Disclaimer: Everything you recognize doubtlessly belongs to the revered JK Rowling.

A.N: There'll be slash in later chapters. Nothing overly graphic as I will be focusing on the romance more than on the sexual aspect, but you've been warned. You should also watch out for violence, which will mostly justify the 'M' rating. Also, beware, this fic is going to be of rather epic proportion. Enjoy!

Prologue: Running Under the Rain

Harry Potter was used to running.

Until his legs burned and shook, until his chest was ready to burst with the frenzied beat of his heart, each gasp for air like molten fire down his lungs.

As he understood it, normal people ran to stay fit, to avoid being late, to unwind after a stressful day. They didn't know the gnawing fear of an enemy's breath down their necks, that blind desperation to outrun death, to push past the stabbing pain in their side, the agony that crawled up the spine, to the skull, reverberating in every bone each time their foot hit the ground.

But Harry knew. Oh, did he know.

Running was a constant in his life, something he had learned he needed like food and sleep at the age when children took their first stumbling steps. At the age when they first discovered how to close their hands into fists.

Harry almost missed the bygone days when he ran only to avoid his cousin's beatings.

Specially now.

The sky above his head was filled with dark, angry clouds. It was raining buckets, the downpour blanketing the world, thick and clammy. Rainwater was ice-cold against his flesh, rivulets down his matted hair, blurring his surroundings to a senseless mass of drenched-grey and sogged-green. He could hardly see the slippery ground, wet earth dangerously slick under his used trainers. His jeans were caked with mud and his shirt was so plastered against his body that it felt like a second skin.

He could hear the Death Eaters in the distance, hollering like a pack of rabid dogs closing in on its preys, wild and blood-crazed, loud even over the roaring rain.

Harry didn't know how Voldemort's minions had managed to find them. Not once had they gotten so close to being caught in all their months of Horcrux-hunting. Their frustrating, terrible months living like shadows, like tracked pariahs fighting a war that felt long lost. Success had kept evading them, especially after Ron's departure, but they had found ways to survive, Hermione and him, to stay out of the Dark Lord's reach, even after screams into the night, scarlet blood on immaculate snow, spell-fire in wide brown eyes, head-splitting pain in lighting-bolt scar Godric's Hollow, because hope was a stubborn, traitorous thing that snarled in defiance and refused to die easily. They'd been safe, had kept going, flirting with Voldemort's forces but never touching.

Until now, that is.

They had been careless, in the end. A blotched ward, it was all it had taken. A spell they had performed countless times before. Heads buzzing from lack of food, limbs lead-heavy from lassitude of their fruitless quest, and a misplaced strand of magic had sealed their fate, had led them here.

Merlin, he was so very tired of it all. Exhausted to his core, sick of this endless war.

They both were.

Despite her efforts to be quiet, Harry had heard Hermione cry herself to sleep every night for days and days. He had not found the words to comfort her. How could he have? He felt like some kind of fading ghost himself, weak and lifeless. He had feared he would lose her to depression, but she had stopped. Stopped crying, stopped laughing. Ron's absence and the understanding that he could not come back had brought a new shadow to her eyes, a kind of ruthless determination he felt mirrored under his own skin.

They had held on, together, had dealt with the fear, the violence, the daily news of people they loved suffering. For over six months.

And now, they had been found and were running.

Harry did not hear the yelled Cutting Hex over the loud thrum of the rain, but the strength of it hit him like a racing train, knocked the air from his lungs, exploded over his back in shards of sharp, jarring pain that blinded his vision, filled his mouth with the churning tang of blood, viscous and coppery.

"DID THAT HURT, BABY POTTER?!"

His heart was loud, so loud in his ears, rushing with a sound like the waves of a demented sea, drowning him, but –

He didn't fall. His knees trembled, threatened to give out, his head spun, nauseating, but he kept going, locked his muscles and ran, faster, because stopping now would mean death, and everything in him revolted at the very idea, growled in protested, clawed at him and rebelled. Against the slow trickle of blood down his back and the tearing, bone-deep pain of its open wound. Against the other injuries he could hardly feel in comparison, and his burning muscles, and his ragged breath. . .

