The Resistance

Chapter 12

Wind howled around the burrow, making the towering home creak under the pressure of protecting its inhabitants form the storm outside. The resistance was sat around the long dining table of the Weasley home, all of them whispering quietly to their neighbours as Narcissa and Hermione walked in. Silence dropped over the table as they sat down, every pair of eyes studying them intently.

            "So, Hermione," McGonagall said, drawing attention back to the meeting, "I trust that Narcissa has filled you in on all you need to know?" Hermione nodded. "Good. But there is one more thing we have to fill you in on." She hesitated, and Hermione looked confusedly around the table, all eyes now avoiding her own.

            "What?"

            "Potter, he is alive. I understand that in your past, he was killed. But whatever you did, it changed a lot."

            "The Dark Lord realised the Potter was the last horcrux, and that if he killed him, it would leave him vulnerable," Bellatrix explained. "He is being held in a cell in the dungeons of Hogwarts."

            "And the plan," Sirius said, "is to launch a rescue mission."

            "We shall send in a small team, five or six of us at most, to infiltrate the castle whilst Bellatrix and Severus lure his guards away from the cell," Lupin finished.

            "But what then?" Hermione asked desperately. "Harry is still a horcrux, which means even if we can free him we still can't kill Voldemort."  Hermione ignored the various flinches and cringes of discomfort that shuddered around the table. "So what then? What do we do when we get Harry back? We can't simply kill him. And that is the only way to destroy the horcrux." A terrible silence hung, suspended precariously over the table like a four taloned pitchfork. Hermione stared wide eyed at each of her fellow Order members as the shocking realisation of their silence crept over her. "No. No! We can't!" Narcissa took her distraught lovers hand in her own and looked at her sadly.

            "We don't want to kill him Hermione. That's not the plan. But it is dangerous."

            "Well what is it then?" she demanded. Narcissa looked down for a moment before continuing.

            "The only thing, that we could get our hands on that will destroy the part of the Dark Lords sole that lives inside Harry, is Basilisk venom," she said slowly. "We want to feed it into his blood stream, in the hope that it will destroy the horcrux."

            "But that would kill him!"

            "We have phoenix tears," Draco said, speaking up for the first time that evening. Hermione looked up at him and frowned.

            "How?"

            "Draco and I went to harvest the venom. Found a baby one in Bolivia. It bit him. We took Fawks with us just in case and when he healed Draco we collected some of his tears because we knew we would be needed them again," Ron explained.

            "When was this?"

            "Whilst you were, away."

"So it won't kill him?" she asked, looking back at Narcissa.

"Hermione, I can't say for sure. We will have to bring him as close to death as possible, to give ourselves the best chance of destroying the horcrux." Hermione gazed at her, tears burning behind her eyes.

            "So we are going to save him, so that we can kill him?"

            "We have no other choice," Kingsley said gravely. Hermione looked pleadingly around the table. Mrs Weasely was crying, Ron and Ginny both looked livid, but to Hermione's greatest surprise, Draco had silent tear tracks marking his sad, pale face.

            "And you're all okay with this are you? Does Harry even have a say? Does he even know?" When no one answered she shunted her chair back from the table, glaring down at the group. "This is sick." And with that, she stormed from the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.

Narcissa found Hermione sitting on one of the squishy sofas in the Weasely's living room, hugging her knees and staring blindly into the flames, angry tears marking her beautiful young face. The orange light of the fire highlighted the gold and copper streaks in her hair, and made her skin look smooth and pale, almost translucent.

            "You remind me of when we were at Hogwarts, sitting there like that, gazing into the fire, making me guess at what you must be thinking about. Now I know that it was decisions like this, moments like that, which you were always so wrapped up in."

            "It's so overwhelming," she muttered. "It's so hard to adjust to all the changes. I remember it all, my way, those are the memories that I feel are real. The others are more like dreams. I know what happened, but it doesn't feel real, like it happened to someone else, and I am just hearing the story. There are people in there, who I have hated all my life, ever since I met them, who are now my friends. And others who I watched die, but who never did." Narcissa sat next to her young lover and pulled her into the safety and warmth of her arms. "And now," she continued, "they, you all, have offered me my best friend back from the dead, only to tell me that he will probably die anyway."           

"I shan't pretend to even begin to know how you feel," Narcissa murmured. "But my love I do know this, it is the only chance we have to win this war. And you, you alone have given us this chance. We cannot waist it. Because it's the only chance we may have to protect ourselves, the only way we can keep our friends, our families," she took the girls face in her cool slender hands and looked deep into her soft hazel eyes, "and our lovers, safe." Hermione contemplated this for a moment, contemplated what it would be like to loose Narcissa, to watch her slip away from her. Even the idea alone was too much to bear.

            "Okay." And she kissed her, softly, tenderly, deeply on the lips, holding her lover to her, as if at any moment, she might be torn from her.

Filled with a new found sense of courage, and hard set determination, Hermione took her love's hand in her own, and returned to the kitchen.

            "So," she said. "What is the plan?"