A/N: Welcome to my new story, Fire and Ice!
I hope you'll enjoy this sci-fi / mystery / romance tale, and hopefully drop me a line in a review when you're done! I greatly appreciate feedback.
Read carefully, by the way, if you want a shot at figuring out the mysteries.
Warning: This is going to be a dark tale. That being said, this will stay T throughout.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing.
1. Prologue
Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Inside me today
Around broken in two
Till your eyes share into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
-Mazzy Star, "Into Dust"
21 September 2000
Some say the world is destined to fall in flames.
Some say in ice.
In truth, the universe will likely end in neither.
The fabric of space and time continues to expand, as it has since the dawn of time.
This expansion will be its ultimate undoing, as the dwindling energy gradient will be insufficient to support the basic processes of life - from the contraction of a molecular motor to the electrical pulses in the brain.
The universe does not die, however, in this scenario. No, it persists, lonely and cold, until the end of time - or, for the hopeful, until it enters a new period of rebirth.
Gazing out at the stormy landscape before her, Hermione wryly wondered if it could end in both.
In every direction from her vantage point she could see and smell the bloody byproducts of war. Death permeated the very air in her lungs.
Most of her friends and fellow Order members had fallen already; it was only through a combination of sheer luck and battle shrewdness that Hermione herself remained alive, crouching behind a pillar in the Astronomy Tower. Her windswept hair was knotted, drenched with sweat, and covered with the various leaves and burrs that were remnants of her journey.
Can the universe truly exist, she wondered, if no conscious being is present to witness it?
Hermione saw fire in the eyes of the few remaining on the side of the Light, and pure ice in the hearts of the murderers.
The fire was cooling, however. The battle was nearly over, and Hermione maintained no delusions about which side would inevitably triumph.
Coward, a voice spoke from somewhere in the recesses of her mind, a part she had considered long dead. Fight, even if it means laying down your life with the rest of them.
But she couldn't. Above all, Hermione Granger was a survivor. She could not bring herself to continue to fight a clearly losing battle.
No, she would find a way to escape someplace, somehow - perhaps to another planet if she could manage it.
Her parents were gone, destroyed at the hands of the Dark Lord. She had no remaining family; Voldemort had seen to it that that all the Muggles of the world were enslaved or mercilessly killed.
This world was no more.
Having resolved this admittedly vague plan of action, Hermione turned around.
And braced herself.
