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The Truth About Death	By : Avalon_Sunset Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Hermione/Voldemort Views: 2114 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters or ideas therein. This fiction is purely for entertainment purposes and makes no money.

Chapter List
- 1-The Truth About Death
- 2-Prologue II: Herpo the Foul
- 1
- 2
A/N: Hello! Thanks for clicking onto this story and I hope I can persuade you to join me for the ride. It's going to be pretty long (how long will be up to you to a certain extent), the plot is mapped out all the way to the end and updates should be about weekly. I've had the idea for this story in my head for a while, and now have the time to write it down. It's my aim to keep characters true to canon, though they will of course be changing over the longer term due to experiencing non-canon events. Rating is for much later chapters.
It would be wonderful if you could spare a few seconds of your time to review, since I very much want to improve.
~oOo~
It had been a long time since Death had derived any particular enjoyment from his job. Oh, certainly, in the past he had appreciated it all – the murders, suicides, mercy killings, accidents, diseases - quick deaths, slow deaths, tragic deaths, ironic deaths; from the laboured wrenching of the reluctant soul to the peaceful, contemplative slide away from consciousness. Some came gladly, others… not. He had always found it satisfying to guess which souls would linger as ghosts, too tied to the Earth or too scared to journey on with him. The problem, in the end, was the repetition of it all. The concerns of the dying were so eternally predictable, and often so irrelevant, given Death's knowledge of what lay beyond.
Sometimes Death would repeatedly encounter the same living soul as he harvested others, and sometimes they evaded him for longer than a human lifespan would deem polite – but there was never any question. He got them all in the end. Paracelsus, Agrippa, Peverell, Flamel. Dumbledore. Even the excitement of scoring a big name was starting to wane.
As such, one still morning in early May, Death was rather surprised to find himself eager again. He had arrived in a clearing filled with robed, masked figures and that half-giant. It had already been a busy night, full of magical souls to transport to the other side. So much power wasted…
There was no time to dwell on matters, for he was about to gain a very famous soul. This would really liven up his conversation with the Elders for a while! Smiling, Death withdrew a chocolate frog from somewhere beneath his cloak (Godric Gryffindor – how maddeningly appropriate) and settled himself against a tree trunk. Magic was humming through the clearing, a mess of coloured signatures visible only to him, but all that background static paled in comparison to it. How he loved to feel it's magic, his own magic, still strong after all these years. What a stroke of genius it had been, that Elder Wand.
The carrier of the wand was speaking to his followers, but Death was not listening. He was lost in a memory of other men, another century, the same well-worn path of recollection he travelled every time he met that object. It had been gloriously often, until more recently, but things had again changed. How many times in the last weeks had he collected this wand's victims? As his memory caught up to the present, he polished off the last of his confectionary, and noticed them.
The boy must have got close while he was daydreaming, for suddenly his magical senses were in overload. The wand became insignificant, unimportant, inconsequential. The Stone. And what was that, so foreign and yet so familiar? The Cloak! Oh, the waves of a barely-remembered emotion crashed over him, making it difficult to breathe. His cloak was back. The weight of the long years, so oppressive yesterday, was suddenly lifted, and he was drifting away on the phantom wind summoned by the glorious power of his three creations. They were so close together now. Closer than they had been since that night. It had been his only obsession for so long, finding that stupid cloak, and now it had wandered right up to him while he wasn't even paying attention. He leaned forward, a new sort of fear and interest gripping him as he waited for the scene before him to unfold, Gryffindor's crumpled card forgotten in hand.
Behind the boy, another movement caught his eye: a hand, scrabbling among the leaf litter, closing around a small object. The owner of the hand stood up rapidly and shoved the object into a pocket, but he didn't need to see it to know what it was. The stone. Death had no time to consider the new arrival further, for a voice had started speaking.
"Harry Potter."
The stage was set, the thick silence pierced by the words spoken despite their softness. Death wondered how the boy's duelling was. He hadn't seen a truly great show since Dumbledore and Grindelwald, even if neither of them had had the decency to die in it. Surely that unfortunate circumstance was not likely to repeat itself.
