Everytime
Chapter 2- Second Heartbeat
I pushed myself as hard as I could to think of a solution. I swear that Hermione's ghost was standing there right behind me pushing me on, making me think harder. But when I finally hit the solution, it was so simple that I could barely accept how I hadn't thought of it in the first place.
I was just formulating the final details of my plan when a voice echoed throughout my head. You have seventeen hours and thirty minutes remaining, it notified me before fading once again into the blackness.
And then I was ready. I focused my thoughts on contacting—whatever it was that had given me the second chance again, and soon it returned. I am ready, I said, more bravely than I felt.
Already? it said, although not seeming even faintly surprised. You are aware that you have only used half an hour of your time, correct?
I attempted to nod before realizing that I didn't even have a body, much less anything to nod my head with. Yes, I said, summoning every ounce of my Gryffindor courage to the surface. Yes. I'm ready.
Very well. To when would you like to be returned?
To...six o'clock. On the evening of June first, I replied.
Six o'clock yesterday evening, replied the voice, and I felt a momentary jolt at the fact that I had been—dead—for almost a day now.
Good luck, was the voice's final words before the blackness disappeared in a sudden multicolored swirl, and everything seemed to fade away.
- - - -
The night that I died had begun with a blood-red sunset that had cast shadows over the entirety of Hogsmeade village. Harry, Hermione, and I had sat and rested in the Three Broomsticks, enjoying what we all somehow knew was going to be our last drinks of butterbeer. Rosmerta had kept all the interested patrons out of the pub (a downside of Harry's fame, I guess) and allowed us our final moments of peace. How did we know they would be our final moments? Well, Voldemort himself had told us, of course.
It was just after we had found and destroyed the last Horcrux—Voldemort's snake Nagini. We had lured her away from Voldemort's stronghold—located in the vastness of the now-magically expanded Riddle House in Little Hangleton—and then Harry, the only one of us who had been able to kill, had used the Avada Kedavra curse to rid Voldemort of all but the final fragment of his soul.
That night, we had Apparated back to Grimmauld Place—which we had been using as our temporary headquarters—and prepared for a long night of rest. But that wasn't going to happen, for in the middle of the night Harry had awakened with a sudden jolt, shaken me awake, and then proceeded to explain to Hermione and myself that he had received a vision in the night from Voldemort. Harry had even placed the memory in the Pensieve that had been Dumbledore's final gift to him for us to see. And the very sight shocked us to the core.
Harry's dreams had begun innocently—at least, depending on your point of view—enough, simple pleasant dreams of times he and Ginny had been together. Just when I was ready to explode on the Boy-Who-Lived's sorry ass, though, good old Voldemort had finally shown his disgusting head.
Even in the Pensieve, the face chilled all of us to the bone. "Potter," he had hissed, his foul eyes narrowing to tiny slits.
"You—what the hell do you want?" Harry had finally stammered, looking into his eyes with a braveness that impressed even Hermione and me.
"Nothing," Voldemort had said, the cockiness spreading throughout his face, his mouth twisting into a crooked smile.
"I—I don't understand," said Harry. "Nothing? You've taken Dumbledore, Sirius, Remus, my parents, Cedric, Neville's parents, Mrs. Weasley, Bill, Charlie—and you want nothing?"
"Well, I suppose that's a little unfair," Voldemort had replied, the cockiness never leaving his voice. "You see—I simply wish to tell you something."
"And what is that?" Harry had spat.
"If you have any plans to visit Hogsmeade Village, you may want to make them soon," the bastard had spat back, evil oozing from every inch of him.
"What? What are you going to do to Hogsmeade?" Harry asked.
"You will see, Potter, in time," he said. "Now, if you don't mind, I must be going—you will join those filthy parents of yours soon."
"We'll see," said Harry, failing to rise to the bait. "And—why are you telling me this? What do you want from me?"
"Nothing," said the bastard.
"What?" asked Harry. "You—you don't want anything...you just wanted to tell me?"
"That's right," Voldemort said. "Goodbye, Potter, and enjoy your last hours on this earth."
When Hermione and I had emerged from the Pensieve, our first thoughts were synonymous with Harry's—get to Hogsmeade immediately and defend it as well as possible. The Horcruxes were destroyed, Dumbledore's last orders were complete—now it was time for the final battle.
And so we had Apparated out, our one night of rest interrupted, and gone directly to the Minister, Rufus Scrimgeour, warning him of the impending attack on Hogsmeade. Once he had begun an evacuation (although only of the ones that wanted to leave) we went to the Three Broomsticks and stayed the night, preparing for the day ahead.
To our surprise, when we awoke the next morning we found that most of the villagers had remained—some didn't even believe our warnings! After assuring that they didn't want to leave, we went out for one last day in the village before the final battle. Harry was having the worst time of it—being the one who was prophesized to defeat Voldemort must have been difficult, and Hermione and I tried to cheer him up the best we could.
