Harry and Hermione were in a difficult position. They knew they were being watched so discussing their escape plan took effort. They did not have their wands, or any of their possessions. Except for one. Harry didn't know how to tell it to Hermione, but his mokeskin pouch was still around his neck. The snitch, Marauders map and his mother's letter would not be of much use for escape, but he did have his broken wand in there. And the mirror shard. He had to find a way to ask Hermione if it was possible to apparate with a broken wand.
"Hermione, do you think we will ever get our wands back? You know how I feel about my wand. I hope they do not break them."
"His broken wand! He has the mokeskin pouch still on him! Of course! But why would he talk about it now. Unless he plans to try to use it. But he can't, it won't work. Spells will backfire and if we try to apparte we might splinch.", Hermione wished she studied wandlore more. She packed books, of course, but they were in her handbag.
"No Harry, I don't think they will break them. They might still need us to do magic and a broken wand is very dangerous to use. I wonder how the food will taste. I am used to elf made food by now."
"Elf made food? The last elf made food was... Kreacher? Can I summon him? I don't need a wand for that. But what can the old elf do. As soon as I do it, we will have only a few seconds. And we don't have Ron here..."
"I think we will just have to wait and see."
"Harry, Vo...he-who-must-not-be-named will find us, soon. They did not kill Greyback, werewolf would not be killed by a muggle bullet. Our only hope is Vol...his... prejudice will blind him for a while. But eventually he will figure it out, he will find us."
"I know Hermione, but we cannot do anything."
"We need to tell them. Tell the muggles everything about Riddle. If they know who is coming, they will have to let us go. They won the fight against the snatchers but they cannot hope to defend against him."
"I don't know Hermione. This was never part of any plan. I don't think Dumbledore ever imagined that we would be faced with this. He wanted us to keep hiding from the Order of Phoenix. If we did not trust them, how can we trust the muggles?"
"We can't. But I don't think they will help us unless we tell them exactly how the wizarding world works these days."
"They seem to know a lot of it already. They knew how we are. They know we are wanted for questioning. How do you think they know all this Hermione? We should first figure that out, before we decide if we can trust them."
They fell in silence as they considered this. How did they know so many things about the wizarding world? Some muggles did know about the wizarding world, parents of muggleborns and people who married into wizarding families. But even Hermione's parents only had a general idea of it, pieced together from the brief visits to Diagon Alley and her stories. Before she wiped even that from their minds. The pain of that still haunted her.
How could an organization such as this have such recent information? The ministry fell only a few months ago. And if anything, Hermione would have expected that muggles would know less now that Death Eaters were running the world.
The room had no clocks and they lost track of time, it seemed to them that only minutes passed before they were again interrupted. A woman accompanied by half a dozen guards brought them clothes. Not their clothes, the Inquisition was obviously still afraid of that, but plain muggle clothes. They were comfortable though, if a bit conservative. Hermione noticed that in the best tradition, women were apparently expected to wear skirts and not pants. Colours were also for someone else, Inquisition opting for the white and black.
After they dressed, they were escorted through the empty corridors to the dining hall. The hall was quite different from what they expected. It was a communal hall. And it was far from comfortable. It was just a few rows of plain wooden tables with hard wooden benches. Currently empty, the hall could fit about fifty people in total.
They were motioned to sit at the table. Their guards avoided speaking to them as much as possible and after the incident with Ron, Harry and Hermione knew not to try and smalltalk. After a few minutes, father Paul arrived. He was accompanied by his standard guards and a younger priest. Hermione recognized him as the man who visited them when she was pretending to be asleep. Now that she could get a good look at him, she disliked him even more. There was something in the way he walked, a slight swaying motion, that reminded her of a snake. And his face. Even though his expression was blank, his eyes betrayed him. There was evil in those eyes. Not the open, selfish evil of Voldemort, but equally dangerous. The men sat down on the opposite side of the table. No words were spoken.
After a few moments of tense silence, a side door opened and four trays were brought in. The food was plain and simple, but there was enough of it and Harry and Hermione were starving. They reached for their spoons to start on the soup but a loud cough stopped them. Both men had their hands clasped together and heads slightly bowed. After motioning the Sign of the Cross, they both started in a creepy unison:
"Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen."
The tense silence continued through the entire meal. The food was nourishing and for the first time since they got in this place, Harry and Hermione felt their muscles relaxing. Whatever was going to happen to them, for the next hour they were probably safe.
After they finished their meals, the priests again made a short prayer, this time in silence.
"Well Mister Potter, Miss Granger, here we are. I'm sure you have many questions for me, as I have for you. I hope we can discuss this in a civilized fashion, no lies this time. Although I do understand why you lied to us before. Shall we start? I know the question burning in your mind, ask it."
"Is Ron OK?"
"Mister Weasley is doing well. The potion you used on him has sped up his recovery significantly. The doctors think he will be able to join you tomorrow. We are keeping him sedated for the time being, we wouldn't want him to do something stupid, now that he is alone. My turn. Tell me Mister Potter, why do you think we are in danger?"
"You know already. You watched us on cameras. Hermione told you. One of the Snatchers was a werewolf. If your guns work the way I think they work, he will be able to heal from that wound. Even if you had silver bullets, he would have survived. The silver thing is just a legend, but you probably already know that."
