Author's Note: I have written about 5000 words for the new chapter of "The Anniversary", only to have it brutally erased by what I call my "stupid, stupid, stupid computer". Feel free to send hate mail to this "stupid, stupid, stupid computer", but I have already cursed it to hell and back. I am so disappointed! I was going to post it today, along with this chapter – which I thankfully saved in my email and only lost the last few paragraphs, on which I worked for an hour or so yesterday. I don't think I'll be able to have the patience to create another chapter for "Anniversary" - - it broke me in two when I realized it was gone from my p.c. – perhaps another sunny day will bring me re-inspiration though. SIGH! … please visit my web page for my fan art - - there is a lot of it!
www.geocities.com/littlemaggie01/
By the way! My readers are pressuring me into making this Hermione/Draco - - and the readers are pitted about 9 to 1, in average, as to the pairing… uh-oh… shall I give in to peer pressure or follow my own dreams? Hmm…
Chapter 14
~ A Conclusion? ~
Draco jerked out from behind the curtains, his eyes running across the room. Voldemort was long gone, taking the shortcut and making himself disappear and reappear on the upper floor. Lily, despite any efforts, would never be able to get out of the house in time.
" Draco, are you crazy?" Hermione shouted after him.
He turned around, suddenly seeing how absurd this was. He had acted irrationally, even absurdly. No matter, he'll have to control himself and simply watch the massacre in the Potter's house… right?
" If you try to stop Voldemort, you'll only end up killing yourself, too. Think of the damage you'll do to the future! Even if you manage to save Lily for some odd reason, you will be wiped out of existence!" Hermione said, slightly out of breath, and out of patience as well, beneath her flushed face and rosy cheeks. " There will never be a Draco Malfoy!"
" What do you care?" He blurted out, savagely. " Then you wouldn't be in the punishment room in the first place. Admit it, you wouldn't really care."
Hermione was taken aback by the blunt statements he made. Perhaps she wouldn't truly be affected. Her eyes danced in wonder at how he seemed to be going through a flush of emotions, a warped Sydney Carton battling between saving Charles Darnay, the husband of the woman Sydney loved, or simply watching Charles' execution [Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens]. She said, finally: " Of course I'd care. You're not all that you seem, sometimes."
He scoffed and shook his head. " I'm everything I seem." His voice trailed off. " I was carried away. I'm not doing anything."
Hermione could hear low shuffling on the floor. She turned, and saw that James was moving. "Could it be?" She whispered.
Draco grabbed her hand and pushed her behind the couch with him to observe from a safer stance. Avada Kedavra was a hard curse to master, and at this time Voldemort, though practiced in the Dark Arts, was only merely growing yet in his excessive, destructive power. It was possible, in the confusion at the Potter's home, that his Avada Kedavra spell, and James's spell, had both cancelled one another out in some way, only stunning James for a while. Hermione's mind processed the chances of something like that happening – about one in a million, she decided.
" Lily! Hide Harry! Do something! I'll hold him off!" James was shouting now, running up the stairway. Lucius Malfoy, whom had turned and walked down the steps of the home, ready to abandon the horrors that were to his back, turned in surprise.
James exchanged a brief, hateful glance with Lucius. " Why?" He breathed. " Why Lily and Harry? Why not just me?"
Lucius opened his mouth to reply, his eyes showing no compassion, just a flicker of bitterness. " I only cared for having you dead. The Dark Lord knows what is best, though. If I had taken Lily in for a night, it would have been it, to satisfy myself, but nothing more."
" Bastard." James hissed.
" Give up. Run, James. You can't do anything. You can still run." Lucius sneered. " If you can get past me." He stood in the doorway, face twisted in a menacing leer. Lucius, overpowered with Darkness, his mind only a vessel now to host the evil that Voldemort spread…
" Don't bother. I'm not a coward." James said, then added: " Like you."
Lucius shook his head. " What would make me the coward and you brave?"
" You chose the Dark Side, of course, and that is the coward's side. You're afraid of - - of him - - admit it! Your fear made you mad." James turned and ran up the stairs, not wanting to waste another breath on Lucius.
" James!" Lily shrieked.
" Lily!" He replied, and added: " Hang on! Don't let him in the room! Do a Barrier Spell!"
" I can't - - I'm holding Harry!" Lily cried.
James was at the top of the stairs. A low grumbling noise filled the air as Voldemort spoke, finally, his voice a shrill rasp, something that sounded like: " You are foolish to resist me."
Draco paled and watched his father take a step forwards to grab James, then seemed to grow calm as Lucius turned and left the house instead, afraid of any evidence on James that Lucius' wand killed him. Any incriminating evidence would be bad on a crime scene, after all.
Hermione and Draco exchanged glances. Hermione whispered: " Do you want to go up… up there?"
Draco bit his tongue to keep his voice from wavering, then replied: " Why shouldn't I want to see him up close?" He had a defiant look in him.
" Your hero." Hermione felt herself utter. Draco's eyes narrowed.
They spoke no more amongst one another, though, and instead worked together like a team to slink their way up the stairs. They worked in a sort of mutual understanding, and they were so silent as they did it they took form of an image of cat burglars. Hermione knelt down at the very top of the stairs and moved her head to see the hallway leading to little Harry's room. James was drawing his wand, his eyes wide and frightened. Voldemort hissed and then said, eerily: " Open the room!"
" No!" James shook his head. " Do you think I'm stupid?" James readied his wand, his voice a slow tremble as he continued resolutely: " Leave this house. We've done nothing against you and your evil ways."
Voldemort chuckled, but it sounded more like a dry cough of a suffocating beast. " Evil does not exist. Evil is only an exaggeration. There is only power – higher power and lower power. It is the result, not the means, that count." His grayish, bony hand held out the wand he held, so alike to Harry Potter's, and with a low murmur, he began to say a spell.
