The Flight
They apparate to Heathrow airport Friday afternoon. The remaining Weasleys all stand around the kitchen to say goodbye, giving out back pats and hugs and, in Mrs. Weasley’s case, a tin of sandwiches for the journey.
Even Ron gives Hermione a grudging goodbye, wrapping an arm tightly around her shoulders and whispering “just come home safe, please,” into her hair. Hermione’s stomach clenches at this, and it only releases when Harry gives her a short one-armed hug and says the same.
Before she has time to fully grapple with where she is going, what she plans to do, or the fact that both Harry and Ron look rather worried, she feels George tugging her out to the yard.
“Don’t want to be late for the airplane,” he says sagely as he holds his arm out.
Hermione slings the knapsack holding half of their belongings around her shoulders before taking the proffered arm. With one last look at the Burrow, she turns on the spot and feels the grass fall away from her feet.
They land at the corner of the car drop-off, both wobbling slightly as their feet make contact with the pavement. Hermione cranes her neck to be sure nobody has seen them, and turns toward the terminal.
“All right, Granger?” George asks beside her, smoothing his shirt.
“Just fine.” She jerks her head toward the terminal entrance and beckons him to follow her.
“You’ll have to follow me and do what I do until we’re at the gate,” she whispers to George as they walk through the entrance. “Try to look natural and not ask too many questions.”
She swivels her head for a moment before locating the sign for check-in. “Right,” she says, taking George’s elbow, “this way.”
He meanders quietly beside her, eyes slightly wide as he takes in his surroundings. “Wow,” he says, “so this is how muggles can fly without magic?”
“Mhm,” Hermione murmurs absently, digging her muggle notebook out of the knapsack and entering their passenger identification numbers into the check-in machine.
George peers over her shoulder, and jumps back with a soft cry as the machine spits out their boarding passes. “Merlin, Dad would love it here. They’ve got all the funny composters and everything.”
“They’re called computers, and hush before someone hears you.” Hermione retrieves the two boarding passes from the machine and clamps a hand on his elbow again, steering him toward the terminal. She stops before a large sign with the gate information, holding the boarding pass in front of her. “Let me see…gate A18. Follow me.”
They trot through the airport, Hermione’s grip on George’s elbow loosening as they go. “It shouldn’t be too much further,” she mutters. “I tried to apparate us close enough to the right concourse that we wouldn’t need to take the tram.”
“The tram?”
“Never mind.”
“Remind me again why we’re flying like muggles today?” George asks, his head whipping around as people shuffle past them on all sides, more than one passerby doing a doubletake to gawk at the hole where his ear should be. “This seems like a lot of a bother just to get somewhere.”
“It seemed like the best option,” Hermione shrugs. “No risk of being seen or breaking the Statute of Secrecy. And in case you don’t remember, I don’t much fancy flying on a broomstick.” She shudders. “Especially not over an ocean.”
“So we’re just trusting that muggles can fly long enough to get to Australia?” She can hear the skepticism in his voice.
“Muggles have been flying for decades,” she says. “Give them some credit.”
“I’m just saying,” George murmurs, “they go places in cars. I don’t know if they’re the ones that I would be–”
“Are you going to talk like this the entire way there?”
“Maybe.” George’s mouth twists in a tight smile. “Would you rather I sing?”
“Absolutely not.” Hermione sighs and steers them to the left. “I just don’t know if I can stand twenty-four hours of this.”
George balks. “This is going to take twenty-four hours?”
“Yes. They’re airplanes, not magic, remember?”
“Merlin,” George sighs, the grimace sliding off his face as he shakes his head. “I dunno how these muggles get anything done.”
“They’re not stuck listening to you talk shite so they all just have loads of free time, I think.”
He raises his eyebrows and turns to look at her. “Ha. That was funny, Granger.”
Hermione rolls her eyes and bites back a smile. “I try.”
At last they arrive at gate A18, all the way at the end of the concourse. Hermione breathes a sigh of relief as she sinks into one of the available seats, pulling the knapsack onto her lap.
