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"Why does this keep happening to you, Hermione? Or, more like, why does this keep happening to us? Is it because we associate with you? It must be. This sort of thing doesn't happen to other people."
Ron Weasley was not having a good day. Or, rather, he had been having a good day, when he was sailing around on a pirate ship. His day ceased to be good when he was stranded on a desert island. Under his feet was nothing but white sand. Before him was nothing but turquoise sea. Above him was nothing but blue sky. Behind him was nothing but green foliage. And the sun was burning down.
But at least he's not stranded alone. His sidekick, Harry Potter, was with him, although at that moment he was busy casting expelliarmus on the local wildlife.
Hermione Granger, the one responsible for the Golden Trio being stranded on an island paradise, tossed her salty hair over her salty shoulder. It was frizzing. "Why, I think you're perfectly lucky to be along for the ride, Ronald! Not everyone is able to traverse the high seas of the multiverse, you know. You two ought to count yourselves lucky!" She said, in her snootiest voice. Much like her best friends, she was dressed in a pirate costume, but hers possessed significantly more flourishes, as well as a nicer hat.
To one side of the bickering couple, Harry Potter cast expelliarmus on a starfish, and sectumsempra on a coconut. The one flew away and the other exploded.
But how did the gang reach this point? Because of Hermione's Department of Mysteries shenanigans, of course. She was on her period, and consequently was feeling a bit feisty. Over the course of many experiments with the dimension hopping device located within the super secret wing of the Ministry, she'd learnt, not to control it, but to direct it somewhat. This occured according to her mood. If she were feeling sad or guilty, she'd end up somewhere like Silent Hill. If she were feeling extra curious, she might end up in the Fallout or Elder Scrolls universes. And if she was feeling especially…problematic, then she'd end up doing piracy. Naturally. And since both Harry and Ron were wandering around the Department of Mysteries at the time (skiving off from boring casework), they ended up accompanying her on her latest trip.
Dropped down through a tornado of magical energy, a trip during which Ron could not stop screaming, the trio found themselves slammed face first into the filth splattered shore of Tortuga. Harry and Ron stayed that way whilst Hermione leapt to her feet, her lungs already filling with briny air.
"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!" she cried, her hands going to her hips, her head tilting back, nose pointed at the evening sun.
"Bloody hell," said Ron, into the mud he was lying in. All that anyone heard is the bubbling of the gooey dreck.
"What?" asked Harry, actually lifting his head from the mire and squinting off towards a dark coloured ship of chimera type where it floated in dock. Elsewhere, its crew made merry in the rowdy town.
⚓🌕⚓
Rowdy you say? Sounds like another term for 'party'. Harry and Ron, since escaping from fate, death, and dismemberment at the hands of Voldemort and his Death Eaters, were all about partying, taking every opportunity to participate in fun and games. Hermione? No. She was still as strait laced as always.
However, nagging from the young men led to her accompanying them into town, her lip beginning curled and curling more and more at the unwholesome sights splayed left, right, and centre. Such sights included drunken whores, drunken men, and drunken pigs, the lot of them draped across the mud where they fell. Like breadcrumbs, they delineated the path towards the most popular of Tortuga's many drinking houses slash brothels, sitting like a square Jack 'o lantern slap bang between less garish neighbours.
"I'm not stepping a foot through there," said Hermione, coming to a dead stop several feet before the rotting door of the house of disrepute.
"Come on, Hermione. Don't you want to go home? This place might be the key to that." urged Ron.
"Mmm." agreed Harry, his wand out and ready to expelliarmus his friend straight through the wall if need be.
So, thanks to a combination of nagging and threats, Hermione stepped over the threshold, straight into a world of pain. Unlike in her world, caged music was not playing from pulsating black boxes of sound or else from some magical device, but was being produced by real life people and their real life instruments - fiddles, mostly, and small drums. Also, their voices. People were full throatedly singing at the top of their voices, like self consciousnesses was not a thing. They were also dancing wildly, and clearly having the time of their lives, at least for the five minutes interim between bar brawls.
