Whom the Gods Would Destroy...

Title: Whom the Gods Would Destroy…
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: MA/NC-17
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Angst, Horror, Mystery
Warnings: Character Death, Graphic Violence, Adult Situations, Dark!fic
Summary: DH-EWE: The end of the world has come. Millions dead, magic waning, Hermione Granger and Charlie Weasley are the last people left in Britain—left to pick up the pieces of their once great civilization. Why were they spared? Who is responsible for the death of a nation? These are the mysteries left as a legacy for two lost and lonely people.
Author's Notes: This is my first attempt at a Charlie/Hermione pairing, so please be gentle. This fic is very much inspired by my morbid obsession with ‘end of the world’ scenarios. There are few OCs in this fic, and I have tried to keep much in ‘canon’ as possible. WGWD is unbeta’d, so pardon the mistakes, please?

Additional Note: Though Viktor Krum is mentioned in this part, this is STILL a CW/HG fic!


Whom the Gods Would Destroy…

Part 2




‘quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.’ –A Roman proverb






Hermione was convinced that she had lost her mind not long after leaving Glastonbury. With the world falling down around you, it was easy to go mad. However, she knew she was certifiably insane walking down Kings Road with the sea to her right. The day was dark and rain could fall at any moment, but Hermione did not care. Something had called her to Brighton, and she was going to find what that something was.

She shrugged her rifle higher onto her left shoulder and kept her right hand on her wand handle. So far, the only living thing she had seen or heard were the gulls on the shore below the road. There was a startling lack of bodies, but there were signs of Inferi in the destruction and rotten limbs upon the road.

The night before, she had heard them from her perch in the bell tower of St. Peter’s Church, but did not see them. Perhaps the only thing that surprised Hermione as she had looked out from the bell tower was the glow of fire somewhere beyond the church. Fire meant one thing—life.

Maybe the life was what called her, she did not know. However, as she had walked the city from morning to midday, only the gulls cawed to her. No stray animals, no signs of digging in, there were nothing to show her that someone had been alive to start a fire. There were never any stray animals in the towns she had stopped in, and there were no animal corpses. She figured that the animals—cats, dogs, and wildlife—had taken refuge somewhere, fled like the humans to a place removed from even her eyes.

Hermione moved to an empty beach and sat down, staring out at the empty sea. She had not seen boats, and knew that even if someone were to flee to the sea, the Seal would keep them from going far. Inferi could navigate the waters, no matter how rough, and capsize a boat if it meant killing another life.

Shoving the short stock of her rifle in the sand so that it stood upright, Hermione dug into her backpack, resizing a plastic wrapped piece of old bread. The Stasis Charm was waning after a week, but Hermione ate what was left. She still had a few shrunken cans of tinned meat, beans, and fruit, but soon, she would have to scavenge again.

Hermione leaned back on her elbows, listening to the gulls and the soft waves upon the sand a few metres from her booted feet. The ominous clouds had dissipated. The sun was moving into afternoon over her head, and Hermione knew that she would have to leave the beach soon. The bell tower had served her well, and she knew that it would take a while to walk back.

On the King’s Road again, Hermione turned north onto West Street. As she approached Church Street, Hermione paused. Down that particular street was the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Dome Theatre, and Hermione turned, walking down the middle of the street. There were several abandoned cars pointed in the opposite direction, and there was rubble from the buildings on either side. As Hermione walked, she did not think too much of the rubble at first. Then, pausing again on the street between Dome Theatre and the Museum, she glanced at the buildings again.

Curse marks burned the façade of the Dome Theatre, and to the east, to Victoria Gardens, Hermione could see burnt trees and clods of soil blasted from the ground.

Hermione closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Ozone, a familiar scent, permeated the air like a subtle perfume. There were traces of magic in the air, unmistakable and succinct to Hermione when she concentrated. Someone magical was near, the freshness of the scent of magic perhaps only a day old.

