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
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@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972 @Mega.mind.harry.potter
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Sacking of Severus Snape
The moment her finger touched the Mark, Harry’s scar burned savagely, the starry room vanished from sight, and he was standing upon an overcrop of rock beneath a cliff, and the sea was washing around him and there was triumph in his heart—They have the boy.
A loud bang brought Harry back to where he stood: Disoriented, he raised his wand, but the witch before him was already falling forward; she hit the ground so hard that the glass in the bookcases tinkled.
‘I’ve never had the chance to Stun anyone except in our D.A. lessons,’ said Luna, sounding mildly interested. ‘That was noisier than I thought it would be.’
And sure enough, the ceiling had begun to tremble. Scurrying, echoing footsteps were growing louder from behind the door leading to the dormitories: Luna’s spell had woken Ravenclaws sleeping above.
‘Luna, where are you? I need to get under the Cloak!’
Luna’s small feet appeared out of nowhere; he hurried to her side and she let the Cloak fall back over them as the door opened and a stream of Ravenclaws, all in their nightclothes, flooded into the common room. There were gasps and cries of surprise as they saw Alecto lying there unconscious. Slowly they shuffled in around her, a savage beast that might wake at any moment and attack them. Then one brave little first-year darted up to her and prodded her backside with his big toe.
‘I think she might be dead!’ he shouted with delight.
‘Oh, look,’ whispered Luna happily, as the Ravenclaws crowded in around Alecto. ‘They’re pleased!’
‘Yeah...great...’
Harry closed his eyes, and as his scar throbbed he chose to sink again into Voldemort’s mind...He was moving along the tunnel into the first cave...He had chosen to make sure of the locket before coming…but that would not take him long…
There was a rap on the common room door and every Ravenclaw froze. From the other side, Harry heard the soft, musical voice that issued from the eagle door knocker:
‘Where do Vanished objects go?’
‘I dunno, do I? Shut it!’ snarled an uncouth voice that Harry knew was that of the Carrow brother, Amycus. ‘Alecto? Alecto? Are you there? Have you got him? Open the door!’
The Ravenclaws were whispering amongst themselves, terrified.
Then, without warning, there came a series of loud bangs, as though somebody was firing a gun into the door.
‘ALECTO! If he comes, and we haven’t got Potter—d’you want to go the same way as the Malfoys? ANSWER ME!’ Amycus bellowed, shaking the door for all he was worth, but still it did not open. The Ravenclaws were all backing away, and some of the most frightened began scampering back up the staircase to their beds. Then, just as Harry was wondering whether he ought not to blast the door open and Stun Amycus before the Death Eater could do anything else, a second, most familiar voice rang out beyond the door.
‘May I ask what you are doing, Professor Carrow?’
‘Trying—to get—through this damned—door!’ shouted Amycus. ‘Go and get Flitwick! Get him to open it, now!’
‘But isn’t your sister in there?’ asked Professor McGonagall. ‘Didn’t Professor Flitwick let her in earlier this evening, at your urgent request? Perhaps she could open the door for you? Then you needn’t wake up half the castle.’
‘She ain’t answering, you old besom! You open it! Garn! Do it, now!’
‘Certainly, if you wish it,’ said Professor McGonagall, with awful coldness. There was a gentle tap of the knocker and the musical voice asked again.
‘Where do Vanished objects go?’
‘Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything,’ replied Professor McGonagall.
‘Nicely phrased,’ replied the eagle door knocker, and the door swung open.
The few Ravenclaws who had remained behind sprinted for the stairs as Amycus burst over the threshold, brandishing his wand. Hunched like his sister, he had a pallid, doughy face and tiny eyes, which fell at once on Alecto, sprawled motionless on the floor. He let out a yell of fury and fear.
‘What’ve they done, the little whelps?’ he screamed. ‘I’ll Cruciate the lot of ’em till they tell me who did it—and what’s the Dark Lord going to say?’ he shrieked, standing over his sister and smacking himself on the forehead with his fist, ‘We haven’t got him, and they’ve gone and killed her!’
‘She’s only Stunned,’ said Professor McGonagall impatiently, who had stooped down to examine Alecto. ‘She’ll be perfectly all right.’
‘No she bludgering well won’t!’ bellowed Amycus. ‘Not after the Dark Lord gets hold of her! She’s gone and sent for him, I felt me Mark burn, and he thinks we’ve got Potter!’
