Oh my god, why is this even a thing...
Notes at the end of the second chapter. See you then.
Hermione had been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since the Atrium.
She'd expected the Ministry offices wouldn't have much in the way of activity, of course — it had to be nearly midnight by now, and on normal days the Ministry was supposedly closed for business around seven. There were exceptions, though. It wasn't unusual for a few people to be stuck dealing with one matter or another long into the night. According to Mr Weasley, there were always a few people in the office, doing research or writing up reports or inching their way through backed-up paperwork, even after official business hours the Ministry never truly slept.
And then there was the Department of Law Enforcement, they obviously never shut down completely. Adjustment was always running, twenty-four hours every day of the year, since magical incidents endangering Secrecy hadn't the consideration to constrain themselves to business hours. According to Tonks this time, things often didn't quiet down at the DLE until nearly two in the morning — that was when the evening shift change finally happened, the officers on duty reduced to the minimum of a single trio of Aurors and a couple Hit Wizard teams (plus associated administrative staff). It shouldn't be that late yet, so there should still be over a hundred people in the DLE, perhaps as many as two hundred including Adjustment.
But the Atrium had been still, and quiet, and dark.
And there hadn't been any security at the gates.
Hermione had already been uneasy about all this. And well she should be — charging off to the Ministry in the middle of the night to rescue Sirius from Voldemort was an absolutely mad thing to do. But then, Beth did absolutely mad things on the regular. The best Hermione could do, she'd learned, was to tag along and provide some modicum of sense for Beth, in an effort to hopefully keep her reckless, impulsive best friend alive. She was never happy about it, she didn't take to going on these mad escapades the way Ron did — sometimes, she couldn't help feeling he was encouraging Beth to engage in insane (awesome) heroics, sometimes she just wanted to slap him whenever he opened his mouth — but what else could she do?
This time, this time was a whole new level of reckless. Hermione had tried to draw attention to the fact that Voldemort was hardly likely to, just, walk into the Department of Mysteries on some random day, especially alone — if he were to do such a thing, surely he'd have a Death Eater escort. Sirius was hardly likely to be out somewhere he'd be captured, either — not to mention, he was also one hell of a fighter, if he'd been discovered he would have been able to fight off pretty much anyone long enough to escape. And, wasn't the whole reason Beth was supposed to be learning occlumency that Voldemort might discover their connection and send her false visions? Yes, the one about Mr Weasley had been real, and thank God for that, but they'd known the Order had eyes on the entrance of the Department of Mysteries, so that had been plausible. This one...
Hermione was convinced this was a trap. She'd ended up going along with it anyway, because it'd been clear there was no way to convince Beth otherwise and Hermione wasn't about to let her go off and do something this completely stupid on her own. But it was almost certainly a trap.
Of course, that didn't mean Voldemort would actually be waiting for them down there, or any Death Eaters. It was possible Voldemort just wanted Beth to break into the Ministry and get caught — with the way the Ministry had been going lately, Hermione wouldn't be surprised if they just tossed Beth into Azkaban and asked questions never. (And he'd already proven he could get into Azkaban, he could just walk up and throw a Killing Curse between the bars of her cell and that would be that.) Dumbledore probably wouldn't let that happen, but...
The point was, Hermione hadn't been happy about this in the first place. When she noticed there was no security at the gate, that just made her more anxious. Because there definitely should be. Even if the Ministry was entirely empty (which it never was), there were still sensitive documents all over the place in here, things they didn't want just anyone to waltz in and mess around with. The entrance should never be left unattended, there were always a few Hit Wizards on duty.
Beth, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Luna just...walked right in, through the Atrium and down into the Department of Mysteries. Nobody challenged them. Even into the Department itself — through the ridiculous spinning room, peeking in on the room with the floating brains (what the hell), the creepy damn old archway, and finally through the room with all the clocks. (Hermione had known the Department of Mysteries made the time-turners, she hadn't been surprised to find such a place.) And then through the huge, almost cathedral-like hall, the only light from a few glowing orbs and the tips of their wands.
Following Beth through the shadowy rows of shelves, Hermione's heart was in her throat the whole time, her breath thin and and tense — not because she truly expected to find Voldemort waiting for them in row ninety-seven, though even Beth was starting to get twitchy and awkward, avoiding their eyes, her own doubts growing. (If nothing else, they should have heard something a while ago.) No, she was still convinced this was a trap. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to go wrong, any second now...
She'd almost been glad Ron had pointed out the label under one of the glass balls, that it had Beth's name on it. If nothing else, it would serve as a distraction from her growing discomfort — Beth was becoming visibly ashamed of herself for wasting their time, for running off without thinking, for whatever might happen when they returned to Hogwarts. (Nothing good, probably.) Which was premature, the trap hadn't been sprung yet. And then Beth had to go reaching for the thing.
"Beth, no! I don't think you should touch that." She wasn't sure why — beyond not knowing what the hell it was, and touching unidentified glowing magical objects generally being a bad idea. Unsurprisingly, Neville and Ginny also said Beth should leave it...
...but, also unsurprisingly, Beth ignored them all, grabbed the ball and plucked it off the shelf. Hermione held her breath, her teeth painfully clenched, waiting for– for something to happen. She didn't know what, but it could be anything — it could be cursed, for all they knew! She waited, for several seconds, but...nothing. Nothing happened, the mysterious glass ball just continued to glow and be generally odd and mysterious.
Okay, then.
"Very good, Potter. Now turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me."
Her eyes dropping closed, Hermione bit out a sigh. And that would be the trap. She glanced down one side of the hall and then — her entire body pounding in a single hard thrill, almost painful — the other side. They were surrounded. Figures in black, trousers and tunics meant for dueling shrouded with heavy cloaks, their faces covered with shining silver masks, a dozen lit wands fixed on the six of them. Not Unspeakables. Not Hit Wizards.
Death Eaters.
Great. That was just great. They were out-numbered two to one, by adults — dangerous, deadly brownshirt adults — and they were surrounded. She hoped Beth had a brilliant idea, because Hermione had nothing.
But, bafflingly, they didn't attack. Beth demanded to know where Sirius was, the lack of actual anger on her voice and the way she glanced around suggested she was just giving herself time to think, the Death Eaters taunting her in return. Lord Malfoy, Hermione recognised his voice, and the unnervingly mad-sounding woman, probably Bellatrix Lestrange, spoke for the Death Eaters, the others only chuckling occasionally, muttering to each other. They confirmed the vision had been fake — under the circumstances, Hermione couldn't really feel pleased she'd been right the whole time.
