Kingsley hoped Arthur was fairing better dealing with Ginny. He didn't much like sending Bill into that mess, but what else was there? Muggles might very well be the least of their problems soon.

Watching Severus Snape and his merry legion of ghosts was disturbing. This whole thing seemed to amuse the lot of them. Septima was laughing with Lily Potter. Laughing.

He shook his head and tried to push all of the emotional turmoil down. He needed to keep his head clear. He needed to think. He forced his eyes toward the living.

Severus seemed oddly content, but the man had never been one to display his emotions for all to see. Kingsley dragged a deep breath into his lungs. His need to be calm and centered warred with his desire to start fighting. Throwing spells around wasn't going to help. He was also fairly certain that nothing he said was going to stop this nightmare. Lucius Malfoy had all but unleashed the Dark Court's hunt. Severus Snape might be

"You want me to take you in there?" Severus chuckled. "You wouldn't hold up well, Kings. You aren't made to play in darkness."

"And they are?" Kings gestured to the ghosts arrayed behind them. "Andromeda is?"

"I'm a Black." Andromeda smirked. "Darkness is in my nature. It always has been."

"Whatever is going on in there needs to stop." Kingsley crossed his arms over his chest. "Letting you go in there doesn't offer me any hope that it will."

"We don't need your permission to enter." Severus grinned as his elves arrived with his equipment and supplies. They were wearing some kind of formal armor. "This is where we belong. I'm sorry if this is inconvenient for you."

"No, you're not." Andromeda shook her head. "He's trading on a past with no thought to the future. Why would you be sorry?"

"Honesty in all things? How novel." Severus smirked and tilted his head in recognition of her statement. "I can offer you no promises, Kings. Things beyond your ken are afoot."

"Hermione wouldn't want this." Kingsley gestured toward the darkness. "She never wanted to burn the world to the ground."

"She is a Malfoy and a Black." Andromeda rolled her eyes. "As reasonable as she seems, part of her would expect nothing less of us. Hermione isn't the child warrior you were acquainted with. She didn't work some minor magic and bring Severus back. Those rites are dark magic. They're primal. You've forgotten that dark does not mean evil. Perhaps this will serve as a reminder."

Kingsley watched as Andromeda slipped through the barrier with Severus beside her. He heard laughter and looked up to see Moody grin at him and waggle a ghostly finger.

"Beyond your ken indeed, Boy." The ghost joined the others flowing after Severus and left him standing there with no hope.

Lucius stroked his daughter's cheek. He loved her. It wasn't a lesser love. There was no difference in his feelings for her and his feelings for Draco. She was his family, a part of him, his beloved child. He pressed his lips together as the others went about their business. He was holding on to his sanity, but each moment spent waiting made the task that much harder.

"She will be okay, Father." Draco's hand settled on his shoulder. "Nothing stops her. Nothing keeps her down. She will find her way back to us."

"I didn't protect her well enough." Lucius swallowed and glanced over his shoulder at his son. "She gave me back my life, gave me back my family. She saved Severus. I should have hired guards and food testers. I should have surrounded her with protective wards."

"She would have hexed you silly." Draco's fingers tightened on his shoulder. "Then she would have felt bad about it. You gave her a family, too. You've allowed her creatures to run rampant all over the Manor. The hippogriff sleeps by the fire in the library most days. You've been a wonderful father. She loves you."

"She will come back to us." Narcissa grasped his hand from across the bed. "Our daughter will not be brought low by that muling little boy."

Lucius shuddered as his magic rose up in answer to his wife's words. He felt the rush of Draco's flowing down his arm along with his own and watched as their joined magic spun out from them and wrapped itself around Hermione in silvery strands before sinking into her skin.

Hermione's fingers twitched and a golden glowing ribbon slid slowly out from her fingers and wrapped around them. Narcissa gasped and Draco tilted his head to the side, but Lucius fought off the urge to close his eyes and watched as his daughter's eyes opened.

