Fic Request Fulfilled for forgetablelove
Title: Catch My Fall
Author: lire_casander
Beta: Kirstin (confiteor_3)
Rating: NC - 17
Word count: 4784
Summary: Fifteen years after the final battle, Hermione remembers what really happened that last Valentine's Day.
Warnings: Angst, character death, UST, dark themes.
Disclaimer: I do not own in any form or shape these characters, JK Rowling does. Just playing with them for my own amusement and yours.
Author's Notes: This was my first time writing something like this, so I please ask you to forgive me if I royally messed it up.
Another day. Another anniversary.
She didn't have anything to celebrate, although it had been fifteen years since Voldemort had been defeated, and everyone in the Wizarding World was getting ready for another peaceful Valentine's Day.
She closed the door of her bedroom, trying not to wake up the magical photographs dozing in their frames. She inhaled deeply and began to walk.
It only was another day in her life. Somehow, although she had repeated those words constantly, she hasn't found them meaningful.
Her fourth-years were excited as usual - they weren't very different from what she had been at age fourteen. The only difference was that, while these children worried about the normal frivolities, she had spent those years trying to avoid Voldemort's raising unsuccessfully.
"Good morning," she said with tired voice. The children shut up immediately - they all knew that it wasn't a good idea to annoy Professor Granger. She was famous for being fussy, but those who had the chance to know her were aware that she was still the same Hermione Granger. Those children idolized Hermione because they considered her a heroine - she hated herself for being a survivor.
"Good morning, Professor," everyone said at once. They remained in silence after greeting her until Hermione arrived at the table and, as usual, seated upon the wood. When she opened her mouth to start the lesson, the pale hand of one of her students interrupted her.
"Professor, are we going to go to Hogsmead to celebrate Valentine's Day this year?"
Hermione shook her head. That was the reason why she hated teaching around these days so much. Draco found those questions easier to answer than she ever would.
"No, Miss Weasley," she fought to keep the tears at bay. "This year we won't hold any celebration without the Headmaster consent."
"It's just not fair! " a student with noticeably Eastern characteristics exclaimed. "We are the only place in the Wizarding World that doesn't celebrate the day when Voldemort was defeated. My father says---"
"I have no interest in knowing what your father thinks about this issue, Mr. Smith," Hermione interrupted him. "In this school, it is not found desirable to praise Voldemort's death - that won't make the ones we lost come back."
The class sank in an uncomfortable silence - Bernie Smith was trying at all costs to speak again, but the warning glance of Katie Bell's daughter prevented it.
And, suddenly, the question she feared the most arrived.
"Professor, is it really true you fought in the war?"
She breathed deeply. "Everyone who was old enough to know what a war was fought." It was her diplomatic answer whenever that question arose - but she had never known the answer for the question that inevitably followed.
"Will you tell us how it was? At least today, Professor, please."
She watched them all, one by one, realizing they had been born the same year they had defeated Voldemort. Only a few had both their parents; almost everyone had lost someone during the final battle.
But she couldn't tell the truth to them. She hadn't even told Kyle, in spite of his persistent pleas.
"No," she refused categorically. "I can't. I'm sorry."
"Hermione, they have grown up enough for you to tell them," said a voice from the door. Draco Malfoy, current Hogwarts Headmaster, was leaning against the wood, watching her worryingly. "You have to get over it too. Speak about it. You need it as much as they do."
"But I---" She was lost, scared. Draco entered the class and closed the door.
"I know it's difficult, but it's the best thing for everyone. You have to let it go, Hermione."
The children watched the exchange agape. Many knew about the animosity that had confronted their Headmaster and their History teacher in their youth; how they became friends was still a mystery.
"I already spoke about it in class," replied Hermione. "I teach History of Magic, remember? Every year I have to explain it at least seven times."
"And do you explain who died that night, 'Mione?" Draco Malfoy's shining eyes settled in hers for a second, until getting the answer he wanted. "You won't have to make it all alone. I'm here. But these children need to know why their parents passed away in the battle of Hogwarts. There's nobody better than you to do it."
The students agreed expectantly. Many of them were orphans and they had been brought up in Hogwarts; the rest didn't know much of that night because only those that had left alive the school knew about it - and the survivors could be counted with the fingers of one hand.
"No---I don't think I can."
"Do you still have the Pensieve?" A simple nod followed by a smooth turn of a wrist, and the device appeared upon the table. "Then let it speak for you, 'Mione."
Draco observed his History teacher while she took air heavily and cast a spell unknown for almost all the pupils.
"Maiofacio."
And suddenly the class became an eddy of colours before they landed in front of a fireplace where a boy with black hair and a scar on his forehead was watching the space.
They had backed down fifteen years in time.
To the day of the final battle.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Hogwarts had been besieged for about a fortnight, and it was more and more evident that those who defended the school were losing the battle against Voldemort's army. Harry Potter tried to command a scouting party that would escape from the castle to request aid to the Ministry, but nobody wanted to leave Harry.
Leaving him to Voldemort in those circumstances could mean the death of the Boy-Who-Lived.
"You're not going to leave, are you?" Harry asked his friends, seated in front of him at the table in the common room. "You aren't going to let me face Voldemort on my own."
"I told you we'd have time to come back," Hermione responded. "Here we are, Harry."
He watched both before getting up, exhausted. He headed for the exit of the Gryffindor Tower instead of the stairs that lead to the dorms.
"Aren't you going to sleep, Harry?" asked Ron, blinking. "You should rest, mate, if not, you won't be able to defeat... Voldemort."
"I cannot sleep here with him outside. I will never be able to; until I find a way to kill him, I'm off to the owlery." This said, he disappeared by the hollow left by the Fat Lady, who closed it again once Harry had left.
Ron leaned in his chair with a defeated sigh. He observed Hermione, who had hidden her head between her hands, an excessive trembling growing through her back until becoming a sob.
