Chapter 32
Hermione was reeling from the amount of death she had single-handedly managed to witness within the last few hours.
She supposed she should have been used to it by now. She had, after all, seen so many loved ones die during the war. And in a way she had pretty much lost her parents as well, seeing as they refused to have anything to do with her. She knew she was lucky they were still alive, but it wasn't the same between them anymore.
And as a healer, she had her share of deaths as well. It was always hard losing a patient, especially when there might have been a small chance of saving them; but in those cases, some unknown factor would always present itself and ruin any chances she may once have had of saving the lives of the patients she had so desperately tried to help.
But today was different. The people who were dying on both sides had no idea what they were even dying for. At least Voldemort was straightforward with his goals and why he was killing every witch or wizard of her blood status and all those who opposed him. No this leader was just feeding them all some cock-and-bull story of what he wanted them to believe in order to gain their full support.
She wondered if they would even continue to support him whenever he revealed his true plans, or if by then they would all be in too deep to back out. How long would it continue if he did manage to win? In the future it seemed like there was still opposition, despite his side coming close to victory. So what might the world look like if somehow he did manage to gain control of it all?
She shuddered at the possibility; nothing good could come of worrying about a future which may or may not even come to pass.
And if she could help it, there was no way he would let that happen.
"Granger," she heard a voice call out for her. She looked up, unsure of who it was. Everything was blurry from too far away, and she supposed it was due to all the dust being generated from the falling stone features, as well as the smoke slowly making its way into her corridor.
Hermione had been currently trying to put it out, but it seemed that despite her best efforts, that it would not cooperate. She couldn't help but wonder if like the tornado, it would help to have more man power aiding her.
As the man came closer, her eyes widened in shock to see Flint standing close by.
"What are you doing here?" she asked in surprise, "Never mind; Marcus I need you to help me try and put it out! The more magic we use, the easier it would be to extinguish it!"
"And why would I do that?" his eyes glinted in the light, "When I went through all this effort of helping it happen?"
She sputtered out, fear seeping into her body as puzzle pieces started falling into place. "You're on their side?" she couldn't help but ask, clutching on tightly to her wand. "Are you the one in charge of all of this?"
Hermione knew that he couldn't have been, seeing how he died in the other time line, but it didn't stop the question from slipping out of her mouth. Maybe he would finally el her just who was in charge of all of this.
"No, little Lion Cub," he said with a laugh, "It is not I who is charge. But you already knew that, didn't you? You're trying to play me into revealing who is in charge. Well I got news for you; I'm not as easily manipulated as a Hufflepuff. You will not get any answers out of me, even if I had them to give."
"So you don't know either," Hermione surmised. "How does that feel? To once again be blindly following someone's footsteps without even knowing what their intentions are? Do you get off on being given orders?"
"Incarcerous!" Marcus Flint shouted angrily at that, and she felt herself be tied together. Well, that probably wasn't the smartest move on her part. She should have at least tried to disarm him before goading him into getting answers out of him. Yet now her wand lay on the ground, less than a metre out of her reach. "That will teach you to speak to me like that. I am nobody's lapdog, Granger. I do not take orders from anyone."
"Yet here you are," she couldn't help but say, the words falling out of her mouth before she could stop them.
"Yet here I am," he said, eyes glowing as he walked closer to her. He lifted a finger and ran it down the side of her arm, making her shiver with fright. "But you see, little mudblood, I could care less about who is in charge and what they want to accomplish. You see, I thrive off chaos. I love it. And here is a perfectly opportunity to take charge and get what I really want."
"Which is?" she asked, as he moved closer. She could feel his breath on her neck as his hand slid to her waist. She wanted nothing more than to throw his hand off of her and hit him just as she had his Draco back in third year, and trust her when she said she would hit him far harder. Despite having magic readily available to her, she still was aware of the fact that she could use muggle fighting if it ever came down to it.
And it helped that if Marcus came any closer, then her unbound foot would be in a perfect position to step on him.
She wouldn't be able to run away, not while he still had his wand, but maybe it would be enough of a distraction to be able to take his wand from him.
