Understanding

All Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, all song lyics and titles belong to Evanescence. This song, however, is instrumental, so no lyrics for you. Sorry!

Understanding
Chapter Twenty-Five:
Ascension of the Spirit

Understanding
Chapter Twenty-Five:
Ascension of the Spirit


Standing over my beloved, I turned the most honestly malicious glare I’d ever delivered to Draco Malfoy.

“You want me, Malfoy? Come and get me.”

I took several steps from Hermione and the still-chanting Dumbledore and slowly raised my hand, beckoning Draco toward me. A cocky smirk crossed the younger man’s face a split second before he charged at me with a speed I never would have expected. Thankfully, instincts and nerves built up from years as a double agent gave me the presence of mind to step aside just in time to avoid his blasted knife which, given its position, would have gutted me like a fish had it made contact. Draco stumbled a bit as he encountered air where I should have been, and it was my turn to smirk joylessly.

“Not as easy as you thought it would be, is it, Malfoy?” I knew that my face was a mask of indifference, the hate, loathing, and anger barely held in check. I wanted to let my emotions get the better of me- I wanted to merely launch myself at the little h anh and make him pay. I wanted to kill him quickly but painfully, but as long as there were witnesses, I supposed I had to wait to kill him until he made some move at me. Self defense, you know.

Malfoy had recovered from missing me and had begun pacing around in small ferret-y kind of steps. He was annoying me. In all of the emotion, the pain, the anger- I was glad to find I could still be thoroughly annoyed by stupid little idiosyncrasies. I supposed Snape the bastard was still quite intact…

“Oh, I don’t know,” Malfoy began, panting like he’d run a marathon. He’d also begun touching himself which I was sure had something to do with Hermione but was also completely sure it was not sexual in manner. It looked almost… painful. But the boy simply smirked at me with that so very Draco upturned lip. “It was pretty easy to kill your girlfriend.”

He had begun laughing, and at his statement every muscle in my body clenched. I knew very well that I should not let any personal attack Malfoy could dish out affect my clarity, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore him. The boy grinned evilly at me and in that moment I felt like I could have killed him with my bare hands had I been in the proximity to do so. Collecting every bit of mental and testicular fortitude I could muster, I met his gaze defiantly.

“She’s not dead yet, and from the look of you she didn’t go too quietly.”

Malfoy’s smirk turned malicious as he charges at me once again with that blasted knife, but I knew that I now had the upper hand. I had hit a nerve with Draco, and it was affecting him. Apparently he still hated being bested by the Gryffindor know-it-all.

I once again dodged the knife and succeeded in grabbing Draco by the arm. I pulled the boy close into me and held him in a head lock with one hand. With the other hand I pulled my wand out of my pocket and pointed it at his throat.

“Now, Draco. I can end this all very quickly and easily, but I know that’s not what you want. You want me to suffer. You want me to pay for killing your father. And, truth be told, I want you to suffer as much as humanly possible. So, what do you say? You give me the knife, I drop the wand. We fight like men. We bleed. We break each other’s bones. We pay each other back for whatever we owe. And then I kill you- slowly and painfully. The old-fashioned way.”“Why“Why would I give you my knife? You’d just use it on me!”

“Why would I bloody my hand when all I have to do is whisper a simple incantation and you die right now?”

“How do I know you won’t do that anyway?”

“You don’t, but think about two things. First, I could rip the knife out of your hand anytime I wanted- you’re not really in any position to stop me. And secondly-” I wrenched him in the opposite direction so that Hermione and Dumbledore were in sight. I lowered my mouth menacingly against his ear and snarled. “That’s why. You just fucking stabbed the only women who ever loved me. A simple killing curse is not going to be enough payback. I want to sink my fists into your face and hear your bones crunch. I know you want to do the same to me. So, do we settle this like men or like the little bitch you are?”

“You couldn’t take my knife.” Rolling my eyes and snapping hard on his neck, I watched with joy as the knife fell from his hand. With a simple “accio knife” the blade soon rested neatly in the palm of my hand, settled nicely with my wand, still poised at the ready.

“Okay, alright. I’ll kick your ass the old-fashioned way,” Draco panted though he sounded as if he couldn’t have kicked the ass of a toddler with the flu.

He really never was the smartest boy I ever taught.

I released him then and he backed away like a wounded animal. All politics and banter finally aside, Malfoy and I began circling each other like prize fighters in the ring. Malfoy struck first with a violent jab to my face, cracking my nose and causing me to see stars briefly. I was sure my retaliation would be swift, but just as I raised my fist, he sucker punched me straight in the gut. Toppling over, I threw a wild punch, and luckily my fist connected hard with his crotch.

Howling and pulling away from me, Malfoy’s face turned ghostly white, and in a display I’d just as soon forget, he vomited directly in front of me, bits of it landing on my hands and face. It was all the incentive I needed to pick myself up and stand and fight. I moved around the mess quickly, not giving him time to regroup, and began battering my fists against his head.

Not that there was much in there to be damaged, but I figured there hadn’t been a lot between legs and that seemed to have made quite an impression. I kept a steady rhythm, but once as I stopped to collect my breath he managed to pick himself up and throw a punch that landed directly between my eyes. I was dazed for a moment and Malfoy took advantage, treating me to a healthy dose of head trauma.

I will never be sure how long the fighting carried on like that, each of us dominating for only a few punches at a time. Had it been any other fight, my inability to take out my opponent would have made me doubt my intensity, but I knew in this, the fight for Hermione’s life, it wasn’t that my passion was lacking, simply that Malfoy’s rivaled my own. After all, I had killed his father, he had a right to be angry. And so, the fighting continued, each of us becoming more bloodied, bruised, and most probably concussed until I heard the worst, most frightening sound I’d ever heard in my entire life.

