Neither the Fact of Death nor the Demons of Fear
Hermione always felt naïve when she imagined that the end of the war would come in an epic battle at Hogwarts. When it finally happened, she felt guilty for having fantasized about it so many times, like maybe she’d projected it into being. It was ugly and senseless. She had to keep reminding herself that the deaths of those around her were for the greater good of the wizarding world, but amid the fighting that idea was less than satisfactory. People became strange to her, including herself. She kissed Ron in the Chamber of Secrets with fervor. Harry showed up with Malfoy in tow, both with singed hair and smelling of smoke, oddly peaceable with one another in a lull in the fighting. Mrs. Weasley was a terror, piling up a body count everyone was later uncomfortable thinking about. McGonagall unleashed the stone soldiers and wielded Hogwarts like a mythic sorceress. Everyone, including the Order, rallied behind Neville, who stepped into the role effortlessly.
At some point in the throes of battle, Lestrange entered the Great Hall with fanfare, carelessly prancing across a long dining table, laughing maniacally while throwing deadly spells at preoccupied duelists. Reaching the end of the table, she threw a hex at Ginny who only blocked it with great effort. Mrs. Weasley must have recognized the voice because she abruptly ended her own duel with a nasty slicing jinx to a nameless Death Eater’s neck to confront the spell’s origin. Hermione had never seen – and hoped to never see again – such hate in the eyes of someone she cared about when Mrs. Weasley identified Lestrange.
“Not. My. Daughter - You bitch!”
Mrs. Weasley rolled her wrist perfectly to throw a continuing barrage of spells at Lestrange who initially batted them off with ease. The spells kept coming, however, and she struggled to keep up. Finally, Mrs. Weasley thrust her arm forward to deliver a devastating blow.
Everyone in the vicinity of the two duelists paused to watch Lestrange lifted off the ground by the spell. Her limbs were thrust up and backwards spread eagle. Her mouth opened slightly in surprise before she burst into what looked like thousands of tiny shards of glass. The pieces exploded backwards through the air like ashes from dying fireworks. Then they froze, suspended momentarily mid-air, before they rushed back together to coalesce into a living, breathing Bellatrix Lestrange who landed back on her feet on the table.
No one moved. All were silent with stunned expressions on their faces, including Lestrange. Her charcoal eyes cast about the room while her shoulders heaved. Disbelief eclipsed her face as she recognized the lifeless body of Nymphadora Tonks on the floor nearby. Then before anyone else could move she turned on the spot and was gone in a billowing column of smoke.
There was no time to wonder. The fighting resumed.
**
Narcissa knew it was over when Bellatrix arrived in the glade too early, stumbling to lean against a tree and catch her breath. Doubt was inscribed her face, and it did not escape the blonde woman that she uncharacteristically hid in the crowd of Death Eaters when the Dark Lord also returned to tell them they would all wait for Potter to come to them in the forest.
“Cissy,” whispered Bellatrix as she grasped the blonde’s forearm. “Draco isn’t here.”
Narcissa confirmed that with a quick glance around the glade, panic rising in her throat.
“Cissy. Do you ever miss Andy? Do you ever miss what we were before we corrupted ourselves?”
“I – I miss you,” she stuttered. This was not a conversation she expected to be having at this moment.
“I thought of the two of you every day I was in Azkaban. Well, every day I could think of anything.”
Narcissa could not bear it if it went on like this. Draco, Bellatrix, Andromeda. Was there nothing that would not be taken from her?
Harry Potter came to the glade, and the Dark Lord killed him. After riotous cheering from the crowd of Death Eaters, the Dark Lord turned to Narcissa with an uncanny grace. “Lady Malfoy. As our most esteemed healer, would you please assess the boy.”
She nodded and approached the figure crumpled on the ground. With her back to the crowd, her fingers searched his neck. She thanked her years of practiced impassibility for not jumping when a thumping pulse startled her.
A moment’s hesitation passed, then: “Draco. Is he alive?” The figure nodded almost imperceptibly. She slowly stood while processing the information, whirled around, and delivered the most convincing lie of her life. “Dead.”
