Hermione Granger and The Goblet of Fire (Harmione)

Chapter 20 - The Poet of Beguilement Sings (Part I)

Thy dawn, O Master of the World, thy dawn;

For thee the sunlight creeps across the lawn,

For thee the ships are drawn down to the waves,

For thee the markets throng with myriad slaves,

For thee the hammer on the anvil rings,

For thee the poet of beguilement sings.

The water was warm, comforting, but tinged a slight shade of blue-green, sunlight diffused through lemon juice.

Hermione found it easy to drift aimlessly through the liquid. She was in no hurry and had nowhere to go. Occasionally she thought about swimming towards the surface - she really should, she knew - but the effort was too great, and she never seemed to make any progress upwards.

Her brain told her she really should be drowning. She had nearly drowned once, hadn't she? Half-remembered experiences of mouth, nose and lungs filling with water, the unspeakable pressure within her chest. When was that? Why was that?

Paradoxically, breathing was no harder underwater than in fresh air. That made no sense, but Hermione did not care. It was so calm, so peaceful, that she found herself slipping away, back into the warm embrace of sleep.

So quiet...

Occasionally some dull muffled sounds traversed the liquid, reminders that someone or something else existed in this submarine world, somewhere on the fringes of her hearing. If she concentrated, they sounded like voices, calling to her. Strangely familiar, she could not place them. She would twist and turn, agonisingly slowly, but there was no-one there. So she would drift back into the arms of Morpheus.

At least these voices sounded friendly, if concerned.

There was another voice, strikingly different. It cried out what sounded like "Abracadabra!" and her world flashed with a sickly green pulse before lapsing into a darker hue. Hermione feared that light, recognising the subliminal threat if not the evil sound's identity. Hearing it she would strike out frantically towards the surface, but it proved beyond her reach. As she approached her goal the darkness closed in and the weight in her mind would loom over her and drag her back into the depths...

She was safe here. No one would find her.

Not even Harry...

'Harry?'

Hermione broke surface...

The first fact her subconscious registered was that she was no longer comfortably warm and snug. A heavy, dull pounding pain rose sharply in the back of her head. The hurt was overwhelming, almost as overwhelming as the desire to surrender, to submerge once again, take flight back from reality.

This time she fought back.

Every part of her body ached, throbbing from the migraine-like pain in her head to the tips of her fingers and toes.

Fingers..?

Someone was holding her right hand... or was it her left? It was so difficult to tell...

Her eyelids were weighted down, hours of sleep lacing them closed. Slowly, despite her eyeballs complaining vociferously at the ingress of light, she forced them open.

A thin slit of blinding white light almost drove her back to the sanctuary of oblivion, but she fought that almost irresistible response.

Dark shapes loomed, stark against the unexpected brightness, barely moving.

After a few seconds Hermione thought she recognised the closest silhouette, one gently holding her fingers in his, softly caressing them.

"Daaaaah..." That one word crumbled into a parched croak, her vocal chords and lips struggling against disuse.