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Hermione stepped out of the cart she had been riding on and frowned. This place had the feel of magic, but it definitely wasn’t a wizarding town. She looked around and noticed that everyone seemed to be living in a different era, much like a wizarding town. However, something just felt…different.
She turned to ask the driver of the cart to take her back to the larger town she was just in, but he had already left.
She was visiting Norway on ministry business, and when she had asked someone where the nearest magical town was they had said near Tonsberg. She had apparated to Tonsberg and asked around discreetly where she could fin a place to visit that seemed a little out of the ordinary. She was sent here. And now she felt as if she had been sent here by mistake.
She sighed. Maybe she should just apparate back to where she was staying for the conference and call it a day. Obviously she had miscalculated where the wizarding town was, and she didn’t even know where to start asking someone without violating the statute of secrecy. Which, for some reason, was still a thing.
Five years prior, something strange and horrifying had happened. Half the world’s population had just vanished in seconds. There was no explanation to it. Just half of the people: gone. At first they had thought the Wizarding world had been the only place affected. Maybe there was another dark wizard that had risen, and they had managed some weird population wiping spell in order to gain power. However, once they realized everyone was affected, and they couldn’t trace any real magical power signature, they had given up on that theory.
They had been able to trace the epicenter to the jungles of Wakanda, but after analyzing the area, they still couldn’t figure out what had happened. What caused it.
She had gone home from that trip, devastated.
Molly. Ron. Ginny. Neville. George.
Those were just a few of the people who had vanished in the phenomenon. And she couldn’t bear to stick around the tight knit group. Harry was barely functioning. Luckily none of his children had vanished, however, they were without a large chunk of their family. She and Ron didn’t work out as a couple in the end, but they were still incredibly close.
She had thrown herself into work, and time moved on. Albeit slowly and very empty. Everywhere she went, you could tell that there were supposed to be more people. But there wasn’t. The streets no longer had traffic. Tourist destinations were no longer over crowded. And you would think these things would make the world a better place, but it just made it lonely.
Which is why when she traveled to these conferences on theories to bring back the missing, she always wanted to visit the wizarding villages. To mingle with others like her. To commiserate. To get a sense of belonging.
She looked around the town again, and shrugged. She was here. She might as well grab something to eat before going back to the loneliness of the hotel. She began walking on the streets of the town, looking in the windows.
“You’re new,” someone spoke from behind her. She turned and saw a beautiful woman standing behind her. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but her presence spoke of her importance.
“I am,” Hermione replied, fully turning to face her. “But I’m just visiting.”
The woman smiled, but it wasn’t exactly a friendly smile. It was more suspicious. “Really? We don’t get many visitors here.”
“I can see why,” Hermione answered. “I had to be brought in on a cart. Awfully inconvenient.”
“Yes,” the woman said. “We do that on purpose. We don’t like a lot of people we don’t know showing up in our town. Trust issues.”
“Because of the phenomenon?” Hermione asked, unable to help herself.
“Phenomenon?”
“Yes, that’s what we’re calling the vanishing of the people. The Phenomenon.”
The woman nodded slowly, her smile starting to slip a little bit. “Would you mind coming with me? I think you should talk to our leader.”
“Leader?” Hermione asked, her stomach tightening a bit. This was definitely not a wizarding village. Was it a cult? Did she accidentally stumble into a cult.
“Um, yes. The leader of our government. Of our people. Don’t worry, he’s pretty harmless these days.”
Hermione frowned. “When someone tells you not to worry, that means there really is something to worry about. If you don’t want me here, just say so, and I’ll just leave. You don’t need to be involving leaders.”
“Oh, don’t worry. It’ll just be a quick meet and greet. He likes to meet all the new people. He just wants to say hi and then he’ll ask you how you found us. It’s not big deal. And then you can leave.”
Hermione sighed. She knew she could just apparate out of there, but now she was really curious to meet the leader.
“Okay.”
The woman smiled. “Great! Follow me.”
They weaved their way through the town until they were at a small house on the water. The woman knocked a couple times and waited for the door to open. She waited. And waited. Finally she sighed and rolled her eyes before turning the knob on the door and letting herself inside. Hermione didn’t budge.
“Well, are you coming?” the woman called.
Hermione followed her inside and into a living room, before she stopped dead in her tracks. She had to blink a few times in order to fully understand and take in what she was seeing before her.
The room she had just walked into had a couch, and on that couch there were three…men? Things? She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking at. One was definitely a man. But he looked like he had seen better days. His slightly overweight body was shirtless, and his long hair and beard were matted, seemingly unwashed, and he was wearing sweatpants. Next to him was a man who looked like he was made of rocks. Literal rocks. And beside him was…she didn’t even know how to describe it other than a large purple cockroach.
