After The Battle

She shivered, drawing her cloak closer around her.

When had it all gone wrong? They were all so excited at Christmas. There had been talking, laughing... everyone had been so happy.. So, what had happened? Why could she not remember? What didn't she want to remember?

Her hair tangled in the sharp breeze as she reached the top of the hill.

"Oh my God." she whispered as she looked over the devastation. The bodies had not yet been buried. The corpses were ghastly in their contorted and disturbed shapes.

It all came flooding back.

Was she the only one left?

Seeing a flash of red at the edge of her vision, she ran forward. Her hand rose up to her mouth and she swallowed convulsively. Oh lord, it was Harry! Poor, brave Harry James Potter. Killed by an archer with a crossbow of all things. A crossbow!

She pulled a discarded cloak over Harry's dead and staring face.

She had to say something, anything!

She opened her mouth, and at first nothing came out.

Trying again, she managed.

"We'll meet again, don't know where,
Don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again,
Some Sunny day."

She didn't know where it came from, but it was really nice, pretty, and somehow fitting.

What was that?! Was it looters? Body scavengers, there to rob or desecrate the dead?

*

He also looked out across the bloody battleground. The difference being, he remembered, and had always remembered exactly what had happened on that sunny April afternoon.

Most of the bodies had been destroyed beyond recognition.

It had been a sunny day when the armies of the Light and the Dark had faced off against each other.

Peter Pettigrew had been the first to fall. Not that great a loss. Pettigrew was an incompetent.

Years spent in the company of Potter's best friend, and he hadn't done anything.

After that, people began to drop like flies on both sides. Weasley was dead. Potter had fallen to a crossbow bolt. It was pitiful, really. Cowardly. They were wizards, not medieval Muggles!

*

The wind wafted a twist of song to him.

"We'll meet again, don't know where,
Don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again,
Some Sunny day."

Someone was alive down there! Grimly he set his jaw and began to descend the hill.

They would regret it if they did not have a good reason for being there.

*

She huddled in her cloak, trying not to scream as the footsteps crunched every so often. She'd lost her wand on the first day of the battle. This had relegated her to the Light camp.

She cried out as she was pulled up, her hood ripped off.

"Granger?" A startled voice asked.

*

He didn't know what to think, at first, when he saw the blue cloaked figure crouching among the dead.

He pulled it up and ripped off the hood.

"Granger?" He asked, surprised. Granger was still alive?

"Malfoy?" Her voice echoed his.

Draco Malfoy let go of her.

"What are you doing here?" they asked each other at the same time.

"I...." her voice gave. "I came to say goodbye to them." she said, pointing at the red covered form. "I'm leaving tomorrow. I can't take the silence." the girl's voice faded to a whisper. "We were supposed to graduate this year, Draco." she whispered brokenly. "Instead, everyone has died. There's nothing here for me, now."

"You called me Draco." he replied.

Hermione shrugged helplessly. "All those things seem so pointless now."

"Potter is dead. As is Weasley, Dumbledore, Voldemort, my father, all the other death eaters. All of those who are not dead or dying have already left." Draco's voice was toneless.

Tears spilled down Hermione's face.

"This is good." Draco said, half to himself. "That way no one will see or despise me for doing this."

Hermione found herself wrapped in a pair of warm hard arms.

"Why?" her voice was muffled, but Draco heard it all the same. "Why do you care? You fought against us, and now everyone is dead." Her voice, even muffled, still exposed the loathing she felt towards the whole affair.

Draco was silent for a long moment. "It just seems so.....pointless. Half of the reason I ever insulted you was to get under Potter and Weasley's skins. I always noticed that they always seemed so much more bothered than you did, when I called you names."

He looked out across the ruins and the bodies, the destroyed, once beautiful scenery. "After the first few years, I didn't even mean them anymore. As to holding you when we are on opposite sides..." He took a deep breath, and she felt him roll his shoulders a little.

