Retreat - Act I: Occupation

7. Hoghalls: A History

‘Well, there’s an unusual way to die.’

Draco hoped his off-handed inflection would divert attention from the fact that he was trying, by means of callous commentary, to divert attention from the rather more girlish inflection of the scream by which he had attracted the attention of the nearby Gryffindor duo. Meanwhile, his syntactically muddled thoughts were trying to divert as much of his attention as possible from the ghastly sight before him.

With Ron invoking the dubious protection of excrement, Hermione already crouching before the engravings on the massive stone font, and Draco looking everywhere but at the partially mummified wizard, diversions were universally successful.

The wizard, still pressed against the back of a petrified, wooden chair, adhered to classic mummy fashion (the svelte and papery look rather than the plump maternal one) in all areas but one. His left arm grew healthier near the stone font in which his outstretched hand still lay. It was pink and smooth and virtually pulsed with life in a most unsettling manner, considering the otherwise omnipresent decay.

The font itself put Draco in mind of a sinister Pensieve, complete with magical liquid lapping against its sides – and the wizard’s fingers – almost as if it were trying to escape.

They leaned forward to take a closer look.

‘I don’t think we should touch that.’

‘Thank you for the insight, Granger.’

‘Wonder what he was doing.’

‘Something unhealthy, by the looks of it.’

‘Its placement,’ said Hermione, indicating the font, ‘seems to suggest some sort of security device.’

‘Or,’ said Draco, ‘an inventive form of torture: The Dementor’s Kiss in a Bowl.’

‘Ew!’ said Ron, face contorted. ‘That’s vile, Malfoy!’

‘Exactly.’ What better way to divert attention from unsettling corpses than deliberately unsettling the Weasel? A transference of unsettlement; like moving nothing from one empty place to another.

‘You’re sick,’ Ron muttered and turned to the corpse. ‘He’s got a key ‘round his neck. Maybe it’s—’ Moving to take the key, Ron placed his hand on the corpse’s shoulder. Then everything happened very quickly.

The liquid pounced, surging into the wizard’s arm, pushing the pinkness further, charging upwards, past the elbow, to the shoulder, and into Ron’s hand. Hermione shouted, but her warning came too late.

Ron’s mind exploded.

~~~*~~~

On regaining a modicum of consciousness, it took Arthur Weasley precisely three point five seconds to conclude that the pile of rubble beneath him was too large to be the remains of his nuptial bed, and that what had preceded his rough awakening hadn’t been a dream. Still, as he slid and crawled towards the wall of the lift shaft, he felt perfectly justified in calling it a nightmare.

The Origin had returned. With the horrors of recent wizarding wars, cold or not, the Origin had been purposely forgotten. The Ministry hoped the ancient enemy had given up at last, retreated and dispersed, never to return.

It was tempting to forget an enemy who claimed you were the villain. The Ministry wasn’t disposed to discussing even the possibility that the founders of their society might indeed have built their world on a lie, on a theft of power. They had enough on their unpalatable plate with Grindelwald, Voldemort, Death Eaters, grumpy goblins, and murderous giants.

Nor did the Death Eaters care to promote the possibility of an Origin heritage. It was bad politics to imply that the purity of blood you had based your whole philosophy on might be stolen property. Moreover, the lineages of the oldest pureblood families stretched so far into the uncharted past of the Wizarding world that no one could be quite sure what had really happened.

Like so many cultures, theirs might have had its foundation in piracy, in the pillaging of power rather than portable property. But a disreputable history is an inconvenient history, especially when it makes lawmakers look like hypocrites, or when it calls into question the principles of nobility and purity you wield in your quest for greater power.

But beyond mere politics, the primary reason nearly all trace of the Origin had been erased from public historical records and school syllabi was the same that made people refer to Voldemort as You-Know-Who or, indeed, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Speak not of the demon and he shall not appear. It was a deeply rooted superstition, and a hope people clung to when they could do nothing else.

Like death, the Origin was a subject not easily discussed. In many ways, to wizards and witches, the Origin were death. Few who lived in the Wizarding world could avoid growing dependent on its ever-present magic. Few had the opportunity or capacity to actively practice Muggle fighting skills. And few could hope to fend off an Origin attack. The Origin sucked magic out of the very air, and out of their victims. And all too often, the witches and wizards still fighting had to hack at the bodies of their fallen, puppeteered comrades.

They had been nightmarish wars no one cared, nor dared, to remember.

The most recent war had been a relatively minor one, and it had been won almost by accident. The previous wars – dark ages of the Wizarding world – had been won more or less by proxy. Back then, when the Wizarding world hadn’t yet become truly separated from the Muggle world, armies of mercenary Muggle fighters could be assembled without putting the magical society’s independence in jeopardy.

When such possibilities were greatly reduced, when the newly formed Ministry thought it best to avoid witch-hunts by hiding from the Muggles, the importance of Muggle-born fighters increased, and their ability to survive where purebloods couldn’t forever shifted the balance of power in the Wizarding world.

As Arthur squeezed through the crack in the lift’s door, he thought of what powerful feelings envy and resentment were. He himself had experienced that envy. It was, perhaps, the primary reason for his obsession with all things Muggle. He envied a society not collectively addicted to the debilitating drug that magic, in some respects, had become to the Wizarding world. Technology, for all its incredible advances, didn’t limit Muggles physically the way magic limited Wizards. Even Wizarding sports relied on magic. What was a Quidditch player without his broom?

Unless, Arthur conceded, the Quidditch player in question was Harry Potter, brought up by Muggles for good, if rather cynical, reasons.

And how Arthur wished Harry was there at that moment. Because Arthur was no hero. Arthur could do nothing but flee for his life and hope that, once outside the Ministry, he’d be able to call for help, if there was any to be found. But as he came to the end of the maintenance stairs and took in the sight before him, even that cowardly plan crumbled, in much the same way that the newly erected statue in the entrance hall (replacing the one that had been lost during the Voldemort Incident) lay in golden shards at the feet of a new statue, pieced together from parts of the ceiling, the pillars, the floor, and – Arthur tried his best to ignore it – flesh, bones, and scraps of clothing from the elderly wizard who had been on duty in the hall that night.

It depicted a richly robed witch. Which one it was plain to see – the original Dark witch – She Who Must Not Be Named – Morgana, split apart from the waist up, opening like a poisonous flower to let loose a fountain of Origin light. Above her, sucking up the light, a sparkling Origin globe rotated slowly, growing larger by the second. Below her stood the artist, basking in the vicious blue of his creation.

He, or she, or it, was a queer fellow, or female, or asexual biped – an elf with a fetish for black leather and undoubtedly painful piercings. Its considerable corpulence and short stature contributed to an overall impression of a loose spiky cannonball, filled with artistic aggression and – having spotted Arthur – good old-fashioned rage.

‘WHAT?’ it shrieked, revealing a mouth in need of some serious dental-care. ‘You don’t LIKE my MASTERPEEZE?’ Its bulging eyes flashed blue and a pointed tooth plinked onto the floor. ‘You INFIDEL!’

Behind the elf, the tools of its trade rose, mimicking the motion of its emaciated, spidery hands.

At this point, Arthur decided to abandon all hope of reasoning with the elf and instead focused on trying to convince his own two feet to move, preferably in the opposite direction.

