Every parent leaves something behind for their children to remember them by. Lily Evans didn't know, when she left her diary behind that it would help her son into knowing her and himself…or did she?
Disclaimer: Does anybody even read these?
Oh, and just as a note of warning, this is my first attempt at writing a battle scene, and I don't think it's very much (even if when I pictured the whole ordeal in my mind I thought it would have been awesome). By the way, when you get to the end you might want to kill me or give me the title of Queen of Cliffhangers.
And now: on with fic:
Harry Potter and the Knowledge of a Mother
Chapter 15: Breach
The report of Death Eater forces taking over Snuffles' cavern had been reported an exact week ago, Harry mused, and there was absolutely no indication that they were attacking. Their delay could be a possible result of three things. One, they were gathering more forces than expected and were therefore taking a more extended amount of time regrouping, two, something had gone wrong and delayed their plans, or three, they were just waiting for Dumbledore to let his guard down.
Probably the intruders didn't know that the cave had been controlled by Dumbledore, and were therefore expecting a low defence from their part. That, of course, didn't mean that they would just waltz in expecting it to be easy. There was practically every Death Eater close to Voldemort in that cave, and hiding in the woods near it there were Dementors. Yep, Harry had seen them when he was inspecting the skies the same night that they had found out. He'd nearly fainted while in the air as he hovered above them.
Harry watched the grounds around him, searching for anything out of place from his perch atop the tallest Hogwarts tower. Dumbledore had told him to stay within school grounds after that night with the Dementors, afraid that Voldemort might sense him. Harry knew he was hiding in that cavern, he could feel him there, plotting. His scar throbbed constantly, and was bright at every hour of the day behind his bangs. Even now, standing as Falcospeak, the feathers that usually covered his scar (which was present as always) had fallen off, and the cut seemed to glow into the night, contrasting with the absolute black of his feathers. He wondered why they, himself included, kept on calling it a scar. It had never actually scarred over, it always looked like a fresh cut, red, though not very deep at first glance. It didn't matter. It was far deeper than it looked.
Around him, the night was as quiet as ever, nobody would have guessed what the grounds were hiding. There, in the Forbidden Forest, near that path that Harry had noticed that first night, Hagrid stood, his weapon at hand, Fang at his side. They had thought it would be best if he didn't stand directly behind those imaginary bushes for they couldn't be sure that Dementors wouldn't see through the fake shrubs. Fifty yards into the path, the Giant Squad was waiting in position for Hagrid's signal. They were getting a little restless. They had been doing this same routine for the past week, and the Giants wanted to battle. They were trained for it, after all.
Below, on the steps that led to the front doors of the school a red weasel that went by the name of Sneak lay sleeping, curled around itself. At the signal, he was to run inside and wake the teachers (all resting in the Great Hall) and prepare them for battle. The only faculty members not to take part of the battle were Trelawney and Filch, for obvious reasons.
In the towers that he had discovered during the first inspection, the ones that weren't on the Marauders map, were occupied by members of the Order of the Phoenix, who had all been called there a week prior. McGonagall, in her cat form, was to call them to battle at the signal as well. After that, they would all make their way swiftly to the edge of the forest opposite of where the Giants waited.
If the enemy left their hiding spot, Fawkes, who was guarding the cavern and the surrounding woods, would fly ahead and give the signal to reach positions. Sirius, instead, hid in the alleyway facing the Shrieking Shack, disguised as Padfoot. If Wormtail was with them, he would probably lead them into the school through the Whomping Willow passage, since any other way was blocked by thousands of wards.
"Harry," came a feminine hiss from beside him. "You were supposed to trade watch with me hours ago," Hermione reprimanded, transforming into Tailwinds before his eyes. Even in her fox form, her topaz and white eyes blazed at him. He and Hermione had been told to keep watch from their perch on the tower of their surroundings (much to the chagrin of her fear of heights), but he had failed to wake Hermione so that she could take his place.
He shrugged, or tried to in his current form. "I wanted to let you sleep."
"Harry," her tone was lecturing. "You need your rest, if they breach tonight and you're too tired to fight-" he didn't allow her to finish the sentence.
"I couldn't sleep if I tried," he told her gruffly. "Besides, with all the watches you've been keeping I thought I should let you catch up on your sleep," his voice, or mental voice as he was using his thoughts to speak, held a smile. "I need the smartest witch in school to be fresh and sober when they breach."
In his mind he heard her sigh. It really was strange to speak with her through thought. "Thank you," she answered resigned.
Watching her, Harry brought up a subject that had been bothering him for the past week. "Hermione," he began nervously, "the Holostars. Is there…a reason for why you insisted that Fred and George send them in such a hurry?"