"Now, give me the prophecy, or we'll have to move on to...less pleasant methods."
"Go on, then." Under the edge of fear on her voice — for the rest of them, probably, Beth was irritatingly cavalier about her own safety at the best of times — Beth almost sounded... Was she taunting the bloody magic Nazis? What the hell was she doing?
Swallowing down her own terror as best as she could (which she wasn't bad at, by now), Hermione raised her own wand as Beth did, targeting the dark figure she suspected was Lestrange. She noticed in her peripheral vision Ron was aiming the other way with Beth and Luna, Ginny and Neville with Hermione — it looked like Neville was targeting Lestrange too, not surprised.
Hermione waited for the Death Eaters to do something, or for Beth to curse first, but...nothing happened. Long, tense seconds, and nothing.
"Hand over the prophecy," Malfoy drawled, "and nobody need get hurt." His voice sounded less smooth, less amused than before, almost...annoyed.
Beth snorted. "And I give you this...prophecy, you called it? I give it over, and you'll just let us skip off home, will you?"
Oh good, Beth hadn't entirely taken leave of her senses...
Watching Lestrange, Hermione saw a flicker of her wand, tensed in anticipation, and then realised at the last second that was a summoning charm. Hermione started casting her own, preparing to snatch the ball (prophecy?) out of the air as it flew past her, and—
A swirl of her wand, a pale shield charm sprung into existence around Beth — she fumbled the ball for a second, but managed to keep hold of it. "Nice try, Lestrange, I'm not that stupid."
Lestrange giggled. (Because that wasn't unsettling at all.) "Oh, the little baby Potter thinks she knows how to play? Very well, then..."
"No, Bellatrix. If she smashes it..."
Lestrange scoffed, clicked her tongue. "Fine, fine. It's to be persuasion, then. Travers — take the little one."
Her breath froze in her throat, ice trailing up her spine. Like Lestrange, Cyrus Travers was one of the more infamous Death Eaters from the first war — he had a particular penchant for murdering women and girls, sometimes very young girls, most often torturing them (raping them) for hours first. (Susan's mother had been one of his victims, she'd been on a hair-trigger rage for a whole two weeks after the Azkaban breakout.) The others apparently recognised the name too, gasping and cursing, and their group shuffled around without a word or glance of communication. After a couple seconds, before the Death Eaters had hardly moved, Luna and Ginny were at the middle of their group, flanked by Beth, Ron, Neville, and Hermione — Neville needed someone on this side with him, and Hermione could hardly be the little one.
While they reorganised themselves, Beth called, "You hurt any of them, and I'll smash this thing." Hermione glanced that way quick, to see she'd raised the prophecy above shoulder level, ready to chuck against the ground, her wand poised to throw up a shield on an instant's notice. "I don't think your boss will be too happy about you then, will he?"
The Death Eaters stopped moving, instantly. For long seconds, they all glared at each other in silence.
Then they went back to talking. Hermione could tell by how unfocused Beth sounded, distracted, that she was still wildly trying to come up with a plan — though it was subtle enough people who weren't familiar with her probably wouldn't notice. In the brief conversation — Beth continued to taunt them through the whole thing, because of course she did (Bellatrix even threw a hex at her, though Malfoy himself intercepted it) — Malfoy explained that the glass ball Beth was holding contained a recording of a prophecy made during the last war involving Voldemort, that this prophecy was, in fact, the reason Voldemort had attacked the Potters on Hallowe'en in the first place.
Hermione almost felt like rolling her eyes. A prophecy, really? Ugh. Even if this prophecy thing actually existed, and if divination weren't a total crock of shite, even Hermione knew enough about divination to know that you wouldn't— Acting on prophecies was never a good idea, and more often than not caused them to come to pass, and normally not to one's benefit. Honestly, hadn't Voldemort ever read the Iliad, or Oedipus Rex? This was basic stuff, honestly...
Beth, with more subtlety than Hermione would honestly expect her to be capable of, got Malfoy to keep talking (mostly things Hermione had figured out already). After a couple minutes, she felt one of the younger girls shift behind her, coming up close. "Shelves." She blinked, glanced around them, down at the remains of two glass balls knocked off the shelves by Malfoy and Lestrange's hexes a moment ago. They had been rather noisy when they'd fallen, the crashing and skittering of glass, two figures rattling off nonsense dramatic-sounding—
Oh, a distraction. She got it.
Hermione was temporarily distracted when Beth guessed Sturgis and Bode (arrested and deceased respectively) had been compelled to try to get the prophecy for Voldemort — she hadn't put that together herself but it was obvious in retrospect, and really should have been obvious to Dumbledore, and if nothing else should have been a signal for the Ministry to take security here more seriously, but...
Beth got Malfoy and Lestrange to start arguing again — which wasn't difficult, she just taunted Lestrange into nearly cursing her again by calling Voldemort "Tommy". While the Death Eaters were bickering, she hissed, "Now!" and cast a blasting curse into the shelves. The rest of them were only an instant behind, Hermione aiming at the shelf just next to them, the direction the door was in. And she wasn't the only one, Ron's, Luna's, and her own curse struck in nearly the same spot, the combined power of the spells shredding the material four shelves high and a metre wide, the whole thing teetering from the force, more of the prophecies tipping off the edge to smash against the floor, dozens of ghostly figures and groaning voices overlapping—
"Don't touch the glass!" Hermione moved to cast a basic repelling barrier over their heads, but noticed Beth had beaten her to it, the shimmering dome flaring brighter as Neville next to her added his own. Ron and Ginny were already moving toward the hole they'd blasted into the shelves, the Death Eaters closing in — but not casting, they might hit Beth and accidentally break the prophecy they were after — Hermione cast a wide-angled banishing, a half-dozen falling prophecies shot into the pack of Death Eaters, smashing against their robes.
One of them broke into an eerie, guttural, gurgling scream — he shouldn't have touched the glass.
