The barrier separating the Shabash and the blizzard – this line of demarcation, if you will – was surprisingly rigid, dividing the hill into rough, barren stone on one end and a wall of flurries on the other.
Years later, when she reminisced about this night, Hermione would always be drawn to that moment of stepping past the boundary to find herself in a remarkably different world. She would recall the savage, frozen-hearted wail of the northern winds whipping about her, tearing at the hem of her wool-coated robes, and covering her eyes, lips and cheeks in layers of frost. Gone were the smoky fumes of the Shabash, the drunken carousing of carefree individuals out for a night of pleasure. It was cold here.
Cold, desolate, lonely.
That was her initial impression, when the first breath was shockingly chilling and her pupils still wide, unadjusted to the sudden blinding light.
But the next breath came and then the next. Her pupils shrank, eyesight returning to normal, and she realized that while the blizzard still raged, she could not feel its full force. Its anger was tempered; the destructive power was held in check by an unbending alien will. If not for it, Hermione knew, she would be dead, a frigid corpse drowned in waves of white. Her magic was useless here.
But she was protected; in fact, she wasn't actually even cold. Her heart beat a staccato rhythm against her chest. Blood, warm and lifegiving, gushed through her veins. Her hand was held in a sturdy grip – Draco's. They had passed through the barrier together, as one.
She turned to him, placing her back to the winds. He yelled something, but she could not hear. The blizzard was too loud, and it promptly shoved a handful of snow down his open mouth. He sputtered, spitting it out, making her laugh. Anastasia appeared behind him, blinking and dazed, just as they had been. Draco reached out to pull her closer, doing the same to Hermione. The two girls hooked their hands into the crooks of his elbows, and, lowering their heads against the brunt of the storm, they trudged forward: Draco in the middle, Hermione and Anastasia at his sides.
Hermione could not say how long their journey lasted. A minute, a day, a year? The landscape was indistinguishable, unchanging, white upon white, making the passage of time a moo point. The wind roared and wailed, cruel and cold. It was a force of nature, and cared not for the plight of the living. It just was.
They went forward, always forward, never exchanging even a word, because it would have been pointless. Hermione couldn't see anyone else from the queue – it was just them, the wind, and the snow. But their path was right. This knowledge, just like the elements around them, simply was.
As their journey took them around piled mounds of snow and ice, Hermione wondered as to the inconsistencies around them.
First of all, the source of illumination came to mind. The slopes of Bald Hill had been bathed in shadow when they left; the moon perched high in a midnight sky. But now it was too bright for that, and, although the light appeared muted because of the snow-belching clouds, it was still more than any moon or sky of stars could conceive.
Secondly, the terrain had changed, becoming flat and low.
The third inconsistency was the most critical, although she had a significant difficulty in articulating it. It was all around her: in the air, the snow, the howling wind. All these things tasted exotic to her senses, like a concept that was similar, but different in execution. It wasn't wrong, just... off.
She could draw only one conclusion: this was not Bald Hill. But, that begged the question then: where was she?
...Was this even Earth?
Shivers that had nothing to do with the temperature snaked down her spine. Could this be possible? "And why not?" her mind whispered.
A sharp intake of breath hitched in her chest, carrying a nip of chill to her lungs. She stumbled; Draco had to lean to the side to prevent her from falling, but she didn't even notice. Her consciousness was far away, floating on the ceaseless wonders that magic had to offer. Oh, it had its limits, yes; its mysteries and puzzles, but what miracles it could achieve in the proper hands! It could do so much… like open a passage to another world.
No muggle had ever gone this far. Decades of research and innovation, and what did they have to show for it? Several visits to a barren rock circling the Earth? She had gone further in just a few steps, because this was the power of magic. A power that she, out of the billions of humans on the planet, had been chosen for.
Oh, it did feel good to be a witch.
Closing her eyes, she let a wave of content wash over her soul, as Draco guided the three of them forward. Her mind wandered, contemplating the future, of what she could accomplish, and how she would change the world – the wizarding one.
