Colin Creevey

you guys probably wanted draco but here i am posting more colin stuff

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I just had this random thought I want to share while re-reading Chamber of Secrets.

So Colin Creevey is a muggle-born. He said so to Harry about his dad being a milkman and how they were both surprised when Colin got his acceptance letter. Then he gets attacked by the basilisk. With those facts, he is obviously a muggle-born, and we all probably know that.

But then, in Goblet of Fire, Colin is revealed to have a brother named Dennis who also got accepted into Hogwarts.

What are the chances of 2 muggle-born wizards in the same family???

I think it could have something to do with their mom, who (I’m pretty sure) was never mentioned, or it was a mistake/coincidence.

my personal favorites are Hannah Abbott, Colin creevey, Justin finch-Fletchley, and Ernie Macmillan!!!

I've read a lot of head canons.. but it' usually the sad ones that you kinda wish were true..

Found this:

During Colin Creevy's funeral many wizards came to lay flowers by his grave. Harry wasn't one of them. Instead, he brought a photo and placed gingerly beside the flowers. Although many years had passed and Colin had grown up to be brave and heroic young man, Harry still couldn't help but to think of him as the excitable first year kid who wanted nothing more than a picture of him. The photo that was left at Colin's grave bore Harry's signature scrawled in the corner. It was the only autograph Harry ever gave...

Share one that you love in comments

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842029

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842653

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003843726

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089/r/4400000000017564493

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844352

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844924

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845391

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845905

Tags:

@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972 @Mega.mind.harry.potter

(I have now finished writing the book☺️). I am posting a chapter today, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I’ll post both the final chapter and the epilogue. I am so excited for you all to see the ending I have been working towards for over four years now.)

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Prince’s Tale

Harry remained kneeling at Snape’s side, simply staring down at him, until quite suddenly a high, cold voice spoke so close to them that Harry jumped on his feet, the flask gripped tightly in his hands, thinking that Voldemort had re-entered the room.

Voldemort’s voice reverberated from the walls and floor, and Harry realized that he was talking to Hogwarts and to all the surrounding area, that the residents of Hogsmeade and all those still fighting in the castle would hear him as clearly as if he stood beside them, his breath on the back of their necks, a deathblow away.

‘You have fought,’ said the high, cold voice, ‘valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste.’

Harry knew Voldemort was lying, he had just moments ago witnessed him say how he didn’t care how many died tonight. In fact he had said the more the better.

‘Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.

‘I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.’

Tracey, Allison, and Theodore all shook their heads frantically, looking at Harry.

‘Don’t you dare do what he says,’ said Theodore.

‘There will be a way for us to succeed,’ said Tracey in false confidence.

‘We-we should get to the castle,’ said Allison, the only one to not directly say he shouldn’t go. ‘We need a new plan.’

The girls turned around to head back, but Theodore hung back for just an extra second where he glanced at Snape’s body. Theodore had viewed the man beneath him as a mentor, a role model, and then as a traitor, and Harry could see many conflicting feelings wash across his face before turning and hurrying back to the tunnel entrance with the girls. Harry gathered up the Invisibility Cloak, then looked down at Snape. He did not know what to feel, except shock at the way Snape had been killed, and the reason for which it had been done…

They crawled back through the tunnel, none of them talking, and Harry wondered whether the others could still hear Voldemort ringing in their heads as he could.

“You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest...One hour...”

Small bundles seemed to litter the lawn at the front of the castle. It could only be an hour or so from dawn, yet it was pitch-black. The four of them hurried toward the stone steps. A lone dog, the size of a small boat, lay abandoned in front of them. There was no other sign of Grawp or of his attacker.

The castle was unnaturally silent. There were no flashes of light now, no bangs or screams or shouts. The flagstones of the deserted entrance hall were stained with blood. Emeralds were still scattered all over the floor, along with pieces of marble and splintered wood. Part of the banisters had been blown away.

‘Where is everybody?’ whispered Tracey.

Allison led the way to the Great Hall. Harry stopped in the doorway.

The House tables were gone and the room was crowded. The survivors stood in groups, their arms around each other’s necks. The injured were being treated upon the raised platform by Madam Pomfrey, Chiara Lobosca, and a group of helpers. Firenze was amongst the injured; his flank poured blood and he shook where he lay, unable to stand.

The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall. Harry’s heart plummeted as he saw Fred lying amongst them, surrounded by all the Weasleys. George was kneeling at his head; Mrs Weasley was lying across Fred’s chest, her body shaking. Mr Weasley stroking her hair while tears cascaded down his cheeks.

Without a word, the four turned to the rest of the dead. Harry spotted Canini on her knees crying between the bodies of Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-looking, apparently asleep beneath the dark, enchanted ceiling. Harry had so desperately wanted to comfort his sister earlier, but now he felt numb and as though he couldn’t move. Thankfully she wasn’t completely alone, Susan Bones was hugging her, and as Harry stood rooted in the ground Tracey walked over to join Canini.

Harry suddenly was nearly deafened by a blood curtailing ‘NOOOO!’ from Theodore beside him and looks around to find Dean Thomas and Katie Bell carrying in the body of Colin Creevey.

Theodore attempted to run to his boyfriend’s side, yelling Colin’s name to the body that could no longer hear him, but Harry ran after him and wrapped his arms tightly around his foster brother. He held him still and began dragging him back as Theodore frantically told him to let go. Harry was forced into a memory from two years ago where Remus had done the same for him immediately after Sirius had died, he had hated him at the time, but it was now, as Remus lay still not far away and Harry was doing the same for Theodore, that he finally understood the action his adoptive father had taken. After what felt like an eternity Theodore’s energy gave out and he slumped to his knees.

As gently as putting a baby down for bed, Dean Thomas and Katie Bell lay Colin in front of Theodore and Harry. Even though Colin had grown to become nearly as tall as Harry, he was tiny in death. Sobbing, Theodore ran his fingers through his boyfriend’s mousy brown hair. Allison then came up and kneeled beside him, and a moment later Dennis came running to his brother’s side.

Unable to handle the grief of all this loss, Harry quietly got up and the Great Hall seemed to fly away, become smaller, shrink, as Harry reeled backward from the doorway. He could not draw breath. He could not bear to look at any of the other bodies, to see who else had died for him. He could not bear to join Canini or Theodore, could not look into their eyes, when if he had given himself up in the first place, Remus, Tonks, and Colin might never have died…

He turned away and ran up the marble staircase. Remus…Tonks…Colin…Fred…He yearned not to feel...He wished he could rip out his heart, his innards, everything that was screaming inside him…

The castle was completely empty; even the ghosts seemed to have joined the mass mourning in the Great Hall. Harry ran without stopping, clutching the crystal flask of Snape’s last thoughts, and he did not slow down until he reached the stone gargoyle guarding the headmaster’s office.

‘Password?’

‘Dumbledore!’ said Harry without thinking, because it was he whom he yearned to see, and to his surprise the gargoyle slid aside revealing the spiral staircase behind.

But when Harry burst into the circular office he found a change. The portraits that hung all around the walls were empty. Not a single headmaster or headmistress remained to see him; all, it seemed, had flitted away, charging through the paintings that lined the castle so that they could have a clear view of what was going on.

Harry glanced hopelessly at Dumbledore’s deserted frame, which hung directly behind the headmaster’s chair, then turned his back on it. The stone Pensieve lay in the cabinet where it had always been. Harry heaved it onto the desk and poured Snape’s memories into the wide basin with its runic markings around the edge. To escape into someone else’s head would be a blessed relief…

Nothing that even Snape had left him could be worse than his own thoughts. The memories swirled, silver white and strange, and without hesitating, with a feeling of reckless abandonment, as though this would assuage his torturing grief, Harry dived.

He fell headlong into sunlight, and his feet found warm ground. When he straightened up, he saw that he was in a nearly deserted playground. A single huge chimney dominated the distant skyline. Two girls were swinging backward and forward, and a skinny boy was watching them from behind a clump of bushes. His black hair was overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt.

Harry moved closer to the boy. Snape looked no more than nine or ten years old, sallow, small, stringy. There was undisguised greed in his thin face as he watched the younger of the two girls swinging higher and higher than her sister.

‘Lily, don’t do it!’ shrieked the elder of the two.

But the girl had let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flown into the air, quite literally flown, launched herself skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.

‘Mummy told you not to!’

Petunia stopped her swing by dragging the heels of her sandals on the ground, making a crunching, grinding sound, then leapt up, hands on hips.

‘Mummy said you weren’t allowed, Lily!’

‘But I’m fine,’ said Lily, still giggling. ‘Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do.’

Petunia glanced around. The playground was deserted apart from themselves and, though the girls did not know it, Snape. Lily had picked up a fallen flower from the bush behind which Snape lurked. Petunia advanced, evidently torn between curiosity and disapproval. Lily waited until Petunia was near enough to have a clear view, then held out her palm. The flower sat there, opening and closing its petals, like some bizarre, many-lipped oyster.

‘Stop it!’ shrieked Petunia.

‘It’s not hurting you,’ said Lily, but she closed her hand on the blossom and threw it back to the ground.

‘It’s not right,’ said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower’s flight to the ground and lingered upon it. ‘How do you do it?’ she added, and there was definite longing in her voice.

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Snape could no longer contain himself, but had jumped out from behind the bushes. Petunia shrieked and ran backward toward the swings, but Lily, though clearly startled, remained where she was. Snape seemed to regret his appearance. A dull flush of colour mounted the sallow cheeks as he looked at Lily.

‘What’s obvious?’ asked Lily.

Snape had an air of nervous excitement. With a glance at the distant Petunia, now hovering beside the swings, he lowered his voice and said, ‘I know what you are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re…you’re a witch,’ whispered Snape.

She looked affronted.

‘That’s not a very nice thing to say to somebody!’

She turned, nose in the air, and marched off toward her sister.

‘No!’ said Snape. He was highly coloured now, and Harry wondered why he did not take off the ridiculously large coat, unless it was because he did not want to reveal the smock beneath it. He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older self.

The sisters considered him, united in disapproval, both holding on to one of the swing poles, as though it was the safe place in tag.

‘You are,’ said Snape to Lily. ‘You are a witch. I’ve been watching you for a while. But there’s nothing wrong with that. My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard.’

Petunia’s laugh was like cold water.

‘Wizard!’ she shrieked, her courage returned now that she had recovered from the shock of his unexpected appearance. ‘I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s End by the river,’ she told Lily, and it was evident from her tone that she considered the address a poor recommendation. ‘Why have you been spying on us?’

‘Haven’t been spying,’ said Snape, hot and uncomfortable and dirty-haired in the bright sunlight. ‘Wouldn’t spy on you, anyway,’ he added spitefully, ‘you’re a Muggle.’

Though Petunia evidently did not understand the word, she could hardly mistake the tone.

‘Lily, come on, we’re leaving!’ she said shrilly. Lily obeyed her sister at once, glaring at Snape as she left. He stood watching them as they marched through the playground gate, and Harry, the only one left to observe him, recognized Snape’s bitter disappointment, and understood that Snape had been planning this moment for a while, and that it had all gone wrong…

The scene dissolved, and before Harry knew it, re-formed around him. He was now in a small thicket of trees. He could see a sunlit river glittering through their trunks. The shadows cast by the trees made a basin of cool green shade. Two children sat facing each other, cross-legged on the ground. Snape had removed his coat now; his odd smock looked less peculiar in the half light.

‘…and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school, you get letters.’

‘But I have done magic outside school!’

‘We’re all right. We haven’t got wands yet. They let you off when you’re a kid and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven,’ he nodded importantly, ‘and they start training you, then you’ve got to go careful.’

There was a little silence. Lily had picked up a fallen twig and twirled it in the air, and Harry knew that she was imagining sparks trailing from it. Then she dropped the twig, leaned in toward the boy, and said, ‘It is real, isn’t it? It’s not a joke? Petunia says you’re lying to me. Petunia says there isn’t a Hogwarts. It is real, isn’t it?’

‘It’s real for us,’ said Snape. ‘Not for her. But we’ll get the letter, you and me.’

‘Really?’ whispered Lily.

‘Definitely,’ said Snape, and even with his poorly cut hair and his odd clothes, he struck an oddly impressive figure sprawled in front of her, brimful of confidence in his destiny.

‘And will it really come by owl?’ Lily whispered.

‘Normally,’ said Snape. ‘But you’re Muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come and explain to your parents.’

‘Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?’

Snape hesitated. His black eyes, eager in the greenish gloom, moved over the pale face, the dark red hair.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make any difference.’

‘Good,’ said Lily, relaxing. It was clear that she had been worrying.

‘You’ve got loads of magic,’ said Snape. ‘I saw that. All the time I was watching you...’

His voice trailed away; she was not listening, but had stretched out on the leafy ground and was looking up at the canopy of leaves overhead. He watched her as greedily as he had watched her in the playground.

‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes.

‘Fine,’ he said.

‘They’re not arguing anymore?’

‘Oh yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’

‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’

‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape.

‘Severus?’

A little smile twisted Snape’s mouth when she said his name.

‘Yeah?’

‘Tell me about the dementors again.’

‘What d’you want to know about them for?’

‘If I use magic outside school—‘

‘They wouldn’t give you to the dementors for that! Dementors are for people who do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You’re not going to end up in Azkaban, you’re too—‘

He turned red again and shredded more leaves. Then a small rustling noise behind Harry made him turn: Petunia, hiding behind a tree, had lost her footing.

‘Tuney!’ said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet.

‘Who’s spying now?’ he shouted. ‘What d’you want?’

Petunia was breathless, alarmed at being caught. Harry could see her struggling for something hurtful to say.

‘What is that you’re wearing, anyway?’ she said, pointing at Snape’s chest. ‘Your mum’s blouse?’

There was a crack. A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen.

Lily screamed. The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears.

‘Tuney!’

But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape.

‘Did you make that happen?’

‘No,’ he looked both defiant and scared.

‘You did!’ she was backing away from him. ‘You did! You hurt her!’

‘No—no, I didn’t! No on purpose!’

But the lie did not convince Lily. After one last burning look, she ran from the little thicket, off after her sister, and Snape looked miserable and confused…

And the scene re-formed. Harry looked around. He was on platform nine and three quarters, and Snape stood beside him, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him. Snape was staring at a family of four a short distance away. The two girls stood a little apart from their parents. Harry had never seen his maternal grandparents, not even as pictures at the Dursley’s, it appeared that Lily took more after her dad while their mum looked much like how Petunia would grow up to look. Lily seemed to be pleading with her sister. Harry moved closer to listen.

‘…I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen—‘ She caught her sister’s hand and held on tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away. ‘Maybe once I’m there—no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!’

‘I don’t—want—to—go!’ said Petunia, and she dragged her hand back out of her sister’s grasp. ‘You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a–a…’

Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners’ arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

‘—you think I want to be a–a freak?’

Lily’s eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her hand away.

‘I’m not a freak,’ said Lily. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’

‘That’s where you’re going,’ said Petunia with relish. ‘A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy…weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re being separated from normal people. It’s for our safety.’

Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce.

‘You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you.’

Petunia turned scarlet.

‘Beg? I didn’t beg!’

‘I saw his reply. It was very kind.’

‘You shouldn’t have read—‘ whispered Petunia, ‘that was my private—how could you—?’

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Snape stood nearby. Petunia gasped.

‘That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!’

‘No—not sneaking—‘ Now Lily was on the defensive. ‘Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that’s all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of—‘

‘Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!’ said Petunia, now as pale as she had been flushed. ‘Freak!’ she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her parents stood…

The scene dissolved again. Snape was hurrying along the corridor of the Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the countryside. He had already changed into his school robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off his dreadful Muggle clothes. At last he stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of rowdy boys were talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the window was Lily, her face pressed against the windowpane.

Snape slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite Lily. She glanced at him and then looked back out of the window. She had been crying.

‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she said in a constricted voice.

‘Why not?’

‘Tuney h–hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.’

‘So what?’

She threw him a look of deep dislike.

‘So she’s my sister!’

‘She’s only a—‘ he caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.

‘But we’re going!’ he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. ‘This is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!’

She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.

‘You’d better be in Slytherin,’ said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a little.

‘Slytherin?’

One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his birth father, James: slight, dark caramel skin, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked.

‘Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?’ James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him, and with a jolt, Harry realized that it was Sirius. Sirius did not smile.

‘My whole family have been in Slytherin,’ he said.

‘Blimey,’ said James, ‘and I thought you seemed all right!’

Sirius grinned.

‘Maybe I’ll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?’

James lifted an invisible sword.

‘“Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!” Like my dad.’

Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him.

‘Got a problem with that?’

‘No,’ said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. ‘If you’d rather be brawny than brainy—‘

‘Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?’ interjected Sirius.

James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and looked from James to Sirius in dislike.

‘Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.’

‘Oooooo…’

James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip Snape as he passed.

‘See ya, Snivellus!’ a voice called, as the compartment door slammed…

And the scene dissolved once more…

Harry was standing right behind Snape as they faced the candlelit House tables, lined with rapt faces. Then Professor McGonagall said, ‘Evans, Lily!’

He watched his mother walk forward on trembling legs and sit down upon the rickety stool. Professor McGonagall dropped the Sorting Hat onto her head, and barely a second after it had touched the dark red hair, the hat cried, ‘Gryffindor!’

Harry heard Snape let out a tiny groan. Lily took off the hat, handed it back to Professor McGonagall, then hurried toward the cheering Gryffindors, but as she went she glanced back at Snape, and there was a sad little smile on her face. Harry saw Sirius move up the bench to make room for her. She took one look at him, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms, and firmly turned her back on him.

The roll call continued. Harry watched Remus, Pettigrew, and his father join Lily and Sirius at the Gryffindor table. At last, when only a dozen students remained to be sorted, Professor McGonagall called Snape.

Harry walked with him to the stool, watched him place the hat upon his head.

‘Slytherin!’ cried the Sorting Hat. And Severus Snape moved off to the other side of the Hall, away from Lily, to where the Slytherins were cheering him, to where Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge gleaming upon his chest, patted Snape on the back as he sat down beside him…And the scene changed…

Lily and Snape were walking across the castle courtyard, evidently arguing. Harry hurried to catch up with them, to listen in. As he reached them, he realized how much taller they both were. A few years seemed to have passed since their Sorting.

‘…thought we were supposed to be friends?’ Snape was saying, ‘Best friends?’

‘We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary MacDonald the other day?’

Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face.

‘That was nothing,’ said Snape. ‘It was a laugh, that’s all—‘

‘It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny—‘

‘What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?’ demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

‘What’s Potter got to do with anything?’ said Lily.

‘They sneak out at night. There’s something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?’

‘He’s ill,’ said Lily. ‘They say he’s ill—‘

‘Every month at the full moon?’ said Snape.

‘I know your theory,’ said Lily, and she sounded cold. ‘Why are you so obsessed with them anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing at night?’

‘I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.’

The intensity of his gaze made her blush.

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842029

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842653

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003843726

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089/r/4400000000017564493

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844352

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844924

Tags:

@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972 @Mega.mind.harry.potter

Chapter Thirty: The Battle of Hogwarts

The enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall was dark and scattered with stars, and below it the four long House tables were lined with disheveled students, some in traveling cloaks, others in dressing gowns. Here and there shone the pearly white figures of the school ghosts. Every eye, living and dead, was fixed upon Professor McGonagall, who was speaking from the raised platform at the top of the Hall. Behind her stood the remaining teachers, including the palomino centaur, Firenze, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix who had arrived to fight.

‘—evacuation will be overseen by Mr Filch and Aurora Sinistra. Prefects, when I give the word, you will organize your House and take your charges, in an orderly fashion, to the evacuation point.’

Many of the students looked petrified. However, as Harry skirted the walls, scanning the Slytherin and Gryffindor tables for Theodore, Ernie Macmillan stood up at the Hufflepuff table and shouted. ‘And what if we want to stay and fight?’

There was a smattering of applause.

‘If you are of age, you may stay,’ said Professor McGonagall.

‘What about our things?’ called a girl at the Ravenclaw table. ‘Our trunks, our owls?’

‘We have no time to collect possessions,’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘The important thing is to get you out of here safely.’

‘Where is Headmaster Snape?’ shouted the annoying blood supremest sixth-year William Harper a girl from Harry’s House.

‘He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk,’ replied Professor McGonagall, and a great cheer erupted from the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and even most of the Slytherins.

Harry moved up the Hall alongside the Slytherin table, still looking for Theodore. As he paused, faces turned in his direction, and a great deal of whispering broke out in his wake.

‘We have already placed protection around the castle,’ Professor McGonagall was saying, ‘but it is unlikely to hold for very long unless we reinforce it. I must ask you, therefore, to move quickly and calmly, and do as your prefects—‘

But her final words were drowned as a different voice echoed throughout the Hall. It was high, cold, and clean. There was no telling from where it came; it seemed to issue from the walls themselves. Like the monster it had once commanded, it might have lain dormant there for centuries.

‘I know you are preparing to fight.’

There were screams amongst the students, some of whom clutched each other, looking around in terror for the source of the sound.

‘Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood.’

There was silence in the Hall now, the kind of silence that presses against the eardrums, that seems too huge to be contained by walls.

‘Give me Harry Potter,’ said Voldemort’s voice, ‘and none but him shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you should be rewarded. You have until midnight.’

The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to have found Harry, to hold him frozen in the glare of thousands of invisible beams. Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, ‘But he’s there! Potter’s there! Someone grab him!’

Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. He watched as many Slytherins beside him rose and moved in front of him, but they weren’t facing Harry, but Pansy Parkinson. First Daphne Greengrass, then Niall Urquhart, as well as Ella Wilkins, Bridget Maloney, Scarlett Lympsham, Maynard Hatton, Simon Dedworth, and then finally Terence, Tracey, and Allison. They all stood with their arms raised protecting him from her and the other small minority that may wish to follow Voldemort’s orders. Soon enough they were joined by members of all four Houses, and Harry, awestruck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and under sleeves.

‘Thank you, Miss Parkinson,’ said Professor McGonagall in a clipped voice. ‘You will leave the Hall first with Mr Filch. You will be followed by the rest of former Inquisitorial Squad members.’

Harry heard the grinding of benches and then the sound of angry bullies trooping out on the other side of the Hall.

‘Any underaged Slytherins will follow behind, Ravenclaws, behind them!’ cried Professor McGonagall.

Slowly the four tables emptied. The Slytherin table really only had himself, Tracey, Allison, Terence, Daphne, Millicent, Niall, Ella, Bridget, Gemma Farley, and Adrian Pucey, but a number of older Ravenclaws remained seated while their fellows filed out; even more Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors stayed behind, necessitating Professor McGonagall’s descent from the teachers’ platform to chivvy the underage on their way.

‘Patel, Romsey, Madley! Absolutely not! Nor can you Wolpert, Peakes, Creevey!’

While she was referring to Dennis, hearing the name reminded Harry of one of his worries. He hurried over Remus, who was sitting at the Hufflepuff table with Canini.

‘Where are Theodore and Colin?’

‘They haven’t returned ye—?’ began Remus, looking worried. But he broke off as Kingsley had stepped forward on the raised platform to address those who had remained behind.

‘We’ve only got half an hour until midnight, so we need to act fast! A battle plan has been agreed between the teachers of Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix. Professors Flitwick, Sprout, and McGonagall are going to take groups of fighters up to the three highest towers—Ravenclaw, Astronomy, and Gryffindor—where they’ll have a good overview, excellent positions from which to work spells. Meanwhile Remus’—he indicated Harry’s adoptive father—‘Arthur’—he pointed toward Mr Weasley, sitting at the Gryffindor table with his family—‘and I will take groups into the grounds. We’ll need somebody to organize defense of the entrances of the passageways into the school—‘

‘Sounds like a job for us,’ called out Fred from the Gryffindor table, indicating himself and George, and Kingsley nodded his approval.

‘All right, leaders up here and we’ll divide up the troops!’

‘Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall, hurrying up to him, as students flooded the platform, jostling for position, receiving instructions, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be looking for something?’

‘What? Oh,’ said Harry, ‘oh yeah!’

He had almost forgotten about the Horcrux, almost forgotten that the battle was being fought so that he could search for it: The inexplicable absence of Theodore had momentarily driven every other thought from his mind.

‘Then go, Potter, go!’

‘Right—yeah—‘

He quickly ran up to Remus and Canini.

‘I have to go, you both keep each other safe,’ he said, giving each a hug.

‘We will, go do what you have to do,’ said Remus, and Harry was about to leave before he added. ‘Harry, I’m proud of you.’

Harry nodded in appreciation.

‘Good luck,’ said Canini before Harry ran off to join Allison and Tracey who had just said their own goodbyes to Terry and Terence.

Harry sensed eyes following them as he ran out of the Great Hall again, into the entrance hall still crowded with evacuating students. He allowed himself to be swept up the marble staircase with them, but at the top he hurried off along a deserted corridor. Fear and panic were clouding his thought processes as Allison and Tracey tried to catch up. He tried to calm himself, to concentrate on finding the Horcrux, but his thoughts buzzed as frantically and fruitlessly as wasps trapped beneath a glass. He was beginning to worry about what had happened to his foster brother and it seemed to marshal his ideas. He slowed down, coming to a halt halfway along an empty passage, where he sat down upon the plinth of a departed statue and pulled the Marauder’s Map out of the pouch around his neck.

‘What is it Harry?’ asked Tracey as she and Allison caught up.

‘I can’t see Theodore, or Colin for that matter, anywhere on the map,’ said Harry. Allison put a hand on his shoulder to try and calm him down.

‘They could just be in one of crowds. I’m certain they both are ok,’ she said. Then slowly she added, ‘We have to focus on the Horcrux.’

And so Harry put the map away, pressed his hands over his face, and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate…

Voldemort thought I’d go to Ravenclaw Tower.

There it was: a solid fact, the place to start. Voldemort had stationed Alecto Carrow in the Ravenclaw common room, and there could only be one explanation: Voldemort feared that Harry already knew his Horcrux was connected to that house.

But the only object anyone seemed to associate with Ravenclaw was the lost diadem…and how could the Horcrux be the diadem? How was it possible that Voldemort, a Slytherin, had found the diadem that had eluded generations of Ravenclaws? Who could have told him where to look, when nobody had seen the diadem in living memory?

In living memory...

Beneath his fingers, Harry’s eyes flew open again. He leapt up from the plinth.

‘I have an idea!’ he announced before tearing back the way he had come, now in pursuit of his one last hope. The sound of hundreds of people marching towards the Room of Requirement grew louder and louder as he returned to the marble stairs. Prefects were shouting instructions, trying to keep track of the students in their own Houses; there was much pushing and shoving; Harry saw Zacharias Smith bowling over first years to get to the front of the queue; here and there younger students were in tears, while older ones called desperately for friends, siblings, or other family members…

Harry caught sight of a pearly white figure drifting across the entrance hall below and yelled as loudly as he could over the clamor.

‘Nick! NICK! I need to talk to you!’

He forced his way back through the tide of students, finally reaching the bottom of the stairs, where Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost of Gryffindor, stood waiting for him.

‘Harry! Good to see you my boy!’

Nick made to grasp Harry’s hands with both of his own: Harry’s felt as though they had been thrust into icy water.

‘Nick, you’ve got to help me. Who’s the ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?’

Nearly Headless Nick looked surprised and a little offended.

‘The Gray Lady, of course; but if it is ghostly services you require—?’

‘It’s got to be her, it’s about her House—d’you know where she is?’

‘Harry?’ gasped Allison as she and Tracey caught up.

‘Let’s see…’

Nick’s head wobbled a little on his ruff as he turned hither and thither, peering over the heads of the swarming students.

‘That’s her over there, Harry, the young woman with the long hair.’

Harry looked in the direction of Nick’s transparent, pointing finger and saw a tall ghost who caught sight of Harry looking at her, raised her eyebrows, and drifted away through a solid wall.

Harry ran after her, with the girls trying to keep up but were getting caught behind the ocean of students. Once through the door of the corridor into which she had disappeared, he saw her at the very end of the passage, still gliding smoothly away from him.

‘Hey—wait—come back!’

She consented to pause, floating a few inches from the ground. Harry supposed that she was beautiful, with her waist-length hair and floor-length cloak, but she also looked haughty and proud. Close to, he recognized her as a ghost he had passed several times in the corridor, but to whom he had never spoken.

‘You’re the Gray Lady?’

She nodded but did not speak.

‘The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?’

‘That is correct.’

Her tone was not encouraging.

‘Please: I need some help. I need to know anything you can tell me about the lost diadem.’

A cold smile curved her lips.

‘I am afraid,’ she said, turning to leave, ‘that I cannot help you.’

‘WAIT!’

He had not meant to shout, but anger and panic were threatening to overwhelm him. He glanced at his watch as she hovered in front of him. It was a quarter to midnight.

‘This is urgent,’ he said fiercely. ‘If that diadem’s at Hogwarts, I’ve got to find it, fast.’

‘You are hardly the first student to covet the diadem,’ she said disdainfully. ‘Generations of students have badgered me—‘

‘This isn’t about trying to get better marks!’ Harry shouted at her. ‘It’s about Voldemort—defeating Voldemort—or aren’t you interested in that?’

She could not blush, but her transparent cheeks became more opaque, and her voice was heated as she replied, ‘Of course I—how dare you suggest—?’

‘Well, help me, then!’

Her composure was slipping.

‘It—it is not a question of—‘ she stammered. ‘My mother’s diadem—‘

‘Your mother’s?’

She looked angry with herself.

‘When I lived,’ she said stiffly, ‘I was Helena Ravenclaw.’

‘You’re her daughter? But then, you must know what happened to it!’