~~~*~~~

Ron stared into space, but, in a break with literary tradition, his mind wasn’t elsewhere. It was right there, everywhere, in every nook and every cranny. Still, the blank gaze of his eyes reflected the bafflement of his exploring, expanded mind. He stared into so much space, into so many places all at once, that he saw nothing clearly. A sense beyond vision had been activated, and Ron hadn’t a clue what to do with it, how to process the information overloading his brain.

There were tunnels, cells, arches, thick iron bars, scratches, scorch-marks, decay, emptiness. This prison hadn’t been closed down; it had been broken with one decisive blow. There had been an uprising, and then immediate abandonment, all exits sealed. All except one. He knew this because he could see it all, and his subconscious mind drew conclusions his conscious mind couldn’t. And a word rose from the darkness: Panopticon. Total, centralised, one-way surveillance; They might be watching, so be on your guard, always.

Rather than a central hub with spoke-like cells, this magical version let one single guard survey an entire prison from the safety of a once comfortable chair. And the prisoners would feel perpetually watched, even when no one manned this Pensieve-like device – this Panopticieve, the most insidious surveillance method in the Wizarding world.

Finding words like Panopticon – or, indeed, the newly coined Panopticieve – popping into his mind did nothing to reduce Ron’s general state of bafflement. And when a great number of other obscure terms elbowed their way into his passive vocabulary without further explanation, he began sensing another presence in the Panopticieve. There were faint shadows of thoughts mingling with his; a mind of a more analytical disposition slowly merging with his muddled one; new vocabulary skipping about and making a right mess.

Surprisingly, it was not an altogether unpleasant experience.

~~~*~~~

The same could not be said for crawling down the sloping roof of a Tube train improperly hurled across a patch of African savannah. But the hyenas prowling through the high grass below, moving in and out of shifting patches of moonlight, certainly motivated the six scared humans to stay on the roof. Or rather, stay on the roofs – which proved to be one of the expedition’s major problems, seeing as each carriage had placed itself at a subtly different angle from the one preceding it. It kept everyone on their toes (in a strictly metaphorical sense, hands and knees being required to keep steady, and out of harm’s laughing jaws).

Never before had Julia been pleased to see someone carrying cleverly concealed knives on the Tube. And she expected the same was true of the policeman guarding – and probably taking a good moonlit look at – her rear.

All in all, they were armed with two guns, three knives, two imposing hatpins, and pepper spray. The hatpins were the only weapons that didn’t come onto the roof with an owner attached (though the grey-haired little lady had volunteered for the mission, and would no doubt have tagged along if she’d been able to reach the safety-hatch by herself). The pepper spray was Julia’s. Two large knives were up front, attached to black leather and a snarl that could kill a hyena’s laughter.

Two athletic teenagers – a couple, no doubt – brought up the rear with a gun and legs that could kill. The third knife rattled against the roof as the brawny young businessman in front of Julia struggled to keep his bulk balanced. A real macho man – the first volunteer. Her first volunteer. Her idea.

Since Tube trains don’t commonly leap across continents of their own volition, whatever had whisked them from the bowels of London might still be found in the grove where they had first emerged. There, they might find a way back, a two-way passage. It was worth a try, seeing as logic had already flown out of the cracked, battered windows and, naturally, the phones got no bloody signal. And no, no one had a satellite phone in their oversized backpack. They were on their own, and they had to do something.

And she could hardly refuse to carry out her own plan.

Though perhaps she should have, embarrassment be damned. Better a coward than dead. And, on the other hand, better running for home and comfort than waiting for hyenas to overcome their fear of the Great Hollow Shiny Thing.

So often, heroics were just a subtle variation on good old-fashioned cowardice. Sure, they’d send help to their stranded comrades as soon as possible, but by that time, they themselves would be safe and sound, and very much uneaten. Assuming they got that far. Which seemed unlikely. The brutally ploughed path to the grove proved to be at least sixty feet of potentially lethal rough ground, primed for falls and tumbles and teeth going your jugular.

They spent a bullet on sending a warning. Three other hyenas leaped on the fallen one. It had clearly been a very dry season. Julia felt like manna from heaven, queasy and doughy-brained.

With the hyenas wary and distracted, the Grove Patrol touched ground, and ran.

~~~*~~~

Arthur’s hands scraped against the stone walls of the maintenance staircase. Behind him, something rumbled and shrieked. And yet, as far as Arthur was concerned, it might as well have tap-danced and played the fiddle.

What he was running from had already been firmly established as disagreeably lethal, and no amount of tap-dancing could change that. What mattered now was where he was running away to. Unfortunately, the only destination available to him was a dead end otherwise known as the Department of Mysteries.

However, the very thing that had made him aware of the Origin siege now gave him an idea of how to escape it. The ring on Strange’s finger was no sign of allegiance. Unlike Voldemort, the Origin had never gone in for any impractical and compromising branding of their forces. No, the ring was a transportation device – magic for Muggles, Apparation for dummies. The Origin and their associates had developed a number of such devices – merging magic and technology – to negate any advantage witches and wizards might have, and to give their own soldiers a strong upper hand once they themselves had sucked the battleground clean of natural magic.

