Four: Shoals, Souls, and Funeral Pyres
XXIII
The sand is bleaker on Dragonstone than any beach Hermione has ever seen. It's a stark muted dark that splashes itself murky in divots and long swaths, ground down from the sheer black rock cliffs of the castle. Hermione feels the warmth of the silt through her thin boots as she runs down the shore as fast as her legs can take her, feels the chill of the sea breeze lashing wheals on her cheeks. Already the stars burn above as if they have kept a pocket full of the day to shine all through the night.
Dark sand, darker waters, dark skies, and yet, there gleamed the promise of a dawn.
If they made it on time.
They do make it around the last bend, the final turn, to the alcove at the far back of Dragonstone eventually. A ruddy faced Ron is beside her, a breathless Sirius up ahead with the man called Daemon, and the King had stayed behind, too ill for a chase, but he had ordered his guards, seven strong, to go with them.
They all see it.
The dragon is there already, lumbering up from the shore and the sea, scales shimmering a deep burgundy from the starlight overhead and its dip in the water. An immense beast of nasty looking spines and serpentine grace.
Hermione's eyes fly to its large, cruel jagged mouth. There is no blood there. Not a drop she can spy black in the starlight. Not on fang or torn up lip scarred by battles past. That was good, wasn't it? Surely if it had eaten Visenya already, an unconscious, unarmed Visenya, then wouldn't there be blood? But it was heading for the cave, heading right for the mouth of it, its nest, the Veil, Visenya. It is heading there-
Until it isn't.
The guards are loud in their chainmail and armour. Louder yet by their clumsy steps. Too loud. A pair of deep-set, vicious eyes as black as a Dementors soul trundle towards them. It sees them. There is no blood on its horrible, dreadful mouth.
The Cannibal is still hungry. Food has just come running willingly right to its door. That long, twisted, knot of a neck swivels, loops, and then… then the dragon is rolling from the gape of its nest and swerving straight for them.
Oh no.
XXIV
The Cannibal wastes no time in its charge. It thunders at them at a dead set, scrabbling claws as long as swords splashing up sand and sea and shoal like confetti in the wind. Daemon was the first to act, to leap from his sudden stupor, swinging back, swinging away, calling for something called Caraxes.
Hermione thinks that might be a dragon, knows it must be when, from the sky, she sees a shadow blotting out starlight with wings as wide as a castle gates. The shadow is moving towards them, must have been from a tiny island out at sea, but its too late.
Caraxes has ground to cover, a small sea to fly over, the Cannibal has feet to go.
It doesn't matter, not to time, not to Daemon. Hermione can see it in the stubborn slant of his face eerily familiar to the young Witch who'd spent a childhood seeing the same from the Gryffindor common room. He will try and get into that cavern all the same, past a cannibalistic fiend and to the daughter who was stolen from him. Little less than the Devil would stop him.
Even less would stop Visenya from getting what she wanted on a good day.
Hermione barely has time to pull her wand from her arm holster before the Cannibal lunges, before the ground shakes, before the sands beneath their feet shift. Hermione, always a little less athletic, loses her footing immediately. Or maybe she's pushed down, pushed away, because Sirius is beside her, coming down with her, taking the brunt of the fall for both. They barely miss the swipe of the Cannibal's cruel claw that would have clocked her if she'd still been upright.
One guard isn't so lucky, however. Hermione will never forget the sound of his scream as his torn-a-two.
They've been split between the beast. Sirius with her, Ron and Daemon lost on the other side of a wing span, and the guards-
Hermione watches as they scatter in fear, as a body falls down to the sand. Headless. The Cannibal chews, Hermione's gut churns, face half pressed in the sand, heart half in her throat. It's fast, this dragon, fast and mean and deadly. Hermione spots the cave behind the Cannibal's leather like wing as it goes for another man, and it's the shine of something silver that catches her eye. Starlight on the ground.
It's Visenya staggering out the hollow.
She's ill, tottering on deaths door, and Hermione watches, watches as Sirius drags her up on her feet, getting ready to fire a spell off at the rampaging Cannibal who had bit another guard in half as it knocked a swinging Daemon off his stance, as Visenya slumps pitifully against the stone mouth of the cave. She can barely hold herself up as Visenya sees them there, scrambling, fighting, dying. There's blood on her face, across her pale lips, red tears down her cheek, and Hermione knows, she just knows what Visenya is about to do.
