Initiation
Thebes, Greece, ca. 400 BC
Two years after the rift
As she forged alone through the punishing thickets that sprawled up Mount Kithaironas, Hermione Granger felt herself rapidly losing control. She remembered how Draco Malfoy had jokingly cautioned her against becoming a Maenad, giving into the mountain’s influence and yielding her rational mind to a hurricane of feminine rage and ecstasy. She had rolled her eyes and dismissed it. But as she raced uphill and the mountain’s thorny shrubs jabbed and sliced her, the irritation she felt seemed greater than could be explained by her injuries alone.
Shaking her head, she tried to snap back to her deliberate, patient self. The task at hand would require it. But her aggravated emotions were durable, and lingered under the surface. She wished that Draco was still with her, that they hadn’t split up. Her only remaining ally, the sliver of sun still visible over the western horizon, would soon depart.
She was out of breath. Her thoughts came in fragments, as if powered by her lungs. Alone now. Concentrate on the search. If only we knew what we were looking for.
Hermione climbed higher and the light rain turned to snow. She paused to lift the hood of her wool cloak over her tangle of hair. When her hand brushed the back of her neck, she paused, worried. Why is my skin so hot? As she gained altitude, the emotions flickering through her limbic system morphed from irritation into something more twisted—wild, primal feelings that were difficult for her to place. She could feel a deep magic in the mountain. She feared it.
A week earlier, Hermione and Draco had stood in an Athenian amphitheater, captivated by a play. The city was overrun by revelers celebrating the spring festival for Dionysus: Greeks and foreigners alike dancing with fire, drinking wine, and singing. She had been trying to goad Draco into joining in, chastising him for being an uptight, snobby rich boy, when the scene quieted and a voice echoed from the orchestra to announce the first act.
They watched as a tall young man made his way down from the audience to the orchestra. His stride was easy, patient. His blond hair flowed behind him, coming to life in the spring breeze and catching the light of the festival’s lanterns. At the bottom of the stairs, he walked across the inner circle to the skene, a small structure decorated to represent some royal palace. He reached one arm to the roof and pulled himself up, settling into a relaxed perch, his legs casually crossed at the ankles. Hermione took in a sharp breath as he turned and made visible his mask, a smiling Thalia that conveyed both joy and menace. She felt Draco lean in to whisper, “If that man is a Muggle, I’m a bloody Weasley.” She brushed him off absentmindedly, staring intently at the mysterious actor.
The actor began to speak and the audience fell silent. Hermione and Draco were hopeless to understand the ancient Greek, but his intent was clear: I am a wrathful god. My enemies will be made to suffer.
A chorus of boys, no older than teenagers, emerged from the left side of the skene. Adorned with furs and skins, flowing linens of magenta and indigo, and masks with wild hair and exaggerated feminine eyes and lips, they moved fluidly to their marks. Hermione, with a spark of recognition, blurted out, “I know this play!”
Draco frowned. “It’s thousands of years old and not even in English, how can you know it?”
“The chorus! They’re supposed to be female worshipers of Dionysus from a foreign land. It has to be!”
“Ok, has to be what?”
Her head was suddenly spinning, as stray memories started snapping into place. “The Bacchae! Dumbledore assigned it as reading before the rift and I never understood why. We never even had the chance to cover it in class.”
He looked from her to the actor commanding the stage, nodding slowly. His eyes narrowed. “So three years ago, Dumbledore just knew we’d eventually get blasted back to Ancient Greece? That’s just bloody typical, isn’t it? The rift was probably his grand plan all along…” He trailed off, exasperated.
Hermione only smiled, a thought occurring. Draco noticed and started to say something indignant, but she cut him off. “Nevermind Dumbledore for now. We need to find out why this play is important, and what…” She trailed off, looking at the tall actor’s mask, and the painted eyes that seemed to point directly at her as he spoke from the orchestra. She blinked and cleared her throat. “And what he has to do with this whole situation.”