"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!"
"Six men on a dead man's chest!"
"Yaaaaaaaarr!!!"
And such delights. Hermione's eyes sparkled boozily, and she hadn't even drunk anything yet.
"Hermione? I don't like this place." whimpered Ron, from behind the trio's fearless leader. No, not Harry. Harry himself had already disappeared into the crowd of sweaty, smelly, malcontents roiling about the place.
"Harry? Harry? Where have you gone, mate?! Don't leave me!" Ron disappeared into the crowd likewise, much less happily.
Finally free of the limpets that had attached themselves to her, Hermione pulled out her wand (now suitably sea themed) and accioed a three cornered leather hat across the room and onto her head. There. Done. Now she was a pirate captain.
A pirate captain needs a ship. To the tune of 'Oi! Whaddya think you're doing?!' she traipsed out into the rum soaked dark, a night splashed with silver from the drunken moon. Luckily, there was a handy dandy ship right there! Sitting pretty in the water, black and beautiful, with a lovely skull and bones flag. Hermione skipped on over to it, chased by a reeling man who kept tripping over nothing and skidding through vomit pools.
"Hey! Hey!"
Being a witch, Hermione could simply magic her way onboard, past the couple of drunks guarding the gangplank. She could also summon a crew in record time.
"Accio Harry! Accio Ronald!"
A whoosh and a crashing grew steadily louder, and at first it appeared as if a pair of bludgers were wheeling towards the ship. These dark, fast moving, dense shapes quickly resolved themselves into human beings, a pair of young men, whirling through the air. They knocked the simpering stalker into the drink, as well as the drunken guards, before zooming up onto the deck, where they came to a stop.
⚓🌕⚓
Unfortunately, one cannot simply steal a captain's ship out from under him and expect to get away with it. Hermione (plus Ron and Harry) chaotically enchanted the ship so that it began sailing by itself, pointing it's nose towards the distant horizon, sparkling not with the sun, but with its more mysterious counterpart.
"Aah. Feel that air in my hair. It puts a shiver in me timbers." Hermione sighed, her hair tossed by the salty wind, her hands yanking the giant steering wheel back and forth uselessly. The ship did not obey her whims, but it seemed to know where to go, gliding across the sea, cutting waves asunder. Always the moon sailed on ahead, a carrot on the end of an invisible stick.
But fast as she was, the Black Pearl was not the fastest ship out there, and the skulking drunk was very good at making strange allies. That time he, by a strange series of coincidences, had called upon the powers of the deep to launch another ship at his own, not to destroy it, no never, but to shake loose the fleas from its back.
While the ship was crossing a stretch of open ocean, no goal in sight but the sheer mischievous joy of piloting a pirate ship around, a whirlpool formed on the surface of the ocean to Hermione's right. She glanced at it imperiously, an expression that didn't change much even when the nose of a killer whale ship emerged from the liquid twister.
"Aaah!" Shrieked Ron, his replacement wand as crooked as his broken one used to be.
"Woah!" Exclaimed Harry, sounding as awed as he used to be during his first year at Hogwarts.
Onwards came the whale ship, whose rudder and teeth were formed of coral. Big problem, being English, when undertaking this joy ride, Hermione and co did not enchant the cannon. On the deck of the enemy ship stood the drunk, a figure who became very clear when the ship was mere feet away. He waved a non-existant hat.
"That was a nice go, poppet, but there's only one Captain-"
The ship crashed face first into The Black Pearl.
"Why does this keep happening to you, Hermione?" asked Ron Weasley, some hours later when the sun was rising over the desert island on which the trio had washed up. Both ships were still somewhere out in the blue, no wrecks present on the shore.
"Because I like to experiment, Ronald." said Hermione, sniffly, her head still decorated by a certain hat.