The Father

Hermione

The air was weighted with magic, heavy with it, like static before a storm. As Hermione Granger ran at any awkward crouch she felt it snapping at every part of her not still shielded by her heavy robes.

She cursed harshly, dodging the streamers of red and green light which sparked across the dark courtyard. Her breath was ragged in her throat, the grimy film of dust hanging in the air an acrid bitterness on her tongue.

Her brain caught the flash of movement in her periphery before her brain had even registered it as a potential enemy, and she threw herself behind a wall at the same moment as the curse aimed directly at her smashed into the dark stone. She hastily flung an arm over her face and turned into what remained of the wall as shards of granite exploded violently around her.

Rubble was still falling when her wand arm snapped forward around the ruined wall towards her attacker.

“Petrificus totalis!”

She was too exhausted, too utterly desensitised, to feel satisfied as the spell caught the shadowed figure in the chest and dropped it to the ground.

She pulled back inside the shadow of her shield and inhaled deeply, dropping her head back and sucking down the burning air. Merlin knew she felt like screaming, or crying, or curling up in a ball and pretending that this was all just a bad dream. But it wasn’t, and none of those things would help anyone.

Above her, the luminescent shield had been reduced to a few streaks of light glimmering like oil on water in the rapidly darkening sky. The soap-bubble shield had cracked open hours ago and even as she watched, her head tilted skywards, a flake of improbable light detached itself and floated towards her, disintegrating before it came even close to reaching the ground.

It was both beautiful and achingly terrible.

An iron band squeezed at her chest and Hermione closed her eyes and inhaled a deep and shuddering breath, attempting to collect the parts of herself back together.

She hadn't expected it would be easy. She had never expected it would be in any way a given they would win. But deep down she'd harboured a bright hope which had anchored her through her doubts and insecurities. Only now, after it had faded, did she realise the strength with which it had shone. It had been impossible to retain it, not after people - children - had started dying. Rationally her brain told her there was nothing more she could have done, but her heart had been crying something different since the first curse had been cast.

Heavy breathing and footsteps cut into the haze of her thoughts and a man in a tattered leather overcoat was suddenly behind the wall with her. She spotted him a moment before he caught sight of her crouched in the shadows and his curse died on an intake of breath as she shot a stupefy at him. Still breathless, and only just then realising the warmth at her temple was blood, she reached out and caught the collar of his coat, heaving the now dead-weight behind the ruined wall. She wrapped him in chains of iron and steel that coiled from her wand.

It wasn't enough. It’d never been enough.

She had to do something.

Voldemort’s proclamation that had screamed through their heads in the late afternoon had set an idea flirting with her. Images of a once glowing field, of Cornelius Fudge with his wand to his throat at the Quidditch World Cup. She wasn’t sure if it would work, but now all of the options she was sure about had faded along with the light. It was the only thing left.

Her eyes alighted on the astronomy tower and she knew she needed to be there. She needed to be over the battlefield.

But to do that meant getting across the length of the courtyard and navigating the streams of molten magic being fired in every direction. The thought sent tendrils of panic sneaking into her heart, but no other options existed.

She’d spent hours practicing with the deep meditative state needed to operate the Time Turned in her third year, and she slipped back into it now, clearing her mind of everything but her next step. She took one breath, two, three, and then launched herself around the wall and forward, sprinting as fast as her tired legs would allow. She narrowly avoided tripping on something that she realised with horror was a body and stumbled without a sound, forcing her mental shutters down even further, willing herself on to the castle doors.

Someone behind her screamed. She blocked it out. Nothing else existed but her and the castle, and beyond that the corridors that would spit her out at the top of the astronomy tower. She would make it. She willed herself to make it. She had to make it.

And she very nearly did. But fate had other plans for Hermione Granger. The singular focus which had tunnelled her vision meant that she didn’t see the dark-robed figure detaching itself from the castle walls until it was too late. In that moment she felt the gusting wind of a thousand thoughts surge around her, memories and wishes and things that had been said and would now never be said, and she realised the brilliant truth of one singular thought - I do not want to die.