During the Dark Lord’s gloating back at the Hogwarts castle, she found Draco in the crowd of students under the entrance arch. He shuffled across the expanse to them miserably at her beckoning. She had never been more grateful for Lucius in her life than when he put a hand on both of their backs and ushered them quietly to the rear of the Death Eaters, almost waiting for the moment when Potter leapt up to duel the Dark Lord again. Lucius herded his little family urgently across the Hogwarts bridge away from the battle. They did not stop to see who would be victorious; Lucius was certain it would cost his family too much either way. The sounds of battle resumed, but no one in the Malfoy family saw the bombarda that broke upon them from behind. They pitched forward in a pile, unconscious.
Andromeda Tonks, the head healer for St. Mungo’s, received them when they were brought into the field infirmary. Lucius had been found dead, his body a shield for his wife and son. Draco was released right away to the aurors with few injuries. Andromeda struggled to keep herself together as she prepared to nurse her baby sister to enough health to be tried for war crimes by the Wizengamot. There was no together to keep herself, however, when she learned of her husband’s and daughter’s deaths several hours later. Shacklebolt himself had to usher her from the castle while McGonagall braced herself between both center pillars of the Great Hall to keep it from collapsing with the woman’s grief.
**
There were many, of course, who called for the immediate and public execution of all captured Death Eaters. When no such thing came, the aurors had to break up riots in Diagon Alley for a week until Shacklebolt was instated as Minister of Magic and held public forum for the people’s voices to be heard as part of the wizarding world’s way forward. Private militias armed with wands, debris salvaged from the DA riots, and unsanctioned dark artefacts conducted their own missions to track down Death Eaters, and many of them were successful. Shacklebolt’s diplomacy allowed the ministry to take custody of most of those captured; only Rabastan Lestrange and Antonin Dolohov were confirmed to have been killed in the field. The militias and aurors searched indefatigably for Bellatrix Lestrange, but she remained at large. Those present at her duel with Molly Weasley began to doubt their memory of the dark witch’s recovery from that devastating spell; no one had seen her since she disapparated from the Great Hall.
In a rare joint maneuver, the mostly pureblood Wizengamot and a rising group of young, progressive ministry professionals lobbied for a judicial process whereby Death Eaters might avoid Azkaban or the dementor’s kiss in favor a variety of other penal options, including but not limited to permanent magical traces, rehabilitation programming, and participating in mandatory testing and research about the development of the dark arts. This sounded very promising to a wizarding world weary of death and destruction, and by the time the trials started six months later it garnered the support even of those who had been calling for swift execution. A self-congratulatory sense of righteousness spread over them all; they were already proving how morally superior the Good Side was compared to the archaic, horrific Voldemort and even Grindelwald. Something good would come from the tragedy; a new era was upon wizarding Britain.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione became almost divine to the public. They were objects of celebration and adoration everywhere they went. People who had never so much batted an eye at Hermione were requesting pictures with her and thanking her for her bravery. Many who had previously been outright hostile to the three confessed their admiration for them. The rumor mill pumped around the clock. First, Harry and Hermione were deemed hopelessly in love, and soliloquies about their cleverness and beauty graced one news outlet after another. When Harry and Ginny were finally seen regularly in public being affectionate, it became clear to everyone that it was actually Ron and Hermione who were together. Sometimes it all went to their heads; sometimes their hearts were too heavy to admit.
Hermione, along with Luna, assisted the professors and hired firms in rebuilding Hogwarts. It went rather quickly. Sometimes she had a sense that the castle was repairing itself faster than they were. In any case, it was a bit anticlimactic when its former glory was restored. She wished there was a little more evidence of the horror that had occurred there, so that the memory of those who died would not be lost so soon. The building’s glory seemed to be a mask desperately covering sorrow and death, a new denial of that ancient magic which had consumed its subjects’ in their own darkness.
She struck a deal with McGonagall and the professors, rather like she had with her parents when she’d first gone to Hogwarts. She would complete her seventh year on her own time, as independent study. The school would not reopen until the following year, but the professors found tutoring her a welcome distraction in the meantime. She split her time between the Gryffindor dorm and the Burrow, all the while planning for how to live on her own in the wizarding world. Her supply of money from her parents was dwindling. Eventually a paid research job with Flitwick and Slughorn was offered to her, and she jumped at the chance even though she found it incredibly uninspiring.
