Disclaimer and A/N: I do not own anything from Harry Potter. No copyright infringement is intended. I am, of course, not making any profit from this little endeavour. Should I fail to properly point out a reference to anything that doesn't belong to me, feel free to notify me. Also, feel free to tell me whether you like the story or not (and what you don't like about it). Thank you.
I've been revising this thing for a while now (and bringing it out of its hiatus), but I never seem to catch all the typos and grammar errors. If anything jumps out at you, please drop me a line.
Chapter One
1 Taking the motorway was almost suicidal, but Apparating was out of the question these days, and Hermione Granger just had to get out of Wales and into England, all the way to London. Pansy, Parvati, Bill, and most of the others had all told her she was insane, that the whole plan was completely bonkers. Well, yes. Yes, it was. Of course it was completely bonkers. After all, no sane measures had done a damn thing to stop Nox and the Malleus Deorum, and now, Ron was…he was…
No.
No, she would not think about him. She wouldn't. She couldn't. There was a job that needed to be done, and there simply weren't many people left that could do it. Time was running out. Not so long ago, there had still been many safe zones in Wales, the largest one in Merthyr Tydfil, but that had been overrun by the Malleus almost a year ago. After that, the remaining free wizards and witches had fled into what had once been the Brecon Beacons National Park. A magical perimeter had been established, but as the pitiful ragtag band of starved, frightened people huddled around the dying Afon Hepste, it was clear that they were living – surviving – on borrowed time. There was no escaping the Malleus Deorum. There was no escaping Nox.
That was what everybody thought, and they were right. There was no escaping that monster, his eerie talent for rooting out those he called his enemies, and his wrath. No-one among the wizarding folk had, to their knowledge, ever seen him. No-one knew where precisely he lived, what he really looked like, and how he managed to take over the British Isles and most of Europe so quickly (maybe even the rest of the world, heaven forbid). He was ruthless, that much was sure – ruthless, brutal, efficient, and absolutely lethal. Maybe he and his freaks really were the bane of the wizarding world, the pioneers of a new and terrible world, the harbingers of death and all that.
Then again, maybe they were just an evil and power-hungry bunch like Voldemort and the Death Eaters had been, and all the purple prose and melodrama surrounding them was nothing but a way to build up their mystique and scare their opponents. It made more sense than the alternative, in any case.
Hermione didn't argue that those people, if one could call those monsters that, were a threat that needed to be taken seriously, that might prove too overwhelming to be beaten. What she did oppose was the paralysing fear that made those of her friends (and old antagonists) who still remained behave as if they'd already lost. There was a feeling of end-times in the air that she refused to give into. What else was there? If they gave up now, they might as well all kill themselves, because what was the use of clinging onto a life that wasn't one? She would not admit defeat before that became unavoidable. Once upon strange aeons ago, she, Harry, and Ron had helped defeat the most dangerous dark wizard of all time. Things had changed in the aftermath and the following few years: the world had become a brighter place for all witches and wizards. The Pureblood craze started to fade, laws were passed to curb the unfortunate arbitrariness of the wizarding checks and balances system, damage was repaired. Over time, wounds started to heal.
Then, things started changing again, and now, here they were. No use crying over spilt pumpkin juice, as the vernacular went – not that anyone had got to drink any pumpkin juice in years.
Oh, well.
Outside of Brecon Beacons, there was no doing much magic. It wasn't as bad as in and around London, but bad enough for her not to want to risk detection by the Malleus. It wasn't as if they didn't make any prisoners. The problem was, nobody knew what happened to those poor sods after they were bagged. She absolutely had no intention of finding out, at least not as long as she wasn't in a position to change anything about it.
With a little luck, all of that would change.
…okay, maybe it would require a lot of luck, but only fools relied on such elusive things.
The first few days, she made her way through abandoned, burned-down and hollowed-out towns on foot, travelling at night for the most part, avoiding open spaces whenever possible. People travelling the Welsh wasteland were few, but it wasn't unheard of. There were still regular people – i.e. Muggles – living in Wales, naturally, but they kept to themselves and were wary of strangers and passers-through. What made travelling dangerous was being a person with the ability to perform magic. Lying about it to Malleus goons was not an option, because the bastards could always tell. No-one knew how that was a thing, either, but it was. Whining about it wouldn't change anything, though. It never did.
