Be Careful
102: What Face You Mask
By Anne B. Walsh
Laughter cascaded in over Draco and Hermione as the barrier between them and the rest of their small group dropped away again. Harry had gone on one knee in his fight for breath, and Ron was leaning against the wall, wiping his eyes. Luna perched on a ledge in the wall, smiling. In the center of the floor, a knee-high wildcat with tall tufted ears and broad paws spun in rapid circles, apparently trying to get a glimpse of its own stubby tail.
Hermione stared. “What in Merlin’s name—”
“Ginny was afraid she wouldn’t be allowed to fight,” Luna said, jumping down from her seat. “So I let her have my Animagus amulet. It had one use left on it. Her form is good for fighting, don’t you think?”
“It will be if she can ever stop...” Hermione twirled a finger. “Ginny, what are you doing?”
“Ron asked her if she had any tail,” said Harry, getting control of himself. “She’s trying to figure it out.”
“Weasley!” Draco said in his most shocked tone. “And to your own sister!”
“Sod off, Malfoy,” retorted Ron good-naturedly. “Ginny, calm down, all right? It’s back there, it’s just small and hard to see. Besides, it doesn’t affect how well you can use the rest of what you’ve got, does it?”
“The dirty mind crew gets overtime tonight,” Draco murmured, and beckoned Luna closer. “See how things are going out there?”
Luna nodded and poked her head through the stone wall, then pulled it back. “Quite a lot of people,” she said. “I think it’s safe to let Harry see them now. He can’t send them all away.”
“Hold up one second...” Draco laid his hand on Luna’s shoulder and focused in the way that had become as familiar as Apparition since January, and Luke the mongoose scrabbled up into his favorite observation post around Luna’s neck. Ready now, he chittered to her.
“Please?” Luna said under her breath, looking up at the intersection of wall and ceiling.
The inner wall melted away.
Harry clenched his teeth. It was the only way to keep his mouth from falling open in astonishment.
Where did they all come from?
And what, exactly, are they expecting me to do?
“Is your mysterious mission done or isn’t it?” asked Tonks, whose presence seemed to give Lupin the same feeling that the crowd packed into the Room was giving Harry.
“It is,” Hermione admitted, “but—”
“But what? If it’s done, that means we can go out and fight. If not, tell us what else needs to be done and we’ll do it. Right?” Tonks appealed to the other members of the Order and the DA, who answered with fierce nods, shouts of “Right!” and “You said it!” and even some outright growls.
“It’s not that simple!” Harry shouted. “We don’t even know where—where You-Know-Who is—”
“We don’t have to.”
Everyone turned and looked at the speaker.
It was Ron.
“We don’t have to know where he is,” Ron repeated, his face reddening but his voice firm and sure. “We can make him come to us.”
“How?” Lupin asked, voicing the question general to the room.
“Like this.” Ron swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and shut his eyes. “Voldemort.”
“That’ll just bring Snatchers down on us!” Lavender Brown shouted over the disappointed murmurs.
“To start with,” said Harry, and the room quieted at his voice. He barely noticed; his attention was turned inwards, on the chain of events unfolding in his mind. “Neville, do you have the Map?”
“Right here.” Neville came forward with it. “We keep it running so we know when we can slip out at night.”
“Let me have it.” Harry accepted the worn parchment and focused on it. Show me the Headmaster’s office, he willed. I need to see who’s there.
Lines blurred and reformed. A dot labeled “Severus Snape” sat behind the desk. Nothing else was in sight. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Lupin, Tonks, crowded around Harry, and the Room elevated its floor behind them as everyone tried to get a look at the Map—
“There!” Five or six voices shouted it at once, as new dots began to appear in front of the Headmaster’s fireplace. The names were unfamiliar, but after a few moments in colloquy with them, Snape’s dot moved a few inches away, and other dots began to converge on the Head’s office. “Alecto Carrow” and “Amycus Carrow,” “Minerva McGonagall” and “Filius Flitwick,” “Pomona Sprout” and, slowest of all, as if reluctant, “Horace Slughorn...”
“That’ll do,” Harry said, folding the Map and sliding it into his pocket. “I need good duelers. About a dozen. And someone who’s good with Transfiguration.”
