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Retreat - Act I: Occupation	By : Andreas Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2548 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 5
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- 7
6. Descent

The children of trees rose in defiance of the darkness.
Clustered together in the image of their forbears� mighty forests, they sought
the power of many. Damming and channelling the lingering traces of magic, the
wands focused on one sole goal in perfect symbiosis with their witch and wizard
wielders. �ACCIO BROOMSTICKS!� boomed through the Tower and rung across the
grounds like a vocal bell tolling the might of unsubjugated magic.

Hermione gazed
out into the empty night sky and hoped that Lady Luck would smile on her once
more, that she had recalled the wand-linking charm correctly, that the
broomsticks would heed their call, and that�

�and that hope
wasn�t a mere figment of her imagination.

~~~*~~~

During the design of the Hogwarts
broom-shed, it had been taken as a given that those in want of a broom would
enter, pick out a suitable broom, exit, and then take off. Consequently, the
shed had not been constructed to support a mass exodus of brooms brought about
by one particularly powerful summoning spell.

The result of
the majority of the resident brooms� (though not all � for some, the failing
spells were too many, and they could manage no more than an uninspired hop)
attempting to exit all at once through one door was thus the complete and
chaotic destruction of the shed in question. And as it was reduced to so much
rubble, the already frayed nerves of one very unfortunate badger were reduced
to nothing very much at all.

~~~*~~~

In the Great Hall, a plodding line of newly arrived Hufflepuffs
performed a spirited mass imitation of their troubled totem animal as Potions
Master Severus Snape cursed like a man possessed by some particularly vile
poltergeist. His broomstick had just taken upon itself to zoom out a broken
window, and for this, it was duly damned.

Had he known
it was heeding the call of Gryffindor House, he would likely have sent some
poor Hufflepuff into a dead faint.

~~~*~~~

Having convinced the final batch
of first-years that malfunctioning broomsticks were, in fact, preferable to
trekking through a dark and monster-packed Hogwarts, Ron turned from the
scorched opening in the Tower�s outer wall to peer back at Hermione. She
kneeled, perfectly still, by the corpse of the knight. He called her name. She
remained immobile.

What had
surprised her most about the corpse was the blood. Not the actual presence of
an expanding pool of murky red � a perfectly reasonable side-effect of having a
sword driven straight through one�s body � but, rather, the absence of
the fluid in the death scenes of the two zombies. An absence she had overlooked
until blood, other than her own, had made its final, late appearance.

Before the
sudden outpouring of blood, Hermione had fumbled her slashing way through a
silver-age swashbuckler, where blood happened off-screen. Now, she had
been flung headlong into the unreal reality of contemporary lowbrow action and
horror.

That this
morbidly mental metaphor effectively cast her as the monster-slaying
bloody bimbo of her B-movie life didn�t exactly help matters. Though, really,
she was probably a bit too bright, a bit too brown, a bit too bushy, and a bit
too � small � to be cast as the Blonde Bimbo with the Big Boobies.

Hermione was
content to let her mind make these little excursions into a realm of
metaphorical mirrors. They reflected a reality distorted enough to make it
tolerable and, ultimately, manageable. Brutal, unfiltered reality would demand
her undivided attention soon enough. For now, she would simply process.

She pondered
the blood, its presence and absence.

She considered
the connection between knight and zombies, and the bloody difference.

She tried to
ignore the conclusion that while the zombies were beings fuelled by some
strange form of magic � undead creatures bereaved of their negating prefix �
the knight was a man of flesh and leaking blood. A man she had killed.

Murdered?

She traced the
dull dents in the helmet clutched in her hands. She had vaguely hoped to find
some inhuman monster underneath it. What she found instead looked rather like
an adult Harry. Too much like Harry � even the eyes, staring, possibly at
Death. A man killed by an ancient Muggle weapon, with eyes the colour of
magical murder.

Ron�s hand on
her shoulder jerked her back into what she reluctantly recognised as reality.
The helmet clattered to the floor. Ron spoke, too quickly for her poorly
synched thoughts. She got the gist of his message without registering a word: They
should leave. Quickly.

She lingered
by the Tower�s outer wall, sloppily seated on a hiccupping broom. The sword
stood lodged in armour that, from a distance, looked infested with premature
red rust. Unmoving and unmoved, it grew out of the knight�s body like a potted
wildflower � its murdering nature finally tamed, its thirst for blood
satisfied, for another hundred years or so.

Eyes drifting
across the rubble, Hermione experienced a curious sense of loss, finding
herself half expecting, half wishing, her favourite puppy would burst forth,
yapping reassuringly and wagging its stubby tail. Which, on the whole, would
have been rather unsettling, as she didn�t have a puppy, much less a favourite
one. She was, after all, quite the cat person.

No, what she
did wait around for, she realised, was herself. She hoped against hope that the
person she had been � before the blood, before that night � would return to
take possession of her body, giving the New Hermione a chance to rest in
peaceful oblivion. Before the blood.

She also
realised, for she was indeed a bright girl, that what she really wanted was to
return � return to her idealistic former self, so sure of her ability to
resolve any situation without resorting to excessive violence�

�Hermione!
Come on!�

�to murder.

She followed
Ron down towards the Hall, but she wanted to go back.

Back, before
the blood.

~~~*~~~

Arthur Weasley was, like his youngest male offspring,
having a long night. What he didn�t know was that it would get longer,
downwards, upwards, and round, round, round, in a not-very-merry-go-round. Of
this, Arthur Weasley was blissfully unaware.

Not that Mr.
Weasley�s state of mind could be said to be in any manner blissful as he sat
slumped over his desk at the Ministry�s miniscule Misuse of Muggle Artefacts
Office, contemplating both the case at hand and the syrupy movement of silent
night. Now, this night, devoid of any sound but the vague noises trickling up
and down from more nocturnal branches of the Ministry, was not, strictly
speaking, longer than any other night. Time, after all, remains a constant
throughout the universe. Or so it is assumed by most, except by those
perplexing perpetrators of so-called Relativity Theory.

The Wizarding
World has its very own version of relativity, made popular by the late master
mage Rufus de Quloque, who was wont to argue his theory at great length, and
with many curious and convenient new additions, whenever he was late.
Which was always, even to his own funeral, which was considered very tacky by
those who had to listen to him boisterously reminisce the whole after-funeral
party away. (This last incident was, coincidentally, the most popular example
of a Long Night known to wizarding kind.)

de Quloque�s
theory went, roughly, as follows: Time is a matter of perception. Through
observing the changing state of the world around us, we perceive the forward
motion of Time. Since we all stand at the centre of our very own perceived
universe, and other people very rarely stand at that same centre (since body
possession and mind invasion are pastimes commonly frowned upon by the general
public), we all experience a very personal passing of Time. No man�s Time is
the same as his neighbour�s, and certainly not the same as his wife�s.