It was getting dark when Hermione got to the Second Severn Crossing, by Caldicot. Years ago, when she'd been around eight years old, her parents had taken her to visit Caldicot Castle, on her insistence. She'd been going through her mediaeval castle phase, and her parents had indulged her, trekking with her to Dover, to Warwick, to York, the Tower, Windsor, etc. etc. She'd taken all the tours, read all the books, spent every little penny of her allowance on souvenirs from the castle shops.
Hermione's childhood had been a happy one. She liked to think about that when things started looking too bleak.
The sky was clear and the stars shone rather brightly. It was a little amusing, wasn't it? She'd half expected there to be dramatic thunder and symbolic rainfall. However, the weather rarely obliged anyone's moods. In this case, it was less than ideal. Rain gave those who wanted to remain unseen a certain anonymity. Whelp, nothing for it. She suppressed the urge to sigh irritably, since breathing in deeply wasn't all that advisable around these parts anymore, pulled the hood of her coat even closer over her head, adjusted the straps of her rucksack, jammed her cold and numb hands into her pockets, and gingerly stepped from the cracked motorway onto the bridge. Her mind told her that it started creaking, but that would be ridiculous. She'd never been heavy, but even the largest individual alive could not topple this bridge by themselves.
No, it was just the wind. There was some wear and tear, since no-one had done any repairs on this monstrosity for at least five years, but it would hold. It would hold. It had to. The bridge was, if Hermione's memory didn't fail her, about a mile long. That wasn't so bad. Even if any cars were to cross at the same time, they'd pay no need to a lone figure walking in the shadows. Maybe they wouldn't even see her. Maybe…
…good God! Enough of that!
Telling herself to cut out the nonsense, she marched onward. Below her, the Severn flowed, unaware of the fact that it was dying, that everything was slowly petering out, vanishing, just ending day by day. A fragment of an old poem came to mind:
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Ah, nothing better than some depressing T.S. Eliot soundbite to make herself feel erudite in this broken, crap-sack hellhole. Sad really was happy for deep people, wasn't it? Wasn't that from some old TV show or other? It was hard to remember. So many small things became irrelevant in the great scheme of things. She chuckled and shook her head at herself. If there still was time for this kind of nonsense, then all was not lost.
That was when she heard the sound of a motor revving behind her.
2 Oh, crap! Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh no!The thought kept repeating itself as she tried to stay calm, tried to not panic, tried to just keep walking at a brisk pace whilst simultaneously trying to come up with a viable plan b. Getting to London was always a long shot, and crossing the Severn undetected a rather big risk under the best of circumstances, but there was no other way, and therefore, she'd deemed the risk worth it. Now, her mind was racing, wanting to give her a way out and, at the same time, blame her for not trying to circumvent the Severn, or trying to swim through. But these musings were superfluous and stupid, because there was no choice. Going the long route north would take forever, and not only didn't they have forever, but the longer journey would increase the risk of capture exponentially. Swimming wasn't an option, either. She'd not make it halfway through, and there were the contents of her rucksack that she needed to keep dry.
Behind her, the motor revved again. This was a car, only just driving onto the bridge. Where had it come from? Were these Malleus Deorum who were charged with guarding the bridge? Were they here to catch her? Had she walked into a trap? She kept on walking, hoping, praying to any deity that might be out there despite her lack of faith, that those were people, just innocent people, wanting to be left alone and survive. Survivors. That was it. These weren't-
The sound of a horn honking made her flinch.
Her heart was thundering, her stomach roiling. She stopped dead in her tracks and spun around, her breath hitching in her throat. Further back, there was a…what, a Jeep? Yes, a battered, grey Jeep, slowly rolling toward her. They honked the horn again – an ugly, blaring, cacophonous belch of a sound that was worse than nails on a chalkboard. The Jeep's headlights flared, hurting her eyes. The motor revved again. The car accelerated.
