Chapter Four: Climbing to Hope
The hum and thrum of King's Cross surrounded Hermione, and the crowd engulfed her the moment she stepped off the train. Around her, businessmen rushed, families yelled, and tourists got lost. Ducking over to the wall, she fumbled a paper out of her pocket.
One hand carefully smoothing the creased paper, she checked the time chart again. She had over thirty minutes until the next shuttle to the hotel.
Slumping against the wall, she balled the paper up and stuffed it back into her pocket. The overnight bag slung over her shoulder was lighter then she had expected it to be, until she realized that she only had four books. One of which she had finished on the train ride, before she had begun flip the cards, memorizing every detail on them.
Her hand ghosted over her back pocket, checking for the slim deck case.
Two days. Two days if she lasted into the semi-finals. Two days of playing a card game and looking at what she might have been. She doubted she would find herself longing for life without magic. But a change would be nice.
Who knows, she might hear You-Know-Who without the moniker referring to a half-mad wizard.
She doubted it.
Checking her watch again, she left the wall, and struggled to where the shuttle would arrive. Might as well wait were she could see it.
The hotel was more then she had ever thought it would be. Looking around, she ignored the chandeliers and sweeping staircases, well used to such ostentation from Hogwarts. No, what she stared at, entranced by were the flat screen TVs, and the bank of self-check-in computers. Technology.
Hermione checked in, showing her papers, and received a pamphlet for the duel. Her room was on the eighth floor, and the stairs proved quicker then the backed up elevators.
The room was a decent sized single, with an electronic key card. Throwing her stuff onto the bed, she ducked into the bathroom briefly. The ice bucket took a moment longer to find, as did the ice machine itself, but old habits died hard, and she fetched the ice before settling down to read the pamphlet with a glass of water at hand.
The opening ceremony for the regional tournament would be at six thirty along with dinner, all duelists were strongly recommended to attend. Further rules and the structure to the tournament would be explained there. The rest of booklet was taken up with a map and an explanation of the rules for the duels.
It was the same rules as introduced at a tournament in Japan, called Battle City, but without a card's ownership riding on the duel. It was fine by her; she didn't know what her rarest card was.
Putting the book aside, she brought out her deck. Again. She looked at the top card and sighed. Hermione knew it backwards and forwards. She could name all the cards in her deck and their effects, as well as the effects of all the cards she had rejected for her deck. It was a pointless repetitive exercise that did nothing to calm her nerves. A distraction.
Feeling guilty, she brought out her war magic calculations. She may not be able to owl Harry right now, nor call due to his relatives, but damned if she didn't find someway to help.
Hermione had tried to call him dozens of times that summer already, but had failed each time. His aunt always answered the phone and she saw through any cover story she came up with. She had tired to figure out where he lived, but came up with a blank each time. Her attempt at triangulation failed, and there had been an odd noise, an almost static, over the phone when she had asked one of the Dursleys, posing as a tele-marketer in one of her repeated attempts. She was halfway certain that it was a result of a protection ward over the Dursleys and Harry, but wasn't positive. But as hard as she tried, she couldn't contact him.
She was worried. He should have at least sent a letter to her now by Hedwig now. It was possible he was grieving Sirius, but...
The pencil lead tore the paper and then broke under her hand. She took out another sheet of paper, and began to again.
She wasn't going to be useless. The new spells, sound in theory and all arithmetical theories would be ready when she gave them to Harry on the train.
The card game was great fun, but this may be life or death one day.
She had ignored the clock, but had been aware enough of the passage of time to know that she was missing dinner, but as always, the calculations were more important. She had let the ten minutes she had left herself to get ready go tick by, and then the extra five she had set aside to get down. Then she let another quarter hour pass after the dinner began. She felt like she could almost see the essence of magic, if she sat there long enough and played with her numbers.
Once she thought that though, she knew she had been there too long, and that was enough to tell her she truly was late.
She scrambled for the shoes she had set in her suitcase. She didn't find them, and then looked for the ones she had worn earlier. When contemplating outermost limits of the shield, and its magnitudes, she had toed off them under the desk. It was funny how the jargon was the first thing that came to mind about the placement of the shoes?
The banquet room's door was small, and she nearly went by the room. It creaked just as badly as doors in Hogwarts, that hadn't been oiled in an age. One or two people looked back, before turning their attention back to the front.
"... And in the third round, the number once again is cut in half, and the day ends. On Sunday, the last round of before the semi-finals begin is at ten o'clock, and the semi-finals at twelve thirty. All semi-finalists will be awarded duel disks. Using the holographic systems, the semi-finalist will duel on at a time..."
The tables were small; pitchers of water had been set out, along with trays of vegetables and cheese --appetizers. She slid into a seat at a table with two other duelist already sitting there. One, a girl with purple streaked hair and a daisy chain bracelet smiled briefly at her, before turning her attention back to the man at the podium.
"The grand prize is in an addition to the booster packs, the finalist have a chance to participate in the Global Tournament, as one of two of the champions this tournament will produce." The man standing at the podium held a glass high in the air. "To the best duelist!" he toasted.
"To the best duelist," Hermione mumbled along with the rest, toasting her still empty glass, before pouring water, and silently toasting again, before she drank.
