Facing Danger
Chapter 41: Legends Old and New (Arc 6)
By Anne B. Walsh
“N.E.W.T.s begin tomorrow, oh twin o’ mine.”
“So they do.” George glanced sideways at Fred. “I know that look. You have a plan.”
“When do I not?” Fred held out a sheaf of parchments. “Read ‘em and laugh.”
George accepted the thick stack and leafed through them. “Been working behind my back, have you?”
“Well, when you keep your front so obligingly turned towards the Sanctuary...”
“As was the arrangement. I do our share of the work there, and leave you free to pursue other goals. I merely hadn’t expected you’d catch them so soon.”
Fred snorted. “You thought I would leave any stone unturned to protect us from the Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests? Especially after the fuss Mum made over our O.W.L.s?”
“Too true, too true.” George peered into the window he’d been looking out of, locating his little brother’s reflection. Ron was sitting with the rest of the Pride near the fireplace, watching Hermione demonstrate something complicated involving her wand and three bits of string. “Think he’ll do all right?”
“He’ll pass more than we did, but we weren’t trying.” Fred leaned against the windowsill. “Does he still want to be an Auror?”
George ran the corners of the parchments along his thumb. “Have you got the key to number ninety-three, Diagon Alley, in your pocket?”
“Thought so. And he’s not going to get that O in Potions no matter what he does. No more is Harry.”
“Draco might, but all that’ll do is make him feel guilty.”
The twins meditated for a moment on the unfairness of life, then shrugged in unison.
“They’ll get over it,” Fred predicted. “And if they don’t, we can always blackmail Snape into letting them in anyway.”
“Or get him sacked. Mum says old Professor Slughorn wasn’t nearly so tough with his requirements.”
Fred perked up. “This is true. How might we go about that?”
“Ask Dumbledore to let him take the Defense post he wants so much?”
A long pause, in which two pairs of brown eyes looked everywhere but at one another. Finally, they met, and both twins burst out laughing.
Helping the family was all very well, but they had to have some standards.
Harry picked at his breakfast the next morning. He had known, somewhere in his mind, that the beginning of the spell-breaking year on May Day meant O.W.L.s were near, but even Hermione’s frantic preparation hadn’t brought it home to him like this tense, silent morning in the Great Hall. Fifth and seventh years alike swallowed with difficulty, peering at notes in between bites, and speaking only to trade mnemonics or last-minute ‘don’t forget’s. Fourth years were hushed in respect to what they’d experience next year at this time, and sixth years in both remembrance of their last year’s ordeal and anticipation of next year’s.
Only the younger students, third years and below, were chattering the way they usually did, and Harry couldn’t blame them. They were two years or more from the horrors of O.W.L.s; they couldn’t be expected to understand what this day meant. Meghan and her friend Natalie, the only younger ones near Harry, were ignoring him in favor of casting worried looks at a harried Hermione, who was too deeply engrossed in her textbook to notice.
I wonder what would happen if I tried bouncing bacon off her nose...
A sudden set of bangs from the entrance hall put an end to this idea, as Hermione, along with most of the girls in the Great Hall, shrieked and slammed her book shut. Harry swung his legs quickly over the bench and raced towards the noise. A few steps ahead of the other hundred boys who’d had the same idea, he flung the doors open wide and stared at the scene thus revealed.
Fireworks cavorted around the entrance hall, spinning and fizzing, bursting and sparkling. In the center of the display, seated on their brooms and wearing traveling cloaks, were Fred and George, beaming like a pair of genii whose bottles had been not only uncorked but filled with champagne.
“Mum is going to go spare,” Ron muttered from behind Harry’s left shoulder.
Harry looked down and took a hasty step back. The twins were aloft for a very good reason—the entire floor of the entrance hall had been converted into a swamp. His nose was already informing him how realistic the transfiguration was, and he hoped anyone who might be inclined to lose their breakfast on account of stench would do it in another direction.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Fred began.
“As we all know, O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s begin today,” George continued.
“The pinnacle of testing for wizardly and witchlike skill.”
“Invaluable for anyone wishing employment at the Ministry, Gringotts, or other fine magical establishments.”
