A/N: I'm SO SORRY. I have no excuse for this chapter being terribly late. I had writer's block, plain and simple. I knew what was going to happen, but I wasn't sure how it was going to happen. I meant to get all the action done with in this chapter, but it just got so long and messy that it will end up spilling over into the next chapter. Hopefully, I'll finish the next chapter sooner. Thanks for being so patient!
Zarroc- You bet. You won't find out who in this chapter, but you will in the next!
Quidditch7- Corrupt indeed! But who is the corrupt one? I'm let you linger over the insane possibilities. I'm glad the last chapter was your favorite. Sadly, this one isn't up to par. Hopefully, you still enjoy it!
Coolgirlc- Eeeh… I wouldn't say that Lavender is smart, but she has her moments. I think she was average in school, but Hermione tends to play her off as stupid because of situations in the past. Don't worry about Ron. J.K. Rowling has put him through much more than I have!
Ginnyweasleyrules- Thank you! I'm trying to keep the mystery man a secret! There's a BIG hint in this chapter, but it's a bit misleading. I hope that when you find out who this man is, you'll be happy with the outcome!
Cappygal116- Thanks! You gotta love homework, huh? I've had a ton of it myself. If you think it's bad now, wait until college!
ATrueDreamer- You won't find out much here, but now you'll be a step closer to finding out.
The End of a New Life by MyKonstantine.
Chapter 13: Red-handed Trespasses
"How is this possible?" Lavender whined. "The Ministry prides itself on the highest level of security!"
The blackened image Hermione knew to be Ron snorted. "You actually believe what the Ministry says?"
Lavender grumbled out an excuse while Ron snickered.
"It doesn't matter!" Ginny reminded them. "We have to get out there and find the others!"
"We can't leave here looking like this!"
Ron was right. They were sure to be noticed if they walked out of the closet. The Aurors would be out looking for them then. With the description Ron had given the Aurors, Hermione was sure the Aurors would expect them to be the criminals.
Lavender growled out before Hermione could reason out the whole situation. "We can't just sit here until we look normal again!"
"The Aurors will be after us." Hermione mumbled, seeming very detached from her surroundings. She was stuck inside her own mind, trying to make sense of the situation.
"To hell with the Aurors!" Lavender said through gritted teeth. "I want to find my husband and kill whoever took him from me!"
Hermione had never heard such a powerful statement from Lavender before and found herself in a bit of shock. Still, she could understand the protective rage that overtook Lavender.
"Do you know how enormous the Ministry is?" Ron gawked at Lavender. By the dim wand light, Hermione could just barely see the blue in his eyes and the pinks in his lips as his skin began graying. "They could be anywhere."
"Not to mention that the Ministry of Magic has more employees than any other magical corporation in the whole of Britain." Ginny asked in extreme distress. Hermione could tell that she too was anxious to save the others.
"If this person even works in the Ministry, that is."
Lavender banged her head up against the wall behind her and let out a frustrated cry. "We need a plan! Think!"
"Fuck plans!" Ron shouted much too loud for comfort. Hermione's knees buckled. On was acting rash again, so she knew everything could take a turn for the worst. "Here a plan for you: put your hood up, tilt your head down, and put your hands inside your sleeves."
With that said, Ron knelt down and yanked open the door. His hood up and his sleeves tucked in, he swiftly bent and squeezed through the doorway.
Hermione held her breath, waiting to see what would happen. Nobody in the hall seemed to find Ron's behavior unusual. He walked down with his head bowed as if he were in prayer and nobody dared to disturb them.
After peeking through the door and seeing this, Ginny set one foot outside the extremely small door. "Good thing we're all wearing long dress robes, then."
Ron had stopped in the corner of the hallway and waiting as inconspicuously as possible while the others made their way out. They began walking through the corridors in a tight group. Hermione knew it was only a matter of time before someone sounded the alarm. They had to act quickly.
"Where are we going?" Ginny whispered to the others.
