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 8




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





Hermione cursed as she pulled the motorcycle off the A66 bypass and into the small village of Bowes. The engine sputtered and finally died as the bike rolled up to the only pub in town. Kicking the stand down, Hermione felt Charlie stiffly dismount, pulling off his helmet, looking to the sky.

The sun was setting and already the screeches of the undead could be heard from the fields. The Ducati ‘three-nine’ was loud, and the sound aroused the Inferi before the sun set. Hermione groaned as she tore her helmet from her head. There was no time to think to look for fuel. The ‘three-nine’ could outstrip an Inferi, but it had to have petrol first.

“Here’s as good a place as any,” Hermione muttered darkly, her eyes turning to the stone faced pub called ‘The Ancient Unicorn.’




Charlie was reading the brochures about Bowes, the Bowes castle, the Bowes Museum, even the pub the Ancient Unicorn touting that it was haunted. As far as Charlie could tell, there were no ghosts, but there was something peculiar about Bowes and the inn above the pub. Glancing out the window onto the main street, he could not see any Inferi, but he could hear them beyond the reaches of the village.

Hermione was in the small lavatory, washing in the dark, as there was no electricity. When she emerged from the dark, it was to find her dressed in a set of clean clothes, some that Charlie had scavenged in Leeds before Hermione was well enough to move. Her hair was damp, but up in a bun, and the soot that darkened her face was gone.

“I’ll use the scope,” she said, moving to the rifle leaning by the door. “Wash up, you look almost as bad as Klemper did,” she muttered coldly.

Charlie sighed and shrugged, moving to the double bed and pulling out a set of clean clothes from the knapsack. He paused as Hermione moved to open the sash, kneeling on the floor to rest the barrel of the rifle on the sill. Charlie slipped into the small lavatory, spelling his wand for light.

In the mirror over the sink, he saw a stranger’s face. Ash and soot nearly made his cropped hair black, and the black seemed to cling to his eyebrows and under his nose. Turning on the tap, Charlie had to wait for water, the pressure poor. While waiting, he stripped out of his soiled clothing, finding a clean flannel in a rack over the toilet. When the water did come, it was brackish and stale. Charlie sighed and did the best he could, cleansing Charms would surely wash off the body odour and soot.

Charlie suddenly missed Muggle electricity.

Hermione was peering through the scope of the rifle when Charlie returned to the room in a pair of sweat pants and white tee shirt. The air coming through the window was unusually cold, and Charlie wondered if Hermione were cold. He sat on the side of the bed, watching Hermione in the near dark of the room.

“Nothing unusual, except they will not enter the high street,” Hermione mumbled.

“Is it the town?”

Hermione pulled her face away from the scope and shifted on the floor to look up into Charlie’s face. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I cannot feel anything special about this place, not like the others…” she trailed, her golden eyes growing distant.

Slowly Hermione withdrew the rifle from the sill and closed the sash. Propping the gun against the wall, she moved to lean against the sill.

“I did not feel anything special about Leeds either,” she said quietly, bending her knees up against her chest. “No hum of magic under us or around us, nothing that indicated there was earth magic at all.”

Charlie said nothing, he had no idea why the hotel in Leeds was safe, it simply was, and he did not question it.

“Even outside of York, I didn’t really feel anything except Klemper,” Hermione continued. “It was his magic I felt, but nothing in the earth.”

“How do you feel it?” Charlie finally ventured, having been quite curious for some time.

Hermione shrugged. “It’s like the music, a reaction, I suppose, from the latent magic of the earth itself resonating with our magic. By why that song, the melody… I don’t know.

Of course, when I was traveling from Glastonbury, I had to stop in places where I did not feel the earth’s magic. I slept on rooftops or barricaded myself in buildings, making no noise. But there were other places, I was compelled to go…sanctuaries of a sort. Sometimes churches, sometimes other places. Some places had more than one spot where the Inferi would not go…”

Charlie listened to Hermione’s half formed speculations, telling him about Brighton and other places along the way. He then added his own sanctuaries, Shrewsbury, for one.

“Sacred places, places of immense power, ancient focal points lost to time.”

