Summary: SSHG, AU, Born in the volcanic lake of a stratovolcano, Hermione the Volcanic Nightmare pup explores her new world with curiosity.
Beta Love: Dragon and the Bipolar Weather Attraction Device, Dutchgirl01 the Overly Busy Who Missed her Work Dodge Roll, Commander Shepard the Relieved
Born of Fire and Stone
It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
Frederick Douglass
Hermione didn't know that her birth had heralded the doom of those who suffered amidst the sudden eruption of the giant stratovolcano in which her parents had made their home. To her, it was her playground and her home.
Clouds of sulphuric dioxide, water,and carbon dioxide meant little to her. A pool of acid and alkaline water was just a fun place to play in. The crystalline coloured waters around her home were just as fun as the more hazardous ones, but she never knew the difference between one or the other. To her, both were equally interesting and fun to play in.
The strange things that swarmed away from the flows as often as they gathered around it didn't seem to see her, and they seemed fatally flammable, unlike her. She wondered why they were there—surely if they were so fragile this was not the place for them, right?
She saw one of them dressed up in a shiny wrap, standing on the edge of the lava lake—gazing in as if transfixed by the churning, burbling lava. She cocked her head and bounded toward them.
Did they want to play?
Were they able to?
She wanted to play!
The one in the shiny wrap scrambled down the lava lake's protective bowl as the lava churned from her footsteps and bubbled outward over the bowl.
The shiny one ran off.
Hermione sat on the edge of the bowl, terribly disappointed.
Yoink!
Her father plucked her up in his mouth, dunked her a few times in the lava, and then pinned her down on the rim of the lava bowl to give her a good bath.
Okay, it was bathtime. Maybe after bathtime, someone would play with her.
She spotted him early in the day, sitting on the rim of the volcano looking down into the lava bowl. He didn't try to scale down to examine the bowl like the shiny covered things did—and he kept a respectful distance from the heat and churning below.
Curiosity drove her onward, and she bounded out of the lava bowl that was her home and shook off the excess, sending lava splatters flying in all directions, and then started the climb up the side of the volcano's steep walls. She dug her claws into the stone and set off, sending a rain of the loose, grey stones tumbling down the sides. Her paws turned the stone to superheated rock that melted around her feet, and she made her own stairs on the way up, forging her way ahead.
Severus wasn't sure why he was even there.
Whenever he went to sleep, he ended up by the volcano, watching the great bowl of lava churn and move below. It seemed to be a place both outside and inside of time. People would occasionally visit wrapped in heat-resistant suits or those dressed in a time long past would scurry about their lives down at the base of the mountain.
Oblivious.
He wasn't even sure what time he was when he visited.
Was he in the future—or the past?
He seemed to realise what the people wearing silver-coated clothing were, even though he'd never seen the like before, but he also knew what the villagers were down below.
He saw farmers eking out a life in the fertile, volcanic soul, and busy stone cities and markets of a time long before there were cars.
Yet, he saw them all, depending on the moment.
Only one thing remained stationary, and that was the mountain itself—if one could consider a living mountain anything but stationary.
There were times when he saw the mountain churn. He felt the ground tremble, and he knew far beneath the Earth it was not cold. It was more than fire. It was utterly primordial—a core of creation housed deep within. The surface was, despite its solidity, moving. Giant plates pushed against the other and concealed the greatest heat of destruction and creation—and creatures it seemed that only few saw.
He imagined the moon Io, one of Jupiter's moons, as a place filled with creatures of fire and ash—just as he imagined the great storms of Saturn creating a rain of soot that in turn changed into a rain of diamonds by the planet's churning pressure that changed gases into a pseudo metallic swirl where gases acted like molten metal.
He wondered—
Were the creatures he saw perhaps displaced visitors from one of the other primordial worlds?
Or had they been here all along?
And why would HE see them when others obviously couldn't?
Grrrruff?
Severus startled.
There was a—dog staring at him.
A dog in—shape, at least.
But its body was composed of molten "stone" over a superheated core. The surface was like the thick silica lava that oozed from the volcano. Its eyes—seemingly crafted of superheated energy, stared at him with an orange-red gaze. Tail wagging, droplets of lava flinging in a few directions, it whuffed to him, bowing down on its front legs just like any dog that wanted to play.
Severus grasped a round stone from the rim and threw it.
ZOOM!
The thumping of lava feet tore across the volcanic rim as the beast pursued the stone, skidded across the loose stone as it turned to lava and then cooled, and it came trotting back victoriously.
It dropped the stone "ball" in front of him—but the ball was now a vicious blob of lava.
The beast wagged its tail, bowing.
Come on! Throw it! Throw it!
Severus' eyes widened. The voice was in his head. While it wasn't in any language he knew, he understood the meaning clearly.
