Hogwarts: The Legacy

(c)2005 by Josh Cohen. May not be reprinted, except for personal use. The Potterverse was created by JK Rowling, and remains her property. I\'m just borrowing it for a little while.

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PROLOGUE

Warning: Contains scenes of rape, as well as major character death.

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Hermione Granger simply did not have the strength of will to close her eyes. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to do so. The wizard above her was the most powerful dark wizard who had ever lived. He was tall, and pale, and nearly skeletal; his face was almost flat owing to the slits he had for a nose, and his skin was scaly to the touch.

He was Lord Voldemort, and he was raping her.

It had taken almost a full year for Harry Potter to trust Draco Malfoy. Ron Weasley, Harry’s best friend, still didn’t quite trust the young man he called “the amazing bouncing ferret” when no one else was listening. But now Malfoy was their only way into Voldemort’s inner sanctum.

“Around this corner,” Draco whispered, the subvocalizing spell taught them by Professor Lupin – who had returned to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts for their final year at Hogwarts – keeping his voice low enough that only Harry and Ron, upon whom Draco had cast the spell as well, could hear. “Then through the doors.”

“We’ll cover you,” Ron vowed. “No one else will get in your way.”

Draco saw a cold fire burning in Ron’s eyes – he had recently come to think of Weasley as “Ron”, ever since Hermione had been kidnapped, right under the noses of Professors Dumbledore and Snape. Ron had it bad for Hermione, even though she had made clear, in no uncertain terms, that there would be no relationship between the two of them.

But Draco couldn’t begrudge Ron. In the past two years, the Golden Trio had allowed him in, first at the behest of Dumbledore, and then of their own accord. And now it was up to them to save the fourth member of their group.

Harry held up a hand, five fingers extended. Slowly, he began lowering them.

Draco and Ron tensed, their wands held at the ready.

Harry’s hand became a fist.

Draco and Ron darted out from around the corner, Harry close behind.

“Displodo!” The shout came from Draco and Ron together, and it was enough to blow the heavy oak door to dust.

“Harry!”

The scream was Hermione’s.

The three of them ran toward it.

Lord Voldemort had held his wand the entire time he was with Hermione Granger. Each time he had taken her, he had been forced to hold her with his not-insubstantial magical abilities. She was by far the strongest witch he had ever attempted to impregnate, even stronger than Bellatrix LeStrange, his lieutenant.

Now, though, he pulled his nude body away from Granger, casting a magnified version of the full-body bind to hold her equally-nude form in place. He accio’d a robe and pulled it over his head, transfiguring it into a loose shirt, trousers, and boots as it fell downward. The clothes were all heavy silk, venomously green.

“Hermione!”

The red-haired wizardling – Ron Weasley, Voldemort remembered – was nearly purple with fury, but his magic was less disciplined than Voldemort’s. He sent a burst of pure anger out of his wand, a violent orange thing that nonetheless impressed the Dark Lord. Not that he couldn’t wave it away with the narrowest flick.

“No,” Harry growled, his hand on Ron’s shoulder. “He’s mine.”

Harry’s grip on his wand grew so tight that he felt the wood might splinter in his hands. He advanced on Voldemort, one hand over his head, his wand extended in front of his body, presenting the narrowest possible target.

“You must be dreaming, boy,” Voldemort hissed. “To think that you can take me, one on one. Do you not remember what happened the last time?”

“It won’t happen again,” Harry snapped. “This time, you will not rise.”

“Oh, now you’re just being ridiculous.”

“Am I?”

Voldemort stared into Harry’s eyes, holding him there, trying to use his legilimency to learn Harry’s secrets. But Professor Snape had been thorough in teaching Harry to become a skilled Occlumens, and heavy mental barriers crashed down on Voldemort’s questing psychic tentacle like stones on a garden hose.

“Impressive,” Voldemort said. “So, it is to be a duel to the death?”

“A duel to the death.”

Ron and Draco edged out of the way, watching the two wizards circle each other. Draco had raised his wand, but Ron’s hand stayed him. “We can’t,” Ron had said. “Look.”

