(First things first: the last chapter is fixed. Jump back and read that before heading on, unless you've already done so. Secondly, this chapter has a compilation soundtrack, so if you feel like catching extra feels: 1) War by Jeremy Zuckerman from the Legend of Korra: Book One Soundtrack, 2) Death or Sovngarde by Jeremy Soule from the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Soundtrack, 3) Red Sorrow by Audiomachine from Phenomena)

"Hermione?"

Everything hurt. Everything.

"Hermione."

She tried to open her eyes. She couldn't see who dared disturb her afterlife without doing so. Still, she struggled for it.

Sounds beat into her skull. Shouting. Screaming. Cursing. Footsteps. Tumbling stones, thunderous explosions, crackling air.

Pain and warmth radiated from her side, worrying enough that she finally managed to open her eyes.

Someone grabbed her hand at the same moment, and she groaned in pain. Stone pulled against her back and feet, and she did not have the strength to pull away. She forced her eyes open a little more. The line of dead was getting farther away. She couldn't look at it. Didn't want to know.

Her tongue laid too heavy in her mouth to tell the one dragging her across the floor to stop. She could see other people being moved. There was a line of red following Hermione.

"Get the injured out!"

Hermione's head felt too big. She let it fall back for a moment, but her hair immediately got caught on something, and there was a great pain at the back of her head. She forced her neck to support it.

"Behind!"

Hermione stopped abruptly. The hands clenching her wrist loosened and fell away. She twisted, trying to see what had happened.

A horrifying sound left her.

Jacob Williams. Tess's friend, the one who- who had helped her and Fred get away from Umbridge after she found the Room of Requirement a lifetime ago. His eyes were still open, his face frozen in alarm. Hermione screamed again, trying to reach him. Everything hurt. She could barely move. Over Jacob's still form, she could see the front line approaching. Students and Order members slowly lost ground toward the Great Hall.

And Hermione was right in their path.

"Jacob!"

Another set of hands. Hermione bit out a bark of pain as she was yanked sideways toward the wall. It was much slower going than before.

"Tess, run," Hermione ground out.

"My father is here," Tess answered, panting. Hermione tried to help her by pushing with her feet, but they refused to move. Tess grunted, pulling faster. "I have to stop him."

"Tess, that's not your job," Hermione managed.

"Albert's got Fred, then he's coming with."

"Fred?" Hermione whispered. She picked her head up enough to see through the hall. The fastest runners must have been sent to clear the Hall. Sure enough, Albert was dragging a copper-haired, cursing, bleeding man across the floor. Hermione nearly stopped breathing.

Tess pushed her up against the wall, then danced away before Hermione could try to grab for her. Albert pulled Fred up alongside her, then handed Hermione her wand. Fred already had his in a grip so tight his knuckles were white.

She managed to grab Albert's hand for a moment. He glanced at her, eyes far more focused on where Tess had gone. "Keep her safe."

He nodded, bending to kiss her bloody forehead. He ripped out of her grip and ran after Tess.

"I thought you were dead," Hermione whispered, leaning against Fred.

"It'll take more than that to get me, love," Fred answered.

~m~

Tess went the long way around, tearing through the broken halls as fast as she could. She'd seen her father not long ago, on the wrong side of the line. Smiling, as his Dark Lord proclaimed Harry Potter dead. He gestured to her subtly, while the Malfoys made a show. She pretended not to have seen him at all.

She found him about a hundred feet forward from that, trying to flank a group of students, wand raised. The students had yet to see him; he was hiding behind a wall more standing than crumbled, pointing through the gap of a few missing bricks. Tess snarled.

"Coward!"

It rang through the hall, not for the first time that night.

She shot a curse. It broke the brick over his head, showering him in stone and dust, singeing his hair, and he twisted to face her. Albert's pounding footsteps skidded to a stop beside her, and he raised his wand. Tess shook her head, just slightly. Her father stepped away from the wall, into the middle of the hall, as though he would block her passage.

As though she wasn't there for him.

"It's not too late," her father tried. Made his face soften, because he was the sort of monster that could do that.

"It's far too late," she answered. Another curse. He blocked it. Another Death Eater came running up, but her father raised a hand.

"Tessadora, I still love you. Your mother loves you."

Tess straightened. Bringing up her mother was really the lowest blow he could think of? Not that she was a traitor to her gender, to her family, for not wanting to be bred like a prized dragon?

