Whom the Gods Would Destroy...

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

1

They did not know what was truly happening until it was blasting through the wards, bursting through doors, and death was upon them. The secret sanctuary of Glastonbury Abbey, hidden from Muggle eyes for centuries, was breached. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was only second in its security and secrecy to the Abbey and its ancient Scriptorium.

The Abbey was in the care of the Sisters of Ine, Ine being the King of Wessex who directed the building of the original Abbey in the Eighth Century. Through the centuries, magical folk protected the location, as it, and Glastonbury Tor were the markers to the gateway to the legendary Avalon. The Sisters of Ine were the last link to the ancient secret. But it was the Abbey, in the Twenty-First Century, which was more of a sanctuary, a higher academy of learning for those pursuing knowledge beyond that taught at Hogwarts. The secret of Avalon had been lost, along with the ancient magicks predating the Abbey and Sisterhood.

The Sisters of Ine were fierce witches, wise, ancient, and powerful. However, when the wards were breached and the hallowed halls of the Abbey bathed in blood, there had been no warning. No prognosticator with the inner Seeing Eye could have anticipated the darkness that was falling over Britain.

By the time Glastonbury Abbey fell, Britain was lost.

Gellert Grindelwald was a brilliant man—cruel, but brilliant. Taking a page from the Nazis in the late 1930s and early 1940s with the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, Gellert Grindelwald began experimenting with curses resulting in death. Nurmengard Prison was overcrowded; Grindelwald's opponents were great in number and were growing steadily larger into the 1940s. Ever experimenting with Dark Magic, Grindelwald created the Holokauston Curse. In 1941, the population of the black tower of Nurmengard was cut by fifty percent due to the Curse. By 1945, just before Grindelwald's defeat by Albus Dumbledore, over three million Muggles, witches, wizards, and Squibs had died in Nurmengard Prison under Gellert Grindelwald's Deathstick, later known to Harry Potter as the Elder Wand.

For decades, the Holokauston Curse was taboo, more so than the Killing Curse. While the Killing Curse focused upon one victim, the Holokauston killed multitudes in one casting. No book would record the evilest Curse known to magical kind. No wizard would teach the Curse, and no curious soul would experiment with the mechanics of the Curse. And so, it was for over fifty years until those who remembered the Curse grew old or died. Those who survived those dark times hoped that the Curse would simply be lost, a tale to be told in warning to children and grandchildren.

This was not the case, however, as Hermione Granger and Charlie Weasley would come to know for themselves.

April in Basingstoke was not so bad, or so Hermione Granger thought sitting on the steps leading away from the Basingstoke Railway Station in the noonday sun. Until that morning, she had never been to Basingstoke before. There had never been a reason to ever go to Basingstoke, and as she leaned back into the steps, soaking the warm sun on her face, she realized that there was no reason to stay.

She had followed the M3 from Southampton on her motor scooter, and the scooter had finally stopped in Basingstoke. Hermione had no clue how to repair a motor scooter. Unless she found another form of suitable Muggle transportation, or a broom, she would have to walk again.

Two months before, thirty-year-old Hermione Granger would never have considered riding a scooter in Britain. However, necessity had shown Hermione that she would have to reconsider what she had believed to be proper or normal for a witch. Two months and three days before, the world had ended, and she, as far as she knew at that point, was perhaps, the only person left alive in all of England, Scotland, and possibly Ireland.

Hermione no longer cried, grieved, or feared for herself. The facts were: she was alive, she still could use most of her magic, and she was too stubborn to let herself die without knowing why everything she knew had turned to shit.

Sitting up straight, Hermione moved to grasp her backpack from between her feet, drawing out a bottle of water and unscrewing the cap to drink. The water was not as cold as she would have liked, but since there was no such thing as electricity, she would not find a cold bottle of anything anywhere. Short of casting a freezing Charm on the plastic bottle, Hermione would have to settle with tepid water.

Setting the bottle on the step next to her, she pulled off her military issue boots, magically resized, and peeled off her sweaty socks. Wrinkling her nose in distaste at the damp cotton, she balled them up and threw them into her backpack, withdrawing a fresh pair.

All the while, Hermione listened. There was nothing but birds and the wind.

The silence of her homeland was disturbing. No motors running, no people buzzing with life, no movement except the clouds and wind. After two months, she still could not get used to the quiet.