But since we
are such very communal creatures, we have constructed time, a universal
constant in the same league as metres and intercultural misunderstandings. To
make sure we can all keep track of this constructed constant, we have created
clocks, small devices that happen in a very predictable and constant
sort of way, except for when one forgets to wind them up, or accidentally drop
them from one�s bedroom window onto the surprisingly thick head of the local
worm-chasing rooster.

Problems,
other than the purely accidental destruction of mechanical devices, occur when
a person�s private Time is too far out of synch with time. Say you�re a
relaxed, leisurely, laid-back sort of individual, to use de Quloque�s favourite
example. Say you spend your days pondering the infinite problems of our Times.
Say you do this particular pondering suitably reclined in some hammock or
other, meditating on the big blue above. Say your thoughts speed about most
vigorously while the sky happens very slowly, as it is wont to do on
those bright blue days so very conducive to productive pondering of portentous
problems. On such occasions, the ponderer�s own Time may move very ponderously
indeed while, elsewhere and just about everywhere, clocks keep happening
in a most regular and unponderous manner. On such unfortunate occasions,
the ponderer may arrive at places according to a personal Time most woefully
out of synch with time, as related by those most regular little
devices that so greatly disturb the concentration of the serious ponderer. But,
it should most certainly be noted that the ponderer whose Time is always on time
ponders at a most ponderous and ineffective pace, and is thus not
much of a ponderer at all, and perfectly unlikely to solve the serious Problems
of Our Times as the professional ponderer must eventually do, if
left to ponder in peace.

Say, on the
other hand (the short one lazing forth the hours), that your ponderings ponder
themselves into what is generously described as a coma, and uncompanionably
called a dead stop with scant hope of resurrection. At such regrettable times,
with no distractions to pull you from your passed-away ponderings� frozen clutches,
even the flickering of a candle (for these times tend to favour the darker
hours) happens so vigorously in comparison to your own very much not
happening thoughts that eons seem to pass for every unmissable tick of the, at
such times ever-present, clock. It is at these times, when Time comes to a halt
and time keeps on ticking, that nights, and the occasional day, feel
longer than ever before.

Arthur
Weasley�s troublesome case at hand (the one saying �Arthur�, pointing at
�Work�) also concerned the inconstancy of time. Or, to be more precise, the
inconstancy of timetables. Not the accepted and assumed inconstancies always
found in railway companies� optimistic time planning but anomalies that defied
even what little reason the timetables did display.

Laid out
before him on his desk were timetables for the London Underground. And he had
to find a pattern to the anomalies.

The anomalies
Mr Weasley was investigating were not actually listed in the timetables
themselves. In fact, they had been most expertly covered up by both the London
Underground and the Muggle officials in charge. Not even the notorious Muggle
media had covered the case, nor had its only slightly less notorious Wizarding
counterpart. They had, surprisingly enough, not considered the grumbling of
disgruntled ex-employees sufficient proof to publish such unbelievable
theories.

It was sheer
luck that the Quibbler had had its pages full with stranger fictions at the
time.

A little over
a two months previously, drivers for the London Underground began reporting
weird incidents, calling in sick due to unstable work conditions, or simply
quitting altogether. The tunnels were misbehaving, they said. Hallucinations
were an everyday occurrence. Those who didn�t suddenly find themselves driving
through fields of barley or other sorts of scenery not usually found beneath
central London started getting to their stations ahead of schedule. It was hard
to say which phenomena was considered the more unsettling and, frankly, unreal
of the two.

At first, the
Muggles had investigated possible gas leaks, bad food (not, it should be noted,
whether the food was bad in the first place), possible terrorists at play with
a surprisingly subtle form of chemical warfare, and had at one point theorised
that perhaps it was all merely an elaborate practical joke, soon to be
broadcast on some perky cable network. They had even entertained wild ideas of
evil Tube driver union conspiracies, but, when all else failed, they had, as
reluctantly as ever, turned to the Ministry for help. The whole thing smelled
strongly, it was agreed, of magical mischief.

So, the
Ministry investigated, with scarcely more impressive results than the Muggles.
While the first investigators had trekked through the tunnels in search of gas
leaks and biological weapons, the wizards scanned for lingering traces of
magic. Like their forerunners, they found nothing unusual or unexpected. At
least, they found no expected unexpected unusualness. Many were the tunnels
they traversed with nothing more exciting happening than their hearing ghost
trains approaching in the distance. Only twice did a train come round the bend,
causing the wizards to test their Disapparation skills, and the Muggles before
them to test their immediate knowledge of maintenance tunnels.

Those trains
never arrived at the other end of the tunnel. Rather, they arrived at other
ends altogether, as could be vouched for by a Tube driver who felt very
strongly that folk should not be strolling through the Underground
unannounced.

It was the Muggles
speedily cramped into a maintenance tunnel who finally insisted that the
Ministry be brought in, seeing as they were quite convinced the train
that had nearly run them over was not merely some rampant mirage that
had migrated from the African desert to settle underneath central London.

So, the
Ministry investigated, and then, suddenly, the problems seemed to cease. No
reports came in. No drivers quit or called in sick for anything but the usual
unusual reasons. All was calm. The case became a low priority. Until Arthur
Weasley, wrapping up loose ends, thought to ask one driver if, indeed, he had
not experienced any anomalies whatsoever.

It turned out
the driver in question quite enjoyed taking detours through the English
countryside, with occasional glimpses of Italy and Morocco, and in no way felt
this was something to complain about.

Resources were
once more re-allocated to the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts and Misuse of Magic
offices. Additional interviews were conducted. The hippie had stayed on because
of the wild trips, man. (Though, the warthog he lamented having run over in a
secluded Serengeti grove had probably not found it quite so groovy.) The
former flight attendant had quit his previous employment when he�d seen a bear
with a pink umbrella flying past the plane on a motorbike. (The English
countryside was restful by comparison.) And no one had told young master Twist
what the tunnels were supposed to look like. After all, expansive and
curiously placed gardens were all the rage, werhn�ey, eh?

Sceptics
reasonably questioned whether, perhaps, it had merely been a matter of the
Underground hiring nutcases all along. So, communication with commuters was
suggested. Five interviews were conducted before the investigators realised
that making people question the unusual blackness of the tube trains� windows
on some stretches was, in fact, rather counterproductive. Mass media attention
and a mass exodus from the Tube were not on anyone�s wish list.

