A/N: Yes, yes, I realize that it has been days since I last updated. See, there is this little thing called NaNoWriMo. Also known as "National Novel Writing Month". Meaning that Thalia has to pull 50000 words out of her ass before 1 December. Have been working obsessively on that. Forgive. Now that I have a bit more than 1/10 of the thing done, shall take a short break on it to bequeath you with more overblown angst. Well that, and the fact that Mynuet is blackmailing me *eyetwitch*... *ahem* Yes. Moving onwards...
Disclaimer: Am being whipped into cooperation (in a completely un-naughty way) by Mynuet. Am powerless and still lack ownership of Slytherin Quidditch Gods. m000...
~*~
Nightfall.
Everyone who had been in Hogsmeade that day had returned, most with haggard, wary faces. There were several who had relatives in the little village, and several more who knew that their family or loved ones had fought, on one side or another, in the battle.
The doors were locked. No one was allowed to leave the castle until it was deemed safe.
Prefects patrolled the hallways, monitoring to make sure that everyone was safe in their Common Rooms. Ginny Weasley and Emma Dobbs wordlessly met each other in the Great Hall, and headed towards the direction of the History of Magic corridor.
They continued down the empty hallway for several paces, before Ginny, an expression of determination on her face, faced the rival Slytherin Quidditch captain. "Dungeons, twenty minutes."
Emma slowly nodded, understanding the implications, and the two Prefects parted in the hallway where no one ever loitered.
~*~
An hour later found Ginny and Emma quietly crawling out of a secret gate that faced the lake. Both were completely quiet as Emma locked it behind her, quietly murmuring a spell to erase their footprints in the snow even as she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. Ginny shifted her bookbag, lightened with a spell and filled with various supplies, over her shoulder. Still silent, the two moved farther and farther away from the castle, down the same road that the carriages had taken earlier.
Hogsmeade was quiet and dark when they arrived, no more signs of battle, though the streets were filled with people both moving and still.
"Aurors," Emma whispered to Ginny, eyeing their robes as the two approached, heads down and footsteps quiet. I think they're trying to... sort things out, now."
Cautiously, the two approached the village, Emma's eyes peeled for signs of her parents as Ginny looked for... well, many things, really. Draco. Her brothers. People to help... who could tell her things.
"I don't see my parents anywhere," Emma began, but before she could even finish that statement, a burly man in Auror robes stepped straight into their path and grabbed each girl by an arm. One side of his mud-splattered face marred with a gash that ran from his cheekbone to his jaw, his hair (possibly brown, though it was too muddied to tell) matted to his head, his nose apparently having been broken recently, and the other side of his face not bleeding puffed up with a bruise the size of an apple. He might have been unrecognizable, except for the teeth.
"What the hell are you two doing here?" he snarled, glaring down at both of them.
~*~
Ginny looked panicked and tried to yank her arm out of his grasp, but Emma merely glared back, Slytherin Chaser to former Slytherin Chaser, almost as if arguing over Quidditch tactics in the Common Room. "Not your business, Flint, let us go."
"And here I thought you lot were supposed to have gone back to Hogwarts and stayed there," Flint barked, "Well? Looking for someone? As far as I know, none of your prat brothers are casualties. Although as I understand it, the dungbomb-bearing double-trouble duo managed to turn some Death Eater or another into a toothless alligator," Flint glowered at the Weasley girl.
Emma looked somewhat impressed. "Which Death Eater was it?"
"We are still trying to identify him... er... her... IT," Flint muttered, before rolling his eyes, "Unfortunately, gender distinction of zoo animals wasn't one of the chapters in 'The Auror's Training Manual'."
Ginny waved a hand impatiently. "They'll change it back eventually, unless they need alligator parts for prank components..."
Flint snorted, the action peculiar due to his injured nose. "And they call Slytherins evil."
Emma cleared her throat, the sound betraying the first hint of nervousness that she had exhibited that evening. "Speaking of... evil Slytherins... would you happen to know what became of my parents?"
Releasing Ginny's arm and using his sleeve to wipe away some of the blood trickling down his neck, he jerked his head in the direction of where two Aurors were carefully moving a pile of dead bodies. "Over there somewhere. Apparently one got hit by the Killing Curse and the other stabbed, although I'm not sure which is which."
Emma froze, her face blanching a sickly snow-white. "My... parents... killed..." she managed to stammer out, her voice slightly choked, "Both of them?"
Flint looked warily at the younger Slytherin's rapidly paling face and pulled away slightly. "That's what happens in battle, kid."
