The Anti-Heroine || A Harry Potter Fanfiction

Chapter LXXV

CHAPTER LXXV:

Hermione's POV:

"Fuck!" Draco exclaimed, stunned, before seeming to be struck mute in shock. Hermione arched an eyebrow at him across the table and he shoved the tureen of sausages sitting between them aside and smoothed the Daily Prophet down in the centre of the Slytherin table in response.

VIKTOR KRUM DEAD!

DUMBLEDORE IN DISGRACE!

FUDGE SACKED IN VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE!

THADDEUS DAGWORTH NEW MINISTER OF MAGIC!

"Those," Hermione said faintly, her eyes wide as she stared down at the blaring headlines, the bold black letters flashing across the front page before disappearing to allow the next headline to flash, "are some impressive headlines."

It was the morning after the Final Task of the Triwizard Tournament with its unfortunate conclusion. Hermione had woken up feeling uneasy, her worry stemming from her fear of Harry's reaction. Harry had genuinely liked Krum. She hadn't minded the International Quidditch Star, but she wasn't the sort to form strong emotional attachments to people she knew would be only briefly present in her life.

To her relief, Harry appeared far more steady when he woke that morning then he had last night. "Tom came and spoke to me last night," he told her, as they sat up in his (their) four poster, their conversation hidden from their dorm-mates– and, more importantly, from Longbottom, who had spent the night in their dorm– by the silencing charms on the heavy green and silver drapes drawn closed around the bed.

"How did it go?" She asked, a little hesitantly. Harry sighed, shrugging his shoulders slightly.

"As well as it could, really. Voldemort killed Viktor and Tom knew about it, but he didn't tell us because he knew it would upset me and I'd want to stop it."

"It really reminded me," Hermione said quietly, "that this silent war Voldemort is waging against Dumbledore, it may not consist of open conflict and battlefields, but it's still a war, people are still dying and Voldemort..."

"He's not a good person," Harry completed her sentence for her. "In fact, he's actually a really bad person, considering he was perfectly willing to kill an innocent boy who wasn't even involved in Britain's civil war in any degree, just so he could speed up a political move that was already in play."

"It seems stupid to say that I forgot just who he is and what he's capable of," Hermione admitted, "but... I did. He appears civil and human, and despite knowing the contrary to be true, I eventually started to see the mask as who he is, not who he's pretending to be. He is dangerously charismatic, dangerously intelligent, dangerously powerful and dangerously driven."

"Basically," Harry said with a wry smile, "he's a very, very, very dangerous person who's actually an evil bastard and who we've irreversibly allied ourselves with."

"We could run," Hermione offered. "The world is a very large place, and you have a very large pile of gold."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, "except–" he leaned forwards, pressed his hand lightly over her heart, where Tom's Mark was branded into her skin, and into her soul, "–we can't hide from Tom. And I don't want to hide from him, anyway. I love him."

"And he won't leave Britain," Hermione stated with a sigh. "He won't leave what Voldemort has set into motion, because he wants the same thing, just as badly."

"So we're stuck here," Harry summed up their situation.

"We're stuck here." She agreed and Harry gave her a grim look, his green eyes hard.