Understanding came to her like a slap in the face: the Malleus Deorum had found her. There was no way out. There was no escaping. She was halfway across the bridge, and there was no way to go.
There was no way to go but down.
3 Her time was almost up. Again, she had to make a choice that wasn't one. If the Malleus caught her, she'd be doomed. In all probability, they'd get the location of the last wizard rebels out of her before killing her – killing her or worse. No, that must not happen. If she jumped, she might survive. She might make it. She…
…she told herself to stop the infantile nonsense. The jig was up. Her mission was a failure. The only thing left for her to do was protect her friends and buy them a little time.
The wind pulled at her clothes and her hair. Her fingers were numb and clammy, her teeth chattering, beads of sticky sweat slithering down her back. The rucksack was weighing her down. It would pull her into the water. And what of the tide? She'd not had any tables to memorise before setting out.
Didn't matter. Didn't matter.
She grabbed the cold metal of the railing and started pulling herself up. The Jeep was closing in. She could hear them now, the monsters in the car, hollering and laughing. They'd not get her. Her life might be at an end, but she wouldn't let them make her give up her friends' location or the last-ditch, desperate plan they'd concocted in order to prevent the end of everything. That would not happen. It couldn't. Ignoring the approaching sound of the car, she clenched her teeth and climbed upon the railing. There was no time like the present. All she needed was-
There was a loud bang. Something whizzed past her ear.
Oh, great. They had guns.
No. No distraction. She focussed, stepped up, looked down. The lights were almost on her. The monsters were jeering. Another shot. Another. No more time. No more. She needed to jump. She needed-
For a ludicrous second, it felt like someone punched her in the thigh. Then, the pain flared. Her leg was on fire. She lost her balance, tottered, grabbed for purchase, but found none. It happened sluggishly, as in slow motion. Her stomach lurched. She fell.
That was when it happened: the world distorted. Arms wrapped around her. Everything disappeared.
She came to on some kind of soft ground – earth. Grass. Something. It was pretty dark. There were trees. Lying on her back, she was gasping for air, grabbing at the gunshot wound in her thigh. Hot, sticky blood oozed through her fingers. The pain was indescribable, radiating up to her hip and down to her toes. She clenched her teeth, pressed her lips together, and shut her eyes, focussing on her ragged breathing.
What had happened? Who had saved her? How had they Apparated – Apparated! – in a Malleus Deorum controlled zone? How was any of this possible?
"You're bleeding. Damn it. Did I splinch you?"
The sound of this voice – male, young, clear, posh, vaguely familiar – made her flinch. She forced her eyes open again, but they were watering too badly, and it was pretty gloomy, anyway. "I…gunshot…"
"Fucking Muggles think they own the place." The stranger chuckled. It sounded bitter. "They actually do now, don't they? Unbelievable. Here, let me help."
"Don't…I…who…" She couldn't complete the thought in her head, let alone force the words out. Stars and pitch-black blotches were dancing before her eyes. She felt queasy – queasy and tired. Sleep sounded good right about now.
"Heroism now, exposition later. Here: a little light should do the trick. Lumos."
The sudden sphere of white brightness blinded her. She shut her eyes.
"Oh, that's nasty. Don't worry, though. I know just the thing, then we can leave this shithole and get somewhere more appropriate." The stranger cleared his throat, then added, "Vulnera Sanentur."
Immediately, the burning started to fade. Beneath her fingers, Hermione could feel her skin mending. Then, it was all over, the screaming agony of the hole that the projectile had ripped into her flesh only a memory. After a short while, her breathing calmed, as did her heartbeat. She was drenched in sweat, her stomach lurching. Groaning, she tried to sit up, but only managed after the stranger gave her a helping hand. With clammy, trembling hands, she wiped some knotty strands of her messy hair from her face, blinked, and faced the person who'd saved her life.
"Don't strain yourself," he said, an undercurrent of nervousness in his otherwise jovial tone, "but we really need to get going. The Malleus thugs won't be happy about a wizard finding a loophole in their precious magic-free zones. Wankers." It was strange, hearing someone who spoke in such a snooty, upper-class accent utter any kind of curse word.
