"IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I'LL KILL YOU, HARRY!" roared Ron's voice, and, as a great flaming chimaera bore down upon them, he and Hermione dragged Goyle onto their broom and rose up into the air. Malfoy clambered up behind Harry.

"The door, get to the door, the door!" Malfoy practically screeched in Harry's ear, and Harry sped up, his broom neatly swerving through the towers of lost items and the billowing black smoke. Something caught Harry's eyes; a twinkling necklace, and a tiara...

"What are you doing, what are you doing, the door's that way!" Malfoy screamed, but Harry was having nothing of it as he swept down and dived into the smoke, reaching blindly for the diadem. Feeling its strangely light, tattered form around his wrist, he turned around, only to face another flaming beast, this time, a serpent. Malfoy would just not shut up as Harry swerved and turned around, this time, for sure, heading towards the door. Suddenly finding a rectangular patch on the wall, he steered the broom towards it, and moments later he and Malfoy were straight out of the Room of Requirement, the door vanishing behind them.

The moment they had landed, Malfoy just fell off the broom and lay down on the floor, panting. Harry did the same, knowing that that was quite possibly the most intense broom ride of his life; he wasn't keen on doing that again.

"C-Crabbe... C-Crabbe..."

"He's dead," Ron replied, and Harry couldn't help but think that it was a bit harsh. On the other hand, the reason why they were all so traumatized was because of Crabbe, anyway... He felt a pang of loss; the Room of Requirement had been their sanctuary since their 5th year, it was like a second home within a second home. Speaking of the Room of Requirement...

"Where's Ginny?" Harry said sharply. "She... She was here. She was supposed to be going back into the Room of Requirement-"

Ron stared blankly back at Harry. "Blimey, d'you reckon it'll still work after that fire?" Ron asked. "Shall we split up and look-"

"No," Hermione replied, getting up to her feet and dusting the soot off of her clothes. She spared a glance towards Malfoy and Goyle, who were just uselessly slumped on the corridor floor. "Let's stick together," she said. "I say we go - Harry, what's that on your arm?"

"What? Oh yeah-" Harry pulled the diadem from his wrist and held it up. The warmth from the fire was still evident, and it was practically blackened with soot, but he could still make out the words on it: Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

It was then that he noticed a bloodlike substance, dark and tarry, which seemed to be leaking from the diadem. It vibrated suddenly, and broke apart in his hands, and as it did so, Harry thought he could hear the most distant scream of pain, echoing not from the grounds or the castle, but from the thing that had just fragmented in his fingers.

Hermione's whisper brought them all back to the present. "It must have been Fiendfyre!" she exclaimed, her eyes shining.

"Sorry?"

"Fiendfyre - cursed fire - it's one of the substances that destroy Horcruxes, but I would never, ever have dared to use it, it's so dangerous - how did Crabbe know how to - ?"

A thought came to Harry. "Must've learned it from the Carrows," Harry said.

"Shame he wasn't concentrating when they mentioned how to stop it, really," Ron said, whose whose hair, like Hermione's was singed, and whose face was blackened. "If he hadn't tried to kill us all, I'd be quite sorry he was dead."

"But don't you realize?" Hermione whispered. "This means... If we can just get to the snake - "

She broke off as yells and shouts and the unmistakable noises of dueling filled the corridor. Harry looked around and his heart seemed to fail; Death Eaters had penetrated Hogwarts. Fred and Percy had just backed into view, both of them dueling masked and hooded men.

Ron immediately surged forward to help his brothers. "Ron!" Hermione cried out, her eyes pained. Ron only hesitated for a second, before plunging even further into this midst of Death Eaters, firing Stunning spells and whatever spell he could think of.

"He'll be okay," Harry said, grabbing Hermione's forearm. She nodded grimly, and they did their own work as they fought their way through the Death Eaters. Jets of light flew in every direction and the man dueling Percy backed off fast. By this time, Ron was next to his brothers; it was three against one.

The Death Eater the brothers had been dueling's hood fell off, and they saw a high forehead and streaked hair -

"Hello, Minister!" bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. "Did I mention I'm resigning?"

Both Ron and Fred let out an unbelievable laugh. "You're joking, Perce!" Fred shouted as the Death Eater he was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. Thicknesse had fallen to the ground with tiny spikes erupting all over him; he seemed to be turning into some form of sea urchin. Fred looked at Ron; the two still couldn't quite believe that their brother was actually joking for the first time in... They didn't even know how many years.

"You actually are joking, Perce..." Fred said, slowly shaking his head with a smile on his face.

"Yeah, I don't think I've heard you joke since you were-" The air exploded, cutting off Ron's sentence. They had been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, red and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in that fragment of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, and when they all thought they could actually be safe, the world was rent apart.

Harry felt himself flying through the air, his thoughts muddling about in his brain. An explosion? How could it be possible? Bombs? And of course, the instinct to hold on as tight as possible to the stick of wood that was his only weapon here, and protect his head from any debris. He finally landed, hearing the screams and yells of his companions. He didn't know what happened. He didn't know if anyone had been spared.

Harry tried to move his head, and the world suddenly resolved itself into pain and semidarkness. He was half buried in the wreckage of a corridor that had been subjected to a terrible attack. Cold air told him that the side of the castle they had been dueling on had been blown away, and the hot stickiness that he could feel on the side of his face told him that he was bleeding.

Then Harry heard a terrible cry; a cry that was all agony and loss. And he felt it too, strangely. He knew that something horrible had happened; something unspeakable and terrible had occurred, and it was done. "Oh, no," was all Harry could say under his breath, and he felt, for the first time that day, terrified. More frightened, perhaps, than he had ever been in his life.

He saw Hermione stand to her feet, and he could see it in her eyes that she felt it too. "Her-" he started to call out, then stopped, when he saw the three redheaded men grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry's blood ran cold, and Hermione rushed over to the group, before Harry did.

"No! No - NO!" someone was shouting, agony with every word. "NO!"

And Percy was shaking his brother, and Fred was kneeling beside them, and Ron's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last smile still etched upon his face.

"RON!" Hermione screamed, falling to her knees.

(*)

Wow. What a way to start a story, huh? Any way, let me just introduce myself... Hi, my name is Kait, and this is my first time posting a Harry Potter fanfiction here on . I was inspired when JK Rowling said somewhere that she almost killed off Ron, and Fred and Hermione would end up together. Being a huge Fremione shipper, I went for it.

This story is to be a multi-chapter one, closely following the last events of The Deathly Hallows, which is why most of the words seemed familiar; I used the exact same dialogue from the book, adding a few thoughts of my own to the original narration of our queen, JK Rowling. But this is the last time I'll do so... I wanted to use as much of the original dialogue as possible so it would at least seem a bit more realistic and heart-wrenching, and also familiar to the readers.

Disclaimer then, I don't own JK Rowling's wonderful work; I just own the ideas.

I don't know if I'm the first to try this kind of plot... That being said, leave your thoughts through reviews! I accept constructive criticism, just please, don't flame me. :) Thanks for stopping by!