AN: In honor of my bestie Lily's prompt that I utterly failed to fulfil, I have at least nodded at it in passing in the hallway.
Songs for the chapter: Yuna, Lullabies. Sia, Breathe Me. Bad Guy, Patrick Reza Remix.
"There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined."
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours
It was the recipe for a perfect disaster. Hermione wondered, later if they had treated their lives like a storybook, one children could pick up and put down at will and then all would end happily ever after. She wondered if she'd done any one thing differently if she could have changed the outcome. That if in an imaginary version of this world, things might have been different. As it was, she ran for the castle, tucking her jumper down and tying her flyaway hair back up, and tucking her wand in, out of sight. She tumbled into the great hall, heading for the fireplace, not realizing the time. Severus Snape stood in front of the students, warning them of the penalty for helping Harry, but he still calls him Potter. I don't think he can even help himself. I can't help but look at him and think I've never seen a man so tired in my whole life. But I can't afford to pity the man, because McGonagall certainly doesn't. My old mentor steps out into the fray and starts attacking Severus in earnest, and I can't help but hope Draco's already out. Snape turns to flee, but as he turns to run he catches my eye, and gives me a hard stare. And then he's gone, a wisp of smoke outside the castle windows.
Ron grabs my hand and I startle guiltily- he wants to go down and destroy the cup with Nagini's fangs. We go downstairs, cup in hand- Harry's gone to talk to Rowena Ravenclaw and Mcgonagall is calling the castle to battle. The very gargoyles on the battlements are coming to life, and god I hope its enough. I hope I can get Draco out of the way. All of this rests on a prayer. I take Rons warm and sweaty hand and we run down, down, down.
I wonder if I smell. I don't think you're sposed to smell like a fuck at the end of the world. My father keeps eyeing me, standing in the forest in front of Voldemort. I'm a man and I've been around him often and yet in a temper he still makes something hot in my guts roil. I think its because he isn't natural, there's nothing natural about him. You can feel magic, you know, and his just feels like… emptiness with the smell of dirty skin. I can't even explain it. From my earliest memories magic always smelled good, even Nanny's, and Dobbys. Like lemon biscuits and tea on a cold day. Lord Voldemort points his wand at his throat, telling Potter to come to him or he'll kill everyone. The sound resounds throughout the forest, and vibrates into your chest, like a sick sonic boom. I catch my mothers gaze and the only thing I can see reflected back is abject fear. My father looks lost. He never intended to be here. And he loves Severus. More than my mother will ever know. I wouldn't know either, except the summer before I'd stayed at school over the holidays, wanting, more than ever before to run home, but I had been assigned to kill Dumbledore. 17 years old and my soul was already lost. I was looking for oblivion when I found granger, but right before that, snape and my father were in the dungeons, my father's hand on his neck, and I saw it. I know that my father loves my mother, but its in the way of loyalty, the way you love a best friend. I think what he feels for Severus is more like trapped adoration. Maybe the way I feel about Granger. Maybe the way I want to make her want me. The way I want her to save me. Maybe he wants Severus to save his life. I look down at the forest floor, waiting. The first wave of attack begins, Voldemort aiming his wand at the castle, digging away at the shield. I hope mcgonagall has the children out of the way of the wolves. I hope to god Granger doesn't die.
-
Ron kisses me, and I want to like it, want to want to marry him. Want to want this life. But all I can think of is Draco Malfoys hard kisses- he kisses like he wants to prove something, the same way I wanted to prove I was as good as they were when I got to Hogwarts. He kisses like he'd die if he didn't and Ron's warm, spongy boyishness is totally different. It's wrong. Ron knows I'm not feeling it and his eyes widen. I take his hand and turn and run. I can't do this now. Ron is a good man. He takes my hand and runs with me and I regret this moment for the rest of my life. I wish I'd told him I love him. We race up the stairs, heading for Harry, and the room of requirement. I don't know it yet but I'm about to see Malfoy for the last time, like this.
And instead of anything else I'm saving his life.
-
Greg, fucking dickhead that he is casts fiendfyre. He never should have learned and for a minute I pity them both, lives full of boyish mistakes. They've both cast the cruciatus curse on men, killed, watched people beg for death and yet they aren't men. In the moments it takes them to realize they've made a mistake Potter and I are already climbing the stacks. I catch his eye and for a moment, all I can do is look at him with all the regret in the world, and I wish we'd stuck together, that first day at Hogwards. I wish I'd been kinder. I wish I hadn't been determined to be special. I wish so many things and in the second of hesitation potters kept climbing and we're trying to keep up. Greg falls into the fyre and I almost cry out, when Granger and Weasley burst through the doors. Her hair is a hectic fray of energy around her head, concentrating determination on her face as she steers that damned broom and I know she's terrified, she has that focused look like she gets when she's about to hit you. She and potter fall into formation and he reaches for my hand, and misses. She doesn't. I land behind her on the broom and kiss the back of her neck and she tenses, but nobody's fyre chases us from the room, and it looks like The Dark Lord's face, screaming.
We land outside the door, tumbling from the broom. I can't help it. 'What the fuck was that?'. She looks at me, a long look, memorizing my face, I think. And then she takes harry and ron and she runs, leaving me behind.
