An Author's Note:

This chapter marks the beginning of the story – not in any narrative sense, but a literal one. Early on in this project, I decided not to post the first chapter of Rebellion until I had at least three completed chapters – and that is the pace the story shall continue to march, with the second chapter posted when I have four complete chapters, with the third chapter posted when I have five complete chapters, and so it goes.

So it is with no small bit of joy that I write this latest entry. It's been over two years since I started to write and post a totally original story – it hasn't happened since Phantasmatic, in fact. It's always a wonderful feeling, to post something new, that no one's ever seen before.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter – it's more sort of a precursor to what follows than something that stands on its own, and after this chapter I shall begin to dabble in some more serious deviations in canon.

I hope you enjoy.

-PhoenixAeternum

December 4, 2010

Rebellion
Godric's Hollow

With a crack, Harry and Hermione, his and her hands entwined, materialized in Godric's Hollow. It had been over a week since Hermione initially suggested they pay the old village a visit, and that week had been a cold one. When they had left the forest they'd been camping in – a forest in the southwest of the country – the temperature at night would hover just above freezing. But now that they were further north – much further north, in fact – they found the township of Godric's Hollow covered in snow.

The unseasonable cold that had descended upon Britain since the previous year and the Dementors' release from Azkaban had not spared Godric's Hollow; while Harry couldn't be certain of the date, he knew that today fell in the first half of November – but even at Hogwarts, a place far north even from here, he could not remember a time when January's chill came in November.

"Well, this is it," Harry said rather lamely. While things with Hermione had gotten much better over the course of the last seven to ten days – really, ever since the day she suggested Godric's Hollow – he still found it difficult sometimes to talk to her. And now here in place where he was born and where his parents died, he found his tongue numbed by something other than the cold.

"Which way do you want to go?" Hermione asked. They had materialized, invisible beneath Harry's cloak and disguised by Hermione's Polyjuice, on what seemed to be the main road in town; to their left and northbound were several small shops, and to their right and southbound was a large church and a cemetery.

Harry nodded his head in the direction of the cemetery. He wanted to walk through it. He was sure his parents' graves would be there. But there was a tingle in his spine, and he felt there might be something more. There might be generations of Potters buried in that graveyard. He wanted to feel like he was looking into the Mirror of Erised again, wanted to feel like part of something older than himself, larger than himself, but smaller than what the Wizarding world had thrust upon him. He wanted to be someone's son, someone's grandson, and grandnephew; he wanted to be the last blood of an old family, for just one moment – anything but the last hope of a society on the brink of destruction.

His fingers were cold, he realized. He couldn't feel their tips, but could feel them laced with his companion's. They'd spent a lot of time like this lately, holding hands, her touching his arm, or brushing elbows or shoulders or forearms or fingers as they walked.

He thought of Ginny and what she would think, and guilt coiled inside him like a serpent ready to strike. But that's not what this was. This wasn't something that Ginny could have been upset by, could have disapproved of. She would have understood. Harry and Hermione were alone in the world, and neither had anyone, out here, on the run, but the other. He wasn't falling for Hermione. He was clinging to her. He needed to feel like he wasn't alone, and he hoped she would have known that that's all her touch was, that it was contact, that it was the only way to remind himself he wasn't alone, that he wasn't dead yet. Guilt uncoiled. He hoped she understood. Hermione was all he had.

He felt deadness in the pit of his stomach at his loneliness, but tendrils of hope were beginning to crawl over him. As he and Hermione got closer to the cemetery beside the church, he grew ever more hopeful. He just wanted something to affirm that he was here, that he had a past, even if that past was horrific. Even if his history was stained with blood, it would give him some sense that things went on before him. He couldn't pin-point why that was important to him, why it mattered if he had had a family once that existed without the thought of him. But something there comforted him even as their absence weighed heavily on him.

A locked gate stood before them, and it was without thought that Harry pulled out his wand and muttered Alohamora, and the gate creaked open. He took one breath to steady himself, another to ready himself, and stepped with Hermione into Godric's Hollow cemetery.

They walked slowly, the snow crackling with ever step, and looked carefully at each headstone. Some of them were so ancient, others so new, that Harry felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. There were people buried in this cemetery that had died almost a thousand years ago. Of particular note was the oldest headstone they found, belonging to a wizard whose name was not given. All that was written across it was the year, in an unsteady carving: 1099.

With a squeeze, Harry unclasped his hand from Hermione's and motioned her off in one direction as he went in another. Though minutes before he had been clinging to her hand for reassurance, he wanted to be alone now. He felt that his direction was right, and he wanted to face it himself. He wanted to be alone with his family.

But as he passed through row after row of headstones, wiping snow away from some to better see the names carved into them, not one bore the name Potter, or any name he recognized at all. Ericksons and Smiths, Elsegoods and Alreds, and Brightmores and Ellwoods – but no Potters. Not one.

