Hermione Granger and the Year Hidden from Hogwarts
Harry Potter Fanfiction
Chapter 26
A/N: Okay, here it is, hopefully the last chapter on the Trials so that we can finally move onto her actual heritage reveal.
April 25th, 1992
Hermione's knees wobbled.
Had she ever faced her own death before?
She'd experienced dying several times over, but always with the knowledge that it was someone else's ordeal, despite the very real pain.
Her stomach churned, and she entered the arena on shaky legs, feeling as if she was on the edge of hyper-ventilating.
The same gobless that'd checked her over for a third blood mark brought over the sword she'd tossed aside.
"Oh, I don't—" she began, but the gobless cut her off.
"We would not be accused of being fair by a wand-waver," she growled, spitting on the ground.
Hermione frowned at her, grabbing the sword. "Right, because pitting a juvenile who's had no magical schooling against a creature that takes no less than one hundred skilled wizards to subdue is the epitome of fair."
The gobless snarled a grin, not bothered by her accusation in the slightest.
Ear-splitting yowling echoed around the arena, raising the hair on the back of her neck. Shouts from dozens of masculine voices followed—the nundu's handlers, perhaps?
With each echoing step, she grew less and less certain that her plan would work, let alone whether it was ethical or not. Her focus centered more on if she would actually survive or not.
In the middle of that, to pile on top of troubles, something twinged and vibrated against her being, and she instinctively knew it was one of the bonds.
It felt farther than from within the arena, so that ruled out Ignis and the new binding contract with Flitwick, leaving only Erl back at MI5 headquarters.
What was happening there?
The ground echoed, and the shouts grew more panicked.
No matter. MI5 could be on literal fire, and she'd still need to prioritize what was happening here.
She sent a mental pat to the thick tether, hoping Erl would understand to be patient so that she could focus on this last trial before shutting herself off to all but the approaching creature that finally appeared being ushered from a giant tunnel on the far side of the arena.
It was a giant, slathering animal—and yes, it did resemble a large, black leopard, but that was such a pale description to real life, breathing, hot-blooded beast before her.
It was covered in black spikes, and from Flitwick's description, it would look more like a lion of death when it inhaled due to its expanding neck that filled into a terrifying mane, just before it would expel the prepared air with its toxins.
The goblin wranglers didn't even step foot inside the arena. Once it was in, they retreated, and not a moment too soon, a shimmery, pearlescent shield cut off the creature as it pounced after them. It rammed into the translucent wall, sending an echo reverberating up, the magic thickening to milky white nearest the area of impact before evening out once more.
It would protect the audience from the danger of the beast and certainly interfere with Flitwick's backup plan to interfere on her behalf if things got too dangerous.
It also trapped her in with the irritated creature, and she felt it deep in her soul the second it realized that while its intended prey had escaped, it wasn't alone.
When it's glassy eyes slowly turned in her direction and locked onto her, she knew she'd have nightmares for weeks, if not the rest of her life, from the slow, terrifying action—if she survived, that was.
If she'd assumed Flitwick had exaggerated its size when comparing the nundu to a bus, she'd been sorely mistaken. The thing stood taller than a double-decker, and its muscles rippled with breath-taking power beneath its spike riddled black fur.
If a panther and a blowfish ever got together and had deadly, horrifying babies, this would be the result.
The recently returned sword dropped from her numbed fingers, and the nundu leapt into action.
"Oh," the announcer startled, somewhat belatedly as the creature clashed into her hastily erected shield, the force of which sent her rocketing back into the wall of the arena behind her. "The match would begin!"
She shook her head, stunned by the impact, but she kept her grip on the shield up as her vision returned.
And how lucky that she had because when her vision returned the creature's face, towering above her, was the first thing she saw. It dove at her, scratching and biting at the shield, its jaw large enough to wrap nearly halfway around her full-bodied sphere.
It bit down, and somewhat luckily, its inability to pass the more than halfway mark meant that instead of having to withstand the force of its bite, that her bubble of energy shot out from its clamp-jawed death trap instead, rolling with her inside it.
