Out of Time

Chapter 16

He doesn't lead her right to it. They don't even leave the room. Well, he does. She has to wait while he exits the room first, re-enters and tells her the coast is clear. All her prior resolve has crumbled into pieces. She's rabid for more information, almost quivering with anticipation.

Outside in the hallway, he turns to stare at the door. Hermione watches as it vanishes and reappears, seeming exactly the same, but she knows better. Draco swings it open with a small grunt, heavy and stone as it is, and Hermione follows him through to... chaos.

Complete mayhem. It looks like a hurricane just hit. Where the hell is she? Turning in a slow circle, Hermione tries to take in her surroundings.

Mounds and mounds of things. A hoarder's paradise, without a doubt, but most everything seems abandoned or broken. Dust abounds, making a general cloud of it in the air caught by random light sources from windows or magically-sustained lanterns overturned on the floor.

It's far, far larger than the room she and Draco visit. Hermione can't see the distant walls, though that could be visual obstructions along the way. It's impossible to tell. Between the poor lighting and the clutter, it's impossible to tell much of anything for certain.

Draco begins to move through the aisles like Hermione moves through the library, weaving this way and that with confidence. She wonders how much time he's spent here this year. A person could spend years just sifting through the debris. Her hip brushes against the corner of a broken table, which wobbles and sends a small pile of vials and bottles crashing to the floor. Several break, their contents spilling across the stone. Two don't seem to interact well and send up a distinctly sinister brown cloud that wants to move independently.

Casting a wary eye over her shoulder, Hermione scuttles to the other side of the aisle and catches up to Draco.

From the corner of her eye, she glimpses a familiar book cover and does a double-take. Was that Harry's battered old Potions book?

Draco looks over his shoulder to make sure she's keeping up.
"Right over here," he gestures, a hint of nervousness in his tone.

At first, she isn't sure what he means. She's baffled anyway, obviously; how is anything in this room meant to allow access into the castle? It's not as if he's approached a doorway or other secret sort of exit along the wall. They're dead centre, or so it seems. Hard to tell precisely, since the room is so gargantuan, but the point remains. No exits in sight.

He's come to stop in front of an enormous angular wardrobe. It dwarfs him and Hermione goggles at the height and breadth of it. Somewhat nonsensically, she thinks Draco standing next to it looks rather like her standing next to Draco.

It's a musty purpley-grey, but it could have been any colour to begin with. It has a faded decorative trim, a whimsical kind of border that is disproportionate to its intimidating size.

"What the hell is it?" she finally asked, voice hushed. She reaches out to touch it and he tenses slightly but doesn't block her. Hermione gives it a little nudge, testing its solidity and the knobbly legs it stands on. It doesn't move. If it's broken like most of the other furniture she sees in here, it's not in its structural integrity.

Having come this far, Draco seems stuck. "Do you... remember when Montague got stuck in that broken vanishing cabinet last year?"

She does but the implications of this take time to dawn on her.

"Where... where does it go?" she breathes, hardly able to believe what he's done.

"No one had put together that they were a set. Montague was stuck in a kind of limbo for weeks. He could hear something, though, bits and bobs of conversations that were obviously not school-related. Over time, he figured out they must be voices of patrons asking a shopkeeper questions about things. He still couldn't tell where he was, exactly, and he hadn't passed his Apparition test, but finally he managed to Apparate out."