She turned a corner in the shrubs and was suddenly at a dead end. She frowned. That wasn't right. She turned around to trace backwards, but found that to be a dead end as well.
She turned back around again to see two strange characters standing in two different doorways. They were behind what looked like playing cards, though she saw four legs at each.
"Hello?" She asked, barely loud enough to be heard. Two heads popped out from the bottom of the cards.
"Oh!" One exclaimed.
"Can we help you?"
"Only if this way leads to the Goblin City," Hermione replied quickly. She remembered reading about these characters in the book, but as seconds passed she was having a more difficult time remembering.
"We don't know, but they do." They pointed upwards to another set of heads that poked out from on top of the cards.
"Which way leads to the castle in the Goblin City?" She asked them.
"One way goes to sudden death. The other is safe. Choose wisely, because one of us always lies." The answer was cryptic, but Hermione knew they would be. She started to pace.
"Which one is safe?" She asked looking between them. They looked at each other.
"His way." The one on the left said.
"Oh no, it is his way!" He replied crossly. Hermione looked between them.
"One of you is lying now, or you lied before, and neither are safe." Hermione folded her arms across her chest.
"One is safe. And it isn't mine." Left.
"It is not mine." Right.
"Is too!" Left.
"Is not!" Right.
Hermione let out a frustrated yell, they both fell silent. "I don't care which one is safe, and which one is sudden death. Which one goes to the castle?!" They both looked at each other blankly and then back at Hermione.
"They both do."
"Neither! They both go back to the beginning!" The one on the left spoke first so Hermione stepped up to that one and leaned in close.
"What is the Goblin King's name?"
"Y-you can't ask that! We can only answer questions about the Labyrinth."
"Who rules over the Labyrinth?" Hermione countered immediately, a smirk started to take over her face.
"The Goblin King," he answered. She crossed to the card on the right.
"Who rules over the Labyrinth?" She asked confidently. He shook his head.
"You can only ask a question once."
"Who rules over the Labyrinth?" She asked again. He fell silent.
"The Labyrinth has a mind of its own and cannot be ruled or controlled," he answered. Hermione nodded and took a few steps back.
"You are lying," she said to the one on the right. "He said that his way was not the way through. And you lied, so that means your way leads to the castle." Hermione walked forward and pushed open the gate. It swung open silently and she stepped through, a triumphant smile on her face.
Jareth glared at the crystal, at the girl. "She shouldn't have gotten this far, " he muttered. Draco let out a derisive snort.
"Hermione Granger is many things, one of those is a Gryffindor. Infallible courage. She'll beat anything you throw at her because she's bloody brave and stupid." Draco folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall, his eyes wandered about the landscape of the city. It looked absolutely disgusting out there. Jareth had been muttering about how Granger shouldn't have made it this far, basically since she had gotten into the city.
Draco's watch seemed to be keeping the proper time, and a hovering thirteen hour clock nearby told him she had been at it for six hours. Seven left to go.
"Is that so?" Jareth asked, turning his keen green eye and brown eye on Draco. Draco returned the glare.
"Yeah. If anything, she's going to beat your Labyrinth just because you said she couldn't. She's a git like that." Jareth let out one laugh, a smile pulled at his lips. "We'll see how she goes against...this little number." He flipped his palm over, and a smaller crystal was in his hand. He tossed the crystal outside and it instantly transfigured into a large bird. It flew off and Draco watched it with curiosity.
Hermione was getting exhausted. Ever since the door she stepped through, she had been walking through tall hedges with a stone ground. She must have covered miles, but the hedges were so high she couldn't get her bearings, and she didn't want Jareth to accuse her of cheating again. Above her, she heart a terrible screech that froze the blood in her veins. The screech seemed avian but she had never heard it before.
She quickened her pace instinctively even though her legs were exhausted, and her stomach was cramping. She could really use some water as well. The bird call sounded again, much closer this time, and Hermione let out a small gasp.
