Love on the Battlefield

Chapter Title: Of the Fire That Destroys Us All

Fire. Crackling fire. That is what all fires seem to be. All consuming another object, inhaling all available oxygen that it can take in. The flames leap up, assimilated into yellows, oranges, and reds and occasionally something else as it consumes its meal. It doesn´t matter what the meal is: corpses, leaves, logs, animals, or even itself at times. It doesn´t care if you want it to stop for it continues on. As long as materials are obtainable for consumption, it doesn't care.

It won´t care at all. People are like that at times. Wizards and witches know it too well. It´s the Death Eaters that are truly like fire: crackling, consuming, and constantly moving blazing from an untraceable source of hatred. They thrive on destroying others who do not know any better. When they run out of ones to destroy, they set out on destroying themselves.

Sometimes, it´s strange how something so destructive can be necessary. It's easy to forget that you have to have it for the balance. You need the fire to cook and warm the small children, like you need the Death Eaters to balance the scales of the good and the evil. Without evil, how could one judge that something was good?

Silly it seems. You need evil to balance it all out, but you do in an odd way. Someone always has to be evil, no matter if they want to or not. Different views can cause a person to be evil in another´s light.

It was fire that caused mankind to rise out of the caves and into the hut. It was also the reason why so many of mankind - and other species as well - were lost when they forgot how easy it spreads and is more then eager too.

And so it was warming two lone figures in a copse.

One of them was slouching on an ancient log that had fallen many years before, wearing a heavy black cloak with the hood bunched up, blocking its face, and was idly staring at the heart of the fire and glancing up occasionally at its partner.

The partner was smaller than the other, and was glaring at the fire with an unknown passion. It was a woman, with green eyes and long raven hair. She wasn´t pretty at the least, due to a horrific scar that marred the left side of her face, cradling it like a mother cradles her babe. It was long, originating slightly above her brow and extending shortly before her chin, and due to the structure of her face, the scar looked like a crescent moon. It wasn´t deep, but was discolored, ranging from a soft pink to a bright crimson.

An unearthly silence, fueled by hate to the highest degree, was between the two, only interrupted by the crackling of the fire that provided the light. In the distance, a lone wolf howled and they realized they did not know of the time.

One of the few perils of being in a forest - or in this case the Forbidden Forest which one would do well to remember the nature of its name - was that it didn't matter what the time may be; for the Forbidden Forest was always dark once you delved into its heart. They were in the middle where it had the darkness of the midnight hour.

It could have been the middle of the day and they would know no difference. Neither would the magical beats that made their home in the forest. They had no form of telling the time, for unlike their Muggle counterparts, for their watches relied upon them knowing the general time. Watches also depended upon their ability to access a magic field that could only be found when there wasn´t any other sort of field to interrupt it, and there was already a field in the forest to stop students from entering it.

Eventually, the silence was broken by one of the members. "How do you know my name?" she inquired as she looked up at the person sitting opposite her, only the fire and the darkness separating them.

"The world is smaller then you want it to be, Artemis," her un-welcomed companion said, stressing her name at the end. "You´ll find out when you need too."

"You bloody bastard," she hissed.

The figure seemed to be highly amused by her remark. "If you would think for maybe five seconds, you would realize what exactly has happened."

"And what exactly has?" she snapped, her brain racing as she started to list all of those who had a voice and sense of sardonic humor like that. Unfortunately, that didn´t narrow it down to all that much.

Her entire year of her House, Slytherin, was left in her mind. Most of them were Death Eaters, or rumored to be involved with the Dark Lord at least one way or another.

"Think about it, Art," the person coolly replied, tilting its head to the side, still concealed by the hood of the heavy cloak. "Besides, you should be grateful that I found you and not another. You´d already be dead if that were the case."

Artemis also tilted her head to the side, and a flame sputtered up, exposing the end of a very prominent nose. A wicked grin appeared on her face, "Well, isn´t if it the Potions Master."

"Most likely. And now why don´t you think of what just happened a matter of hours ago?"

"You were a greedy arsehole that can´t get any woman to willingly come near you other than the times that you just grab them and carry them off through a forbidden forest?"

Snape pulled back his hood and looked at her, one eyebrow cocked, his lips harshly pressed together.

"No, look at all of the recent happenings."

"Why don´t you enlighten me for since the last time I heard news, it was me giving it to the bloody Ministry."

"Are you that thick, Sinistra?" Snape snapped, his patience growing thin. "You were told to tell the Ministry that horrific lie, and then walk in the forest - "

" - Where I would then meet somebody to escort me back to the castle," Artemis finished, becoming how aware she was acting thickly, too much like a Gryffindor for her preferences. "Well, then who was that one that I saw before you grabbed me?"

