oohdear - Comet Chaser

She hated guns!

She always felt as if she was a throw-back to some distant chivalric age. Always had dreamt that she was a knight in shining armor riding to rescue the damsel in distress, slaying villains...never dragons; she loved dragons.

There was something primordial in facing an enemy and overcoming them that had always appealed to her sense of right and wrong. She did not believe in striking an enemy in the back and never from a hiding place.

But guns negated all that; courage was no longer required. Hell, even skill wasn't an issue; one simply pointed the damn thing and pulled the trigger. And worse than that she hated the idea of shooting someone from half a mile or a mile away, and the victim did not even know who had shot them. That was for cowards and dregs, mostly Muggles, she sadly thought.

So, why, as a witch, was she thinking about guns or long-range rifles? Recently, murders had been committed, mostly of wizards who had been shot with guns, and no one knew who the culprit was. Some Muggle was smuggling guns to the Death Eaters, and they had learned how to use these despicable weapons. It stood to reason the Ministry of Magic could find out if someone had used the Death Magic immediately at the scene of crime, but they had no way of knowing who had fired the gun and killed a wizard.

These thoughts ran through her head as she walked on the garden path.

She looked at the falling blossoms and felt so sad. This is what my life has become, she thought. One day I will fall like these blossoms, and no one will notice; someone will just trample over me as they do over these blossoms, and I would be yesterday's story. No one to cry over me, no one to wake up in the night and miss me. She walked on the path, deep in melancholy and feeling very sorry for herself.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang like a bomb going off or perhaps just a cracker. No. It was a gun shot, some sniper taking a shot.

As she heard the sound, bizarrely, she wondered who had invented guns. And why. Why would one need such brutal weapons?

That question had been haunting her. Who supplied the Death Eaters these weapons? Who taught them their use? Who is behind all this?

There was another loud bang.

As she pulled her wand out, she stumbled and felt herself falling down, put her hands out to cushion the fall, but seemed to be falling in slow motion, and her hands and elbows appeared to be stuck to her sides. She kept on falling, as if there was a hole in the ground where she was going to hit; she just kept on falling...

Into deep darkness, she saw lights swirling, and then the stars whirling slowly in their majestic turning around some center nobody knew about; she saw the galaxies swirling slowly, receding, so slowly, until she could see the whole universe swirling slowly into a vast drain, and suddenly she came back to herself in a thud, a sound that would have moved the stars, the galaxies in their pre-determined path, it seemed to her.

Bang.

She could see through the eyes of someone and feel everything but do nothing else.

His name was William Hayes, and he was fighting somewhere in the sands of the Sahara. He had forgotten long ago why he was fighting...something to do with peace and righteousness and the evil of the Nazis, but everything apart from survival had been swept away a long time ago.

He sighted down the sights of his rifle at the center of the Swastika, let his breath out slowly, and gently squeezed the trigger. The German officer toppled to the right, his knees buckling. Hermione flinched.

He ducked into his camouflage hummock and pulled his long rifle in and hunkered down to wait for the night to set in.

Bang.

Her name was Katherine Brooks, and she held little Adam in her arms as he drifted off to sleep. There was a knock on the door; who could it be at this late hour? She carefully laid Adam down on the sofa and went quietly towards the door, her heart hammering and her mouth going dry. Peter was fighting, as were most able-bodied men. The Great War had been going on for over three and half years, and still there was no end in sight. She opened the door. A man in a military uniform was standing there. One look at his face and it was like her worst nightmares had come home.

"Mrs. Brooks? Katherine Brooks?"

"Yes," she replied, almost a croak.

"I am so sorry to have to inform you that your husband, Peter Brooks, was killed a week ago in the line of duty. He was a very brave man. He died saving another soldier. He died for his country."

She staggered back... "Oh," her mouth opened, and a long, heart-wrenching wail emitted, and she fell down.

Bang.

His name was Joshua Williams, and he was in town to avenge the death of his brother Bill. No way was the scum who had shot his brother getting away with the murder. Lake Horn was a small town, and a stranger had ridden into town. Bill had been loading the wagon with supplies to take back to the ranch when he had stepped back and bumped into the stranger, who had just come out of the saloon. The stranger, whose name was Cody McHale, had taken offence, and although Bill had apologized, words had been said, and the exchange had become more and more heated until Bill had punched Cody full in the face. Cody had rocked back a few steps, wiped his hands on his bloodied face and, with a snarl, drawn his gun and shot Bill three times in the chest. As Bill had fallen, Cody had kept on firing and then kicked the dead man's body.

