Ripples in the Sand

by corvusdraconis

SSHG, AU, Hermione finds a new life far away from Britain while attempting to find a rare plant to help Neville cure his parents.

1. Chapter 1

Summary: SSHG, AU, Hermione finds a new life far away from Britain while attempting to find a rare plant to help Neville cure his parents.

Warning: Weasley bashing, selfish friend bashing, desert violence

A/N: This is an early birthday present for Dutchgirl01

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Ripples in the Sand

Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

James Lovelock

---

Hermione lay back against the hot sand and sighed softly. The sun was moving higher in the sky, and she knew that it would soon become unbearable to most walks of life.

The early morning sand often still held the subtle warmth despite the chill of the night; the almost violent extremes of the great desert tried to roast you alive in one moment and freeze you the next. Then, when you thought the worst was over, the sandstorms would come and try to erase you off the face of memory.

For most of those attempting to live in the vast desert, life was a constant struggle. They lived in a world of extremes, and their ways of surviving were just as extraordinary to outsiders. She had to smile at that, as she had once been that outsider—utterly unready and unwise to the severe ebb and flow of the desert sands.

Perhaps, she mused, she was still learning—she was just not the same witch that had come looking for the rare ingredient Neville had wanted for his parents' cure.

She closed her eyes, hearing the wind move across the sand dunes and the strange and seemingly magical singing of the booming greater dunes—dunes that towered in comparison to what most people thought of when they thought of the desert. The wind would pick up, and the sand grains would shift, avalanching downward and starting the low droning hum that many called "singing."

Thump.

Nudge.

Something moved against her hand, and she smiled.

Three serpentlike "tongues" extended from the sandworm that had decided she had spent too much time sunbathing, and they wrapped around her arm and pulled her up.

"Gah!" she muttered, placing her hand on the sandworm's head. "You're so impatient. You're as bad as Crooks was in the morning when he wanted his kibble at once."

The "young" sandworm seemed to laugh at her, tongues writhing in a dance that seemed like cobras swaying back and forth.

The strangely slick "goo" that coated her arm after the sandworm's affection was over dripped onto the hot sand with a soft tzzz, and the sand it landed on condensed into a smooth and round pebble-like crystal. She picked it up and smiled.

The Wizarding World would probably kill for such a thing—the ultimate energy focus. But to get it—

You had to get past the worms.

The sand shifted around her, the dunes sending out a low drone of music, and the gaping-toothed mouth of the great worm emerged from the rolling sand. The air seemed to roar as the great beast rose like a leviathan out of the sand as if it were water.

The smaller worm excitedly did a few twirls in the sand at the larger one's arrival.

Hermione stood still as the huge worm opened its gaping mouth like a fleshy flower, rows upon rows of spike-like teeth lining the inside.

Magical tendrils extended from inside the greater worm's mouth and surrounded her. Hermione closed her eyes as the great beast identified her, feeling the probing of its magical "tongues"-the mark of a fully mature worm. The babies and the young had physical ones, bodies still anchored within the worldly realm instead of the magical.

The worm droned a low note mixed within the rumbling "growl" that sounded oddly like earth shifting. She felt its consciousness move into hers as it identified her—and then coated her with what could only be described as ectoplasm.

The mark of her acceptance amongst the great desert's worm population.

The slimy "goo" dripped onto the sand where it hadn't soaked into her skin, forming a rain of crystalline pebbles much like its younger brethren. The heat of the desert sun no longer bothered her thanks to the worms. It was better than the best sun creams, and it had certain unique magical properties that the majority of the magical people would pay outrageous sums of money for.

The problem was—

In order to get to it, you had to brave the worms while they were still alive, and the worms had a worrying tendency to eat anything that dared to invade their territories. Man, animal, even entire vehicles. Anything that made vibrations that it did not recognise as part of its protectorate was a target—and since the greatest of the worms were magical, they could sense you coming on multiple levels, even if your feet managed to walk in a way on the sand that confused the younger worms.

Younger was a relative thing, she knew. The youngest of the sandworms probably out-aged her by several hundred years. The greater worms—probably by thousands. She was unsure just how long the great worms lived as it wasn't a very successfully studied creature. Those like herself, and she wasn't even sure how many were like herself, that were close to the worms weren't really making efforts to share knowledge about them.

Their greatest protection was both their viciousness and the fact that few knew what they were capable of outside of sheer destruction. They defended their territories with nothing short of fanatical fervour.

And yet—

Hermione climbed up the rough spiky protrusions that covered the greater worm's body until she stood on the "top" and she patted the edge of the worm's armoured plating with one hand. Magical tendrils emerged from between the plates and moved around her, anchoring her in place as two "feelers" moved to her hands so she could signal to the worm what she was planning even if her mind wasn't as engaged as he should have been.

The worm took off over the top of the sand, crackles of energy forming across its body like a lightning storm. The raw energy arced into her, sending jolts of the worm's mood and health with each connection. Her eyes filled with the same electricity, zapping out from between her eyelids as she saw the "vibrations" the worm was "seeing".

Invaders.

She sensed the younger worm suddenly dive into the sand and burrow far below—well out of reach—joining the countless other younger and more vulnerable wormlings in the safe deep of the sand. The younger worms instinctively hid in the sand, driven to the surface only when safe or when hunger drove them upward toward a "smaller and more manageable" meal.

Again—size and vulnerability were relative.

A "smaller" wormling was often as large as a trolly. The rarer, smaller worms tended to stay below the sand—usually.

Hunger tended to make the younger worms more stupid, following their stomachs over sense—the younger worms still depended on physical sustenance over magic, unlike the oldest. It often reminded her of one of the old monster movies her father had enjoyed watching every autumn where a town across the pond was terrorised by a bunch of giant sandworms.

Giant being relative, of course.

At any rate, she was pretty sure that the sandworm she was currently riding upon was a bit more like the ones from Frank Herbert's Dune; only the worms were magical in nature and capable of thought underneath the intense territorial urges.

It was easy to dismiss the sandworms as being mere beasts with lesser intelligence and simple yet vicious territorial instincts, but Hermione had learned better. Better yet, she'd managed to figure that out without dying in the process, which was probably a true miracle in and of itself.

Hermione knew that she had been exceptionally lucky.

---

Hermione winced to find herself sprawled on a rocky outcrop surrounded in sand. Her skin was hot and painful, and she knew she'd been exposed for much longer than her suncream was designed to protect her. She could feel the press of her wand painfully digging into the crook of her arm, and she slowly attempted to sit up.

She winced in pain as the world spun and punched her squarely between the eyes.

A soft rustling nearby caught her attention, and she suddenly remembered why she had been lured out into this particular patch of desert in the first place.

A young sandworm was caught in a magical trap—struggling against the stabbing "pikes" and lines that both dug into the poor creature's immature plating and exposed its delicate under flesh to the harsh and unforgiving elements.

Poachers.

She'd heard all about them—just about any person who listened to the local alchemist and various apothecaries who desperately desired the rarest ingredient rumoured to be in the desert: the Jewels of the Sandworm.

Rumour, of course, had resulted in a hundred different stories that speculated about where the jewels came from. Hidden caches. Secret tunnels. Wedged in the hide of the beasts and smoothed by the countless hours of being grated against sand under the ground—

Like the rhino, however, people believed the beasts' bodies were the holy grail of potion ingredients, regardless of what was true or not. The creature's notorious viciousness, however, made the biggest worms that of legend and myth. The smallest of them became known as "reality" with the biggest of them taking the spot of something mythical or imaginary, such as the likes of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack that Luna insisted was real (but no one, not even her father, Xenophilius, could ever manage to prove it.)

And Hermione—

She believed them all to be wishful thinking or else outrageous stories concocted by certain parties in an attempt to excuse their horrendous behaviour in the desert.

The only reason she was out in the desert at all was to find the elusive magical desert gourd whose finely ground seeds made for a nutrient-dense flour that Neville wanted to use in the treatment of his parents. The main problem was that it looked exactly like the non-magical variant, the colocynth, and it had an unnerving habit of appearing in only the fiercest of sandstorms. The only way to tell the difference between the two was that when roasted, the magical variant would shine a glowing purple to a magically sensitive eye.

Cultivation of the plant, much to Neville's dismay, failed quite dismally.

So why was she out in the desert combing the dunes for the magical gourd instead of Neville?

Because she was a blithering idiot, she reasoned wryly.

He gave her the ultimate guilt trip complete with the sorrowful puppy dog eyes, the sad, sob story, and the litany of excuses for why he couldn't possibly go out there and get it himself.

Child on the way.

Poor Hannah suffered from crippling anxiety if he wasn't around.

He was an Auror and couldn't get time off to travel.

The list was quite extensive, and she had fallen for it like a sentimental fool.

She hadn't even realised it until someone had anonymously sent her a clipping from the Prophet's society page—of Ronald being wed to Lavender sodding Brown in some ridiculously posh ceremony in a lush tulip field in the Netherlands, of all places—that all of it had been an excuse to get her just as far away from Europe as humanly possible.

War hero.

Order of Merlin.

Unexpected windfall.

Et cetera, and so forth.

And there was Harry Potter, the conquering Boy-Wh0-Lived, and Neville Longbottom, Ginny and Hannah—right by Ron's side in the picture with them all looking so ecstatically happy.

It had been a relief, really. She hadn't truly been with Ronald for well over three years. He didn't approve of her job at the Ministry, and he had definitely not approved of her pursuing a career over marrying him right after graduation and popping out an entire litter of ginger-haired babies in true Weasley fashion.

