Title: An Inevitable Fate
Chapter Thirty Nine: Surrender
Author: KissThis
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Draconis x Hermonia
Setting: 6th year in Hogwarts.
Disclaimer: I did not create Harry Potter or any of the characters from the Harry Potter series. I also have a mortal fear of lawyers. Harry Potter and all its rights ©JK Rowling.
A/N: SO sorry it's been so long, but everything's just been in shambles. Computers have been dying all around me and a great deal of writing has been lost leaving me in tears. Fate is nearing its conclusion, however, and I should be able to rewrite the next chapter in the next 2-3 days. I REALLY hope you enjoy this chapter!
Fingers tightened around Hope's shoulders. She looked down at the creature in her arms and smiled. This was the one who selflessly sacrificed everything for others, and who wouldn't stop until happiness was found. This was the one who stood up against the world's greatest evil and fought bravely to overcome it. This was the woman who represented everything that was pure and right in the universe.
This...
Was...
She...
"Hope...where are the others?" She asked in suddenly with a fear-laced voice.
Hope frowned, and Hermione was torn between confusion and more tears. "They are back on earth. Alive and well – for the time being."
"So it really happened," Hermione whispered. "I'm dead."
Hope nodded and helped Hermione to her feet, but held tight to Hermione's hand. "Hope?"
"You fought bravely, my little warrior."
Tears dripped off Hermione's quivering chin and splattered against her fisted hands. "But it wasn't enough. I lost, and now Voldemort will destroy everything and everyone."
"No, no." Hope insisted, and Hermione's startled face showed her confusion. "You have done more than anyone could have hoped for. You've opened the pathway...the road to victory!"
"I don't understand..."
"The reason your soul tarries in the Void is because I wished to speak with you one last time before you crossed into the Other World. I want to repay the kindness you showed me during my time on Earth."
Hermione frowned, not only because Hope had ignored her confusion, but because the change in topics made no more sense to her than the previous one. Hermione's nails dug into the back of Hope's hand.
"Hope! You're not making any sense!"
The edge's of the blonde's eyes crinkled as she smiled softly, bringing her free hand to cup Hermione's cheek. She brushed the tears from her cheeks in a motherly fashion and ran the pad of her thumb across dewy eyelashes. "I was slipping, Hermione. My soul grew weak until I no longer knew the difference between myself and those whom I had ensnared; Jesus Christ, Kassandra of Troy, Joan of Arc, countless others. The pieces were falling through the cracks, falling faster than I had the time to place them back together."
Now she frowned, "Now that I am finally saying these words aloud I beg your forgiveness for whatever heinous crimes you were forced to commit under my spoiling influence. I had no desire to steal your innocence from you, and now you've paid the cost of my soul's discontent with your life."
Hermione said nothing. She did not weep or shout, but stood resolutely firm staring into pleading sapphire eyes. "May I see them, please?" she finally asked. Her voice was soft.
Hope hesitated, still yearning to hear those words that would pardon her trespasses, but no such words were uttered. Hermione could not give them to her. With a clearing of her throat, Hope waved her hand across the fog encircling them and motioned for Hermione to look closer.
Breath held, Hermione watched a picture form from the insubstantial mists. It was her bedroom, with its characteristic gold furnishings and dark mahogany bed frame. The lights were out and the midnight moon was too high in the sky to lend its light to the shadowed room. It didn't seem to matter though, as her eternal eyes cut through the gloom and illuminated what the darkness had concealed:
A shadowed shape was curled in a nest of gold silken covers, fervently twisting and writhing, jaw working to form cries that she could not hear.
"Harry..." she whispered.
Then, like Alice through the Looking Glass, the world within the picture came rushing up to meet her in a burst of Technicolor and popping sound.
He was screaming; screaming her name. "HERMIONE! Where are you?!" the words were harsh as they fell from his lips. His throat had gone raw from crying – she could still see the shining trails down his cheeks. Hermione reached out for him, but instead of raven locks her hands met only fog.
"I need you 'Mione." Harry was speaking again. "We've always brought our troubles to each others beds, but not that you're gone where do I go? Who do I turn to? How can I cry for you when you're not here to wipe away these tears?"