"I can walk." The words came out more confident than she felt. Again, she blinked. Finally, her vision started to focus as she faced her rescuer. She saw a young man in his mid to late twenties: a narrow, thin face with sharp features, pale skin, bright eyes, white-blond hair. Maybe it had been the shock of the gunshot wound, maybe the emergency Apparating. Her mind was muddled. There was something about this person that was just so familiar, so…that was when the pieces clicked into place. The proverbial galleon dropped. Her stomach panged. "Malfoy?"
4 "Can we leave all the lovely nostalgic reminiscing about the good old Voldemort days for later, when we're safe?" He made a face. "As safe as we can be, which isn't much, these days, granted. Still" – Nimbly, he jumped to his feet and held out a gloved hand to her – "time's money. The fucktards will be after us."
It wasn't as if she was going to get any better offer any time soon. He was right: her questions would have to wait to be answered later. She grabbed his hand and let him pull her up. Despite the heavy rucksack on her back, he did so effortlessly. She, however, tottered, lost her balance, and would have crashed, but he grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and steadied her.
"Thanks," she mumbled, embarrassed despite herself. Yes, the reaction was silly, but old habits had an annoying tendency to die hard.
An expression she knew all too well, and that really did evoke a flash of memories, crossed his face: a rather obnoxious smirk.
He said, "Granger, the swooning damsel in distress. Who would've thought?"
"Can we go?" Her healed leg was shaky, and her innards were roiling. "Oh, and be warned: I might throw up on you."
"Charming as ever. Come on." Unceremoniously, he grabbed her by the elbow and started towing her along through some sort of wood or forest. "And before you ask: no, we can't Apparate to our safe place. What I did? One in a million chance, and one of the last pockets of magic left in the area. No doubt it'll no longer be available after the Malleus finds out about my little stunt."
"How did you even know where I'd be? Was that chance?" Couldn't be. It had been too specific. Her foot caught on a root or something, and she stumbled, but luckily managed not to fall either on her face or on him.
"No, not chance. We knew you were coming."
We? Adrenaline shot through her veins. "How's that possible?" Both the fact that there were even more magical folk alive than her bunch and that these people had known to help her.
"Fireplace. Pansy called." He snickered and glanced at her over his shoulder. "I never thought I'd be happy to hear that you made it, but I almost danced for joy when she made contact and passed on the good news about your group of survivors. You got twenty people left! Incredible."
Her stomach had started cramping again. "She called you? Doesn't she realise that she might've revealed the camp's location to the Malleus?"
"Sh, keep it down!" he snapped, glancing at her again. It was getting colder, and clouds were starting to blot out the stars. "She's not an idiot and knew you'd never get anywhere near London without help. That's why she decided to take a risk, and here I am, your knight in shiny armour. You're welcome."
Biting down a series of snippy replies, she made herself say, "Thank you. I'd be dead without you." It was true, too.
"Don't mention it."
"I do wish she hadn't risked everyone's safety for me, though. There's so few of us left."
"There'll be none left if we fail."
"We?" It was out before she knew it.
"Yes, we," he shot back, clearly annoyed. "You may have the know-how, but you absolutely cannot do this alone, so don't even try. All our lives are at risk. Hell, the entire world is at risk! You may not like me, and I may not like you, but none of that matters right now. So you can either get with the program, or end up getting crushed like a bug. Do you understand?"
Wow. Now, there was some anger bubbling up to the surface. Crikey.
"Actually, I just wanted to say I'm glad you're volunteering, because I would've dragged your sorry posterior along with me to the capital, anyway."
That made him snicker. "You got to admit, it's a lovely posterior."
Despite herself, despite everything, she found herself laughing at that. It just bubbled out of her, like a creek breaking through a thick layer of ice. "Thank you, Malfoy – really."
Right now, it didn't matter that they'd despised each other during the entirety of their school career. It didn't matter that he'd always treated her like dirt due to her blood status, or that she'd regularly shown him up in class on purpose. Right now, they were both magic folk, and they were both fighting for survival.
The bar was low, granted, but all in all, this had been an almost perfect day.