It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Even if he had lost already, if nothing save for a miracle could save him from being either killed or captured in a matter of minutes –

He surrendered to his will to live and ran.

A Crucio hissed past his ear and his pace faltered as he threw himself to a side, firing a few Stunners over his shoulder while he regained his balance, the handle of his wand rough and familiar against his palm.

It was the middle of the day, but he couldn't see five steps ahead of him. The world had been swallowed by the heavy rain, soaked under the falling skies. He had just lost sight of Hermione.

He saw her again moments later, her form vague and bleary in the distance, when she slipped on a patch of damp grass and swayed, body tipping forward. She didn't fall, somehow kept moving towards Stonehenge as fast as she could. She had almost made it.

Harry wondered what had made her choose this location, in the broken second they'd had to Apparate. Maybe she thought they would have better fighting chances within the protection of the ancient stones. Or maybe the single-minded purpose of reaching the historical site – currently devoid of tourists thanks to the weather – was the only thing that kept her going, that drove her onwards the way sheer bullheadedness drove Harry.

And maybe –

The thought struck Harry like a bolt of electricity through the heart. It was him who the Death Eaters wanted, his head that Voldemort wanted to mount on a spike.

Maybe he could save her, give her enough time to escape.

Somewhere behind him, Bellatrix Lestrange laughed, maniacal and victorious, and Harry's guts twisted at the sound of Sirius' murderer's voice, hatred at the very thought of her heavy and acidic in the pit of his stomach.

Rain was coloured green as an Avada Kedavra flew. Harry's blood froze in his veins. He heard himself yell a warning, and Hermione jumped aside, just in time. The Killing Curse didn't hit her on the back, brushed her shoulder instead, but another curse caught her by the legs, threw her against one of the large bluestones that made Stonehenge first circle. She scrambled back on her feet immediately, pressed up against the towering boulder for support.

Almost there. Harry had nearly joined her. He was running so fast to avoid the spells being fired at him that his feet were barely touching the ground, draining the last of his strength to go faster still, until he could see Hermione clearly in spite of the rain.

She was trapped and trembling against the grey rock. Her brown eyes were feverish with desperate defiance, creating a sharp contrast with the livid, stretched skin of her face. She seemed to brace herself as she readjusted her grip on her wand.

Harry stumbled and lost several precious seconds to regain balance.

Hermione's wand-arm rose. She struggled visibly to muster up the strength to cast a spell.

Come on 'Mione. Faster.

Her complexion turned ashen.

As she swayed on her feet, Death Eaters hollered.

Shit.

Harry glided to a stop, turned around and conjured a Protego Maxima. Hexes rebounded against the shield, a deafening crackle of colliding magic that strained his every nerves.

Bellatrix's gleeful cackle was getting louder.

"Run, Hermione!" Harry yelled without turning around. As he'd thought, the Death Eaters no longer dared to cast Unforgivables now that he was in the line of fire. Voldemort wanted him for himself, the psychopathic bastard. "Disapparate!"

He could see black shapes moving through the thick curtain of rain now, but Hermione seemed frozen in place. Harry could still feel her behind him, and for the first time since he had started to run, cold, heart-stopping panic sized him.

They were coming and she wasn't moving.

Head snapping around, Harry's emerald eyes, glowing with the power he was summoning to maintain the shield, found hers.

"NOW!"

Despair tainted Hermione's features, but finally, finally, the words seemed to pierce through her exhausted daze, a primal part of her brain reacting instinctively to the order.

Her eyes fluttered close and she Disapparated with a loud crack. Slytherin's locket, shining against her throat, was the last thing Harry saw before she vanished.

Harry did not have the strength or the concentration to follow her, not anymore. Already, he could feel his shield weaken under the onslaught of dark spells, his breath coming out in short, harsh pants that tore at his throat.

