Task two: The dancing forest war

Day one: Say when

A/N: Ta-dah! Here you go, the first day of the second task! Bit of a slow start, but things will pick up as the story progresses. And yes, Hermione is a bit more of a badass than in canon now that she's been directly threatened. No, Rose and Hermione are not really hooking up per se in this fic... as far as I know. Yet. Warning for gratuitous use of French and funkyness. If you've read this far, you've probably tuned in for the violence, so enjoy it.

By the way, I own none of this. Seriously. I just like playing in the sandbox is all.

There's only one thing that hasn't killed anyone in the field yet-the boots they wear. So check your boots. It'd suck to be the first to find out how your footwear can kill you. -Anonymous

"Professor, where's Hermione?" Body stocking.

"What?" Sprout asked. "Oh, her." Thin jumpsuit.

"Do you remember what the egg said?" The herbology professor asked. Camouflage pants.

"... She's the one, isn't she? The one I'll sorely miss." Heavy boots.

"Indeed. Impressive deduction skills, Miss Snow." Black top.

"Who, professor? Who did this?" Flak jacket.

"The Committee. You are not the worst affected either." Helmet.

"Who else?" Spelled eyeglasses.

"Cho Chang for Cedric. Hannah Abbot for Krum. Gabrielle Delacour for Fleur." Enchanted chamaeleon backpack.

"Do me a favour, Rose." Sprout asked her. "Bring them back alive for me." Battle Rifle.

"You'll owe me." "I know." Pistol.

Rose stared at her reflection as she put on her gloves. The rain jacket came next. Finally, the camouflage paint Hermione had bought her as a kind of joke a few weeks earlier came on, leaving her face covered in a patina of blacks, greens and browns. Rose the fun-loving sadist went to sleep. Out came the soldier, the tribute, the monster. She looked at herself in the mirror, sweeping any emotion away from her face. They would all burn, as they always did. She put her gloved hand through the glass and stared at the broken frame before storming off. Time to do battle once more.

"Contestants!" A loud voice boomed out, the echoes reverberating over the crowd gathered to gawk at the spectacle. "Welcome to the second task of the Triwizard tournament! Instead of taking place in the lake as originally planned, this task will be held in the Forbidden Forest. It was once known as the dancing forest, a communal melting pot where members of all sapient magical races lived together in peace, protected by the Forest and its wilder inhabitants. But... Something happened there, the few survivors that came to the castle never said what it was, but I am sure you'll find out what happened there sooner or later, so no worries about that."

"Now, it's a designated sacrifice zone, an area no wizard or witch can enter and expect to come out the other side. This is the forest you are to traverse today. Your task is to retrieve your hostage, located at the other end of the forest, in the space of seven days. You are to present yourselves back here on noon in seven days' time with your hostage alive and in one piece if you are to successfully complete this task."

The crowd cheered as the four contestants entered the clearing. Rose switched the safety on her rifle off, conspicuously ignoring the three others' preparations as she stared at the trees stretching out as far as the eye could see.

"Now." The announcer cut over the shouts of the crowd. "Let it never be said that we, the organisers, are not generous in our help & assistance. Each of the contestants gets a bag full of food and a magical map outlining the path they should take to reach their hostages." A piece of yellowing parchment appeared in Rose's hands along with something that reminded her of a coin purse with a stretching opening. She guessed that it was the goodie bag the guy was talking about. She stuffed it into her pant's back pocket and resumed her staring match with the forest.

"Contestants..." The announcer shouted as Bagman lifted a hand in the air. Rose tightened her hold on the rifle until she felt her knuckles hand came down. "Begin!"

The four contestants sprinted into the forest.

Renervation nausea was one of the nastiest ways to wake up with all your limbs still attached. Not only did it give you a splitting headache, one of the lesser known side-effects of renervation was that it temporarily boosted your senses and metabolism into overdrive. Think having a hangover and chugging a litre of coffee in under a minute while you're on the deck of a boat in the middle of a typhoon. Not fun. The vomiting doesn't help either.

Hermione came to feeling all of these things and seeing her trenchcoat absorb the vomit she'd just sprayed all over it. She cringed in disgust. She was pretty sure that she hadn't enchanted her coat to do that. Then again, maybe one of the blood absorption charms used in rune drawings was malfunctioning again. The possibility that she'd been vomiting enough blood to activate the enchantment did not bear thinking about, so she avoided it.

The last thing she remembered was... was... volunteering? To be a hostage? Why had she gone and done that again? Oh yes, duty, pride at being chosen for the honor, the glory... Fuck. Someone had messed with her mind. Again. Was it Snape again? No, he hadn't even been in the same room then. Much vaunted though the Professor's skill at mind magics was, she doubted that even he could modify your memories whilst asleep on the other side of the castle. Not to mention that he'd have known better than to try and appeal to her more sentimental side. She'd have to investigate that later.

So she was an 'artificially willing' hostage. She had no idea where she was or how long she'd been out for. She checked her watch. The indicators glowed blue. Her wards were at half their charge. It took between one and two days for the coat to fully recharge, which meant that she'd been out for around twelve hours. Maybe a little more if you considered that the automatic renervation charm that had woken her up took a small percentage of the warding magic to work.

She checked her limbs. Still attached, good. Left leg chained to the wall, not good. Her spare wand was securely stashed in its panty holster, but she didn't want to take it out until she'd searched around a bit more. She sighed and reached into her coat's inner pocket for the backup specs. There was no way she was just running around with one of anything. Normal stuff went wrong sometimes, but with magic defects and errors were par for the course. Enchanted quills spontaneously combusting, magical candies that literally tasted like shit and chess sets that attacked their owners were just some of the mundane dangers students had to deal with and these dangers got more and more acute the more complicated the device they were using was. Thankfully, a pair of glasses wasn't that complex, but redundancy was a habit rather than an annoyance, so two pairs was the idea.

She checked the chain with her glasses on. A light blue aura with runes running through it glowed in the dark, almost blinding her without illuminating anything around her. Magic just wasn't fair. She studied the runes as they orbited around the chain, mentally categorising what they were and what they did when used in conjunction with the others. Hermione cursed. They were inhibitor runes, restricting her ability to mentally command magic to a stupid degree. This would not do.

The room itself was pretty drab, brown stains on sandstone, grey flagstones on the floor, dark ceiling illuminated by some weird, acid-green moss. Her glasses told her nothing about what enchantments were active in there. The whole room was flooded with red, white, blue and yellow filaments that weren't really doing anything except hang there. So no charms or active wards anywhere but on the chain-according to the glasses.

She stuffed her hand into the front pocket of her trousers and thought about a notebook and piece of paper. She grabbed a hold of them as the blue aura grew brighter. Her world swam in front of her eyes and caused her to stumble and fall on her ass. Great, it reacted to both her coat's enchantments and her own magic. If she was going to beat this thing, she'd have to do it using as little magic as possible. Shaking off the dizziness, she set to work copying the rune chain and figuring out how to beat it.

Hey, it wasn't like she had anything else to do, right?

The forest was dark and gloomy-looking on the giant screen. Albus studied it with the other judges, trying to divine just where the champions were going to go. Crouch just groused at the cost of the endeavour. It wasn't the giant screen in itself, but the installation of similar mirror-vision sets for the express purpose of allowing the Wizarding World to watch the proceedings that set his teeth on edge. That had not been anticipated in the budget, but Albus had insisted.

Albus smiled at the idea of the entire wizarding world finally getting to see their saviour perform heroic deeds rather than those fictional tales of dragons & imps that Lockhart had cooked up between 'adventure' books. It had been a struggle to get approval in time, but now it was all set up for Rose to showcase her greatness. Good or bad didn't really matter to Dumbledore. What mattered was Rose's actions and, for good or ill, her performance will dazzle and finally silence his detractors.

Hell, if she acted in the way Albus knew she would, they'd finally get around to firing him from his position of chief Mugwump once and for all and send him out to fight Voldemort with full immunity. Fifty years of political squabbling & infighting was not what he'd signed up for. He was a born hero and mentor to many other heroes. And, in his honest opinion, he was a better hero than he ever was a politician. And, good or bad, Rose was a heroine who'd need support and guidance. At least, that was his assessment of her. Time would tell, but even if she was another Dark Lady, she only really had one prophecy to fulfill before someone came along and shoved a kedavra up her ass, so it wasn't really relevant. It all hinged on her performance out there. And how much of the forest was left standing afterwards, of course.

Percy just stared at the other judges, paying no attention to the screen in front of him. They'd 'volunteered' Hannah. His on-again, off-again best friend with boobies-benefits ever since Penny Clearwater had gone and joined the American Legion. Quietly sitting behind Crouch, Percy Weasley plotted murder with the subtlety of a politician and the boundless reserves of righteous fury only a Weasley could muster for any length of time. He wasn't the only one.

