Fallen
By: Bristar
Chapter 1
The pain was overwhelming. It pulsated and contracted, slithering through his veins like a thousand biting snakes, his
muscles tense his mind screaming. He couldn't escape it. It choked him, it cut him, it slowly began to kill him.
The terrible pain crept steadily towards his heart, each beat bring his death closer and closer, his own body ticking
off the seconds till his doom. Visions of his life passed before his eyes. The day he had received his Hogwarts letter.
His first meeting with Hermione and Ron. The meeting of Voldemort his first year before the mirror of Erisid. His
entire life was displayed like a Muggle movie screen. He couldn't help but realize how little time it took. He was
too young to die, seventeen years was long enough to experience all life had to offer. People needed him, didn't
they? He knew someone needed him. He tried to fight the death that crept slowly towards his struggling heart, but he
was so tired. So very tired.
Let go! don't fight it! his mind cried, desperate to have its rest.
"Harry!!! Harry!" someone familiar and near by was screaming his name, desperation and grief poured through the voice and into his barely beating heart. Someone need him. The haziness of his mind began to recede. Something was pulling him back. Someone needed him.
He opened his eyes slowly, his eyelids feeling as though they were weighted down by a thousand bricks, it took nearly all his strength to part them.
At first he was met by only blackness, then the outline of shape's arose and then dim colors, and at last a face.
Hermione's face.
Her pale face was streaked with what appeared to be blood, mixed with splotches of dirt and grime, and she was crying, sobbing in fact. Her cries racked her body slim body, her Hogwarts robes were tattered and hanging, a large gash spread across one shoulder, dried blood was caked around her once white Oxford shirt.
She was clutching his hand in hers but he couldn't feel it. She hadn't realized he'd open his eyes yet, her own were clouded with tears and sorrow.
"Her..Hermi...Hermione," he breathed the word out like a shuttering wind, so soft he feared she would not hear him, but he was rewarded with a thankful gasp and Hermione's chocolate brown eyes met his own in a hazy trance.
"Harry oh Harry, stay with me, please dear Merlin don't die on me," she begged lifting his head gently in her free hand, holding him gently against her as she knelt against cold stone.
What happened to me? he thought fighting to find the answers in his pain stricken mind.
Why is Hermione crying? She should never have to cry.
He was fading again. He could feel the dark haziness creeping up on him. Hermione realized it as well, his breaths had grown more shallow and farther apart. He was slipping once more. He was so tired. So tired.
"Harry oh please..... hang on! Voldemort's gone, its over! He left after you fell, he thought he had killed you.... y..you cant die ... y..y..you just cant. I need you.... I... need you!" she was crying so hard now, her body shacking so badly it made his own shiver with the force of her emotional pain. He could see her stricken face through his obscured vision as he slipped further inside himself. That's when it all came into place. That's when he remembered.
Voldemort.
He and his Deatheaters had attacked Hogwarts.
There had been blood. So much blood.
And death. So many had died.
Ron?
He was dead, Harry could remember it so clearly now, as if someone had hit the instant replay and brought forth a picture from the back of his mind. Ron had rushed forward to save Ginny -Voldemort had taken her almost instantly as his Deatheaters plagued about the school, killing and torturing anyone and everyone they crossed. Voldemort had killed him so easily, it had been cowardly and quick, it had been so unfair. Ron hadn't even raised his wand before the killing curse struck him straight in his chest. The sound of his limp dead body hitting the floor echoed through Harry's mind, rebounding off the walls of his subconscious until he couldn't escape it.
Ron.
He was dead.
Voldemort had killed him.
Anger, so horrible and burning surged through him so strongly that it began to push back the pain and death that nearly overcome him moments before. Anger was going to save him.
Ron was dead.
Ron was dead.
And Voldemort had killed him.
"Ron," he croaked as feeling slowly began to lace through his body, he could now feel Hermione's damp shacking hand clutching his own, but he no longer cared, more memories had flooded forth.
Semus had fallen protecting Lavender from an advancing Deatheater, he'd taken a knife to the stomach, Lavender died moments later when she rushed her boyfriends murder, killing herself upon the same knife.
Ginny had been taken away by Draco Malfoy, he could remember her screaming and thrashing as Harry glimpsed her through the haziness of fire and flying spells, he hadn't been able to save her, he prayed she was still alive.
He could remember taking down a black robed Deatheater that had tried to ravage a 6th year Perfect in Hufflepuff, she had escaped, but only barely.
He could remember Hermione, screaming spells with a furry he had never seen in all his days, her body had radiated power and energy that made attackers think twice, as she desperately protected those she cared for.
And Dumbledore, he had been the first to fall, but not before taking half the Deatheaters with him. Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the age had fallen at last, and it had been a brave death worthy of only the greatest of men. But what would the Wizarding World do without him?
Ron was dead.
Ron was dead.
Where was his noble death? He deserved to die a Knight and a martyr, but he'd gotten neither. Why hadn't Harry been able save him? Where was he when his best friend died?
Voldemort, he had come face to face with Harry, and he'd tried to kill him... with a...with a.... sword of some kind. He dimly remember the black, green glowing blade as it cut into his body, slicing flesh.
He hadn't been able to save Ron.
"He's dead Harry, Ron's dead," Hermione's hopeless sad voice cut him deeper than any wound ever could have, and his broken body couldn't handle the intensity of emotions that welled up inside him, and he met blackness before he even realized it was there.
Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, had escaped death once again. But those he loved had not.