They slipped through the hole in the shelves, whole prophecies and the occasional shard bouncing off the dome over their heads, Ron and Ginny were through first, then Neville, Hermione, Beth. Luna was nearly out when an arm wrapped around her from behind, all their wands turned that way and Beth—
Despite herself, Hermione gaped for a second in disbelief — Beth punched the Death Eater in the face, cast a stunning charm over Luna's shoulder (followed immediately by four more from the rest of them, carefully aimed through the gap in the shelves) while pulling Luna the rest of the way through by a fistfull of her jumper. Neville caught her before she could fall, Ron and Ginny were already carving a path through the next shelf, Hermione shot off a couple banishing charms on the shelves, up several metres toward the top, the whole thing tipping over further, quicker as Beth started doing the same.
There was a heavy grinding and splintering, a hundred of the little balls slipping out and crashing to the floor all at once, as this row slammed into the next, the thin shelves and posts cracking and crumbling under the weight. The Death Eaters were yelling, somebody had set the falling row of shelves on fire — which was only making the destruction and chaos worse, so thanks for that — two Death Eaters were trying to slip through the gap, one was hit by a disarming hex from Beth, quickly followed by a bludgeoning hex from Hermione, pushing them back through as the whole thing came collapsing down.
Through the noise, Hermione heard another unnerving scream, a second Death Eater getting cursed by the raining glass. Assuming those two buried in shelving and the one Beth had stunned were out of the fight, they were down from twelve Death Eaters to eight. Not bad.
(Hermione tried not to think about the fact that at least two of them were permanently injured.)
By the time Hermione ducked through into the next row, they'd already finished blasting a hole into the one after. "Maïa!" She turned at the shout of her name, scrambled to catch the prophecy — instinctively, she wasn't thinking, fear flaring through her head to toe after it was already too late, the smooth, warm glass landing in her hands. But, thankfully, she didn't get cursed, it must have broken when Beth picked it up. Which was obvious when she thought about it, presumably Malfoy didn't want to get cursed by the thing. It took a little bit of effort to wedge it into one of the magically-enhanced pockets in her denims — she'd stitched expansion charms into the cloth with silver thread, Runes class was dead useful — but just because it was so wide across, once she had it through it fit just fine, showing no hint she was carrying anything at all.
Which Beth would have known before handing the thing to her — the Death Eaters would probably guess they still had it, but they wouln't be able to tell who. Beth might never be a good student, but she was very clever.
Through into the next row, they knocked down the shelving they'd just slipped through, tipping it over onto the mess they'd already made, as it fell running down the length of the row, firing off more blasting curses, setting the shelves on fire here and there. Two robed figures appeared in head of them, Hermione levitated a few shards of glass on the floor up, transfigured them longer and pointier even as stunning charms lanced out, one was downed and the other shielded, but not a shield meant for physical projectiles, her glass shards slipped right through, and a third Death Eater went down screaming.
"Bloody hell, 'Mione," Ron gasped as they rounded the corner, jumping over the prophecy-cursed Death Eater — Luna stunned the man as she went by, cutting off his writhing and moaning. "You're fecking scary, you know that?"
Hermione grimaced, trying not to feel guilty. They were members of an organisation seeking to wipe people like herself out of existence, it was just self-defence...
"Fucking brilliant, you mean!" She rather wished Ginny wouldn't sound so indecently gleeful about it.
They charged off down the hall, still throwing blasting and fire charms in all directions, Hermione and Beth casting occasional trap hexes here and there on the floor behind them. There were shifting shapes far away in the darkness that might have been pursuers, but by the time they reached the door back into the time-turner room there was nobody in sight. All six of them swept inside, Beth slamming the door behind them, Hermione hitting it with a sealing charm — one of the ones that physically bound the door to the frame, so unlocking charms wouldn't work. That shouldn't be visible from the opposite side...she didn't think.
All of them took a quick moment to catch their breath — red-faced and sweaty, a few of them had scratches on their arms from forcing their way through the shelves, Neville badly enough he was bleeding from multiple places, but nobody was badly injured. Somehow, bloody miracle...
But they couldn't be that far behind. "We have to... We have to get out of here."
Beth nodded, gestured toward the door on the opposite side of the room. "The spinning room should be just there."
"It's a long straight shot to the lifts," Ron said, frowning.
"I'm sorry, you know another way out of here?"
"I'm just thinking Hermione should have kept some of that glass. That shite's effective."
Neville let out a breathless, nervous laugh.
They started across the room, looping around the large basin in the middle. Made of a pure white marble, maybe three metres wide and higher than her waist, the thing was filled with what Hermione recognised as sands of time — there had been a few grams of it in the hourglass at the centre of her time-turner. There was far more than a few grams of it here, the entire basin was filled with the stuff, little crystals glinting in the light. Almost like quartz, but with an unnatural purplish cast to it, blue and orange, shimmering silver reflections thrown back and forth, enough it almost seemed to faintly glow. The sands weren't perfectly stable, a transparent containment field was cast over the whole basin, the air within smeared with hints of colour, like reflections on oil.
It was pretty, if...subtly unnerving. There was just something off about the stuff, even if Hermione couldn't quite put her finger on what. Beyond the fact that it was time itself somehow alchemised into physical grains, something that should not exist, that part should be obvious.
Halfway across the room, they all jumped at a thump against the door behind them. Beth hissed, "Down," they all ducked behind one of the desks scattered across the room. Hermione and Beth had been at the back, she tried to look across the room from under her desk, but she couldn't see much of anything — the next desk over, the basin of impossible sand nearby, bits of the walls...
After a couple tense seconds, there was an almighty crash, followed by a heavy clang — someone had blasted the door off its hinges. Hermione held her breath, listening.
"Straight through, you think?"
"Assuming they know the exit is that way."
"Worth looking. Check under the desks."
"Stupeat!" That was Beth — hopefully she'd actually hit one of them, breaking their cover. There were a few more shouted spells, but Hermione couldn't bloody see anything. She rolled over, kicked the leg of her desk, sliding out from behind it on her back—
And there was a Death Eater right there, stepping out from a desk he must have ducked behind for a second. His mask was cracked, probably by a falling shelf or a bludgeoning hex, what Hermione could see of his face clenched with rage. He spotted her, his wand was already aimed, "Animam exp—"
"Exc—" Even as she said it she knew it was too late, he was a few syllables ahead of her.
She was about to die.
"—ed-yaaahh!" The Death Eater's robes suddenly burst into flames, the instant before he could get the lethal curse off. He flailed for a second, before he could put out the fire a flaring yellow-white curse hit him, and he was flung back, slammed into a desk hard enough the wood splintered under him. Hermione was certain she'd heard bones snap. Though he was still burning, the flames spreading to the shards of the desk around him, the man didn't move.
