They scrambled through the reactor complex, knowing that their pursuers were only moments behind. The sarcophagus was not a complete solid containment structure. It was meant to protect the surrounding environment. Go deep enough into the sub-levels of the reactor, it was quite possible to find ways to approach the core itself. It was exactly what Flyorov and his now dead comrades had done during the incident. It was where the Soviet scientists had kept penetrating in expeditions during the construction of the Sarcophagus, which had led to the discover of the horrifying new mineral, "Corium," in 1991. Down the stairs, into the basement of the reactor, where the pumps remained, where the lower 'biological shield' had collapsed under the force of the explosion above it, as the reactor itself detonated…
The geometry of death mattered for everything. Looking through lenses of a gas mask threatening to fog, sometimes the detector read only 5 röntgens an hour. Other times, it peaked at 250 röntgens an hour and Hermione screamed "Run faster!" Once, it hit one thousand.
Slytherins are taught to look for the advantage. This is insane. Madness. "Lara, cover me!"
"...'Mione?!" The woman stopped short and spun back. She knew what the screech from the radiation detector meant, too. One thousand röntgens...
Hermione flung herself back, to face the ongoing enemy. "One thousand röntgens! We're at One thousand röntgens!" She figured they were slytherins, or like them culturally, they had to be crack wizards and witches to be given this duty, and trusted, too… Don't you realise that it's in your best interest to run while you've still got a fucking chance?
But it was Hermione's magic that sustained the protective field for their own group, that wavered and surged with the effort, that was protecting them to an unknown level of efficacy, that might be risking a lethal dose right now; one had only minutes at one thousand röntgens.
The enemy had none, they had minutes to win or die in, and they were exquisitely vulnerable. But so was Hermione, if she couldn't shift to a shield to protect herself from the first attack…
But it was Larissa who caught it, turned and twisted it first. She stood there, a defiant friend, worried at the pause, but uncaring of anything but standing at Hermione's side.
Fuck, all these people are too good for me, Hermione thought in wonder. The rest of the team hopefully was around another corner, where the radiation levels dropped off again.
And she was surprised, and yet not surprised at all, to see Millicent Bulstrode, relying on a bubble-head charm, charging forward in the robes of a Morsmordre Auror, as built as a woman who played rugby, as hefty and powerful as a man as she had developed in her twenties. Tracey Davis, blonde and delicate and with an expression that was absolutely terrified, followed her at the head of their squad.
"ONE THOUSAND, YOU IDIOTS!" Hermione repeated again. It was Larissa who shielded her from the Sectumsempra that went tearing from Millicent's wand.
"Mudblood bitch, you're here!" She snapped another offensive spell off, but Larissa was well-poised to block it too. "Attack, damn you!" Millicent screamed back at the rest of her squad, and they snapped out their wands. She had dragged this part of the counterinsurgency team down here, against all sense or sanity, and now they were in for a penny, in for a pound. They prepared for a battle, while the rad detectors screamed and skittered.
The distraction, though, was already terminal. Stumbling through the darkness, with only wands and torches for illumination, they had not been prepared for the wave of green light which sickeningly reflected off of the rust-streaked and dirt-covered walls. The shouted words: "Avada kedavra!"
The way that Millicent was slammed back and collapsed into one of the walls, instantly dead.
Ron, standing there.
"It's Strelkov! Fall back! Fall back!" Tracey exclaimed, looking to Hermione with an expression of terrified relief, like she were genuinely thankful to her enemy for warning her how utterly horrifying it was.
And then Ron's wand flicked again. "Bombarda Maxima!"
He aimed not at anyone, but at the ceiling above and beyond them as they fell back. The corridor exploded in a gust of collapsing concrete and metal, shearing and straining and screaming.
They couldn't let them escape, after all. Not really, not if Hermione wanted it or not. She thought she might well have killed Millicent if she had had the chance, but… My God. Her magic flowed through her, keeping the radiation shield going. Larissa had know compunctions, tearing into the trapped team with a savage set of cutting spells alongside Ron. The others clustered around.
Hermione couldn't use her wand, it was already busy, but she drew her pistol in her off-hand, and the crack echoed through the corridors. Blood dripped down from the lifeless body of Tracey Davis, entombed forever in this mystical hell, where technology and humanity's deepest fears dripped and mixed together, like the blood and the radioactive dust in the hall. There had been no point in deterring them by trying to get them to leave. Ron was right.
Killing them was the only option. It always had been.
She holstered the pistol and inclined her head to him.
For a fraction of a second, of a hint of old Ron was there, relieved that she appreciated what he had done. Then it was gone. "Let's go," he snapped. "We don't have any time left at all down here."
