Hiraeth
In the End
By Atlas May Wood [atlasmay]
For The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition: Training Camp; Round Three—Some Real World History
Portsmouth Plovers—Seeker
"Hermione! Wake up!"
A cold hand grasps her shoulder, shaking her into consciousness.
"A ship," the voice continues frantically. "In the harbour. Hermione, come quickly!"
Hermione blearily opens her eyes, squinting at the shadowy figure hovering above her. Uncomprehending, she manages a small noise of annoyance and pulls her blanket over her head.
"Come on Hermione, get up!" the voice urges. A hand yanks the blanket from her loose grip and Hermione sits up, scowling as the room slowly comes into focus, all darkened shapes and hazy outlines. She vaguely registers a flash of green eyes and a shock of black hair before a loose bundle of clothing is thrown at her.
"Harry!" she chides sharply. Scowling, she unravels the bundle and watches as a thick sweater and a knit hat fall onto her lap. She frowns as her sleep addled brain slowly catches up to the stumbling actions of the man in front of her.
"A ship?" she mumbles, eyebrows furrowed.
Her eyes widen, and her mouth drops open in a perfect mix of surprise, disbelief, and hope.
"He's…back?" she questions hesitantly.
Harry pauses his ministrations only long enough to turn around and send her a meaningful smile.
Hermione is on her feet and shrugging on her winter attire only a moment later.
"Let's go!" she calls to Harry as she runs through the front door, hopping gracelessly as she shoves her left foot into her boot and hastily laces it up.
In the next instant, she is sprinting down the network of narrow gravel roads that connects her modest wooden home to the bustling and lively harbour.
She rounds a corner, nearly tripping over the loose rocks underfoot. One by one, the piers slowly come into view. She stops, bent in half, and catches her breath. Harry's thudding footsteps come to a halt behind her.
She straightens and her gaze travels fondly over the magnificent harbour. The amiable shouts of sailors carry over the din of waves and the thrumming of the wind. The bracing smell of the ocean wraps Hermione in its familiar embrace.
She inhales deeply and grins. This is home.
Hermione can feel Harry's energetic presence just behind her. He is practically vibrating with abounding excitement.
"Pier Five," he says softly, but Hermione can hear the impatience in his voice. She silently concedes. Nostalgia could wait. The harbour would always be there for her to appreciate.
He, on the other hand, would not.
Taking off again, Hermione finds herself engulfed in a jovial crowd moments later. She nudges her way through, absently excusing herself as she pushes through teary reunions. Her head darts wildly, curls flying and bouncing against her cheek, as she pops onto her toes in an effort to see above the crowd.
She cannot see Harry anymore and silently presumes he has gone off to find Ron. All around her, there is laughter. Kisses and whispered promises are exchanged.
The wind whips happily at her flushed cheeks as she soundlessly basks in the hope and the love she feels all around her. Her eyes flutter shut as she commits the moment to memory, wishing she could live in it forever.
Excitement bubbles in her chest, and she can feel her whole body vibrating in response as her eyes slowly open and scan the crowd.
"Missed me, love?"
The words are almost carried away in the wind, to join the cacophony of laughter and shouts in the teeming pier.
Almost.
A single, breathless moment has hardly passed before Hermione has spun around and hurled herself into Draco's arms.
The stiff material of his naval uniform is harsh against her cheek as she cries, her head buried deep into the crook of his neck. Her legs wrap tightly around his slim waist and she vaguely registers how thin he's become before she's craning her head up to meet his lips.
She swears she can hear symphonies playing in the distance, somewhere beyond the cold, merciless reaches of the war.
"I love you."
The words are unprompted in the stillness of the setting sun.
Hermione and Draco are laying side by side in the snow in the Malfoy's backyard, underneath a barren tree, as they gaze at the cloudless sky. Hermione's cheeks are still flushed from her afternoon of sledding with Harry and Ron, one which she had quite forcefully dragged a reluctant Draco to.