The Ministry’s researchers still hadn’t figured out how to disable the ring that Arthur’s grandfather had once acquired. Which, in retrospect, turned out to be one massive stroke of luck, for Arthur at least. Now, if only he could locate the ring before his pursuer located him (no doubt intent on dislocating him altogether).

As he rushed through the entrance of the Department, the poorly patched-up statue of Morgana pulverised the remnants of the crashed lift and blasted its way through the doors.

~~~*~~~

Rather than flounder about in baffled wonderment, Hermione went about her exploration of the Deeper Dungeons in as methodical a manner as she could in her incorporeal state. She examined the layout of the intricate network of tunnels and cells, mapped and memorised blocked and flooded sections, and cross-referenced it all with what rudimentary knowledge she had of the infamous Hoghalls prison complex.

When it had been in use, it had rivalled and probably surpassed Azkaban in terms of security, though the comparison was a flawed one, Azkaban being Hoghalls’ junior by several decades. Hoghalls had also held a far greater range of magical species, criminals of all shapes and sizes.

There had been a few failed escape attempts in the early days of the prison – pre-Hogwarts castle – but for many decades no one even bothered to try, until the final mass exodus that put an end to Hoghalls, for all time. But the details had always been hazy.

Somehow, the inmates had found a way to make the security system – the Panopticieve – backfire, if the mummified watchwizard was anything to go by. With the prisoners breaking out of their cells all through the dungeons, a bloodbath was inevitable and only the guards on the upper levels survived, sealing off all exits in a futile attempt to control the situation.

Then, with the explosive help of some infamous dragon inmates, the prisoners blasted their way through solid rock and flew away, but not before bestowing a fatal farewell gift on their hated Hellhalls.

Through some sort of curse, the nature of which Hermione had never been able to ascertain, the prisoners made sure that if ever their exit was sealed off, or the cells closed, the castle Hogwarts would crumble and vanish. So now, Hoghalls was an entirely escape-proof prison. Escape was, in fact, guaranteed.

And it was this perpetual escape route Hermione sought as she let her mind pour into every part of the erstwhile prison. Following scorch-marks overgrown with lichen and massive gates thrown on the floors like misshapen arrows, she traced the path the fleeing prisoners had once ripped through Hoghalls. Swimming in a shimmering sea of extrasensory perception beyond anything she’d ever experienced, Hermione imagined herself following a yellow brick road, off to find the Exit, the wonderful Exit of Oz.

Drifting beside her, puzzled but reassured by her presence, was a Gryffindor lion who had long since found his courage. And as they reached the end of the road, a Slytherin tin man – whose heart’s whereabouts were still unknown – reached in and yanked them both from their magical down under.

~~~*~~~

Either it had been a season of horrendous drought and fruitless hunting or the hyenas bringing the Grove Patrol down, one by one, were different somehow – bolder, wilder, deadlier, braving both guns and knives relentlessly, shrieking with mad laughter. It couldn’t be natural, this terror-go-round circle of death. Weapons were meant to keep mankind in its very own circle of life, powered by ambition and greed and other such elevated emotions but separated from the grit and growling of the greater animal kingdom.

And yet here they were – hunted, prey, meat of the human kind. Going down. Pulled into high grass as dry as the dust stinging Julia’s eyes, making the grove flicker before her. She had always been a fast runner, and even now she was winning the race. But the stakes had never been this high. Behind her, the young woman’s vocal chords were ripped out, and the policeman went down with a cry of rage and a futile bullet to his attacker’s head.

Julia fought an impulse to turn back. He, the policeman whose name she couldn’t even remember, had told her to run and never look back. Someone had to reach the grove. That was the objective of the mission: Getting out and getting help.

And it should have been him, probably the least selfish of all the volunteers, genuinely seeking to help without coveting anything – not fame, not freedom – except possibly Julia’s behind. And as for Julia, she didn’t even want to be there. She was an idea person, a marketing consultant who made others grow permanent false grins for the cameras she hid behind. But then, every once in a while, a complex job became important enough for her to do it herself, because Julia was a faithful subscriber to the idea that if you want something done properly, hold the whip yourself, don’t delegate. And now, there was no one left to delegate to.