Draco nodded. He gestured at the chorus, now dancing towards the other side of the stage. “What’s going on, then?”
“Bacchae is about Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy,” she explained. Draco raised an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes and continued, “He was born to a Theban noblewoman and Zeus, but his mother died and no one in her family believed her or that Dionysus was a god. This makes him angry, so he returns to flaunt his power and compel Thebes to worship him. He poses as one of his own followers and brings a chorus of women to support him.” Hermione glanced over and caught Draco’s expression of agonizing boredom.
“This is important,” she huffed. He blinked and waved a hand in front of his face, like he was shooing a bug.
“Sorry, do carry on. It’s just a reflex.”
“That’s worse!”
“Sorry.”
She scowled and continued. “He exacts his revenge by whipping all the women in town into a frenzy, sending them up to the mountain…” She paused to point to Mount Kilthaironas, sitting placidly to the northeast. “…where they live independently, hunting big game with their bare hands, and reveling in the god’s name.”
He nodded again, mulling it over. “So he makes the men’s greatest fears into reality.”
“Exactly. He turns them against each other.”
“And eventually the women kill the men with the powers endowed to them by their god?”
“Sort of. Pentheus, the young, reckless king, wants to send his army up the mountain to regain control over the women by force. But Dionysus exploits his latent perversion and tricks him into going alone to spy on the women. Then his own mother murders him, blinded by madness.”
Draco raised his eyebrows, seemingly impressed by the god’s devious plot. “Sounds like he deserved it.”
Hermione pursed her lips and shook her head grimly, still looking down at the actors. “He deserved something. No one deserves that.”
“Nonsense. The true power in that world is there,” Draco insisted, pointing at the masked man. “He sets the price of arrogance. And what is more arrogant than to wage war on a god?”
Hermione glanced sideways at him, annoyed. “Do you think that’s what Voldemort wanted your parents to think about him?” Immediately, she regretted saying it, and braced for him to snap back at her or storm off. Instead, his gaze grew distant and his face relaxed into an expression of curiosity.
“Yeah. That’s what he wanted everyone to think.” He lowered his head. “And my father did. But not my mother. She saw that Voldemort was just a man.”
Hermione was surprised to hear Voldemort’s name from Draco’s lips. She nodded. “Just a man.” She looked back down to the orchestra, where the mirthful eyes of the enigmatic Thalia waited patiently for her.
An ancient hawthorn tree loomed over Hermione as she struggled to pull herself to the ledge it stood on. Her cloak was dusted in snow and she gasped for air. Bracing her hands on the roots protruding from the dirt wall, she pushed up and tumbled over the edge, rolling down towards the tree’s hollow. Her head came down hard on a gnarled root. She heard a shriek and realized it was hers, her lungs suddenly painfully empty and unable to expand. The wind quieted. The mountain was still, waiting.
Hermione sat up and groaned, clutching the back of her head with one hand. When she opened her eyes, the scenery rocked violently back and forth, and she clenched them shut again. Everything was spinning out of control, and she suddenly ached with loneliness. Her friends and family wouldn’t be born for thousands of years. No, she thought, correcting herself. If we fail, they’ll never even be born at all. She pulled her knees to her chest and, for a moment, surrendered her concentration to the incessant, frantic thudding of her heart. She just needed a minute to catch her breath. Just a minute. A solitary raven circled overhead.
The moment passed quietly and Hermione opened her eyes again. “I can do this,” she whispered to the cold air, trying to sound convincing. Just then, she caught a flash of blond hair in a thicket a hundred paces ahead of her. She stood up and started to shout after it, “Draco!” But her voice was lost to a sudden surge of emotion. The whirlwind had returned with vengeance. It was as if all the tiny emotions in the storm had ceased to fly about randomly, and were suddenly all pushing her body in the same direction — up the mountain, up towards Draco. She was suddenly aware of the way her skin stretched taut over her muscles, wound tightly around her skeleton. A visceral dream erupted into her imagination, and she imagined herself as a sort of cosmic assembly line drone, wrapping bones with sinew and tendons and transforming lifeless bodies into human beings.
