Holly Potter: The Bookish, Burgling, Badass (Hp x Mcu) by Personfour

Chapter 23: Summer 1995 (II)

Summary:

A cliffhanger is finally paid off, people are surprisingly honest, Holly is unpleasantly surprised several times, and things heat up.

Notes:

Hey people, I'm not dead. TL;DR: Life has been ultra shitty. Here's an update, expect more updates but probably not every week. I still have this fic outlined to Endgame, its not ending bc of Life BS.

Detailed version? In my last note I said something like "not feeling great." That escalated scary quick and I was functionally useless for ~6 weeks. Six weeks right at the start of my college semester, which meant my entire semester was beyond recovery. Fun Times. Anyways, I drop my classes only to get a call from housing saying I need to move out in 2 days. Fun times but that actually went shockingly smooth other than my pc screen getting a scratch. Just as I was settling in I think it was about a week later that my grandpa suddenly died. He had alzheimer's so frankly it was a mercy, but shocking because he'd only been diagnosed less than a year ago. Good chunk of that was while I was away at college too so from my POV it came outta nowhere since I never saw his decline in person. Fun times. I think it was a couple weeks after that my Mom caught Covid. Her life and health in general was never at risk but that wasn't great to been around, couldn't sneeze for weeks without someone panicking. Fun times. Then finally, just this week my dog somehow managed to accidentally rip out one of his nails- imagine a cute little dog with a paw that won't stop bleeding and won't stay still to wrap it. Pretty sure there's still bloodstains on the floor somewhere. He's fine now, no worries, but still being super careful with him.

So yeah, life been not so great. I guess on the plus side I can say Elden Ring is great?

TL;DR: Life has been ultra shitty. Here's an update, expect more updates but probably not every week. I still have this fic outlined to Endgame, it's not ending bc of Life BS.

Looking at a bloodied and hysterically sobbing Hermione, Sirius futilely trying to calm her, Holly felt too numb to think.  How could this have happened?

It was a dumb question.  She knew exactly how this came to be. 

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After Hermione's falling out with her parents Holly did her best to distract her friend.  She asked if Hermione wanted to help her make a Force Choke spell (it ended up being shockingly easy, taking them only a couple hours to master wandlessly); give her free reign over the Manor's library (that earned an actual look of excitement); offered to talk about boys (after a very awkward start they both agreed Cedric Diggory was rather pretty); and tried to get her to binge some movies and video games (Hermione laughed at The Princess Bride, Holly counted it as a win).

Despite all that, Hermione was clearly still out of it.  Whenever left to visit her parents with Sirius she came back looking worse.

Having parents seemed complicated.

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After a week preparing Hermione's parents were finally ready to move into Potter Manor.  Knowing they needed the extra hands and moral support, Holly offered her help to move and apparated over with them.

What greeted them was a sight none of them were expecting: houses crushed to rubble; trees knocked over; fire and smoke clogging the air, limiting visibility and stinging her eyes; screams of pain and fear coming from all sides.  It looked like a warzone, or that a tornado had blown through the neighborhood, something that was explained a second later when she saw the figure of a giant stomping through a row of houses nearby.

Unfortunately, the giant wasn't alone.  Several cloaked Death Eaters were following behind, laughing as they casually picked through the rubble for survivors.