Wedlocked
Chapter 36: The Ties That Bind

The lumpy leer only spread further across Fred's face, looking even more unnatural and disturbing than when she had seen it on Carrow himself. Fred was meant to smile broadly, like he was up to no good but wanted to distract you from that fact with a toothy grin. Whenever he smiled at a girl, it was done in that same toothy way, letting her know that he was indeed up to no good and would happily get up to it with her. He had never leered at anyone, especially not at Hermione.

"Well, now you've done it, brother," George sighed, drawing his wand and training it on them. "This was supposed to be easy."

"Easy is no fun," Fred commented, licking his lips eagerly.

"But the Dark Lord gave orders," George hissed. "We must obey them."

Carrow sighed, clearly put out at having his 'fun' disrupted by anyone, even Lord Voldemort. "Fine."

Sirius took advantage of the pair's conversation to step sideways, putting himself fully between false Weasleys and Hermione. Safe behind the shield he made for her, she could see Harry guarded by Remus; the man's eyes were darting wildly from Carrow and his companion to the crowd and back again, searching with a rapidity that verged on panic.

"What happened to the others?" Remus demanded, voice harder than she had ever heard it. He sounded positively lethal, more frightening than before the full moon, and she knew precisely why. 'The others' was not Kingsley, Fred or George. 'The others' was Tonks and no one else.

The imposters did not know or care what Remus meant. George smiled, though it was more like a disturbing contortion of the mouth than anything either of the twins would ever make. "Thought they were so funny, they did. The ginger blood traitors laughed when we showed up at their door."

"They aren't laughing now," Carrow said.

"What did you do to them?" Remus shouted. Hermione knew his thoughts rested solely with Tonks, despite the anger he was showing at the prospect of the two pranksters being dead.

This was bad. She had dealt with Death Eaters in the past. At the Ministry in June, they had a purpose: To get the prophecy from Harry. Any damage they did then was simply collateral, unintended, accidental, a means to an end. Today, here, in the crowded Muggle side of King's Cross, any harm would be fully intentional and more gruesome than anything they might have inflicted in summer. This needed to end quickly, before anyone got hurt.

"Get us out of here," she whispered and gripping her wand and Sirius's jacket with equal strength. "We can contact Dumbledore from home."

"I can't," he ground out. "I've tried."

"Anti-Disapparition charms," George said sweetly. "You can get in, but you'll never get out." He, whoever he really was, gave that horrid grin and began walking around them, slowly, casually, as if they posed absolutely no threat.

What were they waiting for?

By what logic she dared apply to the Death Eaters, they had what they wanted. Harry, the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived, was there within their grasp. Obtaining him was still Voldemort's main goal. The Bloody Law might have been intended to ensnare her, but that had simply been a new way to get to Harry.

So what were they waiting for?

"The Mudblood looks nervous," George observed blandly. No doubt he participated in the numerous Muggle Hunts that had gone on before Voldemort grew so intent on Hermione Granger.

Carrow sneered with Fred's mouth. "As well she should. The Dark Lord wants to make an example of you. How long did you think he would let you disobey him? He would have happily killed you if you came to him properly in September, but now…" He breathed in slowly as if contemplating just what agonies Voldemort would visit on her after so many months of wilful defiance. "Now, you will beg for death, Mudblood."

"Enough, Carrow," a silky voice reprimanded.

The words had been spoken gently but Carrow and the Death Eater masquerading as George both flinched at the sound as if they had been slapped. Hermione knew that they would only react that way to one thing: Voldemort.

The dark wizard slid from the air as if he had been there all along, Apparating into being without so much as a whisper announcing his arrival. The twins fell onto one knee, prostrating themselves. Their audience, by contrast, turned into a herd of panicked animals at the sight; the witches and wizards who knew of him screamed and ran; the Muggles could only guess at what he might be and attempted the same response. It was bedlam, and the Death Eaters were having none of it. Spells began to fly, so many streaks of green – Killing Curses – flashed across the tumult that the whole of King's Cross looked as if it had been painted that sickening shade.

"Enough," Voldemort called, reigning in his overzealous followers with a single word.

