A few days later found Hermione sitting in the library surrounded by wedding magazines thinking of a design for her wedding dress. It was the last thing on the list that needed to be done before the wedding in a week's time. She wanted witch's wedding robes, nothing fluffy and nothing to eccentric. After four days of choosing she finally came upon a design. The dress was form fitting to her hips then flared out to a long circle skirt with layers of fine light cotton fabric underneath. The sleeves were made of fine silk lace and went all the way to wrists and hung long. There was fine light blue embroidery going through the dress.
Making sure Severus was nowhere in the house Hermione found the long white robe she bought from Madam Malkin's and levitated it before her. Concentrating on her specific designs she waved her wand and watched as her idea came to fruition. Hermione then put the dress on to do some final fixes before casting a spell to make all changes permanent. It was then that she heard Severus step through the fireplace and with the wave of her wand she was in her normal clothes and the dress was folded up and put in the box it was in before Severus walked in.
"Are you okay?" asked Severus concerned.
"Fine, I'm fine. Why do you ask?" Severus raised an eyebrow then saw the box.
"Just making sure." Severus walked up to Hermione and kissed her on the lips before putting his packages of potions ingredients away. Enough time for Hermione to write a quick note and have the box delivered to Minerva for safe keeping until their wedding.
When Severus came back up after putting everything away he found Hermione lying on her stomach on the floor before the fire reading a thick tome. He looked over her shoulder to see she was reading up on the wizarding worlds of the Caribbean, specifically she was on the section about the ancient lore the European explorers had on the natives of the islands and their connection to those of the West African tribes. She was so into what she was reading that she was startled to feel Severus laid on top of her, his head hovering beside hers, his weight gently pushing into the thick shag rug beneath her.
"Always the book worm." Whispered Severus before kissing her on the shoulder.
"Pot meet kettle." Responded Hermione causing Severus to chuckle.
"Touché. What do you think of what's written?" he asked as he moved beside her but still touching her.
"It says that some of the slaves from the West African coast were descended from a branch of Atlantians and when they were brought to the Caribbean they mixed with the other branch of Atlantians. Its trying to explain the magic in the Caribbean and why its so different and yet similar to anything else." Hermione took a breath.
"Continue." Severus said wanting to hear her opinion.
"But, Atlantis never existed." Hermione was very confused.
"And what makes you say that?"
"It was never found. There is no evidence, just hearsay."
"Yes, you only know about Atlantis from Plato, Crantor, Cameron, Philo and other philosophers."
"Okay."
"You forget one important thing though." Hermione looked at Severus confused. "They were all muggles. In the wizarding world there are accurate records of Atlantis and its existence. To be more specific, Atlantis was the capital city and Atlas was the country named after the famous titan." Hermione sat up straight looking down on Severus.
"You mean to tell me it existed and there is proof in the wizarding world?"
"Yup."
"But there is no trace of it, what happened?"
"In that the muggle accounts are correct. The country of Atlas was hit by a powerful earthquake and sunk. The country lay atop the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Atlas joined, at one point, Jan Mayen, Iceland, the Azores, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, along with Ascension Island, Saint Helena, Tristan da Cunha, Gough Island, and Bouvet Island. Atlas was a couple of large island continents with smaller islands from the Artic down to Antarctica." Severus waited a moment for all that information to sink in. "The evidence does exist. The ridge used to be above sea level and cut Atlantis in two essentially but when the earthquake hit there were numerous survivors that watched in various ships and on other islands and volcanoes erupted and the vast majority of Atlas sunk beneath the waves."
"So by this the survivors fled."
"Yes, to the Americas and Western Africa. A few made it as far as Egypt and parts of the Levant. The muggles have done DNA testing recently showing that there are people in the Levant, the west coast of the African continent and the East coast of the Americas. Though this was thousands of years before the Greek empire. Atlas fell around the beginning of the Egyptian Empire with some of the Atlasians marrying into Egyptian royalty and passing on their knowledge." Severus watched as Hermione's mind exploded.
"Why weren't we taught any of this? Why wasn't this information passed on to the muggles?" Hermione had so many more questions and was so overwrought with questions that she went quiet.
"To answer one question the information as never passed on to muggles for fear that they may seek out the descendants and cause them some form of harm. The last descendants live in Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, and some of the Caribbean islands. They are small wizarding communities that like to go unseen. But their numbers are dwindling." Hermione nodded her head in understanding.
"So what is their magic like?"
"They don't require wands or spells. Magic comes to them as easily as breathing its not something they need to think about. You could say the same for us but even if we still do wandless and wordless magic we still have to say the spells in our heads or at least concentrate for what we need with the spell in the back of our thought. They still make potions, though because their magic is old, the potions they use and the magic they use is considered dark magic even though there is nothing dark about it. It was labeled as dark by the European wix because they were jealous of their power." Severus scowled at that thought. And was so lost in his anger he didn't notice Hermione looking him over and then a thought dawn.
"Severus?"
"Yes." Severus looked at her.
"Were you taught by one of them?" There was a reason she was a know it all.
"Yes. While a student at Hogwarts I befriended one of them and she taught me all she knew. She was a Ravenclaw and joined the death eaters just like me. But when we both realized the gravity of what we had done we both tried to get out."
"What happened to her?"
"She tried to leave Britain to return home but was found out and captured. Bellatrix's husband tortured her and then killed her."
"I'm so sorry." Hermione put her hand on his arm and squeezed.
"It was a long time ago." Severus responded as he pulled Hermione down into his arms. "I hope to teach you at some point though." at that Hermione's eyes lit up.