She was answered with silence. Hermione racked her brain. Finally, she realized what had been in front of her the entire time. "The closet! Ron, we need to search the closet on the second floor!"
"What closet?" Lavender asked.
"What floor are we on now?" Ron answered Hermione rather than Lavender.
"I don't know!"
In frustration, Ron snatched up a piece of parchment as it flew by his hand then pulled his hand back into his sleeve.
"What floor are we on?" Ron harshly questioned the enchanted parchment.
"Nine!" The parchment squealed out in anguish.
"Ron!" Hermione chided him. "You going to get us caught! You can't just go clobbering memos as they fly by!"
"They're enchanted!" Ron shot back. "It's not like I hurt them!"
Ginny was beginning to shake with anxiety under her robe. "Oh shut up! Just get to the stairs and get down there!"
Hermione headed the group, trying to keep a steady pace on the stairs. If they moved too quickly, it was certain to cause suspicion. Still, Hermione wanted nothing more than to speed down the stairs and find her friends.
After what felt like hours of mindless stepping, they had finally reached the second floor. Now where was the closet?
Hermione mentally raced through the halls, trying to pinpoint the location of the closet. After she had ran to get Ron, had she taken a left turn or a right turn?
Suddenly, it came bursting back into her memory.
"This way!" She whispered excitedly, rushing down one of the halls so quickly that Ginny and Lavender, who had never seen the mysterious storage closet before, could barely keep up with her.
A long corridor and a few sharp turns later, Hermione was jiggling restlessly at the door handle. The door was locked, only heightening her suspicions.
Before Hermione had a chance to pull out her wand, Lavender had already done so.
"Alohamora!" Lavender called out. Hermione turned the door handle once again. Nothing happened. "Alohamora!" Still nothing.
Lavender began rapidly tapped her wand against the door handle. "What the hell kind of lock is this?" She yelled much louder than she should have. "Why isn't the 'Alohamora' spell working?"
Ginny clenched Lavender wrist in an attempt to stop her from making a scene, but it was too late. The crowded hallway was staring at them in confusion.
"Who are they, mummy?" A little boy asked his twig of a mother as the passed by.
The mother cleared her throat nervously. "The maintenance group, I believe." She told him uneasily. "They're hags, I think. Move along now!"
"I'll show you hags!" Lavender mumbled viciously, but resisted the urge to turn around.
Hermione knew they had to get into the closet quickly. Thankfully, she also knew that this was the same locking charm that she had used on that very door weeks ago. The criminal had stolen her charm! How rude! How odd.
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and mumbled the incantation that would unlock the door. When she finally heard a soft click, she knew that it had finally worked. She grabbed a hold on the door handle and wrenched the door open.
"What the hell was that?" Ron asked as he passed through the door.
"Later." Hermione barely managed to get the words out. She was too focused on the room she had just entered.
The room had been torn to shreds again, but it wasn't the same as the last time she had been in it. The shelves and floors were not filled with various papers and trinkets. It was filled with orbs that looked like crystal balls. A few were shattered to pieces on the ground and oozing a fluorescent purple liquid.
"What happened to all the papers that were here before?" Ron asked, squinting his eyes so he could see to the end of the very long room.
"I dunno." Hermione gulped down hard, trying to keep her fear from rising up. "Do you think the papers were really there?"
"We saw them, didn't we?"
Ginny crouched down next to a broken glass ball. "But did you touch the papers?"
Ron let out an awkward growling noise from deep in his throat. "Well, no." He knelt down next to Ginny. "So you're saying it was some type of concealment charm?"
"If somebody knew you were coming, yeah!" Ginny quipped. "It's obvious that this would be suspicious to you. Even you're not that daft!"
Ron gave Ginny a sharp look, but seemed to cool down rather than pick a fight. This surprised Hermione, but she supposed it was because Ron knew there were much more important matters at hand.
"I suppose a room full of crystal balls would be a bit dodgy."
