Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or any of his fellow characters. If you recognize them, they belong to JK Rowling and her publishers, and probably warner brs. somewhere in the mix as well. I do however claim ownership of the this fic's plot-bunny, and state, in full honesty, i've never seen it before.

on with the ficky...

Silver in the Moonlight
"Harry!"

Harry looked up, receiving a face full of rain for his efforts. He quickly shoved his hair out of his face, and managed to discern that, coupled with the voice, the person running toward him must be Hermione.

Her hair was blowing all over the place in the angry wind, it was pouring rain and nearly freezing, but she didn't even have a sweater on, let alone a cloak. He clenched his teeth: Something must have happened.

"Harry!" she repeated jumping up and throwing her arms around them. Automatically his arms wound tightly around her, and spun them around. From an outsider's point of view he was sure it looked silly, but between the wind and her force and his own fatigue it was all he could do to keep from falling backward.

"Hermione, what's wrong?" He yelled when he'd finally regained his balance.

She released her death-grip on his neck, but did not let go of him entirely. Her fists clenched around his sleeves, and she was looking up at him so imploringly. "Harry, I've figured out a way for you to kill Voldemort!"

"What?" he responded, sure he hadn't heard her right.

"I've figured out a way for YOU TO KILL VOLDEMORT—" Lightening flashed behind her and a second later the expected crash of thunder arrived. She jumped, he closed his eyes.

Hermione was saying something again, but he couldn't clearly make out what it was. Of course he'd understood the first thing she'd said, and he was sure that, in typical Hermione fashion, whatever she was saying now was the explanation, however he couldn't hear her well over the storm and he really did want to get out of it before the lightning came back, he was exhausted, and he was still attempting to absorb the little he had heard: She'd figured out how he was going to kill Voldemort?

"Hermione lets go inside!" He shouted, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and ushering her back around toward the house, assuming that she probably hadn't even heard what he'd said but hoping she'd be able to deduce it by his actions.

She complied very easily and somehow between where they'd started and the short, but seemingly long, path back to the house managed to end up with his knapsack on her own shoulder, and her arm around his back, as if he were injured and needing her to be his human crutch. Although, despite the fact that his glasses were charmed to repel rain, his hair was sopping wet and blowing in front of his eyes, and under his glasses, so quickly and viciously, that he ended up with very little practical sight, and was quite glad Hermione was there to guide him.

When they were about ten feet away from the shabby little entrance porch and warm glowing windows that Grimmauld Place had become in the few days they'd been staying there, the door opened and a tall, gangly figure walked out, but didn't make any move to come toward them. Harry was sure Ron, and didn't understand why he didn't come over to them immediately. However, after a moment's subconscious contemplation he remembered that he'd left Ron and Hermione more or less alone for twelve hours, which meant they must have gotten into some stupid fight and Ron was still sour about it.

"Here!" Hermione shouted, slinging his knapsack and Ron, who caught it automatically, but looked as though, having realized who'd tossed it to him, he may drop it out of spite.

"Hey Ron!" Harry said in greeting, not quite sure whether or not Ron could hear him.

"Let's talk inside!" He shouted in response, opening the door and motioning for them to go in before him.

Anxious to be out of the cold and sit down, Harry walked right passed him, but turned and waited for the other two to follow him. To his surprise Ron walked right in front of Hermione, cutting her off and leaving the muggle-style screen door to slam against her back. He slung Harry's knapsack to the side carelessly and began to say "So, mate, how'd it go?" when Hermione let out an annoyed 'Aarrgh!' and pushed the door, which Ron had left to slam shut on her, open with so much force that it's knob banged into the wall behind it, causing a few of the picture frames to fall on the floor and Kreature, with amazing response time, to come wandering into the room, complaining about insane mudbloods and blood-traitors and secret keeping.

"What's with you Ron?" Harry asked, immediately regretting it when the reactionary expression on Ron's face told him he'd taken the question as a declaration of Harry being on Hermione's side.

"Oh, it's gotta be something with me, does it?"

Hermione rolled her eyes and Harry had to struggle to not do the same. Instead he chose to ignore Ron's question and make his way further into the house. He could here something being discussed in the kitchen, it sounded like by at least five or six people, and he wondered why they were all here since it had only been Ron and Hermione when he'd left.

