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The trip, for the most part, has been boring. It shouldn’t be, really, but it has been so far, at least, and she hasn’t accomplished anything. Hermione sits on the edge of the boat, and the wine-dark sea stares back at her, mocking her and inviting her-- and suddenly, she’s actually kind of tempted.
Maybe.
Then-- because she can’t lose the fight just yet-- Draco Malfoy, their captain appears. His windswept hair is pale in the glittering sun, the rest of him just as pale. “Granger,” he says.
“What is it?”
“Potter talked to a dead person and now he’s saying that we’re heading towards our own death.”
“He’s kind of gone insane, hasn’t he?”
“Well, a few days with us here can do that to a guy.”
“What did he say, exactly?” inquires Hermione. “We can’t all die.”
“There are Sirens coming up ahead. We may all die.”
“Damn,” she says softly.
“Yeah.”
She looks up, frowning. “We won’t die. Get that tub of beeswax from under the deck.” Draco nods, all efficiency and a stern expression. She’s got a plan, and it’s going to work.
Hermione sighs and looks down at the wine dark sea. “We won’t die?” she says, but it’s a question now, a question that can only be answered by Fate or future. She’s rather doubtful that Fate would be happy to divulge that information. They’ll have to wait for the future. That’s when she starts to think out loud, or perhaps it can be called talking to herself. “We can’t die. We haven’t done anything yet. Not really.” The ocean hisses back at her. Hermione frowns, not expecting an answer. “I can’t die-- not yet. I haven’t done anything. And I-- I need to.”
She knows her answer now. She has to listen to the Sirens, come back different than when she started. They’ll make her different, make her special and unique. Gods, she wants to hear them so badly. The wanting, the ache is starting to pull on her, tug her to the water like the ropes Draco is bringing up from under the deck. Hermione groans, tries to forget about the night years ago, when she first heard the water call to her through the hollows of a pearly conch, and she tries to stop the sounds rolling through her. But gods, it’s so hard.
Draco returns, looking sheepish with a large tub of beeswax in hand, and he sets it down and waits for her to start talking. “Shove that in your ears when we get close,” she says. “It’ll block the sound.”
“What about you?” he asks curiously.
She grins, and it’s a nearly feral grin, one with teeth. Hermione has to remind herself that she has claws, not fangs. “Tie me to the mast,” she responds. “I want to hear them.”
He looks at her with alarm. “Really? I’ll have Potter do that. You can’t sue him for damages, I don’t think.”
Hermione nods. “Sure. Just get yourselves ready. And bring the rope.”
Malfoy does exactly that, and she stands against the mast, getting ready to be tied down the for the once and only time in her life-- so she is. Harry does it, and it’s odd, not being able to move. Her breath is the beat of a hummingbird’s wings; fast and unsteady in her chest, while she can feel each beat of her heart in her throat. It steadies when she starts to listen to the ocean, smooth and aquamarine and cool against her heart. The rope chafes her skin, but she ignores it for now.
That’s when the sirens first start singing.
She closes her eyes and starts listening-- and gods. The sirens sound like--
The sirens sound like if ice and Euterpe got married and had a small child that ate nothing but honeysuckle and purchased the souls of other small children to eat with their honeysuckle meals or possibly burn in ancient sacrificial rites.
They’re perfect in a way that’s absolutely wrong. They’re beautiful in a way that can’t possibly be real. In fact, Hermione is almost certain they aren’t real-- so she opens her eyes.
She opens her eyes, and everything start to hurt-- the sounds become real, they swallow her, and her head starts to pound in the same way the ocean does. She opens her eyes, and everything comes into focus, colors sharper and clearer, lines drawn where there weren’t before. She opens her eyes, and she sees cities burning at her feet.
And suddenly-- Hermione’s certain that this can be the only thing that can be real; the only thing that exists, the burning cities and nothing between them and her. The flames are so beautiful, blazing crimson and canary, and she wants to touch them, feel the lick of the fire on her own fingers and make sure that there’s nothing left in the ashes on the ground.
She wants everything to burn.
That’s when the tears start coming in hot, short, angry bursts-- she starts tugging on the ropes, pulling and tearing at them even though she’s fucking helpless, she’s trapped. That will not do, no, no, no. There has got to be some way she can get out of the ropes that are climbing over her body like a thousand serpents that want to strangle her in her sleep.