"They're not crystal balls." Lavender injected into conversation. She had been staring hard into one of the orbs for a while, but Hermione really hadn't noticed until Lavender had spoken. "There's no mist inside, just this liquid. My inner eye can't connect with it."
Hermione scoffed off the ridiculous notion of Lavender being able to see into the future. "Lavender, your inner eye-"
"Don't be jealous because I did better than you in Divination, Hermione. It's not your fault you don't have the right aura."
"Oh, piss off!"
"Shut up! Both of you!" Ginny snapped from her place on the cold, stone floor. "Hermione, Lavender spent about four years straight staring into a crystal ball, so she knows that's not a crystal ball. Lavender, Hermione along with the majority of witches and wizards believes Divination to be a bunch of bullocks. Get used to it. Now both of you try to figure out what the hell is happening here!"
Ginny's rant had taken Hermione back a step. While in her heart she felt insulted and her pride felt wounded, she knew Ginny's temper was on a short leash. The slight rivalry that Hermione had formed against Lavender set that temper loose and they were attacked.
Hermione watched in silence as Ron reached his hand down toward the ooze.
"Don't touch it!" Ginny warned Ron in an urgent tone. "It could be poison for all you know!"
"How are we supposed to know what it is?"
"We have to test it." Hermione suggested as she searched around the room. After realizing that shelves cluttered with glass orbs were all she could find, she picked out an isolated, unbroken orb on the floor. Within seconds, she had turned it into a mouse.
"Eeeek!" Lavender squealed, backing up into the corner of the room. "Why a mouse? I hate mice!"
"Oh, keep your panties dry!"
Everyone watched closely as Hermione moved the mouse through the air and gently placed him in a puddle of purple goo. It waded around for a moment, trying to familiarize itself with the strange substance of which it was now stuck inside. It sniffed the glowing liquid before taking a few curious licks.
Hermione waited to see whether or not the mouse would be affected. After a minute, nothing had happened, but then the mouse began to twitch its whiskers furiously. Hermione's stomach jumped and she feared the worst.
The mouse leapt up, sneezed out a purple glittery substance and scurried out of the puddle and under the shelves.
"That's poisonous, all right." Ron jested as he reached for the substance once again. "We may get sick, die… we may even sneeze out purple bogies."
"That's the last time I try to save your life!" Ginny shot back.
Ron inched closer and closer to the ooze until a fingertip on his right hand hit it and the liquid rippled.
Without warning, Ron's fingertip turned a warm peach colour. It ran up his hand, passed his wrist and engulfed his arm. Soon it reached his head. On his right side, his skin turned pale, his hair grew out fiery red and his eye turned blue, leaving Hermione with the horrifying split-second image of Ron's face half normal, half deadly black.
Before Hermione could even try to explain what was happening, Ron's whole body had turned back to the way it was before he had entered the portal. Ron was in awe. He carefully studied the top of his hands, and then flipped them over to study the palms.
"Does this mean that they're not disguised anymore?" Ron asked in a meek voice.
Lavender pushed him away from the purple goo on the floor. "Do you think?" she grumbled back sarcastically, shoving her own hand into the liquid. Still with a bit of reluctance, Hermione and Ginny followed suit.
"Now where the hell did they go?" Lavender questioned when she stood up once again and began searching every visible crevice in the room.
Ginny let out a little cough. "I already looked, Lav. The only door in here is the one we came in through."
"That's impossible!" Lavender threw her hands up in frustration. "Somebody would have seen them! They wouldn't just let this man take them, especially after they knew who he was!"
Hermione tried her best to gulp down her idea on the subject, but it slipped out anyway. "Maybe they went with the captor because of who he was."
The thought was not debated. A painful squeaking interrupted all of their minds. Hermione knew none of her friends were the squeaking type, thus made her way over to the shelf she had seen the mouse run under a few moments ago.
"If that thing is dead, I'm going to kill you." Lavender gritted her teeth at Ron.