Her reply was surprised and nervous. "I just wanted to give everyone time to store a lot of memories before the year is out," her tone belied guilt.
A pause, and then Harry asked again. "It's not that you did it…as a…goodbye present…did you?" Honestly, the thought had been nagging at Harry since that interview in Dumbledore's office. At first he'd been in awe at all the things Hermione managed to do without breaking down, but then a question had formed in his mind. What if she thought that she wouldn't live past the summer?
"I won't say I'm not scared, Harry," Hermione told him defiantly. "I won't say that, because I've never been this scared in my life. But I have no intention of giving up my life. I won't go without a fight."
"Then why are you storing all those memories?" He said, referring to the endless Holostars that she kept in her robes at all times.
"Harry, I don't want to die," she repeated, "but this is war, or its prelude, Harry. There are risks."
Harry was about to reply, but the sound of the Whomping Willow lashing out at nothing in the middle of the night caught his attention and held it. Especially when it suddenly stopped moving as though it had been immobilized. "Hermione, look!" He called to her. There in the shadows of the tree's limbs, was a small figure scurrying about. A mouse. "Hermione, it's him!" He shouted in her mind. "It's Wormtail!"
Hermione put one of her paws against his back. "You can't go after him, Harry, you'll give us away," she told him, calming him. "He's here to scout," she told him.
"Can you read his mind from here?" She nodded her head, her elf-like ears twitching as though picking up a sound from far away.
"He's terrified. If his master dies tonight he's lost, but there's nothing out of the ordinary and Dumbledore's too old to uphold a breach. He thinks we have no idea they're coming," she reported Wormtail's thoughts. After nearly an hour of scouting the mouse headed back to the Whomping Willow sure that they would be successful.
"Tell, everybody to start getting ready for the signal," Harry ordered, but Hermione was already working on that.
She was contacting Sneak, below them, that very second. "Ron," she whispered in her mind, "Ron, are you awake?" She asked. He was.
"Yeah, the Whomping Willow woke me up," he told her grumpily.
"Did you see Wormtail down there?"
"Yeah, I bloody well sure did," he replied bitterly. "I wanted to go after him, but I figured You-Know-Who would get suspicious if his little pet didn't come home."
Hermione let out a sigh of relief. "Good, now go tell the faculty to start getting ready," she ordered, and Ron went right away. Only a moment later Dumbledore stood sipping a sherbet lemon in the spot just a short time prior occupied by the weasel.
Within seconds McGonagall had warned the members, of the Order and Hagrid had told the Giants to get ready, which they readily did. Now they were just waiting for Padfoot's return and Fawkes' signal.
And then Harry felt it. A growing pain above his right eye, where his scar stood, intensifying by second, blinding him. He felt the world spinning around him. "They're coming," he whispered hoarsely, as his body was no longer able to maintain his hawkish form and returned him to the shapes of a human Harry Potter. "He's close," he told Hermione, this time speaking through his mouth, as he clutched his hand to a spot on his forehead. "He's coming."
Hermione placed a paw on his back, trying to keep him from hurtling down the side of the tower, and began screaming with her telepathy for everyone to get in position.
"But Fawkes didn't give the signal yet!" She could hear Ron protest in his mind.
"Something must have slowed her down," she replied quickly, "Harry's having convulsions. Professor Dumbledore, I'm bringing him down to ground level," she told the Headmaster. In the distance a bird screeched the ugliest, most urgent sound. She looked over to see Fawkes, carrying a beaten black dog in her talons. Someone must have attacked Sirius, probably thinking that he was the only one that was guarding at the moment.
"Yes, Miss Granger, but first," she heard his ancient voice speaking in her mind, her ears receiving the sound after her brain did, "make that storm come here quicker," he ordered.
Storm? What storm? Hermione asked herself frantically. She'd been so preoccupied with Harry and Wormtail that she didn't even notice the storm forming somewhere beyond Hogsmeade. Of course! She thought. That's why they're attacking tonight! They must have thought that with such an ugly storm brewing, not even Hagrid would wander out of his hut. Hermione closed her eyes, her paws still pinning Harry safely to the roof of the tower as he convulsed beneath her, and concentrated. It wasn't easy, she'd never done something so drastic with the elements. All she'd really done till that moment had been a couple of whirlwinds, and she'd made a few plants grow quicker. Okay, the first thing to do was make the water in those clouds condense with higher speed, and then push it toward the school with the most powerful winds that she could conjure.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes. As she willed the black clouds to grow her pupils dilated and her entire irises turned white pushing back the topaz that had surrounded it only seconds earlier. The clouds grew in size and darkened in color before her very eyes, and she began to pull them toward her with all her might. Within seconds, the clouds were directly over her head. The clouds wouldn't release water until after the Death Eaters would arrive, but she knew that even that was an advantage.