At night, and sometimes, but rarely, during the day, the screams filled the air—a violent contrast to the silence. Hermione missed the ambient hum of life, but as her eyes moved along the street, she almost wished a car would buzz by, a cyclist, maybe a family walking. There was nothing.

Reapplying her boots, Hermione knew she had to move. There was no time to find transport out of Basingstoke that April day. Possibly, in the morning when the sun was up, she could leave. She had to find high ground, a rooftop preferably, or a high flat with some food and no dead things.

Zipping up her backpack, she shouldered it as she stood, reaching down to grasp the shoulder strap of the L96A1-AWS sniper rifle, a souvenir from an abandoned blockade near Bristol. It was a little heavy on her shoulder, but Hermione ignored it. Her pack was also heavy with clothes, food, and ammo even though she had shrunk it. Everything she needed to survive was strapped to her body, her pack, her rifle, and most importantly, her wand in a holster strapped to the belt about her baggy military issue camouflaged trousers.

She began walking toward the tallest building she could see. Hermione hoped that the chrome yellow building was empty, but she kept her hand on the handle of her wand as she walked. It had become habit, but it had kept her alive more than once since the beginning of her journey.

Atop a place she learned was called Crown Heights, Hermione Granger watched the sun set. She had her resized sleeping bag unrolled under her, her rifle set up before her, resting on the edge of the roof, peering down on the commons before the railway station. Through her scope, she could see the empty water bottle she had left behind, and the discarded motor scooter resting on the curb of the street.

She waited for the sounds, and she did not have to wait long.

The only way for Hermione to describe the sound was by comparing it to a combination of an owl's screech, a baby's shriek, and the high-pitched cry of a cat. It was terrible, and it was hard to believe that something once human could produce the noise. She often wondered if a banshee's cry were similar.

When the first figure stalked into the sight of her scope, Hermione grinned, and silently moved her lips to count. Five, twelve, twenty, thirty-one… All she could see were thirty-one, it was plenty, and there were surely many more nearby. Hermione watched as they ignored her scooter and water bottle, but congregated in the street, their faces pointed to the sky, blind eyes seeing nothing, not even the rising moon.

The only way she would be found was if she were near them, or made noise near them.

Inferi were in no way like animals that could sniff out prey, but their sense of hearing, oddly, was keen.

Hermione slipped her finger around the trigger of her rifle, but did not squeeze. She only used the rifle if she were in a tight spot, and as it was, she was safe for the night having blocked all access to the roof. The AWS was nearly silent, and with the added Charms, it would never make a sound when shot. The only sound would be the bullet whizzing through the air to splatter a head of one of the monsters on the street below.

Hermione set the rifle down beside her sleeping bag with a sigh. Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the unusually bright stars appearing in the sky. For one more night, she could sleep safely with the incoherent cries of the Inferi haunting her dreams.

The smell of ozone and blood woke her, but it was Aurora Sinistra's insistent voice that indicated to Hermione she was not dreaming.

"Get up, Hermione! Grab what you can, you must go!"

The Abbey cell was dark except for one high window in a featureless wall.

Hermione did not question her old Astronomy professor, and did not bother doffing her nightgown as she slipped into a pair of old jogging pants and tee shirt. She slipped her bare feet into a pair of old trainers and grabbed her knapsack from under the Spartan bed.

Aurora Sinistra was dressed in the black robes of the Sisterhood, her long ebon hair free from the intricate bindings that usually held it up from the column of her white throat. Aurora Sinistra stood near the door of the cell, peeking though a crack at what Hermione could see were flashes of curse fire.

"We cannot Apparate or Portkey. The Ministry must have enacted the Seal! You must run, Hermione, keep running and do not come back, do you understand me?"

Hermione did not, but nodded anyway, still believing she was half dreaming.

"If they have breached the wards here, no place is safe!"

Hermione frowned, not understanding.

Aurora moved to grasp Hermione by the shoulders.

"Do not make a sound, do not cast a spell until you are free of this place. Try to get to Hogwarts, that is the only other place that might be intact!"

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing as Aurora Sinistra pressed kisses into Hermione's cheeks before taking her hand and pulling her through the door into what Hermione believed was hell.

