A/N: We all know how I am about plot (if you don't, you'll soon learn). If there are particulars that are out of order I apologise, but also...that's just how it goes. By now, you surely all know just to roll with it lol Also, I'm pretty bad at maligning Ron, but in this particular one, he's not a bad dude... So what are we gonna do? You got it, we gonna roll with it lol
Eternal thanks to the wonderful Lib McGranger. I am in your debt my dear.
Trigger Warning for the death of supporting characters etc. This is the Battle of Hogwarts. You know how it goes.
-0-
The Chamber of Secrets was just as dank as Ron warned her it would be. But there, next to the body of the Basilisk, Hermione took revenge on Voldemort for all the evil that he had done. Ron, bless his heart, had talked her through the evil visions that had swum around her. Of Minerva telling her she was worthless. Of her parents disowning her for a love she could not change. Of being jeered at. Of being ordinary.
Of being without Minerva.
Of being alone.
She had plunged that Basilisk fang into the cup with such force that she had cracked the stone tile beneath it and as she looked up gratefully at Ron, they'd laughed together.
"You're such a bad arse," he chuckled.
"At least I'm not just an arse," she said affectionately, after all they'd been through.
"I reckon that they'll reckon we're meant to be together?"
"Probably," she shrugged. There were no secrets between them anymore. "Sorry?"
"I'm not," he chuckled. "You'd never be happy wi' me. Too small, somehow," he grinned in that way he did. "McGonagall'll be a better fit."
"Merlin, I hope so," Hermione whispered, looking at the destroyed cup. "And you'll find someone, Ron," she smiled. "And I'll be there when you marry her and have babies with her and the like."
"Can't wait," he chuckled, blushing up to his hairline. "They're gonna need godparents, right? You and McGonagall? Harry and Gin? Can't really go wrong, can I?"
She grinned and hugged him tightly.
"Let's go."
They ran back up to the castle, following Ron even as she kept an eye out for Minerva. The way her eyes roamed over every face in their vicinity made her dizzy and she almost tripped over Ron's feet more than once.
Harry caught up to them as they ran into the second floor and told them, as they followed him, that the Diadem was in the Room of Requirement. They raced up the stairs and had to do an abrupt turn as a number of boulders came rolling down the corridor. Before they crashed into the wall at the top of the stairs, she could hear the Order directing spells to fasten them in place and realised they were part of the defences. Having raced back down the stairs, they were nearly run over by a herd of stampeding desks.
"Charge!" came a cry from a voice she would know anywhere.
"Minerva -"
"Hermione!" Harry screamed, shaking her from her shock. "No time! Let's go!"
She dithered for barely a second when the choice was taken from her. Harry rounded the corner ahead of them and threw himself backwards as a suit of armour swung its sword where his head had been.
"Go around." She pushed him in the opposite direction.
"They do know we're on the same side, right?" Ron grumbled.
They made their way - safely - to the Room of Requirement. As she and Ron kept watch, Harry paced in front of the door, asking for the place where lost things are stored.
As soon as he opened the door, she reaffirmed her need to spend the rest of her life researching this room. Her brain was abuzz with theories as to why anyone would make such a room and her fingers tingled with the need to catalogue the things in it. As they stepped inside, she realised the actual scale of the room and she stared wide-eyed at all the rows and rows of things that people had left.
"There must be hundreds of years worth of artefacts in here," she breathed.
"Yeah, but we only need one," Harry said resolutely. "Let's go."
They split up and raced down the aisles looking for the Diadem. Hermione just could not get over the amount of stuff that she couldn't wait to get her hands on. She stopped to look at a pile of books when Harry's shout went up.
"I found it!"
She ran towards his voice and slid around a particularly wobbly pile of junk. Just as she was scrambling for the other Basilisk fang, a shadow blocked the light from the door. They all turned to look and Hermione's eyes bugged as Draco appeared at the doorway with Crabbe and Goyle.
"Bloody hell," Ron growled. "That's all we need."
Harry stood and Hermione shook her head.
"I'll go," she muttered. She rubbed her arm absently and stepped into Draco's eye line. "Draco?" Hermione yelled cautiously. He frowned as their eyes met. "Let us pass. We," she glanced at the boys who shrugged helplessly. "We need to pass."
"I -"
He looked so lost that a small part of Hermione felt sorry for him.
