Hermione was the first to wake up. Her head pounding and her body sore, she rolled over with a groan and unsteadily got to her feet. Her eyes blinked as she tried to adjust to the pitch blackness that enveloped them. Finding her wand dangling from her wrist holster, she was grateful that it had not been damaged in the fall. With a silent Lumos, she lit the tip of her wand and gazed around the room she and her friends had found themselves in.
She was shocked to find herself in a rather cavernous room that while it clearly was aged, as the air was stale and damp, was nonetheless immaculate. There was not a shred of dust to be seen, let alone debris from their fall. The only disturbance seemed to just herself, Harry, and Ron. Speaking of whom, it appeared that one of them was slowly coming back to reality as well. Harry was still clutching his wand as his breathing seemed to accelerate as it does for people who rapidly awaken from the lands of sleep. Suddenly, his breathing paused, and Hermione ducked down as she had an idea what was coming.
With a start, Harry was on his feet and his wand ready, his eyes wild and looking around. His reactions were always better than the average person, but sometimes his jumpiness could border on the actions of the paranoid. Old Mad-Eye Moody's teachings had served them all well, but Harry could sometimes take it a little too far depending on the situation. He did not like being ambushed, and because of that, anytime he was disorientated he would revert to having a hair-thin trigger on his wand.
"Harry, it is ok. It is just me Hermione!" she called from the floor, away from her agitated friend.
"Hermione?" he paused, "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I am fine. And you? Anything broken?"
Lowering his wand, Harry replied, "Stiff in the neck and shoulders, but fine altogether. Where are we?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, I just woke up about a minute before you. Let's check up on Ron." As if in a response to the question, they were greeted by a sound coming from the prone form of their ginger haired friend, except it wasn't the sound of stirring or even groaning. Ron Weasley was snoring.
Shaking their heads in near-disbelief, Harry and Hermione glanced at each other and non-verbally elected to let him rest for the time being. The fight that had been a part of not too long ago had been magically taxing for them all, though Ron seemed to have had the worst of it. The duo put some distance between Ron, before quickly kissing and embracing.
"That was a close one love."
"Agreed, that was almost as bad as Hogwarts." Harry could only nod as his chin rested on Hermione's bushy-haired head, and she clung to his chest. Their minds drifting into the past.
The Battle of Hogwarts was a long drawn out affair that altogether ended in a draw almost two years ago. It really had started since the death of Albus Dumbledore in their sixth year, his life ended by Severus Snape in a later-determined mercy kill. The trio had been given a task by Dumbledore in his will to seek out horcruxes, powerful vessels that contained the various soul shards of Lord Voldemort. These vessels had guaranteed that the Dark Lord would remain immortal – thus undefeatable. They had traveled up and down the country finding and destroying them where they could, somehow evading capture by Voldemort's Death Eaters and other roaming mercenaries.
Eventually they found themselves back at Hogwarts their old school to seek out one of the last items. While they were successful, they had alerted the dark lord of their whereabouts, which then led to him gathering his forces for an assault on the venerated old castle. During a brief armistice, Harry was granted the last memories of Dumbledore, his old headmaster and Severus Snape, Dumbledore's apparent murderer, and was given a terrible truth. Harry himself was a horcrux, an accidental one, but one that still granted Voldemort immortality. In a last desperate, brave, and even he would later admit it, stupid move- Harry went to Voldemort to sacrifice himself to rid the world of one of the last of Voldemort's bindings to this realm. His sacrifice had surprisingly worked, and with some added, and unforeseen benefits. He returned to the mortal realm, leaving behind the shard of the formerly known Tom Riddle in the Fields of Tartarus. Without the additional piece of soul leaching his magical core, Harry had received an added boost in magical power.
But magic is a tricky business. Soul magic is even more unpredictable. When Harry sacrificed himself to Voldemort's Avada Kedavra, there was a powerful backlash of magic that struck all that was around them. While those surrounding them, mostly Death Eaters with their disgusting souls still intact were unaffected, the same could not be said for Nagini, Voldemort's familiar and final Horcrux. The soul shard could not hold on as it was ripped from the snake and dragged away to hell or whatever world you may call for the wicked and damned.
Voldemort and Harry then dueled in a battle for the ages. Whole sections of the Forbidden Forest that surrounded Hogwarts burned that night, victim to the heat of the battle. Spells flew in every direction as they fought for almost a straight hour without pause. Voldemort's repertoire of spells being countered by Harry's youth, reflexes, and newfound power. Voldemort, to his credit used every tactic he could to countermand every attempt of the youth. Their respective followers of the light and dark did not intervene, nor did they attack each other as the air was thick from the battle dripping with unstable energy and the smell of ozone. On and on they fought, as the victory of one would be the defeat of the other's army regardless of the size. It was as if they had been transported to the times of Ancient Greece, where waring armies selected their best fighters to duel to the death to decide the fates of nations.
Eventually and finally the battle paused as the two faced one another again, this time panting looked much worse than they had started. Voldemort's body, a construct of necromantic magics that had used Harry's very own blood to resurrect himself, could heal itself using his magic, was covered with dozens of small cuts and gashes that were slow to heal. Harry was no better, with a gash across his forehead, oddly across his infamous scar was covered in rapidly developing bruises and a blackened hand from a glancing blow of cursed fire. They stared at each other with looks that could only be described as hatred, and dare it be said, resignation. They were too evenly matched and they both knew it. It was Voldemort who moved first, pulling a portkey from his clothes, and upon activating it, transported away. His Death Eaters followed him in short order.
