Green spells slammed into her back. Umbridge lost her balance instantly, tumbling and rolling a long way. Her sleeve tore with a loud rip. Her ankles and knees smashed against stones, sending sharp pain shooting through her legs. She couldn't put any weight on them.
Umbridge had spent her entire Ministry career behind a desk. Her dueling skills had rusted away years ago, handed back to the professors the day she graduated. The only spell she could reliably cast was the Patronus Charm—just enough to prove she qualified as one of those "righteous" witches the textbooks talked about.
"Damn criminals! Doesn't anyone police this place in Albania?" Umbridge hissed through gritted teeth.
Her escape plan had completely collapsed. The area where Apparition worked was still a long way off, but her knees and ankles were in no condition to run. The only thing left to use was Bertha Jorkins.
This ambitious journey was about to end right here. A wave of fear surged through Umbridge. She had failed Melvin's task. She hadn't found Peter Pettigrew or Voldemort. Even if she somehow made it back to the Ministry, there was no chance of regaining power.
Umbridge glanced back. In the darkness behind them, the tavern staff were closing in slowly. The tips of their wands still glowed—clearly seasoned dark wizards who wouldn't leave openings.
Then, from the side, a powerful force suddenly dragged both her and Bertha into the bushes. At the same time, a dazzling green light shot into the sky and exploded.
"The Dark Mark?" Umbridge's pupils shrank.
There was no time to check their surroundings. Umbridge felt herself being lifted and thrown over someone's shoulder. The bumpy ride and the branches whipping past told her the escape was still on.
Bertha was helping support her from the side. The three of them rushed through the trees, crashing through branch after branch, bloody and disheveled.
Umbridge stared at the Dark Mark in the sky, then at the side profile of the male wizard carrying her. She couldn't keep up the fake voice anymore. "Peter Pettigrew? Wormtail—the one who escaped Azkaban! You really are here!"
The short, stout witch was both shocked and delighted.
Wormtail had no idea what was going on and felt uneasy, but the moment he saw the Ouroboros mark he had decided to help. Carrying the former Senior Undersecretary while running left him slightly out of breath.
"Ouroboros mark… You're one of Professor Levent's people… here to help find the Dark Lord too? Not staying low-key is one thing, but how did you manage to piss off the tavern staff?"
"We'll talk about the tavern later. The important thing is that mark… how could you dare…" Umbridge was starting to feel real fear now.
"I needed to draw those wizards' attention. Only then could I create an opening to save you two."
Wormtail was, after all, the traitor who had fooled the entire wizarding world for twelve years. In the shortest time he had come up with a plan. "The mark will make them think there are other Death Eaters around. They won't chase too aggressively. And the mark is obvious enough that perhaps…"
Perhaps it would draw the Dark Lord's attention.
Wormtail sighed and swallowed the rest of the sentence. He had been wandering Albania for months with nothing to show for it. Now he couldn't even go back to the tavern. Hungry, exhausted, and out of breath.
"You're a Death Eater, of course you're not nervous about the Dark Mark. I'm not!" Umbridge complained, her voice no longer disguised.
"Excuse me… may I ask where we're going?" Bertha, who had been silent the whole time, suddenly spoke up.
Wormtail immediately glanced at her arms. Both were scratched and bleeding, but there was no Ouroboros mark as he had expected.
"You brought her as cannon fodder?" Wormtail whispered.
"She has nothing to do with me. We're not even on the same side. I just happened to run into her tonight when the tavern staff attacked me." Umbridge felt no gratitude. She had brought the silly witch along only as an extra meat shield on the road.
"Then should we deal with her now?" Wormtail asked viciously.
"Keep her. She might still be useful. She's a brain-damaged fool—easy to trick—and she has Ministry employee credentials. Who knows? She might bring us a pleasant surprise."
Umbridge saw the pursuers falling farther behind and the spells growing less frequent. Her voice slowed back into that sickly-sweet tone:
"Bertha, come with us. That tavern is a black shop. The staff are all dark wizards. If you go back now, you'll definitely be murdered."
"You know me?" Bertha's eyes flashed with surprised delight. She had known there was something strangely familiar about her.