Hermione sucked in a shaky breath — that was far too close.
(Also, she was pretty sure Beth had just killed him. She was honestly surprised by how much she did not care.)
She pushed herself up to her feet, shaky with adrenaline, ducked again as spells shot over her head. There was still a Death Eater, there, only a few metres away through the desks — either Beth had missed, or the other one had revived him right away. Hermione shot off a blasting curse, but she missed badly, her hand shaking too much. A spell of crackling green lightning sliced across the air, a Killing Curse, where was it— Ginny! A flick of Hermione's wand, a desk lifted up into the air, then exploded into flying shrapnel when the curse hit it — Ginny was knocked off her feet, but she would live.
A few more spells flew in at the Death Eater from behind her, he ducked behind cover, Beth hopped up onto a desk a bit to Hermione's left, aimed a nasty piercing hex down at the man's head. Hermione could hear him swearing from here, he quick slapped Beth's curse out of the way, hitting a desk behind him instead, carving a hole six inches wide through the wood. The man shot off two blue spellglows, Hermione ducked but they weren't aimed at her, a jab and the desk Beth had been on burst into bright yellow flame, but she'd already hopped away onto another one, Hermione cast a strong bludgeoning hex, not at the man but the desk in front of him, the curses the man had cast a second ago caused a lot of noise and yelling behind her but she didn't hear any screaming, the desk she'd hit was ripped off the floor and slammed into the Death Eater, his breath came out in a strangled cough, Beth cast a severing curse down at him, he banished the desk off of him, rolling down to the side, a pair of stunning spells from behind her passing through where his head had been a second ago, Beth's severing curse sliced the flying desk in half but it was still flying right at her, she skipped out of the way, leaping onto another desk, cursing through gritted teeth—
A gleaming white spellglow shot through the air, coming in just to Hermione's left — it wasn't aimed at anyone, probably a high-intensity blasting curse of some kind. She cast a repelling barrier, angled between herself and where the curse was about to land. It hit like a bomb, one of the desks just completely incinerated, the stone floor under it crumbling, a shockwave thudding through the room, wind pulling at Hermione's hair around her barrier. A wide-angle fire spell on her lips, she turned and—
Froze. When the blasting curse had hit, Beth had been standing on one of the desks on the edge of the row, right next to the basin. The force of the explosion had pushed her desk back, tipped over, Beth was teetering back, stumbling off the desk, falling through the containment field...
...into the sands.
Hermione dropped her fire charm, brought her wand around to summon Beth out, but she was too late, she wasn't going to make it. Through the mess of her hair, vibrant red-orange curls flying around her head, Hermione caught the expression on Beth's face, surprise collapsing into determination, her eyes narrowed, jaw set. She yanked her arms in, twisting, leading with her shoulder — apparating, she was going to apparate out.
Beth's foot sank into the basin.
There was a harsh crack of inexpertly-performed apparation, and Beth blinked out of existence.
Before the crack had even faded entirely, there was a quick series of popping noises, a crackling of electricity. The rainbow swirls in the containment field contorted, twisting around, drawn toward a single point like water circling the drain, a thin trail of shimmering purple sand drawn up in a spiral, then quickly thickening, like a dust devil—
There were more popping noises, bright white light given off with each one, Hermione winced, shielding her eyes. The column of spinning sands thickening and thickening, there was another quick series of pops, another crack, and Beth had reappeared exactly where she'd left, her figure oddly blurred and the colours oversaturated, just for an instant before, with a loud squealing noise, like steel being torn apart, a blinding flare of purple-white light—
The ground shook under her feet, her hip knocking painfully against a desk, a cabinet against the wall toppled and crashed to the floor, dozens of little gold time-turners skittering across the ground, Hermione couldn't see inside the basin, still shining far too brightly to look at directly, but the air all around it seemed to undulate, wobbling back and forth, ephemeral trails of multicoloured light whirling around stretching out around it...
...into the room — the containment field had broken.
"Run! Get away from it, run!"
"But Beth was—!"
"No, move, go!" The others slipped through the desks, moving toward the door on the left, Neville (his clothes striped with char) and Ginny (half of her hair burned away) dragging Ron (cuts from shrapnel littering his left arm) along despite his struggling, flailing and yelling for Beth. There was another high squeal from the basin, Hermione's steps hitched, suddenly feeling impossibly heavy, the vortex in the sands drawing her in.
A spellglow shot over Luna's head to slam into the wall, the Death Eater's aim wide. Hermione glanced over her shoulder, spotted him behind her, closer to the basin and clearly struggling to keep moving. She paused, planting her feet against the pull, plucked another desk off the ground to send it flying in at the Death Eater from the side. He tried to dodge but he stumbled, the vortex pulling him off balance, and the desk crashed into him, shoving him onto his arse and closer to the basin—
The squealing noise was constant now, bands of colour sweeping across the room, the light in the middle only growing brighter, Hermione finally reached the others huddled near the door, Neville and Ginny had shield charms up, Luna was scrambling to transfigure desks into a physical barrier, an uncharacteristic anxious scowl on her face, Ron had stopped struggling, but wasn't casting, his hand shaking too much, barely holding back tears, he couldn't breathe to cast anything. Hermione helped Luna, since it wasn't like she needed incantations to do transfiguration, it didn't matter that her chest was burning, her throat clenched so tight it ached, she—
"It's too big!" Luna yelled. She grabbed Ginny by the shoulder, turned to the exit. "Through the door now or we die!" She sounded remarkably confident about that, but Ginny did claim the odd little girl was a Seer, so...
The girls were through first, then Neville and Ron, the former dragging the latter by the elbow, Ron shouting something about not leaving Beth behind. Hermione gave him a hard shove with her off hand, firming up their barricade with a last couple bits of conjuration, turned around to slip through the door and—
The piercing squeal coming from behind — as though the sands were tearing a hole into the universe, the fabric of reality itself noisily protesting — suddenly cut out with a deep, bone-shivering shockwave, reverberating in Hermione's chest hard enough her breath was stolen, something heavy slammed into her back and she was thrown off her feet. She crashed into something — Ron or Neville, probably — a glancing hit, the impact not really hurting but tipping her into a spin, an instant later she hit something hard, levering her over the hip, her momentum carrying her over and—
A dull, heavy pain in her head, an echo carrying through her, and the world went grey and numb.