"Hermione, what happened?" But she just kept shaking. Ron approached slowly and surrounded her shoulders with his arm, trying to contain her sobs. "Hermione, he will understand. Or what's better, he will kill Voldemort. All this will be finished before you can say Alohomora."
"We are sieged, Ron! This doesn't have nor will have any good ending! Don't you understand it? We're going to die here because we don't have any chance to survive! We don't have any way out, the castle is nearly destroyed! And the solution we have is simply not viable! Although at this rate, Voldemort won't even need to murder Harry..."
The outburst took him by surprise. Ron loosened her immediately and faced her deranged glance.
The siege had made an impression on them, on all of them. Ron knew that it was just a matter of time before Hermione lost faith - even the strongest needed reassurance. But Hermione was right, the siege was killing them.
There were few left in the castle - only the loyal to Harry who had defied their families. The Creevey brothers had left their cameras and had chosen to fight next to their idol. Hannah Abbott and Justin Flinch-Fletchey, Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan, and just a few more. Neville had left his grandmother with the promise to save the Wizarding World. Luna hadn't even said goodbye to her father. And the active members of the Order of the Phoenix had moved in to the castle before the siege. Everyone had decided to leave behind what they had known during their childhood to fight next to the hero.
Only Harry was nothing more than a teenager scared of his own fate. A teenager who didn't have family to come back to; the Weasleys had tried to make him change his mind, but he was very stubborn.
"Hermione, please, you can't lose hope now. This is just temporary. You'll see it'll end up fine."
"How? Ron? Do you know how?" Before the troubled silence of her friend, Hermione closed her eyes. "We will not leave the castle alive."
"I'm sure we will."
"And why are you so sure? "
"Because we have the secret weapon Voldemort despises so much. We can love, Hermione. It's love that is going to save us from this."
"You speak like Dumbledore."
"I will take that as a compliment."
"It wasn't."
"Dumbledore was a good man," Ron countered, hurt. "He trusted Harry before anyone else, and he always supported him."
"Dumbledore was an old, crazy man near the end," affirmed Hermione with harshness. "All that about the 'power he does not know' is nothing more than a hoax. Love and naïveté aren't going to take us from this place, Ron. We are lost. And the moment Voldemort discovers a crack to strain into Hogwarts... you won't have to care about Harry sacrificing himself for us. We will be already dead."
"You are a hypocrite," accused the teenager. "Why don't you go and tell Harry instead of making him hopeful about a victory you don't believe in? Answer me!"
"Because he refuses to see reason, that's why! Damn it, Ron, he doesn't even pay attention to you! Don't you see it?"
"See what, Hermione? Please tell me because I don't understand you."
"He spends his nights in the owlery, for Merlin's sake! He doesn't want to listen to us because he has no excuses anymore! He has nothing!"
She was hysterical, screaming so loudly that Ron would have feared she could be heard all over the tower hadn't it been for the Silencing Charm they had cast before beginning the meeting that Harry had finished abruptly.
"I'm going to repeat my first question," said Ron slowly. "What happened to you? You're not that fatalist usually. Why do you say we are dead? What are you hiding from me?"
He approached her, eyes wide open and fixed on hers, leaning into her personal space.
"What do you know that I don't?" he whispered, breathing only a couple of centimetres away from her lips.
They were so close that Ron could almost hear the gears of Hermione's brain working to give him a satisfactory answer. "Don't lie to me," he whispered. "I can't stand you lying to me."
She breathed in as if it was hard for her to do so, trembling hands she didn't know where to place. Ron took both in his hands and kept them. Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but the thought was stuck with those freckles and refused to cooperate.
The atmosphere became more oppressive; Hermione didn't know what was happening to her, why she couldn't articulate a sound, how all of a sudden her world had been reduced to those blue irises that had been with her during the last years. She tried to talk again, but no sound left her throat.
There was no more air in the room than the one lodged Ron's lungs, she decided. She raised a hand, brushing the freckles of her friend's cheeks, entangling her fingers in an untamed tuft of his red head. Time had stopped.
And then, when it seemed that everything was destined to happen, an explosion tore the air and a whine frightened them.
"Hogwarts has been taken!"
They separated steeply, as if suddenly they burned with the power of a thousand ignited bonfires. They looked each other in the eye for a second before running to look for Harry.
The final battle for the control of the Wizarding World had just started.
Harry found them halfway - he was running from the owlery because he had also heard Colin Creevey's shouts.
"What has happened?" he asked, almost out of breath.
"I don't know," Hermione exclaimed. "But we have to stop it, whatever it is!"
They approached the Great Hall, where all the members of the resistance had congregated, wands in hand, but the Death Eaters were nowhere to be found.
"Does anyone know what's going on?" demanded Harry again.
"Colin has begun to scream like crazy," explained McGonnagall. "I have yet to see him, but I have a horrible feeling he and his brother have been caught - they were patrolling together."
Sounds of footsteps cushioned by the carpets were heard outside the hall - they were noisier than two boys' footsteps and the only ones absent were the Creevey brothers. There was somebody else in the castle, and that presence caused them all to shiver.
"Whatever comes from this, ," said Harry between gritted teeth, a whisper that reached them all like a yell. "Whatever comes from this, we have to kill Voldemort."
Hermione closed her eyes for a second. She had to tell the truth to everyone, what she and Harry had discovered that same afternoon, what was going to cost them the battle, the war and life.
She tried to speak, but the footsteps had just stopped in front of the door, and everything was silent. The seconds passed by slowly, as though they found it difficult to shell off the clock.
The door opened without a warning, and sudden beams of green and red light flew left, right and centre, reaching the members of the Order before they could react.
Harry covered himself with a spell before attacking, but everything happened in slow motion. He could see Bellatrix Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy, Nott and many others, fighting maskless. He could see how Bellatrix's wand sent a shining, green ray and Hannah Abbott fell like a wrecked doll.
Less than three seconds later, Hogwarts' Great Hall became the bloodier battlefield of the war.
