Once More Unto The Breach // DHr

s e v e n

The first time Hermione used the Avada Kedavra curse was a little over a year ago now. She was with Neville, hiding out in an abandoned silo off a farmland somewhere in Wales that they deemed safe enough to crash in even just for a couple of hours.

It was one of those blistering summer nights with the wind non-existent, water equally as scarce, and a humidity that completely matted the hair atop their heads that were already caked with mud, sweat, and blood. The two of them had been separated from their group from a mission that went horribly, horribly wrong. Exhaustion, hunger, pain of every kind wracked their bodies, but not checking all the floors, however dead tired they might have been, was a fatally rookie mistake neither of them made again.

If she concentrated enough, she could still remember how the incantation tasted in her mouth, more rotten and more vile than whatever was drilled into her brain back in school. She remembers almost burning herself under a steady stream of piping hot shower water just so she could feel warm again. She could still remember the feeling of having a piece of herself be forcefully ripped off from the very seam of her existence, and the utter helplessness that ultimately drove her to marking her own grave. Because she was a member of the Light, and those fighting to live would not, should not, could not be taking them.

But Hermione did. Neville did. Because at that moment, they found that they were too afraid to die.

In the end, that is what war boils down to - protecting your own life even at the cost of someone else's.

That night was the night that had them back to back and cornered by a number far greater than two - resulting in scars that marred Hermione's wand, Neville's skin, and both their souls forever. How they managed to survive is still a blur to her, and it's the first time she found herself being okay with not knowing.