Lia shot into the empty, silent Atrium like a cannonball fired from its barrel.
The floor was smooth as a mirror, reflecting her disheveled yet resolute figure.
The air was filled with a faint smell of disinfectant, and... the increasingly dense stench of decaying Dark Magic and the smell of blood from a dying struggle.
In her Eye of Truth, the entire world had transformed into a network composed of magical threads.
Countless Black threads, representing evil and curses, all converged toward the same place.
Underground, deep below.
The Department of Mysteries.
Lia didn't even look at the golden, barred elevators leading to different departments; she followed the shortest straight path and plunged toward the staircase leading underground.
The sturdy iron door shattered like paper before her, collapsing inward with a loud crash!
She rushed down the spiral staircase, leaving a shallow crack mark on the hard stone steps with every footfall.
Getting closer.
Hermione's aura—fearful yet stubbornly resilient—guided her with perfect clarity in her perception, like a beacon in the dark night.
She burst into a corridor lined with Black doors.
This was it!
Without hesitation, Lia's small body leaped up, transforming mid-air into a human shape and delivering a flying kick to the tightly closed main door.
"CRASH—!"
The entire door, along with the surrounding wall, was smashed to pieces by the combined violence of physics and magic!
Fragments of stone and door panels exploded outward in a fan shape!
Through the swirling dust, Lia clearly saw the scene inside.
It was a circular hall, surrounded by countless identical doors.
And in the center of the hall, twelve masked Death Eaters had Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, and Luna tightly surrounded.
A wand was held against Hermione's throat.
The one holding the wand was a rugged-looking man with a cruel, sneering grin on his face.
Hermione's face was pale, but her eyes remained defiant; she stared intensely at the leader, Lucius Malfoy.
Ron was grinning foolishly nearby, drooling, clearly affected by some nasty curse.
Neville's nose was crooked to one side, his face covered in blood, but he still stubbornly held up his wand.
And in Lucius's hand was a dull, gray glass orb emitting an ominous aura.
The Prophecy Orb.
The very thing that had caused Mr. Weasley's attack in the dream.
"Give me the Prophecy Orb, Potter," Lucius said with his characteristic aristocratic drawl, arrogant and triumphant.
"Otherwise, your little mudblood friend will be the first to go. I imagine Antonin would be delighted to show us how her head explodes."
mudblood... the word she tried to forget with all her might, yet one that burned her soul every night in her nightmares.
The word that caused her boundless pain and self-destruction when she spoke it to Hermione.
Now, spoken by the enemy to threaten Hermione's life.
Two extreme emotions—ultimate self-blame and towering rage toward the enemy—collided violently within her, igniting an unprecedented nuclear fusion.
It wasn't the cold killing intent of Tom Riddle.
It was her own.
The fury belonging to Lia, wanting to tear everything before her to shreds!
"Shattering Bones!"
A cold, hoarse voice came from the broken doorway.
A spell, cast faster than the reaction limit of any Wizard, turned the Death Eater holding Hermione into dust.
As the smoke cleared, a white-haired girl stood there, her clothes soaked and ragged.
Her dusty cat ears were pressed tightly against her scalp due to extreme anger, and her long tail lashed the air behind her in a frenzy, making light'snap, snap' sounds.
Lia stood still, her eyes sweeping over every horrified Death Eater present.
Her gaze finally landed on the figure she had longed for day and night.
"Hermione..."
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