Jaded

JADED

It is truly peculiar how history has a way of repeating itself. Call it fate, destiny, luck, whatever you will. But one fact remains the same - life is ironic.

Rodolphus Lestrange drew back the curtains, peered into the darkness and swore. Closing them again with a flick of his wrist, he shouted to his wife.

"Bella, take Tom and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off - "
She ran into the room and looked out the window herself. She then turned to her husband, a look of stubborn resolve on her face.

"No, I'm staying with you. It's me he wants anyway. It should be you going."

He gave a fleeting look towards the window, turned back to his wife and, looking her straight in the eye, he slapped her forcefully across the face with his free hand.

"Do not tell me that I have done nothing. I am proud of every single action I have taken in my life. For that, he wants me too - I can tell. We've both done too much for him not to want either of us."

She wiped the tears off her face, wincing when she touched the part of her cheek where his hand had made contact. "You're no good to me dead."

He only laughed. "I am. If I die here, you'll have enough time to be long gone. On the contrary, you're no good to me dead, and you're no good to Tom dead. You heard me. Now go."

"Rodolphus - "

"Shut up."

The sound of footsteps coming ever closer caused Rodolphus to turn his head towards the door. With a determined look on his face, he leant forward towards Bellatrix and kissed her, long and hard. When he spoke, it was in tones so low and harsh that she had no choice but to obey.

"Now get out."

"Please...." But her last plea fell on deaf ears. He had already turned his back on her, and she had run out of arguments.

Just as the door Bella had left through slammed shut, the front door burst open and a dark figure crossed the threshold.

"Lestrange."

Rodolphus knew who it was, and the sound of his voice made his blood run cold.

"Potter."

War and its consequences had not looked kindly on Harry Potter. He was no longer the Boy who Lived - Harry had merely survived. His happiness had died with Cedric Diggory and his youth with Sirius Black, while all the compassion he had ever shown had gone to the grave with Neville Longbottom.

His honour had dissolved as he watched Ron Weasley fall to the floor.

With his best friend's death, the world had been left with a Harry Potter full of vengeance, a young man who was so much like the hated Death Eaters except that he fought for the other side. For the duration of the war, he had been celebrated as a hero. He was strong, yes; powerful, undoubtedly; but his eyes looked strangely dead and he was as merciless as any of the Dark.

And now the war was over. But nobody knew what to do with Harry Potter. No one could stop his violent actions, because during the war it had been necessary and nobody wished to appear a hypocrite. After all, it was thanks to his brutality that Voldemort was dead.

So vengeance was his. Among those who had fallen victim to the Boy who Lived were Peter Pettigrew, Severus Snape and Lucius Malfoy - those responsible for three of the deaths that had changed his life so much. And maybe Harry Potter could have been content...

but Bellatrix Lestrange was still at large.

Harry looked around the room, and spotting the door, made his way towards it. But Rodolphus stepped in front of him.

"Get out of my house, Potter."

"No, you get out of my way. I have no business with you."

"I know what you want. She's my wife, her business is my business, therefore you have business with me."

"I'm going through that door, Lestrange, and it would be... inadvisable to get in my way."

"You don't scare me, Potter."

"And you don't scare me. I killed your master and I can kill you."

Rodolphus raised his wand, but Harry was quicker. Stepping in towards him, Harry reached into his robes and thrust a dagger between his ribs.

Lestrange stared down at the knife handle protruding from his chest. The highest insult that could be paid to a Death Eater was to be killed by a muggle instrument, and Harry knew it. In the second it took him to fall to the floor, Rodolphus Lestrange realised how dangerous Potter really was. He hoped his wife was far away.

Smiling grimly at the look of surprise on his adversary's face, Harry stepped over his body and walked through the door.

Bellatrix ran through the dark and empty house as fast as she could. She heard noises coming from the kitchen, and the final ominous thud chilled her to the bone. Not looking back for a second, she continued to sprint down the hallway with hot tears running down her cheeks. Finally reaching the door she was looking for and knowing she was cornered, Bellatrix gave up hope for herself and planted herself firmly in front of it. She wiped the tears from her eyes, arranged her face into a well-practiced look of disdain and waited for Harry, twirling her wand between her fingers.

Rounding a corner, Harry suddenly found himself face to face with Bellatrix Lestrange. Seeing her again, he was reminded vividly of the night Sirius had died. He raised his wand threateningly, but to his irritation she just smiled.

"Little baby Harry Potter," she said, in the mock baby voice she had used the last time he saw her. "I was wondering when I'd see you again."