The
investigation yielded little new headway. Still, through the perceptiveness of
the excursion-fond drivers, the essential nature of the problem was revealed to
be far more physical than food-induced hallucinations or feisty mirages.

Unlike their
Muggle colleagues, the Ministry wizards thought it perfectly plausible that
underground trains could, for whatever reason, pop out in all sorts of unusual
places. So they looked for landmarks described by the drivers, and found some
most curiously placed Tube tracks; hidden in secluded valleys, shrouded by
dense groves, laying half submerged in the moving Moroccan sand, all of them
beginning and ending with � nothing. All of them falling into utter disuse as
soon as they were discovered, providing no further clues.

So, clues had
to be searched for elsewhere. And Arthur searched in timetables, seeking some
pattern to the strangeness. It was fiddly work well suited to him, whose Muggle
mania was, in many ways, no more than an extravagant form of the common
Crossword Compulsion.

But he could
make neither heads nor tails of it, and patterns emerged only when he was
nodding half to sleep, on account of his going mildly cross-eyed. It seemed
hopeless, and had it been the only reason for his working overtime, he would
have already gone home to hear Molly chide him once more for his going along �
like a mindless lump � with Albus Dumbledore�s plans for Harry Potter.

But Dumbledore
had asked him to keep an eye on things inside the Ministry that night, on
account of what was happening outside the bunker-like premises.
Dumbledore did not trust Minister Fudge to do the Right Thing in a crisis.
Therefore, he wanted to be notified instantly if the night�s Auror raid went
awry, so that he could send in those members of the Order not already part of
the Auror assault team � knowing full well that Fudge would never ask for his
help. Not anymore.

So, Arthur
kept an eye on things. And felt as though he was being watched. As if someone
else was keeping an eye on him. Paranoia crept up his spine, tickling his tired
senses.

The candle
flared.

Most people
ascribed the little candle on Arthur�s desk to his infamous obsession with all
things Muggle. It was a plain little light. Its only peculiar, and little
known, trait was a predisposition on its part for having a tiny rotating
eyeball appear at irregular intervals inside its burning flame. Except for the
�irregular� bit, the eye was the very image of Constant Vigilance. It spun
around like a mad thing. The flame flickered moodily.

Arthur drew a
deep breath, and sighed. Here were the news he�d been waiting for. But he�d
been waiting to receive them in some other form. The form of the flickering
flame meant that the news were most likely bad. Very bad. Dire, even.

Arthur put his
left forefinger into the flame. It crackled. He winced. The scenery changed.

~~~*~~~

�What are they?�

It was the
first thing she said on arriving in the Great Hall. She said it, and she
waited, watching. She knew Snape and McGonagall had heard. Her steady gaze
amplified her question, her demand for attention, for explanation, beyond mere
verbal repetition. She waited.

Snorting,
Snape stormed off to help maintain another part of the shields holding the
strained walls together. The sound of crumbling stone and creaking wood filled
the air, the students� frightened murmuring an anxious underscore.

McGonagall
sighed, turned, and faced the inquisitive gaze of Hermione Granger. �They,� she
said, �are the Origin.�

A grating,
gleeful voice erupted behind her. �Orgy? Wha�s this about an orgy then?�

Two pairs of
chillingly feline eyes, thin slits of vexation, locked on the intruder.

�Peeves,� said
Peeves, saluting, as though they had not made the poltergeists questionable
acquaintance far too long ago. �Resident Morall Officicer tryin� t�inject a bit
o�comic relief!�

�Please,�
purred McGonagall, �be so kind as to relieve yourself somewhere else.�

Peeves, being
not entirely suicidal, promptly boosted his personal morale by shooting off in
quite the opposite direction.

Hermione
turned back to the professor. �Origin of what?�

�Magic,
allegedly.� McGonagall sighed. �They claim we stole it from them.� She glanced
at the teachers toiling at the shielding. �And now they want it back,
presumably.�

�Did we?�

�Steal it?
Depends on your point of view, I suppose. Most important things do.� Her brows
furrowed further. �It�s all rather complex and shrouded in myth. No one quite
knows the truth anymore, I suspect. Except the Origin. They are, after all,
immortal. The question is: Are they telling the Truth?� She quirked a smile at
the look of surprise on Hermione�s face. �If, that is, you can be immortal
without being alive in the first place. The Origin are, it would seem, pure
energy and thought. They exist. Like water and air.� The floor trembled.
McGonagall snorted. �With a grudge the size of Mount Helena.� She turned
around. �I�m afraid I must assist my staff, Miss Granger. There will be ample
time for discussion once this crisis has been resolved.�

Following
McGonagall to Snape, Hermione did not feel quite so confident.

Leaving off
questions like Why have I never heard of this before for later,
she asked whether steel was the only thing that could kill these Origin.

McGonagall
smiled. �Yes, I heard the sword proved useful. I�m � proud of you for
protecting my House in my absence, Miss Granger. But, yes, steel is our sole
weapon against the Origin, thus far. Though it�s more a case of
short-circuiting them than killing them.�

Hermione
glanced about, counting. �Then how will we defend ourselves,� she asked in a
voice suggesting that a Great Hall filled with exactly four sword-wielding
pieces of armour was not an ideal place to make a last stand, all things
considered.

Snape spun
around, his eyes simmering with ire. �We will not engage in physical
combat with the Origin, the way you seem strangely keen on doing, Granger! We
will stay put and the let the Ministry deal with it!�

�The
Ministry,� said McGonagall, �will send Aurors trained in combat using steel
weapons. They�ve kept a small unit ready in case of Origin attack, even though
it�s been over a hundred years since they last appeared.� She quirked an
eyebrow. �For once, the Ministry appears to be prepared.�

Hermione
wasn�t reassured. �When will they get here? Have you spoken to��

Snape�s anger
flared again. �Of course we�ve contacted them, you silly girl! Do you think
just because your fabulous � sadly defunct � trio has saved Hogwarts in
the past that the entire staff is incompetent?�

�We�ve sent
owls,� said McGonagall. �The Floo lines are too unstable.�

That brought
another question to the forefront of Hermione�s mind. �What�s happened to � magic?�

Snape turned
to her, having just hurled a spell at the slowly cracking wall in poorly
disguised panic. His perpetual sneer slid into a full-on grimace. �Tell me,
Miss Granger: Were you born a nosy, meddlesome busybody, or is that another
thing you�ve caught from one of those precious old books of yours? As much as
I�d like to say I can manage the Hall�s defences on my own, I do require the
Headmistress�s assistance.� He leered. �Think you can spare her,
Granger?� He turned back to his spellwork, muttering, �And spare me your
incessant questioning.�

McGonagall
smiled apologetically at Hermione. �Professor Snape feels there�s � a time and
a place for questioning minds.� There was a snort behind her, and she added,
pointedly: �For we do, of course, encourage such minds at this school.�
It was a sore subject that had gotten thoroughly infected since McGonagall
became Headmistress. Hermione was sure Snape would have been fired had it not
been for his work for the Order.

McGonagall
gestured to one of the tables. �Take a seat, and I�ll explain all � or what
little we know � as soon as we�ve secured the shields.� She turned around,
decisively, and Hermione swallowed back her questions, a bitter aftertaste in
her mind. She limped over to an empty stretch of bench, pulled out her adopted
wand and began healing her wounds.

The spells
were simple. She could peruse the Hall while performing them (repeated times,
to reach normal results). Ron sat at the centre of a pile of young Gryffindor,
a first-year on his knee. He seemed to be telling them some story, probably
featuring both her and Harry, keeping their minds off reality. He reminded
Hermione of his father, telling his plentiful offspring tales of those strange,
fascinating Muggles. She looked away. She did not need to contemplate
what a good father her non-boyfriend would one day make.

Seeing the
students at their House tables, as though waiting for dinner to arrive,
Hermione thought about what a comfort habit could be, when the vicious unknown
comes knocking. Or, to be more precise, comes to knock down your massive stone
walls.

A stone house
had saved three little pigs from a big, bad wolf. But these Origin did more
than huff and puff. Hermione looked over at the teachers and Aurors at work on
the shields. With tentative relief, she noted that their attempts seemed
successful.

She leaned
back, closed her eyes, and let Three Little Pigs distract her troubled mind.
The noise around her provided an unusual soundtrack for the silent fairytale
flickering before her inner vision: The distant sound of Ron�s acting out
exciting scenes to her left, forced intellectual discourse from the Ravenclaws
behind, timid singing from the huddle of Hufflepuffs to her right, spells
bellowed all around, and an odd noise just on the edge of hearing.

Her eyes
snapped open.

She sat up.
Listening.

There. There
it was. There they were. Sounds easily mistaken for the background noise
of an overfull Great Hall. But it wasn�t. It didn�t fit. She looked about, seeking
some source of the sound, but � like incompetent pop singers indulging in
playback � it just didn�t fit.

It almost
seemed like an echo, of some previous gathering in the Hall. Or, she realised,
the echo of another Hall entirely.

Ignoring the
gasps around her, Hermione threw herself onto the floor, pressing her ear to
the tiles. She listened. She heard. She saw the big, bad wolf climb down the
chimney, falling into the boiling cauldron.

And she knew.

