Electric Funeral
Hermione had not let herself rest. She had insisted that she needed to be involved in efforts to rally the world against Voldemort from the moment that she had arrived in France. But Voldemort’s supporters had quickly seized the governments of several other wizarding societies on the continent. The International Wizarding bodies of governance had been paralysed. The French Ministry had badly wanted the British exiles to do nothing.
She had been stuffed away in Thionville, in Lorraine near Metz. The dense population of the Moselle valley meant the shining lights of the towns and cities stretched off to the south toward Metz, and in the north, the glow of Luxembourg could be dimly seen. They lived with Molly and Andromeda and Tonks in a rented apartment building, and tried to make the best of it.
There had only been one assassination attempt against her, and Andromeda had managed to drive off the attackers long enough for French Aurors to arrive. She wasn’t really sure what it meant to her life, at this point, that she counted one assassination attempt as ‘only’, and therefore a good thing, but it was what existence at come to for Hermione. At least her parents were safe in Australia, where Charles was firmly in power and the Australian Ministry was on his side. She had never thought she would support a King before, but at least he stood against Voldemort; that made her re-think everything, when it came to politics.
The night had already been swirling with rumours. For the past few days, supporters of Voldemort had been fanning out through wizarding communities, encouraging them to muster tonight. Fearing mass violence, Andromeda and Tonks had distributed guns and arms to augment their wands with, and prepared to have everyone mass outside where they could more easily respond to an attack. They had rented the Chateau de la Grange on the north end of the city, for what was officially, to the muggles, a camping trip. That would remove them from their known location, in case it became a target.
Nobody wanted to sleep, and for a while Ron held out hope that nothing would happen, and they’d ultimately just be able to go home. With Molly there, and the somewhat traditional views of sex the wizarding world had, Hermione was sharing a room with Luna and Ginny, and very much not Ron. But for the moment Molly had no problem with them snuggling in front of a camp-fire, Hermione looking over the remnants of the instant meals they’d prepared.
Actually, sometimes Hermione felt she was a little attracted to Luna, as much as the girl was completely daft when she wasn’t being actively disturbing. There was a real intelligence buried there, and she was cute…
As much as past memories made her deeply, deeply uncomfortable, Hermione was starting to grapple with the fact that girls were a Thing for her, and there was nothing she could do about it. But she still loved Ron, and that was a choice. They would find a way to start a life, somewhere, at some point.
And then the sun came up. The sky to the east was filled with a terrible raging fire, a sphere of light which rapidly evolved into a column of flame rising into the perfectly capped cloud which left no doubt of what it was. A few of the young wizards and witches were screaming. “my eyes, my eyes, God my eyes!” One of them was shouting.
Andromeda burst out of the tent next to them as Ron whipped around desperately in confusion and shock. Tonks was at her side. She looked to the east, and froze for a moment, a wooden, chilled expression crossing her face, as Tonks, her hair turning black, followed her gaze with an expression of blank horror.
“To your feet, all of you!” Andromeda cried. “Molly, do you remember it?”
Molly Weasley had leapt to her feet. She looked to the north. There, they both saw a glimmering blue half-sphere, coming approximately from where the city of Luxembourg should be. There was a green crack across the surface.
Something descending. Hermione knew enough, science-fiction, science fact, movies—something descending from orbit.
What the euphemisms of technical language called a ‘reentry vehicle.’
“They do,” Molly noted. “Yes, I do, Andy. CHILDREN, it’s called Protego Totalus Magnae… Elektra interruptus!! Now, all together, we must link our magic!”
“Hermione, what’s going on, what’s going on, what’s going on? ” Ron asked desperately, looking wide to the sky, where he could see the rising columns from other places, the distant flashes.
“Do what your mother says now Ron, it’s our only chance,” Hermione raised her wand skyward. “It’s the end of the world. Nuclear War.”
Protego Totalus Magnae… Elektra Interruptus! Andromeda and Molly synchronised themselves in vocalising it. They gathered together the magic of many declarations of Protego. Around Thionville, a shimmering shield began to form. And there was a crack, when a nuclear device tried to slip against the southern part. A green flash. Perhaps it had been aimed against Metz. No definitive way to manifest this spell existed, but it had been developed for precisely this reason, to let a group of wizards …
Defend against that which in the late 20 th century had transformed from the impossible into the sickeningly likely. The world had convinced itself, but… One… Hermione thought, to the south. We got one…
This wasn’t some random madness. Britain had nukes. Voldemort had nukes. Then a second bomb came in, and detonated, not in Thionville, but twenty-five kilometres to the south, a clear attempt to hit Metz. In the direction of the city, everything vanished.
Molly sharply shifted to cast a night spell, unvocalised, with the flick of her wrist. It saved them all from blindness, and Tonks stepped up to join her mother in maintaining the defensive shield over Thionville. As the mushroom cloud rose ominously over them, Hermione felt an aching, horrifying hollow deep inside of herself.
Tonks gave voice to what she was thinking, as the red boiling cloud, flashing lightning around the surface, rose in the characteristic mushroom form. “Gods. Voldemort did this, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he had to, Britain has nukes, he had to have at least started it,” Andy nodded, grimly looking to the south. “He’s started a war with the entire world.”
“What does that mean, what’s happening there?” Ron asked, and Hermione could feel, in his voice, how deeply devastated he was by this. He was dimly grasping what those with more experience in the muggle world knew now as an absolutely horrifying fact.
Hermione swallowed dryly. “It means hundreds of millions of people are dying right now, Ron. And with everything Wizardkind is doing to save ourselves from the Bomb, the Statute of Secrecy is broken.”
“There’s people down there, a city, what’s happening to them ‘Mione, what’s happening to them!?”
“They’re dying.”
She felt him leave her side. Felt him dash forward, spin, raise his wand. Molly spun – “DON’T YOU DARE!”
But it was too late, Ron apparated straight for Metz, to save anyone he could, while the dissipated intensity of the shockwave ruffled the air around them, and laughed at their hopes and dreams for the world.
Hermione’s heart fell into the very base of her stomach. She knew people could survive much closer to a nuclear blast. It wasn’t that. It was the death of any last innocence. While the war had remained in the wizarding world, she could convince herself that most of the world was experiencing a normal life. When it was contained in Britain, she could walk around France and see normal people, still having normal aspirations. Now the whole world was at war. Nothing would ever be normal again.
And Ron, full of guilt at Harry’s death, at defeat, had gone straight into the fire to try and help. Hermione held back, she didn’t immediately follow him, but she looked hard at Molly and Andromeda and Tonks. She was old enough to make this choice herself, but they all needed to make it. “We need to go after him. Not just to keep him safe. To save anyone we can. Even in the parts of the Moselle Valley not hit, the hospitals will quickly become overwhelmed. And people will blame Wizards for this, when they find out the truth of what happened. We need to go. We need to save as many people as we can. It’s our obligation. We couldn’t stop Voldemort, we couldn’t stop this, but we can save his victims. We have to try!”
To her surprise, the three women glanced between each other. There was no disagreement.
Andromeda Tonks, far too much like Bellatrix in appearance for Hermione’s comfort, brushed her hair back, faced whatever demons she was facing—and perhaps they were all named Bellatrix in that moment, knowing her sister’s possible role in this—and looked again to the south where the mushroom cloud at last began to dissipate. “You’re right. Let’s go.”