By- TheGreyLady (immaculatecalypso@hotmail.com)
Chapter 016- A Hateful Hollow
"So we all know the plan, right?" Harry said, opening his long trench coat to the warm summer air.
"I still don't think this is a good idea," Hermione said as she pulled her gloves on. She stared at the parking lot, catching sight of a few American cars and a security van.
Severus, Harry and Ron gave her exasperated looks before pulling their black masks into place. Hermione sighed and donned her own. Things were already bad enough. Why were they making matters even worse?
She didn't have time to ponder that thought as Harry and Ron picked up the large cement block and hurled it through the huge glass doors. Alarms went off almost instantly. She wasted no time following the men inside.
She'd been surprised when Ron told her that they wouldn't be able to simply apparate into the store. Arthur Weasley, in an effort to protect Muggles from being robbed blind by wizards, saw to it that every Muggle store was equipped with apparition detectors.
So, they had to do it the old-fashioned way. The Muggle police would be called but, thankfully, no Aurors. They estimated less than five minutes to procure everything they would need. The store was huge, so they'd have to be quick.
Wal-Mart, the parent store of ASDA*, when open, sold everything from knickers to computers. While Hermione was tempted by the sleek laptop she ran by, it was hardly the reason she was here. She dashed to the sporting section and quickly picked up four sets of night-vision binoculars, utility knives, and Swiss-Army knives. Shrinking and pocketing them, she quickly looked over the shelves to see if there was anything else they could need.
"Freeze!" A voice yelled. She heard something click. A gun…
She put her hands into the air and slowly turned. The man wasn't wearing a typical policeman's uniform. He had to be a member of the store's security personnel.
"Take off your mask!" the man ordered. Hermione hesitated. "Now!" the man bellowed. She saw a husky form creep behind the guard and wait. Do something, Ron, she silently urged as she brought her hands to her face.
Ron raised something in his hands and brought it down over the guard's head. The man grunted as he collapsed to the floor. She bolted past the guard, ducking down to pick up his pistol. It wouldn't do to have him wake up armed.
She dashed to the electronics section next. Getting cameras was her primary responsibility.
Once she reached the display case, she used the utility knife to access the cabinet beneath it. Unable to weigh the pros and cons of each model, Hermione grabbed the most expensive digital and film cameras. She felt badly, the digital cameras cost nearly $2,000 a piece and she'd taken four of them. She also took four very expensive video camcorders. She went to the film and shoved pack after pack into her rapidly filling pockets. Batteries occupied any remaining space.
As she began to dash to the exit, she saw a display of walkie-talkies. Using the utility knife like a hammer, she shattered the glass surrounding the items and took them as well.
As she ran through the broken doors, she saw flashing blue lights in the distance. Once she escaped the empty parking lot and entered the woods, she caught her breath and apparated.
She was the first one to reach the warehouse they'd selected. Willing her heart to slow down, she began to remove the stolen items from her trench coat's many, many pockets.
After unshrinking everything, Harry, Severus and Ron appeared. She sighed with relief as they silently began emptying their pockets as well. If they were criminals by trade, they would have just made a large amount of money.
Ron had somehow managed to get his hands on four sets of lopping shears, flashlights, baseball bats, three different kinds of hunting rifles with ammunition of every variety, two shotguns, axes, a long rope and a portable heat generator. Harry's goods consisted of four very expensive looking watches, tasers, pepper spray, mace, over a dozen rolls of duct tape, a large amount of rat poison and --much to Hermione's dismay-- handful after handful of somewhat expensive looking jewelry.
He explained that if things didn't go according to plan, they could sell the jewelry for Muggle money, eliminating the need for risky conversions. As much as she didn't like it, she had to agree.
Severus, whose job was to find anything that could possibly compromise the makeup of the pool, had returned with several gallons of bleach, nearly a dozen propane tanks, an additional heat generator and dozens of pesticides that contained chemicals she couldn't even pronounce. He also brought dozens of chocolate bars, canned goods, bread, bottled water, tins of meat and… instant coffee?