“However, for those of us willing to employ ourselves...” Fred sucked his teeth. “Perhaps not quite so necessary.”
“Besides being unduly stressful, at a time when stress is most unneeded.” George beamed genially at the crowd.
Fred bowed grandly from his broom. “Thus, with best wishes to all for a successful testing time, we embark on the next phase of our lives—entrepreneurship.”
“Come and see us at number ninety-three, Diagon Alley!” George added. “Special discount to those taking O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s!”
Each twin produced a bundle of sparklers from under his cloak, lit them with his wand, and tossed them into the air. The sparklers fizzed to life and began to spell out words:
WEASLEY’S WIZARDING WHEEZES
FOR ALL YOUR HUMOROUS NEEDS
93 DIAGON ALLEY, OPEN MON-SAT
The students cheered wildly, waving hands and hats as Fred and George took one last bow, then flew out the great oak doors into the clear morning beyond. The sparklers, taking their cue from their creators’ departure, scrambled themselves together and began to spell out a final message:
ONCE YOU GO TWIN, YOU’LL NEVER GIVE IN!
Harry had to sit down on the end of the Gryffindor benches, his knees were so weak from laughing. Somehow O.W.L.s no longer seemed quite as scary.
For one thing, we’ll have trouble getting to them if the teachers can’t clean that up...
The teachers could and did, and O.W.L.s began strictly on schedule. Harry found them running together in his mind, so that he had to make sure he wasn’t writing Transfiguration answers on his Charms paper, or scribbling down History of Magic dates instead of Herbology specifications. He panicked in Arithmancy when he realized with five minutes to go that he’d written down his answers and forgot to show his work, but by dint of frantic effort he got every problem except one fixed before time was called.
The rest of the Pride was hardly immune. Neville, his old clumsiness brought back on by nerves, nearly fell off the Astronomy Tower while trying to adjust his telescope, and Draco got carried away with his stirring during the Potions practical and joggled Hermione’s elbow, causing her to spill essence of sumac on herself. Though her hand and arm were turning red and swelling up, she was still able, at the examiner’s prompting, to name the key components of the lotion with which she’d be treated in the hospital wing—acorns, ivy leaves, and flowers of zinc—and thus won an automatic pass in case she didn’t return in time to finish her brewing.
“How come we never get perks like that?” grumbled Ron, kicking his cauldron to try and loosen the crust of potion that had formed on the lip.
It was in Defense Against the Dark Arts, though, that the Pride and the rest of the DA truly shone. Their attacks were sharp, their shields and blocks firm, their tactics careful and sure. Harry’s stag Patronus chased Hermione’s lion and Draco’s wolf around the room, then danced away from the nipping attacks of Ron’s terrier and leaped easily over Neville’s doe. The examiners scribbled notes and beamed at them genially, and one asked Harry what memory he tended to use to cast such a strong Patronus.
“It—” Harry coughed twice and swallowed hard. “It depends where I am and what’s happening, sir,” he answered truthfully.
“Ah, I see, I see. Thank you, Mr. Potter, that’s all.”
“What was that?” Hermione asked as Harry escaped the room.
“Ask her,” Harry choked, pointing across the hall before succumbing to laughter.
“Ask who?” Hermione turned and began to laugh herself.
Ginny waved from her perch on one of the desks in the room opposite the exam site, where Harry would have been able to see her but the examiners wouldn’t. She had put her hair into stiff braids sticking straight out from the sides of her head, painted her face white, rouged circles on her cheeks, and highlighted her eyelids, one in green, the other in blue. “Just in case he couldn’t come up with anything good to think about,” she said sweetly.
Harry straightened up and caught his breath. “I’ll give you something good to think about,” he said. “Come here.”
“Make me.”
“If you insist.”
Ginny leapt off the desk and fled down the hall, Harry three steps behind.
When the final word had been written, the final punctuation mark put in place, and the scrolls were collected and taken away for grading, the fifth and seventh years let out a collective sigh and collapsed for a night and day. Then they recovered, realized they had survived, and began to wreak havoc on their surroundings and their colleagues out of sheer relief. The rest of the school, having finished their final exams while O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s were going on, were fair game and took part wholeheartedly.