‘While the diadem bestows wisdom,’ she said with an obvious effort to pull herself together, ‘I doubt that it would greatly increase your chances of defeating the wizard who calls himself Lord—‘

‘Haven’t I just told you, I’m not interested in wearing it!’ Harry said fiercely. ‘There’s no time to explain—but if you care about Hogwarts, if you want to see Voldemort finished, you’ve got to tell me anything you know about the diadem!’

She remained quite still, floating in midair, staring down at him, and a sense of hopelessness engulfed Harry. Of course, if she had known anything, she would have told Flitwick or Dumbledore, who had surely asked her the same question. He had shaken his head and made to turn away when she spoke in a low voice.

‘I stole the diadem from my mother.’

‘You—you did what?’

‘I stole the diadem,’ repeated Helena Ravenclaw in a in a whisper. ‘I sought to make myself cleverer, more important than my mother. I ran away with it.’

He did not know how he had managed to gain her confidence and did not ask; he simply listened, hard, as she went on.

‘My mother, they say, never admitted that the diadem was gone, but pretended that she had it still. She concealed her loss, my dreadful betrayal, even from the other founders of Hogwarts. Then my mother fell ill-fatally ill. In spite of my perfidy, she was desperate to see me one more time. She sent a man who had long loved me, though I spurned his advances, to find me. She knew that he would not rest until he had done so.’

Harry waited. She drew a deep breath of no air and threw back her head.

‘He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with him, he became violent. The Baron was always a hot-tempered man. Furious at my refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed me.’

‘The Baron? You mean—?’

‘The Bloody Baron, yes, your House’s ghost,’ said the Gray Lady, and she lifted aside the cloak she wore to reveal a single dark wound in her white chest. ‘When he saw what he had done, he was overcome with remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and used it to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as an act of penitence…as he should,’ she added bitterly.

‘And…and the diadem?’

‘It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree.’

‘A hollow tree?’ repeated Harry. ‘What tree? Where was this?’

‘A forest in Albania. A lonely place I thought was far beyond my mother’s reach.’

‘Albania,’ repeated Harry. Sense was emerging miraculously from confusion, and now he understood why she was telling him what she had denied Dumbledore and Flitwick. ‘You’ve already told someone this story, haven’t you? Another student?’

She closed her eyes and nodded.

‘Ihad...noidea...Hewas...flattering. Heseemedto...to understand…to sympathize…’

Yes, Harry thought, Tom Riddle would certainly have understood Helena Ravenclaw’s desire to possess fabulous objects to which she had little right.

‘Well, you weren’t the first person Riddle wormed things out of,’ Harry muttered. ‘He could be charming when he wanted…’

So Voldemort had managed to wheedle the location of the lost diadem out of the Gray Lady. He had traveled to that far-flung forest and retrieved the diadem from its hiding place, perhaps as soon as he left Hogwarts, before he even started work at Borgin and Burkes.

And wouldn’t those secluded Albanian woods have seemed an excellent refuge when, so much later, Voldemort had needed a place to lie low, undisturbed, for ten long years?

But the diadem, once it became his precious Horcrux, had not been left in that lowly tree…No, the diadem had been returned secretly to its true home, and Voldemort must have put it there—

‘—the night he asked for a job!’ said Harry, finishing his thought.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He hid the diadem in the castle, the night he asked Dumbledore to let him teach!’ said Harry. Saying it out loud enabled him to make sense of it all. ‘He must’ve hidden the diadem on his way up to, or down from, Dumbledore’s office! But it was still worth trying to get the job—then he might’ve got the chance to nick Gryffindor’s sword as well…thank you, thanks!’

Harry left her floating there, looking utterly bewildered. As he rounded the corner back into the entrance hall, he checked his watch. It was five minutes until midnight, and though he now knew what the last Horcrux was, he was no closer to discovering where it was.

‘There you are-‘ said Tracey, as she and Allison finally found him, but lost in desperate speculation he ran right passed them, turned a corner, but he had taken only a few steps down the new corridor when the window to his left broke open with a deafening, shattering crash. As he leapt aside, a gigantic body flew in through the window and hit the opposite wall. Something large and furry detached itself, whimpering, from the new arrival and flung itself at Harry.

‘Hagrid!’ bellowed Harry and the girls, Harry had to fight off Fang the boarhound’s attentions as the enormous bearded figure clambered to his feet.

‘Harry, Tracey, Allison, yer here! Yer all here!’

Hagrid stooped down, bestowed upon the three friends a cursory and rib-cracking hug, then ran back to the shattered window.

‘Good boy, Grawpy!’ he bellowed through the hole in the window. ‘I’ll see yer in a moment, there’s a good lad!’

Beyond Hagrid, out in the dark night, Harry saw bursts of light in the distance and heard a weird, keening scream. He looked down at his watch. It was midnight. The battle had begun.

‘Blimey, Harry,’ panted Hagrid, ‘this is it, eh? Time ter fight?’

‘Hagrid, how did you know to be here?’ asked Tracey quickly.

‘Heard You-Know-Who from up in our cave,’ said Hagrid grimly. ‘Voice carried, didn’ it? “Yeh got till midnight ter gimme Potter.” Knew yeh mus’ be here, knew what mus’ be happenin’. Get down, Fang. So we come ter join in, me an’ Grawpy an’ Fang. Smashed our way through the boundary by the forest, Grawpy was carryin’ us, Fang an’ me. Told him ter let me down at the castle, so he shoved me through the window, bless him. Not exac’ly what I meant, bu’—where’s Theo?’

‘We don’t know, Harry I’m guessing you haven’t been able to find him yet,’ said Allison.

‘No,’ said Harry, ‘come on.’

They all hurried together along the corridor, Fang lolloping beside them. Harry could hear movement through the corridors all around: running footsteps, shouts; through the windows, he could see more flashes of light in the dark grounds.

‘Where’re we goin’?’ puffed Hagrid, pounding along at Harry’s heels, making the floorboards quake.

‘I dunno exactly,’ said Harry, making another random turn, ‘but Theodore and his boyfriend must be around here somewhere…’

The first casualties of the battle were already strewn across the passage ahead: The two stone gargoyles that usually guarded the entrance to the staffroom had been smashed apart by a jinx that had sailed through another broken window. Their remains stirred feebly on the floor, and as Harry and the girls leapt over one of their disembodied heads, it moaned faintly.

‘Oh, don’t mind me…I’ll just lie here and crumble…’

Its ugly stone face made Harry think suddenly of the marble bust of Rowena Ravenclaw at Xenophilius’s house, wearing that mad headdress—and then of the statue in Ravenclaw Tower, with the stone diadem upon her white curls…And as he reached the end of the passage, he finally remembered why the stone diadem had looked familiar, he remembered a third stone effigy came back to him: that of an ugly old warlock, onto whose head Harry himself had placed a wig and a battered old tiara. The shock shot through Harry with the heat of firewhisky, and he nearly stumbled.

He knew, at last, where the Horcrux sat waiting for him…

Tom Riddle, who confided in no one and operated alone, might have been arrogant enough to assume that he, and only he, had penetrated the deepest mysteries of Hogwarts Castle. Of course, Dumbledore and Flitwick, those model pupils, had never set foot in that particular place, but he, Harry, had strayed off the beaten track in his time at school—here at last was a secret he and Voldemort knew, that Dumbledore had never discovered—

He was roused by Professor Sprout, who was thundering past followed by Neville, Susan Bones, and half a dozen others, all of them wearing earmuffs and carrying what appeared to be large potted plants.

‘Mandrakes!’ Neville bellowed at them over his shoulder as he ran. ‘Going to lob them over the walls—they won’t like this!’

Harry knew now where to go. He sped off, with Hagrid and Fang galloping behind him. They passed portrait after portrait, and the painted figures raced alongside them, wizards and witches in ruffs and breeches, in armor and cloaks, cramming themselves into each others’ canvases, screaming news from other parts of the castle. As they reached the end of this corridor, the whole castle shook, and Harry knew, as a gigantic vase blew off its plinth with explosive force, that it was in the grip of enchantments more sinister than those of the teachers and the Order.

‘It’s all righ’, Fang—it’s all righ’!’ yelled Hagrid, but the great boarhound had taken flight as slivers of china flew like shrapnel through the air, and Hagrid pounded off after the terrified dog, leaving Harry with just Allison and Tracey.

‘Where are we going?’ begged Tracey, she and Allison both had their wands drawn now, but Harry had no time to answer.

He forged on through the trembling passages, his wand at the ready, and for the length of one corridor the little painted knight, Sir Cadogan, rushed from painting to painting beside him, clanking along in his armour, screaming encouragement, his fat little pony cantering behind him.

‘Braggarts and rogues, dogs and scoundrels, drive them out, Harry Potter, see them off!’

Harry hurtled around a corner and found Fred and a small knot of students, including Lee Jordan, Terry Boot, and Hannah Abbott, standing beside another empty plinth, whose statue had concealed a secret passageway. Their wands were drawn and they were listening at the concealed hole.

‘Nice night for it!’ Fred shouted as the castle quaked again, and the three friends sprinted by, elated and terrified in equal measure. Along yet another corridor he dashed, and then there were owls everywhere, and Mrs Norris was hissing and trying to bat them with her paws, no doubt to return them to their proper place…

‘Potter!’

Aberforth Dumbledore stood blocking the corridor ahead, his wand held ready.

‘I’ve had hundreds of kids thundering through my pub, Potter.’

‘Sorry—‘ began Allison.

‘We’re evacuating,’ Harry said, ‘Voldemort’s—‘

‘—attacking because they haven’t handed you over, yeah,’ said Aberforth. ‘I’m not deaf, the whole of Hogsmeade heard him. And it never occurred to any of you to keep a few Death Eater spawn hostage? You three may be good, but some of those Slytherins you just released are going to go straight to their parents!’

‘It wouldn’t stop Voldemort,’ said Harry, ‘and your brother would never have done it. We have to give everyone a chance and not punish those before they’ve made their choice.’

Aberforth grunted and tore away in the opposite direction.

“Your brother would never have done it”...Well, it was the truth, Harry thought as he ran on again: Dumbledore, who had defended Snape for so long, would never have held students ransom...

And then he skidded around a final corner and with a yell of mingled relief and fury he saw them: Theodore and Colin, both with their arms full of familiar large, curved, dirty yellow objects, Colin with a broomstick under his arm.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Harry shouted.

‘I could kill you right now!’ shouted Allison, but Harry could tell she was relieved.

‘Chamber of Secrets,’ said Theodore.

‘Chamber—what?’ said Harry, the three of them coming to an unsteady halt before the couple.

‘Theo, he’s an absolute genius!’ said Colin completely out of breath. ‘He came up with a plan to help you guys! Just after you left Harry and I caught up a bit with Dennis I asked Theo what the plan was now, and at first he said he didn’t know, but then I could practically see the lightbulb turn on above his head. He said there were objects of some sort you needed to destroy to kill You-Know-Who, and that he just realized where he could get some, and so he took us to the Chamber of Secrets!’

‘Really—?’ asked Tracey.

‘Yes, I realized that Dumbledore only took one fang, so the dead Basilisk likely still had nearly a full mouthful,’ said Theodore simply, but he still had a wide grin on his face just like Colin’s.

Harry’s eyes dropped to the objects clutched in Theodore and Colin’s arms and realized what they were: probably every fang left from the mouth of Salazar’s basilisk.

‘But how did you get in there?’ he asked, staring from the fangs to Theodore. ‘You need to speak Parseltongue!’

Theodore made a horrible strangled hissing noise.

‘Sometimes when you have your Voldemort vision nightmares you talk Parseltongue in your sleep, I guess seven years as your dorm-mate has its advantages,’ he told Harry apologetically.

‘It still took him a few tries, but I guess he has a Grass Snake as a Patronus for a reason as eventually the door opened!’ explained Colin. ‘My boyfriend is absolutely brilliant!’

‘So…’ Harry was struggling to keep up. ‘So…’

‘So hand us the cup so that we’re one more down!’ exclaimed Theodore, so sudden desperation coming over him.

Tracey quickly shoved her hand into her purse and a moment later drew out the ancient cup and placed it in front of Theodore. He knelt down, raised the fang above his head, and with one hard thrust Theodore broke the cup into several pieces. Harry couldn’t be sure, but it was almost like there was a little screech along with the breaking of the metal.

‘Alright! What’s next!’ said Colin eagerly, but Theodore put down his fang and took Colin’s hands in his.

‘This next part has to be just the three of us, it’s too dangerous for more to know,’ said Theodore very seriously. ‘I need you to join the fight, they’ll need every D.A. member there is.’

Colin looked reluctant, but he gave Theodore the tiniest nod.

‘I’ll go find Dennis then, we should stick together, and I can return his broom,’ said Colin.

‘Just about everyone under seventeen was evacuated,’ noted Harry.

‘Ha, I know my brother, he double backed when no one was looking,’ said Colin as he let go of Theodore, he then gave his boyfriend a long proper kiss. ‘Stay safe, I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Theodore managed before Colin ran down the corridor and out of sight. Slowly Theodore turned back to the others. ‘That is one more Horcrux we don’t have to worry about. What’s happened since I left? What is next?’

As he said it, there was an explosion from overhead: All four of them looked up as dust fell from the ceiling and they heard a distant scream.

‘I know what the diadem looks like, and I know where it is,’ said Harry, talking fast. ‘He hid it exactly where I hid my old Potions book, where everyone’s been hiding stuff for centuries. He thought he was the only one to find it. Come one.’

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003804769

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003805533

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003806102

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003806803

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003808304

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003810956

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003811902

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003814653

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003816806

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003819557

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003821422

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003822967

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003823601

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003825124

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@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972

Chapter Fifteen: Godric’s Hollow

When Harry woke the following day it was several seconds before he remembered what had happened. Then he hoped, childishly, that it had been a dream, that Allison and he were still together and that she had never left. Yet by turning his head on his pillow he could see Allison’s deserted bunk. It was like a dead body in the way it seemed to draw his eyes. Harry jumped down from his own bed, keeping his eyes averted from Allison’s. Tracey, who was already busy in the kitchen, did not wish Harry good morning, but turned her face away quickly as he went by. Theodore was sitting at the table, his face’s focus unnaturally absorbed by the apple slices on his plate.

She’s gone. Harry told himself. She’s gone. He had to keep thinking it as he washed and dressed, as though repetition would dull the shock of it. She’s gone, she’s not coming back, and it’s all my fault. And that was the simple truth of it. Harry knew, because their protective enchantments meant that it would be impossible, once they vacated this spot, for Allison to find them again.

He, Tracey, and Theodore ate breakfast in silence. Tracey’s eyes were puffy and red; she looked as if she had not slept. Theodore didn’t look well rested either. They packed up their things, Tracey dawdling. Harry knew why she wanted to span out their time on the riverbank; several times he saw her look up eagerly and he was sure she had deluded herself into thinking that she heard footsteps through the heavy rain, but no spiky-bobbed figure with a pink headband appeared between the trees. Harry was no better however, as every time he imitated her, looked around (for he could not help hoping a little, himself) and saw nothing but rain-swept woods, another little parcel of burning remorse exploded inside him. He could hear Allison saying, ‘You don't love me anymore!’, and with tears in his eyes he resumed packing with a hard knot in the pit of his stomach.