Charlie had nothing to add to that thought. He could neither agree nor disagree. He could not deny that he had felt compulsions to go certain places to hide.

“Then there is the lack of Inferi in certain regions,” Hermione added. “Brighton was thick with them, but London, or at least Whitehall and Charing Cross were not so concentrated. Even Leeds…”

Again, Hermione trailed, hugging her legs tighter to her chest.

“What if they are being commanded not to bother with us?”

Charlie blinked. “Why would that be? Who knows who is alive and who is dead?”

Hermione sighed dejectedly glancing out the dark windowpane. “It was a thought, a dreadful one, at that. Then again, we are so in the dark about what brought about our current situation.

If Klemper’s words a true, there are more dreadful things to consider.”

“A child?”

Hermione nodded. “Klemper may be mad, but not as mad as that. He must have seen Black and his army of undead meeting with the true puppet master. But a boy?” Hermione shook her head. “I only wish Klemper were so barking mad…”

Charlie sighed and lifted his bare feet from the floor to sit Indian style on the edge of the bed. His feet were cold, and he dearly wished he had a pair of his mum’s knit wool socks. The thought of his mother made Charlie clench his teeth. He hated himself for not thinking to take the brooms, no matter that there was no magic to use them. If they had the brooms, they would be in the highlands in hours and not days or weeks.

“How would a child know anything about the Holokauston Curse, Regulus Black, or any of it?” Hermione mused to herself, biting her thumbnail of her left hand in thought.

“We don’t know enough, Hermione. As you said, Klemper was half mad, he could have been mistaken…”

Hermione clicked her fingernail against her teeth and met Charlie’s eyes. “True, but it is something to consider.

We need to get to Hogwarts and now. At first light, I’ll find some petrol, somewhere…and some tanks to spare that we can lash to the back of the bike. If we have to have a horde of Inferi chasing after us during the night, so be it,” she stated resolutely.






Hermione lay in the double bed, staring out the window to her right as the sky began to lighten. Charlie, despite her insistence, slept in a sleeping bag on the floor between the bed and the door. He had slept on the pullout sofa in the hotel in Leeds, and Hermione felt odd having him so distant, in body and mind. The night in London, after Malfoy destroyed the Ministry, had been the last time they shared a real bed. Charlie was not Viktor, and Hermione wondered if Charlie would forgive her for kissing him.

Hermione sighed softly, throwing an arm over her head. She could not sleep. Her mind would not shut down, but that was never anything unusual for her. Hermione had once taken medication prescribed by a Muggle doctor to make her sleep. She knew it was borderline addicting, but she took the pills every night just to make the gears in her brain stop.

Mania was what the doctor called it. Being manic had Hermione trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe all night long when her body needed to rest. Exhaustion had made her sleep since February; the stress and strain on her body forced her brain to shut down. No matter the danger, Hermione could sleep dreamlessly.

Now, however, Hermione was too troubled by what she had seen in Copmanthorpe. She could still smell the burning bodies, half rotten. She could still see Klemper’s soot stained body, and hear his wheezing voice, his lungs filled with ash of human bodies. Another survivor, one that was nearly mad. When Hermione thought about it during the dark hours, Viktor Krum was also nearly mad. Any sane person would leave imminent danger, try to find the cause of their situation, remedy it, and move on. Klemper would not leave the pyre; Viktor would not leave his dead wife. Draco Malfoy was not mad, but then again, it was always hard to tell about anyone descended from the ‘Noble House of Black.’

Was she sane, after all? And Charlie?

Hermione had heard the music, and that had nearly been enough to make her believe she was mad. And she knew that convincing Charlie the music was real made her appear mad. She wondered if Charlie thought she was mad, still.

Glancing out the window again, a pinkish sky greeted her, and she rose slowly. Slipping her wand into the sleeve of her shirt, she padded over to the window, craning her head to look down the street to where she had seen the Inferi only hours before. A few lingered as grey light was replaced by sunlight coming from the eastern horizon.

