~**~


Crack. Crack.


By megan_lupin


~**~


Crack.


The sound pierced the young woman’s ears as she walked along the street, the heavy darkness of the late night cloaking around her. She whipped her head around, her thick and bushy brown hair flinging with the combination of the quick action and the slight breeze. Her eyes squinted as she tried to strain her sight in order to pierce through the shadows.


But there were just shadows. It is nothing, she told herself, shaking her head as if to dislodge her thoughts. I am imagining things.


Still, the young woman reached into her pocket and wrapped her fingers around a warm and thin piece of wood – her wand, the wand that had been her protection far more than once in recent years. She held it securely inside of her pocket – hidden but able to be revealed in a moment’s notice – and continued on with her walk, quickening her pace only slightly.


Crack. Crack.


Upon hearing the noises, she abruptly turned around, pulling her wand from her pocket and, holding the instrument steady despite her shaking hands, pointed it out in front of her.


“Lumos,� she muttered, and a thin beam of light shone from the tip of her wand and broke into the shadows before her. Once again, however, there was nothing to be seen. A cool breeze blew, rustling the leaves in the autumn trees, and it caused the woman to pull her jacket tighter around her as a shiver ran up her spine. But whether or not the shiver was strictly due to the coolness of the wind, she did not know.


And for the second time that night, the young woman shook her fears away. It is nothing, she thought.


Pocketing her wand, though still keeping the handle gripped in her fingers, she turned the corner, her brown eyes seeing the welcomed entrance to her flat up ahead. The rest of the way to her home was spotted with street lamps, making the sidewalk a lot less shadowed and fearful than before. But, regardless of the added light, the young woman unconsciously quickened her pace from a ‘walk’ to something that somewhat resembled that of a ‘jog’.


It all came to a head only a few metres from the young woman’s door. She was just a little ways from her door; she had only needed barely a minute before she was safe inside of her home. She had been just a moment away from having the shadows and fear of earlier in the evening completely forgotten.


But that moment that had been needed was too long, it seemed. Everything appeared to take place in slow motion, causing her to feel as if hours passed, the time slowly dragging out and making each second, each flicker of fear, stretch to agonising degrees.


Had the young woman been able to watch the time pass on a watch or clock, she would have seen that only minutes managed to pass from the beginning to the end.


It was the flickering of the first street lamp that started it. The lamp hissed and sputtered, dimming slowly, before finally going out all together.


Crack. Crack. Crack.


Intense cold gripped the young witch, piercing and freezing her soul to its innermost core, and her heart started pounding so hard against her ribcage that she felt like it was going to burst out of it. Each exhaling breath that she took could be seen floating in the air in front of her face, and the conscious part of her mind continued to insist that the cold was not a natural thing; it was not being caused by the autumn weather or the breeze that was still blowing.


The seven lamps that lined the street soon all followed the first one; seconds ticked by, they dimmed and quickly went out, plunging the entire street into a thick darkness and allowing the night’s shadows to take over.


Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.


She could hear them; she knew that they were there, slowly but surely making their way all around her, surrounding her, trapping her. She knew that they were there, though she still could not see any of them. A part of her yearned to light her wand, just so as to see either where they were or so as to illuminate the path to her door, thinking that perhaps she could make it inside. If she hurried, if she was quick enough, she could make it to her door … Right?


But the brief hope soon faded as the full meaning of the cold and sudden darkness hit her. Nature could not make darkness so complete as it was now; natural coldness did not come as suddenly as this freezing air had come, and nature’s chill did not go so deep as this one did, chilling her all the way to her soul.


The screams that started to echo in her head, as well as the beginning of her blurring vision, made the answer all too clear to the young woman.


Screaming. Yelling. Spells fired from wands faster than she had ever seen before, faster than she had ever imagined. Colours flashed across her sight – green, red, blue, yellow, black, purple. She had no way to keep them all straight in her ever-thinking, all-knowing mind.