"I killed him," Snape said, looking at the fire, causing half of his face to be aglow and the rest to be sunken in the shadows. "I had to kill one of my own pupils. Remember Potter´s year?" he said, obviously remembering the student in question with nostalgia.

"That year is impossible to forget."

"Well, it was Terry bloody Boot. One of the best Potion students that had come out of the Ravenclaw house in decades. And what did he do? He threw all of that away to be a Death Eater."

"That sounds very familiar," Artemis put in, interrupting his train of thought. She looked at him, and part of her felt sympathy for the wizard that sat before her. Losing a prized pupil was one thing - having to kill that pupil was an entirely different one.

"Why... Why was he here?" Artemis inquired, trying to accept that a boy - no, a full-grown man - whom she had taught for seven years, had been killed slightly before she arrived.

"Well, I had to inform Voldemort," Artemis flinched at his name, "something to explain why I was leaving. I said I was going to meet up a traveler that knew of some people who had some Dark Arts artefacts. Then Boot decided to volunteer himself to guard my back in case the person was rather fishy.

"I couldn´t argue with him. It would only rouse up suspicion, and I have enough of that already going on debating over my current status. So, we apparated - I told him to trust me as I didn´t want him to splinch himself, again - and then when we didn´t see anyone for a good hour or so, he decided that he was going to off me. To make his story believable he would claim that the bloke I was meeting did it and he barely made it out.

"Oh, he would have made a wonderful Slytherin. If only he weren't so stuck in those books, but yes. It was either him, or me and it just had to be him. Who knows what would have happened to you if I had lost."

"Is that a notion that you actually care for my well-being?"

Snape smirked, "Are you mad? You´re annoying and have your head stuck up in the clouds all the time. No, if you did disappear, Trelawney would have your spot as well as her current position, and I am not having her as my second head."

"Aw, you´re no fun at all," Artemis joked half-heartedly. "But I know my Slytherins would miss me to no end. And to think, Trelawney as your second head when she was in Hufflepuff."

"Maybe I could arrange for Hooch to take that spot, if the situation becomes that bad."

Artemis glared at him, a bit taken aback at his levity.

"Well, why haven´t we returned," she asked, trying to steer clear of topics that involved her death.

"Simple reason. I haven´t made plans regarding how to take Boot´s body back."

"Tell the story that he would have told."

Snape looked at her, and raised an eyebrow. "Do you think He would buy that story for one second? He probably wouldn´t have bought it from Boot. Unlike some people, I actually know how He acts, and the nature of His plans. He is a very intelligent man, Sinistra. He´s Albus´ equal on many levels, and there are some that Albus falls horribly short to him.

"Knowing the nature of His followers is one of those things," he finished with a sober note.

Some things never seem as if they can only rub you other than one way: wrong.

Hermione and Ron had arrived to see mass chaos and not a speck of order for miles around.

The instant setting was something out of a graphic muggle horror movie - which was considered "the norm" for many ever since He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named returned to power with the aid of Harry Potter, involuntarily. Not many believed that Harry was used to help bring back the feared Dark Lord, but there were enough people that gave him unspoken fear and many privately thought that he should be locked up - or even put to death - for bringing back such a monster.

It was northern Scotland, but it appeared that it only deserved to exist in the nightmares of all. The normally green grass was trampled down on the earth and dirt was clumped together in small heaps where a person running across the slick grass kicked it up. Trees were being pushed down, in attempts of to secure the area and the sky seemed darker than the night.

Groups of wizards and witches were hurrying close together, only having a couple of torches and their wand light as their guide, as it appeared the stars were not going to shine that night.

Ron and Hermione, who now called each other `Weasley´ and `Granger´ for the moment, quickly walked over to Mad-Eye Moody, pushing aside those who were in plain Auror robes.

Moody gave them what could be considered a grin if his eyes didn´t appear to be constantly narrowed and glaring at the ones on his staff, a small group of wizards and witches that looked worse for the wear at the moment and were quietly conversing among themselves.

"What do you have so far?" Ron inquired from Moody, easily steering the older wizard away from the rest of the moving mass of wizards and witches. Hermione was on the other side of Moody, glancing over her shoulder to check the situation behind them every so often.

Age had not been kind to Moody; in fact it had been downright cruel to the powerful wizard. He didn´t look like a cheery old man, he looked like a young man trapped inside a vessel that was beneath his abilities and had to constantly limit himself. His forehead was full of wrinkles that were constantly shifting as he talked or made a movement.

"Not much, Weasley," he grunted, his magical eye swiveling around incessantly, "hardly anything if you want the dirt truth." He glanced over at Hermione, who was at the moment glaring at a huddle of wizards who were looking over at them.

"Was it . . . Him?"

Moody looked over at Hermione, his eyes instinctually narrowed, giving away what happened. She had heard countless of stories from older Aurors that worked with Moody in the first war and knew his body language and passed it down to the trainees, to warn them of when he was in a bad or dangerous mood.