Except, for the first time in years, she was not alone in these fantasies. There was a figure by her side, steadily steering her forward, just as he was now.
The next step changed everything yet again.
Quiet. It became quiet. But the change was so sudden, so rapid, that the resulting contrast in volumes made everything seem louder by comparison. Her body, without any adequate time to adjust, perceived the newfound silence as noise. Thundering in her ears, it sounded like water crashing down from unimaginable heights.
Hermione shut her eyes tighter, dispelling the sounds of silence, and focused on the little things: the gentle caress of a light breeze; the freshness of the air; the way her hair, windswept and wild, now prickled the back of her neck. And how empty her hand felt without Draco's fingers curled around hers. Draco wasn't here anymore.
She opened her eyes.
She had entered a clearing, a perfect circle in the middle of the storm – its eye. The sky was clear; only several clouds, like fluffy sheep, wandered across the field of blue. A few snowflakes casually drifted down, coasting through the air. One landed on the tip of her nose, melting into a fat droplet that hung for a moment and then slid down, making her nose itch.
After rubbing the itch away, she grasped a handful of her hair in one hand, her wand in the other, and whispered an incantation to calm the rioting curls. Honestly, the insufferability of her hair was…insufferable. Why did it challenge her so?
Still, she was a witch, was she not?
Once the inferior part of her genetics was put back into its proper place, and snow brushed off the front of her robes, Hermione raised her eyes to survey the land around her.
She stood alone. If Draco and Anastasia had exited the blizzard, it wasn't here. She felt no worry at this fact, however. Instead, a peaceful tranquility descended upon her shoulders. There was no rational explanation for this – she simply knew that her companions were safe. So, putting the mystery of their whereabouts aside, she focused on her immediate surroundings.
Nothing moved. The world was still, frozen into an unmoving panorama of white. Not a single tree, shrub, or any living thing seemed to inhabit this flat expanse, marked only by heaps of snow and the meandering trails between them. There was white, only white, spread across the land like a smothering blanket. It stretched endlessly in all directions, desolate and silent. Hermione shivered, a bite of fear replacing the otherworldly calm in her soul. She had never felt so inconsequential before. Everything she had done – the total aggregate of her actions and decisions, her hopes and her dreams, her very individuality and who she was as a person – it meant nothing before this empty vastness. Nothing.
Was this what it felt like to stand before the eyes of God?
And then she blinked. And movement came. For there was life here; it just took a little time to notice it.
It began with the snowflakes. She saw them again, twirling down from the heavens, where a distant and feeble sun gleamed with a worn-out light. It was smaller here – more proof that this was, maybe, another world. She breathed in the air, crisp with winter freshness, and exhaled a cloud of vapor that settled on her clothes, promptly turning to frost.
She saw no signs of the blizzard she had crossed to get here; it had quietly disappeared, as if it had only been a figment of her imagination. Had it even been real? Was any of this real?
"Is that what you think?" a voice rumbled behind her. "That this land is a slave to your perceptions?"
It took all of Hermione's will to remain standing and not fall to her knees. Her recent feelings of insignificance were dwarfed in comparison to what she felt now. She was microscopic: a twig caught in a maelstrom; a leaf on the edges of a tornado, about to be swept up into the maw of the vortex. Taking very slow and deliberate breaths, Hermione lowered her gaze to the ground. There, snow rose into little twisters, carried by an invisible wind. Her lips became dry. Hermione traced her tongue over them, clenching her hands into fists to prevent her fingers from trembling.
"No," she finally managed to rasp out. "I hold no sway here, I know that."
Mirthlessly, the voice chuckled behind her. It was a terrible sound; not due to some malevolence, but because of how uncaring and powerful it was, like an avalanche baring down on a group of hapless adventurers. It was a force of nature, neither good nor evil. Just as the world around her, it simply was.
"Indeed, you do not," the voice agreed. "Still, few manage to gaze upon these lands. My ever-vigilant subjects see fit to guard this place, although it is not necessary."
