Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 36

J.K. Rowling can control the Harry Potter monsters.

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Hermione was not at breakfast.

Harry, busy with his battle plans, considered how Ernie and Tracey could run the distraction.

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In fact she was running. And a troll blinked as it followed her out the front door.

"Sunlight didn't freeze it?!" she squeaked.

Flying down the steps faster than she thought possible, she pelted toward Hagrid's hut, wand out. The troll was faster. Its club clipped her robe, knocking her down in a cloud of debris. She fell with an "ow!" and saw it lift its club to strike again.

"Wingardium leviosa!" she pointed her wand at the club.

The club froze in its position. The troll tugged at it four times, until it lifted its stumpy legs clear off the ground.

Hermione rose quivering. "Silen – Silencio!" she stuttered. The grunting and huffing beast went quiet. It looked both ways, perturbed by the lack of sound.

Then it leapt toward her.

"Protego!" She clapped a shield around it. "Silencio! Wingardium Leviosa! Expelliarmus!" It floated a foot off the ground, taking swipes at her but unable to touch anything.

The ground began to shake, as if a freight train were coming. She took a step backward, and over her shoulder the safety of Hagrid's hut beckoned.

Maintaining her wand on the troll, she took another step backward. The troll's movements became erratic. Its fingers quivered convulsively, reaching for the club. It hunched over, arms tearing up grass.

And the shaking earth throbbed painfully. Hermione took two more steps. "Where is everybody?"

Then, earth shattering, everything exploded.

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Harry knelt beside her. No pulse. No breath. His armstrength waned. He beheld her stilled body and sobbed, one broken sob. Choc stared at her, first with one eye and then the other.

"Hermione!" Harry shouted, as if shouting could change what had happened.

"No!" He cried, now the tears tumbling out, down his face, and into his robes. "Don't die!" He gasped for air, the fresh and ancient fear drowning him.

"Please," he whispered. Sometimes a whisper, with its incipient power is louder than a shout.

But this did him no good. The dust drifted lazily about in the sunlight. His phoenix came and spread its beautiful wings over the girl's folded hands. A single tear slipped from Choc's eye and fell to Hermione's arm. Even that phoenix tear did nothing.

"You said you wouldn't leave me," he sobbed over her stilled form.

Albus Dumbledore, arriving on cue, coming from goodness knows where, peered at Harry's stricken face from the edge of the crater. Minutes passed.

"A student has died," Albus finally intoned. What just happened? The hairs on his arms stood straight up. His heart hammered fast. This is magic – in the air, in the earth, everywhere. He felt it, a restless breeze twisting his beard. This is ... dangerous magic. Complete synesthesia of every danger I have ever known.

Where the path to the lake had been, now in a crater Harry sat. He alone had crossed the indefinable boundary rim and gone to cradle Hermione.

Albus stood back, watching Harry on the little knoll in the middle, the small boy surrounded by the rich brown soil of Hogwarts, and his best friend there enshrined – yet he knew she was no longer – dead to the twinkling golden light.

Harry did not notice his Headmaster at all.