Luna could not believe what she was seeing. She had difficulty believing she was still alive this long after meeting the Lord Voldemort, but out of all the things that had ever had difficulty believing, from what was in the newspaper, to what people said about her, was what she was seeing, which was strange; ordinarily what she had seen was her basis for believing or not believing other things. Invading the enemy's mind had turned out to not be a prospect of solving difficult mental puzzles, but instead she found herself on the grounds in front of Hogwarts. A black cloud came over.

"Where are we?" she asked, trying to keep the confusion out of her voice.

"We're exactly where we think we are," Hermione said. "We're in the mind of the greatest Legilimens to ever live."

"I fail to understand. How is it that we can see each other? How is it that we're in..."

"It is a rare thing that anyone has ever used the mind arts to interact with the Dark Lord, even with his permission," Malfoy said. "My father was among the best. In his words, our master fortified his mind with False Memory Charms that he can control from within."

"That's..."

"What?" he asked. "You should be aware that this is a perfectly futile task. The most any of us can hope to accomplish is distracting him, but if his defenses can overwhelm us without his direct intervention, we cannot succeed at even that."

"What was the dark cloud?" Luna asked, hoping it was not irrelevant.

"That was your friend using the Imperius Curse."

"What?" she asked, turning to Malfoy. He was quite the font of information at the moment. Perhaps he had heard something. "That takes form in here?"

"It's probably not intentional," Hermione speculated. "That means Voldemort isn't in complete control of the situation. Ron might be keeping him from attacking our bodies."

It was a wise move, certainly, and she could see her friend taking that exact step, but was the mind and memory normally related to willpower? She could only think that perhaps it was Voldemort who interrelated them through the creation of this space.

"Has this ever happened before?" she asked as they walked forward to the castle. "How do we know what to do in this situation?"

"Hannah told me that one time, the interrogators at the Ministry tried an unusual tactic for getting information out of her. Oddly enough, it was the same setting." She sighed. "Apart from that, I don't know of anyone ever constructing this kind of mental prison, either in his own mind or someone else's."

"What did she do to get out?"

"Well, the man was looking to cut her a deal, so when he saw that tactic wasn't working, he switched to talking to her directly. Basically, the reason he failed was because she kept her guard up the whole time. He thought she was in her head, but he never realized she had every intention of ratting him out at the first opportunity."

"So, inside of her own mind, her mental defenses still worked?" Hermione blinked.

"Actually, I'm not sure. That would not be theoretically possible." They passed through the doors into the Entrance Hall. It was not exactly as any of them remembered it, but certain differences could be expected with a gap of roughly fifty years. "If she was in her own mind, she must have been down to whatever tricks people normally use to keep others out of their heads, but if she was in the wizard's mind, then it would make perfect sense that she could still use the mind arts. She wasn't exactly a master, even if she was a hard worker."

"The witch was an open book," Draco said. "Every time I saw her, what she felt was clearly written on her face. I cared nothing for what she was thinking, but I could have checked if I felt so inclined."

"You're right," Hermione said, looking down at the large tiles of the floor, passing into the Great Hall. "She was straightforward and honest, and that's probably what made Ron..." She sighed, having revealed something Luna had never realized. "That makes it more likely that she was in the other person's mind. I can't see her doing anything but block right after learning Occlumency, especially not given who she was. She would have said she was too scatterbrained for this sort of thing to work."

The Great Hall was empty except for them, though that was expected. Luna attempted to use the mind arts to reach the witch next to her, but apparently she was already using them. From the headache that was forming, it was everything she could do to avoid getting kicked out by the dark wizard. Dementors passed into the hall from the grand entrance behind them.

"I think we should assume they are not here to help us."

"That's wise," her friend said, raising her wand. "Expecto Patronum!" Nothing happened. "What?"

"Do you know the Patronus Charm?"

"Of course," Hermione said, backing away with the others. "There's no reason it should fail."

"The Dark Lord must have decided to use other agents to protect his mind in order to keep from dividing his focus."

"Are our souls in here?" Luna asked. "What attracts them to us?"

"Our souls are always with us." The other Ravenclaw sighed deeply as they got out to the central staircase. "This is reminding me of the time we lost the castle, and it's painful."

"Ignore your mental weaknesses," Malfoy suggested. It seemed like he was thinking about something.

"That's most of what I am right now," Hermione said. "We might as well get up the stairs. I don't like this idea, but it's... all I have."

"What?"

"Hannah said she couldn't find a place to hide in the replica of Hogwarts that her interrogator constructed; she ended up in the Trophy Room. I have an idea. If anyone has an idea as to how to get rid of the wraiths-"

"No, not really," Luna said. It was strange how calm she was, though the others probably thought that all the time. "We should just move."

They ran up the stairs without needing any more explanation. Voldemort's mind was as dangerous as they could have predicted, and if they were not managing to distract him enough thanks to his autonomous defenses, then Ron and Neville were not going to have any better luck on the outside. Technically, she was not sure how much time was passing, but some amount of time had to be passing, and that meant she had to act as quickly as possible.