Karkaroff just looked bored. He'd been on a number of missions in his days as a, well, better not think of that. Mind readers were around. But anyway, he knew that it would be a while before they crossed paths with anything interesting, so he settled down and went to sleep.

Bagman was already asleep, no doubt snoring off that flask of firewhiskey he'd been chugging ever since yesterday's planning sessions.

Madame Maxime wondered about how well Fleur would do out there. She was a delicate thing, and the forbidden forest tended to equate 'delicate' with 'tasty'. She also wondered just how long it'd be before Antoine Delacour decided to send his assassins after her. She was worried. Those people were good at what they did.

Lost in their little worlds, none of them bothered to think about what would happen when something exciting did happen. This was, after all, being broadcast live across Magical Britain, 24/7, with no interruptions or cutoffs. They'd come to regret that decision.

The forest floor was dark and gloomy, which raised a number of problems for the contestants. For Fleur, Viktor and Cedric, it meant a cautions Lumos had to be used when they wanted to make sure that a shadow was just that, a shadow. For Rose, it meant that her world was greener than green. Night vision was not the best of ideas in the daytime, but she had no real choice. It was either that or breaking out the flashlight & start shooting at shadows and, despite the truly impressive amount of stuff she'd stashed in her backpack, the need for conserving power, ammunition and supplies had been drummed into her during her ATP days, so night vision it was.

She took care to hide in the shadow of the giant trees as she assessed her environment. There was minor movement here and there, mostly small, presumably cute & furry, animals scampering away from the strange human girl that smelled like ash and gun oil. The tree tops had to be examined without her nightvision switched on, so she only did it sporadically, but she didn't see anything other than leaves and strange scaly lizard-monkeys with massive teeth scampering around up there. The scaly monkey things ignored her, so she was happy to ignore them in turn.

One good thing about the forest was that the ground was still relatively clear, with only small patches of grass and a carpet of leaves to be wary of. Since, by all accounts, wizarding warfare tended to be confrontational rather than relying on range & surprise, not to mention almost exclusively wand-based, the sparse ground cover meant that mines weren't likely to blow up in her face. She still side-stepped any strange outline her glasses showed her.

Hermione had tried to train her into how to recognise the intent of spells based on colour and light intensity, but hadn't been able to really spend the time to explain it well. Which meant side-stepping anything that glowed if she saw it. Hey, her glasses being spelled for seeing things at night was great, but trying to determine if what you were about to step on was a cheering charm or a death curse was kinda hard when there wasn't much of a difference in hues either way.

She came to the edge of what her map told her was a small clearing and shut off the nightvision with a thought. Some good work had gone into those glasses, she could tell. She squatted down and pulled a meal bar out of her jacket and started munching away, keeping an eye out for more movement. The clouds opened up, dumping a small shower on the forest as she chewed away. For a moment, she was back in Panem scouting for bandits. She savoured that moment, wondering how her colleagues and family were doing.

She listened carefully before hearing the crunch of boots on autumn leaves. She grinned. Some entertainment, exactly what she'd been looking for.

"Right then!" Cedric said, cheerfully roasting a large rat over an open fire. "Who wants lunch?"

Fleur gagged on her own bile, eyeing the skinned rodent with revulsion and a degree of hunger. "Zat ees... Deesgusting."

Victor just eyed the thing. "Dibs on the breast."

Cedric just smiled at his two companions. "Alright. Now then... ideas?"

"About what?" Krum asked. "We just follow the map."

"If zees ees about food, I propose zat two of us 'unt while ze ozzer scouts a'ead."

"Huh?" Cedric asked, confused. What the hell did the girl just say?

"Fleur." Viktor snapped. "Drop it. There's nobody but us out here."

"Oh alright." The girl huffed. "As long as you don't mention it back at school."

"What? You faked your accent... Why did you fake your accent?" Cedric asked, confused.

"Because, at Beauxbatons, I am surrounded by bitches. I wanted to be somebody other than 'little miss perfect' for once. Actually be able to talk to my fellow colleagues as an equal sufferer of 'ogwarts's legendary lack of 'ospitality. But no, now I am ze champion of L'institut de Beauxbatons. Now, zis fucking accent is getting in the way!" she just sighed. "Too late to change, now. Putain."

"Well," a voice said from the bushes. "Sucks to be you."

"Rose!" Cedric bellowed, frantically looking around for the psychotic beanstalk. "Uh, where are you?"

A blur dropped down from the branch overlooking the little impromptu camp they'd built themselves. Viktor looked amused when Fleur managed to jump into the bushes on reflex alone. Cedric just sighed. It was the Hufflepuff seventh year dorms all over again. "Hello there. Care for some lunch?" He said, shoving the half-cooked rat in Rose's face.

"Ew no! I'll stick to my rations thank you."

Fleur perked up. "Rations! Can I have one?"

"Wow, blondie can talk! Good for you. And no, screw you. I just came by to say hi and see how you guys were doing. Besides, you got your own ration pack in the magic pouch thing they gave you." Fleur pouted, then brightened as she came up with a bar of maybe-chocolate and started chomping down on it.

"We're doing well, thanks." Cedric smiled, deliberately ignoring the petrificus a quick-thinking Krum cast on the Delacour girl so that he could steal her chocolate bar. Fleur's wand blurred as she batted the spell right back at Viktor, causing the burly bulgarian to seize up and collapse awkwardly on the ground. "Just, you know, sitting down and having lunch."

"Ah, okay. Well, in that case..." She stood up, biting down on the energy bar in her hands. "Good luck! Oh, and if I were you, I'd suggest you stick together out here. If I were an enemy, I would've killed you all an hour ago. At least together, you stand a chance of one of you being able to have one of you survive."

The glasses worked like a charm. That is to say, using them was a haphazard, dangerous and altogether tiring affair all round if you didn't know what you were doing. Hermione did, given that she'd enchanted the four separate pairs herself, but still had the good sense to not try and do any delicate runework with the night vision switched on. Blinding yourself in a pitch black room because you had both mage sight and night vision on was something to avoid, if only to stave off having to explain the situation to Madame Pomfrey again. She'd had more than enough such occasions in third and fourth year, thank you very much. So mage sight it was.

Her penknife scritched as she carved another rune into the soft outer coating of the mythril chains, the bad penmanship guaranteeing that this one would be a power hog when activated. Thankfully, the chains themselves would provide the power to activate the super-heating spell function the rune represented. The idea was that, with enough badly carved runes, the chain would lose its magical charge faster than the dungeon's own magic could replenish it, overloading the chain's self-repair function and destroying the chain at the same time.

The scritch, scritch of the knife carving into the soft mythril coating was a cacophony to Hermione's ears. The thin layer of sweat she'd developed as she kept scratching away made her clothing stick to her in uncomfortable areas. Her fear at being discovered and the general nausea of the renervation kept her from asking even harder questions, such as what to do next, where to go, how to find out where she was.

A part of her wondered if this was Azkaban. It certainly looked like it, what with the generally filthy and gloomy environs she found herself in. And, if anything, Azkaban would be the perfect setting for this insane tournament. A real crowd pleaser. Come watch the idiots get their souls sucked out during a fetch quest, ten galleons a ticket and that's cutting your throat, that is! She blew another errant strand of electrified hair out of her face. Focus, Hermione, this is important! If she got this wrong, who knew what would happen? Hadn't Parkinson been hit by marble shrapnel when she'd mixed up a runic preservation cluster and a condensation chain? Or was it Greengrass? Screw those bitches anyway, the Granger was the best at what she did.

Finally, the last rune was put in place, a general-area combination freezing and rusting charm that had been developed specifically for just such a purpose. Drawing a bit of blood from her finger, Hermione smeared the chain with a thin trail that went from rune to rune. She braced herself against the wall. "Activate!"

The runes glowed a blazing white as they started up. The sequence was working! Yes! The chain's blue aura was visibly diminishing and-

ZAP!

Rose moved silently across the plateau, her green eyes scanning the rocky outcropping with more fervor than her earlier passive scan of the forest she'd allowed herself. The map the announcers had given her indicated that there should be a way down close by, but if there was one, it was well-hidden. The scraggly tufts of grass she equated more with desert landscapes than winter in the far north just confused the living hell out of her. What was devilgrass even doing here? It's not like there wasn't plenty of competition going around. By rights, nothing like that stuff should be growing here. And in this damp environment? Everything she remembered about the tufts of green told her that a good storm or two would drown the goddamn stuff, but nevertheless, here it was.

Fucking magical bullshit, messing with her knowledge of what grew where. As if the wands and involvement of civilians as hostages rather than contenders in these guys' bloodsport wasn't bad enough. She patted her semi-auto rifle with fondness. Now this was something she could rely on even if everything else went to shit. The wand that held a connection to miss pale & blue only worked if you wanted it to (intent you stupid bitch, knowledge girl had informed her when she'd asked, rude-ass cunt) and the other one, while it did its spellwork if you knew the spell, the whole learning the correct motion, enunciation and pronunciation thing was a pain in the ass and made using magic in combat more of a liability than an asset.