Suddenly, Hermione felt a thrill pass through her body. With her eyes still closed, Hermione listened. Distantly was the sea and the gulls, then there was a wind that moaned between the building blocks, then there was a scratching noise—Inferi, and under everything, a strain of music too faint to fully grasp.

Hermione knew she was mad, she was a witch, but she did not have the power to hear so keenly, however, the strain of music felt real, true. The strain of music was the sound of a life straining to keep alive—just like her.

When Hermione opened her eyes, it was with a shock. During her mental travels, the sun had moved west. Dread gripped her, pushing out all her hope. The sun was beginning to set and she was far enough away from St. Peter’s Church and sanctuary that she would not make it before true darkness fell.

“Shit.”

She would have to run up either Marlborough Place or Grand Parade to St. Peter’s Place. Hermione ran to the end of Church Street, but already the shadow between the Museum and the Theatre was becoming too dark. Hermione cursed in streams under her breath as she started up Marlborough Place along Victoria Gardens. It was in the Gardens that she saw the first of the Inferi under a few burnt trees nearest to the southern end of the park.

Hermione drew her wand, but kept running, her boots barely making a noise on the street. What did make a noise was the rubble she kept kicking as she ran, and it was that sound that the Inferi heard.

“Shit, shit!” she gasped.

A shriek arose from the park, as if the green itself were wailing. Hermione kept running, finally making it past Victoria Gardens to the intersection of North Road, but it made no difference. The Inferi would follow her all the way to St. Peter’s Church, just visible beyond another island of green between the roads. There was little rubble in the street as she headed north, and she knew she would not have noticed before, having left the church and headed west along Gloucester Street.

Hermione considered heading east toward Queen’s Park, and as she ran east, she knew the Inferi were loping after her. Hermione did not look back, she could not afford to look back, however, as she started down Kingswood Street, she found her way barred. Burnt cars acted as a barricade, and Hermione had no choice but to cut south down William Street. Again, the street was barricaded at the far end, and Hermione realized that she was caught in a trap meant for the Inferi.

Hermione ran toward the pile of automobiles and stopped, gasping for breath. The Inferi were not far behind, just entering William Street. Hermione raised her wand and shrugged her rifle higher. She would blast as many as she could in the street, an elevated car park to her right and building her left. Grand Parade Mews was half way between the blocks, but Hermione knew it was a dead end, terminating into the backside of apartment buildings.

Hermione knew she would have to climb the barricade, but it would be difficult. The barricade had been built to trap Inferi, and although dead, they could be as agile as the living. The shrieks of the dead grew nearer and Hermione began counting heads. Fifty plus, she stopped counting after forty, heads she would have to blast.

It had been a mistake to come to Brighton, no matter that there might be a witch or wizard nearby. It had been a mistake to come into a once populated city. Hermione gritted her teeth as the Inferi approached, slowing a bit from their loping run.

This was it, Hermione thought, and readied herself to fight until the end.

“Get down!” a voice roared from high above her and Hermione nearly dropped her wand from shock.

Hermione could not see the source of the barking, male voice, but she complied. Throwing herself to the rubble strewn street, she felt a Blasting Hex fly over her, and heard the sound of rotten flesh being torn apart. She did not even gag as a heavy, dead arm landed upon the backs of her knees.

“Hurry, ve must run now!”

A large, paw-like hand grasped her arm, wrenching her upward, and suddenly, Hermione was running. Her saviour had pulled her up and over the barricade, and soon Hermione realized that she was running back toward the Royal Pavilion.

Edward Street gave way to a fence and Hermione let her body collide with it, her head buzzing illogical thoughts.

“I vill lift you, Her-my-nee…”

Hermione blinked, her eyes catching sight of part of a face under a thick cowl of a cloak. However, before she could speak, she lifted and forced to climb. Jumping over the thick wrought-iron gate, she found herself rolling upon a lawn.

“Hurry! Run to the Pavilion!”