The Death Eaters cornered them next to the teachers' table - the Order tried to hide Harry behind a curtain of reflecting and shielding spells, but the wizard managed to find a hole in their human wall and strained himself forward. They fought for ages, curses flying in each and every direction, not aimed properly and therefore missing their destiny. The Order had killed many Death Eaters, but it had suffered several losses. When the Death Eaters stopped fighting, Harry couldn't believe what had just taken place.
Around him there were only corpses. Fred and George still had that amused smirk of the ones who laughed even at the death, grasping their wands in identical gesture. Molly Weasley laid not so far away, eyes closed in an endless pain. Fleur was clutching the inert body of a half werewolf Bill. McGonnagall tried to make Hooch sit up unsuccessfully, and Arthur Weasley was holding his face with his hands, obviously hurting.
Unharmed, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville still kept their wands and aimed them trembly towards the attackers, who were in front of them, looking at them with predatory eyes.
"What's going on?" whispered Ron.
"They are... waiting," Neville said.
"They wait for Voldemort," said Harry. "He hadn't wanted to do the dirty work, but when it comes down to me..."
Hermione tightened her grip on his arm, and Harry looked back at her, remembering the conversation they had had earlier that evening.
"Harry, there's something you should know," she had begun in a low voice. "I have found out what the last Horcrux is."
"Excellent," he had smiled. "Exactly what we needed. So?"
"The problem is... it is a person..."
Silence followed her words - Harry had killed several Death Eaters during the course of the war, but that was different. Killing someone in order to destroy Voldemort meant a plot, and a murder.
"Who is it?"
"That's our biggest problem."
"Hermione, please tell me. Is it someone we know?" Her short nod made him grimace. "Is is someone I love?" Another nod, and he closed his eyes in an attempt not to think. "Who?"
"Harry, the last Horcrux... is you."
Astonishment was stronger than the tears that struggled to leave his eyes. Everything they had fought for, everything they had believed in, the only path they knew how to follow, everything had been wrong all that time. They couldn't afford the destruction of that last Horcrux. It was as though they were forced to ask an angel to resign from his wings.
And nevertheless they had to give up flying.
"It's fine," Harry finally choked. "I had come to terms with the fact that I could die during the war. Being certain of it doesn't make it easier for me--- but it simplifies your decisions."
"How?" Hermione was shaking. "I don't see how you dying can simplify anything to us."
"I will let Voldemort kill me, and just immediately afterwards one of you, or everyone, has to murder him. But it must be immediately afterwards, Hermione. If you let him think he's already won, you'll all be dead. And then our sacrifices will be of no use."
"Harry, I can't tell the other--- Ron will die as soon as he knows this--- Harry, this can't be happening---"
"What's happening here, Hermione?" asked Ron suddenly, bursting in into the office. "What is that I don't have to know?"
A cold and snaky voice interrupted his memories. "My, my, Harry, I sssee you are already sssaying goodbye to your dear friendsss..."
"Voldemort," Harry's voice was coldly calculated. "We meet again."
"Thiss time I hope you will fight on your feet. It would be far too eassy to kill a coward."
"I am not scared of you, Tom."
They looked at each other for a second - Death Eaters and members of the Order holding their breaths, ready to jump at the tiniest hint of a change. Ron and Neville tried to gather up all the hatred needed to cast an Avada Kedavra; Hermione and Ginny looked for the wrath that would allow them to summon an Unforgivable.
And in a second, in a twinkling of an eye, everything was finished. Voldemort was faster and pointed his wand at Harry's chest, sure and doubtless. He hadn't even deigned to pronounce the spell aloud.
A reflection of green light.
A deaf sound of a body falling to the ground.
In that second, in that twinkling of an eye, in that beat, the destiny of the Wizarding World was sealed. When Voldemort lowered his wand and started turning around to receive the applauses of his minions, four different voices yelled at the same time - wrath, hatred, fear and pain.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Four beams of green light later, Voldemort's body lay on the ground of the Great Hall, boneless, while his partisans looked at him, overwhelmed.
"Lord?" Bellatrix asked in a broken voice. "Lord? You've killed the Dark lord!"
She removed her wand from her robes, where she had kept it after killing Lupin and Tonks, and aimed it feebly, trembly, at the survivors of the Order, congregated around the inert body of their former leader.
She found herself pointed by four wands, and then she lowered hers - she could recognize the desperation of the ones who had nothing to lose. That feeling made heroes and winners.
It shone in McGonnagall's eyes, in Flitwick's, in Fleur's. In Ginny's eyes and in Neville's, Arthur's and Charlie's.
In the eyes of Ron and Hermione there was much more than desperation. Something worse.
Emptiness.
Slowly, Bellatrix deposited her wand in the ground and knelt down, followed by the rest of the Death Eaters. They didn't have another option left than to surrender - their leader had just fallen, and without their head they were nothing more than simple wizards.
Once they had arrested and immobilized every Death Eaters in the Hall, Hermione retired to her dorm to cry over her losses. She was all alone - without Harry, the reason why she had survived for so long had just vanished in thin air.
Sitting upon her bed, she buried her head in her hands and burst into tears. She spent a lot of time like that, shaking from head to foot - until a tender hand slightly touched her shoulder. She looked up, wiping the tears running free down her face, to see who had dared to interrupt her self-pity party.
Ron was in front of her, with a red rose playing in his hand and eyes as full of tears as hers.
"Happy Valentine's Day," he whispered. "I know it's not the best of moments, but I've seen death so close today and I've thought I don't want to waste this chance. I know Harry would have liked this---"
Hermione didn't reply at first. She found it surrealist that Ron still remembered it was Valentine's Day - she found it impossible to believe beautiful things such as a rose still existed, when Harry had died in the battle to save the Wizarding World. She was reminded then of the stolen moment in the common room, when Colin Creevey's screams had made the world spin again after it had stopped revolving in those blue eyes.
