Chapter Text
Hermione Granger looked up from Albus Dumbledore's body, tears streaming down her face. This was it, the final battle against Voldemort and his Death Eaters, but the cost was overwhelming. So many dead, including a few Muggles who had the misfortune to be nearby when the battle spilled into a quiet warehouse district. So many, and now this.
Ron swore. "There's the little bastard," he said. He took off at a run towards a far doorway, screaming curses as fast as he could get them off. Ahead of him Malfoy could be seen ducking out of sight as the magical energies burst around him.
"Ron," she yelled, trying to call him back before he fell into some Death Eater trap. It was no good; the animosity there had always been between Ron and Malfoy was too strong. He was into the building before she had a chance to stop him.
Harry straightened up from where he had been crouched down beside her. "It's all right, Hermione," he said in an oddly gentle voice. "I know what to do now. I know how to kill Voldemort." His eyes were slightly unfocused, scaring her a little even through the exhaustion of battle. He lifted his head and let out an achingly beautiful cry that no human throat should have been able to produce.
An answering cry came from the sky, and Fawkes swooped in to land on Harry's outstretched arm. The phoenix looked at his most resplendent, immaculate despite the fight that had been raging around him. He too bowed his head towards his dead master and shed a single, brilliant tear.
Hermione rose, pushing her tears away, determined to end this now. Voldemort had killed enough. "Let's do it."
Harry shook his head sadly. "I have to do this alone," he said. "Don't try to follow me in. Everyone in that building will die."
Something about the way he said it made her stop. "Everyone?"
"Don't worry about me, Hermione. I've been living on borrowed time for the last seventeen years."
"Harry, no!" She went to grab him, but he gestured and a shimmering barrier sprang up in front of her.
"Goodbye, Hermione," he said with a smile. "Live well. Look after Ron for me." Then his face set into grim lines and he turned and strode towards the warehouse. A golden glow was flickering around him, dancing like phoenix flames, dispersing the sickly green bolts that flew at him in a way that shouldn't have been possible according to everything Hermione had learned. Harry largely ignored them, swatting at the occasional hex with his wand to send it flying back towards the increasingly desperate Death Eaters inside.
Hermione screamed after him to no avail. She couldn't take the time to break down Harry's barrier spell in the middle of battle, as well he knew, and it was only moments before she found herself fighting for her life again. The last view she had of Harry Potter was him striding into Voldemort's refuge, wand out and Fawkes riding on his shoulder.
Some time between seconds and an eternity later, she was knocked flat by an explosion. She heard phoenix song rise one last time, saw the golden bird-shaped flames rising as they almost gently pushed the walls of the warehouse apart, and understood. Fawkes had released the fires that were his life and Harry had added all his magic, his life, his love. Nothing as tainted as Voldemort could survive those cleansing flames. Nothing as simple as human flesh.
"Harry, oh Harry," she cried, tears starting afresh. Then realisation hit her. "Ron," she whispered. "Oh God, no! Ron!"
She ran towards the end of the broken building where she'd last seen her friend, but strong hands caught her, held her. "Ron was in there!" she shouted.
"I know," Arthur Weasley said quietly, "I know." His eyes were the eyes of a father who had already seen too many of his children die, and that over all else broke her.
He held her as she cried for Ron, for Harry, for herself and Arthur and everyone who would have to go on without them. "We've got to go," he told her. "The Muggle authorities will be here soon, and there's too few of us left to hide this away."
Hermione nodded dumbly. It didn't matter any more. They were all dead, she thought as she apparated away. Voldemort, Harry, Ron, all dead. They had beaten the darkness, but at such a cost that she wished it had never happened.
*************
Sam Curtis rolled his eyes as he drove through the suburban streets at speeds any normal motorist would consider insane. "Or any of the rest," he said. "We'll see when we get there, Chris."
"Whatever it is, I'm betting against 'gas main explosion' no matter what the police say."
True, Sam thought with the part of his mind that wasn't concentrating on the road. There had been a lot of large scale accidents of late, all with perfectly innocent explanations and followed by ministerial platitudes about improving safety standards. Individually they were nothing. Together they formed a pattern that Malone wanted to know more about, especially when the Minister turned evasive on him. If there was anything linking these events, it was very much part of CI5's remit to investigate it.
The emergency services seemed to have everything under control when they arrived. The fires were all out, and the investigators were even picking over the rubble, trying to determine what had gone on. Sam frowned and checked his watch.
"They worked fast," he said. Too fast, truth be told.
"No, you just drive slowly," Chris joked, but Sam could see he'd picked up what Sam meant. Chris would know as well as he did that from the reports Spencer intercepted, the fireball should have started blazes that could have taken hours to damp down. There was no way should it all be over yet.