He grimaced. "I can't. It's—lava."
The beast nosed the lava ball closer, whining.
Come on, please?
That busy lava tail beat back and forth wildly, sending a rain of lava bits flying in all directions.
Severus cringed, flailing as he fully expected to be burned alive.
Only he wasn't.
He peeked out from his arms and fingers and watched as a glob of lava cooled on his skin and then plopped harmlessly on the ground.
Only—
They weren't fingers.
They were paws.
He looked down in shock at the jutting muzzle on his own face. He flexed his paws, and the superheat emanating from his paw pads melted the rock underneath him only for it to cool slightly after.
"I knew you were different!" the female voice cried quite clearly, no longer just a voice in his head. "I'm Hermione! What's your name?"
Severus tested his feet and made chewing motions as he tried to feel what his tongue felt like in his mouth and where his teeth were. The unnerving feel of ears moving on his head felt strange and yet somehow natural.
"Severus," he said, surprised to find that his throat and mouth worked to speak.
"Hallo, Severus!" Hermione greeted, tail wagging like mad. "I'm so happy to meet you!"
Severus, unsure of what to say in such an unknown situation could only slowly wag his tail as globs of lava flew off it.
"Let's play!" Hermione cheered, bowing to the ground, rump up.
Severus was unable to stop himself from bowing back, excitement pooling in his stomach.
Hermione leapt away and ran, Severus hot on her heels. They ran and tumbled and pounced and slid down the side of the mountain, sending a cascade of pyroclastic flow down with them. They slid and bounded down the mountain with the flow, leaping over the trees that were toppled by the heated flowage of heat, ash, stone, gases, and more.
They flopped down on each other at the base of the volcano, both thrilled and exhausted by the chase.
Severus saw people standing and gawping at the cloud of flow dissipate. They stared at it as if they had no idea what it meant. It was obvious that they didn't see Hermione or him—but they did see the remains of the pyroclastic flow they had brought down the mountain with their antics.
Unlike the people he'd seen dressed in some kind of shiny suits, these people were dressed in simple tunics and cloth wraps—people of a certain time that seemed both familiar and foreign.
"They're pretty strange, aren't they?" Hermione observed. "Sometimes they look like that. Sometimes different."
Severus nodded. "I think—" He wrinkled his muzzle. "This place is outside of time. It keeps its own time. There are times I see things I know very well. There are times I see things I don't know well at all."
Hermione cocked her head. "We should visit them and learn from them! They can't see us usually—I've tried to get them to play, but only you saw me."
Severus smiled. "Okay!"
The two Volcanic Nightmare pups set off to explore what time had in store for them at the base of the volcano.
Time passed or, as Severus perceived it, ebbed and flowed.
Sometimes, it was like being in some ancient place come to life.
Sometimes it was more like the time he'd been born to.
They learned together.
Language.
Culture.
Agriculture of the finest of vegetables and fruits.
Ancient technology met with new, and the two pups soaked it all in like sponges.
They learned to control their magma heat.
They learned to swim.
They learned to sail with the fishermen, watching with insatiable curiosity at how the people crafted and cast their nets and spears or poles.
All while being totally invisible to the people that lived there.
They learned to read and write. They learned about art from sculptures, mosaics, and frescos. They learned about science. They learned about alchemy and potions, medicine, and more.
At least during the day.
At night, Hermione's parents would pluck them up and tuck them to sleep in the lava bowl, seemingly unconcerned about having an adoptee in the mix.
Four legs. One tail. Two eyes. Magma insides. Seemed perfectly normal to them.
Sometimes Severus would wake back home—the place that seemed less like home than the volcano, and life would go on while his brain protested that his real home was far away—in a place of fire and stone.
School was all wrong. The things that were taught as history—some were right but others, he knew, weren't right at all. Not that anyone would believe him. His parents thought him completely nutters.
His mum seemed quite worried that he would seemingly disappear from time to time. His da, on the other hand—well, his da seemed relieved that Severus was out of his hair more often.
It was a relief when he closed his eyes to sleep and found himself back in the comfy lava bowl.
Hermione was always there, happy to see him in a way that made his lava heart churn with its own happiness. They would frolick on the rim of the bowl, tossing lava in waves over the edge, chase each other up the sides of the volcano's rim and then slide down in the always fun pyroclastic flow on their bellies. Then, they would go into the towns of whatever time soaking in the lessons that only time could teach them.
Until they found a woman tending a small temple of Hephaestus. The temple, too, seemed to exist outside of time. The woman there—ageless.
She saw them.
She spoke to them in so many languages. She could touch them. She could rub their bellies and feed them the tasty stones and ores that turned into the most delicious food.
Most importantly of all, perhaps, she taught them of the great Hephaestus, known to the Romans as Vulcan. God of fire, volcanoes, deserts, metalworking, and the forge.
