Chapter Three.

The fields of London were empty as no one dared to step outside in the shadows of the night. The world was in turmoil – living in fear of Voldemort. After taking over the world, Voldemort made it clear – anyone that went across his rule would mysteriously vanish. Only those that were brave at heart or incredibly stupid would challenge his power; and the ones that worked at a distance, never seen, had a price on their heads and were wanted – dead or alive. But everyone knew who were the ones that worked at a distance and they knew to keep their distance from them. Anyone who was seen conversing or in cahoots with them, would be seen as a traitor and would mysteriously vanish as well.

In an empty farmers' field in London, two figures walked quickly and quietly, talking in hushed voices now and then. Both were wearing long cloaks around their shoulders that swept down around their ankles. They were hunched over, hair falling into their eyes, hoping not to be seen. They knew the turmoil Voldemort was putting the world into, and if they were seen, it would mean instant death. Continuing through the fields, they hoped to get as much ground covered as they could in the dying night shadows.

"Riley," One of the voices hissed, casting a glance at her counterpart. "We shouldn't be here… we should have stayed where we were. We could be caught, we could be killed, we –"

"You're ranting again," The first girl; Riley cut in with a singsong voice. "I didn't ask you to come with me anyways, Alexis. You could have slept inside of that muggle airport; they were giving out 'beds' to all the newcomers off the planes. It's your own fault for following me out that bathroom window. I didn't ask you to come, you know?"

Alexis narrowed her brown eyes, as she glared after Riley, before stalking off after her. "I'm only here because I know what you're up to. You're going to Grimmauld place, aren't you?" No reply. "I knew it! I knew that you would do something foolish like this. It was seven years ago Riley – you need to let go off the past – I did. They did it for the better; they didn't want to sacrifice us." Alexis muttered, her voice fading off as she looked at Riley for a reaction.

Riley stood rigid in the field; as the sun started to rise over the horizon. Alexis looked warily at Riley; before sighing and taking a step closer to Riley. "Listen Riley," Alexis started off slowly; not wanting to anger her short-fused friend. "It was for the better. They didn't let us in because we were to immature… we didn't understand what was going on then, and look at what's going on now…" Alexis' voice faded off, as Riley turned and looked at her, her cold gaze, making Alexis freeze mid-sentence.

"You actually believe what they told us?" She said in no more then a whisper. "You believe that it was better that we didn't know what was going on, that it would save us in the long run? You believe that bull?"

"Maybe it was bull Riley, maybe not. But remember – you ran away. You left in the middle of the night. Maybe there was something more too it… but we'll never know now, will we?" Glancing around, Alexis saw that the sun was rising, and the empty farmers field was almost in complete sunlight. "We need to move Riley; the sun's almost up…and I doubt you want to get caught, seen out in the field. That would basically scream 'breaking the rules of the ruler of the world'. And, I doubt that you want that to happen; not before giving a piece of your mind to the Order, right?"

Instead of replying to Alexis' questions, she just pulled the cloak that was draped around her shoulders and kept on moving across the field. Alexis rolled her eyes at the sudden change in Riley's attitude, but shrugged it off, following after Riley.

Ron and Hermione huffed, as their footsteps started slacking off on the stone slabs beneath their feet. They had been running through the underground maze of corridors and staircases, for what seemed like a long time as they tried to find an exit. But, during all the twists and turns they took, they didn't even know where they were; they could have been back in the dungeon area for all they knew. The constant slap as their feet hit each stone slab alongside the eerie quietness of this area, kept them on their guard.

"Where do you think the damn exit is? We keep seeing slabs and slabs of stone. This is getting us nowhere." Ron seethed, tired of seeing stone after stone, and never anything else.

"Calm down Ron, save your anger for later," Hermione said, resting a hand on his arm. "We have to focus on what's ahead of us; getting out of here alive and uncaught."

"Calm down? Calm down! We're lost in here, and I just left my little sister down in the dungeon with a space cadet, and you expect me to calm down?" Ron muttered; his voice rising as the anger built up inside of him.

Hermione sighed, speechless. She knew she shouldn't have said that to Ron, she could be the same way if someone of her family was locked down in the dungeon; and wouldn't take to kindly to someone telling her to calm down. But, the truth was there was nothing that they could do for either Luna or Ginny; they didn't know where those two were; they could have been anywhere in this place. Smiling, Hermione turned back to Ron, hoping to cheer him up.

