Chapter Text
Alternate cover here
"Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone. The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be slaughtered, as well every member of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before him, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together."
The fighting around the castle seemed to slow as the words boomed around them, flashes of curses and hexes missing their targets. Wails erupted from the scattered groups of fighters as Voldemort appeared on the front steps just outside the Entrance Hall, Nagini around his neck and flanked by dozens of Death Eaters. Hagrid stood weeping behind him, Harry’s body limp and still in his arms.
Hermione fought back the urge to scream as she weaved her way out of the castle and through the crowd, oblivious to her surroundings. Harry couldn’t be dead. They had been so close to winning this war, to defeating Voldemort and proving that Light could defeat Darkness despite the odds stacked against them. This was impossible. Her best friend couldn’t be dead.
All around her, the battle waned. Most had heeded Voldemort’s words of caution and backed away from their duels with palms raised. A few continued to fight, slicing through the air with their wands with renewed vigor in an attempt to force their way closer to Voldemort, to Harry. Maybe he could still be rescued. Maybe they hadn’t lost the war yet.
Hermione stilled as she stepped to the front of the crowd of people, close enough to see Harry’s green eyes glazed over, his skin waxy and pale. There was no coming back from this, and the realization of it settled in her stomach like a weight. Ron appeared next to her and stood motionless, fury rolling off of him in waves.
All at once, the fighting stopped. The ones who had tried to get to Harry lay in heaps between the two sides, Bellatrix cackling between killing curses. Hermione quickly scanned those who had fallen and was relieved she didn’t see a single shock of red hair. Her relief quickly turned to dread as she recognized the body of Neville Longbottom in his striped sweater, the sword of Gryffindor still clutched in his hands.
“Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, is dead,” Voldemort repeated. His lips curled over his teeth, triumph on his snakelike features as he raised his wand and pointed it at Hagrid. Harry’s body suddenly flew from Hagrid’s grasp, lifted into the air and thrown about like a ragdoll, proof that he was truly dead. After a few twirls, Voldemort lowered his wand and stood proudly as Harry tumbled to the ground, his lifeless form landing with a sickening thud at Voldemort’s feet, crumpled and broken.
It was too much. Hermione felt something break inside her, something feral stirring deep in her chest, and she stepped forward before she could stop herself.
“Crucio!” came a voice she barely recognized as her own, her wand pointed straight at Voldemort’s heart. She had never used an Unforgivable Curse before, but she meant it with every fiber of her being, her grief and rage fueling her like gasoline on a fire. He flinched against the curse, chuckling softly as he resisted it and holding up a hand to stop Bellatrix from advancing.
“Come now, little Mudblood,” he crooned, almost a whisper. “You’re going to have to try harder than that.” He flicked his wand at her, not even bothering to utter the incantation, as searing pain shot through every cell of her body. It felt as though she was being ripped apart piece by piece, her nerves fraying as she fell to her knees. She heard Ron call her name from somewhere behind her, muted and distant.
Through the intense pain, the feeling of thousands of white-hot knives slicing away at her, she raised her wand in defiance. Voldemort’s expression faltered for a fraction of a second before pressing the curse further, his brow furrowing in concentration.
Hermione braced against the heavier onslaught of the Cruciatus, her wand arm shaking uncontrollably, but she did not lower it. She couldn’t if she tried. Not when she could meet Harry’s unseeing eyes, wide open and glassy, staring up at her from where he lay. Not when she recognized the fear in his vacant expression.
“Crucio!” she cried through gritted teeth, focusing all of her magic and anguish and pain into the curse, allowing the Dark Magic to join with her own. Voldemort was pushed back to the ground as it hit him, releasing her as he fell and allowing her to clamber back to her feet.
She barely registered the battle recommencing around her, curses flying in every direction. The Death Eaters whooped with glee as they were released from their positions to fight, leaving Bellatrix to attend to her Dark Lord. Hermione’s vision tunneled as she surged toward where Voldemort had fallen, a flash of green just barely missing her shoulder from somewhere to her left.