What she always does.
Save the day.
But she's so ill, and they only have a little time left, a little magic to go, and even being awake, being on her feet, is sure to be taking a heavy toll. Anything more-
Lilac locks hazel across the shore. Friends meeting gazes in the dead of night. Visenya had never felt so far away before, so out of reach, so… lost. Through the blood and the agony and the understanding of what was coming, Visenya, because of course she does, smiles.
They both know what the price of this will be, and Hermione screams. Screams the loudest she ever has. Screams until her voice cuts to ragged silence impossibly louder than any noise she could make.
That, Hermione thinks, is grief. Just… silence.
"No! Don't! Please!"
It's too late.
XXV
Visenya's form explodes. That's the only way to describe it. A great big burst of bone and skin and blinding magic. Seeing her transform is like watching a soul be set loose. A soul which had always been too big for its body, too bright for its burn.
The dragon that lands on its feet in Visenya's place, taking out the cavern wall with its enormous wing was as black as the sky above. Crueller than the night breeze. Bigger than the sea lapping on the shoal. It's so big, in fact, that there's an almighty crash as the side of the cliff breaks with the cave, shatters like glass, like tissue, like flesh.
Miraculously, Dragonstone still stands by the end, despite its cave being blown out from under it. A testament to the magic that must have raised the place once upon a time. Idly, Hermione fears for the Veil, fears for its destruction, fears there will be no way home-
But that fear is little and fleeting, and doesn't last very long. Can't last very long.
Hermione is terrified of something else entirely. She doesn't know whether it's the ungodly noise, the sense of something behind it, or the overlapping shadow that falls over it, over half the stretch of large beach, but the Cannibal freezes for a moment, crouches down low in fear, pressing a delicate belly to the rocks below, but the peace only lasts a second, a moment.
Then dragons do what dragons do.
Fight.
XXVI
It's not a long fight. It never is with Visenya. She hits hard and she hits fast and she hits in the soft places that makes sure another hit isn't needed.
The world around them quakes as beasts collide. With each step of Visenya's, with each lunge of the Cannibal, it is hard to keep upright. Impossible, truly. The movement alone is enough to send them sprawling on the sand, bouncing between the rocks, caught in earthquake, in hurricane of a flapped wing, in the deafening of a roar of beasts out for blood.
Dazedly, Hermione wonders what the people in the castle are thinking, what they might believe is happening through this racket, but she doesn't have time to ponder it much. Sirius is dragging her up, dragging her over to a bolder, using the rock to cling to an upright hold. It's the only way to stay on their feet during the onslaught.
The rest is just scales, teeth, and fiery fury.
Hermione only catches glimpses of it. The fight. A flash of claw. A dash of fang. Winding necks weaving and knitting as two scrabble for an upper hand on the back of a mean bite. It's here Hermione realizes Visenya has never fought another dragon before, in the way her moves are sloppy, messy in a way Hermione isn't used to seeing Visenya be. Ultimately, it costs Visenya as the Cannibal gets a bite to a wing in, tearing with a chomp and a coiled yank that rips up along the thinnest flesh of a dragon.
Nevertheless, Visenya gives back as good as she gets. The sound of snapping bone from the lashing out Visenya gave to the Cannibals undefended leg causes the beast to howl and shriek-
Just as Caraxes lands. Hermione thinks she hears Daemon yell something in a strange language, thinks Caraxes might follow it with the way it dips and goes for the Cannibal, snapping at a tail, the closest appendage. The Cannibal is smart, however. That is easy to see. And it doesn't like its chances with a broken leg and now two opponents rather than one very, very sick one, despite how big Visenya is.
It twists itself up and limps back, scuttles low away, slinking to the sea. Caraxes dogs it across the sand, snapping and snarling all the way, chasing it off as Visenya doesn't follow-
Because she can't follow.
Hermione realizes why when Visenya gives a sluggish lurch in the pitch, an unsteady wobble, a heavy, blood wet hack that splatters black on the sand that would be red in the sunshine.
Finally, finally, Hermione finds her own footing. Just enough to fight off Sirius's hold, to run for her friend, to find her voice.
"Vis! Stop it! Stop it! Please just stop!"
Hermione begs because this is it. She feels it in her bones as much as she felt the clash of dragons shake the earth beneath her boots.
This is the end.