She shook the dream off, panicked. Returning to her body, Hermione found an unfamiliar strength spiraling through her limbs. She discovered she was running, no — sprinting, after Draco, without any memory of starting. What is happening to me? She slowed, recognizing one particular feeling with dread.
She stopped altogether, her face flushed. Time traveling to Ancient Greece is one thing, she thought grimly. Lusting after that stupid Slytherin toad is entirely another. Worst of all, the feeling was not entirely unfamiliar. She felt some relief that at least this time, she had the magic of Mount Kithaironas, whatever it was, to explain it. Standing in a clearing, her jaw clenched tight and eyes wide, Hermione sternly gathered herself again. She breathed in and out. Then she took one deliberate step, then another, allowing the mysterious strength to evaporate. She was in control. Whatever brought them to this mountain must be nearby.
Hermione reached the thicket at the end of the clearing and called out for her companion. A flock of nightjars had settled into the bushes and were churring noisily. The din swelled as she pushed through the dense foliage, swatting angrily at branches jutting out at eye level. Just as she felt her irritation start to boil over again, the weeds and vines dropped off to make way for a placid creek. She saw Draco off to the side, standing on the bank, and she was relieved.
“Draco! Where have you been?” She made her way towards him, carefully stepping through a tangle of vines and thorny blackberry bushes. “How did you get up here?” She stumbled over a thick root, throwing her hands out into the dirt to break her fall.
Draco’s head turned slowly, seemingly amused. Only — it wasn’t who she thought it was at all. On the man’s face, Hermione recognized with dread the smiling Thalia mask from the Bacchae. She shot up to her feet and drew her wand, waiting for him to speak or move. The twisted smile on his face looked… amused? She wasn’t sure. None of it made any sense.
She was contemplating whether to strike pre-emptively when he spoke to her, with a soft, effeminate voice, “You do not know how you live, or what you are doing, or who you are.”
Taken aback by his English, she said nothing. Then, at once, the storm inside her exploded again, causing her to cry out and double over, hands on her knees. Stronger than before, she felt alternating surges of violent rage, passion, and even ecstasy, overwhelming her loneliness and terror. But the surging tide lifting all those emotions to the surface was a desperate sensation to yield—not to the stranger in the mask, but the mountain. His mountain. To scream, violently, and then to melt into the earth, releasing all her fear and control. To attack the stranger, and embrace him deeply. To tear his arms from his body, and worship them. Her hands started to shake badly, and her wand slipped to the ground. The mask tilted down, following it.
She looked up and opened her mouth. "You," she started, as the emotions rising in her throat threatened to escape. She shoved them down again. "You brought us here. Who are you?"
After a moment, the stranger raised his head and said, "I am as I appear. An initiate of Dionysus." His voice was so soft, if he had been an inch farther away, she could not have heard him.
Hermione’s swirl of emotions was suddenly imbued with an indigo streak of dread. A joyful, intoxicating, beckoning dread. She remembered the play. There was never an initiate—Dionysus himself only posed as one to inflict terror on his enemies. She took a breath, internally clambering for a handhold on reality. She mustered a shred of defiance to pose one last question to the stranger. But she was afraid she already knew the answer to her question — she had seen it on the page. Dumbledore had told her to read it. “And where is your god?"
The smile on the stranger’s mask seemed to grow. “He is where I am, but you, being impious, do not see him." This time, his voice boomed across the mountain, but she simultaneously felt the words drift from the air and crawl over her skin, settling in her ears like whispers. Hermione’s knees fell to the ground with a painful thud, and it now took her full concentration to avoid succumbing to the frenetic maelstrom of despair and ecstasy.
