"Hey!" the security wizard said, standing up from behind his desk. "No visitors permitted after hours. Come back tomorrow.
His eyes widened when they settled onto Violet and Sirius as they stepped into the Atrium. The vast chamber was empty except for the security wizard and in the dim light, eerie shadows were cast upward onto the ceiling from occasional floor tiles that emitted weak blue light, distorted and blown out of proportion by the distance.
Violet was still glamoured as the grim-faced woman, and Sirius had wrapped a conjured red cloth around his face like a highwayman of old. She had her invisibility cloak with her, the liquid fabric folded into an improbably small pocket of her robes, but she doubted Sirius would fit under it with her. Besides, it would be unfortunate if someone were to connect an undetectable invasion into the Ministry that bypassed any and all security measures with a similarly remarkable invisibility cloak belonging to Violet Potter.
The security wizard reached for something under his desk, but he moved with the painful slowness of a career spent behind a desk rather than the field of battle.
"Imperio," Violet murmured, and the man's fingers stilled just millimeters away from the panic button.
"Nice one," Sirius said. "What are you going to do with him?"
Violet grinned. "Have him take the night off and go on one hell of a bender."
Sirius laughed. "Perfect."
Sirius led the way to the lifts, sticking to the edges of the Atrium. Even if the bottom floor was empty, glass-bottomed balconies circled high overhead, and it wouldn't do to be spotted by a Ministry worker burning the midnight oil.
The lift was lit by a warm orange ceiling lamp that flickered slightly. Burnished brass handholds were set into each wall. Violet watched the slatted wooden doors swing close with a click.
"Level Nine," Sirius said, immediately stumbling into the wall as the lift suddenly leapt to the side as if stung by a wasp.
Violet kept her feet more easily, crouching to maintain her balance as the lift suddenly careened into a steep fall. "How much farther?"
"Don't know," Sirius said through gritted teeth. He looked a little green. "I don't remember them being this fast."
Violet was about to remark that perhaps they could try asking the lift to go a little slower if it knew how to listen to the desired level when it suddenly slammed to a stop with a crash of grinding metal. The doors swung open with an absurd grace after the vigorous transit.
"Level Nine," a cool, sourceless voice said. "Department of Mysteries."
"Careful," Sirius hissed. "There'll be at least one Order member under a cloak or Disillusioned. Unless Dung's skived off again. And I wouldn't bet on the Unspeakables observing business hours."
"Don't worry," Violet said as she allowed her glamour to fall. Veiling the sight of others came at the cost of her own uncanny senses.
She raised her left hand and an even, slightly blue-tinged light spread away from them, illuminating the whole room without regard for distance. She sighed softly as her awareness sharpened. Even the antechamber to the Department of Mysteries was deeply magical, long forgotten enchantments woven into every millimeter.
With a flick of her wand, she conjured a cloth and tied it around her face like Sirius. She rolled her shoulders.
"If they're there, I shall see them."
She took the lead then since Sirius didn't know anything about the layout of the Department of Mysteries that she didn't. The antechamber was a small room with a neatly cleared desk and chair in one corner that could have been any Ministry office, but beyond that, the architecture was unlike anything else she had seen so far. A long corridor stretched outward, its floor, walls, and ceiling smooth black tiles of a material she couldn't identify. Winter's light illuminated branching polygonal patterns in the tiles, stark glowing white against the dark that throbbed with unrecognizable power. At the end of the corridor was a door—wood painted black, of course, but with a silver handle—that was crossed by the same white threads.
Something shifted. It was a figure under a very good Disillusionment charm, but in the wash of Violet's magic, they were haloed as if by a brilliant backlight. They started, then stilled, apparently confident in their invisibility.
Stupefy, Violet cast with a minute twitch of her wand.
Red light flared, and the figure dove aside at the last moment, slamming into the ground with a masculine grunt. His Disillusionment Charm collapsed as he erected a shield that immediately shuddered under Violet's assault. His hair was a bright red.
Stupefy. Depulso. Impedimenta. Celeratas Estribus!