The Cannibal takes to the skies somewhere from the corner of her eye, nearly falls, but finds it's own winged footing and flies off, Caraxes guarding the shores from its possible return. And Visenya, heaving, goes the opposite way.
Crashing to the shore limply.
XXVII
Hermione's knees meet sand and shattered rock that bite into her tender skin as she tore her own cloak off, flopping beside the dragon wheezing and gasping on the floor that could barely hold its entirety. She holds the cloak out, open, inviting to the dragons lolling head. The sand is red with blood, sticky and warm on her knees. Visenya's dragon mouth is open, sucking in large gulps of air that weren't holding in her lungs, snout covered in blood
Her own coughed-up blood.
"Turn back! Turn back right now!"
The dragon blinks at her, lilac eyes rolling in its immense skull, and all Hermione can think is this is it.
They had four days-
Four days if Visenya had stayed unconscious. Being awake, moving, fighting, makes the curse worse, faster. Water down a drain. An Animagus transformation costs a lot of magic, it is why not everyone can do it at all. You need to have a deep well to draw from, a lot of magic and a lot of energy-
Energy that had been holding off the curse.
A giant claw scrabbles and slips pathetically in the sand, as if Visenya had tired to get up but could not, and Hermione is crying. She feels it more than hears her sobs. A wet warmth to her cheeks that matches the blood on the dragons face. An ache to her ribs. A catch to her throat.
"Please, Visenya, come back now. Come back to me."
The form starts to shrink, scales smoothing to skin, black lifting to silver and pink, a dying dragon decreasing to a dying, shivering girl.
XXVIII
Hermione wraps the cloak around the naked, convulsing form as soon as the magic dissipates, as soon as Visenya is small enough to cover, and there she is. Visenya, her dearest friend, laying bleeding in the sands, in her arms.
Visenya, because of course she does, smiles at Hermione from below. Her mouth a bloody mess, teeth stained red from more than the fight only moments ago, but it's warm and it's bright and it's-
Visenya.
"You've got… dirt on… on your nose. Did you… know?"
There's puffing, a clattering sort of rattle deep in her chest, but it's said with a dimple and a twinkle and Hermione can't help but return it. It takes her back to the Hogwarts express, one of the first things she had said to Visenya and Ron, back when she'd thought the worst thing in this world was a failed exam.
"Why?"
She asks in return with a chuckle that was damp and tacky. Why did you do it? Why didn't you just stay asleep? Why did you have to save the day one last time? Why must you do this to me?
Visenya looks a mess, mostly dead already, and she chokes on her breath, chokes so hard and spews up more blood that joins the already soaked sands, Hermione's hands-
They had four days. Four glorious days that would have fixed it all, made everything better… but Visenya is a candle being burnt at both ends with very little wick left.
"One-"
She coughs and it sounds like barbs are in her throat, and Hermione tries to shush her, but Visenya, even now, wasn't one to go quietly.
"Last good… thing."
There's the sound of feet behind her, pulsing on the ground, and suddenly she's joined in the ditch, someone hitting down beside her, pressing her away to take her place-
Hermione lets them, sees a flash of silver and knows it's Daemon.
They had four days.
They do not anymore.
They would be lucky to have four minutes.
XXIX
It's hard to watch and harder to hear, the way Daemon clutches at Visenya, unsure where to touch or where to hold, what to say or what to do, tugging cloak higher around her, desperate.
"Visenya?"
The girl blinks hazily up at him. The clock is ticking to zero. Visenya doesn't recognize him at first, obviously she doesn't, he's a stranger, but Hermione thinks, in the fog of pain and blood, there might have been a spark of perception if not understanding. A soft, transient sort of I know you.
"'Ello-"
Visenya tries to say, but her voice is snatched from her, replaced with more hacking and wheezing, and somehow more blood.
"Don't speak-"
Daemon demands, hands winding into the cloak he was holding, into the dying girl he was tugging onto his lap, drooping head resting on thighs, and then he is whirling on Hermione. He has the same determined glint in his eye when he first spotted the Cannibal on the shore. The same one he shared with the girl in his hold.
"Fix her. You said you could heal her… do it!"
Hermione fumbles with her bag, nearly pulls the latch right off before pulling the potion out, but she's shaking her head already even as she holds it out.
"It's too late-"
Daemon won't hear it, and swipes the bottle from her, using his teeth to pop the cork out where he spat it forgotten on the shore some distance away.