Turning herself back into her original form she held Harry with one hand, and reached for the Firebolt behind her with the other. He had suggested that they use that when going to and leaving the tower, knowing how much Hermione hated to fly, and how uncomfortable it was to hang on when a big pair of wings flapped beneath your arse. Hermione had never been so glad to mount a broom in her entire life. Pushing her fear aside for Harry's sake, she guided them both to the secure ground next to where Dumbledore stood. Her breath was heavy and she was dizzy from both handling a broom with the added weight of an extra person and the effort of making a storm reach its destination far sooner than it should have.
"Marvellous job, Miss Granger," the Headmaster complimented her, just as Ron, restored to his original form, stepped out of the building.
"They're all right here behind the door," he informed, referring to the school's faculty members, and then turned to look at Harry.
His convulsions had stopped, but his breath was heavy and ragged, and somehow, he'd split a lip. And just then, Harry stood up straight and looked at the Whomping Willow with determination.
"The pain stopped suddenly," he told them. Hermione jumped at hearing him say that. "He's here," and the remaining three people turned to look at the same tree that Harry had been fixing with his glare, Fawkes coming to stand at their fit, her eyes still on the Willow as well.
The sky, that had been dark already because of lacking moonlight, was now a black blanket, not allowing any light onto the courtyard, the only source of illumination the lanterns that were dimly lit in the Hogwarts hallways streaming veiled light out of the window. Strong gusts of wind snapped their robes around their feet, freezing the cold sweat that they weren't able to hold back, making their eyes water from its intensity.
But even in these conditions the four-five, with the phoenix-saw a fat, balding, brown mouse scurrying out of the passage to hit the knot on the tree. One of its front legs shone an eerie white, as though the leg was made of metal. And it was. It was made of silver.
Wormtail again.
He didn't turn back to his natural form, and soon they found out why. What must have been more than a thirty Dementors followed him out of the passage, and Harry felt the world spinning around, as Hermione and Ron felt the life sucked out of them. Before he could pass out, Hermione pulled out enough chocolate frogs to keep them strong for a while. Everyone devoured them desperately. Though Harry couldn't see them, he knew the Giants and the Order members were doing much the same thing.
They were a rather horrible sight, masked with their black robes, so that nothing but maybe a hand, dead and putrefied, was exposed to them. They were hungry, and they seemed to be pointing Harry. They were less than what Harry had calculated when he'd flown over the woods, but they were enough to send a man to horrid depths within few short moments.
To confirm his thoughts, out of the passage came eighty or so figures, wearing cloaks featuring the Dark Mark. All that could be seen of them was their mouths, smudged with chocolate, their skin, so grey and ashy that they looked like corpses, and their jaw muscles, tense and clenched after the prolonged exposure to the Dementors.
Only when the last hooded figure stepped out did Wormtail turn back into Peter Pettigrew. This one was different. There were no chocolate stains around its mouth, his face was squished, like a serpent's, his nostrils only two flat slits, his skin looked scaly, and his eyes were a glowing blood red.
"Well, Tom," Dumbledore began, a Chocolate Frog leg in hand, "you really look horrible."
Voldemort, once known as Tom Riddle, sneered at him. "I look like power." He corrected. "I am power."
Dumbledore shrugged. "You may be, but you still look horrible."
His opponent smiled a most horrifying smile. "You know, professor," he spat the word, "I came here hoping to make a…a deal with you, if you will."
Dumbledore's eyebrows furrowed. "Oh?" He asked. "And since when is a deal made with the aid of thirty Dementors?"
"Since they are part of the deal," the Headmaster motioned him to go on. "I will tell these Dementors to retreat, and leave your school unharmed, at the sole condition that you follow me where you are required to."
The old wizard popped the Chocolate Frog leg he was holding in his mouth, chewed it and swallowed it slowly, made to look as he was thinking, and then, after a brief pause, "No."
"No?" Voldemort echoed, his voice hushed but angry. "You wish to have the life of seven hundred students on your conscience?" He asked, trying to lay the guilt trip on him. It didn't matter that he wouldn't have had the Dementors retreat in any case, but the Headmaster was supposed to care for them.
"You really think we'd let you and your dirty Dementors inside the school?" Harry spat at him.
Voldemort laughed. His cruel, cold, snake like hissing laugh. "How do you plan to stop me? With your Mudblood girlfriend?" He threw a cursory glance to Hermione. "Or with that ridiculous bird?" Looking at Fawkes he laughed harder.