"Well, if I was going to die anyway, committing murder wouldn't matter much anyway now would it?" Ron pointed out. He looked under the shelf, popped back up and clutched his hands onto the shelf. "I suggest you lot move back."
With that said, Ron pushed the shelf backwards, letting out a harsh grunt as he did so.
The mouse wasn't there.
"What the-"
Hermione heard the noise again, a much softer squeak of a mouse. She knelt down on all fours and put her ear to the floor. She heard a squeak again.
"It's below the floor." Hermione told the others.
Lavender's face crunched up in confusion. "Wouldn't it just be on the first floor then?"
"I don't know." Hermione admitted. "I can only hear the mouse, nothing else."
Ginny tapped her floor on the stone and a strange echo reverberated up to them. "That's just not right."
"Now we just have to figure out what it is."
Slowly, the whole group pulled out their wands and aimed them at the seemingly normal patch of cold, gray stone.
"Fenticula apparatus!" Silence.
"Accio!" Nothing.
"Evanesco!" Still nothing.
"Alohamora!" Without warning, a large slab of the stone collapsed at Hermione feet, almost taking her down with it.
Ginny's eyes darted from her wand to the hole in the floor. "I really didn't expect Alohamora to work!"
"What is this?" Hermione heard Lavender say as she stared down the hole. "A secret passage?"
"Of course! The Ministry must have hundreds!" Hermione felt her adrenaline begin to pump once again as she felt herself getting closer to solving the mystery. "This must be the way they went!"
"But we don't know what the hell could be down there!" Lavender protested. "We don't even know how deep it is? There's got to be another way."
"Oh, shut up." Ginny grumbled as she sat down and stuck both legs through the narrow opening. "If it didn't kill a baby mouse, it won't kill you."
Ginny's bright red hair flew up in the air as she plummeted down into the passageway. Hermione listened intensely until she heard a thunk.
"It's not that deep at all!" Ginny's voice carried upwards. "Come on, then! Hurry up!"
Without hesitation, Hermione leaped forward and fell freely for a few moments before clumsily hitting the ground and falling onto her side. She got up and called for Lavender to come down.
They were on the final leg of their journey. Hermione could feel it. It was now time to discover if they would be heroes… or if they would be too late.
Ron was the last to clunk down into the corridor with walls of dirt. They began a steady hike through the tunnel with their wands lit and ready to attack. Hermione couldn't tell whether they were moving in any certain directions. Sometimes she felt as if she were climbing upward, sometimes she was stumbling downward.
Hermione began to falter and Lavender vivaciously took the lead. She kept expecting a trap to engulf under and send her to St. Mungo's but nothing came their way. The man who created the tunnel obviously did not expect anyone to find it. Hermione was lucky that confidence was this man's weakness.
"Oomph!"
Lavender had hit the wall. Literally.
"The tunnel just ends?" She gawked. "It can't just end!"
Hermione went over to the wall and examined it with her bright wand light. There was no sign of a door. There were no notches, no strange discolorations.
Ginny let out a strangled cough, pointed her wand at the center of the wall, and cried out "Alohamora!"
Nothing happened.
"Sorry, mates." Ginny shrugged and forced a crooked smile to spread across her lips. "I just I just had beginner's luck last time." Ginny banged her fist against the wall. There was no hollow echo. "If only Bill were here! Cursebreakers can break down anything in two seconds flat."
"We don't need a cursebreaker." Ron replied casually. "Look up!"
Hermione lifted her wand up toward the ceiling, but there was no ceiling there. Instead, there lay a wooden trap door.
"Great." Lavender whined. "We have to climb. How the hell are we supposed to climb up there?"
Hermione stopped. She hadn't thought of that herself. They were far too heavy to levitate themselves. There had to be another way.
"We're supposed to use this, I think." Ginny said. Hermione turned around to see Ginny gripping a filthy brown vine covered in small thorns on the wall to their right. They had been so busy searching the walls in front of them that they had not looked on either side of it.
