Whom the Gods Would Destroy...

Title: Whom the Gods Would Destroy…
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: MA/NC-17
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Angst, Horror, Mystery
Warnings: Character Death, Graphic Violence, Adult Situations, Dark!fic
Summary: DH-EWE: The end of the world has come. Millions dead, magic waning, Hermione Granger and Charlie Weasley are the last people left in Britain—left to pick up the pieces of their once great civilization. Why were they spared? Who is responsible for the death of a nation? These are the mysteries left as a legacy for two lost and lonely people.
Author's Notes: This is my first attempt at a Charlie/Hermione pairing, so please be gentle. This fic is very much inspired by my morbid obsession with ‘end of the world’ scenarios. There are few OCs in this fic, and I have tried to keep much in ‘canon’ as possible. WGWD is unbeta’d, so pardon the mistakes, please?




Whom the Gods Would Destroy…

Part 19




‘quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.’ –A Roman proverb





Sleeping, eating, resting, it was done in silence until they began preparing to go the next night. Charlie had slipped away for a few hours to procure brooms, to speak to Marcus Flint about their plans to go to Cornwall. When Charlie returned, he found Hermione dressing in clothes he had never seen before, black dragon hide armour. It was not the only thing different, he noticed, as she sat in a armchair before the fire, slipping her feet into knee high dragon hide boots with straps and buckles. Her hair was cut, as she had grabbed her thick hair and lopped it off with a knife. The result made her curls spring closer to her skull, falling about her cheeks in honey coloured strands.

“There is armour for you as well,” she said, noticing him standing just beside the curtained partition. “A gift.”

Charlie frowned, moving to the bed where there was a pile of dragon hide clothing. The boots on the floor, and a heavy cloak folded next to the clothes were somehow familiar. As Hermione stood, donning the cloak, he knew where he had seen the costume before.

Death Eater. All that was missing was the mask.

“Malfoy,” Charlie growled, stepping away from the clothing on the bed, his eye boring into Hermione’s cropped head.

Hermione turned, slipping her wand into a holster on her side, indistinguishable from the armour. “Yes,” she answered.

Charlie’s ire came upon him suddenly and as Hermione began to move to the lavatory, Charlie caught her by the shoulders, glaring down into her eyes.

“How? Why?” he snarled.

Hermione’s eyes widened for a moment and then narrowed. “Astoria brought it with Lucius wish that we ‘be outfitted for battle.’ I’m not keen on wearing it, but it was a kind gesture…”

Charlie lifted his chin, feeling the long sleeves on Hermione’s wiry muscled arms, a softer dragon hide that doubtless came from a Hebridean Black.

“’Kind gesture…?’”

“I owed him, Charlie, and his wish, selflessly, was that we end this nightmare.”

Charlie released her and she immediately headed for the lavatory. He listened as the tap on the sink turned on. Moving to follow, he watched her drink water from a glass, gazing at her cropped hair in the mirror.

“Your hair?”

She turned the tap off and set the glass on the back of the sink. “It was in the way.”

Charlie felt something in his chest snap, as if she had said something profound. It took a moment to figure out why he felt so lost, so suddenly. It was Hermione’s mien. She was rested, focused, and she was seriously preparing for battle. Charlie felt as if he were looking at a stranger.

“The brooms?”

He straightened as she passed him into the bedroom, moving to a pack setting on one of the armchairs, hands digging inside.

“I have two Firebolts at Hagrid’s hut,” he said in a growl, eyeing the dragon hide on the bed again. “We can leave in an hour or less, if we are ready…”

Hermione paused, closing the flap on the knapsack, her hands poised to lash it shut. Her eyes turned to him, a curl falling into her face.

“I’m ready,” she whispered, her hands moving again to adjust the straps of the knapsack.

Charlie forcefully swallowed his anger.





Harry was sitting on Hagrid’s doorstep when Hermione and Charlie came for the brooms. Hermione shivered at the sight of her friend, the floodlights scattering light across the grounds catching Harry’s emerald eyes sans his spectacles. Harry stood as they approached, a heavy winter cloak on his shoulders despite it being near the end of June.

Hermione watched as Harry nodded to Charlie, as he moving to the brooms hidden behind a water barrel. Harry came to Hermione, looking down at her shadowed face for a moment before enveloping her in a tight embrace. Hermione sighed, Harry’s warmth a balm to her anxious mind.