Harry is watching Snape die, tears falling from his eyes. I siphon the tears into a vial, and we run for the pensieve. Falling inside it feels like a sick feeling, just like Snapes death. Malfoys father will be devastated. I shouldn't know, but I do. Malfoy told me that night, sitting in the classroom, where I'd been trying to force my magic to make a perfect copy that felt like it had a soul, and we fucked for the first time. He'd just seen his father kissing snape's neck, and he burst into the damned room like a damned stormcloud, smashing my china bowl. The magic swirled around his head, and he shook it, hard, like a wet dog, breathing like he'd run a mile.
What are you doing in here, Hermione? And I'd never heard him say my name before and I don't know why but I sat on the floor and I told him. We'd come to the castle and no one knew, but he did. Later, Bellatrix Lestrange cut my arm and infected it, and later still he kissed it better in the shack and I was lost, even to myself. He had pretended not to know who harry was and I didn't ask him what the consequence was, I just touched him like we'd die for it. We still might.
I don't tell Harry what we saw isn't real. But I do wonder if snape will kill us all, from wherever he is now. I wonder if there's anything I can do. But Harry will go to the forest to die and I know it and he knows it and I want to tell him he's the bravest man I've ever known but instead I run for Neville, sword in hand. Ron hasn't realized, what it means, so I just get us out of the way. Everyone should have the chance to choose the manner of their own death and I fucking hope Harry really is a horcrux or snape has doomed us all.
Lord Voldemort waits, patiently for him, stinking up the forest with his sick magic like a dog with an infection. Waiting to see if Potter comes. He walks out of the trees, seemingly unafraid, hands high. I want to cry out. I want to scream. Why the fuck granger didn't stop this, I don't know but in this very moment I could strangle her with my belt I'm so angry. Voldemort gloats and the fear freezes my father's face. He holds up Snape's wand and my father buckles, falling to his knees. Voldemort spits on the ground, and then casts. Avada Kedavra! And Potter falls. I've never been so afraid in my whole life. My mother is trying to reach my father when Voldemort says, silk in his voice…'Narcissa. Make sure.' and my mother stumbles forward, still beautiful, so broken, and bends to touch Potter's neck. She counts the beat of my heart. He's dead, she says, voice quiet, leaden. Hagrid stumbles forward, and picks up Harry, gentle and softly. And we all walk out of the forest to tell the wizarding world that its all over. I want to be dead, except I want to see her one last time. Maybe I can save her. Maybe.
Harry Potter is dead!
Harry Potter is dead!
The magnified voice echoes across the grounds of the castle and we stumble towards the sound and the look on Minerva's face would break your heart. But I'm really wondering if it's true. I can't lose Harry. I can't. Voldemort gloats, and I'm looking for Neville- Neville has to have played his part, and I can't see him, and I realize just how much this effort relies on hope. We don't kill after all. Or maim. Or use the Dark Arts. Draco does. We've never talked about it but his magic smells. When he gets close enough it smells different- it would, anyway, but to me it smells a bit like an underlayer of wet ink on his magic. It smells stronger every time I see him. I wonder what we'll both smell like by the end of this war. If we even make it beyond today. I finally sight him, a few to the left of McNair. Inside, I can suddenly breathe. He's standing with his mother and father and then Hagrid steps forward, Harry in his arms.
But it's Narcissa who catches my eye. 'I know' she mouths, and then looks at Harry, shaking her head. I hear a sharp cry behind me and turn my head, and Luna is weeping, she's got Neville in her arms, a sharp fang embedded in his chest.
-
Then it all goes to total shit, of course, because Potter falls from Hagrid's arms and casts Stupefy at The Dark Lord. In approximately 30 seconds I'm totally convinced we're all about to fucking die. Potter really has no dueling style at all, its just the absolute brute force of his magic punching through, like lightning in the air. Its mesmerising to watch. But then Voldemort stuns him backwards, blunting his head into a column, and in the moment of distraction, flicks his wand at my mother, casually, elegantly brutal, and she crumples to the ground. I don't even hear the spell that kills her. Because I know, instantly, that she's dead.
My father lifts her into his arms, looking, for the first time in a long time, like himself, and siezes my arm. When we land in the Manor Foyer, he stalks outside into her rose garden, my mother in his arms, and howls. The dusk gathers around him and all I can hear is my blood in my ears, and my own shame beating in time with my heart. I remain, still, stiff and angry, watching my father stand in the gathering darkness, looking for Hermione, only seeing my father, a tall and lonely figure, unnaturally still in the dying light. He turns and I can see my mothers blood on his robes. I walk toward him, slowly, knelt in the green of her blooming garden, reach out and feel the silk of his shoulder beneath my hand.
-
I think I'm going to die with the pain of it. Narcissa is small in my arms, weightless, and all I can feel is my own neglect. Its like everything that made her her, is gone. Her hands are cold.
Her hands are never cold.
I can hear my son behind me, and feel his hand on my shoulder.
Before I've even thought, made a decision, I'm on my feet. I hit him hard enough to bring him to his knees, then again. He doesn't stop me, doesn't even resist, just takes the punches one by one and finally I notice my son isn't a boy anymore, and suddenly, I feel the grief well up and my son wraps his arms around me, taller, now, than I am. And here we stand, a tableaux of the lost and the broken until we're standing, alone, in the dark.
I look up at my tall, beautiful son and see his mother.
'Draco. We have to go and find Severus.' For once, he doesn't question me. Doesn't say he's dead. Just picks up his mother and carries her in, to Topsy.
It occurs to me for the first time I'm looking at a man.
For just a second, I want my boy back.
The shame runs through my hands like liquid silver.