The World Turned Upside Down.
The scream was unfathomable. It was the most horrifying, hollow thing that Hermione had heard. She thought it might be magical, it seemed like it reached into her soul and tore at it. Ginny blanched in horror, Andromeda froze in place. Ron grimaced horribly. He drew breath in his lungs, and he screamed, and he screamed. His screams echoed and ripped through the whole of Hogwarts, and left them all thankful that the castle was virtually empty for the summer.
And Hermione did what was natural in that moment, for her friend. She flung herself down and embraced him as hard as she could. "Harry, Harry, it's all right, it's all right. It's me, it's Hermione, it's alright."
Ginny was right there with her. They felt a glassy feeling of peace, too, as Andromeda washed a spell over them. His tears stained his cheeks and his breaths came as short, sharp gasps. Hermione had no idea what it was, but, she wondered if that was what the soul felt like, when it left paradise. Harry's skin was clammy and pulse racing impossibly fast.
Ginny's cheeks were just as tear-filled as Harry's, and Hermione realised the same for her own, without even really thinking about it. "Come on, come on, it's safe here… It's so, so safe here, we're safer here than we've been in years Harry."
"What… what happened? I just remember the battle beginning, and …"
"Don't worry about anything. The battle ended, and we lost, Harry. But we … We fought on, and we've recovered Hogwarts from him," Hermione whispered.
"My God." His voice was a breathless whisper. "It felt like agony, what happened?"
"Your nerves were on fire from coming alive again," Andromeda murmured. "Rest as much as you need, Harry Potter. You deserve it."
"Misses Tonks?"
"She's the Headmistress now," Ginny explained. "God I love you. Please, just rest."
Harry had been provided enough information to come to the obvious conclusion. "Misses Tonks is the Headmistress-McGonagall didn't make it?"
"I'm sorry, no. It still hurts," Hermione acknowledged, and the pain blanched across her face like the heat being sucked from her skin. "There's a lot to explain, but we're here, Ron is right behind us, and we'll explain everything, but first, just breathe. And there will be hot tea."
"Hey Mate," Ron offered. "Just hang in there, nice and steady."
"Thank you." A pause. "You sound different. You all do."
"There's a lot to explain, Harry. Just take it easy. Everything is safe here," Ginny insisted.
"What about… Have you defeated You Know Who, then?"
"Riddle is still a threat to the world," Hermione admitted, not wanting to sugar-coat that one, but still trying to be gentle. "However, he is in Turkey, and we are in control of Britain. People call him by his name now. It's an act of defiance."
"In Turkey? What … Why?"
"I promise you'll know by the end of the day, but let's take things slowly."
"Well, I guess I'm supposed to fight him, right?" Harry said in frustration.
"He's scared shitless of you," Ron offered.
"Ron, I …" Harry could tell that things were not quite right. That Ron was not quite right. He gently pushed Ginny and Hermione away enough to sit up.
Stared into Ron's face. His face was overcome with shock. He looked to Hermione—and again, his expression was overcome with shock.
"What's happened to the two of you?"
"This is going to be a very long story, Harry," Hermione began, then halted. "I mean, we'll have plenty of time on the train to London."
"...Leaving Hogwarts? Is it time for the Express?"
"No, a special train has been laid on," Hermione answered automatically.
"Hermione, you're… Older. And I never thought you'd cut your hair in your life," Harry began, with a growing sense of panic in his words. "Ron, you've got to tell me…"
Ron sighed, shook his head, ignored his sister's glare. "It's been six years, Harry. More than six, by a bit. It's the summer of two thousand and four."
"What.. I was.." He shook his head. "I was dead. That's what that was. I was dead!"
"Have some tea, young man," Andromeda murmured, pushing herself in and presenting the cup to him. How very British of us. 'You were dead, but now you're not, so have some tea', Hermione mused, choking back the bleak bitter bemused laughter for Harry's sake.
Harry took the cup, even with his horrified expression at his friends and his girlfriend. "I was dead, that's what that was. And you brought me back. How is that possible? Not even the Master of Death can do that."
"We had some help from Russia," Ginny began.
"...Is that what those uniforms you're wearing are?"