"Voldemort is dead. He's gone for good. He turned himself into a Dragon, and someone lopped off his head before burning his body. I even think he had his essence trapped in a jar." His voice was vaguely amused at this turn of events.

"So he's dead. I never needed, nor wanted a Lord. But Father..." Briefly he looked across to the stone figure of Lucius Malfoy, standing atop a hill. He'd been killed by Neville Longbottom, turned to stone. Who would have thought it? He took a deep breath. "Father always wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and I was too young, too..... stupid to see that I shouldn't, that it was a bad idea. And then I was here." His voice turned mocking. "First Lieutenant Draco Lucius Malfoy of the Dark Army. The youngest officer and commander in the entire company." His mouth twisted. "Some of the things I saw in the fighting....were monstrous."

Draco slipped into thought, and Hermione did not ask what he had seen. She didn't want to know. Some of the casualties she had treated back in her own camp had been so terrible. One man had had his skin burnt off his face with a curse. And even after the skin and nerves underneath had been fixed, the man had just kept on screaming and screaming. She shuddered. She would never forget that man for the rest of her life.

He was jolted out of his reverie by her voice. "I have the worst nightmares." She said quietly. "I had to keep out of the battles as I lost my wand on the first day. Some of the casualties.... they haunt me for not saving them, for having to turn them away, as there was so many. So many." Her voice dropped as she turned in his arms. Her eyes were red and puffy. "I couldn't save Ginny. She came in covered in blood and concussed. I did all I could, but she never woke up. I think the dream about her is the worst."

Draco looked down at her. "Why?" He asked simply.

Hermione turned her head to look up at him. "Because they aren't bad dreams. It's just Ginny as she was before this started. Talking, laughing. Dancing at the balls. And it's just so horrible, because." She wiped her eyes that had begun to blur again. "Because, she'll never do anything like that again, and it's all my fault."

He sighed. "It's not your fault, Hermione. I doubt anyone could have saved her if she was that badly injured, and whether it was you, or someone who'd been a Mediwizard for the past ten years, no one saves every patient." He was about to add more, when movement caught on the edge of his vision. Carrion Crows. Vultures. They were coming to eat the dead. He looked back to the girl in his arms. She didn't need to see this, not in the state she was in. "We should probably go, it's getting dark, and it's dangerous here at night time." He didn't add that some of the magic had fused to create new and terrible monsters. He had the horrible suspicion that she already knew.

Hermione allowed him to pull her to her feet as he stood himself.

As they began to walk off, Hermione asked him one more question that had been bothering her. "I'm leaving tomorrow. Going somewhere new and different, to escape the memories. Do you..." She paused. "Do you want to come?"

His face was blank as he hurried them away from the broken place that it was now, a magical wasteland, making it unsafe to do the simplest of spells there, let alone fly or apparate. Nothing would ever grow here again.

He looked down at her before his words sealed his fate. "Yes."

They continued their walk without speaking until they reached the border. Then they apparated away.

And the rest, was silence.

Fini

*
Oh the tears that you weep
for the poor tortured souls
who fall at your feet
with their love begging bowls
all the clerks and the tailors
the sharks and the sailors
all good at the trades
but they'll always be failures
Alms for the poor
for the wretched disciples
and the love that they swore
with their hearts on the bible
beseeching the honour
to sit at your table
and feast on your holiness
as long as they're able
Love needs its martyrs
needs its sacrifices
they live for your beauty
and pay for their vices
love will be the death of
my lonely soul brothers
but their spirit shall live on in
the hearts of all lovers
You're holding court
with your lips and your smile
your body's a halo
their minds are on trial
sure as adam is eve
sure as jonah turned whaler
they're crooked love thieves
and you are their jailor
Love needs its martyrs
needs its sacrifices
they live for your beauty
and pay for their vices
love will be the death of
my lonely soul brothers
but their spirit shall live on in
the hearts of all lovers.

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J