Afterglow

Afterglow

Disclaimer: I, alas, do not own Harry Potter or any of the other characters in the series.

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She didn’t know how much longer she could last. For the past six hours she had stood and fought for everything and everyone she held dear. Seven hours ago, she would not have thought herself capable of battle, but war changes people. At first it was difficult to throw curses and hexes at other humans, even if they were minions of a delusional, bloodthirsty monster. But Hermione Granger was not the Hogwarts brain for nothing, and soon enough destruction was flowing freely from her fingertips.

Now she stood, bloody and aching, back to back with Ginny Weasley over the twitching body of her youngest brother, who had been hit with a Crucio from a burly looking Death Eater. Said Death Eater was now advancing maliciously on the two girls. Hermione was checking Ron’s pulse when Ginny screamed the killing curse at the man, who could not avoid the blast of green light that shot from her wand.

He fell to the uneven ground heavily, and Ginny dropped her wand in horror.
“I- I, Hermione, he, I, Ron-” she stuttered, and burst into tears. Assuring herself that Ron was recovering, Hermione enfolded the younger girl in a tight embrace.

“Oh, Ginny, Ginny, it’s ok, you had to, he would have killed you and Ron, and me. You saved all our lives, and look, Ron will be all right, see, he’s not shaking, his breathing is evening out. Shhhh, Ginny, shh.” Hermione had no tears left, but she knew what that curse took out of a person. The first and only time she had uttered those death-words had been when a Death Eater had given her a break from Crucio only to attempt to remove her pants. The curse had exploded from somewhere in her gut and the man had died hanging out of his robes, sprawled across Hermione’s shuddering legs.

She released Ginny, and took a look around. The Final Battle was still raging, and members of both sides lay dead or dying all around. And then she saw it. A circle was forming, impenetrable and solid, but Hermione knew what it meant. Harry had found Voldemort.

“Ginny, here, help me get him up. We’ve got to hurry.” Ginny’s head snapped up at the tone in her friend’s voice, and followed her worried gaze. Silently, she helped Hermione lift a barely cognizant Ron, and together they hurried towards The Boy Who Lived.

Adrenaline was coursing through Hermione’s veins, energy she didn’t realize she had impelling her to shove Ron, awake and groaning, into his sister’s arms as Hermione sprinted up the hill towards Harry. Blasting two Death Eaters with hexes, she stopped short as she saw what was happening in that circle. Voldemort was holding Harry’s wand and screaming “Crucio! CRUCIO!” but Harry wasn’t flinching. Instead, he was pummeling the Dark Lord in the stomach, trying to retrieve his wand, and causing little damage. As Hermione watched, Voldemort kicked Harry away, and the boy fell hard against a rock not far from where she stood. The magic circle popped, like a giant soap bubble, and Voldemort began screaming for his Death Eaters.

Panicking, Hermione rushed to Harry, and nearly burst into tears when she saw he wasn’t knocked out, or worse, dead.

“Harry! Harry! Here, take my wand Harry, he’s not looking, hurry! Please, Harry, if I could kill him I would- take my wand!” Harry looked dazedly at his best friend as tears started coursing down her face. “Please, Harry, I can’t lose you.”

Green eyes snapped to attention, locked with wet golden-brown ones, and Harry all but grabbed the wand out of Hermione’s hand. Whipping around, those green eyes immediately found their target. Faces flashed in his mind; his parents, Sirius, Cedric Diggory, the Longbottoms, Ron, Hermione. Harry screamed the killing curse, and a jet of green light shot out of the wand in his hand, striking the tall, pale wizard just as he turned his red eyes on his young enemy.

At first, Voldemort just looked stunned, then he began to change. His skin lost its sallow hue and his bald head was covered in dark hair. His red eyes faded to an intense, dark brown, and he suddenly looked like a teenager. Furiously, Tom Riddle picked up both his wand and Harry’s, but before he could so much as draw breath, he fell to the ground, limp and heavy.

Harry ran towards the fallen lump, but he only got two steps before a boom erupted from Riddle’s body, deafening and forceful enough to knock everyone on the hill to the ground. Seconds passed, and Hermione lifted her aching head from the ground. Others were rising as well, and most of them were making for the spot where Riddle and Harry lay still. A Death Eater ran shrieking towards them from behind Hermione. She stuck out a leg and tripped the woman, whose leg made a sickening crack as she fell.