He turned his inhuman eyes to the tiny cluster of resistance, something like a pleasant smile on his pale, reptilian face. It sent a chill of fear and revulsion down her spine. "Forgive me, I grew impatient," he said conversationally. "Understandable, wouldn't you say?"

"Why are you here?" Remus demanded, not taking up the Dark wizard's pleasant tone.

"To show that Lord Voldemort is merciful."

"By allowing your minions to murder innocent people?" Remus spat, his voice wavering ever so slightly over the word 'murder' as he, doubtless, imagined the woman he loved being killed by Carrow and his companion.

The Dark Lord replied with an elegant shrug. "They are Muggles; hardly people by any stretch of the imagination. It is magical blood that I care about, and I will not allow it to be wasted."

"Who is the one spilling it?" Harry shouted from behind his human shield. "YOU!"

"Ah, Harry Potter, I am so pleased you are here," Voldemort smiled like a kindly uncle. He circled around the boy and his protector, looking rather like a vulture just waiting for its prey to die. His hands, ghastly white and empty, gestured as he spoke; his words were menacing enough in meaning that he needed no wand to reinforce them. "You alone can end this battle. No one else need die in this struggle. Come before me, face me yourself and I will end all violence against those who would harbour you."

"You're insane!" Sirius called. "We'll never let him near you!"

The Dark wizard's smile grew fierce. "Then I will allow my followers to punish every man, woman and child who had the misfortune to bear witness to Potter's cowardice. Everyone who has ever aided him will be killed. Anyone who has ever set eyes on him will cease to be. He will die as he should have those fifteen years ago, all memory of his life erased. It will be as if Harry Potter never was.

"Come, Harry Potter."

When he didn't step forward immediately, Voldemort removed the wand from his robes and pointed it at the crowd, training it on a Muggle without bothering to look who he would kill in Harry's place. "I am waiting, Potter."

In the time it took Hermione's heart to beat just once, Harry shoved off Remus's hands and protests, ran the short distance to stand between Voldemort and the woman he had picked at random. He didn't know her, at least Hermione didn't think he did. The Muggle woman was not thanking him or telling him to run back behind his friends; she was standing, dumbfounded and frightened at the horrific man who had pointed the glowing stick at her. To a Muggle this must look like madness. To a witch like Hermione, it looked worse.

"I knew you would come," Voldemort said softly. "The Boy Who Lived."

His lips moved, forming the two words Hermione feared most, and vibrant green light flashed from the tip of his wand.

Her cry of dismay was lost in the shared horror that followed the boy sacrificing himself for so many. She tried to run to him, but Sirius held her back. She could only watch as his body crumpled. Her entire focus was on him, Harry, as he fell, on watching his knees buckle, his body twist and tumble as it dropped until Remus ran forward to stop him hitting the floor. She was so intent on her friend, she barely distinguished the sound of the Death Eaters' panic from her own, but the shrill wail that she later realised emanated from Bellatrix Lestrange broke through her daze. She looked past Harry and saw another figure had fallen, though no one had run forward to catch Voldemort; the man lay in a heap on the cold tiles of the railway station.

'Let him stays there,' she thought and raced with Sirius to join Remus at Harry's side.

"Please tell me he's not dead," she begged. "Please, please."

"Why would he be so stupid?" Sirius growled. "He didn't even have his wand out."

"Because he is a brilliant boy."

Hermione's head shot up to see the addition to their grief.

Dumbledore looked reverently down at the body of her friend. "He really is quite clever. Brave beyond sense, but still clever."

"He was brilliant and clever and brave. He's nothing now," she corrected him bitterly. She wanted to spit at him, claw at him and demand to know where he had been just moments earlier. Where had he been when Harry was being killed? What good were all those memories and special lessons he spent hours reviewing with Harry? He ought to have been teaching spells and wards. He had gone through so much trouble to protect her from Voldemort, why had he done nothing for Harry?

His eye held an audacious twinkle as he looked down at her. "Are you quite sure about that?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" she yelled, irritated that he would question her intelligence over something as devastating as the tense she used to discuss her recently-murdered friend. "It was a Killing Curse! I doubt he could live through that twice!"

