As usual, none of this belongs to me. Original idea still belongs to LeoLupin.
Chapter 6
As expected, there was no pain. The sensation could best be described as one of profound emptiness. Hermione examined her surroundings, sensing rather than seeing the millions of lights winking on and off at her. Out of curiosity, she stretched her perceptions out to a small group of them. What she saw was indescribable. Each light was, in fact, a sort of window; a window into another country, or another time. In one, she caught a glance of a half-finished stone pyramidal structure in the desert, in another massive dinosaurs ripped trees down.
Something caught her eye, figuratively speaking. She turned to it, and perceived an empty blackness. But was it truly empty? Closer inspection revealed that the space was comprised on many of those windows, rotating rapidly around a focal point. A strange feeling erupted within her; one of intense euphoria. She felt herself blink, and in that momentary loss of eye contact the scene had changed. She was now standing in a long stone room, filled with gold, silver, and jewels. She whirled around, and saw only a patch of wall of a slightly lighter shade than the rest. She turned back to the room, and jumped a clear foot in the air when a hand came to rest on her shoulder. "Holy shit." She heard Ron breathe behind her. She extricated herself from the hand, Harry's, to take a closer look at the riches.
"As I expected," She noted with distaste. "A Nazi vault." Precious heirlooms, gilded menorahs, silver rings inscribed with Hebrew characters; all marks of the brutal and oppressive politics of 1940's Germany. She turned to the boys; Harry was glancing around with an expression of mild disgust, and Ron was curiously flipping through a copy of the Torah. "If it's anywhere in Germany, it's here."
The trio scattered, sifting through the mountains of confiscated treasures to find a single weapon. After several minutes of fruitless searching, Harry and Hermione met up in the middle of a stack of Synagogue relics. Harry straightened up quite suddenly, dropping a large lamp on the pile. "We'll never find the damn thing; it's like searching for a needle in a thousand haystacks."
Hermione stood as well, laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder. It felt odd to be doing this to him, the one who was always so confident and self-assured. "We'll find it; even if we have to tear this chamber apart brick by brick." He turned to her, and she felt herself drawn irresistibly towards him; towards his eyes, his lips. Scruffy or no, he was a very attractive man. But there was more to it than that. There was…she didn't know how to explain it. He began to lean towards her as well; she felt her eyes close involuntarily; her head tilt ever-so-slightly. And then…
"Guys! I found it!" Ron's voice from the other side of the chamber completely spoiled the moment. Hermione was at the point of throwing something large and heavy at him, until her brain processed his exclamation.
"He found it!" She cried excitedly to Harry, and ran off in the direction of the voice. It came from the very end of the hall, through a narrow doorway. Hermione was so excited that she didn't notice the thick grooves cut into the stone within that doorway. But as soon as she passed it, she stopped dead.
Beyond the opening was a small room, no larger than ten meters square. In the center, on a raised pedestal, was a large spear, two meters long, with a darkish red stain capping the shank, illuminated by a narrow shaft of light from the ceiling. Opposite the only exit, the benevolent face of Jesus Christ looked down on the spear from a wooden crucifix. Hermione briefly noticed that one arm of the crucifix had splintered and was hanging from the remainder, but the bulk of her attention was focused on the pedestal and the object lying thereupon. There was only one thing it could possibly be.
"The Lance of Longinus." Harry breathed, making Hermione jump again. That man had a lot to learn about not sneaking up on people.
Hermione's ire was quickly forgotten, however, when Ron took a step towards the spear. Her hand immediately shot out and grabbed his arm, causing him to turn towards her. "What is it?" He asked her, "There's nothing to be afraid of."
