Before Snape was allowed in the heart of the temple, he had to consent to the same purification bath that Harry underwent. The queen insisted. Harry expected a well aimed snap of a protest, convincing and stern, to come out of Snape's mouth, but his former teacher looked down his nose and unclasped his cloak with a flick of his thumb. "Lead the way," he said.

Harry did a subtle double take, not expecting that. He'd always seen Snape and his clothes as inseparable, not counting a certain nightmarish scene that he pushed right out of his mind. Snape followed behind the queen and her guards while he was told to stay put. Ten minutes later, Harry expected to see Snape in a larger version of the same scrubs he wore, yet Snape returned, hair wet, still in his familiar clothing. The clothes were also soaking wet.

This was no time for humor, yet Harry found the sight disturbingly funny. He couldn't help it, "You can't even be a hostage like anyone else." He assumed Snape refused to go all the way bare and smirked before remembering the trauma he suffered at his Dad's hands. "Oh my God, I'm sorry. Forget I said anything. I'm stupid. The water threw me."

Snape glared while Harry's neurosis played out in too many apologies. He interrupted him, "This isn't water. I managed to analyze the substance showered upon us. It's a salt solution enhanced to raise our biochemical signatures to higher frequencies. About 1000 hertz higher than normal. To that of this cavern, I suspect. Anything lower than a certain range, is intolerable to these people. They would experience pain in our presence. The shower merely helps us acclimate to their environment, and us to them. However, the food contains the antidote for acclimating to these conditions."

When Harry only stared, he added, "If you must know, I did exactly as instructed. There were no clothes to fit me and I refused to waste magic on those insubstantial paper-thin sacks that you're wearing. I had them drench my clothing, wring them out and drench them again. Even my wand."

With that, he removed his wand and made a swirling motion around his head. He must've smuggled it in somehow. He made no bones about hiding it. He stirred up a current of wind and kept it localized within six feet around him until his clothes were dry. This struck Harry as odd. Snape could've easily used an instantaneous drying spell but chose this method instead. Before Harry could ask why, he saw guards on the platform behind him, stepping forward and coming together. There appeared to be discussion among them. The queen was no where to be seen, but Harry was sure they were still being observed in that strange window in the rocks. Out here, he could not see it, but in that cafeteria Snape had stood before it. The window had no edges, just a view through the rocks. It must've been part of the queen's technology.

Iece and the blue child were gone from the overhanging growth. Harry, still standing across the water, sensed it, even though he couldn't see it clearly from that distance.

He said, "How do we get up there? This place only obeys the queen."

Snape replied, "This place does as she wishes. How did you get up there the first time?"
Harry moved to the edge of the water and pointed down. "These columns of stones just came up. They met our every step."

Snape stuck his boot out over the water and immediately a tube of eroded rock broke the surface.

"I believe we have permission."

He led the way as Harry took a step after he had proceeded to the second pillar. It's a good thing we aren't afraid of heights, Harry thought as the flat-topped pillars took them higher and higher across the water, almost to the very ceiling of the cavern. By then he realized that it didn't matter how high or dangers the situation was, he'd risk it all to get Iece back.

Once they stood on the largest pillar, which stopped under the overhanging rock growth, Snape set about casting shields and protection charms. Harry stood there feeling useless, but then thought, what the hell, and began using the imaginary Elder Wand to help him. There wasn't much room to work with in terms of ground, but their spells were not limited to gravity and had full range of several kilometers around them. They layered more anti-detection wards around these until Snape was satisfied that he could do no more.

"We have to be careful. We don't know the sensitivity of their technology. Keep any magic at a fourth of your ability, unless I say otherwise. If we affect this thing, our magic will expand through it, and not stay contained here. I merely wish to test it."

Harry nodded.

"Be ready. I'm going to send a pulse into the ceiling, as you did. If enemies detect us and break through, you must throw their explosion back at them and seal the rupture."

"Got it." Harry poised, wand hand ready.

Snape repeated the actions he'd seen Harry perform and they both waited. After a few seconds, a mere ripple of light gently glided overhead, but not strong enough to light up the inner canals of the rock as before.

When there were no explosions or open fire, Snape said, "Interesting."

Without warning, he threw a spell out in front of him. "Sciandre Firmamentum." He immediately began climbing. Harry had never seen this spell before and looked on, impressed, as Snape leapt up an ephemeral sheen of stairs that were barely an outline.

"Why didn't they ever teach us that at Hogwarts," Harry wanted to know.