"Listen, I bet they're already out! I bet that they are here somewhere too, doing exactly what we're doing. Just don't lose hope, Ron. We still have… each other." Hermione whispered, tugging her cloak closer to her for warmth.

Unsure of what Hermione meant by that meaning, 'We still have each other', he shrugged it off thinking that it was some kind of girly thing. "You're right… we do still have each other. Well get out… even if it kills us in the process, right?"

Hermione looked back for a second, before looking ahead again. "You're right we will get out. But, lets hope that it doesn't kill us in the process."

With a more comfortable silence between the two now, they continued running down the hall, believing that Luna and Ginny were doing exactly what they were doing too. The two of them hadn't gone more then twenty steps when they heard something that brought the idea of everyone being okay, crumbling down.

"AAAAHHHH!"

The two stopped mid-step, looking back in the direction of the yell, then at each other.

"That was Luna… wasn't it?" Ron slowly said.

Hermione nodded, closing her eyes shut, hoping to block out that scream.

She was backed up into the corner of Ginny's cell, unable to get away since the Death Eaters were closing in on her. She silently cursed herself for not taking the time and not closing the cell door behind her. If she had done that, she wouldn't be cornered; trapped with nowhere to run. She looked from one cloaked figure to the next, trying to calculate their size and movement, to attempt a get-away. No such luck; came to her though. She was trapped.

While she was thinking of the many ways these Death Eaters could kill her and Ginny, one of her arms unlinked themselves from Ginny's legs' and slipped into her pocket to get out her wand. However that didn't go unnoticed within the group surrounding her. A smirk graced itself on one of the figures, as they slowly approached the two girls; the smirk growing bigger with every step taken.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here," A hand shot out and latched onto Luna's arm, dragging her hand out – wand along with it. "Thought you could pull a fast one on us?" The voice under the hood said; pulling Luna close enough to him so that she could feel his breath on her. "But, in the end… we have all the 'fast ones'." With that said, he pushed Luna back, making her stumble back, releasing Ginny from her back in the process as she tried to stop herself from hitting the cold stone slabs head on.

Landing on the ground, she brushed a stray blond strand back, glaring up at the figure. She knew that voice from somewhere – somewhere from Hogwarts – but she couldn't place the voice to a name or face. She cursed herself for not paying attention to others' at school; but broke out of her reverie, remembering the predicament she and Ginny were in. Speaking of Ginny, she looked wildly around her for the red-haired girl, but didn't see her lying on the ground.

"Looking for someone?" The figure replied in the same oily voice. "Maybe you just misplaced her… or handed her right over to us. Either way… you dropped her… right into us." He stopped for a second to let what he said sink in, before continuing on. "And it won't be long till you drop as well. But… not the same way your pal did."

Ron looked over at Hermione, who was pacing back and forth, after that scream, and frankly he was getting agitated at the brunette's constant pacing. They had to go and help them, they were in trouble and he knew it. If only they hadn't gone the way they had, they could have saved Ginny and Luna from whoever was coming down the opposing corridor.

It was their entire fault.

'Ron couldn't speak, so he simply nodded. Luna looked at them in a state of somewhere between reality and dreams, then quickly turned, and hurried down the stairs, pulling her wand back out of her pocket. Ron and Hermione stood there, stunned for a second, before Hermione started ushering Ron up the stone stairs, and the two broke out into a run. As it turned out, running up the stone steps was harder then they thought. With the many curves of these stairs, and them being made out of stone, they had to run slower, so that their footsteps wouldn't echo. Reaching the archway of the stairs, the two stopped.

"Which way do we go?" Hermione hissed, darting a quick glance at Ron.

"Left? No right? Where's Harry's Invisibility Cloak when you need it?" Ron replied, glaring into the darkness.

Footsteps and the shout of one voice were heard, coming along the passageway. Ron and Hermione looked in the direction the voice was coming from the left. Quickly calculating this all, Hermione quickly muttered to Ron, "If their voices are coming from the left, that must lead further into this – this place. The right, it might lead to the exit." With a sharp nod from Ron, the two tore off, running in that direction; the idea that the stones beneath them would echo every step, banished.'

"Hermione," Ron started, and Hermione stopped pacing, looking at him. "We have to go back. They'll need our he–"

"We can't go back, Ron." Hermione snapped, crossing her arms across her chest and staring at him. "We're useless to them."