The torrential rain from the night before had caused the muddy river beside them to rise rapidly and would soon spill over onto their bank. They had lingered a good hour after they would usually have departed their campsite. Finally having gotten rid of any sign anyone had stayed there three times, Tracey seemed unable to find any more reasons to delay: She, Theodore, and Harry grasped hands and Disapparated, reappearing on a windswept heather-covered hillside.

The instant they arrived, Harry dropped their hands and walked away from them, finally sitting down in the grove of heathers; his face in his knees, shaking with twelve hours or more of suppressed sobs. He could hear Tracey also crying somewhere nearby, and Theodore setting up the tent and protective enchantments. After a couple of minutes, Theodore became silent and soon Harry registered him sitting next to him. Harry felt his foster brother pat him gently on the back.

‘Let it all out, it’ll be ok,’ he said at first, then when Harry began to calm down he added, ‘what finally broke down your walls, leaving the little island without her with us?’

‘No,’ Harry choked between shaky breaths, absentmindedly he picked one of the heathers and put it in his pocket, ‘I think that’s why Tracey broke. No, it’s just these flowers…they’re…’

‘Allison Heather Runcorn…’ Theodore said slowly in realization, and that was the last time any of them spoke her name.

They did not discuss Allison at all over the next few days. Harry was determined never to mention her name again, he felt so betrayed and heartbroken, as did Tracey, and Theodore seemed to know that it was no use forcing the issue with either of them. After that first morning Tracey never cried again over Allison, but late at night when Harry was sure the other two were asleep he couldn’t stop the deep sobs from escaping him.

As time moved on Harry had started bringing out the Marauder’s Map and examining it by wandlight. He was waiting for the moment when Allison’s labeled dot would reappear in the corridors of Hogwarts, proving that she had returned to the comfortable castle, protected by her father’s intimidating status. However, Allison did not appear on the map, and after a while Harry found himself thinking about Remus, Canini, and his uncle Ted. He knew most of his life that his uncle was Muggle-born, but for some misguided reason he had thought the Pureblood status of his aunt Andromeda and their wealth would spare him the treatment other Muggle-borns were facing. That illusion was shattered now, as Colin’s portion of Potterwatch had confirmed that he was on the run.

By day, they devoted themselves to trying to figure out potential ways to obtain a basilisk fang, but the more they discussed incredibly risky Hogwarts break-in plans or undertake the dangerous process of breeding their own Basilisk, the more desperate and far-fetched their plans became. If a basilisk fang was what they needed, Harry was becoming increasingly frustrated that Dumbledore never mentioned where to find one other than Hogwarts. There were moments when he did not know whether he was angrier with Allison or with Dumbledore. What we thought was that you actually knew what you were doing…What we thought was that you knew something from Dumbledore that would help us…That after all this time you'd have a plan!

He could not hide it from himself: Allison had been right. Dumbledore had left him virtually nothing. They had discovered one Horcrux, but they had no means of destroying it: The others were as unattainable as they had ever been. Hopelessness threatened to engulf him. He was staggered now to think of his own presumption in accepting his friends’ offers to accompany him on this meandering, pointless journey. He knew nothing, he had no ideas, and he was constantly painfully on the alert for any indication that Theodore or Tracey too were about to tell him that they had had enough, that they were both leaving.

They were spending many evenings in near silence, and Tracey took to bringing out Phineas Nigellus’s portrait and propping it up in a chair, as though he might fill part of the gaping hole left by Allison’s departure. Despite his previous assertion that he would never visit them again, Phineas Nigellus did not seem able to resist the chance to find out more about what Harry was up to, and consented to reappear, blindfolded, every few days or so. Harry was even glad to see him, because he was company, albeit of a snide and taunting kind.

They relished any news about what was happening in Hogwarts, though Phineas Nigellus was not an ideal informer. He venerated Snape, the first Slytherin headmaster since he himself had controlled the school, and they had to be careful not to criticize or ask impertinent questions about Snape, or Phineas Nigellus would instantly leave his painting.

However, he did let drop certain snippets. Snape seemed to be facing a constant, low level of mutiny from a hard core of students. Ginny Weasley had been banned from going into Hogsmeade. Snape had reinstated Umbridge’s old decree forbidding gatherings of three or more students or any unofficial student societies.

From all of these things, Harry deduced that Neville, Ella, Luna, Susan, and probably Ron and Ginny had been doing their best to continue Dumbledore’s Army. This scant news made Harry very proud, but also feel even more isolated than he had ever been before. Their discussions with the former headmaster was making Harry think of Dumbledore and of Hogwarts itself, which he missed nearly as much as his ex-girlfriend. Indeed as Phineas Nigellus talked about Snape’s crackdown, Harry experienced a split second of madness when he imagined simply going back to school to join the destabilization of Snape’s regime. Being fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge, seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at that moment. But then he remembered that he was Undesirable Number One, that there was a ten-thousand-Galleon price on his head, and that to walk into Hogwarts these days was just as dangerous as walking into the Ministry of Magic. Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently emphasized this fact by slipping in leading questions about Harry, Tracey, and Theodore’s whereabouts. Theodore shoved him back inside Tracey’s purse every time he did this, and Phineas Nigellus invariably refused to reappear for several days after these unceremonious goodbyes.

The weather grew colder and colder. They did not dare remain in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of England, where a hard ground frost was the worst of their worries, they continued to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside, where sleet pounded the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent was flooded with chill water: and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow buried the tent in the night.

They already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from several sitting room windows before one small nice moment occurred.

The three of them had been listening to Potterwatch one cold snowy night, when something different happened.

‘—and that’s the weather for today,’ said the voice of Fred Weasley. ‘Rangefinder, I believe you had an announcement?’

‘Yes I do Rapier,’ said Colin Creevey, he normally sounded confident when he spoke during a broadcast but now he sounded nervous. ‘This message goes out to one person in particular, who I have faith is listening. Happy birthday my grey-eyed grass snake, I love you and hope you are safe.’

Theodore let a choked-gasp, his eyes now fixed upon the radio.

‘I’m sure he is Rangefinder,’ said Lee Jordan softly. ‘Well that’s our show for tonight, tune in next time with the password Alastor.’

‘H-he sent a message out just for me,’ said Theodore, looking very touched but also saddened…tears welled up in his eyes. ‘If only I could send a message back.’

It was only in the last couple months that Harry realized another aspect of this journey that was hard on his friends. Tracey and Theodore, along with being away from their families, missed Terence and Colin dearly, as Harry now missed Allison, but just like Harry they were keeping their longings silent. A couple times Harry had caught Tracey squeezing her copy of her and Terence’s matching small emerald lockets, while Harry had spotted Theodore opening a music box that had been a gift from Colin three Christmases previous.

Tracey nor Harry knew how to comfort Theodore in this moment, so Harry decided to change the subject slightly.

‘It’s your birthday?’ said Harry, acting borderline dumb.

‘Yeah, I guess,’ said Theodore with a shrug. ‘I’ve sort of lost track of what day it is at this point.’

‘Well happy eighteenth birthday Theodore!’ said Harry loudly.

‘Yes, happy birthday,’ chimed in Tracey. ‘We should celebrate!’

‘You’re right, Tracey did you pack the bottle Blishen's Firewhisky from my birthday?’

‘Yes, let me get it,’ she said as she started rummaging through her purse.

‘No, Harry wait,’ started Theodore, but there was now a smile on his face, ‘that bottle was a gift to you from Tonks, I don’t want you to waste it on me.’

‘But I want to share what’s left of it with you two. It’ll both warm and cheer us up, and don’t worry I’ll keep the bottle itself as a memory of Tonks’ gift.’

And so within a couple hours the half a bottle of Firewhisky became empty, and all three were telling jokes and laughing. After one round of soul-tickling laughter Harry suddenly blurted.

‘You know, I believe I could destroy the Horcrux right here, right now with Fiendfyre.’

‘And why don’t you?’ asked Tracey while giggling.

‘Because I’d burn this whole forest down with us still inside it,’ he bellowed.

There was silence for a second, and then all three burst out into laughing once more.

The next morning however there was no laughter, the complete opposite, every little sound was like a dragon’s roar. Tracey made some toast and it took all of them over an hour to each eat one slice. As they nibbled slowly on their pieces, Theodore slowly and quietly spoke.

‘I read about Fiendfyre in Magick Moste Evile, you know how to cast it and think it can destroy Horcruxes?’

‘Yeah, I learned it in our second year, it’s what I used to kill the basilisk,’ said Harry. ‘It’s an incredibly dark curse and it kills everything in its path so I think it could destroy the locket.’

‘Then why haven’t you used it?’ asked Tracey.

‘Because it can’t be controlled,’ said Harry in frustration, ‘it only consumes and grows, the only reason I survived was because Fawkes managed to absorb the flames. I’ve thought about waiting until we get all four Horcruxes, cast the spell, and then apparate away, but it could then kill kilometres and kilometres of life before a more powerful magical force stops it. Even to stop Voldemort I just can’t do that.’

There was a pause.

‘Basilisk fang it is,’ said Theodore finally.

The week continued onward and there came an evening when Harry resolved to suggest, again, what seemed to him the only unexplored avenue left to them. They had just eaten an unusually good meal: Theodore had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as he left), and Tracey had finally gotten the hang of “One Minute Feasts - It's Magic!”. Harry thought they might be more persuadable than when their stomachs were full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears. He had also had the foresight to suggest that they take a few hours’ break from wearing the Horcrux, which was hanging off of a chair beside him.

‘Theo? Tracey?’

‘Hmm?’ mumbled Theodore, he was curled up in one of Dumbledore’s armchairs with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. He could not imagine how much more he could get out of the book, which was not, after all, very long, but evidently without Allison’s help he was still having difficulty deciphering parts of it and the copy of Rune Dictionary she left behind lay open on the arm of the chair next to him. Tracey was also reading, but she was taking her break from cooking or Horcrux wearing to read her personal copy of Magic Heart, and she was giggling at the good parts. Harry cleared his throat. He felt anxious, possibly more than he should.

‘Guys, I’ve been thinking, and—'

‘Harry, could you give me a hand with this?’ asked Theodore. Apparently he had not been listening to him. Tracey looked up at Harry for a moment, but when he went to help his brother she went back to enjoying her book. Theodore leaned forward and held out The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

‘Look at the symbol,’ He said, pointing to the top of a page.

Above what Harry assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, he could not be sure), there was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.

‘I never took Ancient Runes, Theo.’

‘Neither did I, but I’ve now gone completely through She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s copies of Rune Dictionary and Advanced Rune Translation, it’s not in either, and so I’m now starting to believe it is not a tune at all.’

‘So what is it then?’ asked Harry, who honestly wasn’t that interested.

‘Well once I started suspecting it wasn’t a rune I started thinking it was an eye, but after studying the page and following story I don’t think it’s an eye either. You see, it’s not part of the book at all, it was drawn in afterwards. Now the reason I asked you over here, and Tracey maybe you should come over to because of your knowledge from Ancient Studies, is that I’m hoping one of you recognizes it, as I do not.’

Harry let Tracey take a good long look first, but when she didn’t recognize it he took another look just to be safe.

‘No…No, wait a moment,’ Harry looked closer. ‘Isn’t it the same symbol Luna’s dad was wearing around his neck?’

‘It is? I didn’t get a chance to meet Xenophilius at the wedding,’ said Theodore.

‘It is that symbol, and that makes it Grindelwald’s mark,’ said Harry confidently.

Tracey stared at him, open mouthed.

‘What?’

‘Krum told me...’

He recounted the story that Viktor Krum had told him at the wedding. Tracey looked astonished, ‘Grindelwald’s mark? Harry I know we aren’t really saying her name, but I wish Allison was here, she knows a lot about Grindelwald.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t have been much help,’ mumbled Harry, a bit of anger rising at the mention of her name, ‘she said at the wedding she had never heard Grindelwald had a symbol.’

‘It’s possible Krum’s knowledge was incomplete,’ said Theodore. ‘I believed him when he said Grindelwald carved it into the walls of Durmstrang, but what if after leaving school Grindelwald didn’t really use it again and that’s why it’s not well known?’

‘And that begs the question, if not Grindelwald’s symbol, what does it actually represent, and why is it in Dumbledore’s book?’ asked Tracey.

‘Yeah it is weird,’ said Harry. ‘And if it was a Dark symbol you’d think Scrimgeour would have recognized it. He was Head Auror and then Head of the Department of Law Enforcement, he ought to have been expert on this sort of stuff.’

‘It’s possible he did what I did, checked it against all runes, and when he couldn’t find a match he assumed it was just an eye.’

No one spoke, but they continued to stare at the strange mark. Harry tried again.

‘Guys?’

‘Hmm?’ mumbled Theodore.

‘Yes Harry?’ said Tracey, giving him her attention.

‘I’ve been thinking. I—I want to go to Godric’s Hollow.’

‘Harry…I don’t know…’ said Theodore, now looking up at him.

‘I think we should do it,’ said Tracey suddenly and firmly. ‘I think at this point we’ll have to go there.’

‘But I thought you agreed that it’s a trap?’ said Theodore, quite serious.

‘I do agree that it is likely a trap, but I also think it’s a risk we’re going to have to take at this point,’ said Tracey. ‘There are many reasons we should go to Godric’s Hollow, firstly it’s not impossible that Voldemort hid a Horcrux there as it has meaning to him, being where Dumbledore grew up he could have left something important for us to fine there, and finally being the birthplace of Godric Gryffindor it possibly has the real sword and even though we’re Slytherin any Horcrux destroying item is worth investigating. There is also the fact that back at the end of June I made a promise to Harry that I would go with him to Godric’s Hollow, and I think it’s time to fulfill that promise.’

Harry did not want to admit that he had not been thinking about swords or Horcruxes at all when he suggested they go to Godric’s Hollow. For him, the lure of the village lay as his parents’ graves, the house where he had narrowly escaped death, and in the person of Bathilda Bagshot. He did really appreciate her support however.

‘Thank you Tracey, I really mean it,’ said Harry, taking in what she said. ‘Also Gryffindor came from Godric’s Hollow?’

‘It’s in the name, Harry,’ said Tracey, rolling her eyes while laughing. Both of them then faced Theodore, who looked very hesitant.

‘It’s dangerous, guys,’ Theodore finally whispered. ‘But I have to admit, recently even I’ve been thinking we might have to go. Other than Hogwarts it really is the only place with possible information or items that we may need.’

‘It’s settled then, we’re going to Godric’s Hollow,’ said Harry, then the vastness of it all sunk in. ‘But where in Godric’s Hollow do we even search, especially because we don’t know what we’re searching for.’

‘The graveyard at the very least,’ said Theodore, now starting to sound confident.

‘Er, why?’ asked Tracey.