"I've been looking for you, Bellatrix Lestrange. I've been looking for you for three years."

"Well congratulations. You seem to have found me."

A harsh laugh escaped his lips, and for the first time Harry saw her mask of nonchalance crack if only just for a second. He leaned in closer to her, sensing weakness.

"I had the misfortune of meeting you three years ago. And since then, believe me, I've thought about that night a lot. Do you remember it? You told me that I had to really mean an Unforgivable. Righteous anger wasn't going to hurt you for long, oh no, but you said I need to really want to cause pain, to enjoy it. Well now, I do." With a yell and a scream, Bella Lestrange was writhing on the floor. And indeed, there was a look of grim satisfaction on Harry's face. He twitched his wand, and she lay panting at his feet.

"You killed Sirius." He said, scathingly.

"I know." She started to get up. "Still grieving over that, are we? It's unwise to keep emotion bottled up like that, boy."

"That's the whole point. I'm not. And I wouldn't have had to if only I found you earlier." He raised his shaking hand and pointed his wand straight at her. "Say hi to Sirius for me. I'm sure he'll be delighted to see you. "

"Wait!" she screamed, grabbing his ankles. In his surprise, Harry jumped back and was able to see her face. Any pretence of indifference had now dissolved, and what he saw was hardly any better. On her face was a look of hatred and love mixed together that made her once beautiful face quite ugly. "Do whatever you want, but get out of my house and don't go through that door. Don't kill him, not Tom! Please - I'll do anything -"
Harry looked down on her with contempt. Pity was no longer a part of his vocabulary - the word had lost meaning for him a long time ago.

"You never gave Sirius a chance to beg for his life. You never gave me a chance to beg for his life. Why should I give you that luxury?"

He saw her struggling to reach for her wand, but once again Harry was quicker. With a flash of green light she lay still, and Harry nearly laughed to see that she actually died with a look of hatred on her face. He walked towards the door she had been guarding, opened it, and blinked.

To Harry's surprise, the room was not dark and dank like the rest of the house, but a powder blue colour with a neatly stencilled sailboat border running around the top and bottom of all four walls. At the opposite wall of the room stood a crib. It puzzled Harry until he realised that something within it was crying.

"They have a baby...."

He walked closer and leaned in over, staring at the baby in disbelief. Watching its little face screw up and slowly grow redder, he couldn't do anything but laugh.

"So you're what Voldemort's right hand lady gave her life for. Tell me, kid, do you think it was worth it? Because let me tell you now - it wasn't." He slowly reached into his robes, pulled out his wand and stuck it through the bars. "It's a pity, you know. If you were anyone else's son I wouldn't have looked at you twice."

He stopped, and smiled to himself as he heard the door open.

"Hermione," he said, without surprise, "I thought you would follow me."

"Harry," she said with a sob in her voice, "what have you done?"

Ever since the night Ron Weasley had died, Hermione Granger had suffered in silence. Harry had shut himself off from the world, and while they remained close, he had no words of comfort or concern to spare for her - instead, he was expecting Hermione to do all the comforting. Hermione knew Harry was under the impression that he was the only one affected by Ron's death and Snape's betrayal, but she couldn't understand why. There was no more Weasley family to grieve for him, and while Harry realised this he seemed to forget that Hermione was still very much alive, and was also in deep distress. So when Harry succeeded in killing Severus Snape, she was not so much angry that he had done it, but angry that he had done it without her. He had only been friends with Ron for a few months more than Hermione, yet he seemed to have forgotten that she had been friends with either of them at all.

For two years, Hermione had watched with growing alarm as Harry began and continued on his bloody campaign. She had tried to be his guardian, his conscience, but with each unjustified murder Harry became harder and harder to look after. She watched as the young man she had known and loved turn into a hard and bitter stranger, and yet she had tried to stay as close to him as possible.

The night he killed Voldemort, she was once again watching - this time from the strong grip of a Death Eater nearby. Hermione, who had never suffered the indignity of being victim to one of the Unforgivables, watched Harry get hit again and again, writhing on the ground and being made to do unspeakable things. He was weak by that time - Voldemort had had him in his grip for two weeks - and was no longer able to resist even the most simple of spells. Both his lack of strength and his wand were no match for the Dark Lord at the height of his power.

But Hermione had come to give him both strength and a wand, and so when Harry came close to her she slipped what she had brought with her in his hand. That was how the legend would be remembered forever - Harry Potter killed the Dark Lord with his best friend's wand.