With still too much adrenaline to burn, Hermione did not stop to question, but began running up an unkempt lawn to a structure she had only seen in pictures. She had not seen the structure earlier, for the Dome Theatre on Church Street blocked the view.

Brighton’s Royal Pavilion was a white structure that caught the glowing orange rays of the setting sun on the domed roof as if the structure were aflame, but to Hermione, it looked like sanctuary. Every step she took toward the Pavilion made Hermione feel safer.

How she managed to get inside, how she suddenly felt as if no dark, dead things outside would harm her that night, she could not say. All she knew was that she was again being pulled into chambers, all looted, all destroyed, until she was set down before a fireplace and given a plate of food which consisted mostly of canned fruits and meats.

When the cloak was doffed and a face floated before hers in the firelight, all Hermione could say weakly was: “My hero, once again.”

Viktor Krum had not aged well, and it seemed that life had been as hard on him as it had on Hermione. The new scars across his dark brow, intersecting the bridge of his beaklike nose, made him appear like one of the sculptures of Roman Emperors she had seen smashed in one of the chambers she had passed.

“Vhy are you here? Vhere are your friends?” he asked, his thick fingers brushing her filthy hair from her soot-covered face.

“Dead, like everyone, I suppose. Why are you here?”

Viktor’s face darkened as he sat down next to her before the fire. “My vife and I vere here on holiday. She died veeks ago.”

Hermione wanted to seem sympathetic, but she had lost so many that her sympathy was all used before ever reaching Brighton.

“I tried Portkeys, I tried Apparation, nothing vorks,” Viktor grumbled rising to his feet before the fire, stoking it and leaning against the carved side. In the growing light, Hermione realized she was sitting before the fireplace in the Music Room of the Pavilion. She sat upon the ornate carpet, gazing up at the great mirror over the mantle. It was almost like the pictures she had seen, but not quite.

“I know. I’ve been travelling by scooter or on foot. You wouldn’t happen to have a broom?”

Viktor shook his head. Hermione said no more as she studied Viktor in the firelight. Viktor was just as substantial as she remembered, and once again, he had saved her life.

“Haff you heard any news?”

It was Hermione’s turn to shake her head. She chewed a piece of canned fruit slowly before swallowing.

“The Ministry has set the Seal, and that is all I know.”

Viktor swore under his breath, a fist slamming into stone. “I did not think they vould do it,” he muttered. Hermione agreed. It had been the final measure of defence, and Hermione knew that it had damned them all.

“You are the first person I have seen alive,” Hermione began.

Viktor moved to Hermione’s side, kneeling next to her and catching her face between his large hands.

“Thank the gods, you are alive, Her-my-nee. If I vould haff to save someone, I am glad it vas you.”

Hermione smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes. The warmth of his hands upon her cheeks felt more like a dream than reality. Perhaps she was dreaming, Hermione could not be sure. It seemed like only seconds before she had been running for her life.

Viktor sighed and slowly released Hermione’s face. Almost as if to break the perfection of a dream, a distant shriek slipped in through the walls of the Royal Pavilion and into their ears.

“They vill not come to this place. I do not know vhy exactly,” Viktor answered even as Hermione opened her mouth to ask if they should run or hide. “It is safe here, ve can sleep.”

Hermione stared at Viktor’s face, which softened with weariness. He sat next to her, watching her eat, his dark eyes following her every movement. When his eyes moved to the rifle setting at her side, he asked her about it.

Hermione told her story, the attack on the Abbey, her escape, and what she had seen between Glastonbury and Brighton.

“Aurora wanted me to go to Hogwarts, but without a broom, it would take ages,” Hermione explained softly, finally having her fill of canned fruit.

Viktor’s dark brow rose and Hermione felt as if she sounded like a madwoman.

“Hogvarts vould be a safe place,” Viktor said, more to himself than to Hermione. “It vould be a good place to regroup if there vere survivors.”

“It is a stretch. If Glastonbury Abbey were breached, surely Hogwarts would be in ruins.”