And when they touched the sacred lava pool with their paws, they found they could transform into a visible, human form.
So began their apprenticeship with the priestess of Hephaestus.
When night fell, Hermione's parents were there lounging lazily by the sacred pool as if it was the most natural place to be. The priestess' hand caressed their lava heads with affection.
Hermione and Severus exchanged glances and realised that maybe they hadn't been so sneaky after all.
Hermione and Severus chewed on a large silica-rich rock together as they watched the busy docks of this particular timeline. This was, if they judged it correctly, a more "modern" time when people had rediscovered plumbing and fresh water. They used smelly machines more, and the boats they took out onto the water were bigger and faster. The nets were not woven by hand.
The vineyards were still plentiful. The language was different, but they didn't mind. They'd always learned new ones easily. They were good listeners and great learners.
The Priestess Flavia had always taught them to learn as much as they could, for when the volcano wiped away the seasons or the civilisation, they alone would remember what came before and what would come after. That was the gift of their lives—forever learning and remembering when others would forget.
They were destruction.
They were bringers of life.
They were the cycle.
While Hephaestus was the god of the forge and volcano, he was also the god of the cycle—for the volcano was both the birth of land even as it wrought destruction to pave the way for growth.
While there was the goddess of the harvest and agriculture—it was the volcano that made the lands fertile long before the trees and plants did the rest.
They had learned they were a necessary part of the cycle—the heart of the volcano. The beating hearts of the Earth's core.
Whatever they learned, they brought back to the Earth, and the Earth would remember—all that was and all that would be.
They saw some tourists that stood out like beacons in the crowd. Tucked under some sort of cloak, they stood out like the sun in a dark room, their very presence an advertisement for those that were unseen to take notice.
They nicked fresh food from the carts. Wine. Trinkets. Clothes—
But they weren't poor or needy—
They were doing it simply because they could.
Severus stood, shaking his body off and little bits of lava went sizzling into the ocean. Hermione did the same, and they padded off to follow the strange beacon thieves.
"Look at all these trinkets," Peter crowed gleefully as he ripped into a packet of milk toffees and began to inhale the sweet treats.
"Calm down, Wormy," Sirius said as he bopped him upside the head. "Leave some for us, yeah?"
Peter seemed to pout, but he ate a bit slower.
"The wine seems good enough," James said as he drank straight from the bottle like a heathen. He belched and laughed.
Sirius snatched the bottle from him and drank some too. "Maybe, if you like sweet instead of dry."
"Goes better with the sweets and food," James said, snatching the bottle back and drinking. "Aren't you going to try something, Moony?"
Remus shook his head, looking a bit rattled. "I think something is watching us."
"Don't be stupid," James said. "Cloak keeps us hidden."
Remus frowned. "We're not wearing it now."
"Well we don't need it here, you berk," Sirius said, giving Remus a nudge. "What crawled up your arse and died, anyway?"
Remus grimaced. "I just feel like we're being watched."
"Just because they are looking at us doesn't mean they see us," Peter chided.
Remus sighed. "It's a pretty persistent feeling."
"You worry too much," Sirius scoffed, giving Remus a playful shove as he passed him the bottle. "Drink with us and then we can go explore that mountain."
"You want to drink and hike a mountain?" Remus asked, frowning dubiously.
"Fly, dummy," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. "We're wizards, innit right?"
Remus grimaced.
"Why're you so sullen, Moony?" James asked.
"Thinking," Remus muttered. "Something Lily told me once."
"Oh ho, what did the gorgeous girl have to say?" James said interestedly, eyebrows wiggling.
Remus set his jaw. "That on the night Dumbledore forced Regulus to a Vow of silence about my being a werewolf—you bolted off from snogging her, yelling that you had to stop Padfoot before he did something really stupid."
Sirius snorted. "My baby bro is a ruddy pain in the arse. My parents' perfect little poster child for pureblood supremacy."
"So you set him up to be mauled by a werewolf?" Remus accused.
"He'd just be properly scared is all," Sirius said dismissively.
"He could have been killed!"
Sirius shrugged.
"I could have been sent to Azkaban," Remus growled.
"We wouldn't have let that happen," James said hastily.
"Even more likely, they would have executed me just like those rogue werewolves they caught from Fenrir Greyback's pack," Remus said.
"Dumbledore wouldn't have ever let that happen," Sirius objected.
"Yeah, right," Remus snorted rudely, standing up. "Like he didn't prevent three boy wizards from turning themselves into animals and setting free a werewolf to roam the green and forest and possibly killing some innocent traveller or worse—making them a werewolf just like me. Less than human. Less than a true animal. Unable to get a job. Without what others think are basic rights."
"Moony—" James said, reaching for him.