"My blood is needed, yes?"
It's too hard to watch, to see, this desperation against the inevitable, and Hermione looks away. Yet, she nods.
The Potion would need time to get into Visenya's system, time to heal the damage-
Time they no longer have.
From the corner of her eye, Hermione watches as Daemon doesn't wait for a dagger, instead biting into the fleshy meat of his own palm, squeezing a fist over the lip of the bottle to bleed a stream into the murky green potion. It fizzles and settles to a gold.
He really is her father then.
Daemon drags Visenya higher up onto his lap, cradling her head, forcing the contents down her seizing throat, urges the potion along with a drag of his fingers down a neck. Visenya's too far gone, too out of it, to fight much. She nearly chokes, on her potion or the blood it was hard to tell, but she swallows nevertheless.
"Hey Little Matches."
XXX
It's Sirius, along with a stone-stock-still Ron, who's joined them and spoken. The nickname snags what little awareness and attention Visenya has left, and despite dying, the pain she must be in as the curse worked her insides outwards, despite it all, she sees Sirius and she-
She laughs. Dimpled, sweet, Visenya laughs like honey dripping from spoon.
Matches, he used to call her. Her own Marauder name.
Sirius drops down beside Visenya, opposite Daemon, and Hermione stumbles back, stumbles to Ron who wasn't moving, wasn't blinking, barely breathing, and watched on. Suddenly feeling like she's intruding, obtrusive.
"Look at the mess you've caused."
Sirius says with a kind knuckled brush to Visenya's brow, pushing away sand and blood crusted curls from her forehead.
Her lightning bolt scar glimmers in the moonlight, and Visenya's chest is quaking, her breath abruptly coming short and shallow and too fast to do much of anything.
The potion does not have time-
They don't have time, but Visenya is smiling, using the last of her strength to reach a wavering hand out that hardly rises a few inches. Sirius meets her more than halfway, more than ready to grasp it in his own, grasping it and refusing to let go.
"Mischief… managed… aye?"
His thumb dances over the scars on Visenya's hand, and Daemon is turning on Hermione.
"Why is it not working? Do something!"
Hermione weeps harder, weeps so hard she can't breathe, can't think, stuttering as she shakes her head.
"There's not enough time-"
"Then make time! What use is your magic if you can't-"
He's cut off by a hand catching at his as it went for the hilt of his sword. Visenya's let go of Sirius and held onto Daemon's wrist that had been once cradling her head.
"Don't…"
Visenya struggles, wrestles for her words so hard Hermione curls in on herself like a wilting sunflower, slams her eyes shut so tight she sees white on the back of her eyelids. It doesn't, however, change anything. Eyes wide open, eyes wide shut, Visenya is still dying.
"Fight… no… fight… Not here… not now… It's too beautiful… It looks… looks like a… a good night for flying."
Visenya, so full of life and fire and laughter, the girl who fought Basilisks and Dementors, cold in the bloody sand. Hermione's moan catches like thorns on her tongue, on her gums, and her eyes peel open just in time to see Daemon dropping the hilt of his sword for the cheek of Visenya's bloody, pale face.
"We'll go flying on a night like this. Together, yes? You'll see. You must only hold on a little longer-"
Visenya takes in one breath, then two, and then nothing.
"Visenya? Visenya?"
Daemon shakes, pats, shakes some more. Visenya doesn't blink. Visenya doesn't move. Blank, lilac eyes stare up to a father she never knew.
"Visenya? Visenya!"
It's no use. The hand holding Daemon's falls to the sand palm up, blood-soaked and lax. It doesn't rise again. Visenya doesn't answer.
She's dead.
XXXI
The minutes, the hours, the days following are a mess of obscure reminiscence to Hermione after Visenya's death. She doesn't come too until she's standing in a dark, long room, Sirius, who had brought her here for one final, private goodbye, standing at her side.
She's the last to visit, and she still can't make herself cross the distance, make herself look.
It's when someone mentions taking the body out to the funeral pyre on shore that Hermione comes hurtling back into herself from wherever grief and shock had whisked her away to.
"Fire?"
She barks out suddenly, furiously, stomping across the flagstones of the long room.
"You're going to burn her?!"