So, when Neville had come to her with his elaborate sob story of wanting the magical wild desert gourd—

It was an excuse for her to get away from it all as much as anything.

What really bothered her, however, was that her supposed best friends had preferred to shove her off to the desert rather than simply tell her the truth. Had someone perhaps told them that she was "too attached" to Ron and needed to be pushed off somewhere?

She could think of a few people that might have believed that in the Weasley family.

Ron had always made her out to be so terribly clingy to his mum.

A bloody harpy.

So, while she was out in the desert in the middle of a horrendous sandstorm searching for the elusive magical gourds, Hermione happened to hear the droning cries of a trapped young sandworm.

Caught in a poacher's trap, the beast was exposed to the sand's bitter bite as the storm raged on, and its cries of distress and pain sounded a lot like a child lost in the desert.

The "small" sandworm was easily the height of the Knight Bus and perhaps five times as long, and the magical trap that held it was devised with a combination of magic and Muggle technological ruthlessness meant to subdue and leave the poor creature to suffer and die long before the owners came back to check the trap.

Long, serpent-like tongues extended from the beast's mouth as it desperately fought to free itself from the trap, but the magic reinforced the "spears" as well as a complex web of magical cords that tightened inexorably around it. The trap itself hovered just above the surface of the sand, making it so the worm's cries and thrashing did not attract any "friends" that might come by to help it.

Cruel.

Efficient.

The rumours said the worms sensed movement and vibrations that ran through the ground, and even if such rumours were false, the poachers were not risking if it wasn't true. The fact there were no other, larger worms being attracted did nothing but prove that the trap was doing what it was meant to do, not that larger worms did not exist—

But if this creature was "small" enough to be managed, then the stories painted a picture of something truly massive living under the sand of the great desert.

But so much story did not make it the truth.

Truth, however, was right in front of her.

Suffering.

No matter what the creature's fate may have been, she couldn't allow something innocent to suffer. To kill for food was necessary. To torture was a thing of mankind—the mark of a mind both greater and more fractured. To some studies, only the highest of intelligent beings would torture on purpose—for their own amusement.

Some said this made creatures such as cats, primates, and cetaceans a measure of such evils, for they were all capable of tormenting their prey before (or if) they ate it afterwards.

What was evil?

All Hermione knew was that she couldn't just let the creature suffer.

She remembered why she had been bent and crumpled upon the stone outcrop. Her first attempt to free the sandworm had been met with magical backlash from the trap's maker—insurance that if the worm had any actual magic that it would neutralise it.

How would she free it without injuring herself—she who was undoubtedly much more fragile than the worm itself?

How did you fight magic that fought back?

Think, Hermione, think!

Are you a witch or are you not?

Idiot girl.

Hermione mentally facepalmed as she turned the young sandworm into a gerbil, and the little rodent tore off across the dunes squeaking in terror.

She realised she had underestimated the poacher's snare when the spikes suddenly turned to face her.

"Shi—" Hermione cursed as she dove while casting a shielding spell, but there was something insidious about the enchantments as they pierced through her spells and into her body.

Sandworm killers.

Of course, it would be made to pierce through the toughened flesh of a beast reputed to have the thickest hide—

She whimpered as searing agony struck her in multiple places, and her lifeblood trickled out from where she had been impaled.

Idiot. She winced as she mentally chided herself. Why did she have to act too quickly based on her emotions instead of thinking things through first?

She was always so bloody impulsive whenever it came to helping others—helping people with homework, helping people and causes that didn't even want her to help—

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

She knew better, but she kept on doing the most Gryffindor thing like some poster child for the house that had never really understood or supported her.

The sand was rumbling. The dunes were "singing".

Her hands were sinking into the sand as it seemed to bounce around. Panic settled in her heart, and she felt the rush of adrenaline in her body even as she knew that it could be just as fatal to try and move as it was not to. Her blood was watering the sand, and she felt her death as the red stained the grains of silica, quartz, and whatever other minerals merged together into the dunes.

Using her magic in that moment would seal her doom—even if the magic transported her away. She would end up just like poor Dobby—fatally wounded by the trap that came for the ride along with her.

The sand was churning, and she could hear what could have been a roar of the very earth opening up to swallow her whole. Sand fell from everywhere, stinging as it hit her eyes, shot up her nose, and coated her mouth as she tried to breathe, the cloth covering her nose and mouth having fallen away as she dove to avoid the vicious magical spikes.

The sand finally gave way as the greatest of sandworms opened its enormous maw to the open air, sand flowing like water off its body. Rows upon rows of spikey teeth both moved and clacked together with a chirping sound that seemed as if a giant cricket was attempting to call out to its brethren across the vast desert. The sound paused as the throaty thumping call of the mature worm resembled the beat of a great earthen drum.

Hermione went tumbling into the air, trap and all, and the unfurled mouth of the great worm snapped shut around her as all went dark.

---

Hermione woke with a strange tingling sensation throughout her body, and she opened her eyes as her disorientation made it so much harder for her to determine where she was.

There was a strange, wet sensation moving across her skin, and she tried to make sense of it. There was the brightness of the sun somewhere "over there" and a moist warmth where she was that spoke of humidity. There were spikes everywhere like a hundred thousand stalagmites and stalactites. Yet, she felt as if she were cooler despite it all, like sitting under a shade tree when the rest of the area was sunny without clouds.

She'd been out in the desert long enough to know what true heat was, and she was being spared the blistering 47°C of peak Saharan midday air temperature or the even higher 80°C of the sand's heat stored deep within its layered grains. Whatever the temperature was in this place—it was survivable. That alone was a gift in itself.

As she slowly moved, she realised something was moving along with her, slithering across her skin. She froze, unsure. Was it a snake? Was she near a nest of horned desert vipers? Gods—She wasn't prepared.

Where was her wand?

The sensation of wetness accompanied the slithering, and she struggled to make sense of it. She squinted in the blurred vision of heat waves and disorientation.

There was a sandworm—mouth agape as multiple "tongues" smoothly moved over her skin. Its mouth unfurled like an alien pod, and she could see rows of thin but dagger-like teeth. Its tongues were exploring her skin, leaving trails of tinted saliva over her skin. Where it touched her, it tingled, but it—

Hermione blinked.

The wounds she had suffered from the trap were healing rapidly as she stared at them. As the sandworm's excretions met her wounds, the skin was healing, leaving not even a scar to mark her ordeal.

The sandworm was, especially now it was close enough to touch her, beyond huge. While she knew from recent experience that the superior worm had been big enough to swallow a few Muggle tanks all at once, even the smaller one was no tiny hamster. It could, quite easily, devour her whole.

Yet—

Somehow, it seemed to be much more curious about her than eager to eat her.

As she sat up, the serpentlike tongues seemed to sense she was no longer out cold, and she watched them bob and sway about as if to get a better look at her even though she could not see any sort of eyes.

What was the proper response to such a creature?

Hagrid hadn't mentioned such things, and the books had dismissed sandworms as a myth to frighten people out of the desert much like tales of man-eating crocodiles did.

"Thank you," she said awkwardly. "For saving me."

The serpentlike tongues extended and slithered against her curiously, and she tried not to make any sudden or alarming moves. She hoped that if the creature had intended to devour her that it would have done it while she was down for the count not while she was alive, but she had no data or sufficient experience even to begin to guess what was the proper reaction to a curious sandworm.

The strange healing of her wounds—wounds that she absolutely knew she had suffered—seemed to be because of the sandworm.

The worm's strange, semi-sentient tongues extended to her, rubbing up against her. Each had its own "mouth" which seemed a bit redundant on a creature whose entire mouth was big enough to eat a Land Rover whole—

She closed her eyes as one rubbed up against her cheek, unsure whether the next moment would bring pain or not. One of the serpent tongues clamped on her nose but withdrew, seemingly satisfied or perhaps a bit perplexed by her appendages.

Her nose tingled where the sandworm slime both absorbed into her skin and dripped off the tip of her nose. She realised that the lingering pain she had in places where she'd suffered various war wounds were no longer aching. She reached out her hand, and the tongues slid gently against her skin, and she could feel the strange sensation of touching pure magic in much the way that one would see.

"Oh," Hermione whispered. The worm's senses intermingled with hers, and then she felt her surroundings in a way that added dimensions in a way she hadn't realised existed. She couldn't see with her eyes, yet she could suddenly feel the footfall of the smallest of creatures on the sand even miles away. Based on that she could easily tell how light it was or how heavy. She could tell how fast it was going, when it stopped, and—in a most disconcerting way—if it was likely to make a good meal. She could feel the radiant energy of the sun filtering through the sand as it trickled down to the cooler layers.

Even more amazing, she could sense the stirring of the worms under the sand in response to the annoying grating sensation of nails across the chalkboard that signalled the movement of trespassers over the sand.

"Walk without rhythm, and we won't attract the worm," Paul Atreides had said in reference to the great sandworms of Arrakis—Shai'hulud.

Could the author have met a real sandworm in the desert and crafted a fictional world that centred around a mythical beast that none could have ever believed was real?

Was the author truly a Muggle?

Perhaps, the truth was hidden between the pages of science fiction and alleged fantasy—scrambled just enough to confuse those who read it to think it was a bit too otherworldly to be real.

No wizard or witch would ever think to take Muggle fiction seriously. No Muggle would take mere "fiction" seriously, either. It was the perfect disguise for true inspiration. While she had felt things were written purposely altered so as not to give a guidebook in which to bring death to the real creature, the first contact was nothing short of the Fremen's spiritual reverence for the Old Man of the Desert—Shai'hulud.