“I love you,” Harry whispered into her ear.

She stiffened, pulling back slightly to peer up at his face. It was then that Harry kissed her. It was not like the many kisses they had shared, as brother and sister, but deeper, longer, and wetter. Hermione was too shocked to speak when Harry pulled his lips away.

He stroked her shorter hair, smiling sadly.

“If ‘he’ is here, I will find him. I was born for this,” Harry whispered.

Hermione blinked, lost for a moment, and then realizing what Harry meant by his words.

“Harry…” she started, but trailed as his fingers move to still her lips.

“The vision I had all those years ago, on the edge of life and death, I should have killed every last bit of his soul. Dumbledore was too kind; he was too full of hope… I will find ‘him’ and I will stop him, even if it does kill me this time.”

She trembled, holding to the front of Harry’s jumper. Fear seized her, and she fell into Harry’s arms again. They held each other for a long while, Harry’s fingers brushing through her hair.

“We will be fine. Don’t worry about us,” was the last thing Harry said before extracting himself from her arms.

Hermione slumped as Harry moved to shake Charlie’s hand. She licked her lips, wondering what Harry was whispering to Charlie. Charlie nodded gravely, pulling the two brooms from behind the barrel, moving to pass one to Hermione. The broom seemed too heavy in her hand, but she took it, waiting for Charlie to mount first.

Harry only watched as Charlie took off first, into the moonless, starless sky. When Hermione followed, slower, Harry smiled at her, and began to take off back to the castle. Charlie was waiting for her, and together, they circled the castle, before slipping through the pulsing wards and to the south.

Outside of the lights of Hogwarts, Hermione could not see much in front of her face except for Charlie. They edged faster over the landscape, rising high into the sky. After about twenty-minutes, the clouds parted, and the waning moon lit their way.

She still hated flying, but racing over the land that had birthed and nurtured her, Hermione could not deny that flying over Scotland and into England was awe inspiring. The waning moon was red and bright, larger than it should be, and slightly foreboding. Pushing faster, Hermione began to figure how long it would take to reach Tintagel at the rate they were flying. Six hours, five? Either way, it would be daylight by the time they reached Cornwall. Of course, if they were to hit a front…it would be longer.

Charlie would glance back occasionally, his jade green eyes catching the moonlight. Hermione would nod to him when they would alter their course slightly to make a straighter line for Cornwall. They did not fly over the sea; Hermione had mentioned the Seal, something that had kept them from doing so much, yet something they did not think of so often. Hermione was not exactly sure where the Seal rested, but knew it was somewhere in the sea. She was not even sure if Ireland was incorporated under the Seal. It was safer not to take too many chances. Flying in a southwestern direction from Hogwarts over land would take longer, but it was a safer bet. Hermione did not know what getting too close to the Seal might mean or do to a witch or wizard.

The Firebolts were rated zero to one hundred fifty miles in ten seconds, and as Hermione followed Charlie in the moonlight, the dark green cloak he wore over his wide shoulder flapping violently behind him, Hermione began to think of Harry.

The madness of Voldemort never seemed to die.

Hermione sighed, her hands growing numb from holding to the broom handle, her ears and face cold where the shield Charm on the broom did not keep the icy wind from freezing her skin. The cold had not gone unnoticed, as it seemed that February cold stretched on throughout the seasons. Hermione considered it was due to the Seal, somehow affecting the very nature of their world. Only years before, Dementors and their influence had caused the coolest and wettest year in recorded Twentieth Century history just before what would have been her Seventh Year.

Gazing ahead and then down, Hermione wondered where they were. Time began to have no meaning as they flew, the moon’s hooded red eye shifting slowly across the night sky. However, before them, Hermione saw a strange shimmering on the low clouds, and immediately pulled her broom handle up to brake. Charlie did the same, until they hovered side by side, looking to the southwest.

“A front,” Charlie said. “It’s coming toward us…”

Hermione said nothing as suddenly they both were spiraling down to the dark landscape below just hovering short of the ground on a hilltop overlooking a dark village and a lake beyond. Hermione set her feet down as the shimmering clouds moved closer, and she could feel a type of static electricity crackling over her skin, and the void of magic sweep through her.

“That’s that,” Charlie sighed next to her, looking at the distant moon glow through the clouds.

She could barely see him and her hand itched to pull her wand from the holster about her breasts and ribs. Instead, she set her broom on the ground and began to try to look about them, discern where they were.