"Hermione, what's going on?" He asked, looking back over his shoulder before opening the kitchen door.

"That's what I've got to tell you!" She said excitedly, pulling at his cloak. He hadn't realized he'd forgotten to take it off. He shrugged out of it and let her take it. She fiddled with it, making as if to fold it, but she was smiling very brightly. "We've got to go upstairs and talk, just us—Oh, no one's hurt!—" she told him, reading his expression with wonderful accuracy, "—Anyway, I don't want anyone else to know until I've told you about it. But," she sighed, looking a little disappointed about it, "you should dry off and get something to eat first, you must be exhausted."

"Yeah," he replied, looking over her head, at Ron, who had hung back in the hall and was glaring at the pair of them.

"What's with him?" He whispered to her.

"Oh, he's just mad because I won't tell him what I've figured out, that's all." She smiled, waving her hand dismissively.

"You mean about—"

"SSSHHHH!" She cut him off but nodded in answer.

"Okay, let's just go upstairs right now then; you know I'll never be able to get away from them once I get in there—Who is "them" by the way?"

"Professor Lupin, and Tonks, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and Kingsley, he came with Tonks, and another Order member, I don't know him too well, and his name is something funny, something French, I don't remember it right now, but Lupin trusts him and seems to know him well, so I suppose he's fine."

"Oh, why're they all here?"

"Well Mrs. Weasley came when Ron told her we were going to be here all day, and so Mr. Weasley came, and then I had this idea, but I won't tell them, not until I've discussed it with you, so Mrs. Weasley started owling people, saying that it wasn't an emergency but anyone who wouldn't be too busy tonight should come by. I really wish she hadn't, but Ron—" she shot him a nasty look over Harry's shoulder, "—had to go and say something to him mother."

"I see."

"Look, Harry, you really should eat," she said, her tone instantly becoming soft, sympathetic, but still commanding—her "mother" tone, as he and Ron jokingly referred to it. "Go upstairs, change into some fresh, dry clothes, and I'll meet you up there in about five minutes with a plate of dinner."

She did not wait for him to respond before placing her hand around his wrist and sliding him in front of her, back toward the staircase, much like he'd done a few moments before, with her, in the rain. It was quite the visual display of everything their relationship was when they did things like that, he thought, as he passed Ron, who was making his way into the kitchen, and began climbing stairs: There was no battle for control, no lack of trust; it was a sort of perfectly balanced harmony. And, especially when he was as tired and unwilling to deal with the rest of the world as he was now, he was immensely grateful for her ability to think like him but act with much more reason.

He did not bother to light the room when he walked in, and kicked the door shut behind him, not really caring whether or not it closed. He let his robes drop to the floor, pulled off his wet sweater and shirt, slid out of his shoes and socks, wrestled his jeans off, somehow managed to remember an appropriate drying charm, and was just putting on a fresh shirt when Hermione softly knocked on the door, although, quite characteristically, she did not wait for a response before opening it.

Usually such liberties, from Hermione, did not annoy him in the least, and although, for some reason, this time it did, ever so slightly, he found that just the smell of the warm food she'd brought with her redeemed her a hundred times over.

"Thanks," he mumbled, taking it from her and dropping unceremoniously onto his bed. He sat at the head, and she quickly plopped down at the other end, pulling a brown, obviously muggle-wrapped, package out of her robes as she did so. She folded her legs in front of her and set it between them but made no move to open it.

"What's that," he asked between bites, trying not to be too piggish, but knowing that she wouldn't hold it against him, seeing as he hadn't eaten in twelve hours.

"I'll tell you when you're done, wouldn't want you to have a choking fit or anything." She responded smiling, although the serious look in her eyes lead him to believe she may not be joking.

They sat in silence while he ate, and he could tell it was hard for her: Typical Hermione, wanting to explain animatedly and in great detail exactly what had lead her to the inspiration that had resulted in her conclusion and ultimate victory. The thought made him smile a bit, and he was sure that had the room not been so dark he'd be able to see her turning red in anticipation.

When he'd finally put his plate aside, she wasted no time in tearing through a fold in the package with her fingers. It opened rather easily to the bottom side of a slightly beat up looking rectangular box, which, at least on the currently visible side, was completely white. She looked over her shoulder to make sure the door was closed before she pulled at its little security tabs to open it. When she was satisfied she pulled back the flap and held it out toward him, completely open, and it's contents completely visible.