And the "smaller" worms—

They were twisted into the horrific antagonists of horror movies.

The truth, however, was exploring her as much as she was exploring it—a witch and a sandworm—each attempting to ascertain the truth of the other.

But as the worm explored her, larger serpent tendrils that seemed to be made of magic surrounded her. They did not come from the worm that had been investigating her, seemingly coming from elsewhere. There was a low, droning growl that shook the very ground under her feet.

Hermione's fear spiked as she realised that those formations had not been stalagmites.

They were teeth.

She was in the mouth of the greater sandworm.

As the panic rose in her body, every instinct telling her she needed to scramble to safety, the tendrils of magic rubbed up against her gently but firmly.

The "smaller" sandworm didn't seem to be at all bothered that it might be eaten by its greater relative. No, it seemed to be staring at her, tendrils waving in their serpentlike dance.

Waiting.

She remembered the litany that the protagonist in Frank Herbert's novel recited:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn to the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing left behind. Only I will remain."*(FH)

She closed her eyes, reciting the litany as she remembered it. It had been a while since she'd nestled in the beanbag chair at the library and read just to read. War had torn her childhood away from her. After it, she was already considered an adult, and with it came other responsibilities that didn't allow for making a detour to enjoy a pleasure reading at the London library.

Books had always been her comfort.

Words.

Mind over matter.

"I must not fear." She took a deep breath.

"Fear is the mind-killer." She exhaled.

"Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration." In, she breathed.

"I will face my fear."

Out, she breathed.

"I will permit it to pass over me and through me."

A deep breath, in and out.

"And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path."

Deeper breath. Breathe, Hermione. Focus on nothing. Let go.

"Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing," she whispered.

She opened her eyes as she forced her fear away.

"Only I will remain."

Her gaze fell upon a glowing tendril that hovered but inches in front of her face. A single glowing drop of liquid glistened off the tip, positively teeming with magic along with something very alien and unknown. Hermione felt as if the entire universe was somehow right there waiting—and staring directly at her.

She realised it was an offering but also a test.

Could she trust the sandworms?

Could they trust her?

Some thoughts have a certain sound, she remembered. That being the equivalent of a form. Through sound and motion, you will be able to paralyze nerves, shatter bones, set fires, suffocate an enemy, or burst his organs.

The book and movies, of course, was a story of a great war, and a protagonist rose to fight a greater evil whose reach spanned longer than a lifetime of one person alone. She had enjoyed the book series as a child, long before most others her age would have read such books. Her parents had always encouraged her to read whatever she could. She had eagerly read anything and everything—but she had never been so thankful for having read that choice bit of science fiction.

Fiction—

Truth within fiction.

But where was the truth in the story?

In the story, the sandworms created the poison that would become the Water of Life only upon its death by drowning—the resulting chemical once purified by select highly-trained people was a powerful mind-altering substance that could expand the consciousness of those that partook of it. Perhaps, that part, she thought, was fictional.

She hoped so, at least.

She'd never been trained in mind and body how to convert poison—fight a sociopathic megalomaniac, perhaps, but that hadn't truly been actual training so much as sheer dumb luck incarnate.

She stared at the droplet as it hung on the one tendril.

Would she step forward and let go of her preconceived notions? Or would she cling to how things had always been, desperate to hold on to what she thought she knew?

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

I will face my fear.

She took in a deep breath and exhaled. She took a step forward and let the droplet land on her tongue.

---

"Make sure he's buried up to his neck," the scar-faced wizard snarled at his fellows as they struggled to both stand in the heat and bury their victim in the deep desert.

"Why the desert, cousin?" one of them asked, looking visibly confused. "Why not just leave him dead somewhere public and humiliating?"

"We want him to suffer, idiot," the scar-faced wizard snapped. "That's what we're getting paid for. That's what we're doing."

"Not sure why we can't just bury him anywhere else," the other wizard mumbled.

"We aren't getting paid to ask questions," Scarface snapped. "We're getting paid to do as we're told, period."

"We could just use a nice Crucia—HRK!" the man choked as Scarface toppled him over with a spell.

"I'm not busting your jaw over your little Pangolin trading side-business, David, so just make bloody sure that this pale-faced shite is buried clear up to the neck. That's my business."

David rubbed his jaw and sighed. "Fine." He used a spell to sink their hostage into deep sand and wrinkled his nose.

Scarface used a Wizarding camera and took a photo, using his boot to tilt up the man's chin. "Smile for the camera, you sodding traitor," Scarface spat viciously as he clicked the trigger. He jerked his head to the other man. "What you dose him with?"

"The stuff you gave me," David answered.

"It better wear off," Scarface warned him. "He needs to suffer, not just croak."

"I wasn't exactly measuring when I threw it in his face," David snapped. "He was fucking trying to kill me. He shouldn't have even seen me."

Scarface curled his lip. "He's a notorious spy, you idiot. He fought in a war. Of course, he's going to sense you lurking there in a fucking disillusionment."

"Just be glad it even worked," David snorted. "I don't trust that Muggle shite."

"Just grab your dead animals and let's go," Scarface said. "We need to get out of this sandstorm for Apparition to even work, otherwise we'll show up in bloody pieces."

"Tch," David muttered and staggered over to where he had stashed a few crates. He shrank them all down and placed them in a dragonhide satchel. "You'll be thanking me when we get a ruddy great pile of gold from this dead beast. It's way worth more than even Acromantula venom."

Scarface grunted as he tried to adjust the cloth over his face. "Stupid spells don't ever work right in this bloody desert, but I guess that's why we're leaving him out here, yeah?"

"Maybe the sand will choke him to death before he can die of starvation or exposure," David speculated as he slung the satchel over his shoulder. "Come on, mate, we gotta go get our arses past these dunes."

The air seemed to vibrate as the sand suddenly shifted in the storm. The dunes made a low, droning sound even as the wind fought to drown out the noise. The wizards struggled against the blowing sand, their eyes stinging as sand was steadily embedded into places where sand did not belong.

They trudged slowly into the wind, doubling back when the sand and wind seemed to stubbornly resist their very best efforts. They stumbled blindly in the blowing sand even as the debris in the air smashed into them. They determinedly kept on, their goal lost in the haze of attacking sand. The sand quaked around their feet, sending sand in an avalanche down the dune. The dune vibrated with sound as they went tumbling down the other side only to land in a tangled heap on top of each other at the base of the dune.

The two pulled themselves up when the winds eventually died down, each staring at the other accusingly.

Despite the sun being high in the sky and the wind having disappeared, the sand was trembling violently below their feet. Grains bounced and seemed to slide like tumbling waves.

They struggled to remain standing, but they soon fell on all fours, madly flailing to push themselves upright and fight the turbulent sand. They slid.

The sand seemed to cascade down upon them and rows upon rows of terrifying stiletto teeth emerged as the gaping maw of the greater desert sandworm opened up beneath them. There was a roar, deafening, as the grinding of countless teeth moved in eager anticipation. The static electricity arced and zapped into their bodies even as the teeth impaled them, their bodies jerking spasmodically in both bowel-loosening terror and shocked surprise.

As their bodies stilled, a dense cloud of concentrated Dark magic escaped their corpses as their very souls attempted to leave their bodies, but the long tongue-tendrils of the greater sandworm immediately attacked, instantly purifying the Dark magic with a blast of radiant energy before it was drawn into its maw and devoured.

"Bless the Maker and His water," Hermione whispered softly as her hands lay flat against the worm's scaled body. "Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people." *FH

Hermione's eyes glowed a radiant electric blue as she slid down the worm's side, her connection to the sandworm both intense and intimate. She knew at that moment that the victims of the sandworm's ire had been Dark wizards, and the very "soul" of them had been blackened and tainted. With the energy having left the body, however, all that was left of them was meat and water. Nothing of their energy remained.

The greater sandworm kept its mouth open, and Hermione used her magic to remove the impaled bodies from its teeth. Nothing would go to waste. It was the unwritten law of the desert as she had come to know it.

She inspected the bodies if only to imprint the memory of them upon her consciousness and thus the shared memory of the worms. What she knew, they would know, and that knowledge would spread far and wide under the sands as fire would across the dry forest.

One of the bodies had broken off a "smaller" tooth, and she removed it with all due reverence. The teeth of the worm were a lethal weapon like no other. Nothing, not even the tempered metals of the Muggle or magical world could match it.

She moved the bodies out of the greater worm's mouth and closed her eyes. The worm's tongue-tendrils moved gently around her, communing with her, and one tendril deposited a "drop" of its favour into her mouth as their consciousnesses merged.

The worm seemed to both drone and drum, the sound echoing through the very sand itself, the dunes singing in response to its passage.

When she opened her eyes, the tooth had been transformed into a perfect "knife," and she holstered it on her body with her collection of other treasured tools. The worm was satisfied that its territory was properly defended, and it left her to go and "feed the young."

As the greater worm plunged deep into the sand and quickly disappeared, Hermione wobbled on the surface of the sand but did not lose her footing. She had become used to sand riding as much as wormriding—dancing upon the wake of the great Maker.

While the novels had always been a work of pure fiction to her, there were far too many similarities, hidden truths, buried within the fiction. And her newfound reverence for the great beasts bordered on respect for the gods, for there was no doubt that the creature's awesome power in the desert was nothing short of both life and death.

There was no better word for them than Shai'hulud, which meant multiple things depending on the amount of reverence one put into its saying. Old Man of the Desert. Old Father Eternity. Grandfather of the Desert. They were all Shai'hulud.

