I own none of these characters. A/N: This chapter is the most obviously AU since it does not acknowledge any of the information about Horcruxes that we learned in HBP. Ah well. Thanks to my sister for beta-ing.
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Icarus
by MarbleGlove
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Dear Icarus, I suppose I should apologize for inconveniencing you. Given the rules of the Post Coop and the fact that the book accompanying this letter is quite magical, you will have had to pick it up yourself. I also imagine that it was a nerve-wracking venture, looking for any curses I might have placed on it and failing to find them. However, I do not apologize. If you are receiving this package, then I am dead while you still live. If the world were perfect, then I will have won the final battle and finally taken you as my most honored prisoner. And yet, despite my knowledge and despite my power, I know that failure is possible and I am preparing for that eventuality.
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Sweat collected on Hermione's face and the back of her neck as she unpacked all of her boxes. Her hair was up in a sloppy bun held with her wand. She felt naked if she didn't have it on or near her, but she refused to use it without real cause. Thus she had carried all of her boxes up the stairs in the muggle manner: with panted breath, aching muscles, and sweat.
Deciding how to arrange everything in her new eight-by-ten-foot dorm room helped keep her mind occupied. She studiously avoided thinking about the one small book tucked away on the bottom shelf of her bookcase that was not a textbook.
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I find myself unsure how to label you. I have a suspicion as to your identity and if I am correct, then you are my enemy. Yet, as I read over our correspondence, I realize that I consider you my friend, perhaps my only friend. Of all those I respect and am respected by in turn, you alone have not sworn your loyalty to me. You have maintained your self-will, but still we converse. It is to you, then, that I send my last journal. Like all of my journals, it contains my memories. It is you who have perfected the manner of creating a body to go along with a spirit, and I believe that I have taught you the means of creating a spirit inside a body. With the memories of this journal, you have the means to resurrect me. I know you well enough to know that you will not do this immediately. But I also know that you will not destroy this possibility. Perhaps you will lock the journal away in your Gringotts vault. Perhaps you will place it amongst your old second-year textbooks as a reminder of the past. But you will keep it safe, I know.
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The Ministry of Magic had provided her with papers proving that she had attended school for the past seven years in a ministry-affiliated educational program, but they were a bit vague on the details of what she had studied. Her results on the correspondence course in biology had also helped her. But it had still taken a small suggestion spell to get Hermione accepted into the muggle university of her choice.
It was cheating, she knew it, and she had done it anyway, but she was determined that it would be the last time. From now on, she would succeed as a muggle and advance by her own merit.
This was to be her fresh start.
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It will take a while, but eventually Harry Potter, who, if I am dead, will have killed me, will begin to wonder how things could have been different. He will wonder if there was not perhaps a better way to deal with me, a way that did not involve him becoming a murderer. He will wonder, and you will reassure him that he did the right thing. But eventually you will murmur that perhaps there is a way to undo what he has done, a way to unmake him a murderer. And you will think of this journal I have sent to you and you will have all the knowledge necessary to remake me and undo the murder that killed me. I wonder what your reasons will be when you think to bring me back to life. Will it be a need to reassure your friend that he is not evil? Will you have missed our correspondence so much? Will it be because you have finally had too much of the wizarding world and want it punished as much as I? Or will it be some other reason that I have not thought of?
Her parents were happy. They could now visit and call her whenever they wanted and didn't have to wait for her to contact them first or find some other wizard or witch to escort them past the anti-muggle wards that surrounded the various wizarding enclaves.
And Hermione was beginning to realize that her father had been right when he told her that the world was larger than the wizarding world. She had been so caught up in the fight that she hadn't realized that the Voldemort war wasn't a world war, it was just a gang war. It was a war between two small minorities hidden inside a large city.
She had gotten caught up in a gang war, but now it was over and she had her chance to escape that entire world. It was a chance she was taking. She wouldn't let herself be caught up in the anger and violence that such a small, intense society seemed incapable of avoiding.
There was peace awaiting her in the greater world.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I find that in writing to you, in placing my trust in you, I am calmed. The final battle will be soon and while I plan to win, I find that I am not scared of dying. What terrifies me most is the idea that I will win at the cost of a battle that leaves behind your lifeless body. I do not think you are preparing a journal for my keeping though in this instance I am trustworthy. If my worst fears come true, then I will collect all the pictures there are of you, your body, our correspondence, everything that has captured a little bit of your essence and I will have a great portrait painted, an attempt to see you whole from the little pieces that you will have left behind. I promise to give you what immortality I can.
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Her old life was over, and while she would keep her wand and her friends, she had no intention of living in the world of magic again. She had betrayed it, and it had betrayed her, and she couldn't bear to be who she was when she was there.
The muggle world was where she was born and it would be where she died. She would study medicine and perhaps her knowledge of magical means of transformation would help her study the science of genetics. But it was science that she would study, and it was muggles whom she would hopefully help.
She didn't think about the small book tucked away on the bottom shelf of her bookcase.
Neither did she destroy it.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I plan to live forever, but if I die, I know that this last piece of me will remain safe in your keeping. I remain always, Lord Voldemort
The dawn is breaking. I must go.
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The End