The mission was no longer about self-preservation. Even after an hour of discussion, no one had been able to reason why Fudge would want to bring the Dementors back but everyone remained convinced that it was not to serve any benign purpose. Unfortunately, Fudge had the press under his thumb so it would be unlikely that the public would realize this until it was too late. They needed to kill the Dementors before they emerged.
If only Wal-Mart sold napalm… in any case, it was not a bad haul for the first-time thieves.
"If we weren't already going to prison," Hermione said as she began to unpack the various cameras and put batteries in them, "we would definitely be going now."
"If we weren't already going to prison, we wouldn't have just robbed that store," Ron reminded her while carefully watching her put the batteries into the camera. Hermione ignored him.
"These cameras," she said to Severus and Ron, "are film cameras. We'll need to have the film developed with Magical and Muggle fluid. These are point-and-click cameras. You point at what you want to take a picture of and you press this button to take the picture. Make sure your fingers aren't over the lens."
"We know how to use cameras, Hermione," Ron sighed.
"These," Hermione ignored him once again and pointed to the digital cameras, "are digital cameras. They're helpful because we won't have to use film but there is no development process. The picture is stored on the camera and can be extracted when you save what's on this chip," she removed the memory card to show the pure-bloods, "onto something else. If the place is guarded against Muggle technology then these will be worthless."
"Wow…" Ron said.
"These will record videos of what we see," she said, turning on a camcorder and showing Ron and Severus how they worked. They looked amazed. She pointed to the small LCD screen and continued, "Whatever registers on this screen will be recorded to the tapes inside if you press the 'Record' button."
Harry quickly explained each piece of Muggle technology as they readied it for the mission. He barely stopped Severus from spraying mace into his own eyes. Hermione began examining the rifles that Ron had brought. She doubted that Severus and Ron knew how to shoot them. Fact was, she wasn't exactly sure how to use one either.
Taking the smallest model, she read the instructions and loaded it. After casting a silencing charm on the object, she raised it and aimed for one of the crates. She'd fired her cousin's B.B. gun when she was younger and that hadn't been too difficult. How hard could this be?
She took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.
The deadly weapon kicked violently against her shoulder, throwing her back. She had not managed to hit the crate but rather took a nice chunk out of the wall nearly six feet above it.
They were all preparing for meeting with Dementors. Obviously, a rifle was not going to help her. Naturally, if these were fully developed Dementors then nothing would help them if no one cast a Patronus charm.
"I'll be casting the Patronus charm. I won't be able to use any of these," she said miserably while gesturing to the various rifles. The men nodded and rose to try.
Harry's lithe figure did not fare much better than she did and he declared that he would be helping Hermione with the Patronus. Ron with his stockier frame managed to nick the crate. Severus managed to hit the corner of it. Hardly reassuring but it was the best they could expect from the amateur marksmen. At least they were stable enough to hit the crate at all.
They quickly discarded the items they deemed useless for the mission. Even if they shrunk everything, it would be difficult to differentiate the objects with touch alone and speed was by far the most important factor of the infiltration.
Ron cast a disillusionment charm on the rope before joining the others as they practiced retrieving the tools. This was it. This was what she'd been dreading since she'd retrieved Severus all those months ago.
The extra food and jewelry were left behind. If anything went wrong, they would be returning here. If anything went terribly wrong, they wouldn't be needing it.
* * *
Ron was quickly proving to be a very helpful member of the group.
Instead of using the elevator/phone booth to enter the Ministry, Ron led them straight into the dilapidated building through the front doors.
"I must commend you, Mr. Weasley. I doubt anyone will expect us to enter this way," Severus said.
"George and Fred," Ron said, ducking his head slightly in embarrassment, "they found this entrance when Dad had to watch them one day. It isn't exactly glamorous."
"That's the point, Mr. Weasley," Severus said not unkindly.