Well of course they are. But suddenly Hermione realised that Harry had lived such a repressed, abusive life under the Dursleys that he didn't know what a Russian Army uniform looked like. Hermione at the age of eleven had, from watching BBC alongside her parents as the Berlin wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed and other events at the time which seemed good but she had in the past five years learned a much more nuanced view toward. She had seeing the grinding poverty and social collapse which had started before the nuclear war.
Hermione smiled wryly. "Well, yes. I'm a Senior Councillor of Witchcraft in the armed forces of the Russian Ministry of Witchcraft. Since the Ministry doesn't have a similar formal system of ranks, it's easiest to introduce me in English, as Colonel Granger."
"Colonel? Isn't that important?"
"Hermione and Ron both did very well for themselves," Ginny said. "I'm just a bloody Captain."
"The Russians took over fighting Voldemort, then… What, what about the Ministry, about Shacklebolt?"
"I'm sorry, Harry," Tonks interchanged then, and she stepped closer, her hair black. "There's a hell of a lot to cover but that's mostly it, yes; Shacklebolt's dead."
"...Tonks. Are Remus and Teddy alright?"
"—Teddy is fine, Harry," Tonks answered, her expression frozen. It told Harry everything he needed to know.
"Oh God, I'm sorry." His hands shook, and the tea dripped on the side of the cup. "Oh God."
Andromeda briefly closed her eyes. "It's best if we head for the train, Harry. We can explain everything aboard. It's very comfortable and … It gives everyone a moment to think of where to begin."
Hermione was suddenly overtaken by an intense and unstoppable nausea. She staggered away from Harry's bed, and despite all of her effort, collapsed the ground, vomiting.
"Awh shit. She must have taken some kind of dose at Chernobyl after all," Tonks exclaimed, moving quickly to Hermione's side.
"...Chernobyl!?" Harry wasn't that dense about the muggle world!
"All of you," Andromeda instructed firmly, holding the vial which had held the Water of Life for Harry. "There is no harm; it is already taken from the lake. A drop for each of you." She insisted, carefully, like any good potioneer, dripping out a single drop of the dregs left in the vial for each of those who had gone into the brutal heart of the Reactor Building. It wasn't enough to completely heal them, but it brought some immediate relief.
"What about Master Flyorov and Larissa?" Hermione asked.
"I have enough left for them," Andromeda promised.
And that was Harry's introduction to how utterly the world had been turned upside down.
Hermione had been evaluated in the infirmary by both healers and Doctors. They quickly concluded that, with the delayed onset and the relative paucity of other symptoms, that she had taken an acute whole-body absorbed dose of about 2 Grays and with magical and technological supporting care—they were very experienced in treating radiation casualties at this point—she would recover from her symptoms in a day or two, particularly after the single drop of the Water of Life, which if insufficient to heal her perfectly, remained the only efficacious known healing magic against radiation.
'Don't worry, it isn't even enough to make your hair fall out' wasn't exactly what one would have gotten as a response before the war began to this kind of acute radiation exposure, but here, this long after the war, it was about what was to be expected. It meant, anyway, that Bella's magic had worked; the anti-radiation shield had actually protected them. An entire new field of magic had been opened by her lover's research of those decades before. It was wonderful, and Hermione was proud of her. But she was also terribly ashamed for having interfered in the careful plan to ease Harry into an understanding of this world.
It was evening when they returned to Hogsmeade. Hermione looked to see Larissa standing there on the platform of the station, smoking. With the doses of radiation Larissa had already taken, Hermione could tell in an instant that her friend was suffering from the same sickness, and yet hadn't been to the infirmary, or had a drop of the Water of Life, yet.
Draco was nearby, talking with Major Greengrass. He kept worriedly glancing toward Larissa every so often, and seemed relieved when Hermione arrived, then frowned at her own appearance. "Lara's not well."
"I think we both took a dose, worse than the others did," Hermione answered. "It's more than that, though. She looks like death. The good news is that Andromeda should be along soon, to give her one drop left over from Harry's. It should be enough to help."
"It's more than just being sick—talk to her, Hermione. She wanted to be alone, but—talk to her."
"Oh fuck, Draco, I can hear that!" Larissa called, making Draco look sheepish. There was a death's head grin on her lips as she took a drag from the cigarette.
Hermione saw it and hastened to her friend's side. "We've both suffered acute radiation syndrome, Lara. You should get that damned thing out of your mouth and find a doctor."