The shield, even hastily raised, had clear power behind it, and Violet's initial spells accomplished little more than sending rippling waves through it that cast strange patterns of light on the walls, like sunlight shining onto the ocean floor. The last spell, darker than what had preceded it, caved the Protego Charm inward and coiled around the man's right arm. His fingers flew open, dropping his wand, and he let out a strangled sound as his right arm reached for his own neck and began to squeeze.
Stupefy.
The man went still, drawing an unconscious breath of relief. Violet picked up his wand and slid it back up his sleeve.
"Do you know him?" she asked Sirius.
"He's Order. Bill Weasley," Sirius said, wide-eyed. The whole exchange hadn't lasted five seconds. "Damn. I didn't see him at all. How'd you know he was there?"
Violet shrugged, leaning over the unconscious wizard. He was very handsome, and she could see the resemblance to the Weasleys at Hogwarts. She gently brushed a strand of hair that had escaped his ponytail away from his eyes.
"Not bad," she whispered, inches from his face. "Next time, strike first. Good thing you're getting a second chance, yes?"
His ear twitched and he let out an abrupt snore.
Violet laughed and rose to her feet. "Will he be the only one, you think?"
"Should be," Sirius said. His gaze flicked to the door at the end of the hall and back. "We weren't supposed to go farther than this corridor. But if we leave Bill here and he wakes up, we'll have the whole bloody Order showing up."
"Good point. Somnus. That should last a few hours at least." She Disillusioned him, and Bill's still form faded from normal vision, though he was still highlighted to her.
"He's still going to tell Dumbledore that someone broke into the Department of Mysteries, and it won't be hard for him to guess who. Death Eaters wouldn't have left him alive."
"I know," Violet said. "Counting on it. Dumbledore needs to know that keeping us in the dark isn't the lower risk option. If he knows that we're going act on our own either way, he'll realize it's better to coordinate."
Sirius coughed. "Interesting theory."
Violet sniffed. "All right, then. Let's go see what secrets the Unspeakables are hiding."
The white patterns in the black tiles twisted underfoot, writhing and subdividing into ever more intricate patterns that seemed to be drawn toward their footprints, twisting and thronging like a nest of serpents. They made their way down the corridor, the soft clicking of their shoes on the floor the only sound. Violet tried the doorknob, and it turned with a barely audible thunk.
No lock.
Sirius whistled. "Not sure if that's a bad sign or a really, really, bad sign."
"Don't know," Violet said. "But no finer invitation have I seen than an unsecured door."
Behind the door was a large cylindrical room of the same shiny black material. Violet's Winter light expanded to include the room, every corner and crevice perfectly lit. The white patterns continued unbroken into the room.
Violet dipped into a mock bow. "After you," she said.
Sirius made a derisive sound as he crossed the threshold. As his foot fell, Violet let out a breath as the patterns didn't seem to react.
"Look safe?" she asked.
"One moment," Sirius said. He spun his wand in an anticlockwise spiral and a pulse of air rippled through the room, stirring dust. "I don't see anything."
"Right."
Violet joined him in the room and immediately regretted it. The lines pulsed briefly, and she barely kept her feet as the room suddenly lurched into motion. It spun, faster and faster still, before finally slamming to a stop.
Sirius groaned and started picking himself up from off the floor. "Enough with the fucking spinning…"
Violet didn't respond. The room had eight identical doors, and after the violent rotation, she had no idea which one they had come through. She sighed.
"I have a feeling this is going to be rather more complicated than we'd hoped."
~#~
Déjà vu set in after the fourth spinning room, identical in all ways to those that had come before. Similarly uniform black corridors connected them, twisting and turning with no apparent logic. Occasionally, they passed labeled doors with cryptic names such as Temporal Anomalies, Cognition Manifest, and Volatile Exotics. They passed these by; not only were they a potential distraction, there could be danger lying there too.
"Dumbledore's been down here a few times," Sirius said. "He said the prophecy room's huge, so we'll know it if we find it. Can't miss it."
Violet nodded. After the second spinning cylinder, she had had the idea of leaving behind something to mark their trail to avoid backtracking, and now soft blue motes of light marked their progress. They would fade after a few hours, hopefully leaving the Unspeakables none the wiser to their presence.
