Fanning the Flames

Additional Disclaimer: "The City in the Sea" is property of Edgar Allan Poe. I make no money or profit from this.


Tongues of flame lick at their heels. The crackle and roar of the fire is monstrous, more terrifying than anything Hermione has ever heard before. She screams, hands clutching wildly at Ron's waist as he directs the broom higher and higher still. They narrowly avoid getting nipped by a flaming raptor and Hermione chokes, the smoke and heat making her dizzy.

From somewhere below, in the centre of the fiendish fire, there is a high-pitched, keening cry. Alarmed, Hermione and Ron simultaneously crane their necks, seeking out the source of the sound. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle are teetering on a rapidly disintegrating tower of books, the firestorm intent on swallowing them up.

"Hang on!" Ron roars, and swoops down. The broom rolls to the side and Hermione leans over, pulling the unconscious Goyle up with Ron's help.

"What about me?!" Malfoy yells.

"Go back!" she cries, already leaning over to reach out for Malfoy. Above them, Harry circles, distracting the chimera that broke free from the rest of the storm.

"Grab hold of me!" Panting, Hermione flings her hand out. But Malfoy's fingers are too slick with sweat; they slide over her palm, unable to find purchase.

"No!" Stretching as much as her body allows, Hermione struggles to grasp hold of his hand.

Just then, a large column of black smoke bursts upward. The intensity of it and the heat take Hermione by surprise. That, as well as the sudden pitching of the broom as Ron tries to avoid the jets of smoke, jostles Hermione from her seat.

She plummets toward the floor and the welcoming blaze, and then there is nothing but stillness.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

"Granger. Granger. Get up."

Her head positively aching, Hermione blinks blearily. It takes her a moment to focus. When she does, when she remembers herself, she scrambles to her feet, fingers automatically seeking her wand.

Harry. Hogwarts. The diadem.

But her wand is neither in her hand or in her trouser pocket. Had she dropped it? If she had, fire surely would have consumed it.

The fire!

Wild-eyed, Hermione spins about. There is no fire. There is no sign of a fire ever having been here. There is no Harry, no Ron, no Goyle, no broomstick, no—

"Granger, whatever are you doing?"

"Malfoy?" she says slowly, turning round to face him. He had woke her. How long had she been out? "What's happened? Where is everyone? Is Hogwarts safe?"

His mouth twists up in a familiar sneer. "If you'd stop nattering on for a single second," he says, "perhaps you'd realise we've a larger issue at hand to concern ourselves with here."

Though Hermione frowns and her nostrils flare to indicate her immense displeasure with his tone, she grows silent. Thoughtful. Observant.

Around them is nothing familiar, though she cannot deny that, wherever they are, it is beautiful. It is some sort of castle, much more grand and pristine than Hogwarts ever was. The ceiling is high overhead, proudly keeping watch over activity seemingly meters below. Everything is white, gleaming. The sterility of their surroundings is peaceful and yet haunting at the same time.

"What is this place?" Her voice is hushed, awed. Reverence, Hermione senses, is necessary in these hallowed halls.

Malfoy looks over at Hermione, his grey eyes paler and more luminous than ever. "The City of Death."

"It can't be," she says automatically.

"It is."

Hermione Granger is an intelligent witch. She is perceptive, astute. She knows many things – but she does not want to know what this is, what Malfoy is implying happened to them.

A lump rises in her throat and Hermione pivots, presenting her back to Malfoy and trying to get hold of herself.

There is too much yet she must do! There are too many people depending on her! Though she had experienced a great deal in her eighteen years, she has only truly just begun to live!

I can't be dead.

"Yes, you can," Malfoy said, and Hermione gasped, not realising she had spoken aloud.

"Buck up, Mu--." Malfoy frowns, wrinkles appearing in his brow. Through her rising panic, Hermione senses Malfoy is trying to reason with himself. About what, she's no idea. "Granger. It could be worse."