He did not know what he'd expected; he hadn't had enough time to think on it to expect anything really. However, this was not it. A metallic creature, shiny and deceptively calm in the moonlight stared back at him.

"Hermione," he began, when he could finally look away from it and back up at her, "this is…"

"Yeah!" She responded, grinning proudly.

"Where'd you get it? When'd you get it?" He asked, completely incredulous, his mind racing a million miles a minute, but not entirely sure what to say without more information.

"I bought it at a pawn shop a few hours after I first had the idea, so around six hours after you left."

"How? You're not eighteen." She rolled her eyes, which glowed bright and blue looking, whether it be from the solitary light of the moon, or from her excitement he didn't know.

"Magic, silly. Honestly, I can make a fake I.D. with a wand far better than your cousin and his friends probably have."

"Oh," he responded dumbly, realizing that it had been a rather stupid question.

"So what do you think?" She asked, not bothering to wait for him to get out of his sputter.

"Well, this isn't going to do much good against magic. I mean—"

"Of course it will! Don't you get it? I personally find it to be rather poetically ironic. Voldemort's a half-blood like you, right?—" He nodded, "—but he tried to completely reject his muggle side, thinking that all muggles, and all things muggle, are weak. Because of that he won't have bothered studying muggle weapons, thinking they're inferior, and he won't be expecting it in the least. And since all of his followers are all either purebloods, or half-bloods who reject and deny their muggle heritage as well, none of them will know what to do against it, or how to help save him. All you've got to do is pull your wand with your left hand, distract him with that—and , like you've said before, when we'd talked about it, your wands kind of get tied to each other don't they?—so you'll have the perfect opening to take aim."

He continued to just stare at her for a minute, and then, abruptly, his gaze dropped back down to the package sitting between them. He wasn't really sure what to do or say. It was perfect. Her plan. Really, it was. He didn't know why he hadn't thought about it before, except, and he didn't want to admit it even to himself, that maybe he, like Voldemort, had just over looked muggle inventions after his introduction to the magical world, easily assuming that all those things he was so used to were somehow inferior to anything that belonged to the wonderful new world he'd joined.

Finally he looked back up at the girl across from him, who seemed to be holding her breath waiting for his response.

"Hermione," he breathed, looking back up at her and grabbing her shoulders, "you, are brilliant!"

"I thought it was a pretty good idea," she grinned.

"Have you got the—"

"Yeah," she cut him off, pulling a little round out of her pocket.

"Okay, so now what? Do you want to tell the others?" He asked, a fresh batch of adrenaline releasing itself into his body. He wanted to do something now. He wanted it to be over now. And she'd just presented such a perfect way for it to be so…

"At first I thought we should. But now I think we shouldn't. I really don't want to take the chance of it leaking out—Not that I mistrust anyone!—" She exclaimed quickly, her eyes widening and her arms flying in up as if to proclaim her innocence, "—It's just that, you know how those things go and the less people who know the better. Besides, most of the Order won't be familiar with them, and I really don't feel like spending hours attempting to explain it, especially to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley."

He nodded, understanding exactly how she felt. And he could just picture Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's very different, but predictable, reactions: Mr. Weasley would be insatiably curious. He'd want to know everything there was to know about it. He'd want to know exactly how it worked, which, more or less, would come out to them having to explain the entire history of muggle technology for the past five hundred years. Mrs. Weasley, of course, would be exactly the opposite. She seemed to have an ingrained mistrust of muggle methods and practices, and Harry, knowing how overprotective she was, was sure that she wouldn't tolerate the idea of depending on a muggle weapon.

"So what do we tell them all the fuss was about?"

"Oh, I already figured that out." She answered, grinning mischievously.

"What?" He asked, wondering if she'd pull some other amazing devise or tactic out of the hat.

"Summon Kreature," she said.

He raised an eyebrow: usually she discouraged attempting to force Kreature to do anything. And summoning him was definitely on that list.

"Kreature!" He called, jumping a little against his will when, not a second later, a loud crack sounded right next to his ear.

"Master called," the wrinkly, point-nosed house elf said. He was looking around the room very slowly, rubbing his hands together as if cold. When his gaze landed on Hermione he glared at her profusely.