The unfortunate consequence of that was that she tumbled head over heels, dizzy and dazed when she finally slowed to a stop.
If this fight had been counting on first blood like before, she would've already earned the first point against her as warm liquid ran down from a bump on her head, dotting and smearing the inside of her shield that'd encountered the wound.
It was a rather macabre sight that she noted distantly sent the goblins into a bloodthirsty uproar.
She didn't have time to care too much about the taste of her death on the tips of their tongues because the nundu was even more angry and bounding in her direction. With two leaps, it'd cleared the considerable distance and pounced on her, sending her spinning off again.
If she hadn't been exposed to Side-Along Apparition before had nothing left inside her but water, she would've been violently sick. Which would've been immensely awful since she didn't intend to release her hold on this shield—her sole lifeline since Flitwick was cut off from interfering by the arena's shield—until she was down to her dying breath.
When the orb slowed to a stop, her rattled brain hadn't even had time to settle her vision before two images of the nundu, now more resembling a pair of angry lions straight from the depths of the underworld, hovered over her.
This was it, she thought, the moment of truth. She couldn't help but feel somewhat relieved that she was no longer standing in for the overgrown beasts' cat toy.
She switched to her metavision, wholly intimidated by the breathtaking display of the nundu's power. Even in the darkness of this vision, the dark ironstone of the nundu's power was visible, swirling around its lungs as it prepared to release its deadly breath.
It would be ideal if she avoided testing that altogether.
She split her attention between maintaining the shield and gathering up a mass of energy that she manipulated to match the nundu's natural hue. Luckily, the shade of grey wasn't too removed from her own bluebell. She adjusted the frequency of the energy until it achieved the correct color, and then lashed out with it, lucky that her own powers permeated through the protection when others' couldn't.
Unfortunately, the process of passing through the barrier affected the speed and altered the color slightly. Before she could correct for that discrepancy, the nundu released a cloud of toxic breath, swirling in the same sickly grey as the rest of it.
She wondered what it looked like in normal sight, if it would be visible at all.
In her metavision, she watched with bated breath as it met her shield and… dispersed.
She gasped in relief, unaware of how terrified she'd actually been until she saw the confirmation that her shield would hold up to one of its natural weapons.
Without waiting, since she wasn't sure how many more direct hits she could withstand against her shield, she began adjusting the flow of the energy, fine-tuning it to correct for the color beyond the barrier since—again—she'd have to be dead or dying before she intended to release her hold on this protection.
The nundu was quick though, and once it realized its breath hadn't affected her, it growled in fury and swiped at her with one oversized claw.
Her stomach rose into her throat at the weightlessness of being airborne for a terror-inducing three seconds as the projectile she'd become, traversed the entire length of the more than one-hundred-meter span.
Oh, this is not good, she had time to think as she saw the edge of the arena loom closer and closer.
She wished she'd taken a physics class as, at the last second, she yanked a loose wall of dirt up into the air in front of her. Her bubble hit that with teeth-jarring impact, passing through before the nearly instantaneous bone-rattling follow-up jolt of banging into the arena's shield.
There was a transference of energy as some of the sapphire blue of her shield shimmered in a firework of curling tendrils through the pearlescent presence of the arena's dome in a light-dazzling display of magic.
She wasn't sure if her curtain of dirt had helped, but it'd taken a lot of power, so she told herself it had as she bounced to the ground.
She'd landed near the discarded sword, and something about that niggled the back of her mind. She was bleeding, bruised, and severely depleted, on her last dregs. Instinctively, her body told her that she wouldn't survive another impact. At this point, she wasn't even sure if she had enough energy to subdue the animal, and her gaze returned to the discarded sword.
The way the earth weaver, Bulwak, had moved with it each time he tossed about his power… she wondered if it wasn't some conductor or magnifier.
A glance over her shoulder showed the nundu still on the far side of the arena, watching her and biding its time as it paced, gaze locked on her to see what she'd do next.
It could reach her in four leaps, maybe five.
And even as she thought that, it's neck puffed up again as it drew air, growing a mane to resemble a deranged lion once more.
"Bloody nundu," she growled back, glancing at the sword.
She'd have to drop her shield.