Finally evening arrived, and still no attack. We all got tired of waiting and had gone to the Three Broomsticks for one last drink of butterbeer. The battle had begun soon after, and the clock had read six the last time I had looked at it before Voldemort's attack, making it an ideal place for my attempt to change the past.
And then I had opened my eyes, and there was the Three Broomsticks, exactly as I remembered it before the battle. A cheery fire burned in the fireplace, illuminating the faces of...
And then there they were. Harry and Hermione. My two best friends. One of them the woman who I had had the biggest crush of my entire life on.
Fighting the instinct to throw my arms around them and hug them both tightly, I reminded myself that if I failed in my attempt, I would be dead again in less than two hours.
Instead, I just watched my friends fondly. There was Harry, trying as hard as he could to complete the picture of the tragic hero and prepare himself for death or something equally stupid—at least it had seemed so at first, before the fatal green light had taken him by surprise and spelled the end of the Light's hopes in a single instant.
And there was Hermione, her studiousness still insatiable. She had drunk very little of her butterbeer, but was instead going over an immense book called The Dark Arts: What You Need to Know that we had found in Grimmauld Place's library.
As for me—I simply stared into the faces of my friends, happy just to be alive again and to be there with them. I continued to stare until Hermione noticed and fixed me with a questioning gaze, upon which my ears instantly turned red and I looked away, pretending to be studying the dregs of my butterbeer.
Harry sighed. "This is stupid," he said. "We shouldn't just be waiting for him like this. We should be—"
But we would never hear the end of the sentence, because at that very moment the entirety of the pub shook with a force unlike anything I'd ever felt before. Hermione toppled off her stool and onto the floor, and I quickly reached out my hand and helped her back up.
Harry kept his balance perfectly and quickly jumped off the stool, pulling out his wand. He tapped his dragon-hide vest once, trinkets that Scrimgeour had loaned us after being informed of the seriousness of the battle we were about to face. I pulled mine out as well.
"Ready?" asked Harry, instantly transformed from the melancholy boy looking into his butterbeer glass to the Boy-Who-Lived, hero of the wizarding world. I nodded. Hermione nodded.
"Then—let's go," he said simply, and, leaving a cowering Rosmerta behind the counter, we followed him out onto the streets of Hogsmeade.
Although the sun had set completely into the dark sky, the village was still illuminated by the lights of curses, and we were able to follow them to were the main battle was taking place. Several giants were visible over the tops of buildings, but we managed to avoid them as we continued to make our way towards Lord Voldemort for the last time.
Finally we arrived in an open field which was almost completely illuminated by the curses and where the final battle had taken place and finished the first time. I was dripping with sweat by this point, but I did my best to ignore it and focus on the task that was ahead.
And then, just as I remembered, Draco Malfoy, in full Death Eater garb, spotted us and shouted a warning. "Oi! Potter and his pathetic friends have arrived!"
And then the battle began.
Immediately there were three curses flying at Harry and one at Hermione. "Protego!" yelled Harry, and a shield sprung up, encapsulating both him and Hermione. The spells dissolved into it harmlessly.
I flew forward, throwing Stunners wherever I saw white masks, which was almost everywhere—we were surrounded by them. Lucius Malfoy stepped forward, and we began to duel.
"Well, well," he said, thinking that I didn't know who he was. "What do we have here? A Weasley...pity that my diary didn't kill your little sister, isn't it? Although I suppose that she's gotten quite pretty now..."
I didn't even let him finish. I brought my wand forward in a flash and wandlessly cast a Sectumsempra hex. Malfoy Sr. simply wandlessly conjured a shield and the hex bounced off, causing me to have to jump to the side to avoid it.
"Temper, temper, Weasley!" he shouted, and I growled and shot another Sectumsempra at him, which he dodged easily, turning around this time and firing an Avada Kedavra at me. I quickly dodged, feeling the curse whoosh past my left ear, before casting another Sectumsempra. "Got anything else up your sleeve, Weasley? Pathetic!" Malfoy shouted as he dodged the hex.
I brought my wand to my side and let it hang loosely in my hand, preparing to cast a shield or jump to the side whenever it was needed. Malfoy stared me down, not casting any curses. We began to circle each other, wands drawn, each of us attempting to force as much hatred as we could into our gazes. I let my eyes wander slightly—Hermione was succeeding in taking down her Death Eater, and now, having placed him in a full body bind, was dueling another. Harry was too far away for me to see him, but I knew from the last time I had done this that he was okay. So far.