Draco's gloved fingers trace patterns insistently on the back of Hermione's hand. She turns her head towards him and catches him staring intently at her.
His eyes are brimming with hope and sincerity and unbridled passion.
Hermione falls for him all over again.
"I love you," she replies, and suddenly she finds herself pinned under Draco's lean body as he resumes their kiss with more passion than Hermione had thought possible.
Minutes or hours later—Hermione isn't exactly sure—she is pulling herself to her feet and dusting snow off of her worn jacket. She turns around, grinning as she usually is when she is with him, and feels her entire body go as rigid as ice.
Draco is on one knee, a dark green jewelry box clutched tightly in his right hand.
He is smirking, the bastard, at her undoubtedly shocked expression.
"Would you look at that," he starts in that smug tone of his. "I've finally rendered her speechless. If I'd known it was this easy, I would have proposed ages ago."
Hermione can only blink as her mouth falls open soundlessly.
Draco raises one eyebrow amusedly. "Will you marry me, Hermione Granger?"
"Are you serious?" comes rushing out of her mouth before she can filter herself.
"Of course, love," he chuckles, opening the velvet jewelry box. "Now, are you going to say yes or stand there gaping all night? Not that I'd mind, or course, but it is a tad cold out—"
Hermione hurls herself at him for the second time in as many days. "Yes," she breathes, entangling her fingers in his impossibly soft hair as she slams her lips into his.
All around her, euphoria swirls through the December air in blissfully palpable tendrils that Hermione can feel as clearly with her numb fingers as she can with her heart.
But nothing can last forever.
"I'm enlisting in the navy."
The modest living room is packed full of extended family and dear friends, come to celebrate the safe return of their sons, husbands, and brothers. The wind cracks sharply at the glass pane in the windows, providing a dull accompaniment to the laughter and merriment in the rooms.
The merrily crackling fire in the rusted heath does little to quell the sudden burst of cold Hermione feels springing from her fingers and spreading unhindered through her body.
A ceramic bowl slips from her numbed fingers and crashes to the floor below, where it shatters into a million irreparable pieces.
Harry swears.
He drops to her feet, warning her not to move, as he collects the fragments in the sleeve of his jacket. Hermione doesn't hear him, deafened by the sound of blood rushing to her head.
Waves, she thinks. I can hear waves crashing against rocks out at sea.
The burst of cold dread settles in her heart.
"You can't go," she says, not quite a whisper.
"What?" Harry straightens. "Hermione, you know how much this means to me—"
"You can't leave me," she says, hardly registering his words.
Harry's expression softens in an instant and he pulls her into his arms, crushing her face into his chest. Hermione breathes in the familiar, comforting scent of home.
"I'm so sorry, 'Mione," he whispers into her tangle of hair. "But I have to go."
"We should get married tomorrow."
Hermione and Draco lay cocooned in a nest of blankets in front of his grand fireplace which crackles sharply, warding off the looming cold. Hermione laughs.
"You're hilarious, Draco, really."
His fingers, calloused from handling rough ropes and heavy guns, tilt her chin towards him, and she marvels at the way the firelight is reflected in his steely, sincere eyes.
"I'm not joking," he continues softly. "Who knows when this war will end."
Or if I'll make it home, lays heavily in the air, unspoken but stiffly acknowledged by both.
Hermione lifts her hand from Draco's chest, glancing at the golden band on her finger. She twists her hand, marvelling at the refraction of the softly glowing fire through the emerald cut diamond.
"In the end," she sighs, feeling her throat constrict painfully.
"We'll live happily ever after," Draco continues—promises—as he tightens his grip on her.
Golden light slowly, seemingly, crawls up Draco's chest and comes to rest upon his face. His earnest expression flickers in the warm glow, and Hermione's breath hitches.
"Okay," she breathes. "Let's get married tomorrow." And he smiles.
In front of the crackling heath, bathed in gold and love and warmth, Hermione thinks that anything is possible.