“So,” George says, looking around, “we just sit here and the seats move? Or does the whole building fly?”
“What?” Hermione turns and stares at him.
George gestures to the seat. “How do they work?”
Hermione puts a hand to her forehead, wondering bleakly if bringing him along was a truly terrible idea. She might have even preferred Ron at the moment.
“These seats don’t fly,” she says with as much patience and grace as she can muster. “This is just a waiting area. When they call us, we’ll board the actual airplane and that will fly.”
“Oh.” George swivels in his seat, looking around the gate with renewed interest. “And so how do they get the airplane in the air if they don’t use magic?”
Hermione shrugs. “Physics, I suppose.”
George’s forehead crinkles. “What’s physics?”
“Muggle science,” Hermione explains, leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. “To study things like how things move and how energy is created.”
“And?”
She opens one eye and glares at him. George sits beside her with his hands folded in his lap, looking at her expectantly.
“And what?”
He throws his hands up. “How do things move and how is energy created, Granger? At least according to muggles.”
Hermione rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. I never took physics since it’s covered in secondary school and I was already at Hogwarts by then.”
“So you don’t know how this airplane is going to fly us all the way to Australia?”
“No.” She fixes him with a lofty look and purses her lips. “Now would you stop asking questions like that before someone hears you?”
George’s face goes slightly slack. “So—” he looks over his shoulder and leans closer before whispering, “if it’s not with magic, how do you know that this thing will actually get us to Australia?”
“I told you before,” Hermione replies at normal volume. “People have been flying like this for thirty years. We’ll be fine. Now will you please let me get some rest before it’s time for us to board?”
George does not let her rest. He pesters her with questions all the way through boarding, hardly even pausing as he hands the gate agent his charmed passport. Hermione holds her breath at this, but the agent’s eyes glaze over as he scans the charmed paper, and he lets them through without comment.
By the time they take their seats in the airplane, Hermione rather regrets allowing George to come along at all.
“What is this for?” he asks, dropping into the window seat and eyeing the seatbelt.
“You put it across your lap like this,” Hermione demonstrates with her own, “and click it into place, and it’s supposed to keep you safe if something happens.”
George frowns and clicks the seatbelt into place before turning back to Hermione. “I thought you said these airplane things are safe.”
“They are,” she sighs. “It’s just a precaution.”
Their rowmate, a very tired looking man holding an overstuffed duffel bag, lumbers to the row and drops into the aisle seat. He gives a short, hurried nod to George and Hermione before sitting down, and promptly closes his eyes.
George peers across Hermione at the man. “Now how in the name of Merlin am I supposed to get out of here to go to the loo?”
Thankfully, the flight attendant chooses that moment to come over the intercom and welcome them all to the flight.
“Wow,” George says, looking up above him as the attendant’s voice rings through the plane. “How do they do that?”
Hermione shrugs. “It’s some sort of microphone.”
“Microphone?”
Hermione glances over her shoulder at the man next to her and ducks her head to whisper to George. “A tool they have to amplify voices.”
With a small jolt, the plane begins to taxi on the runway. Hermione leans back in her seat and settles her arm across the arm rest between her and George. With her foot, she gently taps the knapsack tucked safely beneath the seat in front of her.
Beside her, George stares out the window. “How do they get it off the ground?” he asks softly as the brightly-colored lines of the runway pass beneath them.
Hermione leans around him to get a better look. “They’ll start moving the plane like they’re doing now,” she explains, “only it will go much faster, and when it gets to be fast enough they’ll tilt the wheels up and the air underneath them will be moving fast enough to make it fly.”
George turns and raises an eyebrow. “All on its own?”
Hermione nods. “All on its own.”
As if on cue the engines suddenly roar to life and George sits back in his seat, though his eyes remain glued to the window. The plane lurches back slightly and then begins to move forward, going faster and faster until Hermione feels the weightless sensation of the wheels lifting off the ground.
Beside her, George lets out a stifled cry, his hand coming to clutch Hermione’s forearm. “Is it—” he looks wildly out the window, “is this what it’s supposed to feel like?”
