Hermione and Harry looked and looked, but couldn't find the Diadem. Maybe Helena Ravenclaw had been wrong, maybe it wasn't here. If they couldn't find it, they couldn't destroy Voldemort. It had to be here. It had to. The Room of Requirement was huge and overwhelming. The diadem could be anywhere. After what felt like a whole day of searching, Harry came upon the Vanishing Cabinet, the one that Draco had used to get the Death-Eaters that killed Dumbledore into the castle last year. It made Harry furious seeing it, but he opened the doors anyways. Inside there were actually quite a few things since last time. The diadem could be in here.
"Hermione! Come and help me with this!" Harry yelled.
"I'm coming!" Hermione called, and she came around the corner of a stack of chairs.
She instantly saw what Harry was doing, and started searching the cabinet. The shelves were layered…You could take off the first row of them, and the cabinet went farther back. Once they had cleaned out the first part, tossing the remains into a pile behind them, Harry and Hermione took out the first shelf and started to look into the second, farther back, one. The whole time, Harry had propped the doors to the cabinet open with a chair. Now he climbed up onto it, Hermione behind him, and into the wooden box to search. But as Hermione climbed in, the chair shook. She stepped inside the cabinet…And the chair tumbled over. Immediately everything went black. The doors had shut. Harry began to feel around, but before he could say 'Lumos', he started to feel woozy. Hermione yelped.
"What?" Harry yawned, and then fell onto the wood. Hermione followed.
When Harry woke up, he was sitting in a black-painted chair in a small room. His eyes were wide open, as if he hadn't been asleep at all. But something was strange…He felt his hair and eyes. His glasses were gone, and his hair was shorter, a light brown color. His nose was sharp from the best he could tell, but there were no reflections in the room. Harry looked beside him and saw another girl with dirty blonde hair and huge eyes feeling her face, too. He lips were curved into a strange grimace that meant she was thinking…It was Hermione. The girl was rather short, wearing all grey clothes and her hair in a ponytail. Harry looked down. He was wearing all grey as well. He looked up suddenly, realizing someone was speaking. The room was fairly small, with a few rows of folding chairs set up and several other sixteen-year-olds sitting with adults. Harry looked up to find two adults behind him, presumably parents. What had the vanishing cabinet done? Was he a muggle? What was happening here? And how would he get back? Harry looked over at Hermione and widened his eyes. She looked at him and gave start.
"Harry?" she whispered.
"Hermione?"
They both nodded, and then looked at each other questionably. At the front of the room there was a man with greying hair standing in front of five bowls. Inside two of the bowls were coal and glass, but Harry couldn't see the rest. There was a huge knife on the center table.
"So, to choose your Faction you will come forward, slice your palm, and let the blood trickle into the bowl that represents your choice. Good luck, and we will call names for you to come up."
Harry and Hermione looked at each other again, but Hermione seemed to understand it perfectly.
"What's going on?" Harry whispered. His voice was deep and masculine.
"They are choosing the Faction, a group of people, they want to be in. It's not unlike house-sorting."
"How do you know all this?"
"I listened to what he was saying."
"How are we going to get back—"
Suddenly someone prodded both Harry and Hermione's heads and they looked behind them. The man was a little old but clearly whoever they were's father. He put his finger to his lips and looked angry.
"But we don't know are names!" Harry said out of the corner of his mouth, turning to look straight ahead.
"We will figure something out. You choose what I choose, Harry."
"And you choose what I choose."
"Okay."
They both turned to look ahead. The first boy was shaking with anxiety. He squinted his eyes and cut his hand, letting his blood trickle into a bowl Harry couldn't see. They kept watching for a half hour.
"Caleb Prior." the man at the front called.
Everyone in the room looked around, until finally the man behind Harry shoved him.
"That's you, son."
Harry turned red, and eyeing Hermione he got up and went to the center of the room. Maybe it would go back to normal right after he cut himself, maybe it would go back right now. But nothing happened. Harry picked up the knife. How would he choose? He didn't know what he was doing! On the bowls read the names of the 'Factions'. The one with the coals in it read Dauntless. Harry liked the sound of that. Especially after he saw that the others were called things like Amity, and Candor. Dauntless sounded best. Harry looked Hermione in the eyes and made sure she could see his choice, and then he cut his palm. Harry grunted, but it wasn't like he hadn't been injured before. Then he thrust his hand over the bowl of coals, letting the blood fall onto the embers and sizzle. Everyone clapped robotically, except for the man who had been behind Harry. His 'father' was clearly displeased with the choice.
"Beatrice Prior." the man called as Harry stepped to the side. The people in the back were ushering him in. Most of them were pierced and tattooed. Immediately Hermione got up (clearly she'd figured out who she was long before), and went to the knife. Whimpering, she cut her palm and let the blood go into the Dauntless bowl as well. Once again, everyone clapped. Except their father. He looked even more displeased. Harry and Hermione didn't look at him throughout the rest of the ceremony, and when they finally left, they hadn't gazed at him again. The crowd of people continued out of the building, but one person called "Dauntless initiates this way!".
Harry and Hermione both followed the man along with a few others and they walked through the streets of a big city for a mile or so. Harry had seen the city before in a book. It was Chicago in America. But the problem was that it was broken down. Windows were cracked everywhere and steam came from randomly burning fires. Some of the streets had caved in to reveal old trains underground. Someone pointed to a dying man in the street and murmured "Factionless."
He smirked and kept walking.
Eventually everyone reached a train. It was moving quickly along tracks that lead to a bridge and on. As soon as they got to the train, the Dauntless teenagers started running to keep up with it, and then jumping on. Harry and Hermione looked at each other. Hermione was gaping.
"C'mon!" someone yelled. Harry and Hermione reluctantly started jogging, then running, then sprinting. They had to catch up. Harry grabbed hold of a bar and hoisted himself up first, then he grabbed Hermione's arms and pulled her up too. They both crept along a rattling piece of metal until they reach the door, which the two climbed in to with no hesitation. Hundreds of people were sitting in rows of seats on the train dressed in black, most pierced, and all tattooed. Harry and Hermione looked at each other.
"This is insane, Harry." Hermione murmured. Harry nodded and looked at Hermione. She looked so different, and yet he could still tell it was her. Beatrice Prior. That was her name. And he was Caleb. How were they going to get back? The vanishing cabinet had had more effects than Harry had ever heard about. They could try to travel back to Hogwarts, because they were still on earth, but they were on a different continent, and Harry could tell that for some strange reason this wasn't the Chicago he'd heard of. It was some sort of deranged distorted version. They sat on the train for an hour or so before there was some movement. Silently, nearly all of the people got up from the train and opened the door. Then they jumped. Harry and Hermione looked at each other again, crazed.
"They're JUMPING?!"