21: Blood
"How do you know my name?" Dahlia repeated, louder this time, trying to sound braver than she felt.
The wand trembled in her hand, betraying her pounding heart.
Bellatrix grinned, peering out from beneath her tangled black curls.
"How could I not know you, Dahlia Dursley?...I killed your parents."
The girl took a step backwards.
"No." A blunt refusal. She refused, simply refused to believe this.
The woman's mouth opened slowly and she smiled a wicked smile, her red lips curling around her pointy teeth.
Dahlia backed away, shaking her head. The wand shook in her hand. She had never held a wand in threat against anyone before. This wand was heavier than her own, longer. It felt foreign and awkward in her sweaty grip.
"Give me the wand, Dalia," Severus said, taking a slow step in her direction, but she didn't hear him. Her attention was focused on the woman before her.
"No," she said again, this time forcefully, almost a scream as a tear rolled down her cheek.
"It was a car accident. I was young, but I remember it. Don't lie to me. I was there. It gave me this," she pulled on the neckline of her blouse to revel a long scar that ran from her shoulder over her collarbone.
"Oh, I'm not suggesting that the car didn't swerve off the road and hit a tree. I'm just suggesting that it wasn't the rain that caused it to do so."
The girl paled. She had noticed a strange light as it happened. She had thought it was an angel.
She swallowed thickly, her mouth suddenly dry.
"Why?" she whispered, the horror of the situation hitting her. The room seemed to spin around her.
"Because," the woman's eyes flashed viciously, "I was trying to kill all the remaining blood relatives of Harry Potter. I thought I had killed you too...but apparently you lived."
Dahlia was speechless. Time seemed to stand still. She tried to think of a spell, any spell, to use as the woman lunged at her, but her mind was blank. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Severus lunge at her from the other direction. She couldn't even move. Severus was faster and his hand closed around the wand first, pulling it from Dahlia's grasp.
But Bellatrix had other weapons at her disposal and a split-second later there was a knife at the girl's throat, digging into the skin in the same place that Hermione bore a scar.
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The world seemed very far away. Hermione felt herself be lifted and placed on a stretcher, surrounded by the familiar scents of medicinal potions. She felt hands on her side and heard a muttered healing spell. Her eyes cracked open to see the familiar yet unexpected face of the figure kneeling over her.
"It's all right, Hermione, I'm taking care of you," Lavender told her bravely, but the woman's pale face gave away the true seriousness of the injuries. Beyond Lavender she could see the smoke from her school, her precious school. It was burning. Severus and Dalia were inside, but she knew that due to the third occupant of the building, the fire wasn't their greatest threat.
"The prophecy..." she murmured in delirium, her eyes sliding shut once more.
The dying scientist always turns to religion at the last moment, after all is lost. It had been her weakness, her belief in only what could be seen and proven. At some level she had always suspected that her failure to open her mind to what was beyond the realm of reasoning would be the key to her downfall. Now she was sure of it.
"I should have listened to the prophecy," she whispered, wishing she had at least found out what it said. Instead she had smashed it against the fireplace without even so much as a second thought. She had always been curious, but her fear of things she could not control had overwhelmed her curiousity. Her hatred of divination had prevented her from gathering all the possible information at her disposal.
"The prophecy?" Lavender asked, casting a spell to stop the bleeding.
"There was a prophecy about me…"
Lavender's hands froze mid-motion.
"I know," Lavender whispered as she paled.
Hermione's eyes snapped open and she looked up at the woman.
"How?" Pansy had stolen it, only a few knew of its existence.
"I was there. I was the one…the one the prophecy was made to."
Hermione lifted herself up on one elbow and looked Lavender in the eye.
"Who? Who made the prophecy?"
"Pavarti. Soon before her death."
"What did it say, Lavender?" She couldn't help the desperate twinge that crept into her voice. "What did the prophecy say?"
Lavender glanced around her to make sure that no one was listening and then leaned down to whisper in Hermione's ear.
"You are the link, the blood connection between the savior and the one who must be saved."
Hermione's mind was spinning.
Blood magic? But for whom? She had no living blood relatives. She had established a blood connection with Severus through their marriage, but who else was there?
"Who? Who is to be saved?"
"A child," Lavender breathed. "It is the difference between another reaching the power of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and stopping it before it begins. "
Her eyes darted to the school. Dahlia. Hermione had connected herself to Harry's bloodline…a bloodline to which Dahlia also belonged. She had linked Severus and Dahlia.
Blood magic, it was passed down through the bloodlines then. Protection, sacrifice. Through birth or through the marriage ritual.
As Voldemort had died, his power had passed to his most trusted servant. Harry's power had passed to his niece. Hermione had tied herself into Harry's bloodline, into Lily's….and then brought Severus into it as well.
Severus loved the girl as a daughter, Hermione knew that. He would save her from Bella...but what would happen to him?
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The madwoman pulled Dahlia towards her tightly. The girl's head was forced backwards, exposing her small, white neck. The sharp blade pressed against it digging into the skin and breaking it slightly as the first few drops of blood trickled down the smooth surface. Dahlia's breathing was shallow and erratic, her eyes were shut in fear and pain.