‘Got Potter?’ said Professor McGonagall sharply. ‘What do you mean, “got Potter”?’
‘He told us Potter might try and get inside Ravenclaw Tower, and to send for him if we caught him!’
‘Why would Harry Potter try to get inside Ravenclaw Tower? Potter belongs in Horace’s House!’
‘We was told he might come in here!’ said Carrow. ‘I dunno why, do I?’
Professor McGonagall stood up and her beady eyes swept the room. Twice they passed right over the place where Harry and Luna stood.
‘We can push it off on the kids,’ said Amycus, his piglike face suddenly crafty. ‘Yeah, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll say Alecto was ambushed by the kids, them kids up there’—he looked up at the starry ceiling toward the dormitories—‘and we’ll say they forced her to press the Mark, and that’s why he got a false alarm…He can punish them. Couple of kids more or less, what’s the difference?’
‘Only the difference between truth and lies, courage and cowardice,’ said Professor McGonagall, who had turned pale, ‘a difference, in short, which you and your sister seem unable to appreciate. But let me make one thing very clear. You are not going to pass off your many ineptitudes on the students of Hogwarts. I shall not permit it.’
Pride in McGonagall’s words warmed Harry’s heart.
‘Excuse me?’
Amycus moved forward until he was offensively close to Professor McGonagall, his face within inches of hers. She refused to back away, but looked down at him as if he were something disgusting she had found stuck to a lavatory seat.
‘It’s not a case of what you’ll permit, Minerva McGonagall. You time’s over. It’s us what’s in charge here now, and you’ll back me up or you’ll pay the price.’
And he spat in her face.
Harry pulled the Cloak off himself, raised his wand, and said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, ‘Crucio!’
The Death Eater was lifted off his feet. He writhed through the air like a drowning man, thrashing and howling in pain, and then, with a crunch and a shattering of glass, he smashed into the front of a bookcase and crumpled, insensible, to the floor.
‘I see what Bellatrix meant,’ said Harry, the blood thundering through his brain, ‘you need to really mean it.’
‘Potter!’ whispered Professor McGonagall, clutching her heart. ‘Potter—you’re here! What—? How—?’
She struggled to pull herself together. ‘Potter, that was foolish!’
‘He spat at you,’ said Harry.
‘Potter, I—that was very—very gallant of you—but don’t you realize —?’
‘Yeah, I do,’ Harry assured her. Somehow her panic steadied him. ‘Professor McGonagall, Voldemort’s on the way.’
‘Oh, are we allowed to say the name now?’ asked Luna with an air of interest, pulling off the Invisibility Cloak. This appearance of a second outlaw seemed to overwhelm Professor McGonagall, who staggered backward and fell into a nearby chair, clutching at the neck of her old tartan dressing gown.
‘I don’t think it makes any difference what we call him,’ Harry told Luna. ‘He already knows where I am.’
In a distant part of Harry’s brain, that part connected to the angry, burning scar, he could see Voldemort sailing fast over the dark lake in the ghostly green boat…He had nearly reached the island where the stone basin stood…
‘You must flee,’ whispered Professor McGonagall. ‘Now, Potter, as quickly as you can!’
‘I can’t,’ said Harry. ‘There’s something I need to do. Professor, do you know where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?’
‘The d–diadem of Ravenclaw? Of course not—hasn’t it been lost for centuries?’ She sat up a little straighter. ‘Potter, it was madness, utter madness, for you to enter this castle—‘
‘I had to,’ said Harry. ‘Professor, there’s something hidden here that I’m supposed to find, something to stop Voldemort, and it could be the diadem—if I could just speak to Professor Flitwick—‘
There was a sound of movement, of clinking glass: Amycus was coming around. Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet, pointing her want at the groggy Death Eater, and said, ‘Imperio.’
Amycus got up, walked over to his sister, picked up her wand, then shuffled obediently to Professor McGonagall and handed it over along with his own. Then he lay down on the floor beside Alecto. Professor McGonagall waved her wand again, and a length of shimmering silver rope appeared out of thin air and snaked around the Carrows, binding them tightly together, and finally she muttered, ‘Mimblewimble,’ which Harry knew would keep the two Death Eater siblings from speaking.