That was the theory, at least. Even without backtracking, she had no way of knowing how much longer it might take to find the prophecy. It would be deeply embarrassing, not to mention inconvenient, if their blind wanderings continued until the Ministry reopened the following day.
They passed through another spin room, and Sirius swore profusely as he was sent sprawling for the fifth time that day.
"You know," he said, "when you pitched this little excursion I was expecting a little more excitement and a lot fewer pratfalls."
"Perhaps if you simply crawled, you could avoid the bruises at the expense of what little remains of your dignity," Violet replied, voice dry.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I'd like to see how good your balance is after thirteen years in Azkaban…"
He trailed off when he realized she wasn't paying attention anymore. A labeled door had caught her eye, but it wasn't like any of the others they had passed. Emblazoned in gold letters on a small black plaque was simply The Other Side. Of greater note was that the handle appeared to have been hastily sawed off and an official-looking notice with skulls and crossbones in its upper corners had been hammered into the wood.
"By order of the Head Unspeakable," Sirius read from the notice, "all further research into project The Other Side is hereby forbidden. All materials relating to The Other Side must be incinerated. This door to the Cold Room is to remain closed at all times."
And, at the bottom in thick, angry letters, "EXTREME DANGER."
Sirius let out breath. "Damn. You know it's a bad sign when the bloody Unspeakables think something's too dangerous to research." He started making his way away from the door but stopped when he realized Violet wasn't following.
She put her hand on the door. It felt cool.
"I know what they were studying," she said.
"You—what?"
She pressed on the door. It didn't budge.
"Are you sure this is a good—"
Violet forced a wave of Winter magic through her hand into the door. She had known that the Unspeakables had researched the Wyld and even come into contact with Maeve's agents, eventually coming to a head when Aryssa tried to assassinate Violet with two expulsed Unspeakables' help several years ago. There was no doubt that this was the source of that research.
The temperature dropped several degrees and there was a long, crisp cracking sound as whatever magical protections had been placed on the door failed and the wood began to blacken and fall away in clumps, decaying before their eyes. Violet wasted no time striding over the blackened dust into the room.
It was bizarre. At first, it seemed as if a divine hand had seen fit to scoop up a chunk of wintry forest and deposit it here, at the bottom of the Ministry of Magic. Evergreens heaped with snow and the trickling of cold water flowing beneath the frozen surface of a small stream made the scene appear serenely beautiful. But closer inspection revealed the truth. The trees were artificial, the cold controlled, and the stream had been charmed to flow unceasingly.
But what stood out above all was the arch in the center of the room. It was clearly designed by man and apparently carved out of a single massive block of stone. The white patterns in the floor, mostly hidden by the heaps of snow, curled around and up the arch, illuminating runic carvings in the stone with gleaming light.
It was not natural. It was not a chance conjunction between worlds. But Violet knew, without the faintest doubt, that this arch would carry any passer-through to the Wyld all the same.
"What the hell?" Sirius asked, staring at the arch with no less apprehension for his confusion.
For a moment, Violet considered destroying the arch. Although she had no business criticizing mortals taking part in matters of the fae, and the Unspeakables clearly weren't using the arch anymore, something about its mimicry of what should arise only from nature seemed… profane.
She shook her head. Profane or not, it wasn't hurting anything, and to be honest, the prospect of being able to travel to the Wyld whenever she wished was intriguing. Her recent experience of being cut off from the Wyld proved the potential utility of creating artificial arches, even if the thought was instinctually distasteful.
"Let's go," Violet said, turning on her heels. Sirius followed her with a final uncertain look at the Cold Room.
"What was…"
"Nothing you'd be better off for knowing."
They continued in silence for the best part of another hour before they found it. A chamber that rivaled the Atrium in size yawned before them, asparkle in all directions with the glitter of glass. A hundred, a thousand, a million prophecies—tiny globes of portent, a tide of whispers of what may yet be.
"Merlin," Sirius breathed. "How many…?"
Violet wet her lips and lowered her gaze to the smooth black floor. "Focus on the one we're looking for and try not to look at the rest. If you do, something just might look back."
"Right," Sirius said, tearing his gaze away from the hypnotizing sea of glass. "Split up and look? It'll take long enough even then."
