Summary: Short stories for 31 Days of Flash Fiction

Beta Love: Dragon and the Cold Water Bottle Torture, Dutchgirl01 the Busiest Bee that Ever Buzzed, Commander Shepard the Winter Soldier

A/N: Artfight and Terraria is eating my soul… x.x death.

Warning: Mention of rape.

Release

Nightmares are releases.

Sylvia Browne

Prompt: She grabbed the shard of glass and dragged her body forward, stray slivers burrowing into her knees. She had to get up. This was it.

This was the way of things, she realised.

Pain.

That was what told her she was still, somehow, alive.

Glass was peppered all across her skin where she had been thrown. The smashed shop windows—Diagon Alley shops, all—were looking like a rampaging drunken dragon had saundered in.

With Voldemort gone, it set free the whims of the purebloods—people once on a leash of fear for their Dark Lord. Now, with Riddle dead and the truth of the halfblood exposed, true Purebloods were taking out their impotence on any and all.

But Mudbloods most of all.

Halfbloods, perhaps, were persecuted just as much because a certain halfblood had subjugated the entirety of Wizarding Britain before Harry Potter had taken him out. Revenge was a powerful motivator amongst the highly active attackers, and the Ministry was in no condition to help.

It currently hung in tatters.

And Kingsley had been injured badly that they had secreted him away somewhere to recover—now Arthur Weasley, outcast pureblood but at least "pure" was on the throne of Minister for Magic.

And he was having his balls squeezed by a certain wife for priorities like the Marriage Law.

A law that would ensure the pure would have their pick of wives.

And so lay the groundwork for where she was—

Her refusal to marry someone because they put the galleon fee to the Ministry Marriage Law Office—which was being run by none other than Ginevra and Percy Weasley.

This world was worse than before.

And Hermione was at her last step before the cliff drop.

Release me.

"But what will I become?" Hermione whispered into the rain of glass and blood.

Everything they can never be.

There was a time when Hermione would have fought tooth a nail to save every life, thinking every life was precious.

But that was before she was thrown against a wall and defiled simply for being—her.

While all of Diagon Alley ignored her screams.

She wasn't married, and by the law, those not married were considered—fair game.

To prevent loose witches.

Afterwards, Ronald had come onto the scene like a white knight, offering to marry her despite her dishonour. Like a hero.

A smug, defiant hero.

But she had known the Old Laws—the buried laws that even purebloods couldn't touch. The Laws set down by Hecate, that no mortal could stand against.

The Goddess of Magic. Sorcery. Ghosts. The Moon. Night. Necromancy—the unspoken and feared.

So feared that they buried those laws under various other laws forbidding any to even speak of it. Only, just because you didn't say anything about a thing did not make it go away.

And Hermione had touched the ancient tome—and Hecate's ire stirred in resonance to her ordeal, offering her Her Darkness in exchange for releasing her favoured hound. A hound that desired to wreak havoc upon the world that had bound it.

There would be no Harry Potter to save the Wizarding World from this cesspit. He was in Mungos in a coma he never arose from. They could paint him however they wanted—he wasn't there to argue.

And they did.

Ginny claimed Harry was conscious for all the while it took them to take their marriage vows.

But Hermione knew better, now.

The enemy was closer than it had ever been.

She could trust no one but one—

The one who would become the Destroyer.

The one that understood her.

Release me.

Hermione took his hand as he pulled her from the battle's glass.

His neck was torn but healed. His eyes smouldered with hate, but not of her. For her—they burned as bright as the full moon.

Her parents were gone.

Her old life gone.

Her friends—were not even her friends.

There was only him.

"Yes," she said, deciding as the Dark Key fit into the lock of her soul. IT had always been there. Waiting. Waiting for a reason.

She had many reasons, now.

But the most significant was that she despised slavery.

"Kiss me if you wish," she invited. Even now, she would not force a choice upon this man.

He deserved better.

His mouth covered hers, devouring her, but even as it did, she became the key to his lock. This was what she had been born to be, but it was her choice to embody it.

Darkness passed between them, resonating, filling, changing them.

This was no Dark hex or petty Dark spell. This was no Horcrux. This was no complicated weave to bring power to the unworthy.

This was raw magic. Primordial. Seething. Sentient magic.

Her body jerked and twisted in pain, but he held her close to him—his heat merging with hers. His Darkness swallowed her up, soothing her.

It would be a fleeting pain.

The pain of rebirth.

The pain before the ecstasy of rightness.

There was a baleful bay, and she suddenly realised it was a doubled thing—one from him. One from her.

Their shapes grew, altered, grew in Darkness. The sun eclipsed. The moon was dark.

The two Hounds of Hecate snarled in the dark, their bodies glistening with the fluid of their rebirth even as their eyes glowed with moonlight. Their coats like the obsidian blanket of stars in the cosmos, shifting with nebulae and cosmic wind.

They levelled Diagon Alley and mated upon the ruins and the corpses, releasing magic from its subjugation by unworthy mortal hands.

Back to the Goddess.

Back to the Earth.

And those bodies they left rose in the wake of necromantic wrath, obliterating all who hid amongst the rubble. Only when no one was left alive did those bodies fall to the Earth and turn to dust.

The eclipse lasted for an entire day, defying all known science, shown in all locations across the globe.

Severus gnawed gently on his mate's ears, licking the side of her muzzle as she lay on her side, four pups greedily suckling from her teats.

He brought her Darkness and moonlight, feeding her dutifully as she guarded over the pups—not that any were stupid enough to attempt to approach their den. When the pups were big enough, Hecate would bid them to raze a location that was too arrogant of magic, and so they would, but the rest of them the Goddess let them raise their family in peaceful Darkness.

No longer chained to the human world, Severus was a loyal, attentive mate, and Hermione—

She needed only the love of her mate and the hand of her Goddess to be perfectly content.

She no longer worried about other things, anymore.

Perhaps, in the future, with their pups fully grown and set upon the world, they would take on human forms again—raising a society of magic that remembered the Dark Goddess' hand in all magic.

Perhaps.

But for now, the two Hecate Hounds were content in their lot in life, far from the stench of humanity that had once subjugated them.

Hermione licked over one pup—a strange combination of purples, blues, and brown, and he wrestled with her muzzle, trying to pin her down.

Tried, but—ultimately failed when she lifted her head.

Severus gave their wayward pup "the look."

Hermione licked under his chin and gave him a canine smile.

Severus lay down beside his mate, snuggling with her before it was time to hunt again and bring her food.

Hermione's tail wagged in appreciation, as they both closed their eyes and slept the day away.

And they lived Darkly ever after.