"You," he bit out, "And trust me when I say I'm going to enjoy hurting you. You see, the real Slytherin way is to let others do all the hard parts, and then come in at the last moment and take everything from them. And that, Granger, is exactly what I plan to do. I am going to sit back and let everyone fight to take the Ministry, while I enjoy using you thoroughly, and afterwards, I simply need to kill the one in charge and take everything from them. The great thing about this organization is that everything is anonymous. If there is anyone who knows the true person behind the hood, they can easily be taken care of, but other than that, no one knows anyone else. And so if I simply turn up after all of this and take credit, then I am in charge."
"Why me?" she couldn't help but ask. It couldn't be about convenience, because he had approached her while she was at St. Mungo's as well, so it must have meant that he had some sort of fixation on her.
"Because you're all wrong!" Marcus spat out, "Someone with your brains and beauty should be a pureblood, but instead your blood is muddy. You're absolute filth, yet you prance around the country as if you bloody own all of it, when you have no family connections and no old money. You have nothing, and yet you somehow managed to have more than half us purebloods do now. And it isn't fair."
"Well maybe if you hadn't tried to kill everyone like me during the war you would have something left," she said sarcastically, "Or maybe, if like Draco, you tried to change you could have some of your old status left."
His eyes flashed at the mention of Draco's name, "Draco, is it?" he asked her, moving far too close to her for her liking. "Let me guess, Granger. You fell for him and his money, like the whore you are. Do you enjoy him using you to better his name? Because trust me when I say that he doesn't care a single bit for you. He's going to use you and toss you, like he does everyone else when they lose their purpose in his life. You see, he's oddly like his father on that count."
"He's nothing like his father!" Hermione hissed. "He's a good man who has changed."
"So you're in love with him, then," Marcus said softly, "What a waste. I had hoped you would be pure, but I suppose that it doesn't really matter anyways, now does it? Besides, this will be like killing two birds with one stone. Hurt Malfoy, and enjoy torturing you. Because by the time I'm done with you, you're going to be begging me to kill you and be merciful. But I promise you, Granger, I will be anything but merciful with you, like I was with Percy Weasley when I sucked the air from his throat. No matter how much you cry and how much you scream, I will enjoy every curse I cast. I deserve that much," he whispered.
"Stupefy!" a voice called out from further away. As Marcus Flint fell to the ground, Blaise came into her line of vision. "Granger! Are you okay?" He ran over to where she was standing, and cast a charm with his wand to release her. She collapsed onto him, letting out a slight sob.
She could feel her body shaking as Blaise picked up her wand and handed it to her. "He killed Percy!" she cried softly, "And he was going to kill me too. Oh Merlin, he was going to kill me."
Blaise rubbed her back softly as she let out some tears, still attempting to process all that had happened in such a short period of time. "I know, Granger," Blaise said softly. "I know. But you're safe now, I promise. We just need to get through this, yeah? And once we do, I promise we'll all go back to Grimmauld place and drink a round on me."
She let out a watery laugh, "I should have seen it coming; I knew there was something weird with him wanting to talk to me that day at the hospital. I just thought he was attempting to use me to gain more information about all of this so he could use it to his benefit. Not because he wanted to sell it to the leader of whatever these people call themselves."
"The Vetusta," Blaise filled in for her. "I ran into a group of them downstairs and they more than happily spilled their name to me."
She snorted, "Sounds appropriate. They're all for the old ways aren't they," she said, recognizing the root of the word. "I just…can we keep moving? I don't want to think about it anymore. If I do, I'll start to go into shock. Merlin, there's so many things I haven't done yet, so many things I haven't said. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't shown up when you did."
"Just returning the favour," he told her, "You helped save our asses back with that tornado. Now let's see if we can find the sick son of a bitch in charge of this, and bring them down once and for all."
"And how do you plan on knowing who it is?" she couldn't help but ask, as the words slipped out of her mouth.
"I plan on looking for the only idiot brandishing the Staff of Merlin. Some Aurors said they spotted him with it earlier, and if we get to him in time, perhaps we can sneak up behind him and stun him. Because let's face it, it's going to be rather difficult bringing him down using only our magic."
She frowned. She hadn't quite thought of how she would deal with bring him down once she got to him.