‘Seriously how did you both pass Professor Binns class for four years, have either of you ever even read A History of Magic?’

‘Well-no,’ Tracey admitted.

‘Erm,’ Harry said, smiling genuinely for what felt like the first time in months. The muscles in his face felt oddly stiff. ‘I might’ve opened you know, when I bought it...just the once...’

‘Alight, I’ll explain. I think you packed a copy, right Tracey?’ Theodore sounded much more like his old self that he had done of late; Harry half expected him to announce that he was off to the library.

‘Yes,’ and she pulled it out of her purse and handed it to him, Theodore opened it to a specific page and began reading.

‘“Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, wizards went into hiding for good. It was natural, perhaps, that they formed their own small communities within a community. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several magical families, who banded together for mutual support and protection. The villages of Tinworthin Cornwald, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire, and Ottery St. Catchpole on the south coast of England were notable homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles. Most celebrated of these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric’s Hollow, the West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged the first Golden Snitch”-That’s another thing Harry, we might be able to open your Snitch there-“The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magical families, and this accounts, no doubt for the stories of hauntings that have dogged the little church beside it for many centuries.” It goes on to mention some of the influential magical families that live in each village, but since we can’t risk talking to them the next best option for information is the graveyard that is mentioned. It would be nice though if we could talk to Bagshot herself.’

‘I think we can,’ said Harry, a lightbulb going off in his head.

‘What?’ said both Tracey and Theodore.

‘When we were at Grimmauld Place I found a letter from my mum from her time at Godric’s Hollow, in it she talked about how Bathilda Bagshot would visit my family during a time when not even Sirius was allowed to visit. She also specifically wrote that Bagshot cared about me,’ began Harry, he then remembered even more facts he knew. ‘And at the wedding, Ron’s great-aunt Muriel told me that Bagshot still lives in Godric’s Hollow and about how she was connected to the Dumbledore family. I don’t know how much of all Muriel said was true, but it’s clear she knew more about Dumbledore than most. What I’m trying to say is my parents trusted her and she was close to Dumbledore, so of all the witches and wizards currently in Godric’s Hollow I think we can trust her.’

‘Bathilda Bagshot,’ murmured Theodore, staring intently at Bathilda’s embossed name on the front cover of A History of Magic. ‘If all that is true, than I suppose—‘

‘So,’ said Harry after letting Theodore consider it all for a minute, ‘are we going to go to Godric’s Hollow?’

‘Yes, however not today, but like the Ministry we’ll have to plan and prepare,’ said Theodore as he sat up from the armchair, and Harry could tell that the prospect of having a plan again had lifted his mood as much as his. ‘We’ll have to use more Polyjuice Potion, we can’t risk anyone in the village recognizing us. With She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named gone we should be able mostly fit under the Invisible Cloak again, for our feet we can use Disillusionment Charms. We’ll Disapparate together this time…’

Harry and Tracey let him talk, nodding and agreeing whenever there was a pause, but Harry’s mind had left the conversation. For the first time since he had discovered how they were going to destroy the Horcruxes, he felt excited.

He was about to go to where he was born, it had been almost exactly four years since the last time he had visited. He loved his childhood with his adoptive family very much, but it was in Godric’s Hollow that, but for Voldemort, he would have grown up and spent every school holiday. Sirius and Remus would have just been his uncles…He might have grown up with friends other than children of the Order of the Phoenix…He might have had additional brothers and sisters…It would have been his mother who had made his seventeenth birthday cake. The life he had lost had hardly ever seemed so real to him as at this moment, when he knew he was about to see the place were it had been taken from him, as Sirius and Remus had only ever shown him his parent’s grave and nothing else. After the other two had gone to bed that night, Harry quietly extracted his rucksack from Tracey’s bag, and from inside it, the pile of photographs he had packed. For the first time in months, he pursued the old pictures, but this time focused solely on the photos from before he was orphaned. The photos of his parents, smiling and waving up at him from the images, which were all he had left of them now.

Harry would gladly have set out for Godric’s Hollow the following day, but Theodore had other ideas. Convinced as he was that Voldemort would expect Harry to return to the scene of his parents’ deaths, he was determined that they would set off only after they had ensured that they had the best disguises possible. It was therefore nearly a full week later—once they had surreptitiously obtained hairs from innocent Muggles who were Christmas shopping, and had practiced Apparating and Disapparating while underneath the Invisibility Cloak together, and Tracey had mastered the Disillusionment Charm—that Theodore agreed it was time to make the journey.

They were to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness, so it was late afternoon when they finally swallowed Polyjuice Potion, Harry transforming into a balding, middle-aged Muggle man, Tracey into his small and rather mousy wife, and Theodore into their blonde teenaged son. Tracey’s purse containing all of their possessions (apart from the Horcrux, which Harry was wearing around his neck) was tucked into an inside pocket of Tracey’s buttoned-up coat. Harry lowered the Invisibility Cloak over them, then they turned into the suffocating darkness once again.

Heart beating in his throat, Harry opened his eyes. They were standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky in which the night’s first stars were already glimmering feebly. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a glow of golden streetlights indicated the centre of the village.

‘Look at all this snow!’ Theodore whispered beneath the cloak. ‘How did we not think of snow? After all our planning, we’ll leave behind prints!’

‘It’s ok,’ whispered Tracey, ‘I’ll walk behind you two and get rid of them.’

But Harry did not want to enter the village like a pantomime horse, trying to keep themselves concealed while magically covering their traces.

‘Let’s take off the Cloak,’ said Harry, and when both looked frightened. ‘Oh, come on, we don’t look like us and there’s no one around.’

He stowed the Cloak under his jacket and they made their way forward unhampered, the icy air stinging their faces as they passed more cottages. Anyone of them might have been the one in which James and Lily had once lived or where Bathilda lived now. Harry gazed at the front doors, their snow-burdened roofs, and their frost porches, wondering whether he remembered any of them, knowing deep inside that it was impossible, that he had been little more than a year old when he had left this place forever. He was not even sure whether he would be able to see the cottage at all; he did not know what happened when the subjects of a Fidelius Charm died.

Then the little lane along which they were walking curved to the left and the heart of the village, a small square, was revealed to them. Strung all around with coloured lights, there was what looked like a war memorial in the mile, partly obscured by a windblown Christmas tree. There were several shops, a post office, a pub and a little church whose stained-glass windows were glowing jewel-bright across the square.

The snow here had become impacted, It was hard and slippery where people had trodden on it all day. Villagers were crisscrossing in front of them, their figures briefly illuminated by streetlamps. They heard a snatch of laughter and pop music as the pub door opened and closed; then they heard a carol start up inside the little church.

‘I was a fool, it’s been six days since my birthday, hasn’t it? Guys I think it’s Christmas Eve!’ said Theodore.

‘It is?’

Harry had lost track of the date; they had not seen a newspaper for weeks.

‘Unless Colin got Theo’s birthday wrong, which is unlikely, then it’s got to be Christmas Eve,’ confirmed Tracey.

Theodore than looked in a different direction, towards the church, 'They...They're in there then, Harry? In the graveyard I mean. Your mum and dad?'

'Yes, they're, ere, around the centre.'

Harry felt a thrill of something that was beyond excitement, more like fear. It had been so long since he had last visited his parents grave, and every time previous he had been accompanied by both Sirius and Remus. Perhaps Tracey knew how he was feeling, because she reached for his hand and took the lead for the first time, pulling him forward. Halfway across the square, however, Theodore stopped dead.

'Harry! You never told me about this!'

Harry didn't know what he was talking about and was a bit confused. Theodore was pointing at the war memorial. As they had passed it, it had transformed. Instead of an obelisk covered in names, there was a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy sitting in his mother’s arms. Snow lay upon all their heads, like fluffy white caps.

'I didn't know...Padfoot and Moony must not have known either...'

Harry drew closer, gazing up into his parents’ faces. He had never known that there was a statue...How strange it was to see himself represented in stone, a happy baby without a scar on his forehead...

'C’mon,' said Harry, when he had looked his fill they turned again toward the church. As they crossed the road, he glanced over his shoulder; the statue had turned back into the war memorial.

The singing grew louder as they approached the church. It made Harry’s throat constrict. It reminded him so forcefully of Hogwarts, of Peeves bellowing rude versions of carols from inside suits of armor, of the Great Hall’s twelve Christmas trees, of Dumbledore wearing a bonnet he had won in a cracker, of Remus' and Andromeda's Christmas cooking...

There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Theodore pushed it open as quietly as possible and they edged through it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the snow lay deep and untouched. They moved off through the snow, carving deep trenches behind them as they walked around the building, keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows.

Behind the church row upon row of snowy tombstones protruded from a blanket of pale blue that was flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass hit the snow.

'Alright, lets see what information we can find,' whispered Tracey.

Keeping his hand closed tightly on the wand in his jacket pocket, Harry moved toward the nearest grave.

'Look at this, it’s an Abbott, could be an ancestor of Hannah’s!'

'We should try to keep our voices down, not draw attention,' said Tracey.

They waded deeper and deeper into the graveyard, gouging dark tracks into the snow behind them, stooping to peer at the words on old headstones, every now and then squinting into the surrounding darkness to make absolutely sure that they were unaccompanied.

‘Guys, over here!’ said Theodore.

He was two rows away of tombstones away and two rows ahead of where Harry knew his parents lay.

‘What is it?’ asked Tracey curiously.

‘Come see,’ Theodore insisted.

He pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw, upon the frozen lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dumbledore and, a short way below her dates of birth and death, and Her Daughter Ariana. There was also a quotation:

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

So Rita Skeeter and Muriel had got some of their facts right. The Dumbledore family had indeed lived here, and part of it had died here. A thought he had back at the wedding also appeared to be true, there graves were very close to his parents, so Harry likely walked right passed them several times while he was growing up.

Seeing the grave was worse than hearing about it. Harry could not help thinking that he and Dumbledore both had deep roots in this graveyard, and that Dumbledore ought to have told him so, yet he had never thought to share the connection. They could have visited the place together; for a moment Harry imagined coming here with Dumbledore, of what a bond that would been, of how much it would have meant to him. But it seemed that to Dumbledore, the fact that their families lay side by side in the same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he wanted Harry to do.

Both his friends were looking at him, and he was glad that his face was hidden in shadow. He read the words on the tombstone again.

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

He did not understand what these words meant. Surely Dumbledore had chosen them, as the eldest member of the family once his mother had died.

‘Is it possible that Dumbledore mentioned—?’ began Tracey.

‘No,’ said Harry curtly, then, ‘let’s keep looking,’ and he turned away, wishing he had not seen the stone.

Of all the information he had hoped to find, that hadn’t been it.

‘I found Julie Parkes’ grave,’ said Theodore solemnly. ‘She was my age, this war is just terrible.’

Being the year above him and a Gryffindor Harry hadn’t really known her, but Terence had shared classes with her so if he was aware of her death he was probably quite bummed.

‘Harry, is this your parents’?’ called out Tracey. Harry turned around expecting to say yes, but Tracey was standing over a further and much older grave.

‘No, why?’

‘My bad, I thought it said Potter,’ she was rubbing at a crumpling, mossy stone, gazing down at it, a little frown on her face. ‘Wait! Harry, Theo, get over here!’

Quickly they converged on her point.

‘What is it?’ asked Harry.

‘Look what I found?’

The grave was extremely old, weathered so that Harry could hardly make out the name. Tracey showed him and Theodore the symbol beneath it.

‘You’re right Tracey, it’s the symbol from my book!’ exclaimed Theodore in excitement.

Harry peered at the place she indicated: The stone was so worn that it was hard to make out what was engraved there, though there did seem to be a triangular mark beneath the nearly illegible name.

‘Are you sure?’ Harry asked.

‘I think so,’ said Tracey as she lit her wand and pointed it at the name on the headstone. ‘I think the name says Ignotus…that name sounds familiar.’

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Theodore, writing down information from the grave.

‘Me neither,’ agreed Harry, who resumed looking at other names.

Every now and then he recognized a surname that, like Abbott, he had met at Hogwarts. Sometimes there were several generations of the same Wizarding family represented in the graveyard. Harry could tell from the dates that it had either died out, or the current members had moved away from Godric’s Hollow. Deeper and deeper amongst the graves he went, trying to find anything that would help his quest, but the urge to visit his own parents grave only continued to grow.

The darkness and the silence seemed to become, all of a sudden, much deeper. Harry looked around, worried, thinking of dementors, then realized that the carols had finished, that the chatter and flurry of churchgoers were fading away as they made their way back into the square. Somebody inside the church had just turned off the lights.

Finally after not finding anything new for several minutes he abruptly turned around and headed straight for the centre of the graveyard. Seemingly noticing his sudden change in direction the other two turned and began to walk in the direction Harry was going until all three converged at a single grave.

The headstone was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore’s tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. He had read his parents grave many times before, but Harry felt as though he was a different person now than he was then. He did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.

“James Medini Potter

Born 27 March 1960

Died 31 October 1981

Lily Joy Potter

Born 30 January 1960

Died 31 October 1981

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”

Harry read the words slowly, as though it were the first time doing so, and he read the last of them aloud. ‘“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”…’ A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. ‘I never thought of it before, but isn’t that a Death Eater idea? Why is that here?’

‘It’s ok Harry, I don’t it means defying and defeating death literally like how You-Know-Who tries to do,’ said Tracey reassuringly. ‘I think it’s meant to be more like the spirit lives on after death.’

‘It doesn’t though,’ Harry mumbled, he thought visiting his parents would cheer him up but he was now feeling morbid.

‘It does though,’ said Theodore softly but firmly, putting an arm around Harry. ‘Remember when we were in that room in the Department of Mysteries, the room with the whispers. I denied it at the time, but I now believe they’re the voices of loved ones we’ve lost. They continued on, but we’ll catch up with them eventually in the end.’

Harry tried to force a smile, and Theodore let him go, but his face fell again moments later. Despite what Theodore said, Harry knew the truth, that they were not living, they were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.

Realizing Harry was not better, Theodore was the one to take Harry’s hand this time, and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at him or Tracey, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something to give to them, and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was leafless and frozen. But Tracey raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air and a bouquet of poinsettia blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parents’ grave.

As soon as he stood up he wanted to leave. He did not think he could stand another moment there. He put his arm around Tracey and Theodore’s shoulders, and they put their arms around his waist, and they turned in silence and walked away through the snow, past Dumbledore’s mother and sister, back toward the dark church and the out-of-sight kissing gate.

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003768423

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003769317

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003770117

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003771789

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003772695

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003774876

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003775746

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003776170

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003776958

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003777821

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003778655

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003779874

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003781975

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003784137

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003786670

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003788477

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003788958

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003789922

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003790766

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003792515

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003794298

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003794299

Tags:

@Teddy.J.B @Pervaza972 @CatsAndRoblox @Missy Clara Oswald

Chapter Twenty-Three: After the Burial

Patches of bright blue sky were beginning to appear over the castle turrets, but these signs of approaching summer did not lift Harry’s mood. He had been thwarted, both in his attempts to find out what Malfoy was doing, and in his efforts to start a conversation with Slughorn that might lead, somehow, to Slughorn handing over the memory he had apparently suppressed for decades.