~~~*~~~

�A trap. �Twas a bloody trap!�

The hallway was
dark, faint moonlight filtering through lichen-frosted windows. Arthur would
have squinted if he could, and in the safe candlelight of his office, he
probably did. But it mattered little. Despite the greenish gloom, Arthur could
survey the frightening scene with perfect clarity. The magical eye he
co-inhabited registered shades and layers of reality beyond what any
carbon-based being�s synaptic nodes could ever process. The first few times
he�d linked to the eye, he�d been sick for hours afterwards.

Arthur got a
good look at walls, floor, and ceiling as the eye spun around like some
particularly lively gyroscope. He got a good look at the eight Aurors leaning
against the walls, tense and drooping, alert and weary, like animals hunted
near the point of total exhaustion. He saw a member of the medical field unit
crouched over a wounded Auror, and another body already abandoned further down
the hallway. Through the ceiling, he saw worrisome shadows prowl about.

�We�ve tried
to get through to headquarters, but whatever they�ve used to disable our wands
has cut off everything but this,� Mad-Eye muttered, his eye glancing at the
Muggle-style lighter flickering in his left hand. �Let Fudge know we�re most
likely dealing with some sort of Origin trap, whatever made them creep
out of their stinkin�oles.�

�Origin?� said
Arthur, hearing his own voice only faintly. �Are you sure?�

�No. But
whoever they are, they set up the Death Eaters too, so we�re fighting a bloody
war on two fronts until those pureblood idiots get it through their thick
skulls we�re in the same leakin� rowboat and they need t�pick up an oar!� Moody
growled.

There was
commotion in the distance. Screams and echoing, repeated blasts. The Aurors
readied themselves for retreat, two picking up their fallen friend, the rest
forming a protective circle.

�Tell Fudge
his precious, strange Inspector was one of the first to go down, and that old
Alastor Moody has seized command of his pitiful excuse for a police force,
consequences and procedures be damned. That should make him send reinforcements
without delay, posh git.�

�Ehm.�

�The exact
wording should do it, Arthur. And do hurry. But,� Moody held up a bulky,
elongated Muggle object of black steel, �before y�do, do tell me how to use
this damn thing.�

Arthur hesitated.
He wasn�t quite sure how to use the Damn Thing. Though he had a fair
grasp of what it did, to other things, and other people.

And he was
pretty sure the Damn Thing was called an Aykay-47.

~~~*~~~

�We�re not safe here!�

�I ASSURE you,
Miss Granger, even with failing magic, we can keep these shields up for a VERY
long�� Snape broke off at a loud CRACK from the Gryffindor table.

All eyes
focused in amazement on the frayed, dismal figure of Dobby the house elf,
staggering about on the table, arms flailing, screeching: �FLY MASTERS! FLY!
BAD-THINGS ARE COMING!�

The entire
Hall froze in incomprehension, staring at the elf.

The entire
Hall, save one.

As Hermione
ran for the far wall, a deafening CRACK enveloped her. Tables that usually
served up delightful culinary feasts broke out in a decidedly less delightful
array of warriors and monsters, all clearly willing to make this a Last Supper
for everyone but themselves. It was a meal of nightmares, a mortal cuisine �
the end of the siege.

As the
strategizing part of Hermione�s brain put in additional overtime, she ran
backwards, shouting highly objectionable obscenities at every foe within
earshot. Had Common Sense not called in sick until further notice, it would
surely have suffered major coronary on the spot.

What Hermione
did do on the spot was fall down, in a planned yet unsurprisingly
painful manner. Blue bolts streaked through the air above her. She leapt back
up. Using the Origin deathrays (there she went again, lolloping into B-movie
lala-land) to her advantage had worked before, and being creative was, she
decided, definitely secondary to staying alive. Hermione was a practical girl.
Though, throwing herself headfirst into a blown open food-lift shaft, she had
to wonder if she wasn�t, perchance, practically potty as well.