The blow caught her in the midsection and she was launched off the ground, limbs pinwheeling like a rag-doll before being slammed, hard, into the ground. She felt the sickening snap of her clavicle and though she knew she screamed, she could hear nothing over the high pitched wail reverberating around her skull. For a period of time which in that moment felt infinite, she could do nothing but gasp heaving mouthfuls of the cloying air.

She might have lain there forever had it not been for the distant knowledge, somewhere deep, that recognised the growing pain as something primal and importantly, alive. It was like a switch, wakening the remainder of her thoughts alongside it and then finally, the connection between her mind and body surged to life and with a tremendous effort she forced her eyes open.

She was lying on her side, the ground below her cheek damp and cold and somewhat soft, and she sluggishly realised that she was stretched across one of the flowerbeds that surrounded the courtyard. Hagrid had spent all summer planting them, daisy and delphinium and lavender. She would have to thank him. If they both survived.

Turning her eyes upwards she found the unyielding stone of the castle flowing into the sky. Except even turned drunkenly onto its side, the silhouette looked wrong. Grotesque.

Attempting to leverage herself to sitting, Hermione screamed when she applied any amount of weight to her left arm. Her vision greyed at the edges and she fell back to the damp earth, the coolness of the soil stark against her hot cheeks. When the sickness had faded enough that she was sure she wouldn’t vomit, she rolled onto her other side with a groan and pushed herself up with her good arm. Even then a wash of dizziness nearly forced her down again.

Hogwarts, now righted, gleamed in the night sky, bowed under a cruel canopy of stars that seemed too beautiful to bear witness to the scene beneath them. Where Ravenclaw Tower had once been there was nothing but a gaping hole and dancing flames which leapt like spectres on the battlements. And below, at its feet, a sea of cold dead rubble and presumably buried beneath it, the Death Eater who had intended to kill her. It was unclear whether the explosion had been an accident, or purposeful, and who had caused it. She had no doubt the teachers and students would sacrifice the castle, even those robed in blue and silver, if it meant winning. Whoever had caused it, she was under no illusion that they had spared her her life.

She got to her feet slowly, fighting nausea. Her vision narrowed and focused, wobbling at the edges. She didn’t dare brush off the clods of dirt which clung to her robes and hair for fear of losing balance completely. In comparison to the acetous scent of the battlefield, the earthy freshness was like a perfume.

As she stood and watched the ruins in a state she would recognise later as shock, pin pricks of light began to fall, burning pieces of ash floating down around her and catching in her hair like lazy fireflies. But no, they weren’t ash. They were pages. Pages upon pages of burning books. History and knowledge and millennia of dedication all gone up in smoke.

She knew then, deep in her gut, that they were losing. She used the desperation that came with that knowledge to stoke the flame inside of her. One more time. One more try.

The astronomy tower was still standing, a defiant arm stretching skywards. She had to reach it.

She started forward, this time more slowly. The pain in her left side was crushing. She knew she’d broken her collarbone and was sure at least one rib was bruised, if not broken too. Thankfully her leg was in a better state, though it hurt more than its should to put weight on it. The pain, like a bucket of ice water - clarifying and electric though it was, was an unwelcome distraction, and absently she reached for her wand, the healing spell already on her lips.

And found nothing but empty air.

The speed at which her head whipped downwards, as if to prove her fingers held nothing, was a mistake and this time she did vomit. The bile which she heaved up was black in the fading light. It had been over thirty one hours since she’d last eaten and her stomach retched up the nothingness, cramping and bitter. Even that did not stop the crawling panic at the loss of her wand.

She was undefended at the worst possible time.

Straightening, stomach muscles screaming, she cast about frantically. The air was crowded with dust and the fire blazing above was casting a strange orange glow across the ruined courtyard. Shadows of the rubble stretched and jumped unnaturally, and Hermione flinched time and time again. It was impossible to know what was dead rock and what was human enemy.

Her wand was nowhere to be seen.