As the grove grew closer, it hit Julia, not for the first time that night, that pepper spray made for one measly whip.

~~~*~~~

Mad-Eye Moody was in a foul mood. He’d been reduced to kicking Death Eaters in the groin and, while usually enough to raise his mood above gloomy, there just wasn’t time for such comic relief. Muggle mercenaries were closing in on all fronts and cooperation had to be the name of the game if they cared to keep any Wizarding players on the magically drained board.

‘D’ye get it, lad?’ shouted Moody to the well inbred young man clutching his crotch and crossing his eyes. ‘As much as I hate your guts,’ he continued, illustrating this sentiment by applying great pressure to an older toff’s well fed stomach, ‘we have t’work together or yon other bastards’ll sprinkle this garden with our blood, pure or no!’

‘They’re only Muggles,’ sneered an older, more athletic yet equally non-descript black-clad Death Eater, knocking Moody to the ground.

Never one to pass up a silvery opportunity, Moody promptly swung his steel-capped boot into three parts very private Death Eater property. The man howled and toppled athletically over his young colleague.

From Moody’s grittily grounded though somewhat muddied perspective, the fight raging around him looked an interminable mess, a tangle of kicking and clawing would-be fist-fighters who made up for inexperience with sheer raging hatred and an abundance of pointy sticks otherwise known – but now quite useless – as wands. It had to end, right now. Moody’s hands crawled across the Muggle weapon slung over his shoulder. Akay-47, press to fire.

The unexpected recoil pressed Moody into the mud and painted a blood-red trail of exploding bullet-wounds from the young Death Eater’s knee across his torso and straight through the side of his head. The booming smattering of the automatic and the peculiar sound of flesh-encased bone being shot to pieces brought everything else to a sudden dead stop. The young Death Eater, just as dead and quite permanently stopped, flopped messily into a large rosebush. Moody rose, the mechanical beast in his hand silent – but still in attack position.

Walter Goyle tore wide eyes from his neighbour’s mutilated son to glare at Moody. ‘You killed him!’

‘Yes,’ said Moody, pointing the 47 at the agitated man, ‘and that’s what them Muggles’ll do to all of us, unless we work together! There ain’t nothin’ clean or proper about a Muggle death,’ he indicated the body and bloodied rosebush, ‘and we got no magical defences. Ye better face facts – that the Muggles have the upper hand here – or I’ll do away with you right now.’

Watching the faces of both friends and foes register the fact that Moody was, in fact, the only one with a working – and quite lethal – weapon provided the old Auror with a perfect distraction from the fact that he’d just committed murder, however unintentional. He’d killed on battlefields before, but seeing someone crumple in a flash of green light was something quite different from watching a young man go to pieces before you.

The rosebush was adorned with pinkish tendrils of blond hair, fastened with blood and brain matter. Moody’s gnarled finger twitched on the trigger.

‘Well?’ he growled. ‘Anyone else feel like feedin’ the plants? No? Then I suggest you stop wasting time on dirty looks and try to figure out which way Away is.’

‘Away?’ asked one of the junior Aurors.

‘From the bastards I just signalled with this here loudmouth Muggle-wand,’ said Moody, waving the gun about, enjoying the flinches this inspired in both subordinates and sub-ordinary Death Arses, and reflecting – briefly – on the fact that pushing aside thoughts of murder had brought inappropriate humour to the front of his mind.

Now that the fighting had stopped, there was time to properly take in his surroundings. And save for the odd corpse, these were rather attractive ones – a well-tended garden with a multitude of hedges and large bushes tinted greyish blue. To the north lay the mansion they’d just escaped. To the west was what appeared to be a large maze. To the south the garden faded into a more open layout with flowers, streams and ponds. And to the east lay some sort of large bower, verging on a small grove.

‘Quiet,’ hissed Moody, listening for sounds from the west. Footfalls on gravel. Bursts of speed. Lost in the maze. To the north, a door thrown open. Reinforcements sent out to locate the lost, and the escaped. To the east and the south, nothing.

‘May I suggest the bower?’ drawled Goyle. ‘It seems the logical choice. Natural fortifications.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Sam Upwine, an experienced if somewhat stuffy Auror. ‘Are we going to fend them off with pointy sticks?’

‘Now, Sam,’ said Moody, ‘that is what we usually do, innit?’

‘But of course,’ sighed Goyle, ‘they’re useless now. You’re right, we should head for an exit. Maybe they’ll work outside.’

‘No,’ said Moody, ‘it’s precisely because they’re useless that we’re going to behave as if they weren’t. Y’see, it’s the illogical choice.’ His natural eye peered at Goyle while his other searched for advancing mercenaries. ‘It might throw them off the track – confuse them.’

They all stared at him as if he were quite mad.

‘See,’ he grinned, ‘it’s got you baffled, and you’re at least as dumb as yon other bastards.’

~~~*~~~

‘You didn’t have to bloody flog me, Malfoy!’ whined Ron, cradling his sore hand.

‘Got you out, didn’t it?’ huffed Draco. ‘Even if I had wanted to touch your filthy extremities, I’d have been pulled in too, and then we’d have been in a right mess, you dimwit!’ he added, shuddering at a completely unwarranted mental inventory of available filthy extremities.

‘What’s that wand made of anyway?’ asked Ron, glaring at the dark wood.

‘African blackwood melded with ironwood. A bit like you, actually; really, really dense,’ said Draco, dearly hoping hardness wasn’t another shared property. Though, really, Weasley didn’t seem the type.

‘Why’s everything so damn hard with you, Malfoy? First a metal broom, now this.’

‘Trust me,’ muttered Draco, ‘not everything is hard.’ Because you’re certainly not my type.

‘Oh, get a divorce,’ huffed Hermione. ‘Honestly, the way you two carry on. We need to focus on getting off this level! I know how to get out of the actual prison, but I didn’t have time to look for a way down. Ron?’

He started as her wide eyes focused on him. ‘Huh?’

‘Did you see anything? You were in there longer.’

Ron blushed at the thought of how utterly lost he’d been before she appeared. ‘Ehm,’ he said, closing his eyes and frowning deeply, ‘I think, yes, I saw stairs, all closed off, but there was – a shaft – and some sort of metal grid.’ He opened his eyes and grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s it.’

‘Of course!’ Hermione exclaimed, sparking hope in Ron’s eyes. ‘It must have been a dragon cell!’

‘A what?’ asked Draco, feeling peculiar twitches of claustrophobia shudder up his spine.

‘A dragon cell!’

‘Ah. A dragon cell. Great explanation, Granger. Whatever would we do without you?’

~~~*~~~

Julia had never expected a background in junior hurdle-racing to be such a life-safer. Sure, it had helped her get together with that cute racer, which at the time had seemed a life or apocalypse sort of thing. But that it would help her keep ahead of a pack of starved hyenas while racing through a dark and recently brutalized African grove, that had come as a complete surprise. Though certainly not an unpleasant one, even if everything else seemed painted in shades of doom.

She leaped onto the fallen tree, slid sideways and stumbled painfully to the ground on the other side. A large clearing opened up before her, and the moon shone on two other things that came as complete surprises.

However, their inherent degree of pleasantness remained to be seen.

The leading hyena scrambled onto the tumbled trunk.

Julia ran for the nearest ring.

~~~*~~~

The ring had to be there somewhere, filed with all the other junk no one had been able to make use of since the Origin Wars. Arthur rummaged through well-filled boxes and independent little anarchistic heaps, finding all sorts of questionable crap, but no ring. Somewhere behind him, the statue of Morgana sauntered straight through yet another set of discordantly stocked shelves.

‘Come come out out and pl-play, li-littlelittle man man,’ chanted the two semi-independent parts of its mutilated head. ‘Ma-magic-magic hasass abandon-don-doned youyou-You-ou are are all-all alone-lone-lonely lost-lost. Let-let meh-ee ta-take the-the pai-ai-ain away-ay.’