Yes, there is.
Hermione lets out a sigh of relief when she senses the cool burn of steel against her leg, calming her rope-burnt skin. She has to get out, see the flames and monsters that have suddenly made their appearance among the burning buildings, free herself, free the demons that reside beneath her skin and make her want to--
Jump.
She fights it, tugs and pulls at the ropes to give her the knife, so she can rush over to the fallible gods and beautiful monsters, perfection and disgrace, martyrdom and a pointless death. The ropes come through, and they hand it to her, though it feels like grey-eyed Athena is smirking at her. Hermione doesn’t care.
She cuts herself free and jumps.
She runs to the side and jumps.
She sits on the edge and jumps.
Every step is a jump, right now, and it doesn’t matter if she makes it or not, because the jumping, not the falling or where she’ll land are what matter.
Hermione Granger jumps.
She tries to swim; starts to swim, and it’s hard, with the currents that swirl around her and feel like suffocation and she nearly drowns-- oh, but then she doesn't and it’s terrifying and cold and she wants it to stop and go and continue all at once. The ebb and flow of the water isn't stopping, is dragging her towards the sounds like glass that want to break her and shatter and suffocate her. She lets herself flow away, loses herself to the movement of the ocean and the sounds of the sirens-- until she remembers she cannot, cannot let herself be the victim. Hermione keeps swimming and--
She hits her head on a rock.
It hurts a lot, at first. Then it hurts a little bit less. That’s because her brains are smeared all over the sharp brown rocks, mossy and slick, yet apparently still jagged enough to cut her head open. She can’t feel a thing now. The numbness is the worst part; knowing that she’s going to die-- that she’s dying, and not feeling a single thing. Heroes should feel something while they’re dying. It’s part of the pact.
Hermione looks up, because if she can’t feel something like a good guy, then she should be able to see something, like her life flashing before her eyes, or something. It doesn’t feel right, to die like this, defeated by a rock, especially since she’s done everything right-- she was steadfast and loyal, filled with valour and the right mix of crimson and gold, she fought monsters with her wits and won-- so yeah, she should get something a little bit special. But she doesn’t.
No, when Hermione Granger looks up for what should be the last time, she sees dreams. Terrible dreams, maybe even nightmares, but still. Dreams. In her dreams--
In her dreams, there’s a man sculpted out of the purest of marble, unattainable, gorgeous, and perfect in the glittering sun. In her dreams, there’s a locket, floating just out of reach, heavy and gold, with an unknown crest on the front. In her dreams, there’s a city, razed to the ground and set down at her feet.
In her dreams, there’s a monster.
She wants them all.
Maybe the man wasn’t quite a dream, though, because he’s standing right over her, flawless marble on brown rock. Hermione looks into his eyes, not believing, not wanting to disbelieve because then-- because then he’d go poof off into the air-- this impeccable specimen of siren-hood, and she would really prefer that not to happen.
So. Hermione Granger makes the conscious choice to believe.
That’s what keeps her alive.
###
He looks at her, the nearly dead girl that’s just washed up on his rock. Her brains happen to be getting a mess on his feet and the rock, but she dreamed up the monsters, and the monsters have come, so he decides to keep her. Upon further contemplation, she’s also objectively very pretty, and her eyes have the same wine-dark sea in them that he recognizes from the times he’s used the water as a mirror that gives back his reflections like the boy that punches his friend, hard.
Her eyes have the sea in them.
Tom Riddle contemplates that for a second, until he realizes that said wine-dark sea eyes are beginning to get a bit glassy. He has to make a choice. Right now.
He will be keeping her.
So he kisses her, swift and hard, a kiss that claims and a kiss that bites, a kiss that means something, and he doesn’t know what, yet, but even still. Even still, Tom Riddle is on a grey rock in the middle of an indigo sea kissing a very nearly dead girl. He knows what it means now.
He considers her now, lying prone on a rock, not dead. Her song had been different, so different from anything he’d sung in so, so long, and she’d fought so hard to listen and still stay away from him. His grin is all teeth, sharp white incisors in bright contrast with carmine lips, feral. No one can stay away from him. Tom gets them all in the end.