"Here's what we know," Hermione had the slightly manic expression that was usually associated with exam revision, "They've stopped flooing in and out of the Ministry directly through the home fireplaces, even for the most senior members. So, everyone needs to use one of the three public entrances."
"And we just need to get a hold of any two of them to get in. Granger we've been over this," Snape's voice was a tad bit exasperated as he heard her repeat the same things again and again, in stressed mutterances. "I'll try not to go for the highest-ranking officers but we have to make do with what we get. And for God's sake, I thought you said you've done this before!"
"Yes but I told you they've updated the security system since the last time Harry, Ron and I broke in. I daresay, we ourselves contributed to it...Now new protocols have been put in place in case of the use of polyjuice potion or any such transformative charms for infiltrating the headquarters." she accentuated, "As soon as we step inside, they're gonna know."
"And we have adjusted our plans accordingly, haven't we? What have we been doing here, encamped and hatching these plans since morning for?" he asked, "We are prepared for things to go wrong anyways."
"I don't know...We are taking a huge risk and we're leaving an awful lot of it on chance-"
"Don't worry, it will work out just fine. I'll make sure no harm comes to you." Snape said, which made Hermione gaze up at his face; he was maintaining his cool but she could tell he was a little tensed too, but she didn't know it was entirely for her safety. He was looking around the corner, keeping out a watchful eye. "Why don't you do me a favour and come over here. You need to point out our potential targets."
She crossed the tiny alley they were hiding in, to go over to the fence near which he was standing, peeping out through a little gap and looked over. Little more than a minute later, she spotted an unsuspecting woman in her mid-thirties saunter about the pavement, eager to start her shift at work. "Allright, that's Evangeline Merryweather. I know her, although she works at a different department-"
"Which department?"
"A different one. Who cares? Grab her!"
Snape blinked with surprise at her bossiness but wasted no time in subtly Stunning her. It was nighttime and the road was pretty much deserted so they weren't seen by anyone and they carried her to their hideout where they pulled out a few of her hair. Hermione swallowed the potion and as her body started changing, she transfigured her clothes to look like hers as well. She fished through her purse and found some spare tokens to pass through the gates. Then she placed a little vial under Evangeline's nose, smelling which, she started twitching and when they saw she was about to regain consciousness, they quickly apparated to the other place.
There, Hermione pointed out another man who would serve as Snape's disguise. He was significantly more difficult to tackle but after they had managed to subdue him, they had to wipe his memory as well. Then Snape drank the potion laced with his hair folicles and slowly started turning into the wiry middle-aged man with a mustache and pointy beard. Then he repeated the same process as their other victim.
"Okay, this is Reginald Hardholmes. He works at the Magical Maintenance department." Hermione informed, pulling out his ID. "I've seen him around...he's got a high level security clearance. So if we find ourselves in a sticky spot you can get us out. Plus, his character somewhat matches yours- he's a pompous prat. If anyone engages you in conversation, try to recall the most colourful profanities in your vocabulary and simply let them have it."
"Charming," Snape said, "Let's go."
With the first phase of their plan working out without much ado, they stepped out into the pavement and walked into the public restroom beside a crowded tube-station. They parted ways and joined their respective queues marked as 'Gentlemen' and 'Ladies' and before walking into their individual cubicles, Hermione looked over the heads to glimpse at Snape, who turned his head towards her as well and gave a nod.
They zoomed down the short chute and emerged out of the fireplace into the Ministry of Magic. The great Atrium was not as cramped with people as it usually was since the day-crew had finished their work and only those who had night shifts were milling about. Snape's sharp eyes quickly found Hermione over the throngs of people, while she was still dusting the soot off of her dress.
"Remember, we've got a maximum of twenty minutes before they realize something is wrong." she said out of the corner of her mouth, her breath hitching, "We've got to hurry."
"Look, I know I said that if it doesn't work out, we'll surrender, but I can't let them catch you." he proclaimed urgently as he stared intently at her face. "Twenty minutes. And then you get out- evidence or no evidence."
