Chapter 25: Fate & Hermione Granger

Five chapters left. I'll most likely be making the final chapters the third part I was meaning to write. I already have a few parts done so the end should be coming quick. Hope you enjoy!

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Hermione felt a surge of purpose, one so strong that she was guided through a dream as easily as she walked the halls of Hogwarts. The screams, she knew were real but she didn't pay them any mind. All she cared about was the image of Draco in the distance.

They were in a small black-walled room, probably ten by ten by ten feet. An ethereal yellow light shone upon them, making them feel like they were the only people in the world. He looked tiny, more like a house dog than a wolf. She liked to make him seem smaller in her head. Nothing that size could be violent, animalistic, a heartbreaker…

"Draco?" she called to the dream. Even though the room was small and she felt very much within it, he felt far off in the distance. "Is that you? Please talk to me!"

He curled up into a fluffy little white ball. She felt him dying, felt trapped within a body that no longer worked and perhaps was never his.

As she got closer, she started to see a pale hand and black leather-clad feet behind the little dog. She first thought it was an adult Draco hovering over his wolf self. She soon began to see the veiny, white hands of a corpse with a pulse. She saw the dark robes draping to the floor and, soon after that, the face of evil with its slits for a nose.

She called out his name and ran to his side but, when she hugged him as if to shield him from Voldemort's magic, it suddenly felt at though they were finally one person. Her thoughts and his were together as one, crammed into her brain. Every memory; every ache and desire.

They stood and faced Voldemort as one but, no matter how invincible she felt, Voldemort merely smiled and put his hand to their chest. They were immobile, covered in smoke, as he sucked at the core of them. Their energy ran through him like blood through veins and Voldemort's smile grew more sinister, even jovial, until they fell to the floor, exhausted.

She watched the rest of the dream from an immeasurable distance. She was once again all-knowing and alone, watching over their human bodies as Voldemort tore them apart with his bare hands. He'd move a hand through the air and a strip of skin would rip off their skin. No wand or mercy required.

"You have played your parts well, my children. You were perfect," Voldemort lauded himself.

The walls of the room expanded and she saw the Chamber as perfectly as Harry had described all those years ago.

Then, she saw Harry at the makeshift altar, a sacrifice. A series of objects lay before him in a bowl. She couldn't see what they were but, at the same time, they didn't matter anymore. The no longer held their great power. Voldemort closed his hand into a fist, one finger at a time. As he did, the objects exploded into powder one by one. All that was left was Harry. The final object.

Voldemort bent over Harry's mangled body and, as lovingly as a father might caress the head of a baby, smoothed back the hair from his forehead.

"You are the final part of me, Harry Potter. With your death, I become immortal."

Harry caught on fire and, too quickly, turned to ash. Like a drug, Voldemort breathed him in and all that was once Harry Potter was absorbed through his skin. He turned back towards the ghost of Hermione and she saw then the human that had once been Tom Riddle. His skin was a healthy color, his features almost handsome. His hair was dark and silky and his eyes were bright yellow like a wolf's, reflecting the low light in very inhuman ways.

She turned around to see what he was smiling at so triumphantly and saw an army of wolf men standing in endless rows, howling at him. Slave to master. Victim to murderer.

And all went red.

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Hermione awoke at the sounds of screams just outside the bedroom door. Once again, she wished she could wake up to the sounds of laughter and children. She wished she wouldn't find an empty pillow, his scent still polluting the air with the possibility of a loving life that could never be.

She knew there was no laughter for kilometers. The screams outside seemed to exist in her dreams, long before she ever woke, as if she'd been fighting for hours with the rest of them. In fact, if she closed her eyes again, she could see where the hallways had been scorched and the wolves had taken over. She knew where Harry was, trying to defend the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, and where Draco still fought near the entrance to the school.

She saw, without being there, the bits that had been taken out from her beloved school, the books set afire in the midst of battle, and the years of history that now lay scattered in pieces at the enemy's feet.

"Why did you go?" she whispered to herself, hoping Draco would hear her. "Why didn't you wake me?"

No one answered but she also knew she would do the same. The room was hidden so she was safe. She considered staying in until the fight died down but she knew they couldn't win without her. Being tethered to someone else (and stretching that tether as far as it could go) made her feel like there was a greater purpose to everything.

Maybe she couldn't have the life and the children and the possibility of tomorrow, but she could at least help others live her dreams.

As she carelessly walked down the halls toward the Chamber, she felt impervious. She knew everything had been leading up to that day. That fight. That bathroom entrance. That boy. Stupid, blond, disaster of a boy, beautifully hers in eternal ways that normal people could never comprehend.

As she neared the girl's bathroom where the Chamber of Secrets threatened to wake, she realized that they were already waiting for her. Surely enough, the hall was empty, unlike her dreams of past battles. Moaning Myrtle continued to cry in a stall, screeching about awful furry monsters with big teeth who threatened to steal her soul. Her moans annoyed Hermione so she growled through the door and Myrtle disappeared.

Finally, she was alone with her destiny.

She heard a crash at the door and whirled around. Harry leaned against the door. Blood dripped down his arm in swirling lines. It looked like a chunk of his shoulder had been blown away. She grimaced and went to help him stand.

"I couldn't stop them from opening it!" he shouted. The blasts had obviously damaged his hearing.

"It's fine! We're not too late!"

"NO!" he screamed, gripping his forehead as he crashed to the floor. "YOU CAN'T! You can't go down there, Hermione. They're waiting for you. I saw them. They have Draco!"

"It's a trap?" she echoed as she examined his wound. It all seemed so very familiar. She kicked the door closed and rested Harry's head on her lap. "Well, of course it is."