"No we don't." Flyorov spoke up then, turning back down the corridor. "No we don't." He didn't sound tired, but it seemed very final and very certain nonetheless. They hastened down another flight of stairs, twisted and melted under extreme heat. The very bottom of the sub-levels. There seemed to be a faint glow in the air.
There's no way it could still be ionizing the air, Hermione thought in a horrified grimness. There was a breathless, chilled silence from everyone. One more corner, and there was …
It was half-filled with Corium, halfway from floor to ceiling, through the holes melted in the ceiling above… The only reason it hadn't melted further, was the liquid nitrogen that had been pumped into the ground below, thanks to the heroic efforts of the miners, and here they were, face to face, with the radioactive lava, solidified into strange shapes, like they stood inside of a lava tube next to a volcano, looking at the aftermath of fire.
But where lava was solid, you had a chance to live. Here… "What is the glow? Master Flyorov? It can't be ionizing the air, it can't still be ionizing the air."
"It can't, it wasn't that, it wasn't that. When I came, when I first came… The Corium was flowing down. But it still glowed, you see… they're buried in there, Miss Granger. My comrades are buried in there. Under it. That's where they fell… where I fell. Trying to stop it from melting through. To buy time for the miners..." He wanted to say more, but his words failed him; perhaps there was nothing good to say. He just stared at the place where, a bit less than two decades before, he had laid down his life with his friends.
Hermione stared in blank horror. But Flyorov was not frozen; she watched the man raise his wand, and begin to speak, an incantation in a language older than old, a Slavic tongue of times past, an appeal to water and earth. The glow in the air shifted and curled around them. The light faded, their wands' light faded, the torches blinked out—pitch blackness, except for the faint blue glow. The room faded, the walls faded, the Corium faded, the world faded into nothingness and blackness. The last thing she saw was Luna start forward, walking toward the Corium. Hermione wanted to stop her, desperately wanted to stop her, didn't think her shield could hold, didn't know if her shield really was holding, if Bellatrix's magic of waves and electricity was really protecting them nearly enough for them to walk out of this hell alive. She opened her mouth, but the world became blank, and she could not beg Luna to stop, she could not open her mouth to speak. The darkness closed in, totally, utterly, until sensation itself seemed to flee. The sound of the dosimeter going off, still skittering, still screeching, still warning, was the last sound, until everything faded away.
It was like the womb of the Earth—the stillness of the grave. Hermione felt like she had forgotten how to breathe, and maybe she really had.
Was there a faint glow ahead? Was she alone? She felt alone. She felt perfectly alone.
There was no way they could succeed. The Baba Yaga would not save them. They had come here based on the memory of one man, they were going to die, they were already dying, these were the thoughts that you had in the moment before you die …
Bellatrix, I love you. Use Nagini and find a way to win, she forced herself to think, feeling no pain, feeling nothing at all, she used her last thought, thankful to think it, furious that it stretched on forever, like it would never end. Was this death? Was it like falling into a black hole? Was she going to keep thinking like this forever, never quite reaching the end of her thoughts? She wondered if she should try, with a last burning synapse, to will her magical core into some fantastical act of magical suicide, just to end it all, end it now, rather than be trapped here forever, feeling thought and the mind fade away, fade away, fade away…
Hermione stirred to a shake, and then another. Then, she felt her mask being pulled off. She blinked, and blinked, and her mind returned to her with a jolt, but everything the night before seemed like a fog, like a dream, like a moment that had not really happened at all. Her eyes opening—the light surged in, hurting them, she frantically closed them. Wait, the night before? Isn't it still night? But it wasn't. Who was above her? She cupped her hands, and cracked one eye.
Tonks.
"Uhhm. Tonks. Where are we?"
"Black spruce forest. Like in the far north," Tonks answered, eyes green, wide, nervous, hair red. She's never looked more Celtic. Or more like she's impersonating a Weasley.
She pushed herself up, and like Tonks had, quickly worked to remove the outer layer of protective CBRN cloak and other things which might have gained contamination. She felt an incredible relief when she saw Luna's wonderful flaxen blonde hair spill out of her mask and cloak and couldn't for the life of her understand why she was so terrified for Luna, only able to dimly remember the details of the confused moment in the very depths of the Reactor Building…
Is my wand going to be radioactive? She wondered, with a moment of panic, even as another part of her was relieved that she was alive to worry about such stupid, mundane things.
Luna started walking almost immediately, toward a gentle rustling, that Hermione realised was a brook, as she pushed herself up with an inordinate amount of concern toward the slightly younger witch. And then, beyond the creek, she saw the clearing in the forest, and –
Master Flyorov, standing before it, offering a polite little bow.
The hut with chicken legs.