As the battlefield roused itself from the explosion, Hermione made a snap decision. She had to move. To remain here, searching for her wand, would be a death sentence.

She pushed the thought of the abandoned wand from her mind, as well as the unbidden memories that floated to the surface of Olivander’s shop and an eleven year old girl who for the first time felt as though she belonged, and limped forward to the castle doors. They hung skewed on their frames, the once ornate design of stone knights that surrounded them now hollow.

All of this Hermione noted absently and fleetingly as she threw herself inside and into the entrance hall. The sconces which lined the walls were unlit and the gloom of the usually cheerful space felt eerie. It was not just the darkness, she realised with a shiver as she pushed her tired body down the East Corridor, but the portraits too. Every single one was empty, the gilded frames holding nothing but blank spaces and empty rooms.

The turning to the astronomy tower came into view but she ignored it, it would be no good to her without a wand. There was only one option left now and she gritted her teeth as each step up the unmoving staircases jolted her broken bones. She clutched the arm of her damaged side to her chest and forced herself up a step at a time, focussing on her laboured breaths echoing through the silence. When the landing of the third floor came into view, she staggered forward, half-falling against the wall.

“Please”, she whispered raggedly into the blank stretch of stone. “Please”.

She had no idea if the Room of Requirement could manifest her a wand, but magical theory dictated there was no reason why it shouldn’t. A wand, after all, was simply a collection of components, none of which was an exception to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration. For a fleeting moment she remembered committing those laws to heart for an upcoming exam in Fourth year, the textbook in her lap before the fire in the Gryffindor common room. A lifetime ago.

And if the room couldn’t do it? Wouldn’t do it? Well then her second choice - to return to the courtyard and pry a wand from the lifeless hand of one of her once school-mates - didn’t bear thinking about. And yet she would do it - had to do it - if the room didn’t appear to her, and soon.

Frustration mounting, she slapped at the stone with the palm of her hand. “Come on. Please”. It was cold under her fingers, unyielding, and for a moment she closed her eyes and imagined pouring all of her wants and desperate needs into the limestone, channeling a path inside. It was only a visualisation, only a trick of the mind, and yet a subtle movement brushed at her fingertips and when she opened her eyes again, there was the door, double her size and bound with iron.

There was still some hope left after all.

She reached for the handle and slipped inside.

*****

The wand levelled directly at her face didn’t waver for a moment as a familiar voice hissed, “don’t you fucking move, Granger or I promise I will kill you”.

Hermione flattened herself back against the door she had just closed, wheezing hoarsely around the pain in her ribs. Narrowed grey eyes bore into her own and she could see both fear and hatred in them.

“I’m unarmed, Malfoy. See, no wand”.

She raised her palms towards the man crowded inside of her personal space, and in the light of the room that came from no discernible source, noticed just how encrusted they were with blood and dirt. If the action was supposed to have comforted him though it had the opposite effect.

“Like fuck you are”, Malfoy said between gritted teeth and this time the tip of his wand ground solidly into the skin of her forehead as he leaned forward. “Expect me to believe that do you, mudblood?”

“Believe what you want. What are you even doing here?”

Even to her own ears, her voice sounded calm. Too calm. It didn’t match with the thundering heartbeat echoing in her ears and pulsing inside her damaged bones. She wondered what Malfoy saw when he looked at her - if she looked as composed as she sounded or if he could see the panic mirrored in her own eyes.

Between one heartbeat and the next, his wand was gone and his fingers were digging painfully into her shoulders, swiftly pushing her around and ramming her against the door. The fire along her left hand side was viciously stoked and she whimpered. For a moment she imagined that Malfoy stilled, but then her wrists were clasped in his biting fingers and his other hand was hideously running across her body searching for the wand which she knew wasn’t there.

She struggled against him, knowing full well that her effort was laughable. He was much bigger than her, and his leverage over her as he used his body weight to press her against the door meant she could barely move.

“Get off me!”

“I’m not taking any chances, not with you”, Malfoy said breathlessly, the fingers at her wrist feeling as though they could snap bones.