She held out a hand and took the rose. She brought it to her nose and inhaled the scent, letting it penetrate in her system and take over her feelings. She looked up again towards that redhead who was in all her memories, and took a daring decision.
She took Ron by the collar of his wrinkled shirt and claimed his lips in a rushed and clumsy kiss that in spite of its flaws was still almost perfect. Ron deepened the kiss, enthusiastically; he slowly rolled her on her back on the bed, and pulled out of the kiss for a moment before getting back to his ministrations. His hands were everywhere - her face, her neck, her hips, her breasts, her hair. His skilled tongue relished in the mystery of her nipples, and she simply let him in.
It was almost animalistic, but nevertheless it was very romantic. She realized she was in love with him - maybe it wasn't too late, maybe... When he slid inside her and thrusted, Hermione exclaimed in a strangled voice, "I love you," looking straight into the glassy eyes on the face upon hers.
A second later she felt Ron's warm breath on her lips, and the words she had been waiting to hear for so long filled her heart.
"I have always loved you, Hermione."
The climax. The sensation of being part of a whole. The knowledge of being complete.
When silence filled everything again, the echo of their acts reverberated through the empty space, and words breathed between whispers lulled them to sleep, next to one another, cuddling, complementing each other.
They didn't see it coming. Their sleep was deep, so much that they didn't notice the door opening with the stealth of a spy, and a blond almost white shag waved before settling on skinny shoulders. The intruder raised his wand and aimed it at them.
That moment was the one that both chose to wake, a happy sigh among them, not at all aware of the black magic that was being cast against them.
"I love you," Ron whispered, caressing Hermione's blushing cheek.
"I love you too."
"You are so affectionate it's making me sick," the sardonic interruption took them by surprise, frightening them. They turned around and saw the danger they had been exposed to.
A Death Eater had escaped.
Lucius Malfoy didn't waste time in choosing his first victim amongst the two teenagers, disarmed and naked on the bed. He pointed at Hermione and smirked evilly.
"Avada Kedavra."
Green filled the room. Hermione could see the beam going towards her, fatal and horrible, only one millisecond before a body interposed between the ray and her.
Too much behind schedule to avoid it. Ron fell lifeless in front of her, the eyes that seconds before had loved her now empty and expressionless.
Dead.
"Ron?" she asked on the brink of hysteria, only half aware that the love of her life couldn't reply. "Ron? Ron!"
Lucius Malfoy seemed surprised at first, but soon he recovered from the astonishment of the sacrifice that had made his work easier. He pointed his wand at Hermione again, this time sure that he was about to end with the last bastion of the fight against the Dark Lord.
Hermione looked him in the eye, fear giving her enough courage to face her with her head held high. He opened his mouth to pronounce the spell; everything was going on in slow motion, Hermione could follow the movements of her murderer's face, when the inexplicable happened.
Lucius Malfoy collapsed in the ground with a strong blow.
Behind him, the blond, haggard and worn figure of Draco Malfoy lowered his wand.
For what seemed an eternity they stared at each other - Hermione tried to decide whether it had been only a dream or a real situation, Draco blinking and not thinking about anything. He didn't give her time to dress up - he tossed his wand aside and ran towards her, not at all concerned about her nakedness. He jumped into the bed and hugged Hermione when everything started to come down on her.
"It is finished," he promised. "It's over."
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Another eddy of colour and movement, and they were all back in the class, seated again at their desks. Hermione was still standing up, her knuckles white due to the force she was using to grip the table; Draco was supporting her because her legs shook so badly; he was scared that she would collapsed at any time.
"Wow," said the distressed voice of Marie Weasley. "My father--- my father was a very attractive man."
"Bill Weasley was a good person," admitted Draco. "Fleur was luck to have found a man like him. You are very lucky to be his daughter."
Several girls were sobbing by then - Bernie Smith approached one of them and hugged her. "C'mon, Alice, calm down, calm down. Your father is still alive, and you have already seen that he fought bravely in the war." Draco looked at Alice Longbottom, Neville and Ginny's daughter, sobering almost immediately.
He crossed the room with a glance, finding each face twisting with pain, each tear, aware of the weakness of the person he was still hugging. His eyes settled in Kyle Weasley's brilliant blue irises - the living image of his father - so similar that Draco had to bite his tongue in order not to call him 'Ron.'
"Uncle Draco," said the boy. "Please, let it end now. Please."
It was a plea he knew very well - he had been hearing it for a long time. The war had cost them many lives, but the sanity of the survivors was damaged forever. He had never listened to his nephew's request, born of the desperation of a son who couldn't stand to see his mother dying little by little on the inside.
He nodded.
"Hermione, come with me, please," he whispered, setting a hand in the small of her back and therefore pressing her face into his chest. "You need to get out of here."
He threw one last look around the classroom - Kyle, Ron and Hermione's son, was looking back at him. Draco couldn't help thinking that they hadn't had the chance to love each other like they deserved, yet they had had a wonderful son.
He took Hermione to his office, slowly, dreading what he was going to do. He opened the door, remembering every time he had lead people where he wanted, during his time as a spy for the Order. They had been difficult times, times when he had learned spells that had saved his life more than once.
Now it was the moment to use one of them.
He watched Hermione - exhausted, trembling and scared. He focused on that specific time of their lives, on what he had done, on the lives that had been saved. Hermione needed to go ahead, to get over it, to forget the precise moment when her life was utterly knocked down. Draco closed his eyes and inhaled before pronouncing the word that would erase the final battle off Hermione's memory. Forever.
The word that would change their lives again.
"Obliviate."
------------------------
ORIGINAL REQUEST:
Briefly describe what you'd like to receive: a fic about a valentine's day during the second war. angst is a must with a UST resolution.