"Hermione! Wake up!"
A cold hand grasps her shoulder, shaking her into consciousness.
"A ship," the voice continues frantically. "In the harbour. Hermione, come quickly!"
Hermione groans, pulling her stiff blanket tighter around herself.
"Go away Harry," she mumbles through her pillow.
"It's on fire!" he continues. "Draco's already gone down to help put it out—come on, you don't want to miss this!"
Hermione throws the blanket off and leaps out of bed. She can see billows of black smoke from her window. In the next instant, she is running towards the harbour with Harry at her side.
"What happened?" she screams amidst the commotion. People are flocking towards the harbour from all directions, it seems, to see the flaming ship.
"A collision, I think," he shouts back.
Very gradually, Hermione loses sight of Harry in the chaos. She stops, feeling her shoulders being tugged in all directions by the thronging masses of spectators rushing to the pier.
"Harry!" she calls, and she begins to jog away from the crowd, towards higher ground.
A line of children pushes past her as they run towards the sight, obviously having been on their way to school. Men and women hang out the windows of nearby offices and homes as they partake in the spectacle.
"Harry!"
The crowd is almost nonexistent this far from the waterfront. Hermione cranes her neck and scans the crowd below for Harry. She thinks she spots him and has just started forward when she is thrown violently backwards into the trunk of an oak tree.
Everything goes black.
When Hermione opens her eyes, she sees only blinding white. She hears nothing but a sharp ringing in her ears. Spots of darkness cloud at the edge of her sight and, gradually, her vision comes into focus.
She wishes it hadn't.
All around her, bodies are strewn in the grass. Some are moving. Some are not.
She herself has just narrowly missed landing on a picket fence.
In a daze, she pushes against the bark behind her, righting herself. Pieces of glass fall from her clothes as she stands up. She wonders where they came from. She puts a hand to the back of her head. It comes back bloody.
To her right, the crumbling remains of a house are on fire. From her spot on the hill, her gaze finds the waterfront below. She screams soundlessly.
The entire pier is on levelled. What remains of it is on fire. The charred hull of a ship is drifting further into the docking station.
There's nothing left. There's nothing left but ash and rubble.
Suddenly, she is assaulted with the sound of a dull roar. As her hearing returns more definitively, she can make out the sounds of screaming and crying and groaning all around her. An indescribable wail of pure agony pierces through all the others.
She realizes it is her.
"Harry," she hisses in a hoarse, inhuman voice.
She cannot bear to think of Draco. Not yet.
Walking, crawling, dragging herself forwards is the most painful thing Hermione has ever done in her life.
Because she knows.
"In the end," she pants, the syllables hardly decipherable. A silent prayer. A baseless plea.
Somehow, she has made it to the edge of the pier, where she last saw Harry. The water seems strangely far away.
Hermione stops, rolling herself onto her back and panting for air as she stares at the oddly serene sky. Even the wind has ceased its incessant blowing.
Suddenly, a new sound, an ominously dangerous sound, assaults her hearing. Struggling to her knees, Hermione faces the harbour.
The water, she screams in her mind.
She knows what is happening. Even if she was capable of running, she knows she wouldn't. She knows she couldn't bring herself to do it, anyway.
The blast had been deafeningly silent. The waves are anything but.
The roaring is tremendous now, as the enormous wave comes rushing into the harbour.
"In the end," Hermione pleads, as sobs wrack her body.
The water is bitterly cold.
a/n: 'Halifax was devastated on 6 December 1917 when two ships collided in the city's harbour, one of them a munitions ship loaded with explosives bound for the battlefields of the First World War. What followed was one of the largest human-made explosions prior to the detonation of the first atomic bombs in 1945. The north end of Halifax was wiped out by the blast and subsequent tsunami. Nearly 2,000 people died, another 9,000 were maimed or blinded, and more than 25,000 were left without adequate shelter' (The Canadian Encyclopedia).