‘Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall, turning to face him again with superb indifference to the Carrows’ predicament, ‘if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named does indeed know that you are here—‘
As she said it, a wrath that was like physical pain blazed through Harry, setting his scar on fire, and for a second he looked down upon a basin whose potion had turned clear, and saw that no golden locket lay safe beneath the surface—
‘Potter, are you all right?’ said a voice, and Harry came back. He was clutching Luna’s shoulder to steady himself.
‘Time’s running out, Voldemort’s getting nearer. Professor, I’m acting on Dumbledore’s orders, I must find what he wanted me to find! But we’ve got to get the students out while I’m searching the castle—It’s me Voldemort wants, but he won’t care about killing any kid who gets in his way, especially not now—‘ not now that he knows I’m attacking Horcruxes. Harry finished the sentence in his head.
‘You’re acting on Dumbledore’s orders?’ she repeated with a look of dawning wonder. Then she drew herself up to her fullest height. ‘We shall secure the school against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named while you search for this—this object.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘I think so,’ said Professor McGonagall dryly, ‘we teachers are rather good at magic, you know. I am sure we will be able to hold him off for a while if we all put out best efforts into it. Of course, something will have to be done about Professor Snape—‘
‘Let me—‘
‘—and if Hogwarts is about to enter a stage of siege, with the Dark Lord at the gates, it would indeed be advisable to take as many innocent people out of the way as possible. With the Floo network under observation, and Apparition impossible within the grounds—‘
‘There’s a way,’ said Harry quickly, and he explained about the passageway leading into the Hog’s Head.
‘Potter, we’re talking about hundreds of students—‘
‘I know, Professor, but if Voldemort and the Death Eaters are concentrating on the school boundaries they won’t be interested in anyone who’s Disapparating out of Hog’s Head.’
‘There’s something in that,’ she agreed. She pointed her wand at the Carrows, and a silver net fell upon their bound bodies, tied itself around them, and hoisted them into the air, where they dangled beneath the blue-and-gold ceiling like two large, ugly sea creatures. ‘Come. We must alert the other Heads of House. You’d better put that Cloak back on.’
She marched toward the door, and as she did so she raised her wand. From the tip burst three silver cats with spectacle markings around their eyes. The Patronuses ran sleekly ahead, filling the spiral staircase with silvery light, as Professor McGonagall, Harry, and Luna hurried back down.
Along the corridors they raced, and one by one the Patronuses left them; Professor McGonagall’s tartan dressing gown rustled over the floor, and Harry and Luna jogged behind her under the Cloak.
They had descended two more floors when another set of quiet footsteps joined theirs, Harry, whose scar was still prickling, heard them first. He felt in the pouch around his neck for the Marauder’s Map, but before he could take it out, McGonagall too seemed to become aware of their company, She halted, raised her wand ready to duel, and said, ‘Who’s there?’
‘It is I,’ said a low voice.
From behind a suit of armour stepped Severus Snape.
Hatred boiled up in Harry at the sight of him: He had forgotten the details of Snape’s appearance in the magnitude of his crimes, forgotten how his greasy black hair hung in curtains around his thin face, how his black eyes had a dead, cold look. He was not wearing nightclothes, but was dressed in his usual black cloak, and he too was holding his wand ready for a fight.
‘Where are the Carrows?’ he asked quietly.
‘Wherever you told them to be, I expect, Severus,’ said Professor McGonagall.
Snape stopped nearer, and his eyes flitted over Professor McGonagall into the air around her, as if he knew that Harry was there. Harry held up his wand tip too, ready to attack.
‘I was under the impression,’ said Snape, ‘that Alecto had apprehended an intruder.’
‘Really?’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘And what gave you that impression?’
Snape made a slight flexing movement of his left arm, where the Dark Mark was branded into his skin.
‘Oh, but naturally,’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘You Death Eaters have your own private means of communication, I forgot.’
Snape pretended not to have heard her. His eyes were still probing the air all about her, and he was moving gradually closer, with an air of hardly noticing what he was doing.
‘I did not know that it was your night to patrol the corridors, Minerva.’
‘You have some objection?’
‘I wonder what could have brought you out of your bed at this hour?’
‘I thought I heard a disturbance,’ said Professor McGonagall.
‘Really? But all seems calm.’
Snape looked into her eyes.