The Sisters were fighting with their wands in one hand, and swords in the other. What they were fighting in the corridors and courtyards of the hidden Abbey were people. However, as Aurora pulled Hermione between the fighting, Hermione could see that the Sisters were not just fighting people, for they were not people…

"Intruders are coming in through the gate to the north!" a voice shouted over the din of screeches and unnatural howls. The voice belonged to a shimmering lion Patronus, but the corporeal form disappeared as the voice attached screamed.

Hermione's teeth were chattering as Aurora pulled her down a dark corridor, nearly dragging her down the uneven steps into one of the cellars. The sound of the fight above was distant, but as Aurora moved toward a barrel of wine, releasing Hermione's hand, Hermione edged back to the bottom of the stairs. Above, a bright flash of light caused her to clench her teeth as a wave of odour hit her—burning flesh. Fire had erupted from somewhere in the Abbey compound, and Hermione could hear the shrieks of what ever was attacking and the Sisterhood alike.

Fiendfyre.

"Hermione! Here!"

Hermione turned to find that Aurora had moved a barrel to reveal a low, dark passage.

"It will take you to the Tor. From there you must run."

Aurora was breathless, her wide emerald eyes adamant that Hermione snap out of her daze and obey. Hermione moved to her old mentor, ready to help Aurora pull the barrel behind them both. However, as Hermione's hand slipped from Aurora's as she entered the passage, the barrel began to move back in place, and the wall's stone magically began to mend.

"No! Aurora, no! Come with me!" Hermione called back.

"No, my darling, you must go, I cannot leave this place. I cannot leave my Sisters to fight alone. Go to Hogwarts!"

The wall was nearly closed as Aurora bent closer to smile at Hermione, tears streaming down her face.

"Aurora? Aurora!" Hermione screamed.

When the darkness engulfed Hermione, she was sitting on the damp floor of a low passage, finally awake.

She did not know how long she sat in the dark, but through the thick wall of stone, she could hear the muffled shrieks of death and the roar of fire. Hermione pinched herself before lighting her wand; she hoped she was still asleep in the tiny cell of the Abbey. But she was not, and she knew she had to begin crawling.

Hours passed before she saw the sky again, crawling up through what seemed to be an ancient well, Hermione dislodged a stone to step out of St. Michael's Tower, and up into the fresh outdoor air. She was sweaty, dirty, and dazed. From Glastonbury Tor she could see the village was aflame. She could see a few people running only to be cut down by the dark blots of other figures. From the Tor, Hermione could feel magic surrounding her, and as she watched Glastonbury burn, none of the attackers came near.

The sun rose, and the distant dark figures departed, some seeming to fall completely dead in the sunlight, others hiding in the shadows or running stupidly into the fire to be burnt to ash. Hermione watched as nothing but the fires moved as nothing was left alive.

It was incomprehensible, and Hermione collapsed on the stones surrounding the base of St. Michael's Tower, her wand held so tight in her hand that her knuckles hurt, everything she owned stuffed into a knapsack over her left shoulder. It was not until the sun was nearly at its highest point in the sky did she move.

It was February 21, 2010.

It was not until February 23, 2010 that Hermione realized that what had attacked the Abbey and the village of Glastonbury were thousands of Inferi.

There was a military blockade on the M4 east of Bristol, and ten days after Glastonbury, that was where Hermione found the rifle. It was atop a camouflaged vehicle just off the M4, metal crates of ammo unused, the rifle not loaded. Bodies were scattered on the road, civilian and military, cars and trucks blocking what would have been a normal traffic pattern. Hermione stood atop a family sedan, her hand shielding her eyes from the bright morning sun in March.

There was no one alive.

Hermione knew she was in shock, and that her clothing she had escaped Glastonbury in were not sufficient to shield her from the cold. At the hastily constructed blockade, in boxes and bundles, she found boots, military issue uniforms, and rations. There were guns, medicine, food, but Hermione only took what she thought would be necessary. She changed into a pair of lightweight combat trousers, layering shirts under a vest, topping it with a matching heavier jacket. Vaguely, she remembered the Muggle military calling the uniform as a whole a Temperate Dress DPM, referring more to the pattern on the uniform. Her dad had been in the military as a young man, and it was as she was zipping up the jacket that she wondered if her parents were safe in Melbourne.