Harry had worried a bit about this time in terms of the spell-breaking year—what if one of the pranks went too far and caused serious consequences? But his fears were unfounded, as nothing more painful than a few interesting hairdos and one case of extremely long fingernails surfaced. The yearmates, he discovered, were more likely to team up and defend each other than to play anything but the most basic of tricks on one another.
“We’re not stupid,” Lee said disdainfully when Harry mentioned this in passing at a Sanctuary meeting about a week before school let out. “This is important. It’s real. No one’s going to blow it for the sake of some dumb prank.”
“No one?” said Maya, looking up from where she was watering their new grass seedlings with a gentle spray from her wand. “Not even Fred and George?”
“Not even them.” Lee was emphatic. “They like a good joke as much as anybody, but this has to do with fighting You-Know—V-Voldemort,” he corrected at Harry’s glare, with barely a stammer. “George, especially, wants it taken off.”
“Why George especially?” Ginny asked, tamping down the dirt around a clump of pansies with the toe of her shoe.
“Oh, he hasn’t told you?” Lee grinned. “Well, I don’t know if I should say anything...”
“Spill it,” Maya commanded.
Lee pretended to cower. “Yes, dear.” He straightened up, stretched his back, and looked at Ginny. “Not a word to your mum,” he warned. “She’ll have enough to be going on with when she hears about the new shop.”
“What is it?” asked Harry.
“He’s interested in a Muggle girl.”
“George is?” Ginny frowned. “How did he meet her?”
“She works in the village near your house. He was just flirting with her at first, the way he and Fred do with every girl they meet, but now he’s been seeing her at holidays and writing her letters for almost a year.” Lee chuckled. “What first got her attention was those card tricks he does. ‘They’re amazing! Just like real magic!’”
Harry reached out and pulled an ace of hearts out of Ginny’s sleeve. “Like that?” he asked, holding it up.
“Just like that, except he is using real magic, and you’re not, are you?” Lee looked curiously at Harry’s hands.
“Not a bit.” Harry made the ace vanish, then produced it once more from behind Lee’s ear.
“Oh, I see what you’re doing!” Maya exclaimed. “But unless someone was right where I am, they’d never notice!”
“Which is the point, and would you mind not telling anyone what you saw?” Harry lit the ace on fire, dropped the ashes into Maya’s palm, closed her fingers, and blew on them, opening them to reveal the ace perfectly sound in her hand. “After all, a good magician never reveals his secrets.”
Maya stared in amazement. “Of course I won’t tell,” she said, stroking the card’s face with a finger. “Can I keep this?”
“Sure, I’ve got others.” Harry gave her his best Wolf-grin.
Ginny humphed, stomping over and standing between Maya and Harry. “Can’t I turn my back for three seconds without you flirting with some hot werewolf?” she demanded.
Harry blinked. For a split-second, and for no reason he could fathom, he’d thought of Cedric Diggory.
Maybe because that’s how I always felt when I saw him with Cho...
As usual at Hogwarts in the time after exams were over, various professors held optional lecture and discussion sessions on topics in their areas of interest. Three days before the end of term, Professor Jones posted a large notice giving the time and place for her lecture on “Merlin: The Man and the Mythology.” The next day, when she arrived, the room was full to capacity, and people were standing in the back, peering over the heads of the ones in front.
“Oh, for as—here, sit down,” she said irritably, flicking her wand and creating a set of bleachers under the standees. “Can everyone see now, and hear all right?”
A general chorus indicated that this was indeed the case.
“Wonderful. You’re here to hear me talk about Merlin. What do you know about him already?”
Hands flew up all over the room. Professor Jones called on person after person, charming a piece of chalk to write up the answers on the board. Shortly the entire gathering knew, if they hadn’t before, that Merlin was the court magician for the legendary King Arthur, that he’d been known as the “Prince of Enchanters,” that some legends said he’d lived backwards, that others linked him with the Founders of Hogwarts, that he’d supported laws and wizards who helped and protected Muggles, and that the Order of Merlin was named after him.
“Not a bad list, for someone who lived so long ago,” Professor Jones said, leaning her hands on the desk at the front of the room. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, what would you say if I told you that everything on this list has some element of truth to it?”
