Manacled by Senlinyu

Chapter 63: Flashback 38

Author's Note: This is the final flashback chapter.

July 2003

Sussex Lab was a huge black building that looked as though it had been dropped down into the middle of the Ashdown Forest. The apparition wards extended several hundred yards. Hermione approached under heavy disillusionment, giving wide berth to the other, smaller buildings scattered about it. The Lab overshadowed everything. The air was so twisted and corrupted with Dark Magic it was difficult to breathe. Dementors were patrolling high overhead.

From the angle of her approach, the building reminded Hermione of the pictures of Azkaban. She'd seen the blueprints of Sussex design and seen it from a distance, but it was the first time she'd approached it.

It was a towering, V-shaped building, with no visible point of entry. There were only a handful of windows on the uppermost floors. She knew from the blueprints that the only entry was by a secured apparition point inside the building, and the only exit a separate disapparition point on a different floor.

If she'd been calmer and less grief-stricken, she would have realised there was no way for Draco to extract Ginny so quickly without compromising himself.

They'd both made mistakes out of desperation.

She glanced around. It was evening and overcast for summer. It was beginning to grow dim; the dark creatures would soon emerge in force.

Hermione approached until she reached the final layer of protective wards. They were the same impenetrable kind that had been over Hogwarts. The grass and plants had burned away into ash along the perimeter.

Hermione held her hand out, and the magic crackled, shimmering into visibility at her proximity.

She pulled a knife out of her cloak and, kneeling down, pierced the wards near the ground. The manticore venom in the silver slipped through as though the magic didn't exist. Hermione pulled one of the dozens of bombs she'd brought, tapped it lightly with the tip of her wand, and pushed it through the opening, being careful not to let the ward or the knife come in contact with the tiny orb. If she accidentally set off a bomb, the Death Eaters would be picking up bits and pieces of her across a fifty foot radius.

She tried not to think about it.

She pushed five of the bombs through the opening in the ward and, with a flick of her wand, levitated the bombs over to the building, leaving three interspersed along the base and sending two to hover about twenty feet up the wall. She withdrew the knife, and the opening in the ward instantly resealed.

She quickly moved ten feet further and repeated the steps until she had made her way all the way along the east wall of the building and her pockets were empty. Based on every report Severus and Draco had ever brought about Sussex, the east side of the the building was where the curse development division and most research using human test subjects were located. The west side of the building was more technological, where the shackles and research into breaking the Fidelius had been based.

She backed away as far as she could, eyeing the edge of the disapparition wards and trying to gauge how far she'd need to run. With a quick flick, she cast a bubble-head charm on herself.

She closed her eyes and drew a slow breath before opening them and extending her wand hand.

I'm going to take care of you. I'm always going to take care of you.

She waved her wand sharply upwards and then slashed down.

There was a split second of silence. Then there was a rumble, as though the particles in the air were all vibrating.