All the while, Charlie moved, pulling the pack from his back, and opening the flap to dig. Hermione’s eyes widened as matches lit and she whirled to see that Charlie had lit a small lamp, without the aid of magic, setting it on a rock jutting out of the hilltop. He sat down on another rock and next pulled a folded book, pages worn, some torn. It was a road atlas of Britain, and Hermione wondered where he had found it.

Shrugging off her back and dropping it to the ground, she moved in the light sitting near the lamp, the only source of light for miles and miles. Despite the small flame, she could see that the hill they sat upon was high, rocky, and oddly familiar. It made Hermione think that they might be in the Lake District.

“Northwest of Kendal, maybe,” she listened as Charlie mused, his fingers running over the wrinkled page of the book on his knees.

He was still in a thick jumper and denims, only the heavy dark green cloak over his shoulders. Glancing down at her own attire, she frowned.

“The Lake District,” he mumbled.

She nodded. “We could walk a while, it would be safe,” she suggested.

Charlie glanced up from the road atlas, eyes narrowed, thinking.

“I suppose,” was all he said.

Hermione looked to the lamp, wanting to sigh, or say something. Since her mention of Malfoy, the clothing, everything had been strained. It was before that, she realized, it was when they had sex… She could feel then that Charlie was holding back, as if to spare her something. It made her feel awkward, as if she truly did not know the man across from her at all.

She wanted to know him, wanted to be able to talk with him, feel with him… Granted, the weight of their current situation gave them no time for frivolity, but Hermione did not care much for the fact he was upset with her for whatever reason.

Even as they walked down to the village, learning that it was a village called Glenridding, Hermione walked two steps behind Charlie as he carried the lamp to light their way. They carried their brooms across their shoulders and Hermione felt as if she were sulking with every step they took along the road.

The sulking did not last long as in Hartsop, several miles south of Glenridding, the front cleared. Hermione felt as if she could breathe again.

Alighting the air again, Hermione took the lead, pushing her broom faster. She decided not to think about Charlie and their odd relationship for the time being. It only confused her.






The first rays of dawn came as they flashed over Shropshire, and Charlie felt his chest squeeze remembering his night in Shrewsbury. He only let his eyes take in the landscape for a moment before laying his body flatter above the broom handle to take on speed. He came up beside Hermione whose golden eyes were keen on the land before them. She seemed to know where to go, and he followed.

By Glouscester, she angled southwest, flying along the coast of the Mouth of the Severn, the rising sun on their backs. Charlie followed her as she began to angle to the ground, and as she did, Charlie could feel a perceptible change in the air. It was not the void, but something like it. When his feet hit the ground on a desolate high street, Charlie winced as pain raced through his body. It felt as if something inside of him was being pulled out through his navel and he clutched his middle; stumbling to his knees, broom clattering on the road.

Several steps away, Hermione had mimicked his motion, but was only on one knee. Her cropped hair was in her face as her hand moved to her wand and drew it slowly. Her lips moved, and suddenly has if a pulling hand had been smacked away, whatever was being pulled out of him snapped back into place. Charlie grunted, falling with his hands into the wet pavement.

“What, what was that?” he gasped, his mouth feeling dry, his eyes burning.

Hermione said nothing, rising stiffly and moving to him to help him sit on the road. Her hands brushed along his stubbly jaw to his hair.

“This place,” she said calmly. “It feels as if…” she trailed, and did not continue. “C’mon,” she mumbled.

Charlie recovered quickly, but every step he took along the empty street felt as if he were slogging through thick bog water. The village was called Boscastle, Charlie learned after passing a few empty shops on the road. Charlie was not familiar with the village.

There were no bodies in sight, and as they came to rest at an abandoned Muggle café, pulling toppled outside chairs up to sit at one of the tables, Charlie pulled out his road atlas from his pack. Katie Flint had given it to him, finding it among the belongings of the dead at Hogwarts. It was useful, and it did not take long for Charlie to find a map of Cornwall.

Boscastle was a little over three miles from the village of Tintagel. He said as much to Hermione, who did not seem to be listening to him, but to the sound of the nearby sea. Her eyes were distant, moving to the lightening sky. Charlie ground his teeth and began digging in his pack again, withdrawing a tin of beans and Charming it hot and open.

“I kept thinking, and I realized something,” Hermione said finally, her eyes moving to the heated tin of beans Charlie was eating with a Conjured spoon. “I kept thinking about Tom Riddle and this cave.”

