Luna Lovegood looks around in awe as the chariot they're on parallels the earth as Lamia scans the sea below them for something. After a moment she finds her voice and quietly says, "Hermione, look up."
Luna knows the instant that her only friend opens her eyes, as the faint whimpering gives way to a gasp of awe. A moment later, Hermione says, "It's beautiful, where are we?"
Luna glances down as she says, "We're above the sky."
Hermione mutters, "That's impossible."
Luna shakes her head, "No, really, we're above the sky. I can see it below us."
Slightly peevishly, Hermione glances down, and her eyes widen in awe,
"Are we in space?"
Somewhat sarcastically, Luna asks, "Is space above the sky?"
Suddenly, the chariot launches into a dive towards the Mediterranean sea and Hermione screams as a silvery glow surrounds the chariot as it dives through the atmosphere, and a cloud towards the open sea. Suddenly, the chariot levels out as an island appears beneath them, and it comes to rest on a small grassy hill overlooking a single roomed stone house.
As Luna steps off the deck of the chariot, she looks around in confusion as she can't see a single wrackspurt, blibbering humdinger, or any of a dozen other creatures she can normally see moving around in the air. Even the ones that they brought with them are slowly drifting away from them. Though, the ones around Hermione seem to be hanging on far more stubbornly than she'd expect.
With a shake of her head, Luna skips towards the house, as that seems like the most sensible place to be going.
═══════ ◌ೋღ ღ ═══════
Lamia frowns as Hermione doesn't let go of the Chariot, even after they've been on the ground for a finger of time. Shaking her head, she carefully prises Hermione's hands off the edge of the chariot, and easily lifts the catatonic girl in both arms.
As she slithers off, Beth tries to stand, only for her legs to continue to behave more like jelly than they should do. She swiftly passes Lovegood on her way to the house. When she fails to see her mother in the house or workyard, she turns to the caves and slithers her way down the central spiral corridor. It's not until she reaches the family gallery that she pulls her tail in, and proceeds on foot, as the lamplight that's flickering from inside the passageway tells her that her mother is there.
As Lamia walks into the gallery, she pauses in surprise at the neat piles of tablets stacked around the left hand side of the room. Shaking her head she softly calls, "Mother, this mortal seems to be stuck."
═══════ ◌ೋღ ღ ═══════
Kirke looks up from the scribes altar, and the tablet she was reading. Pushing herself to her feet she walks over to look at the young woman in Lamia's arms.
After touching the woman around the head and neck she shakes her head, "This mortal has been touched deeply by Phobos and Deimos, and Deimos' grip has tightened it's hold on her.
Lamia sighs, "I didn't realise it was so bad. I thought she was just uneasy about coming onto Auntie's chariot, and she seemed fine when she was watching the stars."
Kirke looks at her daughter consideringly, before deciding to use this as a teaching moment rather than one deserving punishment. "I see. Then it is down to you to protect the mortal from their influence in the future. I'll take her to the house and brew an elixir that will drive away their influence. Take the tablets by the entrance to Calliroe and tell her to have them copied and sorted, as they belong in the general galleries. Once you've done that you need to find the general enchantment to ward of both Phobos and Deimos. Make sure it will also cover Epialês, Algos, Atê, and Hybreos too, as you don't want there to be a path for Deimos and Phobos to work around your charm. Oh, and beat it into a talisman, so that you don't have to be around the mortal all the time."
Lamia groans as the difficulty of what's required quickly exceeds anything she's had to do before. "Are you sure that she needs all of those?"
Kirke smiles, "Really Lamia, haven't you even used the skills I taught you to find out what's wrong with the mortal. Or did you come straight to me for help?"
Lamia grimaces and silently picks up the tablets as her mother glides out of the gallery with Hermione.
═══════ ◌ೋღ ღ ═══════
Lamia has already refilled the oil lamp she's using in one of the unoccupied galleries three times when the blond haired mortal is led in by one of the Nymphs.
In her arms she holds a basket with three loves of bread, one of the slates that Beth uses, a stick of charcoal, and the two books about words. Silently the woman sits down beside her and places the slate on the altar next to the clay mould of the talisman Lamia's going to make.