But Harry smiled. A smile that unsettled something within Voldemort. "Why don't you show him what you can do Fawkes?" And with that the bird let out a high-pitched, eardrum bursting screech, giving off the final signal. Immediately, from behind the fake bushes the sixty-some Giants rushed out forming three perfect military roes, while from the opposite side of the forest, thirty or so Order of the Phoenix members came out, holding their wands in offensive stances, steadily pointed at the Dementors. Among them, Harry could see Sirius, slightly beaten but determined, Lupin, sickly looking but strong as ever, and Jenna, who looked like she wanted a piece of the man that had killed her best friend sixteen years earlier.
Voldemort chuckled again. "You are outnumbered."
While the faculty members filtered out of the school behind him, Harry pulled his wand from his robes and pointed it at the Dementors. Closing his eyes to gather the happiness of all those wonderful nights spent with Hermione before the fire, reading his mother's diary, Harry called, "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" His Patronus took out twelve of the Dementors before anyone even registered it. He threw a smirk Voldemort's way. "Now we're not," he said, accepting the Chocolate Frog that Hermione was handing him.
It was right then that the rain started to fall. A thick, unending sheet of hard water dropping incessantly and mercilessly on their heads heavily. Dumbledore and his followers welcomed it. His opponents took it as a beacon to begin battle.
Spells began to run amuck from both sides, the Dementors tried to get to anyone in their reach, enemy and non, Giants waved their weapons. Harry and Lupin were busy taking out Dementors while faculty members duelled with Death Eaters.
Just as the last Dementor dropped, out of the school doors, that had been freed in favour of the courtyard, students had walked out, who had been beckoned by either the sound of battle, or by the effect of the Dementors. Most of them were Slytherins, yet there were a couple of Ravenclaws among them.
They all raised their wands and pointed them against their own faculty. Looking at them more closely, Harry realized that they were mostly all related to important Death Eaters. Shit! He swore. He watched powerless as Snape was taken out by Millicent Bullstrode since he had his back turned to them, not even knowing his students had filed out of their dormitories. Now we're outnumbered!
Yet, just as he thought that, several of those perpetrators were thrown into a high arch in the air by some strong disarming spells.
Gryffindors! His roommates, his friends, almost the entire Gryffindor house from fourth year and above stood there, wands poised. Ginny winked at him after having disarmed Goyle.
Pansy was thrown on top of a Dementor by a strong "Expelliarmus!" Krista and her friends were there as well.
And then it all became confused. Students fighting teachers fighting Death Eaters fighting Giants. Even Ciucciobello fought, by throwing himself in the gut of any Death Eater that he came across. Harry was throwing hexes, yet he didn't know which ones, the sound of the rain too loud, the battle too confused, his robes too heavy because of the water.
"GINNY!" He thought he heard someone shout from the Front Doors. Draco Malfoy stood there horrified after having screamed the name, as his own father, Lucius Malfoy, stood not twenty paces from his son with one hand firmly squeezing the redhead's neck. Harry saw the man raise his wand, a maniacal expression covering his face, making him look mad. Oh, no! There wasn't time! Harry looked on in pure horror as he saw the word forming on the Death Eater's mouth.
"AVADA…" but before he could finish giving her the Unforgivable, Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, shouted out, "Expelliarmus!" The black, expensive wand was thrown far away, the girl dropped from his hold slumping to the ground, and the man himself was thrown back several feet. Before he could get back up again his son shouted, "Petrificus Totalus!" Lucius Malfoy lay unmoving in the mud.
Draco rushed over to Ginny, helping the gasping girl to her feet, supporting her light weight against his body as he began to petrify other Death Eaters. The next one he'd sent down was Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, who had just had his wand split in two by Rubeus Hagrid, the half Giant that taught Care of Magical Creatures. Hagrid looked at the young Malfoy stunned, and then broke into a proud grin beneath his burly beard. "G'ed work, lad!" he called to him. "G'ed work!"
"DISCERPO NUBIS!" Somewhere off to his right he heard Hermione shout, and watched as her wand guided lightning pillars down from the clouds and onto unsuspecting opponents. She's already taken out seven Slytherins when Harry noticed a bony, horrid hand reaching for her throat. Before she could even scream, Voldemort had his wand pressed against her chest menacingly.
And Harry watched with terrified stupor as his enemy, the man that had taken everything from him, turned to face him, holding Hermione in his arms. That laugh, the laugh that Harry hated, oh, so much, filled the entire courtyard, so much that everyone stopped to stare. He cackled madly as Harry watched him helplessly, the rain carrying out the hissing laugh to every ear rather than dampening the sound, like it had with everything else.
No, not her!
To be continued.
Author's ramblings: Please don't kill me, I'm just a little ole' fanfic writer! Anyway, for any comments, critisisms, or flames, always review or drop me a line at Robbygal@hotmail.com.
Love
Pearl