“Mione no!” Ron yelled from several paces behind her, but she didn’t pause. She heard him shout a stunning spell and for a split second, thought it might hit her in the back. When it didn’t, she continued forward; intent to finish what Harry had started, or die trying.
Spells and strategies repeated themselves like a mantra in her mind, as her subconscious clawed for any sense of control it could find in the chaos. Shield yourself, summon the sword, kill Nagini, kill Voldemort. Protego, accio Sword of Gryffindor, Wingardium Leviosa, Avada Kedavra.
As she approached, Bellatrix leapt to her feet, a sinister smile playing on her lips and her wand delicately balancing between her fingertips. Voldemort rose with her, and to Hermione’s surprise, he seemed to be laughing. The sound sent a shiver up her spine.
Voldemort drew himself up to his full height and watched her approach with a look of intrigue. Bellatrix danced impatiently at his side, like a child waiting for a gift on Christmas morning.
“Please, My Lord, let me have another go–”
“Silence, Bellatrix,” he said coldly, his eyes never leaving Hermione’s face. Before Hermione could speak, before she could even register that the time to use her spells was upon her, he flicked his wand and wordlessly cast hers aside; it flew several feet in the air and disappeared out of sight.
She braced herself. This was it. Wandless, defenseless, she was going to die. Nobody would come to rescue her now. At least she would be killed for a cause she believed in, standing up to face a monster that others couldn’t. She wouldn’t have to live with the grief that always came with surviving a war, she assured herself. She shut her eyes and inhaled slowly, preparing for the inevitable. She was ready.
“Stupefy.” And the world went black.
—
Hermione awoke to the sound of voices, hushed and frantic, all around her. A set of footsteps was quickly receding down a stone passageway, and gone before she was able to organize her thoughts. She lay on her back on what she assumed was a dungeon floor, the cold damp of it seeping into her bones. She wracked her brain over her last memories, trying to piece together what had occurred and where she might have been. The last thing she remembered was Harry’s body hitting the stone, and seeing red.
She carefully opened one eye a crack, just enough to get a blurry picture of her surroundings. She saw metal bars, illuminated by sparse candles that flickered lazily in the dark, and a figure sitting near her feet, wearing a dark cloak that covered their face.
As she stirred, the figure turned to look at her, placing a hand on her knee and pulling their hood away from their face.
“Mione?” came a familiar voice. “Mione, you’re awake!” She opened her eyes fully and Ginny’s face swam into view, smudged with dirt and dried blood but wearing an expression of hope. The younger girl wrapped her arms around Hermione’s neck and pulled her into a sitting position, holding her tight.
“Ginny,” Hermione breathed, returning the embrace. “Ginny what happened? Where are we?” She released Ginny and held her at arms’ length, trying to get a good look at her. Besides the grime across her cheeks, she looked physically unharmed. But she could tell that Ginny had broken apart mentally during the final battle with Voldemort too; her smile didn’t reach her eyes, and she seemed like she was trying to take up as little space as possible.
The way her face fell betrayed just how bad things had gotten without saying a word. Hermione braced herself for the worst.
“H-Harry is… dead,” Ginny began, and Hermione nodded, unable to get the sight of Harry’s limp body crashing to the ground out of her mind’s eye. “We kept fighting… You used the Cruciatus on Voldemort – that was absolutely mental, by the way – but then he stunned you, and when Ron saw you fall he… he…” She trailed off, staring just past Hermione’s shoulder, as she wiped a tear from her cheek. When she spoke again, her voice seemed smaller. “He went after Voldemort too. B-Bellatrix got to him first.”
Hermione grasped Ginny’s hand in her own and squeezed, the chasm in her chest widening and threatening to swallow her whole. She didn’t need her to continue to know the outcome of that duel. Ron was dead. “I’m sorry, Gin,” she whispered, blinking away her own tears.