~~~*~~~

No one manned the Ministry lifts in the middle of the
night, it being visiting time only for people who rarely took kindly to such
assistance. So Arthur Weasley paced in perfect solitude, and imperfect peace of
mind, wishing for a speedier ascent.

The few
messages travelling through the complex at this late hour flapped tiredly out
of his circular way. When the Floo connection on his floor had failed, he�d
considered sending a written message but had eventually decided Moody�s specific
wording was better delivered by mouth, even if this now meant he had to be in
the same room as the irritable Minister to do it.

When the lift
pinged to a stop, Arthur Weasley was in too much of a hurry to notice the
crawling, crippled messages crumpling beneath his feet.

~~~*~~~

There was war in the Hogwarts kitchens.

If you�re
looking to throw an indoor war, there are few places more suitable than a
large-scale kitchen. Plenty of sharp edges, and plenty of places to hide from
them. A multitude of substances ready to be misused in ways only the most
vengeful of chefs would in his wildest, most murderous fantasies contemplate.

The medieval
warlords who greeted unwanted visitors with feasts featuring little beyond
generous helpings of boiling oil never considered a more wholesome alternative
for the early ladder-risers. And they certainly didn�t contemplate the tactical
advantage large amounts of boiling porridge could give a minor army of highly
aggrieved house elves, levitating pots of the aggressive breakfast over the
exposed heads of an opposing force of Origin origin.

All in all,
kitchens provide excellent locations not only for various species of fungus and
rat, but also for very messy minor wars. Very loud and messy. Which was
why no one noticed the small, potty feline streaking towards the exit, dodging
legs and oatmeal bombs, thanking its lucky gas fur-balls for making the
kitchens the final destination of the food-lift it had just tumbled gracelessly
out of.

~~~*~~~

Cornelius Fudge felt pleased with himself. It was not an
uncommon sensation.

Cornelius
Fudge felt pleased with himself for many reasons, foremost among them on this
particular night was the fact that the Chief Inspector he had personally
appointed had just handed him the Death Eaters on a plate. Figuratively
speaking.

Acting on the
advice of Inspector Strange � that most splendid fellow � Fudge had trusted a
delectable piece of intelligence to the extent that he had sent nearly the
entire wizarding police force, Aurors and all, under the competent lead of that
same Inspector Strange, to come down like a mighty hammer on a large Death
Eater meeting. And it had paid off.

�I wanted to
tell you in person,� the Inspector had said (�and Floo silence is still in
effect, for precautionary reasons�). �I wanted to tell you in person: They�ve
fallen into our trap. Every last one of them.� And he had smiled, and Fudge had
congratulated him any number of times. And the wine would be on its way up as
soon as the fireplace stopped sputtering.

Times were
good. Fudge felt pleased with himself, and with the world at large. But mostly
with himself, having masterminded it all.

And then
Arthur Weasley burst through the door.

There was no
denying that the Weasley�s were an old and well respected pureblood family.
Still, there was something quite upsetting about them. Far too many
children, for one thing. It brought about a sort of inflation of the bloodline
that was most unfortunate and ill-considered. And far too much of the
boisterous offspring would undoubtedly marry into less distinguished
bloodlines, diluting the ancient Weasley magic. There were simply not enough
pureblood youngsters left. And they could hardly marry within the family.
Especially considering the amount of boys Arthur and Molly had spawned. And,
no, such connections were not to be thought of, even outside the
family. Marriage was, after all, a Pillar of Society, and not to be defiled by
such impropriety. Fudge had very strong views about this.

In fact,
Cornelius Fudge had very strong views about everything. Not having the mental
dexterity to grasp the finer points of ideas, he found it necessary to have strong
views about them in order to hang on at all. (This is, coincidentally, why
there is often so little difference between the local village idiot and the
political leaders of the World.)

And Cornelius
Fudge had strong views about the Weasleys. They were a nuisance, and a
blustering, bumbling, boisterous bloody nuisance at that.

�What can I do
for you, Arthur?� said Fudge, smiling congenially.

Arthur Weasley
made no reply, staring in a most peculiar manner at the Inspector.

Fudge�s smile
turned into a beaming grin. �You�ll be pleased to hear, no doubt,� he bubbled,
�that the Inspector and his men have secured the mansion and captured every
last one of the leading Death Eaters! I�d say that rather reduces this � war,�
he displayed his distaste with all the subtlety of a drunk mime artist, �to a
personal skirmish between You-Know-Who and Albus Dumbledore, which we can no
doubt deal with in due time.� He grinned again. �Splendid news, wouldn�t
you say, Arthur?�

Arthur had at
this point registered that he was, in fact, being addressed and had turned his
noticeably divided attention to Fudge. �Splendid? Oh, yes. Indeed.�

�You don�t
seem overly thrilled, I must say, Mr Weasley,� said the Inspector.

�What? I
don�t? No, maybe � maybe I don�t.� His laugh barely even convinced Fudge of its
sincerity. �Long night, you know. Terribly long. Terrible shock � good
terrible shock! Terribly good terrible shock! Terrific, even!�
Arthur grinned like a madman. Fudge decided he probably was. �In-deed!�
exclaimed Arthur. �Most � gratifying!� He backed towards the door. �Must
tell Molly. She�ll be terrifie� terribly pleased! Terrible-bly!
B-bye, now!� With a grin that could have knocked over a grumpy rhinoceros and a
wave that knocked over a small vase, Arthur exited.

�Strange man,
that,� said Fudge.

�Indeed. Most
peculiar.�

~~~*~~~

Hermione
padded, keeping close to the walls, towards the Slytherin sector of the upper dungeons
(�upper� being relative, she supposed, to the Pits of Hell, and an altogether
inappropriate designation since going there was always a real downer). She
hissed and shook her head, peeved at her prattling mind. Her mind was not happy
with the Current State of Affairs, taking every chance to ignore them, and she
was not happy with her mind. That this implied that she and her mind were
separate entities � establishing her as firmly out of her mind � was
something she�d rather not dwell on.

She needed to focus.

Reason for
being in the downer dungeons: Finding Malfoy.

Reason for
believing Malfoy to be found in downer dungeons: He wasn�t in the Hall.

Reason for noticing
his not being in the Hall: Unknown. She�d ask her mind once she got back to
it.

Of course,
Malfoy�s absence could mean merely that he had been killed by the Origin. But
she doubted it. The Slytherins would have been in a right state. And there was
so rarely anything right about them, she�d have been bound to notice.

Nightly
excursions had led Hermione to the conclusion that Malfoy spent his nights in
very deep � most likely unnatural � sleep these days, as oxymoronic as it
sounded. Maybe he had slept soundly through the attack, drugged out on Death
Eater potions. It certainly had a more � Slytherin ring to it.

In any case,
Hermione needed help. Everyone else was in the Hall, captives of these Origin
creatures. She would simply have to make do with Malfoy.

Why me?
she thought. Why me?