But where was Hermione's place in the tale? Nowhere. And while this had not bothered her so much, what did bother her was when Harry opened his eyes in Hogwarts's hospital wing after a week of anxious waiting and hoping, they were still filled with the same hatred that Hermione had seen in them for the last two years. She had thought the end of the war would have changed that.

She still felt responsible for him, though. So wherever Harry left his mark, Hermione was there to pick up the pieces.

And there were pieces to pick up tonight. While Harry was really only looking for Bellatrix, Hermione knew that the rest of her family was in danger. She had no care for Rodolphus, but she was aware that they had a one-year-old son.

She knew this would come as a surprise to Harry. She also knew that surprises were one thing he didn't like.

Hermione moved cautiously towards Harry, biting her lip when she realised that his wand was in the crib.

"Harry?"

He held a finger to his lips. "Shhh - listen."

Hermione heard a baby crying, and unaware that she had been holding her breath, she let out a rush of air in relief that the boy was alive. She knew, though, that to keep it that way she would have to tread very carefully. She moved closer towards Harry, and in response he turned around. On his face was a look of savage hunger that she had seen before, during the times that he had hunted down and eventually murdered the Death Eaters that had killed those he loved. He held his finger to his lips again and started to advance towards the crib. Turning to Hermione, the gleeful intonation of his voice made her feel sick in her stomach.

"They have a son!"

Hermione swallowed hard. "I know."

"Well, what are we going to do about it?"

"What?"

"Are we going to do something about it?"

"I don't know about you, Harry, but I want to try and stop him crying."

He smiled and looked down at his wand. "There's an easy way to do that, you know."

She looked at him in horror. "You know that's not what I meant."

"You always were the soft one."

She tried to stop herself shaking. "Please Harry, leave him alone, just let me take him. You can't do this."

He turned to face her, furious. "I can't? I can't? Are you doubting me, Hermione? Because I nearly did, and I would have if you hadn't interrupted me!"

"But why, Harry?"

He laughed. "You need an explanation? He's their son, Hermione! Do we really need another like them in the world?"

"You don't know what he's going to grow up to be!"

"Yes, I do, Hermione. Do you know what they named him? Tom. Tom! I know exactly what he's going to grow up to be - evil, and arrogant, and twisted. He's going to be the next Rodolphus Lestrange, or worse, the next - the next -" his voice trailed off, but he didn't need to finish the sentence.

"You don't know, Harry. He could grow up to be the next Sirius Black."

But this appeared to be the wrong thing to say, because he rounded on her. "Don't bring Sirius into this!"

"You brought Sirius into this, Harry - why else is Bellatrix Lestrange lying dead outside this door?"

"Don't talk about what you don't understand."

"I don't understand? I understand more than you think. She killed Sirius, so you killed her!"

"You don't know anything about this. About how I feel, why I do what I do. You haven't ever been through the things I have, you've never seen half the things I have, what would you know? You don't know anything, Hermione, anything!"

"Oh, Harry, you'd be surprised."

This was the last response he had expected her to give. He had thought that she would just start sobbing, or try to placate him, not relate to him.

"You think I didn't care when Sirius died? You think I didn't care when I saw the Dark Mark over the Burrow, when the three of us ran in and found what we found? You think I didn't care when I saw Neville pull off the most spectacular duel of his life, only to be outwitted in the last moment by scum like Malfoy? You think I didn't care when I saw Snape start firing at the wrong people, saw the jets of green light hitting the wrong people, hit - hit - " she gave a great shuddering gasp, "hit Ron?"

She took a step in closer to Harry, dropping her voice to a whisper.

"You think I didn't care, when I saw you hit the stone floor at his feet again and again and - "

"Shut up."

But she didn't. "When I watched, Harry, as slowly you lost out - "

"Shut up"

"You think I didn't care Harry? Why else do you think I risked life and limb to get inside that lair of his, to get Ron's wand to you, why do you think I stood there and watched you - "

"SHUT UP!"

His words echoed around the room, and this time Hermione fell silent. They glared at each other for a moment, but then with a sneer on his face that reflected some of the people Hermione hated the most, he turned his attention back to the crib.

"You know Hermione, extremely touching as that was, you still haven't convinced me about this kid."

She was angry now, shaking from the emotions she had just expressed and the fact that he was not acknowledging them.

"Fine then, Harry, maybe this will convince you. Look at him. Think where his parents are. Think where you are. And tell me, can you honestly say you can't see something else? Can't you just see it Harry, eighteen years ago in Godric's Hollow...."
She could see she had gotten his attention. He was standing absolutely rigid, rooted to the spot. "Don't go there Hermione."