This sentiment did little to assuage her. "That's what scares me." She retorted, pulling him back forcefully. Forcing the two males back, Hermione set about demonstrating exactly why she had been recommended for the mission. Every inch of the room was analyzed, and every step calculated so as not to set off any hidden traps. The only things not physically touched were the most obvious choices for booby traps: the wooden crucifix and the spear itself. The only things turned up by her search were small holes cut near the top of the walls and an inscription on the pedestal reading "Iterum ergo locutus est eis Iesus dicens ego sum lux mundi qui sequitur me non abulabit in tenebris sed habebit lucem vitae," translated from Latin by Ron into "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." She had no idea why this particular Bible verse had been chosen, but as far as she knew the room was clean. She made to life the spear, but Harry's voiced stopped her.
"Get back here; we'll lift it up with magic, just to be sure." Magic, the newest factor in the equation. And, coincidentally, the one she kept forgetting about. Regardless, she retreated outside the room and permitted Harry to cause the two thousand year-old weapon to float several centimetres above its base. Nothing happened, beyond the spear floating in mid-air. It faintly amused Hermione that she was not fazed by a Legionnaire's weapon hovering of its own accord, a sight that would have once had her running away screaming.
Hermione's personal reactions aside, the fact is that absolutely nothing happened by raising the spear from its pedestal. Emboldened by that, the trio cautiously re-entered the room and Hermione deftly plucked the spear out of the air.
That time, something did happen. Several somethings, as a matter of fact. First, two immense stone slabs slid together from the grooves Hermione had failed to notice earlier, effectively blocking their escape. Second, sand began to pour out of the small holes Hermione had succeeded in noticing earlier. Third and finally the sand, having no outlets, began to accumulate around their feet. And the level was quickly rising.
"Suffocated by sand; lovely," Ron commented. He was ignored.
"Any bright ideas?" Harry asked Hermione, a sarcastic edge to his voice.
She shot him a look that would have killed most men. "I'm working on it, I'm working on it."
"Well whatever you're doing, do it faster." He was not helping, and the sand had just passed their kneecaps.
The Hermione's eyes happened upon the inscription. The words Ron had translated flooded back to her: He that followeth me shall not be left in darkness. She thrust the spear into Ron's hands, and began wading towards the crucifix. "Hermione, I don't want to alarm you but we are rapidly running out of room." She ignored the words, not even registering who had spoken them, but she could not ignore the fact that the sand was somewhere about her mid-torso.
She reached the crucifix, and the brilliant light that had guided her to it shut off. What in the hell was she supposed to do with a broken crucifix? "Hermione!" She ignored the voice. The sand was at her upper chest. How could this wooden carving save them? Then she remembered being in Iran, a long time ago, and being trapped in a treasure chamber while searching for the Cup of Jamshid. She remembered her father pulling on something on the wall, and talking to her later about fulcrum release levers.
Her reverie was interrupted by another pesky voice. "Hermione, we are going to die!" And it was true; in her reminiscing she had failed to notice that the sand was rising up her neck. With a great effort she lifter her arms from the rising sand and pushed upwards on the broken arm of the crucifix. It crept upwards a few millimetres with agonizing slowness, then snapped the rest of the way into place. The room echoed with the sounds of primitive gears turning, and the entire back wall of the chamber swung open.
Almost 150 cubic meters of and material is inevitably going to take the path of least resistance, and in that case that happened to be through the newly-created hole. The miniature tidal wave carried its passengers with it a short distance, until depositing them unceremoniously on the dirt floor of a tunnel. Two of the trio got up, brushed themselves off, and surveyed their surroundings.
"Good job," Ron praised offhandedly. "I thought we were goners." Hermione accepted the compliment silently, still not quite used to brushes with death. Ron glanced down the tunnel. "I wonder where that goes."
Harry swiped his hat against his pants, dislodging the accumulated sand on both, before replacing it on his head. He outstretched a hand to Hermione, and pulled her to her feet. "Let's find out."
Sorry for the long wait, life has been hell and my muse deserted me.
Bible verse is legit, of course; John 8:12. Likewise the Cup of Jamshid is real, or as real as a mythological object can get. In Persian mythology, it was filled with an elixir of immortality and the whole world could be seen in it.