Ron led the group through a maze of hallways, each one littered with more debris than the last. They reached a door that had been locked with a variety of bolts and padlocks. Ron removed his axe and began to hack away at the door. They would have to do without magic for as long as they could; it was possible that any magic cast would set off an alarm, since Fudge could be anticipating their return. When the splinters and dust settled, they all looked into the dank, pitch-black room.
Each removed their flashlights and followed Ron in. He led them down a series of tunnels. Leaking metal pipes, dusty stone walls and dirt were the only things they could see. Hermione assumed the pipes must have been used for water. The heat radiating from them would have been less uncomfortable if it had been winter but instead it made the tunnels unbearably hot. She could feel the sweat beading on her forehead before it dripped into her eyes, forcing her to swipe her filthy gloved hand over them.
Eventually, they had to form a single-file line to continue. They crawled beneath the hot pipes. Hermione was covered with dust and cobwebs. No one in the group looked any better. They finally reached a large grate on the floor. Ron removed the sheers and began to clip away at it while Harry fastened the rope to one of the cooler pipes.
"This will take us to the stair. We have to be quiet. You wait here while I go and remove the other grate. I'll tug on the rope four times when you can follow," Ron whispered. After Harry finished the knot, Ron wrapped Harry's invisibility cloak around his shoulders and began lowering himself into the pit. Harry kept a hand on the rope in case something went wrong.
A minute passed and then another. She stood silently, looking down into the blackness. She took the night vision binoculars and watched Ron as he began using the utility knife to unscrew the grate. She felt arms wrap around her waist. Placing her free hand onto the offender's hand, she realized it was Severus.
"How far is he?" he asked quietly.
"He's working on the final screw now," she replied as she entwined their fingers. She put the binoculars back into her coat and turned to embrace Severus. She was terrified, try as she might, she couldn't eliminate the vision of his death from her mind. Should I tell him? No… I don't believe in prophecy. I just have an overactive imagination.
Even as she told herself that, she couldn't help but wonder if she was wrong.
"He's ready," Harry hissed.
"You first," she said. Harry began to lower himself down the hole. Severus placed a hand on the rope to determine when Harry left it and focused his flashlight into the hole.
Hermione took out her night vision binoculars again and stared at Severus through the bright green lenses. He's going to die if he goes in there, she thought over and over again. She fingered the taser she'd strapped to her thigh. She had to stop him. She had to stop him at all cost. Magic wasn't an option, he'd thwart her before she even got the first word out.
"We have to do this," Severus whispered, causing her to jump. "There's no time for second thoughts."
"But…" Was he reading her mind?
"Worry about yourself," he said, letting one of his hands settle onto the rope. "It's time, Hermione. You first." He kissed her lightly before guiding her hand to the rope.
She didn't have to speculate as to why Severus' words did not calm her. She quashed her fears and paranoia under a tidal wave of logic. It was too late to back out and they needed Severus… and prophecy and foresight were only around so frauds like Trelawny could avoid unemployment.
And it isn't as though I've got the 'gift' in any case, she thought, calming herself only slightly.
She climbed down the long rope, thankful that she had not removed her gloves despite the heat. The only source of light was from above her, where she imagined Severus was watching her. Much too soon, the light from Severus diminished but a corresponding light peeked from beneath her. The murky air began to cool and dry as she continued her descent. She slid down the rope until she dropped quietly onto the floor. Tugging on the nearly invisible rope four times, she quickly covered herself in the invisibility cloak and ducked into a corner.
Severus descended several tense minutes later. She opened the cloak to him. She and Harry did not need to worry about following each other. They knew where they were going. Severus crouched behind her as they crept to the Department of Mysteries. They passed several bored Aurors as they made their way to the long, torch-lit hallway that would take them into the Department of Mysteries.
One guard sat alone at the end of the hallway. They had all planned on this. She and Severus moved closer to the oblivious guard. The man was perusing a Gladrags catalogue… pervert.
Severus gave her a taser as the crept closer and soon she could hear the guard's quiet breathing. Ever so slowly, they crept behind the man. They waited a full minute before moving. Severus leapt from the invisibility cloak, pinned the man's hands against his body and slammed a gloved hand over his mouth being mindful to pinch the man's nostrils shut as well. Hermione slammed the taser into the man's abdomen and released 100,000 volts* of electricity into his body.