"Agreed."
Sirius jerked his head in a nod and took the left half of room while Violet moved to the right. Without his company, the chamber took on a more sinister air. Here, the words of long-dead prophets were preserved in glass and brass, the burnished plaques beneath each sphere the only clue to their identities. Some were truly ancient, dated centuries old, and still their ethereal magic within swirled in perpetual proclamation of Fate's limitless patience. It was as if someone had unearthed a mausoleum and put its contents on display in a morbid display of cemeterial beauty.
If the prophecies were ordered in any way, it must have been one that made sense only to the unquiet minds of the Unspeakables. For a time, it would seem almost as if they were ordered alphabetically by the prophet's names, but it would inevitably give way to chronological or geographical order, and then to mindless chaos before wrapping back around again. It was maddening.
"Violet," Sirius hissed from across the room. Speaking more loudly would have felt oddly flippant in these somber surroundings. "I think I found it."
That got her attention immediately. She hurried over and studied the brass plate.
S.P.T to A.P.W.B.D
Dark Lord,
(?) Violet Potter
Violet nodded to Sirius. This was it. She released a slow breath as she reached for the prophecy. The glass was cool and utterly smooth beneath her touch, but she could sense the protective magics on it recognizing her as one of the two named in the prophecy.
"Are you going to take it?" Sirius asked.
"Yes. But…" Violet considered for a moment and a smile curled her lips beneath her cloth mask. "I think it might be best if Voldemort isn't to know that the prophecy is gone at all."
She plucked a single long strand of her hair and wrapped it into a circle, then reached to her boot to draw a short knife. Taking a deep breath, she slashed it across her palm.
"What the fuck?" Sirius exclaimed as blood, nearly black in the low light, welled from the wound. It seemed certain that some would spatter to the ground, but instead it pooled in her palm, stilled by some unseen force.
"Shh," Violet said absently, then breathed out. Glowing fog, sky-blue, streamed from her lips and seemed to be absorbed by the pool of blood. The liquid stilled, becoming perfectly smooth, and lost its color. It began to spin, parting in the center to follow the shape of the circled hair, then rose to hover above her palm and a second and third axis joined its rotation, growing faster and faster until its spin could be seen no longer.
Suddenly, Violet snatched the sphere out of the air, and it was as hard and smooth as glass.
"Not bad, eh?" she said.
"I could have summoned that, you know," Sirius said, looking at the fake prophecy distastefully. "Unless you enjoy cutting yourself open, that is."
Violet pulled down her mask and licked the cut on her hand, then looked up, grinning through bloody teeth. The stinging sensation in her hand was already beginning to fade as the cut slowly shrank. "Oh, I assure you, you couldn't conjure this."
She held up the sphere and turned it so it caught the light. Like the real prophecies, it contained swirling mists, but they were darker and more turbulent, and as they watched, the clouds flickered with light. It was like a freezing thunderstorm barely restrained by glass.
"What sort of magic even is that?" Sirius asked, peering closer. "You didn't use a wand."
"Only the fairest of them all," Violet replied. "All right. Here goes."
In a single quick motion, she snatched the real prophecy and placed the fake in its place on the stand. She slipped the prophecy into her robes. She didn't really have a use for it and would probably smash it as soon as they got out of here.
A flash of red caught her eye and she looked up.
"Oh, that's lovely," she hissed and yanked the cloth back up to cover her face.
The glowing white patterns in the floor, visible only under her Winter light, were changing. From where she stood, a ripple was spreading through the white lines, and where it went, the lines turned thin and angry red, spidery like so many arteries.
"What?" Sirius asked, still unable to see the enchantment interlaced with every inch of the Department.
"I think…" Violet began, "that we may have pissed off the locals!"
Behind them, there was a crack as someone Apparated, passing unhindered through the wards. They wore deep blue robes, almost black, and under their hood, only an impenetrable void could be seen.
Sirius and she cast almost simultaneously, and two Stunning Spells rocketed toward the Unspeakable, who absorbed them with a silent spell and immediately Disapparated away.
"Run!" barked Violet. The Unspeakable hadn't been trying to get away. They were going to get reinforcements.
