AUTHOR NOTE: This is a one shot. It is a horror story. It is not a happy story. It is not a nice story. It came to me while I was at the Dr office for some tests. I hate hospitals. So you have been warned.
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Hermione woke up in pain. She looked down and saw that her right arm was obviously broken. Struggling to sit up she looked around the Chamber. It was quiet and still in the dimness. The magical lamps that had been burning earlier were mostly extinguished.
"Ron!" She called out only to have no response. She looked around to try and find her wand. She discovered it sitting a few feet away from her. Using her left hand she managed to cast the bone repair spell which at least let her use her arm again, even if it hurt like the blazes. She coughed blood as she felt a rib shift so she cast the spell again.
Casting a lumos she saw Ron laying a few yards across from her she hobbled over to him.
"Hey Ron. Time to get up." She said nudging him with her toe. When he didn't respond she bent down and rolled him over. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. The reason why was the basilisk fang that was driven into his chest.
She stared at the wound for several untold moments. Unsure of what to do now. When the Horcrux exploded it must have driven the fang into his chest when it threw them apart.
Swallowing her pain she whispered, "I'll send someone to get you Ron." She then made her way slowly and painfully out of the chamber.
===xxx===xx
Once she gained the surface she became concerned as the only noise she heard was the wind whistling and howling through the castle. Stepping out of the tunnel to the chamber she was met with a disturbing sight. What looked like someone had turned Myrtle into a glass statue then shattered it on the floor was scattered across the floor.
Shaking her head she made her way to the main staircase and down. By the time she had reached the great hall she was on edge. Debris littered the corridors, some of the stairs had collapsed and not a single voice, or human created noise was heard yet. With as many who had gathered for the final battle she should have heard someone she thought.
The great hall, entry corridor, and from what she could see through the shattered entry doors of the grounds, they were covered with bodies. There were no vultures at least she thought.
Looking around she found most of Neville. He had the Gryffindor sword laying a few inches from his outstretched hand. Lavender Brown was laying on the floor with her throat ripped out. She saw Ginny, or what was left of Ginny, half her in each hand of a troll. She shivered thinking back to her encounter in the toilet so long ago. This troll like all other beings in the great hall, save herself, lay still and unmoving.
She saw a body with messy black hair laying face down on the floor. She hobbled as quickly as she could over to it. Rolling him over she screamed and fell backwards as the entire front half of the body had been burned, melted and ripped off. She felt her eyes roll and shift as he fell over backwards unconscious.
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When Hermione awoke again she was cold and laying on the stone floor of the great hall. She could see the shadowy shapes of the bodies around her in the moonlight. Gripping her wand she scrabbled backwards, over several other bodies in her haste to get away. To run from the ruined mess that had been her best friend, her first true friend in her life, Harry Potter.
She reached the wall and cast a Lumos. This did not improve things as the bodies still sat where they were. She stood and walked out of the castle. The front doors hanging slightly off their hinges. She stepped around a greasy smear on the front steps which still had a green waistcoat mixed in it.
Walking down the lane she felt the stillness, the emptiness of the forest. No night birds sang, no creatures stirred. Only the soft sighing of the winds and the falling of the leaves. She paused to look again, it was May and the woods should be bursting with life but the leaves were falling off of the trees. The needles on the conifers were browning and falling. Even the grass was turning brown like it was late summer. She shivered as she contemplated the meaning of this.
Pulling herself together she moved onward. Her wand light showing her the way around several bodies that lay strewn and broken along the lane. Katie Bell had impaled a Giant in the eye with her broom apparently only for it to fall on her. She had been trapped under its bulk enough that only her arm and head were showing. Eyes bulging out in a mockery of goggles.
Stumbling into Hogsmeade Hermione found that most of the village was intact, the fighting had been focused at the school. She entered the three broomsticks to find Madam Rosmerta laying across the bar holding a crossbow. Her body untouched and unmolested.
Sighing Hermione went behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of firewhiskey. Making her way towards the upstairs bedrooms she found an empty and clean one. Laying on the bed she began to pull heavily from the bottle.
===xxx===xx
Hermione woke up hungover and sick. Sitting up lead to her vomiting the entire contents, what little they were, of her stomach onto the floor. The stench of regurgitated whiskey began to permeate the room. She also noticed that sometime during the night she had wet herself. The clothes she was wearing were covered in ash and blood so she needed to clean up.
Finding a bath she filled the tub with water and stripped her filthy clothes off. Soaking she tried to figure out what day or time or anything it was. She knew she was starting to get hungry so it must have been at least a day or two.
Wrapping herself in a towel she left her dirty rags on the floor of the bath and made her way downstairs. She had heard rumors that madam Rosmerta lived in the backroom she went there. It was true and she raided the woman's clothes dresser. Finding a tunic that fit her like a dress and some leggings and boots Hermione felt at least better equipped to handle things.
The kitchen and basement held enough food to feed a small army in stasis so she wouldn't starve to death anytime soon. But she had to find someone. Find anyone. Looking out the window as she ate the meal she had prepared she saw the body of a dog laying in the street. No flies buzzed over it, even though it sat in the full spring sunlight.
Hermione considered a stray thought that somehow when Harry slew Voldemort the entire value was plunged into a death field. Why she lived was beyond her though. Unless it had something to do with being in the chamber so far below ground. She had no idea. She did know though that she would go mad if she didn't hear a human voice soon.
Returning to the school she recovered a broom from the castle and started flying. She figured Duff Town would be a good place to start. It was only a few miles away over the hills.
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Not worried about the statute of secrecy Hermione landed her broom in the middle of the village. She had never been here in her life yet , even though she had spent the last decade basically next door. It was a quaint picturesque Scottish village.