Larissa snorted, but behind the gesture of insouciance, Hermione could see tears welling again. "You know, Hermione, you know as a point of objective fact, that for a dose of two Grays or less, ninety-five percent of the time or more you're fine, and treatment literally does nothing at all. Onset would have been sooner if it was higher than two Grays. I'll be fine."
"Lara…"
"Shut up and have a cigarette, 'Mione. It'll cure the nausea."
She was seized with a terrible and certain dread. She took the offered belomor from Larissa, and the light that followed. Larissa was right, of course she was. The horrible acrid intensity nonetheless nicely batted back the nausea. Potions were only palliative against radiation (though she imagined that the entire new field of magic that Bellatrix had established might well fix that soon enough); this was like its own awful kind of magic at how quickly it banished her sickness, even if it was only temporary. Gods, I'm such an addict. She hung there, leaning against the side of one of the passenger coaches, and smoked silently with Larissa.
Finally, her friend seemed to calm. "What's wrong?" Hermione at last ventured. "It's not like you to push Draco away and I can plainly see it's not something that he did."
Larissa took another hard drag before she answered. "It's Master Flyorov. He will die with the next new moon. Which is in four days. He's going with Lady Tamar to a cottage in the Highlands, to keep his promise to the Baba Yaga that he'll be buried here, instead of in Russia. For some reason, that was important, and he said he'd keep it."
"Gods, why?" Hermione trembled, thinking of the old man who had been so kindly, so dignified, who had protected Delphi for Bellatrix, who had helped her, who had helped them all.
Larissa pulled the cigarette from her lips and glared at Hermione for a minute. "Did you think that the Water could bring everyone back to life that it pleased? Oh, it can heal anyone who manages to drink it, the Water of Life can. The Water of Death can kill anyone who drinks it; it can restore any body which it's sprinkled on. A wonderful open casket funeral I suppose. But, Hermione, it's hard to cheat death, and the Waters don't do it exactly; they let you cheat death once. One person at a time."
"Gods. He chose to die so we could bring Harry back."
"As he put it to me just an hour ago: 'Dear, rare is the opportunity that an old man has to save a young man's life in a War.' And, it's very peaceful. You just fade away, with the end of the lunar cycle."
Hermione's eyes welled with tears, and she inhaled from the cigarette like a drowning woman. "Gods. Don't tell Harry, it would destroy him."
"It's already destroyed me, 'Mione." Her voice ached with the loss.
Hermione squeezed her friend hard, and waved to Draco, who came over immediately. He embraced his fiancee without hesitation, even sharing the embrace with her best friend—the woman who was about to become his aunt, in law.
"I'm not letting you say that, Lara. We've both got lives ahead of us." They hugged and cried, and held each other, and supported Larissa, in mourning one more life lost in this terrible war, one more father and husband and brother.
Andromeda arrived, as she had promised, looking concerned. "Larissa Sergeivna, I've been looking for you. I have something for you," she coughed. "Put aside the cancer stick, and stick out your tongue, if you would."
"The Water of Life," Hermione supplied.
"I don't want to even think about water right now…" Larissa muttered, her look fresh and flush with pain, renewed with what a thought of the Water of Life or Death did for her right now.
Andromeda to Draco and Hermione.
"You won't need to find Master Flyorov after this, I guess that's who you were looking for," Hermione supplied. "He's dying. And the water, nor anything else can save him."
"Harry?" Andromeda asked simply.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
Larissa cried harder into Draco's shoulder. "He is so proud, that as an old and infirm man, he could do the dying in this war for a young man, why is he so proud…"
Hermione and Draco tugged her toward Andromeda. "Come on," Draco whispered to her. "He also wants you to live, and so do we all. Stick out your tongue for Aunt Andromeda."
At last, Larissa turned toward her Aunt-to-be, and stuck out her tongue. Seeing her awful state, Andy quietly used both of the last drops in the vial.
And then, at last, the whistle warned that it was time to board.
Hermione didn't even know how it was possible to be alive and feel like this, and yet there she was, breathing. And this terrible night with no respite had just begun. Now they had to tell Harry everything, and somehow negotiate all that came after. She felt utterly bleak—just utterly, utterly bleak.
Still no fucking word from the Pripyet.
