Fic: The Children of Death Eaters
Recipient: niuserre
Request: The apocalypse wasn't caused by Voldemort in fact, but there's been the magical equivalent of an EMP bomb and the Order and everyone else have to manage without magic.
Author: vimesy
Fandom: Harry Potter
Title: The Children of Death Eaters
Summary: People are drawn to each other in all sorts of ways. The end of the world as they know it is a good one. Post-series AU.
Rating/warnings: PG. Character death and obnoxious pop-culture references.
Characters/pairing: Ginny/Luna, Snape/Lupin, assorted.
Disclaimer: JKR owns Harry Potter.
Notes: I really hopes this works for you; I’m not sure it’s quite what you wanted.
Severus Snape saw and sneered at atomic bombs in Muggle Studies as a student. He's heard of EMP bombs. Electromagnetic pulse. Something oddly akin to this has just ballooned over England, getting into Wizards' chests in the night and pulling away with something that belongs to them. A sweeping pulse of magic has, quite bluntly, taken away the powers of everyone in the Wizarding world. Snape is left with a pain in his chest and too many thoughts.
It's obvious why it had to happen, although it's a solution so extreme that it hardly seems worth it. It is, in fact, the ultimate solution, and a choice that Snape had to make. The hour he had to think it over doesn't seem nearly long enough to decide that destroying the power of every Wizard in England was worth it if it meant Voldemort's death. He had Harry to think of, though, and in the end there wasn't another option, or at least that's the easy answer. He has to think about what he's done.
Electro. He knows electricity from Muggle Studies. It's mostly harmless, a source of power. But, like most power, it can be distorted.
Magnetic. Literally, he understands the available damage here. The word magnetic has always made him think of other things, though, like eyes and hands. People are drawn to each other in all sorts of ways.
Pulse seems odd to him, though. It's been three years since Sirius Black's pulse stopped. It's been two since Snape first felt Remus Lupin's erratic pulse against his skin. Pulse shouldn't mean destruction. It's shouldn't even mean magic. It should be a normal, human thing, and this is not. This pulse means death, not life. It is the death of something deep inside them all, and he knows it won't go well from here. Some of them will take badly to this new hole in themselves, and they will try to fill it with the wrong things.
***
Ginny licks her lips, which are chapped slightly from the disaster. Strange that chapped lips are the worst she suffered. Of course, there's also the little nagging the back of her brain that something is wrong. She ignores it, because right now everything is wrong, and she doesn't have time to assign names and feelings to all of the tragedies around her.
Seventeen is a bad age for Ginny, just as eleven was. She spent this last year trying to help Harry, only to be cut off from him at the end, because there are things that people need to do alone. Now, they're brought him back, bleeding and unconscious, and they say it wasn't even Voldemort. Whatever left this feeling in Ginny's head is also the thing which left Harry bleeding. McGonagall said that it's because Harry had such strong magical powers, and Ginny feels the past tense acutely. She doesn't want to examine it yet. Harry is alive, that's the important thing.
***
Luna Lovegood has seen a lot of sad, strange things, but the aftermath of the pulse which seeped through England is worse. It would be better if the damage were tangible. She could handle blasted buildings and broken bodies, but this is stranger.
Something just got broken. They're all sure of that. For now, however, they have to figure out how to stop Harry from bleeding.
***
Six hours later, it is too late. Without magic, St. Mungo’s is nothing, and that’s only the beginning. What about Ministry security, Gringotts, jobs, and what the hell is the point of going to Hogwarts anymore?
This is Ginny, not coping.
People weren’t supposed to die. The device which Snape constructed as a last resort wasn’t supposed to kill people. Of course, someone with powers like Harry’s. . . They’ll never know the extent of his powers, though.
Ginny wants the world to blow up. She wanted it when Tom was in her head and she wants it now. Destruction would be wonderful in lieu of this quiet grace after the deadly, sapping pulse of the Bomb Which Wasn't.
***
The dragons are dying. Everyone expected it, but that makes no difference. Everything that is magic is dying. Maybe if the Muggles knew, they’d be happy.
Remus Lupin is dying too. It takes him six days after the pulse to fade away completely, and no one can look at Snape correctly after that.
Snape makes it easy for them.
***
The world feels gutted and wrong without magic. The old daily activities feel hollow and ridiculous, which is odd, because the often-ludicrous show of the Wizarding world has gone out of them.
Tonks has moved to Scotland. There is nothing here for her anymore. The others are drifting away, too. Families stay together, though, changing in the necessary ways.
