A/N: Meh. This is just another crap story by me. But, what they hell, I like it, and its wonderfully screwed up. General inspiration and some quotes come from the song "Jet Black New Year" By Thursday. (Hence the title)

Usual disclaimers apply. I'm still not making any money here. But I'm thinking about going for a 200% raise. Not that it will change anything. Oh well.

Jet Black New Year

By Alice

It was a desperate party. No one knew where the alcohol came from, and no one cared. It had been New Years Eve, but there had been no party planned. There were nineteen of us left. No food, no water, no hope. Why not have a party? There was nothing else to do. It was a desperate grasp at our old lives, before it was all ruined. As Seamus had put it, "How can we take this chance not to celebrate?" We all new it was probably our last few days.

Not that anyone talked about that.

Someone started playing a guitar in the great hall. It was Dean Thomas, and he wasn't that good but people danced anyways. Downing shot after shot, we danced with friends, danced with lovers, and soon, when the alcohol took effect, we danced with everyone else.

At first, we all knew we were suppressing something, and the atmosphere seemed very forced. We were all just trying to ignore the pain. Then, slowly we managed to drive everything except the music away. Spinning, laughing… The laughter was beautiful, it had been the first heard in the great hall for months. Since everything had gone to shit.

For a while, we actually all managed to forget about the pain. We forgot about death eaters that were camped just outside the Hogwarts border. We forgot about the dead, and the dying. We forgot about the hopelessness we had felt just hours ago. We danced, we sang, and we kissed, promising each other that this year would be better, but not remembering the problems of the year that was about to end.

It might have been Ron who called out that the great hall was too big, and that we should move somewhere where there was better acoustics, but at that point, it could have been anyone. It doesn't really matter in the telling of things I suppose. All you need to know is that the idea was well accepted, and we began to move down the hall, picking and disregarding rooms at random.

How we ever managed to make it to the astronomy tower was never known. We might have seemed like a happy group, singing and tossing back the bitter shots. Oddly enough, it was Neville who remembered to bring the alcohol. He was the only one at that point who was fit to remember anything. Even Snape, who was the only teacher left, had apparently let go. He had one arm around Blaise and one around Draco. They were the only Slytherin's who had not walked out during the first week of the siege. However, that didn't matter, four months and three battles later, most of the other houses had been whittled down to five or six students each. Alas, I do not have long, and this is common knowledge, so I have to move on.

One of the things I can explain is why we decided to go up to the astronomy tower. We wanted to see the stars. Somehow, we managed to remember that we had not been outside in five months, but not why. We trooped upstairs, tripping over each other in our drunken excitement. There was a sort of slack-jawed silence when we reached the open balcony and looked up at the sky. The stars were beautiful, and for a moment, no ones glance wavered, and everyone wondered why we did not come out here more often. It was Hermione's gaze that fell first. She was too smart for her own good even when she was drunk. It was her scream that made the others look down. As other screams joined hers, the sudden harmonic crescendo brought our misery back in full force, and our intoxicated surprise doubled the pain.

The screams stopped as suddenly as they started, and then the crying began. It was a hopeless sound, filled with a fear and despair that was contagious and incurable. Even Snape's stone cold façade had broken, and he looked like he wanted to be sick.

Clouds of jet-black smoke hung in a low cloud clouds over the death eater camp. It was the polluted waste of over one hundred small magical fires. The fires themselves we almost pretty, each one glowing a different color. He's reading over my shoulder now, and says I'm talking gibberish, and should get on with it, because it's almost midnight. He is right of course; it was eleven o'clock when we came up here, and now… It is almost twelve.

It was Blaise who started it all, though he did not mean to, I suppose. He just gave up. After having a discussion with Draco for several minutes, he stood up, swore loudly, and turned to the rest of us. He, rather bluntly, told us that he was turning himself in, and that his family was out there, and he missed them. We all nodded sympathetically. Blaise had been on the edge of giving in, and none of us were too surprised. However, we were surprised when four out of five Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff joined them. We did not try and stop them. I could tell by a few of the faces around the room, that there was others who were considering joining them.

After mumbling useless apologies, they darted from the astronomy tower, an almost eager look on their faces. We moved out onto the balcony, and watched their progress across the lawn. Finally, they reached the wards, their hands raised in a sign of surrender. The second they crossed Lucius Malfoy raised his wand, and killed all six of them. He turned without another glance, leaving the bodies for lower death eaters to pick up and burn. There would be no better treatment for traitors.

Draco Malfoy turned away with a sick gag. I watched with a frown, as he tossed back another shot, trying to bring back that blissful feeling with little luck. Hannah Abbot started to sob miserably. She had been engaged to one of the Ravenclaws. She too, went back to the bottles. One by one, the rest of us joined them, but the atmosphere was to far gone to bring back. Each drink just made us more miserable then the last.

Twenty minutes later, we were all slumped on the floor. Hannah was in the corner, fondling a shard of broken glass, as if daring herself to push down and end it all. None of us could be bothered to take it away from her. She was still sobbing quietly. Hermione had somehow ended up nestled against Snape. She was lying on his chest, and every once and a while, he brushed her dark hair away from his face, because it tickled him. They were speaking in low voices, about poisons and potions to cure drunkenness.

The minutes stretched out filling everyone with a painful sort of emptiness. Many people were watching the clock, counting down until midnight. Until the beginning of a year that they knew would be worse then the last. No one said much until suddenly, Hermione's discussion with Snape came to an abrupt halt, and so did Hannah's weeping. For a split second there was a deadly silence in the room. Then Hannah screamed.