"Please, Harry." Hermione sobbed. "Please don't cry. I couldn't bare it if you cried because of me."
"COME BACK!"
She heard the sound of ripping silk before the scream and cried. Unable to bear the sight of best friend's violent anguish as he tore her room apart, she buried head in hands and wept. The sounds died away and Hermione saw through watery vision a Harry mourning, drawn up against a shattered bedpost, hugging his knees to his chest.
"Don't go where I can't follow..." he whispered, but Hermione heard it as loudly as if he'd shouted it from atop Gryffindor tower.
The image of her bedroom faded to gray, and she wrapped her arms around herself to stop her body's shaking as she fought back racking sobs.
"Why couldn't you have just let Harry be the bloody hero."
That was Ron's voice.
"Ron?" She watched the gray curtain roll back and the face of her friend come into view.
He was angry; angrier than she'd ever seen him, the red of his face bleeding all the way to his roots. He was striding down an unknown hallway, long-legged gait carrying him faster than Hermione could discern where he was by examining the portraits lining the wall. He was in the dungeon, but any more than that she could not tell.
"Everyone was fine with Harry as champion. Why couldn't you just leave it be?" The hands swinging at his sides clenched into fists. "Why did it have to be you that died?"
Hermione shook her head, forgetting for a moment in her distress that he could not see her. "No, Ron! You mustn't say such things!"
"I wish your places had been exchanged; that Harry had died and you had lived." He lashed out at the wall and the young girl in the portrait shrieked as the frame fell from its nail and crashed to the floor.
Hermione's hands went to her throat, pressing against the sticky trails left by endless tears. "You don't mean that," she breathed. "You can't mean that. Oh Ron! He's your friend! Please, you cannot mean that..."
She tried once more – desperately tried – to fling herself into the vision, but the fog dwelling picture passed straight through her body. Reappearing on the other side, Hermione crumbled inwards on herself, hugging herself hysterically for comfort that would not come.
"I will avenge you," He whispered. Hermione whirled around and found the picture had righted itself onto her side of the fog. The slightly transparent scene overlaid Hope's sad face.
Ron had always had a short-temper and was quick to jump to inappropriate solutions, but this time he looked serious. Dead serious. To Ron, 'avenging' meant killing, and to the rest of the world that meant murder.
"Damn it, Ron! Come to your senses," She yelled. Her voice echoed in the Void's emptiness. "You'll go to Azkaban!"
He stopped suddenly, and for a vain moment Hermione believed she'd actually gotten through to him. But then there occurred a faint rustling sound, like paper kept too long in a crumpled ball now being finally smoothed out. It was a picture.
Picture Hermione was laughing into the wind and sipping on a soda can, her eyes on the shoreline. Childish as always, when the photograph moved (as wizards photos are apt to do) Picture Ron leaned over the side of the boat and sent a hearty splash at Picture Hermione.
It had been taken on the day of her birthday, and completely without her knowledge. She could see Ginny and Draco tubing in the background so it must have been Harry. The photograph was so crumpled it seemed that Ron had been carrying it around with him all this time.
A large wet dot splattered against the shiny surface and Picture Hermione looked up in surprise. Callused fingers quickly wiped the photograph clean again and shoved it back into his pocket.
"I will kill the man who murdered you." The vow set him walking again, and Hermione gave up on trying to follow the twisting turning path he was leading through the dungeons.
Hermione's heart was pounding beneath her breast. The man who had stabbed her was already dead, she'd seen it with her own eyes. That left Harry; who, it seemed, Ron blamed for her death. But Harry wasn't in the dungeons...was he? How much time had passed?
A door blasted open, and Hermione realized that Ron's fist no longer clenched air. Wand in hand, he burst into the exposed room.
Cushioned walls and matted floors. There was a yellowish light emanating from the fluorescent light fixtures fixated to the ceiling; only a few rooms in the whole castle possessed electricity. For some settings it was a necessity. Light glinting off metal caught her eye and her eyes darted across the weapons hanging upon the walls.
She knew this place...
This was the dueling room.
"Oh God!" she gasped, all her air suddenly spent.
