Hermione's next act was to dive over a table for her life. Because the dummy; or as she'd also heard it called, an Auton; had a barrel sticking out of it's hand. And it was not just for decoration.

She hit the floor on the other side of the table hard, and had barely had a chance to catch her breath when the the table was rocked by a blast from the dummy's gun. Splinters of the desk were raining down upon her, so she scrambled to take cover behind the adjacent table.

"Hear the bangs," she was muttering to herself. "Hear the bangs, hear the bangs, hear the bangs."

Not waiting for anyone to come help, however, she shot to her feet and flung her wand outwards. The Dummy was kicking through the wreckage of the desk, looking for a corpse, and so Hermione sent stunning spell right at the back of the thing's neck. The Auton stumbled forward, smoke coming from the place where the spell had hit and created a ring of seared plastic. But then it was turning around, on unsteady legs perhaps, but still holding out the half hand/half gun with ill intent.

Hermione managed to send a hex flying at the Auton just as a burst of fire flew out at her. She jumped for cover again, and started crawling across the floor, firing every offensive spell she could think of through the leg spaces of the tables.

"Come on!" she shouted aloud. "What use is a building full of Aurors if they can't hear a fight going on the next floor above them!"

The Auton, meanwhile, began to give up on firing randomly and hoping to hit Hermione, and instead to chose to start trampling every desk in sight in the hope she might be under it.

"Damn," Hermione cursed, hearing her only defences being crushed one by one.

She jumped up again, hoping to distract the dummy from this plot, but found herself freezing the second she laid eyes on it. The Auton was waiting for her, holding an office chair aloft. And as soon as Hermione showed herself, it launched the chair at her. Hermione ducked as fast as she could, but the edge of the chair legs clipped the back of the head hard.

Her vision cut out for a second, and then came painfully rushing back. She was on her back, looking up at the drab, pale ceiling tiles of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical creatures. There were footsteps, and then the Auton was in front of her.

That horribly vacant face, with the plastic torn in places, peered down at her. The arm extended out so the gun hand was aimed right at her face. This is where it intended to kill her. Blow Hermione Granger into the next life if there was one to go to.

But Hermione Granger, as many had pointed out on numerous occasions, was the brightest witch of her age, and had seconds earlier spotted something through the gaping hole burned through the Auton's midsection.

And so, before the dummy could execute her, Hermione sat up straight and shoved her hand right through the Auton's stomach hole.

"Accio filing cabinet!" she screamed.

The huge, steel filing cabinet on the other side of the office raised off the floor and came roaring towards them. Hermione threw herself flat against the carpet, and the Auton turned just in time to have every report Hermione had ever filed on house elf dietary requirements smash into it.

For a tiny moment, the office was silent and still. Then the elevator arrived.

The doors drew open and as many Aurors as had been able to fit inside now carefully crept out, wands at the ready. Harry Potter was among them. He let his eyes fall across the room. Destroyed desks and holes in the walls and no sign of Hermione. He looked to other dozen or so Aurors, and they looked back with equally confused expressions. They had heard a tumultuous commotion coming from this floor; so where was the fight?

A fumbling sound from the far corner drew their attention, and across the office floor they saw a heavy filing cabinet being tossed aside, and a plastic dummy crawling out from under it. The dummy, to the amazement of the Aurors, was climbing sluggishly to it's feet. They gazed at it's battered and burnt plastic covering, and at the hole that had been carved out of it's midsection.

"Excuse me?" Harry called to it, unsure of what else to do.

The dummy looked up at them with no face. It paused for a second. Then it raised it's gun hand, and unleashed a torrent of fire upon them.

"Down!" Harry roared, and he and the other Aurors ducked for cover, while the Auton fired blast after blast at them.

Suddenly it was an all out battle. The Aurors were sending curses and hexes from all over the office. The dummy picked up a heavy table and began using it as a shield, letting it take the brunt of their spells so it could use the other arm to return in kind.

"Get closer," Harry heard someone calling. "Get around him, flank the damned thing!"

So they did. But the dummy didn't like that. It picked up office chairs again and flung them at anything that moved. Two men were taken out right away. A group of three Aurors tried standing together, concentrating their fire and sending a barrage of spells, but the dummy shot the ceiling out above them and they were crushed by the falling debris.

Harry searched his mind for a new kind of attack. There were a large group of highly trained officials fighting with one shop window dummy, and the officials were dropping fast. He saw his colleague Davvart fire spell after spell, but the dummy evaded all of them, then heaved the desk above it's head and prepared to throw it.

"Stop!" Harry shouted, jumping out from behind his cover "I'll give you what you came for!"

Everything stopped. The few wizards that were left looked at Harry in confusion, but he was willing to bet the Auton knew exactly what he was talking about, and that was why it too had paused.

"You came here for a reason, right?" said Harry. He held his hands up in surrender and started taking small steps towards the centre of the office, where the dummy was stood. "Everything that's happened these past few days... it's all been for something, hasn't it? Well if you let everyone leave here in one piece, then maybe me and you and talk about just what exactly that something is."

The Auton stood perfectly still. It's chest did not rise and fall, it's limbs did not quiver. But that blank face held Harry's gaze, and somehow he knew it was thinking. And it must have reached a decision, because the table was harmlessly dropped to the ground to break apart, and the smoking barrel receded back into the plastic palm so the hand could become whole again.

"Okay," said Harry, breathlessly. "So... we have a deal?"

Even if the dummy had been able to reply, it would not have gotten the chance to. Quite out of nowhere, a battered and furious Hermione appeared from the rumble and was standing directly behind the dummy. She pressed her wand right into the tip of the Auton's neck and through gritted teeth said, "Bombarda."

The dummy's head exploded in a ball of flames. The plastic erupted into bits and flew into the air. The rest of the body went limp, and keeled over.

When the smoke cleared, Hermione was looking at Harry. There were cuts and scrapes all over her face, her clothes covered in ash and wreckage. She sighed deeply.

"On second thought, Harry, maybe you're right and there is something strange going on."