scattered from the dais where the long teachers table had sat, where Snape had glared at him in times gone past. No need. There were no students left in the castle to teach, those who had not been killed were traumatised. Would never be the same. And hundreds of them had fallen. A handful was all that remained of the cheerful, loud roomful of first years to seventh years.
"Harry," he turned. She stood there, watching him, and he stared at her, almost blinded by the images crossing his mind. Begging him not to go, arguing with Ron, sorting out the Potions part of the Philosopher's stone.
"Harry," she sighed. Hermione watched her friend turn towards her, slowly. She looked around. Officials had tidied the Great Hall, made it clean, and obliterated the blood that had carpeted the floor. She knew she was lucky to survive, one of so small a few. He was so thin, so tired, he looked more like he had when he was thirteen, fourteen than a seventeen year old student in his final year. But then, she supposed, he wasn't. And it wasn't his final year, it was the school itself. Hogwarts wasn't closing. The doors would remain always open, but it needed repairing.
"Harry, come back to the hospital wing,' she said softly, breaking the trance he was stumbling under. He looked up at her.
"I." the harsh sound of a voice not frequently used anymore. He'd grown so silent in the months leading to it. So quiet. Never speaking of the pain that would occur. That he had witnessed now.
"I can't. They're up there. They all want to know.what it was like," he said helplessly. "And I can't. 'Mione, I can't."
Her heart broke at the nickname, something he hadn't used in a long time. Their circle was broken, the three, and would never be the perfect bright band of gold holding them together again, in times when squabbles over ball dates had seemed important, but Ron would recover.
"You don't. Who's made you feel as if you do?" she said fiercely. Hounding them mercilessly, the press. Skeeter, the wretched woman, in the lead. Her nose to the ground, tracking through the piles of dead, a story.
He just moved towards her, footsteps loud on the stone flags. She stared down, at the solid grey they had always been, and fleetingly saw them, as they had been that night, dark crimson with a river of blood.
"I'm coming," he said quietly, and lapsed into the silence, listening to horrors Hermione couldn't imagine. She would always regret not being by her friend's side, but she hadn't been. She'd survived, as friends, and those who felt as relatives had died.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was the next morning she'd discovered what had happened. Only that which could safely be said was a last link with Gryffindor, and Slytherin. She dropped to her knees, her hand covering her mouth, as silent sobs racked her lithe frame. Her screams rang hollow in the old building, and those who were left rushed to aid her. And stood beside her, gasping in pain at what lay before.
Bright winter sunshine, cool, and watery, flooded the room, reflecting off the pale walls, as what was real faded into what existed only in the mind. A pair of bent, and battered glasses lay on the bedside table, honest, and dignified, but unbroken. The hospital corners Madam Pomfrey still kept with long training were tucked in the corners of the bed, but the crisp blankets were rumpled, and the wand lay tossed on the soft white sheets, as a boat on tempest tossed waters.
The cries were muffled, and she got up, strangely calm, wiping the liquid from her face. Tears shed easily, not without pain.
Outside, in the sunshine, she'd blinked, and pushed past the reporters hounding the grounds, bounding like hunters after a kill, and ignoring the futile attempts to gain a story. She dropped onto the grass, by the lake, a crumpled piece of paper curled in her hand. One final, slow tear coursed down her cheek, as she cried for the Boy Who Lived, now, the Boy Who Died.
'Mione,
Everyone is saying we lived, we came through it. Ron is alive, his dad isn't. It doesn't seem right that voldemort, who was only alive because of me, should die, and so many others, and I should remain. I told you before I went in, that I wouldn't survive. Told you to run. Told Ron to run. But I did.
All the rest of you, you're pushing through a screen, into the sun, again. The Phoenix is dead, but there're still people willing to fight against the darkness. But I'm not. I'm still there, 'Mione. I can't seem to get out. I don't want to get out. He killed my mum, my dad, everyone who meant something, even Sirius.
They keep asking for my story. Telling me I'm a hero. I'm not. I'm just me, always praised for something I didn't do. My mum and dad were the heroes, and they're dead.
I'm sorry for it. But I have to. I'm not really right, not here. Not now. Not anymore. I've always had Voldemort looking over my shoulder, and I can't make it right, not now.
Goodbye, Mione.'
A/N: Kudos to the fantastic Kalina, without whose gems of stories, I would never have written this. Really, it's kind of based on her's, but mine was a 'what if he survived, but didn't really'. Her stuff is a lot better than mine, way better. But mine is lil' me fighting out, and if you have comments, critisim, then pass it on.