A/N:

Hello! Thanks for reading 'Father', a story predominantly set thirteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts and told from three different points of view.

Each chapter is short, usually no more than 1500 words, but you can expect frequent uploads and a fun ride!

Current rating: T

FATHER

Chapter One: Hermione

Hermione could taste the magic on her tongue as she ran. Everywhere the air was alive with it, a crackling static that raced across her skin.

She ducked and threw herself around a toppled crenellation, chunks of rubble blasting across her face as the spell meant to kill her smashed into the stone.

"Confundo!" she shouted, leaning out just enough to aim the spell at her attacker. It caught him in the chest and he spun, dropping his wand to the ground. She pulled back, breathing heavily, clutching her wand in a blood slicked palm.

The shield which only hours ago had glowed liked a luminescent soap bubble had been reduced to a few streaks of light across the rapidly darkening sky and she watched with detached horror as flakes of it fell to the ground.

She'd never expected it would be easy, but the chaos of the battlefield thudded fear through her veins. There was no order, no anticipation. No logical sequence. Everything was unpredictable and uncontrollable.

It had become a battle of odds and they were losing.

Heavy breathing and footsteps and a man in a tattered leather overcoat was suddenly behind her makeshift shield. She spotted him a moment before he caught sight of her crouched in the shadows and his curse died on an intake of breath as she shot a stupefy at him.

It wasn't stopping. They weren't winning. She had to do something.

Clearing her mind of anything but her next step, she took a deep breath and jumped out from the ruins, sprinting across the courtyard and narrowly avoiding tripping on something that she realised with horror was a body. She stumbled without a sound, dodging chunks of rubble and places where the ground had been viciously gashed open.

Spells flew in the air around her but she paid them little heed. All her attention was focussed on the curtain wall and the steps just below which lead down to the lake.

She had to find Harry.

Somewhere behind her someone screamed. The sound mingled with the thudding heartbeat in her ears, her laboured breathing which seemed strangely uncoupled from her body.

She had to keep going, she had to -

She'd missed the dark-robed figure next to the castle walls. He was already lifting his wand before Hermione had discerned that the shape detaching itself from the gloom was a man. She couldn't see his lips but she knew with a terrible certainty what would happen next. Time seemed to bend and warp around the moment in which she would die, as though life had chosen to give her an elongated preview of her own death. After everything, it struck her that it was unfair that it should happen like this. No fight. No duel for her life. Just a heartbeat, and then gone.

She inhaled, and then suddenly, the world changed.

Time caught up with itself and she found herself launched off her feet and spinning violently through the air, the ground merging with the sky in one whirling kaleidoscope of colour until suddenly it wasn't, and she was lying crumpled on the ground with a mouth full of grit and blood.

She had no idea if she was dead. But the pain - the pain was surely a good thing?

She had little time to wonder as a tremendous boom cleaved through the air, like it had sucked all other sound in the world into itself and expelled it in one screaming exhalation. It set every one of already overwrought senses on fire, but it was enough to tell her that she was alive.

Her ears rang in an incessant peel. Everything was dark... but no. No, open your eyes. The very act felt like a mammoth action, like pulling the weight of the earth from her face. But finally, there was light and something. She blinked the dust from her eyes.

She was flat on her back. Above her a dark shape glowed. A misshapen silhouette, she finally realised, burning against the purpling sky.

Ravenclaw Tower was gone.

It seemed inconceivable, but there it was. Nothingness where before there had been the centuries old castle.

She pushed herself up, gasping in pain as her shoulder grated against bone. Dislocated maybe, she thought absently to herself as she cast her eyes around the scene before her.

A wave of dizziness tumbled her stomach.

Desperately, she sought out the loose threads of thought. There'd been an explosion. She should have been dead. Why was she supposed to be dead?

Her chest lurched as she remembered. The Death Eater. Her eyes flitted about madly, but he was gone. Where he'd been standing was nothing but cold, dead rubble; huge chunks of stone blasted from the sky.

Burning pieces of ash floated down around her and caught in her hair. Biting down nausea she pushed herself to her feet and narrowly avoided vomiting. Her shoulder was a ball of flame and she held her arm limply with her free hand. She needed to fix it and then find Harry. They were running out of time.

The spell was on her lips at the same time as she realised her wand wasn't in her hand. Panic crawled across her skin. She was undefended at the worst possible time.

Her eyes frantically scanned the ground, the light blazing from above casting a strange orange glow on the ruined courtyard and making the shadows of the detritus stretch and bend unnaturally.

The dread grew as she realised that her wand was nowhere to be seen.

Around her the battlefield was coming back to life. The shockwave of the explosion had flattened everything but now people were rising and resuming the fight. It wouldn't be long until someone noticed her and without a wand, she was doomed.

With one last lingering look at the dark archway which led down to the lake, she hurried across to the gaping the castle doors and threw herself inside.

The entrance hall was cold and dark. A hasty palisade had been thrown up in front of the doors to the Great Hall which thankfully were still standing and closed tightly. She knew that inside they were treating the injured and for a moment she longed to shout the password and be let in. To feel warmth on her skin and be around those that she trusted, who could protect her. But she couldn't, she had to keep going.

As fast as her damaged body would let her she ran into a side corridor and then up a set of stairs. It was unnerving to see them so still above her. She hadn't realised the sounds of their swooping movements through the air until they were gone.

She continued up, panting out breaths in short sharp gasps. Every step sent a jolt of pain through her arm.

The landing of the third floor came into view and she rushed forward.

"Please", she said raggedly as she forced her way to a blank stretch of wall. Her last hope. There was only one place in the castle that she could possibly find a wand, and it wasn't here.

"No!" she half-sobbed as she reached the wall and slapped it with the palm of her hand. "No".

She closed her eyes, willing away the tears swimming across her vision. She was done for. Without her wand there was little she could do. Without her wand, she was nothing but a liability.

Beneath her fingers, a subtle movement shifted against her skin.

When she opened her eyes, before her stood a door where once there had been only unyielding stone, the wood beneath her fingers proof that she wasn't dreaming. A flood of relief overwhelmed her, so strong that she sagged, but in the next moment she'd pushed herself up again.

There was still some hope left.

Still gasping for breath, she reached for the handle and slipped inside.