Title: Impundulu
Author: Alim Siemanym
Rating: R
Prospective Pairings: Albus Dumbledore/Harry Potter, Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama
Archived at: Livejournal, FFN Summary:
Prologue
31 December 2010
Hermione sat at what used to be her desk, in what used to be her office, deep in the bowels of what used to be the Ministry of Magic of Great Britain. It was ingenious, really. Who would ever expect the last remnants of the wizarding resistance to seek shelter in the government offices that had fallen all those years ago?
What had begun as a glorious victory against the forces of evil had quickly devolved into a large scale witch hunt. Literally. A consummate megalomaniac, Voldemort had cared little about secrecy statutes as he tortured and slaughtered muggles and their brethren. Once Voldemort had taken control of the ministry, there had been little effort made to hide the Death Eaters' atrocities from the nonmagical population.
The wizarding world, in their arrogance, thought the muggles little more than sheep, and couldn't conceive of the muggle world rising up in rebellion against their "betters." The muggles, for their part, used these deeply-ingrained prejudices to their advantage, quietly recruiting discontented muggleborns, identifying key locations, and planning the complete and total subjugation of the wizarding race.
Officially the military was merely bringing a rogue element of society back under the control of the Crown.
Unofficially they were eradicating a large, widespread terrorist movement.
And just when the wizarding population looked to their savior, to Harry Potter, to rebuild their world in the days after his great victory, the muggles came.
Hermione looked at the rune circle painstakingly inscribed with sand from the six remaining time turners in magical britain. The Department of Mysteries had spent nearly a century developing the runic sequences, though the final inscription had never been tested. An additional two years of study by Hermione herself, done on the run from Death Eaters and muggle Exterminators alike, had brought her to this point.
The door creaked, a groan of aged wood and unoiled hinges, and Hermione whirled around, wand in hand, a spell at her lips. Harry Potter slipped the Cloak of Invisibility off and said, "A tree grows in Brooklyn."
"A weed grows in Staten Island," Hermione replied, putting her wand away. "Well?"
He handed her a brown paper shopping bag. "Same old. Nearly got spotted in Glasgow. Paper's in there."
She hmm'd and rifled through the supplies he'd picked up. Tampons, antiseptic, wheatabix, Tang, a How to Know if Your Neighbor's a Wizard pamphlet stapled to the receipt, and yesterday's copy of The Daily Telegraph. She pulled it out, glanced disinterestedly at the large color image of three ridiculously-garbed wizards being arrested at King's Cross Station, and flipped to the second page.
Harry peered down at the rune circle. "You almost done with that?" he asked, gesturing.
"As done as it will ever be," she replied absently, her attention on an article about some cutting edge research into quantum-based spell detection.
"Huh," Harry said, looking down at the intricate designs that sprawled across the floor. "Makes me kinda wish I'd taken runes at Hogwarts, ya know?"
Hogwarts, the only place Harry had ever really called home. Now closed, abandoned, discovered by muggles and turned into an attraction of sorts, its interiors gutted and vandalized. Even the ghosts had gone.
The door creaked again and Ron stumbled in, batting aside the wands that were immediately in his face. "The horn blows at midnight," he said impatiently. "Harry were you in Glasgow?"
"The General died at dawn," Hermione replied with the counter-phrase, at the same time as Harry said, "Yeah, why?"
"They saw you. It's all on the radio. I think they're using some new sort of apparition-detector because there's loads of please-men outside--"
He never finished that thought.
Hermione and Harry both startled into action, Harry locking the door, first with his holly wand, then with the Elder Wand for good measure. Hermione moved to her desk, pulled out her handbag, and slung it over one shoulder. She marched back over to the runic circle and took a deep breath.
"We've got one chance at this," she said calmly. "Now, whatever you do, don't mess up the sand."
The men nodded, faces set. Someone banged on the door and it shuddered.
She took another deep breath. Now or never.
At the very center of the circle was a triangle, unfinished, with three sides that never met. She stepped into the circle and took a position at one apex. "Harry, Ron, pick a corner," she ordered. "Use your feet to finish the triangle. Heels together. Hold on to each other if you must."
The door shuddered again and the wood groaned. They stepped into the rune circle, and the triangle was complete. Hermione took a third, final breath and began to chant.
The ground started shaking. Blue light rose from the runes as the sand dissolved into sheets of blue-white lightning. As the circle began to rotate around them, Hermione's chanting grew louder and faster, reaching a fevered pitch just as the door shuddered and gave way, muggle commandos pouring into the room. The black-clad soldiers pointed assault rifles in their direction as their leader shouted, "In the name of Her Majesty and the Crown--"
Harry had just enough time to give them a wry grin and a two fingered salute before the universe swallowed them whole.
The universe spat them out in a field of dried grasses, under a bright sun and blue skies. Actually there was very little spitting involved; if Harry had to choose a descriptor for their method of arrival, he probably would have picked something along the lines of vomit. The whole experience reminded Harry of a time when the Dursleys had locked him outdoors and, being hungry, he had eaten the berries from a holly tree, only to vomit the nasty things up an hour later after an excruciating bellyache.
The three of them lay sprawled in the dry grass, gasping for breath. Hermione waved the wand she still held in a white-knuckled grip and said, "Tempus."
A white mist drifted from the tip of her wand and fizzled out. "Dammit," she exclaimed, dropping her head back down with a thump. Ron groaned and flopped an arm over his eyes, looking all the world like he had simply laid down for a kip. Harry sat up and looked around at their new surroundings.
"My wand's overloaded. I'll need to buy a new one. Ron, give me your wand --"
Harry stopped listening to his friend, instead opting to stare at the line of soldiers with their red jackets, blue trousers, and white pith helmets that marched in neat formation across the field, rifles at their shoulders, bayonets glinting in the sunlight. A man lay prone not ten feet in front of his current position, wearing khaki trousers, jacket, and slouch hat, hunting rifle propped out before him, murmuring quietly, "Een, twee, drie, vier, vyf--"
"Hermione," Harry said quietly, so as to get her attention without giving away their position.
"Just a second, Harry," she replied behind him, distracted. "Tempus."
The Boer fired, Hermione gasped, Ron startled into a crouch, and Harry said, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."