Releasing all my previous concerns I transform and lunge at the nearest enemy. Thankfully, others are smart enough by now to know that I'm not a werewolf on all fours. Slamming into Voldemort's followers with my haunches and hind quarters they go tumbling like marbles, sometimes bouncing. I can't do any real damage like this put I can blindside them, maybe knock them unconscious for other people to actually deal with.
I saw less friends than I had wanted. All the faces I had passed before the pause of our battle seemed to be fewer in the hall. No Fred. Tonks and Lupin were both absent. My heart sank.
Please, not them. A whine escapes my muzzle and a nearby deatheater laughs but it's only his mistake as I sink my teeth into the flesh of his thigh and watch him bleed out.
If my friends have to die then so do you. I think nonapologetically.
Every time I look to the center of the room there's Voldemort battling with three of the Order. The third time I look far enough left I see Ginny and Bellatrix Lestrange exchanging curses that thankfully never connect with Ginny. Molly steps in, shouting something I can't hear over the blasting and shouting in my ears. Next moment Bellatrix is frozen, slowly sinking to her knees with her mouth wide open. I don't dare disappear now but I can't stay a wolf too much longer so I slip into the professor's lounge and grab a robe, putting it on and tying a strip of torn off cloth tightly around my waist.
There's a loud bang so I only peek my head through a crack in the door. I have to rub my eyes thinking that maybe I'm hallucinating. Again to make sure I haven't messed up my shift back into human form. Both cases reveal the same image. Voldemort circling the cleared space in the center of the hall with Harry. All the others stand around in audience.
Harry taunts him and Voldemort hisses insults back at him. Harry's voice is lower than Voldemort's so I can't quite hear him but whatever it is doesn't go over well. As if anything could go over well with the dark lord. Voldemort raises his wand even further but it looks familiar. Squinting my eyes and standing on tip-toe I can make out the the rough details of the wand, Dumbledore's wand. The wand he was buried with.
"That bastard." I hiss under my breath.
"Avada kedavra" Voldemort hisses and before I can think I'm running out from behind the door. Next thing I know, Voldemort is crumpled on the stone floor.
I stand there, not moving, I can't move. Voldemort is dead. Voldemort is nearly cold on the ground before me. I can feel the emotions well up inside of me. My mom and dad were gone but because of Harry I still had Pare, my grandparents, Viktor would be waiting for me, and my brothers and sister were all waiting for me to get back. The wizarding world would start anew. Start fresh and our next generation wouldn't have to worry so much about our healing wound.
I walk numbly up to Harry.
"He's dead?" I point at the body.
"No doubt this time." Harry nods. Ministry officials start to appear out of nowhere and take the deatheaters away while more students left and the Weasleys gathered, Harry and Hermione among them, and wept. They had fallen - Fred, Lupin, Tonks - laid out on the cold stone floor of the great hall and now that the haze of chaos has dissipated I see that several others are also not present. Some of them faceless because of werewolves, unrecognisable because of curses.
There's no one here for me. I think selfishly and go around making sure I can help anyone that needs it. I heal three broken ribs, deep cuts, a concussion but I can't heal the emotional pain of some of these people, I can't heal death.
Harry and Hermione come to kneel by me as a repair one students hand, broken by a blasting curse.
"Thank you for coming." Hermione says softly.
"I didn't do anything." I shake my head.
"You saved my Bill." Fleur trills, passing by with Bill's hand clutched tightly in hers. I shake my head again.
"It's true." Bill affirms. "That deatheater you bit the leg off of."
"I didn't bite it off."
"Doesn't matter. You killed him before he could kill me."
"I saw you." Harry smiles. "You were actually evening the odds for others."
"I didn't do very well did I?" I hiss and point at the bodies.
"It could have been worse if everyone wasn't here." Harry rests a hand on my shoulder. The kid I'm working on thanks me and leaves.
"Thank you Harry." I sigh. "For our lives. If you ever need anything from me, just ask." We nod silently. "I have to get back to the camp. We'll need to be getting cleaned up and find where we can all go now that it's over."
"The floo network is still running." Hermione says and then hugs me. "You've done a lot even if you don't see it." She whispers in my ear and then lets me go.
I walk passed Flitwick who's cleaning up the mess I'd made of the deatheater, the Weasleys still consoling each other, McGonagall hurrying by with the students that had hid like I told them to. The youngest one, a girl no older than fourteen, collides into me and wraps her arms around my torso.
"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." She cries.