The pathway she was on suddenly opened and she stepped out onto a field. It seemed to be the size of a Quidditch Pitch, maybe more. The ground was broken randomly in places and revealed stone. There was no cover in this opening except a few fallen pillars that were maybe a meter-maybe two-thick. It was hard to tell because of the distance. A shadow swept over the clearing and Hermione's eyes darted towards the sky.
This was no regular bird. The Condor maybe was the best comparison she could make for this thing, but it was still larger than that. Her eyes followed it as it leaned left and swept back over the clearing. She had no doubt in her mind that it would attack if she stepped out into the open.
The bird let out its screech again and Hermione's hands clapped over her ears. She struggled to remain standing. The call seemed to fill her head and rattle her brain. She grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't understand why the bird's call was this terrible. It frightened her immensely.
She gripped her wand and followed the bird again, judging the speed of it, and it's circling of the clearing. It stayed at roughly at sixty meters above the ground. "Okay. okay," she whispered, her grip on her wand slick with sweat.
"IMMOBULOUS!" She let out a bellow as loud as she could muster, willing all of the power she had into the spell. It shot from her wand and she watched, frozen, as the spell hit the bird, like she intended.
With wings frozen out by it's sides, the bird stayed aloft for a while, but started to lose ground. Hermione watched long enough to realize that it was indeed, frozen, and she took off running.
The earthly part of the ground turned to mud as she ran, and then muck. It suctioned her feet and made it impossible to run. She looked again at the bird, who was still soaring in a straight line, and then struggled to get her feet out of the mud. She stood on stone then and realized how slow her progress would be across the field. The stones were several feet apart-too far to jump- and she had yet to reach the fallen pillars. Her heart was pounding in her chest.
How could she get across the field in time? Before the bird recovered? She tried to take deep breaths. How could she solidify the mud?
"Glacius!" It came first to her mind. She pointed her wand at the mud before her and watched as the blue light was swallowed into the ground. She touched her foot gingerly to the ground and was relieved to see that she remained on the surface. She took two short steps out, and remained up. She ran to the next stone exposure and cast the spell again.
And so was her progress. With each spell, she felt herself draining a bit more. The bird was gone from sight now. She forced herself to concentrate, the first pillar was approaching. When she did make it to the pillar she scrambled up on top of it as fast as she could. This added height let her see more of the field. It was...a chess board of sorts, but the mud had over taken a lot of the stonework. At the far end-the direction she was headed, she could make out the castle. With a breath of relief she realized how close she was. And in the same second she saw that the last several meters of field was solid mud.
She moved down the pillar as fast as she dared and eased herself onto the ground. She froze the mud as she ran and made her way to the next pillar. Her progress was slow.
She made it to about two thirds of the way across the field when the bird let out its terrifying call. She froze. She was terribly exposed here. She was on a pillar at the moment, her arms out stretched for balance. The bird was still out of sight. She was just about to jump down when a gust of wind played with her hair.
On the wind carried a whisper, "Hermione." It sang as it tugged at her hair and clothes. It first started as a gentle breeze but then it became more insistent, the call of her name was constant, she crouched to the pillar and eased herself down, but the wind remained bothering her. She froze the mud in front of her, but the wind stole away her spell. She again crouched and released her spell with the tip of her wand almost touching the mud. It stuck this time and she took a low step onto the mud. She slipped instantly.
Before, she hadn't had the wind to mess with her balance and the frozen slick surface of the mud hadn't been a problem. But now she would have no traction.
With tears in her eyes, at the hopelessness of her situation she crawled, on her elbows and knees. The wind still bothered her but she moved more in the direction she meant to than not. Once on the stone she moved on. The bird sounded again.
She fell then, the call of the bird filled her head and blurred her vision. She was cowering, shivering. The wind still called her name, now screaming.
The shadow of the bird passed over her and Hermione's heart pounded painfully in her chest, filling her with adrenaline.
She'd die here. She'd die if she tried to run. Tears leaked quickly from her eyes now.
"Get up," the wind said suddenly, but the voice wasn't Jareth's any longer. She knew that voice. It was Malfoy. But there was a lot in the voice she hadn't heard before. Pleading. Pain. Encouragement.