Bellatrix woke up to that frustration, and shrugged, hastily glancing through the dispatches on her nightstand and then boiling water with her wand to quickly create a steaming mug of instant coffee. Coffee in hand, she wandered out onto the portico lined balcony of the classical building that she had quartered her staff in, overlooking the Plaza Mayor. To create an immediate separation and vision of independence for the Junta de la Salvación Nacional, Jorge and his men were quartered separately in the Casa Consistorial.
She tossed on her duster over her nightclothes, and nursed the cup in her hands. The inland air in the morning was cool, but it would heat up fast. Looking around the room, frozen in time, at last Bellatrix shook her head and descended to the private, secured room that held the Telecaster. She was surprised to see that Jorge was waiting for her.
"M'lady. No news?"
"No news. I was going to harass Cissy about it."
"Hermione is a brave woman, I…"
"If bravery was all that mattered, none of us would be here like this," Bellatrix shrugged. "Though, it does count for something," she acknowledged with a faint smile, admitting that she was nearly the poster child for reckless bravery. She raised the cup to her lips. "I'll be returning to Tordesillas to meet the Portuguese in four hours, I believe, for that summit. You have a government now, my friend?"
"I do. I imagine we will part fairly soon, and I don't know if we will see each other again, if I am to stay here and lead the liberation of my homeland, and you are to go east to face down that beast once and for all. But, Lady Black, I will just say this – you have been both my Oppressor and my General. Whatever happens, and no matter how long each of us live and no matter what the end of all of this is, and no matter how we are otherwise remembered – I swear with God as my witness that I make my own free choice, right now, to remember you only as my General." He came to attention, and saluted.
Bellatrix stared for a moment. She tried to think of all the things that she could say, but they just left her, none of them would come. She raised her cup of coffee to acknowledge the salute. Fifty-three years, and this is where I am. Finally, something came to her. "Jorge, you taught me that a muggle is also a Man. Everything else flowed from that. When I face him, I will reward you for that. He will be greeted with the shout of ¡Viva el Muerte! – that's it. Free your land my friend, you deserve to be the one. We're both flawed people, but we chose to make the right choice at the right time, and that's in the end, I suppose, all that separates a hero from a villain."
They both laughed at the irony of it, and Bellatrix, with a little touch of wandless magic, unlocked the door to the Telecaster room, and stepped inside. She closed it behind her, set her half-full mug down on the table before the Telecaster, and thought back to all the times she'd commanded these Black Guards. They wouldn't be with her when she went to face Voldemort, but knowing the power he now commanded, she thought that good. She wanted them to see an end to the war.
She reached for her wand. The gears whirred, the epicycles began to spin and interlock, the bronzen workings turned, the number-wheels rolled. An image began to form, when it was acknowledged by the woman on the other side. Narcissa, already at her desk, perfectly done up in every way, the very image of what everyone wanted the Prime Minister to be right now, composed, regal, professional, dignified, confident. The adjectives oozed from her bearing like she had practised her entire life to project all of them effortlessly, and, in fact, she had.
"Bella." The gentle tone in her voice when she greeted her sister, though, was absolutely sincere.
"Cissy. I'm in Valladolid, you know. Nice city. We took it with just a few desultory small arms engagements and some shelling around the southern outskirts—the old city is perfectly intact and, I understand, the largest not hit by a nuke in Castile proper."
Narcissa sniffed lightly. "You will doubtless be pleased to know that the press are comparing you to Montgomery, Wellington and Marlborough.
"Don't really think I'm the type, to be honest. Prettier, for one." Oh yes, she did enjoy tweaking her sister a bit.
"I'm sure they'd agree," Narcissa answered, ever-so-mildly. "I won't delay it any longer, you've obviously contacted me about Hermione, and the answer is that she arrived in Britain yesterday. To my knowledge, she's fine—certainly fine enough to They already travelled to Hogwarts. Lord Potter is alive again."
"...You didn't tell me!?" A flash of anger crossed her face. "I, Cissy, I was worried stiff about her…"
"You were also liberating Valladolid, and I frankly didn't need you here, or need the risk of the embarrassment of you decamping from your Army to insert yourself in this. I have carefully arranged everything to manage the situation, and I should like very much to keep it that way."