Hermione rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, suddenly feeling hungry. Turning from the window, she found Charlie’s knapsack near his head. Hermione knelt down to feel for the shrunken tins of food, but paused to look at Charlie’s sleeping face. His mouth was slightly open as he lay on his right side, his right arm cushioned under his head. He snored during the night, but it was nothing compared to his younger brother’s raucous nighttime operatic rale. In fact, Charlie’s snore had been soft, more like a deep inhale, not loud and not grating. Hermione smirked as she withdrew a can of pineapple chunks in sweet syrup and a small can of ham. Charlie shifted as the sound of the buckles on the knapsack clinking, and he licked his lips.

Hermione balanced on the balls of her feet, watching him. He did not look like he was thirty-eight. He looked just as Hermione remembered when she first met him. The only difference was the hair. When Hermione first met Charlie, his crimson hair had been shaggier, now it was cut close. He was just as substantial as she remembered, his face, even angry, still handsome.

When Charlie shifted again, Hermione rose. She would have to thank Charlie at some point; he had saved her, over and over again.

Hermione opened the tins with her wand, after resizing them, and began eating, leaning into the side of the bed, watching the sky brighten. When it was sufficiently light out, Hermione donned her boots and her waist-length leather jacket and quietly left Charlie to continue sleeping.

Approximately two hours later, at about eight in the morning, Hermione was lashing two petrol tanks to the back of the bike when the window overhead opened and Charlie peered out.

“You crazy witch!” he shouted.

Hermione ignored him.

“I thought you left me here alone!”

Hermione finished, using her wand to add an extra sticking Charm to keep the small portable tanks in place. Slipping her wand into the holster on her belt, she glanced up at Charlie who was shirtless and scowling.

“Eat up, Weasley, we leave in twenty minutes,” she called, causing Charlie to mutter a curse and slam the sash down with a clatter.

Hermione grinned to herself.





Farmland and villages whizzed by as the A66 switched back and forth from a narrow two-lane to wide four-lane roadway. Before midday, they had crossed the River Eden and got onto the M6 near Pategill. Charlie held fast to Hermione, surprised at the lack of abandoned or stopped cars. The clear roadway had Hermione pushing the motorcycle upwards of ninety miles per hour. It worried Charlie.

He said nothing through the visor of his helmet, the tail of his coat flapping violently behind him. Hermione seemed to handle the motorcycle as well as Charlie did a broom. Besides the fear that Hermione might lose control of the monstrous bike, Charlie was exhilarated by the speed and precision. If times were better, Charlie wondered if Hermione would show him how to drive the bike.

They stopped past midday to eat and stretch, but the reprieve lasted only ten minutes before Hermione was slipping her helmet on again. The empty M6 let them roar along the countryside unimpeded, and by the time Hermione had to refuel the bike, they were at the junction of the A69.

They did not speak as Hermione lashed the empty tank to the back of the bike again, zipping her jacket up to her throat as the day turned colder despite the glorious sunlight. The sunlight almost made Charlie believe that their world was normal, but the lack of life and the emptiness brought everything back to focus.

By sundown, they had passed into Scotland, the M6 becoming the M74. Charlie still did not understand the numbering of the motorways. He nearly shouted to Hermione as the darkness fell around them, the headlight on the motorcycle coming on to light the motorway ahead of them. Charlie had thought that Hermione would stop in a village somewhere for the night, but she seemed to have other ideas.

Charlie was wary, and tried to glance behind to see if Inferi were chasing behind in the distance, but there was nothing more than the muted glow of the taillight trying to shine through the tanks Hermione had lashed to the back. The engine roared as they sped through the dark, and it seemed like time flew by as fast as the countryside. The sound and the movement made Charlie drowsy, but when the bike slowed and eventually came to a stop, he was wide-awake.

Hermione kicked the stand and killed the engine, but left the light shining. Charlie dismounted, flipping up the visor on his helmet, his wand out.

“Why have we stopped?” he asked suddenly as Hermione took off her helmet, setting it on the seat of the motorcycle, a scowl on her lips.

“Refuel, and because we have to go into Glasgow.”

Charlie glanced about in the dark, the only light coming from the bike. He could not see Glasgow, in fact, he could see little beyond the range of light. He could hear Inferi, but in the distance.

“We’re in Glasgow?”

Hermione moved to retrieve the remaining container of petrol, setting it on the pavement as she unscrewed the cap of the gas tank.