A puzzled murmur filled the room for a few moments, until Su Li raised her hand. “I don’t mean to be rude, Professor,” she said when called on, “but how could anyone live backwards? It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t, and that’s why there’s only an element of truth to it.” Professor Jones grasped the floating chalk in her hand and drew a long, horizontal line on the clear portion of chalkboard. “Let me explain it like this. Imagine this as your timeline. King Arthur and his court are here.” She drew a dot near the left end of the line and labeled it with a crown. “The births of Hogwarts’ Founders are here.” Another dot, this one near the center of the line, with a baby’s rattle drawn above. “The Founding of the school is here, and the great Battle of Hogwarts, when Salazar Slytherin tried to take the castle from the other Founders by force, is here.” Two more dots, one with a scroll, the other with a wand spitting sparks. “With me so far?”
An affirmative murmur answered her.
“Now.” Professor Jones rolled the chalk between her fingers. “Remember that Merlin was a truly astounding wizard, especially talented with Charms, and watch this.”
On the segment between the Founding and the Battle, she wrote the word Youth. The segment between the Founders’ births and the Founding she labeled with Middle Years, and next to King Arthur’s crown, Old Age.
“These are the records we have of the wizard called Merlin,” Professor Jones said, stepping back. “You can see how Muggles, ignorant of the workings of magic, might get the idea that he lived backwards. Can any of you, who are better informed, give me a more intelligent solution?”
“Time magic,” said Terry Boot. “It’s got to be.”
“So it does.” Professor Jones drew a pair of arrows, one from the Battle of Hogwarts back to the Founders’ births, the other from the Founding to King Arthur’s time. “In his life, Merlin made two great leaps in time. The first happened when he was a young man, and it was very precisely controlled and executed. The second was accidental, sparked off by the mishap of seeing and being seen by his younger self. That explains both why it was such a long jump back in time and why he appeared so aged when he arrived there—he had used up some of his own life force in making sure he would survive the jump.”
“Was Merlin something to do with the Founders, then?” Susan Bones asked. “You’ve got him all mixed up in there, but I’ve never heard any stories about him being along.”
“Oh, he was something to do with the Founders indeed.” Professor Jones chuckled, leaning back against the corner of the chalkboard. “Here’s a riddle for you. How could it be that Merlin was related to the children of Godric Gryffindor, but not to Gryffindor himself?”
“Paul and Maura are related to Merlin?” Ron whispered in shock as the room burst into buzzing. “They never said!”
“Maybe it’s like their mum,” said Meghan. “They miss him too much to talk about him.”
“Like their mum,” Harry repeated half to himself, and raised his hand.
“Yes, Potter,” Professor Jones said, waving the room to quiet.
“They’d have to be related on their mother’s side, wouldn’t they?” Harry asked. “Gryffindor’s kids, I mean, to Merlin. Was he their uncle or something like that?”
“Not their uncle, no. But you’re right about the way they’re related.” Professor Jones drew her finger along the segment she’d labeled Youth. “Remember, this is the period in the Founders’ lives when they were having their own children. Merlin wasn’t much older than those children. Now can you work it out?”
Hermione gasped and flung her hand into the air. “I don’t remember where I saw it,” she said breathlessly when Professor Jones called on her. “But I know I’ve seen it somewhere. There’s one tradition that says Godric Gryffindor was the luckiest Founder, because when he married, he didn’t just get a wife, he got a family—his wife had a child already, she’d been married before!”
Professor Jones smiled. “I wondered if anyone would know about that old thing,” she said. “Yes, that’s the riddle in plain English. Gryffindor married a widow, who had a little boy about three or four years old from her first husband. His name was Emrys, and he was an older brother to Gryffindor’s son and daughter and to all the Founders’ children. He grew up with them, he learned alongside them, he loved them, and after the Battle of Hogwarts, he left them forever.”
“He loved them, so he left them?” Blaise said from his seat near the back.
“Not ‘so,’ Zabini.” Professor Jones sat down on the corner of the desk. “More like ‘but.’ He loved them, but he knew he was needed in another time. He’d always heard, growing up, that his stepfather and the other Founders had a mysterious enemy who didn’t want them to meet one another or begin a school. It struck Emrys shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts that without the enemy’s so-called interference, Hogwarts might never have been founded at all. So he plotted a jump through time, back to the births of the Founders, and became their friendly enemy, ensuring the timeline he had experienced would come to pass.”
