Hermione slipped out of the courtroom with the other representatives, up the stairs in the crush of people, and waited in the crowd for the lift to arrive. She glanced backwards at the Department of Mysteries, walls gleaming black in the torchlight, and bit her lip. She didn't really want to have lunch with Dumbledore, and she was perfectly capable of making it back to her seat in time without supervision...
She really wasn't that hungry…
Silently, Hermione slipped away from the group, easing her way down the dark hallway in her dark Wizengamot robes to the door at the end of the hall. She wasn't likely to get another easy chance to go to the Department of Mysteries, she figured, and she didn't want to let this one slip by.
Upon opening the door, Hermione was faced by a perfectly round room with twelve identical doors. Slowly, she closed the one behind her, but another door did not open.
"Um," she said. "I'm hoping to talk to… a secretary, I guess?"
The room spun around her, before a door directly in front of her opened. There was beautiful, dancing light coming from the door, and carefully, Hermione made her way forward into the room.
As Hermione's eyes adjusted to the brilliant glare, she was able to see the cause: there were clocks gleaming form every surface, large and small, grandfather and carriage, hanging in the spaces between the bookcases or standing on desks ranging the length of the room. A busy, relentless ticking filled the place like thousands of miniscule, marching footsteps. The source of the dancing, diamond-bright light was a towering crystal bell jar that stood at the far end of the room.
"Can I help you?"
Hermione whirled around to see an Unspeakable next to her, clad in robes with the hood drawn. Their voice was utterly unrecognizable.
"Umm," Hermione said intelligently.
The Unspeakable sighed.
"Here for a prophecy?" the Unspeakable said, unkindly. "Come on, then."
Hermione had mostly intended to try and get an idea about what all the Department of Mysteries did. If they were the people who did the most research into magic itself and how it worked, Hermione was curious if they accepted summer internship applicants.
Still. She wasn't about to interrupt and correct the annoyed Unspeakable. The Hall of Prophecies would be fine to check out, she supposed. It'd be an interesting diversion at the least, and there had been a prophecy made about her.
Hermione followed the Unspeakable past small offices off the room of clocks, all the way to a door at the far side. As she passed the crystal bell jar, she was able to see there was a hummingbird in it, flying on glittering wind to the top, only to fall and die, becoming enclosed in a tiny, jewel-bright egg. A moment later the egg rose, cracking open to reveal the hummingbird, which reached the top and fell to the bottom again, feathers bedraggled and damp, and the bird was enclosed again in the egg by the time it reached the bottom.
"Do you know who made your prophecy?" the Unspeakable asked. "Or who received it?"
Hermione hesitated. "Err—"
The Unspeakable made a frustrated noise. "Do you know anything about it?"
"It was made by Luna Lovegood," Hermione said quickly. Aggravation through the identity-masking voice magic was frightening. "I don't know who it was made to."
The Unspeakable took a clear orb from their robes.
"Luna Lovegood," they told it, and the orb began to glow an opaque white and lifted into the air. The Unspeakable refocused on Hermione. "This will take you to relevant prophecies made or received by that person. Only take the ones about yourself. You will be driven to horrifying madness otherwise."
"Understood," Hermione said weakly.
The Unspeakable shooed her away, and Hermione followed the glowing light.
She emerged into a dark hallway, with what looked like dozens of upon dozens of glass spheres, sitting on tiny pedestals. Each had a tiny label beneath it. The orb floating in front of her bobbed impatiently, and Hermione hurried after it.
At the end of the row, the orb turned, and Hermione gasped, a sound that echoed in the enormous room she found herself in. There were hundreds of sets of shelves in the hall, with thousands upon thousands of prophecies upon them. Was this all the prophecies ever made? How did the hall of prophecy work? Did these just sit here forever until the person who they were made about came to listen? Or did they expire eventually, and this was just how many prophecies were made all the time?
The orb floating down the aisleway, past many rows, until it turned into row 97, according to the tiny plaque on the shelf. It floated midway down, stopping to hover in front of a particular sphere, and Hermione examined the label.
l.m.l. to x.l.l and g.h.o.; h.j.g.
