AUTHOR'S NOTE- This is the end of part 1, we made it halfway! Thank you to everyone who has stuck through and made it this far. I love each and every one of you! As always your comments and reviews and favorites mean the world. I respond to all of them. Please follow to keep updated on this story. Enjoy!
The End of the Beginning
The room is warm with the remnants of magic that bounce against the walls and Maxima's fingertips still burn with the expulsion of such strong magic. There is no time to examine the changes; slender fingertips and appendages where she once were short and curved her body now stretched tall and narrow.
"You were dead. DEAD!" Screams an enraged Bellatrix armed with blades ready to carve something new onto the girls already marred body. Bellatrix charges forward, her hair standing on end and vocally snarling when she is prevented from her goal. Lucius and Snape stand between the unstable woman and the newly discovered Maxima Potter.
"How is this even possible" Lucius mutters softly his fingers grazing her cheek. His touch is hard, rough, as if he is trying to confirm that what he sees is there, concrete. Disbelief touches his feature, but she wants to spit at him, throw her fists, steal his wand, she wants him to feel her pain, she wants him to bleed. The crushed bones in her foot ache as she drags the broken appendage alongside her.
A stale silence holds the room, and one knows whether to move to battel or flee in fear. Blood streams from Maxima's nose and ears onto her body staining the tattered remnants of her clothing. She doesn't even bother to wipe the blood. The girlish voice of Hermione says something about presentation, about looking her best but Maxima has no such inclinations. Blood and carnage did not scare her, the rage boiled hot within her elegant frame.
The onlooking death eaters look anxious, hands clutching wands waiting impatiently for their direction to strike. Most look confused, other frightening as if a ghost had risen, she supposed for some, one had.
Maxima would think of this moment often and wonder, if they hadn't come to rescue her, what Malfoy would have decided. Would he have saved her life or signed her execution. But as it happened, it was out of her hands and further out of his.
Snape attacked Lucius Malfoy first, a quick bombarda, and pieces of human flesh flew around the room. Narcissa screams and the sound is harrowing "Lucius no. HE WAS YOUR FRIEND" she rasps fallen to the ground, he wand pointed at Snape weakly. Her death is instant, her final scream barely heard over the sound of Draco vomiting. Draco who was an orphan.
Maxima felt sick too bile built up in her through as the sight of the flesh and blood but she swallowed the taste down. Snape had taken a stand for her and she would fight her way out with him, this is what he had been training her for.
The death eaters are not given enough time to recover from the shock before the order of phenix apart in. The calvary had arrived. They are dressed in battle gear, wands at the ready and all it takes is one look from Sirius for her to feel safe, protected.
She had been so sure in that moment. So sure, that they would all survive. She had been so wrong.
Spells fly across the room, with miraculous colors and devastating results. Vincent Crabbe and Greggory Goyle meet their end by Fred Weasley's curse, to which Harry voices sounds of displeasure. They didn't need to kill he thought, they were the light side. Harry's pure morality, while beautiful, would be their undoing.
Something is placed in her pocked by Snape, but in the chaos of avoiding both friendly fire and unfriendly curses Maxima isn't even able to look up in confusion much less examine the object.
The moment he enters Maxima can feel it, a shiver that crawls up her spine despite the hot blood flowing out of her open wounds. Sirius stands in front of her exchanging fire with Yaxley while she clutches desperately to Lucius' wand. The wand fought against her but after being so long without one she was glad for the thieved item.
In a final curse from Sirius, Yaxley turns white, translucently pale, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he falls to the ground. "Avada Kadavra" Maxima whispers, not wanting to stretch out his death, he deserved at least that dignity. She feels the burn in her soul that is already too dark, but she had saved Sirius at least from this mark.
She grabs Sirius' arm, clad in leather, to tell him to run, tell him that he-who-must-not-be-named had arrived, to save at least him. But she was too slow. He is clapping a crisp sound of bone meeting bone, it is sickening but the room seems to slow as he moves across the room. The great Lord Voldemort.
Maxima feels the burn of his eyes on her skin. His sicked red colored eyes that sat in sunken eye sockets. "what a beautiful sentiment" He drawls, and his voice is as smooth as sandpaper. She had never seen him before. Stories of Harry's nightmares, and his experiences she had heard, but she had never been face-to-face with the monster.
His skin is snake-like stretched over bone diminishing any human features. He was thin, in a wiry sort of way but Maxima supposed the killing cure didn't require muscular strength. His lean stature was no reason to dimmish fear, she could the power radiating off of him. "Maxima Potter. Come from the grave to meet death again?" he questions his voice raw and his wand firmly pointed at her.
"Avada Kadava" Voldemort hisses, wasting no time, his wand pointed at her. Snape, full of bravery and flowing cloak steps in the way. The spell enters his chest, and she watches in horror as the life, the magic leaves his body. It is almost slow motion the way his skull cracks on the floor as his body collapses, and Maxima can almost see his well cultivated knowledge slipping into nothing along with brain matter on the cold floor. Sirius has to hold her back from running to hold Snape, nothing could save him now.