If you were fighting, time was a luxury you would never have again if you indulged it, so spending one and a half seconds making twirly motions and using some bullshit dead language to conjure a pretty ball of light that could just as soon blow you to shit rather than the dickhead you were aiming at was a waste of everyone's time. How the hell these idiots even fought using these sticks when they were outclassed in range and rate of fire by some dude with a bow & arrow was beyond her.

Okay, so speed, versatility & agility were on their side, but she had yet to meet the adult wizard thin enough to dodge anything smaller than a low-flying gunship, so what advantage they had was just pissed to the wind. Maybe the whole 'I never need to reload a wand' thing was an advantage? Nah, the twirling and chanting thing was the reloading sequence. Not like you could say the words and just chain the same spell over and over again, though that'd be pretty cool. Firing confringo at a rate of about 240 instances a minute would fuck up anyone's day, even if she'd still take the machine-grenade launcher any day of the goddamn week. 240 rounds of sparkly bullshit a minute vs roughly 3-400 high-yield grenades every 30-odd seconds? Bweh-heheheh. Let them try to get anywhere near her if she found a portable version of one of those babies. Baddies be chunked.

Still, where was that damn descent point? She had enough rope to rappel down if needs be, but she knew better than to try that shit on unfamiliar terrain. The few times she'd had to do it during ATP free-fighting sessions had not gone well and the other times she'd done so as a scout, well, the less said about those clusterfucking sessions, the better. And this time, she didn't have a recon drone handy either. Ah, fuck it. Rose thumbed the rifle's safety and hunched behind a patch of devil grass as she unslung her backpack. The front of her pack opened at her touch, revealing a piece of yellowing parchment that should have crumbled to dust a long time ago. She retrieved it along with her spare wand and tapped the side of the parchment. The blank piece of paper filled in with what looked like ink before resolving itself into the recognisable shape of a map. A wireframe grid blinked into existence before deforming to show the contours of the terrain around her immediate vicinity, giving a fake 3d profile of the landscape. She just shook her head and waited a minute. There, the map was ready at least. Fucking irritating, having to wait for it to finish doing its thing.

Hmm, according to the map, her descent point should be right... there! She looked up to where her hand was pointed to see more cliff face. She frowned in annoyance, stashed the map into the inside pocket of her jacket and readied her rifle again. Approaching the cliff face, she looked at where the map had indicated and-stairs? Someone had actually hacked away stairs into the rock face? And man, they were steep. One wrong move and you'd be getting to the bottom a lot faster than you meant to. Rose just stared at the barely visible outline of rough-hewn rock and sighed. She strapped her rifle down across her chest to leave her legs free and unholstered her .45 pistol. If there was anything on the stairs, the rifle would be worse than useless. Close quarters fighting with a full-length semi-automatic rifle was suicide against ordinary humans in this kind of setting, not to mention the kind of things that tended to hunt on rocky outcroppings just like this one back home. You didn't swing a broadsword in a bar, after all. Not unless you wanted to dent the walls, ceiling and very little else in-between.

Idly, she wondered about whether giant spiders hung out on these rocks or not. Wouldn't be the first time. Thanking the stars that these idiots had never even heard of snipers before, she started down, one hand steadying herself on the rock as she slowly made her way down the stairs while the other kept her gun pointed at wherever she was looking. This was going to be fun, she could tell.

The runic battery had finally finished its recharging sequence. The chime it gave off woke Hermione out of her pain-induced reverie. Fifteen hours had passed since whatever it was that had drained the coat's to less than a quarter of its full capacity and about three had passed since she'd been KO'ed by the chains detecting her messing with their structural integrity. Messing with the chains' runic signature was a bad idea, gotcha. The knife was sitting on the floor nearby, its wooden handle smoking as if it'd just been fished out of a fire. She checked her gloves. Minor scorch marks were still visible all along the area covering her palms and the itching sensation underneath them indicated that whatever defensive system she'd triggered had caused either wounding or burning on her hand proper. If it hadn't been for the gloves, she probably wouldn't have had much other than a stump left if it was powerful enough to blast through the protective charms themselves. Those fuckers.

She spent a minute ranting at the walls. Nobody came to check on her, which was okay. That told her a bit about the security on this place that she could exploit. She reached once more for the discarded carving stylus and cast a gimlet eye over the wall. Granite, probably a foot thick if this place was built to Hogwarts standards. Her mind whirring into overdrive as it processed just what runic sequence would be powerful enough to gouge out the chain without killing her and whoever was on the other side of the wall, she approached the part where the chain met the wall. Whatever enchantments existed on the chain itself probably didn't extend too far beyond the connecting point with the wall itself. They could be stronger on the wall, though, in which case she'd wish that the previous jolt had killed her. Either way, she couldn't stay here. These bastards had kidnapped her, which meant that she was now involved in the tournament. And nobody involves Hermione Jane Granger in anything she didn't like without her consent. The Vanquisher of Umbridge set to work.

Yep, nobody had enchanted the wall itself. Fucking typical.

"Putain!" Fleur yelled as she fell on her ass. "Why is this ramp so slippery?"

"Rain, two, three days ago." Viktor said. "Never reached Hogwarts. Strange."

"Oh, that's because the castle's wards stops most bad weather from getting through." Cedric said, casting a silent drying charm on the stones in front of him. A cobblestone cracked in two. Oops, maybe not so strong next time, Ced? "Bugger, anyway, yeah, it still rains and snows, but anything bigger than a small thunderstorm should theoretically be stopped from getting too close."

"It not vork very vell, zen. I remember, day after first task, massive storm outside. Boat had to be moored."

"Well, the wards have been rather patchy lately. Kind of a good thing, too, otherwise Rose'd have died against that Horntail."

"Ah, oui." Fleur said. "I watched replay of zat stunt. Daring, if a bit stupid, of 'er."

"Indeed. Very fun to vatch. And zat sing, grenade launcher? Powerful. Probably too powerful."

"I went to see her afterwards." Cedric said. "That stunt broke her arm in three places. Poppy was mad as a rabid Skrewt because of it."

The trio lapsed into silence as they kept going down to the valley floor. It was an easy walk down the broad, cobblestoned avenue flanked by abandoned houses that looked like they'd grown out of the rock. Cedric had recognised the style and told the other two about how early wizarding settlements had enchanted cliffs like these to provide fortifications that were secure against muggle invaders. This one, along with the ancient fishing village carved into the Dover cliffs, were the last vestige of such settlements in the British Isles, since gunpowder and the statute of secrecy had pretty much nullified the need for them. The statute of secrecy had done less to stop their use than the invention of gunpowder though. The ancient mountain stronghold of the Oural wizards disappearing in a massive explosion had ultimately been the death knell of settlements such as these. The goblins hadn't stopped bragging about that particular score since.

"So, vat do you sink Rose is doing right now?" Krum asked Cedric curiously.

"Oh, probably getting into trouble again. She's very good at that, apparently."

"Ah oui. Ca c'est vrai." Fleur giggled. "I hope she's okay though. She promised she'd help me get even with that fils de pute Crouch for stealing my baby sister."

"I hope she's okay too."

Rose wasn't okay. In fact, she was as far from okay as it was possible to get. She'd expected a lot of things coming down the crazy-ass stairs. Rock crocodiles was not one of them.

Her pistol thundered in the silence as yet another rock croc tried to attack her, bluish-red blood spilling over her jacket as the thing's body sailed on over the cliff and into the misty depths. They were squat creatures, recognisable as alligators or crocodiles, but with bigger feet, more powerful legs and fangs that looked like they dripped venom.

Also, they hissed. And not in the way snakes hissed out a 'hello' or a 'you wouldn't have a spare mouse I could bum off ya, gov?' when she ran into them, but a proper, bone-chilling hsssss that did funky things to her hind brain. Oh, and they jumped too as she was rather painfully finding out.

She fell on her ass as another croc came flying past like a demented drill-bit, the teeth glistening in the morning sunlight like so many razor blades just missing her face as she dove down and fired back into the croc's anus. It squealed like a stuck pig, roared and jumped backwards towards her. She fired a round into the thing's exposed underbelly before the now-trashing corpse landed on her stomach and her spine lit up like a firecracker. "Woof!" The pain and confusion increased as the corpse's twitching got more and more violent. Which is when the smell of spilled digestive juices commenced their assault on her nose. Rose, having had enough, aimed at the rock croc's brain pan and caressed the trigger. Snap. A convulsive jerk and the croc lay still, its enormous tail swaying from side to side like a contented cat's.

