"More prisoners?" a deep voice resonated within the enclosed space at the centre of the maze. "Phaw! I can't have a quiet moment to myself, can I?"

Tony looked up, mouth hanging open, as a spider the size of the Great Lake at Hogwarts slowly descended toward them.

He wasn't arachnophobic, but that might change soon, he realised.

The spider-demon landed clumsily, some of its legs giving out under its crushing weight. Each leg was as long as a redwood tree. The venom-dripping pincers could easily snap the biggest giant in half. The milky eyes, however…

"It's blind," the Ripper murmured, as though she'd read his mind. She was always quick to pinpoint her enemies' weaknesses. Though Tony still entertained a vague hope that the spider wouldn't turn out to be an enemy.

"I may be blind," the eight-legged demon said haughtily, "but I am not deaf, dead meat."

Tony reflexively tried to swallow the lump that was forming in his throat, and failed. Silence fell. The spider didn't move. The Ripper had unsheathed two of her larger blades, but they looked ridiculously inadequate in the face of the monstrous creature that stood between them and the three gesticulating people caught in its web. "Don't," Tony said, his voice sounding as weak as his knees felt. "Let me talk to it first."

She scoffed, but gestured for him to proceed. Ted was apparently waiting for them to decide what to do, so Tony took one hesitant step forward. "Greetings, um…" Sir? Milady? Your Horrifying-ness? Better to skip the formalities. "We're here to…relieve you of the prisoners. Master's orders."

"About time," the spider grumbled. The ground shook under their feet when it spoke. "I have better things to do with my precious time, I'll have you know. Go on, then. Cut them loose and take them away."

Tony stared at it blankly. It couldn't be that easy. The Ripper didn't wait for the demon to change its mind, though; she was already making her way toward the web-glued trio.

"Are you Shelob?" Ted asked out of the blue.

Tony scowled. The name rang a bell, somewhere in the darkest recesses of his mind.

"Shelob! That measly weakling!" It was hard to tell, since the spider didn't have facial features, but judging by its rumbling voice, it felt somewhat disgruntled. "I am Ungoliant, the Primeval Light-Eater!" Again, the name sounded vaguely familiar; for some reason, Tony was under the impression that he should be terrified right out of his mind, instead of merely apprehensive. "And who has the honour of being in my presence?"

"Oh, I'm no one important," Ted replied hastily. He'd gone several shades paler. "Just a minor demon obediently doing the Master's bidding, Gloomweaver."

"Little help here?" the Ripper called out with annoyance. Tony let go of Sirius, hoping that he would stay upright and not stray away, then ran toward the web while Ted kept the demon distracted. He used a Severing Charm to cut off the heavy threads that surrounded Angie's husband.

"I am quite convinced of your unimportance, gnat," Ungoliant said petulantly, "but I would like your number and department, please. Do you have a signed order for this release?"

Tony glanced back at Ted, who quickly patted his pockets. "Sure we do, ah, Your Malignancy." The Wolf took out a printed picture of Sirius and waved it before the spider's sightless eyes. "There it is. All in order. As for my number, it's, um…4815162342. Department of Horror and Panic. I'm…junior staff. We all are."

"Horror and Panic?" Ungoliant repeated slowly. There was a tense moment of silence. Tony returned to the task at hand while the spider decided on their fate. The web was coming loose. "Ugh," the demon said eventually. "They changed the name again? How are we old-timers supposed to keep track if they change the names all the time? It's been the Department of Dread and Dismay for barely a millennium!" It huffed, and the blast of air nearly blew Tony and the Ripper off the web. Tony regained his balance and hacked off the few remaining threads, freeing his doppelgänger at last.

Fake Tony was staring at him, but his face was unreadable. "Who in Harry's name are you people?" he muttered. He looked exhausted. Not physically – he was an Ancient, too – but psychically exhausted. Mentally drained. How long had they been here?

"Keep your bloody mouth shut, you idiot," the Ripper snapped in a low voice. "There's just no smart version of you anywhere, is there?"

"Tell me about it!" Ted was saying to the demon. "But what's a puny demon to do about it, eh? I'm only doing as I'm told, Your Eminent Pestilence."

"Of course, of course," Ungoliant agreed. "It's hardly your place to question your betters, youngling." Its pale eyes drifted toward the web, where the Ripper was almost done cutting Eddie loose. "Are you finished yet? I don't have all day! These webs won't spin themselves."

"Nearly done, Your, um…Noxious Majesty," Tony said uncertainly. Ted gave him a thumbs-up and nodded encouragingly. "Your webs are very…sturdy."

The Ripper severed the last thread, and Eddie sprang free from his bonds. The three of them were coated in gooey slime. "Yuck," he said verbosely. The Ripper narrowed her eyes at him, and he flinched when he caught her gaze. "I mean, ah, thank you, lovely little lady." He grinned suddenly, and Tony had to look back to "his" Ted to make sure he was still there, and not over here. They could have been twins.