Finally Malfoy snapped and shot a Cruciatus Curse at me. I dodged to the right, but somehow another Cruciatus found me there, and I fell to the ground. Agony beyond agony was now coursing through my veins, overcoming every inch of my body. I don't know how I continued to breathe, but even living hurt by this point. For an instant, I wanted to die again...I wanted to forfeit my chance...
And then the pain was gone. Malfoy, his eyes glittering, stepped forward and shot another Cruciatus at me, but before it hit I suddenly rolled to the side and jumped to my feet, shouting, "Protego!" as I did so. Malfoy's Disarming Curse sunk into the shield ineffectively, and once again we were on equal footing.
Malfoy was grunting heavily now, and his taunts had finally stopped. I could tell that he was surprised at the last trick I had shown him—sometimes it helps to have older brothers. I stepped forward as Malfoy missed me with a Body Bind and shot a Disarming Charm at him, which he casually waved his wand and stopped. Fury began to course through my veins. Lucius Malfoy was about to become acquainted with the famous Weasley temper.
And then, off to the side somewhere, shouts began to sound—the Aurors had arrived. Malfoy turned to look, and I almost did before realizing what had happened last time and instead shot a wandless Expelliarmus at him. His face contorted into a look of shock and fury as his wand flew out of his grasp and into my waiting hand.
"Petrificus totalus!" I shouted, and Malfoy, Disarmed and taken by surpise, fell to the floor, his legs snapping together instantly. Harry came into view, dueling two Death Eaters at once but smiling at me and shouted words of encouragement as I stepped over Malfoy's useless body and took on one of Harry's Death Eaters. This hadn't happened before, I thought happily. Maybe this will be all it takes to change it!
I immediately shot an Expelliarmus at Harry's Death Eater, and it caught him or her in the mask, ripping it and the upper part of their robes open. I watched in silent anger as none other than Bellatrix Lestrange emerged from the darkness—and suddenly I was on the floor in agonizing pain yet again. The Cruciatus shot pain through every nerve in my body, and I could feel my throat was sore from screaming, but I didn't remember the cries escaping my mouth...
The pain stopped abruptly, and I looked up confusedly. Hermione was standing by my side, and she gave me a smile and a nod as she returned to the fray. I felt something unexplainable rush through me at the sight of her, but I couldn't stop to ponder as Harry was quickly being surrounded by Death Eaters, and this time their master himself was behind them.
Lord Voldemort.
Harry and Voldemort locked eyes, and Harry had put up a shield to deflect Voldemort's curse when I had to turn away and engage another Death Eater. Keep them away from Harry, I repeated over and over in my head, my mantra keeping me focused on the task at hand. I deflected a curse from the Death Eater and shot a Jelly-Legs Jinx at him or her, missing by a fraction of an inch but hitting a Death Eater behind me. "Wotcher, Ron!" shouted Tonks from somewhere beyond the felled Death Eater, and I felt a flash of happiness when I recognized her voice.
I had just run to engage another Death Eater when it happened. There was a brief lull in the fighting, and I had already Stunned the Death Eater before I realized anything was going on.
A loud scream of terror was coming from Hermione, and before I could do anything there was a blinding flash of green light.
Hermione's dead body lay in front of me, her face frozen in a determined expression, her eyes wide with terror.
She had taken the Killing Curse for me.
Harry let out a cry as Voldemort began to laugh, and began throwing a frenzy of curses at him. I knew what was coming next, but I couldn't do anything but watch as he was cut down from three separate Killing Curses, one coming from the bastard Voldemort himself.
It was over. Nothing had changed.
Harry...Hermione...
I barely moved as the Cruciatus Curse found its way from Lord Voldemort's wand to mine. I didn't care as the pain overwhelmed me yet again, becoming my only world and overwhelming all of my senses. I didn't mind as the curse hit me again and again, and when it was over I was begging for death.
It came in the form of a writhing green light. I took it in the chest gladly.
And then everything went black.
- - - -
-A/N- Well, for a change I decided to put the author's notes at the end of the chapter instead of the beginning. I'd like to begin with a thank you to all my reviewers for Chapter 1—
HaRrYpOtTa15- Thanks for the compliments, and I'll try to fix that error in the first chapter. Thanks for reviewing—my first reviewer!
Dumbledor- Thanks a lot! I'm guessing that by "who is the voice" you mean the narrator—in which case that would be Ron, as you probably could tell from this chapter, lol.
JnSr- Wow! Thanks a lot, especially for the "great author" comment D. I really appreciate your review, and hope you enjoyed this chapter!
Eckles- Thanks! By the way, I re-uploaded this chapter to fix some small errors and when I realized that I had missed a crucial plot detail...don't you hate when that happens, lol. Anyway...
And now that the review thank-yous are over with, I'd like to say one more thing—this story is not over, and neither are Ron's hopes, so before you flame me for the ending, please consider this D. Thanks for reading, and please review!