Heaving the thing's corpse off her hurting torso, Rose reloaded as quickly as she could and resumed her limp down the narrow-ass stairs, scanning the outcropping for any further well-camouflaged hand-bags-to-be. This whole Magic thing was just bullshit.

Half an hour of stumbling led her to a plateau wide enough for a breather and a five-minute check-up. She shucked off her bag and the upper part of her outfit. No bones broken, some heavy bruising around her stomach and rib-cage, though given the fact that she wasn't screaming in pain and vomiting blood everywhere, this meant just skin-deep bruising rather than having her internal organs ruptured like last time.

She chucked her gear back on, played with the straps a bit and took a flashlight out of her bag. She then reloaded the two magazines she'd emptied at the rock crocs and the world in general before checking the chambered mag again and refilling that one too. She shouldered her bag back on, put on her helmet, picked up her rifle and secured that too, switched the flashlight on and cautiously approached the cave opening. Food could wait for now. No need to linger on an exposed cliff-face for any longer than she needed to stay there. It was a cold day, after all.

Rose entered the cave. A twee-looking stone cottage sat on chicken legs in the corner. She was really starting to hate this whole magic business.

The hostage reception committee was antsy. The vanguard had arrived two days ago to prep the area for the arrival of the contestants as well as the hostage holding area. Out of the five-man team, only two had been there to greet the contingent of aurors, hitwizards and contracted guards meant to keep the hostages safe until the contestants arrived to take the kids back to Hogwarts. The survivors had been cagey about what exactly had happened to the three others, but had successfully cleared out the area and, once the hand-over had been done and dusted, had hit the road as fast as they could. They hadn't been heard from since.

The Auror contingent had set up the standard repellent ward set as soon as they'd arrived with the hostage, used the compound's dungeons to secure the hostages and fortified the outer walls of the small castle before unpacking and powering up a large wardstone specifically designed to let none but the guards, the hostages and the contestants into the compound. Their morning well-spent, they'd gone on to man the outer walls while the hitwizards settled into the various nooks and crannies they could find for a week-long stake-out.

Then they'd flooded the area with magical mirrors. Some hovered, others flew around, most settled themselves on walls and offered the spectators back home a bird's-eye view of an area almost unknown to anyone outside of a very special few in the department of mysterious. But no mirrors pointed at the strange skies above them. The shade of blue was just wrong. It jarred at the wizards' senses with its wrongness. The stars were little better, all planetary bodies visible at night glaring an angry red in the sky. The wizards were back in Albion. And Albion was not happy at all.

Hermione, secure in the currently unguarded dungeon, did not know this. She had no idea she was no longer in England, let alone Earth. She had no idea that she'd been transported to a mystical sub-space pocket lost in time & space, where magic was at its purest in all the realms of man. Thus, she could be readily excused for using a blasting rune in a realm where doing such a thing was frankly stupid. But she sure found out when she activated the runes with her blood.

Her jacket suddenly hardened against her as a protective barrier so powerful it sheared through oxygen molecules stopped her from being splattered across the room by a blast of raw, destructive magic. The chain around her ankle buckled and melted as the super-powered blast tore it apart like wet tissue paper. She'd been blown across her cell, but nothing prepared her for what she'd see when she landed with nary a bruise to her name. "Ow." She moaned. "Owowow, my head! My legs! Bloody hell! What-huh." Oh look, she thought as she gazed at the wall her runes had just blown to pieces. The entire cell was a square space made up of cracked, cooling stone. Some bits were still glowing as globs of molten granite cascaded onto the floor. It looked like hell. She felt like hell. Well, at least the door was open now. Time to move.

She limped as quickly as she could out into the corridor, wondering for a moment if she'd died and gone to hell. It looked an awful lot like the third floor corridor back in first year. Felt the same, too, though that could be from the stench of burning stone rather than from the super-dangerous environment it looked to be. Oh, who was she kidding? This was the wizarding world. They made drinking tea a life-or-death struggle half the time. A dungeon? That was just asking for something big & nasty to drop in for a Hermione sandwich or two.

There were noises coming from the other cells. Seems like her little party had woken the others from their beauty sleep. Three voices, probably relatives or friends of the other contestants. She didn't have much time before her kidnappers came to pay them a visit. The first cell she got to made her stop for a second. "Cho? Cho chang? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Hermione?" The scared Ravenclaw graduate asked. "I could ask you the same thing."

"I'm here to help." The bushy-haired witch said. "Anyone in there with you?"

"Yes, a little blonde girl. Shit, they've chained her to a wall! Where the hell am I?"

"Hell, I think. Had a small accident with a blasting rune, so your guess is as good as any at this point. Oh, and you're chained to the wall too by the looks of things."

"WHAT? Oh no, not again! Please, Hermione, you have to help me!"

"Okay." Granger said, palming her wand and deciding on what spell to use. "Take cover! Reducto!"

The door dissolved into a mass of flying splinters & ash. "Ah! Ow! That hurt!" Cho yelled as the blonde girl tried to press herself even further into the farthest corner of the cell. "Damnit Granger! Those splinters hurt!"

"Well, at least you know we aren't dead. Finite!" She shouted as she pointed her wand at the chain affixed to Cho's ankle.

"Actually, if this is hell..."

"Right, fine, point taken. Now go find another cell, there's still one person missing."

"Okay. And how do you know that?"

"Because there are four people in the tournament and only three of us so far, so go!"

"What? Cedric did this to me?"

"Nope, it was Dumbledore." Hermione said with fake cheer. "He sold us out for the tournament. Now go, we don't have much time!" Cho went.

"Maman!" the young girl wailed. "Fleur! Maman! Aidez-moi!" Ah, French. Hermione could deal with French. Definitely beat being sworn at in Pictish. Stupid Grey Lady and her stupid penchant for archaic scottish slang.

"Ey. Je m'appelle Hermione Granger. C'est quoi, ton nom?"

"Gabrielle." The little girl replied cautiously. "Qu'est-ce que vous faites dans mon cauchemar?"

"C'est pas un cauchemar, Gabrielle. C'est reel."

The girl cried and wailed. Being told your nightmare was real was not a fun experience, as Hermione could attest to, but time was of the essence here. "Je veux rentrer chez moi! C'est pas juste!"

"Je sais, ma petite. C'est pourquoi je suis la, apres tout. Je vais te ramener chez ta soeur, d'accord?"

The little blonde girl looked at her "... Tu promets?"

"C'est promis. Quand j'ai fini avec la chaine, on pourra partir d'ici. Tu me suis?"

"...oui."

"Finite!" The chain dissolved into the floor under the force of Hermione's will and she found herself with an armful of grateful blonde french girl. "Allez, suis-moi fillette." She said, disengaging from the girl's hug. "Dis-moi, est-ce que tu peux parler anglais?"

"Yes." The girl's voice said. "I speak a bit of Anglais, but not much."

"It's alright. As long as you can understand it, little one. Allons-y!"

They fled the cell & joined up with Cho and a dishevelled-looking Hannah Abbot. Hermione groaned. Four girls versus an unknown number of kidnappers. This got better by the fucking minute. Couldn't they have kidnapped someone more capable? She felt like even Gilderoy 'the pansy not of the Parkinson clan' Lockhart would be a welcome sight at the moment. No, wait, she liked the idea of having her memories intact! Auror Tonks, maybe? But no, no joy. She hoped Rose hauled ass. This was turning into one of those days again.

Translation:

"Mommy! Fleur! Mommy! Help me!"

"Hey, my name's Hermione. What's your name?"

"Gabrielle. What are you doing in my nightmare?"

"It's not a nightmare, Gabrielle. It's real."

"I want to go home! It's unfair!"

"I know, little one. It's why I'm here, after all. I'll take you back to your sister, okay?"

"... You promise?"

"It's a promise. When I'm finished with the chain, we'll be able to leave. You following me?"

"...Yes."

"Okay, now follow me girlie. Tell me, can you speak English?"

The cavernous city drank up sound and light & spat nothing back. The buildings and open spaces were dimly visible in the gloom, but it seemed that only a measly percentage of the high-yield beam her flashlight projected into the murky depths of the cave ever made it back. She couldn't hear any of the echoes she was expecting either. Apart from that, it was pretty much what you'd expect in a cave – damp, windblown and smelling faintly of rotten bread.

Her path was a fairly straightforward one, just follow the route she was on until she came out on the other side. Easy peasy. Through a dark cave filled with ruins and things that had been abandoned so long ago that a thin film of transparent rock had formed over the stuff that hadn't decayed into a mouldy puddle.

Her footfalls, for all that there weren't any reverberations coming back at her (and how big a cavern did you need for an echo to not, well, bounce all the way back again?) , still sounded way louder than they should. Every step she took ended in plomping, crunching, scraping and grinding as her boots crushed loose debris underfoot. The rifle was getting heavier too, though that was probably because of the light now strapped to the side of the barrel as much as it was keeping her gun pointed ahead in a ready firing stance as she crept forward in the gloom.