Disappointment was starting to fill him. Maybe none of them were here, not even his parents. Maybe their bodies had never been recovered. Maybe they'd been ruined in the collapse of the house. Maybe he was all that was left, and maybe he'd always been. Maybe not even their bones had survived Voldemort.

But within a minute of continuing to walk, he finally saw it. Etched faintly on a double headstone, seeming unnaturally aged, were the words he had hoped to see.

Inscribed upon the tombstone where two sets of names, dates of birth and of death, and beneath that an inscription: The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death. He had found the grave of his parents. Slowly and with no sense of his own body, Harry lowered himself down to his knees before his parents' grave. They were buried there, in the earth beneath him. The better part of two decades separated them, but he felt such a closeness. They were right there. He reached out a shaking hand and touched their headstone.

He was shivering, and his face was burning. They were right here.

A hand fell on his shoulder and gripped it. He looked his head back and saw Hermione with unfalling tears in her eyes, tears that would never fall. His own face was beginning to contort, though no tears came to him. There were no tears for this, not from him. He placed a hand on Hermione's. Neither spoke, each communicating through the touch of hand to hand. Hermione gave a sad smile, the saddest, perhaps, he had ever seen, and with the hand that wasn't beneath Harry's, rose her wand, pointed it at the point where headstone met earth, and, without taking her sad, watery eyes from Harry, conjured a wreath of white roses.

With a grim smile of neither humor nor happiness, Harry gave his silent thanks to her. He rose, his head turned downward in solemn respect for his parents. With a sentiment halfway between sorrow and regret, he took Hermione's hand again and led her away from the cemetery. Though he could have spent a lifetime staring into the words etched into the headstone of the parents he'd never known, he knew there was more to be done here in Godric's Hollow.

They walked down the road away from the cemetery, away from the church, away from the point at which they'd earlier Apparated. They'd only been a few dozen steps from the cemetery when it happened.

"Tell me, tell me – where is it? I know you have it... The Elder Wand!"

"No, no, no, my lord, please, no – I swear it, I swear it!"

"Crucio!"

The old man's piteous moan, his death knell, grew louder, pierced the air and sky. He writhed there on the floor, helpless and powerless and all of him at the mercy of Lord Voldemort.

"Please! Please..." the man begged with a moan, gasping for breath, gasping for life. "Please, please, it was stolen... Stolen so long ago... Please!"

The Dark Lord was incensed – stolen! The object he sought, the most powerful wand in the world, and it was gone. He could see into Gregorovitch's mind, weak and useless, and see that what he told him was true. It had been stolen, and the worthless man never knew the thief.

He watched it play over once and again in Gregorovitch's mind, watched his memory of the thief stealing the wand. The man was unknown to him. It might be impossible to find. Rage – familiar, empowering rage – was filling him, and with his slitted eyes growing wider, a snarl on his lips, and his wand raised, he brought death down on the sniveling man before him.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry fell to one knee, clutching his forehead and trying not to call out in pain. This vision of Voldemort had been more violent than usual, and the scared look on the old wandmaker's face had seared itself into Harry's mind.

"He's found Gregorovitch, Hermione. He's killed him." Harry was panting, his eyes burning. He had only begun to rise from his one knee when Hermione seized his arm and squeezed.

"Harry," she said, and Harry could hear that she was frightened, "look over there. There's someone... watching."

Twenty yards away, an ancient-looking woman stood, almost doubled over. She scuttled closer to where Harry and Hermione stood, and Harry brought himself to his feet and cautiously he and Hermione inched closer to the woman as well, until they were close enough that Harry knew who she was.

"That's Bathilda Bagshot, Hermione," Harry said under his breath, and he could feel her grasp his arm a little more firmly. "Dumbledore might have told her to keep an eye out."

Their Polyjuice had worn off sometime during Harry's vision of Voldemort, and their true selves were revealed as Bathilda Bagshot was within just a few feet of them, and then she spoke:

"Harry Potter?"

He nodded. "Yes – yes, I am Harry Potter."

She nodded twice in rapid succession. "Dumbledore..." she said slowly, and seemed to be struggling to speak her next word. "Dumbledore said you might come." Her eyes, thick with cataracts, ran over the pair of them, their hands entwined. "There should be three of you. Dumbledore said..." she trailed off again for a moment, like a reader losing her place. "Dumbledore said three."

Harry felt a tinge of anger not entirely his own. Hermione was shrinking against him. "Dumbledore was wrong about one of us. It's just us two now."

Bathilda Bagshot nodded slowly. "We need to get inside. He," she pointed to the sky, "is watching."

She motioned them to follow, turned, and hobbled down the road, Harry and Hermione following behind.

"She doesn't..." Hermione paused for a moment, "Harry, she doesn't seem right."

