The Fandom Games

Hermione

You would have thought that after seven years of watching fairy-tale monsters fly out of storybooks and into her reality, Hermione would have grown accustomed to seeing fantastical creatures by now. But as the Tyrannosaurus Rex unhinges its rotting jaws and bites through a tree trunk as easily as if it were a pretzel, Hermione does something she never thought possible: she misses dragons.

‘Fly, you fools!’ Legolas hisses.

Hermione is frozen. Peter glances around him, as if looking for a jetpack or a massive bird. ‘How?’

Legolas sighs. ‘Run! Just run!’ He slips into the undergrowth. Arya follows him. Peter flicks his arm, and a spiderweb shoots out of his wrist, and clings round the dinosaur’s neck. Hermione expects the T-rex to choke, or at least slow down. But the dinosaur just shakes her head, and the bulging neck muscles burst through the web, shredding it. Peter glances back, his eyes wide with panic, before sprinting after Arya and Legolas.

Hermione grabs her wand and shouts, ‘stupefy!’ The stunning spell erupts from her wand in an ice-blue blast of light. The T-rex stumbles for a second, then regains its balance, and keeps hurtling towards them. Hermione mutters a curse (the rude, non-magical kind). Peter and Arya are just blurs of red and black through the trees. Legolas has vanished altogether.

Snow White is curled up behind her bush, her face buried in her hands. Hermione groans, ‘come on,’ grabbing at her arm. Why is it her that’s left to deal with Snow White? Isn’t the point of going on this quest together that they’re supposed to be a team? She yanks Snow White to her feet and runs.

The T-rex is gaining on them far quicker than Hermione had hoped. She pushes forwards, but Snow White is dragging her back, panting like an overheating puppy. The soles of her velvet plimsoles are splitting. ‘Couldn’t you drop the shoes?’ Hermione complains, ‘How is anybody supposed to outrun a T-rex in high heels?’ If only she could apparate them out of here, but she doesn’t know anywhere in this world well enough for that to work. She lifts her gaze to the treeline. Peeping above the treeline is the tip of a triangle. When the sun catches it, the blue glass glows gold like a beacon. This must be the giant pyramid that Peter mentioned. Hermione just needs to reach there, then they’ll reach safety. The hope makes her legs feel lighter.

The dinosaur bulldozes through a dead tree. Splinters of bark rain onto Hermione’s back. Snow White squeals, her shoe catches on a root, and she tumbles down, pulling Hermione with her. The ground thuds, her vision spins, something snaps, and icy water engulfs her.

Hermione pushes her head upwards. They must have fallen over, rolled all the way down that bank and into this stream. Her hand is flecked with red cuts, stinging from the water. She kneels up and slides back onto her feet, but her right ankle screams in protest at the weight. Stabbing pains shoot up her leg. She tests it again, but the pain only doubles. Numbness is seeping across her right side.

Terrific. She’s sprained her ankle. Now, of all the times that her ankle could possibly be sprained.

She can’t see the T-Rex, but the thudding noises that echo down the river are making Hermione think that is hasn’t exactly popped off to tea. Snow White is thrashing around in the stream, displacing bucketloads of icy water and subsequently crying that her hair is wet.

‘Sh!’ Hermione hisses, ‘I read somewhere that they can only see movement.’ She seizes Snow White’s sleeve, and lies back down in the water, pressing her stomach against the riverbed. Snow White copies her, choking back sobs. Hermione supposes that the water would feel cold, if she could feel anything other than the pain clawing away at her ankle.