In Arabic, there was a name that was disturbingly close to it: Shay'khulud which means "thing of eternity." They were both, perhaps, right.

Hermione had to admit the first time she had taken the sandworm's covenant, it had been a truly spiritual experience that had both unmade and remade her into something more fit for symbiosis with the great worm. She had given the worms the gift of her human experience, her knowledge of the world, but they had also given her theirs in return—and she had no doubt she had the better part of the bargain.

She would never wish to leave the desert, she knew.

She and the worms were now as one. She could no more leave them behind than she could cut off her own arm. Her senses were no longer limited by the boundaries of human experience. She saw infinitely further and deeper, but she also had to temper the deeply rooted drive to protect the sands with reason.

It was a drive that was like a kind of hunger—a drive rooted in protecting the magic that flowed throughout the sand of the desert, vastly ignored by magicals—unnoticed due to the harshness of the environs' rampant energy that concealed it.

The desert was a virtual powerhouse of magical energy from which the leys carried off into the wider world. It incubated within the desert before spreading out to the world in its raw and truest form, a power so primaeval that it heated the sand under the cover of the sun's rays.

The worms protected it.

Her ethical compass had to undergo some tweaking to accept that the cycle of life when it came to the worms was a bit more ruthless than what she'd grown up viewing as acceptable. She had come to know the truest form of the greater good. If the worms did not protect the desert, the magic of the world would be lesser for it.

The scope of how important the deserts were to the world had hit her with a greater epiphany of how very little humankind knew of the significance of a place that was frankly no picnic to live in. The Sahara, the Arabian, Kalahari, Thar, Sonoran, Chuhuahuan—all of them harboured sandworms. All of them protected the magic that was incubated under them. Perhaps, the only desert that had no resident worms was Antarctica—but it was probably the only place in the world where people weren't actively trying to move there and live, either.

Antarctica's climate was just unforgivingly hostile enough to guard itself sufficiently all on its own.

As she committed the two Dark wizards to memory, she stripped them of their clothes and gear, shrinking it all down and packing it up to sort through at a later time. She then stepped away from them, making a series of deliberate movements over the sand until her feet hit a sort of dense, more crystalised layer that resonated when her boots touched it.

She thumped her boots against it firmly.

Thum.

Thum.

Thum.

She closed her eyes, feeling the desert as the worm. "Come," she called out softly. "Let no waste taint the sand."

The sand around her churned as a number of "smaller" sandworms emerged from underground and tore into the remains of the two dark wizards, splitting the spoils evenly between them.

They rubbed up against her in appreciation after their feast, their scaled hides sending tingles of their shared bond between them. The largest of them extended a tendril where a droplet of swirling magic and water glistened on the end.

"Blessed be the Maker and His water," Hermione whispered, allowing the tendril to deposit the droplet in her mouth. Her eyes glowed a brighter blue as the Covenant was reinforced.

Her senses expanded across the area as the worm searched the state of its desert. There was something that seemed out of place in the sands—something that made the worms incredibly curious. It wasn't moving, however, and they needed her to go explore it for them.

It would require the use of—hands.

And maybe eyes too.

Hermione pulled the shemagh over her nose and mouth and climbed on one of the smaller worms, taking place on its "back" as it moved across the surface of the sand.

---

Hermione hopped off the sandworm, sliding neatly down its side into the hot sand. She gave the worm a reassuring pat on the inside of its mouth.

Its hunger appeased, this particular worm was much more curious than blinded by instinct. It waited for her to determine what was the better action. The smaller worms had taken to the sands, driven to patrol the desert for possible prey or random interlopers.

Hermione saw the mess of long black hair belonging to someone who had been buried up to the neck in sand. She scowled, further reinforced in her belief that the supposedly greater intelligence of men did not always lead to greater acts intended for the advancement of humanity.

She closed her eyes as her hand touched the worm's side. The tingle of their bond solidified as she envisioned what she wanted to happen in her mind's eye.

The worm plunged into the sand and made the grains churn, and the ground seemed to boil as the worm pushed upward from deep in the sand. It pushed the captive up and out of the sand to land prostrate with a flop.

Hermione's senses merged with the young worm's, and she could tell the victim was still alive, but they were definitely not having a very good time of it. Exposure to the harsh desert conditions, dehydration, and whatever other tortures came before being buried in the sand probably did the victim no favours. They were tall and skinny, and it made the phrase "worth their weight in water" rather dubious.

She turned the victim over and brushed the lank, oily hair away from their face.

Her hand froze in place as she recognised the familiar countenance, even as badly sunburnt and bruised as it was.

Severus Snape.

"Shite," Hermione cursed.

---

Severus opened his eyes to find himself in a dimly lit area that reminded him strongly of the dungeons at Hogwarts. He remembered having been tailed by someone he couldn't quite see, and the scuffle was hindered by the fact that they had found him in a busy Muggle area where pulling out a wand would have caused unwanted complications.

He sat up slowly, expecting pain, but he found he was bandaged loosely in moist dressings from head to foot.

I look like a mummy, he thought as he examined himself with no little chagrin.

His wand, which he had always kept hidden on his person transfigured into a button, lay beside him.

Wherever he was, he was alive, and they clearly wanted him to have his wand.

Murderers are not likely to give me back my wand, he thought. Even Muggle ones. And the Muggles couldn't transfigure me back my wand—

Beside him, he saw a cool glass of water, and the purifying flower of the greater desert moonlily floated within, gently perfuming the air with its light, sweet fragrance.

The very flower he had been searching for—the sole reason he'd been out scouring the desert for upwards of a year.

Did someone know?

He touched his neck where Nagini's venom still tormented him—trapped below his skin. It had made it almost impossible to sleep or concentrate on some days. It had driven him in the hunt for the mythical bloom—

Something rarer and more precious than even the unicorn's tears.

And they knew it had to be alive to be of any use at all—

He sipped from the glass of water—it was icy cold and pure with the pleasing hint of minerals. He hissed suddenly as his neck burned, and he clutched at it with a strangled curse. His fingers dug into his skin and came back wet.

He stared at his hand in confusion. A blackish green fluid covered his pale hand.

His hand trembled slightly as he put down the glass of water. The pain was gone—but he'd lived with it for so long that he had forgotten what a pain-free life even was.

As his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he realised he was surrounded in greenery. A number of underground plants around him let off a soft phosphorescent glow. The very walls were lush with abundant life, and there was a dampness in the air that smelled of petrichor.

The air was cool and fresh rather than stale, so whatever ecosystem existed in this place was complete enough to fully oxygenate the air.

He took in a deeper breath, and felt more relaxed. He examined the bandages he was covered in, and he found they were loose and light, just enough to keep whatever medicine on his skin. When he peeled back the wrap, his skin was its usual paleness but it was not what he expected. He'd expected burnt, painful skin—practically cooked in the Saharan sun.

It wasn't.

He ran his hand over his skin and felt the smoothness with wonder. He clawed at his neck and rubbed, and his scars were no longer thick and rough against his palm.

Surely someone wanted him to be alive. Why go through all the trouble to heal his injuries so perfectly and give him back his wand only to decide to murder him?

Severus found loose clothes folded neatly beside the bed along with a basin filled with warm water and clean towels. He washed up using the bar of fresh scented but not obnoxiously perfumed soap and relished the simple pleasure of feeling clean after his ordeal.

Much like his altercations with Voldemort, washing up afterwards had more meaning than just the cleaning of his physical body. While his skin had obviously been cleaned before being treated, there was comfort in the ritual as much as the sensation of the soft cloth and water.

Whoever had allowed him such luxury, however—they probably didn't even know how special it was to him. Leaving him alone to wake up, too, was strangely considerate. It gave him time to take in his situation without having a knee-jerk reaction to what he thought was a fight.

And then there was the greater desert moonlily—

Even if was not allowed to take it with him, the fact it existed and floated in the water in front of him and was used to assure him that the water being offered was purified was a gift beyond price.

Could they have known he was a potion master? Were they a herbologist? A healer?

The water had settled something inside him, and he felt more at peace despite his unknown circumstances. The dimness comforted his eyes, and there was enough light to see well without squinting.

He pulled on the robes and found them reassuringly thick but surprisingly light. The style was the more traditional nomad desert fare, but it was loose and comfortable. It made him feel less exposed, and it also seemed to have a pocket in the sleeves for a wand—

So whoever had saved him was intimately familiar with the needs of a magical person, even if their guess that he'd actually drink the water if the greater desert moon lily was floating in it was entirely a shot in the dark.

He stood, tucked his wand into the sleeve, and made his way out of the room he was in, noting that the doorway was naturally carved into what appeared to be bedrock and earth. There was a thick carpet-like curtain serving as a door, but there was no lock or even a twitch of a spell that may have triggered as he neared it.

Curious.

Apparently, whoever it was that saved him felt no need to keep him prisoner, or they believed he wasn't going to attack them immediately.

Foolish, perhaps—

Or maybe, they didn't want him to assume the worst.

Such thoughts confused him. He wasn't used to not having to look over his shoulder for the next dagger in the back, and his capture by Dark wizards hadn't exactly proven him wrong in his paranoia.

The main chamber that he entered was rather more expansive, but there was also more phosphorescent lighting due to plants growing in the walls. Mosses, lichens, and fungus grew there in abundance, but there were shelves carved into the bedrock that held pools of water. Each pool had hundreds of moon lilies in them, all glowing and shimmering like living lamps in the dark. It smelled fresh and healthy rather than dank, and he found himself pleasantly surprised.

It didn't seem like he was in the desert anymore, but the floor was sandy, which seemed to indicate he was at least somewhere near the desert.