Of course, she had hoped, she had even been confident, until the exhausting process of descending into the reactor and the fight had stripped every bit of hope out of her body and left her with nothing but the dim feeling of disoriented, not-quite-there memories that she had left, slowly firming up in some ways, and in others, lurking at the edge of her memory and refusing to coming out, as if she had walked down into a cave filled with monsters instead of a ruined building filled with the melted remnants of a nuclear reactor core—was that what had happened? Had there been monsters down there? Snakes, bears, elephants, magical creatures, harpies trying to tear her apart? Could she quite remember which it had been?
The uncertainty was terrifying, and for the first time, a cold hand of fear came across her heart, and caught, and squeezed, and suggested that this too was part of the dream, and she was laying on the floor of the steam distribution corridor, dying? One more last memory?
If you live an entire life while dying in the blink of an eye, how is that any different than death, or living? Which is which? Wouldn't one be just as real as the other? She pursed her lips, and putting her hand on the bark of one of the trees, felt it warm and real and reassuring. Then she carried on, stepping carefully over the stream, not wanting to contaminate it with her boots, even with the coverlets over them they had worn removed and left on the earth behind them. A brief flash of a thought—that it was awful to contaminate this random, beautiful spot where a powerful goddess waited, with anything at all.
But Flyorov had come here two decades before, when the situation was much worse.
They formed up together into a knot, and carried on behind Flyorov toward the clearing. There was nothing in the forest, in the grass, or in the creek to suggest anything abnormal. Instead, in front of them the hut was deceptive, it might have been a normal structure, if you did not glance down, did not see the twitching, eager chicken legs, that perhaps, just perhaps, wanted to leap away and run, by whatever guiding force made the hut live, or have a simulcra of life.
They reached it, and a rope ladder hung down. Hermione started. Was that there a moment ago? Was it really? She couldn't tell, she couldn't be quite sure. And she wanted to tell Luna not to climb it, but of course Luna was already climbing it.
Larissa was more composed than she was, apparently. Her friend dashed forward, first, to join Luna. "You should have someone with you who has the 'Russian scent', my friend," Larissa said to Luna kindly, staying close enough that Luna's heels nearly nipped her on the ladder. Flyorov followed them.
When Hermione got to the top, she stared. Though it had seemed like just a minute, Luna was already sitting down, with a cup of rich smelling tisane of herbs in front of her. The hut was much larger on the inside than it was on the outside.
The immensely ancient crone with her long sharp nose and ears and exaggerated features was dressed in old robes. At first, nothing seemed unusual, though her nails were so long and at the corner of the eye, they seemed like razor-sharp claws, but just like overgrown nails, if you looked directly at them. A fire roared and the interior was quite comfortably warm, there was a cauldron over it, and there were boughs and branches on the walls, drying.
The crone. The crone.
Hermione was drawn back to her face. There was something in it, under the tufts and hanging tendrils of grey hair, that was indescribable and nerve-wracking. She stood before Flyorov and Larissa, she had both their backs to the wall. "You have the Russian scent," the Baba Yaga spoke, addressing them with a curl of bemusement seeming faint in a rasping cold voice.
"Why did you bring these foreigners to me?"
"I wished to return, to ask for the Water of Death, Your Exaltedness," Flyorov answered. "It was promised to me. And we all have need of it, for the sake of the Russian land."
"hnnh…" A long fingernail pricked against Larissa's neck, as the Baba Yaga's beady eyes swept from one to another. "What does the Russian land need the Water of Death for?" She withdrew, and stepped over to where Luna drank her tea, leaning down. "Dearie, you are enjoying it?" The Baba asked, fingernails stroking through Luna's hair.
The blonde's head bobbed in agreement. "Thank you," she said with a genuine, innocent smile, unimpacted by whom she was addressing.
Hermione wasn't surprised at all.
Then she realised—Luna must have been there a while when she climbed up the ladder only a bare moment before, and yet, Ron and Tonks had not arrived yet… What's going on!?
The Baba Yaga, without quite turning, wagged a finger at her. "Don't think so loud. Time moves here as I please it, not you. My house."
Tonks and Ron finally arrived. The Baba turned toward them for a moment, Ron's eyes widening as he froze in place "Hmf. More people without a Russian scent. You've led an invasion of my home, Vasily Gregorovich."
"Forgive me, Your Exaltedness…"
"You know," the Baba turned back to Luna, and smelled her hair. "Mmmnn." Then she turned and approached Hermione, looked her over. Hermione stayed very still, very close to the door, to the wall. The Baba looked at her for a moment, then peeled away to poke Tonks in the stomach with a soft cackle. "You, my dear, will be back someday. Old, old, what's in you, that's something real…" She puttered back toward Hermione, reaching for her broom.
"Let me say, clever one, that you have a little bit of this land in you after all. A little bit of the scent. I was wrong the first time." She smiled, a hideous thing.