“Yes.” Hermione nods, choosing not to comment on the vice-like grip he has on her arm. “There might be a little turbulence at first as they get up to the right altitude—”
“What happens if there’s trouble?” George glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “If the airplane gets knocked down or something? I don’t think I’d have time to get my broom out of the bag.”
“That won’t happen.”
“But if it does?”
“It won’t.”
“But suppose something does—”
“Jesus Christ,” Hermione mutters under her breath. “Nothing is going to happen, George, alright? Just try to relax. We’re in here for the next seven hours.”
“I thought you said it would be twenty-four?”
“This is just the first flight,” Hermione sighs, leaning back against her headrest. “We’ll have a layover in Dubai where we change planes and that flight will take us the rest of the way.”
George grumbles something about a broomstick but then closes his mouth. The fingers clamped around her forearm relax slightly, and then retract.
Hermione sinks into her seat, closing her eyes and wondering if she has any hope of sleeping before they land.
Sleep does not come, but Hermione settles into the rigid comforts of the plane. It feels nice, nostalgic even, to be in an airplane again. She hasn’t set foot in one since she was thirteen and her family traveled to France for a summer holiday. After a year of sleeping in a tent and traveling via dragonback or apparition, it feels almost luxurious to be able to sit back on a cloth-covered seat and close her eyes for half a day, knowing someone else will get her where she must go.
Hermione listens as the plane sails higher in the sky, the gentle rumblings making it known that all was working as it should. Much to her relief, their row-mate seems to fall asleep as soon as they reach cruising altitude, his round head lolling gracelessly into the aisleway.
George, for his part, seems content to stare out the window and marvel at the clouds below them.
“I’ve never been this high on a broom,” he murmurs to Hermione, nodding to the sky. “We tried once, me and—at home one summer.”
His face takes on a far-off look, eyes gazing past Hermione at nothing. “We got up maybe two hundred meters and then I sneezed and fell off my broom. Had to turn my jumper into a parachute. Mum nearly had a fit when she heard us land on the attic roof.” He gives a soft chuckle at this, still staring past her.
Hermione feels the edges of her mouth curl up. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”
George pauses, his eyes now homing in on her face. Hermione freezes, realizing what she said. “I’m sorry—”
George shrugs. “Funny enough, that didn’t even occur to us as a possible outcome until Mum started yelling.”
He turns back to look out the window. His voice shifts, a forced lightness coming through. “It was the most fun I ever had falling off a broom, though. I might have to try it again when we get back just for the thrill.”
He falls silent. Hermione bites her lip and doesn’t reply.
George watches the cloud for another moment, and then looks over his shoulder, eyebrows furrowed.
“You’re quiet.” It sounds like an accusation.
Hermione frowns. “I don’t have anything to say.”
He stares at her, his eyes once again sliding from her face to some far-off sight that she cannot see. “Everyone’s always quiet now,” he mutters, scowling as he again turns away from her. “Everything’s too bloody quiet.”
Hermione doesn’t know what to say to that. Her chest contracts, and she searches the corners of her mind for a proper response but finds nothing, so she fishes a book out of her knapsack, sits back in her seat, and begins to read.
It occurs to her too late that George Weasley is probably not used to quiet. While she has grown up spending much of her time either alone or with adults who would rather read than talk, he has spent his whole life with his brother. She remembers the ruckus that used to follow the two of them everywhere, boisterous laughter and jaunty cheers and pops and yells. They used to drive her mad, filling every space they entered with chatter and noise.
She glances over her shoulder, trying to move as slowly as possible so George won’t see her looking. The tray in front of him has been lowered, and he leans over it, elbow digging into the pebbled plastic with his chin propped firmly in his freckled hand. She cannot see his face, but if she had to guess she would say he is gazing distractedly into the sky, thinking again about a broomstick ride he and Fred took that should have ended in disaster but somehow didn’t.