Hermione was, again, reminded, that it wasn't just her life on the line here. It was Draco's as well. She clenched her fists and looked up at the bird, still circling over head. Though it was several meters lower this time. She took a step out into the mud.
If she froze it again, she would have to crawl and that would put her in an indefensible position against the bird. It was so large it could easily pluck her from her prone figure. And her progress was too slow with the wind and the ice. Yet if she stepped through the mud, the bird may be able to see her standing easier, it wouldn't be as easy to pick her up with as thick and as deep as her feet are in the mud.
She was almost to the stone when the bird landed in front of her. She stared at it, eyes wide. It was taller than she was, it's wings outstretched would swallow her. The bird was solid black with a gray shine in its feathers. At it's neck was a light and puffy necklace of plummage. It's head was giant, it's mouth could easily claim one of her arms. Her entire head could fit in its beak, which was probably half a meter. It's eyes bore into hers.
She saw intelligence in them. She didn't move. She barely breathed.
"I am Terror," it said. The voice was like nails, and scratching, and breaking glass. It tugged at her ears, as if prolonged exposure would cause them to bleed. She wanted to cover her ears but she didn't want to move.
"I'm Hermione Granger," she responded. She wasn't being polite, or trying to be funny. She had no idea what to do.
"Do you know what lies beneath the ground, here?" The wings spread wide in a gesture to the field around them. Hermione didn't take her eyes off the bird. She felt something nudge her foot, first from beneath the mud. She held in a scream as she looked down.
A pearly white skull floated around her, as if she was standing in water and not mud. Tears started to leak from her eyes again.
She had never known this level of fear existed. She felt it in every nerve, in every heart beat. She couldn't think and she couldn't move.
"Fight," a voice in the back of her mind nudged, like the wind. She drew in a deep breath. How? How could she fight something so huge?
"I'll feed you to my nestlings." The bird's voice assaulted her mind and she felt ghost beaks nipping and tearing at her flesh. She raised her wand at the bird.
"No," she whispered quietly, "I won't let you." She somehow managed to keep the tremble out of her hand. "IMMOBULOUS!" The bird froze again, this time falling over. She drew in a deep breath and she started to move. She'd have to bypass that stone entirely. She trudge through the mud as fast as she could, the wind still pulling at her. She felt as if each second was borrowed. She constantly looked over her shoulder to make sure the heap of feathers remained there.
After a while she stood at the end. Looking across the several meters of mud. She took her first steps.
Of course this mud didn't just swallow her shins, it went up to her knees. She let out an enraged yell. What else could she do?! Ice wouldn't work because of the wind.
"Fire," she said quietly. Heat it. Turn it to dirt, or clay, or something. "Lacarnum Inflamare!" She put all her adrenaline into it and watched as the flames lept from her wand and scorched the ground. The jet licked the ground. She kept the flame up as she gingerly pulled her leg up and stepped on the burnt ground. It held.
She managed to get her other leg up and saw that her weight was pressing the burnt top layer, into the mud. She had to move quick. She shuffled forward as quick as she dared onto the land, as her flames kept burning the ground before her.
She could only concentrate on what she was doing as she moved forward. She ate up the distance slowly. When she she was close enough, she extinguished the flames and jumped for the stone landing. She landed solidly and turned to look back at the fallen form of the bird.
It was gone.
She took a few steps forward, towards the re-entrance of the maze, her eyes searching the field behind her, when she bumped into a figure. She raised her wand and wiped her head around in the same motion, expecting Terror.
It was Jareth. She didn't lower her wand as she glared at him, her heart was still pounding but she felt so drained. So exhausted. She needed food and water.
He didn't look angry, or upset. If anything, she would venture a guess that he was impressed. "I will say well done," he gestured sideways and suddenly the pathway before them led to a table with food set on it. Hermione eyed it hungrily. She realized after a second of looking at the food that Draco was sitting there as well. He looked alarmed, at his surroundings and then at Hermione and Jareth.
"Sit," Jareth ushered her forward.
