The morning that Hermione Granger arrived in the Fire Nation, she woke up thinking about strangulation, her hands outstretched as if to catch a throat between them.
She experienced a moment of disorientation before realizing what she was seeing: her own arms lifted trancelike before her in the semidarkness, a halo of water rippling around her fingertips. She hadn't bent in her sleep since she was a child.
Rising to her knees on her sleeping mat, Hermione guided the water back into its bowl with a slow sweep of her right hand. She breathed a moment, feeling the hush and sway of the ship moving in the ocean, feeling her heart slow. The ship's cabin was small and dim, lit by a single red lantern in the corner.
Then she bent over the bowl to wash her face. In the moment before she closed her eyes, she saw her dim reflection held in the water. The young woman looking back at her did not look shaken or disturbed. She looked ready.
#
At age eight, Hermione took a vow never to kill, a rite of passage for young female waterbenders of the Northern Tribe. "By the spirits of the ocean and moon," she chanted with the others, the paint cold and wet upon her cheeks, "I vow to use my waterbending to heal, to honor the elemental precepts of life, rebirth, and replenishment. I vow never to injure or kill another soul."
The same day, the boys with waterbending ability took an oath, too. Their oath spoke of power, and how it must be used responsibly. It spoke of strength and skill, mentioning fighters of legendary prowess. It spoke of doing what was necessary.
Hermione seethed about the differences. "It's not fair," she said mutinously to her friends Cho and Pansy the following week, during one of their first healing lessons.
"Why?" Cho said, brow furrowed in concentration as she passed water through the qi paths in the model before them.
"I'm glad we're healers," said Pansy from across the table, copying a diagram of the model's wrist. "Who wants to splash around playing soldier all day?"
"Besides," Cho added, "you don't want to hurt people, do you, Hermione?"
"Not for no reason," Hermione huffed. "But if someone tries to hurt me, or you two, or anyone else, then of course I'll want to stop them."
She shoved a fistful of water through the model's qi paths so forcefully that the others flinched.
#
There it was. The Fire Nation's Capital Island, growing upon the horizon.
Standing at the ship's prow, Hermione watched it transform from a tiny interruption into a magnificent city. The caldera of the dormant volcano seemed to breach up out of the ocean's gunmetal waves, glimmering with the filigree of fine buildings. By sunhigh, the Nimbus had sailed into the First Lord's Harbor.
The captain had told Hermione to expect a small escort to the Royal Palace. So, as they lowered anchor, Hermione hoisted her sealskin pack high on her shoulder and scanned the docks, looking for an official or two bearing the golden flames of the Royal Seal.
What she saw instead was an entire royal procession. At the front stood an empty palanquin carried by four servants. Then came a squadron of eight armored guards, then half a dozen diplomatic officials, swaddled so thoroughly in red silks that they reminded Hermione of newborns. Lastly, a pair of dragon moose were hitched to a fine blackwood cart, already being laden with her crates of clothes and scrolls by yet more red-clothed servants.
Hermione's breath caught. All this for her. All this in recognition of who she was and what she'd accomplished.
But the prickle of excitement faded, and her stomach tightened in a way that had nothing to do with the harbor's choppy waters. She would need to look into these people's faces and smile, and accept their thanks, and shield her true purpose so deeply that none of them would see a shadow of it.