“Sounds like a Slytherin,” said Roger, ducking Selena’s punch. “Did he see the little kid that was him when he was making sure his mum met Gryffindor?”
Professor Jones nodded. “They recognized one another, the child Emrys and the man, and each of their souls tried to fling the intruder away. Since the child belonged in that moment of time and the man did not, the man was the one who lost the contest. By the time he recovered his senses, he was farther back in time than he had ever intended to go, and he had the appearance of an old man. Whether he remembered the stories of Merlin and set out to deliberately recreate them, or whether he stumbled across the events taking place and simply did what seemed best at the time, no one knows.”
Luna made a soft crooning noise in her throat. “She’s so sad,” she whispered when Harry frowned at her and Ron raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “It’s a sorrow as long as the one in the chamber near Sanctuary, but even deeper than that.”
“Thanks for telling us.” Ron leaned back in his seat. “How did we get mixed up in all this time-traveling seer-mystical stuff anyway?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Harry said, tapping his forehead. “Nor did she.” Luna drew back her left sleeve to reveal the crescent-shaped scar where the fragments of her mother’s scrying bowl had struck her. “You can still walk out if you want.”
“What, with these on?” Ron jiggled his pendant chain, making the four medallions jingle faintly. “I’m not that stupid.”
Draco looked over his shoulder. “How stupid are you?” he inquired in a tone of friendly interest.
“Not nearly as stupid as you are, Black,” said Professor Jones loudly, causing Draco to execute a jump-and-twist maneuver in his seat and the rest of the Pride to hastily don their best ‘who me, no I wasn’t talking at all’ expressions. “The last person to talk during one of my lectures was never found.”
“Oh boy!” Draco beamed, though worry lurked at the back of his eyes. “I’ve always wanted to see the moon up close!”
Professor Jones turned to Luna and motioned her to stand up. Luna did so, and without further prompting walked over to Draco and plopped herself into his lap. “Close enough for you?” Professor Jones asked as the assembled students snickered.
“It’ll do,” Draco grunted, readjusting where Luna’s weight pressed down.
“Good. Why don’t we return to the topic at hand, namely, Merlin? Thoughts about why he might have been pro-Muggle? Yes, Miss Smythe?”
“Three of the four Founders thought Muggles were all right. If they were like parents to him, he probably would have listened to them...”
The lecture over, Luna started to get up, but Draco’s hand closed around her wrist. “Where’re you going in such a hurry? We haven’t done this for a while.”
“I know. But I have to talk to someone before she goes.”
“Oh, well, if that’s more important than I am...”
Luna flicked Draco on the side of the head. “Nothing is more important than you are to me,” she said quietly. “But this needs to be done. I won’t be long.”
“Off you go, then.” Draco released her, and watched as she threaded her way through the room towards a familiar mane of red hair.
What’s she in such a hurry to talk to Amanda about?
A thought came to him. Carefully, making each movement seem random and unconnected, he drew his wand, laid it up by his ear, and whispered a spell Tonks had taught the Pride to improve their hearing with respect to a particular person or people, focusing his attention on Luna and Amanda.
Luna’s voice came into focus first. “...allow that as unexpected outside interference?”
“If you’ll give me one penalty outside our normal timeline,” Amanda responded. “Agreed?”
“That seems fair.” Luna nodded and turned away. Draco removed the spell hastily before she could See it on him, and stood up with a smile as she returned to his side.
“Get your business done?” he asked, holding out his hand to her.
Luna squeezed the hand and released it. “Yes, I did. Do you need any help packing, or are you finished?”
“What needs finishing, I can finish on my own. Why don’t we go down to the lake for a while, or Hagrid’s Place?”
“Not today. Why don’t you go with Amanda? She doesn’t have anything to do.”
By the time Draco got his mouth open to answer this, Luna was already gone, squeezing between a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin and vanishing out the door.
“Something wrong?” Harry asked, seeing Draco standing with his mouth open.
Draco shook his head, half in denial, half in bewilderment. “She’s just... weird.”