The earth shudders and the waters ripple. Hermione lifts her head a little. The T-rex has halted up on the bank, right where Snow White tripped. Its nostrils twitch, its eyes roll back and forth in their leathery sockets. Now its mere metres away, Hermione can really see how its legs compare to the tree trunks, how far back its tail trails behind it, how its skull would be large enough for Hermione to lie across its tongue like a corpse on a bier. Its head tips back and roars, and its breath stirs up the surface of the water like wind. Rotting flesh glistens on its yellow teeth. A currant washes over Hermione’s face. She flinches, rolling back on her ankle, and cries out. No. She bites her lip, but the noise has already escaped her mouth. The T-rex rotates its head towards them. Snow White starts singing under her breath about the joys of friendship and about not eating princesses. Hermione clasps her hand over her mouth, but it’s too late for that to make a difference now, because the T-Rex is heading towards them. It plants its foot in the water, and half the stream billows upwards. Hermione claws at the riverbank, trying to haul herself out of the water, but as the monster steps into the river another torrent floods her body. The T-rex opens its jaws.

‘Hold on, literally!’ There’s a flash of red, and Hermione grabs it, and then she’s pulled up out of the water, and soars over the yowling T-rex’s head. It snatches and bites up at Hermione’s flailing legs, but she is flying far out of its reach, among the trees. The forest floor zooms thirty metres below her feet in a blur of brown and green. She’s clinging onto Peter’s leg, who’s grinning like the Cheshire Kneazle. With one hand he holds onto a screaming Snow White, and with the other he hangs from a translucent thread. He shoots a web from his wrist, which dances upwards through the air until it sticks onto a branch of the forest canopy. He swings from it like the pendulum of a clock, gliding past twisted branches and rustling leaves and an extremely confused monkey. Hermione’s hair is whipped back from the speed.

So this is why he’s called Spider-Man. Hermione had thought that the webs were just for catching flies, or maybe very small pigeons.

Dense trees and shaded undergrowth are giving way to spindly hedges and scorched grass. Peter shoots a web straight above him, and they plummet like a broken lift. When her foot slams into the ground, another wave of pain sweeps through her. Her legs quit carrying her, and she collapses onto the grass.

‘Hermione!’ Peter bends over her. ‘Hermione, your ankle is all puffy.’

She tries to mutter, ‘oh, I hadn’t noticed,’ but her words come out as a mumble.

The glass pyramid towers behind Peter. It must have been magnificent before the glass had cracked and chunks of the concrete had crumpled and vines had woven around the walls. Hermione knows she should be excited to see it, but she can’t remember why. She only remembers rolling down that bank and the snapping sound and the pain and the pain and the pain.

The humanoid elf and the murder child are rushing out of dented doors. The big elf scoops her up in his arms, and carries her inside. It’s funny, because his heartbeat is slow and stately, like the drum in an orchestra, but Hermione’s is going thudda-thudda-thud. She is flying through the doors and a corridor with a sad-looking carpet and a room like a waiting room at a dentist’s with scritchy-scratchy sofas and dead pot plants. Poor plants. Poor ankle. The tall elf lays her down on a scritchy-scratchy sofa.

‘She will lose consciousness,’ the tall elf says, rummaging through a leather bag. ‘Look for blankets, or food!’ he barks at Spandex-Man and Murder Baby. He barks like a dog. Woof woof.

‘Woof woof,’ says Hermione.

Murder Baby places a hand on Hermione’s forehead, and laughs. ‘Gods, you have a bad reaction to shock. You’re practically delusional.’ Hermione doesn’t remember what delusional means. It sounds like a perfume advert.

Big Elf is squeezing something into her mouth from a green pouch, like a parent feeding a baby. It tastes like stripey dolly mix. ‘This will help. Lady Galadriel herself brewed this.’

Hermione waits for it to help. And it does help, because warmth is trickling through her like honey, and the poor little ankle is numbing, and for a moment her mind breaks through the fog and shouts, what is wrong with us?

Spandex-Boy is bounding up to her. ‘Mr Legolas we found a vending machine!’ He hands him a plastic water bottle. Big Elf unscrews the cap and tips the green pouch into it. The water darkens to a cosy orange. Hermione sips it, and with each gulp her ankle hurts less and her mind wakes up more. She thinks of Ron and Harry and Hogwarts and how she’s nowhere near any of them because a silly swearing unicorn man says they don’t exist and she needs to save the world but a dinosaur broke her ankle and now she is here.

‘We need to make a splint,’ Legolas decides. Peter is flitting around behind him, ransacking cupboards.