They're not alone. Of course they're not alone, and Hermione's outrage bounces off the cobblestones and the candle light like bullets from a muggle gun. Daemon is there, at the far end, and so is a woman, the one Ron called Princess Visenya, who must be Rhaenyra. They have a small retinue of guards with them, two dark haired boys too, standing watch, vigil over the stone plinth at the very end of the long, narrow chamber.
The stone plinth Hermione refuses to look at indirectly or otherwise.
"You can't burn her! They-… she-… we-…"
She shakes. She shakes terribly. Her hands, her knees, her head, her heart. Hermione feels it vibrating in her chest, pulsing so hard she thinks it might leap to freedom from between her ribs.
"We have to take her home! We have to… have to… take her back where she belongs-"
Sirius has caught up now, caught up and snagged her by the shoulder, trying to fruitlessly tug Hermione back from the clearly grieving family. He's polite enough not to mention that they don't know if they could go home at all now. The Veil was in ruins beneath the cave-in Visenya had caused in her Animagus transformation, and Merlin knew if they could fix it.
"Hermione, love, how about we go outside for a breather? You can come see Visenya later-"
But the woman, Rhaenyra, Visenya's birth mother, is matching Hermione step for step, rising up, chin high, fire in her eyes.
"How dare you."
Her voice is sleek and hard like black glass, elegant in its keenness, and Hermione's too lost to her own pain to realize this is the first time she's spoke to the woman.
"She is my daughter-"
"She's my friend!"
Hermione yells to the flicker of the candles. She doesn't mean to. She's meant none of this. Yet grief makes the world a cruel place, and can make people crueller. These people don't deserve her anger, her pain, they're evidently experiencing their own by the red to their eyes, but it's all inside her chest. A big swarming ball of black that threatens to erupt and drown her.
Drown the entire room if she doesn't let it out.
"She was my friend."
She reiterates brokenly.
"She was a sister to me. She was… she was… she needs to go home."
It's funny, how grief makes the smallest things bigger. Makes a man's head twist around until the slightest mole hill becomes a mountain.
"She has people who would like to visit her grave and… and we need to… to put her to rest near James and Lily and Remus and… Teddy needs to get a new suit for a funeral and that will take time. Molly will cook and… we need to clean out Godric's Hollow for the wake and we can't… I can't-"
Hermione sees what she's doing. There's a sad sort of awareness she has like staring back from a fractured reflection in a broken mirror. She thinks if she puts the funeral off, focuses on the little things like flower arrangements and catering and getting music sorted then she won't have to face-
Face the funeral itself, like she can't face the stone plinth beside them.
No funeral equals no friend to bury is the reasoning of Hermione's mourned logic. It doesn't make sense, of course.
Grief never does.
Visenya is fine. She's just… just…
Rhaenyra, it seems, by the way the anger washes to pity on her pretty face, the way she holds up a hand to hold off the guards who had crept closer at the outburst, sees what Hermione is doing too. Sirius as well, by the calm stroke to her shoulder.
"'Mione… she's not coming back. It's been three days."
Viciously, Hermione tears herself away from the older man who spoke, backing up on the flagstones like a cornered cat.
"I know that!"
She scowls and spits.
"Don't you think I know that?"
It's the anger speaking now. She's hurting. She's hurting so bad, and she's a bit like a wounded animal. She wants to lash out and hurt everything else too. It's wrong. It's cruel.
Hermione does it anyway.
"Where were you anyway, Sirius? Where were you! Visenya needed you and you've just… been here? Drinking wine and putting your hands up skirts?! Having a laugh?! If she knew you were alive, she would have done anything and everything to come and get you! But you didn't do the same! You left her to fight Riddle and the Death eaters while you lived it up in a fuckin' castle! And you?!"
She turns to the woman, to Daemon, to the two dark haired boys.
"Who are you, anyway? You didn't know Visenya. None of you do. If you did you'd know she likes dandelions and there's no dandelions here! Not one! You'd know she hates being in rooms with no windows, and you'd know she hates the cold and this fuckin' room is freezing! Why is it so cold here?! Why have you put her here?! She doesn't belong here! It's too dark and it's too cold and how is she going to be able to play the piano like she does if she can't see the keys… She doesn't-"
Hermione's eyes land on the stone plinth during her nonsensical rant, and suddenly it all stops. The yelling, the rambling, the shaking fury.