At least there weren't any rock crocs down in the dark. That would truly suck, having to dodge jumping reptiles with the closest thing you can get to zero visibility with a source of luminescence handy. It would be a short inconvenience though; in the dark, all they needed to do was get behind you. She knew. It was a favourite tactic of hers when dealing with Dissident patrol teams – stab them in the back in the dark. Worked well, most of the time.

The buildings started getting larger the farther she walked into the gloomy depths. The quality of the road improved dramatically as well. Less debris was scattered around, the sides of the road were now clearly delineated and signposts written in a kind of pictographic alphabet she'd never seen before indicated the name of other roads & tributaries.

It was absurdly clean. The large buildings, the parts that hadn't caved in on themselves at least, looked pristine. Not a patch of mould, moss or stalagmite formation in sight. The parts that had caved in showed neat interiors as well, the large bits of rock that had been either walls or roofing in the far distant past stacked either against intact wallsides or in a solid pyramid structure in the middle of the room. Not a single creature in sight, which, given the vast amounts of available shelter available in these houses, was rather strange in and of itself.

Come to think of it, this would be the perfect hunting/sleeping ground for cave-dwellers in general. There hadn't been any shortage of wildlife up in the forbidden forest, so why the dearth of wildlife in a place that was a perfect shelter for anything smaller than a cargo truck? It did not make any sense. Even the air was clearer, come to think about it, which by itself was odd-movement!

The rifle moved like an extension of Rose's self, the sights tracking where the movement had been half a second ago. The beam reflected off stone, more stone and-clay? That was odd. Rose hadn't seen even a fragment of clay anywhere since leaving the castle. She wondered just what this was. The people that lived here hadn't looked like they'd mastered anything more complicated than carving squares out of the rock to make dwellings with, but, now that she thought about it a bit more, they had had a kind of alphabet, possibly even a numbering system if the sign posts had been anything to go by. So pottery was not too far out of the realm of possibility, right? She decided to investigate carefully.

She inched forward, alternating her viewpoint so that the rifle covered all four cardinal points, ceiling and floor with equal consideration as quickly as possible. She would inch forward a few metres, stop, look up, look down, then do a quick about-face scan, sometimes clockwise, sometimes anti-clockwise, then turn around quickly and continue forward. It was a trick she'd picked up in the arena: if it looked interesting, it was most likely a trap of some sort. A cautious approach would help either stall or thwart a surprise attack long enough for you to think and allow you to decide whether to investigate closer or run for cover.

The first time she'd done it in militia training, the instructor had chewed her out, of course, since speed was of the essence in the field and, should you not have the tools to remotely evaluate a situation without exposing yourself and your mates to needless danger, then you were fucked anyway. But the militia was not the arena. For one, you were reasonably sure that your fellow militiamen generally weren't out to kill and/or brutally maim you at the earliest opportunity most of the time and had access to basic equipment such as portable scanners when in an active combat zone. But out here, old instincts came to the fore. And this was one of those.

She eventually reached the clay thing that just sat off to one side, its rusty red colouring oddly jarring when compared to the uniform black road underneath it and the overall brownish tint of the buildings & cavern walls. It was a tall cylinder with odd squiggles running around it set on top of four metal legs. Rose passed the flashlight beam over the thing carefully, noting the moist surface of the baked clay and the intricate artwork near the top & bottom of the cylinder that enclosed pictograms similar to those on the signposts. What was it doing here? It looked fairly new. Who'd moved it into place? Who'd kept moss from growing over it? Was it hollow? What did it contain if it was?

That's when Rose made a mistake. She touched the cylinder. Something akin to lightning picked her up and threw her clear across the road. What the hell? And ow!

Then the stone started glowing in a weird, off-blue colour. Which was when she figured out her mistake. It was a trap. The whole cave city was a trap. Something did live here, but it sure as hell wasn't animal in nature. So what was it?

"WE ARE THE GUARDING PRAXIS OF ARCADIA TERTIUS. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF BORDER REGULATIONS AMENDMENT SIXTY-SIX DASH FOUR F. PREPARE TO BE TERMINATED!" A monolithic voice that just screamed that it was of mechanical origin reverberated across the cavern. Rose's lips twitched upwards at the revelation.

An AI. Well, that answered that, then. The dull thud of stone meeting stone started to reverberate through the cavern. Rose readied her rifle and started running forward. This wasn't good, but maybe she'd have some fun doing this. It had been ages since she'd gone head-to-head with sapient machines smaller than the insane tanks that roamed the deserts, after all.

And these were magical bullshit machines. Made out of clay. Clay monster shooting. Definitely on her to-do list when she used that funky Arena training room in the castle next time.

Crack! The rapport of rifle fire roared through the cavern, the muzzle flash messing with Rose's night vision as the bullet flew true. Terracotta fragments shot everywhere as the now de-animated clay statue of a leather-clad warrior wielding a heavy pike was pushed backwards by the force of the rifle bullet. She hadn't had this much fun in years! The stairwell cleared for the next thirty metres, Rose thundered upwards, firing her rifle as she leapt from step to step.

Crack! A Shield cylinder thing, one of its three supporting struts shot out from underneath it, toppled to the ground and disintegrated in a flash of fire and ozone that set her teeth on edge. Crack! A winged Gargoyle lost its head. Crack! It lost its left leg, toppling forward and down the stairs, picking up speed and losing pieces of itself as it bounced down to the streets below. The trick was to shoot out the legs and let gravity do the rest.

Crack! A clay warrior folded in on itself as Rose's bullet struck centre mass, allowing Rose to rush towards it and pull its head forward. It toppled over, feebly trying to grab onto Rose as it went past. Rose neatly sidestepped the swipe as she loaded a new magazine. The crash as it hit the bottom of the stairs warmed her heart.

A rusty iron spear sailed towards her out of the dark, forcing her to drop forward onto the steps and roll sideways to avoid any follow-up speartossing. The spear's shaft shattered against the far wall, the force of the throw proving too much for the much-neglected weapon. The rifle came to bear on the general area the toss had come from, lighting up what looked like a square box with legs and arms getting ready to chuck another spear at her.

Crack! Crack! The first shot took out the arm holding up the spear while the other blew a hole straight through the box itself, tossing the construct on its ass long enough for Rose to close the distance and kick its underside hard enough to crack the base of the box and send its cache of spears rolling out of the thing's reach. She then stomped a hole through the weakened baked clay, fraying the cartouche containing the strange pictograms. The box stopped moving. Now she was running up stairs with a sore foot. Good thinking, Rose. Nicely done.

She reached the landing at the top of the staircase to see what looked like light at the end of a corridor... coming through a crack in the caved-in section of the passage that was most probably the exit.

Rose, wary of spending time readying a charge large enough to blow a hole through the debris blocking the way, brought the Elder wand to bear on the obstruction and let anger flood her emotions. The tip of the deathstick glowed a sickly yellow before belching out green smoke. Rose ducked.

The world went white.

The trio looked on frightened awe as part of the cliff came tumbling down in an avalanche of stone a mile away from where they were. Other, more chilling sounds could be heard over the din.

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!"

"VANDALISM HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE LIST OF CHARGES. IN THE NAME OF THE PRAXIS, DIE!"

"MWAHHAHAHAHAH!" BOOM. More rocks joined the avalanche as a whole section detached itself from the rest and came down with a thunderous crash. Wait, were those houses in the newly exposed cliff-face?

Cedric just shook his head. "I don't even want to know."

"Da." "Oui, bonne idee."

Hermione ran for her life as the shouting intensified. She'd taken the lead by default, really. The Hogwarts girls were used to listening to her thanks to the defence classes and Gabrielle was being irritatingly clingy. Okay, so the girl was clearly traumatised by the whole big booms, dark corridors and being chased by unknown enemies thing, but there was a time and place for wanting reassuring hugs. Running for your life was not such a time.

Eventually, Hermione just gave up and offered the girl a piggy back ride in exchange for not tripping her when she was peering around a corner again. Now, she was not only running faster than the other girls to clear the way ahead of them, she was also doing it with a ten-year-old girl strapped to her back. Not that she was heavy, mind. Which was weird.

The Gryffindor brainiac knew she'd normally get tired from dragging a mini-limpet around for all the times she'd been browbeaten into doing it for her baby sister, but Gabrielle was really light. Too light, really. Hermione wondered about that, privately. Something other than the threat of imminent death to ponder about, that's the spirit girl!

Oh gods, she was doing it again. Okay, stop thinking about the kidnappers who were no doubt pissed at having their pristine dungeon turned into an explosives testing range and are probably all armed to the teeth with something dangerous enough to give her peers a run for their money, what they'd do to the girls if they caught them etcetera, the important thing here was making sure there weren't any of them impeding their escape-in-progress.

