As Hermione stepped into the room, she found herself a little surprised by all that was in front of her.
The room was lit with an abundance of torches hanging on the walls, which by themselves seemed sturdy enough to take the full force of any spells that they could cast inside the room. That did not mention the abundance of magical energy Hermione could feel radiating off the stone walls.
Hermione's eyes reached the roof and the action/realisation caused her to become a little stiff.
Hanging from the ceiling were several cages with a variety of magical beasts in them.
They were currently all asleep, no doubt a magical occurrence possibly powered by the room itself, but Hermione had read through Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them enough times to know that each of the beasts trapped in those cages up above were dangerous enough to kill someone on accident.
Eventually, however, she managed to drag her eyes back from the ceiling, to the long pillar of stone in the centre of the room that seemed to be supporting the high roof which was shrouded fully in darkness itself.
The shadows cast from the long central pillar obstructing the torches placed all around organically, divided the room into sections of various needs.
The plainest section was one that had several rings drawn or rather painted on the floor, which Hermione recognised as dueling rings. Although plain, the boundaries of each ring had mattresses that would help cushion the fall of anyone fated to be blasted out of it.
There were several dummies in the area too for people to practice by themselves if they didn't have a partner.
The closest area to it was one filled with several herbs and cauldrons, no doubt to prepare potions that would help heal all these injuries.
'I wonder where the ingredients and animals came from?'
'The forbidden forest?'
'That just makes all this even more mysterious doesn't it?'
'Why would there be such a room in Hogwarts? And why would it remain undiscovered for so long?'
'Was Luna right when she said that it was the residence of a True God?'
Hermione clenched her fists but Harry's words snapped her out of it.
"Hermione! They've got books! Not just ones about how to defend ourselves from simple spells, but also ones that involve dark magic! This will be perfect for us to learn how to defend ourselves from 'Him'!"
Hermione's eyes snapped to the short storage of books as her eyes landed on the book Harry was about to pick up but before he could do anything-
flick
Hermione's wand flicked as Harry's robes locked his hands.
"Don't touch a book you don't know about. They could be cursed!"
Harry's eyes widened and he nodded, allowing Hermione to let him go as Cedric spoke up this time-
"The books are dangerous…we'll have to clean several of them up…or at least restrict their access so that not many people learn them…" He was staring closely at a dusty book that was half opened and lying open on a table.
But-
"Oh please! Cursed!? These books? For God's sake, these books are so tame.." Astoria complained as she simply picked up a random book.
A large black mass was ejected out of the book as she said so, but before anyone could react, Astoria snapped her fingers causing the black mass to WWWWWWWWWAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLL in horrendous pain.
Astoria had used her Beyonder ability, psyche storm, on whatever it was that had tried cursing her.
The sound would've left everyone's ears ringing but they suddenly realised that they couldn't hear a thing.
They weren't plunged into silence, meaning that their ears still worked, but it seemed like whatever was wailing suddenly couldn't make a sound anymore.
Confused, they all looked around for which one of them had saved the day but they were surprised when they saw that neither Hermione nor Harry had pulled it off.
Luna, on the other hand, just stared at a random wall, but everyone ignored her as they chalked up the 'strange' happening to the supremely magical room helping them out.
Everyone, however, gathered at the fourth section, which was a plain lounge. They looked around for a few seconds before turning to Hermione once again-
"Now what?" Astoria asked, "Do you want me to perform the ritual?"
Hermione nodded, "If the ritual can do what you say it can, I want to make sure it happens as fast as possible."
"I've been meaning to ask, but what ritual?" Harry asked and Cedric also leaned in.
Hermione looked at Astoria for permission and once she got a soft nod in response she took charge in explaining to them what Astoria had told her, "....it's a ritual to prevent anyone from being able to divine anything about this place at least until they're an Angel."
Although Astoria's ritual worked even for a True God not directly having domain over Fate, she didn't know it herself because she didn't know that a True God was just another Sequence 0. To her, the concept of a True God was still someone beyond the Sequence.
But Hermione knew, from using her overpowered Sefirah Castle powered Divination about the ritual and her knowledge about Sequence 0, but she didn't reveal anything about it. Especially because she didn't want to upset the True God of the Monster Pathway, who was the most likely candidate 'performing the ritual deed', since she didn't want to pick a fight with Lady Luck.
But the simple fact that this would keep out even an angel had shocked both Harry and Cedric.
Luna was still staring at the wall, though, she was even making various strange expressions, but because she had turned away from everyone else, no one noticed them.
"I hadn't thought of that…" Harry admitted.
Cedric shook his head with a wry smile, "I thought we'd be using a normal ritual, I came prepared with the ingredients! Haha~. Well, I guess I should've expected this from the student that's at the top of the class."
Once things were cleared, Hermione turned towards Astoria, "You can start as soon as you wish. Do you need us to go outside?"
Astoria shook her head, "No, but I need you to give me the contract we signed on. It'll help me involve everyone else into the ritual too."
Hermione nodded and fetched the contract out of her bag of holding with a simple accio and handed it over to Astoria.
And in a few minutes, with everything needed for the ritual prepared, Astoria knelt in front of the altar as the rest of the people present just watched the ritual happen quietly.
Luna also appeared to have finished her conversation with the 'wall' and was standing beside everyone silently.
"I"
"I pray for the power of fate."
"I pray for the power of curses and calamities."
"I pray for the Goddess's loving grace."
"I pray for the Goddess's great powers to curse everything about this place with the quality that it will never be found."
"Daphne flower, a fragrance that belongs to fate, I pray for you to bestow powers to my incantation.
"Greengrass dew, the liquid that belongs to the settlement of fates, I pray for you to bestow powers to my incantation."
Astoria said as she dropped the notarised contract in front of the candle representing the Goddess of Fortune.
There was silence for a few seconds before everyone in the room had their hair stand on end.
They all felt a powerful indescribable and indiscernible gaze that felt like it had no origin or end penetrate into their very beings.
It felt as if their very lives were being weighed on scales.
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A/N : Hello. Been a busy with irl stuff lately. Sorry for the delay, things should be quicker from tomorrow.