But she didn't have many other choices.
She wish she could confirm her brain's working theory it'd developed on the fly, but if Trainer Hart were here, he'd remind her that it was her most valuable asset.
With a cry, Hermione dove for the sword, dropping her shield at the last possible second so that she could scoop the garnet encrusted blade, glittering like little puddles of blood—what she would resemble if this didn't work.
The ground shook with jarring force, and she spun to see the nundu had already crossed half the arena.
She switched to her metavision, spooled up as much of the ironstone grey as she could, and then released it on the nundu's next leap. She'd underestimated it's stride. It wouldn't four; it'd be on her in three.
The force of the released energy blasted from the goblin-forged weapon in a torrent, sending her back two steps until her back met the cool energy of the arena's shield. With a force that made her ears pop, the deluge met the nundu, disorienting it.
She wasted no time in weaving a net around it, not stopping even when it seemed to shake off the initial hit and take another lumbering step forward, air puffed up and ready to release.
I should recall the shield, her thoughts blared, but it would also disrupt the flow of the energy and break the process.
She might have to start over with the bindings.
There were too many unknowns.
What she did know, with unerring certainty, was that she would not survive another careless swipe of that creature's paw. Not to mention, she'd put everything she had into this attack. If she broke off now, for all she knew it could dissipate, wasted into the air.
She'd backed herself into a last stand.
The air sack on the nundu's neck trembled as it reached full capacity, and just when it was about to release, a visible change began to happen.
It froze in place, mouth halfway open to display rows of sharp, white fangs.
Hermione pressed her advantage, weaving more intricately now that she'd gotten an initial net surrounding the titan beast.
The nundu shook its head, as if to brush off distracting thoughts.
Hermione's entire body shook with exhaustion and pain, but she maintained a singular, narrowed focus. Nothing existed outside her patternmaking of the ironstone energy, not the confusion of the crowd, not the false starts and stops of the confused beast as it attempted to press forward, and not the warning bells going off in her mind that she was close to exhausting her core.
Ignoring all that, she sent three more cords out to strengthen the tether now that she was satisfied with the netting. Each one affected the beast.
The first sent the nundu ramrod straight, like a statue meant to guard the gates of Hell. The second intertwined with the existing threads as the nundu hunched low to the ground as the toxic air passed through its neck membrane, filtering out the toxins to dissipate harmlessly into the air as normal oxygen, and the third had the nundu bowing its head and closing its eyes in a hope-giving display of submission.
And that was when her energy gave out.
She collapsed to the floor, even losing her grip on her metavision as she kept a wary eye on the beast before.
Without access to her visiomagus abilities, she had no way to verify that the tether had held, so she kept her wary, sharp, adrenaline-fueled, but exhausted gaze on the nundu not ten feet from her. If it chose, it could stretch out one of its man-sized paws and mash her out of existence without inching forward another step.
It wasn't her imagination that the entire arena held its breath. Even with such concentration trained on the threat, her peripherals picked up on the frozen statures of the audience.
You and me both, she thought.
Finally, after what felt like eons, the nundu opened its eyes.
The crowd gasped, but, with a curl of guilt, Hermione recognized the empty gaze that locked onto her.
It was over, even if the announcer and onlookers hadn't realized.
With Herculean effort, she climbed to her feet, her battered body moving with all the speed of an old, arthritic man. She approached the nundu who never made a move except to watch her with open, expectant eyes.
Even lying supine on the ground, flattened out, she was barely taller than its head. She carefully reached for a spot between its blank eyes, avoiding the numerous spines out of instinct even if she wasn't sure if they were poisonous, and scratched its fur.
It closed its eyes.
She'd traded hers and Flitwick's freedom for this nundu's.
She leaned closer and lowered her voice so that the words remained between them. "I will fix this. I promise you."
It didn't open its eyes.
Deliberately, she turned her back on the creature. It might've been rather cocky since she couldn't verify with her metavision, but even when she felt the great beast lumber to its feet, standing meters above her head, she didn't turn to look.
Instead, she raised her voice and called, "The nundu is subdued."
There was a moment of silence before the goblins went wild.