***
Weeks later, they are already growing into this world. They're not Muggles and they never will be, but they can cope. That's all there needs to be. Ginny likes this new world even more than the others do because she has found a secret reason to love the hollow shell.
"It's funny," says Luna.
Wow. It's really not very bloody funny. Maybe she is loony.
"It's weird," Luna amends.
Some best friend. Ginny can't believe this. It's-wait. Weird, huh? That feels right. "Yeah," she says, "it is," because that is the word that Ginny can accept as a description of this new world. Good, bad, tragic, it's not enough. It's weird.
"My dad's going to write about this for the Quibbler," Luna tells her. She's never gotten the hang of shutting up, and she tells Ginny everything. Ginny's come to kind of enjoy the white noise (because she can't be expected to listen all the time), but now she's blind sided.
"Luna." She wants to say, Your dad is dead. She wants to say, It was only a month ago. She wants to make Luna shut her mouth or go to sleep so she'll stop saying things like that. It's possible that the pulse unhinged Ginny a little. It's not like she's not used to the insults, though. After her first year, it was nothing but "Hey, Weasley. I hear you've lost it." "Weasley, you need mental help." "Heard you fucked You-Know-Who, Weasley." The truth or fiction of these remarks is not the point. It just got to her after a while. Now she's learned to soak it up.
Luna is looking at her, her head tilted to one side and her pale hair floating past her strange eyes. She always looks like she's moving underwater. "I know he's dead, Ginny," she says matter-of-factly. The words are a sharp blow of lucidity, a blade of sunlight across Ginny's eyes.
So they kiss.
***
The problem with the world crashing down around you is that you have to get up when things stop breaking. Of course, some wizards didn't. To the purebloods, the curse of being transformed into Muggles and the absence of any solution was too much. The most disturbing effect of the pulse was the intense psychological one. The loss of traditional powers brought out something fiercely ugly in some Wizards. No one bothered to comment on the fact that many were former Slytherins or the children of Death Eaters.
Ginny, Neville, and Luna sit on the steps of the castle. Neville's feet are swinging a little, which makes Ginny sad. He is probably the one who lost the least when their powers were drained away, but it seems to have hurt hin the most, maybe in some place deep down where what little power he had was attached to his heart. The emptiness of Neville mirrors the new emptiness of the world, a comparison which makes Ginny more uncomfortable now that she's seen the insanity in Malfoy's eyes.
The purebloods aren't just taking it hard. As their pure, superior powers drained away, so did their minds. Snape has always said that purebloods are inbred, and he'd probably blame their already weak minds for this great breaking. Ginny secretly agrees, believing that her family's distance from other pureblood families is what spared her and the other Weasleys from losing their minds. Maybe it's just because they've never been so fanatical. As Luna once told her, lunatics go crazy.
***
Hermione and Ron are coping better than Ginny. They’ve got each other, and all Ginny has is a broken Neville and a distant Luna.
So Ginny is learning to dust. She has to manage Muggle chores now, and it’s not as bad as she thought it might be. What’s bad is Hermione’s sense of humor. No one wants to hear the bomb called “the gold Kryptonite of the Wizarding World,” and she’s not even going to touch, “Someone set up us the magical EMP bomb.”
It’s ok. Hermione is under a lot of strain.
***
When Viktor Krum comes crashing into the country with meaningful subtext about his dead headmaster and a miracle solution to their problems, Ginny ignores it. Maybe their powers will be restored, but she doesn’t care. She’s too occupied with Neville and what Malfoy and the other purebloods have put him through.
***
In the end, the real problem with the world crashing down around you is that it eventually comes crashing back up. There is no other phrase to describe this. Ginny hates to admit it, but she liked things broken. The great smashing, grinding sound of things righting themselves makes her angry. Luna's seeming indifference doesn’t so much annoy her as give her pause. She thought they were on the same gritty, crumbled page. They found a way to live in the death of the Wizarding world, but its resurrection might mean their demise. The pulse changed everyone, twisted them in subtle little ways into different shapes, some shocking and some admirable. It twisted Ginny into an adult. She doesn’t really regret it, but she wishes it had come more slowly. Luna still seems like such a little girl. Ginny will have to ask whoever ends up with Neville about this. She had assumed that Neville would have grown up with it, but he's only grown younger, with ash in his eyes.
Ginny watches the bomb implode in backwards slow motion over the next few months, and she clings to Luna and to the memories of the apocalypse which happened in the Wizarding world and in her head.