As they hurtle through the sky towards the other end of the world the interior of the plane shifts and bends into the strange liminal space that only becomes known when one is traveling between places and time zones. The cabin lights dim and all around Hermione passengers close their window shades and snuggle into their narrow seats in an attempt to get some rest before they touch down into their real lives again.
Under the glow of an overhead light, Hermione reads. Her head has begun to hurt and the words seem to pulse on the page in front of her, but she tells herself to focus, to take it one word at a time. She goes back to the beginning of the paragraph and starts again, hoping she will absorb some of the meaning this time around.
It’s no use. She reads the paragraph a third time, but her brain feels like a skipping record, always going back to the same line.
She listens to the gentle rhythmic breathing of George to her right, slumped against the window, and the whistling snores of the man on her left. She shifts slightly in her seat, exhaling when she feels the seatbelt dig into the soft flesh of her stomach.
She lets the book fall closed in her lap as she leans her head back and closes her eyes, thinking of the Hogwarts library. She misses the bookshelves, the dim glow of the sconces, and the ever-present smell of parchment. She misses it almost as much as she misses her parents, can feel the yearning flicker through her chest like a flame. What she would give to spend just one more afternoon amidst the books, to be nothing more than a student enclosed in a fortressed castle. What a joy it would be to have professors down the corridor, giving direction and upholding order.
Order. The world needs more order.
Hermione turns her head to the side, facing the window. It feels heavy, this head of hers, so full of thoughts and images and sounds that won’t be quieted. Even now, tired as she is, dark and dreamy as the cabin remains, she can feel sleep dancing just at the edge of her mind, unwilling to envelop her.
The images roll through her head unbidden as she sinks deeper into her stupor.
The Order. There is the Order at Grimmauld Place: Sirius and Lupin and Mrs. Weasley and Mr. Weasley and Snape and McGonagall. They are talking, planning. Lupin is smiling. He looks up, and Hermione tries to scream, to warn him. Run! Only the words won’t come, and the scene is changing, morphing into something darker. The walls of Grimmauld Place turn to stone towers and begin crumbling, tumbling down around them, raining onto the bodies below, which seem to have multiplied tenfold. Hermione feels her chest constrict, she can barely breathe as Antonin Dolohov appears, face twisting in glee as Remus Lupin falls to the ground.
Everywhere she turns there is horror, screams ringing, echoing against the crumbling walls. She opens her mouth to shout, to try to save them, but she can’t—she can’t—
“Hermione. Hermione.”
She wakes with a start and whips her head around, the seatbelt straining against her lap. Slowly, the airplane cabin comes into focus. She runs a hand through her hair, peeling the strands off her sweaty forehead. Beside her, George removes his hand from her shoulder, his face grim.
“Sorry for waking you,” he says, tucking his hand into his lap. “You were starting to make noises. I figured—”
“Thanks.”
She takes a shaky breath in and looks down at her hands, trying to ignore the burning sensation behind her eyes.
She will not cry. She will not cry now, not in front of all these people, on an airplane with George Weasley.
If George hears her rasping breaths or sees the tears pooling in the corner of her eyes he does not show it. He simply nods and turns back to the window. He doesn’t need to say more for Hermione to guess what she had sounded like, and she doesn’t need to explain the terror she feels every time she drifts off into unconsciousness. He knows.
“What time is it?” Hermione asks, shifting in her seat and surreptitiously wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket.
“I dunno,” George shrugs, not bothering to look at his watch. “But I think we’re almost there.”
“Oh?” Hermione tilts her head. “Why’s that?”
George gestures towards the window and lifts the shade. “That looks like land,” he says.
Hermione leans over him to look out the window, and her breath catches. Amidst the expanse of bleary terrain, they are rapidly approaching the unmistakable skyline of a city.
Hermione checks her watch to see if the timing lines up. It does.
“We’re almost there,” she breathes, turning slightly to give him a wan smile. The horrible images in her mind are melting away, and she doesn’t care that she is still leaning over him as she turns back to look out the window. In less than an hour they will land and board their second, final flight.
Soon they will be in Australia, and she can begin the search for her parents in earnest.