The shouting dimmed somewhat as she reached a stairwell. Up or down? They'd expect up. Up was a good idea, but that stairwell had been used recently if the fresh mud on the landing and the flight of stairs heading upwards was any indication. Plus, they'd expect any escapees to go upwards and Hermione had spent far too many hours berating wannabe movie heroes about getting stuck on a rooftop to want the same thing to happen to her on whatever counted as a rooftop in these parts. But down?

Down was dark. It looked scary. It was scary. It was the dumbest thing you could do, if you were fantasising about the right way to escape. But, if you actually are the escapee, then down makes sense. Pipes, sewers, practically any form of infrastructure involving water or power had incoming and outgoing pipes underground.

Everyone is waiting for you to make your escape by climbing upwards, which leaves less people likely to be on the lower levels. Which gave you a tactical advantage in terms of both speed and flexibility. If you ended up low enough to use the pipes, you could wade your way to safety, preferrably with your sense of smell switched off. Or you could walk until you are on the far side of the structure you're in and head up from there.

Otherwise, well, generally dark & cold areas were ideal for storing food, so you may get lucky and find a cozy place to hide in. That, and basements were cool in Hermione's opinion. Never know what you might find down in one. Case in point: Hogwarts. Never in a million years would you head into the Hogwarts dungeons and expect Severus Snape. Unless you've met him, or heard of him, or caught a whiff of his clothes, but that's cheating, so it doesn't count.

Down it was. Hermione signalled the other girls to hurry up before climbing down into the bowels of the compound. The voice that kept insisting that down was scary for a reason was ignored. Better the risk of danger than the utter certainty of it, in her opinion.

"They're gone? But... where did they go?"

Auror captain Andrews was having a bad day. No, that was a lie, it had been a bad couple of days. Life in Auror guard Section four generally went that way-there were days where things were bad, then there were days where things were worse. This, for instance, was a moderately bad day. They were sitting on top of a bunch of magically enchanted teenagers in the middle of an alien landscape with no backup and/or help capable of coming their way for the next seven days. In and of itself, that wouldn't be much of a hassle, just dig in and wait it out. But their activities and locations were being broadcast clear across wizarding Britain and he'd seen enough operations go south through leaked information to trust the whole 'oh, nobody other than the guys directly involved in this know where you are' bit any further than he could spit it.

But even that wasn't really that much worse than his normal day. Just a bit more interesting than usual, no big deal. No, what made it bad was that the four VIPs his contingent was guarding had just blown up the holding area and, well, vanished. Whatever explosive charm Granger had managed to use down there had shorted the wards and made casting a homenium revelio or tracking charm an exercise in hilarious futility. Every time he cast it, the entire dungeon section lit up like a bonfire. That had been an hour ago. The bosses back home knew and would no doubt be giving him a call very soon. The floo didn't work across dimensions, so he was forced to use a mini-mirror to communicate. Not that he minded, his muggleborn roots still rebelling at the thought of voluntarily sticking your head in an active fireplace when a telephone was such an easy & simple thing to use.

"They went further into the dungeons, ma'am. Roughly speaking, we lost track of them on the second sub-level. They're heading straight down, though, if my guess is correct. The hit-wizards are deployed down there, so they won't be lost for long."

"Don't be so sure captain. Hermione Granger managed to escape Hogwarts after taking out your colleagues, infiltrate the DMLE and penetrate Madame Bones' security cordon as if it didn't exist. This despite her being taken by surprise from behind by Auror Dawlish at the start of that little rumpus. Right now, she's got the drop on you, a bunch of witches backing her up and has just demonstrated a level of runic manipulation & wandless casting that's making Dumbledore go green in the face. About the only thing you have going for yourself right now is the fact that she doesn't know where she is any more than you do. God help you if she finds out that the basement she's happily gallivanting through was Morgana La Fey's. "

"And why is this an iss-ah. Muggleborn?"

"Indeed. While we may know of her as a controversial defender of the realm, the muggles still remember her for her involvement in the fall of Gegedzerick's Keep and have interpreted her legacy accordingly."

"Yes, it was quite the surprise to find out that Morgana La Fey was not as bad as she's generally portrayed. And that Dark Lords & Ladies have actually been forces for good in the past, really. That was not so much a surprise as it was a gigantic shock to me. But anyway, I understand completely."

The face in the fire frowned at him. "No you do not, Captain. Let it be known that, should the young miss Granger find out that she's in Morgana's Mausoleum before you make contact with her, she will interpret you as being involved in trying to resurrect her and act accordingly. She has a tendency to... overreact to perceived threats, to put it simply."

"Madam?"

"Put plainly, she will kill everyone in the compound if she even suspects you of being the minions to a Dark Lord or Lady. "

Andrews just scoffed at the lady. "Oh, please. She's a sixteen-year-old girl."

"A sixteen-year-old who has managed to survive being thrust into the middle of the darkest intrigues of the wizarding world the minute the sorting hat covered her hair. She's more paranoid than Moody and madder than Bellatrix on a redcap binge when threatened. Let's not forget the fact that she's trained with the Dragon Slayer Snow one-on-one every day since the first task. She's spent the past two years tutoring a defence study session and does a better job than either Black or Lupin now. Everybody sees a muggleborn bookworm when facing her, captain, but the truth is that she has the makings of a magical genius and is already a truly vicious enemy if riled. I have seen it, captain. Pray you don't."

Andrews just stared at the intense face in the fire. This was insane. "Understood madame. I will endeavour to make contact as soon as possible. Any other advice you wish to impart?" What else could he say, really?

"Make sure she gets any confiscated equipment back from you Andrews. Oh, and remember to tell her to eat something sweet every once in a while. Poor girl's going to need it."

"Alright. In that case, good day, madame."

"You too, young man. McGonnagall out. Good luck. And remember to keep practising transfiguration! Such a waste of talent, this..." the voice muttered as the flames died back down to normal.

Captain Andrews sighed heavily as he contemplated the backpack he'd confiscated from the girl that morning. He had more of an idea of how to approach the girl and he knew that time was rapidly running out for doing so. Hermione Granger thought she was in danger. She was slowly cornering herself down there. And, when she did, she'd turn around. He had until she pivoted around to get to her. If he didn't, well, then he'd find out if Minerva was right and one of her cubs was, as a matter of fact, the vicious and merciless apex predator McGonnagall thought she was. Lions weren't brave, steadfast or loyal. They were simply very, very good at tearing you apart before you had time to scream. And if he did have a Lion on his hands, then at least it'd be quick if he screwed this up.

He turned back to watch the mirror charting the contestants' progress through the second task. Wait, what the hell were those three doing? Eating dinner already? Pssh, idiots.

"Blimey, Charlie." Charlie Weasley looked at his youngest brother askance.

"What is it now, mo-Ron?" The tired man asked from his spot at the table.

"The girl-who-lived! She's, she's downright dangerous she is!" Ron said in awestruck horror as the images of what was going on in the cliff caves reached them. Just in time for one of Snow's explosives to turn yet more guardian golems into so much gravel.

Charlie stared at Ron. "You just figured that out now? Bloody hell!" he knew letting Bill try out his pranks on the kid when they were little had been a bad idea, but this? How the hell was he in the top five of his year marks-wise again?

"What?"

"That bitch killed Tania! Of course she's fucking dangerous, Ron. She killed my dragon."

"Oh, yeah. Had forgotten 'bout that." Charlie just smacked him in the back of the head. Sometimes, talking to Ron was like trying to teach Hagrid proper warding schematics after a bottle or two of firewhiskey. Actually no, that wasn't right. It was like trying to tell the half giant that 'misunderstood' meant something entirely different from what he thought it did.

"Say Charlie, do you want the rest of that sandwich?"

"Just take it and shut up, please."

"Okay!"

Rose let out a roar and shot a clay golem in the gonads. Charlie toasted the screen. He knew exactly how she felt. Bitch.

Okay, so the swamp was not much of an improvement on the cliff-face. For one, it was a frozen swamp. Solid ground just looked solid but generally wasn't. The trees were either dead or probably wished they were. The water was freezing. And the wildlife was... interesting. Getting out of the ancient city had been fun. Running into more rock crocs had been less fun, especially since the remaining spear chucking pottery soldiers had added that little element of surprise she could have done without. Still, despite grazing wounds and some clay shrapnel hindering her left hand, she'd made it to the bottom of the cliff... and right into swamp country. It was dirty, depressing and dim. She loved it.

Rose whistled a tune as she waded through the knee-deep water, somewhat thankful that the very cold that numbed her legs was also preventing said legs from becoming a pair of leech-infested stumps. Her boots waded forwards, the only indication that she was indeed moving her legs right then coming from the soft crackle the partially iced-over water surface made as her shin pushed the crystalline membrane aside.