Harry exchanged glances with the remaining members of the Pride, a proceeding which took a few moments. “Too easy,” he said at last. “Not taking it.”
“Sod off,” Draco snapped, and started towards Amanda, replacing his irritated look with a gracious smile. “I hear you might want to go out to the lake for a little while,” he said when he was close enough for her to hear.
“Yes, that would be lovely. Thank you.”
From behind white masks, fifteen pairs of eyes surveyed Hogwarts’ main gates.
This was the day of reckoning.
Birds twittered in the Forest as Draco and Amanda took turns skipping rocks across the lake. “Kind of dead out here,” Draco remarked, watching his stone bounce a fifth time and sink. “Where is everyone?”
“Packing, eating, returning library books to make sure Madam Pince doesn’t send them Howlers over the holidays...” Amanda shrugged. “Matt’s probably hanging out a window somewhere trying to impress his friends. He’s good at that.”
“At impressing his friends, or at trying to impress them?”
“More the second than the first.” Amanda scooped up another rock and stopped in mid-swing as a merman’s head broke the surface of the water. He spouted off a string of angry Mermish and hurled a rock towards them, making Draco dive one way and Amanda the other. The rock clattered to a halt several feet behind them, and the merman nodded angrily and dived back under the surface.
“What was that all about?” Draco asked, sitting up. “And why’re you laughing?”
“I—I don’t—” Amanda got herself under control. “I don’t speak Mermish, but I understand it a little. He said something along the lines of ‘How would you like it if I threw rocks into your living room?’”
“Oops.” Draco leaned back on his hands. “I guess that does it for stone-skipping here. Funny, though, I thought the merpeople lived a lot deeper in the lake.”
“You get loners in every race.” Amanda imitated his pose. “People who’d prefer to go it on their own, who don’t want anybody else hanging around them. Though I suppose you don’t know much about that, living like you do.”
How did she make that not sound rude? Tone of voice, I guess. “I’ve certainly had a lot more of company than not,” Draco agreed. “We grew up fast, too, from being around adults so much and from the trust they put in us. One wrong word from any of us could have broken our world apart.”
“Almost like children who grow up during war.” Amanda’s eyes were far away. “They learn fast, but there’s always something missing. What they have to do to survive, to grow up at all, it breaks a little piece of them off inside and they can never get it back. And sometimes that leads them to do terrible things.”
Draco wasn’t surprised to see the shimmering in her eyes. What happened to you? he wanted to ask. What have you been through that you can say that with so much certainty? Who hurt you like this? Tell me, and I’ll find them and make sure they never do it again...
Movement beyond her caught his attention before he could speak. He glanced in that direction idly, then stared for an instant before throwing himself to the ground. “Get down!” he hissed, and Amanda flattened herself immediately against the stones.
“What is it?” she breathed, her voice barely louder than the lap of the lake water against the shore.
“Death Eaters.” Draco stomped on all the mental voices clamoring that it couldn’t be, it was impossible, he’d seen wrong, there was some mistake. This was too important to let himself get distracted over. “Do you have your Galleon?”
“Right here.” Amanda pulled it from her pocket and passed it over, lifting her head just enough to see the last of the dark-robed and white-masked figures flitting across the grass towards the castle. “Are they mad? Attacking in broad daylight?”
“I want to know how they got past the wards,” Draco said grimly, pulling out his wand. “But first things first.” He tapped the wand’s tip three times against the golden coin. “To all DA members,” he said clearly to it. “Invasion. Death Eaters. This is not a drill.”
All over the Gryffindor common room, students swore or jumped, groping in pockets and pouches. Harry blinked at the message, then shook off his confusion and went to one knee on the hearthrug. “House-elf here!”
With a loud crack, Kady appeared before him. “Master Harry calls?”
“We’ve got trouble, Kady,” Harry said grimly, holding out the Galleon with the word “Invasion” centered on its rim. “Get me the Map, please? And then get everyone to their partners.”
“Yes, Master Harry!” Kady vanished again.
“You’re not taking this seriously?” said Lindsey Jordan in disbelief. “Someone’s having us all on! It’s a joke!”