"We're useless? It's us that are useless? My sister is with Looney Luna… that's what I call useless. She's in her own dimension – dreaming away – Hell, she probably doesn't even know she's being attacked. I'm going to help them – you can stay here – that's what I call being useless." Hermione gasped at the coldness in Ron's voice as he glared at her. She took a step forward, hoping to calm Ron down, and placed a hand on his arm.

"We can't do anything Ron," She tried to say, but it came out in a higher pitch then she wanted. "We don't hav–"

She stopped mid-sentence as she felt Ron's hand on top of hers, thinking she had gotten through to him. She looked up at his face, but saw it was anything but that – his eyes looked at her coldly, sending a shiver down her spine.

She had never seen Ron like this before. Before she realized what was going on, Ron pried her hand off of his arm and pushed her roughly backwards, making her fall to the ground, completely shocked. She thought she saw a flicker of some emotion in his eyes before they turned cold again, and he turned with a swish of his cloak, walking away from her and deeper into this stone building.

Before he disappeared around the corner, he cast a glance at Hermione, who was still sitting shocked on the stone slabs. "Do whatever you want Hermione – wait here for me, or come with me." And with that, he disappeared around the corner.

Hermione starred after him, long after he left, in pure shock. Was that really Ron? She had never seen him that angry before – and she had seen him angry before. Sighing, she stood up, brushing dirt off her robes. "As I was trying to say before Ron," She whispered to the still air. "We don't have a wand. We're the useless ones… not Luna."

Hermione stood there for a minute, looking at the spot where Ron disappeared around the corner. Many thoughts went through her mind, but none more then should she follow Ron deeper into this place or go try to find an exit, along with the others.

"If Ginny and Luna are already in here… and Ron went looking for them… the three of them are as good as gone… and no one probably knows where we are…" With that in her mind, Hermione nodded, deciding the answer to her question. "I need to find a way out. I can come back later with others. That should work." With a smile now gracing her features, Hermione turned on her heel, and walked down the hallway; going the opposite way Ron went.

Ron walked down the corridor, turning here and there, to put some distance between him and Hermione –whatever she decided to do - and because he thought that this was the way back to where they left Ginny and Luna. Looking at all the slabs of stones that lined the corridor, he hoped that he was going in the right way. Each and every slab looked the same, and there were no landmarks to show him the way back to the dungeon area. All he could do was wander around this place, hoping to find what he was looking for. But, all he knew for sure was that he was getting more lost as each second past by.

His thought travelled back to Hermione – sitting in the corridor a look of shock and was it a bit or terror looking at him as if he was a monster. He closed his eyes, sighing. He had really made a mess of things. Although Hermione probably meant well by what she was trying to say to him, it still got on his nerves. If it were one of Hermione's relatives down there, she'd be jumping down there after them, wouldn't she? He nodded to himself, answering the doubts clouding his mind.

Hermione walked down the hall, looking this way and that for any other movement in the stone slab corridor. Every once and a while she would hear what she thought was a sound of footsteps, but it would fade away almost as soon as she had heard it. Looking up at the ceiling of the corridor, where slabs were missing in the walls, sunlight was starting to peak through the open places.

"I have to be near an exit now… I can see the sunlight, so I'm definitely above ground." Smiling at the thought of almost getting out of the maze of corridors, she continued with new hope.

Hermione sighed; hoping this time her idea would work. She saw the end of the corridor approaching slowly and inwardly smiled, knowing an exit would be nearby. Slowing her footsteps she leaned against the stone slabs listening for any sounds. Upon hearing nothing, she peeked around the corner. Her inward smile turned into a smile as instead of meeting endless slabs of stone; she was greeted by an archway that lead outside no more then four hundred feet away from her.

The exit!

Hermione's mind screamed at her to get out of there, but a piece of her mind wandered back to Ron and the others, until a figure of a Death Eater appeared in her mind. Shaking her head; to rid her mind of those thoughts, she started off down the corridor, first at a walk, then at a run; her feet pounding of the slabs of stone, not caring whether she was heard now or not – she was almost free of this place.

What Hermione didn't hear though, because of her own pounding footsteps, was a set of footsteps following hers. By the time Hermione reached the end of the corridor where the archway was situated, she had slowed from running to walking quickly, doubled over panting. Holding onto the archway, Hermione looked at her surroundings. Everything around this place was dead; and the stream that at one point probably ran along this place, was now a swamp, and smelled bad as well. At the end of the dead-ness, which looked to be another couple hundred feet away, was a wrought iron gate, which seemed to be the way out.

