Chapter Text
Brightflame’s Witch
Chapter One: Only Branches, Only Leaves
-o-
Brisbane, January 1999
They’d had a dog.
A big shaggy Newfoundland she heard them call Dozer.
Dozer.
They were happy and smiling, walking through the park in Brisbane.
Hermione had taken one look at them—alright, perhaps the longest look of her life, one she very much felt frozen in—and turned back around.
She had hidden behind a tree as they walked by, and pretended to be looking through her bag.
She caught the gaze of her mum, and mum had paused to look at the girl by the tree, at the daughter she didn’t know, just in observation, before carrying on jogging with dad and the dog.
There had been no recognition in her eyes. Her dad hadn’t even turned to look. Hermione couldn’t say if she hoped the dog had come over to sniff her shoes and get pets. It didn’t, but if it had, what would Hermione have done?
She didn’t believe if she opened her mouth words would have come out.
There was no place in their life for Hermione anymore. The knowledge of her existence would only upend the cozy, quaint little life they had built together. It would have felt wicked of her to take that away.
She had been having the strangest dreams… nightmares, really.
An ashen tree with faded scarlet leaves. There was a face carved into the flakey white bark weeping tears of blood. Crows were mocking nearby but she could never see them, muffled amidst the moans of wind through tall grass.
Banners she did not recognize, not Hogwarts nor muggle.
A sharp jaw with moon milk skin, lips curving, laughing—the sound of it like sleek velvet, warm to her ears. Pale hair.
A knight kneeling, his sword in the mud.
A dragon’s eye opening.
A silvery serpent hissed and twined possessively around a single red rose, two petals falling. Then vanished beneath impossible green fire, transcending into nothing. Hermione would wake up in cold rivulets of sweat, the sheets soaked.
She had not a clue what it meant, or if it meant anything at all, but she had been having them for weeks. They felt like visions, and even though she could agree prophecies and seers were real, and that, yes, Divination could be a legitimate craft, it was not her standard way of navigating things.
Especially after everything.
Prophecies and all that. She was done with it.
At least the war was finished, that was genuinely all she could ask for. Everything else was a gift.
Ought to be.
Should be looked at that way.
Should.
Living was a mercy, to be sure, but it was heavy.
Every morning she woke just before dawn.
Her room was still dark.
Somewhere, impossibly close, horses whinnied.
Wind brushed across her face though every window was shut.
She had been wondering if it was leftover shock from living on the road for over a year.
Sometimes, she could even smell remnants of smoke and wet grass, like a phantom memory she couldn’t get to. For a while she'd wondered whether someone had tampered with her memories. If they had, she wouldn't know.
It would feel right somehow. Hermione didn’t know what she deserved, but it wasn’t the parents whose memories she had amended without their consent.
She awoke in her hotel room, eyes flying open, knuckles already tight around her wand. Faint rain and grass reached for her from somewhere nearby, though outside, on the third floor, she could see the sky was a bruise of black and blue, the stars twinkling.
Birdsong.
Horses.
Shouting.
Then complete silence, except for the blood pumping through her ears.
Her pulse thudded painfully at her other wrist, and she sat up, lifting her hand.
Hermione’s eyes widened briefly, adjusting to the shadows, finding a thin red leaf, crumbling to bits within her palm.
It’d just… disappeared. Entirely.
It was frightening enough, she had run several diagnostics on as much of the hotel as she could, checking for gas leaks, carbon monoxide poisoning, asbestos, etc. but nothing definitive came up. She called a report in for a potential gas leak, to have them come out and check, just in case.
-o-
She reckoned she’d take the plane back to England, and that would be that. What she hadn’t banked on, was the delay, nor the cancellation and forty-eight hour layover in Athens.
So there she was in Greece just… thinking, or attempting not to, rather.
For once.
She bought a freshly torn, buttered hunk of bread, and an espresso. She could feel happy for the appetite, choosing a bench to sit. She pushed up her sunglasses, taking a bite of warm seeded rye.
It was one of the most beautiful places on earth, but she was… meh. She looked around, sipping her espresso. She wasn’t even supposed to be here.
What if she just… never went back?
Honestly, she thought everyone would get on just fine. They would survive, like always, even Ron.
She wasn’t certain she’d have picked Greece, though could be a start.
When she was done eating, she went to a payphone, made certain things were all sorted with the impromptu hotel room she’d had to wrangle, and took a scenic walk through several sites.
She could have found a floo.
She could have Apparated across Europe until she reached London.
But right now, it felt better to drift. She was almost accustomed to it anyway.
She saw the ruined temples. Pondered Athena, Artemis, Apollo and the moon, and the Underworld.
Hades and Persephone.
Love that people didn’t ask for.
Dogs.
Red roses and silver snakes.
Faded scarlet leaves.
In a jolt, her soul felt to leave her body, her eyes snagging on those exact leaves in the distance, perched on a lonely hill nearby. Ashen bark, flaking in the sunlight as if to beckon her closer. Tall blades of grass wisped over its gargantuan, gnarled roots that sifted down between both dirt and stone, creating a sort of knoll beneath it a couple could sit under, not unlike an oak tree.
A crimson face, twisted in despair, carved into the trunk, bleeding.
She could swear she could hear whispers the closer she got, the fuzz on her neck standing on end.
A man strode by her—a maintenance worker, pushing a tool cart and wearing a cap.
“Uh, pardon me, sir,” she greeted, certain she must look as pale and panicked as the bark.
“Everything alright, miss?” the man asked her, halting his cart to look her over with a sniff, his mustache twitching.
“What is this tree here?” Hermione said, gesturing towards it. “What kind is it?”
He looked very confused. “Tree?”
“Yes,” she said, staring directly at it. “Right there.”
The man shook his head, squinting, then gazed back at her. “Hasn’t been a tree there for… something like a hundred years.”
“Oh.”
She was stunned silent, not taking her eyes from the tree, its weeping face, as the maintenance worker continued pushing his cart along.
The tree was… wrong.
Suspicious.
The visions.
As if someone planned this.
Had she been cursed?
Hexed? Double jinxed?
Was she in a dream?
She pinched herself, taking another step to the tree, staring up at it, ghosting one of her hands over the roots, not quite touching it.
Then, she hoisted herself up over the stone beside it, scraping her knee slightly. She stood, dusting her hands off on her denim shorts.
She looked around to see if anyone was watching her nonsense, crouching down low toward the trunk until she was eye to eye with the face.
Just… staring at it.
Hermione almost jumped from her skin, hearing the croon of a crow from above but when she glanced up there was only branches, only leaves.
Every hair on her body shot up.
She focused on the face again, its eyes entrancing her.
Its lips, if she narrowed in on them long enough, might she catch them moving with the whispers?
Athens felt like it was fading away, the car horns and city roar dissolving into white static.
The air grew colder.
Her breath misted.
That wasn't possible.
A gust struck her across the face, and her body moved before her mind caught up.
Hermione stumbled backward, hunched on one elbow, her wand pointed at the bleeding bark.
She searched for witnesses, seeing no one, before muttering a quiet Revelio.
Nothing.
She got back to her knees, lifting a hand.
Wiggling her fingers, spreading them out.
She exhaled a low, slow breath, pressing the pads of her fingers onto the bark, her palm flattening right between the eyes.
Any breath she had left was taken from her, chest tightening as her head tipped back of its own accord, her vision tunneling into thick blackness.
-o-