"Ron was hurt too and I lost Ginny. I'm afraid to find her. I saw the wolves attack. I don't know what I'll find if she's dead, Hermione."

That was the first time she'd seen Harry cry since Sirius died. It felt like that day all over again. They were tired of losing people. Hermione knew what was waiting for them if Harry opened the door to the Chamber for her, if they went in after Draco like she saw in her dream. So, she picked up the pieces of her friend and began her plan to cheat fate.

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Draco was swallowed by a black and gray smoke that smelled of a bonfire in hell and looked as alive as Voldemort's snake did before he tore it apart with his teeth. The battle seemed like a whirlpool of blurry, violent memories, already far in the past.

He once again thought of Hermione, who slept safely upstairs, and thanked God.

He knew he should have been afraid. He'd been captured by living smoke that reminded him of his Great Aunt Debbie after her fifth cigar. He had never been inside the Chamber of Secrets but had seen sketches of its interior in his father's dark library. Salazar Slytherin's icy face stared him down in the distance. He was tied up like a pig about to be slaughtered, but with simple ropes. The only thing holding him down was the smoke, which meant Voldemort didn't trust his little monster minions to guard him.

"Draco?" her voice echoed in the dark distance. He heard her footsteps on the wet floor, running towards him.

He called out her name but it came out like a pathetic howl, an almost human howl by werewolf standards. He was too weak and the smoke had begun to burn his eyes.

"Don't move, sweetheart. I'm here. Just rest there," she whispered, looking around to make sure they were alone. They weren't but they figured they had a few moments to say what was needed. "I won't let them take you. They'll have to kill me first."

He whimpered and, despite his four-legged state, nuzzled his large muzzle against her chest lovingly. He closed his eyes and thought of her, of their past, as he'd done before when the wolf threatened to take him over forever. Nothing. He remained encased in fur and smoke.

"You really shouldn't have said that," said a squeaky voice behind her. Hermione felt like the person was whispering in her ear and shivered. The voice was familiar but unimaginable and so, not obvious. She whirled around and saw two figures in the distance. One wore the dark robes of a Death Eater; the other, Hogwarts pajamas.

"Who goes there?" asked Hermione. Her voice echoed ominously and made Draco twinge on the wet floor. He could pull apart the fear in her voice.

The figures stepped closer, wands raised. The dim light revealed Blaise Zabini, handsome and evil as ever, and a less threatening Dennis Creevey.

"Dennis?" scoffed Hermione. Draco was proud to hear a Malfoy laugh leave her lips, just as he relished every time she used profanity in creative ways that were singularly his. "You're the werewolf hiding inside Hogwarts?"

He's the sniveling idiot that nearly got me expelled? thought Draco miserably.

Hermione didn't find it funny at all. "You hurt Colin? Your own brother? And Pansy?" Dennis' face drooped with guilt. Hermione stepped forth with an outstretched hand as if trying to bring him back to the light herself. Draco watched in awe. He'd have run by now, or tried to gnaw someone to pieces. He'd defend her but only Hermione would think people as obviously scarred as the two boys before her could be saved in any way.

Hermione, come back. Come back to me. They'll kill you without a second thought.

"He won't hurt me," she replied to Draco the wolf. "They need me."

"You can hear him?" questioned Blaise, his wand at the ready. Hermione saw he was wearing a pair of flimsy shorts under his cloak, which meant he was willing and able to shift at any time. "He's right, isn't he? You're mates. That's why you can talk the way you do, no matter your shape."

"What about it? So what if we are?"

Dennis and Blaise smirked at each other. "It means you're in the right place, at the right time, little Mudblood. You're about to usher the beginning of the end of Hogwarts. Welcome to your fate, Hermione Granger," said Dennis.

Hermione looked at Draco, waiting for his permission to tear them apart should they strike first. She quickly saw that Dennis was taken over by something besides the wolf. He was too close to gone. Draco's large wolf eyes read something like, I'm sorry I can't take that blow for you. I'm stuck like this.

"I'll protect you," she whispered back.

Before she could turn back at her adversaries, her sensitive ears heard the slow tap tap of another wolf inching towards her in the darkness. She felt them all, the way one feels the cold after opening the front door in the middle of a snow storm. Sudden. Devastating. She couldn't see an escape, not given the mountain of heartbeats that now made themselves known in the dark distance.

I was sure we were alone, thought Draco, almost apologetic for leading her into the trap.

Still, the others threatened with their presence but didn't encroach upon them. The heartbeats stayed in the dark. For a moment, she thought they were figments meant to inspire fear but neither Dennis nor Blaise knew that sort of magic and both she and Draco felt them.

She felt them as family, heartbeat to heartbeat. She also knew they'd kill her as easily as they killed their food in the wild. They were waiting for a signal. A twitch.

"We're not here to kill you, Hermione," said Dennis. "This is about something greater. This is what You-Know-Who has been planning all along. This very moment has been foreseen years ago. All that we need now is Harry."

She chuckled softly. "We were an accident, Dennis. Get over it. We could have been anyone. There could be other mates out there. An accident. That's all. Voldemort knew nothing. To this day, he doesn't see the world the way we do."

"Seen the future, have you?" replied Blaise, feeling cocky as ever.

"I know how you want this little showdown to end, Blaise, and it isn't going to happen."

His eyes began to glow, the way they did just before the change. "And why is that?"

"Because, even if I am the perfect piece to Voldemort's creepy little puzzle, there's something you will never get," she warned. Dennis too began to change. His limbs tore themselves apart and recombined in new, lupine ways. Hermione let go of her fear like an icy breath and said, "Harry Potter."

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Reviews are better than stupid, blond disasters. Really. Every time I got a review, I wrote a paragraph. You guys are my inspiration. All my love to you.