The twisted words were lost on Arthur, but the strange staccato rhythm rattled his nerves. If his heart were to beat any faster, it’d bounce off without him.

Rhythm.

The sonic lab. Hadn’t someone had some wild theory about sounds at certain wavelengths jamming Origin technology? Some ambitious Muggleborn who sought to blend science and magic? Yes! Arthur had quite liked the fellow, in fact. Unfortunately, the Department Head hadn’t, and the projects had all been cancelled – the sonic lab, among others, instantly thrown into disuse.

The ring must still be there.

‘I-aye can can s-see you you,’ said Morgana in a booming stage whisper, her voice echoing softly through the sonic lab to her left.

~~~*~~~

Dragons were never picky eaters. But too proud to be beggars, they decided to be choosers. And so, they chose young virgins, which was more a case of joining the latest trend in franchised human sacrifice than any illogically informed religious inclination on their part. Because dragons didn’t do religion.

But they did do business, and their deals with surrounding villages were almost universally profitable ones. In return for controlled urban renewal, rather than surprise village thoroughfares outlining the erratic progress of yet another manhunt, village councils paid the to them reasonable price of embarrassingly emancipated females (because dragons had no gynaecological skills to speak of, they could never tell a virgin from a whore) or sour spinsters (as for judging beauty, no human sacrifice was sufficiently into spikes and leather to arouse a single scale). In fact, they could have offered a monkey in a dress for all the difference it would have made to the dragon’s menu. Because, really, anything goes, as long as it’s soft enough to be chewed and – here’s the catch – preheated with dragon-fire – their own fire.

Properly heated, everything tastes the same to a dragon (presumably like chicken, which is code for a sort of culinary nothingness matched only by certain kinds of rapid food served by slow and selectively senile youths all across the known universe). For this reason, it’s all about the foreplay, the hunts or the ritual sacrifices, the arguing over misunderstood side-orders. But take away a dragon’s fire and you effectively sentence it to a slow and starving death. Or rather, slow and starving up to the point where it eats an unprepared dinner, is instantly poisoned, keels over and curses the local health inspector god

This is why dragons kept in prison mustn’t have their fire extinguished if they’re to be kept alive. However, dragon fire is a dangerous thing and no one in their right mind would open a cell door to offer food to an angry dragon (and they do tend to be rather miffed, for while dragons like living in caves and having their food brought to them, prison cells tend not to feature enormous piles of loot to sleep on – the loot in question typically being what got them into prison in the first place).

Thus, the Dragon Cell was designed when the Hoghalls board of governors realised that investing in research was, in the long run, cheaper than using disposable labour to bring food to the resident dragons.

At its most basic, the design involves two cells, one holding the dragon and another, some distance above, holding the dragon’s food, a.k.a. organic waste headed for Tastes Like Fried Chicken land. Between the cells is a shaft into which the food is dropped, landing on a metal grille where it can be readily torched from below.

This grille wasn’t added to ensure wryneck among the resident dragons but rather to avoid having to replace the straw on the floor after every barbecued meal. Because dragons didn’t do well on cold stone floors, and a heap of straw was better than no heap at all.

Besides, burnt dragon stunk something vile.

~~~*~~~

The hyena reeked of death and decay, which was just as well, as it let Julia know where the beast was without having to turn to look at it. She had to see where she was running. One stumble and this deadly game of tag would be over in an instant. It would show her pursuer that she was weak, wounded, easy prey. One fall and all fear would be gone. The beast’s fear, already losing the battle against famine, gone. Her fear, heightened for a few seconds and then, in death, gone.

But as it was, the hyena was wary enough to allow even her tired feet and mind to outrun and outsmart it. And there was only the one left. She’d done away with the rest, which was the source of the famished predator’s fear. But it had learnt two things from seeing its fellows perish one by one: fear, and to avoid the great rings that stood at each end of the gleaming stones that stretched across the open ground.

Julia’s first thought upon seeing the massive metal rings with their strange etchings, like circuits carved in stone, was that she’d stumbled into a movie, a sci-fi flick she’d seen a few years back, featuring a hot nerd and a very pretty bad guy. Stargate; she was pretty sure that was its name. In any case, the central prop in the movie was certainly one, and these rings, partly submerged in recently cleared ground, looked like not-too-distant cousins. But these didn’t feature shimmering, pond-like edge-of-wormhole thingies, and there were no moving parts. Except for moving parts of hyena.

She’d run for the tracks - a piece of home, of London, of imagined safety, stand clear of the closing doors. But there were no doors to close. There was only the ring she ran through, huge and dark and, apparently, inactive. Unlike the ring at the other end of the tracks. It was the exact replica of the first – roughly the size of a Tube tunnel, she guessed – but its circuit carvings shone a fluorescent blue. Though its centre seemed as empty as that through which the pack of hyenas now pursued her, it was clearly active, and the only logical conclusion – what with the entire train being whisked off to Africa in an instant – was that this worked rather like an Earth-based stargate, a doorway home. She ran towards it. She ran through it. The African wilderness remained, as inhospitable as before. The leading hyena leapt through the ring.

There was no time to consider different strategies or routes, Julia just ran right, around the ring at the same time as the pack charged through it. She would have run in the opposite direction if it weren’t for the thickness of the surrounding grove. The only way to run was back where she came from. But the tail end of the pack, not yet through the ring, diverted to cut off her exit. She stopped, looking frantically about her, trapped. The lead hyenas turned about and ran through the ring again. Only, they didn’t, not quite. They vanished into thin air, three of them. A fourth had stopped halfway through to the other side but was turning to follow Julia’s progress. It shouldn’t have.

In turning about, the front end of the animal now entered the ring again, but from the other direction, the one the vanished threesome had been headed in. By the time its nose and head started to fade abruptly out of existence, Julia had it figured: the ring was a one-way system. Things, like her train, exited onto the rails, but entered from the other end, just as the other ring would undoubtedly have worked, had it been active. And so, as half of the hyena was transported to an unknown elsewhere, or even nowhere, the part on the rails remained.