"Isn't it the same, Harry? You know it, it's exactly the same. Can't you see your dad trying to stop him killing you and your mother, can't you see your mother doing the same - "

"Don't you dare compare my parents to scum like that!"

"Can't you see him, walking through the nursery door, pulling out his wand... can't you see a jet of green light rebounding straight back? You of all people should know, Harry! He has his mother's protection!"

"As do I."

"It won't save you, Harry!"

"It already has."

"Harry, please... don't you see what this is? Can't you see it? This is fate, Harry. You can't make the choices he did...."

"It's a bit late for that, don't you think?" And with that, he raised his wand and pointed it at the crib.

"No, Harry!" she screamed. "You have to better that he was! Show me that you are!"
They were both breathing rather heavily now, and Harry's question took Hermione by surprise.

"How can I be sure that I am?"

"You are what?"

"Better that he was? Look at what I've done, even just in this house. Anger, hate, revenge, this would just seal it, wouldn't it?"

"Harry, what are you talking about? Your name is Harry Potter, not Tom Riddle, and you have a power he did not, remember? You choose now Harry, it's your choice. Will you use that power, or not? You are not Lord Voldemort, Harry. But it's your decision whether you become him or not. What will it be?"

He hesitated, but kept his wand trained on the baby.

"Please, Harry. I know you remember. Can't you remember what it was to care for someone, what it was to feel something other than pain and hate and anger? Think of Sirius. You loved him, didn't you? What about Ginny, Fred, George? Ron, Harry, you have to remember what you felt for Ron!"

"Felt, Hermione, not feel."

"Fine then. It was in the past. But what about me, Harry? I'm still here, I'm still alive."

His silence broke her heart.

She turned away from him, her eyes bright with tears waiting to be shed.

"Do what you will then. But just remember - the past is the past, what's done is done. It can be forgiven and forgotten, it already has been. But this - if you do this Harry, you will never be forgiven, no one will ever forget. And you won't be around to make it right."

"What would you have me do?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Turn away Harry, and walk out the door. You know I'll make it right, you know I always have." She leant in and whispered straight in his ear, leaving her tears on his cheek.

"You're not like him Harry. Please, I believe in you even if you don't."

"Why, Hermione?"

"Because you've all I have left - I have nothing else to hope for. Please don't prove me wrong."

He stood there, still staring at the crib, while Hermione silently prayed to whatever gods were out there that he would just turn around and leave.

But he didn't.

"Do you know what hope is, Hermione? It was someone's attempt at making denial sound positive. Hope is humanity's last resort when all they want to do is ignore the facts."

Hermione couldn't believe her ears. He had just belittled everything she was hanging on to, and he knew it.

"Harry, when did you become such a twisted little... you sound like Malfoy!"

"Malfoy? So you're comparing me to Malfoy and Voldemort, my parents to the Lestranges - what are you going to call me next, Hermione? Snape?"

"How far are you prepared to go, Harry? Because who knows, I just might."

In response, he thrust his wand further into the crib, and laughed.

"What did you say earlier, Hermione? You believe in me? Belief's for deities, and trust me, I'm no god. And I don't want your hope, Granger. Ron hoped and dreamed more things for me than you ever could and look how far it got him."

"You bastard Harry! You're worse than I thought...."

"Watch me." And looking her straight in the eye, he did what she had been dreading. "Avada Kedava!"

Hermione watched in horror as the jet of green light engulfed the baby boy - a sight she had seen so many times but knew she would never get used to.

But unlike all the times before, he didn't stop crying, and he didn't lie still. Instead, mirroring what Hermione could only assume happened in Godric's Hollow 17 years earlier, the spell refocussed and rebounded - straight back to Harry.

Hermione did the only thing she could, and screamed. "Harry!"

Running forward, she knocked him over onto the ground. Feeling her hair singe as the spell brushed past her head, she winced as she heard it blow a hole through the roof.

She lay there with her eyes closed, getting over the shock. Opening them again, she stood up and hit him as hard as she could.

"You idiot! You complete idiot! Do you realise what you could have done? What you have done? I tried to warn you, Harry! But do you listen? No! You're so wrapped up in yourself, Harry! You're so, so self centred. Why don't you think once in a while?"

He didn't answer, but sat there and began to cry. She had no sympathy for him, however, and she just shook her head in disgust.

And with that, she took Tom Lestrange out of his crib, carefully stepped over his mother's body, and left Harry in the nursery, panting, shaking.

And more so than ever before -

Alone.