When Sirius opened his eyes next Annikaya was already awake and pacing around the edges of the room looking up. She noticed he was awake. "It's funny but you can't see where the walls end from here. It looks like it goes on forever."

Sirius stood and shook out his robes. He hated wrinkly robes. He only wished he had a comb about too. "Well, shall we try again?" he inquired.

"Wouldn't it be better to try one person at a time?" Annikaya asked. "That way only one of us risks falling another thousand feet."

For a second she sounded exactly like James and Sirius looked at her oddly before he pulled out his wand. It was a reasonable suggestion. "You or me?"

"You. You're crazy." she grinned.

To his surprise Sirius grinned back at her. "That's the spirit!" He swished and flicked and rose steadily up into the air. Annikaya stood back against the wall to get a better view. "I can just make out the top of the wall." he called down a couple minutes later. "Here it-" Before he could finish he was yet again falling helplessly through the air!

Annikaya's face swam into focus before his own. "Are you ok Sirius?"

Sirius groaned. "That hurt more than before."

"I noticed. You had me really scared. I thought you'd..."

"Died?" he asked dryly.

"You know what I mean!"

Sirius touched the back of his head experimentally. "Not even a goose egg. Damn, that hurts!"

"You shouldn't use language like that when we're in this position."

"What?"

"Damn. You know, it means go to hell. And we're...never mind. I thought it was funny." she ended lamely.

"I'm the one who hit his head." he reminded her.

She sighed and asked the heavens what she'd done to deserve this.

"This being a handsome bloke like me?" he asked just to see her reaction. She was really pretty funny when she got like this. Annikaya leveled the Death Glare at him again. Sirius just smiled innocently.

"I'm going to write a nasty book about you." she vowed.

Sirius chuckled and swished and flicked again. "I almost made it this time." he informed her groggily.

"Sirius..."

He shoved her hand away and sat up by himself. He looked up speculatively.

"Too bad you can't conjure up some rope or something."

"Do you want to try?" he asked her.

"Sirius, I admit that this is the only plan we've got but it's not working. You just aren't high enough before you hit the barrier or whatever."

"You're right." Sirius sighed defeatedly.

"It's ok. We'll get out of here. Already you've done more than me in all my time here."

He turned to her. "Just how long have you been here?"

"I don't really know." she replied. "I'm not ageing so I'm not sure how time works here. I tried marking on the walls but I didn't have anything to mark with. I didn't have my purse that day. So all I have is a potato chip bag..." her voice trailed off. "Say, Sirius..." her voice was in forced- casual mode. "I know you said you couldn't just make stuff but can you change it? From one thing to another?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, could you...change a potato chip bag into a ladder?"

"No." Sirius winced as her face fell. "The two things are just too different. You can change a pen into a pencil because they're about the mass. A matchbox can become a frog or a rat a goblet because they stay about the same mass. But a potato chip bag...If only we had some string or thread I could turn it into rope but a potato chip bag just won't work."

"Oh."

Sirius hated to see her so down. He smiled confidently for her. "Don't worry. If a baby can defeat He-who-must-not-be-named, then two idiots like us can certainly get out of a silly old box. Why don't you get some rest? Maybe something will come to us when we're fresh."

Sirius woke up suddenly. He looked over at Annikaya soundly asleep. "Psst. Annikaya." She didn't wake up. "Annikaya!"

"What?" she mumbled.

"I've got an idea."

She didn't even open her eyes. "Tell me in the morning." Just like that she was asleep again. It took Sirius considerably longer. "You want to WHAT?!"

"Calm down! It's not like I like this any better than you." Sirius said impatiently.

"Do you want to explain this to me one more time?" she demanded.

He sighed. "It was what you said yesterday about transfiguring something into a ladder. We obviously can't do that but I can transfigure thread into rope. And our clothes are the only thread around here."

"If you think for one minute that I'm going to get naked for you-"

"No! God, no! Hopefully our outer clothes will be enough."

"And if they're not?" Her voice was soft and dangerous.

"I wouldn't even think of looking. I'll use a spell if you like."

Annikaya's eyes were narrowed. "Good. Because I think we both know who'd be losing their skivvies first, don't we?"

"Do you want to get out of here or not?"

"Just get on with it, will you?" she snapped.

Sirius bit back a reply and began. "Is it ready yet?" Annikaya asked, her arms crossed protectively as she stood in her underwear.

"Just two last things." he said. "I've got to make it stronger and attach your belt buckle as a hook to the end." He was feeling a little uncomfortable trying to work magic in his underwear.