“Valkyrie!” The unwashed man exclaimed throwing his game controller down. “What is the meaning of this! Who is this?”
“This,” Valkyrie answered, “is an outsider who has somehow found her way into our sanctuary.”
The man frowned and looked toward Hermione. “You found your way here?”
At her nod, he looked her up and down before finally standing up. He took a step toward her, and she instinctively took a step back. She braced herself for whatever he had to say or do to her, but she truly wasn’t prepared for what he did next. His face broke out into a huge smile, and he closed the gap between them, embracing her in a tight hug. “Welcome to New Asgard!” he exclaimed as he pulled away from her. “I’m Thor, the leader around here. These are my best friends, Korg and Miek, and you’ve already met Valkyrie, my second in command.”
“Um,” Hermione said through her shock, “I’m Hermione.”
“Hermione!” Thor exclaimed, like she was the best thing to happen in the world. “I’m so glad that you came to visit! It’s been so long since we’ve had anyone new here!”
Hermione didn’t really know how to react. This shirtless man, named after a Norse God, and who was doing his best impression of The Dude, was way too excited and enthusiastic for her comfort. But he seemed harmless. Korg and Miek on the other hand…
“Um, I’m sorry, but I have to ask…”
“Oh, Kork and Miek? They’re from space,” Thor explained enthusistically. “They’re basically aliens.”
“Aliens,” Hermione stated.
“Well, we don’t really like being called aliens, Thor just insists on explaining that that’s what we are, so we just go with it,” Korg explained.
Hermione just nodded.
“Do you have a place to stay?” Thor asked.
“I’m actually staying in Oslo for a conference,” she explained.
“Oslo? That’s very far away,” Thor said.
“Yes, well, I have efficient ways of transportation,” Hermione explained.
“Are you an alien, too?” Korg asked.
“No, I’m actually a witch,” Hermione explained. Secrecy rules be damned, she was sitting in a room with two aliens. “And so we have a way of teleporting places. I actually found my way here because I was trying to find other magical cities and towns to ask around how the phenomenon has affected them.”
And just like that, the tone in the room shifted. It went from playful to deadly serious in seconds. Hermione was guessing the answer to the question was going to be that the phenomenon had a huge affect on their town.
“Oh,” Thor said. “I see.”
“But,” Hermione said quickly, “I can tell that you are not magical, and therefore not relevant to my questions, so we can just let it go.”
But it was too late. Thor stepped away from her and moved back toward the couch. He flopped down and picked his controller back up. The game restarted on the screen, and the three men started their game up. She could tell she was being dismissed.
She heard Valkyrie sigh beside her before she turned and left the house, not bothering to wait for Hermione.
Hermione stood in the dark living room, and just looked at Thor. He looked so…defeated. Something happened. He lost someone important in the phenomenon. And her mentioning it triggered him. Having been through grief counseling and treated for depression and PTSD after the war, she recognized the signs. She knew she wasn’t going to get through to him tonight. Not while he was in this state. She turned toward the door and started to leave, but first she turned around and looked one more time at the man on the sofa. Her heart reached out to him. She would be back.
Two days later she finally had the time to return to New Asgard. The conference was over and she was given a much needed vacation. With half the population gone, her work at the ministry in her department had gone down. However, she had doubled her work load by taking on research for the phenomenon.
She walked through the little village and looked around at everyone. They were all dressed like they had come from a different time. But now, after much thought, and a little research, she was pretty sure they had come from a different place entirely.
She had been a little lax on keeping up with things in the muggle world, and once she turned on a computer and typed in the name Thor, she was bombarded with news articles about Thor, the actual fucking god, coming to earth and fighting alongside The Avengers, this superhero group from America. And it turns out that over the last decade or so, they were a big deal.
She could blame most of the fact that she had never heard of them on them being in America. The other part because they mostly dealt with the muggle world. However, she really needed to pay more attention to current events because it turns out people were coming out with powers and aliens were invading the Earth. And if she had known about the big alien invasion in New York, she wouldn’t have been quite so shocked at the aliens sitting on Thor’s couch.
She finally reached Thor’s house, and knocked. She waited. She knew that she would inevitably have to let herself in, but she wanted to be polite.
After about three minutes, she got tired of being polite, and she turned the door knob and let herself into the house. She walked into the living room to see Thor, Korg and Miek in the exact same spot she had left them two days ago. She was pretty sure Thor was still wearing the same pair of sweat pants.
