Magic? || Years 5-7

We Wait: The Battle of Hogwarts

"Harry!" Hermione breathed, but there was already a rustle of Harry shifting around and moving whatever had been blocking the entrance to the Shrieking Shack. He slipped into the room, the rest of them crawling up after them.

Snape was slumped against the wall, lying sideways, blood gushing from the punctures in his neck. His fingers were scrabbling uselessly at the wound, trying in vain to staunch the blood flow, as if that'd save him with the venom tearing through his veins. His face pale, almost as white as a ghost, his eyes stark against his skin.

Harry swept off the Invisibility Cloak. Snape's eyes widened, blood gurgling as he tried to speak. When Harry lent down, Snape seized him by the collar and pulled him close.

Hermione gave a soft groan, touching Amisty's arm. "Isn't there anything—?"

Amisty shook her head. The blood loss was too great, the venom was too fast. Even if the castle weren't under siege, he'd die before they reached the hospital wing.

Silvery with a blue sheen, something other than blood seeped from Snape's mouth and eyes and eyes. It seemed to linger between a liquid and a gas, hovering above the dark smears of blood.

Hermione waved her wand, Conjuring a glass flask out of midair. She pressed it into Harry's shaking hands, and he was quick to collect the leaking memory. It took him three tries to stopper it properly.

Paler than ever, blood still trickling sluggishly from his wounds, Snape's fingers slackened on Harry's collar. "Look. . . at. . . me. . ."

Life slipped quietly, fragile as a bird with a broken wing, from Snape's black eyes. They stared blankly at the wall across the room. His mouth slightly agape, his hand thudding to the floor. Magic coalesced in the center of his chest, where his heart would've beaten, before seeping into the earth and disappearing. Finding life elsewhere.

Amisty had never liked Snape. He was cruel, rude, manipulative. A terror to her and to her friends. But no one deserved to die, not like this. She stepped forward, lowering his eyelids, and cleaned the blood away until the only signs of struggle were the two punctures in his neck.

When a high, cold voice spoke almost directly in her ear, it took all of her control not to scream. Voldemort hadn't returned, he was projecting once again, speaking to all of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade and anywhere else that he could reach. Right in their ears, as if he were a wand's-width away.

"You have fought," Voldemort said, and Amisty could almost feel his breath ghosting across the back of her neck, "valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.

"Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste.

"Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately.

"You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.

"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."

Harry had gone pale.

"Don't," Amisty said, fear making her voice high and thin. "Harry, don't."

"Don't listen to him," Ron said, shaking his head.

"It'll be all right," Hermione said, a tad wilder, a tad more hysterical as their worry and guilt rang sour. "Let's—let's get back to the castle, if he's gone to the forest we'll need to think of a new plan—"