"You didn't train her well enough!" Ron shouted, flinging out his wand arm. His face was screwed up in rage, but tears in his eyes caught the light and made his blue orbs shine. "YOU'RE THE REASON SHE'S DEAD!"
At the other end of Ron's wand, Severus Snape did not look up. He was staring down at his hands as if he'd never seen them before, and clutched in them was Hermione's giant long sword. The assassin's blood still stained the blade and the sticky liquid dulled the steel's sheen.
Ron stepped forward and the tip of his wand grazed his professor's jaw. "You killed Hermione," he hissed accusingly, grinding the wooden cylinder into flesh.
Snape didn't even blink. "You're right."
"NO!" Hermione shrieked, but the picture was already fading to gray. "NO! No, no, no, no, NO!" She screamed as if that one monosyllabic word held all her hopes and emotions.
The picture changed again, and this time she was looking into the comforting familiarity of the Gryffindor common room. She almost couldn't bring herself to look at the picture. Her thoughts were still at the other end of the castle, where disaster was near to occurring. Sniffling and still wiping ineffectually at her eyes, Hermione found her newest gaze to be turned to Ginny. Hermione began to smile, despite her internal anguish, because the younger girl looked exactly as she would any other day, curled up on the couch reading a book.
"That's my Ginny," Hermione whispered through a watery smile.
She leaned closer and found with warming remembrance the book to be The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. She loaned it to Ginny ages ago, but had never remembered to ask if she had read it. The cover had been flipped open as well as a few title pages so that the beginning of the first chapter lay unobtrusively in Ginny's lap.
The numeral 'one' that decorated the aging paper was so elaborate and decadent that it took up most of the page, and Hermione read the half page of text quickly, smiling as she fell into the soothing rhythm of a good book. She waited anxiously for Ginny to turn the page – she wasn't sure if there'd be any good books in Heaven, or any at all for that matter – but the page never turned.
"Ginny?" She waited. And waited.
With a strangled cry that made Hermione jump in her skin, the book tumbled from Ginny's limp hands onto her lap and couch, until finally landing upside down upon the carpeting. Slender fingers tried to find purchase on the tightly upholstered sofa, then Ginny sighed as she toppled off the couch and joined her book sprawled out on the hard floor. She'd fainted dead away.
With eyes now closed, Hermione could see they were red from rubbing and there was a pink flush across her skin that no make-up or embarrassment had given her. The frail girl had cried herself into exhaustion.
"Why?" Hermione's demand was softened by the quiet tone of her voice. "Why do they cry?"
She wanted ever so much to reach out and gather the youngest Weasley into her arms, but past experience told her it was pointless. She was a spectator – nothing more. Besides, the vision was turning that empty gray she'd already grown to hate. Her wings ruffled slightly as she half-hopped, half-floated back to Hope.
"Is this true despair? Now that hope is gone?"
Hope clasped both of Hermione's hands and drew her close, nodding into thick chocolate curls. "Yes. This is true despair." Her hands squeezed Hermione's suddenly. "But it is not my passing they mourn. It is yours."
Hermione stiffened.
"Hope can never truly die," she continued quickly. "Humans can. That is the fate of all mortal things."
Hermione closed her eyes and buried her face in the crook of Hope's shoulder. "What now?"
"Now we will talk of the favor I grant you in return for your kindness—"
Hermione shook her head, and Hope cut her words short. "First, show me Draco." Her whispered voice was muffled by skin and hair. "Then we will talk of this favor..."
Hope nodded, though time was short, and gestured at the cloud of fog once more. Allowing Hope's arms to remain around her, Hermione twisted in the blonde's grasp and fixed both amber eyes on the receding gray.
The room was daunting – filled to the brim with flowers and candles, the walls decorated with sketchings of herself she recognized to be from Seamus' drawing book – but she only had eyes for the boy lying slumped against a glass dais.
The room's centerpiece, she was taken-aback to find her immobile body trapped within the crystal coffin. The glass above her throat was fogged, as Draco's warm but ragged breaths steamed the surface of her tomb. Wind from an open window ruffled his bangs, and a smile crept onto her face as the familiar urge to brush them back made her fingers tingle.