At the time of the trials, Harry and Ron were being fast-tracked through auror training. The trio remained key witnesses throughout the trials. They sat through days of evidence, argument, prosecution, defense, appeals, and discussion in the courtroom. Even the days they weren’t asked to speak left them exhausted. Initially, Hermione thought the new judicial process was an important step forward, but over time she grew weary of the whole idea of justice, mercy, and retribution. Every decision was bad for one person and good for someone else; she wanted nothing more than to be done with it.
Narcissa and Draco Malfoy were some of the first trials. Harry testified magnificently on their behalf. Draco had not exposed him at Malfoy Manor. Draco had not committed Dumbledore’s murder when he got his chance. Draco had left the battle at Hogwarts early. The blonde man kept his eyes averted throughout his trial and spoke little but confidently when questioned. The Wizengamot voted unanimously to acquit him.
On the day of Narcissa’s trial, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the remaining Order members who attended every trial were caught off guard to find Andromeda Tonks sitting behind their row, holding her newly adopted grandson, Teddy Tonks, Jr., on her lap. She flashed them a small smile, but the sadness did not leave her eyes. They did not know why, but they all gave her a small nod of deference when murmuring their condolences. Even with their backs to her while they faced the courtroom floor, her presence was overwhelming. The woman’s magic lapped at Hermione’s neck, flushing her with cold and warmth over and over.
They were only distracted from her presence when Narcissa Malfoy was escorted to the defense seat. Narcissa had broken her femur fleeing Hogwarts and now walked with a brightly burnished cane. She could not hide the hitch in her step, but it somehow made her look regal – even more than before. She took her seat without lowering her head. Witnesses for and against her took the stand, the latter weaker than the former. Harry shared how she lied about his death to Voldemort in the forbidden forest, thus allowing him to surprise and beat him in the last duel. She had basically won the war for them, he said, and no one dared to contradict him. Narcissa’s eyes followed him as he left the witness stand and widened when she found Andromeda. Her jaw clenched and unclenched with an unreadable anxiety. Then she looked away and strode as quickly as she could out of the room when her acquittal was announced.
Several weeks later, Narcissa and Draco joined the audience at the trials. They were mostly silent except for once when Andromeda and her grandson approached them to exchange brief pleasantries. Tension radiated from them, but ever after that they nodded amicably to each other when entering or exiting the room.
One day, at a particularly trying time in Fenrir Greyback’s trial, they were all startled by a loud explosion as the only door in and out of the room wrenched off its hinges and spewed itself in splinters out onto the main floor. A collective gasp and not a few screams escaped from those present. Bellatrix Lestrange, face full of fury and hair billowing behind her, was taking long, purposeful steps straight toward Shacklebolt and the Chief Warlock. Shouting filled the room and spells began to fly at her from every direction. She batted them away with her bare hand as her flashing wand wove a protego, probably with a fiato duri, unlike Hermione had ever seen. Her free hand stretched streaks of lightning from it the shield she’d created and wrapped them around her body. As fervent spells from the audience flew toward it, it expanded out to seize them, immobilizing the casters’ wands in place. With her hands outstretched, she held the spherical shield crackling with electricity, sending glacial blue light illuminating fixed spell strands to the frozen wands. She rotated slowly, scanning every corner of the room with penetrating eyes and controlling every active magical impulse directed at her. Finally facing the row of war heroes, she dropped her arms and cast her wand to the floor; the protective bubble and its pulsing electricity collapsed. Her lips parted slightly, and Hermione saw a light disappear from her eyes. Within seconds dozens of spells from the wands she’d released were upon her, and she was pinned to the floor unconscious. Narcissa and Andromeda, who were seated in the same row, gripped the armrests of their chairs, backs rigid against the seat, a mixture of fear and despair on their faces.
The next day the Daily Prophet sported a photo of Lestrange’s bulbous spell with its blue strands on the Wizengamot floor under the headline, “DEATH EATER ATTACKS MINISTER OF MAGIC” and on the second page, “LESTRANGE DEFEATED BY HARRY POTTER AND AUROR TEAM” next to a picture of the dark-haired woman crumpled on the floor bleeding from the mouth.
All sensational. All lies.