Being proven right was not always the salve it is supposed to be. Hermione woke early, sweating from heated dreams and padded to the kitchen to make tea. She was still half-asleep when the Galleon around her neck suddenly went hot. Her DA coin was a handy way to communicate in emergencies as no one had yet succeeded in charming a mobile phone to work reliably near magic.
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Hermione blinked as the letters appeared. Her fingers automatically sent the received code as she rushed upstairs to wake Andromeda. The older witch didn't dally asking questions. She got dressed, woke Narcissa then bundled her sister and her grandson into the Renault Hermione had bought. Ted had harped on about her learning how to drive. She had only taken lessons to shut him up. He would've been chuckling now.
Andromeda loaded her emergency chest into the back of the minivan as well as her owl, Hermione's owl, and Crookshanks. She took their identity cards but not the Portkey in the cellar as it was registered with the British Ministry. Driving sedately away, the newly minted Mme Valerie Morel headed west towards the mountains and the Spanish border while Hermione Disapparated with Draco and Theo.
They arrived in front of the monument in Preseren Square in Ljubljana in a thunderstorm. Hermione would've preferred a less public place but she had only Apparated to the Slovenian capital once and needed somewhere memorable. She leaned against the poet's plinth as she got her bearings. The weather was the deciding factor. If anyone was staring plaintively into the rain at five am, she would simply have to risk it.
She cast Impervius, Warming, and Disillusionment charms on the three of them then pulled an old coin out of her pocket. It was a Knut, bent along one edge and green with verdigris. Hermione flipped it then caught the coin in both hands. When Ulrik had shown her how to activate the token he'd done it one handed, sliding the Knut easily between his fingers. The first time she had tried it she'd dropped the damn thing.
Goblins couldn't Apparate. They wouldn't have to dig tunnels if they could simply hop from place to place at their whim. However, they could always find what belonged to them and not all Ministries regulated the manufacture of Portkeys quite as closely as they should. Ulrik appeared in Preseren Square within minutes.
Draco, rumpled and edgy, glared at the goblin. He was short and lean with an angular face, a description that would've covered his entire race. He had a wide mouth with thin lips, which were moving quickly as he spoke rapidly with Hermione in Gobbledegook. Draco decided he hated the pointy little bastard when his witch hugged the usurious wretch.
"Can you understand them?" The blond hissed to his lover. Theo shook his head, sidling closer so they could both stand in the scant shelter of the statue. Hermione had dragged them out of bed, told them to dress warmly and to pack quickly. They'd done so. Theo stuffed his hands into the pouch pocket of his hoodie and tried not to feel like a marsupial. The Muggle garment was ridiculous but it was cosy.
"She didn't bring Crookshanks. Something's gone wrong." He wasn't at his best in the grey morning. He needed the clarity of light or dark. Gloom made him remember Azkaban. The rain helped, oddly enough. It might be icy and bucketing but they were definitely not cloistered. Thunder boomed. His head felt full of echoes.
"The toadstool seems happy enough." Draco muttered. He wanted to be in his soft bed with Theo's arms around him and nothing more challenging in the day than choosing between croissants or crepes for breakfast. His stomach growled at thought of food. Hermione would have some. She was always squirreling things away or bringing home odd trinkets. "Why didn't Mother Apparate here with us?"
"I think we are about to do something very illegal." Theo mused, having been considering the same question. Narcissa would've accompanied her son through the Veil if that were where he was going. Her absence now, gone off in the midi-van ostentatiously mundanely, made him wonder if she were giving them an alibi. There was space enough in the Muggle vehicle for all six of them and the menagerie.
The goblin left. Hermione straightened, taking a deep breath. Ulrik had been expecting something like this since they had begun opening the vaults. He had counselled her not to approach Marchbanks directly, to wait until the government was in shambles before stepping in as a saviour. Conditioned not to expect gratitude from the wanded, he hadn't been surprised to be informed the Ministry had bitten the hand that had tried to feed it.
"Let's get out of the weather." Hermione held out her hands to Draco and Theo. They disappeared.