He'd fallen asleep trying to press his body through the glass barrier and Hermione's body had, for obvious reasons, made no move to assist him. Hermione could have lived with this memory of him in her heart for the rest of Eternity. But some cruel trick of candlelight illuminated the liquid paths running down the sides of the crystal coffin and Hermione's heart broke.
As he slept he cried...
...cried for her.
"No more," she rasped, closing her eyes. When she opened them again, the room – and Draco – were gone. She was suddenly so very cold...
"Hermione – we must hurry!" Hope's voice wavered slightly, alerting Hermione to the other's need. Pulling back, she turned to face the blonde woman, arms wrapped around her torso.
"What is this favor?"
"Because you saved my soul I will give you the choice of whom I inhabit next – to destroy Voldemort. It can be anyone."
Hermione's stomach dropped to the tips of her toes. Unbidden, the faces of her friends flashed in her mind. "I can't do that," she said. "I cannot sacrifice one of my friends."
Hope's fingers curled and the fog above her hand twisted into a tiny orb. "It does not have to be one of your own."
Faces of people she'd never met flashed through the tiny globe. They smiled at her with happy, innocent faces – taunting the decision she was being forced to make. She shook her head violently, pushing Hope's hand away.
"No!"
"War is coming to Earth; you must choose!" Hope insisted.
"How can I?" was Hermione's counter. "You're asking me to pick and choose between innocent people."
"Who will you choose?"
Hermione back winged, drifting into the fog. Hope watched her with sapphire eyes so penetrating, she had to look away. Hermione sunk to her knees, her crystal marker disappearing in a puff of sparkled before it was crushed beneath her weight. The tiny jewel reappeared above Hermione's hands. She cupped her palms instinctively to catch the crystal, but it remained passively floating several inches above them. She reached uncertainly up and the gem balanced itself upon the tip of her finger. She watched with distracting fascination as the crystal rotated lazily on its axis.
"Hermione, please! You must choose now."
Hermione's toying fingers stopped, but the jewel looked no differently than before. She didn't get up, actually going as far as to fold her pearly wings against her back.
"A name!"
Cool amber eyes locked with sapphire. "Hermione Granger."
Hope recoiled as if she'd been struck.
"What?!" She choked.
"You said I could ick anyone, Hope. I choose myself." Hermione resolutely argued.
"You're dead!"
"I know it's in your power to bring me back..."
Hope, shaking her head furiously as if that would dissuade her, opened and shut her mouth several times, floundering, before she finally managed a strangled 'no'.
"No," she repeated -- more firmly this time. "I won't.""YES, YOU WILL!" Hermione screamed. Hope stumbled back, the tips of her wings tangling between her elgs. "I will not sacrifice another persons life."
"I told you," Hope keened. "It doesn't have to be someone you know--"
"Not. This is my responsibility and mine alone. I intend to finish what I started, no matter what the cost." Hermione's hands were clenched into fists, matching the angry look on her face. But Hermione knew that it was not for fear of her that made Hope cower.
"But you don't understand." Hope's voice was near hysterical. "Your thread's been cut! You were fated to die that night!"
Hermione's reply was terse, "I understand that, but--"
"You don't! You have a chance to cross over into the other world! To be at peace! Please, be content with death and allow your soul to pass!"
Wringing her hands, and eyes filled with tears, Hope had crumbled into a complete mess. Something cold settled in Hermione's stomach, and she knew that this conversation was leading to something bad. Even with forewarning, Hermione opened her mouth to ask the inevitable question.
"What's going on, Hope?" She asked, the words forming slowly -- already dreading the answer.
"If I send you back, you'll lose your place in eternity. The Fates will send your soul to purgatory. You'll be stuck in limbo forever!"
Hermione couldn't even draw breath to speak. She didn't see Hope move, but felt her arms go around her waist as Hope embraced her from behind. Blonde hair tickeled her cheek as Hope's chin rested on her shoulder. The arms around Hermione's midsection tightened as their owner pressed her face into the crook of Hermione's neck.
"I've already killed your body," she whispered; lips against skin. "Please don't make me kill your soul as well..."