The man didn't have a chance and went lax almost instantly, his muffled yells ceasing as he fell unconscious. The door to the Department of Mysteries quickly opened and Severus dragged the limp man in and dropped him unceremoniously on the floor. Hermione took a cloth and stuffed it into the man's mouth before securing it by taking the duct-tape and wrapping it around the man's head. Harry and Ron doffed their invisibility cloak and helped her. Hands, arms, legs and feet were secured in moments.
She looked at the guard with slight mirth when they finished, there was no way he would be escaping. He looked vaguely like a great big silver mummy. Harry and Ron flushed to bright red as they tried to contain their snickers and even Severus had an amused smirk on his face. She fought the urge to laugh as Severus covered her with the invisibility cloak again.
They finally reached the forbidding plaque and removed their cloaks. Hermione and Harry took the camcorders and began to record, making sure to catch shots of the group while Severus and Ron took photographs. If something happened -- if someone died -- these documents were proof that they had been here.
Maybe these pictures could give some other revolutionary hope.
Harry and Hermione entered first, carefully documenting everything in the room. The room's hauntingly eerie quality had increased a thousand-fold. Bright red blood no longer cascaded from the stone walls… now a chunky black-red substance fell in clotted globs from every crevice in the walls and ceiling. She felt the thick liquid rain onto her hair and face. Anxiety quickly began to overtake her but she couldn't be sure if it was from the forming Dementors or from the room itself.
Or both.
The torches that had lit the room only a few months ago had been extinguished. The pool itself now emitted a dull red light that cast shadows in every corner.
She cupped her hand above the camera, preventing the liquid from blocking the lens, as she took fearful steps into this hateful abyss of man's warped creation. She hated Aristides for leaving a document of his father's handiwork. She hated mankind for being capable of unleashing this sort of evil upon the unsuspecting world. She hated that she and her friends were the ones who had to fight it.
Life wasn't fair, but that simple fact didn't matter.
Convinced that she had recorded enough, she placed the camera in her coat again and drew her wand. Severus gave her a short nod. It was time.
Severus deposited his camera into his own coat before removing the poisons he'd brought with a grace that belied his speed. Opening canister after canister, package after package, he began to take hesitant steps towards the pool when he froze.
"Severus?" Hermione called, instantly wondering if this heinous reality was turning into the horror her nightmares.
The older man shook his head and stepped forward again until he reached the edge of the pool. He dropped the bleach as he collapsed onto all fours. Keeping her wand drawn, Hermione approached him slowly. Once she came within a few feet of the pool, she felt what had stopped Severus. The vision of her parents' bodies floated before her eyes, the screams of her fellow classmates during the final battle with Voldemort flooded her ears. She distantly heard a crack and the quiet click of her wand hitting the floor as pain radiated from her legs.
"Ron, keep going!" She dimly heard Harry shout as bursts of white light flashed across the dark room. A bright silver phantom appeared between herself and Severus. She looked up to see a misty white stag staring into the pool. Hermione felt her senses return and realized she had collapsed to her knees. She rose to her feet again, listening to her knees pop and crack from the fall. Retrieving her wand, she wiped the black matter from the willow.
"What…?" she heard Ron say. She turned to the Patronus again. It was hopping from foot to foot, trying to turn away from the pool despite Harry's commands. Hermione cast her Patronus charm, which yielded the same result a few moments later.
"What's going on?" Hermione asked, struggling to keep her otter corporeal.
"Something's wrong. Don't stop, Ron!" Harry replied, prompting more flashes to momentarily illuminate the room.
"Stop the charms!" Severus ordered as he dragged Hermione away from the pool, "I've never seen a Patronus act like this."
Before she had a chance to end the spell, her otter along with Harry's stag disbanded in hazes of silver mist. The feeling of dread returned again and she had no choice but to recast. "We have to get out of here!" she shouted as her Patronus vanished again; luckily, she and Severus had put enough distance between themselves and the pool to function.