Preferred Rating: PG-13 and up
Specifics you want (optional, maximum of three): angst, dark themes, UST (with resolution)
Deal Breakers (what don't you want?): incest, kinky sex
Thanks for participating in the exchange! Happy Valentine's Day! ♥
Author: lire_casander
Beta: Kirstin (confiteor_3)
Rating: NC - 17
Word count: 4784
Summary: Fifteen years after the final battle, Hermione remembers what really happened that last Valentine's Day.
Warnings: Angst, character death, UST, dark themes.
Disclaimer: I do not own in any form or shape these characters, JK Rowling does. Just playing with them for my own amusement and yours.
Author's Notes: This was my first time writing something like this, so I please ask you to forgive me if I royally messed it up.
Another day. Another anniversary.
She didn't have anything to celebrate, although it had been fifteen years since Voldemort had been defeated, and everyone in the Wizarding World was getting ready for another peaceful Valentine's Day.
She closed the door of her bedroom, trying not to wake up the magical photographs dozing in their frames. She inhaled deeply and began to walk.
It only was another day in her life. Somehow, although she had repeated those words constantly, she hasn't found them meaningful.
Her fourth-years were excited as usual - they weren't very different from what she had been at age fourteen. The only difference was that, while these children worried about the normal frivolities, she had spent those years trying to avoid Voldemort's raising unsuccessfully.
"Good morning," she said with tired voice. The children shut up immediately - they all knew that it wasn't a good idea to annoy Professor Granger. She was famous for being fussy, but those who had the chance to know her were aware that she was still the same Hermione Granger. Those children idolized Hermione because they considered her a heroine - she hated herself for being a survivor.
"Good morning, Professor," everyone said at once. They remained in silence after greeting her until Hermione arrived at the table and, as usual, seated upon the wood. When she opened her mouth to start the lesson, the pale hand of one of her students interrupted her.
"Professor, are we going to go to Hogsmead to celebrate Valentine's Day this year?"
Hermione shook her head. That was the reason why she hated teaching around these days so much. Draco found those questions easier to answer than she ever would.
"No, Miss Weasley," she fought to keep the tears at bay. "This year we won't hold any celebration without the Headmaster consent."
"It's just not fair! " a student with noticeably Eastern characteristics exclaimed. "We are the only place in the Wizarding World that doesn't celebrate the day when Voldemort was defeated. My father says---"
"I have no interest in knowing what your father thinks about this issue, Mr. Smith," Hermione interrupted him. "In this school, it is not found desirable to praise Voldemort's death - that won't make the ones we lost come back."
The class sank in an uncomfortable silence - Bernie Smith was trying at all costs to speak again, but the warning glance of Katie Bell's daughter prevented it.
And, suddenly, the question she feared the most arrived.
"Professor, is it really true you fought in the war?"
She breathed deeply. "Everyone who was old enough to know what a war was fought." It was her diplomatic answer whenever that question arose - but she had never known the answer for the question that inevitably followed.
"Will you tell us how it was? At least today, Professor, please."
She watched them all, one by one, realizing they had been born the same year they had defeated Voldemort. Only a few had both their parents; almost everyone had lost someone during the final battle.
But she couldn't tell the truth to them. She hadn't even told Kyle, in spite of his persistent pleas.
"No," she refused categorically. "I can't. I'm sorry."
"Hermione, they have grown up enough for you to tell them," said a voice from the door. Draco Malfoy, current Hogwarts Headmaster, was leaning against the wood, watching her worryingly. "You have to get over it too. Speak about it. You need it as much as they do."
"But I---" She was lost, scared. Draco entered the class and closed the door.
"I know it's difficult, but it's the best thing for everyone. You have to let it go, Hermione."
The children watched the exchange agape. Many knew about the animosity that had confronted their Headmaster and their History teacher in their youth; how they became friends was still a mystery.
"I already spoke about it in class," replied Hermione. "I teach History of Magic, remember? Every year I have to explain it at least seven times."
"And do you explain who died that night, 'Mione?" Draco Malfoy's shining eyes settled in hers for a second, until getting the answer he wanted. "You won't have to make it all alone. I'm here. But these children need to know why their parents passed away in the battle of Hogwarts. There's nobody better than you to do it."
The students agreed expectantly. Many of them were orphans and they had been brought up in Hogwarts; the rest didn't know much of that night because only those that had left alive the school knew about it - and the survivors could be counted with the fingers of one hand.
"No---I don't think I can."
"Do you still have the Pensieve?" A simple nod followed by a smooth turn of a wrist, and the device appeared upon the table. "Then let it speak for you, 'Mione."
Draco observed his History teacher while she took air heavily and cast a spell unknown for almost all the pupils.
"Maiofacio."
And suddenly the class became an eddy of colours before they landed in front of a fireplace where a boy with black hair and a scar on his forehead was watching the space.
They had backed down fifteen years in time.
To the day of the final battle.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Hogwarts had been besieged for about a fortnight, and it was more and more evident that those who defended the school were losing the battle against Voldemort's army. Harry Potter tried to command a scouting party that would escape from the castle to request aid to the Ministry, but nobody wanted to leave Harry.
Leaving him to Voldemort in those circumstances could mean the death of the Boy-Who-Lived.
"You're not going to leave, are you?" Harry asked his friends, seated in front of him at the table in the common room. "You aren't going to let me face Voldemort on my own."
"I told you we'd have time to come back," Hermione responded. "Here we are, Harry."
He watched both before getting up, exhausted. He headed for the exit of the Gryffindor Tower instead of the stairs that lead to the dorms.
"Aren't you going to sleep, Harry?" asked Ron, blinking. "You should rest, mate, if not, you won't be able to defeat... Voldemort."
"I cannot sleep here with him outside. I will never be able to; until I find a way to kill him, I'm off to the owlery." This said, he disappeared by the hollow left by the Fat Lady, who closed it again once Harry had left.
Ron leaned in his chair with a defeated sigh. He observed Hermione, who had hidden her head between her hands, an excessive trembling growing through her back until becoming a sob.