The trouble was, there were dementors above them.

"Consider this," Malfoy said, not looking at her. "Where would the Dark Lord keep his own memories?"

"The library?" Hermione asked.

"That's where you would keep your memories. The Lord Voldemort would keep them in the Chamber." It was a wonder why he was bringing that up. "Fortunately, however, there are some inside my own mind." He placed a hand on Hermione's shoulder and then disappeared.

"Expecto Patronum!" The familiar silver otter burst forth and floated along ahead of them, driving the wraiths out of the way. "That was rather sick. It looks like his happiest memories of Draco involved torturing him in some way."

Luna did not know if their odds had improved or worsened with the Slytherin on the outside, but with their enemy's memories, at the very least they could navigate the place more effectively. She had her own wand out, though she still had no idea where they were going. Her friend went ahead and apologized for never having mentioned the place whilst they were at school together.

"The Room of Requirement," she said, having heard of it from Lady Ravenclaw's writings. There was something in there about the diadem, but annotations said that it was a loose end; if it ever existed it had been moved ages ago. "Do you really get in there by simply thinking?"

"Yes, and now I have some idea of what Voldemort must have wanted out of the place. He was trying to get rid of evidence at the time; it was a spare wand that he used to kill someone." She looked back as she continued running up the stair, having to stop as it moved to connect again. "That should be enough. I doubt that Ron and I were ever thinking the exact same string of words when we went into the meeting room."

"Are there, then, a limited amount of rooms?"

Anyone who knew her could tell there was nothing that Hermione wanted more than to explore that very question, but it had nothing to do with what they wanted. They were looking for a weakness, something that would allow them to hit the enemy where it hurt. It seemed unlikely that the original plan of distracting him enough for the boys to prevail from the outside would work, as far as they had come already. Out of breath, probably from not having run up the stairs day in and day out for the past few years, they reached the mysterious room, as always had it been called.

A door appeared on the wall and opened for them, right as the Patronus moved a floating wraith out of the way. The others were watching them carefully, but unable to intervene. The door closed behind them on a room much larger than was possible, and from floor to ceiling it was stuffed with the most random clutter that she had ever seen. Nearly tripping over a long-lost book, she picked it up to see a stretch of years on the cover.

"Who would write a book about this?"

"Everything in here is a product of Voldemort's imagination," Hermione said after a moment. "I think Draco might have been onto something when he suggested that the good stuff would be in the Chamber, but I don't think that he would have put anything that could be used against him behind something that can be opened by Parseltongue, not when he knows Evan is trying to kill him." She sighed. "Even if there are secrets in there, we couldn't get in, not without help."

"Right," Luna said. "Accio secrets!" A rather large amounts of odds and ends went flying at her before she put up a shield charm. "Unfortunate."

"This room contains more than just his secrets," her friend said. "I would assume that he doesn't know what everything in here is and assumed it was all secrets. Simultaneously, it seems he subconsciously filled in some of the details with his own memories." She held up another book with a title that indicated it covered the Gaunt family tree back to Lord Slytherin.

"What's that over there?" she asked, pointing with her wand at a cabinet. It seemed odd that someone would want to hide a piece of furniture.

"That's the broken Vanishing Cabinet," Hermione said. "I've been in this room before and I remember seeing a potions book dating back to the thirties, but I had no idea that this old thing had been in here ever since Tom Riddle was at school."

"Wherever might it lead?" Luna asked.

"Nowhere, considering it's broken." She cast a few diagnostic spells. "I don't know whether I imagined that his mind would fix it or if it might work just because he never realized it was broken, but it was a thin thread in the first place. It could have taken us off the rails, as it were, into an unguarded part of Voldemort's mind."

"I have another idea," she said after a moment, steeling herself. She had a thought to hide what she was planning behind a dreamy mask, but her own expression would serve well enough for that purpose. "If we need to kill him, then we need to go in another room. We may need another way out, though."

"I can create a portkey," Hermione said, trying to see where she was going with it. "He would most likely believe a portkey would work inside his own version of Hogwarts."

"Keep it on you and be ready to activate it at any time."

The pair of them went out of the room before Luna cleared her mind and opened it again, unperturbed by dementors. Whether their host was aware of them or not she no longer knew, and no longer cared; she doubted that even from within, she could distract him enough; she and her friend had already attempted a mental invasion at the same instant that Ron attempted an Imperius curse, and for whatever reason he had gotten rather good at those. What occurred to her now was most likely the only way to gain an advantage. She cleared her mind while her friend was busy making a portkey out of a book she had grabbed.

What can I gain from sacrificing myself?

It was a question that must have been pondered before, but not by the master of the replica of the school in which she found herself, not consciously, anyway. It was not with greater hesitation that the door opened for her again, but she could have sworn something was different. She was failing to place what seemed so strange as the door appeared and opened once more, but she closed it behind herself.