‘Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva? Because if you have, I must insist—‘
Professor McGonagall moved faster than Harry could have believed: Her wand slashed through the air and for a split second Harry thought that Snape must crumple, unconscious, but the swiftness of his Shield Charm was such that McGonagall was thrown off balance. She brandished her wand at a torch on the wall and it flew out of its bracket. Harry, about to curse Snape, was forced to pull Luna out of the way of the descending flames, which became a ring of fire that filled the corridor and flew like a lasso at Snape—
Then it was no longer fire, but a great black serpent that McGonagall blasted to smoke, which re-formed and solidified in seconds to become a swarm of pursuing daggers. Snape avoided them only be forcing the suit of armour in front of him, and with echoing clang, the dagger sank, one after another, into the breast—
‘Minerva!’ said a squeaky voice, and looking behind him, still shielding Luna from flying spells, Harry saw Professor Flitwick and Sprout sprinting up the corridor toward them in the nightclothes, with the enormous Professor Slughorn panting along at the rear.
‘No!’ squeaking Flitwick, raising his wand. ‘You’ll do more murder at Hogwarts!’
Flitwick’s spell hit the suit of armour behind which Snap had taken shelter: With a clatter it came to life. Snape struggled free of the crushing arms and sent it flying back toward his attackers; Harry and Luna had to dive sideways to avoid it as it smashed into the wall and shattered. When Harry looked up again, Snape was in full flight, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout all thundering after him. He hurtled through a classroom door and, moments later, he heard McGonagall cry, ‘Coward! COWARD!’
‘What’s happened, what’s happened?’ asked Luna.
Harry dragged her to her feet and they raced along the corridor, trailing the invisibility Cloak behind them, into the deserted classroom where Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout were standing at a smashed window.
‘He jumped,’ said Professor McGonagall as Harry and Luna ran into the room.
‘You means he’s dead?’ Harry sprinted to the window, ignoring Flitwick’s and Sprout’s yells of shock at his sudden appearance.
‘No, he’s not dead,’ said McGonagall bitterly. ‘Unlike Dumbledore, he was still carrying a wand…and he seems to have learned a few tricks from his master.’
With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, batlike shape flying through the darkness toward the perimeter wall.
There were heavy footfalls behind them, and a great deal of puffing: Slughorn had just caught up.
‘Harry!’ he panted, massaging his immense chest beneath his emerald-green silk pajamas. ‘My dear boy…what a surprise...Minerva, do please explain...Severus...what..?’
‘Our headmaster is taking a short break,’ said Professor McGonagall, pointing at the Snape-shaped hole in the windows.
‘Professor!’ Harry shouted, his hands at his forehead. He could see the Inferi-filled lake sliding beneath him, and he felt the ghostly green boat bump into the underground shore, and Voldemort leapt from it with murder in his heart—
‘Professor, we’ve got to barricade the school, he’s coming now!’
‘Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming,’ she told the other teachers. Sprout and Flitwick gasped; Slughorn let out a low groan. ‘Potter has work to do in the castle on Dumbledore’s orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are capable while Potter does what he needs to do.’
‘You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-Who indefinitely?’ said Professor Sprout.
‘Thank you, Pomona,’ said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches there passed a look of grim understanding. ‘I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance.’
‘Agreed,” said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the door. ‘I shall meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House.’
And as she jogged out of sight, they could hear her muttering, ‘Tentacula, Devil’s Snare. And Snargaluff pod…yes, I’d like to see the Death Eaters fighting those.’
‘I can act from here,’ said Flitwick, and although he could bare see out of it, he pointed his wand through the smashed window and started muttering incantations of great complexity. Harry heard a weird rushing noise, as though Flitwick had unleashed the power of the wind into the grounds.
‘Professor,’ Harry said, approaching the little Charms master, ‘Professor, I’m sorry to interrupt, but this is important. Have you got any idea where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?’
‘—Protego Horribilis—the diadem of Ravenclaw?’ squeaked Flitwick. ‘A little extra wisdom never goes amiss, Potter, but I hardly think it would be much use in this situation!’
‘I only meant—do you know where it is? Have you seen it?”
‘Seen it? Nobody has seen it in living memory! Long since lost, my boy!’
Harry felt a mixture of desperate disappointment and panic. What, then, was the Horcrux?
‘We shall meet you and your Ravenclaws in the Great Hall, Filius!’ said Professor McGonagall, beckoning to Harry and Luna to follow her.
They had just reached the door when Slughorn rumbled into speech.