‘Instead of focusing on both, just focus on Slughorn,’ Theodore told Harry in almost a begging tone.

They were sitting with Allison, Tracey, Terence, and Colin in a sunny corner of the courtyard after they ate lunch. Theodore and Allison were both clutching a Ministry of Magic leaflet—Common Apparition Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—for they were taking their tests later that very afternoon, but by and large the leaflets had not proved soothing to the nerves. Terence was sharing his Apparation practice experience with Tracey, and telling her despite failing his first test he still succeeded with flying colours when he took the next test. Harry was looking over the Half-Blood Prince’s book for the thousandth time, trying to find answers. Finally Colin was looking over a copy of “Witch Holiday? Magazine”, he said he was looking for somewhere he could take his family on vacation in the future, but Harry had a dark suspicion he was looking for places his muggle family could hide if the war got worse.

They were all so engulfed by the different things they were focused on that when the young Ravenclaw girl cleared her throat they all were a little startled.

‘Harry Potter?’ said the girl. ‘I was asked to give you this.’

‘Thanks…’

Harry’s heart sank as he took the small scroll of parchment.

Once the girl was out of earshot he said, ‘Dumbledore said we wouldn’t be having any more lessons until I got the memory!’

‘Perhaps this is just a check up on your progress or to see if you need some help?’ suggested Allison, as Harry unrolled the parchment; but rather than finding Dumbledore’s long, narrow, slanted writing he saw an untidy sprawl, very difficult to read due to the presence of large blotches on the parchment where the ink had run.

“Dear Harry, Canini, Tracey, Allison, and Theodore,

Aragog died last night. Harry and friends, you met him, and you know how special he was. Canini, I know you’d have liked him. It would mean a lot to me if you’d nip down for the burial later this evening. I’m planning on doing it round dusk, that was his favorite time of day. I know you’re not supposed to be out that late, but you can use the cloak. Wouldn’t ask, but I can’t face it alone.

Hagrid”

‘Look at this,’ said Harry, handing the note to Allison.

‘Bloody hell! No!’ she said, scanning it quickly and passing it to Theodore and Tracey.

‘He’s gone mad,’ said Tracey. ‘Aragog didn’t care about any of us, why should we go to his funeral, he told his family it was ok to eat us and we barely made it out of the forest alive.’

‘We wouldn’t have without you, Tracey,’ said Theodore in an appreciative tone. ‘I was nervous about me and Allison’s test later, but now I’m just glad it’s giving me an excuse not to go if the test lasts into the evening.’

‘Isn’t that a bit rude?’ asked Colin. ‘Hagrid’s your friend and he’s in pain, shouldn’t you go?’

‘Colin, I love you, but you don’t what the four of us went through. Aragog wanted to eat us and we had to fight with and run from his hundreds of children, it scared Tracey so bad she hasn’t liked spiders since. If it was Fang that was dead I’d happily go to the funeral to support Hagrid, but I will not attend a funeral for something that willingly tried to kill me.’

‘Alright, that makes sense,’ admitted Colin.

‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand,’ said Terence. ‘What does he mean by we aren’t supposed to be out that late, we’ve held Quidditch practice around or just after sunset several times all year?’

Harry had been wondering this too as he and Allison had gone to the stadium on Valentine’s Day at sunset no problem and had stayed long past it getting dark and neither of them got in trouble. Harry had also never heard Canini complain that had trouble reaching the Shrieking Shack each full moon.

‘Quidditch teams going to practice were given an exemption so maybe you wouldn’t know,’ said Tracey. ‘But since I was poisoned security at night has become a million times tighter, and so if you’re caught outside the castle past nightfall you’ll get in serious trouble.’

'Maybe he's right though Tracey, maybe you, me, and Canini go down to see him tonight,' said Harry.

'I'm sorry, Harry, but I'm with Theodore on this one. I want to support Hagrid, but I can't go near the monster that I still see in my nightmare,' said Tracey.

Harry took the note back and stared down at all the inky blotches all over it. Tears had clearly fallen thick and fast upon the parchment...

'Harry...you're going to still go, aren't you?' said Allison, looking into his eyes. 'Is it worth getting detention over?'

Harry sighed.

'I don't know,' he said honestly. 'I s’pose Hagrid’ll have to bury Aragog without us.'

'Yes, but he'll be ok, he's an adult,' said Allison trying to be reassuring. 'He'll have Fang, and Canini if you give her this letter.'

'And Harry,' said Theodore with the unmistakable expression of having an idea, 'With about half the six-years going off to take the test, the Potions classroom will mostly be empty...maybe you'll finally get Slughorn to cooperate.'

'Cooperate with what?' asked Colin.

'Something Dumbledore wants done,' Theodore answered. 'Harry's been trying to talk to Slughorn for months.'

'It’s hopeless, but who knows, maybe my fifty-seventh time will be lucky, what do you think?' said Harry bitterly.

'Oh my gosh Harry, that's it!’ said Allison in a sudden burst of excitement.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Use the potion you gave me for safekeeping! Felix Felicis,’ said Allison, overjoyed by her breakthrough.

‘You’re a genius, jaanu!’ said Harry, now equally excited and kissed Allison. But then a thought popped into his mind. ‘I will use the potion if I have too, but I had been saving it for the war. If we end up in a fight like we were in the Ministry ever again I want as much luck as possible to guarantee everyone I care about survives. I have a class with Professor Slughorn today, and if I can’t get the memory by the time class ends then I’ll use the potion in the afternoon.’

‘That sounds like a plan,’ said Terence.

‘And don’t worry Harry,’ said Theodore, ‘you don’t need to drink the whole bottle for it to work, so you can still use it for your noble cause later.’

‘Well, before lunch ends I should give Canini this letter so that Hagrid isn’t completely alone,’ said Harry standing up with his things. ‘You’ll both do fine on your test, best of luck.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Thank you Harry.’

And with the goodbyes said, Harry reentered the castle to find his younger sister. It turned out he did not need to go far as when he looked into the Great Hall he could see that Canini was one of the few students still eating lunch. She was absentmindedly picking at the bread of her sandwich and slowly eating the pieces.

‘Hey sis, I got this letter from Hagrid, he wants us to go to his hut tonight but I’m not sure if I can attend, could you possibly—Cani what’s wrong?’

As Harry sat down next to her he got a better look at her and realized her face was pale and her eyes were puffy and red.

‘D-did you read the Daily Prophet today?’ she asked, her lower lip quivering.

Harry realized this probably had to do with what Tonks had been saying the other day.

‘No, but Tonks told me some parts. What’s happened?’

‘Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf who ki-the werewolf who bit m…he attacked Phillip Montgomery’s younger brother, Pip’s in my year, his brother died in St. Mungo’s. He was only five…’

‘Died?’ said Harry, reviewing what he new about werewolves in his head. ‘But I thought wizards bit by a werewolf survive and turn into another werewolf?’

‘It’s rare but if the werewolf hurts you more than just a bite you can die. Also injuries from a werewolf’s or claws can’t be closed without mixture of powdered silver and dittany, so if they don’t get treatment fast enough they bleed out. That’s what happened to Pip’s brother, he-he ran out of blood and his heart just stopped.’

‘But why would Greyback fatally wound him instead of abducting him and making him join his pack?’

‘I don’t know, Greyback works with Voldemort now and supposedly Phillip’s mother refused to help the Death Eaters, but Greyback sometimes just likes to kill his victims, like he did with my parents-but you know that already…’

Now more than ever Harry wanted to tell her that no, Greyback doesn’t just kill sometimes, when he kills it’s because someone told him to, and that Borgin ordered her parents deaths. But tears were now already running down her face from reliving the attack on her when she was three and her parent’s murder, and he couldn’t bare add to the trauma she was already experiencing. He wrapped his arms around her tight.

‘And Remus is with Greyback in his pack, if they are killing their enemies now what if they discover he’s a spy for the Order. Harry I haven’t heard from Moony since Christmas, I’m scared.’

Harry hugged her even tighter.

‘He’s going to be ok, that’s what Tonks was telling me. They’ve received no word that he’s hurt, but either way they’re getting Chiara to extract him, he’s not going to be a spy anymore.’

‘He’s coming home?’

‘Yes Cani, he’s coming home.’

Harry continued to hug Canini until she calmed down and rubbed her tears away.

‘Thanks Scarface, I really needed that. What was it you wanted me to visit Hagrid about?’ she asked, and now Harry felt guilty of asking her a favour when she was having such a hard day.

‘Er, Aragog died yesterday, Hagrid’s hosting a funeral, and he wants me and you to come,’ said Harry slowly.

‘I’m sorry Harry, but I think what I’ve gone through today is more death than I can take at the moment. I know you said you are unsure if you can attend, but if it’s at all possible please go. That Acromantula meant more to him than just a pet, he’s going to need a friend.’

Harry nodded, although didn’t make any promises, and then the bell rang overhead in the castle. They hugged one more time and then Harry headed off to the dungeons.

There were only three of them in Potions that afternoon: Harry, Ernie, and Draco Malfoy.

'All too young to Apparate just yet?' said Slughorn genially. 'Not turned seventeen yet?'

They shook their heads.

'Ah well,' said Slughorn cheerily, 'as we’re so few, we’ll do something fun. I want you all to brew me up something amusing!'

'That sounds good, sir,' said Ernie sycophantically, rubbing his hands together. Malfoy, on the other hand, did not crack a smile.

'What do you mean, "something amusing"?' he said irritably.

'Oh, surprise me,' said Slughorn airily.

Malfoy opened his copy of Advanced Potion-Making with a sulky expression. It could not have been plainer that he thought this lesson was a waste of time. Undoubtedly, Harry thought, watching him over the top of his own book, Malfoy was begrudging the time he could otherwise be spending in the Room of Requirement.

Was it his imagination, or did Malfoy, look thinner? Certainly he looked paler; his skin still had that grayish tinge, probably because he so rarely saw daylight these days. But there was no air of smugness, excitement, or superiority; none of the swagger that he had had on the Hogwarts Express, when he had boasted openly of the mission he had been given by Voldemort...There could be only one conclusion, in Harry’s opinion: The mission, whatever it was, was going badly.

Cheered by this thought, Harry skimmed through his copy of Advanced Potion-Making and found a heavily corrected Half-Blood Prince’s version of “An Elixir to Induce Euphoria,” which seemed not only to meet Slughorn’s instructions, but which might (Harry’s heart leapt as the thought struck him) put Slughorn into such a good mood that he would be prepared to hand over that memory if Harry could persuade him to taste some...

'Well, now, this looks absolutely wonderful,' said Slughorn an hour and a half later, clapping his hands together as he stared down into the sunshine yellow contents of Harry’s cauldron. 'Euphoria, I take it? And what’s that I smell? Mmmm...you’ve added just a sprig of peppermint, haven’t you? Unorthodox, but what a stroke of inspiration, Harry, of course, that would tend to counterbalance the occasional side effects of excessive singing and nose-tweaking...I really don’t know where you get these brain waves, my boy...unless—'

Harry pushed the Half-Blood Prince’s book deeper into his bag with his foot.

'—it’s just your mother’s genes coming out in you!'

'Oh...yeah, maybe,' said Harry, relieved.

Ernie was looking rather grumpy; determined to outshine Harry for once, he had most rashly invented his own potion, which had curdled and formed a kind of purple dumpling at the bottom of his cauldron.

Malfoy was already packing up, sour-faced; Slughorn had pronounced his Hiccuping Solution merely 'passable.'

The bell rang and both Ernie and Malfoy left at once.

'Sir,' Harry began, but Slughorn immediately glanced over his shoulder; when he saw that the room was empty but for himself and Harry, he hurried away as fast as he could.

'Professor—Professor, don’t you want to taste my po—?' called Harry desperately.

But Slughorn had gone. Disappointed, Harry emptied the cauldron, packed up his things, left the dungeon, and walked slowly back to the common room.

Theodore and Allison returned in the late afternoon.

'Harry!' cried Allison as she entered the common room and gave him a hug. 'You won't believe this Harry, we both passed!'

'Oh hey, that's great news, congrats!' he said and gave her a quick kiss.

'Yes, she did great,' said Theodore as he entered. 'She thought she was going to Splintch, but just like me she Disapparated and Apparated perfectly.'

'I'm so happy for both of you,' said Tracey.

'And how did your class with Slughorn go?' asked Theodore.

'The class itself was fine, but I didn't get the memory, so its to plan B then,' said Harry, though still with a smile on his face from sharing in Theodore and Allison's joy.

They spent most of their dinner celebrating the two passing their Apparition exam, then by the time they set off back to the common room they were now discussing the continuing problem of Slughorn and the memory.

'Now then, Harry—are you going to continue all of our good luck and use the Felix Felicis tonight?' asked Tracey.

'Yeah, I s’pose I’d better,' said Harry. 'So I reckon I won't need all of it, not twelve hours’ worth, it can’t take all night...I’ll just take a mouthful. Two or three hours should do it.'

Allison went up to her dorm and got the Felix Felicis, and as they had only just seen Slughorn enter the Great Hall and knew that he liked to take time over meals, they lingered for a while in the common room, the plan being that Harry should go to Slughorn’s office once the teacher had had time to get back there. When the sun had sunk to the level of the treetops in the Forbidden Forest, they decided the moment had come, and after checking carefully that no one was particularly looking at them Allison handed Harry the tiny, gleaming bottle.

'Ok, here goes,' said Harry, and he raised the little bottle and took a carefully measured gulp, then handed the potion back to Allison for safe keeping.

'Well, how do you feel?' whispered Allison.

Harry did not answer for a moment. Then, slowly but surely, an exhilarating sense of infinite opportunity stole through him; he felt as though he could have done anything, anything at all...and getting the memory from Slughorn seemed suddenly not only possible, but positively easy...

He got to his feet, smiling, brimming with confidence.

'Excellent,' he said. 'Really excellent. Right...I’m going down to Hagrid’s.'

'What?' said Theodore, Allison, and Tracey together, looking aghast.

'Sorry, Harry—but you have to go get Slughorn's memory, remember?' said Tracey.

'No,' said Harry confidently. 'I’m going to Hagrid’s, I’ve got a good feeling about going to Hagrid’s.'

'You feel like being near Aragog's dead body?' asked Theodore, looking stunned.

'Yeah,' said Harry, pulling his Invisibility Cloak out of his bag. 'I feel like it’s the place to be tonight, you know what I mean?'

'No,' said all three of his friends again in unison, all looking positively alarmed now.