Viktor shrugged, “Perhaps not.”

Hermione blinked, turning her face slowly to Viktor. Viktor smiled sadly and continued. “You said the Abbey was destroyed, but vot of other places? There are other magical places in Britain.”

Hermione nodded, and slowly her eyes narrowed. Why had Glastonbury Abbey, a place of concentrated magical power, been destroyed, and a place like the Royal Pavilion seem to repel the Inferi? Hermione’s eyes moved about the room and slowly she closed them.

Listening again, Hermione moved through the sound of the crackling fire, Viktor’s deep breathing and hard pounding heart, past the distant shriek of the Inferi, downward. Water ran deep below them, perhaps the River Steine, and deeper was the hum of rock, sea, and magic.

Again, Hermione heard a strain of music, fainter than before, as if too distant or too old. Hermione bit her bottom lip. Surely, she was losing what bit of sanity she had left.

“Vot is it?” Viktor asked, rousing Hermione.

Hermione’s eyes focused upon Viktor’s dark countenance. “I…” she began, but trailed, her amber eyes moving to the raging fire before them. “I think I might be losing my mind, Viktor.”

Viktor’s thick hand caught her chin and turned her face to his. “You von’t, Her-my-nee. You aren’t.”

Hermione said nothing. In Viktor’s dark eyes, she saw sadness, loss.

“How did your wife die?” she asked in almost a whisper.

Viktor’s fingers traced her face, moving down to her lips. “The Inferi caught her, scavenging a market. It vas in the day, in the middle of the day.”

His eyes shimmered and he looked away, down at the carpet. Hermione gasped when his arms wrapped about her, pulling her tight against his wide chest.

“Viktor…” she breathed.

It had been an age since someone held her. The warmth of live flesh and the sensation of a beating heart made Hermione sigh. In the firelight, he kissed her lips, not caring that she was dirty and reeked of filth and death.

Hermione hesitated to touch him in return as the kiss ended. To touch another living person was like breathing to Hermione. Her hands ran along his scarred face, marveling the life she saw in his dark eyes, ignoring the fact that he was not handsome. Viktor was alive, he was real, and he held her because she too was alive.

Hermione knew he only held her because of his desperation. Viktor had lost someone he loved, his wife. Hermione had not known Viktor’s wife, had never seen the woman, but the dark spark in Viktor’s eyes at her memory—Viktor had loved his wife.

Viktor kissed her again, desperately, wildly. Hermione hummed against his lips as he began pulling off the black knit sweater he wore. Her dirty fingers ran over the hard planes of his chest, down along a trail of dark hair to the waistband of his ragged trousers. He grunted softly when she touched him. Years and years before, he had been the one to take her maidenhead, and years and years before that, he had saved her.

Viktor helped her out of her layers of clothing, peeling and stripping away everything until the heat of the fire beat against her skin. She smelled terrible; death seemed to ooze from her very skin. It did not seem to matter to Viktor who kissed her throat and nipped at the soft skin below her ears.

The manner in which his rough hands cupped her full breasts, the way he looked up at her as she positioned herself over his cock, it made Hermione feel safe—even it was for only one night.

Viktor, uncharacteristically, whimpered when Hermione took his length. She could see the tears in his eyes, but she moved all the same. Her hero was lost in his memories of another woman, one that he loved, and one who surely had a matching silver wedding band upon her dead finger. Hermione did not cry. She had wasted enough tears.

Hermione rode Viktor, relishing the warmth of his large body, relishing the groans ripping from his throat despite his memories. He felt so large inside her body, larger than he did the first time they had coupled years before.

She gazed down at him in the firelight, his mouth agape, and his dark hair spilling on the ornate carpet of the Royal Pavilion’s Music Room. Hermione ran her ragged nails down the rippling muscles of his wide chest. Viktor responded by arching his hips upward, his fingers curling about her hipbones.

