Author's Note: This fic is not intended to strictly adhere to canon. Though many (or most) of its characters and recognizable elements of the plot and/or text are of course property of JKR, this story is written as AU. I don't own anything except my original character(s) and plot that deviates from the Harry Potter canon universe.
Chapter 2: In Which Hermione Makes A Decision
Hermione Granger still stood in the middle of the battlefield, staring up at the dark-clouded sky. She had not moved a muscle, other than those required to breath, in nearly half an hour.
It was finally over. Done. And what was left? What had they been fighting for?
She finally lowered her gaze to survey the battlefield around her.
Blood. So much blood.
In some sick and twisted way, it almost made sense to her that in a war which placed such significance on the purity of one's blood, all that blood would eventually end up spilled across the final battlefield.
In the end, it hadn't mattered whether yours was pure blood, half-blood, or mudblood. In the end, all the blood was left pooling next to the dead bodies.
Blood. So much blood. Too much blood.
Looking around for any sign of life, she didn't have to look far before spotting slight movement nearby. Ginny Weasley sat not far away, cradling both Ron and Harry's heads in her lap, as she gently stroked each of their heads, and stared straight ahead, off into the distance – not really seeing anything in front of her, just looking at the far-away horizon, zoned-out. Her shoulders slowly rocked back and forth, in a seemingly unconscious manner, and tears still streamed silently down her cheeks.
Approaching her red-headed friend, she reached out a hand to graze the other girl's shoulder, bringing her back to awareness. Ginny looked up at the last surviving member of the so-called 'Golden Trio' and opened her mouth as if trying to say something, but nothing came out so she simply shook her head to convey disbelief in their present situation.
At her insistence, Ginny carefully resettled her brother and Harry's heads upon the soft grass beneath them and rose to join her.
She began to pick her way around the fresh corpses that now littered the final battlefield - the grounds of Hogwarts – looking for any survivors. She didn't even particularly care which side they might have been on. It didn't matter much now. Dark or Light, they were all that was really left now.
Walking up the stone steps and passing through the massive wooden front doors of the castle, they discovered another Weasley alive. George Weasley was hunched over the body of his identical twin brother, pressing his clammy forehead to that of his cold twin's.
When he noticed the soft sound of their footsteps arriving in the Entrance Hall, he raised his head.
They numbly regarded one another for several minutes, none of them uttering a word, their breathing the only sound in the massive Hall.
They were it. Two Weasleys and a Granger, they were apparently the sole survivors of the Battle of Hogwarts.
Just then, a loud 'crack' echoed throughout the Hall and they all turned to its source, finding Dobby the house-elf near the doorway to the Great Hall.
"Mister Harry Potter sir?" the house-elf questioned. He was given no answer, save the sorrowful shake of her head.
After silently mulling over the devastating news, the normally-cheerful house-elf tearfully turned to her and further inquired, "Mister and Missus Loopy?"
Again, she found no words and settled for shaking her head.
"What does Dobby and Winky do with baby Loopy?" he asked. The question had been directed at no one in particular – it was really more a case of him thinking aloud.
"Teddy's safe then?" she verified, thankful for even just one more life that had not been extinguished in the violent bloodshed of the day. She felt a tremendous wave of relief when Dobby nodded in confirmation that the little boy was indeed unharmed.
"Baby Loopy is being with Winky," he informed them.
"Thank you for keeping him safe, Dobby. Do you know if anyone else survived?" she asked.
Dobby sadly looked down at the floor near his small feet and responded in an overwhelmingly somber tone, "Rinka and Flo, the house-elves, is being hurt but Dobby and Winky fixes them. We is not finding any others – no masters or misses."
No one said anything else for several minutes. What else was there to say, really? No words could change anything. Nothing they said would bring any of them back.
In the deafening silence of the Hogwarts Entrance Hall, two witches, one wizard, and a house-elf found their previously numb states slowly fade away as the reality of what had happened began to take hold and the beginnings of what would surely be a lifetime of pain and grief began to set in.