Potter was spared any response he might have made, since the voice spoke again.
"You brought company, Harry. How touching. And here I was thinking you'd have the Gryffindor courage to come alone."
The tone was light, mocking, and ended with cold laughter as he observed the boy whip around and notice the girl standing behind his right side.
"Ah, of course," continued the voice, "You didn't know." There was a pause, and Death could sense the uncertainty of the robed figures as they waited for their leader's next move. The Potter boy turned back to face his adversaries and was doing an admirable job of hiding his fear. Godric, you would be proud.
"I'm afraid I don't like uninvited guests, Harry." There was the barest twitch of the Elder Wand and the familiar flash of green light. Death, who had been watching the speaker, was surprised when the light was stopped by a direct hit with another the same.
To every observer it was painfully obvious that the boy had not meant to cast the spell. Furthermore, it was clear that having cast it, he was determined to lose. This is an interesting twist. Death felt the Elder wand's magic swirl and shift, deciding its allegiance. To the boy's horror, his spell was accelerating, both wizards now desperate to break the connection. It was too late.
The green light hit its mark as a final, primal sound of disbelief and rage emanated from the snakelike wizard. Death watched in dismay as the fractured soul skittered away before he could reach it. Again.
The robed figures were on their feet before the body had even fallen to the floor. So many things started happening at once, and in the panic and confusion nobody noticed the woman raise her wand until the scream had already passed her lips –
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
The shocked expression frozen onto the girl's features indicated that she had not seen the spell until it was far too late. The boy staggered and, gasping, fell to the ground beside the body, as the restrained half-giant let out a wordless yell.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
Potter did not try to dodge the curse, if indeed he had even registered its existence. The green light threw his body over onto the girl's in a cruel facsimile of sleeping lovers. A blanket of stunned silence fell once more over the scene, interrupted only by the giant's wracking sobs. Was this how it was all to end? Death sensed his precious objects lying on the ground, one with each body, now ownerless. This is all wrong. The wheels were already turning in his mind as he moved forward, stooping to collect the fallen souls. Soundlessly, instantly, he left the oppressive clearing. There was work to be done.
~oOo~
Hermione slipped away from the Great Hall, no clear plan in mind. Some combination of the stress and the chronic tiredness was making her mind heavy and out-of-focus, until she could no longer clearly recall the motivation behind her own actions. Fred. That was all she could remember. So many Weasleys, so much crushing grief; she had to get away before she suffocated under it. She had felt like an outsider in the moment, unable to mourn like the others because of the enormity of the task still set before them. Adrenaline had been charging its way around her body for hours and sitting down was unthinkable, akin to giving up.
With the sword of Gryffindor gone, the basilisk fangs she carried were the only way to destroy the snake, weren't they? If she did not find that snake, it would all be for nothing. Ron could not help her and Harry had disappeared, so it was left to her. In the doorway she moved aside to admit someone coming in the other direction; it turned out to be Oliver Wood carrying a body. Colin. Oliver gave her a desperate look as she stumbled onwards in shock. He expects me to fix this. They all do.
It was a bizarre comfort to Hermione, in that bleakest moment, that she would likely die if she did nothing. Die like Fred, Colin, Remus and Tonks. The thought made her task seem so much simpler – it became easy to walk into the unknown danger ahead, to try to protect Ron and the others, because there was no alternative. Her steps quickened across the entrance hall and she did not look back.
Once outside, her eye was drawn to the movement of a person appearing from the air. Quite apart from the unique method of concealment, she would recognise that figure anywhere. Harry. Where was he going? She paused, watching him speak with Neville but too far away to hear the words. Harry disappeared again and in that moment she realised his destination, why he needed to go unseen, why he had not told her. Are you giving up, Harry? Do you believe it will save us? In the panic of the moment, she could find no other possible motivation. All the times Harry had been determined to go it alone came rushing back to her, all the times he had been determined to protect people.