The next two years had the country devolve into a form of civil war where no major battles were fought, as neither side no longer had the numbers they once had. Instead it became a game of cat and mouse as each side sought intelligence about the other. One side would attack supposed weak spots of the other through small skirmishes. Voldemort confined himself to the ministry of Magic from which he orchestrated his minions. Harry and his supporters made Hogwarts the base of the resistance. Magical Britain was isolated from the rest of the word, which was a double-edged sword for both sides. With the International Confederation of Wizards effectively blockading magical Great Britain from the world, no one could smuggle in forces that might tip the balances and finally finish off the war, but that was just as true for the enemy.
With the war in a stalemate, Harry, Ron and Hermione had volunteered to infiltrate the Ministry and seek the department of records to see if they could uncover the locations of the internment camps that Voldemort's army used to imprison muggleborns and dissenters. It was their hope that if the resistance could liberate these camps, they could finally gain the numbers to win the war. Which is what brought them to their current situation.
With a quick extra squeeze, Harry and Hermione released each other from their embrace. "Ok, not to ask the obvious question, but where the hell, are we? Harry asked.
Hermione and Harry took a true inspection of their surroundings, casting mild Lumos spell, lighting the tips of their wands with a pale white light. Together they began to wander the space they found themselves. The room, or really was more of a cavern if anything else. Upon finding a wall, they discovered that they were smoothly layered stone the size of automobiles in a bricklayer pattern that while ancient, nonetheless did not contain any signs of aging, with little to no signs of cracking, mold, or damp. Though the found the walls, the light of their wants did not penetrate the inky blackness around them much further than a few meters. Hermione cast a Homenum Revelio, seeking signs of life around them. There was a red light that mimicked muggle radar that emanated from the duo, only relaying that within the space that they found themselves and the still snoring Ron, whose echoes could be best compared to be a bear, considering the surprising amplification of the cavern.
Content that they were alone, Harry cast a Lumos Maxima, and the equivalent of a small magical sun was illumined at the very top of the cavern bathing every corner of the space with near-blinding light. It was at this moment that the duo lost the breath for the moment as they took in the sight of the space that they were in. The room/cavern was more than twice the size of the Great Hall at Hogwarts and could even be as big enough to hold the Quidditch pitch that Harry and Ron had played on in their relative youth. The ceiling was a system of giant arches that rested on top of the walls approximately 150 feet straight above them.
After a moment, Harry regained his composure and turned to Hermione with a quizzical eyebrow raised. Looking at her, he could tell that she was attempting to process the information in front of her as fast as she could. Her chocolate brown eyes wildly darting back and forth, examining the ceiling for as much detail as she could, biting her lower lip in a way that was one of the most endearing traits of her, if you were to ask Harry. Finally she started to speak.
"This may seem like a long-shot but hear me out." She began. "I think we may be in the foundations of the Ministry of Magic. These stones are absolutely ancient, and yet they appear to not barely aged at all. If you look above at the ceiling between us and Ron, which is where one would assume we would have fallen, there is no damage to the ceiling, though there is that one patch of about 10 stones that somehow seem… newer if you would; almost as if the ceiling repaired itself with new material. There is also a tremendous amount of magic in the air, it is almost like static electricity is flowing around us. A place like the ministry must have so much magical energy built up over the years, it could almost be like Hogwarts is at times. It could also explain how we fell so far, and yet none of us is harmed, minus Ronald over there, though his issues, are probably stemming from that fight." As if to prove her point, Ron let loose his mightiest snore yet. Shaking her head, she asked the dark-haired wizard next to her, "What do you think Harry?"
At first looking to patch of ceiling she had directed him to and then making his way to one of the walls, he began to run a chiseled and scarred hand first over the stones, and then the crevasses in-between. "I think you are right 'Mione. Especially about the magic part. I have found through my… experiences, that when it comes to cleaning stones and bricks like this, there is one factor that never gets properly cleaned, even with magic. And that is the mortar. The Dursleys had me strip and replace the mortar between every brick of their home one summer and it was a nasty business. Down here on these stones, the mortar is aged – in good shape– but still aged. Meanwhile the mortar up there, on that patch of "repaired" ceiling – the mortar looks newly done." This time, it was Hermione's turn to raise an eyebrow at this, to which Harry shrugged and said, "Seeker eyes. It's amazing what you can see once your eyesight is fixed and you don't need glasses anymore."
In truth, once the horcrux was out of his scar, Harry realized he no longer needed glasses. He still wore glasses, but with zero lenses in them now, though he did not share that secret outside of Hermione and Ron. This was largely done for three reasons. The first was protection from debris and other material that often flies around in the heat of battle. The second was that it was a small way of fooling the enemy, but even small differences have their advantages. Once during a firefight, a rather clever mercenary summoned his glasses, and reacting from previous reports that Harry was essentially blind without them, relaxed ever so slightly in his attack. This gave Harry enough of a moment to end his attacker's life with a quick cutting curse. The third reason was simpler; Having worn glasses most of his life, Harry was just more comfortable with them on than without.
Their location now agreed upon, they decided it was finally time to awaken Ron. Hermione took the honors, kicking Ron lightly in his foot. When that didn't work, she kicked him in his shin with a proper windup. With a howl, Ron awoke suddenly to the sounds of his friend's laughter. "Oi, you bloody mental witch, what was that for?"
"That" Harry chuckled, "Was for not properly rationing your magic in a fight, mate… again. You really do need to work on that."
"Not my fault I am not the living breathing definition of a magic nuclear reactor."
"How do you know about?"
"Remember Harry, I did fancy Hermione before you and I did make an attempt to learn some things about the Muggle world. Though in hindsight I am glad we stayed as friends, does she heap this kind of abuse on you?"
"You know I am right over here Ron, hearing every word you say."
"I know I know. But did you have to kick a man while he is literally lying down?"
Pulling him to his feet, Harry responded, "Unfortunately mate, we did. Now it's time to get up and get you caught up."