"Much appreciated," the mysterious Ancient – Amy – concurred.

"Wait until you get to the Horror and Panic Department," Ted said loudly, for Ungoliant's benefit. "You won't be so thankful then, maggots! Now let's move, you filthy rat droppings!"

Ungoliant chuckled appreciatively, but it soon recovered its grumpy disposition. "It's time for my nap. I trust you'll see yourselves out, eh?"

"Um…" Ted began.

"Of course we will," Tony assured the spider. "We may be worthless pests, but we do know the way. Like any self-respecting demon. Getting here was a breeze."

"Yes, yes, good for you," Ungoliant said with a yawn. It was already rappelling back whence it'd come from. The six of them watched in silence until it was out of sight again – and hopefully out of earshot.

"Who the hell are you?" Fake Tony asked again as soon as he deemed it safe. "Why do you look…a bit like me?"

They looked nothing alike, as far as Tony was concerned. He had a luxurious, well-defined beard and great hair, while Fake Him had a stupid goatee and a cropped haircut. He was dressed smartly, with a midnight shirt and black velvet pants, while Definitely-Not-Him wore a ridiculous multicolour t-shirt and threadbare, faded jeans. And sandals with socks. What was he, some sort of hippie?

Angie had married that?

The Ripper scoffed, and squinted at the other female Ancient, whom Angie had called Amy, when she did likewise. They studied each other like two rival alley cats. "And who are you, then?" the Ripper asked. "If you're my replacement, I'd like to at least know your name."

"Um, maybe we should move a bit further away before making proper introductions," Ted ventured.

His doppelgänger nodded in agreement. "Exactly what I was going to say."

"Great minds think alike," Ted said with a wide smile. The Ripper and Amy rolled their eyes in unison but, after getting hold of Sirius, the whole group began to walk toward…well, hopefully an exit. Away from Ungoliant, in any case.

They advanced in silence for a long time – not for lack of curiosity about each other, but because they were occasionally pursued by various species of demons, most of them bug-like. They were in no danger from the critters, but it left them little time for conversation. Eventually, the attacks began to dwindle, and Fake Tony, who was certainly more stubborn than Real Tony, asked again who they were.

"Well we're…you, but from another, um...world," Tony explained haltingly.

"Dimension," the Ripper corrected him.

"Reality," Ted said. They glared at each other.

"Whatever," Tony said. "You get the idea."

Amy nodded, a bitter grimace twisting her youthful face. "We get the idea perfectly, Fake Tony."

Fake Tony? That was the other-

Oh. Well. It was all a matter of perspective, Tony figured. He cleared his throat. "So, um…who are you? Angie didn't tell us," he said to Amy.

She seemed about to reply, but the real Fake Tony interrupted her. "My Angie?" he demanded. Tony nodded. "You saw her? When? Where? Is she alright?"

"Calm down, fledgling," Amy chided him. "Let the man answer."

Fledgling – that, at least, was the same everywhere, whichever world you happened to hail from.

"We saw her in your home dimension," Tony replied. "She was fine. She was worried about you, though, so she asked us to come look for you and help you, if we could. We had to come back here, anyway. It wasn't much of a detour." The Ripper gave him the evil eye. "Did you…did you end up in our world, somehow?"

"I don't think so," Eddie answered. "We visited a lot of worlds, but unless you live in a giant swamp or on a scorched planet…" He shrugged.

"Um, no, we don't. Our world…well, it's quite similar to yours in many ways. We mistook it for ours, in fact, until Angie realised that something was wrong."

Fake Tony rounded on him. "Did you kiss my wife?" he demanded.

"What? No!" Tony chuckled weakly. "I panicked when she tried to kiss me, and that's when…that's how we figured out what was going on."

"Can we please stop talking about the blasted girl for five bloody minutes?" the Ripper said through gritted teeth. "Will someone tell me who this woman is?" she pointed to Amy, who stopped walking. They all did.

"I'm Amy. The Pilot," she said simply. "And you are…?"

"I'm-"

"You're Amelia Earhart!" Tony exclaimed. Amy nodded wearily. He felt incredibly smug that he'd figured it out all by himself.

The Ripper shoved him, hard, and he ended in the hedge. "Do not interrupt when I'm talking, fledgling!" As Tony gingerly extracted himself from the gigantic plant, she returned her attention on Amy. "I'm the Ripper," she introduced herself.

There was a pause, during which, Tony assumed, everyone expected her to reveal her true name. When she didn't, he quickly took back control of the conversation. "Miss Earhart, I'm enchanted to meet you, but I suppose we'd better discuss our options. I'm sure we all want to escape this hellhole."