It was also filled with dead people. No one moved. A car sat idling as if its driver had simply slumped over dead and let the vehicle drift into the center commons. She turned the engine off and looked around. Going in the store she found dead people. In the library, in the pub, she saw dead cats, dead birds, dead dogs, dead people. No one alive at all.
Taking the broom she started flying again. Panic starting to set in. How far did it reach, how far until she found a living person.
Edinburgh was a crypt. Glasgow was mausoleum, Yorkshire was on fire and nothing more than a pyre to the dead. She flew onward. Into the night, into the next day. Hovering over London she watched the fire of airplanes that had simply fallen out of the sky around Heathrow. She looked down and saw a double-decker bus had run into the heart of Trafalgar square.
Laughing she circled lower and lower. Until she reached the Ministry entrance. Picking up the phone she dialed the number relieved to hear at least the magical recording. She did it three times just to hear another voice before she said shakily "look for survivors."
A badge with that on it popped out and then started lowering herself into the building. She spent the next several hours in a fruitless search. Nothing alive was in the building at all.
Diagon Alley was just as dark and empty. The stores that had not been boarded up bereft of people. Maybe the Goblins had survived she hoped. It would be better than nothing to talk to them even.
The bank was filled with dead goblins. She went to the teller's desk and rang the service bell. Nothing happened. She screamed, she shouted and no one came. She turned and walked back out.
Standing in the middle of Diagon Alley she began to fire red sparks, lightning bolts, thunder, and all in vain as no one came to see what the disruption was.
Mounting her broom she flew back out and over the city. Looking around she laughed as she realized she was the queen of the world. She ruled all of the UK and London, who knows maybe the entire world. Laughing maniacally she flew to the tower of London. A few spells later and she wore the royal regalia. She might as well, its not like anyone else ever would.
===xxx===xx
Hermione looked around the Queen's bedroom at Buckingham. She had moved in there a month ago. Sitting on the throne and making up orders for parliament to obey. A parliament chamber that was dark and empty.
It was starting to get tiresome though. No one had come to see what was going on. She had gone to the government offices and used their communication devices to try and reach other governments, other militaries, anyone. All to receive no answer.
Given that food placed in magical stasis did not age or go bad she was well stocked for the rest of her life. She calculated that even if she became a gluttonous pig she would have at least a decade's worth of food and drink in Diagon Alley alone. That was not counting the muggle canned goods she had been eating as well. When those supplies ran out she could go back to Hogsmeade, across to Paris and then the other major cities around the world with their own magical communities. She would not starve to death.
What made her more concerned though was that she would also not die from an encounter with a magical or mundane creature either. As all life it seemed like had died instantly and simultaneously all across the world. Not even bacteria as when she had returned to Hogwarts the bodies of her friends had not begun to decay from anything other than chemical processes. The bacteria of putrefaction had not moved in.
It had been a few weeks but her friends all lay in graves on the Hogwarts lawn. Stones with their names and what details she knew had been carved by her to place over them. She had placed Harry and Ron in a small tomb she had created in front of the school.
She had placed a third nook in the middle of the tomb with her own name and details on the slab that would seal it. She hesitated though still as while she had not been raised very strongly in the faith of Christ she still felt that suicide was somehow a dangerous wrong thing. She would lay in the nook and think, she would talk to her friends. Tell them of the things she had found while looting having moved into Hogsmeade permanently now with winter coming.
===xxx===xx
It had been a year since the final battle against Voldemort. Hermione had broken down and traveled the world on her broom. Taking forever to cross the oceans, she had almost fallen in more than once, but she reached the Americas. The land of the dead. The jewel of Asia was broken. The palaces of the Sheikhs empty ruins. The land of the Pharaohs belonged to the spirits once more. The ghosts of Rome were the echos in the ruins. Paris the city of lights, lay darkened. Nothing moved. The dead laid out in the streets so much she became inured to it.
She had tried driving on the autobahn in a super sports car that her dad would have loved she knew. Only for it to sputter and die after a few yards as the fuel had broken down too much.
She returned to Hogsmeade and laid down in her tomb. She clutched the vial of the Draught of the Living Death tightly in her left hand. She figured that since the tomb was air tight if she closed it up then went to sleep with the potion that it wouldn't technically be suicide. Even if it was she could argue the last year had been more than enough time in purgatory. She hoped. Either way she could take no more of it.
Sliding the lid into place she sealed her niche. Downing the vial she whispered, "I'll see you soon my friends."
The sun set and the stars came out. The wind rustled the bare trees gently as the last survivor of the war fell asleep.
===xxx===xx
Albus Dumbledore stood quietly off to the side by Minerva McGonnegal. The two of them watched Madam Pomfrey work heroically to preserve the life force of the little brown haired first year that had been the unfortunate focus of attention by a troll.
The two boys who had tried to rescue her lay wrapped in shrouds on tables a few feet away. Their broken and shattered bodies only distinguishable by the shock of bright red hair and messy black that remained.
Madam Pomfrey shrieked in anger. "NO You cannot have her! No damn you! No!" She cried as she cast spell after spell. Poured potions into the body that passed through the broken and torn organs. The body too broken though to be healed, even by the power of magic. The spirit already fled.
Madam Pomfrey stepped back from the table tears streaming down her face. "I thought I had her. I thought she was so close but then she just left. She gave up on me." She shook her head at Dumbledore. "She's gone."
Dumbledore nodded. His eyes glistening with unshod tears but said nothing as he slowly and gravely walked out of the Hospital wing. Minerva took her friend in a hug as she wept openly at three of her cubs whose luck had run out.