Hermione decided plain honesty was the only way to deal with a Goddess, however strange of one that they faced right then and there. "I'm not Russian by blood."
"Oh no, oh no, you're not," she agreed, starting to sweep. "So much dust… Yes you see, you're not Russian by blood, and you can't become Russian by living here, or by learning the language, those things are not enough, not enough alone. She spun around with a spry and wiry strength and supple quickness that was impossible in a body like her's, and used it to lightly tap Hermione in the stomach with the handle of the broom, watching her tense up. She then tapped the others, too. "But you bled… Suffered. Fought. That does count for something. You have left a little bit of yourselves in my soil!"
Hermione felt, abruptly, an intense surge of emotion, and she reached to her eyes to wipe at that, crying without thinking about it. She felt complimented and hollow all at once, at all the years of war. It was true, she could never leave that behind, she would carry something of it within her forever. She was proud to be marked by what she had experienced here.
"You will carry a bit of us in you, when you go back to your Gramarye," the Baba mused, and stepped up, and with a long fingernail, stole some of the tears from Hermione's cheek, and she could only watch in curious awe, while they still fell, as the fingertip was extended up to the Baba's lips, and she tasted them.
"Hmmn."
"So, we'll be allowed to go to bring Harry back?" Luna asked pleasantly, looking up from her tea.
"Child, the Water of Death doesn't work quite that way. Vasily Gregorovich could just as well bring back your father," the Baba laughed.
"Well, he's happy right now," Luna answered with a diffident disinterest in the subject. "But surely you must know about the Boy Who Lived."
"I know all about the lessons that have been taught, in how prophecies create themselves," the Baba replied, and at last, returned to Flyorov's side, and left Luna to ponder that one. "Your children are well?"
"The ones who live, Your Exaltedness," he replied, flatly, and with a tired voice. "Such is war."
"Such is war," she repeated the words, like she were tasting them. Then, moved on without another thought, acknowledging, but not dwelling upon, the anguish the question brought to Flyorov. He had not brought up his children before-with good reason. The Baba Yaga moved on. Another question. "Your wife?"
"Busy, on the front."
"Hmm! Will you level the debt with Merlin's Gramarye for these little shavings of these souls that I have got?"
Hermione felt a little bit of a chill at the question, but Flyorov merely nodded, and smiled, a perfectly dignified old gentleman, a gentleman of the soul. Such men were born, not made, and their class did not matter, they were gentlemen regardless of their money or status or power. "Of course."
The Baba Yaga looked at him, and looked, and nodded once as if acknowledging at last that she were satisfied with his statement. There was something about the exchange, about how it was said, about what was said, that was incredibly significant, that scared Hermione, but she could not pin what it was, or why.
The Baba shuffled over to one of the windows, this one not open to the forest beyond, but the shutters closed like they were in an old house in winter. "Hmm, hmmm," she was mumbling to herself, taking a ceramic jar off one of the shelves. She opened the window…
"Hold your breath!" Flyorov suddenly ordered all of them, in a tone that brooked no disobedience.
On the other side of the window a waterfall was pouring past it. The Baba reached out with the ceramic jar. Hermione realised, in a moment, that to inhale the mist, the vapour, the haze of the water off that waterfall, would be instant death. That was the meaning of the warning.
To the Baba it was nothing, and she filled the jar and sealed it and closed the window—and all the mist disappeared like it had never been there at all. But the sealed jar, she thoroughly wiped clean, and dribbled wax from a candle against the stone lid, and then presented it to Flyorov. "Vasily Gregorovich, you have the boon I promised you."
"Your Exaltedness." He bowed deeply as he took the jar.
She laughed, and turned back away to her cauldron. "Now out with you all, I am an old woman and I grow tired—and bored!"
Suddenly Hermione felt a terrible pressure, a terrible power, a fatigue pressing in around her. With the others, she staggered to the ladder, and made her way down, barely keeping her feet. Only Master Flyorov, in a reverse of his health, seemed sprightly, descending the ladder at last. Hermione got a faint sense that he had exchanged some last words with the Baba Yaga, but she could not make them out.
"Let's find where we are," he instructed them, but they staggered along in a dazed haze, an uncertain fog, like that encounter had taken far longer than they had thought, like they had felt something essential taken from them by the encounter in the Hut With Chicken Legs.
Finally, hours later, they staggered out to a road and flagged down a passing truck, carrying wood harvested for fuel, including the wood alcohol it burned down for power. The astonished driver led to an equally astonished team, all except Flyorov and perhaps Larissa, who understood that the Hut moved, as it pleased.
They were some kilometres north of Sokol, in Vologda Oblast, in the vast north woods. And five days had passed, when it seemed like twelve hours.