"Draco," Ron said gently, stepping forward to join her. "Mate, it's time to -"
"I need to take you to him," Draco said, his voice wavering as he met Hermione's eyes again. "I need to."
"Fuck that," Goyle grunted. "Bombarda!"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!"
Draco screamed at his offsiders as Hermione pushed Ron out of the way as the stack of things closest to them exploded around them. They rolled off to one side, losing sight of Harry as he rolled the other way.
"We kill him," one of them muttered. "He'll make us his generals."
"No, you idiots, we need to capture him."
"You're weak. Your family is done," Crabbe spat, pushing past him into the room. "I'm going to kill him first."
The battle was fierce and despite being magically superior, they struggled to gain the upper hand. Hermione managed to hold her own, her wandless magic was now good enough that she didn't need a wand, but as Goyle sent a particularly stubborn set of spells their way, she wished she had a little more control.
"Granger," Draco's voice stopped her as Ron cast a shield over the two of them. "Catch."
Hermione turned as saw Draco drawing her wand from his robes and throwing it her way.
"Accio," she screamed, holding out her hand.
Time seemed to stop as her wand spun in the air and suddenly shot straight down to her and into her hand. The feeling of having it back in her hands was something she would never be able to describe and she pushed Ron backwards as she stepped forward.
Using what she had practised with Minerva, she duelled them back until they were right at the edge of the room and nearly out of the door. Before she could push them out and slam the door behind them, she turned and grinned as Harry joined them. It was an error, and she knew it, as she heard Crabbe's gruff shout.
"Did he just -"
She turned and watched in horror as fire burst from Crabbe's wand.
"No!"
"What are you doing?"
"Oh shit," Ron grunted.
"RUN!"
She pushed Harry forward as Goyle and Draco caught up with them and they all ran as fast as they could, away from the fire that seemed intent on consuming everything in the room. It swirled through the stacks, wheezing gleefully as things exploded and melted and hissed their destruction into the room. They ran for what felt like hours but would have been mere seconds, as the fire roared around them. She realised they'd lost Draco and Goyle somewhere along the way.
"Harry," Ron grunted, stopping and pulling two brooms from a stack out of Hermione's eye line.
"Get on," Harry hissed, pulling Hermione to his side. "Now."
He kicked off and Hermione clutched onto his back, her eyes closed. Books and cleverness were fine, but as soon as her feet left the ground, she was done for. They banked left and right and Hermione protected her head as they flew past a searching lick of flame. Crabbe had clearly lost control of the Fiendfyre long ago and she watched as he bumbled around a corner into a dead end.
"Oh."
Her stomach rolled as she watched him fall under an avalanche of items and gleeful fire.
"Harry!"
Ron screamed out their names and she turned. He pointed down and she saw Draco and Goyle running into trouble.
"Leave 'em," Harry screamed, but Hermione smacked his shoulder and glared. He groaned and they wheeled around.
They got ahead of the Fiendfyre and Goyle managed to heave himself onto Ron's broom as Draco took Harry's hand. She thanked every deity she knew that Harry was a brilliant flyer. They wheeled around and sped off for a window.
"Potter!" Draco squealed. As they left the ground again, Draco's fingers started sliding out of Harry's hand and everything seemed to stop. For a long moment, she watched as Harry struggled to keep hold of him and try to steer them out of the Room of Requirement. Draco's eyes found hers. "Please."
Her heart was beating far too fast for her to take a breath as she considered her options. She remembered every moment of her torture at the hands of Bellatrix and every second of it was watched by Draco and his mother. He'd saved Harry by refusing to identify him, but he'd also stood by while she was being so cruelly treated.
"Hermione," Harry grunted. "Come on."
She shook herself and reached out, grabbing the back of Draco's robes and hauling him closer. She squeaked as they weaved between the searching fingers of the Fiendfyre. The heat was overwhelming and she struggled to keep hold of Harry and Draco as they urged the brooms on faster. They managed to squeak through the door at the last minute and tumbled into the corridor outside the Room of Requirement with a thump. All five of them collapsed, exhausted, on the floor. As she tried to catch her breath, there was a peculiar whining noise before the door to the Room of Requirement slammed shut and turned back into stone.
Harry got to his feet first and pointed his wand at Goyle.
"Anything to add?"
Goyle shook his head and Harry left him, pausing to look at Draco for a moment. They stared at each other before Harry nodded once and stalked off.