He touched the nearby mossy shelf, and it yielded lightly under his fingers, soft and pliable with a gentle squishiness. Moisture brushed his fingers, and he realised the carved shelves were a type of hydroponic setup or living greenhouse of sorts.

But, he thought, there is no sun. How curious.

He started to think it was simply a growing area, but there seemed to be a desk and table carved into the rock as well as chairs. Carved containers holding rolls of parchment, ink, and quills were gathered on the surface, and he could see notes on some sort of unfamiliar-looking fungus that included detailed sketched illustrations.

A dark brown and cream-coloured pharaoh eagle-owl curiously observed him from a sand-smoothed tree-branch perch. It swivelled its head to peer at him with an intense stare. Its deep orange eyes seemed to glow brightly in the dimness.

As he eyed the perching raptor, he noticed the lines of multiple bookshelves seemingly set into the rock itself. His immediate thought was that putting books in such a humid place would surely be fatal to any book of value, but when he neared his hand to the shelf, he realised it was perfectly dry and not at all as damp as the rest of the room.

Magic, he figured—but it was the kind of magic most people would forget to use. Lucius had paid a great deal of money to have his shelves specially made and enchanted for his library, and Hogwarts' books were always meticulously tended to by Madam Pince.

His eyes went back to the parchment on the desk. The writing looked—familiar, somehow.

It meant little, as he had graded many an essay, and the handwriting tended to blur together, but—

Severus shook his head.

Idiot, he chided. You're alive because of someone you don't know, and you're trying to remember bloody handwriting?

It was far too neat to be typical "angry Death Eater" fare. For a cultured wizard, Lucius' handwriting was utterly atrocious, as was that of the majority of people he knew. It was also too well written to be "lazy student" writing, either, so ruminating on whose it was was moot.

Whoever it was already had him at quite a disadvantage. They apparently knew more about him than he did of them—

And they dressed my wounds and cleaned me up, and I very much doubt if they did it blind, he said to himself. No use being mortified now, he figured. It was already done.

He peeked around another doorway and saw quite an extensive laboratory. His eyebrows raised at the most impressive sight. Despite the floor being covered in a layer of sand, it was a scrupulously clean setup and obviously lovingly maintained. A miniature aqueduct was channelling perfectly pristine water from somewhere, and the reservoir itself was littered with a vast array of flourishing water lilies.

A tinge of jealousy fluttered in his gut.

The entire setup was amazing.

The air was even more pleasingly "fresh" in this unknown place than what he knew from the old familiar moors of Scotland. That was saying something quite profound in itself.

There was a deep vibration that seemed to resonate in the ground. While the earth did not shake, there was an ambient droning tone that seemed to ring through to the very floor. It almost reminded him of whale song, and for a moment he idly wondered if he was under the ocean.

He walked into the next adjoining room, and he realised he was standing in a vast cavern. The chamber was remarkably expansive, spreading out a bit like a Quidditch pitch; the side walls were oddly smooth, as if they had been carved and sanded over a great expanse of time.

There was a great rumbling sound, and he saw the movement of something large moving past the larger opening. It passed after what seemed like a long time, the very ground vibrating with the force of the movement.

After the large shape left, a slight figure walked into the chamber, their body covered in loose desert garments, a cloth covering both head and face. They carried a hamper with them and set it down on a stone table. They pulled some sort of stone out from their clothes and placed it in a receptacle. The stone glowed brightly at first, and then the glow spread through a series of magical grooves that lit the rooms slightly brighter. It was enough to see things clearly but not be overwhelmed or suffer eye strain trying to peer at a scroll in the dimness.

The figure picked up the hamper and carried it over to one of the water shelves, setting it down and picking through the contents. They washed some of the items and laid them on the main table.

"The food is fresh," they said as they spread the items out on the table. "I hope the clothes were comfortable enough for you. I had to guess your size."

Severus' eyebrows knit together. "They were acceptable as well as generous, thank you." He paused, unsure what was the proper way to be both wary and grateful. "I appreciate the purified water—it was—very considerate of you."

The unknown female, and he was pretty sure they were female, chuckled, confirming his suspicion. "A world renowned potions master would hardly accept unknown food or drink without some reassurance of safety."

"You have me at a disadvantage, I fear," Snape said.

"Your face was all over the journals for having cured lycanthropy, Master Snape," the woman said. "Few who read the academic publications would not know you by name, and even then, others would know your face from the various newspapers."

Snape's lip curled. "I would question the verisimilitude of anything the papers publish about anyone."

The woman chuckled, and the sound was not as unpleasant to the ears as he would have expected. When most people laughed, it bothered him on a visceral level. He'd learned that laughter was usually at his expense when he was younger, and he'd always had a knee-jerk reaction to it: anger.

"I'd imagine the papers would say much the same amount of truth to whatever story came out about me," she replied. "There are very few times I have read an article in the paper that has captured truth without some sort of sensationalism attached."

She gestured to the table where the food had been laid out. "I am known as Hafsa to those that live in or around the desert," she introduced herself. "I will admit it is easier to say than others I have been called. Please. Sit. Eat. Your body is probably starving for nutrients after having healed so intensely."

Snape's stomach growled imperiously, and he winced as it loudly proclaimed its state of being empty despite his attempt to not seem excited at the very thought of food.

He noticed that there was a sort of flat bread piled on a plate, a bowl of fresh figs, some sort of hearty stew, and a clay pot full of what looked like steaming couscous and vegetables.

"Feel free to cast whatever spells you require to test its edibility," she said. "I can assure you it is perfectly safe for human consumption."

Severus twitched slightly, but he appreciated the sentiment. He was a paranoid sort by nature, and he was in an unknown place facing unknown food that could have unknown things in it—

He took out his wand and made a few passes, and the wand didn't even glow.

There was nothing unsafe about the food.

He put up his wand and sighed in satisfaction. "Thank you," he said, sitting down.

He noticed that the woman's eyes were a bright electric blue that extended into where the whites would be. They were quite strikingly different, almost alien. She seemed to tilt her head as if listening to something, and then she blinked.

Her eyes were a dark brown, like Guinness hit by sunlight. Some of the crackles of blue seemed to flicker there, but it was not as evident as before—

Had he imagined it?

He must have.

Eyes didn't just—change colour like that. Well, unless they were a werewolf, and he was pretty sure werewolves didn't come with electric blue eyes or would speak with him so civilly in the midst of the change.

Maybe he had a concussion.

"I am relieved that you are now well enough to walk," the woman said as she sorted things in the room. "I was concerned that they may have done something deeper than it appeared."

Snape, his mouth attempting to absorb every bit of flavour out of what he was eating, swallowed. "Judging by the bandages, I take it that I was burned severely."

"The heat of the Saharan Desert is not known to be merciful, no," she replied. "Fortunately, you were not so far gone that you could not be saved. Your skin responded well to the salve."

"More than well, it seems," he agreed, tilting his head.

He ate quietly and contemplated what to say to a stranger who had saved his life. "I am—most grateful for your care."

The woman shook her head. "It was nothing."

"If you have read even a fraction of what is written about me," Snape said, "then any compassion on your part is nothing short of miraculous."

"Newspapers are hardly a good judge of character," Hafsa said with a soft grunt. "I prefer to judge people based on their actions."

Severus was silent for a time. "Some of the things I have done in my life were not kind or indicative of praiseworthiness."

Hafsa took in a deep breath and sighed. "I think everyone has done something they regret," she said. "Something deeply troubling. It is what they do after that—that is what matters."

Severus' eyebrows knit together. "You speak as one with experience."

Hafsa sighed. "I have done things I will regret for the rest of my life. There is no changing them, and I cannot even say I could have, but I still did them."

Snape closed his eyes and nodded. He said nothing, but the feeling of regret was an all too familiar one.

"The food is very satisfying, thank you," he said after a while.

"There is a family establishment in Morocco that is happy to provide local fare to me when it is needed," Hafsa said. "The bread is cooked in the heated sand and is called taguella, and a small family that lives in the desert makes it for me. It has become a favourite, even without the stew to dip it in."

"You live here—" he said. "In the desert?"

Hafsa nodded. "I have not lived here all my life, but—" She tilted her head. "I feel as though I have lived many lifetimes here. It was not always so. When I first came here, I was very new to desert life. I made very memorable mistakes, but the desert was a teacher I could not afford to ignore. I had to learn fast or perish. I almost did. But—I found my way here, and I truly think it was for a reason."

Severus had cleaned his bowl almost spotless, having scooped up the last of the stew with the bread. His stomach full, he sipped the offered tea and closed his eyes with contentment. "The lilies—"

"Rare jewels of the desert, or so they tell me," Hafsa offered. "I have found a way to appease their sense of proliferation here. They seem to flourish."

"I have never seen one save in illustrations in books," Severus admitted.

"I fear they do not do terribly well outside of the desert," Hafsa said. "It seems they sense when they have left its cradle, and they soon wither, and their innate properties die along with them. No amount of attempted preservation seems to work. Stasis spells are completely ineffectual."

"Yet, you tell no one of your findings," Snape commented.

"They are rare in the wild," Hafsa said. "Should a hundred would-be hunters scour the desert for them, fight over them, and attempt to take them from their home—the few that do exist would be lost, their properties nullified."

"People are dunderheads," Snape said with a snort.

"Perhaps," Hafsa agreed, "but the desert keeps its secrets close. And you, Master Snape, will you keep its secret?"

Severus let out a long breath. "I would not release a hundred or thousand morons upon the desert to look for a myth only to litter the desert with their corpses," he said. "Think of the poor jackals."