"…"
See? Total idiot, right?
Umbridge shot Wormtail a smug look and switched back to the sweet voice. "Of course I know you! I'm Dolores Umbridge, Senior Undersecretary at the Ministry. We're colleagues! If you hadn't warned me, I would have been killed already. Thank you so much. By the way, what brings you to Albania?"
"I came to Albania to…"
Bertha started to answer, then suddenly froze. She thought for a few seconds before remembering. "I came to visit my aunt. She lives in… Albania… Oh no! I left my memo back at the tavern!"
"It's fine, it's fine. We'll travel together from now on. I'll take good care of you." Umbridge smiled sweetly, her face full of malicious cunning.
"All right then…" Bertha nodded obediently.
Her mind was a whirlwind. Umbridge and Wormtail both thought she was an idiot, but she wasn't brain-dead—just missing pieces of her memory. Her brain still worked perfectly fine.
An escaped Death Eater from Azkaban… a high-ranking Ministry official…
The two of them together gave her an overwhelmingly strong sense of déjà vu. She felt as if she had seen this exact pairing before. Even though those memories had been wiped, the impression they left had been burned into her soul.
Her subconscious kept poking at that buried recollection, giving her splitting headaches as she desperately tried to remember where the feeling came from.
"What on earth is it?" Bertha murmured, eyes distant, as she kept running alongside them.
"She really is an idiot?"
Wormtail ran until they were well beyond the tavern's territory. He looked back—they had completely shaken off the pursuers. They were now in an area where Apparition worked again. He should have felt relieved, but something felt wrong.
Sweat had soaked through his clothes. The cold wind hit him and every hair on his body stood on end. His heart felt squeezed in an iron fist. His blood raced, but breathing grew heavier and heavier, as if the air itself had turned thick.
How could there be such crushing pressure?
It felt like something in this wild forest… was watching them.
…
London – Diagon Alley
Late afternoon.
Summer days in London stayed light longer. Sunset would linger for hours. Shops sent off their last customers and hung "Closed" signs. Even Gringotts gradually quieted down. Goblins in scarlet uniforms filed out, leaving only a skeleton crew on night duty.
At the Daily Prophet, the busiest part of the day had just begun. Reporters double-checked sources and confirmed the latest stories. Editors pored over drafts, polishing every word. The female presenter rehearsed her script for the umpteenth time.
"Ah… finally done."
Hermione finished the last line, stretched her aching back, and didn't even bother rubbing her tired eyes. She grabbed her carefully compiled summary and hurried toward the editor-in-chief's office.
She knocked and opened the door. Mr Goode sat behind his square desk—a man in his forties or fifties with carefully styled salt-and-pepper hair and beard. His hairline was receding, his hooked nose made his eyes look deep-set, and his wizarding robes were perfectly pressed. A quill badge gleamed on his chest.
"You finished the Triwizard Tournament archives?"
Mr Goode looked up, tossed his quill into the inkpot, and opened the summary his intern editor-assistant had written. His eyes skimmed the dense annotations—thorough, comprehensive… and far too wordy for his taste.
He flipped through a couple of pages without really reading, then dropped the file aside.
"You're an editor's assistant, not the archives manager. You need to learn how to pick the useful bits out of mountains of material—not copy down everything you see. The origin of the Goblet of Fire, the history of the magical schools… no reader or viewer wants to wade through that boring old stuff."
"But the Triwizard Tournament hasn't been held for centuries. Surely some witches and wizards are curious about how it started? Shouldn't we satisfy that curiosity?"
"The Daily Prophet is a newspaper, not a textbook. Nobody pays for centuries-old trivia. If they're curious they can go to a bookshop or ask around in a pub!"
"But…"
The young witch wanted to argue, but the evening news broadcast was about to start and Mr Goode's patience was gone. "You're an intern, not a board member. Either go back and rewrite it the way I asked and have it on my desk by this time tomorrow, or I'll find someone else to do the job!"
"Understood, sir."
Hermione left the office looking defeated.
When she first started the internship she had been full of excitement. Now it had been worn down to exhaustion. Hermione always had her own ideas about things, but the veteran staff saw those ideas as overly idealistic, naïve… or, to put it bluntly, stupid and impractical.