~Fin
Request: The apocalypse wasn't caused by Voldemort in fact, but there's been the magical equivalent of an EMP bomb and the Order and everyone else have to manage without magic.
Author: vimesy
Fandom: Harry Potter
Title: The Children of Death Eaters
Summary: People are drawn to each other in all sorts of ways. The end of the world as they know it is a good one. Post-series AU.
Rating/warnings: PG. Character death and obnoxious pop-culture references.
Characters/pairing: Ginny/Luna, Snape/Lupin, assorted.
Disclaimer: JKR owns Harry Potter.
Notes: I really hopes this works for you; I’m not sure it’s quite what you wanted.
Severus Snape saw and sneered at atomic bombs in Muggle Studies as a student. He's heard of EMP bombs. Electromagnetic pulse. Something oddly akin to this has just ballooned over England, getting into Wizards' chests in the night and pulling away with something that belongs to them. A sweeping pulse of magic has, quite bluntly, taken away the powers of everyone in the Wizarding world. Snape is left with a pain in his chest and too many thoughts.
It's obvious why it had to happen, although it's a solution so extreme that it hardly seems worth it. It is, in fact, the ultimate solution, and a choice that Snape had to make. The hour he had to think it over doesn't seem nearly long enough to decide that destroying the power of every Wizard in England was worth it if it meant Voldemort's death. He had Harry to think of, though, and in the end there wasn't another option, or at least that's the easy answer. He has to think about what he's done.
Electro. He knows electricity from Muggle Studies. It's mostly harmless, a source of power. But, like most power, it can be distorted.
Magnetic. Literally, he understands the available damage here. The word magnetic has always made him think of other things, though, like eyes and hands. People are drawn to each other in all sorts of ways.
Pulse seems odd to him, though. It's been three years since Sirius Black's pulse stopped. It's been two since Snape first felt Remus Lupin's erratic pulse against his skin. Pulse shouldn't mean destruction. It's shouldn't even mean magic. It should be a normal, human thing, and this is not. This pulse means death, not life. It is the death of something deep inside them all, and he knows it won't go well from here. Some of them will take badly to this new hole in themselves, and they will try to fill it with the wrong things.
***
Ginny licks her lips, which are chapped slightly from the disaster. Strange that chapped lips are the worst she suffered. Of course, there's also the little nagging the back of her brain that something is wrong. She ignores it, because right now everything is wrong, and she doesn't have time to assign names and feelings to all of the tragedies around her.
Seventeen is a bad age for Ginny, just as eleven was. She spent this last year trying to help Harry, only to be cut off from him at the end, because there are things that people need to do alone. Now, they're brought him back, bleeding and unconscious, and they say it wasn't even Voldemort. Whatever left this feeling in Ginny's head is also the thing which left Harry bleeding. McGonagall said that it's because Harry had such strong magical powers, and Ginny feels the past tense acutely. She doesn't want to examine it yet. Harry is alive, that's the important thing.
***
Luna Lovegood has seen a lot of sad, strange things, but the aftermath of the pulse which seeped through England is worse. It would be better if the damage were tangible. She could handle blasted buildings and broken bodies, but this is stranger.
Something just got broken. They're all sure of that. For now, however, they have to figure out how to stop Harry from bleeding.
***
Six hours later, it is too late. Without magic, St. Mungo’s is nothing, and that’s only the beginning. What about Ministry security, Gringotts, jobs, and what the hell is the point of going to Hogwarts anymore?
This is Ginny, not coping.
People weren’t supposed to die. The device which Snape constructed as a last resort wasn’t supposed to kill people. Of course, someone with powers like Harry’s. . . They’ll never know the extent of his powers, though.
Ginny wants the world to blow up. She wanted it when Tom was in her head and she wants it now. Destruction would be wonderful in lieu of this quiet grace after the deadly, sapping pulse of the Bomb Which Wasn't.
***
The dragons are dying. Everyone expected it, but that makes no difference. Everything that is magic is dying. Maybe if the Muggles knew, they’d be happy.
Remus Lupin is dying too. It takes him six days after the pulse to fade away completely, and no one can look at Snape correctly after that.
Snape makes it easy for them.
***
The world feels gutted and wrong without magic. The old daily activities feel hollow and ridiculous, which is odd, because the often-ludicrous show of the Wizarding world has gone out of them.
Tonks has moved to Scotland. There is nothing here for her anymore. The others are drifting away, too. Families stay together, though, changing in the necessary ways.