They reappeared with a splatter of stowaway rain on a rocky path leading to an arched gate in a heavy stone wall. Ahead and above, a castle nestled in an outcrop of sandstone with the sun sparkling off copper spires. Hermione gave at the knees subsiding onto the grass as her head spun. She probably could have waited longer in Ljubljana but with the Trace on her wizards she hadn't wanted to hang about.
"Welcome to Bulgaria." Hermione said, inhaling slowly. She had been pushing her Apparition distance with both jumps. Of course, she was chuffed she had done got them to Plovdiv but she wasn't anxious to do that again. Drawing her wand, the witch sent her Patronus with a message to the castle then smiled wryly up at Draco and Theo. "At least here you'll be able to fly."
Viktor Krum came out to meet them wearing a singlet and shorts, sweating from a morning run. Theo thought he looked more angry than surprised as the Quidditch star offered their witch his arm and escorted them into his family home. Defensive wards dense enough to be obvious even to the suppressed washed over them. Grindelwald had been only the latest despot in Bulgaria's tumultuous history.
They had breakfast in a wood panelled room lit by windows on three sides with a view of the valley below. And the sky, an eternity of it. Draco had eyes only for the blue. He couldn't have said what he ate even under an Imperius. Theo divided his attention between their host, their witch, and the French toast laden with jam. Krum didn't say much as Hermione brought him up to speed with recent events.
"Longbottom warned you?" Theo asked, recalling the rangy Gryffindor from the not-official-at-all visit. He couldn't bring to mind much more detail than the Auror's presence as he had been concentrating hard on feigning nonchalance. If there had been significant byplay between Hermione and her former Housemate, he hadn't noticed it.
"Neville's not happy with how the DMLE is being run. He joined because of his parents, and after the sword everyone sort of expected it of him." Hermione had been supportive but had advised her friend to keep his options open. She'd seen what living in someone's shadow had done to Harry and Ron.
"Happy enough to enforce this." Holding up his manacle, Theo battled not to sneer. Krum was a pure-blood and a decent chap, based on a vague impression from almost ten years ago, as well as their host. A proper wizard did not spit bile at the breakfast table. "I beg pardon. Bit of a sore spot."
"It is understood." Viktor raised a hand to forestall further apology. "The zadushavam rite is a heavy weight to carry." He saw the boy's eyes sharpen. This one was clever, still with some fight in him. The pale one didn't have much left. Maybe the breeze would liven him but Viktor had seen that look in his uncles. A heavy weight.
"The Ministry used a variant of the punishment ritual Durmstrang uses, modified for longer duration." Hermione had wondered at the source of the parolees' binding, which everyone was so sure was safe. Safe for whom? "It's an old working, picked for stability I'd guess. There aren't many work-arounds."
"You are going to free our magic?" Theo asked, sounding as slow as Goyle to his ears. Hermione nodded. He sat back in his chair and bit down hard on the words that wanted to burst out of his mouth. Think first, he heard his father's counsel. Be lavish with your thoughts, meagre with your speech. "How?"
"There is a place of no magic. A Thracian salt mine said to be tainted by the blood of Ares." His grandmother had loved telling all the old stories. Viktor had listened only when the weather was too bad for flying, leading to his baba scolding him and saying naughty boys who didn't pay attention went down the Devil's Wound. "When Hermione told me what had been done to you, I remembered that place."
"If I had more information on the modifications made to the rite, I'd be more confident in picking it apart but given the hash the Ministry made of the IMP legislation, who knows what they've worked into the ritual." She wasn't in all good conscience terribly thrilled by her solution to the suppression and said as much. "This is far from ideal. Smothering your magic after years in Azkaban could extinguish it entirely. I'd bet they didn't have a Curse-Breaker on hand to make sure the matrix formed properly or that the modal array bonded evenly or..." Hermione took a breath. "There are other options."
"Would you wait, if it were you?" Theo rubbed his wrist. He'd dreamed of cutting off his hand, of watching the shackle fall to the floor, shattering and releasing him. He'd woken up with the cuff in his mouth, biting hard enough to make his teeth ache.