Visenya is laid out on the black stone. Hermione can't see her face, they'd wrapped her up in strips of perfumed velvet and silk over bandages of linen, wrapped her tight and bound her up. She looks like one of those mummies from a museum, with none of the decay but all of the Pharaoh finery.
Visenya would have gotten a kick out of it. She would have laughed and scoffed and sipped at a bottle of Firewhisky and said What a waste. All that money spent on incense and gold, and not a single fuckin' Odgens in sight? These people clearly don't know what they're doing to make a good memorial. The secret is the booze. Get everyone lacquered right up, the music blaring, and the rest sorts itself out. It's not a wake until someone passes out with their head in a toilet.
Hermione doesn't need to see her face though, her hair, her skin. It's her friend there. Visenya. Same shape, same height, same slope. She can imagine her smiling, imagine her standing right in front of her, kicked back on the plinth without a care in the world, shaking her head disappointedly in that lopsided way she did.
What do you think you're doing, 'Mione?
She'd ask with a chuckle.
This isn't you. I'm normally the arsehole, remember? I'm bad cop, you're good cop. Ease of a little, yeah? They're grieving too. Let them have the little I've got left to give them. You know it's what I'd want.
Hermione stumbles back from the plinth like she's been hit in the chest with a hammer.
"I'm sorry-"
She wheezes.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it-"
Sirius takes a step towards her, a hand kinder than she deserves stretching out, but Hermione swivels on her heel and flees.
XXXII
They hold the funeral pyre at dawn on the fourth day. Hermione stands on the shore with Ron's hand tight in hers. He doesn't speak. He hasn't spoken in the last four days. Yet, neither has she apart from that disaster in the vigil chambers.
Words are trivial little things, and both know they would lack in any attempt to convey what they felt.
The people of Dragonstone make a big deal out of it, this funeral pyre. There's a sea of silver hair all around her, Targaryens left, right, and centre. It nearly makes Hermione feel claustrophobic. She remembers what Ron had said back in the castle what felt like a life time ago. There was rogue Visenya, Pirate Visenya, not-so-drunk-but-getting-there Visenya, Lovegood Visenya and Princess Visenya-
Hermione ticks them off as she sees them, counts them along like sheep to sleep if only to focus on something other than the wrapped corpse ready and waiting on a pile of dry wood.
She supposes that's what happens when a stolen Princess comes home only to die. A show.
The King is up front, next to a red-haired woman half his age and a gaggle of sombre looking men around them. Mostly dressed in green.
There's one Hermione immediately dislikes with a fever that itches. A bearded fellow near the woman by the King, tall but with a small smile on his mouth. He seems a little… smug. Too smug to be at a funeral. Pleased with himself almost. Amused.
Ron must have spotted him too, because slowly, discreetly, he's letting go of Hermione's hand for the wand at his hip. Hermione stalls him with a squeeze to his wrist and a shake of her head. She dips in close-
"Later."
She promises. Not don't. Not never. Later. The old Hermione would have concerned herself with manners and customs and rules-
But this Hermione is standing at her best friends funeral with a man smiling like a cat who got the cream. However, this Hermione also sees the crowd around her.
There's a line drawn in the sand. Invisible but evident. Daemon and Rhaenyra and their two boys were standing off to one side, Sirius, Ron and Hermione with them… and across the stretch was the King, the woman, their own throng of silver haired children around Hermione's age, perhaps a little older, their own guards against the black clad on their side…
There's a tension here more than grief. An underscoring symphony cresting just below the surface that promises an explosive climax.
Something here wasn't quite right, and as much as Hermione wanted to shoot off a popping hex at the green man's balls, see how smiley he would be then, she knows how dangerous it is to spark a match near an unknown keg. Water or flammable wine?
Best not to test their welcome anymore than they already had.
Yet.
It's Rhaenyra, in the end, who drapes a strange sort of flag over the wrapped remains of Hermione's friend. A black band of rich velvet with a three headed red dragon embroidered on its face. Yet, it's Daemon who lights the fire on the stacked wood with a lit torch. The fire catches quickly. Hotly.
Hermione watches as it engulfs Visenya. Like the girl herself, it's almost too bright to look at directly, too hot to get close too, too beautiful all the same to try and get away from. The wood sizzles, cracks and pops. Dark, dense smoke rises from the dark, dense sand bed.
Soon, the whole thing, every twig and every scrap of silk and velvet, is up in flames.
Hermione holds Ron's hand through it all.