For a time, Hermione couldn't begin to guess how long, she floated in a sort of distant half-consciousness, everything hurt, like a bludger had gone to town on her for a couple minutes, it felt like the ground was tilting and spinning under her, nausea starting to rise, her ears stuffed with cotton, sound a muffled, unidentifiable wall.
Before long, the noise started to resolve as the crackles and bursts of spellfire, she could feel her fingers again. There were voices, she recognised them as voices, she could pick out the sounds just fine, but for some reason they didn't make sense, just random noise and not words at all...
Until suddenly they were. "—up, Hermione, please wake up..." Ron, that was Ron.
"'m fine." With some effort, Hermione forced her eyes open, winced, the yellowish light filling wherever they were stabbing into her skull. But she kept them open anyway...not that it did much good, the image dizzily spinning down and to the right, it was hard to make out much. One arm blindly reaching in what she was pretty sure was Ron's direction, she said, "Help me up."
"Er, maybe you shouldn't be moving..."
"I'm fine, Neville, just dizzy." Well, she wasn't fine, really, she did still hurt, she was going to have bruises bloody everywhere tomorrow, but she didn't think anything was broken. A hand found hers, another at her elbow, and Ron helped her sit up.
Which just made the spinning worse. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut.
"—need a healer, think we can flag one of them down?"
"What? Is someone...?" Oh, she must have blacked out for a second. Her head did really fucking hurt, the world was still spinning, and everything was too damn bright. Must be post-traumatic amnesia, then — she had a concussion. Great. Everything had gone very fuzzy for a moment there, but she didn't think she'd actually lost consciousness, or at least not completely, so it shouldn't be that bad. As long as she didn't get hit in the head again any time soon, she'd be fine.
Or get cursed, she guessed. She was looking out into the room, the amphitheatre with the creepy archway, and there was a bloody battle going on in here, several Death Eaters — more than there should be, she thought, they must have had reinforcements waiting — and a couple dozen people in the black and red and blue of Aurors and Hit Wizards. They were moving around so fast, far too many blinding flashes of spellglows, Hermione couldn't tell what was going on really, not to mention everything was still bloody spinning. She was pretty sure the Death Eaters were losing, though. At the very least, they did appear to be outnumbered. That was...good. That was good.
No, nothing was good. Beth had– she—
She was gone. Whatever that magical chain reaction was, it'd been bad enough for Hermione some distance from it, and Beth had been in the middle of it, she—
"—think it's broken, but other than that, I think we're fine."
"What?" Hermione turned back to her friends, glanced between them (trying not to notice how nauseous looking around was making her). Oh, injuries, right, she'd been confused what they wanted a healer for (herself, obviously), Ron must have been telling her how everyone was. There were a few more scratches here and there, everyone was going to be awfully bruised up tomorrow, but the only new thing (she thought) was that Neville was cradling his wrist, his face pulled into a pained grimace — he had broken his wrist before, probably remembered what it felt like.
Of course, because he was Neville, he groaned through his teeth, "Are you sure you're okay, Hermione?"
"Yes, I think so." At least, she was pretty sure that hadn't been another black out — inattention and confusion were more symptoms. "I have a con– concussion, that's all."
Hermione got four very doubtful frowns. Which was quite silly, concussions weren't really that big of a deal for mages — they tended to heal very quickly just on their own, and magic was much better than medicine at healing brain damage. (Though any memories lost were gone for good, obviously.) She even had a couple potions in one of her expanded pockets that would help, but she didn't trust herself to be able to identify the correct one by sight at the moment. A little short-sighted, perhaps, but she'd planned for other people getting injured, not herself...
Or maybe they just found the symptoms a bit unnerving. If she was coming off particularly absent and confused, she supposed she might seem very much not like herself, she could understand how the others might find that worrying. But, really, she'd be fine.
(She was not fine — Beth was gone.)
The fight in the big ampitheatre-like room — they were a couple tiers of benches down from one of the side doors, Hermione must have hit her head tumbling down here — was still going on, the five of them pretty much ignored by both sides, thankfully. Presumably the Death Eaters still wanted their prophecy, but they were rather too occupied to bother with them at the moment. Even as Hermione watched, the Death Eaters started to pull away from their various little duels, making for the doors, the Aurors and Hit Wizards (and several people in civilian dress, the Order?) practically tripping over themselves trying to follow — the Death Eaters were retreating.
Hermione pushed herself to her feet, and immediately teetered to her right, she would have fallen over if Ron didn't catch her. "Woah, Hermione, settle down, we should—"
"We have to go after them."
"There isn't—"
"We can't let them get away. We can't."
It was a mad thing to say, especially since Hermione could hardly even see straight at the moment — what the hell was she supposed to do that half the DLE couldn't? But Ron didn't argue, his fingers tightening with anger, his voice thick with grief. "Fine. You have a plan?"
She didn't, really, but she couldn't just sit here watching the room spin around her and do nothing.
With stumbling, awkward steps, Ron or Ginny catching her now and again when she teetered too far, Hermione started across the amphitheatre, into the circular room with all the doors and the spinning. Thankfully, multiple doors were hanging open, so it wasn't going to start moving on them, and the flashes of spellfire made it obvious which way they were supposed to be going. She must have had another brief black out, because she didn't actually remember making it to the hallway, but they were still moving and nobody said anything, so she must have kept walking like normal.
There were stairs down a side hall from the lifts, several Hit Wizards in the hall, firing spells up through the door — the Death Eaters must be taking the stairs together, instead of splitting up to take the lifts. So, it seemed the obvious thing to do was take one of the lifts up themselves. Hermione stumbled in first, leaned against the back wall to rest. Despite not actually doing much, she was weirdly out of breath, her limbs twitching.
Before long, the doors opened out into the Atrium. There was clearly a battle going on here too, the air shuddering with one shockwave after another, powerful mages clashing, debris clattering against the floor, the occasional flare of fire or crackle of lightning. Sounded like a hell of a fight, whatever that was.
Ginny started moving, but Luna stopped her by the elbow. Pointing her wand out the door, she said, smooth and calm, "Five. Four."