"We don´t know for certain, but I´d bet my magical eye on it."

Hermione nodded soberly and glanced over at Ron who looked as if he had just eaten his shoe. She bit her lower lip, a habit that she admitted was horrible and was as much of a trademark as her bushy hair in the ponytail was.

"Go back to your team, Moody," Ron said taking a few strides and looking around. The night air was thick and had moisture in it; it would rain by morning. Hermione looked at him, and offered him a comforting smile. She walked up by him and patted his arm.

"C´mon, you don´t have to go in if you don´t want too. I can borrow someone -"

"No, I´m coming. You always said that you could only conquer your fears by facing them, and it´s time for me to face mine." Ron said, biting down hard after he finished.

"Well, let´s go," she said in a quiet voice, one she hardly ever used now. She and Ron were held as the two most trusted people, in Harry's eyes, had on Harry's team and they were constantly giving orders: yelling and screaming were commonplace, but whispering things that carried emotional baggage was extremely rare.

Ron turned and glanced at the fortress called Azkaban, the place, which all wizards feared, and the prisoners would lose their sanity within weeks. Dementors were not caring creatures, robbing them from their past, and some would argue their soul.

The fortress was everything that was described in horror stories where the villain would live and make a plot that would endanger everyone. It was tall, intimidating and was built out of ancient stone that you never could find any more. Part of the towers were crumbling and the walls surrounding it had holes where the Earth had shifted or someone had blasted the hole with their wand on a dare, or it was what had caused this state of alarm.

This place had torn apart families, lovers, mothers and fathers, brother and sisters, and friends. They were thrown together, with no thought about their concerns or what to do with the other prisoners that were already held hostage by their own memories and deeds. It wouldn´t matter anyway, since they would soon become lost in their own mind just like the older ones.

However, there were always a few that took long to break, or somehow kept a thread of their sanity. No matter, they died like all humans did - only they had no one to grieve over their corpse as it was laid down into the earth where it would become what it once was, and they had the Dementors to watch their body being lowered down into it. They, the Dementors, did not care, for they would get another human to replace the one that had passed on. That was the way of life they all knew and would repeat until the end of time, as they understood it.

Ron shuddered at the thought of this . . . He looked to the side, to where trees were falling down. Nothing like this had ever happened before, save the escape of Sirius Black but this was worse than that, far worse because it was a veritable threat.

"We should start searching," Hermione said interrupting his thoughts.

Silently, they walked back to the fortress of Azkaban to inspect the damages caused by the one thing that they all dreaded: the escape of all of the prisoners and Dementors of Azkaban.

Hours later, Ron and Hermione arrived at the Ministry. Both were yawning and covered in mud, and in Ron´s case blood. He had slipped in a cell and his robe caught the blood of an inmate who had clawed himself in personal agony.

Hermione´s hair was in disarray, and Ron´s was rumpled. They looked as if they just rolled out of bed instead of spending the entire night up at Azkaban.

They wordlessly passed through several corridors and went into another room that was dark. They fumbled around, bumping into chairs and tables for a couple of moments until they reached the fireplace, which looked as if it hadn´t been used in years.

Ron grabbed a yellow drawstring pouch out from his robes and took out a pinch of green powder and offering it to Hermione, who did the same.

"Incendio," Ron muttered, pointing his wand at the fireplace where brilliant flames instantly jumped up from the hearth.

Hermione winced at the sudden change in environment. She didn´t like that wizards and witches - she even - had the power to change almost anything that they wished with a flick of a wand and a phrase. It bothered her since the beginning of her life as a witch and would most likely continue to do so.

Ron threw the powder into the fireplace and muttered, "Green light," and then jumped into the flames, disappearing instantly.

Hermione looked over her shoulder, the hairs of her back erect with alarm. She paused for a moment, her ears attentively straining to hear something that could be the cause of her paranoia.

She heard nothing and didn´t see anything move - although she never did have good eyesight in dark places - move so she turned back to the fireplace that the fire was roaring as if it had been blazing for hours and never planned to stop.

She threw in her floo powder and then heard a chair being pulled out in the room. She gave the room a sinister grin before panic flooded her and she hissed, "Green light!" prior to running into the fire and disappearing.

Harry was sitting in his usual chair, staring across the coffee table at the couch that contained Ron and Hermione. A foul taste was in his mouth, one that he hadn´t had in his mouth for years. Not since . . . He shook his head and tried to force himself to listen to Ron who was rattling on about something.

Ever since he had had that dream and then read . . . but was the dream a hint? He was considered this. How many times do people dream of their ex-girlfriend-turned-Death-Eater landing in their kitchen and then learn that she´s disappeared?

". . . Anyway, all of the prisoners were found huddling behind the fortress and the Dementors were long gone. They´re all in St. Mungo´s except for Ginny." He spat out her name as if it were fatal poison.