Emma dropped to the ground, her hands rapidly clenching and unclenching as tears, coupled oddly with a strange, dreary smile, slipped down her face. "DEAD! Both of them... DEAD! Of their madness and megalomania... and... and...!" Ginny and the uncomfortable Flint only saw a glimpse of her face before she raised her hands to over it and started to sob... and laugh, shoulders shaking slightly with a twisted mix of hysterical grief and joy.
"Urgh," Flint grumbled, raising his grimy hands to cover his ears, "Bloody hell... stop your caterwauling, girl... there is the unsavoury business of wading through piles of dead people to look for survivors still to be done, Merlin only knows how many were killed, civilian or otherwise, runaway Death Eaters to track down, and I can really use a Healing Potion and a firewhiskey right now. Mad female hysteria is REALLY not something I want to deal with... all right, kindly shut up unless you want all Aurors in a five kilometre radius to flock over, thinking that you're being killed as a virgin sacrifice. Unless you're going to make yourselves somewhat useful, go back to the castle and bawl over there."
Even as Emma's brief bout of emotional distress started to abate, Ginny reached into one of her pockets and fished out a small vial of purple Healing Potion. "There, take that one, I have more."
Flint squinted at it with his non-swollen eye, then his muddy, battered face cracked into a grin. "And where's the firewhiskey?"
"No disrespect meant," Ginny mumbled with a straight face, "But you need a shower far more than you need a drink."
The former Slytherin captain roared with laughter, then unceremoniously pointed her and the now-calming Emma towards the direction of more still bodies. "All right. Get to work, since you're here."
Snapping a jaunty mock-salute marred by the Eye Roll of Ineffable Contempt, Ginny replied with a quick "Yes, SIR!" and moved gingerly towards a woman clutching her broken leg and moaning in pain.
~*~
By five o'clock in the morning, the small apothecary's worth of potions and supplies that had occupied Ginny's bookbag had been quite visibly reduced, and both girls, having cast Charms and dispensed Potions for several hours without rest, were about to fall asleep on their feet.
Emma was on her fifth yawn after casting yet another Ferula charm to splint a boy's arm, when Flint, looking somewhat more weary but less battered, approached the two girls. "Well then, you two look a bit fagged."
"Oh, really..." Ginny's voice was killingly bland.
"Perhaps you should sleep a while," Flint remarked, as if stumbling upon a new truth of the universe. "Tent over there still empty. I'm sure they won't mind you enlarging the cot. Would be bad if we had you two as patients on top of everything else."
"We thank you for your incredible thoughtfulness and caring nature," Emma remarked sarcastically as the Auror pulled them towards the tent in question with a snort. But as soon as they were inside, both looked at the cot with longing eyes, and Emma cast one last charm to enlarge the thing to twice its original size, and then the Gryffindor and Slytherin, not even close friends by any means, both lay down, side by side, and fell asleep within seconds of closing their eyes.
~*~
The daytime shift was starting, and the Aurors who had been working through the night started to return to their tents for some much-needed rest. A weary Roger Davies, rumpled dark hair falling into his eyes, pulled the flap of his tent open, took one look inside, and moved away with a very confused expression.
"Er... would any of you be so kind as to enlighten me on why there are two young girls asleep in my bed?"
"Because I wanted to frame you for bigamy with minors, get you arrested, and shag your woman while you're in Azkaban," Flint answered sardonically.
Roger scowled at his former rival captain. "If it weren't for the fact that with you dead, I'd have to run the... graveyard shift alone, I would do something hideous and disfiguring to you right now. Shouldn't they be at Hogwarts?"
"Ask THEM," Flint shrugged, "They came here by themselves at the dead of night."
Roger sighed, gave another half-hearted glare at the former Slytherin, and walked back into his tent. Clearing his throat, he reached over and shook both girls by their shoulders.
Ginny opened her eyes first, then blinked, startled, at the face of a former temporary Defense professor. "Er... Professor Davies?"
"Call me Roger," he replied, "What are you doing here?"
"Well... I think Emma wanted to find out what happened to her parents, and I... wanted to come help..." Ginny replied uncomfortably, "And then Flint came, and then we were put to work, and..."
"And you should be back in Hogwarts, both of you," Roger said gently, "Here, do you think you can make the trip back?"
Both girls nodded, scrambling to their feet and trying to smooth down their rumpled robes. Ginny picked up her bookbag.
