To address some concerns that may or may not exist (I may be overthinking this):
I always wanted the character of Hermione to be stronger. She's a Gryffindor, and therefore brave, reckless, etc. but at the same time smart as a whip. I thought it would be nice to have her make her own decisions, instead of following Harry's lead, to have her defend herself easily, and be fearless in the face of danger. In the future, I would love for her personality to be more calculating (wary from all the things she's gone through), and for her to be more carefree in general. There will be minimal lip-biting-staring-off-into-the-distance-in-indecision in my story.
-Addie
She groaned as her hip made contact with hardwood flooring.
Hermione blinked, looking around, as the flashing blue light retreated from her vision. She shook her head, only to find her ears were no longer ringing. Cringing and holding her hip, she sat up, only to find herself in a small sitting room, complete with cozy furniture and warm colors. The Gryffindor Common Room? she considered briefly, noticing the red and gold accents around her. She was just struggling to her feet when she heard a man call out in fear from the steps behind her.
"Run! Take the baby and run!" he screamed desperately, and from above, she heard a woman scream back and a baby crying.
She lept to her feet, whipping out her wand in a practiced movement, her magic flowing unchecked around her, and heard the creak of a gate opening beyond the front door. A tall man ran past her to the couch, not noticing her, and scrambled around, looking for his wand.
"GODRIC! Where is it?!" he shouted frantically, searching the couch cushions, but froze when the doorbell rang.
Hermione, still behind him, in the corner of the room where she fell, crouched into a defensive position, all her energy focused on the door, ready to strike.
The door was blasted off its hinges with a deafening bang, and through the rubble, stepped Voldemort.
Oddly, he was different than he had been moments ago in the Great Hall. She saw he had greying dark hair and pale skin when his hood dropped from his head, but he was decidedly human.
If it hadn't been for the glowing red eyes, with the pupils of a snake, she wouldn't have known who he was.
The eyes fell upon the man standing in front of him first, still wandless, but his posture matching Hermione's. His lips curled into a cruel sneer, but then his eyes flicked to Hermione. She was a mess, small and emaciated, covered in dirt and blood, but the ends of each riotous curl sparked as her magic swirled around her like a whirlpool, faster and faster with each second.
Before she could stop herself, she cried, "If you want to kill them, you'll have to kill me first!" surprising herself as her voice didn't shake and sounded powerful, even to her own ears.
The man standing between Hermione and the Dark Lord whirled halfway around, not daring to turn his back to Voldemort, but startled by her unannounced presence.
Harry? she thought, as he turned to look at her, and she saw his familiar tangled hair and glasses, but she snapped out of it as soon as their eyes locked, as his were hazel and not the comforting green of her best friend.
He was also taller and larger than her slight Harry, and seemed older. Hermione held his gaze for only a moment before flicking her eyes to the mantle, where his wand rested, and back to the red of her attacker.
"And who are you to challenge the Dark Lord?" Voldemort intoned, in a high-pitched voice that would have been menacing if it hadn't been so unexpected and slightly laced with uncertainty.
The man between them dove to the ground with surprising agility and rolled to the hearth as Voldemort shot off the first curse.
Hermione blocked it without even thinking, brushing it aside like the inconvenience it truly was at her level of power. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man had found his wand, and was back in a defensive position.
"I'm only a mudblood," she replied acidly, and watched as Voldemort's eyes narrowed in calculation, "but you seem scared, Riddle." His nostrils flared, and fury etched itself on his face.
"You dare?" he snarled, shooting a familiar jet of green light her way.
She was toying with him, and he with her, but she was expecting it. As she sent his curse back at him, she wordlessly and invisibly warded the stairs and wrapped her thickest shield around the other man, the same one she had just used to defend Harry in the Great Hall. She sensed the anti-portkey wards going up, and the anti-apparition wards, but dismantled them as quickly as they were built. In answer, she heard a telltale pop, meaning the house's other occupants had gotten away.
The man, in a truly Harry-esque move, put himself between her and Voldemort, ready to protect the intruder in his home. She smiled, thinking of her friend, and he suddenly found himself in the garden.
"Oh, don't be like that, Tom," she drawled, trying to look bored, "what's the rush?"
Voldemort growled from the other side of the room, dropped into a duelling position, and prepared to fight. In reply, she grinned as widely as she could, showing all her teeth in a near-feral display.
"Crucio!" he spat, looking truly murderous.
"Protego!" she shouted, though unnecessary, since her magic was still swirling.
"Avada Kedavra!" he shouted, viciously twisting his wand.
"Piertotem!" she responded, conjuring a block of granite to absorb the curse.
Apparently uninterested in verbal spells, Voldemort raised his wand above his head, and swept it down in a slashing motion, a whip made out of fire crossing the length of the room.
She intercepted it easily with a quick slab of ice, putting out the flame in a hiss of steam.
Fighting back now, she shot off the first curse she could think of, while her magic reached out and grabbed the couch, making Voldemort slash it to pieces midair, without putting up a Shield Charm. A deep slash opened on the center of his forehead in a jagged line, not unlike her best friend's scar.
"Avada Kedavra!" he shrieked again, this time with an undertone of pain, as blood ran down his face.
"Sectumsempra!" she bellowed, putting her weight behind it. She knew the Killing Curse would never get past the tornado of raw magical energy that swirled around her.
The Dark Slicing Curse shattered Voldemort's shields as though they were made of eggshell, and hit home, opening a fatal wound at his throat from which he would never recover. Before the Dark Lord could so much as react, she cast again.
"Fiendfyre!" she said, her voice nearly a whisper, a column of flame shooting out toward her opponent in the shape of a Griffin. Fiendfyre was some of the darkest magic possible, capable of destroying anything and everything in its path should the caster not be powerful enough to control it.
Fortunately, Hermione had power in spades.
The Griffin's jaws opened wide, and seemed to swallow Voldemort whole. The piece of soul still tethered to his body would not be free to roam the earth; it would cease to exist.
After only a moment, she pulled the Griffin back with a tug of her wand, and it shrunk, before turning to bow before her, a signal that it was at her service, and disappeared.
The other man stood in the doorway of the house, staring in bewilderment at the charred pile of ash that had once been He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and then looked up at Hermione, their eyes locking for a second time.
He opened his mouth to speak, but at that very moment, the howling vortex surrounding Hermione slowed to a halt and the floor rushed up to meet her. She barely registered the man catching her before she hit the ground.
