Here Comes the Flood

Chapter 1

The storm that crashed and roared outside the small window in the hidden room seemed to have been raging for years. To the group of witches and wizards huddled in the darkness of the decrepit, dank space, this thought was quite fitting. It was a harsh truth that they had all come to accept over time: the wizarding world had been ominous and hauntingly dark for over a year now.

A young witch with a thick mane of bushy hair crouched in the corner next to a lumpy cot, staring out the window at the angry sky. As expected, the Dark Mark blazed green over the darkened clouds, flickering brightly for an instant in the glow of a flash of lightning. Closing her eyes, Hermione Granger turned away from the window, wishing, as she had countless times before, that the mark would miraculously disappear. Over time she had come to realize that such thoughts would only bring false hope.

A curled body on the cot lurched suddenly, startled awake by a vivid nightmare. Hermione pushed a lock of unruly raven hair off the young man's forehead, exposing a lightning bolt scar, and shushed his murmurs with a whisper that went unheard by the others beneath a crash of thunder.

"Is he awake, dear?" a voice called from across the room, and all eyes swerved over to stare at the young man as he pressed his eyes closed in obvious pain (and in what Hermione suspected was an attempt to pretend he was, in fact, still sleeping).

Hermione nodded, moving aside as Molly Weasley carried over a washcloth and a bucket of cold water to dab the young man's face.

"Does he look any better, Mum?" came a soft voice from somewhere in the huddle of wizards. Ron Weasley stood up from his seat on the floor, abandoning the game of wizard chess he had been playing with his younger sister, Ginny. A look of hopeful concern was etched in his tired features. He looked at least five years older than his youthful eighteen.

"I'm alright, Ron," Harry Potter replied for Mrs. Weasley, pushing himself up on one of his elbows to properly see his friend.

"Lie down mate, you'll use up all your energy if you keep that up," Ron scolded in a voice that was much more mature than it had been only a year before.

Ron sat down on the edge of the bed, watching his friend with concern. Harry was a wreck, his body weak from fighting the never-ending war that seemed to be his life.

"Has there been any news? Anything new?" The Boy Who Lived questioned, lying back on the cot and pressing a hand distractedly to his forehead to quell what had become a constant pain.

"Nothing. They still haven't heard from Charlie. They're starting to think that maybe..." Ron trailed off, looking away. He was not ready to believe the Order's suspicions. He refused to lose another family member to Lord Voldemort.

"He's not, Ron. He would fight back; he would find a way to escape."

"You can't fight the Killing Curse," Ron muttered, before realizing just to whom he was talking. "I mean, I meant, you know, a normal wizard..." Ron trailed off again, though the sheepish tone that would have normally accompanied a statement such as this had been replaced with a deep sadness, and Harry's lips curled into the slightest smile of understanding.

"Right," Harry replied, painfully aware, as always, of just who he was and what he had somehow managed to do.

Harry slipped in and out of a restless sleep for the rest of the night as the others took turns looking after him. He dreamed of snakes and blood and of a green mark hovering constantly in the sky. Just as the sky was getting lighter, (yet the rain kept coming), he dreamed of Lily and James, of Neville Longbottom and Bill Weasley, of Sirius and Dumbledore, and of the rest of those who had been lost in the fight. He woke with a start, and Hermione lay down next to him, stroking his cheek and whispering softly until his heartbeat calmed and his breathing slowed.

Sometimes he didn't dream at all. He slept for many long hours, peacefully, but woke up feeling guilty that he was alive and they weren't--that he had failed in avenging their deaths.

During his waking hours he would lie in bed, rehashing the past. He knew they would never admit it, but he swore that the others blamed him for all that had happened, and for the lives that had been lost because he hadn't been good enough, strong enough, brave enough. To them, he thought, he was no longer The Boy Who Lived, but was now The Boy Who Couldn't Kill Him, or, when he was in a particularly tragic mood, The Boy Who Couldn't Save Us. On these days he couldn't look at them, and turned his eyes determinedly to the window, wishing they would stop taking care of him and coddling him and pitying him as though he was worthy of their worry and attention.

He was wrong in thinking these things, of course. Hermione and Ron still held him dearest in their hearts. The Weasleys still regarded him as a member of their family (perhaps even more so now, considering their loses), and Remus Lupin, the last of the Marauders, loved him as his own son. They knew Harry had tried his best and had fought with everything he had. They knew more than anyone that they couldn't blame Harry for what had happened any more than they could blame themselves.

But these thoughts and misunderstandings went unspoken and unexplained as the days wore on, and the group huddled in the darkness and despair of the hidden room continued to lose hope that the world they remembered would ever return. The Dark Lord had conquered with an army so unrelenting and fierce and was so insufficiently rivaled by the few remaining witches and wizards who stood by what was right and good.

Dumbledore's Army, they had once been called. That had been the beginning, a time that was now a memory so dim that those who remained wondered whether it had actually been real. It had been a time before the real war had begun, before their leader himself had been slain by Voldemort, before they had begun to lose more than they won.

In the corner of the hidden room, curled against the cold, and maybe even more so against his own thoughts, Harry Potter awoke with a start for what could have been the millionth time. And suddenly, the startling images of a dream fresh beneath his eyelids, he knew. He knew what was coming, what the Dark Lord was waiting for, and what would end the war once and for all. And as the thunder crashed outside, The Boy Who Lived closed his eyes, giving in to the inevitable. All he could do now was wait.