They made it halfway out of the Hall of Prophecy when a series of cracks announced the appearance of four foes. They were Unspeakables one and all, not an Auror to be seen. It seemed the rumors that the Department of Mysteries preferred to handle matters in-house were true. That was good, in a way. If they were Aurors, she might have felt the need to hold back. She hadn't forgotten that it had been the Unspeakables' research that had led to her being attacked by Aryssa at Maeve's orders.
Dissoluti Lux!
The killing light sprang from her wand, scything though their shields and into the Unspeakables' tight formation. Chunks of unraveled fabric from their robes drifted to the ground in the moment before they twisted and Disapparated.
Violet swore and tried to raise a barrier against teleportation, but it failed to take hold. It was as if the magic that permeated the Department of Mysteries was fighting against her.
Damn.
Fighting superior numbers was one thing, but if there mobility was unhindered and Sirius and hers was… It wasn't a fight she could afford to take.
"Keep moving!" she said, sprinting toward the exit. She heard the cracks of Apparition behind them, but Sirius slashed his wand and a rack of prophecies collapsed behind them with a mighty crash to cover their retreat.
Fumos!
Caustic clouds of dense, black smoke issued in all directions as she whirled her wand overhead. Breaking up lines of sight would help reduce the Unspeakables' ability to outmaneuver them with Apparition and possibly force them to pursue more cautiously or risk cursing each other by mistake. As long as Violet and Sirius stuck together, they could freely cast on anything that moved.
Something shifted in the smoke, and Sirius cast a volley of curses at it. There was a grunt of pain, and then a bright red flash sailed by them, a few meters away, before erupting into blinding light and deafening shock.
Violet staggered, ears ringing, as she collided with Sirius, who had been mostly shielded by her body. Something, maybe shrapnel, had cut into her leg, but it still seemed able to hold her weight.
She could see the door out of the room, but two of the Unspeakables stepped out of the smoke to block their path, curls of black lingering on their robes as if it didn't want to let them go. Behind them, the other two Unspeakables appeared and moved to surround them, then were shortly joined by yet another three hooded figures.
"Intruders," one of the recently arrived Unspeakables said, their voice hollow and inhuman. It sounded like a thousand voices all speaking in perfect synchronization but without the slightest bit of personality or emotion. "It has been some time since anyone has attempted to test our security. I advise you to surrender. There's no need to involve the law, and if you cooperate, it is not unheard of for would-be thieves to receive generous offers of employment."
Sirius stared in disbelief, his wand still outstretched. "You're offering us a job?"
The Unspeakable shrugged. "Provisionally. And contingent on your immediate surrender and complete cooperation, of course. Do you accept?"
Sirius gave Violet an uncertain look. It wasn't that he was seriously considering the offer, but Violet could imagine that from his perspective, their position might seem hopeless. Honestly, for all she knew, the Unspeakables were telling the truth. It didn't matter.
She smiled behind her mask, visible only in her eyes.
"Oh, friend," she said, an almost musical note to her voice. "I'm afraid I've already chosen my banner."
"We could make a better offer."
Violet shook her head. "No. You really couldn't."
She could hear her heart thundering within her chest. Ever since Winter's manifestation had left her in the Forbidden Forest, she had felt a vague sense of loss. Winter was always with her, but for those few minutes, there had been something more.
Now, under the flush of battle, it had returned. It was with her again. She could feel Winter's power rising within her, so strong it took her breath away and sent electric tingles though every part of her body. Was this how Maeve had felt when she claimed the seat of Winter's power? If so, Violet thought she had a new understanding of her actions. This power was intoxicating and undeniable. There was something more too, pinnacle of pinnacle, just beyond her reach. She wanted that, too.
She spread her arms as if they were wings. Her right leg felt warm, slick with her own blood, but she stood tall despite it.
"You should never have built that arch."
It should have been hopeless. They were surrounded, and the only exit was securely blocked. Six highly trained members of the Ministry's most secretive department had them dead to rights. None of it mattered.
Violet clasped her hands and Winter came to Earth.
Roaring winds emanated from where she stood, building to a torrent that flung prophecy orbs from their stands, hurling them like projectiles, and toppled solid metal racks. Cold came with it, so bitter that it ripped moisture from the air and froze it into jagged shards of ice, whipped like blades by the wind.