"Hermione, what happened?" But she just kept shaking. Ron approached slowly and surrounded her shoulders with his arm, trying to contain her sobs. "Hermione, he will understand. Or what's better, he will kill Voldemort. All this will be finished before you can say Alohomora."
"We are sieged, Ron! This doesn't have nor will have any good ending! Don't you understand it? We're going to die here because we don't have any chance to survive! We don't have any way out, the castle is nearly destroyed! And the solution we have is simply not viable! Although at this rate, Voldemort won't even need to murder Harry..."
The outburst took him by surprise. Ron loosened her immediately and faced her deranged glance.
The siege had made an impression on them, on all of them. Ron knew that it was just a matter of time before Hermione lost faith - even the strongest needed reassurance. But Hermione was right, the siege was killing them.
There were few left in the castle - only the loyal to Harry who had defied their families. The Creevey brothers had left their cameras and had chosen to fight next to their idol. Hannah Abbott and Justin Flinch-Fletchey, Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan, and just a few more. Neville had left his grandmother with the promise to save the Wizarding World. Luna hadn't even said goodbye to her father. And the active members of the Order of the Phoenix had moved in to the castle before the siege. Everyone had decided to leave behind what they had known during their childhood to fight next to the hero.
Only Harry was nothing more than a teenager scared of his own fate. A teenager who didn't have family to come back to; the Weasleys had tried to make him change his mind, but he was very stubborn.
"Hermione, please, you can't lose hope now. This is just temporary. You'll see it'll end up fine."
"How? Ron? Do you know how?" Before the troubled silence of her friend, Hermione closed her eyes. "We will not leave the castle alive."
"I'm sure we will."
"And why are you so sure? "
"Because we have the secret weapon Voldemort despises so much. We can love, Hermione. It's love that is going to save us from this."
"You speak like Dumbledore."
"I will take that as a compliment."
"It wasn't."
"Dumbledore was a good man," Ron countered, hurt. "He trusted Harry before anyone else, and he always supported him."
"Dumbledore was an old, crazy man near the end," affirmed Hermione with harshness. "All that about the 'power he does not know' is nothing more than a hoax. Love and naïveté aren't going to take us from this place, Ron. We are lost. And the moment Voldemort discovers a crack to strain into Hogwarts... you won't have to care about Harry sacrificing himself for us. We will be already dead."
"You are a hypocrite," accused the teenager. "Why don't you go and tell Harry instead of making him hopeful about a victory you don't believe in? Answer me!"
"Because he refuses to see reason, that's why! Damn it, Ron, he doesn't even pay attention to you! Don't you see it?"
"See what, Hermione? Please tell me because I don't understand you."
"He spends his nights in the owlery, for Merlin's sake! He doesn't want to listen to us because he has no excuses anymore! He has nothing!"
She was hysterical, screaming so loudly that Ron would have feared she could be heard all over the tower hadn't it been for the Silencing Charm they had cast before beginning the meeting that Harry had finished abruptly.
"I'm going to repeat my first question," said Ron slowly. "What happened to you? You're not that fatalist usually. Why do you say we are dead? What are you hiding from me?"
He approached her, eyes wide open and fixed on hers, leaning into her personal space.
"What do you know that I don't?" he whispered, breathing only a couple of centimetres away from her lips.
They were so close that Ron could almost hear the gears of Hermione's brain working to give him a satisfactory answer. "Don't lie to me," he whispered. "I can't stand you lying to me."
She breathed in as if it was hard for her to do so, trembling hands she didn't know where to place. Ron took both in his hands and kept them. Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but the thought was stuck with those freckles and refused to cooperate.
The atmosphere became more oppressive; Hermione didn't know what was happening to her, why she couldn't articulate a sound, how all of a sudden her world had been reduced to those blue irises that had been with her during the last years. She tried to talk again, but no sound left her throat.
There was no more air in the room than the one lodged Ron's lungs, she decided. She raised a hand, brushing the freckles of her friend's cheeks, entangling her fingers in an untamed tuft of his red head. Time had stopped.
And then, when it seemed that everything was destined to happen, an explosion tore the air and a whine frightened them.
"Hogwarts has been taken!"
They separated steeply, as if suddenly they burned with the power of a thousand ignited bonfires. They looked each other in the eye for a second before running to look for Harry.
The final battle for the control of the Wizarding World had just started.
Harry found them halfway - he was running from the owlery because he had also heard Colin Creevey's shouts.
"What has happened?" he asked, almost out of breath.
"I don't know," Hermione exclaimed. "But we have to stop it, whatever it is!"
They approached the Great Hall, where all the members of the resistance had congregated, wands in hand, but the Death Eaters were nowhere to be found.
"Does anyone know what's going on?" demanded Harry again.
"Colin has begun to scream like crazy," explained McGonnagall. "I have yet to see him, but I have a horrible feeling he and his brother have been caught - they were patrolling together."
Sounds of footsteps cushioned by the carpets were heard outside the hall - they were noisier than two boys' footsteps and the only ones absent were the Creevey brothers. There was somebody else in the castle, and that presence caused them all to shiver.
"Whatever comes from this, ," said Harry between gritted teeth, a whisper that reached them all like a yell. "Whatever comes from this, we have to kill Voldemort."
Hermione closed her eyes for a second. She had to tell the truth to everyone, what she and Harry had discovered that same afternoon, what was going to cost them the battle, the war and life.
She tried to speak, but the footsteps had just stopped in front of the door, and everything was silent. The seconds passed by slowly, as though they found it difficult to shell off the clock.
The door opened without a warning, and sudden beams of green and red light flew left, right and centre, reaching the members of the Order before they could react.
Harry covered himself with a spell before attacking, but everything happened in slow motion. He could see Bellatrix Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy, Nott and many others, fighting maskless. He could see how Bellatrix's wand sent a shining, green ray and Hannah Abbott fell like a wrecked doll.
Less than three seconds later, Hogwarts' Great Hall became the bloodier battlefield of the war.