"Yes, we know. We know how to kill werewolves though. Unfortunately, we did not know one was in the party."
"Just how much do you know? You seem to know a lot about Hermione, Ron and me. How do you know so much about the wizarding world? I thought the Ministry takes care of all muggles. I thought wizards erased all memories of themselves 300 years ago."
"They did Mister Potter, they did. Of course, not all memory. Important people were told. Today, your Prime Minister is told about the Ministry on his first day. Back in the day, it was kings and queens. Royalty, powerful people. They are told, because that is the way things were before. A long time ago, wizards were part of the society. Of course, back then, there were a few thousand wizards in Britain and few million muggles. Still a lot more muggles than wizards, but you could have a wizard in every larger village. The better wizards, the more powerful ones, served in bigger cities. The most powerful ones worked in courts. Remember the legend of Merlin. He is the most famous, but he is not the only wizard to be part of the aristocracy. Almost all "old wizarding families", as you might know them, were. The Blacks, Crouches, Lestrange, Longbottom, Malfoy. Yes Mister Potter, I know you recognize those names. Hundreds of years ago, all those families were royalty in the muggle world. They were also the ones who fought the secrecy act the most, 300 years ago. You see, it was a very good life for them. Being a wizard, especially a powerful one, was a good life. Power and wealth were practically given to them, they only had to ask. So they made sure that provisions were left in the act that allowed them to use muggles as they were used to. This is how knowledge of wizards survived in the muggle world. But as the centuries passed, a strange thing happened. The number of muggles rose. Tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions. But the number of wizards did not. Seven hundred years ago, there were a few thousand wizards in Britain. Today, we estimate there are around ten thousands wizards. For some reason, He only knows why, the number of wizards seems to be limited. And so the memory diluted. Now reduced to a legend and fantasy stories for children. But some remember the truth. The knowledge has been passed on, from generation to generation, that the wizards are out there. And that not all of them are good."
"But how do you know new things. You know that the Ministry is after me, and they have only been doing that for a year now. How can you know recent events?"
"Ah, well. While wizards don't take much notice of such things as science and technology, we muggles are still progressing. We have always known wizards exist, but for the past few decades our technology has enabled us to keep a pretty close eye on your world mister Potter."
"But wait a moment.", Hermione interrupted, "Technology doesn't work next to magic. Electric devices don't work in strong magic fields. You couldn't be using technology to monitor the Ministry or Hogwarts."
"But we can monitor everywhere else. You see miss Granger, we might not be able to monitor places with high magic density, but we can monitor all other places in Britain. When you eliminate all normal places, whatever is left is magical. And technology is not the only way to get information. We specialized in extracting information in the past 500 years."
"You tortured wizards to get information on us?"
"Volunteers mister Potter, volunteers. Some of the muggle born wizards are borne into catholic families. Few, very few, maintain their faith even when they accept their invitation to Hogwarts. It is an act of faith and bravery to do so. They risk their souls to help protect those who cannot protect themselves. We pray for them daily. My turn again. I know that you are on a mission. And I heard you say that Dumbledore asked you to keep this mission secret from your friends. I'm afraid I'll have to know what this mission is."
Harry knew that this questions was going to come up. There were two ways he could respond. He will either have to tell them they are looking for the Horcrux or the Hallows. The Horcrux was a secret, even in the wizarding world. If he tells them about it, he might be releasing a very dangerous knowledge into the world. On the other hand, they will have no way to check his story. The Hallows are a popular bedtime story in the wizarding world. It's possible that they know about them. In which case they might wonder just what it is that we plan to do with them. And he had to admit, he didn't have an actual plan. Getting the Hallows would supposedly bring him mastery over Death, but unless that means he can wish Voldemort away, he still needs a plan to bring him and his army down. It was time to make a choice.
"We are looking for three powerful artefacts known as the Deathly Hallows. A magical Elder wand, magical cloak and a stone. Legend claims that they were created by Death himself and handed to three brothers: Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus Peverell. The Elder wand is said to be the most powerful wand in existence and whoever wields it cannot be defeated in a duel. The magical cloak grants the wearer complete invisibility, even from Death itself. The stone is said to grant the ability to bring back souls of the dead."
"Blasphemy!", shouted Sarnowski, "This has gone far enough! You are going to sit here and listen to this boy talk about necromancy? These words are an abomination! No man can bring back that which God Almighty has taken to his side. We should deal with them as we have always dealt with such."
"Calm down Piotr.", father Paul was reading something one of his sides passed on, "It would seem that we have records of this legend, dating back... all the way to 1300. It's just a legend, Piotr. Let the boy speak, even on trial he would have a chance to present his case. Continue Harry, tell us why you think these artefacts exist, and why are you trying to find them."
"Well, we think they exist because we think we saw one. And we are trying to find them because Vol... Riddle is trying to find them too."
"You think you have seen one? Which one?"
"I think that professor Dumbledore had at one point in his possession the cloak. And we know that the dark lord is trying to find the wand. He believes it will make him unstoppable.", Harry realized it would be a good idea to mention exactly why, "You see, he is a very powerful wizard even without the Elder wand. But for some reason, when he tried to kill me as a child he formed a connection between us. Now normal wands do not work normally when we fight. They tend to become entwined, and refuse to duel. I don't even understand this completely myself. So I believe he is searching for the Elder wand to be able to personally kill me."