Er...okay, then. Luna apparently wasn't even pretending to be a normal person anymore. Shaking off how very odd it was for the (very odd) girl to know exactly when the Death Eaters would be going by, Hermione obediently raised her wand, all five of them aiming blindly out into the Atrium.
"Two. One. Stupeat." A pack of eight or so Death Eaters had just come into sight, charging out into the Atrium from their left.
"Stupeat!" "Excide!" "Distona!" "Stupeat!"
Hermione jumped at the growl of an incantation from Ron — that curse was extremely lethal, if it landed whoever was hit with it would almost certainly die, even if a healer got to them immediately. It wasn't quite so irreversible as the Killing Curse, the damage just caused enough bleeding it was all but impossible to stop in time. It was one of the spells Sirius had taught Beth over the summer, she'd passed it on to just a tiny handful of trusted people, repeating his warning to only ever cast this one anywhere near a person if they wanted the target dead. (It had reminded Hermione of basic gun safety stuff, actually.)
He probably did want them dead. Beth was—
She understood, was the point. Hers wasn't exactly a schoolyard jinx either.
Five spellglows lanced out, three the bright red of stunners, one a sharp yellow-orange, another a wide arc of a pale blue-white, reaching the pack of Death Eaters more or less in sync, Luna's hex slightly ahead and Neville's slightly behind. The first stunner hit one of the figures in the lead, he collapsed limply to the floor, Ginny's slipped straight through the group without hitting any of them, Ron's curse struck one just above the hip — a portion of the figure's torso dissolving in a blink, dark specks poofing out and falling to the floor like ash, the Death Eater fell screaming next to his severed leg, blood quickly pooling — Hermione's curse landed an instant later — a figure in the centre of the arc took it full in the chest, cutting them down (and possibly through) the bone, one to the left was clipped across the shoulder (superficial damage), one to the right got a shield up in time — and then Neville's stunner came in, but it was caught on a shield charm.
The Death Eaters reacted instantly, pivoting as a group to fling spells in retaliation. Hermione let herself go limp, throwing up a shield charm as she fell; the rest dropped too, Ginny yanked the doors closed with a flick of her wand, Neville and Luna both cast a barrier. The grate caught at least two spells that had no effect, probably needed a body to act on properly (one she recognised as the Unforgiveable torture curse), then was struck by a severing curse and then a blasting curse, weakening it and then smashing it into pieces — the barrier spells sent the shrapnel skittering away, she didn't think any of them were hit. In the next instant, Hermione's shield flared and brinked out, by the blinding flash of light and the boom of thunder a lightning curse of some kind, but it didn't reach into the lift, her shield charm had done its job. Then a pair of Killing Curses sailed through, smashed into the wall of the lift just where Hermione had been standing a moment ago — the repelling barrier was angled forward, bits of ice-cold wood and metal rained down on Hermione, but the impacts were light, they shouldn't even bruise.
Before the Death Eaters could send a second volley they were being joined by several more of their fellows, spells raining down on them from behind. Reviving charms were cast at all the downed men — two of them, the ones hit by Ron's curse and the centre of Hermione's, stayed down — and they continued further into the Atrium, by the time Hermione finally managed to push herself up to her shaky feet (with Ron's help) Aurors and Hit Wizards were already running by.
They followed after the figures in red and blue cloaks, Hermione limping along leaning on Ron, trying to walk just made the spinning worse. The Ministry people (and probable Order allies) were still firing off curses at the fleeing Death Eaters, but she couldn't see much, certainly couldn't aim around them to help. She couldn't do anything.
She hadn't done anything. Beth had fallen in, and Hermione had just stood there, and—
(She was gone, she couldn't believe Beth was gone...)
They came up short, Hermione stumbling enough she nearly fell again, when the Aurors and Hit Wizards petered to a halt, only a few metres into the Atrium proper. At a glance, clinging to Ron's clothes and yanking herself up onto her toes, the Death Eaters had stopped too, clumping up near the wall between here and the fireplaces out. Everyone had gone still, looking into the middle of the Atrium, casting shields and conjured barriers, but not facing each other, instead out, as though expecting incoming fire from...
Oh. Hermione had been focusing so intently on the fleeing Death Eaters, she hadn't even noticed at first who was in the middle of the Atrium.
Voldemort.
But he wasn't alone — the Dark Lord was in the middle of a duel, with a single figure it looked like. Hermione couldn't see much from here, just an occasional flicker of motion over the others' heads — she'd heard Voldemort could fly unassisted, but apparently this other person could too — flashes of light now and again, twisting shadows, flares of fire and lightning, deflected spellglows flying up into the air to crash into walls and ceiling, carving out deep craters, debris spilling down toward the floor. She couldn't see anything.
So she crept to the left, squeezing between the pack of Aurors and Hit Wizards and the inside wall of the Atrium, behind the fountain. There was a small gap here, Hermione could push to the front without actually having to force her way through them. And she could see.
Not that she could make much out, as uncooperative as her eyesight was being at the moment. Voldemort of course — all in black, hairless skin deathly pale, eyes seeming to glow red. She caught flashes of his opponent — shorter than him, dark trousers, glittering green blouse under a black cloak with flashes of red, her hair a lighter red-orange, drawn into a long plait save for a few wisps around her temple, pale skin bronzed from the sun. And it was only flashes, it almost didn't matter that she could barely see straight, the woman (she was pretty sure) was too damn fast.
Now and again, she would pause for a couple seconds — curses lancing so quickly between the duelists the spellglows almost seemed a solid line of colour, broken here and there with shield charms or flashes of light as spells explosively died — before whirling into motion, quicker than a human should be able to move, enough she almost seemed to blur (and Hermione didn't think it was just the concussion messing with her), sliding along the ground, still sending the occasional spell off at Voldemort, his own spells missing her, sometimes lifting off the ground to whirl through the air before stopping again, trading more spells, the air burning with magical light or thickening with unnatural shadow (some kind of dark magic Voldemort kept using, she didn't know what that was) before she moved again — debris trailing after her, layered with charms until they glowed with it before raining down on Voldemort, caught with a smouldering black and red shield of some kind, or perhaps sparks of lightning would gather in her wake, exploding to life when she paused again, a dozen lightening bolts crawling across the floor and filling the air, Voldemort floating off the ground and conjuring metal to intercept them and casting more shields, before retaliating with arcs of black-purple flame, which the woman slipped between, dancing effortlessly through the air...