Through his mask, she felt the stranger's gaze on her forehead, pushing into her mind as if it were wet sand. She frantically searched for memories, whether to hide her deepest thoughts or offer them up she couldn't tell. Then, a sharp image formed in her mind of herself, laying a flowering grapevine next to a fire at a shrine in Thebes. The shrine was for Semele, Dionysus's mother. It wasn’t a memory — Hermione had never been there. Puzzled, she looked up at the stranger, desperate that he would be satisfied nonetheless.
To her immense relief, the chaos finally relented. A nightjar vacated its branch and the rest of the flock followed, allowing silence to return to the mountain. A single cricket chirped once, then fell silent, seemingly self-conscious. Hermione was breathing heavily. The threatening grin of the Thalia softened somehow, and the stranger whispered, "The shrine of Cadmus’s daughter, which now I have covered all around with the cluster-bearing grapevine..."
Her eyes locked with those of the mask, Hermione felt a sudden certainty that the stranger would dissolve into the night air as soon as she looked away. She searched for words but found none. At last, he spoke to her a final time, “You are not yet ready. But, you will be. And when you are…” He brought his gently closed hand to his chest in an earnest gesture. “You may be the greatest of them all.”
Hermione said nothing, staring up defiantly, fighting the urge to cower. When at last his stare became unbearable, she looked down and picked up her wand, feeling his presence evaporate. The slender vine wood in her hand felt like a lifeless, useless twig in the shadow of the mountain. Greatest of them all? I might as well be a Muggle here, she thought.
She gathered herself and walked towards the bank where the stranger had been standing. There were no marks, no evidence at all that a person had ever stood where she had seen the actor stand only moments before. She looked up across the stream, and spotted a small stone arch in the underbrush where the stranger had been looking. She started towards it, trying to shake off the intensity of the actor’s magic.
Beyond the arch was a small clearing, tucked between two foreboding cliffs. The moon was barely peeking through the clouds, and Hermione caught a glimpse of a metallic flash at the base of the cliffs. She ran through the knee-high grass to get closer. The sharp rocks opened up at the end of the clearing, revealing what looked like a shallow cave, protecting its inner wall from prying eyes on all sides. Hermione walked into the dim cavern, bringing into view a strange, enormous object. She gawked, disbelieving her eyes.
She recognized it immediately from Dumbledore’s reading assignments, but it made no sense. And yet, there it was, the only plausible explanation for why they might have been sent to antiquity. There could certainly be no mistake about what it was.
“Hermione! Are you in there?” She turned to see Draco’s head peek around the stone wall, his face wearing an expression of concern. He swiftly traded it for a familiar one of smug annoyance when he caught her eye. “Oh good. I was worried I might find you naked, gnawing on a gazelle or something else equally unseem- oof!” He grunted as she squeezed his ribcage with both arms, relieved beyond reason to see the Slytherin boy again. His cheeks went pink and he pushed her off, forcing a grimace of indignation.
“You absolute git. You missed everything!” she scolded. Replaying what he had said, she hastily added on, “And if you ever even think about me naked, I’ll hex you into oblivion!” For a moment, her mind flashed back to the episode in the clearing, unconsciously running after what she thought was Draco, heart pounding with desire. Horrified, she quickly jerked her focus to the present again. He started to retort when he finally saw what she had found. “Merlin’s beard… what is that thing?”
There on Mount Kithaironas, towering over ancient Thebes, more than two thousand years prior to the invention of mass steel production, a glittering stainless steel cylinder stretched horizontally across the cavern’s inner wall, easily over sixty feet long. It protruded from the wall itself, as if the mountain had grown around it, and huge fingers of stone wrapped around parts of it like a hand wielding a sword.
Hermione gestured towards the middle and they walked closer to get a better look, marveling in silence. Over two thousand years and five thousand miles removed from the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence, the young witch and wizard puzzled over a strange symbol painted onto the contraption — an American flag, with no fewer than all fifty stars.
“It’s called a Saturn V,” she finally replied. “It’s a rocket for sending people to the moon.”