Terre Aride

Chapter 1 . Under the Olive Trees

"Bit closer. Come on, budge in everyone. You, sir, turn a little toward the groom, yes. Smile now--"

A burst of the camera's smoky blue emission caught Hermione full in the face, rousing from her a sneeze that earned her a raptor-eyed glare from Fleur. Hermione secretly couldn't help being entertained by the idea that the bride's Angry Veela Look might be the one to appear in her wedding photos.

Charlie and Ginny, Gabrielle, and an old school friend of Bill's were stepping away from the large olive tree under which Fleur and Bill continued to stand. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Mme. Delecour replaced them, posing with their children.

The fabric of Hermione's dress robes clung uncomfortably to her back in the Mediterranean's August warmth. She fanned herself languidly with an ostentatious program from the ceremony and turned away toward the reception pavilion.

Here--in the south of France, on the Delecours' lavish and green property outside Marseille, attending a friendly wedding--Hermione couldn't help feeling slightly detached and alienated from the mood, from the illusion of peace and prosperity. Hints ranging in prominence from Harry's subdued demeanor to Bill's ragged and lopsided smile pointed to the reality that waited outside this pretty fantasy, but most seemed to be doing their best to ignore it for the day. Breathing in the smell of flowers and good food, Hermione decided she'd play make-believe for a little while, too.

"So. That's it. She's one of us." Ginny had caught up with her.

"Mmhm. Admit it, though, she's gotten a little better," Hermione replied fairly.

Ginny waved her hand dismissively as though she were batting away a fly. "All the best--or worst, whatever--tragedies start with a wedding. We'll see." She tugged gruffly at her pale golden gown.

"Leave it alone, Gin. You look good," said Fred as they reached the edge of the terrace of tables behind the stately manor house. He and George lounged back in their chairs drinking some sort of pale wine.

"Pfft, yeah." Ginny answered, taking a seat herself.

"No, really," insisted George. "You can say what you want about old Fleur, but she's right--you would have looked like a 'flamant rose en feu' if she'd put you in pink."

"What is that supposed to mean?" hissed Ginny, plucking a petit-four from a passing caterer's tray.

"I believe it means 'flamingo on fire,' dear sister."

Hermione hurried to hide her smile. Ginny's face turned an angry crimson and she swallowed her food hastily, opening her mouth to say something.

"Hey, don't hex the messenger," supplicated Fred, holding up his hands innocently.

She shut her mouth in a thin line only to open it again, laughing this time despite herself. The twins grinned impishly and looked down toward the grove from which the photographer's tersely professional directions and puffs of magically-charged smoke continued to issue.

"Are they ever going to be done with that? I'm getting hungry."

"Sun's going down," Hermione said, shading her eyes as she said it from the rich glow in the west. "They'll finish soon, I expect."

Hermione leaned back comfortably in her chair and listened to the Weasley siblings' banter; she recognized some others at the party and smiled or waved accordingly. Members of the vastly extended Weasley and Prewett families never ceased to appear and Fred, George and Ginny continually endured interruptions in the form of aunts, second cousins and the like marching over to shake hands energetically, plant sloppy kisses on cheeks, or propose extravagant toasts.

The twin's assistant at their joke shop and, incidentally, Fred's date--Verity Castor--materialized at his side after some minutes and she and Ginny (who had taken to Verity much more than Fleur) struck up a chat. George, very conspicuously, let his eyes roam appreciatively over flocks of young French witches.

"George, is that champagne, and where can I get some?" asked Hermione, indicating his flute of softly bubbling wine.

"Champagne? Nah, this stuff makes champagne taste like dragon piss. I don't know what it is, but it's good. Over there," he responded, pointing off toward a white tented area further up toward the house. Hermione thanked him and wound her way between tables and clusters of people. She was reduced to pointing to what she wanted when she got there because the bartender did not speak English.

"Merus," he told her, pouring it out and smiling. "Vin céleste."

"Merci," she said, and wandered a few yards away to stand solitary near a well-manicured lattice and sip her merus. George had been very right; the drink was cool and tasted, ethereally and improbably, of light. She imagined it glowed a little as the day's shadows lengthened. Hermione leaned against the sun-bleached yellow of the house's stonework and watched the reception's dynamics--the way people moved and circled and gesticulated in patterns, designs unconsciously choreographed by conversation currents and the rotation of starter platters.

"Hermione Granger, such a wallflower," observed a soft voice from what sounded like the rosebush next to her.