Hermione was silently leaning back on the couch, looking at Ron and taking in all of the information he was babbling about, when and a small grin appeared on her face.

". . . Is anybody listening to me?!" Ron cried out, realizing that he had been talking for well over ten minutes without anybody listening except for himself. He silently fumed as he looked over to Harry, who looked as if he was trying to solve the mystery of the universe, and Hermione was pondering the ceiling of Harry´s flat, smiling distantly.

Harry straightened up in his chair and looked over at Ron, "Well, we do know one thing about her -"

"Two things actually," Hermione interrupted, as she snapped her head over to Harry.

Harry nodded, "Two things. She´ll be looking for Voldemort," even now Hermione and Ron still flinched slightly, "if he wasn´t the one who caused her disappearance, and . . . well, me."

"Do we set up a trap? Wait for him to make the first move? Have you go flouncing around London with a big bulls eye on your arse?"

Ron and Harry gave small chortles at Hermione´s vein attempt at to lighten the current situation. If there was one thing that Hermione was far from perfect at, it was trying to tell a joke - but she had improved.

"I don´t know," Harry said weakly, his tone uncertain and sounding as if it belonged to a lost child.

Ron gave Hermione and uneasy glance an shrugged. His eyes were pleading and she shook her head and stared at the coffee table, tracing the markings of the wood with her eyes. Up and down the table, the same paths always having the same ending and nothing ever came up that wasn´t already there.

"Harry," Hermione slowly said after a couple of tense moments, "should we join -"

"No, don´t even suggest it, Hermione. They threw us out and we are not going back. Ever." Harry´s words had a bitterness and his tone was hard, unlike the one that he had used moments before.

Ron sighed and Hermione got up and walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She looked at her reflection in a small pool of water that was on the table.

Hermione quickly got up and went over into the kitchen, and looked in the cupboards until she found a tall glass and set it down on the counter. She paused for a few minutes, listening to the idle chatter of her two best friends in the room a few feet away.

She shook her head and took out a tall phial out of a pocket of her cloak and stared at it and then tilted it to the side and watched the thick red liquid shift as the phial changed. She quickly set it on the counter and filled up her glass with some water.

Hermione braced herself as she took the contents of the phial in one long gulp and then drank the water after it. She let out her breath and pocketed the now empty phial in the same pocket that she removed it from.

Her eyes fluttered over to the clock and she made a mental note of the time before she washed the glass that she used with magic and set it back in the cupboard.

Hermione straightened out her cloak, although it wasn´t hanging wrongly in the first place, and re-joined Harry and Ron in the other room.

Sirius exited Hogwarts with a heavy heart. His meeting with Minerva had not gone the way that he had hoped it would. He hated that she wouldn´t listen to him. He was being torn in two, one telling him to join Remus and all of those who he had known before his imprisonment and the other saying that he needed to protect Harry all that he could.

He swung over on his motorcycle, bringing the engine to life and quickly leaving the castle in the dust. No matter what it was, it always seemed less of a problem when he rode his bike, letting the wind tangle and run its fingers through his long hair.

He was at Hogsmeade in a couple of minutes and took the path that traversed it, hoping to pass as an unruly teenager instead of the madman Sirius Black to the residents of Hogsmeade. Luck was on his side, as no one paid him too much attention and he was soon leaving Hogsmeade in the dust as well.

Only a couple more miles until he would arrive at the place that he would reside until they could think of a better plan. Only a few more miles, and yet it felt as if he was traveling to the other side of the globe, leaving everything that he cared about behind.

Through the mists of the crystal ball, Sibyl Trelawney gazed and found several different people that she had been searching for. She would have patted herself on the back, but that would have caused her to break the link that she had with her crystal ball. She was especially cautious because re-establishing the link she now had could prove to be impossible, forcing her to lose access to images that she had only a moment before.

She made out the form of Rudra Sprout, sitting in a greenhouse taking notes about a plant. She forced herself to sharpen the image and to hear the sounds, as if she really were there.

A large snowy owl tapped on the door to the greenhouse and Rudra set aside her notes to let in the bird. It perched on her shoulder and she awkwardly untied the piece of parchment that was attached to its leg.

She quickly skimmed through it, and Sibyl thought that it gave the older woman a look of alarm as she quickly pulled out a piece of bread from a nearby sack and scribbled a reply on the back of the parchment, giving it to the owl.

The picture wavered and Sibyl gave a cry of alarm as she lost the image completely, and she was left alone in her dismal tower. She gave a heavy sigh, disappointed that she couldn´t hold the image any longer. She didn´t have enough energy to check up on the last person on her list, which meant she would have to do that tomorrow, when she had rested and more had energy to spare.

She could only hope that he would spare her, unlike the fire that had already consumed her.