"You go look over the debris, I'll talk to the firemen." Chris nodded and headed over to the remains of the building. Even if his partner was more used to blowing things up than looking at them afterwards, Sam trusted Chris's abilities when it came to explosives damage. Meanwhile it was time to sharpen his own people skills.
By the time Chris called him over, Sam had got five completely consistent, utterly inexplicable reports of what had happened when the firemen had arrived. By the looks of Chris's scowl, the physical evidence was making every bit as little sense.
"It was definitely an explosion of some sort," he said, "but it's a weird one. The blast pattern isn't right for any explosives I know of, and I haven't found any traces of a detonator or bomb casing. Maybe forensics will turn something up. And look at this." He held up something that it took Sam a moment or two to recognise. "Fire needs to burn hot and long to do this to human bone," Chris continued, "longer than it took us to get here, or hot enough to take out the entire neighbourhood not just this one building."
"It didn't burn that long in the first place," Sam said grimly. "When the emergency services got here, all they found were a few small secondary fires. The primary fire either never took hold or blew itself out in the explosion, except they keep saying fires don't do that."
Chris made a face. "It doesn't add up. We've got a number of corpses we'll probably never figure out fried in a way that just doesn't happen, an explosion that doesn't fit any known pattern and doesn't behave right, no sign of the original bomb and no one claiming responsibility. What the hell is going on?"
Over from the rubble at the far end of what had once been a warehouse, a cry went up. Sam looked over. "They've found something."
Something turned out to be someone. Two someones, in fact; two boys, one redhead and one fair, lying badly battered beneath the remains of a solid wall. Sam and Chris kept back as the ambulance crews worked, but it was clear that bloodied and bruised as they were, the boys were still alive.
Sam looked at Chris and smiled. "Eye-witnesses," he said.
Chris laughed. "Well, we had to get a break some time."
*****
Both boys also had yet to come round, and the doctors were not as optimistic as Sam would have liked. "They suffered severe head trauma, numerous broken bones and lost a significant amount of blood before they were found. There's no telling when or indeed whether they will wake up."
"Whether?" Chris asked uneasily.
"It's not unknown for even healthy adolescents to remain comatose after such a severe head injury," the doctor told them. "At this point I'm not prepared to guess at what will happen."
"Bloody marvellous," Sam grumbled as they walked away. "The only leads we've got are out for the count and may never come round. Malone's not going to be happy."
Chris nodded sourly. "At least he can be pleased that his instincts are on the money. Whatever's happening here is weird enough to go in a Sci Fi movie."
"It's not another killer satellite, is it?" Sam asked, brought up short by the thought.
"Nah, the damage is still all wrong. The fireball came from the inside of the warehouse, whatever it was."
"Oh well," Sam sighed. "At least it's your turn to tell Malone. I'll go secure the kids' room."
"Gee, thanks."
Sam smirked briefly at his partner's lack of enthusiasm for being on the receiving end of Malone's displeasure with the world. The amusement lasted only as long as it took him to return to the hospital room set aside for the two boys, and take a good long look at the two people caught in the middle of all this.
They looked pale and small, surrounded as they were by various pieces of medical machinery all merrily beeping away. People in hospital always looked small to Sam for some reason, but the fact that they were both youngsters made them seem especially frail. Schoolkids, even ones who looked to be in their late teens, shouldn't be getting hospitalised in his opinion.
Somewhere, some family was worried sick about its missing children. Probably two families, Sam thought, given that there wasn't much resemblance between them. The red-headed boy was tall and broadly built if not exactly muscular, with a well-rounded face and mildly prominent ears. The blond was perhaps a little shorter and noticeably slimmer, much more angular all round. They might be siblings, but on the whole Sam thought not.
Who were they? What had they been doing there? What had happened to them? Who would do this? All good questions, Sam thought, but all things he had no way of knowing the answers to. If the boys woke up, perhaps they could fill in the blanks. If not, well, Sam would just have to find some other way to teach the bombers that you don't do that to children.
Chris slipped quietly into the room, and Sam shook himself from his brooding. Fat lot of use he'd have been if someone had come to finish them off, he thought, carefully not thinking of how Carl Dietrich had died in their care.
"We've got the watch," Chris said. He kept his voice low despite the fact that they wanted the two boys to wake up, but Sam couldn't fault him for that. Something in the atmosphere of the room made him too unwilling to break the hush.
"Usual drill?" was all he asked.
Chris nodded. "Keep an eye out for anything suspicious and let Malone know the moment they're capable of answering questions. You want to stay here while I go charm the nurses into agreeing?"
Sam nodded, and settled back in his chair as Chris left to be his usual ebullient self to the staff. He had a feeling this was going to be a long watch.