“Hello,” she said, moving into the room.
The three men on the couch looked up at her. Thor gave her a wide grin. “Hermione!” he exclaimed. “You’ve returned!”
“I have,” she said. “And I was wondering if maybe I could talk to you for a minute?”
“Of course!” he said, he loud voice boistrous. He paused the game and stood up.
“Maybe we can talk outside?”
“Sure, sure,” he said. He turned to his couch mates. “Don’t cheat.”
Without waiting for an answer he walked past Hermione and out the door.
Hermione gave the other two people a small smile before turning and joining him. When she got outside she could see Thor standing there, looking out into the ocean as if he didn’t get out there very often and enjoy the view.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, coming up next to him.
He turned and looked at her quizically. “I’m sorry?”
“I said I’m sorry for your loss. You must have lost someone very close to you in the phenomenon.”
Thor turned away from her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hermione moved closer, so that she was only a couple inches away. “It’s okay to feel the way you’re feeling. I hope no one has told you otherwise. We all grieve differently. But I just wanted to let you know that talking to someone helps. Finding someone to just let it all out to, someone who won’t try to fix you. And getting outside every once in a while. Maybe taking a shower,” she reached up and placed a hand on his bare shoulder. “Please find someone to open up to. Korg. Miek. Valkyrie. They all seem to care about you. Perhaps while you’re playing your video games you can just open up.”
“Korg and Miek don’t understand,” Thor said, quietly.
“Then find someone who does,” Hermione said, just as quietly. She gently squeezed his shoulder, and just stood by him as they stared out into the ocean.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Thor said so quietly she had to strain to hear him.
“Do what?” she said, nearly as quiet.
“Live,” he replied, his voice breaking.
Hermione’s heart broke, and she moved so that she could wrap her arms around him in a hug. And then the big, burly, actual Norse god broke down in her arms. And she held him as he cried.
After that afternoon of comforting Thor while he cried on the shore outside of his house, she had become his person. She was surprised that he had chosen her to open up to, rather than someone he was closer to, but she wasn’t going to turn him away.
He would call her, and she would listen to him as he talked about growing up in Asgard, of feeling as if he was never enough. Of his mother’s death. His father’s. His brother’s.
Sometimes she would apparate to New Asgard, and he would tell her the deeper, more painful things as they lay o on the grass under the stars. He told her of Thanos and how he slaughtered half of his people right in front of him. How he should have been killed that day on the ship. She held him as he told her how he had the chance to rid the world of Thanos before he snapped. He had this epic weapon that would kill him in one blow. And he had chosen to get Thanos in the chest, and every night he dreams of making the choice to go for the head.
After confessing how he felt the whole phenomenon was his fault, he then told her he would understand if she no longer want to come spend time with him. To be his person. She answered by placing a kiss on his cheek and wiping the tears off his cheek.
She knew telling him that it was insane to blame himself for the actions of a madman, she knew that telling him it wasn’t his fault would backfire. She had spent enough time with Harry during and after the war to know it would just frustrate him and cause him to deny it all. So, instead, she whispered something she knew he would want to hear.
“I forgive you.”
After that, while he was still carrying the guilt. One woman’s forgiveness wouldn’t make everything better, but he began to carry himself as if he were just a little bit lighter. Like maybe if one person would forgive him for not killing Thanos before he had a chance to wipe out half of the world, then maybe more would.
Now, it had been a couple months since she had even heard from Thor, and she was beginning to worry a little. Okay, she was worrying a lot. She had called the house a couple times, and finally Korg had answered. He had said The Hulk had come and taken Thor with him. They had an idea on how to bring everyone back. And so she waited.
Thor had become one of her closest friends that she had. Harry was so busy with the kids that she rarely saw him anymore. But while Thor had been opening up to her about his life, she had reciprocated with hers. And she had to admit, she was starting to have some feelings for him.
So, while he was off saving the world, she would just throw herself into her work, and maybe, just maybe, the next time she saw him, she would have the courage to tell him that she was starting to fall in love with him. Just a little.
The phone woke her from a dead sleep. She fumbled for it and saw Thor in the contacts. She quickly answered.
“Thor?”
“I need you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m in New York, I don’t know if you can even get here, but I just—”
“Give me the address,” Hermione replied, already getting out of bed and throwing on clothes. “Get me the address, and I’ll be there in minutes.”
“Hold on.”
