Interwoven

The festering stench of methane and hydrogen sulfide burned the interior of her nose, the gases sticking like chewing gum to her olfactory bulb.

Hermione Granger shoved a hanky against her nose, though it did little when the handkerchief itself smelled of marsh gas. It was comforting nonetheless, the way a mother's kiss to a scraped kneecap was comforting despite the addition of saliva and germs to the wound.

Moonlight glinted off the bog, the tepid summer air stale amidst the sunken place. Sheep carcasses floated amongst the murky depths to her right and left, one of which had the posterior of the animal sticking out and rotting, while the chest and head were trapped in an eternal youth.

She hoped there were only sheep carcasses, but Hermione had never considered herself a lucky witch. She stepped along the jutting pieces of land betwixt dark pools, feeling much like Frodo Baggins. She only hoped there were no gollums lurking around, nor inferi in the waters.

Six years since she had been back on British soil, and her first assignment takes place in a bloody bog. Maybe the British Ministry was still pissed she’d accepted her masterships overseas. Her foot caught in a mossy hole, and she nearly went head over tit. Instead she stumbled, grumbling and casting a series of unnecessary hexes towards the offending hole behind her.

She would take a long vacation after this. Maybe to Jamaica or back to Peru where she’d met a lovely man who hadn’t let her leave his bed for days at a time. Or she’d finally get around to checking out the Pyramids of Giza. They’d offered her once already to clear some of the nasty curses lingering in tombs long forgotten, surely they would offer again.

Hermione pressed on once she was over the tripping-in-a-hole incident and had incited her rage well enough. Her wand flicked incrementally, sending detection spells within a two meter radius. She had expected—well, she actually had very little expectations considering the minute amount of information the ministry had given besides the location and their desire for her to bring back artifacts— but missions gifted by government agencies usually included a copious number of curses along the way. Though she supposed, when she pressed the hanky nearly into her nostrils, the bog was a well-enough deterrent for most.

The bog was eerily silent aside from the squelching of her boots as they sank into the mud with each step. She could feel the pull of old magic, thick in the air, faint but unmistakable.

The moonlight illuminated a broken path ahead, one made of moss, lichen, and stones so black they looked far more like potholes in the ground than stepping pads. She glanced upwards, squinting. “Lumos Maxima.”

The light poured from her wand, surrounding her in an encasement of luminescence that stretched nearly six meters in diameter. Through the light she could just make out, rising from the muck and fog, the outlines of ruins, half sunken in the marsh. She moved closer, carefully checking each black stepping stone to ensure not only that it wasn’t cursed to hell, but that it was in fact a step and not a bottomless pit.

The structure had once been grand—stone arches and columns jutting at odd angles from the earth, their intricate carvings weathered and crumbling. The architecture suggested it was built in the late Middle Ages, likely around the 15th century, and its stones were now mottled with algae and rot, as though the marsh had been devouring it for centuries. Once she was close enough, she tapped her wand against the closest archway, murmuring a series of detection spells.

Muggle repellant wards. Though she wasn’t sure what muggle would find themselves galavanting through an English bog. Confunding curse. Not unusual, nor dangerous. Anti-intruder jinx. Also not uncommon. Skin-flaying hex. That quirked her brow. Diabolical in nature, and finally enough reason to accept why she had been asked for this mission and not any fuddy-duddy cursebreaker the ministry had lying around.

She dispelled the curses, most of which had corroded due to the period of time they had been on the structure. Spell corrosion of dark magic worked much like muggle batteries. Over time, they leak and seep into nearby surfaces, leaving behind something even nastier than originally intended. Meaning the skin-flaying hex was just as likely to flay not only skin but all underlying tissue and cells, leaving one a sort of walking skeleton for the few seconds of consciousness that remained after an ordeal of that nature.

Nasty business, though it left Hermione practically buzzing with excitement.

Vines crawled along what remained of the walls, and water dripped from the cracks in the stone, pooling in shallow depressions. The door—if there had ever been one—was long gone, leaving a gaping black maw into the heart of the ruin. Hermione approached cautiously, her senses on high alert. The magic here felt older, more primal. Not the kind that was necessarily cast with intent, but something that had soaked into the land itself.

As she stepped inside, the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. The air felt thick, oppressive, like walking through molasses. However, the smell of rotting carcass was left behind, and Hermione was able to breathe through her nose once more.

The chamber beyond the entrance was circular, with a domed ceiling that had partially collapsed. There were symbols etched into the stone floor, runes, humming with residual energy despite the cracks throughout the stone.

In the center of the room, half submerged in the muddy ground, lay a stone altar, its surface slick with moisture. Altars, traditionally, meant sacrifice, worship, or prayer, with an origin in the belief that objects or places were inhabited by spirits or deities worthy of prayers or gifts.

Altars meant artifacts in her line of work— cursed ones.