"No." She had ruminated on that question for weeks while trying to find a way to free them. "We could find a Curse-Breaker or artisan who might be able to manipulate the binding but it would take months to undo the security on the manacles even before dismantling the suppression." Hermione shifted in her seat, uncomfortable with the next admission. "Before I resigned, I managed to get a look at some of the notations for the unbinding. They weren't complete."
"The Ministry doesn't have a way to release us?" His voice was controlled, so precise it cut through Draco's enraptured contemplation of the sky. Both Slytherins listened closely to the witch's reply.
"According to the person who let me see the project, the Ministry had initially assumed despite the changes the unbinding Durmstrang uses would still work. That was not the case." Hermione did not mention the name of the very worried person who had shared sensitive information with her. She tried not to even think of them, shutting their identity away in a corner of her mind where hopefully no Legilimens could reach. "I couldn't reveal what I knew without implicating my source but I could fight the legislation."
"They would leave us like this?" Draco hissed, his face a porcelain mask.
"All of the parolees have to go through Integration. Given the goals of the IMP are to have you socialising amiably with Muggles, I'd wager they think that'll give them more than enough time to develop a functional deactivation for the suppression." She heard her outrage begin to smoulder and took a long swallow of pumpkin juice to quench it.
"I want this thing off me!" His shout made them all jump, including Draco himself. He tore at the manacle as though he could yank it off by main force. Theo reached over to calm him but the blond jerked away. "Get off!"
"We'll go now." Hermione decided. There were lots of reasons, so many sensible reasons, why they should delay to be more certain. Unfortunately, she couldn't be sure going to the mine would work at all. Simply turning the magic off for a moment might only be a brief respite but seeing Draco's rising panic, there was little else she could do.
Viktor took them to the Devil's Wound. He had flown there when Hermione had asked him to confirm it was a null not just an old wives' tale. His broom had begun to fail near the hillock that hid the entrance so he had marked that point of fading and walked the rest of the distance. The mouth of the mine looked like nothing more ominous than a dent in the rock, half-grown over. It hungered, though, and he had been cautious in approaching.
He Apparated to the fading point then explained what he had found. A long slope down through pale stone stained the colour of dried blood. The ceiling was low and the incline steep, winding down for perhaps five hundred yards until opening into a series of alcoves. His Lumos had blinked out at the second alcove, beyond that he could tell them nothing.
"I was sick for a day, not puking but ill, after. My wand was sluggish too. Better now but the effect lingers." Viktor stood at the spot he had marked with a small cairn so he would know it to Apparate. "I think leave your wand here and the cunning little bag. I will stay. It was lucky I left my broom here the first time. I could not have willed myself home."
"Good idea." Hermione fished around in her beaded bag for three flashlights, three canteens, climbing rope with carabiners, a first aid kit, a stopwatch, a backpack with bright reflective tape criss-crossing it, and three bicycle helmets. She doled out the gear then showed Theo and Draco how to fasten the helmets. "They're not rated for caving but better than nothing."
"It really was down to you that the wunderkind didn't die." Theo marvelled.
"Harry was the hero. I was the one that remembered the toilet paper." She said briskly, hiding her appreciation. Hermione entrusted her wand and beaded bag to Viktor. "Give us thirty minutes. I'd like to limit our exposure."
"If you are not back by then I will fetch cousin Leonid and he will find you." Viktor agreed, standing guard for their return. Hermione hugged him before girding herself for unpleasantness. If Krum the Seeker, top athlete and Tri-Wizard Champion, had felt ill after entering the null, she anticipated being very poorly. She set an alarm on the stopwatch and clicked it, beginning the half-hour countdown.
The effect near the entrance was not obvious. Hermione had faced Dementors and horcuxes. Compared to a Dark artefact, the magic dead aura was subtle. She looked to the wizards flanking her before she stepped inside. Theo shrugged and Draco gestured impatiently for her to lead on. Neither seemed much affected.