Remus shrugged his hand off his shoulder. "Go have fun playing in the volcano," he snapped bitterly. "I'm going to go meet Lily at the Temple of Jupiter and pray for an end to my being a cursed spawn of Lycaon."
"Moony, wait!" Sirius yelled, reaching for him, but Remus disappeared with a sharp crack.
"Fuck," Sirius swore, kicking the ground in aggravation.
"He'll get over it like he always does, mate," Peter said with a sigh. "Bloke always gets so moody before the full moon."
"Come on, we'll catch up with him after we go explore that volcano," James said. "The locals claim that people often go up there and never come back."
"Probably because they fall somewhere, and no one notices," Sirius snorted. "But we aren't walking."
They packed up their stash of pilfered goods and mounted their brooms and zoomed off to the top of the mountain's cone.
They didn't notice the two sets of glowing eyes materialise in the shadows as Severus shook a cloak off his head, making the rest of his and Hermione's bodies appear as she chewed on a piece of parchment as it screamed with the cries of hundreds of tiny inky voices as the magic in it was freed from the artefact.
They took the strange cloak between them and disappeared into thin air as they willed themselves back to the Temple of Vulcan, Roman God of the Volcano and forge.
"You said they were heading toward our Lord's great mountain?" Priestess Flavia asked carefully as she fingered the filmy cloak that literally made things disappear.
Severus nodded. Both he and Hermione were in their more natural Volcanic Nightmare forms, but that had never stopped the priestess from understanding them perfectly.
Flavia frowned as she gazed up to the apex of the volcano. "We shall give this as an offering to our Lord Vulcan Hephaistos," she said with a set jaw. "And we can pray that it is enough to appease him enough to allow us to save those we can."
Hermione's parents as well as a number of other Volcanic hounds stood from the sacred lava pool, sensing that things were rapidly going—pear-shaped. Other hounds materialised out of the pool's lava, summoned from various times the volcano's magma roots stretched under the Earth and beyond. Lava dripped from their bodies and mouths as they let out a low bay.
Priestess Flavia offered the cloak to the sacred lava and dropped to her knees in prayer.
When the great God of Fire, Forge, Craft, and Creation rose from his home, tired of things pinging off his "roof" and forge. Normally, the locals were respectful of his great forge and home, and he even tolerated the curious poking of scientists on the roof of his great volcano—provided they explored respectfully.
He heard his faithful Priestess praying to have permission to save the innocents from his wrath—people who had been respectful to His most glorious mountain and forge.
He heard the bays of his beloved hounds—and knew that they awaited his commands.
In one hand, he held the offering of an artefact he had created so many cycles ago—for Pluto that he might visit his love Proserpina whom the Greek called both Kore and Persephone while her watchful mother tried to keep them apart.
When Pluto had finally managed to abduct her to take her to their planned wedding, the cloak became less important, but it had also been stolen—lost to a supposed hero who came to steal from the dead and instead found a treasure far better.
Pluto would be glad to see it, he figured.
The God of the Forge set his jaw as he let the cloak float down to cover his great anvil. He stomped on the ground to signal his anger, but to also give his priestess the signal she required to spring to action.
The wise would flee before the mountain split open and heat of his forge vented to the skies of the gods.
Those that weren't—
Well, his Uncle would have more guests in the Underworld.
When the great lava lake began to churn, the three mates didn't think much of it. They just laughed as they dodged the lava on their brooms while dropping things into the bubbling boiling rock. They had bubblehead charms over their heads to make it easier to breathe, and the cooling charms gave them confidence where the ordinary human would have surely sensed mortal peril.
It only made them braver, laughing and sniggering as they dodged and tossed things into the caldera from rocks, boulders, and their trash as they swigged the last of the wine and gorged themselves on all the food.
As the churning lava got more active, they froze it with various spells and Aguamenti, and gleefully flew through the rings they created as they attempted to fill the top of the caldera with water.
They didn't even notice that as they took turns blasting each other with the water creation spell that it created large angry clouds of steam whenever it hit the bubbling lava.
And perhaps, they didn't notice how the stone was cracking from a series of strengthening earthquakes as the large pond of water they were flinging around was now steadily oozing down the growing cracks toward the inner magma chamber.
Perhaps.
Or maybe it wouldn't actually have made a difference if they'd noticed. They were too busy having the time of their lives chasing an adrenaline high with the unrestrained glee of eleven-year-olds on their very first brooms.
They hovered above the steaming water, whooping and giving each other high-fives.
Only the water was disappearing.
Down, down, down to the magma chamber below where Vulcan's great forge smouldered just waiting for a reason.
Evil, perhaps, needed no reason, but the volcano and Vulcan's forge had always been the greatest equaliser throughout time. It was creation and destruction. It was life. It was the eraser of arrogance as much as it took the oblivious, but for those that took the time to pay attention to the Earth's rumbles and the shudders of the mountain—the mountain let some escape.
