Title: Acts of Desperation
Author: MissAnnThropic
Spoilers: post- Half-Blood Prince
Summary: A lifetime ago, I had read in a hundred books that war changes people. We are at war, the wizarding world against Voldemort, and I could not have predicted how it would change me.
Disclaimer: In case this comes as a complete shock to all of you, brace yourselves to discover that I'm not JK Rowling. If I was, there wouldn't be any of this Ron/Hermione nonsense.
A/N: If you're looking for a marshmallow cream poof of H/Hr fluff, you'll find this fic a most distasteful surprise. This is not your happily ever after Harry/Hermione story.

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A lifetime ago, I had read in a hundred books that war changes people. We are at war, the wizarding world against Voldemort, and I could not have predicted how it would change me. It's one thing to read it and something vastly different to live it. I barely know the girl I used to be, before. And I'm so warped and bent and burned inside that I can't even miss her.

The Hermione I am now is nothing like that pitiful child. And Harry's changed, maybe even more than I have. We've changed, because before leaving Hogwarts it would never have occurred to us to screw each other black and blue.

It just goes to show.

There's a beast in me, something dark and savage. It's fury and abandon and desperation exorcised through me. It's barely even me when that black monster surges up inside me. It's the embodiment of rage, at the war, at myself, at everything… sometimes even at Harry.

Harry alone meets my beast head-on. He stands in the path of the onslaught, in a just so Harry fashion, and I let it strike out. I unleash it into his unkempt black hair, against his pale skin, into his mouth, I scrape it into his shoulders with my nails, carve it into his throat with my teeth, trap it between me and Harry when there's a wall at his back. It's something powerful, and it consumes me, and usually it's not sated until Harry's dominated or he's overpowered me. He doesn't break me, nothing is going to break this new me, but sometimes he can defeat me, beat back that beast with his own brawn, his teeth and hands his instruments.

It didn't used to be this way. I used to be sweet and innocent and virginal. I used to sleep soundly and giggle like a fool little girl. I used to ponder the dueling fancies in my childish brain, deciding whether I'd crush on Harry or Ron that week.

I used to think we could defeat Voldemort without losing most of who we were.

I used to be a naïve prat.

Now everything's buggered, and somewhere between the Death Eaters and Horcruxes and battles and Voldemort we're nothing of the children we once were. We're war-hardened at eighteen. We're veterans. We have all the damage. We're so far from kids that I'd cry if I wasn't so numb to worthless things like tears.

At first it wasn't so different. It was still the three of us, Harry, Ron, and me. But none of us finished our seventh year at Hogwarts. Hermione Granger, the biggest bookworm in the school, turned drop-out to chase after Death Eaters with her two best friends. Children on a mission to save the world.

And then Ron died. Not bravely or courageously like we'd all believed every Gryffindor did. He died at the hands of a band of Death Eaters, crying and wetting his pants, and I was horrified that he could die that way. I was angry that he could die that way. Furious at them for reducing Ron to that. And I felt, for the first time, that monster in me. A coldness, a cruelty, a disregard for another's pain and suffering I never thought I could feel.

In a way, Ron's death forced Harry and I to recognize how seriously and severely we were cast into the unforgivable. There was no Dumbledore to come to our rescue, the Death Eaters weren't going to be kinder to us because we were young, the Ministry wasn't going to save our hides, because they were out of control. There was no control. There was only every fight for life and the one that would follow if you were lucky enough to survive the first. Barely staying a step ahead of death became our standard, the measure of normal. We embraced it, shed our old selves to do it, but we had no choice. Because death's not a choice, it's failure.

We had to be brutal. We had to take life without flinching, without hesitation. We had to become self-made Aurors. Aurors with no compunction about killing.

At times I am still afraid of the strength and power of the beast in me that lusts for blood. I am vicious, vicious in a way Ron wasn't, and that's why I'm alive and he isn't.

I give over to that darkness day after day, I let it take over and rule my actions, and it slowly starts to change me. I'm cruel everywhere now. I'm a wretch to my old friends from Hogwarts, I'm merciless toward my former professors and mentors, and I'm a horror to strangers. I'm dangerous to anyone in my way. I have to be, and I'm unapologetic about what I've become. If I apologize for it I must first doubt it, or at least acknowledge some element of wrong in me, and second-guessing like that could get me killed. I'll be a killer and unashamed of it. I'll be that beast that broke free of unseen bonds when Ron was taken from us. And for that, I'm alive. For the time being.

If there's one dark force greater than my own these days, at least on the good side, it's Harry's.

We live together at Grimmauld Place. It's our base of operations, and it's not safe but nowhere is so it doesn't make a lot of difference. Harry walks around with this sense about him. He's His executioner. Harry won't let it end any other way, we've all given up too much for it to end in victory of that bastard of a wizard. Voldemort will die by Harry's hand, and the powerful fury in that certainty makes Harry one far more given over to inner darkness than I.

But where we crack, we crumble.