~~~*~~~

Like the small, inconspicuous
candle on his desk, many were the things ascribed to Arthur Weasley�s
fascination with all things Muggle. The fascination itself was, however, not
ascribed to anything in particular save the fact that Arthur was Arthur and, well,
we all know Arthur, don�t we? Now, had this same Arthur been a less
good-natured and guileless soul, he might have felt vaguely offended by this
line of reasoning, but, as it were, he didn�t give it much thought; if any at
all. Which was also roughly the amount of thought he himself gave to the origin
of his fascination with all things Muggle. The foundation of his fascination
held, in short, no fascination for him.

Had he
dissected the development of his own character and its defining obsessions with
as great a zeal as he did every possible Muggle contraption he came across,
Arthur would have found that his very fist contact with Muggle mechanics had
come at the age of six, through his then already ancient and now quite firmly
dead great, great grandfather. This curious old gentleman had told young Arthur
stories of how they survived in the olden days, during the last Origin War,
when magic was leeched from the land and all those who did not flee had to live
like Muggles. The stories had been enchanting, and some part of Arthur had
never forgotten, nor ceased to try to understand how those wondrous
contraptions might have worked, and did work.

But, in
addition to the Muggle machines, his great, great grandfather had also spoken �
darkly, seriously � of the Origin that the rest of his generation seemed to have
purposely forgot. He showed young Arthur his trophies of war, among them a
small blue ring of incomparable beauty.

The exact same
kind of ring he had seen on the supposedly dead Chief Inspector Strange some
minutes before.

Arthur�s mind
was troubled beyond coherency. He had to get to his desk, to warn Moody, had to
get a message to Dumbledore, somehow.

Treachery. The
Ministry had been compromised.

Panic pushed
its unwelcome way into the lift with him. As the doors closed, Arthur turned
around.

Inspector
Strange was watching him.

~~~*~~~

The room smelled.

It smelled of
dust.

It smelled of
dust for the very simple reason that it was covered in that very same
substance.

It smelled of
dust because the very air, stale and stagnant, was imbued with it.

It smelled of
dust because it didn�t smell of living.

It smelled of
dust, Hermione decided, with the single-minded evil intent of making her
sneeze. After all, this was Malfoy�s room. (A prefect perk. Though hers
was a paragon of cleanliness in comparison.)

In addition to
the overwhelming dust sensation, the room was infested by an oppressive, mute
darkness. Hermione wished she hadn�t had to change back into human form to
unlock the door. Cat eyes would have been a blessing. Eyes now slow and human,
she stood just inside the doorway, watching contours emerge, as though a blank
room was lazily redrawing itself in response to an unexpected, uninvited
visitor.

There were
three big bookcases filled with books. Old, important-looking, presumably very
interesting books. Hermione�s feet itched to throw her body forth, into the
dusty armchair wedged between two bookcases. Her mind craved the distractions
the tomes could offer � wanting to escape further into the universe of Thought
to escape an outside world of Terror.

An ancient-looking
book lay on a bedside table, less seductive in its solitude, but an acceptable
destination since beside it, on a plushly musty bed, lay the still body of one
Draco Malfoy.

~~~*~~~

Much to the surprise of Minister Fudge�s personal
secretary, Chief Inspector Strange was talking into a small black box with a
shiny stick at the top.

�We may have a
� complication,� said Strange, still looking at the closed lift doors. �No. I
don�t think it�s anything major. He�s a bumbling fool; stopping him before he
gets word to the Phoenix will not be difficult. In fact,� he continued,
lowering his gaze to follow the trail of crawling messages on the floor, �I
rather think our problem will take care of itself.�

�Excuse me?�
said the secretary, advancing hesitantly towards Strange. �Is that � a Muggle
device?�

Strange smiled
pleasantly. �Very perceptive. It is indeed.� He put the walkie-talkie back into
his pocket. �This is too, actually,� he said and pulled out the gun.

A mere second
after Strange had shot the secretary, Fudge�s very best wine-glass crashed onto
his expensive carpet � thankfully (due to the Floo still being down) not
carrying any actual wine with it.

In the
descending lift, messages fell twitching to the floor, one by one by three.

~~~*~~~

Draco Malfoy would make a
beautiful corpse. On a purely aesthetic level. In fact, Hermione thought, he
would probably be more beautiful dead than alive, since it would make him
rather less likely to open his mouth and spoil the pretty picture. As it were,
Malfoy was merely deeply attractive and completely repulsive at the very same
time. It sort of evened out in the end. Though, she had to admit, he looked
quite beautiful there, a tumbled Greek sculpture in the dusty darkness. This,
she decided, was because he looked pretty dead. (Pretty, her disowned
mind sniggered.)

Pretty dead,
but not quite. There was a faint pulse, but little presence of mind. (Maybe she
could lend him hers. It was only being a nuisance, after all.)

She�d tried
shaking him and shouting, to no avail. Time, like Patience, was something she
had far too little of. She could hear movement further down the corridor.

She slapped
him.

�GAAAAAHHH!�

Well, that did
it.

Malfoy glared
at her. �GRANGER? What the hell are you doing?�

�Trying to
save you. Though I don�t know why.�

�Well, I
certainly don�t!�

Hermione
grabbed his arm, hauled him off the bed and towards the door in one swift move.

�And exactly what
do you propose to save me from, you madwoman?� cried Malfoy, stumbling along in
befuddled bafflement. On ��woman� they entered the corridor. There were huge,
spideresque � yet hardly picturesque � creatures lumbering up towards them.

�Pick one.�

Malfoy
blanched. �I � I�d � rather not.�

�Then please cooperate!
And put that wand away � it doesn�t work on them.�

Draco lowered
his wand, looked at it, looked at the creatures, back at the wand, and said, in
a distant tone of voice (for his mind was already running away at this point):
�I could � poke out an eye?�

There were
quite a lot of eyes. Even more fangs. Draco pocketed his wand.

�COME ON!�
shouted Hermione, rushing the way of Draco�s runaway mind.

Draco turned.
And he ran.

~~~*~~~

When the lift had shuddered almost to a halt, Arthur had
decided to take his chances on the roof of the wooden device. However, once
there, there was little to do besides wait for an opportunity to present
itself. As it was a magical lift, there were no ropes to climb up, and the
walls were sheer stone.