Remus laughed, more a shocked breath than anything else, but it sounded enough like a laugh to have Hermione's head snap around to stare at him. He looked ecstatic, his face beaming with a smile so bright he looked crazed. "He has."

"You're joking," Sirius said, frown creasing his brow as he reached down, his fingers replacing Lupin's on Harry's neck, pressing into the boy's skin to feel the pulse that could not possibly still exist. A moment passed, just enough for a single heartbeat, and he, too, was smiling.

"Brilliant boy," Dumbledore said again.

No one contradicted him.

"That tickles," complained the brilliant, clever, senselessly brave boy, swatting at Sirius's hands as he opened his eyes groggily.

No one spoke as he sat up. No one dared breathe as his hands felt across his chest and stomach, searching for some indication of damage. The boy looked to Dumbledore. "Did it work?"

"Did what work?" Sirius demanded. "Did your plan succeed in giving me a fucking heart attack? Why, yes, it did. Great job, ya knob."

"Sirius," Dumbledore chided gently, "Harry has played his part perfectly. I trust the Horcrux has been destroyed."

Harry nodded. "I left it back in that misty, white place with Regulus."

"Wait," Sirius interrupted. "Regulus? My Regulus?"

Harry nodded as he turned to Dumbledore, "Professor, was that all in my head or is that what death is really like?"

"Having never died myself, I could not say for certain," Dumbledore replied sagely, pausing as the delighted light burst in his eyes. "But for the moment, let us focus on the here and not the hereafter. There is but one Horcrux remaining. Remus, if you would be so good as to destroy it for us. Sirius, your work is as it has been since September."

Sirius nodded and stood, pulling Hermione up with him.

She wanted to protest, to demand answers of Harry and the Headmaster. There was so much happening that she had not known about, vital secrets that were only now being revealed after it was too late. She had known about the Horcruxes the Order were systematically destroying, but no one had said anything about Harry having one. Surely that was information that should have been shared immediately to them all. She wanted to objection, but she couldn't. Awareness was returning to her of the dangers nearby. The Death Eaters, those who had not fled when Voldemort fell, were gathered around their master, nervously watching him regain consciousness. Sirius saw them, too. Saw one above all others. The round little man with a rat face and a hand made from silvery magic.

"Wormtail," he said, his voice a harsh growl.

"S-Sirius," the man squeaked, as ratlike in sound as he was in appearance. "Fine w-wife you've got yourself. N-not quite your type as I recall. All legs."

Sirius had his wand drawn, ready to silence Pettigrew permanently. Hermione could not understand why the man was standing in the open as he was, as if he were just begging to be killed. She had seen the way Sirius and Remus reacted to him in the Shrieking Shack, knew their murderous contempt for the man. It was all wrong. Pettigrew was a coward, but he wasn't stupid; he had to know that it was suicide to face Sirius head on, but that's just what he was doing. He was not the sort to stand and fight, he worked subtly with deceit and subterfuge to make up for his lack of strength and skill.

Deceit. She tore her eyes off the hated Animagus, searching the chaos that whirled around them, and saw it, the green glow of a wand just outside her husband's vision.

"Sirius!" she shouted and tried to shove him out of the way, but he was too strong and too intent on Wormtail to be moved. Her counterspell came too late. Pain stabbed her hard in the chest, the ache resonating in her torso. It felt as if her heart had stopped beating, though she could still feel it pounding its panicked drumbeat.

The pain spiked again when saw Sirius swaying on his feet, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed.

Desperately she held tight to him, her knuckles going white as she twisted her fingers into the leather of his jacket, trying to keep him standing, as if that was the only requirement for life, but his weight proved too much. He slipped from her fingers. As he fell, her rings, spellbound and impossible to remove, slipped easily over her knuckle and drop to the ground with him.

'Till death do you part.'

A/N: I've done all I can, but still feel as if this chapter could have been better. I think it's how quickly Harry wakes from death. In the books it seems to take forever because it's from Harry's perspective, but from the outside it can't have taken very long between the curse and him waking. Agree? Disagree?