“If it’s a joke, we all look a little stupid,” Harry retorted. “If it’s not, we all look a little dead. One of those is easier to get over than the other one. Get to your mustering point. We’re fighting.”
Lindsey gulped once, then nodded and clambered out the portrait hole, several other Gryffindors close behind her. Ron came clattering down the stairs from the dormitory with Neville behind him, buckling on the belt that held his potion piece. “Know anything yet?” the taller boy asked, making a wide detour around a clump of chairs.
“I will in—” Harry’s answer was cut off by Kady’s returning crack. “Now. Thanks, Kady.”
“Of course, Master.” Kady bobbed a curtsey and handed over the Map, then produced a piece of leather with worn spots on both sides. “Shall Kady put on Master’s leg-guard now?”
“Please do.” Harry sat down, extended his right leg for Kady’s attentions, and drew his wand. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” he muttered, activating the Map. Ron leaned over the back of the chair, watching as the lines of Hogwarts formed on the paper. The common room was mostly empty now, and the dots of people appearing on the Map showed where the students had gone.
Rooms and stairways might move about at Hogwarts, but corridors were slightly more stable, and the places where corridors met were even more so. Harry had taken this into account when he set up the DA’s basic defense positions. Nests of artillery and skirmishers were located at strategic crossroads points, designed to lure attackers in and make sure they got no further. If they did, the Flying Squad and the medics were headquartered in the Room of Requirement with their house-elf partners, ready to go where they were needed.
“Remind me to thank Padfoot and Moony again for making this thing,” Harry said, mentally checking off the four artillery positions as where they ought to be.
“You sure about that?” Ron tapped a finger against the parchment.
Harry looked where his friend was pointing and laughed. “Even more sure, with that. Come on, let’s get to headquarters. Kady?”
“Ready, sir!” Kady piped from under Harry’s robes, where she was now holding tightly to the leather leg-guard all the Flying Squad wore. Harry stood up as Ron came around the chair. The boys clasped hands, Kady reached out to touch Ron’s leg, and an instant of compression later they were standing in the Room of Requirement, alive with people and noise.
“QUIET!” Harry bellowed, and kept his grin internal when the DA obeyed instantly. “All right, people, we have about fifteen attackers coming in the front door. They either think we’re stupid or they’re feeling us out. Either way, we’re going to beat them. Communications?”
“Ready,” Hermione answered, holding up her Zippo. “We have the main artillery core on the fire, and they have Galleon-communication to the others.”
“Perfect.” Harry shot a side glance at Ron, who made a triangle with his thumbs and forefingers. “Plan Delta, everyone.” He set the Map down on a table that shot out of the floor to hold it, noticing as he did that three of the attackers had peeled off from the main group in the entrance hall and were hanging back as a rearguard. “With a twist,” he added. “Davies?”
“Yes, sir.” Roger snickered and leaned down to say something to his house-elf partner. An instant later, he was gone.
The oldest member of the rearguard, whose silvering hair was escaping from the back of her mask, heard the choking sob first and whirled around. One of her two compatriots did the same, while the other kept a lookout the way they had been going. Such things as diversions were not unknown.
But the only thing that happened was that a dark-haired girl wearing a Slytherin crest stumbled out of a cross-corridor, crying. She saw the masked figures and gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.
“Don’t scream!” the oldest member cautioned her sternly. “It’s all right, you two,” she added to her fellow fighters. “She’s no threat. Are you all right, dearie?”
“Oh, it was awful!” The girl, assured of her welcome, came forward and fell on the older witch’s shoulder, shivering. “Just awful! But now I know everything will be all right.”
“That’s right, dear, you just relax.” The older woman helped the girl lean back against the wall, then slide down it into a sitting position. “We’ll take care of you.”
“Thank you.” The girl smiled through her teary eyes. “You’re so... so...”
The masked wizard who was watching the way the girl had come made a sound like a sigh and collapsed. The other folded up at the knees and toppled over against the far wall, just as the witch felt her own muscles go limp and her wand drop from her hand.
“So gullible,” the girl finished, her smile magically transformed into a grin. “You never even noticed I sat down on my stun grenades.”
If the witch could have done so, she would have rolled her eyes. This is going to look fabulous on my record. Outsmarted by a teenager.