Draco had seen the golden-green circle appear around Harry and Voldemort, a dueling circle that meant no one could affect either combatant until one was defeated.

Instead, they went to Hermione. She was nude, and shuddering, but her tears had stopped. Ron pulled off his robe and draped it over her body while Draco, who was known throughout Hogwarts for his ability to defeat the wards on the girls’ dormitories, went to work breaking the spell that held her to the wide bed upon which she was bound.

“Ron,” Hermione rasped. “Draco.” Her voice was hoarse from screaming. “You came.”

“Of course we came,” Ron said, his hand cupping her cheek. “What kind of friends would we be if we didn’t?”

There were no tears left, but Hermione wanted to cry with relief. Her sobs were dry, but the moment Draco released her upper body from the spell, she grabbed Ron around the neck and pulled him to her, her arms around him tight enough to break his ribs.

Draco knelt on the bed behind Hermione and laid his hands on her bare shoulders, trying to soothe her. It was a measure of how mature Ron had become that he didn’t give Draco a dirty look. He simply allowed the other young wizard to hold Hermione as well.

Eventually, though, Draco drew back. “Ron,” he said, “I need you to move away. I need to break the rest of the bind.”

“All right.” Ron carefully extricated himself from Hermione’s embrace, still within touching distance, but not actually touching. Draco aimed his wand at the bed, between Hermione’s knees, and whispered an incantation so obscure that even Hermione didn’t recognize it. A line of dark blue slowly extended from Draco’s wand and pulsed into the bed. A warm sensation grew underneath Hermione’s bare legs and bottom, becoming painfully hot.

Hermione gritted her teeth and waited. Any pain was worth enduring if it meant freedom from Voldemort, and she knew that Draco wouldn’t hurt her without a purpose.

“Draco,” Ron said softly, “you’d better hurry.”

There was a burst of blue light that drove along the line connecting Draco’s wand to the bed, and then a soft pop, and suddenly Hermione could move again. She scrambled off the bed and into Draco’s arms.

Ron didn’t even notice. He was watching the duel.

Harry knew he was finished. He didn’t have enough to defeat Voldemort. He knew that this was how he’d gotten his godfather killed two years ago, but there had been no time to wait. His connection with Voldemort had shown what the Dark Lord was doing to Hermione, and he simply couldn’t abide that.

Ginny and Luna were rounding up as many members of the Order of the Phoenix as they could. But Harry, Ron, and Draco couldn’t wait.

Harry knew that he’d come farther than anyone had thought possible. Dozens of Death Eaters were strewn throughout the hallways of Voldemort’s redoubt. The only one none of them had seen was Bellatrix LeStrange, but since last year, when Professor Lupin had tracked, dueled, and nearly killed her before she managed to Apparate away, no one had seen her. She was presumed dead. Even Voldemort thought so.

Another crucio burst through Harry’s chest. He couldn’t take much more of this. He screamed, his voice unable to contain the agony of the spell’s effects.

“Harry!” shouted Ron. “Hang on!”

“Shut up, boy!” Voldemort snapped. “Your little savior is finished. Avada Kedavra!”

The burst of green light was blinding, but when it was over, the golden-green circle around Harry and Voldemort was no more. Harry Potter lay crumpled in a heap, a charred circle on his chest.

Voldemort was advancing on them now. His wand was out. Draco was at the ready, ready to take on the Dark Lord.

Draco’s eyes widened. Voldemort took it to be fear. But it wasn’t.

A green glow suffused Voldemort’s body. Draco and Ron and Hermione took it to be the precursor to some sort of spell. It was.

Voldemort stopped.

He tried to move, but he couldn’t.

A pair of hands came up around his neck. Slender but strong hands, long-fingered, craggy with age. One grasped the Dark Lord’s chin, one draped itself across his forehead.

There was a sharp snap, and the Dark Lord fell to the ground, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Professor!” Hermione nearly screamed.

For it was Professor Albus Dumbledore, the only wizard Voldemort ever truly feared, who had somehow made it in time to save them. Not Harry, whose broken body Dumbledore was reverently, gently lifting with a mobilicorpus spell, but Draco, Ron, and Hermione were safe.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. The Voldemort War was over.