The Death Eaters cornered them next to the teachers' table - the Order tried to hide Harry behind a curtain of reflecting and shielding spells, but the wizard managed to find a hole in their human wall and strained himself forward. They fought for ages, curses flying in each and every direction, not aimed properly and therefore missing their destiny. The Order had killed many Death Eaters, but it had suffered several losses. When the Death Eaters stopped fighting, Harry couldn't believe what had just taken place.
Around him there were only corpses. Fred and George still had that amused smirk of the ones who laughed even at the death, grasping their wands in identical gesture. Molly Weasley laid not so far away, eyes closed in an endless pain. Fleur was clutching the inert body of a half werewolf Bill. McGonnagall tried to make Hooch sit up unsuccessfully, and Arthur Weasley was holding his face with his hands, obviously hurting.
Unharmed, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville still kept their wands and aimed them trembly towards the attackers, who were in front of them, looking at them with predatory eyes.
"What's going on?" whispered Ron.
"They are... waiting," Neville said.
"They wait for Voldemort," said Harry. "He hadn't wanted to do the dirty work, but when it comes down to me..."
Hermione tightened her grip on his arm, and Harry looked back at her, remembering the conversation they had had earlier that evening.
"Harry, there's something you should know," she had begun in a low voice. "I have found out what the last Horcrux is."
"Excellent," he had smiled. "Exactly what we needed. So?"
"The problem is... it is a person..."
Silence followed her words - Harry had killed several Death Eaters during the course of the war, but that was different. Killing someone in order to destroy Voldemort meant a plot, and a murder.
"Who is it?"
"That's our biggest problem."
"Hermione, please tell me. Is it someone we know?" Her short nod made him grimace. "Is is someone I love?" Another nod, and he closed his eyes in an attempt not to think. "Who?"
"Harry, the last Horcrux... is you."
Astonishment was stronger than the tears that struggled to leave his eyes. Everything they had fought for, everything they had believed in, the only path they knew how to follow, everything had been wrong all that time. They couldn't afford the destruction of that last Horcrux. It was as though they were forced to ask an angel to resign from his wings.
And nevertheless they had to give up flying.
"It's fine," Harry finally choked. "I had come to terms with the fact that I could die during the war. Being certain of it doesn't make it easier for me--- but it simplifies your decisions."
"How?" Hermione was shaking. "I don't see how you dying can simplify anything to us."
"I will let Voldemort kill me, and just immediately afterwards one of you, or everyone, has to murder him. But it must be immediately afterwards, Hermione. If you let him think he's already won, you'll all be dead. And then our sacrifices will be of no use."
"Harry, I can't tell the other--- Ron will die as soon as he knows this--- Harry, this can't be happening---"
"What's happening here, Hermione?" asked Ron suddenly, bursting in into the office. "What is that I don't have to know?"
A cold and snaky voice interrupted his memories. "My, my, Harry, I sssee you are already sssaying goodbye to your dear friendsss..."
"Voldemort," Harry's voice was coldly calculated. "We meet again."
"Thiss time I hope you will fight on your feet. It would be far too eassy to kill a coward."
"I am not scared of you, Tom."
They looked at each other for a second - Death Eaters and members of the Order holding their breaths, ready to jump at the tiniest hint of a change. Ron and Neville tried to gather up all the hatred needed to cast an Avada Kedavra; Hermione and Ginny looked for the wrath that would allow them to summon an Unforgivable.
And in a second, in a twinkling of an eye, everything was finished. Voldemort was faster and pointed his wand at Harry's chest, sure and doubtless. He hadn't even deigned to pronounce the spell aloud.
A reflection of green light.
A deaf sound of a body falling to the ground.
In that second, in that twinkling of an eye, in that beat, the destiny of the Wizarding World was sealed. When Voldemort lowered his wand and started turning around to receive the applauses of his minions, four different voices yelled at the same time - wrath, hatred, fear and pain.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Four beams of green light later, Voldemort's body lay on the ground of the Great Hall, boneless, while his partisans looked at him, overwhelmed.
"Lord?" Bellatrix asked in a broken voice. "Lord? You've killed the Dark lord!"
She removed her wand from her robes, where she had kept it after killing Lupin and Tonks, and aimed it feebly, trembly, at the survivors of the Order, congregated around the inert body of their former leader.
She found herself pointed by four wands, and then she lowered hers - she could recognize the desperation of the ones who had nothing to lose. That feeling made heroes and winners.
It shone in McGonnagall's eyes, in Flitwick's, in Fleur's. In Ginny's eyes and in Neville's, Arthur's and Charlie's.
In the eyes of Ron and Hermione there was much more than desperation. Something worse.
Emptiness.
Slowly, Bellatrix deposited her wand in the ground and knelt down, followed by the rest of the Death Eaters. They didn't have another option left than to surrender - their leader had just fallen, and without their head they were nothing more than simple wizards.
Once they had arrested and immobilized every Death Eaters in the Hall, Hermione retired to her dorm to cry over her losses. She was all alone - without Harry, the reason why she had survived for so long had just vanished in thin air.
Sitting upon her bed, she buried her head in her hands and burst into tears. She spent a lot of time like that, shaking from head to foot - until a tender hand slightly touched her shoulder. She looked up, wiping the tears running free down her face, to see who had dared to interrupt her self-pity party.
Ron was in front of her, with a red rose playing in his hand and eyes as full of tears as hers.
"Happy Valentine's Day," he whispered. "I know it's not the best of moments, but I've seen death so close today and I've thought I don't want to waste this chance. I know Harry would have liked this---"
Hermione didn't reply at first. She found it surrealist that Ron still remembered it was Valentine's Day - she found it impossible to believe beautiful things such as a rose still existed, when Harry had died in the battle to save the Wizarding World. She was reminded then of the stolen moment in the common room, when Colin Creevey's screams had made the world spin again after it had stopped revolving in those blue eyes.