The girl scooped up the three wands from where they had fallen and disappeared back around the corridor from whence she had come. An instant later came a whipcrack noise like Apparition, though that was impossible here at Hogwarts...
So was three of us being overpowered by one untrained little girl.
I suppose there’s a first time for everything.
Then there was silence.
Harry watched the progress of the battle on the Map, nodding in approval as Selena disposed of the rearguard and the skirmishers drew off another set of attackers to be ambushed by an artillery nest. There were eight attackers left in the main group, and they were coming up on a point Ron had chosen as particularly good for the Flying Squad to attack in.
May as well let them have their innings like everyone else.
“Skirmishers to the corridor west of ambush position gamma,” he ordered. “Get the noisemakers ready.”
Hermione repeated the orders into her Zippo, and gave him the nod a moment later to show the skirmishers had heard and would comply.
“Flying Squad prepare to deploy to the corridors on the north and east of that position,” Harry went on. “Shoot to disarm first, then to stun. All except the leader.” His finger rested on a particular spot on the Map. “He’s mine.”
“How’re we supposed to know who he is?” Lee objected.
Harry told them.
“Got it.”
“Wait for it,” Ron said, watching the progress of the dots on the Map. “Wait for it...”
The last attacker passed through the doorway to the ambush spot.
“Now!”
A series of explosions went off behind the diminished group of attackers. Their leader whirled to face the new enemy, his wand coming up to bear—
Only to see empty doorways staring him in the face.
Two seconds later, a spell hit him in the exact center of his back.
The attackers’ leader shrieked as Harry’s spell sent him staggering across the room and tore the wand from his left hand. Harry took two steps forward and caught the wand neatly. “We win,” he said, looking around at the slumped figures of masked and robed attackers on the floor.
The leader recovered his balance, turned around, and glared through the eyeholes of his mask. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“You scream like a girl when you get disarmed from behind.”
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do,” said Professor Longbottom, stepping out of one of the other corridors. “And I told you not to treat them like easy targets,” she added to the reviving figures on the floor. “You, especially,” she said to the leader. “I would have thought you of all people would have some respect for just how good they’ve become.”
“Yeah, well...” The leader pulled off his mask, exposing tangled black hair and a sheepish pair of grey eyes. “I guess I didn’t want to believe you.”
Professor Longbottom shook her head. “Does Aletha know you still hide from facts like this?”
“She will,” Harry said, grinning at his godfather. “You want your wand back, or can I keep it?”
“Shut up and give it here.” Padfoot stuck his hand out. “And no telling Moony about this,” he added. “Or Danger, either. Let me break the news of my ignominious defeat myself.”
“Fine by me. You’ll see them before I do anyway.”
“Don’t you lot get cocky over this, either,” Professor Longbottom warned the DA as more of the Aurors dressed as Death Eaters unmasked and stood up, groaning. “This was just a preliminary exercise. Real Death Eaters play a lot harder. But I do have to admit, I’m impressed with your response time and overall professionalism. That little game with the rearguard notwithstanding.” She turned to give a look to the members of that group who had just arrived, Auror Leticia Halcyon in the lead. “Playing the role to the hilt, are we?”
Auror Halcyon shrugged. “It’d have about a one-third chance of working for real, if the girl hit on a pureblood snob who recognized her and not one of the sort who’re blood-crazed or just plain crazed. I wouldn’t recommend trying it twice, though.”
“That goes for all these tricks,” Professor Longbottom went on, giving her husband a hand up from the floor. “Because that’s all they are, is tricks. Your spellwork should still be your main focus. Though I can’t say I saw anything to be ashamed of there either...” She sighed. “What I’m talking all around is, well done, Defense Association. Don’t let yourselves get slack over the holidays. That’s all.”
For now, Harry finished mentally. But when real attacks come, they’ll come, and we’ll fight back. There’s no sense worrying about them until then, except to plan and practice.
And for today, there was a victory to celebrate.
Author Notes:
And thus ends year five! Onwards to year six—but first, much evil in the summer. Did you really expect anything else?
Happy 2010! Here’s to more frequent updates! And yes, that is a Twilight joke in the middle of the chapter.