James was quick, he cast a Reflect Spell on himself – a spell no longer in use these days, for it was known to wreck considerable damage if it was cast wrong. A yellowish cloud of smoke wrapped around James ever-so-tightly and then squeezed around him, and when Voldemort's wand released a torrent of energy at James – a sign of a powerful spell – the yellow cloud seemed to swallow the spell up.
A frightening silence filled the air, and then the cloud spat the spell back. It seemed to be absorbed into Voldemort's body, as if he were immune to it. James was horrified. Was Voldemort truly so powerful that even Voldemort's own Dark Arts couldn't kill him?
" Who sent you? Who helped you?" Lily begged from the room, unknowing of Lucius leering on their house steps downstairs. Peter Pettigrew trembled silently a distance off, not watching the house but not walking away, his eyes sliding from one figure to another.
Voldemort turned and grabbed James before James could give away the true identities of the people. James could only murmur: "Lily, hide, it's serious—!" Then, Voldemort's fingers dug tighter into James' neck, holding him frozen in one place, his face gaining a bloody red color as air flow was cut off from him. James tried to cough but ended up only gasping for air. " Lily…" He breathed out.
The wand that Voldemort bared was pointed at the crown of James's head, executioner-spell style. Voldemort whispered: " Say goodbye." Then, without another second, he shouted: "Avada Kedavra! Die for once, you scum!"
James seemed to convulse, his eyes blinking open rapidly, his mouth falling open as Voldemort's fingers let him go. Voldemort's long, thin fingers must have snapped something inside James's neck, whether it was his wind pipe or something else, for blood rushed from his open mouth in a rusty current. The Avada Kedavra spell worked nicely, though, for James was dead already, at least not feeling the torturous pain and humiliation of watching himself bleed to death on the floor before the bedroom where his wife and child awaited their death.
Voldemort then proceeded to cast a few spells to destroy any evidence that James was strangled, and the blood and bruises were quickly gone. He seemed to sense more presence in the hallway just then, for he turned to look down the hallway, his breath low and rasping.
Lily whispered: "James?"
Hermione's heart broke at the sound.
" James!" Lily cried as she got no reply.
The veins in Draco's neck seemed to tighten angrily, almost flexing and pushing out. Hermione watched him slowly turn his face away from the sight in the hallway. Voldemort was moving slowly towards the staircase again, then he stopped and decidedly swung at the bedroom door.
" No!" Lily shouted, pressing her back to it. " Encantinis Blocadus…" She chanted, pressing her knuckles at her chest, James in one hand, her wand slipping from her fingers. The door achieved an odd glow. It would withhold any spell or intrusion for a few minutes for her to gain her bearings.
Voldemort rasped: " There is no escaping!"
Hermione whispered: " I didn't know there was such a struggle…"
Draco didn't reply. His pale face had paled even more, until it was a ghostly, ashen color.
" Leave, please leave!" Lily bawled, holding Harry closer to her breast. " Or at least take me. Don't hurt Harry. Please."
Draco's fists tightened on Hermione's hand. He'd been involuntarily squeezing it for a while now. Below the Darkness inside of him, below the layers of scorn and hate and anger that piled up on top of one another in him, Draco had an odd humane side that was aching and scratching with blood-encrusted nails to escape. He closed his eyes, trying to reflect upon his father's words. There is no evil. There is no evil. It is all power. It is the result, not the means. The words mirrored Voldemort's as he killed the Potters.
Hermione turned to Draco and said, slowly: " I don't know about you, but I'm convinced. I'm going to do something."
Draco didn't reply.
" Do you know any Dark Arts spells? Any at all! Give me a five-minute course on the Avada Kedavra…" She stammered, her hands shaking.
Draco shook his head. " I… I don't know it yet… well. My Father told me that any respectable, powerful wizard couldn't carry himself without knowing it. We do not need to practice it - - openly." The last word was added in a tone of secrecy. " You can't, Granger, you can't learn it in minutes."
Hermione looked panicked. " Please! Or are you afraid… because you support it?"
Draco didn't know how to answer that, for deep inside of himself, there was a tumultuous sea of conflict at the moment. His supposedly 'dead' feelings, his dormant sense of reality, had slowly been awakened over the course of time. Being locked away in the room with Hermione had left him vulnerable. There was nobody in the Punishment Room to follow, no rules to cower behind, no father's eyes to watch him, none of his father's words to dictate to him, and no weekly letters to him from Lucius, denouncing all and poisoning the leftover good in Draco. With nobody to impress and nobody to listen to, something inside of Draco had begun to disintegrate.
Hermione bit her lower lip angrily. " I should have known what the Malfoys would stay faithful to, despite all. I suppose McGonagall was right. You are a vessel of the Dark Lord, nothing more, nothing less. Back there in the living room, I thought… I thought…" A tear slid down her cheek. Whatever had opened in her heart to Draco had just slammed shut, smashing his fingers along the way. She stood, and said, hatefully: " I'm going to do something, whether you like it or not. If I am erased from the face of history, then so be it."
~*~
Author's Note:
Chapter fifteen, coming soon! Bwa ha ha ha! Will Draco do something? What is to become of Hermione and all that exists of her? Will Lily be spared? What about Voldemort… will Harry ever be famous and have his scar? Would this incident still, in a way, make him the 'boy who lived'? Would changing the past lock Draco and Hermione in that time period forever? Or would they be shuttled back to the future to see what life was like with the changes? Or - - or - - will nothing be changed? Will they both perish? What? WHAT? WHAT????
Review… for more… he he he…