She held out a hand and took the rose. She brought it to her nose and inhaled the scent, letting it penetrate in her system and take over her feelings. She looked up again towards that redhead who was in all her memories, and took a daring decision.
She took Ron by the collar of his wrinkled shirt and claimed his lips in a rushed and clumsy kiss that in spite of its flaws was still almost perfect. Ron deepened the kiss, enthusiastically; he slowly rolled her on her back on the bed, and pulled out of the kiss for a moment before getting back to his ministrations. His hands were everywhere - her face, her neck, her hips, her breasts, her hair. His skilled tongue relished in the mystery of her nipples, and she simply let him in.
It was almost animalistic, but nevertheless it was very romantic. She realized she was in love with him - maybe it wasn't too late, maybe... When he slid inside her and thrusted, Hermione exclaimed in a strangled voice, "I love you," looking straight into the glassy eyes on the face upon hers.
A second later she felt Ron's warm breath on her lips, and the words she had been waiting to hear for so long filled her heart.
"I have always loved you, Hermione."
The climax. The sensation of being part of a whole. The knowledge of being complete.
When silence filled everything again, the echo of their acts reverberated through the empty space, and words breathed between whispers lulled them to sleep, next to one another, cuddling, complementing each other.
They didn't see it coming. Their sleep was deep, so much that they didn't notice the door opening with the stealth of a spy, and a blond almost white shag waved before settling on skinny shoulders. The intruder raised his wand and aimed it at them.
That moment was the one that both chose to wake, a happy sigh among them, not at all aware of the black magic that was being cast against them.
"I love you," Ron whispered, caressing Hermione's blushing cheek.
"I love you too."
"You are so affectionate it's making me sick," the sardonic interruption took them by surprise, frightening them. They turned around and saw the danger they had been exposed to.
A Death Eater had escaped.
Lucius Malfoy didn't waste time in choosing his first victim amongst the two teenagers, disarmed and naked on the bed. He pointed at Hermione and smirked evilly.
"Avada Kedavra."
Green filled the room. Hermione could see the beam going towards her, fatal and horrible, only one millisecond before a body interposed between the ray and her.
Too much behind schedule to avoid it. Ron fell lifeless in front of her, the eyes that seconds before had loved her now empty and expressionless.
Dead.
"Ron?" she asked on the brink of hysteria, only half aware that the love of her life couldn't reply. "Ron? Ron!"
Lucius Malfoy seemed surprised at first, but soon he recovered from the astonishment of the sacrifice that had made his work easier. He pointed his wand at Hermione again, this time sure that he was about to end with the last bastion of the fight against the Dark Lord.
Hermione looked him in the eye, fear giving her enough courage to face her with her head held high. He opened his mouth to pronounce the spell; everything was going on in slow motion, Hermione could follow the movements of her murderer's face, when the inexplicable happened.
Lucius Malfoy collapsed in the ground with a strong blow.
Behind him, the blond, haggard and worn figure of Draco Malfoy lowered his wand.
For what seemed an eternity they stared at each other - Hermione tried to decide whether it had been only a dream or a real situation, Draco blinking and not thinking about anything. He didn't give her time to dress up - he tossed his wand aside and ran towards her, not at all concerned about her nakedness. He jumped into the bed and hugged Hermione when everything started to come down on her.
"It is finished," he promised. "It's over."
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Another eddy of colour and movement, and they were all back in the class, seated again at their desks. Hermione was still standing up, her knuckles white due to the force she was using to grip the table; Draco was supporting her because her legs shook so badly; he was scared that she would collapsed at any time.
"Wow," said the distressed voice of Marie Weasley. "My father--- my father was a very attractive man."
"Bill Weasley was a good person," admitted Draco. "Fleur was luck to have found a man like him. You are very lucky to be his daughter."
Several girls were sobbing by then - Bernie Smith approached one of them and hugged her. "C'mon, Alice, calm down, calm down. Your father is still alive, and you have already seen that he fought bravely in the war." Draco looked at Alice Longbottom, Neville and Ginny's daughter, sobering almost immediately.
He crossed the room with a glance, finding each face twisting with pain, each tear, aware of the weakness of the person he was still hugging. His eyes settled in Kyle Weasley's brilliant blue irises - the living image of his father - so similar that Draco had to bite his tongue in order not to call him 'Ron.'
"Uncle Draco," said the boy. "Please, let it end now. Please."
It was a plea he knew very well - he had been hearing it for a long time. The war had cost them many lives, but the sanity of the survivors was damaged forever. He had never listened to his nephew's request, born of the desperation of a son who couldn't stand to see his mother dying little by little on the inside.
He nodded.
"Hermione, come with me, please," he whispered, setting a hand in the small of her back and therefore pressing her face into his chest. "You need to get out of here."
He threw one last look around the classroom - Kyle, Ron and Hermione's son, was looking back at him. Draco couldn't help thinking that they hadn't had the chance to love each other like they deserved, yet they had had a wonderful son.
He took Hermione to his office, slowly, dreading what he was going to do. He opened the door, remembering every time he had lead people where he wanted, during his time as a spy for the Order. They had been difficult times, times when he had learned spells that had saved his life more than once.
Now it was the moment to use one of them.
He watched Hermione - exhausted, trembling and scared. He focused on that specific time of their lives, on what he had done, on the lives that had been saved. Hermione needed to go ahead, to get over it, to forget the precise moment when her life was utterly knocked down. Draco closed his eyes and inhaled before pronouncing the word that would erase the final battle off Hermione's memory. Forever.
The word that would change their lives again.
"Obliviate."
------------------------
ORIGINAL REQUEST:
Briefly describe what you'd like to receive: a fic about a valentine's day during the second war. angst is a must with a UST resolution.
Preferred Rating: PG-13 and up
Specifics you want (optional, maximum of three): angst, dark themes, UST (with resolution)
Deal Breakers (what don't you want?): incest, kinky sex
Thanks for participating in the exchange! Happy Valentine's Day! ♥