(?) hermione granger
This must be it, Hermione thought. L.M.L. must be Luna, and she'd probably recited the prophecy to her father and someone else the first time, before she'd repeated it to Hermione in the bookstore during her first ever trip to Diagon Alley. Careful, Hermione picked up the sphere.
The sphere did nothing in her hand, and Hermione bit her lip. She reached out with a bit of her magic, just enough to touch it. The sphere reacted, and the ghostly image of a very young Luna Lovegood emerged and began to speak.
"The viper borne to Muggles shall be the New Blood to change the world
By clearing the cluttered path with those who answer her call
Whether gifted or claimed, true, faked, or false, pure magic unfurled,
The she-serpent borne of teeth shall rise and triumph over them all."
The ghostly image receded back into the sphere, and Hermione held it a moment longer, before carefully setting the sphere back on the shelf. As she did, the label of the sphere right next to it caught her eye:
p.a.e.l. to x.l.l. and l.m.l.
luna lovegood and (?) hermione granger
And then another, next to that one:
a.g.e. to x.l.l. and l.m.l.
(?) hermione granger; (?) luna lovegood; (?) susan bones
Hermione had to pause.
'l.m.l' she'd determined was Luna Lovegood. She suspected 'x.l.l.' was Luna's father, Xenophilius Lovegood. Who was 'p.a.e.l', though? Had that been Luna's mother?
Further, there was a question mark next to her own name. Did that mean they were unsure the prophecy was connected to her? If she picked it up, and it turned out it wasn't, would she still go insane?
Hermione bit her lip. Surely it was the label that would allow someone to pick the sphere up, right? She couldn't imagine that recorded record of the echoes of temporal magic traveling through time would be able to identify a magical signature. But it was the Department of Mysteries. Who knew what they could do?
Before she could talk herself out of it, Hermione grabbed the sphere, holding her breath for a minute. When nothing happened, she slowly exhaled, and she reached out to touch the orb with her magic. The ghostly image of a young woman emerged.
"A bridge of bloods will bridge the realms," the ghostly woman said. "A tree of power will hold her house and seat. When she hides in the trees of the she-spawned she, the blood that runs will lay at her feet." The young woman suddenly raised her hands toward the ceiling. "Let the blood run, yea, let them bleed, for it will weaken those in power. The bridge will bridge the realm and realms; she is the last bridge, and none will come after."
The ghostly image of the woman receded back into the orb, and Hermione blinked, mechanically setting it back on the shelf. She paused a long moment, before she plunged her hands into her robes, desperately searching.
"C'mon, c'mon," she muttered, growing anxious. "Of all the times to not have a scrap of parchment…"
She found a bent self-inking quill at the bottom of her left pocket, but nothing else helpful. Scowling, Hermione snatched up the orb again and sat on the floor, hiking up her robes.
"Okay," she said, holding the orb in her left hand and pushing her magic at it. "Let's go."
The ghostly woman reemerged, and Hermione rapidly wrote down what the image said, scrawling onto the side of her thigh with the worst handwriting she'd had in years. It took three replays to get it all down, and when it was finally done, Hermione blew on her leg to dry the ink before carefully standing up.
She traded that sphere for the one next to it, the one with her coven members listed. When madness didn't claim her, she sat down again, hiking up her robes with her quill at the ready.
This time, the prophesier was an old, bearded man.
"At the Solstice will come a new dawn, born of fire and forged in flame," he said. "The coven-child cares not for rules and will entirely reset the game." He continued, "Deaths shall die a fiery death, and contradictions shall resolve. The she shall respect the no man and together make Magic evolve."
Aware of the dwindling time, Hermione managed to replay it once more to scribble it all down. She hastily blew on her leg and returned the sphere to its place on the shelf. She was turning to the glowing navigation orb to ask it to take her out when her eyes caught on another nearby sphere.
s.p.t to a.p.b.w.d
dark lord and (?) harry potter
Hermione stared.
A prophecy, about the Dark Lord and Harry Potter? One that Albus Dumbledore had heard?
She made a mental note of the initials and to ask Harry about it later before taking off running, certain she was undoubtedly already late to get back to the courtroom.