She wanted to argue but there was no time to lose. As they jogged towards the elevators they knew that the two people whose identities they had stolen, had woken up minutes after they had left them, smelling the fumes of the potions they had dangled in front of their noses, and would be joining them any second now. They had to get out of there as soon as possible, lest they wanted to come face to face with their body doubles.
*****************************
Harry was in his office going through some paperwork when there was a purposeful knock at his door. He looked up irked.
"Not now, Tom. I told you I'm busy-"
"Sir, you need to take a look at this." he announced, "There has been a security breach."
"That's not my division," Harry replied, anxious to get back to his reports. "Talk to Robert at the Law Enforcement patrol- "
"They want an experienced Auror on the scene. And mostly everyone has gone home or have been assigned missions." His subordinate didn't fail to convey that he was needed urgently and the nature of the problem confused him.
Harry sighed and got up to follow him to the Monitor room.
*****************************
Hermione and Snape stood rigid inside the elevator as it carried them down to the basement level. Even though it was just a couple of floors, it felt like it was taking a long time and both felt their hearts palpitating.
Hermione nervously looked around and felt as if she could actually hear a ticking in her ears in lieu of the passage of time. "Should we have taken the stairs? What if we run into the real Evangeline and Reginald? They'll be using the elevators as well..."
"As far as I know, their offices are on the upper floors, and we're going down. There's a slim chance of us running into each other." he reassured, "Besides, we have these dungbombs that you supplied from the ingenious collection of the Weasley twins. Worst case scenario is we have to use them to make a hasty escape."
Their whispered conversation was put on hold as the lifts screeched to a halt and the gilded gates opened to let in another passenger. "Ah, Evangeline! Fancy seeing you here." A bespectacled woman in her early fifties got in, displaying a set of pearly white teeth. "How are you? How's the baby?"
A sharp intake of breath seemed to choke Hermione's throat and her hand immediately shot up to her belly, where no fetus was actually there. She couldn't seem to make herself speak and drew in shallow gasps, taking big gulps of air.
A painfully long minute passed before she could even make herself function again. It was when she felt a hand clasp over hers in a sort of calm firmness that she looked up to her side to see Snape staring down at her. She felt him exude his strength through that touch and finally managed to reply, "F-fine, she's- she's fine."
"Oh, know the sex of the baby already have you? I didn't know you were that far along..." The lady didn't seem to have taken any notice, as she had to get off at the next floor. "Well, good for you. See you later poppet!"
Neither of them spoke a word as the elevator grated to the next halt. Hermione felt she had frozen to her place and the bellman looked to them queerly. "Aren't you getting off, miss? This is the last stop."
"Y-yes," Snape spoke for the both of them, "Yes, we are."
He dragged along a Hermione, as she had started to hyperventilate and took her aside, making sure that there was no one around and the bellman had taken the elevator up after dropping them off. Then he rounded on her as she was muttering and shaking uncontrollably.
"Is she going to be okay? I had no idea she was pregnant...Oh my God, what have we done?!"
"Ssh, ssh, she'll be fine. How could we have known she was carrying a child? But it's okay-"
"Are you sure we handled her properly while carrying her? The potions won't have any side-effects, would they?" She grew more hysterical in worry, "Are you sure the Stunning didn't hurt the baby?"
"Listen to me!" He held her by the face and made her look him in the eyes, where he exuded his fortitude and composure. "She will be okay. Her child is gonna be fine. They're already in here somewhere- she's most likely comfortably sitting in her office by now. You need to get your head back in the game."
Even though his deep sonorous voice was the same, she actually wished she could see Snape instead of the disturbingly creepy figure of Reginald. Still, she took a big sigh of relief and made herself calm down, seeing which, he took his hands away, but continued to search her face as her forehead was still creased up in concern for her colleague.
"Will you be kind enough and go check on her?" she pleaded, "I can't- I won't be able to concentrate without making sure she's okay."
He looked at her hands clutching his in a desperate way, and sighed. "Alright," Seeing as it is that they needed to further their plan of distraction, and since two Evangeline Merryweathers can't be risked to be spotted in the same place, he decided to travel back up to basement level four. "I'll go. But, remember you have fifteen minutes left. Make a copy of the documents as soon as you get your hands on them. I'll come and find you."