“Technically, no, but the motorway makes a roundabout up ahead, and then we’ll be in the suburbs. We won’t be able to pass tonight.”

Charlie gaped at Hermione. Her calm was unnerving.

“I need to find a map…”

Charlie sighed; having memorized a map the day Hermione demanded they head for Leeds.

“The A86 will take us to Glen Coe.”

Hermione paused in filling the gas tank and turned her bright eyes to Charlie. “You’re sure?”

Charlie nodded even as a particularly close screech sounded in the still air. Hermione continued filling the tank, tossing the red plastic canister to the pavement and screwing the cap back on. Charlie did not hesitate getting back on the bike though his bones hurt and his arms felt heavy.

He would have to trust Hermione knew what she was, as the bike sped off again, into the heart of Glasgow.






Charlie watched the sun rise behind the Glasgow Necropolis, turning to the west to see the warm rays hit upon the High Kirk of Glasgow, the cathedral once dedicated to the patron saint of Glasgow, St. Mungo.

It was strange to find sanctuary in a graveyard, but they had. Hermione had brought them both through the dark streets, through danger, to the Nineteenth Century graveyard, Inferi trailing behind. As near as the undead were, they did not touch them, but followed behind, attracted by the noise.

The Glasgow Necropolis was set upon a hillside, and Hermione had set the bike next to an ornate tholos tomb mausoleum and pulled her sleeping bag from the pack on Charlie’s back without a word. She slumbered still, her face obscured by wild hair on the ground next to where Charlie sat in his own sleeping bag.

As he looked at her hair, she turned, her eyes open, her wand and hand appearing outside of the bag.

“What is it?” she asked sleepily.

Charlie shook his head, “Nothing, it is dawn.”

Hermione blinked and sat up suddenly, bringing her zipped up blue sleeping bag with her. Charlie nearly laughed. She looked like a blue caterpillar with wild caramel coloured fuzzy hair at one end.

Slowly, she unzipped the bag, and Charlie realized Hermione was still in her leather jacket. She sat next to him, looking down onto the cathedral as the sun’s rays turned the dark stone a deep shade of red.

“I was dreaming…” she mumbled. “For the first time in a long time, I remember what it was about.”

Charlie smirked. “Anything good?”

Hermione stretched, her wand pointing to the clear sky. “I was dreaming about laying in the Prefect’s bath on the fifth floor, floating on the bubbles and feeling warm.”

Charlie chuckled. Considering how much danger that surrounded them from every side, such a benign dream was a luxury.

“Do you think its still there? Hogwarts, I mean?” Hermione asked quietly.

Charlie sighed. “Malfoy said it was there…”

“That was over two weeks ago, Charlie.”

Charlie shrugged. “Then I honestly could not say, Hermione. But it seems to me that if Hogwarts survived at the start of all this, I doubt it would fall easily.”

“I suppose…but remember what Malfoy also said. Magic, it is leaving people as if someone were sapping their strength, or sucking their souls out like Dementors.”

“I know…”

Hermione sat silently for a moment, and Charlie glanced over to see if she were still awake. What he found sobered him. Hermione’s eyes seemed to burn and shift molten gold, her jaw set, and her face pale.

“We need to go.”

Charlie almost protested as Hermione unzipped her sleeping bag and stood, quickly Charming it to roll and shrink. The need to go overruled the need for food, it seemed, and within five minutes, Hermione was driving the motorcycle out of the Necropolis, her entire body taut with anxiety.




The A82 was also known as the Great Western Road, then the Stirling Road, but Hermione kept the number eighty-two at the forefront of her mind.

The full tank of petrol had to be refueled from an abandoned car outside of Glasgow. Day light had revealed the truth of the city. The corpses that littered the streets were in pieces, but those visible through car windows were intact. Hermione had to swerve and weave along the Great Western Road until the city was behind them. Glasgow was large, and Hermione did not want to think about the number of dead.

For the first time since before Leeds, Hermione had felt the hum of magic, finding the Necropolis to be a focal point, as well as the cathedral grounds. Time, however, and exhaustion did not take her to the church, but let her lay her weary head on the ground over the bodies of the long dead. It did not matter to her, as long as she lay her body down and sleep.