Roger nodded slowly. "All right. I will escort you back to Hogwarts, you two. Come on..."
~*~
It was too early for visitors, and Cho Chang was brushing her long hair, still damp from a shower, when there came a soft knock on the door. Throwing on a blue bathrobe, she walked, barefoot, from the bathroom, through her quarters, and towards the door. "Who is it?" she called out softly, just as she pulled it open.
And stared, her wand dropping from nerveless fingers and her mouth falling open, eyes drifting from a dusty Auror's robe slowly upwards towards his face, even more weary than it had been, some six months back, but wearing a relieved smile and love shining in his gaze...
"Roger?" she whispered, her voice quivering and incredulous even as scalding tears began to swim in her eyes, "Roger! You... you're HERE..."
Roger's explanations about how he had brought back some students, and wanted to see if she were alive and well after the Hogsmeade visit yesterday with the battle, along with all of his good intentions, were abruptly cut short when he found his arms full of soft, sobbing woman, her face buried in his neck as she clung to him, crying her relief that he had survived, that he was really here. He had put his arms around her to catch her when she launched herself at him, but his embrace tightened a moment later, and he walked forward two steps, into her quarters and kicking the door shut with his foot. Roughened fingers tangling slowly through her wet, cool hair, he cupped her chin and claimed her mouth.
It had been too long, and too much, and things had been way too dark, and even as she tried to still her sobs, taking great, gulping breaths between frantic kisses, he was trying to rein in the fire inside before it blazed out of control, keeping his hands with conscious effort on her waist. But she understood; Cho always understood, because they knew each other like that from all the past years' closeness, and she was the one to pull him down to her as she fell backwards onto a couch, fingers nimbly moving over the fastenings of his robes as he buried his face in the hair by her neck and breathed.
"I've missed you..." Cho whispered out as his lips brushed against her collarbone, her voice slightly thick. She wasn't sure when her bathrobe got unfastened, but with the way he was touching her, she couldn't make her mind work enough to remember.
"I'm back now," he murmured against her bare, smooth skin as he shrugged out of his robes. And that was the extent of the speaking for a long time.
Much later, she opened her eyes and cupped his face with delicate hands. "When do you have to go back to the field?"
"Today..." he answered, then added, "But not to fight. To clean up... to re-organize and restore."
At her confused expression, he gently told her the news that thus far, none at Hogwarts knew. "Late last evening, in the middle of Hogsmeade, Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort faced off in a duel... the last duel. Only one man came out of that alive."
She gasped.
"Lord Voldemort is dead."
Disclaimer: Am being whipped into cooperation (in a completely un-naughty way) by Mynuet. Am powerless and still lack ownership of Slytherin Quidditch Gods. m000...
~*~
Nightfall.
Everyone who had been in Hogsmeade that day had returned, most with haggard, wary faces. There were several who had relatives in the little village, and several more who knew that their family or loved ones had fought, on one side or another, in the battle.
The doors were locked. No one was allowed to leave the castle until it was deemed safe.
Prefects patrolled the hallways, monitoring to make sure that everyone was safe in their Common Rooms. Ginny Weasley and Emma Dobbs wordlessly met each other in the Great Hall, and headed towards the direction of the History of Magic corridor.
They continued down the empty hallway for several paces, before Ginny, an expression of determination on her face, faced the rival Slytherin Quidditch captain. "Dungeons, twenty minutes."
Emma slowly nodded, understanding the implications, and the two Prefects parted in the hallway where no one ever loitered.
~*~
An hour later found Ginny and Emma quietly crawling out of a secret gate that faced the lake. Both were completely quiet as Emma locked it behind her, quietly murmuring a spell to erase their footprints in the snow even as she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. Ginny shifted her bookbag, lightened with a spell and filled with various supplies, over her shoulder. Still silent, the two moved farther and farther away from the castle, down the same road that the carriages had taken earlier.
Hogsmeade was quiet and dark when they arrived, no more signs of battle, though the streets were filled with people both moving and still.
"Aurors," Emma whispered to Ginny, eyeing their robes as the two approached, heads down and footsteps quiet. I think they're trying to... sort things out, now."
Cautiously, the two approached the village, Emma's eyes peeled for signs of her parents as Ginny looked for... well, many things, really. Draco. Her brothers. People to help... who could tell her things.