With this, he pressed the button to call for another elevator and Hermione composed herself and started making her way towards the Archive room. They shared a last look before he boarded the elevator and her timorous form disappeared around the bend of the corridor.
*****************************
"About twenty minutes ago our sensors picked up something from the floo-network. We responded immediately and alerted the guards as per protocol about a possible breach." Harry was briefed as soon as he appeared. "But then the alarms started going haywire about similar possible trespassing. It recorded four separate instances of the same pair of people entering the premises within a matter of minutes. They don't appear to be working together though."
"Must be a malfunction in the system then." Harry dismissed, although his brows were furrowed since he had previously had faith in the efficiency of the security system, the installation of which he had overseen himself.
"We thought so too, sir," the engineer counterpointed, "Till we checked the footage."
He brought his attention to the monitor that had recorded the incident and pointed out the suspects and Harry had to squint to see clearly amidst the many workers entering and exiting, and no doubt, he witnessed the man with the pointy beard and the lady with a fluffy dress emerge out of two seperate fireplaces. They appeared to converse and then walk purposefully towards the elevators, then the same two people arrived through different fireplaces not a minute later, gave no impression of knowing each other at all, whereafter the woman started towards the elevators while the man took the stairs instead.
"Their IDs label them as Mr. Reginald Hardholmes, Department of Magical Maintenance, and Mrs. Evangeline Merryweather, Department of Regulation and control of magical creatures, Pest Advisory board." Tom read out from the file.
"There's no doubt that the use of polyjuice potion has been made," Harry was surprised that they had thought of also letting the very people they had stolen the identities from to freely walk in, instead of leaving them unconscious and he was curious as to how the intruders came to know that this would make the alarms go crazy. Whoever had done it, had significant knowledge about how everything worked in here and this was simply used as a distraction, so that the police would waste time deciding whether the system was glitching or an actual break-in had occurred. What they didn't know was that the Minister had recently increased surveillance. "They must be still in the building. Where are Mr. Hardholmes and Mrs. Merryweather now?"
"The exits have been sealed off and there are armed guards standing vigilant there. Do you want me to dispatch a task force to smoke them out?"
"Do it," Harry ordered, while looking at the dozen or so screens that displayed live footage of the different corridors and office-rooms of the Ministry of Magic. He spotted the lady in question, happily typing away at her desk, while the suspect, Mr. Hardholmes suddenly interrupted her and they seemed to be chatting; again his doppelganger was seen at a different floor altogether, next to the coffee machine, where he seemed to be feeling up a younger undersecretary, who did not seem to be appreciating his advances. The woman's double could not be seen as yet.
"It's done." The engineer sent a number of enchanted paper airplanes flying through the air and followed Harry's gaze to the identical men as he observed, "They'll find the imposters in no time. But the question is- which ones?"
Harry had been thinking the same thing; the deception was simply to mislead them and by the time they found the real ones, they might accomplish whatever they came here to do. And he was certain that the other Mrs. Merryweather was already busy in that task, hidden from view. There were only so many places that fell in the blind spot of their surveillance charms and he decided to investigate the matter himself.
*****************************
They spotted the pointy-beard and greyish black hair from a mile away, even though he was partly concealed by the darkness in the half-lit back aisle. He had the look of a man caught in the act and as soon as he saw people approaching, he pushed the girl off of him, as if she was the perpetrator. He seemed to be looking for a quick escape but before he could give any excuse, one of the policemen who came haring after him, threw himself at him, knocking him off his feet and pinning him to the ground. There were more closing in on him from every direction. The girl shrieked and moved out of the way, several workers coming about to see what was happening.
"UMPF! Wha- what is the meaning of this?!" Reginald demanded, struggling under the weight, with several wands pointing at him, his face turning violently red from outrage at their audacity, "This is preposterous! I am the chief executive officer of the Magical Maintenance division. Let me go!"
The task-force team contacted their counterparts over their magical earpieces, "We've got one. Gather the rest."