Hermione was too far away to look for the telltale signs of Harry's movement; the crushed blades of grass or small rustling noises. Instead, she walked blindly towards the forest, the dementors' chill descending as she got closer. Shivering, she pulled out her wand and tried to focus. Happy thoughts were so hard to bring to mind now. From the depths, she willed the familiar memory forward; the safe cosiness of the Gryffindor common room, a January evening, snowflakes outside and the fire within. They had been the last three awake – it was approaching midnight, but Ron had instigated an earnest discussion about the Chudley Cannons' seeker and hence had taken far longer to beat Harry at chess than usual. She had been sat with them, half listening, half reading. She remembered the book, the weight and feel of it; New Theory of Numerology. Ron had evidently said something comical, because suddenly the sound of Harry's wonderful, rare laughter was washing over her. She grasped onto the moment desperately.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Relief flooded her as the silver otter erupted from her wand and bounded on ahead. She hurried forward, aware of how long it had taken her to summon the patronus. Harry could only be ahead of her, for he had never had as much trouble with that spell.
Hermione followed the otter, through lack of any other direction. The forest was dense here, the moonlight entirely blocked. The urge to utter Lumos was strong but somehow she did not want to break the darkness, continuing by the silvery patronus-light alone. Small rustling and scurrying sounds entering her sensitised ears sent her adrenaline level higher and higher. She began to notice thick cobwebs among the branches – why did he have to wait here of all places?
Ten or twenty paces in front of her, Harry threw off the cloak. Startled, her concentration was broken and the silver otter flickered and vanished. She now noticed firelight somewhere in the distance and continued forward, clambering awkwardly over tree roots in the dark. Her mouth was open as if to call out but the words would not come, merely panicked gasping breaths. They were arriving at a break in the trees, presumably where the Death Eaters were waiting. Harry had pushed the cloak under his outer robe and she noticed something small drop from his open hand. Training her eyes on that spot, she advanced just as her friend stepped fully into the clearing.
Her mind was screaming at her to look around, assess the situation, help Harry – but her body seemed to be acting of its own accord. Something drew her to the object on the ground, and as her fingers touched it, she felt a surge of magic. Snapping out of the trance, she stood up abruptly and realised several things almost simultaneously.
The first was that she held the resurrection stone. There could be no doubt about it. How had Harry -?
The second, which brought the first to a crashing halt, was that she was stood in the presence of Voldemort. She knew before even laying eyes on him; power was in the very air. Harry had said something similar about Dumbledore once. It was a different type and level of magic than was created by wands and spells alone.
The third, which became terrifyingly evident as she raised her eyes to survey the scene, was that he had already noticed her. For a second frozen in time, Hermione studied those snakelike features, the posture, and the hand holding the wand. The corners of the mouth began to suggest a smile, and she could only stay rooted to the spot as the voice began to speak.
"Harry Potter."
Voldemort was still speaking but she could not process it. Her eyes darted around the clearing, taking in the Death Eaters and poor Hagrid, the campfire and the snake in the glittering cage. Finally she looked to Harry, and saw the shock and terror on his face as he noticed her. Her worst suspicion was realised, for Harry did not even have his wand out.
"Wand," she hissed at him, and he obeyed her perhaps from instinct or habit rather than from desire to comply. He bravely turned back to face Voldemort, and she directed her scattered attention to the last horcrux. There were so many Death Eaters between her and the snake, but perhaps if she-
"I'm afraid I don't like uninvited guests, Harry."
The two movements were so quick that Hermione could barely tell who cast first. Harry must have been on edge, reacting on instinct, for when she glanced at his face she could tell he had not meant for the spells to connect. He had intercepted the spell meant for her, before she had even seen it coming, and it was then that she fully realised her own tiredness and how slow her reactions had become.
For a reason she did not have long to consider - as Harry's spell raced toward Voldemort - Harry was desperate to break the connection. What is it that I don't understand, Harry? What do I not know? There was no time to think, to deduce the best course of action. Voldemort's body was falling to the floor, Harry's expression panic-stricken and confused.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
A bolt of green light, and the world fell away.
~oOo~
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The Truth About Death