Hafsa laughed, and Snape found the sound strangely pleasing and genuine. "I bow to your wisdom."

"I find that—" Severus began. "I came here looking for the lily as a last ditch effort to cure a wound that has plagued me for nearly a decade. Now that I have found it, I feel that it was serendipity that brought me to it, but I should not reveal its existence to others."

"What brought you to the desert?" Severus asked, suddenly curious about what would drive a lone woman out to the alien desert biome to eke out a living.

Hafsa sighed and closed her eyes. "I came in search of the elusive desert colocynth," she said after a while. "Its flour is nutrient-dense, but its magical properties also feed the magic starved—those cut off from their own magic for so long that their bodies are in imbalance. It was my hope to help a friend whose parents were suffering from a chronic malady. Instead of both less and more."

"And yet you found the rarest lily," Snape observed.

"Serendipity," Hafsa said with a chuckle. "Or fate, if you are a believer in such things. I happen to believe that very little occurs in the desert without its strict permission or knowledge."

"You speak as though it was a living thing," Snape said.

"Is not the Earth?" Hafsa asked.

Snape was silent, contemplating. "I suppose it could be said that it is," he acquiesced.

He could not see her smile due to her face being covered from the nose down, but the creases around her eyes wrinkled in their own version of a smile.

"You are welcome to stay until you are sure there will be no unforeseen side effects of the treatments," she said. "No one will be able to find you here. It is a safe place where you may rest and recover."

"And if I wish to leave?" Snape asked darkly, immediately suspicious.

"Then I will take you to where you may safely Apparate without splinching yourself," she said, her eyes casting downward for a moment before looking him straight in the eyes.

"And what if I just walk out that door you came in?"

Hafsa closed her eyes and sighed. "You would most likely die. The desert is not very kind to outsiders. This particular area is rather worse than most."

Snape narrowed his eyes. "Yet, you live here."

Hafsa shook her head slightly. "I have—managed to adapt over time," she said after a while. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. "There was a price for that, however. One I gladly paid, but it was and is a price that I do not expect most others would be so willing to pay."

Snape simmered silently, scowling. He had never been one for mysteries, and the wily old bastard had always given him half answers when he simply wanted a straight one. It made him so angry because Albus had always claimed one thing but would behave in an entirely different way—never truly trusting anyone with the whole story.

He shot to his feet, utterly unable to contain his seething outrage to yet again being fed nothing but obfuscation and half-truths. While his rational mind screamed at him to take a deep breath and not take his frankly abysmal past out on a random stranger who had saved his life, he couldn't help the sudden rise of his anger over being patronised.

He stormed off towards the door the woman had entered through, determined to see firsthand the alleged "danger" that she had warned him of—

Only to walk into a wall of—

Teeth.

Rows and rows and rows of wickedly sharp stiletto teeth.

They moved as something huge—whatever it was—moved, and there was a low rumbling sound and a deep thumping boom as though a great heart was beating or an ancient earthen drum was sounding off.

Sand rained down from various places as the thing moved around—

It seemed to be rearing back as if to strike!

Snape stumbled backwards, practically falling on his posterior. He fell on back as he tried to push his way further, struggling to move. Tendrils extended from the gaping maw of the "thing," hissing, writhing, and mouths agape.

Surprise buffeted him, the emotion hiting him like a bludger, but it was quickly replaced with anger and wrath. It was both a familiar and alien emotion, even as the very unfamiliar maw surged forward.

He let out a cry of panic, his wand forgotten entirely in the emotion of the moment.

A blur of movement, barely seen, was his only visual before the woman was in front of him. The tendrils shot outward in a rush, intent to murder him—of that he had no doubt.

Snape gave a yell, rolling to the side as his wand made its way to his hand and he pointed it—

The tendrils wrapped around the woman, writhing and hissing. She was held aloft, suspended between the moving teeth of the great maw even as the tendrils both held and supported her. She did not struggle, nor did she seem panicked. The magical tendrils seemed to both slide over her as well as into her.

She hung there for what seemed like hours, captured in the horrifying embrace, and then the tendrils set her down before withdrawing one by one. Her hands alighted upon a tendril as she bowed her head. "Bless the Maker and His water. Bless the coming and going of Him. May His passage cleanse the world. May He keep the world for His people."

The tendrils withdrew, and the maw made a thumping noise even as the countless teeth moved against each other. The maw withdrew, fleshy petals closing around the maw as the great mass pulled back from the entranceway.

When she turned back to him, her eyes were a radiant blue within blue—alien and beautiful. Her feet, bare as she walked across the sand, seemed to barely touch the ground. She said not a word as she passed by him on the way back into the living chambers.

Severus could only stare blankly into the dark void where the maw had been, imagining that it was still very much there and waiting. He looked to where his saviour had retreated and then back to the void, swallowing hard as his slice of humble pie forced its way down his throat.

---

Severus did his best to be a better houseguest after his rather shameful epiphany that sometimes when someone was attempting to warn him, it was simply concern for his well-being. It was a hard truth to swallow as most of his life had tried to prove that no one cared for his well-being but himself.

The low rumbling he heard now made much more sense, and he realised he was surrounded in the kind of danger he had no idea how to counter. He wasn't sure there was even a counter to be had.

How did one defeat a gigantic gaping maw?

Hafsa had told him that he was safe, but how could one be safe when right outside the door existed—that?

Apparition was out, the very air seemed against such precise magic. She'd given him his wand, but the struggle to achieve results seemed much like trying to talk in a whisper in a crowded room. It was possible, but it wasn't easy.

Was he a prisoner?

No—he didn't think so, at least. Hafsa had given him her word that if he wished to leave, she would get him to safety. She could have let him die to that—

That—

Thing out there.

But she hadn't.

And what could she have said that would have kept him from rushing headlong into danger just as he had?

Nothing, he supposed. He had always been a stubborn one.

As much as he hated the general impulsivity of Gryffindor students, he knew that he'd had his moments throughout his life that would have probably convinced the Sorting Hat that he'd have fit right in.

He winced at the very thought of it.

"What," he said and then winced. He probably sounded like an idiot. He took a deep breath and stared at one of the lilies floating in the water. "What was that out there?"

"In a word?" Hafsa said clinically. "Sandworm."

She dipped her fingers into the purified water and rubbed her fingers together as the droplets fell from her fingers as she pulled them out. "I have taken to the novels of Frank Herbert and call them Shai'hulud or the Makers. The great ones have no other names more fitting."

"You believe they are divine?"

"I believe they are greater than myself in ways I cannot fathom as well as those I can," she said. "They are important to the life cycle of desert, but most would never see one let alone believe they exist."

"Why live here?" he asked, truly curious.

"It is quiet and no one bothers me here," Hafsa said. "The gardens flourish, and the medicines I allow out of the desert help me to help the desert without bringing a hundred thousand people out here looking to make their mark upon the sand."

Snape's eyes widened in sudden revelation. "You are the Sand Lion Apothecary," he said.

"I am," Hafsa agreed.

"It was your desert extract tincture that allowed—" he trailed off, leaning back in his chair. "It's what allowed my research into the cure for lycanthropy to finally succeed."

"I am glad it was useful to you," Hafsa said, seemingly dismissive of the significance.

"All attempts to analyse the serum caused it to disappear."

"Did you attempt to?"

"Once." He sighed. "It was a natural attempt to discover if it would blow up in my face when added to my formulae."

"Its acid-base properties and reactions to other ingredients were well documented."

"I am not one to take such things purely on faith," Snape said with a sigh, "unless I myself have done the research."

Hafsa snorted. "Yet you did use it."

Snape shook his head. "It was the only thing I hadn't tried that promised results." He closed the book he was reading and set it down on the nearby table. "Though, after what I have seen here, I can certainly imagine why your formulas are unknown and a closely guarded secret."

"Not everything in the desert is as rare as the lily," she allowed. "There are some things that are simply overlooked. The tincture is made of elusive but not impossible ingredients, but it is the pristine nature in which I have grown them that allows them to fuse so well in other formulae to enhance the effects of reactions."

"Still," she said after a while. "I would rather the desert not be invaded with hundreds of seekers hoping to make a quick heap of money and flood the market with impure copies. That would not help anyone."

"The goblins are very clear that they will not share the information for any price," Snape said thoughtfully. "But you were wise to have them draw up the contracts for it."

"The goblins did greatly appreciate the opportunity to regulate its distribution," Hafsa said with a twitch of her lips. "Any satisfaction they may have gained in being able to flummox the Ministry and copycats was entirely unplanned."

"Hn," he said with a grunt. "I have a feeling you knew very well that it would 'flummox' a great many."

Hafsa shrugged. "The tincture was a gift of opportunity to those who had the wisdom to make use of it," she said. "How does the adage go? Don't look a gift hippogriff in the mouth."

Severus let out a soft whuff of air. "As an apology for my abysmal behaviour the other day, I would show you a much more efficient way to distil extract from the desert shrivel fig, whose flesh is notoriously difficult to process. While there are many ways in which to do it, I had perfected it in my hunt for the desert lily."

He watched as the woman seemed to consider his apology.

"That would be an acceptable apology, Master Snape," Hafsa said after a time.

Snape let out his breath slowly, closing his eyes in relief. "Thank you."

---

Severus began to feel better almost immediately after he realised Hafsa was taking his lesson to heart. She watched him closely and said not a word as she mimicked his movements.

The tension he normally felt while teaching seemed to have disappeared as he realised that the intimacy of a one on one teaching was not the same as wrangling a horde of impertinent heathens who didn't want to listen and tried their best to blow each other up.