She grinned, her footsteps echoing softly as she moved closer. She stepped over the rune for rebirth, its zigzagging lines split down the middle with a large fissure. She was halfway to the alter when the ground behind her rumbled, the mud bubbling unnaturally. Hermione’s wand was raised in an instant, eyes narrowing.

Skeletal hands broke through the mud first, followed by rotting faces, their eyes empty and dead.

Inferi.

Hermione groaned. She was now one for two and only hoped the freaky creature from Lord of the Rings wasn’t next.

The undead creatures were slow, sluggish in the muck, but determined. There were five, in various states of rot, pulling themselves out of the ground. The one closest to her feet grabbed at her legs, it’s jagged nails piercing flesh—

She kicked forward, caving in the creature's head before yanking herself out of its grasp. Another had fully emerged from the soppy ground and charged at her.

Hermione didn’t hesitate.

“Incendio.” She snarled, slashing her wand through the air. Flames erupted from the tip, bathing the room in an orange glow as they engulfed the inferi. The creatures shrieked, their bodies crumbling to ash as the heat consumed them. Two more bouts of the fire spell had the dead returning to their natural state.

Silence returned, broken only by the crackling of the dying flames. Hermione exhaled, her pulse slowing back to normal. Sweat beaded down her back, squelching in her thick leathers. The reprieve from the outside stench was now replaced by the scent of mummified barbecue.

Undead guardians of an altar room. Hermione grinned to herself, her blood electrified, and turned back to the raised platform.

The surface of the stone slab was engraved with more runes, their shapes worn smooth by time. A quick detection spell revealed no nasty curses along the slab. She brushed away some of the grime, revealing a shallow indentation in the center. Nestled inside was a small, ornate object that gleamed faintly in the dim light. It was a pendant, circular in shape, with intricate filigree surrounding a smooth, polished stone at its center. The stone itself was a deep, iridescent black, shimmering with hints of purple and green.

She raised her wand towards the treasure, attempting a quick levitation charm to raise the stone from its cavity.

The pendant didn’t budge.

Hermione frowned in annoyance.

It wasn’t the first stubborn artifact she had come across, of course, but that didn’t make her any less irked. She liked puzzles, had always enjoyed the buzz that accompanied a clever solve. But when she was covered in muck and soot, she enjoyed a quick fix even more.

She twirled her wand over the object, casting a  quick diagnostic.

The signature of dark magic permeated into the pendant. There were no active curses on the object; instead, it was seemingly in an inert state. The only true readings she could gather from the diagnostic were anti-levitation and anti-summoning charms. Harmless in themselves.

Hermione quickly slid a hand into the bag at her side, reaching elbow deep until she retrieved the thick leather gloves she required. Sliding her wand between her teeth, she maneuvered her hands into the gloves. Spelled against most touch-based curses, they had become a favorite purchase of hers since she had picked them up in New York two years ago. They were crafted of Hebridean dragon hide, and fit perfectly to her hands, feeling almost like a second skin when she slipped them on. It had taken a nasty nail-ripping curse for her to succumb to the need for the expense.

She gripped her wand once again before reaching her free hand for the pendant.

Hermione’s gloved fingers brushed the surface, and the stone seemed to almost sigh in reverence at the caress. When no immediate threat revealed itself, she gripped it tightly in her palm, and gave a quick tug to remove it from the crevice.

It came without resistance, and she felt the magnetic pull to the object before anything else—

Her fingers tightened instinctually around the egg sized pendant, and suddenly there was a blinding pain in her hand, a stabbing sensation. Hermione hissed, squeezing her eyes shut as she quickly dropped the cursed item into her bag.

Her head swam as she held out her left hand in front of her. In the middle of her glove lay a tiny hole, no bigger than a pinhead.

She shook her head. Impossible.

Her gloves were supposed to be spelled against magical and nonmagical means of tearing. She had taken all the precautions of safety, and yet—

Blood welled under the leather, filling the tiny hole before sliding down her wrist. She tracked it with her eye as it rolled down before dripping onto the floor.

A thrum vibrated through the air, like the string of some ancient god’s lyre had been plucked, and Hermione slammed a hand against her chest as the thrum seemed to vibrate through her. Into her.

Something was wrong—

Her vision blackened, and she gripped her wand tightly, not wasting time casting diagnostics before she apparated directly from the ruins.

St. Mungo’s, she thought as she felt the swirling darkness tugging at her navel.

When she slammed to the floor of her location, polished white marble greeted her as she stumbled and fell, cracking her head against the varnish; so different from the checkered floor she remembered from her last visit nearly eight years ago.

Clipped and rushed footsteps sounded in the distance, and she felt the tug in her chest yank once more. She registered nothing else as she slipped into unconsciousness, the image of her bloody hand marking the pristine floor burning into her brain before she faded into the darkness.