In fact,
Arthur wasn�t quite sure why he�d climbed through the little hatch and onto the
roof in the first place. Still, as the lift dropped away from under his feet,
he vaguely recalled that it had had something to do with not wanting the
ceiling to crash down on him.

He could do
the crashing quite well on his own.

He plunged downwards.

�Win- Wi- Win-
WinGARDium LeviooohSAAAAAAHH!� cried Mr Weasley, and he knew, through his
youngest son�s long and tiresome harangues, experiencing some kind of strangely
uplifting morbid amusement, that little Miss Weasley would have thoroughly disapproved
of his unorthodox intonation.

Then he
blacked out.

~~~*~~~

For some reason, he was keeping pace with the Mudblood. He
pushed himself nearly to the limit, but not quite, and certainly not beyond,
though the situation was undoubtedly dire enough to inspire supernatural
strength.

Their pursuers
were closing in quickly. He couldn�t outrun them however hard he tried. So he
might at least have company in death. The curving corridor had no side exits,
no stairs, nothing to give them that extra edge. They could but run. So he kept
pace. But why? Was this some badly timed nobility; a touch of chivalry
from the Malfoys of old? And for a Mudblood? What would father
say?

The curve of
the corridor strained his legs, wearied his soul; no end in sight, no light at the
end of the tunnel. Another curve, and another, and�

�Weasley?

The red-headed
menace was pulling something out of a tattered bag slung across his shoulder.
Draco�s step faltered. Weasley might slow the beasts down. Sacrificial lamb.

Oh, father would
be proud.

�DOWN!�
bellowed Weasley, pulling back his arm.

A hand on
Draco�s back � Granger�s � pushed him down before he could contemplate the
consequences. He hit the hard floor in a burst of bafflement. Small spherical
objects flew overhead.

There was a
mighty bang, a composite of many weaker cracks, pops, and fizzles.
Multicoloured light filled the tunnel, tinting the dense, white smoke billowing
across them in all the hues of the rainbow. Shrieks and growls erupted behind
them, but neither claws nor fangs ripped into their exposed backs. The
fireworks had slowed the beasts down.

Ronald Weasley
emerged from the smoke, offering his hand to Granger, his brilliantly red hair
and terrified expression turning him into a gangly, cheap, demented clown
amidst the psychedelic colours.

Draco pushed
himself off the floor and hurried after Granger and Weasley, already vanished
in the smoke. After a mere few steps, an arm shout out of the smoke, grabbed
him and yanked him sideways into another corridor. The smoke cleared, and
Weasley�s bent head greeted him, a beacon of red. Granger leaned against a
wall, echoing her boyfriends deep, shuddering breaths.

�Well,� huffed
Draco, petulant purely by habit, having scant energy to feel anything but
genuinely exhausted, �what now?�

Granger�s eyes
unfocused. Her brow furrowed. Weasley regarded her with blatant, unwavering
confidence. Draco wondered if she hadn�t just zoned out from pure shock. He
did, after all, feel pretty close to that himself.

�The Deeper
dungeons,� said Hermione, eyes still distant. �They�re right underneath, aren�t
they?�

�Yes,� said
Draco, �but they�re sealed off.� What did she expect them to do? Sink
through the floor?

�We must be��
Hermione broke off, turning to Draco. �Do you know of any � rooms � directly beneath
the kitchens?� Her look made it plain: She had a plan.

Hearing growls
from the dissipating smoke, Draco wasted no time. He turned and ran for a side
tunnel, shouting �This way!� over his shoulder.

~~~*~~~

At the end of That Way were three doors in a row, one of
which attacked Ron with a plummeting pile of buckets. For Draco Malfoy, this
was apparently vintage comic relief.

There was
nothing comic about the relief Hermione felt as she finally managed to spell
one of the other two doors open. But she had little need for comedy, not
expecting their pursuers to laugh themselves to death anytime soon.

Relief turned
to despair as the room behind the door revealed itself to be a simple storage
room. A place where only rats and spiders dined. And they were rather too big
for escape through a rat-sized hole in the wall.

She hurried
back into the hall, finding the third door open and Malfoy�s wand illuminating
the inside of a small, wood-panelled office, covered in dust. Her sense of
relief made a tentative reappearance.

�Oh, good,�
said Malfoy, approaching the desk. �We�ll write a note saying we�re too sick to
be eaten today and forge our parents� signatures.� He turned to Ron, who looked
around the room with the obvious befuddlement Malfoy was trying to conceal in
tired witticisms. �Though that would only be impressive in my case, of course.�

�Look for an
opening,� said Hermione, already running alongside the right-hand wall.

Perhaps giving Hermione the benefit
of the doubt, Malfoy waited till after he had found the opening to say: �Jolly
good. We can order a last supper. Brilliant plan, Granger. Allow me to worship
your ugly feet.� Ron used his feet to kick the wannabe worshipper.

Meanwhile, Hermione stared at the
food-lift. The tiny food-lift. She had a plan; repetitive if not
brilliant. Or rather, she had had a plan; decidedly not
brilliant. A plan that � probably due to her self-preservation instincts� being
doped up on adrenalin � had entirely failed to encompass Ron and Malfoy
(neither of whom, she was pretty sure, had the ability to transform into small
animals, Malfoy�s brief and involuntary stint as a ferret notwithstanding). The
dark hole in the wall stared at her like some particularly annoying plot-hole
in a badly constructed novel. (A novel that, quite frankly, had used the
Escaping Through A Food-Lift device ad nauseam.) Hermione felt as though her
life was moving in plot-less circles, one bloody action scene after another,
with no discernable goal in sight. It was as though Hogwarts had turned into an
enormous PC platform game and that, in constantly moving down one level,
she was going about it in quite the wrong way.

�It leads to
the Deeper Dungeons, I think,� she said, by way of doubtful explanation.

�It�s rather �
erhm � small,� said Ron.

�Gryffindors!�
huffed Draco, smashing a paperweight into the wood panelling beneath the
opening. �Noble and courageous and utterly stumped when faced with the need for
some good,� he tugged away a piece of panelling, �old-fashioned,� Ron and
Hermione tugged along, �destruction of property!�

The bared hole
in the stone floor looked dark and decidedly uninviting. Gentlemen as they
were, the stances of both Ron and Malfoy indicated that, by all means,
the ancient courtesy of ladies first was to be observed. Ron then made it quite
clear that he thought himself far more masculine than Malfoy � who was not one
to seem a coward, or take the rear when Spiders from Hell were hopping about.

