III. Hermione

The wand Hermione chose — the wand that chose her — had once belonged to Imogen Adelaide Malfoy, a socialite turned academic, who'd risen through the Ministry ranks to become the first female head of the Department of Mysteries. It was a wand that had once produced elegant, delicate magic. There was nothing delicate about the use it was being put to now.

"Watch it, Granger," Zacharias Smith yelled after narrowly avoiding being flattened by the stone archway she'd hit with a crushing spell right above his head. Seeing as the thing had collapsed on top of the half-giant about to squash him, Hermione couldn't bring herself to feel too bad about it.

"Keep pushing forward," McGonagall shouted, barely managing to make herself heard over the commotion. The castle's courtyard had exploded into chaos the moment they'd reached it. Hexes and curses flew through the air, hitting flesh and stone walls, raining down masonry on trolls and werewolves and wizards alike.

There were too many nightmare monsters protecting the school, too many large, powerful creatures with sharp teeth and heavy fists, and skin thick enough to withstand the worst of the spells the Order could throw at them. Hermione was beginning to think they would never make it past the courtyard — or out of it, come to that — when a stone gargoyle crushed the skull of a werewolf as if it were cracking a nut.

All the horrors Voldemort had surrounded the school with — werewolves, trolls, giants, Acromantulas — they were all large, powerful creatures, but Hogwarts was larger and older and more powerful, and they were no longer welcome.

"Get inside," Madam Pince shouted before hitting a werewolf with a curse square in the face.

If outside there was mayhem, inside was no better. Voldemort had yet to grace them with his presence, but over the years he'd replaced all the teachers with his own people, and there were plenty of Death Eaters in the castle even without reinforcements.

Spells bounced off walls in the entrance hall as Justin Finch-Fletchley and a number of kids tried to hold their ground against Virgil Flint, Horace Bulstrode, Ethel Blackwood and half a dozen Acromantulas — smaller than the ones outside but still roughly the size of very large dogs, and venomous to boot.

"Johnson, secure the dungeons," McGonagall said, and Angelina broke away from the main group, followed by Cho Chang, Cormac McLaggen and Oliver Wood. "Mr Thomas, the Headmaster's office. Ms Patil, the kitchens. Find the house-elves. Everyone else, with me." She hit Bulstrode, who was fighting Justin, straight in the back with a stun. "Mr Finch-Fletchely," she said in the tone of one who'd dearly like to hex him too, "are those students?"

He shrugged, severing the leg of an Acromantula with a slicing hex and yelling back over the sound of a falling suit of armour. "They're all of age. We barricaded the rest in the common rooms."

A small ginger girl who couldn't have been a day over fifteen jumped and cheered when a suit of armour speared an Acromantula before smashing it against a wall.

Justin stopped the motion of his wand, stared at the girl, and then looked back at McGonagall, making a face. "She," he said, "is not my fault."

With the bulk of the Order's forces inside the school and with the castle's defences working with them, it was almost easy to believe that all they had to do in order to succeed was keep going. There weren't enough Death Eaters inside Hogwarts to take on an army — even an army such as theirs — and if their luck had held another hour, they could've taken the school with barely any losses. Alas, they were not that lucky, and it was just as well. That hadn't been the plan.

Hermione almost growled in frustration when Death Eaters started Apparating inside the castle. Apparently no one had told them that it wasn't possible to Apparate in and out of Hogwarts. She hit a masked figure with a stun and kept running, ignoring the commotion behind her. The first group into the castle had yet to find the Horcrux. There was no point in taking on Voldemort unless they could destroy the blasted thing.

Two Death Eaters Apparated right in front of her and Hermione stopped short, casting a shield just in time to block the barrage of curses and jinxes throw at her. There were two of them and just one of her, and she couldn't stop defending long enough to cast anything back. When she felt movement behind her, she knew she was done for. Hermione braced for the curse she knew was coming, but a rush of air blew past her and one of the Death Eaters was thrown half way across the corridor. It was all the opening she needed to stun the second one.

Her heart skipped a beat when she turned to find another masked man standing only a few feet from her, but she didn't need to recognise the elaborate carvings of the mask to know him.

"Voldemort's here," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Malfoy said, taking off his mask. "He's looking for Dumbledore. The Horcrux is in the Room of Hidden Things."

Of course it was. Generations of Hogwarts students had used the place to hide everything and anything, from the mundane to the embarrassing, to the dangerous and illegal. Why would Tom Riddle have been any different?

They rushed to the seventh floor, ignoring the chaos all around them — bangs and explosions and flashes of light. Everywhere people were running or fighting or dying, or all three. There were bodies sprawled on the floor or half buried under collapsed walls, and no one was casting stuns anymore.

The sound of the battle receded as they moved to the higher floors. By the time Hermione spotted George, they could no longer hear anything from the battle raging in the castle below.