In Albus’ lap, Hermione suddenly thrashed about, gasping and sputtering.

The death rattle- the body’s last valiant attempt at survival. After the brain is gone, after the soul has left, the heart and lungs run a vigilante campaign to keep air coming and blood flowing. I had heard and seen it many times in my victims, but it had never affected me until this very moment.

In a manner of seconds, her head fell back down to the ground, and all I could do was look to Albus for confirmation. But the old man simply shook his head and lowered his gaze.

For minutes, we were all silent in shock- even Malfoy looked disbelievingly at the lifeless girl in a pile on the ground. It was the closest to a moment of silence Hone one would get, for I had already sprung back into action, vengeance taking complete and utter control of me.

If Hermione had to die, there was no way in hell Ferret Boy was living.

With cat-like speed and reflexes, I sprang at Malfoy, knocking him on his back and straddling him. We wrestled around on the ground in a fierce battle for our own causes, but I knew that there could only be two outcomes of this battle.

Either way, Malfoy would die. It was just a question of if he was taking me with him.

I knew what I had to do, and quite honestly, it was what I had been planning from the start. Malfoy and I were still rolling around on the ground, but he was oblivious to the fact that I was consciously guiding our trajectory. He tried valiantly to knock me unconscious and almost succeeded, but I was doing everything in my power to make him hurt. When we had finally reached my destination, I let him think he was winning fir several minutes in order to accomplish my goal. He mercilessly pummeled my face, chest, and neck with a deadly sneer on his face, but just when he’d really begun to think he’d won, my hand clenched around the steel of his knife, and within seconds it was stuck hilt-deep in his heart.

There was no slow death for Draco Malfoy. My trained hand had pierced straight from his heart, and in his final moments he shot me a confused look and mumbled something through the blood that had begun running from his mouth. I pushed him off me and rolled him onto his back as his eyes rolled backward and the air escaped his lungs.

I stood over his body for several moments, a black feeling coming over me, I had only hated- truly hated- a few people in my life, and Draco Malfoy had been one of them. He had killed my Hermione, and with her all of my dreams had died. With sudden clarity, I remembered my earlier visions of her, by my side in one of those ridiculous white dresses Muggle women insisted on wearing for their weddings. I felt her hold me close and saw her smiling at me in our warm bed in our little house. I saw her holding my son. I heard her whispering my name and felt her reach for me in the middle of the night.

It was all too much for me, and I fell to my knees, dropping Malfoy’s knife and weeping so loudly I believe it actually qualified as wailing, I buried my face in my hands, completely guilt-ridden.

It was all my fault. If I had been there non of this would have happened. If I had only been with her like she’d wanted all along…

Every bit of self-loathing I had ever possessed flooded my consciousness, and I cried loudly and hopelessly. I alm almost completely collapses on the ground when I heard a loud, sharp intake of breath from the Headmaster.

But Albus’ mouth was closed and his eyes were suddenly trained on Hermione. I felt myself go cold as I realized the prank fate must be playing on me, and time stood still as I approached her. Just as I knealt next to her she began to choke and spit up blood, but I was immediately encouraged to see a definite expression on her face- not the involuntary twitching of death- but a visage close to the face one makes when waking up from a particularly nasty nightmare. Albus lifted her head so she would not choke on her own blood, and for a moment she opened unfocused eyes and uttered the most heartbreakingly beautiful statement I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Draco Malfoy has fucking lousy aim.”

With that her head fell back again and her eyes closbut but her breathing was soft and regular. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the leaves and twigs in her hair, the blood stain across her chest, the bruises along her face and neck, the blood trickling from her mouth, and her badly swollen right ankle, she would have looked just like Sleeping Beauty.

“We’d better get her to a hospital.”

Albus’ soft interruption was the only thing that could have pulled my gaze from my beloved, but it did, and as soon as Albus felt she was stable enough, we apparated off my property.

*******************A/N********************
*to be read in a very Eric Cartman kinda voice*
HA! I got you kinda! I got you kinda! I got you kinda!

The title pissed you off, didn't it? Thought I was gonna kill 'Mione, didn't you?

I got you kinda! I got you kinda!

Reviews help me write quickly... You should really think about it; it'll make you feel good!

Reviewing, that is. Not just thinking about reviewing.

Anyways....
Thanks!

JennD: Thanks!

Florentia: Glad to oblige on all three counts: Malfoy dies, Mione and Sev both live!

Deb: Now THAT was the reaction I was looking for! Glad to scare you! I was hoping for an outrage, but most people reacted more violenty when Crookshanks died! Thanks!

deblovesdragon: Duh! I do not have a magazine clipping that says "Aah, the joys of evil" on my bulletin board for nothing! I'm glad you find me both evil and delicious!

redsugg: Wow! I have a biggest fan! Thanks! That means so much! Hope you liked the chappie!

Eagle33: Um, thanks, I think!

Acerbus Limia: Thanks! You can calm down now.

spaz141: So sorry, but I heard that if you weren't emotional over this you'd be emotional over something completely inconsequential! Thanks!

GrrArrg: As we discussed earlier, I think I'd like it if you bitchslapped me! And it make sense as I am your bestest and most highly-favored bitch after all! And, for the record, you belong to me just as much I belong you! Thanks for the quote help, Queen of the Dorks!

mchellin78: *egringrin* I wanted it to be evil, and I sincerely apologize if I hurt you!

droxy: Glad to see you're prepared for the worst, but I don;t think you'll need to be... I seem to be smelling lemons for some reason. =)

Emery: Thanks! It was my pleasure kicking the living shit out of Draco!

****Now, be nice and I may update sooner rather than later!