Goodbye. She thinks. At lease you get to sleep soundly now-
Hermione frowns as for a second, a moment, the fire flashes a scorching green before settling back to red and orange and yellow. It reminds her of Hogwarts' south courtyard, back in the final battle where Riddle had thrown Visenya's body down to the floor in triumph.
Her leg had fallen into a patch of fire left behind by one of Rowle's pyromaniac spells that had demolished the fountain, just a glimmer of green before Visenya had come lurching up. Hermione, at the time, had been too focused on her grief, on the spells that began whizzing over head as the battle kicked up anew, to pay it much mind. But now-
"Did you see that?"
Hermione whispers to Ron.
"Yeah."
He nods back, voice hoarse with misuse.
"Might be the salt in the driftwood wood-"
That was when the shout came in a very distinct, very pissed off and surprised British woman's voice, and a flaming ball came leaping out the funeral pyre.
"Bloody hell! I'm on fire!"
XXXIV
The crowd splits apart like a cracked wishbone, murmuring, yelling, fumbling for each other in the ensuing madness, dazed as a flaming something came tearing out the fire at break neck speeds right towards them. It crashes to the sand, and it-
Well… it rolls around cursing.
It rolls around!
Hermione drops Ron's hand as if she were the one being burnt, once again tugging her cloak off, dashing for the now extinguishing flames of the person rolling in the sand. Hermione plunges over the last stretch of distance, blanketing the form in her cloak, patting desperately to put out the flames. It doesn't take much, the sand had done most of the work, and before long the cloak was being yanked back.
The inner linen bandages of the silk binding were burnt now, peeling off in places, missing entirely in others, leaving behind patches of pale, unblemished skin behind. Unblemished apart from the scars on the back of a hand, on a lithe forearm, and, as shoal dusted fingers come up to wrench and rip the remaining bandages from their head off, which come away in great ribbons that flutter to the floor piece by piece by piece, a lightning bolt scar on a forehead too.
Scowling, clearly riled up and confused, Visenya in all her silver haired glory, hisses and jeers.
"Who the fuck set me on fire?! I was having a nap! And what the hell is all this? Did someone dress me up as a mummy? Did I miss the Halloween party at Lovegood's again?"
"Nap?"
Hermione asked breathlessly, just as Visenya shirked the cloak off completely, huffing as she stood up. Fortunately, what little linen was left covered her dignity, only a few slithers of arms, bottom legs and stomach on show. Not that she seemed to care a whole lot about that.
"Nap?! Vis… Vis you've been dead for four days!"
Pausing in dusting the sand off her thighs and arms, Visenya regarded her with a quirked pale brow and a scrunched up nose. Her gaze swung upwards, as if she was trying to recall the last thing she remembered, before slowly, too assured of herself, she shook her head and carried on with her pat down and self inventry.
"No… No I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I was just sleeping."
Visenya snarled when she realized her brushing was pointless, instead turning to shake her untouched curls out. The sand stubbornly clung to those too.
"Sleeping without breathing?! Without a heartbeat?!"
Visenya met Hermione's eye, snarl dropping to a worried little twist when she spotted Hermione's red blotched face and slightly swollen eyes from spending days and nights crying into a bloody pillow.
"Dead?"
Visenya asks in the way one would ask if it were raining instead. Disappointed but without the gravitas DEATH should bloody bring.
"Again? Are you sure?"
Hermione can't help it. She laughs. Hysterically. Loudly. Positively madly.
"Yes! I'm quite bloody sure! This is your funeral!"
It's only now that Visenya seems to realize the two aren't alone. She keenly scans the gathering around them, the shocked and alarmed onlookers, and, clearly, what she finds she doesn't like.
And, OF BLOODY COURSE, not for the reasons Hermione suspected.
"This is the funeral you gave me? Where's the booze? The food? The strippers?"
She spins back to Hermione with a head cock, tongue clicking on the back of her teeth regretfully.
"Honestly, I'm highly disappointed, 'Mione. Not one single beer float? Not even a little pixie dust? I thought you knew me better than this tragic get together."
"You… you… you…"
Clearly, Hermione's brain broke, and suddenly she's lashing out much as she did with Sirius on the balcony, rushing a supposed dead friend and throwing fists. They do little to hurt Visenya as Hermione pounds on her arms and shoulders, but the blond plays it up with a dimpled grin.