Charlie chewed slowly, and offered the tin to Hermione who shook her head, apparently not hungry.

“Tom Riddle, the man who would become Voldemort, he grew up during the War…”

Charlie swallowed, listening as Hermione eyes moved about the desolate road and the corpse free village.

“He was in the orphanage at Lambeth, and during his school days, he returned there. It must have been in ’39, perhaps the summer of his First Year that the evacuations started in London… I could not imagine why an orphanage would take a trip so far west unless there was a danger of some sort. Riddle had the security Hogwarts during the majority of the year, but at Lambeth, the Blitz had everyone in constant danger and terror…”

Charlie blinked; he knew so little about Muggle history. He only knew that the Magical world had further pulled away from the Muggle world at that point in time. There were parallels, of course, Adolf Hitler and Gellert Grindelwald, and their fall in ’45. Charlie had to admit that as a Pure-blood, there was much he would not know simply due to the accident of his birth. It made him wish he had paid more attention in Muggle Studies.

“Perhaps Riddle was brought here, or near here… It would appeal to him.”

“What do you mean?”

Hermione finally met Charlie’s eyes. “We are only three miles away from Tintagel, and already we could feel the dark power that Kreacher described. It’s magnified now, now that there are so few left alive, perhaps when there were millions still living in the southwest, it was not felt so poignantly.”

Charlie set the tin on the outdoor table. “What did you do?” he asked softly, suspiciously.

“Warded us from it.”

No more was said on the matter, and Charlie was left with unanswered questions. It was not long before they were hovering over the coast, the sun having fully risen, making the sea look black. To the west, Charlie could see Tintagel Head jutting out into the sea. Even with the Seal, the waves crashed into the rocky shore below, as it normally would. There were even gulls flying nearby, cawing into the wind. Charlie wondered why there were still birds when everything else living seemed to be gone or hampered by the Seal.

They flew slowly, eyes scanning the coastline, until they were just over Tintagel Head and the ruins below. The legendary birthplace of King Arthur had been dead for centuries and remained so as they drifted further west and then south.

Rocky cliffs landscaped the ground, and just before a strand of beach, Charlie felt it again.

Whatever ‘wards’ Hermione had cast were being strained, and he felt a sharp stab of pain in his gut. Charlie drifted lower and lower, until his boots dragged the rocky edge of the cliff, Tintagel Head still visible to his right. Hermione landed next to him, her face pale, her lips pressed tight together.

The path down a cleft to a minuscule beach far below was nothing but treacherous, but they found it, as if being pulled by an invisible string at their navels. Charlie thought the sensation felt something like a Portkey activating, but there was no swirl of colour and light, and his head was not spinning on his shoulders.

Hermione walked ahead of him, her broom over her shoulder, her wand in her right hand. She descended slowly and carefully, occasionally stopping to keep her boots from slipping on the wet rocky path. If Charlie did not know better, the path was almost like an animal track.

The sunlight had not come over the cliffs by the time their boots sank into the damp sand of the small beach, the tide coming in on their legs. The seawater was icy, and it distracted Charlie from the stabbing in his gut, but only for a short while.

The entrance of the cave was filled with water, waist deep, and he heard Hermione wheeze as she lifted her cloak to wrap it about her right shoulder with her broom still on her left. Charlie did the same, stepping off a low natural step into the icy water.

“Harry said that there was a door, one to be opened with blood,” Hermione said as she stepped into the dark mouth of the cave, the water higher on her body than on Charlie’s.

“The tide is coming in,” Charlie murmured, his teeth beginning to chatter as he grasped his broom.

“I know,” Hermione said as she slipped further into the cave, and Charlie could no longer see her clearly. “We need to hurry.”

Her wand lit and Charlie’s eyes were blinded shortly as the wet black rock came into view. He expected to see the ‘door’ she had mentioned, but the cave seemed to stretch on before her, further back into the coastline.

“Damn,” she whispered, her voice echoed and then was lost in the sound of waves.

She had stumbled, nearly splashing down into the icy water, and then, she was rising out of the water. Hermione turned to Charlie, blinking as she let her cloak fall loose again, standing above him and out of the water.

“I suppose this is it,” she said as Charlie struggled out of the water, ascending on what felt like man made steps. Arranging himself, his clothes dripping, he set his broom against the wall of the cave, drawing his wand to dry himself and cast a waterproofing Charm on the broom. Hermione did the same even with her wand lit.