Hermione had never seen a magical duel like this. She'd hardly even heard of a duel like this, it was incredible...
While they traded another volley of spells, Voldemort's off hand was drawing some kind of pattern in the air, this odd, poisonous looking greenish goop accumulating around his hand, once the woman stopped moving for a second he brought his fingers up to his lips and blew over them, the goop bursting into hundreds of flying droplets — not aimed in their direction, thankfully — the woman whirled away in a blur again, when she reappeared whipping her cloak off of her. It had clearly been hit with a few of those droplets, now spreading, the cloth seeming to shrivel, while again flooding the room with lightning — with her free hand, somehow — she caught the cloak with a levitation charm, it twisted upon itself, spinning in the air, shredding into dozens of strips each touched with Voldemort's magic, a single flick of her wand remaking them all into long metallic needles, a couple charms set them to glowing, and the woman was moving again, twisting out of the way of a nauseating swirl of yellow-black magic, lifting into the air, hopping from one pillar to another as she ascended and arcing over Voldemort's head, where she slowed enough to be properly visible again, the cursed needles slicing down at the Dark Lord.
He dodged, moving nearly as quickly as she did, a black and white blur sliding across the ground, the spears tracking him as he moved but never quite keeping up. There was a blue-ish flash as each struck the floor, the material seeming to dissolve, stone turned into shifting sands faintly shimmering green, the craters growing and the sands spreading. The woman summoned a patronus with a swirl of her wand — a bird of some kind, Hermione couldn't be certain — sent it flying across the floor, flittering toward one of the spreading piles of cursed sand. The instant the patronus touched it there was a sudden explosion of silvery light, filling the room so thickly Hermione could barely see anything (though, like most light magic, it didn't hurt her eyes at all despite its brightness), everything was light and streaks of shifting shadow, pulsing again and again, presumably as the patronus touched more craters...
When the glare finally cleared — the sickly glimmer of dark magic in all the craters gone now, mundane crumbled stone — both duelists were standing stationary, still for longer than they'd been in the whole fight so far. They were facing each other at an angle from Hermione, the back of Voldemort's right shoulder to her, the unknown woman looking up at him with a slightly crooked smile. Voldemort was floating a couple feet off the ground, surrounded by a...glass, it looked like, he'd conjured a ball of glass around himself (or perhaps summoned debris from the shattered windows of the offices overhead and forged it together) — to defend himself from whatever all that silver light had been, presumably.
Hermione gaped, and she wasn't the only one — there was steam lifting off of Voldemort, a portion of his head and one bare foot gone an angry red, like a bad sunburn.
The woman had actually hit him with something.
She'd read about the last war, and because mages liked their dueling and all, people had tried to document all the significant exchanges throughout history as best as they could. So far as anyone knew, the incidents where Voldemort had ever been hit could be counted on the fingers of one hand. One, an incident in '75 involving Adjustment, against Professor Dumbledore; two, the Battle of Avebury in '77, against Auror Moody and Professor McGonagall; three, the Battle of Hogsmeade on Hallowe'en '79, against Beth's parents, Sirius, and Aberforth Dumbledore; four, a raid on the House of Bones two months later, against Beth's mum (one-on-one, amazingly); five, an attack on a muggleborn safehouse run by the Order early in '81, against Sirius and Neville's parents. That was it.
The only people who had ever injured Voldemort in a one-on-one fight were Albus Dumbledore, widely considered the most powerful mage in the country, and Lily Potter, who mostly held her own through prior planning and trickery (and, in true Gryffindor style, audacious dumb luck).
Now, this unknown woman was number three.
Voldemort asked the question everyone else was probably thinking (Hermione knew she was): "Who are you?"
The woman smiled. She seemed...faintly familiar. Now that Hermione could actually get a good look at her, that was the vague feeling she was getting, that she'd seen this woman before. She couldn't imagine where, though — it wasn't like Hermione really knew that many magical adults. Rather short and slender, like a lot of purebloods, the brilliant red hair, the long, pointy face, she could be related to a lot of mages she'd met, but. Instead of giving a name, she said, "I walk with the storm. If you don't know me for that, you won't understand."
That was gibberish to Hermione, but apparently not to Voldemort — or most of the rest of the mages in the room, judging by the hissing of gasps and whispers. The ball of glass vanished with the barest twitch of the Dark Lord's wand, for a short moment he just stared down at the woman. "If you are who you claim to be, you would wish to regain all that we have lost over these centuries as much as I. There is no reason for us to oppose each other."
"I weren't expecting you think so." One corner of her lips pulling up, she smirked, mocking, taunting. "About what was lost, you understand far less than you believe you do, Tommie dear." A shimmering blue curse lanced out, the woman jabbed it with her wand and it burst, falling to the ground in a shower of harmless white and yellow sparks. "Ooh, sensitive about our birth name, are we?"
Seething, his voice cold and venomous, Voldemort hissed, "I've distanced myself from mine no less than you have from yours. What shame is it you hide, I wonder?"
"I haen't hidden the name, boy, people simply forgotten it." That got another curse, a Torture Curse this time, the woman stepped just out of the way, smoothly and casually. "And this shame you speak on, being born of parents without the gift of magic? That be your shame, Tom, not mine."
This time, Voldemort didn't keep his retaliation to a single curse, a steady stream of spellglows again tying the two of them together — and the unknown woman laughed, bright and almost gleeful, facing the Dark Lord with a smirk, her eyes twinkling in the flashing light of their duel.
Her green eyes.
No...
But once Hermione saw it she couldn't un-see it, dazed enough by the thought that she teetered over, coming to lean against the wall, suddenly dizzy and breathless, but no, she wasn't just imagining it. The duel was somewhat slower this time, the two of them pausing now and again to toss taunts and insults back and forth, so the woman remained mostly visible, not zipping around with inhuman speed, and she—
She was the right height, but not nearly so distressingly scrawny — not like she never bloody ate enough (sometimes Hermione truly hated Beth's family), just really fit. A sprinter, or a football player, or a professional duelist, like. And her colouring was slightly off, her hair a couple shades too light and skin a couple too dark...but that could just be from sun exposure, her hair was lightest at the edges and it wasn't that much of a difference...
Her accent was wrong, sounding vaguely...Scottish...kind of? It wasn't quite right, but Hermione couldn't think what else to compare it to. Certainly not southern, not at all...