"I don't see my parents anywhere," Emma began, but before she could even finish that statement, a burly man in Auror robes stepped straight into their path and grabbed each girl by an arm. One side of his mud-splattered face marred with a gash that ran from his cheekbone to his jaw, his hair (possibly brown, though it was too muddied to tell) matted to his head, his nose apparently having been broken recently, and the other side of his face not bleeding puffed up with a bruise the size of an apple. He might have been unrecognizable, except for the teeth.
"What the hell are you two doing here?" he snarled, glaring down at both of them.
~*~
Ginny looked panicked and tried to yank her arm out of his grasp, but Emma merely glared back, Slytherin Chaser to former Slytherin Chaser, almost as if arguing over Quidditch tactics in the Common Room. "Not your business, Flint, let us go."
"And here I thought you lot were supposed to have gone back to Hogwarts and stayed there," Flint barked, "Well? Looking for someone? As far as I know, none of your prat brothers are casualties. Although as I understand it, the dungbomb-bearing double-trouble duo managed to turn some Death Eater or another into a toothless alligator," Flint glowered at the Weasley girl.
Emma looked somewhat impressed. "Which Death Eater was it?"
"We are still trying to identify him... er... her... IT," Flint muttered, before rolling his eyes, "Unfortunately, gender distinction of zoo animals wasn't one of the chapters in 'The Auror's Training Manual'."
Ginny waved a hand impatiently. "They'll change it back eventually, unless they need alligator parts for prank components..."
Flint snorted, the action peculiar due to his injured nose. "And they call Slytherins evil."
Emma cleared her throat, the sound betraying the first hint of nervousness that she had exhibited that evening. "Speaking of... evil Slytherins... would you happen to know what became of my parents?"
Releasing Ginny's arm and using his sleeve to wipe away some of the blood trickling down his neck, he jerked his head in the direction of where two Aurors were carefully moving a pile of dead bodies. "Over there somewhere. Apparently one got hit by the Killing Curse and the other stabbed, although I'm not sure which is which."
Emma froze, her face blanching a sickly snow-white. "My... parents... killed..." she managed to stammer out, her voice slightly choked, "Both of them?"
Flint looked warily at the younger Slytherin's rapidly paling face and pulled away slightly. "That's what happens in battle, kid."
Emma dropped to the ground, her hands rapidly clenching and unclenching as tears, coupled oddly with a strange, dreary smile, slipped down her face. "DEAD! Both of them... DEAD! Of their madness and megalomania... and... and...!" Ginny and the uncomfortable Flint only saw a glimpse of her face before she raised her hands to over it and started to sob... and laugh, shoulders shaking slightly with a twisted mix of hysterical grief and joy.
"Urgh," Flint grumbled, raising his grimy hands to cover his ears, "Bloody hell... stop your caterwauling, girl... there is the unsavoury business of wading through piles of dead people to look for survivors still to be done, Merlin only knows how many were killed, civilian or otherwise, runaway Death Eaters to track down, and I can really use a Healing Potion and a firewhiskey right now. Mad female hysteria is REALLY not something I want to deal with... all right, kindly shut up unless you want all Aurors in a five kilometre radius to flock over, thinking that you're being killed as a virgin sacrifice. Unless you're going to make yourselves somewhat useful, go back to the castle and bawl over there."
Even as Emma's brief bout of emotional distress started to abate, Ginny reached into one of her pockets and fished out a small vial of purple Healing Potion. "There, take that one, I have more."
Flint squinted at it with his non-swollen eye, then his muddy, battered face cracked into a grin. "And where's the firewhiskey?"
"No disrespect meant," Ginny mumbled with a straight face, "But you need a shower far more than you need a drink."
The former Slytherin captain roared with laughter, then unceremoniously pointed her and the now-calming Emma towards the direction of more still bodies. "All right. Get to work, since you're here."
Snapping a jaunty mock-salute marred by the Eye Roll of Ineffable Contempt, Ginny replied with a quick "Yes, SIR!" and moved gingerly towards a woman clutching her broken leg and moaning in pain.
~*~
By five o'clock in the morning, the small apothecary's worth of potions and supplies that had occupied Ginny's bookbag had been quite visibly reduced, and both girls, having cast Charms and dispensed Potions for several hours without rest, were about to fall asleep on their feet.
Emma was on her fifth yawn after casting yet another Ferula charm to splint a boy's arm, when Flint, looking somewhat more weary but less battered, approached the two girls. "Well then, you two look a bit fagged."
"Oh, really..." Ginny's voice was killingly bland.
"Perhaps you should sleep a while," Flint remarked, as if stumbling upon a new truth of the universe. "Tent over there still empty. I'm sure they won't mind you enlarging the cot. Would be bad if we had you two as patients on top of everything else."