"More running… I can see why no one runs away from here, by the time they finish running, they're to tired to go anymore, and get caught again. They're not as dumb as they seem." Hermione muttered, clenching her fists together, and darting a glance around the dead forest saw that it was clear.

Closing her eyes from the tiredness in her legs, she sighed, as she opened her eyes again. 'All I have to do is get to the other side of those gates, and I'll be OK.' Hermione thought to herself as she darted out from her hiding place, repeating the same thought over and over again in her mind.

"So, Potters' little mudblood friend seemed to escape from this holding place, just what we needed. Giving the girl false hope will do her well. That way… her demise will be far more entertaining when the time comes." A sneer appeared on his face, as he turned with a swish of his cloak away from the running away mudblood and the two-cloaked figures that were following her, and walked back into the dark dank building.

Harry and Neville made their way quickly down the dank muggle alleyway, trying to figure out where Neville had met one of the Dumbledore Armys' members. They had been wandering around for what seemed like hours, each alleyway looking the same.

"Neville, are you sure you met them here? All we're doing is walking around in circles." Harry muttered, looking from one side of the alley to the other. Everything looked the same.

Neville sighed; this was the fourth time Harry had asked him that. "Don't you trust me Harry? Shish."

"Maybe." Harry muttered, falling back into his musings.

What was that dream about? Was it showing what was to come in the future? Was he going to die? Was this just a futile attempt? Maybe they couldn't rally up against Voldemort and his Death Eaters… but he had done it before, hadn't he? He could sure do it again. All of these thoughts chased each other around in his mind, each question wandered to another all of them leading to a dead end or more unanswered questions.

"I think this is it." Neville's voice rang out through the darkness.

"Hmm?" Harry said, snapping back to reality and looking over at Neville who was pointing to a fork in the road. "Are you sure Neville?" Harry stared at the foreboding fork in the road, eyebrows raised.

"I'm sure." Neville said, his voice a little edgy. Couldn't Harry just believe him for once?

"Better then standing around here, I guess." He muttered, nodding and stalked off in the direction Neville had pointed.

Neville rolled his eyes, following Harry down another dingy alleyway. Hopefully this time he was right in the direction of the warehouse… all of these muggle streets looked the same.

The two walked in silence down the alleyway hoping not to attract any Death Eaters to their location, that and the two didn't really have anything to say to each other as they were never that close to each other back at Hogwarts. Neville, who was staring at his shoes for a lack or anything better to say, didn't see Harry stop rigid in front of him and therefore crashed right into him.

"Hey! What was that for Harry! Geez…" Neville muttered, glaring up at the dark haired boy who didn't seem to realize him, only pointing ahead.

Neville followed his gaze to what was ahead… it must have been someone from the DA coming to see where they were… but they didn't seem to see him and Harry yet.

"Hey! We found you! We're over here!"

The figure turned and looked in the direction of Harry and Neville… then started coming their way. Unlike Neville, Harry stood staring ahead at the moving creature before seeing a sudden movement and grabbing a wand.

"Neville, you idiot!" Harry hissed, glaring at the smaller guy. "That's not the DA… its Death Eaters. Draw your stupid wand!" Harry yelled, stepping forward towards the oncoming figure.

Neville just rolled his eyes, scrunching up his face as he did so. Harry thought he could just boss him around because he was 'the boy who lived'. Didn't that ever get old? 'Not in Harry's case, I suppose.' Neville replied to his own question, drawing out his wand as well and following after Harry to the figure that seemed to multiply into three.

"Finally!" Hermione huffed, her hands on her knees.

She had run the couple hundred feet from the arch of the building she had just escaped from and she was a just mere step away from the wrought iron fence surrounding the area. Looking up at the gate, it looked a lot taller up close then it did farther back.

"What now… how will I get over this…" She muttered to herself, staring up at the looming fence. "Maybe it's climbable? Hmmm… no trees around here, they definitely have everything worked out." She sighed; she was back to square one.

Lost in her thoughts, she didn't feel the presence of the two black-cloaked figures that were currently surrounding her, trying to block her off when she did realize what was going on around her. However, Hermione was broken out of her reverie when the sound of a twig snapping caught her attention. She quickly whirled around, her back to the fence searching her surroundings.

"I know you're there… come out!" She yelled, more confident then what she felt.

Seeing nothing around her that moved, Hermione sighed. It must have been just her imagination. 'Yeah, that's it.' She thought, turning around to where the fence still stood. But, she still couldn't shake off the feeling of eyes on her.