Cries echoed in the night, the walls of the castle making the sounds carry easily throughout the corridors. And a part of her wished that she could have seen the events as they happened, for hearing the sounds of death and pain without knowing what, precisely, was happening was far worse.


There was not enough time to think; all she could do was act. She fired spells without thought of the words she was speaking, stepping over a body of a fallen fighter – whether it was that of a friend or foe, she had not the time to look. Another scream, another yell, another laugh.


She cursed someone – she could not see who – before bypassing another dead witch and wizard, their bodies pale as they lay in death.


A curse, an injury, and she fought onwards, hoping that she did not join the growing number of deaths.


Blood spattered, debris fell, curses hit their mark … and the dead – so many bodies – continued to grow.


She fought, a distant and still logical part of her mind knowing as she saw friends fall, their eyes still open – yet pale and unseeing – that the amount of mourning to come would be great …


The creatures floated nearby, that much she knew, although they were not near enough for her to see or touch them. Her heart’s beating intensified until it reached a volume that she was sure could be heard by every one of the people around her. It echoed in her ears, and her throat grew dry with the fear. Her fingers still wrapped around her wand, she whipped the magical instrument out, struggling to hold it steady with her shaking hands.


I need a spell, she thought, but the horrible, soul-sucking creatures were doing their job. She had never felt such emptiness, such intense feeling, from these creatures. How many there were, the young woman did not know, but if the intensity of their power was anything to go by, she was not sure that she wanted to know that precise information. She struggled to think of spell – or even a memory in order to use the one spell that did come to her mind – but her mind was blank of everything except the screams, crying, and fog.


Laughing. Crying. Yelling. Screaming.


So many bodies.


Her breathing, still visible in the night, had grown shallow and quiet by now, but to the young witch, it was still loud enough for all to hear.


Whispers started out from behind her, the male voices deep, yet scratchy. “Go,� one hissed as the other mumbled a reply that was lost on the witch. Throwing all caution to the wind, she ran full force towards her door, hoping even in the hopeless situation that she would reach the safety of her home.


But such was not to be. She did not even make it to the steps before she was stopped, bumping into a large, darkly-clothed figure. He was at least three times her size, and the young woman was definitely no tiny midget, by any means. The figure wrapped his massive arms around her and brought her in closer to him, leaning in with his hooded face as he did so.


“Hello,� he said, his low voice hoarse and a strong, unpleasant odour of cheap alcohol on his breath. He brought his face in closer, leaving only inches separating the two of them. “Not trying to run, are we?� he asked, and she could see the smirk already forming on his lips as he spoke.


She was freezing now, the cold from both nature and the creatures having increased to such degrees as to make her body feel officially frozen in terror. The man held tightly to her frail form, but there really was no need for such actions. The feelings of fear that wrapped themselves around her were restraints enough.


She could no longer hear anything but the beating of her heart and the slow, rattling breath of the Dementors that she knew floated nearby. Her hands and legs were shaking, and her vision was beginning to blur, screams and crying still echoing in her mind.


And another body fell to the beam of green light that hurled through the air.


The last thing that Hermione saw was a group of darkly-robed men, just like the one holding her, approach her. Their matching white masks reflected the light from their wands, light that made their eyes gleam and their smirks visible. She saw the three Dementors joining them, ragged, black cloaks hovering inches above the ground as they floated closer and closer …


And her mind went black …


~**~


Author’s Note: Alright, there you have it. This piece, regardless of how it ends, was ALWAYS conceived as just being a lengthy drabble or short one-shot. NO sequel or additional chapters were ever conceived, and it is really just up to the imagination of the reader on what happens afterwards.


Also, as this was written initially written previously to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it is disregarding that book for the most part. In my mind, I had imagined a far darker and more gruesome ‘Final Battle’ than what was in the book, and that’s mostly where a lot of Hermione’s Dementor-induced memories come from in this piece.


Thanks for reading, though, and please, let me know what you think about it anyway. Is it good? Bad?


~Megan