Sex had meant something to her once, and she smirked to herself in the thought that it had been a while since she had had sex. The world outside had gone mad, but Hermione did not care as Viktor manipulated her scrawny, malnourished body to rest above her, his thickly veined cock impaling her faster and faster. She knew that the act, sex, was not out of love, and would not be ‘love’ for her for a long time.

Viktor kissed her, leaning down as he thrust. Hermione rose up, her arms moving to wrap about his neck, devouring his mouth as their hips met and parted.

The world outside had gone mad, and the sick, twisted truth of it all—what did make tears wet her eyes—was that she, perhaps being the last woman alive in Britain, could never act as an Eve. As Hermione threw her head back to wail, her climax crashing upon her, she wondered if Viktor had had any children.

Viktor grunted, thrusting harder and faster than before. Hermione held fast to him, gasping into his hair, wrapping her legs tighter about his hips. When he came, it was with a loud whine between clenched teeth. He was holding back a roar, a sound that might tempt the Inferi into the protection of the Pavilion. His sweat dripped from his hair and onto Hermione’s chest. He stared down at her as if to assess damages against her. Hermione smiled and ran a hand over his square jaw.

“It’s alright,” she whispered, and Viktor fell upon her, enveloping her in his arms, pressing her warm skin against his.

Hermione let Viktor hold her, softly crying into her hair, which was tangled and sweaty. Viktor lost himself against her, but Hermione did not mind. He had lost far more than she. Staring up at the ornate ceiling and the colours reflected in the chandeliers with firelight, Hermione knew that perhaps she was lucky. She did not have anyone so close that she would feel such unbelievable loss as Viktor. No husband, no children, no lover, and sadly, there were no longer any close friends.

Of course, she worried for Ron and Harry, but Hermione felt as if she had lost those two men long ago. It was an old hurt, easily swallowed down when it surged upward, easily forgotten.

Viktor fell quickly asleep against her, emotions and body wrought out. Hermione brushed his shaggy black hair fondly. Viktor had saved her—again. So, Hermione listened to his deep breathing and the crackle of fire and willed herself to sleep.





“There vas a rumour.”

Hermione nodded as Viktor passed her a bottle of water to pour into a cracked basin he had found in a vitrine somewhere in the Pavilion. It was some priceless Indo-Gothic basin used by King George IV, Hermione figured. She washed her face and her neck as Viktor continued.

“I heard it first in Varna before ve came here.”

Hermione used a piece of cloth, perhaps part of curtain to wash her hair.

“Something about Dark Creatures gathering in Northern Spain. It meant nothing, it vas too vague, until I heard something else in Paris—something about vitches and vizards going mad and killing Muggles.”

Hermione blinked, and paused as she was wiping her underarms. She was still naked, kneeling the morning light streaming in through a great window into the dining hall.

“Ve did not think much about that either, it was rumour. Then ve came to Brighton, and I started reading the Prophet.”

Viktor was kneeling next to her, staring out onto the lawns surrounding the Pavilion, staring at the sun. Hermione assumed that ‘we’ meant Viktor and his wife, a woman who still had no name.

“I was in seclusion,” Hermione began, dropping the cloth into the basin and wringing it out again to begin wiping her breasts. “I hadn’t read the paper in weeks while I was at the Abbey. It wasn’t until I read a Muggle newspaper that I understood the devastation.

What did the Prophet say?”

Viktor sighed and glanced at Hermione, only to quickly glance away as Hermione began wiping her bare legs. Viktor was dressed, and Hermione wondered if he regretted what they had done the night before.

“It vas vot it did not say that made us vorry. There vas no mention of the attacks, although it was videly talked about in Paris. I did not read the newspaper in Paris, so I don’t know if vot the people vere saying vas true. But… To haff so many vizards and vitches vorried in Paris…” Viktor trailed.

Hermione finished by wiping her feet, between her toes, before moving to dress in clothes she had magicked clean moments before washing.