Some.
To those who never lost sight of the danger—those that gave the great forge the greatest respect in distance—he gave a different sort of reward. The time to escape.
But today, the mountain was all out of pity.
The roots under the Earth steamed as the water touched the sacred magma, filling the inner chamber with explosive steam. The pressure built up astronomically, and it pushed the magma up the throat of the Volcano, cracking the stone as it went.
The warnings unheeded, the three boys who thought themselves men because they had finished school and were free to do what they wanted discovered why one did not disrespect the mountain. While Everest might freeze you to death as it stole your heat and your ability to breath, Vulcan's forge was alive with fire.
And sleep—was a matter of good neighbours.
The cone of the volcano blew to pieces as pressure built up and blasted its way upward in stone, ash, magma to lava, and superheated gas both in steam and sulfuric acid. Poison and heat spewed from the heart of the volcano with a loud boom that seemed to crack the skies in half as it carried across the world. A shock wave travelled outward even before the ash and fire finished climbing upwards as the pyroclastic flows took the snow cap that had formed at the heights and transformed it into a lahar.
The pyroclastic flow zoomed down the mountain first as the lahar mixed with debris and followed it, creating giant clouds of instant death, vaporising the moisture from all it touched—burning, killing, destroying a path down the mountain with such speed that no one that saw it from the base could have ever escaped.
No one on the mountain did.
All the sides of the mountain were covered in hot orange and red lava as even more spewed from on top. Gases continuously blowing upward as lava, ash, stone, and more rained downward.
The skies were dark. The air was thick with ash, choking all that breathed and all that grew. It was as if the sky was falling, crushing all that lay below with its increased gravity.
But on a new island that formed seemingly out of nowhere, the innocents, humbled people from all walks of life huddled under the great gargantuan legs of the great Volcanic Nightmare Hounds—born of fire and stone of Vulcan's Forge—
Their bodies glowed with the volcano's wrath, but instead of destroying, they sheltered the people below them with their great shadow, their magic joined to protect them and the few things they carried with them to shelter.
Amazed children gripped the legs of the hounds, too young to know the danger of hugging lava, but the fire did not burn them.
Hounds of all shapes and sizes and ages created a dome of protection over their protected people and animals as one by one they howled into the eruption's clouds of ash and smoke.
The people watched in fascination at the wrath of the Volcano as much as terror, but even as they watched the flows cleanse the city they had once called home, they seemed to realise they were alive to tell about it—yoinked from the blast of the volcano's explosive wrath by beasts they hadn't realised existed in anything but myth or nightmares.
For three days, the volcano spewed its anger unto the world, unbeknownst to them, one day for each offender that had desecrated the ancient Forge of Vulcan. On the fourth day, the skies calmed. The ash settled, and blue skies once again framed the might of the ancient volcano.
The Volcanic Nightmare hounds moved once more, shaking off the ash and lava turned to stone as the barrier they had erected together faded, exposing the people and animals to fresh air once more. The great beasts walked toward land, their pawprints in the water steaming as their bodies formed a land bridge they could all follow back to where their lives had been buried. The birds and animals that had sheltered with the people scattered, no longer bound by the solidarity of survival as old instincts bid them flee. As the humans reached the reformed shore, the great hounds bayed together and vanished into haze of possibility and dreams.
And in the Temple of Vulcan, Priestess Flavia continued her prayers as the hounds returned to her side, rubbing up against her and snuffling her affectionately.
She stood after finishing her prayers, hugging each hound and rewarding them with her radiant, faithful love.
"Thank you, Lord Vulcan, for allows us to protect those we could," she said to the great towering mountain.
And that night, Lily and Remus dug themselves out of the ash that had covered the Temple of Jupiter into the light of the full moon that turned the entire landscape to a desolate scene of grey.
Remus held his hand out under the moonlight in shock, and then fell to his knees sobbing as the people they had protected with their magic filed out into the ashen wasteland.
His lycanthropy was gone.
Vesuvius Erupts, Blanketing Entire Area With Mud, Ash, Fire, and Chaos
It was the strangest thing for those in the vicinity of Mt Vesuvius last week. A calm, peaceful day turned to utter chaos as the red zone around the volcano was tested by the volcano that, quite unusually, gave no warning save for a few earthquakes within minutes of its eruption.
There was no warning that could have realistically allowed for the evacuation of the area in time, and by the time scientists realised there was imminent danger, the pyroclastic flows had already taken the red zone and beyond, obliterating the peace with a thunderous boom that was heard around the world.
While some have compared it to the massive sound of Krakatoa's greatest historical eruption, there was one peculiar difference in this case. Something no scientist can seem to explain. Something that none of the survivors seem willing to talk about.