Later, Professor Dumbledore explained how he had given up on waiting for backup – they were all arguing about who would do what, a problem when one involved the Ministry of Magic – and simply struck out on his own. Voldemort had been so consumed with destroying the four students who had gotten in his way so many times that he’d been unable to pick up on Dumbledore’s approach, especially with the Disillusionment Charm deflecting attention away from himself. In the last Voldemort War, Dumbledore told them as he drove them – in a muggle car, no less – back to 12 Grimmauld Place, it had been magic that had vanquished Voldemort. This time, the only wizard Voldemort ever feared realized that magic would not guarantee the Dark Lord’s fall.

Hermione, Ron, and Draco understood. Harry probably would have as well, had there been time.

The funeral of Harry Potter would have been the best-attended funeral in all of wizarding history had Dumbledore not instructed – for that’s what he did; he basically said, in no uncertain terms, that this was a matter for those Harry had called family – that those who simply wanted to attend for the sake of attending should instead stay home with their loved ones. So it was only the Weasleys, the Order of the Phoenix, and Hermione’s parents who attended, along with Professors Dumbledore and, surprisingly to Ron, Snape.

Harry’s death had hurt, at the time, but time does heal all wounds in its slow, steady fashion. Ginny Weasley, with whom Harry had been quite intimate, had mourned him and eventually moved on with her life, taking a post in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office under her father. Ron’s relationship with Luna Lovegood did not survive Harry’s death; Ron became moody and angry with himself and everyone around him. He eventually went into counseling and emerged years later a mollified man. While Luna took over The Quibbler’s daily accounts for her father, Ron managed to land a post on the Chudley Cannons reserve side. Professor Dumbledore retired quietly after two more years at Hogwarts; the death of Professor McGonagall the summer before the death of Voldemort had hit him quite hard, and his heart was simply no longer in teaching. That, and he’d made a promise to someone. He remained on the Wizengamot, though, and the board of governors for Hogwarts. Professor Snape remained Potions Master, content to apply his vast intellect to intellectual pursuits. It was thought that Snape had truly cared for Harry Potter, and he no longer wished to face even the instruction of the Dark Arts. Remus Lupin stayed on at Hogwarts as well, as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and against all odds, he and Snape became, if not friends, then at least civil to each other. Hermione entered a potions apprenticeship under Professor Snape, while Draco Malfoy retired to the Malfoy Estate, now his sole property after the death of his mother at his father’s hands.

And time marched on. Fifteen years passed in relative calm for the wizarding world. The remaining Death Eaters were quickly rounded up and swiftly dealt with. Azkaban Prison was reformed and placed under the control of wizard jailers; the Dementors were banished from the human plane of existence. Arthur Weasley successfully campaigned for the post of Minister of Magic and, fourteen years after the death of the Boy Who Lived, he took office.

The next summer, a few changes were made to the staff of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Natalie Stein, a member of the United States Government’s Magical Bureau of Investigation – their answer to the Aurors – was hired on to teach Muggle Studies. Professor Anna Vector, the Arithmancy instructor, took over as Head of House for Gryffindor, as she had been one during her school days. Professor Filius Flitwick, the Head of House for Ravenclaw, was named deputy headmaster; Professor Pomona Sprout remained on in Herbology and as the Hufflepuff Head of House. Sibyl Trelawney was offered a position at Beaubaxton’s in France and took it; Firenze the Centaur remained Divination instructor, although he shunned the title of “professor”, preferring to simply use his name as his title. Hagrid remained a professor as well, one of the most popular, and Care of Magical Creatures remained a well-attended course.

The identities of the new Potions professor and the new Headmaster remained a mystery. All anyone knew – including the Wizengamot – was that Remus Lupin had been offered the position but refused it, preferring instead to teach DADA for the time being, and that the previous headmaster, Professor Colwyn – who had taught Ancient Runes before being elevated – was returning to his home of Ireland, where he would be founding a primary school for wizarding folk. Professor Snape, after more than two decades as Potions Master, had finally been persuaded to leave that post.

The board of governors, of course, knew exactly what was going on. But they chose to remain silent.

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