Ok

The face 💀💀 (I actually considered just slapping a paper with a smiley face/ a piece of cheese instead of a face)

Previous Chapters:

Chapter 1: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003622070

Chapter 2: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003623371

Chapter 3: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003624429

Chapter 4: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003627163

Chapter 5: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003627566

Chapter 6: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003628099

Chapter 7: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003629240

Chapter 8: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003629849

Chapter 9: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003633592

Chapter 10: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003636880

Chapter 11: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003637775

Chapter 12: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003637976

Chapter 13: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003644162

Chapter 14: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003647807

Chapter 15: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003659216

Chapter 16: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003662863

Chapter 17: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003666116

Chapter 18: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003669377

Chapter 19: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003676719

Chapter 20: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003693936

Chapter 21: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003700067

Chapter 22: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003700147

Chapter 23: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003700449

Chapter 24: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003714315

Chapter 25: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003737733

Tags: @Bellatrisblack @CatsAndRoblox @Rose.gold.kiisses @MeowTasticCat @Jellybean Jade

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Inquisitorial Squad

(Before I begin I thought I should say the last time I read all 7 books all the way through was 2017, so when I started this series in 2019 it was all still fresh in my mind, and for each chapter I read one or two chapters of the canon version to make sure I'm not missing anything. However the further this went along the longer it has been since I have fully read books 5, 6, and 7, as in it has been nearly 6 years, but in those six years I have watched all 8 films numerous times, so starting with book 4 I started thinking thing that only happened in the movies also happened in the books. Because of all this I thought the Inquisitorial Squad was introduced in November at the earliest, Valentines day at the latest, and had many ideas planed out for conflict between D.A. Slytherins and I.S. Slytherins, but after writing chapter after chapter of them not appearing I finally looked it up and learned they aren't introduced until AFTER Dumbledore is gone and the D.A. has been caught, I had to change that. So I know I try to be as book compliant as possible, but when it comes to the I.S. I hope you excuse the more film leaning content.

Now please enjoy this chapter.)

Harry’s question was answered the very next morning. When Colin’s Daily Prophet arrived, he and Theodore only gazed at the front cover for a moment before Theodore gave a yelp that caused everyone in the vicinity to stare at him.

‘What?’ said Harry, Allison, Tracey, and Terence simultaneously.

For an answer Colin and Theodore spread the newspaper on the table in front of them and pointed at ten black-and-white photographs that filled the whole of the front page, nine showing wizards’ faces and the tenth, a witch’s. Some of the people in the photographs were silently jeering; others were tapping their fingers on the frame of their pictures, looking insolent. Each picture was captioned with a name and the crime for which the person had been sent to Azkaban.

“Antonin Dolohov,” read the legend beneath a wizard with a long, pale, twisted face who was sneering up at Harry, “convicted of the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett,” which Harry knew were Mrs Weasley's brothers.

“Augustus Rookwood,” said the caption beneath a pockmarked man with greasy hair who was leaning against the edge of his picture, looking bored, “convicted of leaking Ministry of Magic Secrets to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

But Harry’s eyes were drawn to the picture of the witch. Her face had leapt out at him the moment he had seen the page. She had long, dark hair that looked unkempt and straggly in the picture, though he had seen it sleek, thick, and shining. She glared up at him through heavily lidded eyes, an arrogant, disdainful smile playing around her thin mouth. Like Sirius and Andromeda, she retained vestiges of great good looks, but something—perhaps Azkaban—had taken most of her beauty. “Bellatrix Lestrange, convicted of the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom.”

Theodore nudged Harry and pointed at the headline over the pictures, which Harry, concentrating on Bellatrix, had not yet read.

"MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN MINISTRY FEARS NOTT IS 'RALLYING POINT' FOR OLD DEATH EATERS"

'They think its your father?' said Harry loudly. 'Not—?'

'Quite!' whispered Theodore desperately. 'Don't draw attention to us—just read it!'

"The Ministry of Magic announced late last night that there has been a mass breakout from Azkaban.

Speaking to reporters in his private office, Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, confirmed that ten high-security prisoners escaped in the early hours of yesterday evening, and that he has already informed the Muggle Prime Minister of the dangerous nature of these individuals.

'We find ourselves, most unfortunately, in the same position we were two and a half years ago when the murderer Peter Pettigrew escaped,'” said Fudge last night. 'However with Pettigrew's death in the spring of 1994, we have another prime suspect. An escape of this magnitude suggests outside help, and we must remember that Morgan Nott, a Death Eater whose been avoiding authorities for nearly three years, would be ideally placed to help others follow in his footsteps. We think it likely that these individuals, who include Nott’s old classmate, Antonin Dolohov, have rallied around Nott as their leader. We are, however, doing all we can to round up the criminals and beg the magical community to remain alert and cautious. On no account should any of these individuals be approached.'"

'I don’t believe this,' said Harry in shock, 'Fudge is blaming the breakout on your father?'

Theodore looked pale, and taking a quick glance around the great hall Harry could see why. Just about everyone that knew Theodore's last name were sneaking nervous looks at him. They probably now saw Theodore as the relative of a man who just made the world ten times more dangerous, and being a Slytherin wasn't going to help. Harry was just greatful that everyone that actually mattered knew Theodore was nothing like his father.

Tracey tried to move the conversation away from Theodore's heritage, 'Fudge is committed to making sure the public still thinks You-Know-Who isn't back, so he'll say anything to try and preserve his lie, no matter how stupid.'

'Its getting dangerous though,' chimed Allison. 'The more the world is misinformed of who the threat is, the less prepared they'll be when attacks actually start to happen.'

Theodore borrowed the newspaper for his full use and began to read the report inside while Harry continued to look around the Great Hall. Some were still looking at Theodore menacingly, but Harry could not understand why his fellow students were not looking scared or at least discussing the terrible piece of news on the front page, but very few of them got the newspaper every day like Colin did. There they all were, talking about homework and Quidditch and who knew what other rubbish, and outside these walls ten more Death Eaters had swollen Voldemort’s ranks...

He glanced up at the staff table. It was a different story here:

Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were deep in conversation, both looking extremely grave. Professor Sprout had the Prophet propped against a bottle of ketchup and was reading the front page with such concentration that she was not noticing the gentle drip of egg yolk falling into her lap from her stationary spoon. Meanwhile, at the far end of the table, Professor Umbridge was tucking into a bowl of porridge. For once her pouchy toad’s eyes were not sweeping the Great Hall looking for misbehaving students. She scowled as she gulped down her food and every now and then she shot a malevolent glance up the table to where Dumbledore and McGonagall were talking so intently.

‘Oh no, I can’t believe it—‘ said Theodore wonderingly, still staring at the newspaper.

‘What now?’ said Harry quickly; he was feeling jumpy.

‘I don’t have words...it’s terrible,’ said Theodore, looking shaken. He folded back page ten of the newspaper and spread it out for the whole group to see.

“TRAGIC DEMISE OF MINISTRY OF MAGIC WORKER

St. Mungo’s Hospital promised a full inquiry last night after Ministry of Magic worker Broderick Bode, 49, was discovered dead in his bed, strangled by a potted-plant.

Healers called to the scene were unable to revive Mr Bode, who had been injured in a workplace accident some weeks prior to his death. Healer Miriam Strout, who was in charge of Mr Bode’s ward at the time of the incident, has been suspended on full pay and was unavailable for comment yesterday, but a spokeswizard for the hospital said in a statement, ‘St. Mungo’s deeply regrets the death of Mr Bode, whose health was improving steadily prior to this tragic accident.’

‘We have strict guidelines on the decorations permitted on our wards but it appears that Healer Strout, busy over the Christmas period, overlooked the dangers of the plant on Mr Bode’s bedside table. As his speech and mobility improved, Healer Strout encouraged Mr Bode to look after the plant himself, unaware that it was not an innocent Flitterbloom, but a cutting of Devil’s Snare, which, when touched by the convalescent Mr Bode, throttled him instantly.’

St. Mungo’s is as yet unable to account for the presence of the plant on the ward and asks any witch or wizard with information to come forward.”

‘Bode...’ said Harry. ‘Bode. It rings a bell...’

‘That’s because we saw him, Harry,’ Theodore whispered. ‘When Lockhart invites us for a visit, Mr Bode was the man in the bed opposite to Lockhart’s, he was the one just lying there, staring at the ceiling. We even watched the Devil’s Snare arrive. Strout—the Healer—she had said it was a Christmas present...’

Harry looked back at the story. A feeling of horror was rising like bile in his throat.

‘How come we didn’t recognize Devil’s Snare..? We’ve seen it before...we could’ve stopped this from happening...’

Colin took his boyfriends hand in his but looked at both Theodore and Harry as he spoke.

‘Neither of you guys could have known, it’s not your fault, so don’t blame yourselves for even a second. It says in here it looked just like a regular plant. Whoever sent it is the one to blame, not either of you.’

‘What jerk gifts someone Devil’s Snare?’ said Tracey in disbelief.

‘Tracey, no offence, but this was no gift,’ said Allison, quite stone faced. ‘This was one of the most deadly plants in the magical world made to look harmless. It was also sent to a Ministry worker who had already barely survived an “accident”. This was murder. Someone learned not only had he survived but was recovering and wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.’

‘Bloody hell, and I’m guessing it was gifted anonymously or with a false name,’ said Theodore. ‘The aurors are going to find it near impossible to find who’s responsible.’

Harry was not thinking about Devil’s Snare. He was remembering taking the lift down to the ninth level of the Ministry on the day of his hearing, and the sallow-faced man who had got in on the Atrium level.

‘I met Bode,’ he said slowly. ‘I saw him at the Ministry with Mr Weasley...’

Tracey’s eye’s lit up for a moment, ‘Now that you mention it Harry, I think my mother has mentioned Mr Bode once or twice. I believe he was an Unspeakable, so he probably worked in the Department of Mysteries. This can’t be a coincidence.’

They looked at one another for a moment, Theodore eventually gave Colin his newspaper back, but then Allison suddenly stood up despite not having finished her breakfast. She looked serious and determined.

‘Where are you going?’ said Harry, startled.

‘I need to send an owl or two,’ said Allison, swinging her bag onto her shoulder. ‘It might not work so I am not going to get any of your hopes up...I’ll see you all in class...’

‘Hopes up or not,’ said Tracey, ‘I wish she would tell us.’

They finished eating, Colin and Terence went their separate ways, while Harry, Tracey, and Theodore started making their way towards the Great Hall exit.

‘Morning Hagrid, how are you?’ said Tracey.

Hagrid was standing beside the doors into the entrance hall, waiting for a crowd of Ravenclaws to pass. He was still as heavily bruised as he had been on the day he had come back from his mission to the giants and there was a new cut right across the bridge of his nose.

‘All righ’, you three?’ he said, trying to muster a smile but managing only a kind of pained grimace.

‘Are you okay, Hagrid?’ asked Harry, following him as he lumbered after the Ravenclaws.

‘Fine, fine,’ said Hagrid with a feeble assumption of airiness; he waved a hand and narrowly missed concussing a frightened-looking Professor Vector, who was passing. ‘Jus’ busy, yeh know, usual stuff—lessons ter prepare—couple o’ salamanders got scale rot—an’ I’m on probation,’ he mumbled.

‘You’re on probation?’ said Tracey very loudly, so that many students passing looked around curiously. ‘Sorry—er—so you’re on probation?’ she whispered.

‘Yeah,’ said Hagrid. ‘’S’no more’n I expected, ter tell yeh the truth. Yeh migh’ not’ve picked up on it, bu’ that inspection didn’ go too well, yeh know...anyway,’ he sighed deeply. ‘Bes’ go an rub a bit more chili powder on them salamanders or their tails’ll be hangin’ off ’em next. See yeh, Harry...Tracey...Theodore...’

He trudged away, out the front doors and down the stone steps into the damp grounds. Harry watched him go, wondering how much more bad news he could stand.

The fact that Hagrid was now on probation became common knowledge within the school over the next few days, but to Harry’s indignation, hardly anybody appeared to be upset about it; indeed, some people, Draco Malfoy prominent among them, seemed positively gleeful. As for the freakish death of an obscure Department of Mysteries employee in St. Mungo’s, Harry and his friends seemed to be the only people who knew or cared.

There was only one topic of conversation in the corridors now: the ten escaped Death Eaters, whose story had finally filtered through the school from those few people who read the newspapers. Rumors were flying that some of the convicts had been spotted in Hogsmeade, that they were supposed to be hiding out in the Shrieking Shack and that they were going to break into Hogwarts, just as Peter Pettigrew had done.

Those who came from Wizarding families had grown up hearing the names of these Death Eaters spoken with almost as much fear as Voldemort’s; the crimes they had committed during the days of Voldemort’s reign of terror were legendary. There were relatives of their victims among the Hogwarts students, who now found themselves the unwilling objects of a gruesome sort of reflected fame as they walked the corridors: his old friend Susan Bones, who had her parents, an uncle, aunt, and cousins all died at the hands of one of the ten, said miserably during History of Magic that she now had a good idea what it felt like to be Harry.

‘And I don’t know how you stand it, it’s horrible,’ she said bluntly. It was true that Susan had lost more people to the war than Harry had, and yet up until now she had never once been treated differently than any other student at Hogwarts.

And yet despite some of the attention being diverted, Harry was the subject of much renewed muttering and pointing in the corridors these days, yet he thought he detected a slight difference in the tone of the whisperers’ voices. They sounded curious rather than hostile now, and once or twice he was sure he overheard snatches of conversation that suggested that the speakers were not satisfied with the Prophet’s version of how and why ten Death Eaters had managed to break out of Azkaban fortress. In their confusion and fear, these doubters now seemed to be turning to the only other explanation available to them, the one that Harry and Dumbledore had been expounding since the previous year.

It was not only the students’ mood that had changed. It was now quite common to come across two or three teachers conversing in low, urgent whispers in the corridors, breaking off their conversations the moment they saw students approaching.

‘I think it’s because the staff room isn’t safe for them now,’ said Tracey in a low voice, as she, Harry, Allison, and Theodore passed Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout huddled together outside the Charms classroom one day. ‘Not with Umbridge there.’

‘Do you think they have information Sirius hasn’t gotten to tell us yet?’ said Theodore, looking back at the three teachers for a moment longer.

‘If they do, we’re not going to hear about it, are we?’ said Harry angrily. ‘Not after Decree...What number are we on now?’

For a new sign had appeared on the house notice board the morning after news of the Azkaban breakout:

“—by order of—

The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts

Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-six.

Signed:

high inquisitor Dolores Umbridge”

This latest decree had been the subject of a great number of jokes among the students. The Weasley twin’s friend Lee Jordan had pointed out to Umbridge that by the terms of the new rule she was not allowed to tell Fred and George off for playing Exploding Snap in the back of the class.

‘Exploding Snap’s got nothing to do with Defense Against the Dark Arts, Professor! That’s not information relating to your subject!’

When Harry next saw Lee, the back of his hand was bleeding rather badly. Harry recommended essence of murtlap.

Harry had thought that the breakout from Azkaban might have humbled Umbridge a little, that she might have been abashed at the catastrophe that had occurred right under her beloved Fudge’s nose. It seemed, however, to have only intensified her furious desire to bring every aspect of life at Hogwarts under her personal control. She seemed determined at the very least to achieve a sacking before long, and the only question was whether it would be Professor Trelawney or Hagrid who went first.