Just as Snape was rounding the corner, he heard a commotion back from the corridor he just came from and he looked back to see at least ten armed policemen surrounding Merryweather, wands pointing threateningly at her and shouting her into submission. The poor woman who had just left her desk to get a glass of water, simply put her hands up in surrender, the pitcher dropping to the floor with a clang. Thoroughly confused, she went down on her knees, alarmed upon being ambushed all of a sudden.
"Don't fire! Please," she squeaked, rattled and shaking in nervousness, as she threw a protective hand over her baby-bump, "What is this about? I'm innocent. I don't understand-"
Snape took a step towards her and then realized they would be coming for him next and he kept going on his way just as he heard several footsteps chase down the corridor after him. Quickly, he found a door and squeezed through, shutting it behind him, the men close at his heels. But they didn't seem to have caught sight of him and had narrowly missed him as he took refuge in this stowaway room. He waited a minute till he heard them pass by, shouting over their intercoms about catching the other intruders.
He wiped the sweat off his brow, hoping they hadn't succeeded in catching Hermione, only to turn around and find a room full of beings staring at him. He had apparently walked into The Goblin Liason office and various short-headed and pointy-eared creatures were craning their necks to take curious looks at him.
The closest one approached him, trying to inquire the reason for this intrusion, since not many Ministry officials chose to set foot in this department unless it was a matter of importance. "Is there anything I can help you with, Mr- "
"Never you mind," Snape chose to take a page out of the real Hardholmes's book and judging that they must be subordinates to him, he added in a thunderous tone, "Back to work everybody!"
Magical beasts were used to being treated like this but goblins were highly intelligent creatures and the one speaking to him didn't seem to buy the show he was trying to put up. Nonetheless, he bowed out of the way as Snape assumed an air of authority and crossed the room to the other exit. He maintained a leisurely pace, as if he was inspecting their work, but as soon as he was outside, he broke into a run, deciding that he had to find a different way to get to Hermione.
*****************************
Down in the archives, Hermione was struggling with her own problems; first of all, there were tonnes upon tonnes of files from which to search the correct data and the ever-helpful elves weren't exactly helping. They had been pestering her to know if there was any way they could help her search for the correct documents and she was this close to snapping at them.
It was when she had rudely remarked that she could do it herself, that they had finally left her alone, carrying on their own work of stacking papers and finding correct case-files if the order came from above. And Hermione found herself a secret niche where she could carry on her search in peace, ever so often, glancing at her watch to keep in mind the time remaining.
At the time, she had no idea what was happening outside, but her hands trembled while she surfed through the reports containing the recent dark-wizard catching missions and her fingers slipped while she brushed her wand over the pages to detect whether any of them had been tampered with.
She didn't hear him approach till he was right at her shoulder and she gasped, making the papers spill all over the marble floors as he caught her by surprise. But it was only Snape, momentarily giving her a fright since he wasn't looking like himself and his features were extremely frazzled, since he had run all the way there.
"Hurry up! They know... they're coming!"
Hermione had never seen him out of breath or even remotely discomposed in her life. And his warning made her more tensed. But they were so close!
The Ministry security had acted quicker than she had calculated and she barely had the time to go through all the documents related to the muggle disappearances. Her search was focused on the months around Ron's death and she was still trying to discover any kind of discrepancy.
She tried two more spells that came to mind and gave up- either the documents hadn't been altered, or she didn't know the right spells.
The folder jerked out of her hand as Snape stabbed it with his own wand. "Primum Revertatur," he chewed out.
The parchment flared white and the ink began to rearrange itself.
"Thank you," she said distractedly, already gathering the rest of it from the ground. She felt her hair stand on end and grabbed the stack of reports, feeling they were close to a revelation. "You take those, and I'll take these." She started poking at the pages and repeating his spell. She felt his eyes burning into her for a long moment before he glanced towards the door again and reluctantly joined in. Within moments, she was reading through them while Snape stared at her expectantly.
She only got the name of the supervising officer that- surprisingly- was common for every single disappearance case, cross-checking it with the dark-wizard hunts- revealing it to be the same person. This was highly irregular and was the only visible connection between the cases. She looked up to convey the message to Snape when suddenly, people barged in through the door.