"I'm not sure it's possible," Amy said. "We went through many portals, and we already asked at least a dozen different demons to take us home, but they all led us to some post-apocalyptic version of the Earth. At first we assumed they were other…departments within Pandemonium, but…" She trailed off uneasily.

"Some of those nightmarish places were inhabited," Eddie said. "By humans, I mean. Muggles, as far as we could tell. There were animals, too, sometimes, some of which I'd never seen before. And the air… Too often, it was so polluted that nothing but us could have survived, but I could tell that it wasn't Pandemonium. It smelled terrible, but not demonic."

"We thought they were showing us the world as it could be," Fake Tony said softly. "The world as it could have been, if things had gone differently in the past. But that last demon told us that they were all real. Some were entirely destroyed, devoid of life. Dead."

"It was dreadful," Amy whispered. "I thought it would never end. That we truly had reached Hell, and were destined to haunt dead worlds for the rest of eternity."

"Then Loki brought us here," Fake Tony said, indicating the maze around them. "Threw us to Ungoliant. Told the demon to keep us captive until someone came along to reclaim us."

"We assumed he meant other demons," Eddie put in. "So it was a relief to see you," he told them – though his gaze was fixed on the Ripper. She was pointedly ignoring him.

"Relieved? We have no proof that this is not yet another one of Loki's schemes," Fake Tony told his friend.

"I'm fairly certain that it is," the Ripper said.

Tony looked at her in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Loki was obviously toying with them before we arrived, having his minions teleporting them to desolate worlds to suck away their morale, but when we got here, he realised he could mess with all six of us. He had his demons retrieve this bunch and ordered the spider to watch over them while we visited their home world, so that both their Evey and we would believe we'd returned to our home world."

Eddie was staring at her, mouth slightly agape. "My brain hurts. Is she always like that? Smart woman," he commented appreciatively. Ted threw him a warning back-off look.

The Ripper ignored the remark. "I don't think that Loki has an ulterior motive, other than screwing us over for fun."

"So you're saying… I'm right, and there's no way out of this place?" Amelia said. "Loki will keep us trapped in here forever, to be his playthings?"

"Well, we already used a bargaining chip to save Sirius," Tony muttered. "Sacrificed Bob to get him back."

"Yes, about that," Fake Tony said. "What is Sirius doing here, exactly? Is he alive, somehow? If so, why is he…like that?" He passed a hand before Sirius's eyes, but Sirius didn't react.

"Crossing the portal into Pandemonium sort of…disconnected his soul," Tony explained. "He's alive, but he needs a remedy. Our friends back home are working on it."

"But what was he doing in Pandemonium in the first place?" Eddie wondered.

"We thought he was dead for a long time," Tony admitted. "Bellatrix sent him flying through the portal at the Ministry, and we assumed…" He trailed off under their judgemental gazes. "What? We had no idea what the archway was! The creepy voices, we figured they belonged to the dead who'd gone through before."

"Sounds like you didn't try very hard to help him sooner," Amy noted.

"Wait, wait," Fake Tony said. "The archway? You mean that your Sirius was left for dead at the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, two years ago?"

"Yeah. I take it that yours survived that, but was killed more recently?"

Fake Tony nodded in confirmation. "If you're only now taking the time to look into Sirius's disappearance… I mean, don't you have better things to do? What about Tom? What about Harry Potter?"

"Vol…um, Tom was defeated a few months ago. Harry is fine. We won the war."

They were staring at him again. Amelia looked incredulous, and Eddie hopeful, but Fake Tony eyed him warily. "Impossible," he murmured. "He's lying."

"I am not!" Tony protested.

"We know for a fact that it's impossible," Fake Tony insisted. "The only way to destroy the-"

"Fledgling," Amy warned him. "We don't know these people. Maybe they did defeat Tom. Maybe things are…different, in their world. Not as hopeless as they seem in ours. Regardless, we shouldn't burden them with our problems. They have done enough."

"No, wait," Tony said. "We want to help. Why do you think it's impossible-"

The Ripper stomped in front of him. "Nope, we're not doing this. It's none of our business. We don't want to know. The Pilot is right: we did our part. Time to get the fuck out of here."

"I need to know that Angie and Walden are going to be alright!" Tony shouted at her. "I know your heart died a century ago, that you don't care about anything and anyone, but can you at least try to understand how I feel?"

"They are not your people, not your family," she snapped at him. "You have no right to care about them. That Angie woman is not your wife. That baby is not your son. They are not yours to save, Antonin."

Tony was so shocked that she'd used his name, for the first time since he'd known her, that it struck him speechless. Fake Tony spoke into the brief silence. "Your friend is correct. This is not your war. We are thankful for the timely rescue, but we'll take it from here."

"Agreed," Ted said, "but shouldn't we work together to get out of Pandemonium, at least?"

They all looked at each other, considering, but before they could come to a decision, a gigantic shadow passed over them.

"Not so fast, you deceitful little vermins."