Snape spoke over his shoulder. "You were taught the basics. It wasn't up to us to make you take the most rudimentary skills and combine them in more creative ways. It's nothing more than a hybrid leviosa and patronus combined. "

"Oh," Harry decided to bite his tongue. "Can I come up too?"

"Will my steps work for you? I hope so, you're the only one of us who going to be able to fit into this."

"What?"

Snape motioned for him. It was obvious what he wanted Harry to do. Harry bit his lip and plunged into the decision to do it. After he tested the first wavering step, as the magical structure took on a subtle, silvery wave-like movement, he climbed with more confidence and squeezed around Snape to get to the opening of the growth. It was shaped like a pouch or a folded taco, he saw, with openings on each side. Up close, its surface was hard and granular as if molten glass had been contaminated with dirt before cooling and stretching like puddy from it's own weight. With no one in there, he couldn't tell if he was looking through it to the inside or not.

Harry climbed inside, at first recoiling from the shockingly soft interior lining. He looked at his hands before telling Snape, "It doesn't feel like rock inside. It's smooth, the way you'd expect the inside of a seashell to be, only, spongy as well. Crap! It feels wet."

"Don't think too much on it. Can you stand inside of it?"

Crouching, Harry was going to say no, but even when his head hit the top of the thing, it gave easily under his push and continued to stretch upward, allowing him to stand.

"Holy fuck! What is this?"

"It's responsive," Snape reminded him. "No doubt this is an intelligent form of the Earth's biology. We should consider it no less remarkable than Verticillium, a common fungus that has such adaptive properties that it lives inches below our feet and communicates the presence of any and all lifeforms to trees for hundreds of kilometers."

"Speaking of fungus. It smells like mushrooms and something else. And if that's the case, then you can get in here too. It's not wet after all, the lining is just extremely soft. Even silky."

Snape squeezed in beside him and cautiously stood to his full height. Harry watched the lining of the growth expand around him, with all the elasticity of a balloon. One square inch appeared to expand three hundred percent or more and as it did, the inner layers increased in translucent quality. They didn't appear quite as clear as class, but stretched enough to increased visibility outside of it.

Harry had never suffered from claustrophobia before, but he was suddenly conscious of the sound of his breathing in this close confinement.

"We're too trusting. They could trap us in here and do anything they want to us."

Two things happened when he said this. One, that silky lining expanded so far, they began to see channels and canals within it, strewn like blood vessels, directly close to their faces. Two, Snape grabbed his hand and squeezed hard enough to alert him to an unspoken signal.

Harry shut up, stunned.

Snape said, as if he'd done nothing, "We have to trust them. If they wanted to hurt us, they could've done it already."

He sounded unusually mild. "I think the queen is truly desperate or she wouldn't bother with our kind at all. Be still and look at the details of this thing. We're not going to get repeated chances to figure this out."

He still had Harry's hand and at that point, Harry knew the strong warm hand holding his, was a huge alarm signal in spite of Snape's calm words. There was a different message here.

"Relax," he told Harry. Then repeated for emphasis. "Re-lax."

Harry unclenched the largest muscle groups in an effort to do as instructed. He was immediately hit with an image of the red crystal in Snape's cave. At first their was the confusion of him and Ash fighting their way out of the fractured thing, but then his mind projected a super realistic image of Snape addressing the Minister of Magic on one side of him, and Bicksby from the CIUM on the other. A secret meeting. About twenty wizards, most of them aurors and muggle officers in the room. For a split second the vision was so detailed that Harry made out textures of clothing, smells like after shave and tense perspiration. Molly Weasley's thick ginger hair made her stand out in a row of seated wizards. Threads of her brightly knitted shawl, were crisp enough to make Harry feel itchy in their incongruous yellow, green, and orange fibers. Further back in the room, Draco's head also set him apart from the bodyguards and officers seated with him. He looked haunted, carrying the effects of the trial, but listened attentively. Then it all vanished.

He was looking at the inner membrane again. Snape let go of his hand. Before the narrative of all of this could piece itself together, Snape said, "Let's figure this out. We'll get out of here just fine."

Harry continued to stare, his lips slightly parted. He understood. He couldn't ask questions right now. The queen could probably see them anywhere, as well as hear them, with all this rock conducting her abilities. If Snape was participating in a larger set up, working with both the Ministry and the CIUM, he couldn't exactly be forthcoming with Harry. It wouldn't do to give the queen more information than necessary, since she had the ability to search Harry's mind. She may not be able to read specific thoughts, but she could glean gestalts of truth and that was still too dangerous. Now that he and Snape were allowed to use their magic, they could try to block the queen out, but Harry had so many questions. How did the CIUM get with Snape? Since Snape was no longer in hiding, he'd be easy to find for them, but what made them all team up like this? Was there some sort of plan everyone was being briefed on? Was Draco fully healed?