Somehow, all of the people in the red zone were found alive, safe and sound, on the island of Isola d'Ischia. They were found gathered at the ancient Temple of Vulcan, safe, fed, and other than traumatised at having escaped a volcanic eruption—totally well. What baffles many is that no one seems to remember the temple having been there, but it has obviously been there since a time when Pompeii was still alive and bustling along with the ancient city of Herculaneum.
The grateful people left pieces of their lives in thanks at the temple. Buttons, stones, coins, and whatever they had on them and set forth back to Naples to rebuild their lives.
Only to find an even greater miracle.
The city was buried in ash, but when machines and shoves broke through the crust, they exposed great pristine caverns within, as if great prehistoric beasts held back the flows as Atlas held up the Earth. The only indicator of some fantastical feat is the shape of these great bodies having held back the ash and stone and then vanished.
The survivors are petitioning for the city to take castings of the shapes to remember the miracle that had saved them and their homes from utter obliviation.
While they haven't received an answer, they haven't said no, either.
Now, a week later, families are pleased to report a joyous reunification with their loved ones as they work to excavate the remains of their lives. There is only one report of missing persons: three young men, friends who were tourists from the UK who were last reported hiking their way to see Vesuvius up close not long before the eruption took place.
If anyone has information on the whereabouts of James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew, who may have found shelter with other families or victims of the volcano, please contact the Naples authorities at once.
Given the degree of damage inflicted upon the red zone, however, authorities face grim odds when it comes to a rescue and believe that it will be a recovery operation instead.
Many are still dumbfounded by the fact that short of digging their homes out from a protective dome of ash, life goes on.
James, Sirius, and Peter woke to find themselves in a dark, hazy sort of room. Stone furniture and dim glows light the stone to light the dour countenance of a pale man wearing a crown of metal laurels. Beside him was a warm-skinned female of ageless quality, her skin flushed with life as a living crown of plants and berries graced her head.
Hades and his Queen, Persephone. Or Pluto and Proserpina. Many names they could be. Many names they had been, but the God and Goddess of the Underworld wore the same expression.
That of utter disgust.
"I suppose I should thank you for returning my cloak to me," Hades said, his teeth like moonlight in the dark. His canines were terribly sharp. His clawed hand closed around his wife's and squeezed gently, and she smiled at him. "But I think the thanks goes more to the souls that returned it without hesitation to my dear nephew of the fire and forge. He may not have the looks of the other gods, but his creative genius is unmatched, and just imagine his surprise upon seeing his old creation returned. And he remembers everything he has ever created."
Hades' black eyes flashed white as he blinked. The light lit up the bottom of his eyelids even as they closed, giving his face an eerie moonlit glow.
"I fear that idiocy and arrogance are things that have not left mortals any more than it leaves the gods, but there is a very big difference. The gods must always tend their domains lest the fabric of reality break down and souls are pitched into the Abyss of perpetual torture, neither living or dead. Neither remembered or forgotten. Torn to bits in every moment of every time, flung to the reaches of a place that makes Purgatory seem idyllic."
"So, you, like so many that have come before me, must be cast into a place that suits your many deeds in life," Hades said, his other hand gripping the bident that had appeared in his hand without a sound.
"So, tell me, what great good have you done in your lives to deserve Elysium? Did you sacrifice yourselves to save innocents from the fire and flame? Have you taken ridicule silently rather than wallow in thoughts of revenge to be a better person? Have you assisted your fellow students in becoming better people? Did you use my cloak to bring prosperity to the people around you, or did you use it selfishly to achieve your own ends?"
It was then that the God of the Underworld stood, and His true height seemed like the greatest of dinosaurs to a gnat.
"You belong in Tartarus," Hades said with a cold, emotionless expression. "Where selfish deeds are rewarded with selfish tasks. May you find maturity in humility."
He bashed the bottom of his bident against the ground, and the very earth cracked and swallowed the three screaming souls into Tartarus.
New Exhibit: The Hounds of Vulcan
Giant Lava Dogs Guard the City of Naples, Cast from the Ash of Vesuvius
Severus found himself back in Cokeworth, utterly disoriented. Countless years had passed by for him. Lifetimes after lifetimes. He had walked the streets of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but he had also seen the founding of Naples and seen it grow into a great, modern city. All the while, Hermione had been at his side, learning language and life through the ages.
To be back in Cokeworth was—unsettling.
He looked at his human hand, flexing his fingers. Even this felt—unnatural.
When he'd been with Hermione, his human form was a vague memory. A guise.
Natural for him was being with her.
Hermione.
Nestled together in their lava nest as they guarded the Priestess of Vulcan.
He'd honestly forgotten he'd once been human.
It was so long ago in his mind.
Lifetimes upon lifetimes ago.