She'd been lucky, really, stumbling across an area where the riverbed shallowed out at a few centimetres below water level, sufficiently dispersing and calming the river that Rose could cross to the other side without having to fear being dragged along by the otherwise fierce currents. Of course, that meant that Rose was now stumbling along on frozen limbs across a murky bit of marshland while wondering whether she'd make it to dry land before the sun made its final plunge below the horizon.

Though, given the brown-on-black colour scheme she was surrounded with, one could excuse her for thinking that it was already nighttime. It would be easy to mistake the frost covering the trees around her to be some type of moonlight while the thick canopy and dark waters could easily fool the befuddled into thinking it was nighttime. Only the few golden rays of a twilit sun piercing the canopy nixed the idea, what little light hitting the ground being devoured and refracted by the brackish surface of the diseased pool she forced herself to wade through. Yet she still persevered with a smile on her face, memories of the New Louisiana reclamation campaign rising to the fore.

According to the map, the ruins of an old house lay on the other side of this area. She hoped she made it while there was still some light left. No point in heading for shelter if you no longer could see it without running into it first. The crackle of the water's icy surface parting under the momentum of her booted legs was the only sound in the frozen swamp.

In the meantime, Viktor was staring at the bridge the map had indicated as a good crossing point. Or rather, what was left of it.

"Voi pizda! Cedric! Is there any other crossing point marked on your map?"

"Yeeeees... But it's about thirty miles away. We may be able to make it by tomorrow, but I highly doubt it."

"And why is that?" Krum asked a tad impatiently.

"Because it's in the middle of forest goblin territory." Fleur offered. "There's even a helpful hint to stay away on the map..."

Krum went back to swearing. "ublyudok doch'ot·stalykh byk! ghoris mamis aralegitimuri spermis shemt'khvevis! Verdammte scheissbruecke!"

Cedric and Fleur spent their time staring at the ruins of the bridge. "So, it looks like the first five or so feet are still intact..." Cedric said. "I think I have an idea."

"And what would that be?" Said the Veela to the Hufflepuff.

"The first one gets depulso'ed across by the two others. The second one is depulso'ed by the one on this side while the one on the other accio's the crosser towards them. The last one is then accio'ed across by the other two. Think that could work?"

The Veela let out a low 'hmm' as she did some mental arithmancy while looking at the diminishing light in the sky and the irate Bulgarian who was so busy swearing in mangled Russian that he was missing the decisions being made without his input.

"Maybe, but at this point, it's worth a try."

Cedric's brainwave had worked. Too bad that he hadn't factored the Bridge Troll into the equation.

"Reducto!" Viktor shouted, the spell's off-blue light hitting the troll in the torso and showering the ground with gore. The troll bellowed in rage and kept coming. The trio kept running. "This isn't working!" Krum panted out, dodging the ten-foot spears the troll chucked at the group with more than a little panic. It wasn't so much that the spears pierced through tree trunks as it was that they pierced through tree trunks despite being blunt. And the serrated barbs didn't help his panic either. "Confringo!" The ground in front of the troll opened up in a dull roar. The troll leapt to the side. "Damn, missed. Cedric?"

"There's a guardhouse a few hundred feet away." The young man said calmly as he wove through the underbrush. A spear aimed his way stopped halfway through the trunk behind him. " Let's make for that first."

"D'accord. Viktor, run, it's my turn to cover you."

"Da! Last vone at ze house iz troll chow."

"Fuck you, Vicky."

Fleur distracted the lumbering beast for a few minutes, launching low-level hexes and jinxes at it to slow it down without exhausting her concentration. Though maybe the Densaugeo had, in hindsight, been a bad idea. Giving a troll metre-long tusks just made it more vicious, it seemed. She dodged left as another barbed pole whizzed at her at stomach height. Time to leave.

She ran through the dense underbrush, foliage tearing at her travel cloak and roots tripping her up whenever she ran too fast. The troll kept coming, racing through the forest as if it weren't even there. The only thing keeping her alive long enough to get back up was the fireballs she sent its way, the legacy of her ancestors frightening the giant grey-skinned creature into going around the resulting blazes, giving her time to stand up, snatch her wand and start sprinting again.

Finally, she came upon a stone structure that lacked a roof and, come to think of it, seemed to be suffering from a lack of wall too. It was a circular structure and had, at some point in the distant past, sported a second story if the rocky debris was anything to go by, but age and violence had torn it up badly. Still, Diggory and Krum were in there, wands at the ready, so maybe she'd have to call this wreck home for the evening. Luckily she had a wizarding tent ready.

Her boots pounded across the open ground, aiming for the narrow entrance to the side of the structure. She felt herself starting to lose speed, panting as the panic of having a troll after her warred with the reasonable, non-panicky side of her personality that told her that, well, maybe the troll wouldn't survive whatever it was the two boys were about to dish out. She sprinted at the door and tried not to think about it overly much.

The inside was a wreck. Whatever furniture there had been had long since crumbled to dust, leaving a bare room with walls full of holes where solid rock should have been. Cedric and Viktor's packs lay in one corner of the room while the two were camped in front of the window. Fleur sprinted inside and collapsed on the ground, clearly relieved at having survived the run.

"I see it." Cedric said calmly as the troll rampaged into view. A spear hit the top of the window and bounced into the room, narrowly missing Fleur on its way through the room and out the other side. "Want to do the honours, Viktor."

"Da." Krum said, his face frowning in dark anger as he made a wand motion every survivor of the blood war had learned to fear on sight. "Avada Kedavra!" A sickly beam of green and black sped at the troll. Cedric could feel the twinge of, well, something as the light seemed to heat up the air around him. The sound of leathery wings fluttering through a starless vacuum was heard as part of the light surrounding the beam disappeared into a vortex of purest black.

The beam hit the troll dead on, the crackle of supercharged magic eating its way through the very essence of the beast echoing clearly through the clearing. It wailed one final time as the corrosive magic burrowed itself into the troll's brain, tearing it to pieces as it searched for the body's 'off' switch. Spear still held high in a firing position, the massive beast finally fell over as the last of its nerve endings were flash fried, its spine boiling in its own juices.

Krum looked at the beast in horror, having felt every second of the troll's agony through the magic he'd employed, smiled at Cedric, gave him the thumbs up and keeled over, out cold from the effort it'd taken to make the spell happen.

"Well, that's not something you see everyday." Cedric sagged in relief before turning to Delacour. "Fleur, can you give me a hand here? Krum's kinda heavy and I don't think a mobilicorpus'd be enough to move him."

Fleur glowered at him. "Give me a minute, s'il te plait. I need to redo my 'air."

The ground around the ruined house was surprisingly solid for such a water-logged area. What was marked as a house on the map had obviously been something more like a large inn than a single household residence. Rose recognised the outline of what was left of the stables, the main entrance, a large open space that might well have been a tavern and a row of caved-in rooms on the second floor that were too uniform in their design to indicate personal habitation.

She tapped her glasses and closed her fist around the elder wand, letting the influx of surrounding magics tell her what her other senses couldn't. It seemed that the inn still had a working wardstone pumping out an ever-clean and perimeter chime ward. If there was anything in there, they would know Rose was coming.

She dropped her bag onto the solid ground, twisting her head this way and that in order to catch anything trying to sneak up on her while her hand fumbled around inside the heavily expanded backpack. "Ah, right. Three pistol clips!" A thunk sounded as three magazines tumbled onto the ground. She pulled her Panem pistol out of its holster, the semi-automatic feeling like an old friend in her hand. She tested the weight again as the other hand stashed the clips into her pant pockets. She loved magic sometimes.

She double-timed her way across the inn's front yard, hoping that what remained of the hedges concealed her from whatever was likely to be inside the house. Hitting the side wall, she racked the slide on her pistol, undid the safety and made her way to the backdoor entrance. The small, well-maintained garden caught the girl by surprise. There were a lot of what looked like weeds growing in one half of the garden, but the other half made her survival-oriented conscience salivate in anticipation. The nutrients provided by the ripe tomatoes alone would be worth the energy needed to kill whatever dwelled inside the house.

The door, rickety as it was, posed a problem to Rose. Breaching a door and clearing a house was something Rose had done at least once a week during her two-year stint with the militia. Rebels and terrorists were a dime a dozen in the forests of Panem, and the barbarian tribes of the east and west coast weren't all too familiar with the concept of borders. She could clear the ruins of an apartment block with nothing but a revolver if she had to, but she generally didn't need to do it by herself. And she doubted that whatever thing used the inn as a refuge would brave the marshland in order to go after her if she stole an onion or five... Still, she needed as much of the stuff inside as she could get. She had the potions and balms packed to treat anything from frostbite to petrification, but that didn't count for shit if she didn't get any clean water to supplement her current supply as well as whatever other stuff she could pack & carry with her. She sighed, unslinging her backpack and stashing it behind a nearby bush. Whatever was in there, she was going to kill it & take its stuff.