"Will you take me to Teddy, Dobby? I'd like to see him now…" she said, though she completed the rest of the thought fully in her head. I need to hold him and know that there is still a future ahead for those of us left.
Dobby distractedly nodded his little head and began to move past the girls in a scamper characteristic of all house-elves. Apparently, he expected them to follow.
As Hermione began to do just that, dragging Ginny along behind her, George made to stand up for the first time since the girls had entered the Entrance Hall. The whole group paused to wait for him to join them.
Placing his hands on the cold stone floor, just to the side of either knee, he used his upper-body strength to force himself away from it and stand up. As soon as he reached his full height, his left leg gave way beneath him.
Seeing the man fall – she realized that even yesterday he'd still been a boy in her mind, but now… now, after everything they had experienced in the past twenty-four hours, no one could think them all anything but adults – Hermione and Dobby rushed over to his side.
Upon reaching his prone body, Hermione caught sight of the injured leg in question. Body panting in response to a great deal of pain, George's pants were torn in several areas of his lower leg and the whole thing was covered in a fair amount of blood. Much to her horror, she could now see that an open wound mid-way up his shin featured a disturbing protrusion. His leg was very broken, she realized, and the bone was sticking straight up out of his skin. How had she not noticed this sooner?
Rather than say anything to him or attempt to use her unfortunately somewhat-limited knowledge of healing spells to mend him right there, next to his twin's dead body, she decided to levitate him instead – relieving him of the prospect of having to put any weight on the useless limb or suffer through the painful jostling that was sure to come from attempting to hop around on his one good leg.
"Change of plans Dobby," she informed her little friend. "Ginny and I'll move George up to the Hospital Wing and you go get Teddy to meet us there," she directed, knowing Ginny was really in no state of mind to help anyone at the moment.
With only a slight nod of his head, the house-elf once again disappeared with a 'crack' and Hermione was left to her own task. She cast off a quick Wingardium Leviosa, lifting a still panting George straight up in front of her. Moving forward, with George floating through the air ahead of her, she grabbed Ginny's hand and pulled the girl into a nearby hallway as the little procession made their way through the castle, up to the Hospital Wing.
Lost in her thoughts and not paying all that much attention to her surroundings, Hermione was startled to find how quickly they had reached the double-doors that led into the Hospital Wing.
Opening one door, she backed her way into the ward, carefully maneovering George through behind her. Once inside, she chose the nearest bed and gently lowered him to rest on top of the sheets. Quickly she got to work and set off to find supplies with which to clean his rather nasty wounds.
As she re-entered the main stretch of the hospital ward – arms filled with all the medical supplies she could find – Dobby popped back into sight, holding Teddy asleep against his shoulder.
The toddler was nearly 2/3 the size of his caretaker, but Hermione did not pause to wonder on the logistics of the house-elf's ability to successfully carry the little boy. She immediately dropped all the medical supplies onto the empty bed beside the one she had placed George on and urgently moved to take a sleeping Teddy into her own arms.
Readjusting the precious child to rest his head upon her shoulder, Hermione looked down to observe his sweet face. He seemed so peaceful as he slept, a look quite opposite of any she had ever seen on his mischevious little face while awake. Having apparently inherited both of his parents' prominent personality traits, the tot in her arms was at once clumsy and outgoing while clever and thoughtful. In the two years since his birth, she had often thought him the epitome of all that was right in the world. To her, he embodied the very future for which they had all continued to fight.
And now that future would include precious Teddy Lupin growing up with no mother, no father, likely no family at all outside of the current occupants of Hogwarts' Hospital Wing.
At that moment, she made up her mind. Looking down at his sweet, innocent, peacefully sleeping little face, she knew she would do whatever was necessary to change things.
She would find a way to change what had happened, for him – for Teddy…
And for George, who had lost nearly his entire family and not long ago had been kneeling over the lifeless body of his identical twin.
She would make things better for Ginny, who – along with having lost her family with George – had held the love of her life in her arms as his breath had left him for good and his heart had finally given up beating.
No matter what she had to do or how long it took, she would make things right for them again. She would fix what had become of the world for them, for all of them.
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