Lupin coughed once. “May I suggest we ask Minerva to do that, once we’ve finished with them?”
Harry thumped the base of his hand against his forehead. “Right. Never mind. But I still need duelers. We have to take them down before they do us.”
And send them back to their Master able to talk, but not to fight.
Ron had the right idea. Now that Voldemort—may as well start saying it again, there’s no more need to hide—was out of Horcruxes, the sooner they could make him come out and fight, the better.
And the best way to make him go anywhere is to let him know I’m there.
He still didn’t like involving everyone else. But then, he hadn’t liked finding out he had this damned destiny in the first place, and not liking it hadn’t changed it a bit. He’d just have to work around it, and do his best to keep them all safe in spite of themselves.
One good thing, we can send everyone who can’t fight out through the Hog’s Head. They’ll be safe in the village—it’ll be Hogwarts Voldemort wants, because “he’s at Hogwarts...”
The phrase brought him a moment’s thought of Sirius, Sirius as Harry had first seen him, skeletal and filthy with the deadness of Azkaban in his eyes, but determined to fight past his sufferings for the sake of the truth.
He never got a chance to finish that fight.
We’ll do it for him.
Tonight. Now.
He turned and started up the stairs to the Room’s Hogwarts door, Lupin, Tonks, and a small band of mixed Order and DA members behind him.
A hand reached out of the crowd and snagged Ron’s sleeve as he started to follow Harry. “Ron, where’s Ginny?” its owner demanded. “I don’t see her anywhere—”
“Mum!” Ron put all the shock and horror he could muster into the word. “You don’t seriously think we’d have brought her with us? She’s still underage!”
“Well, I...” Mum faltered. “Good for you, then. I’m glad you have some sense. Has she been all right with you out there?”
“She was an angel,” Ron said, crossing his fingers behind his back. “Never a moment’s trouble.”
Mum smiled fondly. “That’s my girl. I’ll go get your father, he’ll be glad to see you...”
Fred and George closed in on Ron as Mum hurried off. “Nicely done,” George said. “Tell her what she wants to hear, and let her draw her own conclusions.”
“A classic move, and one I think you must have learned from us.” Fred thrust out his chest.
“So where is our darling Gin-Gin, really?” asked George.
“Mrrowr,” said a voice behind the twins.
Fred turned and looked searchingly at Ginny the lynx. “Don’t tell me,” he said finally. “You’re doing something new with your hair.”
A small choking noise came from Ron’s left. Luke, on Luna’s shoulders, had his face buried in her robes.
“Luna,” George said with some concern. “Your little buddy there. Is he all right?”
“He’s fine.” Luna stroked her companion between the ears. “He just thinks you’re funny.”
Fred beamed. “He has good taste.”
“Yes, he does,” Hermione said quietly from behind Ron.
Ron decided making no comment whatsoever was the safest way to go.
The die is cast, the gauntlet is thrown, and however many other ways there are of saying we’re in for it now...
Luke watched the end of the parade of underage students leaving the Great Hall. Those who were staying to fight—no Slytherins, which hadn’t surprised him one bit, but a fair number of the other Houses’ sixth and seventh years—were running here and there under the direction of their Heads of House, getting in each other’s way and adding to the general impression that there was already a battle in progress here.
Depending on how you define terms, there’s already been one. Spells fired, at least.
Harry’s plan had worked perfectly—he had “appeared” in front of Snape, the four Heads of House, the Carrows, and the team of Snatchers from the Ministry, and Alecto Carrow had pressed her Mark before anyone could stop her. McGonagall and Flitwick had promptly Stunned the two Carrows, while Sprout and the team Harry had brought dealt with the Snatchers.
And Slughorn stood there and dithered and let Snape get away, out the nearest window and down to the gates to join what’s coming for us. Without the faintest idea of what’s coming for him, at my hand...
Luke snapped his teeth a few times at the thought of the fate awaiting his Headmaster. He does deserve it, just a little. He wouldn’t if it weren’t for how it ends, it would be too rough for what he’s really done, but it’s all of a piece so it’s fine by me.