She took a better heavy canvas knapsack from one of the dead soldiers and began taking and shrinking what she needed. By noon, she stared at the bodies, ignoring the stench of soldier and civilian. Most had been beaten, bitten, or eviscerated. However, some were unmarked—most of the dead were unmarked. But none of these dead moved.

Sitting atop the hidden military vehicle, testing the weight of the rifle in her hands, she wondered how 'it' had started. Obviously, there had been a panic, the direction of the people meant that they were fleeing Bristol on the M4 east, but to where?

Hermione shouldered the rifle, having taken the crates of ammo, and shrinking them to put them in her backpack. She began walking between the lanes of cars, stepping over bodies beginning to decay even in the cool weather. She walked further and further from Bristol until the sun began to set again. In a little village off the M4 called Tormarton, she found an inn, a place that made the hair on the back of her neck stand when she entered the building.

The Four Lamps inn barely qualified as an inn as the bottom part was a pub, but what made Hermione feel at ease was the lack of dead inside. Locking the door, warding and sealing the windows with her Vinewood wand, she moved about the pub by wand light until she found a newspaper, a Bristol newspaper, the Western Daily Press, dated from the second week of February.

The headline was shocking by Muggle standards. 'Panic!' was the head caption and below: 'Mass murders and attacks spreading from Cornwall across the southwest into Bristol!' Hermione continued to read the front page by wand light.

Attacks had been reported in the far north, in Aberdeen. The nature of the attacks was unknown, but it was spreading from every corner of Britain. People died from mysterious causes in great numbers in particular areas. The military had had little effect on combating what the newspaper called a 'mob of monsters.' The panic of the people had impeded any sort of movement toward safety. No one knew if biological weapons were being used to kill whole villages. No one knew who or what the monsters were, and any that were attacked usually died.

Hermione frowned as some called the monsters 'zombies.' She knew better. What she could not know was what was killing Muggles in droves with no discernable cause.

She knew she had been at a disadvantage. If only she had not been at the Abbey, she would have known what was happening at the Ministry. Aurora had been correct, Hermione could not Apparate no matter how hard she tried, and she could not create a Portkey. Aurora had also mentioned the Seal.

The Seal, a concept that frightened Hermione more than hordes of Inferi killing everything in sight. The Seal had been an emergency measure put in place to keep Magical folk from leaving Britain. It was done just before Voldemort fell, a measure designed and created in part by Mad-Eye Moody and Kingsley Shacklebolt during their Order years. It had been Kingsley, as Minister, who enacted the law.

If any Dark Lord were to rise again, he or she would be constrained to Britain, and dealt with on the island of Albion. However, the Seal could be used to contain magical disaster, hypothetically, and it seemed that when the Inferi attacks began to escalate, someone in the Ministry had Sealed the island.

By sealing Britain, however, no one could escape. No airplanes, no boats, no traditional means of Muggle transit out of Britain would work. It was if a large soap bubble encapsulated the isle. How long it would last depended solely on someone disengaging the Seal in source deep in the Ministry, its location hidden except a small group of trusted people, who Hermione assumed, were now dead.

The effects of the Seal had been hypothetical at best, and Hermione wondered if the Ministry knew that they were condemning millions of Muggles to die like rats in a trap.

The Seal was a large ward, stronger than anything ever constructed by mere spell work, and from the outside, it worked as a large 'do not notice,' Charm. Therefore, in Hermione's darkened mind, Britain no longer existed to the world as a whole.

The thought was disconcerting.

There would be no outside assistance until someone disengaged the Seal, and Hermione knew that the Inferi were not just beasts of a sort preying on magical folk.

As she folded up the paper and threw it on the bar, she sighed, her eyes taking in the darkness of the pub. Finding the steps leading up into what must be the rooms for rent above, she kicked in the door closest to the stairs, finding the room empty.

Warding the door and windows for silence, she found candles in a wardrobe, and lit them to reveal a modest room with a comfortable full sized bed, and clean bedding. The lavatory was at the end of the hall, furthest from the stairs, and there she found that the water works was functional, but there was no hot water. Hermione bathed in cold water, not minding how icy the spray from the shower was, but happy that she could rinse away the smell of body odour, death, and dust.