He brushed it off, speaking softly, "She knew Dumbledore when he moved to Godric's Hollow as a kid; she's just very old. It's all right – Dumbledore told her to wait for us. She could have the sword."

They walked for only a few minutes when, cast in illumination against the pale moonlight, Harry's eyes beheld a thing he thought he would never see.

It's top floor crumbling and bottom floor blown out, there ahead of them lay the ruins of a house undisturbed for the better part of two decades. He gave Hermione's icy fingers a quick squeeze then decoupled his from hers and increased his pace to walk side by side with Bathilda Bagshot, a question on his lips.

"Mrs. Bagshot – is that... I mean, that is my parents' house, isn't it?"

She nodded, but did not stop. "Not safe. We will talk inside."

He slowed his pace, falling back beside Hermione, a strange solemnity filling him. That was the place he killed them. "They died there," he said to no one in particular. He wanted to stop and stare awhile, but knew he couldn't. They were here for something more important than a memory tour. He wanted to stare at their wrecked home for hours, but knew it would not avenge them. Their memory was better served by the Sword of Gryffindor than by a grieving son's vigil.

A few minutes later, they had arrived at what must have been Bathilda Bagshot's house. They stepped inside, and were quickly led into the sitting room. Bathilda motioned to a sofa beside a small end-table adorned with pictures, and Harry and Hermione sat beside each other, and opposite them was Bathilda in a weathered armchair.

There was silence for a moment, punctuated only by Bathilda's occasional labored breathing. Now that they were in from the dark, in a room with a dozen floating candles, Harry could see just how ancient she really looked. Her eyes bulged and were streaked with red, and her skin was thin and looked like crumpled parchment. Her grey-white hair had grown thin, and what of it was left appeared stringy and unkempt.

"Do you have something for me, Mrs. Bagshot?" Harry asked, unable to keep hopeful anticipation out of his voice. Dumbledore had told her to keep watch for them, surely he must have left something with her intended for them – a weapon, a message. Anything.

"He..." she heaved a heavy breath, "He left something for you. Told me to lock it away, keep it safe." She rose – slowly, shakily – to her feet, closed her eyes, pulled a wand, and placed its tip to her temple. Her lips moved as if she were speaking, but she made no sound. This continued for almost a full minute, and then her eyes flashed open wide, and she spoke in a voice not her own:

"Nurmengard."

A sound like a shot rang out, and Bathilda's sitting room's window shattered. The first shot was followed by more shots, and streaks of light flooded the room. "DOWN!" Harry shouted, grabbing Hermione by the arm and flinging her and himself to the floor. "Protego!" he shouted, his wand pointed in the direction the curses were coming from.

He looked to his left in time to see Bathilda struck by a green curse, and Harry knew she was dead. The Death Eaters were nearly to the window now, still casting curses into the dead woman's home. "Stupefy!" Harry shouted blindly, and Hermione beside him cast a curse as well. "REDUCTO!" he roared, scrambling back to take cover behind Bathilda's armchair, Hermione moving with him.

The Death Eaters were stepping through the window into the sitting room now, and Harry took advantage of the moment to fire another Reducto at the ground near where several of them stood, knocking six Death Eaters off their feet and to the floor.

"Go!" Harry roared at Hermione. "Disapparate! GO!"

Hermione looked terrified and defiant, but the madness in Harry's eyes compelled her compliance. With a crack, she disapparated, while Harry hurled more curses toward the oncoming Death Eaters.

"Confringo!" he shouted, his wand pointed at a Death Eater's wand arm, and he saw the Death Eater's hand blasted away from his arm, now a bleeding stump. The Death Eater screamed, and Harry knew the voice – it was Draco Malfoy.

"Avada Kedavra!" someone shouted, and Harry barely avoided the Killing Curse.

"Confringo!" Harry shouted back, and from the sickening crunch the heard, he knew he'd hit another Death Eater.

"Reducto!" he bellowed, and he saw his curse connect with a Death Eater's shield.

"Reducto!" he called again, and the spell overpowered the Death Eater's Shield Charm, and collided with the man's head. He had killed.

"Protego!" he was forced to shout to block a yellow curse one of the Death Eaters had sent at him.

He heard a crack, and with horror that froze him to the bone, he saw Hermione apparate back into Bathilda Bagshot's house, and he saw a Death Eater take aim at her as soon as she materialized, and he heard a voice he knew begin an incantation to end her life. "Ava–"

Rage filled Harry.

Horrible rage.

His pointed his wand at Draco Malfoy, the Death Eater who meant to kill Harry's last companion, and with every ounce of hateful things in his bones, just a microsecond before another Death Eater turned his wand on Harry himself, he screamed before Malfoy could:

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

X

A/N: Ooh.

PhoenixAeternum

December 8, 2010