"Oi! Wait for me," Ron said, leaving Draco and Goyle the broomsticks as he ran after Harry.
"I'm sorry," Draco croaked before Hermione could leave. "I -"
"I forgive you," she whispered, refusing to look at him. "I won't ever forget, but I forgive you." She took a deep breath and felt something release in her chest. After taking two steps, she turned back around. "Do better than them, Draco."
He dropped onto his backside as she met his eyes finally. They held each other's gaze for just a moment. Nodding to him, she finally ran off, after the boys, without another glance.
"The Diadem, Harry," she asked as she joined them.
"It was destroyed," he muttered. "I saw it. It's gone."
"So -"
"The snake," Harry grunted. "Just the snake."
They sprinted forward just as an explosion slammed into the wall and shook them all to their bones.
The final battle had begun.
-0-
Fred's death was something she had not anticipated. And it had torn her heart out and broken her spirit. As George carried him into the Great Hall, she felt Ron go very still and she heard Molly's scream. She stood, just outside the Weasley family's circle and stared. Ron dropped to his knees and shook Fred's shoulder before Percy pulled Ron away, holding him while he sobbed. She watched as Molly cried over her son's chest and watched George stare blankly.
For a sick moment, she expected Fred to sit up and ask what the matter was, but nobody could fake that pallor.
Fred Weasley really was dead.
She blinked and looked away, remembering a muttered conversation she'd had with Minerva. She recalled saying that should the Weasleys ever have a family emergency, she'd step back, not because they'd wish her to but because that was the right thing to do. And she did so, right as Oliver Wood carried in the little body of Colin Creevy. She felt the tears start running down her face as he laid Colin down on the floor, kneeling beside his body. She knew why Oliver stayed by his side. Colin's family was Muggle, his brother only eleven. There would be nobody to mourn over him until it was ended.
Her chin wobbled as anger coursed through her. He shouldn't have been there at all. He should have been outside the Castle walls. Away from it all, with his brother and his mother and father. Safe. Protected. And yet he lay there, unmoving. Wrong, somehow, without his camera around his neck.
When they bought Lupin and Tonks in, she felt all the strength go from her legs and she crashed to the floor. Ginny noticed, as she did every time Hermione needed something and pulled her into their family huddle. She wrapped her arms around Ginny and held on tight while they sat in shock at all that had happened.
So many had died.
So many people that she felt she had never given the proper attention to. They had always found Colin to be a little annoying, especially with his flashing camera. Harry, she knew, got particularly annoyed with him at times, but now he was gone. He might have changed the world, one photo at a time. And now, there was nothing.
And Lupin. Dear Lupin, who had loved Harry as best he could in the absence of Lily and James and Sirius. And Tonks, who had loved Lupin with everything she had, embracing the part of him that he hated in himself so much. And Fred. One half of a whole, somehow, while still being Fred. She slid her hand into Ron's as they sat quietly, listening to Molly sob on Fred's chest and Arthur's endless murmurs of disbelief.
She hadn't seen Minerva. She couldn't even entertain the possibility that anything might have happened to her. She clung to the promise they had made each other and at that moment, when her thoughts began running away from her, a soft heat warmed her wrist. She burst into tears, immediately feeling terrible as the others wrapped their arms around her. Fred was their brother and they were comforting her for her tears over Minerva and not him. She shook them off, thanking them with a sad smile and wiped her tears. Minerva was alive and she'd never felt so terrible for being so happy.
And then Voldemort's disembodied voice rang out, telling them they were out of time.
Everywhere she looked there were grim faces squaring up. Some of her friends saw her and nodded to her and fell into step behind her. Neville, in particular, looked so tall and so responsible and she smiled as he offered her his hand.
"Got a job to do," he said grimly. "I've got me orders."
"Yeah," she nodded absently, looking around. "Have you seen -"
"He said somat about the snake," Neville confirmed. "But I've not seen him since."
She frowned but assumed Harry was off doing things to shore up the defences. Perhaps he was even with Minerva. It didn't matter. It was time to fight once more.
She and a number of fighters stepped into the Entrance Hall and made their way outside the big doors. It broke her heart to see how damaged they were. As she stepped over the rubble, she wondered absently if they would ever be whole again. It was a good question for a lot of them, she mused as she stood with Ron at the front of the Courtyard. She didn't question why they, in particular, were there, in front of everyone else.
They still had a job to do, and they would do it.
The snake must die.