Violet realized she was laughing.
The closest Unspeakable died instantly, flash-frozen and as still and beautiful as a statue carved from ice. The rest raised shields, but they wavered, enervated by the unnatural cold, battered by cyclonic winds, and tested by flying daggers of ice.
Sirius's eyes darted in all directions, caught between shock, awe, and fear, in the eye of the storm but unburnt by frost. He shouted something, but his words were stolen by the wind.
Then, there was a flare of orange and red from the Unspeakable who had spoken to them earlier, and a second presence, every bit as destructive and beautiful as the storm, took form. Hungry, terrible flames erupted in the form of a burning dragon's head, and they ate the cold and the wind and the ice and the very air—
Fiendfyre. Indoors. And worse, they were managing to control it.
"Run!" Violet shouted, then took her own advice, sprinting toward the exit. The storm behind them continued to rage, but the Fiendfyre was steadily gaining ground against it.
Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.
Premonition buzzed in the back of her mind, and Violet twisted, just as a bolt of lightning shattered the air with its explosive toll. She caught it in her bare hand, wreathed in blue light, and felt it tingle as it wrapped around her arm. Finally, she released it with another crash, and streaking bolts of light leapt from one Unspeakable to another, straining their shields until they glowed. She followed it with a wave of rippling energy. It washed over the Unspeakables' shields but didn't fade, instead remaining a lingering sea of distorted light. Some prophecy shelves caught inside it began to rust, as if each second brought a hundred years of wear to them.
She kept running. Sirius hurled a spell behind them that exploded with a roar. Five meters.
They made it into the corridor at the last possible moment, the Fiendfyre literally snapping at their heels. It started to follow them down the corridor before retracting as the Unspeakable brought it to heel. Clearly they didn't want Violet and Sirius dead badly enough to let Fiendfyre rage freely through the tunnels of the Department of Mysteries.
Violet took the lead, following the trail of lights she had left behind them. She could hear the Unspeakables in pursuit, but as long as she kept them at least a turn in the passageway away, they couldn't Apparate upon them. Unfortunately, that was when the Department of Mysteries itself decided to make its opinion of intruders known.
The glowing patterns that saturated the structure of the Department, still glowing a sinister red, suddenly bloomed bright and the door ahead of them slammed shut and sealed, a point of red light tracing its edges and throwing sparks as the door melted into its frame. The patterns didn't fade.
"It's sealing us in! Inviolatus!"
No sooner than Sirius had stepped within the protective bubble of her shield than the arterial patterns unleashed their charge in a surge of destructive energies. Air froze; Solid material boiled; Space warped, and thunder cracked. None of it so much as scratched her shield.
Tentatively, the attack seemingly spent, Violet lowered the shield and released a breath as the strain of maintaining it faded.
Sirius cursed under his breath as heavy footfalls drew near. All six of the remaining Unspeakables turned the corner, wands ready. They were clearly in no mood for negotiation now, if the bright flash of the Killing Curse was anything to judge by.
Sirius blocked it with a chunk of the wall that had been blown off by the energy trap, but five more curses followed it, battering his defenses as quickly as he could conjure them. Violet hurled curses back at them, but their numbers began to tell. They were clearly skilled and capable duelists, but that wasn't what made them so dangerous. They fought with preternatural coordination, switching effortlessly between offense and defense without a word spoken.
Violet stabbed out with Legilimency, and it skated off robust mental protections as expected, but in the moment of connection, she'd noticed something. The Unspeakable's mind hadn't felt entirely normal. It seemed to flicker between a single entity and something greater, multitudinal. It was as though the team of Unspeakables were somehow mentally linked.
"In three seconds," Violet said, deflecting a Reductor curse back where it came and following it with a bolt of sickly Winter magic, "follow my lead."
Sirius grunted in response. Violet's eyes narrowed in concentration. The world seemed to grow slow around her, and she felt as if plunged into a freezing pool. The timing would have to be perfect.