The next time Lamia looks up from her incription, the woman points at
Lamia and says, "Lamia." Then she points at herself and says, "Luna"
Lamia smile and says, "Luna."
Picking up the smaller dictionary, Luna then carefully writes out the words for 'Can I help' in modern Greek.
Lamia looks at the writing for a moment, before using the charcoal to write out the words in the script that her mother taught her. Then she nods and points to the tablet that she's used to copy out the specific enchantments she needs to fit on the disk she'll be using.
Luna beams a smile at Lamia before writing out the same message in English and saying it aloud.
As time passes, the two of them slowly develop working relationship as Luna demonstrates an artistic flair that Lamia lacks, and is able to quickly sketch out a flow on the planning slate that would take multiple frustrating re-mouldings of the clay template to achieve, simply because charcoal is easier to erase without affecting the surrounding pattern, and there's no risk of the charcoal drying out too much to be useable. At some point Lamia is able to demonstrate the reasons why they use oil lamps, and why the scribe altar has three positions for them.
Eventually though, the day catches up with Luna and she falls asleep on
Lamia's shoulder. As she does, Lamia looks down at Luna before reproducing the current iteration of the design in clay.
═══════ ◌ೋღ ღ ═══════
Madam Bones sits in an old suite on the 3rd floor, one that rather incongruously has a trapdoor in the floor. Also in the room are the headmasters of Beauxbaton's and Durmstrang, along with three witches or wizards wearing hooded grey robes. On the table, that's been placed on top of the trapdoor, sits the goblet of fire.
Clicking her teeth in annoyance, Bones says, "As it's clear that neither of you are going to volunteer any information. Where are the students that have been kidnapped."
The grey cloaked person Bones mentally labels Uno says, "We're fairly sure that they weren't kidnapped."
Bones presses the heel of her hands into her eyes, "If they weren't, no actually I don't care. Where are they?"
Duo shakes their head, "We don't know."
Trio adds, "We do know that Miss Granger has a demonstrated fear of heights."
Bones groans and indicates to the two headmasters.
Maxime asks, "What was Dumbliedore trying to do?"
Duo says, "We believe that he was trying to destroy the goblet. According to his veratasium transcript he believed that the goblet would transport the chosen champion to the cup so that the overseers, judges, could persuade them to stick around long enough. He had no idea that submitting her as a reluctant Hero would put her life in danger."
Karkaroff asks, "So, who's going to replace Dumbledore as a judge."
Uno shrugs, "We had him use his position as overseer to replace his position with Madam Bones."
Bones grinds her teeth at the blatant evidence that not only is her evidence cabinet not secure enough, but they also have enough access to her department to pull something like that with a suspect that should be under 24/7 watch.
Trio notes, "It may be of some interest to note that his Phoenix is actually bonded with the school, not Mr Dumbledore."
Bones grinds out, "Thank you for your time and efforts. Is there anything else that you know about the tournament and goblet of fire, that if we knew you knew we'd believe was important information for us to know?"
Madam Maxime frowns as she parses that sentence while uno, duo, and trio have a brief discussion underneath a privacy charm. "That was an odd and complicated question."
Bones nods, "It's the only way to get those bastards to admit to things sometimes. Their entire department exists to keep and discover secrets."
Trio speaks up, "The answer to your question is. There is."
Bones smiles at Maxime, "See." Turning to Trio she demands, "Then you will provide us with any of that information that does not break your founding oaths."
As the three of them stand up, Duo unshrinks a folder on the table.
Bones sighs, "Of course they were anticipating that."
Karkaroff pulls the file over and opens it. As soon as he sees the two beer stained mats, stuck to a sheet of parchment and labelled, 'contract' and 'tasks' he swears in German.
Maxime pulls the folder over and stares at the beer mats, before looking at Bones, "What is this?"
Bones sighs before she places the mats on the table, and looks at the next page for a few minutes. "It seems like Ludo Bagman was responsible for activating the Goblet of Fire, and he used the original rules and tasks," she waves at the beer mats, "rather than the vastly more comprehensive list of tasks and rules."