She smiled. His Death Eater friend. He didn't want the others to know what a degenerate she was.

She twisted her wand, recalling a transformation lesson. The broken stones on the ground twirled together, until a great eagle soared straight toward her father. He shot a curse at it, but it was stone, and plowed straight into him. Once knocked over, Albert hit him with a Binding Curse. Her eagle came back to land on her shoulder. Her father spit out a curse and an anti-curse, swaying back to his feet.

"Admirable," Tess murmured, as he'd once said to her. She'd climbed back to her feet after he'd hit her, hit her like a damned Muggle, for saying she had a girlfriend.

And that was fear in his eyes, for a fragment of a second.

Tess turned her wand, and her rock-eagle transformed, leaping from her shoulder. A lion landed on the stone before her, jumping on her father, pinning him with claws that bit into his shoulder and thighs. He barked in pain, and Albert thickened the air with hexes.

His Death Eater friend blasted the stone creature to oblivion. He grabbed her father by the back of his near-tattered robes and hauled him up. Albert did not stop aiming hexes at them, but her father's friend blocked or counteracted them all too fast to matter.

Not good.

"Bombarda maxima!"Tess cried, pointing at the ceiling above the pair. The explosion blew the stone upward.

But what goes up must come down. Tess called on one of McGonagall's extra credit assignments. With a sharp wand movement crossing her body with a downward slash, the stone shards turned to razor sharp glass. She flicked her wand back up to accelerate them.

Her father raised his wand, and a dome of fire melted the glass to nothing before it could reach them. His eyes burned with a rage that Tess could not find unfamiliar. She knew her own dark eyes mirrored his. She did not care.

"It is over," said his Death Eater companion. Tess thought she recognized him. "You can still survive this, children."

"They have chosen already, Rookwood," her father spat. "I have no children."

"I have always been your daughter," Tess answered, hating that her voice decided to break. She moved before he could realize it, using one of the spells Hermione had told her of. Sectumsempra.

It caught across her father's chest just as an emerald light streaked across the space between them. Tess did not have time to widen her eyes before it struck.

It caught her shoulder, shoving her into a spin as she tumbled to the ground.

She did not get the chance to see her father fall to his knees, to see him bleed his life away on the stones.

She did not see Albert shout, see him bring the hallway down on Rookwood and her father's corpse.

She did not get to do much at all.

~m~

Hermione forced herself up to her knees. Fred murmured all the healing spells he could as she did. She could not move without them. The pain was too great, and she'd lost too much blood.

Bellatrix Lestrange smiled.

Hermione shot four hexes at her before she raised herself up. One foot. The other. Leaning against the wall before she took a step forward. More hexes. Another step to put herself between Lestrange and Fred.

"There he is."

A hex collided with her shoulder, sending Lestrange stumbling sideways. Fury lit Ginny's eyes. She and Hermione worked in tandem, Hermione daring to take another step forward. Bellatrix lost ground, once, then twice. Fred just kept murmuring healing spells. They consumed his mind wholly: he had to keep Hermione on her feet. He had to. It was the only thing he knew with any certainty.

Luna joined from behind, making Lestrange twist and retreat once more. Ginny and Luna advanced.

It was not enough. Hermione could hardly see; blood dripped from somewhere near her hairline down into her eyes. She was barely standing. Ginny had enough anger to kill the witch on her own, but not the skill nor the stamina. Luna had never been the best dueler. They no longer had the element of surprise.

Ginny dodged a killing curse, and everything happened quite quickly after that.

Bellatrix Lestrange fell to Molly Weasley.

Tom Marvolo Riddle fell to Harry James Potter.

Hermione collapsed, her head bouncing off Fred's shin before hitting the floor.

He did not let her go when the Healers came. He did not let her go when they were loaded on separate stretchers. He did not let her go when they arrived at St. Mungo's, and reporters filled the lobby, trying to learn who was dead and who was dying.

He did not let her go until the mediwitch with frigid hands pried him off her, and they took her down the hall to a different room, and they poured something down his throat that made his head fuzz and he lost consciousness.

.o0O0o.

Thanks to everyone who commented about the formatting issues last time around, I posted ch69 before I went to sleep, so I fixed them when I woke up. Sincerest apologies, it should be better. If it's not, I'm going to go murder a web developer. I'm not. Yet.