"Have you gone completely mad!?"
Barely had those words escaped Mai's lips than she and Oleandra found themselves teleported mere inches from each other, holding hands. As Oleandra squeezed Mai's hand, she sensed that a small, smooth, round object was digging into her palm between their joined hands.
Before Oleandra could process what had just happened, she felt an irresistible lurch as an invisible hook caught just behind her navel, pulling her up and up. The world spun into a blur of colour as her feet lifted from the ground, and before she knew it, she was falling head over heels through the air as solid walls materialised around her…
The runes engraved upon Oleandra's soul immediately began dimming.
She contorted her body and flipped right side up, landing lightly on a pile of papers on what, at first glance, looked like someone's desk, while nearby Mai landed safely on her feet as well. Mai opened her palm, revealing a marble, which she let slip from her hand before crushing it underfoot.
"We're in the Ministry," Oleandra said, glancing around at the rows of empty desks and chairs that filled the room. "We're not too deep underground, so I'd say roughly… sub-level two?" She raised one foot and saw that she was standing on a nameplate reading John Dawlish. "Auror HQ?"
Oleandra hopped down from the desk.
Basement Level 2 of the Ministry of Magic was home to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Clearly, Auror HQ was where the Death Eaters had staged their invasion of the Muggle-Born Sanctuary, judging by how freshly abandoned the place looked.
"What were you thinking?" Mai hissed, rounding on Oleandra and poking her with an accusatory finger. "The Elder Rune? Do you have a death wish?"
"I just had a feeling it was the perfect time to use it," Oleandra replied, shrugging helplessly. "What does it do, anyway?"
Mai looked as though she might explode.
"It reverses causality, you airhead!" she screeched. "It indiscriminately brings about the conclusion of any action before it's even done working! We're lucky we're not dead!"
To give a simple example to follow, imagine Oleandra was hungry; because she was hungry, she went into the kitchen and ate an apple; that is the normal chain of events. To reverse causality would mean that the only reason Oleandra was hungry was because she ate an apple!
In essence, Oleandra's use of the Ruis ogham had worked like this:
First, her runic spell made it so she and Mai were already holding the Portkey they were trying to summon, which is why Mai used the Summoning Charm… to summon the Portkey they were already holding.
Second, the magic made it so Voldemort's General Counter-Spell immediately cancelled Mai's Summoning Charm; but, since she and Oleandra were already holding the Portkey, it did not actually cancel anything in particular… which is why he used it.
Finally, the Portkey had activated, whisking Oleandra and Mai away and making this the second time Voldemort had been hoist with his own petard, with his own Portkey saving his enemy.
"Which means," Oleandra said, blanching. "If Voldemort had instead used the Killing Curse…"
"We would already have been dead, regardless of whether we would have dodged or blocked the curse in a normal scenario, and then he would have fired upon our corpses," Mai said grimly. "It worked out well for us this time, but please do not ever use the dangerous ogham runes again… the elder and yew ones, to be clear."
Well, that was a rather sobering thought.
"There's a fireplace in Yaxley's office nearby, we can use it to catch up to the others," Oleandra said pensively. "And I just said Voldemort, so we should prolly hurry before someone comes this way..."
Although Yaxley was no longer Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, seeing as Oleandra had killed him, that did not change the fact that there was still a fireplace in his office. And given the importance of the position, she had no doubt it had unrestricted access to all sorts of normally inaccessible Floo Network relay points, namely… Hogwarts.
Specifically, the Headmaster's office!
…
After running into a few dead ends and Stunning more than a few surprised clerks along the way, Oleandra and Mai finally stood before the dark mahogany doors that led to the Department Head's office.
"Locked," Mai said grimly as she tried the doorknob. "Alohomora won't crack this lock… and Blasting or Reducing our way through might invite unwanted attention."
"Allow me," Oleandra said confidently. "Step aside."
The magic of the stars was weakened underground, but they were only two floors below the surface, and Oleandra was confident that her magic would still work. As the magic of the stars was a near-extinct discipline, precious little in the way of modern warding was designed to withstand a continuous runic onslaught.
Permanency and persistence were runic magic's fortes!
"Wunjo, Gebu, Raidhu!" Oleandra called, slapping the back of her hand with her palm to activate the Galdr tattooed on it. "In the name of the Standard, the Gift and the Way of Transformations, turn wood into water!"
Droplets of water began trickling down the side of the door as the mahogany began slowly converting into water, magical sparks flying everywhere as the enchantments woven into the wood resisted Oleandra's Transfiguration magic.
"Can't you work any faster?" Mai called. The lift stood right in front of the Department Head's office, and she eyed the needle of its floor indicator warily. "I'm fairly certain we're about to have company. Level eight… seven… six…"
The Galdr branded into the back of Oleandra's hand was growing uncomfortably hot.
"I didn't think a mere door would be this much of a hindrance," Oleandra grumbled to herself as she reached for the golden cup at her waist. "Bloody hell, I can't maintain two different runic spells at once… I'll have to forego Laukaz."
Using her innate Authority over water as the Lady of the Lake, Oleandra marshalled the Thief's Downfall spewing from Hufflepuff's cup into forming a fist, which she sent crashing against the door. The watery fist exploded harmlessly against the hard, lacquered surface, barely putting a dent into it, but the instant the Thief's Downfall contacted it, the rate at which her magic had been devouring the wood drastically increased.
"Five… four… three…" Mai announced.
The intricately carved mahogany door melted into water.
"Got it!" Oleandra exclaimed.
In hindsight, perhaps she ought to have simply sent the Thief's Downfall into the keyhole to remove its locking enchantment and then used Alohomora; that would have been much more efficient than grinding down the door with her weakened runic magic.
"Ding. Level 2," a woman's voice said coolly as the lift slowly rose into sight behind the golden grille, emitting a mechanical groan as it shuddered to a stop. "Department of Magical Law Enforcement, including the Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters and Wizengamot Administration Services."
"They're mine!" Bellatrix shrieked like a banshee, the first woman out of the lift as she sprinted at them like a madwoman, wrenching the lift's golden grilles free from their hinges with a flick of her wand before hurling them at Oleandra and Mai. "Depulso!"