"Your subjects?" Hermione asked, scared but insatiably curious. She was slowly becoming accustomed standing next to this source of unbridled energy. She had never tried, but imagined this was what surfing felt like. If one were to surf on a tidal wave, that is.
"Hail, Snow, Blizzard, Ice, and so many others," the Fae Queen of Winter – there was no doubt as to her identity anymore – answered. "You passed them, albeit with a little guidance."
Hermione remembered the alien will that protected her and her friends from the storm. The one that had let her pass, but not Draco or Anastasia.
"You let me come here," she whispered, "but not my friends."
"They held no interest to me."
"But I did?"
A breath of ice tickled the skin near the back of her ear. Its frigid touch sent waves of goosebumps crashing down her body, over her chest and back.
"You corrected an imbalance once," a perplexing reply sang across fields of snow and ice. "You righted a wrong."
Hermione scrunched her face up in thought. She had done many things over the years, but 'righting a wrong' that caught the attention of a Fae Queen?
The voice sighed, a whiff of a hurricane, and explained, "Observe the lands before you. They appear lifeless, do they not? And yet, the cold that rules them is part of a pattern, one which governs all, from the Gods themselves to bacteria in the dust of flesh. Even my sister and I bow before its might. Each year, we chase each other, but have no hope of ever meeting; it is our destiny. When her power starts to wane, mine begins to grow, and the lands turn cold. The plants freeze; they wither and die, and yet in their end lies the seed of a new beginning. To die is to live – that is the law."
"And to circumvent that law–" Hermione guessed.
"–Is an affront to Nature herself." The voice became angry, pounding in her ears. "A human is not meant to cheat death by stealing life. It wrecks the fabric of reality, cuts it deep with wounds most foul. You removed that infection, healed the rift; you sutured the edges."
"Harry did that," Hermione whispered, her throat as dry as her lips. "Harry dueled him, he killed–"
She was interrupted by that inhuman chuckle again, as if the Queen was amused. "And did you not contribute to this deed?"
"I fought for my life," weakly, Hermione protested. "I fought for my friends."
"Of course, you did. And, in doing so, you were an instrument of order, working against the agents of chaos. You were chosen for this, Hermione Granger, just as you were chosen to be a witch. It is your fate."
The words reverberated through the Gryffindor's soul, chipping away at her beliefs with picks of ice. She had always scoffed at Divination, at the idea of a predetermined future. She decided her future…didn't she?
"I will not say you hold no dominion over your life, human. But the end of the world will come when it must."
Hermione, feeling oddly reassured by these words, looked over the frozen tundra pondering the twists and turns that brought her here. Her earlier theory burned in her mind, the question resting on the tip of her tongue, eager to get out. True to her nature, Hermione didn't even try preventing it from escaping her lips.
"Is this Earth?" she asked, heart fluttering, as she felt the presence of the Queen move to stand abreast of her. She did not tear her eyes away from the view, nor tilt her head to look; it felt sacrilegious in some way to gaze upon the force beside her.
"Yes," the Queen said. Hermione's shoulders sagged in disappointment. She'd been wrong, again. The idea of another world had all been in her head. Magic wasn't all-powerful, after all.
"...and no." Hermione stilled, listening raptly. "This is a version of Earth," the Queen's voice continued. "How it once was…and how it will be yet again."
Hermione glanced over the never-ending snow and ice that stretched in every direction, glistening sadly under the rays of a dim sun. The Queen had said the world would end…and this looked very much like it.
"It is the way," she heard. "To live is to die." Hermione left it at that – what more was there to add? The unlikely pair stood there for a moment, listening to the soft patter of snowflakes drifting to the ground and the crunch of snow under Hermione's feet as she shifted her weight.
"Do you feel it?" The Queen suddenly asked, shattering the silence. "In your left hand."
Hermione raised it high, squinting through the sun's rays to look at a palm that had been burning ever since that strange moment when she woke up at the Shabash.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A gift. From a lesser being. It's rather rare they give one freely to your kind."