Joshua opened the doors of the saloon, walked up to where Cody was sitting drinking and said, "Draw..."

Bang.

He was shot in the arm, and it hurt like hell. He had the body of his buddy Zak over his shoulder, and he was trampling through mud, trying to avoid the Confederate army. They had been getting ready to set up camp when they had been ambushed by the Confederates. Gun fire had erupted from all around, and half of his company had been wiped out before some had managed to reach their guns and return fire.

Bang.

At long last the army had decimated the Knights Templars. Jerusalem lay open to the army in white, thanks to the cannons they had managed to seize from the Christians. He had been given command of one of the cannons, and with his troop of ten helpers, he had loaded and reloaded the cannon and fired all day long at the Christian army. From this distance, they could see the havoc they had wrecked among the enemies, had seen human bodies fly like rubber dolls, arms and legs severed, beheaded bodies and wrecked pieces that had been humans a little time ago. People who had felt like he had, love, hate, compassion, battle lust, hunger, thirst, the dryness of the mouth, the loosening of the bowels. He had missed Soraya so much, and she was with child; would he ever see his child? Hold it in his arms, kiss the little face, watch it smile, watch it cry...

Bang.

Zhen Yuan held the body of his wife and screamed to the heavens, the sound ripping from his soul, sending shivers down the spines of the few onlookers; they clapped their hands over their ears while trying to make the sign of the Amida Buddha at the same time. Slowly shaking their heads, the few onlookers turned away from Zhen. Poor man, they thought. How terrible, what a tragedy. But it is karma, what can you do? Dizang takes all of us in the end. What can be done? Those of the pure soul will find themselves reincarnated, and those who were not pure? Well, they would be reincarnated as well, but not as the People, maybe as insects, or animals, or worse even, as gwai-loh! Amida Buddha save us all from that end, they thought as they walked away from the man in pain. So unseemly to let his pain show so, what a loss of face. But then Zhen was strange; nobody knew him well, and nobody wanted to.

"I will not lose you, Jian. Without you I am incomplete. Without you I am nothing. I cannot lose you, Jian. You cannot leave me!" he screamed over and over again, "Jian, come back, come back."

Hermione was Zhen. Zhen was Hermione.

From that day Zhen had locked himself in his home, reading all the ancient texts he could find, experimenting day and night to find the elusive Elixir of Life. Never again would someone close to him, someone he loved, die. He would find the way to eternal life. He would change the misery of this world. No more would those left behind, the bereaved, cry bitter tears for those departed, and never would anyone hear laments of the dead. His eyes were getting gritty from lack of sleep when suddenly something moved on the floor. He looked down, and the little kitten he had found in the market place and adopted was rubbing itself on his leg. Irritably, he pushed the kitten away with his foot; he needed celerity of thought–all these long months and months of reading, of experimenting, had availed him nothing, and he was no closer to finding the elixir than he had been when he'd started. The kitten rubbed against his leg again. Intending to push the critter again, he stopped. He could not push the little animal away; his was the only love he had left in this life. As he reached down to pick the kitten up, his elbow knocked the small jar into the clay plate. He turned around after picking it up; there on the clay plate was the coarse mixture. He was going to sweep the mixture away when the kitten meowed and scratched his arm, almost drawing blood. He winced and held it up from the scruff of its neck and set it back down on the floor. It was beginning to get dark, and he went to the other side of the table and picked up the candle, lit it, and set it next to the mixture. He turned around as the kitten meowed again, scratching at the door. He went to the door and opened it, and as the kitten stepped out, there was a loud explosion behind him. He was almost hurled from his feet, falling down to his knees. In a daze and amazement, he looked where half of the table had been blown away, staggered to his feet, and walked slowly back to the table to look at what had happened. The first man-made explosion... Instead of inventing the Elixir of Life, he had invented gun powder, the Elixir of Death!

With a scream that was ripped from her soul, Hermione was back in the present, lying on the garden path, people still screaming and running. She screamed and screamed.

Finally, her mind all of a sudden crystal-clear, she swore she'd find the cause of this pain.