The next day, Hermione woke to a crack of thunder before dawn, and spent the early morning wandering the hotel. Eventually, she came to the pool room where she sat, her feet in the water. It was a long time before she pulled her legs out, and stuffed them back into her sandals, but she felt marvelously calm.
Her first duel in the tournament was simple, and she finished it with nearly all her life points. The boy she had dueled smiled at her before flitting off to check on another duel. She had sat a moment longer, collecting her cards and thoughts. It was looking like she was genuinely good at this game.
The second round was nearly an hour later. The game went on for nearly an hour, and she was sweating as she finished, taking to her opponent's final one hundred life points away with Ooguchi, a water-beast that allowed her to attack him directly, and not batter through his defenses again. It had taken her too long to get to the card, she later thought. She had wanted it since her fourth turn, it hadn't appeared until well in to the thirtieth round.
She noted she had missed lunch, and had forgotten to eat before the duel. Hermione ordered room service when she was back in her room, and became further frustrated with her experimental problems and the sadly theoretical limits.
Nearly late to her last duel of the day, she still had the quill stuck behind her ear as she skidded in. She nodded to her opponent, and they began. The girl she dueled was intense and there was no small talk; she played single-mindedly, and left herself open for trap cards, with few defensive cards. However, the girl had pulled out a monster with over two thousand attack points by the end of the second round. Hermione began to forgot the equations that had been running though her brain and paid attention, using the hole to her advantage as she played cards to stall. She won.
Dinner was a relaxed affair, but she had chosen a table to sit alone at. At other tables, occasionally someone would come near tears having lost, and in one case, near fisticuffs, over an accusation of cheating.
Her dreams that night were restless; she saw of the cards coming alive, of them speaking and playing with her, and then there was a deep sadness, with fear and joy closely following, but she couldn't recall why in the morning.
The breakfast provided by the hotel was fine, until she began to pull out her deck, and looked it over. It hit her then: what was she doing? Harry needed her thinking, planning, researching, and helping him, not playing games. She'd grown out of this.
Never the less, here she was, almost to the semi-finals. One of the sixteen remaining and if she won three more duels, she would win the British-division of the Global Tournament. There was a chance, though it was small, that she would be able to go to Japan and duel there.
Which was an utterly ridiculous idea, but one that she was starting to entertain. It would be nice to get out of the country, just for a week. She didn't want to look at the news, but forced herself to each day; unexplained deaths were on the rise. However, she was afraid that leaving the country, even temporarily was a cop out.
"Hermione Granger, right?"
"Uh, yeah," Hermione answered.
"Maria Kaur," a girl with dusky skin, and a friendly, but challenging, smile said. She looked to be about a year younger then Hermione. Not waiting for Hermione's invitation, she sat down, looked briefly at the papers clustered on the table and shook her head at the advanced equations.
Hermione frowned, and gathered the papers possessively, shuffling them together into a single pile.
"This really your first tournament?"
"Yes."
The girl nodded. "Thought so. I hadn't heard of you before."
"You make a habit of knowing all the duelists?" Hermione asked.
"Not quite," Maria searched her for a long moment. "I make a habit of knowing the strong duelists."
"Oh."
They were both silent and then the girl fidgeted, and looked at her watch. She popped back to her feet. "I'll see you later."
Hermione took a deep breath and went to the ballroom that had been converted to the dueling room. The table number had been steadily decreasing, and now there were only eight, with sixteen chairs. By the end the time the next round, they would be in the semi-finals, and the duel disks would be handed out.
She would have one, if she won this duel. Either way it went, she would still see the holograms.
A confident boy, just past puberty smirked at her, and sat down across from her. They waited, not speaking, until the bell rang through the room, marking the beginning of the round. They played rapidly, drawing and slapping down cards with few words. Having played several good games now (there was only so much going over records of old duels could help), Hermione picked out the theme of the deck within three minutes. It was trickery and illusion. Half the cards he placed face down were serious, she needed to rid the field of them quickly, else they interrupt her plans, but the others were useless and distractions. However, though he had plenty of monsters, he could not stand up to her strongest monster, the White River Otter.
As she announced the last attack, he shook his head, and collected his cards.
"Good game," he murmured, and slipped away.
The referee tasked to watching her game as well as three others, pointed her to the waiting room, were two friends who had both made the semi-finals as well were laughing. It was another half hour before the last of the eight semi-finalists joined.
The duel disk was stunning, Hermione decided. A marvel not only of technology, but of artistry. Its design was beautiful enough, but the pure power she could almost feel, flicking it on, and watching the tray snap into place awed her.
For a brief moment, an instant that would always stand crystal clear in her memories, she wondered which was more important, this and the game or magic. She shook the question and the uncertain answer away. Magic obviously mattered the most. Without it, she would have never met Ron and Harry.
They were her best friends, and for all the quarreling over homework and Quidditch, they would be until the end, whatever that might be. She would stand by Harry and Ron until that end, and face it with them.
But... this was summer, and there was nothing she could do that she had not already done. The only way to help Harry was to complete the spells she was creating.
And despite the guilt that she felt playing a game, she also noticed she had found a way around the outer limit of Pucelete theory. If she found a way to bend the field of magic and space around the caster's wand for a second, the spell would work. She hadn't even thought of the idea, until the last game, when she played Trap Hole.
It might be sophistry, but it felt like the game was helping.
And it had been a long time since she had a diversion as fun as this.