George wasn't alone. The boy sitting on the floor next to him — a young Gryffindor Hermione didn't know — pushed to his feet with a grimace and pointed his wand at them, but George merely lifted an eyebrow at Malfoy.

"Friend of yours?" he asked Hermione.

She stopped between Draco and the boy, her wand by her side. "He's one of us. He's been working for the Order all along."

"I'd pretend to be shocked, but Dumbledore always did love a good farce. Lower your wand, Oliver."

But Oliver held his ground. "He's one of them," he said stubbornly. "His lot killed my brother."

George rolled his eyes, pushing away from the wall and placing a hand on the boy's arm. "His lot killed a lot of people's brothers. Now lower your fucking wand or I'll drag you back to Gryffindor Tower myself."

"The Horcrux is in the Room of Requirement," Draco said, and George nodded.

"Figured as much. There's half a dozen Dementors guarding it." To Oliver, he added, "Go. Find anyone who can cast a Patronus and send them our way."

"Can you?" Hermione asked quietly as they headed towards the Room of Requirement. She couldn't see the Dementors yet, but she could feel them — fear and dread tugging at her brain, prickling her skin, spreading like ice through her veins.

"No," George said, peering around a corner and motioning for them to stop. George's Patronus had been a magpie, once upon a time. So had Fred's.

Draco chanced a glance at the Dementors as well, before stepping back. "Six of them. Maybe more. Go back, Weasley. You're no use here," he said, but George merely scoffed. "Suit yourself. I take three, you take three?" he asked Hermione, who was frantically trying to think of a memory bright enough and happy enough to fight off the despair building inside her. "Hermione." Draco touched his fingers to hers, the lightest of touches, and some of the ice receded.

"Yeah," she said, her throat dry.

Harry and Ron. Christmas in the Burrow. The look on her parents' faces every time she stepped off the Hogwarts Express. Something else too, someone else. The memory of it was gone, she couldn't picture it anymore, but she could still call up the feeling, could still feel the warmth of it spreading through her.

"Expecto Patronum!"

Her Patronus skipped through the air in a trail of light, followed by Malfoy's almost identical one. She had no time to wonder at it.

The moment they stepped into view, the Dementors were on them. Two Patronuses weren't enough for so many Dementors, and if Hermione had felt their influence before, that was nothing to the wall of misery and anguish that hit her the moment they focused their attention on her. It became increasingly hard to sustain her Patronus, increasingly hard to believe that anything good had ever or could ever happen. The whole world was made of grief and sorrow, and nothing would ever be right again.

Of the three of them, George was the least affected, casting jinxes and hexes with the reckless abandon of one who didn't need to be close to a Dementor to know that the world was made of nothing but grief and sorrow. He'd known that already.

Hermione tried hard to hold on to the bright things inside of her, tried hard to resist the inexorable pull of the Dementors' power. Draco's Patronus flickered before vanishing entirely, and he just stood there, surrounded by Dementors, his wand still by his side.

"Malfoy," Hermione yelled, directing her otter at the head of the Dementor closest to her. "Draco, snap out of it."

George set one of the Dementors closing in on Draco on fire, but even that wasn't enough to get his attention or to get the Dementors to back off. Hermione backed towards him, her own Patronus quickly losing shape.

The moment it disappeared, the small, bright light still burning inside her went out. And perhaps it was just as well. Harry and Ron were dead, and the Burrow was gone, and her parents would never know her again. All the people she'd loved, all the people who'd made her life happy and bright and worth living, they were gone. The world had already burnt to the ground. Even if they won, they'd already lost, so what was the point?

A Dementor stood only a few inches from Hermione, close enough for her to feel its icy breath on her skin. It lifted its skeletal hands to pull back its hood, and Hermione could not bring herself to move. She could not even bring herself to care.

In that moment the floor and the walls started shaking, and a terrible sound echoed throughout the castle as if Hogwarts itself had come awake. The whole world froze for a split second, and then a large Patronus appeared out of nowhere, galloping towards them. The large silver stag was closely followed by a Jack Russell Terrier, a phoenix and a magpie. The Dementors scattered before the incoming Patronuses, and then immediately gave chase, rushing after them and away from their stunned prey.

"Fred." George's voice startled Hermione, and she turned to see him staring at a barely corporeal Fred Weasley, who smiled brightly at his twin.

"When I said the only way you were growing a beard was over my dead body, I did not mean that literally, Georgie."

George's choked laugh at that sounded suspiciously like a sob.

"I'm here too, if anyone cares," Ron said, floating close by. "Remember me? Also your beloved brother? Where are my tears of joy?"

"How is it possible?" Draco muttered next to Hermione, staring at the apparitions that were almost, but not quite ghosts — too insubstantial, too bright, wavering between being there and not and back again.