One. A Killing Curse at the leftmost Unspeakable, forcing him to step in front of one of his allies' line of sight to avoid it—
Two. Water, conjured earlier and still imbued with Winter magic, exploding in a freezing torrent, forcing all the Unspeakables to react simultaneously, for just a moment—
Three. Crucio.
The Unspeakable whose vision had been blocked by the other as he avoided Violet's Killing Curse howled, the sound distorted by his cowl to sound truly unearthly. Each of the other Unspeakables also staggered as their mental link sharing some fragment of the Torture Curse between them.
"Now!" Violet shouted and slammed her hand into the wall beside them. The sealed door surely had powerful defensive spells on it, and she wasn't willing to bet on being able to break through before the Unspeakables found a countermeasure for her attack. But the wall? She'd already seen it could be damaged, cracked and pitted by combat magic.
A shockwave ripped from her hand, caving in a section of the wall several meters wide and reducing it to a rolling wave of rubble and dust. The hole led into another corridor—not one of the ones they'd traveled through on the way, as it had none of Violet's guiding lights.
They stepped through and Violet jabbed her wand. The rubble lifted itself into the air and reformed, fusing back together. Hopefully it would buy them some time.
She took off down the hallway at a tireless sprint, checking behind her only briefly to make sure Sirius was following. Her wounded leg had mostly healed already by now, and her gate was easy.
"Do you," Sirius said between panting breaths, "know where we're going?"
"Not in the least," Violet replied. "Did you see me take them all out with one Cruciatus? Tell me that wasn't cool."
"Ha," Sirius gasped, then slumped against a wall. Violet stopped running. He was very pale.
"Think they… caught me with something… back there," he said. He coughed, a wet, unhealthy sound.
Violet drew a sharp breath. The front of his robes were torn and blackened and slowly staining with red liquid.
"Right," Violet said, mind whirling. She wasn't sure what spell he'd been hit with, but it clearly wasn't a minor injury. He needed medical treatment, not to maintain a flat out sprint, but they would have to find another way out of the Ministry first. She screwed her eyes shut, trying her best to estimate their relative position in the labyrinthine architecture of the Department of Mysteries, but it was largely academic. Even if they fought their way out of Level Nine, they would still have to escape the Ministry proper, and she doubted the Unspeakables' reluctance to involve the Aurors would extend to allowing them to escape the Atrium unopposed. She could fight or sneak her way out, she was sure, but Sirius with his injury? Not a chance.
She should leave him. She should bid him farewell and avenge his death by carving a bloody path out of the Ministry. It was the logical option. It was even what he would probably want her to do. But however she framed the question, she couldn't accept it. Logical or not, Sirius had come to mean something to her, and abandoning him felt… wrong. Abhorrent, even.
Well, that was all very well and good, but she didn't like the idea of dying together any more. She needed to find an alternate way out, but the anti-teleportation protections felt nigh-unbreakable and even if there were alternate exits somewhere in the Department of Mysteries, its confusing layout meant that Sirius would likely bleed out before they found one. Still, was there a better option? It wasn't as if they could just…
"Huh," she said. "I actually have an idea."
"Really?" Sirius asked. "If it's… as good as deciding to come here in the first place… I can't wait to hear it."
"You'll love it," she said. "Give me your arm."
Sirius leaned against her as she half carried him as quickly as she could manage. They were moving more slowly, but now that she wasn't sprinting, she was able to maintain their lead on the Unspeakables through other means. Transfigured monsters, sabotaged flooring, and electrified pools of water awaited any would-be pursuers.
"Where are we… going?" Sirius managed to ask.
Violet smiled with an unusual warmth. "Home."
~#~
Sirius wasn't doing well. Violet had seen enough death to recognize his labored breath and gaunt skin for what they were. But they were so close now. It had taken a while for her to get her bearings, but she could see her destination now.
If the Unspeakables were still chasing them, they were so far away that she couldn't hear them. More likely, they were licking their wounds and regrouping. With the Department sealed, it wasn't as if the intruders could escape… or so they might have thought.
She crossed the threshold into the Cold Room.
"What?" Sirius asked blearily. "Wha's goin' on?"
She patted his clammy hand. "We're getting out of here."
She took a deep breath.
"Close your eyes and think of some place cold."