"Ummm, Sirius...I just thought of something. I can't climb rope." she admitted.

Sirius brushed that aside. "We'll fly as high as we can and then I'll climb up the rope and pull you the rest of the way. It's only a couple of feet."

"Oh. Ok. Thanks." She watched him attach the belt buckle and turn it into a grappling hook. And once again the two took to the air.

"Get ready." Sirius cautioned Annikaya. "Hand me the rope." He twirled the end and threw it up to the ledge. It missed and came falling back. The second time it got up but didn't have anything to support their weight. The third time it finally held. Annikaya grabbed the dangling end and tied it around her waist while Sirius grabbed hold above her head.

"Remember, your floating will stop too when I cross the barrier. Are you secure?" he asked her.

She tugged on the rope to demonstrate that she was. "Good luck!"

He began shimmying up the rope, his wand in his teeth and not his pocket so the flotation spell would remain active. A few feet up he hit the barrier and Annikaya dropped a few inches as the rope took over. She let out a startled shriek.

"Are you alright?" he called down around the wand. It came out as more of a concerned mumbling.

She understood anyway. "I'm fine. You keep going before you get tired out." She watched him climb the rest of the way and scramble over the ledge and out of sight. A few minutes later Sirius pulled her up. They had finally succeeded in escaping the white room! Annikaya brushed herself off; she'd scraped her hand pulling herself over the ledge and had a nasty rope burn around her waist. Sirius was busy changing the rope back into clothes. She looked around.

The space they were in was just a grey room like the white one but had one considerably advantage. There was a door behind Sirius at the far end of the room. The doorknob was that gold gilt paint that tarnishes and shows the silver metal underneath if it's used too much. None of the silver was showing.

"Here are your clothes." Sirius said, breaking her intense study of the door.

"Uh, one sleeve's shorter than the other.

"Oops. Sorry. I forgot I had that hole in my sock." Obedient to his wand a bit of string uncurled from under his robe, changed color, and added itself to her sleeve.

"That was kind of cute. I'm going to name that thread Lucy." she announced. Sirius stared at her but knew better than to say anything. Instead he reached for the doorknob.

"No! Don't!"

Sirius turned back to her. "Why the hell not?" he asked irritably.

"Someone obviously went to a lot of trouble to keep us down there, what with the barrier and all. Don't you think there might be some sort of protection on the door?"

Sirius grumbled and pointed his wand at the door.

"Not that!" She hadn't spoken soon enough.

"Blastamus!" Nothing happened. "Maybe..." Sirius shouted another word that Annikaya didn't quite catch and the door fell off its hinges, revealing shadowy depths behind.

"I thought magic didn't work." Annikaya was confused.

"Attack magic doesn't work." he replied smugly. He bent down to study the fallen door. "Poison."

"WHAT?! Really? I mean..."

Sirius looked up at her. She was very pale. "It probably wouldn't have hurt us. I mean, it didn't hurt us when we fell all that way." Of course, that wasn't to say that this wouldn't have hurt them, but he didn't want to scare her. "Come on." Taking her hand in his, they stepped over the door into the shadows beyond. Sirius looked around in confused amazement. Before him stretched rows of odd desks with strange glowing boxes, wires curling out the back onto the floor where they joined with more wires. These strange boxes were surrounded with three sided walls of some sort of fabric, each set of three walls surmounted with a strange milky white inverted pear shaped object. In front of each hypnotically blue-white glowing box was a flat sheet with raised squares with some sort of code imprinted on them.

"What is this?" he asked quietly, more to himself than anyone else.

"Why is more what I'd like to know." Annikaya remarked. She walked over to one of the glowing boxes. "Same make as mine."

Sirius was startled and looked at Annikaya with the same wonder he'd applied to the mysterious apparatus. "You know what this is?"

"Of course I do." She looked at him blankly. "Don't tell me you've never seen a computer before!"

"A what?"

"A computer. Do you think it's safe to touch?" When he nodded she grabbed a square piece of plastic and began sliding it across the desk. It made a funny clicking sound and the design on the front of the glowing box changed.

Sirius leaned forward mesmerized. "What are you doing?"

She glanced up, startled. "Oh! Well, this is called a mouse and it moves the arrow on the screen. The arrow allows me to access data."

"What's that do?" he pointed to the flat thing with the squares sticking up.

"It's a keyboard. You use it to store data." She dragged the cursor over to a picture on the screen that said "My Documents." The mouse clicked again.