“For Merlin’s sake, I’m not going to do -” she began to say, yelping when Malfoy pulled her backwards and then pushed her violently into the centre of the room. She fell awkwardly and couldn’t stop the scream of agony that escaped her mouth. The room lurched sideways and for a moment she lay still, sucking in great gasps of air and desperately fighting off the dizziness. The copper taste of blood filled her mouth and she realised she’d bitten her tongue.

When the black spots dancing across her vision passed she pushed herself weakly upright to sitting, her eyes blazing as they narrowed in on Malfoy now seated in front of the door. His long legs were bent in front of him and his hands, holding a thin length of blackened wood, were balanced limply over his knees. Blood was crusted across his forehead and mingled with hair that was damp with sweat, the familiar blonde striped an albino pink. The collar of his shirt, no doubt Saville Row, was soaked red.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Hermione hissed.

He didn’t reply. His chin remained dipped towards the floor, his whole body still save for the fluttering of his fingers as he turned the wand over and over. At first glance it was, she noticed with a wash of dread and bitter disappointment, the only wand in the room. The walls and floor were all same smooth, unyielding limestone, save for the wall at her back which was lined with age-spotted mirrors. They were the same ones that had once been dotted with parchment and photos when the DA had occupied the room each week. Glancing over her shoulder Hermione could even make out the spider-web of cracks which radiated from the centre of one of the mirrors. Neville’s reducto had once rebounded from the ceiling to hit that very spot what felt like a thousand years ago.

Hermione’s stomach clenched. Not only had she found no wand, but she was now more powerless than ever.

In front of her, Malfoy was still unmoving.

“Shouldn’t you to be out there, celebrating with all your little friends?” she asked, not bothering to keep the condescension out of her voice.

His head snapped up to meet her glare.

“As always you know absolutely nothing”, he bit back. His jaw was clenched so hard that the tendons in his neck stood out starkly under his collar. His fists kept opening and closing into white-knuckled fists on the black wand.

They stared at each other with what felt like pure hatred. To Hermione’s surprise, Malfoy was the one to look away first, glancing over his shoulder towards the oak doors she had entered through.

She snorted.

“No one can get in here, if that’s what you’re worried about”.

“You fucking did though”, he hissed.

Malfoy was scared, that much was clear. What of though, Hermione had no idea. His was the side of darkness and why he should fear it when for years he had done nothing but glorify it, was beyond her. Nonetheless, what she had said was true - the room wouldn’t let anyone in who intended to harm them. It went against their needs. It was why Umbridge could never have gained access whilst the DA stood inside hurling spells at wooden dummies. For all the good it had done them.

With his head still turned away from her, Hermione briefly wondered whether she could overwhelm him; somehow take his wand from him. With her own they would have been fairly evenly matched - Hermione exceeded him academically though he’d always had the upper-hand when it came to duelling. Not that it mattered now though. She had no wand and what little wandless magic she was able to do required more strength than her damaged body had to offer.

“What are you looking at, mudblood?”, Draco spat when he caught her looking at him.

“Oh do stop parroting the words of your noxious father, Malfoy. You and I both know they lack conviction”.

Malfoy sneered nastily.

“And what makes you think that?”

“Because if you truly believed them you’d be out there fighting with them, not hidden away in the walls of the castle you despise with a mudblood you detest”.

“You give yourself too much credit, Granger”, Malfoy replied, his expression transforming into a humourless smirk. “A wizard doesn’t spent his energy detesting slugs in the pumpkin patch. He notes them with disgust and then Scorigifies them. You would know all about that, wouldn’t you”.

Hermione ignored him and the barbed reference to their Second Year. She had hoped to perhaps cow Malfoy into letting her go, maybe better still leave the room and in turn, leave her to her own devices, but if anything he seemed to be regaining some of his old confidence in the familiarly of their hostility towards one another. Entrenching him back into cockiness would serve her no good.

She decided to try another tact.

“You could just let me go, you know. I’m not going to tell anyone this is where you’re hiding out”.

