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Snape moved to intervene , then stopped dead.
Something in his peripheral vision caught him. Something he never expected to see.
An Auror was frantically casting healing spells on Umbridge, one after another, his wand shaking. None of them worked. The wound refused to close, as though it had been cursed to stay open.
Snape's pupils contracted. He looked at Hermione.
He took a slow, deliberate breath and forced himself to be calm. He had a stomach full of questions, but right now, none of that mattered.
He didn't like Umbridge. Not even a little. But letting her die here would make everything irreparable. Whatever remained between Hogwarts and the Ministry would be over.
Snape strode to her side, raised his wand, and cast.
"Episkey!"
A flash of white light struck the wound.
The wound trembled. Once. Then nothing.
Snape's jaw tightened. He cast again.
"Episkey!"
Flash after flash of white light fell on her in rapid succession. The effort cost him more than it should have. Sweat began to bead on his forehead. His face drained steadily of color.
Finally, under the weight of his near-exhausted effort, something changed.
Blood began to seep back. The wound's edges stirred , a slow, agonizing crawl, like a snail dragging itself across stone , and new flesh crept in from the borders.
Snape let out a long, shuddering breath and sat down heavily on the floor.
He didn't bother wiping the sweat from his brow. He just stared at the wound, watching, waiting, until he was certain the counter-curse was holding. Only then did he look back up at Hermione.
His eyes were filled with something that looked a great deal like horror.
---
Above the Ministry of Magic, Hermione circled on the back of the fiery serpent.
Below her, over a dozen Aurors had formed a line, wands working without pause, layers of defensive spells flaring and flickering as they fought to hold back the Fiendfyre. They were managing , barely.
It wouldn't last.
The Fiendfyre burned hotter by the second. Cracks were already splitting through the Aurors' barrier.
"Confringo!"
Spells blazed from wand tips. The roar of impact rolled through the Ministry like a wave.
Offices. Conference rooms. Corridors. One after another, they came apart in eruptions of stone and smoke. Debris clattered across the floors. Dust billowed thick enough to choke on.
"Get the Minister out! Now!"
A cluster of Aurors closed around Fudge and pushed him toward the exits. His face was the color of ash. His legs had stopped working. The Aurors were practically carrying him.
He had never, in his worst nightmares, imagined being hunted down on his own ground.
"Apparition!"
Fudge wrenched out his wand and tried. A few sparks sputtered at the tip. Nothing else. The space around him felt thick, solid, like trying to tear through stone.
"Apparition! Apparition!"
"Damn it — move! Just move!"
"Why isn't it working?!"
The other Aurors were hitting the same wall, shaking their wands in desperation. Nothing. Not a flicker.
"What is going on?!" Fudge screamed.
One Auror's expression went grim. "Minister. The space around us , I think it's been sealed."
"What?!"
The word hit Fudge like a physical blow. He swayed.
"An Anti-Apparition Charm!" another Auror shouted.
"Impossible!" a third snapped. "An Anti-Apparition Charm needs multiple powerful wizards casting in concert, plus supporting artifacts. She can't have done this alone. She can't!"
"Then you explain how she did it!"
"Wait — look!"
One Auror stumbled to a halt and pointed, his arm shaking.
The walls. The floor. The ceiling. Everything around them was moving , bending and warping like invisible hands were kneading the world itself. Like a massive kaleidoscope, shapes and colors shifting and bleeding into one another.
The familiar Ministry corridor was gone. What was left was twisted, fractured , like looking at the world through a shattered mirror. Their own faces stared back at them from a dozen broken angles, pale and wide-eyed.
Then Hermione changed her gesture.
The Mirror Dimension obeyed.
Walls tilted. The floor flipped over on itself. The ceiling dropped away into an open abyss.
The entire world became a spinning drum.
"AAAAAH!"
"HELP!"
"WHAT IS THIS?!"
The Aurors were thrown in every direction, stumbling and crashing into each other. Some grabbed for walls that were no longer where they'd been. Some tried to plant their feet and found the ground had rotated out from under them.
They were dolls in a washing machine. The space spun and they spun with it, completely out of control.
Fudge grabbed at an Auror's arm. The Auror lurched sideways and flung him off.
"Minister, I — I can't help it either!" The Auror's face crumpled.
Fudge hit the ground and kept going , rolling through the spinning chaos, smashing into a wall, bouncing back toward the floor. He was fairly certain his internal organs were working their way loose.
"Hermione Granger!" he screamed, his voice cracking, putting everything he had left into it. "Stop this! I am the Minister for Magic!"
Hermione's silhouette flickered in the corners of the Mirror Dimension , here, there, everywhere at once, as if the whole space belonged to her.
"The Minister," she said.
A soft laugh.
Nothing else. And yet somehow, that was enough.
The rotation snapped up a gear.
The screaming grew worse.
Several Aurors had already gone limp, foaming at the mouth, unconscious on the spinning ground. Those still awake swung their wands in wild arcs, throwing every spell they could think of at the walls around them.
"Confringo!"
"Reducto!"
"Diffindo!"
None of it mattered. The Mirror Dimension didn't budge. Their magic hit it and disappeared, like throwing stones into the sea.
Then, without warning, everything stopped.
The spinning simply ceased.
Silence.
"Ugh, "
"Blegh, "
Vomiting. From several directions at once.
The Aurors lay wherever they'd landed, heaving and gasping, faces white as chalk. Some had given up trying to stand and just pressed their foreheads against the floor.
Fudge sat slumped in the middle of it all. He couldn't stand. He wasn't sure he ever would again.
"What..." a young Auror's voice came out thin and trembling, breaking the silence. "What was that? What kind of magic was that?"
Nobody answered.
They were elites , the best the Ministry had. Between them, they had seen things that would make most wizards faint. They had records and training for nearly every form of magic known to exist.
Not this.
"Space magic," an older Auror finally muttered to himself, his voice barely carrying. "Did she... create this herself?"
"Impossible." Another Auror shook his head, though the conviction was draining from his voice with every word. "Absolutely impossible. It can't be..."
But the facts were right there on the floor around them.
If this magic had already existed, the Ministry would have records of it. There would be something. Anything.
There was nothing.
Which left only one explanation.
Somewhere in the wreckage, a voice broke the stunned quiet.
"She's in her third year?"
➤ Next: Mediation
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