‘My word,’ he puffed, pale and sweaty, his walrus mustache aquiver. 'What a to-do! I’m not at all sure whether this is wise, Minerva. He is bound to find a way in, you know, and anyone who has tried to delay him will be in most grievous peril—‘
‘I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great hall in twenty minutes, also,’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘If you wish to leave with your students, we shall not stop you. But if any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us within this castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill.’
‘Minerva!’ he said, aghast.
‘The time has come for Slytherin House to decide upon its loyalties,’ interrupted Professor McGonagall. ‘To follow Potter's example, or the Death Eaters'. Go and wake your students, Horace.’
Harry did not stay to watch Slughorn splutter: He and Luna ran after Professor McGonagall, who had taken up a position in the middle of the corridor and raised her wand.
‘Piertotum—oh, for heaven’s sake, Filch, not now—‘
The aged caretaker had just come hobbling into view, shouting, ‘Students out of bed! Students in the corridors!’
‘They’re supposed to be here, you blithering idiot!’ shouted McGonagall. ‘Now go and do something constructive! Find Peeves!’
‘P–Peeves?’ stammered Filch as though he had never heard the name before.
‘Yes, Peeves, you fool, Peeves! Haven’t you been complaining about him for a quarter of a century? Go and fetch him, at once!’ Filch evidently thought Professor McGonagall had taken leave of her senses, but hobbled away, hunch-shouldered, muttering under his breath.
‘And now—Piertotum Locomotor!’ cried Professor McGonagall.
And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armour jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same.
‘Hogwarts is threatened!’ shouted Professor McGonagall. ‘Man the boundaries, protect us, do your duty to our school!’
Clattering and yelling, the horde of moving statues stampeded past Harry, some of them smaller, others larger, than life. There were animals too, and the clanking suits of armour brandished swords and spiked balls on chains.
‘Now, Potter,’ said McGonagall, ‘you and Miss Lovegood had better return to your friends and bring them to the Great Hall—I shall rouse my Gryffindors.’
They parted at the top of the next staircase, Harry and Luna turning back toward the concealed entrance to the Room of Requirement. As they ran, they met crowds of students, most wearing traveling cloaks over their pajamas, being shepherded down to the Great Hall by teachers and prefects.
‘That was Potter!’
‘Harry Potter!’
‘It was him, I swear, I just saw him!’
But Harry did not look back, and at last they reached the entrance to the Room of Requirement. Harry leaned against the enchanted wall, which opened to admit them, and he and Luna sped back down the steep staircase.
‘Wh—?’
As the room came into view, Harry slipped down a few stairs in shock. It was packed, far more crowded than when he had last been in there. Kingsley and Chiara were looking up at him, as were Gemma Farley, Adrian Pucey, Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet, Dennis Creevey, Terence with his arm around Tracey, Bill and Fleur, and Mr and Mrs Weasley. Then, he heard a pleasantly familiar voice.
‘Harry, what’s happening?’ said Remus, meeting him at the foot of the stairs, Canini by his side.
‘Voldemort’s on his way, they’re barricading the school—Snape’s run for it—What are you doing here? How did you know?’
‘We sent messages to the rest of Dumbledore’s Army,’ Fred explained. ‘You couldn’t expect everyone to miss the fun, Harry, and the D.A. let the Order of the Phoenix know, and it all kind of snowballed.’
‘What first, Harry?’ called George. ‘What’s going on?’
‘They’re evacuating the younger kids and everyone’s meeting in the Great Hall to get organized,’ Harry said. ‘We’re fighting.’ There was a great roar and a surge toward the foot of the stairs, he was pressed back against the wall as they ran past him, the mingled members of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore’s Army, and Harry’s old Quidditch team, all with their wands drawn, heading up into the main castle.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Harry to Terence as he began to pass him, he still wore a small emerald locket that matched Tracey’s. ‘You were my first friend I made here who convinced me Slytherins could be good.’
Terence patted Harry on the back, ‘I wouldn’t miss this, it’s a battle worth fighting for. I’ll see you out there.’
‘Come on, Luna,’ Dean called as he passed, holding out his free hand; she took it and followed him back up the stairs.
The crowd was thinning: Only a little knot of people remained below in the Room of Requirement, and Harry joined them. Mrs Weasley was struggling with Ginny, surrounded by Mr Weasley, Fred, George, Ron, Bill, and Fleur. Remus appeared to be having a similar conversation with Canini.
‘It was a mistake to let you convince me you could come, you should go back to the pub, someone will help you get back to Andromeda, or Tonks—‘ began Remus.