"You're thanking the wrong person." I gently detach her. "Harry defeated Voldemort." She sucks in a breath.
"I know but if you hadn't of warned me to stay where I was I would have been the next funeral. I was stupid and now I have to go to my dad that I love him." She smiles weakly.
When she rejoins her group I look up to the sky through one of the high windows, catching sight of my reflection. I look a little more like my grandmother today because of the dirt, sweat, and blood having set into the lines of my shouting face and deepening them. There's dried blood around my mouth and in my hair, bruises on my body that I'm sure I'm not fully aware of yet.
Viktor's reflection appears behind me and I gasp, turning on the spot.
"V-v-" He's clean, fresh robes, but his hair is longer and he's forgotten to shave. He looks at me with watery eyes but he doesn't speak almost like he's semi petrified. "Viktor?"
"You are still alive." He sucks in an uneven breath. I nod.
"Harry did it." Viktor cups my face in his shaking hands.
"She gave me the letter." His voice is barely over a whisper.
"It hasn't even been twenty-four hours. I told her three days." I hiss trying to shake my head again but Viktor holds it firmly but not harshly in place. He just looks in my eyes, unblinking, as if he did closes his tired looking eyes for even a faction of a second I might disappear.
"She got those students to tell me vaht vas happening." I look sadly at Viktor. "I thought-" He takes another ragged breath and pulls me into his chest, squeezing me. "I can't."
"You could have. You would have had to. For me. For Toby and Rory and Amy." I lock my arms around his waist and squeeze him back.
"I love you." He breathes on my neck.
"I love you too." We break apart but he won't let me too far from his side while we walk to the lounge.
The last student swirls out of sight just as we enter.
"We have a lot of clean up to do." McGonagall sighs.
"Yes, we do." I sympathise. "You most of all being the Headmistress of Hogwarts."
"Oh, my." She furrows her brow having forgotten her new position.
"Vee vill return to help if you like." Viktor offers.
"There are bigger things than Hogwarts right now Krum." She says warmly and walks by us and out of the lounge.
"I'll meet you at the camp." I tell Viktor and kiss him. He's hesitant to let go of my hand but he does.
I step into the fireplace, throwing the powder to the floor and calling out the camp's name. I only have to wait a few seconds to be spat out and another few for Viktor to join me. He goes right back to tightly holding my hand. I realise when I step out of Onora's tent that I'm barely clothed in the knotted up robe and everyone stops to look at me. Viktor and I don't pay attention though I just guide him to my tent so I can put some proper clothes on.
"You didn't work out the kink?" D'Anna greets me, looking me up and down.
"I should strangle you." I growl at her.
"You can't go running off with the little ones here." She scowls but then her face goes soft. "So the clothes were still an issue?" She refers to the fact that I still hadn't gotten my clothes to transform with me. I shake my head loosening Viktor's grip on my hand so that I can go into my room and change.
"I need you to tell Onora to call a camp meeting." I tell D'Anna when I exit into the main room again.
"Just one thing." She clears her throat. "Amycus?"
"He's dead, like I promised." She hugs me tight and then runs off.
"Ina?" Rurik comes out rubbing his eyes. They were red like he'd fallen asleep crying.
"Yeah." I kneel down just as he breaks into a full sprint.
"Dee said you'd gone." He begins to cry into my shoulder.
"But I'm back." I shush him. "I'm back and we can go home."
"Viktor!" Amalia shouts from the tent entrance and she jumps on him. Tobias walks in and calmly up to me.
"Don't leave again." He says. I'm so shocked I can't speak so instead I pick him up in the arm I'm not hold Rurik in and spin them around.
"Oh I love you guys." I cry. "I love you so much." Viktor caresses the back of my neck while holding Amalia in the other arm. "I love you so much." I sob, looking into Viktor's eyes and he bends down to kiss me.
Someone runs into the tent.
"Oh god, put up a warning sign." D'Anna gasps. We laugh. "Onora is gathering everybody outside of her tent." She says and we follow her to Onora's tent.
More than a hundred people are gathered in front of a conjured stage. Each step before I open my mouth for the audience is like the compressing action before a rubber ball bounces.
"It's over." I swallow. They look to one another as if I can't be serious. "Early this morning Harry Potter defeated Voldemort. We fought hard and many people died. People have been dying this entire time but we can't fix the past, we can only move foward now that it's possible." I have to swallow hard to wet my drying mouth. "We can find home again." I begin to tremble just a little.
I had to find home again.