Across the scarred grass, Hermione saw Ginny and Ron stunning any Death Eater within range, and a witch with purple hair delivering a sharp blow to Peter Pettigrew’s head. He fell, and Hermione almost laughed when she saw that the purple haired witch was Tonks. Scanning, her eyes found Harry, still lying motionless on the ground. She stood up stiffly, but turned when she realized that something was holding her ankle. Looking down, Hermione realized that it was the Death Eater she had tripped before. Horrified, she tried to pull away, but the witch’s grip was too strong.

Harry looked up groggily, with his whole world out of focus. His glasses were shattered at the end of his nose, and pieces of glass were pricking his skin.
“Reparo,” he muttered, and one of the lenses repaired itself. Lurching forwards, he stumbled half-blind to Riddle’s corpse. Picking up his own wand, he wiped it off on his shirt. He kicked the body of the wizard who had ruined so much of his life, and cried as he continued to pound the body. When he was done, he sat down and grabbed his wand’s twin. Knowing he couldn’t destroy it himself, he stuck it in his pocket, and got up, looking around.

The battle still raged around him, albeit in pockets, as the remaining Death Eaters attacked in kamikaze fashion, unable to cope with the lifeless form of their master and the consequences that would arise should they be caught. The fighting was rather close to Harry on all sides, but through his daze, he thought he saw two bobbing flashes of red hair, a comforting sign that at least two Weasleys were still alive and kicking. Harry, however, had been left with one face, burned into the space behind his eyes as Riddle fell. Hermione.

He looked around, trying to see her through the battle. Death Eaters were falling left and right, and the two red flashes were still moving frantically. As a purple haired witch he barely registered as Tonks took out a masked wizard to his left, Harry saw her. She and a ferocious looking woman were dueling, and despite the woman’s obviously broken leg, Hermione was losing. All but six of the remaining Death Eaters were out of the way, dead, stunned, or fled, and Harry took down another with the Impedimenta Jinx on his way to Hermione.

The flashes bursting from the two women’s wands were blinding, but Harry had never seen more clearly in his life. Her last words to him were flying around in his head. “Please, Harry, I can’t lose you.”

Those words had snapped him awake, and allowed him to reach that final level that allowed him to kill Voldemort. And now, where his murderous thoughts had been, was only the though that he didn’t want to lose Hermione either.

“STUPEFY!!” Harry shouted, more forcefully than he had meant to, and the woman dropped like a stone. Hermione turned, hearing Harry’s voice, and moved towards him without knowing she did. He was nearly running towards her as well, and when they met, Harry cupped her dirt-, blood-, and tear-stained face in his hands and brought her lips crashing into his.

Hermione wrapped her arms around Harry’s neck, for once, her famous brain not working. She twisted her hands into his spiky dark hair, pulling him even closer to her, as if she were trying to make them one. He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist, still pulling him closer to her. The need for oxygen came after the need for each other, and they devoured the other’s lips and tongues. The world around them seemed to disappear.

Ron and Ginny, being closest, saw them first. Too dazed to wonder what had happened, the siblings realized that whatever it was, it was absolutely right. Tonks limped over after stunning the last of the Death Eaters, and soon the shadowy figures of other aurors and fighters for the Light emerged from the dark battlefield. Ron made a feeble attempt to catch his best friends’s attention, but as they were trying to get into each other’s skin, he soon figured it would be better to leave them and help get the wounded to St. Mungo’s.

Harry and Hermione weren’t even breathing anymore. Stars were dancing at the corners of Hermione’s eyes, and finally her traitorous lungs made her pull away. She stared into the shocking green eyes, only centimeters from her own, and inhaled raggedly.

“Harry?” She spoke only his name, but there were a million questions in it. He let her slide down his legs, tentatively placing her wobbly feet on the ground.

“I did it, Hermione. I killed him. He’s gone.” And the Boy-Who-Was-No-Longer-A-Boy started to cry. Hermione pulled him into her arms, and cradled him there, rocking him back and forth. “I didn’t want to leave you, ‘Mione,” he mumbled into her shoulder.
Hermione didn’t say anything. She simply pulled his face up to hers and kissed him. First his scar, then, removing his glasses, kissed each eye before placing her lips on his. They both knew they would never leave.

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I hope you all enjoy this story (sorry about the lack of smut, next time, I promise!) Please do a girl a favour and review! Thanks! Morrigan