"Oh, hi!" she cried, genuinely startled and pleased to see Remus Lupin. His set of dusky green dress robes were clearly not new, but remained in presentable condition. And he--for once--looked somewhat well, she thought. Though his hair was much more silver than brown these days, his face appeared a little fuller than usual: he might conceivably have been considered to look his age. That was actually downright strange. Hermione wondered transiently whether Tonks had been feeding him better food than he'd been accustomed to, but then recalled the young witch's calamitous effort to prepare breakfast one morning some two years previous at Grimmauld Place--her utter lack of culinary prowess discredited that idea. Maybe it was just that he no longer had the stress of undercover work with the werewolf cadres since revealing his allegiance in the battle of two months ago.

"How are you doing? Enjoying this?" she asked, motioning toward the party at large.

"I'm not bad, all things considered. As for this," he said, looking out over the starched, elegant affair stretching away below them on the lawns, "I'm not really one for weddings. It's been a long time since I've been to one... eighteen years, I guess it would be."

Hermione digested that and then ventured cautiously, "Are you talking about the Potters'?"

"Yeah," he said and did not elaborate. There passed a just-slightly-too-long silence that Hermione felt obligated to break.

"Well. You'll be having one of your own in a few months--might want to get used to it."

"Ah, God, I know," he mumbled, rubbing one hand dramatically down his face.

She laughed quietly. "Worried about it?"

"Not worried, no." He exhaled and looked at the sky. "That's not it."

Hermione was just about to voice her confusion--she thought his frustration had been in jest until that second--when Nymphadora Tonks approached, licking her fingers and saying, by way of a greeting, "Alright, I've consumed every hors d'oeuvre I could find. They will now have to serve dinner." Her triumphant expression turned to one of righteous outrage as she saw a waiter sweep gracefully past with a silver dish of reserves.

"Speak of the devil," said Lupin, smiling. His earlier air of discontent had dissipated and Hermione put it out of mind.

"Evening, Tonks," Hermione said.

"Wotcher," she returned, nodding warmly. Tonks' theme of the day appeared to be blue to match her robes, her eyes translucent and her hair indigo.

"Looks like your strategy worked after all. Here they come," Hermione pointed out, spotting Bill, Fleur and some others trooping up to the pavilion.

Fleur's mother, looking stunning, ascended a low dais, Sonified her voice and announced, "Votre attention, tout le monde. Asseyez-vous, s'il vous plaît, et le dîner viendra bientôt." Hermione's suspicion of hearing something cognitively like the word "dinner" were confirmed when the French-speaking guests all moved obediently to sit.

"Have either of you seen Ron or Harry around?" asked Hermione.

"Yeah, a few minutes ago. That table by the hedge," supplied Tonks as she took Lupin's arm and they headed off in that general direction themselves. Hermione followed at a distance.

º

"Stop ogling your sister-in-law for just two minutes and dance with me. Seriously, Ron." Hermione plucked at his sleeve while Ron looked mildly disturbed, obviously having just come to a full understanding of the impropriety associated with gawking at Fleur now that she was legally his brother's wife.

"I was not ogling her."

Hermione snorted. "Thou shalt not covet. Come on."

The dinner had been very appetizing with good spirits all around. While most, especially Ron, had tucked in with vigor, Harry had picked at his plate until Hermione pierced him with an evocatively motherly stare (acting in interest of Mrs. Weasley) and he'd proceeded obediently to eat.

Now that the platters had been whisked away, a willowy witch dressed in robes of unwarranted profligacy ascended the platform upon which the wedding party had been dining and began to sing. An assortment of instruments--including grand piano, cello, flutes, and a selection of preposterous musical devices that were plainly of pure wizard origin--materialized behind her and conveniently commenced to play themselves. Tables and chairs were Banished with haste to the sidelines and many couples trotted out to dance, Fleur and Bill in the center. While the bride moved gracefully, her husband exhibited something more of a brave limp; Fleur was leading and doing so with care, but she simply beamed at Bill.

"Please?" Hermione implored, forgetting that the word had an end and drawing it out so that one might think it had several syllables, ending in a hiccup.

"What is with you, eh, Hermione?" asked Ron, scrunching up his face and looking at her like an experiment gone wrong.

Harry too looked her up and down. "Ha. I reckon you're a little drunk. Or a little something anyway."

"How could I possibly be drunk?"

Harry grinned--a little foolishly--at her for the first time all night. "You are. You completely are."

"I only had one glass." When she spoke it felt like the words were purposely tying themselves in knots around her tongue, turning to mush and getting lost before they reached her lips.