As they turned to the door, the sounds of rushing water stopped them all. Turning slowly, they looked at the pool again, watching it splash more actively in a whirlpool effect. The blood splashed over the edges of the pool in waves powerful enough to splatter on her coat. Hermione suppressed the urge to gag as she felt the hot liquid penetrate the material.
Before their disbelieving eyes, bodies began to emerge from the pool. They looked very much like human bodies… with alabaster skin stained in red and no bodily hair.
The skin, upon its exposure to the musty air, began to dissolve and decay. She heard choking noises coming from one of her companions as she watched with morbid fascination as the coagulating skin dripped like jelly from the bodies.
There was obviously a reason that all Dementors were robed with their faces concealed. Nausea wracked her and she doubled over to empty her stomach. The chalky taste of stomach acid lingering in her mouth did nothing to calm her stomach as it heaved again.
She heard an unfamiliar voice call out. She turned to see bright yellow light flood her eyes, blinding her and forcing her eyes shut. Before she had time to react, her feet left the floor and her body was hurled backwards.
Her brief flight was halted as she slammed into something and pitched forward, face first. She opened her eyes just in time to see the churning red blood rushing up to meet her.
*ASDA is the UK version of Walmart. From what I hear, they're about the same.
* Yeah, this number seemed really high to me as well so I went and asked a retailer exactly how this many volts won't kill someone. Turns out that the amperage of a taser is less than 1/100th of say, a regular household outlet and amperage is what will kill you. A taser uses EMD (Electro-Muscular Disruption) to override neuro-signals and cause muscles to contract until the person on the business end is on the floor in a fetal position. Basically, we're talking about causing one bitch of a charley-horse. A huge thanks to airtaserandgunstore.com for providing me with this info.
Author's Notes- General notes… yes, I think this could quite possibly be the most evil cliffie I've done yet. Pardon the lateness, this wasn't an easy chapter to write for the obvious reasons. I had to squeeze a lot of stuff into it in lieu of turning it into 2 chapters (1 purely exposition… and that's no fun!)
The next chapter's going to rock. Stay tuned.
Specific notes:
I got a great email the other day. Someone wrote me and asked me why our favorite fugitives didn't just use a pensieve and log the memories as evidence to give to the Americans. It was something that I'd seriously thought about when I began writing this story… and the answer came to me very quickly. However, once again, the immaculate Grey Lady forgot to fill the readers in on her logic.
For starters, I'd like everyone to know that I'm going back to add this information into a previous chapter because many other people may be wondering the same thing but are afraid to ask me since they FEAR MY MIGHTY INTELLECT! *Giggle* Just kidding. Well, I know a lot of people aren't gonna go back and re-read a chapter for three sentences, so I'm going to explain it here, too.
Here's my theory, if anyone has noticed (and maybe the alcohol has screwed with my memory) pensieves have never been used by Ministry officials. Not during the Deatheater trials or during Harry's trial. It seems like a really easy thing to do, doesn't it? With a few moments worth of work, you can see everything that happened in a specific instant.
However, (I'd like to reference OotP) when Marietta was ratting out Harry and the D.A., Kingsley modified her memory. Now, I'm pretty sure that if she were to put her memories into a pensieve, her memories would either be (1.) the modified memories or (2.) Seriously messed up and/or mixed. Option #1 seems more likely unless some sort of "Bertha Jorkins" tactic were used.
And plus-- let's face it-- the story wouldn't be nearly as entertaining if it were that easy. Admit it, you ALL want to go back to that room. Why? Because, deep down, you're all as morbid as I am. Just kidding. You're all cool.
Jo, this chapter is dedicated to you for asking questions as well as my amazingly fantastic beta, Moaning Myrtle. Also (and this is in hindsight *DOH*) I'd like to recognize hopelsydreaming for asking more questions than ANYONE! Not that I don't appreciate it! You three rock.
Thank you's will be up tonight or tomorrow.