‘No,’ Hermione reaches for her wand, ‘I just need to cast talum emendo three times an hour until the bone heals.’ Peter and Arya exchange confused glances. ‘What, haven’t you two ever read The Healer’s Helpmate?’ Then Hermione sighs, because of course nobody here has read The Healer’s Helpmate. She’s as out of place here as a muggle would be at Hogwarts.

Legolas arches his eyebrows. Is he impressed? ‘Are you definite that you can heal your ankle with sorcery?’

‘Well, I’ve technically never done it before, but if I try I should be able to.’ Hermione can’t help but smile. ‘There aren’t many spells that I’ve tried and haven’t been able to do. We should be ready to continue searching for Steven Spielberg after a night.’

‘A night?’ Arya spits out her water. ‘Is this a joke?’

Legolas places a hand on her shoulder. ‘Arya…’

Arya shakes it off. ‘Sorry, but am I the only one who hasn’t forgotten why we’re here? Deadpool said the Villain in the Dark will get to the Library in three days. The sun on the first day is already setting. And you really want to spend… a quarter of our remaining time sitting here doing nothing? I know that it’s not considered honourable to leave someone behind, but if villains get to the Library and edit every story to be exactly how they want, one lost little girl will be the least of our concerns.’

Hermione doesn’t hate that Arya insulted her. She hates that she agrees with Arya. What importance is Hermione, when every storyworld needs saving? A faint hope is growing that this quest isn’t her problem, that she can find a way to go home to Ron and Harry and pretend that today was all a weird fever dream and carrying on hunting horcruxes and sulking in forests.

For two more days, at least.

‘Hermione has to come,’ Peter pipes up. Hermione had almost forgotten that he was here. ‘Mr Deadpool said that us four were part of the seven heroes who would go on the quest. Hermione being here is part of some fixed, written out future we have no control over. It’s inevitable. We don’t have any choice whether we leave her behind or not. And setting off now and dragging her along with us just isn’t going to work.’

‘We do already have one liability to look after,’ Arya muses.

Snow White is pirouetting behind her, singing, ‘the big scary animal came to greet us, but by some miracle it did not eat us, thank goodness my new friends are here, because I think I wet my knickers from fear…’

How dare Arya compare her to Snow White, and call her a liability? Although, if Hermione can’t walk on a quest which appears to require vast amounts of walking, she supposes Arya is right. Hermione literally doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

‘It is settled then,’ Legolas decides, ‘Spider-Man is our leader, and he says that we will wait until dawn. We will wait until dawn.’

Arya seems to respect Legolas’s decision, even if she didn’t respect Peter’s. Huffing like an angry gust of wind, she plonks down on an armchair in the corner of the room, turns her back to everyone, and shifts all her attention to polishing her sword. Hermione assumes her behaviour is Arya-ese for I don’t like it but I accept there’s nothing I can do about it except glare at you all in an off-putting way.

‘Come hither, Spider-Man. It befits us to seek sustenance for our comrades.’ Legolas sweeps out of the room, his cape rippling behind him.

Peter’s face is marked by confusion.

Find food, Hermione mouths at him.

He nods thanks, and leaps out the door. Snow White twirls after them, singing about how she is sad her slippers were molested, but grateful to not have been digested.

Hermione extends her leg across the sofa, wincing at the pain. She twists her wand round in spirals, and casts talum emendo. A tingling warmth spreads through her angle, as if invisible strips of fabric were weaving around the bone, binding it back together. She glances up at Arya, to see if she’s impressed by the magic. Arya hasn’t even turned round.

Hermione leans back on the sofa, and her elbow bashes through something. Behind her is a window, which has been hastily boarded up with splintering wood and duct tape. ‘Arya!’ she calls, ‘can you clear the window?’

Arya polishes her sword extremely attentively.

‘Please?’ Hermione tries. ‘Lady Arya of House Stark, daughter of Eddard Stark and Lady Catelyn of… oh, I’ve forgotten the rest already… Hero of Winter Hell?’