With the two groups cooperating, it had to be more than the kidnapping. As amazed as Harry was, to discover all this when he thought he was alone, he suspected the Backaal posed a global threat somehow and Bicksby's people were just well informed. They weren't necessarily looking out for Harry and his family, but it might serve their best interest that Harry was at the heart of all this. For them, he must've been like a man on inside, an infiltration. He couldn't wait to get Snape inside an array of privacy spells and find out.

While he was thinking this, Snape touched his wand to the silk lining inches from their faces. He sent a pulse of his magic into it. That spot didn't exactly light up, but it thumped as if something leapt under the membrane. He and Harry shared inquisitive glances. Snape did it again, this time sending a stronger current through the tissue. That thump became a sequence of thumps. This felt encouraging, so he graduated his pulses, trying to determine the threshold that caused the reaction Harry had gotten earlier.
He dared not go full strength yet.

"Harry, you try. This place lit up for you."

Harry did, completely ignoring the fact that his wand hand was empty. In his vision, he saw the Elder Wand and touched it gently to the surface area that practically rippled at his touch. The lining took on a clearer quality, becoming less cloudy and they saw movement through it, like watching water move through a pouch. That disturbance produced a phosphorous glow that darted out in a strobe effect before going dark again.

Snape knew that Harry had barely used any magic at all. "It's you it wants. I'm interfering. I'm getting out. When I tell you, send the pulse again."

He did. When Harry heard Snape signal from the ground, he did his thing. This time, the tissue stayed aglow, emitting ripples of thudding pulses and light through the interior of the growth. Snape instructed him to send more and more in increments. Both of them remained on guard, alert to any sudden attack. Harry knew what Snape wanted him to do. Keep increasing his magic to activate the light show that had lit up the whole cavern. That way, they would know the triggering amount and tip toe around that risk.

At times the clarity within the lining increased and decreased. Harry tried to see Snape's expression down below, tried to determine their progress by the look on Snape's face, which was one of intense study. Snape would look up at him, then move his eyes around to the left, as if following a slow-moving tennis ball. They'd shift in the opposite direction, looking all the way around the cavern before coming back to Harry. It wasn't long before Harry was using his normal level of magic that the crystal tubing embedded throughout the cavern lit up, making Harry wonder if this silk lining stuff coated the insides of those as well. They waited and after a few minutes, things went dark again.

"Harry," Snape called. "I want you to intend for your magic to stay in there for five minutes after you've sent it. Come out."

His use of the word 'intend' reminded Harry of Thella and her lessons. Harry did as he was told, quickly stretching and pulling himself out so that he could get down on the ground and see the full effects for himself. It was just as before. Everything was so bright overhead, they could make out where tubes of quartz grew out of bare rock, bridging the ceiling and disappearing again into more raw earth. But more structures came to light now. They saw that the overhanging growth wasn't the only one. It was the biggest one, but their were smaller versions spaced equally apart from it, higher up. There also appeared to be more minor ones embedded deeper in the cavern, in inaccessible places that receded further than their eyes could follow, even with the darkness lit up.

They hardly knew what they were seeing, but they tried to follow every detail available to them. Each noted the flow of liquid through the pockets and channels of rock over their heads. Again, what was opaque stone, took on translucent qualities and the moving stuff took on a green glow and moved similar to chlorophyll under a microscope. This light show lasted more than ten minutes, by Harry's calculations. He'd never had to quantify his magic by timing it before. Beside him, Snape had produced a Quick Quill pen and table. It maniacally took notes as he followed the activity. Harry tried to make sense of the obvious systematic display, but could not. Eventually, all of the activity decreased before slowly fading back to opaque, dull stillness. Everything went dark again.

They looked around, determining that nothing had really changed as far as their safety was concerned. They were still alive and no explosives had interrupted them. Harry found himself sweating and excited, as if something momentous had happened, but unable to say exactly what it was. Snape too, seemed at a loss for words. He frowned, and Harry wasn't so sure he liked that perplexed look. When Snape was confused, that wasn't a good sign.

"What do you think?" Harry asked. "That lining is like cells that conduct energy. Magic instead of electricity or something. Am I close?"

"It's chemical. However, it is stimulated by your magic."

"So this is really like an organ inside the Earth, right? We're attempting to jump start a giant heart?"

Snape lifted his wand and illuminated the space around them. He looked at Harry as if delivering grave news. "This isn't a heart. It's a womb."