She looked from Harry to Kreature and then back to Harry with a disturbingly Malfoy-worthy smirk on her face. She pulled out her wand and clothes, which looked like adapted muggle toddler cloths appeared before her, neatly spread out in the air.

"Kreature, you remember our agreement?"

"Yes, Kreature remembers the deal the mudblood makes. It is shameful but not a shameful as taking orders from a muggle." And, to Harry's surprise, he slowly uncurled his hands and reached toward the clothes, as if every inch his arm moved delivered a whip to his back. It took him five minutes or so but once he had each item of clothing, right down to cute little matching white socks, clenched begrudgingly in one fist, he began to tug at the loincloth-like rag draped around his middle.

"No, Kreature, you can change in your room! But you remember the deal. If, from now on, anyone ever catches you not wearing them…" Hermione cautioned fondly, as if she were talking to a typically rebellious four-year old whom didn't want to share his toys on the play-ground.

"Oh, Kreature remembers. But the mudblood cannot really do this last thing she says, only master can. And master is not so smart as to know, there is no noble pureblood traits in the one Kreature is forced to serve…" He glared at Hermione very pointedly before he, with an eager snap of the fingers, swiftly disappeared.

Harry stared a little bewildered and mostly amused at the spot Kreature had disappeared from, his eyes seeing little white memories of light reflection from where he'd just been.

"What did you do?" He finally asked, his head slowly cranking back to Hermione, as though it were a particularly rusty piece of machinery deeply in need of oil.

"I just told him that if he agreed to always wear clothes then I'd never talk to him again." She sounded intentionally nonchalant and didn't meet his eye, probably attempting to avoid the question she must have known was coming.

"But what was he talking about, "[she can't really do this last thing she says" thing? What'd you tell him would happen if he didn't keep wearing the clothes."

She looked as though she was caught between the torn desire to smirk and giggle until she was hyperventilating. "I—I—gggaawwaahaa—I told him that you'd—that you'd—mmmwwahhaaa" by this point she was red in the face and clutching her sides, "—send him to work for your—hahaaahaaahaa—for your muggle—muggle aunt!"

All the seriousness of only two minutes before dissolved instantly. Harry burst out laughing immediately. The visions of ugly, wrinkly, old house-elf Kreature wondering around his aunt's spotlessly clean, very muggle, kitchen in a dirty rag, mumbling about muggles and talking portraits and probably making scathing third-person comments about every single one of the Dursleys, ran through his head. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of doing that last year when he'd inherited him.

"And—" He added out loud, "—and—ggwwaahhaahaa—I could order him to send me—" he broke off, taking off his glasses carelessly in his mirth, "—to send me weekly—hhahahaaahhhaa—weekly reports!" He was clutching his sides by now, and Hermione had fallen forward, at quite a funny angle, the box wedged into her stomach, and somehow it just made the whole thing funnier. He was smiling so hard the muscles in his cheeks hurt and his eyes were watering, but, as tired as he was, as much stress as he was under it was exactly what he need.

When they had both finally calmed down a bit, he said, as if in after thought, "You know Hermione, I can see what he meant about me not having "pureblood" traits, if any of us should have been in Slytherin, it should have been you."

She smirked in response, "Yeah," she said, "well, what good is intelligence if you don't have the common sense and acting ability to know how to use it?"

"So, that's what we're going to tell them then? That the whole big deal you made about things being secret was getting my permission to force Kreature to wear little kids clothes?" Somehow saying it out loud made it sound much funnier, and much more ludicrous, than it did in his head.

"That's the basic plan," she smiled, "in the mean time we just have to find the rest of the horcruxes, and you could write Kreature letters about that. What side do you think he'd choose? If he knew Voldemort was a half-blood?"

"I don't know," he replied, some of the humor leaving him, "he'd probably stick to it, hopefully in a year or so, as soon as possible, it won't matter. Hopefully he'll be gone."

And just like that the mood was suddenly somber again. Hermione's smile dropped, she leaned forward and gently put a hand on top of Harry's, looking at him with sympathetic eyes. "He will be," she told him. Something about the way she said it, made it much more believable than when Harry himself thought it in his head.

He gave her a half-hearted grin back, but didn't hold her gaze for long. "We should get back down-stairs, they'll all be wondering," he sighed.

