"It would help if you could take Yaxley's form," Mai mouthed. "Can you transform into him?"
Oleandra closed her eyes.
Before she could even begin to picture him, Corban Yaxley appeared in her mind's eye, his dead, glassy eyes seemingly staring straight into her soul. His short, flaxen hair was matted and unkempt, and his skin dry and weathered—
"Pretty good," whispered Mai, watching Oleandra's transformation with interest. "Though your eyes could use a bit more life."
Within moments, the lift screeched to a stop, and its golden grilles sprang open.
Oleandra took a deep breath and looked straight ahead. Past the golden gates demarcating the lift area was the Atrium's main section. All she needed to do was look menacing and escort the Muggle-Born behind her to the fireplaces to her left, the departure area…
"What are you waiting for?" hissed Mai, tugging at Oleandra's sleeve. "We're looking suspicious enough as it is!"
Before entering the lift, they had stripped the Heliopaths of their golden cloaks and sun badges, passing them to a few of the more burly and intimidating Muggle-Born to wear. The problem was that, no matter how hard they tried, they could not make their faces as blank as the emotionless Heliopaths, and the more nervous they became, the harder it became for them to maintain the countenance of a marble statue…
"Morning, Yaxley!"
A tall Wizard strode briskly through the golden gates, nodding in Oleandra's direction as he walked to the lifts behind her. At the sight of the Muggle-Born cowering behind her, he frowned and stopped dead in his tracks, his finger hovering over the lift's up-arrow button.
"I say, aren't those the Mudbloods that came in this morning?" he said, peering suspiciously at their terrified faces and stroking his beard. "Surely you couldn't have judged them all already, Yaxley?"
Oleandra had no earthly idea who this person might possibly be.
"We really ought to have a word with the bounty hunters," she said crossly. "This batch was full of Half-Bloods. Take this girl, for example—" Oleandra reached behind her and seized her cousin by the elbow. "—Muggle mother, Squib father— she's the Dark Lady's cousin, for Merlin's sake! Suspected of being the Heir of Slytherin! She was arrested when she was only twelve, for the crime of trying to purify Hogwarts!"
The tall man's face went as white as a sheet.
"I'll tell the Snatchers to be more discriminating," he said nervously. "Well, er… I'm already running late for work, so…"
Oleandra waved him off, and he hurried into one of the lifts that had just arrived, eager to escape the official Death Eater he had displeased. With the man out of the way, Oleandra led her group through the golden gates and into the throng of wizards and witches milling about the Atrium. It was noon, so a great many people had queued in the departure area to take the Floo Network home, hoping to enjoy their lunch away from the administration's prying eyes.
"Clear the way!" Oleandra shouted, drawing her wand and shooting red sparks into the air. "Official business!"
The crowd parted before her, and those who had been about to head to lunch hastily pocketed their handfuls of Floo Powder and stepped away from the fireplaces, giving Oleandra a wide berth. Evidently, the average Ministry worker was deathly afraid of Yaxley and the Gold-Capes he commanded.
One by one, the Muggle-Born in Oleandra's group stepped up to the fireplaces and pinched Floo Powder between their fingers, then cast the magical substance into the roaring hearths before walking into the emerald flames and vanishing.
Feeling a tug at her sleeve, Oleandra glanced down and bent forwards slightly.
"I'll wait for you by that statue," Mai whispered, standing on tiptoes to speak into Oleandra's ear. "Just in case something goes awry."
Oleandra followed her gaze and nearly gasped in surprise. Gone was the golden fountain of the magical sisters. It had been replaced with an enormous sculpture of black stone, depicting a Witch and a Wizard, sitting atop a black throne made up of startlingly realistic, ugly, twisted figures, which almost seemed to writhe like maggots. Humans.
If things truly went awry, she would not be able to rely on the Aquamirror Spell to display her full strength underground. For sympathetic magic to work, a smaller version of the thing you wished to invoke was required— so no fountain, no lake to serve as a mirror epitomising the stars…
"Magic is Might…" Oleandra muttered to herself as she turned on her heel and marched back to the lifts and pressed one of the down-arrow buttons. "Truer words, eh?"
Mechanically, she rubbed the black stone set into the ring on her finger for comfort. She could not imagine how much more miserable her life would have been had she remained a Squib. Or perhaps none of this would ever have happened… but it was pointless to dwell on it now. The past was the past.
"Level 8," the lift lady said smoothly. "The Atrium."
At last, a lift clattered to a halt before her and flung open its grilles. Seeing that it was going down, the Witches and Wizards waiting nearby began searching for other lifts, while Oleandra reached in and pressed the button for Level Nine before swiftly stepping back.
The empty lift closed its doors and vanished into the depths below, returning moments later, conspicuously crammed as tightly as sardines in a tin with Muggle-Born. Evidently, nobody had wanted to be left for last, so, without supervision from either Oleandra or Mai, the second and third groups had crammed themselves into the lift.
"Anyone still down there?" Oleandra asked helplessly, inwardly cursing them as she watched them spill from the lift the moment the golden grilles opened. "I thought I told you to split into three groups."
People were outright staring at them now.
The Muggle-Born looked incredibly suspicious; a group of twenty or so Wizards and Witches coming from the lower floors, unkempt, their clothes covered in sweat stains, reeking of body odour… it didn't take long for the onlookers to guess what was going on.
"Somebody call the guar—"
And it's precisely at that moment that Oleandra's runic spell finally decided to activate on its own.
Five minutes earlier, she had invoked Thursaz several times in quick succession in the lift, without any particular target in mind, and five minutes was precisely the time it had taken for the magic of the stars to travel through the Earth's crust to the Ministry of Magic's eighth underground level.
The instant Oleandra recognised the Ministry workers around her as enemies, this mass of disembodied runic magic, which had been floating aimlessly around her, finally found its mark…
In a flash, the Giant's Strength rune's power radiated from her, toppling those nearest and wrenching the lift area's golden gate from its hinges, hurling it away and decapitating the black stone statues of the Witch and Wizard, before embedding itself deep in the wall above the visitor entrance at the far end of the Atrium!