The A82 straightened north along the town of Alexandria, and Hermione pushed the bike faster than ever, shifting gears quickly as she avoided impediments in her way. Hogwarts had to be reached.

Hermione was not exactly sure where Hogwarts was in Muggle terms. It was not as if it were listed on a road map. She was sure that eventually she would come to a rail line, or see a sign for a village that sounded familiar. Hogwarts was in the highlands, along the Black Lake, but was the lake itself hidden?

When they neared the village of Luss, Charlie tapped his hand on Hermione’s leather clad stomach, and she took the road off the motorway, Loch Lomond coming into better view. The mountains rose into view and Hermione slowed the bike as she entered the village proper.

Parking the motorcycle near the lake, Hermione let Charlie off first, watching him chuck his helmet to the pavement and run to a clump of trees near a pier. Hermione smirked, knowing that Charlie had probably waited as long as he could before wetting himself. It made him seem human.

Hermione missed that particular feeling as she kicked the stand down and dismounted, feeling sore in the hips from straddling the bike. She slipped out of her helmet and moved to sit on the bank of the loch, taking in the view.

There was no magic in Luss, or none that she could sense right away. She waited for Charlie to return, and listened in the meanwhile. The sound of birds filled her ears and lapping water. Luss was quiet, as it was, like everywhere else, dead. They could not stay long.

When Charlie returned, he almost demanded that they eat something, and for the next ten minutes, they ate out of tins of canned meat and drank from water bottles.

“We’ll press on as far as we can before nightfall,” Hermione said, a cheek full of cold, salty corn beef muddling her speech. “I would like to find a safe place to sleep with a bed and maybe running water.”

Charlie seemed to agree.

Loch Lomond was to their right as they headed north past Tarbet toward the headwaters of the loch at Ardlui. Hermione had refueled at Luss, and drove stony faced, finding fewer cars on the motorway, but more corpses decomposing in the sun. She tried not to look long.

The sun was lighting the highland mountains from the west as Hermione stopped the bike before a sign along the motorway, flipping up her visor.

Crianlarich.

The name was familiar, too familiar. Hermione flicked the visor down and took off into the village.





Charlie stood with Hermione on the platform of Crianlarich station. The sun was nearly set and Charlie itched to move. There was an inn nearby, a place that could be fortified.

“We are close,” Hermione whispered.

Charlie glanced to her, about to speak.

“This railway line. The one of the last Muggle villages was Crianlarich, where I always told the boys to be ready to change into their robes,” Hermione said softly, her eyes moving along the letters on the metal sign on a useless lamppost. “It seems like an age ago,” she whispered.

Charlie wanted to sympathize, but he could not get over the feeling that Inferi were close, though he heard nothing.

“We should follow the rail line,” Hermione began, but paused, her eyes moving to the bare mountains now shrouded in darkness.

Charlie watched her move along the platform, her eyes to the dark sky, stars beginning to appear overhead. There was a cracking sound from somewhere in the village, and both Charlie and Hermione whirled, wands drawn.

The odour came to Charlie before the sight, and suddenly, he was running, grasping Hermione’s leather jacket as he leapt down to the rails. Hermione did not protest, but shrugged free of Charlie’s hold as they ran down the line, their boots hitting the railroad ties to keep from stumbling.

“The bike!” Hermione called from Charlie’s right side.

“No time!”

Charlie was not sure if what he smelled was the stench of the walking dead, but he was not about to turn around and find out. All he knew was that he could smell death, fresh and disgusting. He knew that there was something different, something far more dangerous.

Hermione was gasping at his side, trying to keep up with his long strides. Charlie winced as she began to slow, her neck craning about to see what was behind. He wanted to yell at her, castigate her in some way, but even he was beginning to tire. Crianlarich was behind them as they headed north and soon, there was only complete darkness around them.

When Charlie stopped, it was not because he felt safe, but it was because they had been running continuously for over half an hour. He bent over, his hands on his knees, his wand curled in his right thumb, trying to take in as much oxygen as possible.

“What…what was that?” Hermione gasped, falling to sit on one of the rails slightly ahead of him.