The laboratory was pristine, despite the sand on the floor, and he realised that as he walked into the room, the general dimness disappeared as the lighting stones glowed brighter. The setup was remarkably considerate, the ingredient jars neatly labelled and held in a dark cabinet to help preserve them from the light, and cauldrons were clean and utensils sorted on a hanging rack.

The fresh influx of live ingredients growing on the sides of the walls amazed him with how healthy they were, and the lighting stones seemed to give them just as much light as they needed to flourish without overpowering the room.

Despite the brewing setup, the air in the chamber was perfectly fresh and clean, the plants having purified the air just as the lilies did the water, and there seemed to be a pleasant breeze coming in from "outside." He still wasn't quite sure where outside was, but he had a feeling it was not some hidden Moroccan villa overlooking the Sahara.

After the lesson, Hafsa thanked him politely for demonstrating the method for her and promptly shelved the essence they had extracted in a freshly labelled jar. He noticed that she continued to cover her head and face around him, but he didn't think too hard about it since there were many in the region who did. He couldn't help but think that maybe it was better to get to know the person without being distracted by any visual bias.

Gods only knew that he'd been guilty of that particular prejudice throughout his life. Even as a victim of it, he'd found himself judging others by the same jaded lens. Later, he'd become so bitter about his circumstances that he'd taken it out on his students—

Mind, some had deserved his scorn, but there were certain others—

He was no angel, most assuredly, but he did have regrets about some of his behaviour. Surviving the war had given him perspective. He'd never expected to survive. Surviving—had changed things.

He had to live with his mistakes even more than he'd believed he'd have to. At first, he'd been bitter about it, but—

He'd come to discover value in the simple things, and his quest for the rare desert lily had been as much about penance as anything else. While it would have helped him, and it had, there was still the possibility of giving back to the world instead of taking from it.

Having found the lily, however, he realised that the giving back would have to be more from his own creations than in bringing the lily back to the Wizarding World. He realised that bringing scrutiny to the desert environment was not wise.

The reagents that Hafsa was growing with her purified water, however, was proof that one could give back to the community without bringing down the masses charging off to the desert in search of a quick galleon. The reagents were the highest of quality, fresh, and beyond anything he'd seen even in Hogwarts' greenhouses, but they couldn't be traced back to the desert.

He had a feeling that Hafsa preferred it that way. Her respect for the desert was vast, and—

It seemed that the desert respected her in return.

"I will be going out into the desert to pick dates," Hafsa told him. "It is early enough that there is sufficient light but the sun will not attempt to destroy you cell by cell."

Severus wondered how they would get out into the desert or where they even were. He had no sense of time or place in this particular refuge. It was strange to him that she seemed to be without any obvious clues like the sun or ambient temperature.

"I would recommend covering your head and face, however," she commented after a while. "The sand does like to get everywhere."

Snape snorted. Sand had become ubiquitous in his life. There even seemed to be sand in his soap that added just a bit of friction when washing that wasn't altogether bad.

"I would like to accompany you," he said. "I would say that I would enjoy the fresh air, but oddly, there seems to be quite a bit of it where we are."

Hafsa's eyes smiled, the faint wrinkles around her eyes showing. "We are in a unique ecosystem here," she admitted. "The like of which does not exist anywhere else in the world."

Snape adjusted the covering over his head and face. "I am ready."

Hafsa gestured for him to follow her. "Stay close to me. Do not leave my side until we are there."

Frowning, he wondered if she thought him an idiot.

"This method of travel will probably be—" she tilted her head. "Somewhat unnerving."

Apparition would be out, he knew. Floo would be doubtful in such a place. One, there was no floo system available, and two, it was extremely unlikely that a safe refuge would be connected in such a way.

Portkey?

Hardly anything new.

She moved into the doorway where the gaping "maw" had been.

She waited for him.

She couldn't possibly intend to go out THAT way?

He moved to follow her, a nervous flutter building up in his stomach. As they stood in the stony area Hafsa thumped her leg on the ground in a rhythmic beat. To Severus it sounded like a drum, her foot hitting the sand only for it to seem strangely resonant in a way that sand did not normally act.

Her body swayed back and forth rhythmically as if to follow the call of music that only she could hear. The ground seemed to rumble and shift. Sand poured from many places, like water off a waterfall. The "wall" of sand burst forward as a giant "head" or something unfathomable pushed through and unfolded, fleshy lips peeling back to expose rows and rows of grinding teeth.

Hafsa made a deep thumping sound from her throat, and the creature answered her with a deeper thumping, the throat of the beast making a booming sound as a number of magical tendrils shot out from the worm's maw and surrounded her. They seemed to explore and caress her, and then they withdrew as the great teeth shifted and moved, making a path for her.

Hafsa gestured for him to follow her.

You have GOT to be kidding me, he thought with a shudder.

He stayed right beside her, walking by the teeth that were as tall as trees. The creature's throat rumbled, and he saw the sound vibrating the fleshy flaps that concealed the deeper throat.

Hafsa gestured to him, and she nestled herself against one of the flaps, her hand touching the skin with her bare hand. Her eyes took on the eerie alien blue glow. "Sit next to me and you will be perfectly safe,"she assured him.

Safe? What part of ANY of this is safe?! his mind screamed.

"I would hurry, however," she advised gently. "This Old Man of the Desert is quite eager to go."

Severus sat next to her somewhat stiffly.

The great creature's maw closed, locking them tight within as it began to move, and Snape's version of reality shifted into the realms of the unreal.

---

When the brightness of the early morning sun hit him square in the face, he saw all of the bone-like teeth in hyper detail. The maw opened out like a ramp, and Hafsa stood, walking calmly out as if one would exit a trolley bus without even the same hurry that magical folk practically fell out of the Knight Bus. He followed her, knowing that to stay too long was to court Death.

When she turned and stood still, the magical tendrils extended to her again, surrounding her.

"Thank you, Grandfather of the Desert," she said warmly.

It was then and only then that Severus realised exactly what the creature was. He stared with wide eyes at a not-so-mythical, definitely-not-fictional sandworm.

Hafsa made a thrumming sound in her throat and stomped the sand, and the sandworm answered her with a deep thumping sound before pulling away and diving under the desert sand. The sand parted like water, and the waves of sand practically knocked him over.

Snape stood and stared dumbly at the great sandworm, attempting to sort out his feelings and discern what he knew to be true and what he was still processing to be true.

A soft sound broke him out of his stupor, and he turned to see Hafsa working her way toward a grove of date palms. The sand went on endlessly in all directions, the palms standing like sentries in the sea of dunes.

She looked upward to the dense clusters of dates, and she pulled out what looked like a long knife.

It was a knife made from the tooth of—a sandworm.

A big one.

The knife's "blade"was a bit thicker toward the base where a smooth handle had been carved. She pointed the tip of it upward toward the cluster of hanging dates and a cluster of dates floated downward from the tree. There were many other clusters that remained, but she seemed to be focused on the one she had chosen.

He realised with some wonder that the "knife" was actually her wand, probably the most unique wand in the world. How many, he wondered, could possibly boast of such a thing?

The nearby "smaller" palms had clusters of dates hanging from the trees, but he noticed that the trees were not all of the same species. He eyed the grove and saw many different varieties of date palms. While he wasn't an expert on such things, he could tell from the fruit that he was looking at more variety than the dried dates he'd seen at the supermarket back in the UK.

Hafsa had taken out a small crate and enlarged it along with a few others, but she carefully picked through the dates by hand before moving them into the crates. "Only a few of the trees are fruiting at this time of year," she remarked. "I usually harvest only half, and leave the rest for the wild animals to eat, as there are some birds and fruit bats that take great pleasure in stopping here on their way to other places."

"Do you have a preference as to which clusters I should harvest?" Severus asked.

"No, the fruit here is of exceptionally high quality," she murmured. "The roots go rather deeper than most, but I provide a little help to them."

He detached a heavy cluster of fruit from one of the shorter trees, and levitated it to one of the crates. He picked the dates off one by one, placing them into the crate, quickly picking up a rhythm as he went and switching to using both hands. They worked for most of the early morning until the sand began to gain a scorching heat from the punishing angle of the sun.

"Some of these I will gift to the families who provide me with their food throughout the year," Hafsa explained. "They keep some, sell some, and even make some rather amazing drinks and foods with them. Since their quality is better than what Muggles usually grow, they make enough to support themselves and feed me from time to time."

"How often do you go into the city?" Snape asked, curious.

"Once a month, sometimes twice," she said. "They used to call me Isra, which means one who journeys at night, but instead they call me Hafsa."

"And that means?"

Hafsa sighed deeply. "They once caught me haggling with one of the market vendors, not for myself, but for a traveller I knew really wanted a scarf for his daughter. The vendors, they always expect you to haggle, but the tourist did not know any better. He was going to pay far too much for it. I—" She shook her head. "I haggled for him. I pulled fluent Arabic that I didn't even know I knew right out of my arse. I probably called him a cabbage. The man got the scarf. The daughter was happy, the vendor got his money, and I ended up with my new name."

"But what does it mean?"

"Lioness."

Severus snorted.

"You find this humorous?"

Severus tsked. "I used to teach at a magical school," he said. "There were several groups of students. One was called Gryffindor, whose symbol was a lion. It was not uncommon to call students from this group cubs or lions." He grunted. "After seeing you interact with a giant sandworm, I am prone to think you the very heart of a Gryffindor. Brazen and fearless."