"This is amazing! And muggles use this all the time?"

"Well, yeah...hmmm."

"What?"

"There's nothing in this file" The mouse clicked again and the box on the screen disappeared. Sirius was slightly disappointed; the box had been sort of pretty with a cloud background. The mouse clicked yet again and suddenly the computer was making strange noises, clicks and whirs and mechanical grinding screeches!

"What's it doing now?" Sirius exclaimed, stepping back.

"It's just loading up internet." Her voice was bland.

"What's that?" he asked. Briefly he considered being quiet and letting her work but decided against it. After all, if he hadn't followed his curiosity he never would have met James, Remus, and Peter. Or found out that Remus was a werewolf.

"Internet is...a world-wide data sharing network." Annikaya said carefully as another box popped up. "A homepage would have been a start." she muttered. She put her fingers on the keyboard and began pressing the squares down. The sound it made was kind of pleasant. "Won't let me access my email! Stupid machine!"

"Email?"

She sighed and straightened. "I thought maybe I could send a message to someone letting us know where we are. But it won't work."

"Oh." Truth be told, Sirius was too fascinated with the mysterious bit of technology to be too upset with its failure. "Where to n-"

"Shhh!" At Sirius's warning Annikaya stopped and listened. Someone was coming.

"Quick!"

The two raced down a row of the strange desks and ducked underneath one, trying to keep out of sight. They heard a door open somewhere on the very far side of the room. Boot steps echoed on the tile floor and suddenly the fluorescent lights came on, flooding the room. Sirius jumped, for he was used to the candles and magical lighting of his world, not the harsher lighting without the warning of spell words. The boot steps echoed down one of the aisles of desks as the walker went to the door. There was a click and a buzz.

"Yes sir. The door's been breached. Out." The voice was oddly accented. There was a pause. "Yes sir."

Annikaya's heart was racing and she was sure the booted person would hear it any second.

"Understood sir. Out." There was another ominous click and then the booted feet retreated and the lights turned off. The door shut on the other side of the room

Annikaya began to scoot out from under the desk but Sirius caught her sleeve in a vice-like grip and there was a clear warning in his eyes. Annikaya held still, her leg cramping painfully under her. A few moments later they heard a couple more shuffled boot steps and the door opened and closed again. Annikaya slumped to the floor.

"That was close. That was so close." She was shaking. "How did you know?"

"Practice." he said and tapped his wand on the desk before tracing a bit of red fire in the air to assure that it worked. "Come on. Let's go." he said grimly. They strode purposefully down corridors deserted of life, Sirius holding his wand ready. Eventually the hallway they were following branched out into a sterile lobby. On the other side of an arrangement of pale blue and purple chairs another hallway branched off. On the other side of the chairs and fake floral arrangement were double doors looking onto a parking lot that backed up to the woods, full of skinny half-grown trees.

The two quickly exited the building. Annikaya glanced up to see that the building did not bear a name. Sirius was also looking around in confusion.

"What's the matter?"

"There are no cars in the parking lot and look," he swept his hand before him indicating everything, "the parking lot doesn't have an entrance or an exit. It's like this whole... picture isn't finished."

"Maybe...maybe we should hide." Annikaya said nervously, twining a piece of hair back and forth between her fingers rapidly.

Sirius jogged the length of the parking lot and slipped into the shadows between trees, Annikaya at his heels. She gave an audible sigh of relief as they entered under the meager canopy. Sirius looked back at her quizzically.

"I feel safe in the woods," she explained a bit sheepishly. "I always have."

Sirius was regarding her with a thoughtful frown.

"What?"

"I need to do a spell but it's slightly dangerous and I need your permission first."

"Huh? Why do you need my permission?"

"I need to apparate to the Order's headquarters and figure out what's going on. Then I can let Dumbledore know about you too. But I don't know where we are, so I can't apparate back unless I have something to trace. I can set an aura on you but if anyone else is looking for an aura, they'd find you."

"How likely is that?"

"Not very." Sirius shrugged casually.

"Alright." Then she hesitated. "It's not permanent or going to hurt, is it?"

"No. Just hold still."

Annikaya, avidly fascinated but Latin, tried to understand what he said next but failed. A golden mist streamed out of his wand and settled about her until she had a glowing gold outline. Experimentally she raised her hands and studied the outlines, her eyes wide with delight. After a few minutes the outline faded. When she looked up Sirius was already gone. Sighing, Annikaya settled herself at the base of a tree to wait for him.