"Well, it's magic, innit?" Ron said, grinning.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." Harry smiled, and Hermione could've killed him, could've killed them both, for dying and leaving her all alone, and appearing now out of nowhere, cracking jokes.

"How?" she asked. There was magic, and then there was this.

Harry shrugged. "Dumbledore being Dumbledore."

Dumbledore wasn't this powerful. No one was. No mortal could wield this sort of magic, not even him. But Hermione was standing next to an impossible room of endless possibilities, in a castle where staircases moved on their own, and rooms and hallways sprang fully formed overnight. Dumbledore wasn't this powerful, but Hogwarts was, and while Dumbledore was just one more custodian in a long line of illustrious men and women who'd served the school, clearly the castle liked to play favourites with its headmasters.

Harry, Ron and Fred turned their heads towards one end of the corridor, as if they'd heard something.

"Find the Horcrux," Harry said, "We can't hold him for long." He jumped in place as if on a trampoline, and dove down, disappearing through the stone floor.

"Wait for me," Ron said, and he too was gone.

"Come on, George, race you."

George took off after Fred, who glided down the corridor, wondering loudly if they had time to find Peeves and get him to drop the school's entire cauldron supply on top of the Death Eaters. A cauldron to the head, now that had to hurt, right? Couldn't hurt him, of course — it would fly right through — but it might crack a Death Eater's skull or two, and wasn't that just a capital idea?

"Come on," Draco said, turning towards the Room of Requirement, and Hermione forced herself to focus, forced herself to ignore the knot in her throat.


Harry, Ron and Fred weren't the only miracles spun out of the combined power of Hogwarts's ancestral magic and Albus Dumbledore's unshakable belief that there was very little one could not accomplish with a little determination and just enough disregard for consequences.

The headmaster died on top of the Astronomy Tower, the highest point in the castle, finally crushed under the sheer amount of power required to sustain the spell. While it held, however, the forces of the Order of the Phoenix doubled in number, bolstered by the spectres of those who'd fallen once before to Death Eater wands and Death Eater spells.

They were but shadows, nowhere as powerful as their living counterparts, but their presence was enough to boost the morale of everyone else. Molly Weasley held her ground with fierce resolve, surrounded by her husband and children; George and Fred fought back to back like they always had, dispatching trolls and Acromantulas and Death Eaters with ruthless efficiency.

Everywhere Hermione looked she could see the echo of someone's fallen friend or lover or loved one. She saw Hannah Abbott and Katie Bell, and everyone who'd died the night the Sigma cell had collapsed; she saw James and Lily Potter and Marlene McKinnon and Benjy Fenwick, and all the other members of the original Order of the Phoenix, who'd died so long ago in a different war. She saw Tabitha Jorkins.

The battle raged on for what felt like hours, with both sides trying to claw their way to a victory that seemed just close enough to touch, but that kept being just out of reach. And then Neville ran Voldemort through with Gryffindor's Sword, and it was over.

What Death Eaters still lived quickly Disapparated, knowing when to cut their losses. They'd never be able to run far enough away. Hermione would personally make sure of that.

Voldemort was dead, and the Death Eaters were gone, and nothing remained of Dumbledore's army of ghosts but the people they'd left behind and George Weasley's loud sobs.

Hermione looked around her at the wreckage. There was broken glass everywhere, and half-collapsed walls, and the air smelled of blood and smoke. The room was littered with fallen bodies, people for whom there had been no miracles. Justin Finch-Fletchley lay staring at the ceiling, his eyes unblinking and unseeing; Angelina Johnson was half buried under a pile of rubble, her hair matted with blood.

Hermione hadn't realised she was frantically looking for someone until she spotted Draco a few feet away, and then she was moving before she'd even decided to. He staggered backwards when she slammed into him, but quickly regained his balance, wrapping his arms around her.

"You're alive," she said, her voice muffled against his robes. "You're— You're alive."

He breathed out a sigh and kissed her temple, his arms tight around her.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"I'm fine. I just—" She just needed a minute.

There were things he hadn't told her, things she couldn't remember. Hermione knew enough to know that, and she knew enough — could feel enough — to hazard a guess as to what those things were. It didn't change a thing of what had happened afterwards, of course — the Death Eaters, and Nevin Square, and questions asked deep in the Ministry's dungeons — but just now she couldn't bring herself to care. They were alive, and she had time to figure it out. That's the one thing she never thought she'd have.

Halfway across the room, Molly Weasley knelt down next to George, her one surviving child, and pulled him to her, smiling through the tears. Everywhere around them, people were laughing and crying and hugging each other, relieved and exhausted and glad — that it was over, that they were alive. A time would come for them to mourn their dead, to grieve for all the things they'd lost. For now they were just glad.

Hermione turned her head just enough to see Fawkes land on Professor McGonagall's arm. Outside, the sun was rising over the grounds.


The End