‘Winterfell!’ Arya snaps. Her sword clatters onto the table. She leans over the sofa and rips away the wooden boards with enough strength and enough rage to make Hermione think twice before mispronouncing Game of Thrones cities again. Arya opens her mouth, presumably to make some kind of snippy remark, but then she looks through the window and gasps instead.

Just outside is an abandoned high street. Shops that must have once been bursting with colour and noise now lie abandoned. The setting sun bathes the road in amber light, and the glass shopfronts glow as if they were on fire. Several have scorch marks or bullet holes. This is not why Arya gasped. Arya gasped because instead of being overrun by rats, or pigeons, or particularly aggressive squirrels, this street is overrun by dinosaurs. Pterodactyls roost on overturned restaurant tables, their talons scraping on the metal. A horned triceratops is scrounging through a gift shop how foxes rummage through bins. A blueish raptor, as long as Hagrid is tall, headbutts the window of a Starbucks. Cracks spread along the grass like cobwebs. It rams its head at the window again, and this time it bashes straight through. Fragments of glass rain onto the pavement. The two girls sit there for a moment, pressing their faces to the chilled glass, their shoulders brushing against each other, watching the silent chaos.

Hermione’s parents took her to the London Aquarium when she was little. She remembers trotting along a glass tunnel through a tank, that was designed to make you feel like you were walking along the seabed. The rippling water cast funny blue reflections on her parents’ faces. All around her, pale sharks weaved through the inky water like ghosts. One flew right over her head, so Hermione could see how its thin mouth was curved in an upside-down U, as if it were grimacing while it fantasised about chewing her limbs off. Her parents gasped and pointed and cooed, but Hermione felt as if she had TRESPASSER branded on her forehead. She feels the same way now, staring through different glass and surrounded by different monsters.

She’s suddenly grateful for the warm of Arya’s shoulder, the steady rhythm of her sharp breaths, the glow of knowing that she is next to her. It’s silly how a group of miscellaneous strangers she met only this morning, cocooned together in a building she doesn’t understand, have become the only known thing in this world of unknowns, her anchor in a sea of uncertainty.

‘Hi!’ Peter is bounding towards them, waving his arms around so not to spill two steaming blue bowls. ‘I know where we are! There’s a really old movie series called Jurassic Park, where people make a dinosaur theme park, and then all the dinosaurs escape and eat everyone. It’s great.’

Arya flinches, and shuffles down the sofa. A green dinosaur about the size of a sheep plods towards the Starbucks. The raptor growls from deep within its throat, and sinks its fangs into the green dinosaur’s neck. Blood oozes down its neck and trickles into the gutter. Hermione looks away. ‘It’s barbaric. Somebody thought putting dinosaurs inside a heavily-populated amusement park was a clever idea?’

‘Yeah, you’d think that after the first time the dinosaurs escaped, they’d think to at least upgrade the fences, or not put dinosaur-sized gates in the fences, or to dig ditches around the enclosures like they do in every zoo, or use the electric shock trackers that all the dinosaurs have, or get more than one helicopter pilot, or not make the dinosaurs able to camouflage themselves, or just, like, evacuate the island whenever the dinosaurs escape… you know, when you think about it, they really brought it on themselves.’

The blue raptor emerges from Starbucks, its jaw dripping with pink entrails, arches its neck and makes a warbling sound. Three more raptors scurry out of the shadows and speed into the Starbucks, their meaty tails smacking against each other.

‘Maybe they’ll have cleared out by morning,’ Peter says hopefully, ‘and we can find the portal without being eaten?’

Hermione had almost forgotten that the portal to the real world was why they were here in the first place. Why couldn’t the portal have been somewhere friendlier, like a high street full of puppies or penguins or giant marshmallows? Why do there always have to be man-eating monsters on quests like these?

Music drifts through the hallway – not just Snow White’s singing, but real, synthy, pastel-pink pop music. Peter grins. ‘I found a really old iPad and I’m trying to introduce Legolas to our goddess Taylor. Arya, do you want to join?’