"Worse?" How things could be worse than having died, Hermione hasn't the faintest notion.

"Yes." Malfoy's thin lips curve in a humourless smile. "We could be in Hell."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently —
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free —
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls —
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls —
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers —
Up many and many a marvelous shrine
Whose wreathéd friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in the air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

It might as well be Hell.

Their magic is gone, as though they had never had it at all.

The denizens of the city have no time for anyone save for themselves and for Death, Death who rules over them all from the highest tower in the town.

Death, with his gaunt, elongated countenance that looks through a soul with eyeless, blue-white sockets. Death, with his skeleton and scythe and serenity.

Hermione loathes him. She loathes this place, this city where the inhabitants speak of Death as though he were a God.

Perhaps he is, but Hermione has always been too logical to place her faith in people and beings who have given her no reason to do so.

Hermione feels lost and alone in this place, like a buoy floating aimlessly in an endless, violent sea. She is in misery and can no longer stand the vast whiteness of it all.

Malfoy, on the other hand, is clearly in his element here. He belongs, easily and effortlessly. He follows Death's every word, reveres him as many had Voldemort. Transference as a coping mechanism, Hermione thinks, but says nothing. She is, after all, nothing to Malfoy save for a reminder of him, a badge of all the things he had both lost and gained in death.

She cannot stand the sight of him, no more than she can stand the sight of herself these days.

Death has been unkind to her, moreso than the others.

The others have healthy glows about their skin. They almost seem better than they had been in life. Ethereal beauty had been bestowed upon them – and they are beautiful, so beautiful that it pains Hermione to look upon them at all.

Whereas the others are proud and beautiful, Hermione is thin and washed out. No meat sticks to her bones, no hint of life colours her complexion. Her face is narrow, her eyes devoid of the soul's essence. Her hair is now the shade of dirty water and limply frames her face.

She is Death Incarnate, would Death have deigned to look as he had in all her childhood tales.

There is nothing for her here in the city – no hope, no purpose.

No escape.

She is dead, and in death, for her, there is nothingness.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye —
Not the gaily-jeweled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass —
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea —
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

"Granger."

Hermione stares forward, unblinking as light refracts off the white pillars.

"Granger."

Nails, brittle and broken, tap against the tabletop, echoing a rhythm she had heard in another life at the wedding where their search for the Horcruxes had all began…

"Hermione."

"You said my name," she murmurs, surprised. She does not turn around.

"Would you rather I revert to Mudblood?" Draco inquires, moving to block her line of view.

Hermione looks at the centre of his chest, seeing all and nothing.

"I'd rather you leave me be."

"I need you, Granger."

She straightens, lifting her chin and finally meeting his gaze. "It's Hermione."

"Hermione. I need you, Hermione," Draco says slowly, the effort of such patience clearly etched in the lines of his face.

"I'm not daft, Malfoy."

"It's Draco. If I can manage your name, Granger, you can manage mine."

"Fine," she said tiredly. "I'm not daft, Draco. You're not here for yourself. You don't even think for yourself."

"I most certainly fucking do think for myself," he snaps.

Something about his tone stirs emotions inside Hermione that had long ago been buried. She rises to her feet, practically leaping out of her chair. Anger courses through her veins, invigorating her, she pulls back and then slaps Draco's cheek so forcefully that his head snaps to one side.

"Liar," she grounds out.

Feeling more alive than she had since the moments just before her death, Hermione pushes past Draco and runs.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He finds her hours later, standing by the well in the centre of the city square. She tries to ignore him but cannot.

Lately, Hermione has trouble focusing when Draco is around. It's because he infuriates her so, she tells herself. It's because he's the only one here from home. It's because he's the only thing that's familiar.

It's because she hates the sight of him.

It's because—because—

Because they are alike, flip sides of the same coin.

Because they are all one another truly knows here, though their knowledge is incomplete, is full of gaps.