Harry had stared at her like she had a second head when she fell into one of the chairs in the plush parlour and lit up another cigarette, looking so close to death, between the manifesting symptoms of 'minor' radiation poisoning and the emotional exhaustion of realising that Flyorov would be dead within days. Andromeda bit her lip like she wanted to say something, but then thought better of it and settled back.
"Harry, I'd like you to meet my friend, Lady Larissa Sergeivna Naryshkina." Larissa managed to look dapper, lithe, beautiful even when she was sick, even when she was emotionally miserable. Her neat black hair braided back, her blue eyes so, so sad, she nonetheless made politely to Harry.
"As a friend of Hermione's, just call me Larissa. I'll be in the next carriage."
"A pleasure, I…"
"She's a front comrade of mine," Hermione explained, letting Larissa leave, to be with Draco, to get some sleep in one of the sleeping compartments. Gods knew that she needed it… Gods knew that Hermione did, too. But she couldn't, she wouldn't leave this to someone else with Harry.
Then Ron sat down with them, a five days' stubble on his face, looking just as exhausted. "'Mione, if you've got a smoke?"
Their relationship would probably never be so awful that she'd deny Ron a cigarette. He looked at it. "Oh Christ, couldn't you at least smoke Primas?" This didn't stop him from lighting it up...
"You both smoke now?"
"I managed to quit for about nine months starting last year," Hermione offered. She supposed that was unhelpful, though. The train was underway, now, heading south.
Harry reached out and squeezed Andromeda's hand, hard. On his other side, Ginny sat, and leaned against him, saying nothing—just being there for him. It was just the five of them, then, in the entire coach. And Harry trusted Andromeda, to some extent, Hermione assumed, as Tonks' mother, as a woman who had given him shelter during his flight, and as one of Dumbledore's successors—though he knew nothing at the moment of how she got the position.
Hermione thought of a song by Al Stewart, really appropriate for this trip. It was almost nine minutes long; it was all about trains, and also about the Holocaust, and also about Jean Jaurès getting shot down by a nationalist fanatic days before the First World War broke out. Only Al could make such songs work. She wondered, idly, if he was still alive and if he would want to write any songs about this war. Trains.
"Tell me everything," Harry said, much more insistently now. He reached up and rubbed where his scar had been. "Start at the beginning, start with the Battle of Hogwarts, and tell me everything. People have hidden so much from me—all my life. You're my friends, tell me."
So they told him. They told him, until he cried for everyone who had died at the Battle of Hogwarts. They told him, through the blank horror of how Voldemort had seized power in Britain. They told him, his eyes fixed on them, of Andromeda's organising the escape—of the Malfoy defection from Voldemort's cause. They told him, all about reaching Europe.
They told him about the nuclear war. They told him about the dead, they told him about Voldemort's chilling slogan, of 'culling the muggle herd'. The night the bombs fell, where Hermione spent some time elaborating on Ron's desperate attempt to save lives in the ruined city of Metz, which at length proved he did still have some of a sense of embarrassment left, at least when being complimented in a way he didn't feel was deserved.
They told, then, of Narcissa organising the flight across Germany in goods vans on the railways, lurching over damaged track, avoiding cities clouded with plumes of radioactive dust. They told him about the Russian troops, arriving in western Poland at the invitation of the government; of their interrogations, and their being granted permission to go on into Russia, while the Russian Army fought to slow Voldemort's forces down along the Oder-Neisse Line.
About the defeat of those Armies, and the inexorable advance of the Morsmordre as the entire world rushed to bow and scrape and kiss the ring, and only China and India fought at the side of the CIS, save for the dwindling power of the ANZAC federation fighting for its life in the South Sea.
And Ron told about his completion of infiltration training, and how he had been sent into the cities of Central Europe, to rally muggle resistance, and organise bombings and assassinations and sabotage. About how he had first volunteered for this because he wanted to die.
Because he had failed.
Harry broke down at that point, sobbing against Ginny, and insisting again and again, that he didn't dare believe it, that he couldn't believe it. But, they were in Edinburgh, and he could see, in the lights of the train shed at the station, the masses of soldiers reporting to troop trains, the goods rakes that slowly rolled through on the main line, carrying tanks and armoured cars. He could see the propaganda posters. The security guards, with automatic weapons.