"How did this person manage to get Parvati, Dean, Seamus and Harry out to climb up this thing?" Ron questioned, gently running his fingers over some of the thorns.
Hermione gulped. "He must have convinced them somehow. He might have forced them."
"Sod it!" Lavender decided. "It doesn't matter how they got up there. All that matters is that they still could be up there!"
Lavender grabbed hold of the rope and attempted to pull herself up with only her arms. After moving only inches with her first few pulls, Lavender squeezed her legs around the thick vine. After attempting one more pull, she fell to the ground, her hands and thighs slowly leaking blood.
"I can't do it." Lavender cried as she writhed on the ground. "It hurts too much."
There was a long pause in the darkness while everyone tried to think of a better solution.
Ron twitched his head to the left and grunted as if he had made a difficult decision. "Just get on my back." He said, motioning for Lavender to come over by him. He then looked to Hermione and Ginny. "Do you think you can handle this?"
Hermione looked up again. Though her hands hurt at the sight of the thorns, the vine was not terribly long. She could heal herself and the others one she reached the top. There were more important matters at hand.
Ron hoisted Lavender onto his back and began pulling them up the vine, letting out rough grunts the whole way. Once he had gained a good distance, Hermione fearfully placed her own hands on the vine. She tried to keep a loose grip as she began climbing, but she could still feel blood oozing from her hands and legs.
A loud banging noise could be heard as Ron pushed open the trap door. The rope shimmied as Ron and Lavender climbed out and Ginny began to climb.
It felt like hours by the time Hermione had reached the top of the rope. She hadn't heard any yelling from either Ron or Lavender, so she took that as a good sign. However, they hadn't told her that everything was safe either.
In a leap of faith, Hermione sprawled her arms across the floor, lifted her legs, and rolled herself into the room.
She had expected everything to be safe and sound. She was wrong.
In the four corners of the room, four unconscious bodies dangled from chains. Lavender was hastily throwing out spells to awaken Seamus, but nothing seemed to be working. Ron broke the chains on Dean and began attempting the same thing.
Hermione decided it would be best if she tried to find a powerful spell that would bring them to their senses. She was about to run to Harry, but Ginny had run over to him in a panic as soon as she managed to clamber up the rope. Thus, Hermione made her way over to Parvati.
Her head pounded as she tried to find a solution to the problem. She reminded herself that she needed to relax over and over again. Logic did not combine well with stress. Still, nothing came to mind.
What other spell besides "Ennervate" could revive the unconscious without sending them into shock?
Out of nowhere, Hermione heard the down behind her open and shut. "What the bloody hell happened in here?"
Hermione whipped around and was about to scream out a stunning spell when she froze in place. Her wand was pointing directly in the face of Neville Longbottom.
"Merlin, Hermione! Put that thing down!"
As Hermione lowered her wand, feeling a bit shameful, Ron stood up. "How did you end up in here? Why aren't you with the Aurors?"
"The Aurors went off to the park and told me to wait." Neville explained. "A little while later, some bloke came up to me and said they'd captured the man. He said that Harry and Ginny where in the Minister's headquarters waiting for me! So I came up here!"
"Some bloke?" Ginny gushed out in anger. "You just took the word of 'some bloke?'"
Neville took a step back. "I thought he was an Auror. So… yeah, I suppose I did."
"Wait!" Hermione interrupted the argument with a much more important piece of information that Neville had mentioned. "Did you just say you went to the Minister's headquarters? We're in the Minister's office?"
Neville did not get a chance to answer.
The door behind him slammed once again, a stream of light shot out of a wand, and Neville fell to the ground.
Oy! What a way to end the chapter! I figured that this is better than writing a massive chapter that explains everything all at once. What do you think?
There are only TWO more chapters left!
Remember, the situation seems really suspicious, but not everything is as it seems! I'll give you a hint: The man is not a main character! In fact, in the worl of the Harry Potter books he is barely even mentioned. Expect the unexpected!