"Your master is dead, Bella," Snape tried to reason with her.
"He's been dead before."
Smoke billowed in through the window and he remembered with a sense of urgency that the building they were standing in was on fire.
"His Horcruxes are gone. He's gone forever this time."
"It makes no difference. I'm not doing this for him anymore. I will simply take his place."
"Let her go, Bella," he pleaded. "She means nothing to you. She is just a child."
She had inherited the paranoia from her former master. She had tried to kill this girl and yet the girl lived. The girl would be a threat to her until she was killed.
"She must die. You know how these things work, don't you, Severus?"
She was backing towards the window, taking the girl with her. She reached the open window and reached outside. When she drew her hand back inside, it contained a wand and he belatedly realized that when she had levitated his wand out the window, she had not let it drop to the ground, but set it on a ledge just outside.
With his wand in her hand, she released her knife-hold on the girl who scurried away from her, backing up against the wall. Bellatrix's wand followed her movement.
Severus watched the words come out of the madwoman's mouth as if in slow motion. He had seen the killing-curse used often enough to be able to recognize the shape the words made on the lips without even needing to hear them spoken. A primal scream was torn from him as he lunged in front of the curse in a desperate attempt to protect Dahlia. At that moment he knew he would die for the girl.
And then it came rushing to him, a power he had not even known he possessed.
And instead of the cold, sudden death he had expected, he felt the magic of the curse wash over both of them as they each took a part of it. He heard her small scream from behind him, but it was enough to know that she had only received a portion of the curse intended for her, that she was not dead.
It was an old magic, a magic so ancient and powerful that it could only be used in the most primitive of circumstances, the need of a parent to protect a child.
Bella's eyes widened at the implication.
"She is….she is yours?"
"Yes."
He advanced towards her.
It mattered not that he was not Dahlia's father by birth. He loved her and the magic recognized him as her father all the same.
"I killed her family." The witch insisted desperately as he pointed his wand at her.
"She got a new one."
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Severus carried Dahlia in his arms out and away from the burning building. He had left Bellatrix Lestrange's dead body inside to burn with the rest of it. It was nothing less than what she deserved.
As he walked across the grounds with the girl in his arms, he felt strangely absolved of his guilt for Lily's death. He now knew how it felt to stand between a child and death. He now knew what her final moments had been like.
For the first time, he really accepted the fact that he had not killed Lily, she had chosen it. She had not died in pain and desperation, she had died full of love. He had not been able to save her son, but he had saved her grand-niece. His debt to her was paid and he was free at last. He understood for the first time how powerful the love for a child could be and was even more surprised that it was something of which he was capable.
He had put Lily on a pedestal for so many years, but now found that he stood beside her as her equal.
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After Dahlia's injuries had been treated and she had sufficiently been fussed-over. Severus and Hermione stepped away for a moment alone.
"You look terrible," he told her, tenderly tucking a stray curl behind her ear. She did look terrible. She was pale, bloody, and utterly worn out. But she was alive, he told himself, and she loved him. She smiled a tired smile, and even as her eyes showed the depth of her mourning the loss of her friend, for the loss of her school, her lips curled in tired relief for all those who were still alive.
Severus took her in his arms and quietly recounted what had happened inside the school between him, Bellatrix and Dalia, and she told him of what she had learned of the prophecy.
When they looked back over at Dahlia, there was a boy around her age or maybe a few years older talking to her. He was tall and thin with shaggy brown hair and rumpled clothing. He was not a student at Hermione's school and had been too young to attend Hogwarts while Severus was headmaster there. Severus did not recognize the boy, but nevertheless he reminded him of someone he couldn't quite put his finger on. All he knew was that it wasn't a good memory.
"Who is that boy with Dahlia?" Severus asked, scowling.
"I'm not sure," Hermione replied, "but he looks vaguely familiar. Who is that woman he's with?"
Severus looked behind the boy to see a woman around his age looking after him, a woman he had known in his younger years.
"It's Andromeda Tonks."
Hermione's face lit up.
"Oh, so that must be Teddy Lupin."
Dahlia giggled as the boy lightly touched her shoulder. Severus looked horrified.
"Oh no."
"It's alright, Severus," she said gently. "Dahlia's dealing with a lot right now, finding out what her parents were murdered...it might help her to talk to another orphan."
But he wasn't listening to his wife. He was already moving in the direction of the two children, of the son of his childhood enemy who was touching his daughter.
"No. no. no. no. no."
Hermione laughed and turned around, coming face-to-face with a battered-looking Seamus Finnigan.
"What happens now, Hermione?" He asked intently, searching her for answers in the midst of all the chaos and destruction. He looked at her as if only she could make sense of all that had happened.
She looked over his shoulder to see a large group of wizards and witches with their attention focused on her.
"What happens now?" he asked again and everyone watched her in rapt attention. It was up to her. They were looking to her for leadership. She would remake this world, stitching back together all its shattered pieces.
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A/N: Just a shot epilogue left and then it's done. This was a hard chapter to write, I'd love to know what you thought of it. Please review!!