The back entrance lit up under the glare of Rose's flashlight, the pistol aimed down the beam's centre and into what looked like the old kitchen area. Rose moved swiftly, her breathing getting harsher as she adjusted to the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She swept the harsh artificial light over the room.

The kitchen was a surprisingly large space, enough to outfit two inns of similar size. There were three large cooking areas, each with its own set of utensils still visible under the moss & accumulated debris the ward couldn't clean off. There were also three sets of basins with plumbing enchantments rather than actual plumbing, proving to be surprisingly modern to Rose's eye. There was the tiling obscured by moss, there was the igniter for the stove that had already rusted beyond repair, there was the oven, impeccably clean and cooking away- wait. An unsupervised pot of food? Out here? Riiight.

Rose started to hear her heart beat as her blood pressure spiked. The osbcuring beam of her flashlight gave way to a far sharper perception of the world, the mouldy ceiling showing itself to be at odds with the impeccably cleaned tiling that could be found covering the food preparations area. Someone was in here and they knew she was there too.

Someone that was behind her.

Oh fuck- she was rolling on the mildew-encrusted floor before she even realised she was under attack, a silvery blur moving across the space her neck had occupied a fraction of a second ago. She lifted the flashlight up and shone it straight at her attacker, hoping against hope that it was just a contestant that had gotten way too cocky. No such luck.

It took the shape of a human woman, but looked more like someone's idea of a realistically rendered naked doll than anything else. Black eyes glittered in a face with no other visible features, the whole body naked yet with none of the bits naked bodies were supposed to have. No nose, ears, nipples, genitals, hair, blemishes, scars or even pores were visible in the harsh glare of the electric light. A small amount of stubble sat where a normal human would have a head of hair available, far too short for Rose to figure out just what colour it took.

The part of her brain where her wand normally hung out activated. Monody. Avatar of tragedy, song of death, final breath given shape... there were many colourful names for the thing, but the end of the tale was the same; it decapitated its victim and tricked the headless body's magic into feeding the Monody's mitosis. In the end, if you lost, you had two hungry Monodies and a ready source of fresh meat where once you had one hungry Monody and live prey. She memorised all that even as she raised her gun and fired.

SNAP. The monody screamed at her despite not having a mouth, tightening its grip on a strange blade made of bone & silver as its shoulder disintegrated... and reformed just as quickly. Rose cursed loudly as she was forced to roll away from yet another lunging swipe by the thing, her flank being clipped by a swift kick the monody had given her mid-roll. SNAP SNAP. She fired twice more, hoping against hope that hitting it in the heart and groin would be enough. No such luck, though the heart shot slowed down the thing's attacks significantly.

The eyes. Her wand whispered to her, flashes of the wand's former masters fighting monodies going through her mind. Go for the eyes. Rose agreed and fired off another two rounds at the thing to buy herself some breathing space. SNAP SNAP.

Alright. She thought, taking stock of her situation as she jumped over a kitchen table. Three bullets, no time to reload, two targets. She nodded to herself and turned around.

The naked humanoid thing screeched as it lunged yet again, blade levelled at Rose's face. Rose fired, making sure the eyes filled her crosshairs. SNAP. The area where the Monody's nose would have been caved in, a large spray of some kind of bluish red liquid splashing out behind it. It stopped suddenly, some unseen mouth making a strangled moaning noise as the thing dropped its blade in shock. Rose wasted no time, propelling her lithe frame forward. Stopping suddenly as she came face to face with the monster, she converted the momentum into a swinging kick, taking the dazed thing in the side of its temple, causing it to overbalance and hit the kitchen's grimy stone tiling.

That was apparently enough to force it out of shock, as the monody's whole body spasmed violently when it hit the floor and its howl of pure fury suddenly turned into a magic-infused sonic attack. Her ears ringing painfully, Rose dropped to the ground like a puppet with her stings cut, the demonic thing she was facing slowly getting up. She looked for her flashlight and cursed. The attack shattered the lightbulb, leaving her to fight the strange creature with a rapidly diminishing ambient light source. She dared not channel magic in this house, too many ideas about what the things lurking in these areas did to hunt each other revolving around magic in the first place. That left- the sword. She looked around before seeing it, the bone handle of the strange blade protruding from underneath a broken chair.

She staggered up onto her feet, her wand helping to fight the nausea she normally associated with sea sickness. The monody was almost slower than she was, indicating that that attack it'd used was close to the limit of what it could do. Both noticed the other eyeing the sword greedily, surprised and frustrated that they'd been seen. Rose started the plunge for the blade first, the monody dashing madly in an effort to nullify the head start. Finally, it outpaced Rose and dove for the blade made out of its progenitor's body. It reached the blade and tugged it free of the rotten wood it'd lodged itself in, a feeling of triumph overcoming the monster's mind. With this, it could defeat the intruder. With this, its den would be saf- thumpClack.

The monody blinked at a strange sight. Its sword was once again trapped, this time underneath the black leather boot that the intruder wore. It looked up, straight into the barrel of a gun.

SNAP. The first shot took out the monody's left eye, its deafening shriek of pain going unheard by the already deaf girl. The monster clutched at its eye, the sheer pain having caused it to flip around and hit the floor again. Rose calmly picked up the blade, taking note of the blue-red spray that decorated it. She flicked the sword once, twice, making interesting patterns on the stone floor, and advanced on the writhing form lying at her feet. She cocked her right foot back and swung it at the thing's face, hitting it right in the empty eye socket. The thing lay still, probably passed out from the pain that'd been inflicted on it. Rose didn't care as long as the thing didn't move for a few seconds. She aimed her pistol carefully and squeezed the trigger. SNAP.

The Monody stopped moving altogether. Rose cut off what was left of its head, just to be sure. She quite liked the bone sword. She decided to keep it. There were still more areas to explore, after all.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" Hannah asked for the umpteenth time.

"No." Hermione snapped. "I have no clue, seeing as I'm in pretty much the same boat as you, but since I'm the one sticking my neck around corners first, guess who gets to say where we go and where we don't?"

"Okay, okay, no need to get all miss prissy."

"Oh, as if you can talk, Miss Abbot. Who do you think Neville comes and talks to when you decide to have another hissy fit and 'visit' Percy on weekends? Thomas? Finnegan? No, he comes to me because I, quote 'understand his pain' unquote. So can the fucking attitude for five minutes or, by Merlin, I am throwing you around the next dark corner I have to look in, am I clear?"

"Buh-buh-but-"

"Am I clear, little miss Princess?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"yes'm."

Cho looked at Granger in awe. "Wow, Hermione. How the hell haven't you been chosen as prefect yet?"

"Well, I did send a senior member of the Ministry to prison... I don't think I am going to have much in the way of a future in the wizarding world after that one. Plus, Dumbledore kept mentioning some things about 'flagrant disregard for authority, illegal use of monitoring charms' etcetera etcetera etcetera. He did say something about me still being able to make head girl though, but I don't really want to."

"What? Monitoring charms?"

"I, well, you know Lovegood right?"

"Ah, Loony?"

"Well, she knew a lot of suspicious stuff about me so I kinda snuck into Ravenclaw and tried to find out just what she knew, you know? I had no idea she was being bullied and, well, nerds stick together, don'tcherknow."

"Yeah..." Cho sighed. "Marietta was my best friend before that."

"Pity she was a bullying bitch."

"So you're the reason she has 'THIEF' tattooed across her forehead?"

"Bitch deserved it, trust me. And just why did she have to steal Luna's socks of all things?"

"I lived with her for four-five years. Two words, foot fetish."

"Uh, oh god, that's just..."

"Yeah. She gave the best foot massages though."

"I think I'm going to throw up now."

"Oh look, a corner." Cho said in a faux cheerful tone. "Hannah, be a darl and go stick your head around that, why don't you? Pip-pip lass, we ain't got all day." Abbot snarled at her before slinking back into line next to Gabrielle.

Hermione crept up to the corner, wand in hand and glasses giving off a green glow. "Kill the lights." She stage whispered at them. Cho and Hannah nox'ed their wands, plunging the corridor into darkness. Hermione went down the line and pushed them against the wall, the clomp, clomp of her boots on flagstone the only indication of where she was. The clomping sound headed for the corner.

"Girls," Hermione said in a very calm voice as she stuck her head around the bend. "Run."

Which was roughly when the first glowing tentacle came the other way. Maybe if they threw Hannah at it, the thing would leave them alone? Yeah, fat chance of that working. Still, something to ponder as she ran for her life. Again.

Finally! Well, there's more where that came from, so stay tuned kiddies! This is going to be a hell of a ride.