Every single Divination and Care of Magical Creatures lesson was now conducted in the presence of Umbridge and her clipboard. She lurked by the fire in the heavily perfumed tower room, interrupting Professor Trelawney’s increasingly hysterical talks with difficult questions about Ornithomancy and Heptomology, insisting that she predict students’ answers before they gave them and demanding that she demonstrate her skill at the crystal ball, the tea leaves, and the rune stones in turn. Harry thought that Professor Trelawney might soon crack under the strain; several times he passed her in the corridors (in itself a very unusual occurrence as she generally remained in her tower room), muttering wildly to herself, wringing her hands, and shooting terrified glances over her shoulder, all the time giving off a powerful smell of cooking sherry. If he had not been so worried about Hagrid, he would have felt sorry for her—but if one of them was to be ousted out of a job, there could be only one choice for Harry as to who should remain.

Unfortunately, Harry could not see that Hagrid was putting up a better show than Trelawney. Though he seemed to be following Theodore and Canini’s advice and had shown them nothing more frightening than a crup, a creature indistinguishable from a Jack Russell terrier except for its forked tail, since before Christmas, he also seemed to have lost his nerve. He was oddly distracted and jumpy in lessons, losing the thread of what he was saying while talking to the class, answering questions wrongly and glancing anxiously at Umbridge all the time. He was also more distant with Harry, and his friends than he had ever been before, expressly forbidding them to visit him after dark.

'If she catches yeh, it’ll be all of our necks on the line,' he told them flatly, and with no desire to do anything that jeopardized his job further, they abstained from walking down to his hut in the evenings.

It seemed to Harry that Umbridge was steadily depriving him of everything that made his life at Hogwarts worth living: visits to Hagrid’s house, letters from Sirius, his Firebolt, and Quidditch. He took his revenge the only way he had: redoubling his efforts for the D.A.

Harry was pleased to see that all of them, even Zacharias Smith, had been spurred to work harder than ever by the news that ten more Death Eaters were now on the loose, a pleasant landmark in Harry's hard work paying off was when the very first successful Patronus Charm was cast, unsurprisingly by Tracey. For about a minute she was able to produce a silvery Monarch Butterfly that fluttered around her and the room.

However not even Tracey was improving more pronouncedly than Neville. The news of his parents’ attacker’s escape had wrought a strange and even slightly alarming change in him. He had not once mentioned his meeting with Harry, Theodore, and Canini on the closed ward in St. Mungo’s, and taking their lead from him, they had kept quiet about it too. Nor had he said anything on the subject of Bellatrix and her fellow torturers’ escape; in fact, he barely spoke during D.A. meetings anymore, but worked relentlessly on every new jinx and countercurse Harry taught them, his plump face screwed up in concentration, apparently indifferent to injuries or accidents, working harder than anyone else in the room. He was improving so fast it was quite unnerving and when Harry taught them the Shield Charm, a means of deflecting minor jinxes so that they rebounded upon the attacker, only Tracey and Hermione Granger mastered the charm faster than Neville.

In fact Harry would have given a great deal to be making as much progress at Occlumency as Neville was making during D.A. meetings. Harry’s sessions with Snape, which had started badly enough, were not improving; on the contrary, Harry felt he was getting worse with every lesson.

Before he had started studying Occlumency, his scar had prickled occasionally, usually during the night, or else following one of those strange flashes of Voldemort’s thoughts or moods that he experienced every now and then. Nowadays, however, his scar hardly ever stopped prickling, and he often felt lurches of annoyance or cheerfulness that were unrelated to what was happening to him at the time, which were always accompanied by a particularly painful twinge from his scar. He had the horrible impression that he was slowly turning into a kind of aerial that was tuned in to tiny fluctuations in Voldemort’s mood, and he was sure he could date this increased sensitivity firmly from his first Occlumency lesson with Snape. What was more, he was now dreaming about walking down the corridor toward the entrance to the Department of Mysteries almost every night, dreams that always culminated in him standing longingly in front of the plain black door.

'Perhaps it is similar to working out to gain strength?' said Allison, looking concerned when Harry confided in her and the others. 'How you get very sore, or even tare a muscle before you can get strong.'

'Maybe, but it’s lessons with Snape that are making it worse, and I don't feel any stronger yet,' said Harry flatly. 'I’m getting sick of my scar hurting, and I’m getting bored walking down that corridor every night.' He rubbed his forehead angrily. 'I just wish the door would open, I’m sick of standing staring at it—'

'Harry...that isn't good,' said Tracey sharply. 'Dreaming about that hall and door was why Dumbledore asked Snape to give you those lesson in the first place. You have to truly try to master this skill.’

‘I am trying!’ said Harry, nettled. ‘You attempt to do Occlumency sometime, Snape trying to get inside your head, it’s not a bundle of laughs, you know!’

‘Perhaps...’ said Theodore in a depressed voice.

‘Perhaps what?’ said Allison curiously.

‘Well, perhaps there is a reason Harry isn’t making much progress in his lessons,’ said Theodore down heartedly, and Harry suspected where this was going. ‘What is Professor Snape purposely not teaching Harry correctly so that his mind stays vulnerable to You-Know-Who, maybe even making him more vulnerable than he was before?’

Theodore had always looked up to Snape, he respected him, he had before his father abandoned him, and almost more so afterwards. When he learned however over a years ago that Snape had also been a Death Eater just like his father, Theodore felt betrayed, similar to how he felt about his father. Since then Harry thought Theodore had slowly regained his trust in Snape after learning he was apart of the Order of the Phoenix, and perhaps he had somewhat, but it was clear now that some of that animosity was still there.

‘You’re wrong,’ said Tracey, a little irritated. ‘Dumbledore trusts Snape and entrusted this task to him. We’ve been wrong about not trusting Snape so many times before, it would be silly to go down that spiral once more.’

‘She is right,’ said Allison stoically, ‘If we can not trust Dumbledore’s decisions, then we are truest lost.’

With so much to worry about and so much to do—startling amounts of homework that frequently kept the fifth years working until past midnight, secret D.A. meetings, and regular classes with Snape—it was the end of January before anyone had realized. On its final day came a new decree.

“—by order of—

The High Inquisitor of Hogwarts

Those wishing to join the Inquisitorial Squad for extra credit may sign up in the High Inquisitor's office.

The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven.

Signed:

high inquisitor Dolores Umbridge”

They didn’t understand what this meant when they first saw the new decree, but at their next Charms class it soon became quite clear.

The new charm they were learning was the Growth Charm, and it was rather tricky. Most were standing and practicing on small foot stools Flitwick had brought out, but Pansy and her gang were sitting in their chairs from the lecture, hardly practicing at all.

Then suddenly Ravenclaw Terry Boot, whose wand hand had been shaking slightly from nerves, accidentally missed his stool and his spell hit the chair Goyle was sitting on. The charm was successful however as the chair grew more than three times its normal size, and putting Goyle so high he nearly hit his head on the ceiling.

As Goyle slowly tried to descend from his chair, Pansy, Blaise, and Crabbe quickly surrounded Terry. Probably wanting to defend her second cousin, Allison was by Terry’s side in an instant, and sensing a potential fight coming Harry and his friends joined her.

‘Boot, Boot, Boot,’ said Pansy in a voice that pretended to be disappointed, but in reality she was smiling maniacally from ear to ear. ‘You nearly got someone killed. I’m going to have to take some points away from Ravenclaw.’

‘You’re being fooling Pansy,’ said to Terry’s defense, ‘you may be a Prefect, but only professors can dock House points.

‘Well it’s a good thing I’m not just a Prefect anymore,’ she said while tapping a tiny silver “I” upon her robes just beneath her prefect’s badge, and the rest of her gang included Goyle who had managed to get back to the ground all pointed at an identical badge they each had.

‘What even is that?’ asked Allison, quite annoyed.

‘It’s the badge of the Inquisitorial Squad,’ said Draco Malfoy, who had just half heartedly walked up to join the conversation. ‘And she is correct that members can take away points.’

‘And I’m their leader,’ said Pansy with pride. ‘Well, besides Umbridge. Anyway, I’ll be deducting five points from you Terry for what you did to Goyle.’

‘But I just missed my target, I’m sorry,’ pleaded Terry, ‘it’s not like anyone got hurt’

‘But you could have, another couple meters and he’d be squished on the ceiling. You aren’t very empathic to what you almost did,’ chimed in Blaise.

‘So yes, that’s five points, and I think another five points for questioning me, Boot,’ said Pansy while laughing and her and her group walked away.

‘Next time I’m going to hit her with the Fire-Making Charm,’ muttered Terry, pulling out his wand ‘and it won’t be an accident.’

But Allison grabbed his arm, ‘Just don’t, she’s not worth it.’

They soon learned that anyone could apply to be a member of the Inquisitorial Squad, but Umbridge was only letting the meanest and most bigoted Slytherins join their ranks. Besides Pansy and her squad and Malfoy, there were older students like Graham Montague, Cassius Warrington, and to Harry’s surprise many younger Slytherins like the duelist William Harper, Mafalda Prewett, Uchi Akimbo, Thomas McGruder, Agnes Monkleigh, blood purist Timothy Morcott, Zoe Accrington, Maxwell Lazenby, Selina Moore.

They targeted almost always Houses other than their own, and nearly entirely students who were half-blood, muggleborn, or had any non human ancestry. Poor Canini walked around like a nervous wreck always worrying one of its members would learn her secret.

The bad new kept pouring in as one lunch Terence broke some frustrating news at supper on Friday.

‘Adrian had been doing so well on the team, he was getting along well with most of the members and because he had been training on his own for years I was sure he was going to do great at our next match at the end of the month, but earlier today Warrington cornered me a said I should replace Adrian with that thug Graham Montague.’

‘You told him no, right?’ questioned Harry.

‘Oh I laughed loudly in his face—‘ this got a short giggle out of Tracey. However Terence’s then went quite serious. ‘—But he then implied if I didn’t replace Adrian with Montague that he would get Umbridge to kick me off the team and make him Captain.’

‘What did you say,’ Allison asked quietly.

‘At first I was going to say go ahead and kick me off and that I didn’t want to be on a team with three Inquisitorial Squad members, but I then realized if Warrington really did become Captain he would likely replace you, Scarlett, and Niall, so the team would end up being worse then it was while under Flint. I wasn’t going to let that happen so I reluctantly agreed,’ Terence’s head drooped in defeat.

Harry put a hand on his friends back and gave it a pat, ‘You did what you thought was right. At least this way you can try to impede Warrington and Montague’s harassment of other teams.’

Terence looked even more miserable though after Harry said that, ‘It’s not even just those two that are bullying the other teams. Even though he quit at the being of the year, I just learned that Miles has joined the Inquisitorial Squad. I knew he was a bit of a jerk but I never thought he was this bad. He’ll likely be joining Montague and Warrington on their quest to make everyone’s lives miserable.’

As though saying there names had summoned them, Cassius Warrington and Graham Montague has been walking up the isle along the Slytherin table, and when Warrington’s eyes caught sight of Theodore and Colin eating together, Harry knew that something bad was about to happen.

‘Hey Nott,’ said Montage as he and Warrington toward over Theodore, who rolled his eyes and reluctantly turned around to face them, ‘Are you happy your father has ten new friends to come and rescue you?’

‘Ignore them,’ Harry heard Colin whisper as a warning.

‘I plan too,’ Theodore quietly responded.

‘Or are you worried he might actually want to kill you after willingly spending all your time with the pathetic Harry Potter,’ continued Montague.

It was clear to Cassius though that this wasn’t working so he decided to change tactics.

‘It is a shame that a Pureblooded Slytherin like yourself Nott, with such powerful heritage, isn’t a part of the great Inquisitorial Squad—‘ said Warrington vilely.

Colin got to his feet and stood in Warrington’s way, although Collin had grown quite a lot since Harry first met in several years ago, he still was almost a head shorter than the older teen standing in front of him.

‘Leave him alone,’ said Colin, trying to sound as tough as possible.

‘—We’d ask Umbridge to let you join, but we don’t want someone who thinks a poor grimy mousey mudblood is worth snogging’ and to finish his statement he shoved Colin, who didn’t fall, but had to take several wobbly steps backwards to regain his balance. This act caused a lot students in the surrounding area to laugh, but none laughed as hard as Cassius Warrington.

Harry didn’t even witness Theodore stand up, but the next thing he knew Theodore had punched Warrington in the gut, who collapsed to his knees clutching his stomach. Theodore had started primal yelling at the downed bully, and looked like he was about to kick him but by this point Harry, Tracey, Allison, and Terence had all jumped to there feet and were trying there best to hold their friend back.

It only took a moment of them all holding him for Theodore to start calming down, they were even one by one letting him go, when they heard a frantic warning from Colin from behind them.

‘Look ou—‘

'Flipendo!' yelled a familiar high pitched voice. With a loud bang and a flash of white light Harry, Theodore, Tracey, Allison, and Terence all got knocked back and fell onto the ground hard.

Harry was a little disoriented, but even with his head still spinning he knew it was Umbridge who had cast the jinx.

'I have never seen such violence in these halls! Detention Mr Nott! A weeks worth!' she said furiously, then forcibly calmed herself and turned to Warrington. 'Come Cassius, lets get you to Madam Pomfrey.'

Harry wanted to protest that Warrington had started it by shoving Colin, but he knew Umbridge wouldn't care. Instead as the evil bat walked away Harry helped Theodore and Tracey to their feet. After quickly thanking Harry, Theodore went to his boyfriend who was rubbing his chest where Warrington had shoved him.

'Are you hurt?'

'No, so you shouldn't have done that,' Colin said while trying to sound mad, but his face kept showing he was impressed. 'Now Umbridge is going to torture you with that pen of hers.'

'Don't worry about me, I'll manage,' said Theodore, and a smile came over his face. 'It was worth it to defend you and to finally show those cowardly bullies what a true Slytherin is.'

Theodore may have felt his actions were justified, but Harry could help fear that conflicts like this within their own Hogwarts House were only going to get worse.

🏳‍🌈🌈To celebrate the start of this month I thought I'd share my lgbt headcanons for different Harry Potter characters which has expanded from the one I made last year.

This is just my opinion and feel free to share your lgbt headcanons as well!

Harry is bi-curious

Tracey Davis is pansexual

Luna Lovegood is trans (mtf)

Rolf Scamander is also trans (ftm)

Nymphadora is bisexual and GNC

Tulip Karasu is bi but leans more towards women and nb people

Sirius is gay

Remus is bisexual

Theodore Nott is bi but leans more towards men

Colin Creevey is gay

Daphne and Millicent are both lesbians and in love

Susan Bones is homoromantic and her aunt Amelia is aroace and Susan is dating Lily Moon

Hannah Abbott is genderfluid and uses the title Mx

Draco is closeted bi

Albus Potter is gay

Scorpio is pan

Charlie Weasley is obviously aroace

Bill is bi

Fleur is queer, and Veela are intersex

Poppy Pomfrey is a lesbian