It was sudden, silent, and terribly messy. The remaining four hyenas forgot about Julia, just long enough for her to formulate a crude plan.

She ran circles around the ring, stopping and turning at just the right time for the hyena closest to the ring to figure that running back through would be a shortcut to its prey. Two had vanished like that, running towards the tracks, when a third pounced from the opposite direction, sailing through the ring towards her, jaws open. There was no escape. Julia aimed a high kick at the hyena. Halfway through the ring, its head snapped back, Julia’s shoe snagged on its lower teeth. She fell to the ground as the hyena hit the invisible event horizon. The circuits flashed blue and white as the beast was sliced sideways, Julia being dragged across the ground towards the ring, her heel fading.

She yanked her foot back, expecting her heel to be pulled right off, but it came out whole, with only a bit of what she assumed was hyena gums dangling from it. Not having time to figure out exactly how the transport worked, Julia simply figured it was some sort of safety mechanism, and left it at that. The one remaining hyena, creeping warily around to her side of the ring, figured the whole ring was as far from safe as it could get, and would have nothing more to do with it.

Thus, there was one the crude plan would never work on. And Julia could only run in circles and zigzag patterns, till the hyena decided she was no longer a threat. Which was not an option she was willing to consider. She had to get away. But back the way she came from was no longer an option, even if a single hyena would be hard pressed to surround her, because the ring was the only thing keeping the beast at bay.

Only one other way to go. Into the unknown, and possible nothingness.

She took a deep breath, and charged through the event horizon.

~~~*~~~

Hermione’s knowledge of the finer points of dragon cells was shaky at best. She had only ever heard of them once, in a silly book called A Hundred Terribly Outdated Yet Marginally Amusing Devices, where the article on the dragon cell had as its sole purpose some stupid joke about dragon-fuelled indoor barbecues. But she had been visiting the Weasleys, and there were few books in their modest library she hadn’t already read. Which, in retrospect, was a major stroke of luck for this escaping text addict.

What she did know about this unusual type of cell was enough to sketch a simple plan for getting to the Deeper Dungeons, formerly Hoghalls Prison, through the dragon cell’s surprisingly wide food shaft. Standing at the edge of the dark abyss, she reflected on the fact that food lifts and food shafts were such an unsettlingly returning theme running through her plotless night of horror that she was starting to feel like a runaway monster meal – the Fourth Little Pig: Cutlet. It was making her quite queasy.

The plan involved a coordinated jump onto the metal grille below, hoping the rust that had jammed the chain release in the storage room would have turned the hinges fragile enough to make the grille fall into the cell below, followed by an erratically dressed trio of teenagers - Hermione flanked by two shivering, half-naked boys. Their robes were thrown onto the grille to ease their landing and avoid their legs getting stuck. The last thing they needed were broken bones. Bruises were, on the other hand (and probably the first one too) guaranteed.

Hermione herself remained fully clothed, a perk of being the one to come up with the plan, and being a feminist radiating feline rage at the very suggestion of equal undress. This left Ron in a t-shirt and long johns – which, Hermione told herself, shouldn’t be remotely sexy, which was the sole reason she avoided looking in his direction, thankyouverymuch – and Malfoy in only a pair of skimpy silk boxers, which really oughtn’t to be looked at either, but as she wouldn’t look at Ron and every other direction was frankly depressing, what harm could it do, really?

Malfoy, in his turn, had complained loudly that this part of the plan was only an excuse for Hermione to ogle his noble arse, at which suggestion Ron had snorted derisively, and Hermione had been rather too quick and adamant in her denial, privately deciding she needed to have a serious talk with herself, and a good long lie-down.

That is, if she ever got out of this alive.

~~~*~~~

There was no CG tunnel sparkling around her, no rollercoaster ride through a winding wormhole, no sense of being flushed down the universe’s newly cleaned toilet. In fact, for all of two seconds, Julia experienced mild disappointment at the total lack of sensation involved in stepping through the gate-ring. Then she took in the enormous snake-like beast before her, its head rearing up towards the Tube tunnel’s ceiling, its body crackling with blue light, and the spider-like creatures, ranging from fist-size to Belgian Blue, crawling on and around the massive basilisk.

Not that Julia had any idea what the snake was called, or indeed what it was. If she had, she’d have averted her eyes. As it was, she stared, and was petrified, though surprisingly enough for completely natural reasons.