"Hermione, we will figure out what's wrong." He bent over closer to her. "We won't let you down."

He felt her fingers twitch in his hand. The golden ribbon settled against his skin and he let her love and faith settle into him. Relief flooded him.

"I love you, Hermione." Lucius pressed his lips to her forehead. "We will fix this."

"She knows." Narcissa whispered as their daughter closed her eyes again. "She knows that we love her."

Bill Weasley looked at the black marble walls and shivered. There were things moving in the grey veins of the marble. Things with eyes.

"I've seen a lot of things, but this is beyond my normal amount of terrifying." Bill looked back at his sister and father. He'd taken ten steps, but they were already hard to distinguish. Their voices didn't pass through the barrier. "We can't be that far from them."

"Nothing is stable here." Harry shrugged. "Time and space seem to do their own thing. I'm sure Hermione could explain it."

Bill forced himself forward, keeping close to Harry. "The elves seem to like it here. Don't linger back too far. The Black blood in your veins won't keep you safe without an escort."

"Keep me safe?" Bill took a deep breath. "What is happening here?"

"Your brother poisoned Hermione with some potion. Lucius lost it. The elves are vicious. I wouldn't piss off any of the women. The glowing butterflies are pretty, but don't stare at them too long. They are mesmerizing." Harry sighed. "You might get caught. Things move differently here. We are really down the rabbit hole."

"There are rabbits here?" Bill looked down around his feet.

"If Hermione dreams about them, maybe?" Harry shrugged. "The shadow dogs must hunt something."

"Shadow dogs?" Bill hated the fear that was crawling through him. "I thought I could handle anything. I've walked into cursed tombs without blinking an eye, but this place is something beyond."

"Muggles say humans only use ten percent of their brains at any time. It isn't true, but it's a way of looking at things that applies here." Harry waved his hand out and sent trails of light out in tiny bubbles. "We only access a small amount of the magic available at any given moment. I'm pretty sure Lucius Malfoy wasn't thinking about the limits of his power when he came here to see his daughter. He really does love her as his child. I didn't really believe that until today."

Bill nodded. Something growled down a corridor to his left. Heart pounding, he moved closer to Harry.

"We're almost there." Harry pointed to a pair of intricately carved ebony doors just ahead of them. "Doesn't look much like Mungo's anymore, does it?"

"It doesn't look like Britain anymore, Harry." Bill looked around them and saw runes moving along the walls like living things. "Ron has really stepped in it this time."

Ron watched as the doors opened and Harry led Bill into the chaos. There was no comfort in the familiar face though. A sour taste filled his mouth as he watched his brother moving so carefully. Bill's usual brash confidence was nowhere to be found.

Bill was in over his head. His body language screamed it. Ron locked eyes with him for a moment, but there was no comfort there.

"Is she paralyzed or in a coma?" Bill glanced at the healer pinned to the wall. He didn't want to even contemplate what the tiny elf was carving into the man. He dragged his gaze down to the black marble floor before settling his gaze on the room's other occupants. "What can you tell me about her condition?"

"Your brother poisoned her." Draco glared at Ron. "It was deliberate. Whatever he put in her drink, dropped her fast."

"Goddess Above." Bill turned to face Ron. "What did you give her? Tell me it wasn't Mum's love philter?"

"It wasn't." Ron looked down at his hands. "I found something similar. It only needed one dose. It was harder to brew. I had to really work at it."

"Did you use lotus in it?" Bill snarled and moved closer to his brother. "Any kind of lotus?"

"It needed distilled essence of lotus." Ron looked away from his brother. "It took some time to get it. I had to order it and have it shipped in from Greece."

Bill turned back to Hermione and frowned. Her hair hadn't lost its color. The effects just weren't there.

"I think it's lotus poisoning." Bill licked his lips and looked directly at Lucius Malfoy. "I have no idea why she's doing this well. With the Magics she's worked, lotus exposure could kill her."