And he had grown up through the centuries—as a Volcanic Nightmare pup. Observing. Learning. Guarding the great forge of Vulcan. Remembering the knowledge of people and societies forward and backwards—and then dreaming it back into the Earth in the Archives that no mortal would ever see.
But this place—
The scent was wrong.
There was no tang of sea salt in the air. There was no comforting scent of sulfuric acid wafting down from Vulcan's forge. There was no embrace of the lava burbling invitingly to splash in. No alkaline pools to roll and relax in—
No acid pools to soothe his itchy skin.
No fishing boats to hitch rides on and watch the fishermen haul in their nets and fish like every day before.
This place—was a death trap.
As colourless as a Muggle photograph and just as flat and one dimensional
His ears did a phantom swivel as he heard a commotion.
"Freak! Freak! You're nothing but a freak!"
He walked forward.
A pale boy walked out from a familiar willow tree, standing by a red-haired girl with freckles in the sun.
The taunting girl shrieked and ran, calling them both freaks.
"Are you okay?" the boy asked the girl.
The girl shook her head with a jerk. "Yes."
Severus frowned. The boy looked much like he once did.
But he did not remember this event.
"When we go to Hogwarts, you won't have to worry about this kind of thing. You'll be magical in a magical world," the young Severus told the girl.
"But what if they don't like me?"
"I'll be there for you."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
The girl took his hand, and the boy gave her a small smile.
The older Severus tilted his head as he would have as a hound, trying to decide what he, no, when he was.
This girl—was not Hermione.
It felt—wrong.
"You lost, sir?" the boy asked him.
"No, I am not lost," he answered automatically in ancient Roman Latin.
The boy stared at him. The girl looked ready to piss herself.
Severus frowned, changing gears. "My apologies. I am not—lost. I am simply—looking for—old haunts. Places I knew as a child."
The boy's eyes widened. "Oh. Do you know my da? You kinda look like him."
Severus shook his head. "I do not believe so."
"Come on Sev," the girl whinged. "I want to go get ice cream!"
"But I don't have any money," the boy said quietly, looking embarrassed.
"But I still want some!" she protested, pulling him.
Severus narrowed his eyes. "What is your name, child?"
The girl gulped and hid behind the boy.
"Severus," the boy answered.
"It is a fine, Roman name," Severus told the miniature version of himself. "It served the emperor of Rome, Lucius Septimius Severus, in 145 until his death in 211."
"Really?"
Severus nodded.
"I'm going to give you something that is worth considerably more than a little bit of ice cream," he said to the boy. "But you must hold on to it until you can take it to a—very special bank. Can you do this?"
Young Severus blinked and nodded.
Severus pulled a coin out of his pocket—a coin he'd been given for pulling a merchant from the path of the volcano. It was a post-Caesar coin during a time when his assassination was considered a heroic public service. He and Hermione had been given the merchant's entire purse in thanks for his life—but neither he nor Hermione had any great use for coin save for those times when they were blending in—and many times, they posed as tradesfolk that made potions and balms of the time, often as a priest or priestess of Vulcan at the temple—where very few ever questioned ingredients to a holy concoction.
Neither he nor Hermione valued money save for its use in protecting their home and purchasing basic supplies from the locals, but this young boy—this Severus was not him and yet was—
He shared a certain similarity.
A life he might have lived if he hadn't found himself visiting the volcano in his dreams—and then his reality.
He extended the coin to the young Severus, weaving the magic of the volcano around it so it could not be stolen or lost until it was taken to where it was intended to go.
"Take this, and remember that true value is not found in money or power. It is in the value of life in your heart. Find something you truly love that loves you back, and you will never be lonely, no matter where you find yourself because you will always have it here inside your soul. Find that peace within yourself, and you will never have to rely upon another to provide it for you."
Young Severus took the coin and nodded fervently, keeping it close to his chest.
"What do you hold in your heart, sir?"
Severus smiled tightly. "A lifetime's lifetime of memories of both the past and the future with my very best friends."
"Can I see it?" the girl asked, poking his closed hand.
Frowning, Young Severus opened his fingers to show her the coin.
Her eyes widened with obvious desire. "It's so beautiful! Can I have it?"
Young Severus startled, closing his hand over it, silently jerking his head.
Severus narrowed his eyes.
"This is my gift to him," he said pointedly. "The wrath of Vulcan would follow you for all of your days should you attempt to take it either by force or trickery. Go get your ice cream. I'm sure it will be—delicious."
The girl's face scrunched up with displeasure as she jerked young Severus's arm to drag him along with her.
"Thank you," young Severus called out awkwardly as he looked Severus in the eyes.
Severus nodded to him. "You are quite welcome—Severus."
Severus sighed with relief as he saw the familiar form of Hermione lurking in the rather sad duckweed filled pond. She rose up from the water, and it sizzled off her skin as she shook herself off.