"I can't see or touch it."
The echo of an answer rang across shards of broken ice, sharp as glass, "The time is not yet right."
"And what will it do when it is?" Hermione lowered her hand, blinking several times to get rid of light spots in her eyes.
The Fae Queen paused, as if contemplating some thought. Hermione noticed that the horizon was becoming darker, the wind picking up. The temperature plummeted.
"She who gave it to you is a daughter of fire, and the gift bears her traits," the Queen answered cryptically. "It can hold many forms, but I fear that all will be useless to you. You see, child, fire, despite its power, burns, devouring what it touches, and without something to temper its hunger, can easily spiral out of control. It will not give what you want."
Hermione recalled the monstrous forms of fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement. Draco's friend had died that day, consumed by flame…
"But the cold," the Queen continued, "the cold preserves. It can keep someone who is on the very brink of death alive, for a time, at least. Fire and ice. There is a balance there. What do you know of polar magics?"
"That…they rarely mix," Hermione said, frantically recalling the paucity of information she had read on the subject. "And, when they do, the result is usually destructive."
"That is true," the Queen agreed. "Putting opposites together often yields a volatile reaction. But, in some rare cases, they can combine, and the resulting spell is magnitudes stronger. Fire and ice, child." Hermione felt the weight of a necklace settle around her neck, carrying some object – long and narrow – which now lay between her breasts. Her skin became numb at the touch, but then the feeling passed, and the weight went away. "Remember: fire to burn, ice to preserve, and blood to catalyze. Put them together, complete the pattern, and they may return that which you think is already gone."
Hermione had no time to ponder these remarks: the storm was approaching rapidly, already covering up half the sky. It loomed over her lithe form, its stormy fingers chasing away the last meagre rays of light, blocking out the sun. Gusts of wind tore at her hair, whipping it about her head.
A tempest was coming.
"The last traces of my sister are leaving," the Queen's voice boomed, radiating a increasing strength. "Summer has departed, and my servants are free to ride, heralding my return! I come late this year, and they are impatient! You will go with them, as my entourage."
Hermione wasn't sure if the last part was a question or command; all she knew was that refusing was not an option. Goosebumps coated her body head to toe; her breath froze on the frigid air; eyelashes were heavy from ice.
"My friends," she managed to choke out, "can they come with me?"
"They may…Now, fly, child, fly and remember my words! Fly!"
Whatever remnants of chains had been holding the elemental being shattered; an explosion of ice rocked the ground, hurling Hermione into the air. Propelled into a parabolic arc, the Gryffindor shrieked, desperately reaching for her wand to cast something… anything! Her hand was halfway to her holster, when she froze. With eyes wide from horror, she observed the debris of the explosion moving, melding together, and growing into the form of a giant wolf! Hermione yelled again, and this time her voice was met with howling laughter. The sound was familiar – it was the same one she had heard while waiting on the slopes of Bald Hill.
The newborn wolf, sporting a coat of ivory and a scar running down the side of his muzzle, squared up, launched into the air, and caught Hermione by the folds of her robes, only to toss her onto his back. Stunned, she landed onto the soft fur, feeling broad muscles contract below her thighs as the wolf lunged upwards, into the sky. It took several moments for her heart to start beating again, and the ringing in her ears to subside.
She might have been in shock, but the stormy front was right on their heels, advancing towards her and… her friends!
Draco, she thought! Anastasia! She needed to get to them before they were buried!
Leaning forward towards the wolf's head, she yelled, "Can you find them? Can you take them too?"
A part of the wolf's lip curled upwards in an amused smirk. He growled, charging through the air, his paws as comfortable on it as the ground. The wolf and the rider raced through the skies, wind whistling in their ears. They flew on wings of need, so fast that Hermione's eyes grew teary.
Surging ahead of the winter gale, the pair charged towards Draco and Anastasia.
Towards the world of men.
moo.