The young witch in uniform, who entertained a group of muggle children quite openly, with a few simple and silly spells of the type they had learned in their first year at Hogwarts.
So, east of Edinburgh, they briefly halted on the main line, and showed him the vicinity of Joppa, where the fused glass on the ground and the sharply clicking radiation dosimeters marked the point that a GRU backpack nuke had gone off in a futile attempt to kill Voldemort. The Main Line had been rerouted around the spot, but ruined, abandoned, burned and slagged houses remained, and with the casual abandon of a world where radiation was now normal, the trains merely passed with their windows sealed for safety.
He stopped crying, and got very quiet after that.
Ginny and Hermione told him about joining the MinKol Army Support Troops. Of their first meeting with the redoubtable Alexandra Lukachenko, who Hermione prayed was still alive. Of finally being in a unit together with Larissa. And of the ill-fated Southern Bug Strategic Offensive Operation, the first attempt of the CIS to organise a major front-level counteroffensive against the Morsmordre. Of the initial grand successes which liberated the southwest Ukraine, and carried across the River Dnestr. With a wave of her wand, Andromeda stuck one of Hermione's dog-eared pocket maps up on the wall, and oriented Harry with it.
Now Ron was just as silent as Harry was. He occasionally shot a glare at Hermione. She could feel him trying to project a warning about the Prisoner's Dilemma at her! You bring up Chisinau, I'll bring up Bellatrix, she could hear it, see it written across his face.
Even Harry commented on it. "You two… You're not together anymore, are you?"
"Broke up years ago," Ron sighed, and promptly went for another cigarette.
"Oh."
Still no screaming row. It was a relief, if the smallest of one. So Hermione just told about how she had met up with Ron, who had been operating behind the enemy lines in Moldova, only for them to be forced to retreat again when a massive counterattack with a huge reinforcement by crack Death Eaters and Morsmordre fighting wizards had overcome the local advantage in tanks and artillery of the Russian Army and its allies, leaving two million men and thousands of armoured vehicles destroyed on the field and opening the way for a renewed Morsmordre offensive deep into the very heart of Russia and the Confederation.
"And then… We had a ray of hope," Hermione whispered, exhausted, sick, tired, and she didn't fucking care if Ron was upset at the way she put it.
Harry looked too tired to sleep. He blinked between the two.
Ron sank back in his chair, let his head fall back, staring up to the roof of the compartment, smoke drifting off the end of his cigarette. "Bellatrix Lestrange switched sides, and carried away two entire Fronts of Voldemort's troops. She turned her cloak. Kicked the Morsmordre right out of the eastern Ukraine and all Russia."
"Bellatrix… Defected? She turned on the Dark Lord?"
"She was afraid for her daughter, and Andromeda and Narcissa were already on our side," Hermione said, barely above a whisper, her voice subdued. She was as sick as hell, and living on cigarettes and willpower at the moment. In fairness to him, Ron wasn't much better off. "And disillusioned with the nuclear war. With the breaking of all of his promises. So, yeah, she came to us, in Ossetia, and offered to switch sides."
"My God…" Harry cracked a grin, though. "That must have hurt Voldemort sore, though. And that's when the tide turned?"
"Yes, we dealt several other defeats to the Morsmordre, and then we liberated Scandinavia." Hermione felt relief at moving faster with the explanation, then, and took a brief time explaining the liberation of Scandinavia, and then Britain, and the powerful forces which were unleashed by the nuclear attack on Azkaban. They hadn't covered Ararat yet, though.
"So what happened to Bellatrix?" Harry asked at last. It was unavoidable, then.
"Well, in recognition of her service," Andromeda interjected, perhaps trying to avoid either Ron or Hermione explaining it, "my sister requested and received from His Majesty the King, a pardon, on Bellatrix's behalf."
"Your sister, you mean, Narcissa…" Harry's face was frozen in a rictus of horrified emotions.
"Harry, I'll just get this one out," Ron sighed, and brought the cigarette back to his lips. "Narcissa Malfoy is the Prime Minister of Britain."
"And Bellatrix?"
"Field Marshal Lady Black. She's commanding a fucking Army in Spain, mate. On our bloody side."
Notes:
"The World Turned Upside Down" is the tune supposedly played by the British on the surrender at Yorktown in the American Revolutionary War-the absolute upset of the entire old order and old way of life.