“This door, where is it?” Charlie asked, adding his wand light to the tunnel like cave.

Hermione said nothing, lifting her wand a bit higher to see ahead of her. There was no door, no rock face, in fact it seemed that the tunnel widened ahead of them. As they stepped further into the cave, it became clear that there had once been a rock wall, but had been blasted away—from the inside. Charlie could still feel the dull hum of magic on the black stone as he stepped around it on the slick rock floor.

The air changed, grew colder, and ahead, there was light albeit dim.

“There was a lake in a chamber, Harry said, and a boat. The Inferi were in the water and in the centre of the lake was an island… Other than that, I know almost nothing,” Hermione said, in a whisper as they stealthily moved into the widening passage.

It was after a few more metres that Hermione ‘Nox’d’ her wand. Charlie followed suit, realizing that the light from within the chamber was bright enough to see, though everything was cast in an eerie blue and green light. The moisture in the air was almost suffocating, as was the scent of stagnant water and death. However, there was something more to the cave—evil.

Just as Hermione said, there was a still lake in a large chamber with stalactites of black rock hanging precariously from a ceiling high above, but there was also light streaming down from tiny cracks in the rock. The water was glowing faintly, as if there was some unseen light source in its depths.

Moving along a wet wall to stand atop an ancient flowstone, Charlie and Hermione stood above the lake, gazing across the water to the island in the centre. From Charlie’s vantage point, it appeared the island was approximately a hundred metres from the edge of the lake, and upon it was a natural stone stalagmite rising up about four feet to level off at the top. The stone basin glowed a sickly yellow green upward, and Charlie assumed it was this basin that was filled with a lethal potion.

“I wish I had the scope,” Hermione murmured, crumpling slightly, her back pressed against the rough wall behind her.

Hermione knelt down, and Charlie frowned, feeling very ill very suddenly. He knelt next to her, grasping her shoulders as her head fell down, her chin upon her chest.

“This place… Harry never said anything,” she whispered quickly, somewhat angrily.

He was gasping for breath, a proper breath with no humidity and no stagnation. He could still feel a cool breeze from the sea against his side from the tunnel, but it was not enough.

“There’s someone on the island,” Hermione said finally, lifting her face. “Laying against the dais…”

Charlie’s eyes widened and he stood, narrowing his eyes to the island. Biting his lower lip, he tried to distinguish rock from flesh, and then he saw it. A figure was leaning against the stalagmite, limp, and covered in what appeared to be a black cloak. The only bit of flesh that was somewhat visible was a pale hand, whiter than anything in the chamber, and fingers were curled around something round that was obscured by the cloak.

“Accio broom!” Charlie belted out, his voice sounding watery and wrong.

Hermione gasped, standing quickly as Charlie’s broom flew out of the darkness of the tunnel and slapped into Charlie’s hand. Hermione opened her mouth to say something, but already he was off. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hermione begin to slide down the flowstone to a level below.

The island was further than Charlie originally thought as he drifted over the water. There was nothing in the water he could see, no Inferi as the elf had mentioned. Charlie then considered the door, and how it had been blasted outward, toward the sea.

Had the Inferi gone? How was such a thing possible?

He stowed his questions as he leapt from his broom, his boots slamming into the rocky and uneven surface of the island. Letting the broom fall to the ground, he moved, approaching the top of the island in long strides. The air was different on the island, drier, but the scent of old death remained.

The figure that lay against the dais did not move, and Charlie pulled his wand from his chest holster as he neared. The hand that he had seen was like alabaster stone, not alive, but the longer Charlie looked at the cloak-obscured figure, he noticed the impossibly gentle rise and fall of a breathing chest.

Charlie took a step forward, feeling a sense of deja-vu.

Soon, he stood over the figure, eyes moving to the liquid filled basin above on the dais, and back down to the cowl pulled low over what appeared to be a head. Clutched in the alabaster hand, half hidden in the folds of the cloak, was another basin, as large as the one on the dais, but made of silver.

He knew the basin, and as he flicked his wand to blow the cowl back from the head, he knew the figure’s face. Although, how the familiar face came to be in Voldemort’s Horcrux Cave was as unlikely as the survival of the object in the figure’s hand.

Draco Malfoy was holding Prester John’s mirror, alive, and relatively unscathed.