“The Prophet mentioned that a handful of vizards had attacked Muggles in Cornvall, near Falmouth. Muggles died, vizards were arrested, and that was only three days before…”

Hermione paused again, applying her last shirt. “Before what?”

Viktor’s head bowed. “Before it truly began.”

Viktor did not speak for a long while, and Hermione thought for a moment he was crying. However, when Viktor raised his head again, it was to meet Hermione’s eyes.

“The Inferi did not kill all the Muggles, Her-my-nee. It vas vitches and vizards, people ve know. I saw them.”

Hermione’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” Hermione whispered, horrified.
Viktor did release a sob, but quickly turned his face away, his fists clenched upon his thighs as he knelt next to her.

“I don’t know how they did it, or vhy, but I saw a vizard cast an evil spell, one that vas created by Gindelvald, one that I vas taught never to speak of or seek to learn.”

Hermione brows knitted and she moved closer to Viktor, drawing one of his fists into her hands. Viktor’s fingers unclenched and wove about Hermione’s. Through his hand, Hermione could feel Viktor tremble.

“Holokauston, that is the name of the spell, one that has a complicated incantation and terrible effects,” Viktor whispered.

Holokauston, the Greek of holocaust, meaning ‘to burn whole.’ The word had various implications throughout history. However, a spell created by Grindelwald meant one thing to Hermione, destruction, and despair.

“No one in their right mind vould use that spell. It is beyond the evil of the Killing Curse.”

Hermione stroked the back of Viktor’s palm. She, who had read and studied more books than what was in the Library at Hogwarts, had never heard of such a spell.

“What does the spell do, exactly?”

Viktor stiffened, and for a moment, Hermione believed he would not tell her. Slowly, he began, his voice small coming from his large form.

“As the name implies to us now, holocaust, it is spell designed to kill large numbers. Imagine if a Quidditch pitch vere full, the field and the stands, and a vizard stood on the centre ring…then imagine that vizard casting a spell. The magic of the spell comes out like a visp of smoke, drifting on the vind like a cloud, growing bigger and bigger until the whole pitch is clouded with magic. People vould begin to fall, grow sleepy, others vould feel suffocated, but all…all vould die.”

Hermione said nothing, imagining Viktor’s words, imagining a cloud of shimmering magic floating over the cities and towns, over the motorways and rivers, killing everything in its path. The possible mechanics of such a Curse began to churn through Hermione’s mind, and then something struck her.

“But we did not die.”

Viktor nodded. “I don’t understand it. Muggles died almost instantly…”

Hermione frowned. “Where did you see this?”

“On a motorway. Evaine and I vere trying to leave Brighton for London, go to the Ministry. Inferi had been seen in Vorthing, the towns were evacuating, to vhere, I do not know. It vas chaos, confusion, and I did not see or notice any other vitches or vizards. Ve vere in a car, Evaine is Muggle-born, she knew vot to do.

And then ve saw Ludo Bagman… Ludo Bagman, of all the people in the vorld, standing on a lorry ahead of us… Ve got out of the car, Muggles vere yelling, the automobiles vere shrieking, people vere panicking. Evaine and I valked toward Ludo, and then he pulled his vand.”

Viktor’s eyes were distant as Hermione watched his face, and his grip was tightening on her hand.

“I thought, vot is he going to do? Evaine was pulling on my arm, but I did not move. In front of all those Muggles, Ludo, stupid Ludo, pulled out his vand, but the Muggles did not notice, not at first.

He looked like he vas about to die, his eyes vere not right, and I realized, he was under the Imperius Curse.”

Viktor stopped and wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand. Hermione was wide-eyed.

“And then he did it. He cast the vrost Curse known to our kind. Evaine vas screaming, the Muggles vere screaming when they saw the cloud.

It was a black cloud, like black smoke out of the back of the lorry, but it grew larger, higher. Ve ran, but the cloud moved on the vind and I could not see Evaine before my face. Ve fell to the ground, and I could smell death all around me.

Vhen the sun vas shining upon us again, ve vere alive, but everything around us, the Muggles vere dead.”