"We thank you for your incredible thoughtfulness and caring nature," Emma remarked sarcastically as the Auror pulled them towards the tent in question with a snort. But as soon as they were inside, both looked at the cot with longing eyes, and Emma cast one last charm to enlarge the thing to twice its original size, and then the Gryffindor and Slytherin, not even close friends by any means, both lay down, side by side, and fell asleep within seconds of closing their eyes.
~*~
The daytime shift was starting, and the Aurors who had been working through the night started to return to their tents for some much-needed rest. A weary Roger Davies, rumpled dark hair falling into his eyes, pulled the flap of his tent open, took one look inside, and moved away with a very confused expression.
"Er... would any of you be so kind as to enlighten me on why there are two young girls asleep in my bed?"
"Because I wanted to frame you for bigamy with minors, get you arrested, and shag your woman while you're in Azkaban," Flint answered sardonically.
Roger scowled at his former rival captain. "If it weren't for the fact that with you dead, I'd have to run the... graveyard shift alone, I would do something hideous and disfiguring to you right now. Shouldn't they be at Hogwarts?"
"Ask THEM," Flint shrugged, "They came here by themselves at the dead of night."
Roger sighed, gave another half-hearted glare at the former Slytherin, and walked back into his tent. Clearing his throat, he reached over and shook both girls by their shoulders.
Ginny opened her eyes first, then blinked, startled, at the face of a former temporary Defense professor. "Er... Professor Davies?"
"Call me Roger," he replied, "What are you doing here?"
"Well... I think Emma wanted to find out what happened to her parents, and I... wanted to come help..." Ginny replied uncomfortably, "And then Flint came, and then we were put to work, and..."
"And you should be back in Hogwarts, both of you," Roger said gently, "Here, do you think you can make the trip back?"
Both girls nodded, scrambling to their feet and trying to smooth down their rumpled robes. Ginny picked up her bookbag.
Roger nodded slowly. "All right. I will escort you back to Hogwarts, you two. Come on..."
~*~
It was too early for visitors, and Cho Chang was brushing her long hair, still damp from a shower, when there came a soft knock on the door. Throwing on a blue bathrobe, she walked, barefoot, from the bathroom, through her quarters, and towards the door. "Who is it?" she called out softly, just as she pulled it open.
And stared, her wand dropping from nerveless fingers and her mouth falling open, eyes drifting from a dusty Auror's robe slowly upwards towards his face, even more weary than it had been, some six months back, but wearing a relieved smile and love shining in his gaze...
"Roger?" she whispered, her voice quivering and incredulous even as scalding tears began to swim in her eyes, "Roger! You... you're HERE..."
Roger's explanations about how he had brought back some students, and wanted to see if she were alive and well after the Hogsmeade visit yesterday with the battle, along with all of his good intentions, were abruptly cut short when he found his arms full of soft, sobbing woman, her face buried in his neck as she clung to him, crying her relief that he had survived, that he was really here. He had put his arms around her to catch her when she launched herself at him, but his embrace tightened a moment later, and he walked forward two steps, into her quarters and kicking the door shut with his foot. Roughened fingers tangling slowly through her wet, cool hair, he cupped her chin and claimed her mouth.
It had been too long, and too much, and things had been way too dark, and even as she tried to still her sobs, taking great, gulping breaths between frantic kisses, he was trying to rein in the fire inside before it blazed out of control, keeping his hands with conscious effort on her waist. But she understood; Cho always understood, because they knew each other like that from all the past years' closeness, and she was the one to pull him down to her as she fell backwards onto a couch, fingers nimbly moving over the fastenings of his robes as he buried his face in the hair by her neck and breathed.
"I've missed you..." Cho whispered out as his lips brushed against her collarbone, her voice slightly thick. She wasn't sure when her bathrobe got unfastened, but with the way he was touching her, she couldn't make her mind work enough to remember.
"I'm back now," he murmured against her bare, smooth skin as he shrugged out of his robes. And that was the extent of the speaking for a long time.
Much later, she opened her eyes and cupped his face with delicate hands. "When do you have to go back to the field?"
"Today..." he answered, then added, "But not to fight. To clean up... to re-organize and restore."
At her confused expression, he gently told her the news that thus far, none at Hogwarts knew. "Late last evening, in the middle of Hogsmeade, Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort faced off in a duel... the last duel. Only one man came out of that alive."
She gasped.
"Lord Voldemort is dead."