The air above Hogwarts grounds was heavy as lead. The sky in a faux-night time, thick black clouds churning and rumbling above them all, thin slivers of magnesium bright lightning intervening with the solid darkness.
A mystical fog lay above the battle ground, clouds of magical colour caked the mist in sickly death-green.
Harry lay, conscious but in extreme pain stunned on his back with fog filling his lungs. He struggled to his feet, clawing at the damp earth and getting great sods of the near-black dirt encased under his finger nails. There was a distinct musty aroma, of death, the stormy weather and it made his lungs scream for warmer, more comforting air. He stood shakily surveying the blank field around him. Bodies everywhere like a scene from a muggle world war, all he could see was row after row, pile after pile of cloaks, dismembered limbs and people he had once known, now devoid of breath.
The air thickened yet again and he exhaled and watched patterns form in his visible breath; then he saw her.
He wasn't sure it was a dream, or if he was dead. Trapped somewhere in a strange sense of limbo, after all, everything had fallen extremely silent. She was tiptoeing around the layers of bodies towards him, her white dress torn, covered in mud and stained pinkish-red from her many wounds. Almost dancing, the way she gracefully manouevered throught the macabre maze, of former friends and aquaintances. Her skirt flowing with just the generation of the breeze from her own movements, and the overall ghostly whiteness of her face, and dress, as she neared him in this deathly ballet.
He must be dead, he reasoned, it was too surreal. She looked so beautiful, literally a sight for sore eyes, she gave - what Harry was lead to believe – a fleeting pseudo-smile, and drew level with him.
"You did it" she said, with what sounded like the last of her confidence. He merely nodded, the gravity of the situation was bigger than words. She tried to smile but was overcome by tears. She shook violently with sobs and lurched forward for him, clinging him, desperate to be in his arms, somewhere safe. Somewhere familiar.
He held her close, his nose buried deep within her expanse of hair, deep beneath the smell of musty earth, and singed skin and hair, he could still detect the beautiful aroma he treasured, the one that clung to his robes, and his sheets long after she had left.
He wasn't sure how long they had stood there now, and Hermione was also doubtful, but he treasured this feeling of horrific finality. Everything was over, or so the situation lead them to believe. Harry, however could not shake the feeling of a bowling ball residing somewhere in his gut, the overriding fear that this might not be the end. He shivered acknowledging the fact, regaining some feeling in his skin, noticed the chill that was in the air, and the feverish sensation he received from Hermione's touch.
"Is this it? Are we all that's left?" he said, with a high and uneven voice that reminded Hermione of a few years back, and the endless mocking Harry and Ron received from her over their breaking voices.
Hermione nodded before replying. "We're the only ones conscious at least" she said, spreading her arm out in a fashion that looked like she was offering Harry some kind of morbid feast. Harry gulped. Hard.
"Ron?" he managed to squeak out, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Hermione shook her head, silvery trickles flowing down her cheeks, and held him closer than ever.
She inhaled his scent deeply, longingly, she had a sensation of dimming hope, that now they could live on together, with nothing but the past to bring them down. Hermione knew deep down that the golden shimmering future she was imagining was probably far from the truth, but she had to hold on to that light. Like a tiny flame flickering within all the darkness, which no matter how hard she tried could not shake the feeling, the fire would be extinguished.
He traced his finger up her neck, feeling the smoothness of her pale skin, under his rough battle-gnarled, fingers.
Feeling more graceful than he ever had during his fumbling and confusing evening, he tilted her face to his and planted a soft, chasted, kiss on her lips, he felt a comfortable stinging where her briney tears intermingled with the blood from his near-busted lip.
He held her neck firmly in his fingers, as he deepened the kiss, as they both felt such an amazing feeling of relief, of brightness, and of happiness & love. They both felt for a brief moment that they had triumphed and had been filled with light energy, making them feel as they were floating just above the ground (Though, niether of them dared to open their eyes to check). A noise disturbed them, however faint it was in, in the eerie silence that blanketed them it sounded positively deafening.
Harry's bowling ball sensation inflated with the weight of all the bricks in Hogwarts. Voldemorts hand gave a visible twitch.
Harry's eyes flashed over Hermione's with confusion and grief, after the airy feeling he had just experienced, this new sensation creeping over him, felt subterranean. They both stared, bracing eachother in a firm grip of eachother's waists.
"He's alive" Harry said, realising his fears.
"He can't be, I saw you perform that curse" she was sniffing, blowing her nose on her sleeve, as they watched the reptillian like corpse for any further signs of movement.