She scowls at Peter as if he were a piece of chewing gum stuck to her shoe. ‘No.’

Peter tries to hide his disappointment. ‘You sure?’

‘No.’

‘No as in you’re not sure, or no as in no?’

‘No.’

Peter shrugs. ‘Fair enough.’ Attempting to look blasé doesn’t suit him.

Hermione folds her arms. ‘Arya, I understand that you’ve got the sword, and the cloak, and you’re trying to come across as so dark and mysterious that we could cut our finger on your razor-sharp edge, but being rude doesn’t help anyone. None of us’ – she gestures to Peter, and waves vaguely towards the Taylor Swift Music – ‘are out to get you. We’re not ruffians hiding in a sleezy medieval tavern. We’re trustworthy people.’

Arya slides off the sofa. ‘“Trustworthy People” killed my father. And my mother. And my aunt. And my other aunt. And my uncle. And my other uncle. And my other other uncle. And my great-uncle. And my brother. And his wife. And my unborn nephew. And my other brother. And my other brother… I mean, cousin.’ She wraps her fingers around her sword. ‘When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. And my family hasn’t won very much in the last eight years.’ She sweeps out the door. Her footsteps echo, then fade.

‘Wow,’ Peter mutters, ‘she’s got even more dead relatives than I have.’ He perches on the arm of the sofa, setting the bowls down on the table.

Hermione rests her head on Peter’s shoulder, and gazes through the glass. The raptors are swatting each other away with their tales, vying with each other to strip flesh off the carcass. ‘Is it really clever for her to be one of the seven heroes on this quest? She has the emotional range of a teaspoon.’

Peter doesn’t answer her question. He hands her one of the blue bowls. Dinosaur-shaped spaghetti hoops float in an orange liquid. Hermione eyes them suspiciously.

He offers her a spoon. ‘These went out of date about a month ago, but…’

She takes it. ‘We’re currently surrounded by carnivorous dinosaurs, hunted by a demon barbie clown, on a quest to save fandom from the greatest villains of all time. Food poisoning is the least of our concerns.’ Hermione shovels some into her mouth. She didn’t realise how hungry she was until the hot syrupy sauce is slipping down her throat. The grilled mushrooms she ate with Harry feel like they were a decade ago. ‘If Arya doesn’t trust us, why should we trust her?’ Hermione mumbles through a mouthful of soft spaghetti. ‘We’ve known her for a day, and we’re supposed to risk our lives alongside her? I’ve known my friends Ron and Harry for seven years.’ The spaghetti garbles her words, making seven years sound more like sand ears.

Peter doesn’t reply, but Hermione knows what must be on his mind. The truth hangs in the air between them: Deadpool said that the seven heroes would be betrayed. And Arya hasn’t exactly embraced them with hugs and smiles and rainbows so far.

Peter slurps on the tomato sauce. ‘It’s weird that you and Arya don’t get on. I’d have thought you’d like each other. I mean, you’re both brave, smart, skilled… you’re both proper heroes.’

Hermione doesn’t know what to say to that. She scoops up the last of the pasta, and drops the spoon into the bowl. ‘We should sleep soon. I have a bad feeling about the next two days.’

Peter nods. ‘I doubt I’ll be getting eight hours of sleep each night. My Fitbit will not be happy.’

Hermione casts emendo talum again, and rearranges the cushions. She lies back on the sofa, and squeezes her eyes shut. She hears the scuffling of furniture and the clicking of light switches as Peter copies her. The pop music fades, as the others wind down to sleep in a different part of the pyramid. Hermione is left with darkness and silence.

Maybe she shouldn’t have tried to sleep so soon, because now her mind is racing faster than it was when she was trying to be awake. How can she drift off to sleep, on an itchy sofa in an abandoned building in a ruined theme park filled with man-eating dinosaurs in an entirely new world on an impossible quest to save every storyworld, when she’s not even real and Ron and Harry and real and she has no idea where they are or how they’re doing or…

She falls asleep before she can finish the list of things to worry about.

That is, until a stormtrooper shoots the window.