"Yeah, and then the waiter filled it with that stuff like three more times during supper," said Ron, patting her on the head in a parody of patronization.

Suddenly George (accompanied by a dark, attractive young woman whom Hermione recognized fuzzily as a friend of Fleur's who'd also tried out to be Champion of Beauxbatons three years ago) reeled by laughing dreamily.

"That's drunk," pointed out Hermione, gesturing loosely at Ron's passing brother. "I'm, er... tipsy at best."

"Right. Well, whatever you are, I guess I'll dance with you," conceded Ron, escorting her by the hand out amid the others. The music was upbeat and Hermione thoroughly enjoyed herself while Ron mostly proceeded to look awkward, clearly not a born dancer.

"Lovely wedding, Fleur!" she said over the upsurge of music and mirth around them during an interlude when the two of them were briefly standing together on the outskirts of the throng. Bill was currently occupied being cried upon by Mrs. Weasley for the fifth time that day, and Ron had been pressured into an innocuous dance with a bashful fourteen-year-old cousin of his.

"Zank you. 'Onestly, I zink eet might be bit too much," she replied, her accent as oppressive and, frankly, stereotypical as ever. "My muzzer, she says I deserve eet but ze Weasleys, zey seemed to want somezing more seemple and--euh--natural. Still, I am very 'appy." She smiled widely, a vision in silk and white lace. She was shortly spirited away for a dance by Charlie and Hermione herself went to seek out Harry.

As far as Hermione had seen, he'd mostly been spending his time avoiding Ginny. Perhaps, given that they'd sworn off each other, he didn't trust himself to dance with or be alone with her. Hermione stumbled across him toward the other side of the pavilion, talking with Lupin. They appeared to be engaged in one of their bouts of reminiscence--Harry liked coaxing stories of his parents from their avuncular former teacher.

"So Lily had made Sirius swear on pain of death he'd not pull anything funny before or during the ceremony but, really, that was pretty negligent of her because, oh, you can imagine what happened at the reception. He'd warned me at the stag party--heh, I know, stag party--the night before so I was prepared, but... Oh, hello, Hermione."

"No, don't let me interrupt," she said while tripping over nothing in particular. Lupin gave her a quizzical look and Harry allowed himself a small smirk. In the darkness, she could not determine whether or not it reached his eyes.

"She's--" Harry mimed tipping a bottle to his lips.

"Stop it, I am not drunk," Hermione hissed, flushing violet. But then she looked down to see yet another flute of the colorless wine in her hand that she hadn't remembered putting there. What was it about this stuff? The next day she would come to doubt that alcohol had been what the merus contained.

"Oh, last dance," said Lupin absently. "I promised it to Nymphadora. We'll talk soon, Harry." He strolled away, throwing himself suddenly against a table at one point to avoid what would have been a highly tragic death trampled by Olympe Maxime and Rebeus Hagrid as they lurched hugely around the dance floor.

"Have you seen Ginny yet?"

"What?" asked Harry, looking like he'd not understood her.

"Have you seen Ginny yet?" reiterated Hermione who felt sure that's what she'd just said.

"Oh, mm, a little," he replied evasively.

"She loves you, you know." A second after she'd said it, Hermione couldn't be sure whether she had or not. She decided she hadn't when Harry failed to respond. Of course she hadn't just consumed an undisclosed amount of probably magical wine and told her friend the one thing for which Ginny would murder her. When she next looked over, the space Harry had occupied was empty.

She stood at the edge of the pavilion, forgetting about the comment she... had not made, forgetting too about everything that waited for them after this balmy, airy night was over. Ron materialized by her side and Hermione was glad.

Occasionally, people let loose bursts of luminescent sparkles from their wands that settled on the grass as metallic confetti, mostly directing them at the harassed, jubilant wedding couple. Hermione shook her head and bits of the stuff showered out of her hair. At one point a number of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes fireworks made an appearance. Thankfully, the pyrotechnics generally behaved themselves, exploding at dizzying heights over the sprawling property. Blue and gold and white-hot clouds of fantastical bird-shapes floated far overhead before dissipating into smoke of all the peculiarly blurred colors of an oil slick.

It was very late when the festivities wound down. Bill and Fleur departed on their honeymoon to fatigued cheers. Though she'd had her Apparition license for months, Marseille was an awfully long way from Ottery St. Catchpole and Hermione was sleepy and distracted, so she Flooed away from the party with the others who couldn't or didn't trust themselves to Apparate such a distance. Tripping out of the fire and into the Burrow's dim kitchen, Hermione didn't think of much except bed. Her cot in Ginny's room had rarely felt so inviting and secure.