***
Weeks later, they are already growing into this world. They're not Muggles and they never will be, but they can cope. That's all there needs to be. Ginny likes this new world even more than the others do because she has found a secret reason to love the hollow shell.
"It's funny," says Luna.
Wow. It's really not very bloody funny. Maybe she is loony.
"It's weird," Luna amends.
Some best friend. Ginny can't believe this. It's-wait. Weird, huh? That feels right. "Yeah," she says, "it is," because that is the word that Ginny can accept as a description of this new world. Good, bad, tragic, it's not enough. It's weird.
"My dad's going to write about this for the Quibbler," Luna tells her. She's never gotten the hang of shutting up, and she tells Ginny everything. Ginny's come to kind of enjoy the white noise (because she can't be expected to listen all the time), but now she's blind sided.
"Luna." She wants to say, Your dad is dead. She wants to say, It was only a month ago. She wants to make Luna shut her mouth or go to sleep so she'll stop saying things like that. It's possible that the pulse unhinged Ginny a little. It's not like she's not used to the insults, though. After her first year, it was nothing but "Hey, Weasley. I hear you've lost it." "Weasley, you need mental help." "Heard you fucked You-Know-Who, Weasley." The truth or fiction of these remarks is not the point. It just got to her after a while. Now she's learned to soak it up.
Luna is looking at her, her head tilted to one side and her pale hair floating past her strange eyes. She always looks like she's moving underwater. "I know he's dead, Ginny," she says matter-of-factly. The words are a sharp blow of lucidity, a blade of sunlight across Ginny's eyes.
So they kiss.
***
The problem with the world crashing down around you is that you have to get up when things stop breaking. Of course, some wizards didn't. To the purebloods, the curse of being transformed into Muggles and the absence of any solution was too much. The most disturbing effect of the pulse was the intense psychological one. The loss of traditional powers brought out something fiercely ugly in some Wizards. No one bothered to comment on the fact that many were former Slytherins or the children of Death Eaters.
Ginny, Neville, and Luna sit on the steps of the castle. Neville's feet are swinging a little, which makes Ginny sad. He is probably the one who lost the least when their powers were drained away, but it seems to have hurt hin the most, maybe in some place deep down where what little power he had was attached to his heart. The emptiness of Neville mirrors the new emptiness of the world, a comparison which makes Ginny more uncomfortable now that she's seen the insanity in Malfoy's eyes.
The purebloods aren't just taking it hard. As their pure, superior powers drained away, so did their minds. Snape has always said that purebloods are inbred, and he'd probably blame their already weak minds for this great breaking. Ginny secretly agrees, believing that her family's distance from other pureblood families is what spared her and the other Weasleys from losing their minds. Maybe it's just because they've never been so fanatical. As Luna once told her, lunatics go crazy.
***
Hermione and Ron are coping better than Ginny. They’ve got each other, and all Ginny has is a broken Neville and a distant Luna.
So Ginny is learning to dust. She has to manage Muggle chores now, and it’s not as bad as she thought it might be. What’s bad is Hermione’s sense of humor. No one wants to hear the bomb called “the gold Kryptonite of the Wizarding World,” and she’s not even going to touch, “Someone set up us the magical EMP bomb.”
It’s ok. Hermione is under a lot of strain.
***
When Viktor Krum comes crashing into the country with meaningful subtext about his dead headmaster and a miracle solution to their problems, Ginny ignores it. Maybe their powers will be restored, but she doesn’t care. She’s too occupied with Neville and what Malfoy and the other purebloods have put him through.
***
In the end, the real problem with the world crashing down around you is that it eventually comes crashing back up. There is no other phrase to describe this. Ginny hates to admit it, but she liked things broken. The great smashing, grinding sound of things righting themselves makes her angry. Luna's seeming indifference doesn’t so much annoy her as give her pause. She thought they were on the same gritty, crumbled page. They found a way to live in the death of the Wizarding world, but its resurrection might mean their demise. The pulse changed everyone, twisted them in subtle little ways into different shapes, some shocking and some admirable. It twisted Ginny into an adult. She doesn’t really regret it, but she wishes it had come more slowly. Luna still seems like such a little girl. Ginny will have to ask whoever ends up with Neville about this. She had assumed that Neville would have grown up with it, but he's only grown younger, with ash in his eyes.
Ginny watches the bomb implode in backwards slow motion over the next few months, and she clings to Luna and to the memories of the apocalypse which happened in the Wizarding world and in her head.
~Fin