Charlie shook his head, trying to see Hermione in the darkness. He considered casting a lighting spell, but could not stop his chest from burning or his head spinning. Surprisingly, Hermione seemed to recover faster than he.

“I felt it, I smelled it, but we could have followed the line on the bike much faster…”

“No…” Charlie managed to groan, straightening. “It wasn’t—“

Searing, blinding light whizzed between them, and Hermione jumped to her feet. In the red Curse light, Charlie could see her sweaty face, her wide eyes.

The Curse came from a distance behind them, and Charlie wondered, for a split second, if the Curse was actually intended to hit one of them.

“Run!” he hissed.

Hermione was already running, jumping off the track to the side where the ground was more even. Charlie followed suit, noting that they seemed to be able to move quicker on the even ground, a gravel track that ran parallel to the track.

Charlie could feel a presence behind him, like a wall of crushing death hot on his heels. There was at least one who had a wand and was casting, Inferi were only dead things. It meant someone was alive, but in no way friendly.

Hermione ran ahead of him, only starlight lighting her way. In the dark, Charlie could see little, but enough to see that the rail line was at his left. Coming onto a stream, Hermione leapt back onto the track to cross the railway bridge, it was the only way, and Charlie knew it was a mistake.

Charlie jumped onto the track behind her, pushing her down roughly as the red glow of Curse fire flew at him.

“Protego!” he growled.

Hermione made a noise as the Curse was deflected around Charlie.

“Go, cross the bridge!” Charlie muttered quickly as behind them another glow of Curse fire began to fly.

Hermione rose and ran, her boots clacking into the ties over the bridge. Charlie deflected another Curse, causing him to step back, his boot nearly slipping between the empty spaces between the ties. He could not feel Hermione behind him, could not hear her. Whatever was coming was closing upon him. Charlie clenched his jaw, his eyes dazzled by the light of the spells. Tactically, whatever was coming could only come from one direction, and if Charlie had to run, he could destroy the bridge, giving him time to catch up with Hermione. From the sound of the stream below, Charlie knew he was at least forty feet above the water.

“Alright then,” he muttered to himself.

He began backing along the bridge taking careful steps. The sound of crunching gravel in the distance down the tracks made his eyes move into the dark, someone was near, and the stench of death surrounded them.

Curse fire came again, but not in red. Charlie grunted as he cast a shield Charm, but it was not enough against the power of the Killing Curse. His boot slipped, Charlie opened his mouth to shout out, and twisted his body to fall. The Curse blew over him as he began to fall farther than he thought possible.

There was a shout, but not from his voice, and a brush of air over him, a whizzing sound, but it did not matter as Charlie fell headlong down into icy water. The fall seemed to have taken minutes when it was only seconds. The impact, when it came, did not kill him, as he thought it would, and it did not knock him unconscious. It did however; stun him as his lungs filled with water. He still had his wand, surprisingly, and with it, he used it to surface as the current swept him away from the darker shadow of the railroad bridge.

The current slammed him into rocks; the sides of his head catching the stone, making his teeth crash painfully together in his skull. His feet could not find bottom, and Charlie wondered how pathetic it would seem that he drown. It was then that one last effort of self-preservation took him, and his left arm lashed out to grasp the rock, his hand curling around the stone, and never letting go.





Hermione had seen him through the night vision scope of her rifle, ‘him’ being the one who had forced Charlie off the bridge and down into the water. The face she saw, in the green tint through the lens, was the same one she had seen in Malfoy’s memory.

Regulus Black.

She had stopped running after about two hundred yards from the bridge, and fell to the track, her rifle ready to use. It was the scope she had wanted, and through it, she saw that Black was alone, just as he had been in the Ministry, after attacking Malfoy. Perhaps her assumption that Black was the ‘commander’ of the Inferi had been incorrect, or worse, the Inferi were engaged elsewhere…

Hermione had commented that it felt like they had been allowed to move unimpeded for some time…since Copmanthorpe. Had Black been dispatched to off her and Charlie as he had Malfoy?

No, he had not killed Malfoy; Malfoy had killed himself by trying to release the Seal.