When she was clean, and dressed in a magically cleaned outfit, Hermione found the first bed she had slept upon in days quite comfortable. Wand clenched in her hand, boots on her feet, backpack and rifle in easy reach, she lay on her back in the middle of the bed. Staring up at the dark ceiling, she could only hear far, distant cries of walking death, but there were none close, none aware that a living person was nearby.

Hermione wondered, as she began to let herself sleep, if there were people out in other villages and cities, huddled in boarded up rooms or flats, waiting for rescue that would never come.

It was like a bad movie, all of it. She had seen enough movies in the past ten years, doomsday scenarios with zombies or monsters, and the hopelessness of survivors at the end of their world. Bad movie…

Inferi, from what she had learned through her years at Hogwarts, were the 'reanimated' dead. Not zombies, but puppets of Dark Wizards to do the Wizard's will. It seemed to Hermione, the will driving the Inferi was to kill anything or anyone alive. The motive as to why Muggles should be killed was unknown, and to Hermione, using Inferi and magic to kill made little sense.

She knew that the dead she had seen between Glastonbury to Tormarton would possibly be reanimated as well if the body were intact. Inferi could be used if every bit of their innards had been ripped out, a limb missing, but one thing that Inferi could not function without was a brain. Though dead, the brain was the seat of magic. Even if the Inferi had been Muggle in life, the brain would react to the magical imperative placed upon it. Thus, destroying the head could disable Inferi.

Hermione glanced to her rifle next to her on the bed, shaking off sleep again.

Fire and bright light repelled Inferi, and nothing else. Blasting Curses, Cutting Curses—that was all that could incapacitate them.

They preferred the dark, and could move as easily as if alive, but still they were controlled things, all tied to a master whose will was carried out by legions of undead.

The question was, where and who was the puppet master? It had to be a wizard somewhere in Britain.

The bigger question was: why?

As far as Hermione knew, the lull after the Fall of Voldemort had developed into peace. For twelve years, Wizarding Britain had not seen any indication that another war was on the horizon. Death Eaters were tried, imprisoned, or given the Kiss. The darkness that was Voldemort was gone and a new sun shone upon Britain due in part to Harry Potter and his work with the Wizengamot.

Hermione rubbed her chin as she lay on her back. She had not thought about Harry in years. She wondered if he were still alive.

The last time she had seen Harry was at a ceremony, bestowing the Order of Merlin on the fallen heroes of the War. Harry had silently accepted his commendation, as had Ron and many of the surviving members of the Order and the DA. Even with the posthumous honors, the ceremony had been silent upon the grounds of Hogwarts.

Hermione refused her commendation, but sat in the audience. She had never felt like a 'hero,' and she would not accept an honor that she did not believe she deserved. The War had changed her, as it had changed everyone, but Hermione knew that with the end of the War, it would be the end of the 'Golden Trio.' Ron had left her, Harry had moved on with Ginny. Even those close like Luna had left Britain for work, Neville married Hannah Abbott, and George married Angelina Johnson. Life moved on, and Hermione took a new direction in her life without the attachments of the past.

Hermione was, or had been before the end of the world, a writer, and a scholar. She had written under a nome de plume for the Daily Prophet in their equivalent of a 'Technology' section. She used yet another name to write papers in Ars Alchemica, the scholastic potions journal. Hermione used the alias Jean de Grange to write her favourite work in revisions to Hogwarts, a History, a children's book with a commentary about the useless bias of blood status which was apparently 'controversial,' but sold well. And her last work—the history of the Sisters of Ine set into a work of fiction to protect the identity of those in the Sisterhood.

Of course, as she lay with her eyes closed in the bed above the pub, Jean de Grange, Minnie Mustil, and Herold Felix, were dead, along with everyone else in Britain. Hermione was no longer a writer or scholar, she was simply a survivor—the last woman in Britain.

Hermione slept fitfully, the sounds of shrieks blending memories into her dreams. Hermione dreamt of the War.

Aurora Sinistra had told Hermione to try for Hogwarts, but without a broom, Portkey, or the ability to Apparate, reaching Hogwarts would take time.

April 6, 2010, Hermione was riding another procured motor scooter south. She could have easily gone to London, but after waking atop Crown Heights, Hermione listened to the wind. There had been a sound that had awakened her. She had been hugging her rifle, dreaming a happier dream of a seaside vacation from her childhood. It had been a strain of music, just for a moment, a foreign sound that made her grasp her rifle and sit up in her sleeping bag.