"Do not think that my first encounter with Shai'hulud was either brazen or fearless," Hafsa said with a wry chuckle.

"You call them by terms from a fictional novel," Severus observed.

"I find no other words more appropriate,"she said with a tilt of her head. "I have my suspicions that the author knew rather more about sandworms than most, but he hid the facts in a work of fiction so few if any would guess it was anything but an imaginary story." She stacked the crates together and shrank them down, bundling them in a carry sack. "But there are too many similarities for me to think he had not encountered a real sandworm somewhere in the world. The deserts all harbour worms, but the bigger deserts have the largest ones."

"That monstrosity was plenty large enough," Snape said with a shudder. "I might have pissed myself had you not been so utterly calm."

"That is one of the Makers, as I call them," Hafsa said. "Old and deep travelling. They protect the magic of the desert as well as the desert itself. They are highly protective of their territory in the deep desert. Fortunately for most, the larger worms do not like to travel in the shallower desert."

"You imply there are smaller ones that do," Snape observed.

"Hunger drives the young to find food," Hafsa explained. "The young can be reckless and heedless to danger."

"Sounds like the young of any species."

Hafsa chuckled. "If human children were the size of a bus and inclined to eat anything that could fit in their mouths, perhaps."

"Sounds like Ronald bloody Weasley," Severus muttered half under his breath.

Hafsa paused in her packing of the dates. "You know someone that has grown to the size of a bus?"

"Let us just say that I know quite a few people whose bodies are no longer burning the fiery metabolism of youth."

Hafsa snorted, seemingly amused. "I suppose we all cannot eke out our living in the great desert," she said. She pulled out her worm tooth knife and pointed it at a rock seemingly in the middle of what appeared to be a trench in the sand. The rock shimmered as water seemed to stream out of it, filling the trench.

"There is an aquifer under this site that feeds the trees," Hafsa told him, but, I like to give the wildlife a little respite during the driest part of the season. There is more water than people usually associate with the desert underground, but few ever make it to the surface to form permanent oases."

"I believe I read a scholarly article about some sort of satellite imaging of the Sahara where great tracts of tributaries stretched across this area once," Snape said with a tilt of his head. "But I am starting to wonder if what they were seeing was actually the activity of sandworms."

Hafsa peered at him. "You did not take very long to deduce this," she said with a nod.

"Many revelations come with confronting a myth staring you in the face," Severus admitted. "Or one depositing me on the surface of the desert like a living version of the tube."

Hafsa smiled as a number of birds that were sheltering in the palms immediately came down to the water to drink their fill. "This area is naturally protected from most Muggle scanning techniques, much like the most magical settlements. The concentration of magic here scrambles devices. While not as violently as a place like the Bermuda Triangle, it fools observational tools, cameras, and Muggle devices. Even the very eye of the beholder. No photograph here will actually show more than is expected, perhaps even less than expected."

Severus took in a breath and held it, letting the air out slowly. "The perfect hiding place for something that no one believes exists."

His expression changed a few times as if attempting to settle on one and ultimately landing on confused. "Yet you would trust me with this secret."

"Perhaps, I see you as one who can be trusted with greater secrets than the rest of the world is ready for," Hafsa said.

Snape, shaken, could only stare silently. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, asked, "How?"

The corners of Hafsa's eyes crinkled in her smile. "You knew the moment you stepped onto this ground that it was quite safe to Apparate, but you didn't."

Snape swallowed hard as he attempted to wrangle his thoughts after being caught off-footed. "I would like to know you better," he said, wincing as the words came tumbling out in an uncharacteristically Gryffindor manner. "Not just this greater revelation of life in the sands of the greater desert."

Hafsa's head pulled back as if to evaluate the sudden appearance of a sand viper. Her eyes widened, but then her shoulders seemed to relax. "I would like to get to know you better as well, Master Snape."

"Severus," he said.

She took in a deep breath and seemed to roll the syllables around in her mouth before attempting them. "Severus," she said. She took in an even deeper breath as she closed her eyes. When they opened, they were a bright shining blue. "I must be brave, then, in this spirit of trust."

Hafsa unwrapped her head scarf and sand covering to reveal her face. Her hair, intricately braided with tiny beads and various adornments that incorporated the glowing stones he'd seen everywhere in the sanctuary's walls. Her skin was sun-darkened enough to know that the woman would never suffer from a vitamin D deficiency. Her cheekbones were finely chiselled, not gaunt, but there was both a sense of age and yet a kind of agelessness about her. She had obviously seen a great many things, lived life, had experienced both turmoil and peace. There was a weariness in her, but a brightness and zest for life that settled in her eyes—

Those alien, glowing blue in blue eyes.

A shiver of pure shock travelled down Severus' spine as he suddenly realised who he was staring at. Older. Mature. World-wizened—

"My name before I came to the desert was Hermione," Hafsa said quietly. "You may call me whichever name makes you more comfortable."

Snape was silent, fighting his impulse emotion over what he had learned about reality—what he had learned about the woman who was the long lost Hermione Granger, whom the Prophet had declared was either tragically dead, a snobby cow who abandoned her friends, or else a jealous ex-lover attempting to sully the good name of Ronald Weasley.

It was a price I paid willingly, she had said to him.

A realisation of the power of her confession abruptly settled in his stomach. She could no more leave the desert than the sandworms. She was now—connected to them.

Over a decade had passed since he had seen her last, and her mysterious disappearance had been followed with so many rumours and speculation as to the how and why. Her supposed best mates had subsequently dodged any and all comment—

Guiltily, perhaps.

Hiding something, most assuredly.

She'd gained her mastery in an astonishing number of subjects, had even apprenticed under Minerva for a time before swiftly climbing the rungs of the Ministry career ladder, only to seemingly fall off the face of the Earth.

He'd ignored her, of course, because as the headmaster of the school at the time it wasn't really his concern what Minerva did with her apprentices just as long as they stayed out of his way.

There was always that bit of awkwardness of knowing how poorly he had treated her as a student, even though she had never said anything about it. She'd always greeted him with respect, even if she annoyed him with questions about how his day was and other such rot—

He'd just ignored her, too caught up in his own world of fighting to put his life back together after actually surviving a war.

Eventually, she'd left Hogwarts to pursue her career with the Ministry, and Minerva had read him the riot act for not securing her a place at Hogwarts as a teacher.

"She never asked to stay!" he'd argued stubbornly.

"You never even asked her to consider the possibility!" Minerva had hurled back at him. "I tried to make the suggestion, but YOU are the headmaster, Severus! The offer could only come from YOU!"

Later, he'd told himself it was better for her to get away from Hogwarts and pursue an actual career instead of being stuck teaching imbecilic children who had no sense of self-preservation other than to avoid getting caught shagging in random broom closets.

It wasn't because he missed her asking about his day.

No.

It wasn't because he hoped that perhaps, just perhaps, someone cared about his well-being.

It wasn't because she argued over the latest journal publications with Septima or Minerva or even Pomona with passion.

Never.

It wasn't because she was utterly brilliant, talented in spades, and more than capable of holding her own in an intellectual conversation without sounding like a pompous buffoon—

NO!

Severus saw her looking at him, waiting for the other foot to fall. Perhaps, she was waiting for him to blow up, to riot, to accusing her of being deceitful—

Perhaps, years ago, he would have.

Perhaps, only a month ago, he would have.

But he'd gotten to know Hafsa without having ever seen her face. He'd gotten to know a mind that was as sharp as a tack and more. She had shown him compassion and tolerance. She'd saved his life from being eaten by an annoyed sandworm—

She'd saved him from dying out the desert.

She'd cured his neck wound.

She'd given him the opportunity to leave.

To betray her trust.

To betray her hope that maybe, just maybe, the man he had been during her childhood wasn't the man that she'd gotten to know—

And he could betray her—

Steal the lily. Create his own greenhouse. Outdo her potions and make them his—dash all of her hopes.

Make her cry.

Ruin her.

He looked into her eyes, so alien and beautiful, brimming with the magic of her bond to the desert.

This was not Hermione Granger, swotty sidekick to the Gryffindor Boy Blunders. This was someone entirely apart from the child he had once taught, and the growing woman he'd tried so hard to ignore.

"It would be inappropriate of me," he said softly, "To call you Hermione." He straightened, squaring his shoulders. He took in a deep breath as he saw her eyes close.

"When the one who stands before me is Hafsa, Lioness of the Sahara."

She looked up at him, her eyes widening.

He extended one hand to her. "It would be an honour to get to know you better, Hafsa."

He took her hand as she slowly extended it and ghosted a gentle kiss over her knuckles.

He could sense the warmth of her hand as the slight tremble of her emotion shot through every nerve of her body.

Just as a sudden sandstorm hit and attempted to blow them both arse over tit.

Hafsa quickly put on her head scarf and face covering. "The gourds!" she cried. "We still have to harvest the gourds!"

Knowing that a bubble-head charm wasn't going to work in such magic-rich interference, he quickly pulled his wrap around his face more tightly so the sand wouldn't shoot into his mouth and nose through a rather direct invasion of privacy, he allowed her to clasp his hand tightly and together they ran into the swirling sand.

---

Dreams are messages from the deep. - Dune

End of Chapter One

---

A/N: This was meant for October, but I've been rather addicted to playing computer games lately to break up the writer's block, and the only thing that brought me out of it was my love for Shai'hulud, the Arrakian sandworm.

I've had reports that ao3 tricked people into thinking I had updated Goblin Gratitude, but I had not. Sorry for that confusion. Account is secure, so—Dunno!

Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Thank you for your support and taking the time to read my eclectic stuff!