We will meet again ~ Fred Weasley

- If He Still Loves Me -

"She had put an entire war between herself and the person she loved most."

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The last thing Katherine remembered clearly was the violent sensation of being pulled from the back of the dragon.

There had been hands reaching for her.

Voices shouting.

The roar of the creature beneath them.

The world spinning so violently that she could no longer tell which way was up.

Then—

nothing.

Darkness swallowed everything.

For a while, Katherine simply existed somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, drifting through an endless blackness that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

Then she saw him.

Voldemort.

The sight of him was enough to make every instinct inside her recoil.

He stood surrounded by darkness, his pale face almost impossibly clear against the emptiness surrounding him, those cold red eyes fixed directly upon her as though he could see straight through every defence she had tried to build.

And Katherine knew.

She knew without him needing to say a single word.

He knew.

He knew they had found the Horcrux.

He knew they were searching for the others.

And, somehow, he knew they were getting closer.

The realisation settled into Katherine with a horrible certainty.

They weren't simply fighting a war anymore.

They were fighting against a clock.

Every Horcrux they destroyed brought Voldemort closer to mortality, and every moment they spent searching gave him another opportunity to find them first.

If they succeeded, he could die.

He could finally become vulnerable.

And Voldemort would never allow that to happen willingly.

He would tear the entire country apart before allowing them to find the remaining pieces of his soul.

Katherine understood that now.

He would hunt them.

He would hunt everyone they loved.

He would destroy anything that stood between him and those Horcruxes.

And suddenly the danger felt far greater than it had only hours earlier.

The darkness shifted around her.

Voldemort's face seemed to move closer.

Katherine tried to step backwards.

She couldn't.

Then his voice seemed to echo through the darkness—

and the world shattered.

"Wake up!"

The voice reached her from somewhere impossibly far away.

Katherine tried to open her eyes.

Nothing happened.