The basilisk hissed. Behind her, the hyena, crazed with hunger, burst through the event horizon. The basilisk lunged.

~~~*~~~

Arthur ducked as yet another blast of blue light turned the shelves behind him into rubble and dust. Despite the mess they invariably created in the wake of the statue’s destruction, the masses of shelves and boxes in the archive had proven Arthur’s only viable protection. Compared to Morgana’s mutilated likeness, he was small and agile and could dodge between piles of boxes and run through tunnels formed by leaning sets of shelves. Morgana, on the other hand, had to clear the rubble before she could pass. On yet another strong hand, she was rather too good at clearing up. And she was one cleaning lady who didn’t mind killing a mouse, or weasel, in the process.

He had led her away from the sonic lab, taking advantage of her straightforward approach to archive cleaning, and there was now a clear, wide path leading straight to the lab. All he had to do was get past Morgana, and keep her occupied for as many seconds as possible.

Desperately needing the element of surprise, Arthur turned about so fast his knees felt as though they would break. He raced forward and hit a large set of shelves with full force, just before the statue reached them. The shelves fell. Morgana staggered backwards, getting no leverage to smash the shelves, her light-wielding arms aimed awkwardly at the ceiling. Arthur jumped aboard. Both shelves and statue groaned as he clambered to the top. A geyser of Origin energy erupted before him.

‘You can’t keep that up,’ he muttered, more to himself than the enraged statue.

The geyser ran out of light. Arthur jumped, and his knees took another, even worse beating. Morgana heaved the shelves off her disturbed person as Arthur bolted for the lab. He heard her turning before the first energy bolt shot his way and began running in an erratic zigzag pattern, dodging bolt after bolt. After all, there was very effectively cleared space available for such a manoeuvre. Inside Arthur, a rarely seen part of his personality cackled maliciously, giving Morgana the Wizarding equivalent of a mental finger.

He burst into the sonic lab. There was the ring, still precariously perched atop a crystal pyramid at the centre of one of the bulbous blue sound chambers. Arthur yanked the chamber door open. The doorway to the lab groaned as the statue tried to force its way in. A futile effort.

Arthur approached the pyramid, for the first time considering that he hadn’t a clue how to use the ring. He hesitated, pondering. Then he noticed the silence, and the scrabbling sound behind, as if from a very large rat. He turned about just in time to see a gnarled old hand launch itself at his leg, clutching tight. It was crudely yet solidly attached to a thick rope of semi-artificial bones and tendons. No doubting where it came from.

‘Gotgot youyou!’

As the statue tried to reel him in, Arthur braced himself against the chamber’s doorway, stretching out a hand towards the ring. Too far, much too far. His leg felt as if it would be torn straight off, and incorporated into the wicked statue.

Then something else came back to him from his brief friendship with the Mad Muggleborn. Sonic waves, or something along those lines. He’d demonstrated. The sound chambers were very impressive, Arthur remembered, and then he screamed.

It wasn’t a scream of terror. Not as such. But anyone listening to it might well have mistaken it for the mating call of the common Damsel in Distress. Arthur had never thought he could hit a note that high. On the other hand, he’d never felt inclined to try, and he wasn’t about to share his newfound talent with anyone any time soon, least of all his wife, whose similar vocalisations he’d mocked on several occasions.

But it did the trick. The chamber reverberated, the pyramid trembled, and the ring fell. Arthur was amazed at his luck when it decided to roll down the proper side too. But now, he had to get it.

Taking a deep breath, Arthur let go, throwing himself forward and down while being hauled backwards by Morgana. He grasped frantically for the rolling ring, and, and, and – got it. But the way he was sliding through the lab, bouncing against tables and boxes, putting it on was no mean feat.

But on it went, and some part of Arthur’s mind saw beyond his basic desire to escape, remembered the need for a warning to be sent. The Ministry was under siege! He had to tell Dumbledore! He slid through the doorway—

—and into his own office.

It took a few seconds for him to realise where he was and uncurl from the foetal position Morgana’s imminent attention had inspired. He staggered to his feet and glanced at the blue ring on his finger. So that was how it worked.

Now, to contact Dumbledore. That was why his conscience had brought him here, wasn’t it? And the light was still burning. He picked a leaf from the withered little plant on his desk and fed it to the flame. Then he touched it.

‘Yes?’ asked the disembodied voice of Dumbledore. ‘Have there been any – complications, Arthur?’

‘Origin,’ Arthur stammered, out of breath. ‘They’ve got the Ministry under siege.’

‘Oh, dear.’

And that was the last Arthur heard, before a soft whooshing noise made him turn around, taking his finger out of the flame.

‘Well, well,’ said Chief Inspector Strange, standing in the doorway, gun in hand, ‘Mr Weasley. A Combusticator and a Transport ring? One might almost think you were one of our people. But then again, your blatant stupidity rather spoils the impression, doesn’t it?’

~~~*~~~

‘Dear Draco,’ murmured Draco, causing his unwilling companions to wonder whether he might have hit his head rather badly as they fell in a heap onto the dragon cell’s stone floor. ‘You seem to find yourself repeatedly in compromising positions with Gryffindors this night. Please cease this impropriety immediately. Disrespectfully, yourself. PS. Mr. Weasley really should not put his pauper’s hands on the Malfoy family heirlooms.’

‘It’s not voluntary!’ hissed Ron between gritted teeth.

‘So you say, you poor person pervert you.’

‘I’m stuck!’

‘I’ve noticed.’

‘I can’t get it off!’ growled Ron, his pinned arm twitching and causing horribly inappropriate behaviour in the Malfoy heirlooms, calling into question the veracity of the surely unintentional connotations of Ron’s angry assertion.

Draco rolled his eyes and bit back the quip that would otherwise have leapt off his tongue, had it been someone else’s private property on the ridicule market.

Hermione, however, didn’t have any such compunctions. A loud snigger erupted somewhere above Draco’s left shoulder. It rapidly escalated into hysterical laughter, and the hint of underlying meows and purrs made Ron and Draco rather more uncomfortable than they already were, lying pinned beneath Hermione and a metal grille that had proven less easily dislodged than they’d thought.

Draco sighed. ‘Weasley, help me push.’

And so, in a rare fit of cooperation, Draco and Ron forced Hermione and the grille off their persons, jumped up, put on their robes, and purposely forgot any and all accidental trespasses onto aristocratic private parts. Meanwhile, Hermione staggered to her feet, still giggling, and looked around for a door. She found it in the tunnel outside, where it had embarked on an afterlife as a small indoor jetty, its considerable thickness putting it a full inch above the black water.

‘Who left the tap running?’ said Ron as he stepped out beside Hermione.

‘It’s the lake. We’re below it. Must be seeping in somewhere.’

‘Great,’ muttered Ron. ‘If those monsters don’t get us, we can drown as rats instead. Nice.’ He shuddered theatrically.

Malfoy joined them on the door, dusting off his robe and muttering about how Malfoys could never drown as anything as common as a rat. Hermione, for her part, felt more likely to die a cat than a rat, and any present rodents should count themselves lucky not to end up a Last Supper. She was famished. And clearly in need of therapy.

Hermione splashed her way down the tunnel. ‘This way,’ she called.

‘How do you know?’ asked Draco, staring apprehensively at the dirty water.

‘I’m me,’ said Hermione, sloshing onwards and smelling far too many meals scurrying down the sides of the tunnel to give a damn what she was saying. ‘I know everything.’

‘She does, you know,’ said Ron matter-of-factly and pushed Draco off the door.

‘Oh, shut up, you romantically deluded rodent.’

‘Fuck you, ferret-boy!’