It did not matter, however, as Charlie flew off the bridge, narrowly avoiding the Killing Curse that was partially deflected off a particularly strong shield Charm. The rest of the light dissipated in the dark sky over the bridge.

Hermione shot, for the first time in a long time. She aimed for Black’s head, knowing that the range was not too far for the modified Muggle weapon. Squeezing the trigger, Hermione exhaled a curse.

The bullet whizzed over Charlie’s falling body, through the darkness. Hermione watched through the scope.

The armour-piercing bullet hit its mark, and Hermione watched with morbid satisfaction as Black’s body was blown back, hitting the ground and bouncing of the rails.

“Merlin!” she hissed, jumping up from the track with the rifle pressed into her shoulder, staring down the scope and along the barrel.

Regulus Black’s body did not move. Through the scope, she had seen the splatter of blood, and the perfect hole in the pale man’s forehead, the bullet tearing through the skull and destroying brain matter.

If Regulus Black was not dead before, he surely was now. Hermione, however, had no time to confirm the kill. Charlie was far more important.

Jumping her way down the steep side of the stream, she found him clinging to a rock in the stream below, unconscious. The light of her wand made his face seem blue, dead, but he was not as his mouth opened and closed to gasp for breath. His green eyes were partially opened, but blind from shock.

By some lucky twist of fate, Hermione was able to Levitate him up the slope back to the rail line. In the dark, she was unable to ascertain much about his state other than he was breathing shallowly. Casting warming Charms, she tried to move as quickly as possible north, and away from Black.

Tyndrum was the next village along the line, and Hermione wondered if she had missed the line that would lead to Hogsmeade. She had no memory of Tyndrum. All the same, she felt led to stop before reaching the village proper to cut through the desolate green to a road. Trying to be as careful with Charlie as possible, Hermione crossed the A82, and into the fields again.

The old stone house came into view as the night turned into early morning. Hermione found the front door open, but the smell of death was absent. Hermione found an upper front room with a large bed, having lit her wand as soon as she entered the house. It was on the double bed that she laid Charlie. She did not attend to him immediately, finding that warding the converted house more important.

By the time she returned to the cold room, Hermione could see the sky beginning to lighten outside the window. Had the night passed so quickly?

Charlie was shivering as the warming Charms had faded, and Hermione sighed, moving to lift Charlie’s upper body from the bed, stripping off the knapsack and his coat. Hermione let him lie back again as she began working Charm after Charm, to dry his clothes, to warm him, but it seemed to be of little use.

Hermione stripped out of her leather jacket and rifle strap, to search for candles and to light the fireplace in the room. Within ten minutes, the fire was raging, and candles lit the room with a warm glow.

As the sun rose, Hermione had Charlie’s clothes stripped away, his boots resting on the floor by the bed. She surveyed his pale body, clinically. Despite being a bit undernourished, Charlie’s pale body was bound with muscle, smattered with crimson hair, and unlike Ginny Potter’s comedic ruse years ago, there were no tattoos, but plenty of silver burn scars.

The fall had broken bones, ribs, and his right arm. She had to pry his fingers from his wand, setting it on a table by the bed. Surprisingly, besides bruises, scrapes and a slight concussion, he was fit. He had coughed up water and phlegm, but there was no blood. Hermione pushed at her sleeves, wand at the ready.

Potions would have worked better, at least to ease the pain, but Hermione had no potions and no means to brew any. She could barely remember any of the combat Healing that Madame Pomfrey had taught her in Sixth Year, but Hermione tried her best. Healing the ribs, in the sense that the fractures were mended, and mending the humerus. Hermione winced at the sound of pain Charlie produced.

He did not wake.

Hermione was at a loss as to what exactly could be wrong with Charlie besides perhaps suffering from light hypothermia and a slight fever. She wondered if somehow, the Killing Curse had hit him, not full on, of course, but the influence had weakened him. Charming the blankets on the bed to cover him, Hermione sighed. She tucked the duvet about him, swiping her fingers over his brow. He was warm, and his breathing was not strained as it had been.

For the time being, they were safe, and Charlie was healing. Hermione sat on the floor before the fireplace, stretching out her palms to warm her fingers. She wondered how soon Charlie would be able to move, time was against them.


TBC...