Thus it
happened that Hermione Granger was shortly followed down a dusty lift-shaft by
Draco Malfoy, who in turn was under the pronounced threat of Ron Weasley�s accidentally
slipping heavily onto that pretty-boy ferret head of his.

�Hurry up!�
ordered Hermione. �We�re sitting ducks in here!�

�More like
three sooty Santa-Clauses stuck up a bloody chimney,� muttered Malfoy, who
nonetheless hurried his descent. Roasted Duck was not on his list of preferred
future careers.

�Actually,�
said Hermione, stopping, �we � eh � are stuck.�

Plot-holes,
plan-holes, food-lifts have such very small holes. Of course, the wood
panel massacre should have alerted her to the problem but, alas, her mind was
on an extended if erratic holiday.

She
could get out. The boys could not. She explained this, carefully leaving out
the first part.

It was not
received with general cheer.

�I always
wanted to die in a chimney,� said Malfoy, with the pompous air of a suffering
aristocrat.

�It�s not a
chimney.�

�Leave my
delusions alone, Mudblood.�

�Wait a bit!�
exclaimed Ron, rummaging in his pockets. �I�ve still got two Weasley�s Wailing
Whompers! We could blow our way out!�

Draco snorted.
�Your family is quick to alliterate, isn�t it?�

�We are NOT
illiterate!�

�I did not
say�� Malfoy began, before Hermione�s low growl reached his ears.

�Malfoy! Shut.
Up.�

Malfoy clamped
his mouth shut, the inexplicable sensation of being perched atop an angry
lioness creeping over him.

Ron calmed,
somewhat, at this. �Hermione, you�ll have to climb up a bit��

��M on it,�
came the muffled reply.

�Granger,
you�re not on it, you�re under my robes!�

�That explains
the smell then.�

�I do not
smell!�

�Malfoy,� said
Ron. �Shut up!� And then he dropped the Wailing Whompers.

There was a
wail.

�Great.
Advertise our whereabouts, why don�t you.�

There was a
whomp.

There was
smoke everywhere, but the passage was clear.

�Now,
Granger.� Malfoy coughed. �If you�d be so kind as to remove your face from my
crotch?�

In the
darkness above, Ron Weasley could manage no more eloquent objection to the
mentioned placement of Hermione Granger�s face than an incoherent splutter
followed by an inelegant downwards kick.

�OW! You
little shit!�

Four seconds
later, a Granger-Malfoy-Weasley pile could be observed through the dissipating
smoke of a dark and dank dungeon.

�Men!�
huffed the nether regions of the pile.

There was no
reply.

~~~*~~~

�Mind the
gap.�

Julia Hartwood
found herself more minding the glinting teeth and the yaps than the hardly
present gap between floor and troubled soil.

�Stand clear
of the closing doors.�

And she
wondered how many more times the hyenas would heed the automated warning as the
doors opened and closed, opened and closed.

This was not what she had expected
when stepping onto the ten fifteen from Paddington. Though, after a hard day�s
work, she hadn�t really expected much at all, beyond being bumped and
absentmindedly humped by endless numbers of fellow commuters.

But she certainly hadn�t
expected the Serengeti.

Quite
suddenly, and much to everyone�s tightly packed surprise, the pitch blackness
of the train windows had been torn open by flashes of moonlight, mottled by
shadows of dense foliage. But while this had been worrying, the train had still
been swishing along with comforting regularity at that point. The real problems
came when they burst into full-fledged moonlight and the wide-open spaces of the
African savannah. It seemed as though the grassland had more definite views
about the layout of proper African wilderness than the preceding grove, and had
consequently, and quite abruptly, done away with the misplaced Tube tracks.

The crash had happened
for quite some Time. Everyone could be in unspoken agreement on this temporal
point. Except for those who were already dead.

The radio was
dead, as was the hippie driver. And the backup power was fading.

�Stand cleahr
oofh theah cloahssenng doooah�� Click.

Well. At least
the doors stopped on a closing note.

If it was all
an elaborate joke, in the dead of night, the hyenas were the only ones
laughing.

~~~*~~~

�So, what
you�re saying is, these aren�t the Deeper Dungeons?�

�No. Yes. I
mean, yes, that�s what I�m saying, yes.�

�Glad we
cleared that up, Granger. So, what are these then? The Not-So-Deep-Dungeons?
The Superficial Dungeons?�

�I believe
it�s the guards� living quarters.� A bed which had no doubt been comfortable
some hundred years ago seemed to corroborate her assumption.

Hermione
glanced back at her two male companions and heaved a sigh. �You know, we�d get
out of here much faster if you�d help me look for another exit!� Then she swept
off � to help herself, since no one else seemed much inclined.

Draco turned
to Ron. �Bossy, isn�t she?�

�Shut up,
Malfoy.�
================================================
NOTES
-- This chapter was finished 'on a deadline', which means that some parts are much less edited than others. So, I have a request to make: If you think this chapter would benefit from further editing before I post it to Schnoogle, please let me know. Same goes for if you don't, of course.
I'm weighing my personal desire to edit against my readers' desire to read the continuation of the story without too much of a delay, so I'd really appreciate your advice.
Thank you. :)
-- And, I must say, I'm terribly sorry about the lateness of this chapter. After having edited draft zero (written last summer), I decided that the chapter needed a complete rewrite, and that one subplot should be heavily reduced in favour of another (the Ministry one), which was then greatly expanded. This necessitated both a lot of additional writing and editing as well as research. Which took time. As did RL stuff. But mostly, my superior procrastination skills are to blame. I will improve, really I will. *nods earnestly*
-- As usual, if you want to be notified of updates, join my Yahoo!Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reading_retreat

or friend my Livejournal - http://kayen.livejournal.com

whichever suits you best. :)
-- This is one of those pivotal chapters, plot-wise. I do hope I didn't forget anything. *checks notes again, and again, and misplaces them entirely*
-- I freely admit that my research into the London Underground could have been more thorough, and that I have no idea what the food they serve their personnel is really like. I would, however, like to thank Celeste for helping me with Tube terminology.
-- I was working on a 'thank-you list' (with comments, when needed) of all my lovely reviewers (*waves to lovely reviewers*) but decided to abandon it temporarily in favour of finishing the chapter. Will include it in the next posting. (Am thinking it might be a good idea to do it regularly, since I'm so terribly bad at getting around to sending email thank-yous, being curiously shy about sending mails that amount to little beyond 'squeeeee!')
-- There's more to the Origin than meets the eye. Quite often, it's a fist that meets the nose, and a knife that meets the heart.
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Retreat - Act I: Occupation