And she was older. Much older. It could be hard to tell with mages, they didn't really age much like normal people at all, but she looked to be, she didn't know, mid to late twenties? early thirties? By magical standards, that meant she could easily be as old as sixty.
Mages had done some work with time travel, but it was still a relatively new field of study. It was generally assumed only travel backward in time was possible. If one went back, the only way to return to one's own time was to live through every moment between. There was a sort of logical sense to that, when Hermione thought about it — after all, it was difficult to get to a place that didn't exist yet. At the very least, it was theorised that an attempt to travel forward through time was likely to end up crossing into alternate timelines as well...and then the traveller wouldn't be able to get back, because they'd be in the wrong universe (because parallel universes was something mages had experimentally confirmed to exist, these things were wild sometimes). Short-distance hops were relatively harmless, but it was believed travel to the distant past would always be a one-way trip.
Beth had tried to apparate away...while surrounded by an enormous accumulated volume of alchemised time.
What if the chain-reaction hadn't killed her so much as tossed her back? Not hours, not even years, but decades?
It sounded absolutely mad, Hermione knew that. Even in her own head. But that reckless, excited laughter, that crooked smirk, she knew that smirk. It was her.
And she'd come back for them. She'd been thrown through time, who knew how far, and she'd remembered, and she'd come back for them.
Because of course she did — Elizabeth Potter and her saving people thing, how could Hermione expect anything else?
Her throat clenched so tight it hurt, she felt her chest shivering, meaningless noises wrenched past her lips. She honestly couldn't tell if she were laughing or crying.
In a pause in the noise of the battle, Tom hissing in fury and the woman giggling — Beth never could resist taunting people she didn't like, even when she really, really shouldn't — came the roar of fire bursting into life, again, again, again and again and again. It took a moment for Hermione to place the sound, to follow the flashes of green light to the opposite side of the Atrium. The floo grates were spitting out people, dozens of people — more DLE officers, Order members, random Ministry officials.
Even with her eyesight still not quite cooperating, Hermione managed to pick out Dumbledore and the Minister near the front.
"Oh, good!" the woman — Beth, it had to be Beth — chirped, shooting the Minister a glance (Hermione couldn't see what kind at this angle). "I'm waiting on yous a come here. Gimme one second." She waved her wand at the pack of watching Death Eaters in a wide swish, turned to jab at Voldemort.
The air shimmered, a wide band rushing toward the Death Eaters, striking in a blink. Some had shields up, but it hardly seemed to matter — the spell slammed into the whole group like a massive anvil, tossing them back to crash against the wall, even the ones who had shields up plucked off the ground by the force. The magic was dispersed by the impact, but the energy released still swept across the room, a gust of wind tearing at everyone's clothes, even as far as Hermione, her hair dancing wildly around her head. The DLE officers in the room obviously recognised that for the opportunity it was, once the tempest died down a little leaping on the stunned Death Eaters from both sides, had them pinned.
Wind. It hadn't been a hex so much as, just, a concentrated front of air, bludgeoning the entire group of Death Eaters with blunt physical force. For the effect it had, she might as well have conjured a steel wall and banished it at them.
I walk with the storm, she'd said. Hermione had to see if she could find out what the hell she'd meant by that.
The jab she'd aimed at Voldemort was doing something to the stone of the floor, contorting, jabbing up into spears. But it wasn't just in one spot, whatever spell that was was spreading, racing across the Atrium toward the Dark Lord. He snarled, Hermione could hear it from here, casting at the floor, a crack of thunder split the air, his off hand raising, magic starting to gather around—
In a blink, a crackle of lightning, the woman appeared right behind Voldemort, turning on her heel, her wand sweeping down shoulder to hip, a line of red-yellow fire drawn in the air — not actual fire, she thought, just a curse that vaguely looked like fire. It struck him in the back before he could react, an undignified grunt ripped from his throat, the force of it knocking him forward just in time to run head-first into one of the spears of stone. Voldemort landed flat on his back, inches from the woman's feet.
He was still bringing his wand around when the green flash of a Killing Curse struck him right over the heart.
Hermione held her breath, the whole room seeming to go silent all at once. Even the fight with the other Death Eaters seemed to stop (though perhaps it was simply done already). They watched in disbelief, waiting, for what she didn't know.
Beth — it had to be Beth, decades older but still Beth — bent over, pulled Voldemort's wand out of his limp hand. She tapped the tip of her own wand against the wood, then tossed it into the air. It burst into voracious flame the second after leaving her hand, by the time it should have landed on the floor again there was nothing left, ash in the wind.
She gasped as Voldemort moved, she'd thought he was— No, he wasn't moving, something was lifting out of the Dark Lord's body, a tense smoke of dust and shadow, first a few wisps but quickly gathering into a menacing cloud of too-dense black, a few flickers of sickly green.
"Yeah, yeah." Beth turned to the too-solid-looking shadows, a swirl of her wand summoning her patronus again. (A raptor of some kind, Hermione was pretty sure, a falcon or buzzard.) "I'm knowing you're there. Go on, then, float off and lick your wounds elsewhere. I'll be finishing off the rest of you later."
There was a keening, sibilant screeching — high and piercing and loud, Hermione clapped her hands over her ears, gritting her teeth. The shadows (Voldemort? somehow?) reached for Beth, but then seemed to cringe away, the screeching only getting louder.
If the sound bothered Beth, she didn't show it. In fact, Hermione was pretty sure she rolled her eyes. "Patronus, you idiot."
The cloud hesitated a moment, churning and shivering, and then stretched out for the crowd of Ministry people, so fast, shields came up, shouts of surprise and terror—
A piercing beam of white-silver light lanced through the cloud, breaking it apart into separate wisps of scattered black and green, it took it a moment to reform itself. "Don't you even try any of that," Beth snarled. "Get you out of here — don't make me exorcise you. Go on. Go!"
With a last, echoing scream, the entire Atrium seeming to shake with anger and hatred, the air cooling several degrees in seconds, the cloud swirled around upon itself and, abruptly, vanished.
He was gone.
[Animam ex...] — He doesn't have to get out the whole curse for you to know anything involving animam ex- is probably not good. He's casting the killing curse, in fact. Obviously I changed the incantation, because "avada kedavra" is almost aggressively stupid. It's animam expedi — the same length too, though probably slightly easier to say. And, bonus, it's not completely silly.