Summary: HG/SS: AU: Possibly Crack (Oh who am I kidding, of course, it's crack): After the end of the war came the waiting, and for Hermione Granger, it was worse than everything that had come before it.

Beta Love: Halp! I'm publishing unsupervised!

Warning: blood/gore and uh not entirely nice Hermione

The Waiting

A Corvus Draconis Shorty-short Story

Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come. Robert H. Schuller

It was the waiting that was the worst.

The gnawing hunger and emptiness grew inside her belly, but no food, no reading, no amount of study would assuage it.

Mastery pins lined her collar, but the hunger, the most horrible agony of incompleteness, of need, remained.

She hated how weak it made her feel— to survive. To live.

So many others had not.

Molly wept almost daily for Fred, the Burrow no longer a place of happiness and laughter.

Ron was bitter, angry.

He placated himself with pleasures of the flesh and witches, trying to find the life inside himself.

She had nothing to offer him, for her soul was heavy. Her guilt runneth over.

Her parents had forgiven her, but it never felt the same. She had still done what she did, and even their being alive was a small consolation.

The hunger only grew.

Needy.

Empty.

Meaningless.

Rudderless life—

Harry was too busy trying to make a real life for himself outside of Tom Riddle's shadow and the Boy-Who-Lived and the equally infamous Man-Who-Conquered.

She didn't blame him, no.

Envious, perhaps, that he had Ginny— someone that could share his dreams, touch him, comfort him.

But she— she had nothing to offer either of them.

They might as well have tried to breathe in space, for she was still waiting.

She was waiting for the one that had made her heart beat, her legs weak, her breath leave her lungs in a rush—

But she wasn't waiting for the Light to come and sweep her off her feet, she wasn't waiting for a shining knight or gallant prince of some glorious kingdom. No.

The Dark whispered to her with silken voice and Earthen growls. She could hear it as clearly as the memory of her own screams under Bellatrix's wand. It had since that one, fateful night.

The night that had changed everything—

The night that had changed her.

"I cannot promise you will not die— that there will not be pain, Miss Granger. Bellatrix will see to that—"

He cradled her in his lap, tolerating her painful gasps as she clung to his hand, squeezing it as the Cruciatus continued to rip through her in repeating aftershocks.

"I can promise you that vengeance shall be yours, should you rise again reborn." His voice was a rumble, a purr. "If that is what you truly want, but you must truly want it. You must want it with every fibre of your being— only then can my taint take root in you— free you."

His eyes were black— as black as the vacuum of space where the stars hung burning in the darkness. "But it will take time— time to smoulder. Time to incubate. Time to emerge from the cocoon that is your body and soul."

Her eyes filled with tears because of the pain, but her fingers extended to touch his pale face and his hooked nose, the hard line of his lips. "Master," she whispered.

"Say my Name, and I shall be yours. Your one. Your only."

"Say my Name, and I will wait for you alone."

"Say my Name, and when it is your time, I will be there to hold you and chase you across the skies."

"Severus."

His kiss ghosted her forehead.

"Camazotz."

His kiss pressed against her cheek.

"Zotzilaha Chamalcan."

His mouth covered hers as her body trummed as ancient magic pulsed. Blood from her many, many wounds defied gravity and flowed upward and disappear into his skin.

"Wait for me, my Darling, as I will wait for you."

"Yes," she breathed.

"Hermione," his voice caressed her name as his wings cradled her body and fire—

She saw the flash of fangs as the face of great demonic bat rose above her— wings wrapping around her body, and his teeth buried into her neck and shoulder.

Fire filled every vein and artery in her body, and she screamed as her body was consumed and the room was filled with a great and blackened cloud of bats so thick it became as dark as night.

Bellatrix' torture seemed like nothing after Snape's venomous fire had coursed through every vessel in her body. Death would have been easier, but she had not yielded.

Vengeance burned within her, seeping through both body and soul—

With every drop of blood Bellatrix made her shed, her soul burned as her body was both unmade and remade.

