Chapter Text
No one remembered the moment Voldemort fell. They only remembered what came after.
Harry’s final spell collided with Voldemort’s curse mid-air. Two ancient magics, red and green, two destinies splitting the earth open, creating a chasm into hell. The explosion wasn’t fire or wind or light.
It was pure death.
A howl of magic so cold it stripped breath from lungs, so bright it burned shadows into the stone. And at the epicenter, both Harry and Voldemort crumpled, lifeless, the last of their power spilling out uncontrolled. This magic pulsed from their bodies like blood from a wound. Hermione didn’t have time to think. Not to process the spells still fizzing in the air, or the way the atmosphere had turned metallic and sharp in her lungs. All she remembered was the sickening silence after Harry’s collapse… and then the sound that tore it open:
A shriek that didn’t belong to anything living. Soon tens, dozens, hundreds joined in. People screamed. People ran. But no one understood what they were running from, only that something ancient and starving was waking beneath their feet. Lavender vanished in the crush of bodies. Then Seamus. Dean. Neville and Luna were swallowed by the chaos. Panicked yells to run, to hide, all disappeared beneath another noise: cracking bones scraping stone, too quick to be human.
“Hermione!” Kingsley’s voice was raw, panicked, nothing like the controlled Minister she was used to. His hand grabbed her upper arm with bruising force. “You have to go.”
“What? Kingsley? Ron….Harry….what’s happening?!”
She twisted, desperate to see Harry one last time. She saw Ron sprinting across the rubble toward Harry’s body and that’s when she saw it. Like a flood covering parched earth, corpses surged on the living. Eyes glowing red, they circled their prey and closed in. The first one leapt at him. Ron didn’t have a chance to scream before more swarmed. His wand lit up once, twice, but spells only drew them faster. They didn’t just feed on magic, they absorbed it. Her vision blurred with tears, a scream stuck in her throat. She reached out to do something, anything.
“HERMIONE!” Kingsley’s voice was a roar. “It has to be you. You can fix this.” A glowing teacup shoved into her hand and the familiar tugging of a portkey spread through her stomach.
The last thing she saw of her old life was Ron disappearing beneath the flood of twisted parasitic monsters and a flash of pale-blonde reaching for her as the world tore itself apart.