Luna could hear the other witch making noise from the other side, which prompted interesting magical questions about the nature of the room, but there was no time to ponder them. Tears formed in her eyes, but she wiped them away quickly. Her trick was predicated on the fact that her friend rarely looked into her mind, but she could not be fooled for long. Even with no clue as to how to start, Hermione Granger would be able to reason out the exact combination of words that she had used to get into the room.

All around her there was nothing. There was no light, no darkness; she could not be sure how she was perceiving anything. Had she simply wandered out of Voldemort's mind by wandering into something that he never would have consciously considered? If he knew all the secrets of magic, though, it stood to reason he would know what she was seeking, even if he never thought about it.

It felt like swimming in a great sea, like she was nothing and all that was around her was no different. Whether there was a surface to the waters she could not say, but she suffered from no lack of air. As she felt a vague sense of warmth, she swam towards it, feeling the sea around her give way to fire. The source of the fire, she knew, was the Phoenix, the great power that knew all good and all evil.

Not for one moment had she thought that the room was broken, or that it had not answered her request. She had wanted a room that would answer her question, or one where she could find it herself, and there she was. Theoretically, Hermione would have some difficulty in reaching her mind from the outside, because while all the doors of all the rooms were connected to the outside, she could not hear what was going on in any particular room at any given moment. The last thing she wanted was to match minds with her friend at a pivotal moment, but it looked as though she would not have to.

The Phoenix was directly before her.

Luna had never been in the Headmaster's office, she had never exchanged more than a few words with the old warlock himself. Her interactions with the bird that she knew to be perched in there had been even more limited. In recent years it felt like there was this strange gap between her and her friends, where all of them had been closer, somehow, and she was out in the cold, so to speak. She had tried her hardest to close the gap, working with her father to produce more copies of the text, and only once she had worked as hard as she had did she realize that there was nothing she could do. Only once she tried her absolute hardest to close the gap on her own, did she realize that the Phoenix would have to come down to her.

Come down it did.

"Hello," she said, greeting the force that surpassed her understanding. She thought for a moment that it was about to bear her up on its talons, but it seemed content to rest next to her. "I... I did not exactly expect you to be here, but... I need a way to destroy Voldemort." She reached up at the fiery feathers, not the least bit afraid of being burned. "I... am prepared to give my whole life."

Luna did not know what she was worth, nor did she know what the Phoenix wanted, nor did she know how much of what she was seeing was real. She knew, though, ever since opening the door and closing it quickly behind her, that her offer would be accepted. As the words that were being whispered to her entered her mind, she did the unthinkable and reached beyond the door, connecting with Hermione.

Have you gone mad?

I need you to listen to the Phoenix. I know you can hear this. I know what you can do with the information.

Why can't he fly us all out of here? Why can't he just burn Voldemort from the inside?

Even as her friend was demanding answers to the questions, it was manifest that she asked them only because she knew there was someone qualified to answer. The Phoenix, however, continued with its merciless explanation and she descended into shameless begging as she listened.

Please, take me instead. I can't lose another friend like this. Neville and Ron can't lose another friend like this-

The pleading was futile. As arguably good as the Phoenix was, it seemed to have no sympathy for emotional appeals, at least not in contexts like the one that surrounded her. Luna had the strangest sensation of being dissolved. It was impossible to describe, except that she was literally losing herself. The voice of the great power took the place of her own.

Hermione Granger. How is it that a witch or wizard casts a spell?

I don't know! I've been trying to find out the whole time! It's terrible that I have to resort to something like this, but I was so stupid before, thinking we could get past him with something esoteric- it's the only thing it seems like he doesn't know.

As distressed as she was, it seemed like he was giving her a conundrum to unravel rather than a straight answer. Was that what she needed? Was it what she wanted? Was she not, basically, someone who tried to approach things logically and figure things out.

You know the answer. You only need to ask yourself this. How were you instructed to cast a spell? When did you succeed?

Luna could hear crying. She could hear her friend fall to her knees. Could she hear a heart breaking?

"You don't get to just leave by yourself!" she shrieked. How was it audible from the door? Where was she, exactly? Had the transformation of the space within the room moved her? "Whatever you find out, you have to tell me somehow! I'm not just going to give up on this mental link!"

You have to go.

She could not tell who was saying it. She could not tell who she was.

"You'll be braindead if you stay here, Luna!" Her voice was shaking. "Ask the Phoenix if you can be released before we kill Voldemort..."

You seem confident.

"That's the key, though, isn't it?" she asked, her voice almost spiteful. "I figured it out. I can't believe I didn't see it before..."

Then, you should pay close attention going forward.

What was left of Luna was almost entirely sure that thought had not come from her own head, but some of those terms changed in meaning even as she thought of them. It felt treacherous, to feel so fascinated, and so excited while her friend was suffering, but this was the only thing she could have thought to do. Some strange awareness that she realized she had always known, in one sense or another, informed her that there really had been no other way. There was now nothing to be done to help Hermione Granger. It could only be hoped that for her sacrifice, Luna Lovegood would be forgiven.