Hermione's spirit grew defiant.

Her screams called to the ancient places.

Her blood fed the ancient stone.

But still, she waited.

Even when Harry and Ron grabbed her between then, escaping with Dobby, she waited.

As Dobby's blood coated her hands, a spec of black replaced brown in her eyes.

As the blood of the innocent, the not so innocent, the damned, and the doomed touched her over the course of battle, more black seeped into her eyes, stealing away the brown and replacing it with the Darkness of the Void.

Fred's blood.

Lupin's.

Tonk's.

Lavender's.

Harry's.

Ron's.

Death Eaters.

Victims.

Students.

Teachers.

So many.

By the time her hands had covered the wound on Snape's neck, attempting to hold the blood inside him as she poured liquid tincture of bezoar down his throat, Dittany, anti-venin—her eyes no longer held light or laughter.

Innocence had been purged in fire and blood.

Death after death had germinated the great Dark within her.

So when Voldemort's body had burst into ash, his tattered, broken soul fleeing into the night's remaining darkness, his soul shrapnel had flowed through all that had gathered there, unable to stay, unable to stick—

But when it had touched her skin, a great nova of energy had blown outward as the sun eclipsed, and every single remaining Death Eater, werewolf, and supporter of the great and powerful Dark Lord had burst screaming flames, their bodies falling, their breasts laid open as their hearts disappeared in a final, ultimate offering to Camazotz as their souls fled to what damnation remained.

The survivors believed it had been Voldemort's last magic to ensure none of his people ever attempted to dethrone him.

They believed his death had triggered the gruesome chain reaction of agonising deaths.

They believed Harry Potter had saved the world.

They believed a great many things.

And still, Hermione waited.

Wizarding Britain breathed again.

She waited.

Severus Snape was buried.

She waited.

Hogwarts rebuilt, and she returned, finishing her education.

She waited.

She finished mastery after mastery.

Waiting.

She failed to free the house-elves.

Still, she waited.

She longed.

She hungered.

She taught generations.

She waited.

She watched those she knew grow old and wither.

She waited.

Her body grew frail, but her spirit remained defiant.

Even when her body grew still and her heart ceased. Even when her body grew cold, entombed in stone as so many other of the heroes b efore her—

She waited.

Dark, curving claws scraped on the granite of Hermione Granger's tomb. Leathery wings hung like the shroud of the dead. Dark mist seeped from the very ground, swirling around taloned feet.

The visage of the great bat god was as wrathful as it was impatient—

Waiting…

Waiting…

Badum.

Badum.

At last!

Darkness pulsed as his claws tore away the stone sarcophagus.

No more waiting.

No more.

Never, ever again!

She rose from the primordial Darkness, her skin the colour of night, her mane as riotous as it was in life, eyes as black as His, wings unfolding— her mouth opened in a terror-invoking SCREEEEEEEEEE!

"At last, my love, my mate, my queen," he greeted. "At last, my Hermione reborn to me."

"Severusss," she breathed, her pristine fangs glinting in the moonless sky. "I have waited a lifetime to be held by you again."

"Come to me, my Darling," he crooned, his wings outstretched to enfold her. "Let me adore you."

As their bodies met together, wrapped tightly in each other's wings, muzzles pressed against the others, tongues tangling—

The very sky went dark.

But for a moment of eternity as the world regained fear of the great unknown Dark.

Even with light again returned, the stars of distant galaxies gleaming on the black of space as their own yellow sun found purchase once more—

Tales would be told of how the sun was blotted out by the span of great, bat wings and doomsayers rose to herald the End Times.

But Camazotz and his beloved mate had no intention of destroying the world, no. Why destroy what they could fill with their countless winged children, darkening the skies with their great, many wings?

They only had forever to do so.

They could wait.

Always.

Together.

SCREEEEEEEEEE!

Fin.

A/N: This super short brought to you by thunderstorms waking me up in the middle of a deep sleep when I have to be up in 4 hours for work. RAGGGGGGGHHHHHH...