“I’m not hiding. And you seriously expected me to believe that? You may cavort with simpletons on a daily basis but don’t mistake me for one of them”.

Hermione glared at him. “Like anyone would give a shit about some low-level piece of crap like you, Malfoy. The Order have bigger things to worry about”.

She expected Malfoy to retaliate then, to puff himself up like a threatened bird and chirp on about his greatness and importance to the devil he called his master. Instead, his gaze found his lap, lank strands of hair falling across his face.

“It’s not the Order I’m worried about”, he finally said quietly.

Deep within her gut Hermione sensed the shift, a secret unspoken. If she had been attempting to recruit him as an agent for the Order, this would have been it. A thousand words sat on her tongue but she swallowed them, giving him the space she was sure he needed to fill. It didn’t matter that it was her. It wouldn’t have mattered who sat before him.

The silence stretched so long that Hermione had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from filling it, and then Malfoy inhaled a deep and shuddering breath.

“My father he - he has fallen from favour in the ranks of the Dark Lord. He was once respected for the purity of our family lines and the power he lent to the Death Eaters but now he is punished for imagined transgressions. Omissions based in no reality. They say he did little to bring the Dark Lord back to power despite the fact that nearly everyone believed the Dark Lord to be truly dead. No one knew about…”.

He trailed off, and Hermione knew then that he knew about the Horcruxes. She also knew that despite his loosened tongue that never would have been unshackled if not for their perverse situation, his loyalties still remained wedded to the side that wasn’t her own.

“He turned our ancestral home into a viper’s nest. The rooms I grew up in sullied and stained with putrified flesh and blood. My own bedroom -“

He choked and Hermione was torn at the horror of his story and a dark voice that whispered to her that good people where dying whilst Malfoy cried over his eighteenth century floorboards. She pressed her lips together. He had nearly let slip about the Horcruxes; perhaps his loosened tongue might tell her something she didn’t know, something helpful. But he was silent again, his gaze fixed towards the floor, undoubtedly reliving his own memories in the great slab of Georgian granite and obsidian that was Malfoy Manner. She resisted shuddering.

“What else?” she asked gently when it became clear he would say nothing else. He looked up at her, his jaw slack and his eyes wide, as if momentarily surprised to find her in the room with him. She had never seen him so unguarded and without the constant posturing and sneers, in that moment he looked like the boy on the cusp of manhood that he really was.

The pang of pity deep within her gut was an unwelcome surprise. Her mouth twitched, and in that tiny movement she watched as the illusion of Malfoy was shattered. His eyes darkened, his lips pulling into a furious white line, and before she could take a breath he was on his feet and stalking towards her.

“Of course you want to know what fucking else, mudblood! You think you can get under my skin like a letch, like a fucking harpy”.

His anger was shocking, even for someone who seemed perpetually furious at the world. His eyes blazed as he moved towards her, and for the first time Hermione felt a jolt of true fear. She staggered to her feet and backed quickly into the mirrored wall. Her back hit the glass at the same time as he reached her, slamming his hand into the wall next to her head.

She cringed away from him, her fingers itching for a wand that wasn’t there, when just as quickly as he’d rounded on her, he was drawing away, bent double and gasping for air as though pulled by an invisible rope around his middle.

When his hand reached out to grip his forearm, Hermione’s fear turned to black horror. Terrified to ask, but more terrified not to know, she stepped forward.

“What is it? Oh God, what’s happened?”

He groaned and it sounded more like a wounded animal than a human. He shook his head and when he spoke, it was as though someone was crushing a steel-capped boot into his throat.

“It’s too late”.

“It’s not. It’s not too late! We can, I don’t know, I don't know -”.

Hermione wasn’t sure when they had become a we, but in that moment she didn’t care. She stepped towards him, flinching as he jerked upright and turned to face her. His eyes were shining as his fingers twitched at his cuff and then yanked up the sleeve to reveal a pale forearm mottled with bruises and a sickening, yawning, black-as-midnight tattoo.

“The Dark Lord has won, Granger”. He laughed, a high pitched, disjointed sound.

“He’s won”.