"The magic of the staff cannot do anything other than enhance one's natural powers," Hermione said, paraphrasing a section of a book she had read a while back, "But back with the tornado, we were able to defeat it using a lot of power. So maybe the key to bringing him down, once and for all is to combine all our magic together."
He grinned at her, "There's the Granger I know! Always a few steps ahead."
She laughed softly, "Have I know! Always a few steps ahead."
"Have you seen Draco recently?" she couldn't help but ask, slightly anxiously. She hadn't spotted him or any of her friends since they had arrived on scene, and she needed to know that they were all still okay. Merlin knows she wouldn't be able to handle losing any of them.
"About an hour ago?" Blaise said, looking quite thoughtful. "He was tying up several of the Vetusta, and binding them with a spell that only he could do. Rather ingenious, if I do say so myself."
She let out a sigh of relief. At least he was okay for the time being.
"I won't tell," Blaise promised her, giving her a knowing look. Upon seeing her puzzled look, he stated, "That you're in love with him. I won't tell him. But between the two of us, I think the git is in love with you too, Salazar help us all."
She smiled to herself and Hermione promised herself that the moment they got out of this, she would finally take a leap of faith and tell the blond how she felt about him once and for all, and everything else be damned.
The two of them ran together down the hall, stunning several of the other side, mainly ones who seemed pretty harmless in comparison to Flint and many others. She knew that the majority of the people here were innocent for the most part, guilty mainly following mob mentality without question. And they did not deserve to die in this. Simple stunning and incarceration spells were more than enough for situations like those.
And the ones who seemed far more deadly got more severe curses, ones that would incapacitate a person, but nothing that would do permanent damage in the long run. That was the last thing she wanted to accomplish with all of this.
She knew it would be far too optimistic of her to hope that they all got out of this in one piece.
But for the time being, she would do her very best to ensure that they came close.
Theo was not having the time of his life at the moment. He barely even wanted to fight in the wizarding war, but his father had all but forced him into it. And after that, he promised himself that he would stay straight and narrow. He got a job and stayed on the path as best as he could.
And it hadn't always been something which was easy. There were times when he simply wanted to curse everyone who made his life difficult.
He knew he hadn't been a shining model of perfection in the past, but by the way that others treated him, one would expect Theo to have been a far lesser person. But he bit his tongue, trying his best to not taking any note of them.
Having Pansy in his life made it all the easier. The way she seemed to always see right through him, especially when he was having a difficult time, and somehow always seemed to know exactly what he needed to feel better.
But somehow, a few years later, he found himself straight in the path of the war once more.
He knew he probably could have avoided it all together. He wasn't an Auror like Draco and Blaise, but he knew it was the right thing to do; to fight by them. His inner Slytherin was screaming at him for the way he just dropped everything to help, but loyalty was also one of their traits after all. So in a way, he was doing exactly what one might suspect of Theo Nott.
If that thing happened to be sending full body-binding curses at everyone he saw who he knew not to be on their side, regardless of the person. It didn't matter what spell they threw at him, he decided to be quite equal with the treatment. Of course, some of the times it involved far more complicated duels, but nothing that took longer than a few moments.
He knew Pansy was somewhere behind him, trying to help others who had been injured as well, administering some of the potions she had brought with her, however since her supply was limited, she had to be fairly reasonable with the amount she could give a person.
He loved her all the more for it.
"Immobulus," he heard someone yell out, ahead of him, and he felt his entire body go rigid from the spell. He fell to the ground, unable to see Pansy anywhere in sight. Well at least she would be safe.
"Theo Nott," a smug voice called out, as he stood above him. Theo looked up to see a hooded man wielding a staff in his hand. "I have waited a long time to have you in this position. Hell, the only person I want lying here more than you is Malfoy himself. But you'll have to do for the time being until I get my hands on that bastard."
"Why?" Theo couldn't help but ask, surprised he could even still speak.
"Because of how you lot treated me and my house when we were at school. You dismissed us as useless and unworthy, when the truth was that we were far better than your ancient and noble house could ever be. And you tormented us mercilessly for nothing more than what you deemed to be our heritage. But that's just why I hate you. Not why I'm doing this," the man laughed mirthlessly, as his hood fell to the ground.
He could feel the staff pressing against chest, as he looked into the eyes of Zacharias Smith, praying that Pansy had gotten to safety.