The young witch had thought the newspaper was a beacon that exposed darkness and told the truth. In reality it was a commercial company that danced back and forth between Galleons and basic decency.
In just a few short weeks she had heard too many harsh, realistic truths from Mr Goode.
"Before you write anything, ask yourself: do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell the truth you want them to believe?"
"In this business, mistakes can be corrected. Slips of the tongue get printed."
"I'm more afraid of people who know how to use a pen than people who know how to use magic."
"Write the story for people who can read. Write the headline for people who are afraid to read."
"…"
A whole day of hard work had earned nothing but the editor's rejection. Tomorrow she would have to do it all over again—perhaps only to be rejected again.
"Whatever. At least today's over."
Hermione packed her shoulder bag at her desk and stepped out of the Prophet building. Her head was still crammed full of Triwizard Tournament facts, all jumbled together until she felt dizzy.
She raised her wand at the Leaky Cauldron, flagged down the Knight Bus, squeezed in with the other homeward-bound wizards, and finally got off in Hampstead when the conductor yelled her stop.
She looked up at the orange sunset and felt strangely detached.
Hermione felt like an Inferius—going through the motions of work and home, too tired to notice time passing. Sunlight actually hurt her eyes.
She pushed open the front door and glanced toward the kitchen.
Bastian was peeking around the doorway with eager eyes. Mrs Granger opened the oven and the sweet smell of honey cake filled the house. She had learned the recipe from a Muggle television programme, simplified it for a normal kitchen, and followed the steps until it tasted almost like something from a proper bakery.
This was the most relaxing part of the day—not just because work was over, but because Mum always prepared a proper dinner to reward the two working girls.
"You're home! Come try the cake!" Mrs Granger called without turning around.
The simplified recipe was just the sponge, but when it reached the table it had become a beautiful cream-and-fruit cake decorated with strawberries, mango, blueberries, and chocolate—added because Mum knew her daughter's favourites.
Bastian smiled at Hermione, eyes curving happily. She didn't have a summer internship, so Mrs Granger had been using her as a taste-tester while practising. While Hermione ate, Bastian chattered about her day, bright and cheerful.
Hermione bit into a strawberry covered in cream and felt her exhausted body come back to life.
Then a dull thud came from the living room.
Thump… thump…
The three of them turned at once. Mrs Granger instinctively pulled both girls behind her.
The Granger family fireplace was only decorative—the chimney had been sealed. The room had underfloor heating and an electric fire that gave off a warm glow, used only in winter. Right now, knocking sounds were coming from behind the sealed fireplace.
Thump… thump… thump…
Hermione stared at the fireplace, puzzled. For some reason the rhythm felt strangely familiar—like someone was knocking on a door from inside.
Without thinking, she said tentatively, "Come in?"
A wand tapped from within. The iron plate sealing the fireplace trembled, and suddenly the outline of a door appeared, complete with lock and handle. With a soft turn, a young wizard stepped through.
"Professor Levent?"
The three Granger women stared at him in stunned silence.
Melvin closed the door behind him and brushed dust from his clothes. He was wearing a light-blue long-sleeved cardigan—perfectly ordinary Muggle clothing that made his balanced figure look like a clothing-store mannequin.
If you had seen him walking down the street, no one would ever guess he had just stepped out of a fireplace.
"Mrs Granger, Bastian—please forgive the sudden visit."
Melvin turned to the little witch with cream still on the corner of her mouth and smiled. "Mr Goode told me you've been commuting by Knight Bus the whole time, so I asked Madam Edgecombe to connect your fireplace to the Floo Network. Since I was already at the Ministry, I decided to test it myself."
Mrs Granger was still trying to process what he had just said. Bastian hadn't caught all of it. Only Hermione let out a delighted cheer:
"That means I can sleep an extra half-hour every day!"
"Can we use the fireplace to visit Diagon Alley too?" Bastian asked excitedly. "I want to see where Hermione works!"
"That will need Mr Goode's permission first."
Melvin smiled at her. "Before that, though, we need to cure your illness."