"Ow, watch it! I was apparently dead! You'd think you'd be happy to see me!"
"I'm going to kill you myself!"
Hermione, neverthe-regrettable-less, doesn't get the chance to. Between one punch and another, she's being pushed aside, a crop of ginger hair pressing through, throwing freckled arms around Visenya.
"Bloody 'ell, mate. You've really gotta stop doing this. Once was alright, but twice is getting a bit too much. Even for me."
Visenya returns the hug loosely, patting at a large back in a bout of three.
"I'll just cancel my next death then, shall I? Scrub it out the ol' planner. Fridays are now pizza days."
Visenya's the first to pull back, she always is, never good with prolonged physical contact. Or, perhaps, curious about the crowd now slowly, but surely, getting out of their shock and coming back to themselves to realize, yes, quite right, the dead girl was, in fact, now back on her feet and staring at them as if they were the ones who just summersaulted out their own graves.
"Who are all these people, anyway? Did Hermione just invite anyone from a Daily Prophet lonely hearts ad? Costumes for a funeral is a bit on the nose, don't you think? The whole… wigs and contacts combo is fuckin' creepy. It's not a wizarding thing, right? Dressing up to look like the deceased?"
"Mate…"
Ron began hesitantly.
"They're not wigs and contacts."
"Polyjuice, then?"
Visenya bats back glibly. Ron shakes his head in reply. Languidly, Visenya's gaze sweeps over to Hermione.
"'Mione… what the hell is going on?"
"Well, you see-"
"Matches?"
Visenya's eye snaps away, and it's clear she finds Sirius coming out the crowd. She blinks once, twice, and then her eyes narrow as she leans closer to Hermione, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"Are you sure I'm not dead now? I think I'm seeing ghosts."
Hermione chuckles. After the last month she's had, she'd take every happy moment she could get. Ones she never thought she would get a chance to have again.
"You're not dead. It's Sirius. He's alive."
There's a beat of silence, a drift of sea breeze, and then Visenya's bolting for the man. Sirius sweeps the small girl up into his arms like the sea was sweeping up the shoal, and he's smiling, she's smiling, laughing along with the crow of a nearby morning bird.
"Padfoot!"
Sirius drops her back down into the sand where she bobs on her feet, spry as ever, alive as ever, curse far gone away it seems. Yet neither let go of the other fully. Maybe to convince themselves the other is real.
"Looks like I'm not the only cheating death lately. How'd that happen?"
Sirius, noting the now whispering crowd growing in anxiety and excitement, perhaps a slash of fear too, sensing someone, or someone's shifting behind him, beginning to move closer, Hermione can guess who, grins beneath his well-oiled beard, unhooks the broach of his cloak, and sweeps it over Visenya to give her a bit more cover and warmth.
"I promise I will tell you everything later, but first, there's some people here who are dying to meet you."
Visenya's smile flashes not only her dimples but her pearly white teeth.
"Dying? Too soon, Sirius. Too soon."
"Behave, Matches."
Yeah… Hermione thinks. Fat chance that was ever going to happen.
Next Chapter: Visenya tries to wrap her head around the fact that she's gone from Enemy of the State to Princess of a Crown with a living, breathing set of parents, Hermione tries to puzzle out how Visenya keeps resurrecting herself, along with dealing with a destroyed Veil that has decidedly put a stop to any subsequent attempts to get home, and history goes on repeat when a certain Targaryen uncle and niece meet on Dragonstone's bridge…
A.N: I know this is not Saturday, and it has been many Saturdays since the promised Saturday upload but… surprise? I really wanted to hit the nail on the head for this chapter, because it was a big one, and I think this is simply the best I'm going to get it lol. So instead of trying to pick this apart again and again and again, I decided to finally publish it so I can move on with the story and get to the goodies that are coming up. So while this chapter might not be the best, I think I had a bit of fun with it by the end, and now I can get my neurotic brain to let this go lol.
Good news is Daemon, Rhaenyra, Visenya, Luke and Jace bonding is coming up, and look, on the horizon! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's our Almond boy in his sassy leather boots.
On a similar note, fear not, the Cannibal IS alive and we will see him again. I don't want to give too much away, but him and Visenya become pretty tight, not gonna lie.
As always, thank you so much for taking the time out to read my mad scrawling's. I hope you all liked it, and if you can, don't forget to drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21