"I need you," he says, and Hermione shudders. His breath is warm against her ear, as warm as the breath of the dead can be. She senses his close proximity, knows his chest is mere inches away from her back, knows his white-blond fringe is hanging in his eyes.

"What for?" she asks, staring hard at the limestone of the well.

"Death has a proposition for me and I can't do it alone."

"I'm not helping him."

"Then help me, Granger."

Tension settles in her shoulder blades. Her hands curl into fists. How dare he. How dare he ask Hermione for her help. How dare he presume to think she would even consider it. Why, she wouldn't even be dead if it weren't for Draco Malfoy and his daft friends. She would still be alive. Hermione would be there to help Harry and Ron, be there to know what had become of Hogwarts and all those she cared about.

"Help me, Hermione," Draco says again, softer this time.

"Help you?" she asks, nearly laughing as she faces him. "Help you! Who do you think you are?" Hysteria washes over her, drowning out all sense of right and wrong and decency. "Why should I help you, Draco? Why?"

To his credit, Draco doesn't so much as flinch at her stridency. "Because, for once, I'm asking –and I wouldn't be if I didn't need your help." He pauses, eyes rolling skyward as though the heavens can enlighten him on how to deal with her. "Do you have any idea how damned difficult it is for me to ask someone – let alone you – for that sort of thing?"

The more he speaks, the more Hermione wants to scratch his eyes out, rip out his hair, to destroy him in ways he hadn't dreamed. She may no longer have her magic but that doesn't matter. Hermione has always been a resourceful girl.

"Shut up," she says, and steps to the side in an attempt to get around him.

His hand shoots out, fingers curling around her wrist like a vise. "Don't go."

"Leave me be!" Lashing out, Hermione turns in toward him, her free hand beating at his shoulders. "Let me go!"

"Help me," Draco says again, staring down at her with a curious gleam in his eyes.

"Never," she swears, nearly crying from the frustration of it all. "You're the reason I'm dead!"

It isn't true, not entirely, but it feels true, and that is enough for Hermione. That is enough for today.

"You're not dead," Draco snarled. "Not entirely. You've just forgotten how to live."

Looking up from his hand, the one she'd just attempted to peel off from her wrist, Hermione gazes at him with wild, frantic eyes. "Oh, that's all, is it?" she says scathingly. "Then remind me, won't you?"

For a long moment, Draco stares back at her in silence, lost as the days here are long. Then he nods, almost imperceptibly and to himself, as if confirming something deep within his core.

"Stop bloody nattering," he says, and then he promptly removes the option from her, covering her mouth with his own.

His lips are cool and calculating, though there is a firmness there she hadn't expected. Incensed at both Draco and her own body, for her free hand had moved of its own accord to cling to his shoulder, Hermione does not let him take and take without giving.

Her lips are just as calculating, parting against and moving with his own. A fire, not unlike the one that had started them on this journey, begins to burn bright in her belly and Hermione welcomes the flames. His tongue seeks hers out, touching tip to tip before the muscles slide and contract. Hermione's eyes flutter shut but she is by no means not caught up in the moment, hands scrabbling against the wings of his shoulder blades, down down down until they find a way under and up. Nails rake so hard against Draco's skin that he hisses, the sensation of it against and in her mouth so delicious that she moans.

There is a moment where both pull back for breath – and it is the only moment between them that is stagnant, one that hovers on a precipice.

And then they fall together – clothing disappearing and hands and mouths exploring expanses of skin that neither would have ever dreamed of before. Bodies fit together in the most glorious and primal of ways – and the beast with two backs is much more frightening and dangerous than any they had faced in that fire.

Frightening and dangerous because they can get used to this.

And they do.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave — there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide —
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow —
The hours are breathing faint and low —
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

The immaculate whiteness of the city is slowly becoming impure.

In the distance, though not quite as far as either of them would like, there is red and orange and blue and yellow.

The colours of fire.

The colours of a Hell they had brought upon themselves.