Viktor released Hermione’s hand and stumbled to his feet. Hermione watched as he took several steps away, the sound of his gagging filling her ears. Hermione bowed her head as she heard Viktor vomit onto the floor. She waited, hearing his gasps, and his muttered curses in Bulgarian. With the sound of a Cleaning Charm, Viktor turned to Hermione again.

“Ve vent back to look for Ludo, but he vas gone,” Viktor continued, his voice rougher.

Hermione nodded. “The Inferi?”

“They came that night. Evaine and I hid in a house off the motorway and vaited. A veek later, ve came here. The Inferi vould not cross the fences, and ve did not know vhy. There vere other places the Inferi would not go, but this place vas better protected…a larger area.”

Hermione glanced down into the dirty water in the basin, the sunlight reflecting off the surface. She wondered if places of natural magic kept the Inferi away, but then she remembered the Abbey.

“Her name was Evaine?”

Viktor nodded, and turned his eyes to the lawn outside the window. Hermione followed his gaze, seeing there was a mound of freshly disturbed grass and soil. Evaine Krum was buried just outside. Hermione stilled her beating heart, pushing sentiment aside.

Ludo Bagman, the once famed Beater of the Wimbourne Wasps, had been under the Imperius. Hermione did not doubt Viktor’s words. Viktor knew very well what the Imperius was like after the Tri-Wizard Tournament so many years before. However, the most important question—who was controlling Bagman? How many times had he cast the Holokauston Curse? Where was Bagman now? More importantly, how did Viktor and his wife survive such a lethal Curse?

The last question made Hermione speak again.

“This Curse, Grindelwald designed specifically for Muggles?”

Viktor shook his head, his shaggy hair falling about his shoulders. “It kills everything. Muggles and vizards, that is vot ve could not understand. I vas taught that nothing vas immune from the Holokauston. Evaine thought perhaps I vas taught wrong. Perhaps I vas.”

“And whoever was controlling Ludo knew this Curse…” Hermione whispered to herself.

Viktor moved to sit next to Hermione again, taking her hands into his. Hermione bit her bottom lip and leaned against Viktor whose body was warming than the sun shining through the window.

“It must be a vizard controlling it all, a powerful vizard.”

Hermione agreed, but added: “Or wizards. I somehow cannot imagine one wizard commanding legions of Inferi. And now, with what you have told me about Bagman, it is hard to believe that this is work of one person.”

Viktor shrugged. “Perhaps. I am more concerned vith vhy.”

Hermione shook her head, “I’m more concerned about surviving, getting to Hogwarts.”

Viktor frowned. “If you vere in Glastonbury, vhy did you come here, south?”

Hermione hesitated. She knew that she could not explain herself that would seem in any way logical. However, she knew that she would have to try for Viktor’s sake, if she wanted Viktor to come with her.

“You’ll think I amcrazy, Viktor.”

For the first time since being rescued, Viktor grinned. “As long as you are alive, Her-my-nee, I really do not care.”

Hermione smiled, but let it fade.

“I had a feeling. I had a feeling that I needed to come here.”

Viktor’s grin also faded. “Vot do you mean?”

Hermione sighed. “Something called me here. Maybe it was you, I don’t know.”

Viktor released Hermione’s hands and glanced out the window to the lawn again. Hermione wondered if what she had said had somehow upset Viktor, but when she found herself in his embrace, she knew she was wrong.

“Think of this, Her-my-nee. You are the first magical person I have seen since…” he trailed, unable to think of how to phrase the end of their world. “Maybe magic calls to magic.”

Hermione did not speak. It was a simple explanation, and she knew that it was perhaps the correct explanation. Basingstoke was a hundred or so miles away from Brighton, a distance that seemed further on foot, and less so on scooter. Hermione held to Viktor, knowing that she could not tell him about the strain of music she had heard. In a way, it did not matter, she had found something in Brighton, someone. She had found a friend.



TBC...