‘In your dreams and my nightmares.’

~~~*~~~

In death, the hyena did Julia the unintentional favour of saving her life, at least for a while. As it was flung against the tunnel’s wall and fell onto one of its erstwhile comrades in teeth, Julia stumbled backwards through the transport ring. But she remained in the tunnel. One-way travel. Right. The basilisk and its spidery henchbeings turned their attention back towards her.

Racing down the tunnel with the loud swish-swish scrape of the basilisk and the rapid patter of the spiders behind her, Julia ran into two old friends coming the other way at full speed. The hyenas halted, almost falling over themselves, as they saw what new unwanted company she kept. Julia ran past them.

Up ahead she saw the roaring reason for the hyenas’ panicked flight. A deep blue dragon crouched behind yet another transport ring. But no spiders this time, and the dragon seemed disinclined to attempt exaggerated motion within the cramped confines of the tunnel.

As the hyenas joined her on either side, Julia found unlikely support in her assumption that the dragon was, in fact, the lesser of two evils. She pushed herself yet harder. The dragon reared up, its breast swelling. Ready to fire.

She had to reach the ring before the flames. There was another ring behind the dragon, so this had to be the transport side of the closest ring. It had to be.

Or she was literally fried.

A huge spider dropped down before her. The hyena to her left leapt at it, biting and clawing frantically. Neither Julia nor the second hyena stayed to help in the futile effort. Just a few feet to the ring. Behind them, the noises died down. Fire, the universal deterrent.

The dragon’s flame exploded towards them, but they couldn’t have stopped if they wanted to, and the hyena probably did. The fire surged through the ring, enveloping Julia for a brief second before she burst into wet darkness. She staggered forward, beating out what small fires had managed to take hold on her clothing and in her hair, while the drizzle helped quench those out of her reach.

There was much commotion around her, the smoking hyena howling somewhere to her left and a multitude of male voices clamouring for attention. A black-clad man burst from the darkness to grip her arm painfully.

‘They’re using the rings!’ he exclaimed, raising his right arm to stab her with a small pointed stick.

She screamed and shielded her face, but the man was shoved aside before he could do any real damage. Gentler, but somehow stronger, hands gripped her shoulders.

‘Relax, lass,’ soothed a gruff old voice. ‘Unlike that there arse, I can tell ye’re not the enemy. But, listen now, I need to know—’

She took her arms from her face and looked at the man’s face, which proved much less comforting than his voice. And his large, rolling eye could have rattled anyone.

‘—where did ye come from?’ finished Mad-Eye Moody.

And Julia, overcome with exhaustion and fear, fainted in his arms.

~~~*~~~

Eventually, Draco gave up trying to smear the dust on his robe into more attractive patterns, deciding that dust doesn’t look remotely appealing, even on a Malfoy.

‘What I don’t understand,’ he muttered as he tried to will himself to walk on dirty water, ‘is why they didn’t just use magic to get the food in, instead of that filthy contraption.’

‘Then we’d have been stuck,’ said Hermione. ‘Besides, magic was blocked within the prison. Safety precaution. Not quite sure how they blocked it though.’

Ron snorted. ‘Probably invited some Origin bastards over for tea.’

‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Hermione, making Ron flinch and Draco fall off the tiny ledge he’d been balancing on. They all stopped. ‘That’s why they installed food lifts and other Muggle-style devices! They wanted the castle to keep working under Origin siege!’ She frowned. ‘But what I can’t understand is why Hogwarts: A History would make no mention of it.’

‘That,’ said Draco, sounding every bit the snooty, waterlogged aristocrat, ‘is because your precious Pigprotuberances: The Tedious Tale is so bloody politically correct it tries to convince people the Deeper Dungeons were originally added as extra storage space! And it certainly doesn’t mention what Other Species were detained and dissected here,’ he huffed. ‘Oh, stop looking like your going to be sick all over my delightfully dusty robes, Weasel.’

Anxious to get the discussion back on track, and to avoid Ron and Malfoy coming to blows, Hermione said ‘But why would anyone want to erase the Origin from Wizarding history?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Draco, getting two dark scowls in reply. ‘People don’t like to be reminded that there have been wars fought over the alleged enslavement of an entire race – where their ancestors were effectively fighting on the side of slavery. And people certainly don’t want to think about the Origin having the power to strip them of all their magical abilities.’

Ron looked like one giant question-mark, and while Hermione fought a sudden urge to straighten it into an erect and excited exclamation-mark, he asked the question that should have been on her mind. ‘But why haven’t they – been around then?’

Draco shrugged. ‘Nobody knows. After the last war, they vanished, and no one felt particularly inclined to look them up. Most Wizarding places have had protection against the Origin for centuries – like Hogwarts – but there have been rumours about attacks outside those areas – all unverified, because no one has ever survived, of course. Stop making that horrid face Weasley! Oh, wait, it’s natural, isn’t it? I am sorry. Truly.’

Ron was looking rather queasy, Hermione observed, unlike Malfoy who merely looked mildly rattled, though who knew what went on behind the mask. Hermione herself had moved beyond feelings of illness and fear several severe shocks before. But although her feelings were numbed, her mind was keen, if somewhat twitchy. She narrowed her eyes at Malfoy.

‘How come you know so much about the Origin?’

‘My father is an expert,’ he answered, his open gaze challenging her suspicion.

‘Figures,’ muttered Ron.

‘And besides, I am pureblood,’ Draco added, as if his lineage held the answers to life, the universe, and everything. ‘Which,’ he explained, seeing their perplexed expressions, ‘has nothing to do with blood, per se. Or our – what is that you call it? – yen-ticks? It’s a saying; like that stupid thing Muggles say about blue blood. At least we don’t claim to have ink in our veins. We are pure, but we are pure Origin. And since people don’t want to talk about the Origin… Well, blood’s always a cosy little subject for the aristocratic dinner table, isn’t it?’ He stopped suddenly, and ‘Especially if your guests are all Death Eaters’ found itself floating unsaid through already crowded air.

Hermione stared. She couldn’t help it. ‘You are Origin?’

Ron edged away from Malfoy, eyeing him warily.

‘Purebloods aren’t Origin,’ said Draco, ‘as such. What we are—’

‘What you are,’ growled a man’s voice from out of the darkness, ‘are traitors!’