But it was fine. It was all right. Hermione was safe.

Breathing hard, he waited until he could see each of the Death Eaters' faces to break the Protego, throwing an overpowered Blasting Curse in the same motion.

There were enraged cries and swearing. Harry didn't wait for the Dark Lord's henchmen to regain their footing before he ran into Stonehenge, keeping low to the ground.

Orders to surround him were shouted.

He crossed the two circles of stone unhindered before Death Eaters appeared in front of him, herding him to the center of Stonehenge, death-white masks mocking among the watery greyness of their surroundings.

Harry ran a hand over his eyes, pushing strands of wet hair away from his face in a vain attempt to clear his blurred sight. His head swivelled from side to side, looking for an escape route. There were none.

He backed to the middle of the circles, and Death Eaters followed, smug and unhurried now that they were certain of their success. He walked until his calves bucked against an uneven surface, hard and unyielding that nearly sent him sprawling in the dirt. There was a fallen monolith lying at the center of Stonehenge. Harry stumbled on top of it, his back screaming in protest. It offered a vantage point if nothing else, highlighted the number discrepancy between him and them in merciless relief. His right hand tightened, white-knuckled around his wand.

"Ready to die, Potter?" a man sneered, and Harry almost smiled.

He felt – calm. Not resigned, or defeated, just calm. Detached. He had done his best, given everything. He had loved and suffered for it, had been scraped raw to save his friends, and it had been his choice, to end up here today. Not Voldemort's, not the Ministry's. His. He was alone, bruised and bloodied and hurting, but he'd never been one to cry over his fate, and he couldn't muster up regrets about how his life was going to end. There was only one resolve pulsing through him, strong and steady as the earth beneath his feet: That if he were to die, he would do so fighting. Like his parents and Sirius, Hedwig and Moody, Dumbledore and so many others.

He raised his wand, gathering himself in a tight coil, magic pooling under his skin, bottled lightning at his fingertips.

"Stun him!" someone shouted. There was fear in their voice.

With perfect synchronisation, the Death Eaters took aim and fired and –

Time slowed.

Heart in his throat, pulsing in a painful, shattering rhythm, Harry watched, wand still raised to defend himself, as different curses flew toward him in slow motion. Even the relentless pounding of the rain had slowed to a near-stop, droplets suspended mid-air, glittering, crystalline, like a million fragments of the world. Harry tried to move, but his body wouldn't respond, sluggish as though engulfed in thick honey and what the hell was happening?

Had it been a simple matter of time slowing, he would have thought of a trick played by his adrenaline-filled brain, stretching out his last moments to let him live an eternity in the half-heartbeats he had left. But then, spreading like wildfire, like the sun breaking over the horizon, white, blinding Runes appeared at the Death Eaters' feet and rushed toward him, easily outpacing the curses, circling and twisting in odd arches and deep curves, a flower blooming in the midst of winter.

They crawled on the stone upon which he stood and reached his skin, and Harry's mouth opened in a silent scream because it hurt, oh God it hurt, more than the Cruciatus, more than anything he had ever felt before, electricity seeping through his body, down to his very bones, rattling and rasping and tearing, and Harry could feel, feel everything, flesh and blood and life, with more acuity than he had felt before and it was much, far too much, please stop.

The air around him grew warm, a voracious furnace that bent and contorted like an angry snake, that turned rainwater to thin smoke and curled around the Death Eaters as they cried in agony, fell on their knees, hands raised to protect their eyes against the violent light, transfixed as magic left their bodies.

Time stopped.

Harry's heart missed a beat. Something snapped, tearing open as the earth stood still. Then, in a brilliant explosion, he felt himself fall. His mind shuddered one last time before his world was swallowed by darkness.

Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived, disappeared on January, the 3rd of 1998, to the great despair of the Wizarding community.

And rain continued to fall long afterwards over Stonehenge, washing over the bodies of some of the most feared Death Eaters of the Second War.