She could hear him talking to someone in the background before coming back on the line and reciting an address to her. She hung up and quickly looked the address up on the computer and then closed her eyes. International apparation sucked, but she was willing to do it for him. She popped up outside of a log cabin out in the middle of nowhere. The crack from her apparition must have alerted to everyone inside because the empty porch filled with people as they poured through the door. She started walking up the driveway to the house, and then the man she was looking for pushed his way through the crowd, and came bounding down the stairs of the porch and down the driveway.
He looked…better than when she had last seen him. His hair had been pulled back and part way up. And his beard was no longer a bushy mess, it had been groomed into a braid down the center of his face. And he looked amazing. If she hadn’t already been in love with him, she would be now.
He reached her and pulled her into a tight embrace. “We did it,” he said into her own bushy hair.
“Did what?” she asked, holding him just as tightly.
“We fixed it. We fixed it. Everyone is back. Everyone,” he said.
“What?” she said. “When?”
“Just a couple hours ago.”
She pulled away and pulled out her phone. And then shook her head. Of course. The Weasley’s and Harry didn’t have phones. And she didn’t think to look and see if there had been any owls before she had rushed here.
“Oh my god, Thor, that’s amazing!”
“Mostly amazing. Our friend sacrificed himself to rid the universe of Thanos. So while it’s a happy occasion, it is also drenched in sadness.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, quietly. “I’m so, so, sorry.”
“Will you stay here until the funeral?” Thor asked. “I don’t want to be alone.”
Hermione looked up at the porch, still full of people. So many people. “Thor, I don’t think you would be alone.”
He took a step closer to her and took her hands in his. “I don’t want to be here without you. You mean so much to me, Hermione. You were there for me when I was at my lowest. If you and I hadn’t been talking, I don’t know if I would have gone with Bruce when he came to get me. And then I wouldn’t have been able to travel through time and talk to mother one more time and get Mjonir back. You have changed my life.”
Hermione could feel tears filling her eyes, and she had so many questions about what he had just said, including the travel through time thing, but instead she focused on the last bit. She lifted her hand to his cheek and brushed her thumb against it.
“You have changed mine, as well.”
Thor smiled. “I know I’m not what I once was, but I’m getting better with each day that passes. But I’m in love with you, Hermione. Do you think one day that you would be able to love me?”
Hermione smiled at him. “You silly man—”
“Not a man, I’m a god,” Thor interrupted.
Hermione laughed shaking her head. “You silly god. I’m already in love with you. Have been for a while now.”
Thor’s face broke out into a huge grin, before he closed the remaining gap between them, bringing his mouth down to hers. She happily returned the kiss.
“Wait, you’re doing what?” she asked a few days later.
They had attended Tony’s funeral and then she had brought Thor home with her so she could reunite with everyone who had been gone for the past five years. Ginny was having the hardest time, coming home to her children five years older than when she had left, but Harry was just relieved to have his wife back. After spending a day with them, Hermione and Thor had returned to New Asgard.
“I’ve put Valkyrie in charge,” he said. “Being here is hard. It reminds me of how I have failed my people. I need to put some distance between this place and myself.”
“And you’re doing that by…going to space?” Hermione asked, confused.
“I’ve enjoyed my time with the Guardians of the Galaxy. I’m going to travel with them for a while.”
Hermione could feel her heart breaking. “Oh.”
Thor moved closer to her, running his hands through her curls. “Come with me.”
“What?”
“Come with me. Have you ever been to space?”
Hermione shook her head. “I haven’t.”
“You would love it. And if we run into trouble, you’ll be able to help,” Thor said.
She looked up at Thor, his eyes looked so sincere. And now that everyone was back, it would be easy to find someone to take her position at the Ministry. And she had a bunch of free time now that she wasn’t spending time trying to solve the phenomenon. And if she was traveling in space, she wouldn’t have to worry about what reacclimating everyone into the world would look like.
She was about to open her mouth to answer, but apparently she had been taking too long for Thor’s liking.
“I love you, Hermione. And I will understand if you don’t want to leave everything in order to travel. And the rabbit can be pretty angry, and Star Lord may try to steal you from me…” he trailed off and looked off into the distance before turning back to her. “I don’t want to be so far away from you I can’t call you, either. You’re my person. You told me to find a person, and that person is you. And I hope that one day, maybe in the near future, you would be my wife.”
“Yes,” Hermione said.
“Yes to what?”
“Yes to it all. Yes, I’ll travel in space. Yes I’ll be your wife one day. Because you are my person, too.”
Thor let out a whoop of excitement before swooping down and kissing her. When they pulled apart, they were both wearing huge grins. And as they walked hand in hand back into Thor’s house, the only thing Hermione could think about was what the hell do you pack for space travel?