They ducked out of the way, hiding behind reading tables and Snape had yanked her so hard that the documents flew out of her hands. She made a lunge for it but was held back again.
"Leave it. There's no time!" he hissed, pulling her along as they crouched behind the shelves, avoiding the eyes of the dozen policemen who had slowly begun spreading across the room, closing in from all directions.
But there was only one exit and the cabinets and shelves could protect them for only so long. They decided to take a risk and sprint the remaining few feet to the door and as soon as they came into view, hexes were thrown at them.
Somehow, they dodged and deflected them all, throwing themselves through the open door and banging it close behind them, immediately putting on charms to lock it, to buy themselves time.
"Are you okay?" he asked, out of breath.
"Yeah," But the effects of the polyjuice-potion was wearing off and Hermione had started to change into herself- her face was gaining back her youthful beauty and her amber head of hair, bushier than ever, was falling over her now transformed brown eyes.
They couldn't afford to waste time, as they heard a clamour coming from one end of the long corridor, where inevitably another task force must be approaching fast and they took off in the opposite direction.
While they were changing lanes, right at the intersection, Hermione collided hard with someone carrying a huge stack of papers. For a brief moment, while she was apologizing and Snape helped her up and urged her to keep moving, she saw a brief flash of recognition on that man's face. He was about to give her an earful for her clumsiness but had stopped- staring at her face. And she realized that she must be fully recognizable now.
However, they didn't stop and as they were almost out of sight, they heard a couple of policemen skid over the papers and suffer nasty falls, with the man adding to the cacophony as he demanded them to restore all his paperwork that they had ruined.
The whole security squad of the Ministry must be out looking for them by now and Hermione and Snape had to flatten themselves to a dip in the architectural structure to avoid another couple of policemen as they ran past. Then Snape was about to start running in the opposite direction again, when Hermione caught hold of his sleeve.
"I know another way."
They had to avoid being spotted in video surveillance if they wanted to remain undetected and Hermione knew some secret passages, him following suit, the both of them making for some stairs at yet another hidden pathway.
"Even if we manage to give them the slip, I don't know how we're going to get out of here...the gates are sealed." His beard had shrunk back now and some of his raven black hair was beginning to show.
There was someone there to greet them at the head of the staircase, wand at the ready. They swerved to a stop and Snape's protective arm was shot out over Hermione, but the wand-bearer seemed to have relaxed his hold over it realizing who it was.
"H-hermione?"
"Harry!"
"Wha-" He squinted in confusion. She looked ridiculous in that fluffy dress but it was unmistakably her, "And who's that...?"
Hermione put up her hands in surrender, sensing a flickering ray of hope burning within her. "I know this looks bad...but- I had no choice." She hoped to appeal to his humanity.
Harry was stuttering; he had wanted to catch the intruders himself but he was in for a shock as he found his best friend- whom he thought to be missing and possibly deceased- was the very person responsible for the security breach.
"Please," she begged, as the noise behind them grew closer. "We need your help."
Harry deliberated, his eyes traveling back and forth between her and the oddly familiar man beside her, although he couldn't quite place him yet. He had half a mind to give her a piece of his mind- that was a first- it was always her scolding the two boys, but then sighed, shaking his head, realizing they were running out of time. "Bugger me."
He lowered his wand and jerked his head for them to follow and without wasting a single moment, they ran along behind him, bypassing Ministry security, to arrive at his office. "For the record, this is exactly the thing that I didn't want you to be doing, Hermione."
The tall man looked skeptical about whether the Chosen One actually had a good plan, but Harry simply tapped his hearth with his wand muttering a set of personalized charms and the grilles opened up for their safe passage. He threw in a handful of floo-powder and urged, "Get in, quick!"
Hermione couldn't help but hug him. "Thank you, Harry! I owe you one."
"Be safe," he said, "You better know what you're doing."
Before the green flames engulfed them, he stared at his friend's face and was about to ask who the man was, whose hand she readily took as she stepped into the fireplace. But then he realized that he already knew who it was, only he couldn't figure out for the life of him, how that ever came to be.