While she knew it was iron oxide staining the halite and not the spilled blood of a war god, science provided only partial cover against the ambiance of the place. Hermione kept her flashlight trained on the ground minding each step as they descended. The dark became oppressive and the null pernicious. She paused when she felt the first moment of breathlessness, checking the stopwatch. Less than ten minutes.
"How are you feeling?" Hermione asked. Her voice didn't echo. The air was dry with a metallic tang. She hoped this experiment worked as psyching herself up to revisit the mine would be a chore. This was not a place you lingered.
"Fine." Theo panned his 'torch' over the dirty red streaked pale stone, the colour reminding him of how he had imagined mudblood to look. "It's a bit stuffy."
"Krum was right about the ceiling." Draco had bumped his head, jolting him out of his careful mantra of 'thirty minutes'. In less than half an hour, he might be free. He tried to be positive about this jaunt but it was a labour not to succumb to depression. So few things had gone right in his life he didn't have many happy thoughts to draw upon. Azkaban may well have robbed him permanently of cheer.
"You don't feel it?" She wet her lips then struggled against the urge to spit at the salty taste. Hermione gritted her teeth at their head shakes. The suppression had so dulled their magical perceptions they couldn't sense the torpefying atmosphere. "Right. Let's not hang about."
Picking up her pace despite a growing instinct to rabbit, the witch continued down the slope. Her flashlight worked fine. No moody flickering or film noire slow fade. There wasn't a lot to see. The mine hadn't seen large scale production so the hand-cut tunnel didn't branch much. They reached the first of the alcoves, likely dug to take advantage of a salt bloom when the cave was damper, and Hermione paused to take a drink.
"Why cousin Leonid?" Theo asked, seeing her pallor. He didn't care about Krum's relative. He didn't care for the way the Bulgarian looked at their witch or her ease with him. That the Seeker was muscular with eyes of jet and a slow, soft smile didn't endear him to the English wizard. The Durmstrang boys had all been enticing if you liked them rugged. That was beside the point. Hermione looked intensely uncomfortable and he hoped to distract her with his question.
"He's a geologist." She replied after swallowing slowly. The water was a bit stale from being in the canteen for a while though it blessedly did not taste of salt or iron or darkness. Her heartbeat sounded very loud to Hermione. "Leonid is doing spelunking surveys for his Ph.D. Fascinating, really. He just came back from cave diving in the Yucatan."
"A Squib?" He was surprised Krum was so open about a non-magical cousin. Not the sort of connection a high profile athlete would want, surely.
"Can we not?" Draco interrupted testily. "I want to shuck my chains."
Hermione nodded and pressed on to the second alcove, which was larger and deeper than the first. The shadows skittered across the rough walls disconcertingly like movement. The witch glared at the salt stone. It was hungry. Her legs were cramping. She felt an all over clamminess, light-headed as though her blood sugar had crashed.
"I would've liked to draw a protective ward but that isn't happening. I can definitely say the null magic is strongly in effect here. There's probably a polarised iron ore deposit beneath us, magnetite or something similar. Lodestone can cause lensing in the ambient..." Hermione truncated her discourse. Now was not the time. "Try pulling off the bracelets. If that doesn't work, they should be brittle enough we can use the wire cutters in my backpack."
Draco didn't hesitate. He tore off the manacle and threw it away. A clattering noise as metal hit stone was all the response he got. Theo had bigger hands so easing off the shackle wasn't possible. Hermione got out the Muggle tool and with quite a bit of effort snipped through the circle so it could be stretched wide enough to come off. It too was tossed into the darkness.
Nothing happened.
The rings on Hermione's right forefinger slowly faded with no more than a tingle. They waited, checking the stopwatch, long enough to become restive and when still nothing dire or explosive occurred, the trio returned to the surface. They crossed the null border with minutes to spare. Viktor Apparated them back to his home.
Hermione sagged on arrival, a buzzing noise filling her ears. She waved the wizards away and sat down on the grass. It was nice grass, a soft chloe green. She liked it very much. The witch closed her eyes for a moment. That had been... the cave wasn't... not good... Hermione drifted off in a dizzy, headspin, not seeing Draco and Theo collapse with her.