I'm still a scared, trembling little girl when it comes to my parents. I owled them once when Harry and I set off together, told them to watch themselves and that I'd contact them again when it was over. I feared any more correspondence with them would mean attracting dangerous attention to them. I haven't spoken to them in over a year, in person or by mail. But I still live in terror that they'll get in the way in this magical war. I'm afraid my mum and dad will end up muggle casualties of Voldemort's vie for power.

And Harry…

I know his greatest weakness is me. If I were gone, dead or abandoned him, then he could be an absolute fortress. Nothing need reach past his armor to touch him if I were gone. He'd probably be better off if I were out of the picture, but I can't give him up or leave him to face Voldemort alone. I know he knows this as well as I do. He'll look at me and I'll see that spark of the old Harry, the worried, caring Harry who's gauging the risk he's willing to take with the last person who feels like family to him.

He worries in some hidden place where the Harry I met so long ago still lives, but he's never tried to send me away.

It's an odd thing. I know my death wouldn't work in Voldemort's favor. I can see it in Harry's eyes. If I'm killed Voldemort's finished. That ability for murder that's awakened in Harry is barely kept in human proportion by his attachment to me. He won't be wholly monster for the danger of losing me to that rage. If I'm gone so is that last dam holding back the floodwaters. Voldemort would die, I don't doubt that, but I'm scared to think that Harry wouldn't last much longer after the deed was done.

There is potential and power in Harry that scares me at times, even now, even after everything.

To this day I have managed all curses but avada kedavra. The same cannot be said of Harry. We're that far gone.

We have to be this, these people we've become, and we both know it. There's a strange acceptance in knowing there's not a choice. We could both be put in Azakaban for the things we've done, but the Ministry isn't exactly enforcing the magical laws these days. They're putting out fires at best, and doing it poorly at that. Two rouge Hogwarts drop-outs are barely worth their concern. Even Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, is running loose and wild. How wild they couldn't know.

I know. I alone know.

When the rage and hatred has transfigured itself into a twisted manner of need and passion, as it so often does, I let that blood-lusting beast in me lust for Harry instead. He's the only one that can bring it to heel, when he tries. Sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he lets me take him without putting up a proper fight. Sometimes I need him to roll over and suffer my displaced fury.

Today I wanted to tear something apart, shred and rend and destroy, and I take it out on his shirt when he comes home. From where, I don't know. We don't ask. I force him back against the wall and pin his arms. He's bigger and stronger than I am, he could best me, take control, but he lets me do this. When I bite at his chest, scrape my teeth roughly across scars, he doesn't do a bloody thing to stop me.

If my parents knew about what I do with Harry they'd kill me, that's the old saying anyway, but it's not a joke anymore because people are dying and I'm going to vent on Harry's body. I'll claw my anger and frustration into his skin, I'll draw my desperation down his back in red welts. I'll try to draw a scream from him, be it one of anger or pain or ecstasy. Any kind of outlet will do, but I need to pass off this burning in me before I slip closer to insanity.

I use Harry this way, the only means I have to keep me human, and I'm not shy or embarrassed or ashamed of it because Harry will use me in the exact same way. When Harry's boiling with murderous power, emotional poison that's fit to overtake him, he'll expend some of that energy on me. I'll bruise and bleed and scream for him and it holds us tenuously together.

Sometimes when I'm the one pinned to the wall, or on the bed trapped under him, and he's more killer than Harry, I think I see Voldemort in his eyes. Sometimes he hisses things at me I can't understand, speaking to me in parseltongue. Sometimes I'm not sure who I'm giving in to, at moments lines blur and there's just overwhelming, dangerous potential poised against me, atop me, within me, and I can only trust in Harry not to kill me. So far I'm still alive, and Harry's still alive, so we'll keep tearing into each other so we can keep going.

Suddenly Harry's moving, he's fast and decisive, and I'm on the floor on my back, and there's a knot on my head where it hit the ground and my surprise battles my rage until Harry's straddling me and I'm looking up at his war-worn face and there's that question there. Harry or Dark Lord, friend or foe. I can't tell. He'll either slip his hand up my shirt or stick his knife in my stomach. I'll know my answer then.

And my inner beast, that screeching, insatiable force that I thought needed to dominate today, surges anew and things shift. No, I didn't need to overtake Harry today, I needed him to tear me apart. That monster in my chest needs to be mastered, wrestled into submission, and Harry's the only one who can do it. Whether by passion or weapon, we'll see.

Then Harry's kissing me, fiercely, biting my lip to punish my initial attack on him, but I was provoking him from the start and I fight to strike back. It's play. I won't win, Harry needs to dominate me more than I need to own him, so I'll fold. With his force and his tongue and his hands and his dick he'll have me, use me, and it'll keep him in check. It'll keep me in check. We'll be ready to be warriors again when he's through.

As he takes me and I fight just enough to make it worthwhile, I wonder. I wonder, when it's over, when Voldemort's dead and his Death Eaters beaten back, will Harry and I still be this way? Is there any hope we could kiss without using our teeth, embrace without bruising, have sex without this darkness on the perimeter?

I hope so. I hope someday he can be Harry Potter, the Boy Who Won, the Boy Who Found Love, the Boy Who Lived Happily Ever After.

Right now, we'll both just have to settle for him being the Boy Who Fucked Hermione Granger.

END