‘If you think for a second Tonks isn’t already on her way here you don’t know her at all, just like how you don’t know there is nothing that could make me leave now,’ protested Canini.
‘Cani, my precious daughter, you aren’t just barely underage, you still got nearly two full year to go. The boys I can’t stop, but you…I can’t lose you…’
‘You won’t lose me, dad. I know how to fight, you and Dumbledore’s Army taught me, and this isn’t my first—‘
‘I am very proud of you, but Dumbledore’s Army is a teenagers’ club!’
‘A club where all its members are currently gathering to fight him, something no one else has ever dared to do head on!’ chimed in Harry.
‘Harry,’ sighed Remus in deep frustration. ‘Don’t encourage her, tell your sister to go home.’
‘I won’t, she is the most loyal person I know and she has fought by my side, I can’t turn someone like that away,’ said Harry. ‘In truth I don’t want you, her, Theo, or Tonks here tonight, I also feel like I can’t lose any more family, but if we’re going to win tonight we’re going to need all the help we can get. Canini stays.’
Before anything else could be said there was a loud noise, someone else had clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen. He pulled himself up on the nearest chair, looked around through lopsided horn-rimmed glasses, and said, ‘Am I too late? Has it started? I only just found out, so I–I—‘
Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected to run into most of his family. There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Harry and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension, ‘So—what ‘appended to Muriel’z tiara?’
‘Oh, we’re very sorry Fleur,’ said Tracey who was standing next to Allison. ‘We tried very hard to get it back, but it was stolen.’
‘Oh, it iz ok, not important right now,’ she began.
‘We might eventually get it back actually,’ said Harry absentmindedly. ‘I think the goblin who stole it was killed, so it’s probably still at Gringotts and as long as Muriel lives those that survived need to return it.’
‘I was a fool!’ Percy roared, so loudly that the outsiders couldn’t pretend not to be listening. ‘I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a—a—‘
‘Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron,’ said Fred. Percy swallowed.
‘Yes, I was!’
‘Well, you can’t say it fairer than that,’ said Fred, holding out his hand to Percy.
Mrs Weasley burst into tears. She ran forward, pushed Fred aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father.
‘Er, ‘ave you seen Nymphadora’z baby?’ Fleur asked Remus and the others at this awkward little moment.
‘Last we saw him yesterday Teddy was a tiny little baby with a tuft of bright turquoise hair,’ said Allison.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ Percy said.
Mr Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug his son.
‘What made you see sense, Perce?’ inquired George.
‘It’s been coming on for a while,’ said Percy, mopping his eyes under his glasses with a corner of his traveling cloak. ‘But I had to find a way out and it’s not so easy at the Ministry, they’re imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight for it, so here I am.’
‘Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these,’ said George in a good imitation of Percy’s most pompous manner. ‘Now let’s get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters’ll be taken.’
‘So, you’re my sister-in-law now?’ said Percy, shaking hands with Fleur as they hurried off toward the staircase with Bill, Fred, and George.
‘I’m fighting,’ said Canini, in an end of discussion tone as the Weasley’s headed towards the exit of the Room of Requirement.
‘Alright,’ Remus relented, ‘but you’re to stick by my side all night.’
And she nodded.
'I thought you'd be with Terence, I saw him as he left the room,' said Harry to Tracey.
'I do want to, but I made a promise to you that I'd be by your side until all the Horcruxes are destroyed and that job isn't done yet, Terence knows this and even after all this time apart he knows it is something I must do,' she responded.
Harry, Canini, Remus, Allison, and Tracey started heading for the stairs in the wake of the Weasleys, but then Harry finally noticed an absence.
‘Where’s Theodore?’ asked Harry. ‘And Colin, I didn’t see either of them with Dennis earlier when he passed me.’
‘Theo said something about a bathroom, it was really loud then and he ran off before I could ask him what he meant,’ said Tracey.
‘A bathroom?’
Harry strode across the room to an open door leading off the Room of Requirement and checked the bathroom beyond. It was empty.
‘You’re sure that he said bath—?’
But then his scar seared and the Room of Requirement vanished: He was looking through the high wrought-iron gates with winded boars on pillars at either side, looking through the dark grounds toward the castle, which was ablaze with lights. Nagini lay draped over his shoulders. He was possessed of that cold, cruel sense of purpose that preceded murder.