"The horcruxes" Harry whispered. He looked up meeting her glance strongly, raising his voice to address her directly. "We'd discussed this before, We always presumed that the 7th, and final piece of his soul was within him, but clearly he is cleverer than we bargained for"
"Well, what's the final horcrux? Did you have any clue? A back-up plan?" She questioned. He nodded gravely.
"We didn't like to think about it, but we all know this scar, is far more than a scar" Hermione realised the implications of his statement and grabbed him before she fell to her knees, sobbing more than she felt would ever be humanly possible. This was seven years of her strength and resiliance breaking down infront of their eyes, the brave front diminishing in light of the situation. He cradled her gently.
"Hermione, I am the last horcrux." She pleaded with him with all the warmth in her eyes.
"You knew?"
"I guessed about this time last year, when we couldn't find a plausible final horcrux. Voldemort has proved himself formidable enough not to leave his most vital horcrux inside himself, where it could be so easily destroyed."
Hermione inwardly cursed herself for not noticing this sooner, she could have researched soul methods. Looking in his green eyes, at that flame of hope fading out; she knew she was too late.
The body on the ground moved again, with more force this time.
"We're running out of time" he said, gulping hard, with his eyes now streaming.
"No Harry, there has to be another way", She pleaded now, with all she had.
"There isn't" he said, taking out his wand as she stepped back.
"You can take me with you!" she said as she threw her body against his with such force she almost knocked them both down. "The blast would kill us both"
"I can't ask you to do that" he said gravely. There was a long pause, disrupted intermittently by Voldemort's limbs gaining strength. "Look at me" he demanded. Hermione had turned her face away out of refusal to accept Harry's fate. She did so slowly and met his gaze.
"I love you." He nodded firmly, his voice wavering, and continued. "I know you well enough for you to find some way to blame yourself, but it's not your fault. I've known long enough, I've come to terms with it. I know you can." He raised his wand and pointed it towards them both entwined. "There is nothing," he paused gulping more tears back. "Nothing, you could have done to prevent this. I love you, more than ever" His wand hand shaking violently now. "Ready?" he nodded. She nodded back "I love you" she said. Gazing in his eyes. Without warning he flung her to the ground roughly and she slid away from him rapidly in the mud. She looked up at him pointing the wand at himself. He turned to her as a flash of lightning lit up his face, his scar glowing silver. "I'm sorry." He looked at her, he screamed "I love you" at her, determined these would be his last words. She didn't hear him, an exceptionally large clap of thunder obscured his final words.
"AVADA KEDAVRA" He screamed in the lightning and the rain. His body fell limp in a shower of green sparks and mist, as Hermione let out a most distressing scream. A haunting cocktail of loss and grievance. She ran to his body, it was glowing silver. The sky began to clear; thin rays of sunlight broke through the clouds in piercing white spears. The clouds parted as quickly as they came, the dark mark faded into nothingness, and Hermione could feel the warmth of the setting sun.
A tiny grey orb appeared out of Harry's mouth, in a gasp. It hovered above his mouth for a moment and then floated towards Voldemort's body. It levitated between the two dead wizards and started to grow dramatically in size. The orb of light was roughly the size of a curled up human. It exploded with a violent bang, and an immense shimmer of light unlike any Hermione –the only living witness- had ever seen. Everything returned to normal after the light faded, it was the same dusky sky, the colour seemed to return, and the fog lifted. She ran to Harry's body.
Another tiny orb was floating above his lips, she grabbed him in a strangely compelled & forceful way and pressed her lips against his. She smiled for what felt like the first time in centuries, as Harry's body juddered, and he made a shaking gasp of breath.
She lay with her head on his chest, slowly rising and falling with his breath and a smile on her face.
"Wh-What happened?" Questioned Harry, finding himself to be very much alive and asside from some battle scars, well.
Hermione's mind flickered almost photographically over the many volumes of books she must have read and rested comfortably on "Wizarding battles through the ages" recalling a distant memory, and hopeful technicality.
"Harry, some wizards are blessed. The night your parents were killed; your mother blessed you with something so rare. For in the second you were killed, she loved you with everything she had, ensuring you stayed alive." He nodded "When you sacrificed yourself, Voldemort's soul returned to him, and was destroyed, but your soul was still living. As it has for many years in harmony, his being the weaker, almost dormant soul." She rubbed a hand across his body settling in the palm of one of his, and continued. "Instead of destroying your soul with the blast, someone close by loved you enough at that moment, to spur that effect again, somebody's love prevented your death, Harry" She looked at him with her full eyes, "That somebody, was me."
Love had saved him before, and saved him again tonight, there lay Harry Potter, the boy who loved.