His body shifted into its more natural form instantly, no longer blocked by some unknown energy flux or time shift.
"Are you okay?" Hermione asked.
Severus nuzzled her muzzle and rubbed up against it. "Yes—I'm not sure why the volcano sent me here," he admitted.
"Maybe to give that younger you a chance for a much better life," Hermione said thoughtfully. "That red-haired girl is a real piece of work. I remember seeing many like her in ancient times. Wealthy. Entitled. Centre of the attention."
"He seemed very lonely—just as I once was," Severus said softly, giving her a tender lava slurp upside the face.
"We found each other, though," Hermione said as she thumped a paw against his ear and gave him a return lick.
"I am grateful to Lord Vulcan for bestowing me this life—this peace in my soul," Severus replied. "And for you. I am glad to have met you."
Hermione flicked one ear as she seemed to look into space. "That boy and his family move to Newcastle upon Tyne. His father gets a much better job. He sees love in his family for the first time. You arranged for whoever to get that coin—the goblins held a really nice home for them. Did you know—it would be him?"
Severus shook his head. "No. It was simply waiting for someone who truly needed it but didn't know it. The volcano brought me here—for a reason. Just as it took me from here so long ago—for a reason."
Hermione whuffed, her tail wagging as bits of lava went zinging off into the poor pond. "I'm really glad it did."
Severus smiled, showing his lava teeth. "Me too."
"Where shall we go next, do you think?" Hermione asked.
"Anywhere the volcano sends us, as long as it is with you, my love," Severus said.
Hermione's toothy lava smile was all he ever needed to see as his magma heart beat strongly within his body, filling him with a love so hot it might have been the very core of Vulcan's Forge.
They disappeared together with a poof of ash and heat into the volcano's streams of time.
Priestess Flavia awoke slightly as the two familiar bodies of her most beloved hounds jumped and curled up with her in her bed. They wedged their heads under her hands on one side and the other, tucking her against their bodies.
She smiled, her hand caressing their lava skin with affection as her eyes closed. "Welcome home, my loves."
And far up in the cone cap of the volcano, a new pup was birthed in an eruption of lava as Vesuvius quaked—not out of anger, but in celebration. Hermione's parents tucked the new pup in its bed of nurturing lava, keeping watch over their latest precious bundle of fire and stone.
One day, not now or even soon, the new pup would find its path in Vulcan's service—the path of the God of Fire and Forge, the blessing of the volcano. But for now, the lullaby of the churning Earth and boiling rock would rock their pup to sleep in the cradle of the volcano.
And just maybe, if the pup was really lucky, they would find themselves a friend like Hermione had—a true friend and partner to travel time to the past and future together.
But that would be a story for another time.
And they lived volcanically ever after. (eruption noise)
A/N: Hope you enjoyed the adventure of the lava pups! Dragon stayed up past her expiry hour to finish this story with me. She may live. Heh. heh. Heh. Praise her if you agree.
After credits scene:
James, Sirius, and Peter worked themselves to exhaustion trying to shovel lava out of Tartarus' sole flower garden. Every four hours they were granted rest by the only fountain of clean pure water that healed their blistered and burnt skin and cooled their bodies, but every time they took a sip, they were overcome with images of Lily and Remus living together with their many children throughout their long Wizarding lives.
Remus laughed, arm and arm with Regulus Black, the newly elected Minister For Magic of Britain, as they teamed up to purge the Ministry of corruption and old archaic laws.
They would see images of Regulus and his lovely wife, the former Marlene McKinnon, joining Remus and Lily for a weekend picnic at Brighton together with Orion and Walburga Black, one cured of her obsessive insanity and other of his poison, the elder Blacks having belatedly discovered that certain incidents they had believed to be the work of their Muggle neighbours was actually that of their late elder son instead.
James, Sirius, and Peter would gulp down the water as much as they could stand before trying to close their eyes and rest in the small amount of time they were allotted. But the images remained even after their eyes were closed, burning into their memories what would never be theirs all for a prankster's life and their acts of reckless stupidity at the sacred Forge of Vulcan—the Roman God of Fire and Forge.
It was, perhaps, in this service, that the three mates realised that it wasn't just Mount Etna that the great god of fire and forge held sacred but all volcanoes, and they—had chosen the one where the god nurtured his most favourite beasts that did not judge him for his looks or his disabilities in comparison to the other gods.
And the God Vulcan, whether called by his Roman name or the Greek Hephaestus, would always appreciate the ones who were judged by the world to be lesser only to rise above their "weaknesses" with an even greater strength.
And as the great "sculptural" dogs watched over the city of Naples, the real ones kept their eternal watch over the volcano and its time-travelling roots for their most beloved God.
Always.
Actual FIN.
Really.
I mean it. Fin.