Hermione shivered and watched a gentle flow of tears roll off the curve of her breasts and disappear into the fog. Hope was crying. She didn't know how long she'd stared dispondently out into the Void when the mists suddenly rolled back.
White shores...
...and beyond that -- green fields...
...as far as the eye could see.
Hermione waited, hoping for half a second to hear to dulcted tones of a harp or the joyous chorus of angels. But there was no sound. Just a numbing bliss at the end of a long journey.
Hope squeezed her again, only a half-step away from ivory sand.
Hermione felt the weariness seeping through her body and wanted nothing more than to lay upon the sand and give in to the sleep that could only come from complete and utter tiredness of the spirit.
"Choose another name..." Hope whispered throatily against Hermione's neck, slicked wet by the blonde's own tears.
Lush green hills...she could smell the wildflowers dotting the crests. Her wings shifted over Hope's arms. Restless. The smell of the sea was strong; beckoning. It called to her, whispering her name on the salt breeze that stirred her curls across her face, whispering alluring promises. Crying out, beseeching her to cross.
"You're finally here..."
Hermione's eyes burst wide and she neraly stumbled that final half-foot. Teras brimmed and she could out in a voice that echoed like a lost child:
"Mummy?"
Helen Granger's face held a warm smile as she stepped up to the barrier. Hands flew to Hermione's mouth and she sobbed as joyful tears poured down her cheeks.
"We've missed you, princess."
Only Hope's arms around her waist kept her standing.
"Daddy?" she croaked.
Robert Granger smiled as he appeared before her, putting his arm aorund her mother's shoulders.
"I can't believe it's really you," Hermione sobbed.
They were all smiles. Her mother opened her arms. Inviting. "Come home, love."
Hermione continued to weep. The gesture was all too familiar and memories resurfaced of warm nights curled up against her mother watching the fire crackling in the hearth; the sound of crinkling paper as the crisp pages of a new book were turned, her father reading aloud. She remembered those arms -- wrapped around her, stroking her hair, holding her tight. She knew she'd be safe in those arms. Warm. Protected.
"Go to them," Hope pleaded, her breath whistling across the shell of her ear. "They've been too long without their daughter."
"Mum. Dad."
This time Hermione did crumple to the floor, her knees giving out from beneath her. Hope fell with her, cradling the crying girl against her.
"I'm so sorry." She whimpered.
Hope's body stiffened beneath her, willing her to cross the invisible line that separated the Void from eternal peace. Featers knocked loose from their twin sets of wings rained down upon the nakedly sprawled women. One caught in Hermione's bushy curls.
"There are bigger things at work here than you and I." Hermione spoke the words softly, forcing herself to meet her parents' eyes.
Then something inside her broke. "Take me back."
With identical looks of dibelief, her mother's arms dropped and the doors of fog slammed shut. Burying her face in her hands she wept.
"You're the bravest human I've ever known..." Hope said into the silence.
Hermione had no energy to argue -- she could only cry.
"Is your eternal soul worth the lives of people you've never met?"
Hermione choked on her answer; "Yes."
"Why?" Hope was genuinly curious.
"Why not?" The soft-spoken reply threw Hope.
Hermione's murky gaze was off in the fog above and her tear-stickened face was pressed to Hope's navel. "All life is precious. Ot's a gift that should be cherished and protected at all costs. It is through life that we have friends, that we have love."
Light appeared above her head, and she knew Hope's sapphire eyes were bleeding to amber. Power washed over her and she sighed as it flitted across her skin.
"But there is also suffering." Hope's soothing soprano was low and hollow, the ancient power now invoked. "In all lives there is anger, hatred. Sickness and death."
Hermione could hear the frown in her voice and she smiled. Speaking softly through her tears, Hermione answered; "But there is always love..."
Echoing prophetically in the empty Void, Hermione's final word remained even after her soul disappeared.
Still sitting upon the ground with her legs bent around her, Hope reached out and carefully picked Hermione's lingering soul crystal into her hands. Empty amber eyes watched it dissolve and its glittering remains scatter into the fog.
"Goodbye...my brave little warrior..."
With the tears still drying on her cheeks, Hermione was flung back into her body.