It was a painful sort of scream, and when we all whipped our heads around; we saw her lying on the floor with her eyes rolling back in her head. She had finally slit her throat, and the scream died as quickly as it started. As Hannah fell still, Hermione looked at Snape and nodded. He acknowledged this with a naught a blink but Hermione seem satisfied, and stood up.

Despite the fact she was swaying slightly, she explained in a very clear voice that Snape had four bottles in his pockets. She told us that none of them were labeled; an each held enough liquid for two people to have a drink. When Seamus asked why they should care what was in Snape's pockets, she told him to shut up and let her finish. She said that one of the bottles contained a sobering potion, and the other three contained poison.

Seamus looked about to ask why they should care again, so I elbowed him in the ribs. Hermione looked remorsefully at Hannah, and told them all that they needed someone to be sober to prevent that from happening again. She thought for a moment, and then said softly that they needed eight people who were willing to die to possibly save the others.

It was Draco who asked why they didn't save three lives by having each of them sample the bottle, then waiting for the effects to take hold before giving the correct potion to the lucky partner. I thought this seemed logical, but Hermione quickly disposed of that notion. As it turned out, the sobriety potion had a very negative effect when it was oxidized, and to put it bluntly, would become useless after only minutes.

She was still waiting for volunteers, so I stood up and waited beside her. Slowly others joined us. Ron, Neville, of course, they were always eager to make a place for themselves. Then Ernie, Susan, and Justin got up as well. Terry Boot, the last Ravenclaw, looked down at the body of Hannah before standing up. With one last glance at the room around him, Draco stood up, volunteering himself with a look that said, "What have I got to loose?"

With a sad smile, Hermione handed out the potions. I ended up sharing mine with Draco, but I didn't mind. Once you fight beside someone, knowing you might have to save their lives at any moment, childhood rivalry seemed very trivial. On three, we broke the wax seal on the potions, and took a gulp, then handed it to our partners, who finished the bottles. Ernie let his slip through his fingers and it shattered on the floor dramatically.

Though I gagged slightly on the taste, I seemed luckier then most. Justin and Susan collapsed to the floor almost immediately. They were fallowed almost instantly by Ron and Neville witch made me sad, but not so much as one might think. I suppose that after a while, you can't find some of the emotions you once tried to repress, like grief. Does that make me a monster? I suppose it does, not that I don't have plenty of other qualifications that would make me a monster. Alas, I digress. They are dead, and time for my rambling monologue is running out.

It was a lengthily waiting game, between Terry, Ernie, Draco and I. We sat in a tense circle, impatiently biting our lips at the impending doom. But the end was rather anticlimactic. Terry and Ernie just seemed to slip out of the world, and Terry even seemed to sigh with relief as he joined his fallen housemates.

A few minutes later, Draco and I began to feel more sober, and with each passing moment, felt more like we'd rather have been the ones to die. The idea of sacrificing six people, almost one third of the Hogwarts resistance, seemed foolish at best and downright murderous at worst. Ironic in that a drunken haze of fear, we created the death we were terrified of. Draco looked longingly at his glass, and I didn't blame him.

We sat down beside each other, and watched as the rest continued to devour the remaining alcohol, surrounded by the bodies of there companions. It was an eerie tableau, but neither Draco nor I were very inclined to do anything about it. After all, in the scale of things it really would make no difference.

However, I suppose I should have done more when Seamus went insane, however, I was feeling rather apathetic, and really, there wasn't a lot I could have done. But that doesn't change the fact that I should have tried harder. After all, Draco and I were the only sober ones there, and you really can't trust him with this sort of thing. But as I must reiterate, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Dean was dead as soon as the bottle of fire whiskey shattered on his head, and shards of glass embedded themselves into his skull. As for Seamus, he began trying to claw his eyes out, and upon a quick conference between Draco and myself, we decided that anyone to approach him would probably lose there lives as well.

After a few minutes he collapsed. Looking around the room, he seemed perfectly sane, until he saw Dean and Hermione. Hermione, who had consumed more alcohol in the last ten minutes then she had all night, was looking as the corpse of her friend with something akin to rapt fascination but was probably closer at that point to morbid curiosity. Seamus promptly threw up on himself, and then dashed from the tower. We haven't seen him since, but then again, we didn't look.

It seemed to take Hermione along time to realize that it was just the four of use left. I think it rather shocked her to the bodies of one of the final resistances of Voldemort strewn around. I think that was the time where it sunk in for all of us that the war was over, and that we had done Voldemort's job for him. Hermione crawled back into Severus' arms and Draco and I toasted the coming year, which was now only an hour away. Neither one of use particularly wanted to be clear-headed when we welcomed it.

I'm sure someone will wonder about the demise of Hermione and Snape as well, but I must be brisk, as my time is almost up. Suffice to say that Hermione and our ex-professor Snape (who committed themselves to each other last month) killed each other. Draco just snapped over my should that that is not sufficient, so I will tell you that they slit each others wrists, and died embracing each other. I know that they were welcomed into the light holding hands, just like they would have wanted it. Severus had a very well disguised sentimental streak.

When it was just to two of us left, Draco suggested that I write a final note of the last stand at Hogwarts. I am sending this out with Hedwig and she will be covered in the last of the invisibility potion. I don't know where she will go, or if whoever reads this will be on our side, but if your are, I'm sorry. We did our best, but we were just kids really, and in the end we couldn't do it. Despite all odds, we survived this long, and our time is up. I wish the side of light better luck in the New Year.

Whoever wins, the fate of Draco and I will no doubt become legend, and it is not something to write here. Suffice to say that for good or bad, it will end tonight. This is a newspaper tragedy, and I've nothing left to give. I've been walking between the ghosts of my fallen comrades for to long.

Fare thee well

Harry Potter