And I’m dithering. I should get ready for what I have to do.
“Soon,” Luna whispered, twitching her head so that her hair fell across him, giving him a whiff of the fruity-earth smell of Dirigible Plums (one of his Aunt Andromeda’s hobbies was making scented soaps and shampoos). “I don’t want to leave you in there too long, I don’t know how well it will last, it might wear out and that’s the last thing you need is to have it suddenly crack while Voldemort’s looking at you...” She giggled. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed not being afraid to say that name. And soon, no one will ever need to be afraid to say it again.”
Let’s hope it really is soon. Luke stuck his nose into Luna’s ear. I think we should start upstairs now. The Room should reset to its original location once they’re all out of it.
Luna nodded and started out the door for the entrance hall, moving purposefully. No one stopped her, no one questioned her, but at the turn for the second floor another set of footsteps fell in behind her.
“I just wanted to see what you were doing,” Hermione said, pulling aside a tapestry to let Luna enter a secret passage. “If I shouldn’t, tell me and I’ll go away.”
Luke beckoned her to follow with his remaining front paw. You can come, he chittered aloud. It might help to have an extra pair of hands. A mongoose snicker. Now that you have one again.
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Very funny... wait, did I just understand you?”
“You share blood,” Luna said, jumping the vanishing step. “On purpose, instead of by accident like most people. It makes a difference.”
“Obviously.”
The rest of the climb was undertaken in silence. Finally they stood before the innocuous-seeming wall. The trolls in the tapestry were rushing back and forth as madly as the people in the Great Hall below, unsettled by the lack of a Head to report these interlopers to.
“So who requires the Room?” Hermione asked.
Luke jumped down and resumed his human form on the way. “I do,” Draco said, straightening from his crouch. “Or I will in a moment.” He turned to Luna and pulled her close, looking down at her. “Be careful, you understand me?” he said with as much strength as he could muster around the lump in his throat. “I’m not a Gryffindor. I can’t go on if I lose you.”
“You won’t lose me.” Luna brushed her finger across his lips. “I’ll find you before it’s all over, and we’ll make that last jump together.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
One hungry kiss, and Draco let her go. “Ready when you are,” he said.
Luna looked deep into his eyes, her gaze calm and hypnotic. “He’s telling a terrible story,” she chanted, “but it doesn’t diminish his glory...”
“That’s from Pirates, isn’t it?” Hermione’s voice echoed into Draco’s ears from a long way away. “What is it for?”
“It’s the activation for a mental mask. His mum put it in his mind when she gave him some of her strength, back when he got healed.”
“A mental mask?”
“To hide his thoughts from Legilimency. Like Headmaster Snape uses, and Voldemort.”
“Oh.” A moment’s pause. “What did you need me for?”
“I’ll say as soon as Draco opens the Room. There’s the door now.”
“What is he requiring it for?”
“A prison—quick, before he sees us—”
A prison. That was what this little dark room meant. He was a prisoner, held against his will.
“Quick, before he sees us—” And wild mocking laughter, and hands against his back, and he had stumbled forward into this tiny cell, the door slamming behind him before he could so much as catch his breath. His arm throbbed with pain, his limbs were weak and weary from a night and a day without food or proper rest, but one thought continued to obsess him. The Dark Lord must know how he had been tricked in Severus Snape.
Amazing, a tiny voice at the back of the mind commented. I’ve even convinced myself!
Ignoring the voice, Draco Malfoy continued to focus his will on the door. This might be a prison, but no prison could hold him forever. He would escape, and he would tell his story to the Dark Lord.
Of course you will, chuckled the tiny voice. But when the time is right, Draco. Only when the time is right.
Outside, the shouts and screams of battle drew closer and closer.
The Death Eaters had entered Hogwarts.
Author Notes:
I flipped a coin and writing won over sleep. Probably a good thing, since I wasn’t sleepy and I don’t want to train myself to lie awake in bed. But I am sleepy now, and I’m off to bed as soon as ever I can be. Hope you enjoyed it. More soon.
In case you might not have noticed, Facing Danger was updated while the site's email alerts weren't working properly. Hope you enjoyed that, too, if you did see it.