º

Ginny's alarm clock erupted into a jingling, dissonant tune which provoked a groan from Ginny before Hermione slapped it into silence; it took her a moment, pondering the cracked ceiling bathed in mid-morning light, to recall why she'd set the thing. Remembering, Hermione started up in bed too quickly, her eyesight blurring black for a moment. She felt as if she'd slept with her head in a drawer.

But there was no time for that. Standing, she saw that she sported the same rumpled clothes she'd worn under her dress robes the night before. She changed impatiently, buttoning her shirt on her way out the door and down the lopsided staircase.

Today they would announce whether Hogwarts would reopen or not.

Hermione fumbled with the switch on the wireless in the sitting room, hastily adjusting the volume when Myron Wagtail's voice suddenly blared out of the old-fashioned contraption so as not to wake the rest of the family. She glanced at her watch--10:25--and waited for the song to finish: wizards only had the one station and the announcement was supposed to be made at 10:30.

"... a classic from, of course, The Weird Sisters. We'll be back with more great rock for your lunch hour, but first we take you to the news. For the WWN, this is Glenda Chittock signing out," crackled the wireless. A pause full of static ensued before another voice took over. "The big story for today, the 4^th of August: given recent tragedies, can Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry be trusted with our children? Currently, a committee made up of Ministry officials, school governors, and notable others remains sequestered, deciding whether the school will be closed for good. We'll take you live to the scene when we have more information; in the meantime--"

Hermione listened irritably to a series of lesser news clips (no deaths or Dementor attacks yet today). She felt nauseous, though she couldn't determine whether this was nerve-induced or the continued after-affects of the previous night's revelries. Hermione had crashed in every way possible since then. It seemed impossible now that she could have ever felt liberated from the myriad of problems she and her friends faced. Dumbledore really and truly dead, Voldemort (and bits of his soul) nowhere to be found... and Hermione had precious few realistic hopes that Hogwarts would indeed reopen. She felt that losing the school, a place she loved fiercely, would be the icing on this very rotten cake.

In the month she'd spent with her family in Winchester after their shattered Sixth Year, Hermione--in between writing heaps of letters to Harry, Ron, and Ginny--had tried to distract herself from her worries by exhaustively strategizing her contingency plan of education. She'd decided that she would enter into a correspondence program with Beauxbatons, receiving written assignments and projects from tutors by owl. As for practical instruction, she'd simply have to practice on her own or beg lessons from Order members like Lupin and McGonagall.

Her parents had proved vaguely supportive (though not actually helpful) this summer. Their ability to advise her was, naturally, limited. Hermione never lied to them about the condition of the wizarding world, but neither did she bring up its dangers more often than was fair to them. They knew things were rocky--just as they always were in Muggle society--but they were always still surprised to hear news such as "our headmaster was murdered." Hermione supposed that it was problematic for them to wrap their minds around exactly how small the magical community was: when something bad happened to anyone anywhere, you could only ever be a couple of degrees removed from the incident if not directly involved. However, after every bizarre and unpleasant episode involving their daughter, the Grangers always allowed her to return to the school of magic and do as she saw fit while there. Hermione suspected that, though they cared about her wellbeing, they weren't quite sure what else to do with her. Besides, she'd been of age for some time now, and in a few weeks would be legally an adult even by her parents' standards. It had felt good, as it always did, to return to the company of wizards and witches.

"... a high of 25 with extremely strong winds: thorny flying conditions for the Kestrel-Magpie game tomorrow. And we've just heard that a decision has been reached concerning Hogwarts. Ferris Cadwalader, speaking on behalf of the governors, is prepared to give a statement." Hermione sat up straight, gnawing on her lip, and turned up the volume.

A baritone voice that sounded as if its owner believed himself enormously important issued from the wireless. "After reviewing the arguments for both sides of this debate and after serious deliberation, we have determined that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will provisionally reopen for the 1997-98 school-year--"

Hermione shrieked without thinking, causing a pang of pain in her own tender forehead and probably rousing anyone sleeping on the floors above her.

"Can I take that to mean we're going to have a Seventh Year?" grunted Ron, stumbling in sleepily in threadbare maroon pajama pants.

"Yes!" yelped Hermione despite herself. Sure, everything was going to hell in a hand-basket, but at least she still had Hogwarts.