“It was fast and painless, the best any of us could have hoped for, especially at Bellatrix’s hand,” Ginny said, steeling herself and sitting up a little straighter. “I kept fighting but Dolohov stunned me before I could get too far. Turns out they had no intention of letting us surrender peacefully.” She lifted her arms and motioned to the room. “So they’ve imprisoned the ones they didn’t murder.”
Hermione glanced around the room and realized it was a cell, in a line of cells that went on as far as she could see in the dark, most of them appearing empty. Huddled in the corners of the few occupied cells, pressed up against the metal bars, were at least a dozen people. Some she recognized, like Luna Lovegood – who gave a limp wave when she caught her eye – in the next cell over, and Cormac McLaggen and Zacharias Smith a few down. Most were witches and wizards she hadn’t met before, though she thought she saw some vaguely familiar Hufflepuffs hidden in the darkness. All had been silently watching her since she sat up.
“Is everyone else dead?” she asked after a moment, gaze returning to Ginny.
“I have no way to be sure,” she replied softly. “We’ve been down here for weeks, Mione. It’s almost June.” She waited a beat before continuing, while Hermione processed the information. What else had she missed in the weeks she was unconscious? And why wake her now? “We were all revived within hours, but they left you here, stunned on the floor, this whole time. I’m so sorry, none of us had our wands to wake you… One of the Death Eaters just came down and Rennervated you and left, couldn’t tell which one, seems kind of silly to keep wearing the mask after the war is over–”
“What do they want from us?” Hermione interrupted. This was all too much, and she couldn’t grasp why she hadn’t been murdered along with Harry and Ron. Her heart ached at the thought of continuing on without her best friends, without the boys who had been her biggest supporters and fiercest allies since first year. The Golden Trio was dead, and she was alone.
She thought of the others she had fought beside, who had been willing to sacrifice everything and more, just as she had. She wasn’t alone; she had Ginny, and Luna, though she worried that the latter’s multiple stints as a prisoner recently couldn’t be good for her psyche. Even Cormac and Zacharias were a welcome sight in the dim candlelight.
Ginny leaned in conspiratorially. “There are whispers that we’ll be a public sacrifice,” she said, shrugging, and Hermione gasped. “Dunno why they’d want to keep a Muggleborn and a blood traitor alive for long, other than to make a spectacle out of us.”
Hermione tried to come up with a logical solution, but her mind felt foggy after spending so long stunned; nothing she came up with made any sense. Why murder Ron but spare her? What had the others done to deserve their fates? What had she done to earn hers? Maybe this was Voldemort’s revenge for her Cruciatus curse making contact; perhaps he intended to make a public spectacle of anyone else who crossed him now that Harry was no longer an obstacle. She thought of Bellatrix’s wicked cackle while firing Killing Curses and shuddered, hand reaching toward her left forearm and absently scratching at the faded scar there.
She had been so certain of their victory over the Dark Lord, or death at his hand, that she had never planned to be imprisoned without Harry and Ron, had never even considered it an option. She was meant to help Harry kill Voldemort or die trying, and she fully intended to fulfill that promise.
She and Ginny didn’t speak much after that. The air hung heavy between them and she couldn’t handle any more heartbreak right away. After Hermione inspected every inch of the cell, busying herself so she didn’t have to talk and finding nothing of use, they tucked themselves in the far corner, wrapped together in Ginny’s cloak. Hermione briefly wondered where she had gotten it; it was thick, and black, and not at all something the Weasleys would have had hanging in their closet. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought it had belonged to one of the Death Eaters.
She pushed the thought aside as Luna padded over and joined them on the other side of the bars, silently reaching a pale, shaking hand through to hold Hermione’s. Despite her weeks of unconsciousness, she was exhausted, as she drifted off to sleep, she assured herself, at least we have each other. At least we’ll die together.