The smell of blood fills the room. The curse was bloodless, but gravity was not. The sound of the cracking of his skull on the floor echoes in Maxima's mind. That had almost been her. Severus Snape had just saved her life. Her heard rattled against her ribcage.
"You always did have your own little collection of Wizards so willing to risk their lives for you" he spit venomously. Turning to face is followers he walks barefooted the length of the room. Spells are no longer flying as all look in petrified horror at the monster speaking.
"Anyone else with feelings?" He spits out like poison looking for even the slightest semblance of dissent. The threat hung heavy in the blood-soaked air.
Harry is the first to step up, stupid, bold Harry. Who didn't want any more blood to be shed. "I have destroyed your horcruxes, and you are mortal once more." Harry spoke boldly. "it is me you want, let us end this for once and for all" His words are eloquent, as should the last words of any man be.
Voldemort grins, and it is in this smile that Maxima knows harry has no choice. "Avada-" Voldemort begins, but she projects a shield to harry, who was not ready, fumbling with the hilt of his wand, this was no gentleman's duel.
Voldemort, hisses seeing the purple hue of the shield. He sends a cutting spell at her, she avoids it for the most part but it does create a large laceration from her ear to throat. Sirius' hands are also hit with the spell, the threat is clear. No only she will die if she dared to interfere.
She dropped the shield.
"Stupefy," Harry casts at the same time Voldemort curses "ADVADA KADAVRA!"
Harry falls to the ground, dead.
"Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived is dead, join me or suffer his fate" he bellows.
Dumbledore is the first to move, robed in purple, flourishing his wand and engaging Voldemort in battle.
The other order members follow suite, Sirius and Maxima still side by side, after her display of that protection spell, she was of little use on a battlefield. She downs a pepper-up potion handed by Sirius and hoped it would give her enough energy to ignore her likely fatal injuries for a little while longer.
The order members fought valiantly but there were so many more death eaters and like a infestation they apparated in at numbers they could not compare with.
Ginny Weasley was the first to die at the hands of the Lestrange brothers. The image of her body severed of his extremities, her head rolling on the hard floor would haunt Maxima for many nights to come. Her mother screamed, managing to incapacitate the two, but Bellatrix got the best of her. "Sectum Sempra" Molly Weasley bled out holding the hands of the not yet cold body of her only daughter. Arthurs followed soon after, taking Bellatrix with him, he had set an explosion and charged at her. Maxima wondered if he learned that from watching a muggle movie, the though was like the twisting of a goblin-wrought metal in her gut.
"Down Wolfy" Screamed Yaxley was engaged in spell-fire with Lupin. The two were matched evenly, until Draco had let a bullet exit an ancient revolver. "STOP" he screams, tears fell down his face, while Voldemort and Dumbledore didn't even pause in their exchange the rest looked at the boy in horror. No one knew where he had gotten the muggle object, no one ever got a chance to ask. One bullet entered Remus Lupins brain and death was instant. The victim was Yaxley who had moved towards Draco. In the last shot from the horrid weapon, was at Draco's own temple. Draco Malfoy died quickly, but the look on his face, of true desperation would never be washed from Maxima's mind.
As more and more Deatheaters poured in both Dumbledore and Voldemort disappeared. Maxima didn't have time to ask questions amid the bodies and blood.
Maxima pulled a shield in from of her and Sirius just as an explosion bounced off the shield and hot Fred Weasley. And in just seconds, the entirety of the Weasley family, original members of the sacred 28 had all perished.
A message in Voldemort's voice echo's against the walls "DUMBLEDORE IS DEAD. A NEW WORLD NOW BEGINS". Maxima isn't surprised that Voldemort didn't return, he had won.
Harry Potter is dead. Dumbledore is dead. There only her and Sirius Black protected in a shield that would not last. Maxima doesn't think before she sets the fire. Everything around them burns, deatheaters scream and Maxima feels no remorse. Sirius only holds her so tight it hurts until there is nothing left but ash.
Sirius carries her for a while to get beyond the wards and then apparates them to Grimaud place. Neither of them showers. Nobody tries to peel off the death and carnage. Sirius brings her in his room, and they drink.
They drink from a bottle of the firewiskey, both their mouths touching the lip and neither even asks for a glass. They drink until they cannot feel, they drink until there nothing but them and his untidy bedroom, and the silence isn't unbearable.
They until they cannot feel the pain. They drink until there is no before, there is no tomorrow, there is only this.
They drink, until he kisses her, and his mouth that tastes of cigarette smoke and wisely and pain. It is nothing like she had dreamed it would be but it is everything she needs. He kisses her rough but sensual, like she is the only person in the world.
Her hands search for his body, never close enough, never enough skin. He doesn't complain, and she doesn't ask for him to be gentle and he does say anything when cries after is over. This was not love-making, it is the barely pleasureful and painful reminder that they are alive.
He does not dare to call her Hermione, and listening to the sound her name on his tongue, it is enough. Maxima. It is enough. It has to be.