Bones flicks through the folder before pulling out two nearly inch thick piles of parchment. "Namely these documents."
Maxime stares at the documents incredulously, "You are saying that the champions only have to obey three rules, namely Be Entertaining, Complete three predefined tasks, and don't harm the judges. And the tasks they have to complete are, Steal from a dragon, Do something in the black Lake, and Maze. That's it, after years of negotiations and compromises, this is the entirety of the tasks."
Karakoff grumbles, "I thought we'd removed the task for the lake due to the difficulty with being able to see what happens underwater."
Maxime shakes her head, "We did."
After a few minutes, Bones looks up in alarm, "Wait, didn't they say that they'd had Dumbledore replace his position as an overseer with my name! I do not have time for this."
═══════ ◌ೋღ ღ ═══════
Hermione wakes up to the feeling of woolen sheets against her skin, as her eyes flick open she tenses as she realises that she doesn't recognise.
"Easy Miss Granger, you're safe."
At the sound of Professor Babbling's voice, the memory of looking at the stars and then plummeting to earth return with a rush, and Hermione's eyes widen as her body goes rigid. However the expected rush of fear doesn't come.
The professor's voice continues, "We're on the island of Aeaea in the Mediterranean sea, otherwise known as the island Circe lived on. Circe herself gave you an elixir to drive away the influence of 'Phobos and Deimos' that had taken hold of your mind. She gave me the same elixir too."
Hermione frowns as she mutters, "Call me Hermione." In a more normal tone she continues, "Wait, aren't they just myths?"
"That's what I thought. But I have compelling proof that what we believe to be myths, may have more than a little truth to them." "What proof? Wait, you're trying to distract me. What Elixir?"
"The proof is the two chariots outside, and the six horses that are grazing on the hillside."
As her stomach grumbles, Hermione doubles over, "Professor, where's the toilet?"
"This way, and Hermione, I asked you to call me Beth. I'm not your
Professor anymore. In fact, I feel like I should hand back my
masteries in Ancient Greek, and Linear B."
As she carefully pushes herself to her feet, Hermione notices that Beth is flexing her hand uncomfortably. Spotting her clothes, she quickly pulls them on as the autumn air assaults her skin.
As they leave the house, it finally hits Hermione that they're not in the UK. Or anywhere close to it, as the air tastes clean in a way that she's only ever tasted in the mountains, skiing with her parents. Lost in the strangeness of the situation, she doesn't register that Beth had taken her to the edge of a large stream.
"Here you go, the shovel is by that tree, remember to cover your hole once you've finished."
Hermione's attention snaps to where they are and her eyes widen in mortification, "Professor…"
"Miss Granger! I asked you to call me Beth, I do not work for the school anymore."
As Beth stalks off, Hermione looks around in despair, "What am I supposed to do?"
Beth calls back "Figure it out!"
Hermione groans as she turns to follow Beth, only for her stomach to cramp again and she's forced to cross her legs. As she's trying to work out whether to risk returning to house or not, a wood nymph steps out of a tree and grabs the shovel. A swift movement unearths a shallow hole in a flat area of the bank, and the Nymph easily moves aside what can generously be called her clothing and squats down.
Before she realises it, the Nymph has covered the hole with a small mound of dirt, before putting the shovel back against the tree she walked out of.
Hermione's bladder once more makes itself painfully known, and breaks her out of staring at the tree. Her face turns bright red in embarassment as she struggles with the shovel and the fact she's left her ablutions that little bit too long.
With no trails to follow, and having not paid attention to the path that Prof… Beth took from the house, Hermione looks at the stream, and starts to follow it against the flow. It doesn't take her long to come across a group of young women playing and washing in a natural pool only a couple of minutes walk from where she'd just been.
With a smile, Hermione calls "Hello?" the woman all fall silent for a moment, then break out into furious whispering. Just as Hermione is about to turn away, four of them climb out of the pool and surround her in a giggling group as they work out how to disrobe her, despite her protests.
Once naked, Hermione is led into the bracingly cold pool, where the young women return to their games.
