I Remember

Many people know of the beginning of this war. Few will know its end

It was us, the Order of Phoenix, and those who remain…of them…who will live to tell this tale, and very few, I believe, who will ever repeat it.

We knew they were coming. Dumbledore sent the children home, many refused to leave, all of the seventh year, most of the sixth and many others. Very few ever saw home again.

There were so many. Of them. I stood as one amongst many, alone amongst hundreds. With me were Harry, Ron, Dumbledore, Minerva, Filius, Severus and…Remus.

War drives us to desperate things, to passions we never saw. Such were the passions, loves of Harry and Ginny, Ron and Lavender, Minerva and Severus, and Remus and I. Desperate as our decisions may have been, the frantic search for comfort and open arms, I do not regret the choices we made, that I made.

All I have I have to do is sleep and I'm there again. All I have to do is close my eyes, to believe he loves me again.

Bang. The doors were gone, not knocked over but gone. They are here. Wands at eye level. "Show no mercy", Harry's voice rings clear, through and through.

Avada Kedavra.

As they come I repeat it over and over, as Harry as shown me to do. "He knows something" I thought as he trained me, he taught me alone, away from the rest of Dumbledore's Army. When I failed to kill whatever unfortunate insect he had scrounged up for me, he would remind me. Remind me of the hours of pain my friends had been subjected to. "This is too good for them", he told me.

He never was the same after Sirius died.

I was right. He knew something I did not, I don't believe Dumbledore even knew. They swarmed through the doors, barely fitting thorough, any who fell were trampled underfoot. I learnt by the fourth killing course to aim blindly at the crush, not looking at the faces of the men I killed. I will never know how many died at my hand and wand. I hope never to know.

There were so many. I remember shouting the killing curse a hundred, nay, a thousands times or more, before my vision began to fade, nearly drained of my magic, no matter how many I killed, there were always more. Then I saw them, and so did he. We forced our way through the fields of white, whether living or dead, and we saw them. Harry fought well. No one can deny him that. But he fell, as did so many others. It cannot have been in vain my mind screamed, I have not come this far to lose. As he fell, I rose. He was the stag, Ron was the hound, and Remus was the wolf. And I…I am the phoenix, I rise from the ashes. The very embodiment of every man, woman and child he has slain. I am the Phoenix.

I picked up Harry's wand and I uttered those words Harry taught me so well, the look on the face of that monster who thought he had won was frozen on his face forever more. But then it went wrong…

A green light began to spread up the wand, splitting as it went. I knew how this would end. But I had not counted on him loving me as much as I loved him. He grabbed my hand, told me he loved me, and kissed me for the very last time. My vision filled with green, and when it was gone, my lover lay among the fallen, of the ashes.

Numb from shock, I could only help the others, pick up the pieces of a life I once knew. Then the list came. Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape, Sybil Trelawney, Professor Sprout, Professor Vector, Rubeus Hagrid, Hannah Abbot, Luna Lovegood, Ronald Weasley, Gilderoy Lockhart, Molly Weasley, Fred and George Weasley, Charlie Weasley, Rita Skeeter, Mundungus Fletcher, Draco Malfoy, the Patil twins, Seamus Finnigan, Frank and Alice Longbottom, Nymphadora Tonks, Harry Potter and Remus Lupin. These were the names on lists of the dead. The names that matter to me.

I have done what I was trained to do. And as I became the Phoenix, I lost what mattered most to me. I am the Phoenix. And the image that was Hermione Granger… fades.

I have become what I was born to be.