"Well," she said, jumping up off the bed, her voice cheerful and light-hearted once more, "hopefully Kreature will be done changing right now, because he's going to be putting on quite the show!"

3 Months and 4 Horcruxes Later

Two loud shots rang through the air. A scratchy scream began in reaction, but never finished. Its owner fell to the floor, his long, thin body blasted backward by the impact. Dark colored blood was leaking out from his torso, and for a moment no one moved.

Then a high-pitched voice from somewhere that sounded far away, at least to Harry, yelled out "He killed him! He killed the Dark Lord!"

Pandemonium erupted, all of a sudden the people on Harry's side who were not standing face to face, in the middle of a paused duel with a Death Eater, began yelling too, in excitement and disbelief and victory. And the Death Eaters began to shout as well. Some that it was a trick, other's were swearing vengeance, some of them didn't say anything at all, they just began running for the apparition barrier. Most of them, Harry realized, in some distant, detached corner of his mind, didn't have a clue as to what had just happened, just as Hermione assumed they wouldn't.

He was sure that some of the particularly loyal Death Eaters were, even at this second, attempting to get at him. Thankfully though, Harry had people watching out for him when he, a little dumbstruck, a little numb off his own victory, began single-sightedly walking across the battlefield, thirty feet, to where his former opponent's body lay.

He stood over him for a second or two before he realized that he was not yet entirely dead. But he was dying, that much was obvious. There was no horcruxes to save Tom Marvolo Riddle this time around. His already paper-colored skin, even paler, somehow, was accentuated by the blood quickly seeping out around him, and running down his face from his mouth and nose. His wand had flown across the room and his limbs lay limp. It looked as though his entire last bit of energy was being taken up by looking up at Harry with his half-focused, barely human eyes. He looked as though, if he'd had the strength in his suddenly decrepit body he would have said something very important to Harry. But Harry couldn't think of anything he'd want Voldemort to say to him. Really, it didn't matter now.

"You're only human, in the end, after all." He said blankly, standing over him, his head hung directly down to stare at Voldemort. "Only muggle too, apparently, because all the magic in the world couldn't save you from a muggle weapon. You know, my friend, Hermione, she's a muggle-born; it was her idea I use this. Said it was poetic irony, 'cause you thought muggles were weak and everything and you tried to deny that part of your heritage and so you wouldn't know what to do against it, and you wouldn't be expecting it or know what to do against it. Looks like she was right, but I'm not that surprised, she usually is." He felt some muscle in his left cheek pulling the corner of his lips upward, some muscle controlled by the darker half of his nature: the vengeful part; the cruel part. But he didn't care.

"So how does it feel?" he asked, dropping his knees and whispering, "To know that you were killed by a completely normal muggle shotgun?"

Voldemort made a little hissing noise. "If you can feel, that is…" Harry said, standing up, as if it were an after-thought.

He stood there, over Voldemort's body as it began to writher around, convulse, and eventually, suddenly, become completely still. It took him almost ten minutes to die completely. Harry didn't know how it was that he had no notice of anything or anyone outside himself and Voldemort, until he was completely dead. And he realized, maybe that's what Trelawney's prophecy had meant: They'd always be so pre-occupied with each other that neither could do more than survive, but not really live, so long as the other was doing the same.

Voldemort died a completely muggle death, as week and vulnerable as any muggle. The realization both frightened and calmed Harry.

He lifted the gun slowly until it was directly over the body, and, quite carelessly, dropped it, not really caring whether it stayed on the body or bounced elsewhere. His hand felt amazingly light. He took in a deep breath. Stoically, but with a smile threatening to appear, he turned to walk away, and quietly whispered, "Goodbye."

End.

Okay, well… hadn't really expected that to be that long, but considering I wrote it in two hours, and I have to get up in four hours to spend the next 10 driving… I'm just gonna have to be happy with it : )

It's pretty much an idea I had about a year ago, that I kept meaning to write out somehow, but, procrastinator that I am, I waited until the very last minute to do it. I think this is what should happen in the book, for all the reason's listed in the fic, about it being "poetic irony" and what-not, although I doubt it will. The Kreature stuff was all spur of the moment inspiration though : )

Lemme know what y'all think!

L.C.