Hermione listened as she began packing her bag, shrinking her sleeping bag again. On the wind, just as she sat down to eat a half melted chocolate energy bar, the sound came again. She stopped chewing and stood on the edge of Crown Heights, her hands cupped behind her ears.

It had come from the southeast, and that was where a new, unexplainable compulsion needed her to go, and so she went, with has much haste as she could muster. After several days of walking, she found a working Vespa scooter in Guildford. By April 6, Hermione was on the A23, and she knew where she needed to go.

Brighton.

The traffic heading north had clogged the motorway, and Hermione saw that there were still a great many corpses scattered about, some still sitting in their cars. The southbound lane was almost empty and Hermione did not have a hard time navigating through the stopped traffic. The ease of the drive gave her time to think.

Since the beginning, Hermione had seen many corpses with no discernable cause of death. Some bodies were unmarked, posed as if they had somehow died in their sleep. There was no violent contortion of limbs or faces, no signs of struggle, and no fear in their deaths. Of course, there were others who were mauled and torn, obviously by Inferi. It had puzzled her.

Perhaps it had been like the films, a widespread virus, and a biological weapon that killed everything. It was possible, but improbable given those legions of Inferi that roamed the countryside. Magic was in play, and magic was what killed the people in their cars, sitting in front of their television sets, but magic had spared Hermione, for some reason. The question of how magic could kill millions was one that troubled Hermione as she swerved to miss an open car door with body lying half in, half out.

There had been warning, Hermione remembered from reading the paper in Tormarton. People had tried to flee in their automobiles. Death had chased them from every direction and Hermione could imagine that at some point there was a massive pileup of cars and people having collided trying to flee.

As the midday sun beat down on the top of her borrowed helmet, Hermione wondered why there were not more automobiles on the A23 going south. She knew that there was a ferry at Bishopstone to France; surely, the Muggles had tried to leave Britain by sea.

Hermione squeezed on the brakes and slowed the scooter near the exit to Preston. Planting her feet on the ground, Hermione slapped a gloved hand over her mouth. With a great lurch, Hermione vomited onto the motorway.

Muggles, she was thinking of the people of Britain as Muggles.

Coughing up the last of the stale bread she had eaten that morning, Hermione wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She was trying so desperately to distance herself from feeling that she had begun thinking of herself as someone outside the situation.

She was a Muggle-born witch; her parents were Muggles—just like the bodies rotting in their family sedans with their children in the back seat, their possessions tied to the roofs of the family car. Hermione let a sob pass her lips, barely sounding over the rumble of the scooter's motor. One sob, that was all she would give herself.

Soon, Hermione was driving again, clenching her teeth. She would be in Brighton in the hour, giving her time to find a safe place for the night. Perhaps then, she thought, she would know why she felt so compelled to enter what was once a place populated with the living—now the dead.

St. Peter's Church was cool inside, and as Hermione stared at the Queen Victoria commemorative window, she was thankful that there were no dead eyes blindly staring at the glass with her. The theory that in times of great fear that people crowded into churches seemed to be fiction. St. Peter's Church was empty.

It seemed a shame to Hermione. To die in such a place of beauty and sanctity would have soothed her if she knew that the end was nigh.

She moved toward the chancel and sat down in the first pew. For early April, the air outside was hot and sticky. The sea air seemed suffocating to her along with the stench of death that told her she was in a bigger town. If she remembered correctly, Brighton had about 480,000 people. All were dead, in some form or another, and that did not count the thousands of tourists who had come off-season to the seaside.

Hermione leaned into the pew, stretching her arms out along the back. The painting of a crucified Christ stared down at her, silently studying her. Hermione stared back.

Perhaps she was a forsaken woman, left behind after missing the greatest battle, Armageddon. Perhaps this was Tribulation.

Hermione had never been religious, but she had been respectful of religion. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her fist, staring hard at the passively crucified Christ. He did not seem to be suffering for her sins on the chancel wall of St. Peter's Church, instead he seemed to be telling her something with his deadened eyes and stern face.

Hermione's lips trembled and she nodded to the flat representation of one religion's messiah. She had been left behind for a reason, and she would have to fight to save herself and what was left of her world.

"Alright," she whispered to the icon, and rose to her feet.