Shadow Walker
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time.
-Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
*
*
*
Chapter Five:
Now all the demons look like prophets, and I'm living out every word they speak.
-Jars of Clay, "Work"
They'd been expecting something of the sort at some point, but it still startled both Hermione and Ron quite badly one evening, when the fire suddenly birthed a miniature green tongue of flame at its heart. But before their wands had even been fully raised, a partially singed scroll had been shoved through. It landed with a chuff of embers on the hearthrug, and the green flame winked out as though it had never existed.
Hermione and Ron exchanged glances. A few tendrils of smoke wafted up from the scroll and disappeared. Without having to voice any kind of instruction, both inhabitants of the remote cabin smoothly moved into action. Ron went to do a sweep of the grounds and check the wards. Hermione Levitated the scroll and made sure there were no hidden Portkeys or nefarious hexes worked into it, rotating it with her wand and examining it from all angles.
"We're clear," Ron informed her succinctly, closing and latching the door with a flick of his wand, as he re-entered. "What's it say?"
"I think it's from Luna. It's in code. Some kind of ancient rune." Hermione squinted at a line in the scroll at eye level, where it was still hovering. "Could be a Germanic Goblin variant. Trust Luna to pick something so obscure less than two hundred people in the world could even hope to translate it."
Ron almost smiled.
"And how long will it take you?"
Hermione did not even look up from the parchment. "At least four hours." She traced a couple of figures in the air with her wand, clearly thinking to herself, lips moving slightly. She shook her head and blew air upward in exasperation. "Make that six. It looks like she's anagrammed everything as well."
"What can I do?"
The question caught Hermione by surprise, and a grateful smile flashed onto her face before she even realized it.
"It looks like I'm going to need the Gringotts Reference volume, Dumbledore's notes on the European dialects of 12th century Goblins, and the Gobbledygook-English dictionary. Oh and my Advanced Arithmancy text. Don't Accio the notes. Dumbledore put a Scattering Charm on them. We'd be forever gathering them all back up." Hermione was speaking as she efficiently Summoned parchment, quill, and ink from a drawer in the roll top desk opposite the sofa. They arranged themselves neatly on the desk's surface, as a ponderous stack of books floated into the room. Hermione could hear rustling from her bedroom.
"These on the bottom shelf?" Ron called.
"They're in the cabinet to the left. Under the file marker "Dumbledore", sub-tabbed …
"'G' for Goblin…" Ron chimed in. "You don't think I know your filing habits by now, Hermione?"
The question was good-natured enough in tone, but it snagged something in Hermione's thought process, as did her earlier surprise. She was continuing to attribute to Ron the attitudes and habits he'd had in school, and she supposed that was grossly unfair. He'd become almost unfailingly solicitous, nearly too thoughtful, in fact. She thought she might rather enjoy a good row with him every now and then, but a lot of Ron's snap and zing had gone out of him since the Battle.
Shadows of who we used to be… ghosts… he'd said. She supposed that was true. They had become pale, translucent copies of the vibrant, full-color people they'd been once. She tried to shrug off the hovering aura of sorrow; there was work to do.
When Ron returned with the sheaf of parchments, Hermione was crouched over the desk, writing furiously. She had not even taken the time to sit down.
"She's got our names, and both code words. It's definitely from Luna," Hermione said, in the breathless tone she always used when in a rush to suss out something. Ron slid the chair over beneath her, and she sat down in it, without even looking. "Thanks."
"Anything else?" His voice held faint traces of amusement.
"What?" She flashed her eyes up at him for an instant, as she raked her hair out of her face, and resumed writing. Ron opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, clearly unsure how to proceed.
"It's…good to see you like this, Hermione. Almost like … almost like old times." He said the last phrase delicately, seemingly worried that he might unleash another Christmas-tree-type onslaught. Hermione set her quill down, and regarded him for a moment.
"I never thought I'd see the day that you would enjoy my being in one of my trademark free-for-alls." A smile glimmered briefly in her eyes, and then vanished. "But then, I never thought I'd see a lot of the things we've seen." She sighed, and picked up her quill again. "I'm sorry, Ron. I'm … I'm like a constant little grey raincloud, aren't I?" There was a halfhearted laugh in her voice.
"Hey," Ron said softly, kneeling beside her. "Hey, it's not as if you don't - as if we all don't have reason." His voice twisted a little on the word `all', as if belatedly realizing that such an encompassing word was hardly applicable anymore. He laid his big hand gently on top of hers. She squirmed in her chair when their skin made contact, and her hand trembled in the urge to snatch it away, but she forced herself to remain still.
"Ron - " The tone was a plea again. Please don't ask this of me. Please don't force me to hurt you. Please don't destroy what little remains.
He hadn't let her articulate her protest last time, and he forestalled her once again. He zigzagged his thumb across the back of her hand once, squeezed her knuckles, and used his other hand to brace himself on the desk to rise. When he had stood to his feet, he moved toward the fireplace, leaning against the mantel with one hand, and gazing into the flames.
"I'm not - I'm not making a move, Hermione. I promise. But don't - "he stopped, sighing, and raked one hand through his hair, which was glinting burnished gold in the firelight. "Don't be so afraid of the other that you stop letting me be your friend."
She tucked her hair behind her ears, twisted it into a knot, and stuck her wand through it.
"Of course not, Ron," she said succinctly, though the matter of fact tone was tempered with tenderness.
There was silence. She sat motionless for a moment, her hands limp and still in her lap. There was so much to say;
there was nothing to say. Ron seemed to want her; she wanted Harry. Their desires were incompatible with each other,
and impossible in and of themselves. She found that she was pathetically grateful that Ron was at least attempting to
be an adult about it.
"You've only got five hours and forty-five minutes left," he chided her gently, breaking into her reverie.
"Right," she breathed, shaking herself back to reality and flexing her fingers in preparation.
A moment later, the sounds of quill-scratch on parchment and the snap of flame were the only things to be heard in the tiny cabin.
~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*
"Ron! Ron, wake up!" Hermione shook his shoulder fiercely, her voice a hissing whisper, despite the fact that there was no one else around to disturb. Ron's lanky form was sprawled out on the worn sofa, head thrown back, where he'd fallen asleep waiting for Hermione to finish her translation. A Weasley family photo album was open across his lap. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, in rather dated hair and dress, were kissing behind a towering wedding cake that looked as if it were on the verge of collapsing entirely.
He startled awake, arms and legs pin wheeling, groping in his pocket for his wand. The album fell to the floor with a thump, closing of its own accord.
"What? What's going --?" He came more fully awake, and relaxed when he saw her. "Oh, you've finished then?" She waited for the second realization to come, that if she'd finished, and was waking him in the middle of the night, then something was up. And it probably was not good. "What does it say?" His face was guarded, his voice fearful.
"They've arrested Ginny."
"Arrested -? Then why isn't she here? Why didn't she let us know? Isn't that what her necklace was bloody well for?"
Hermione's expression was pure chagrin.
"Luna says that they've developed some kind of Nullification Charm for portkeys. The detention area is covered with them, so any portkey we'd have sent her wouldn't have worked. Ginny managed to get the pendant to Luna somehow, before she was taken down there."
"But -- but Ginny's done nothing. You said - "he stopped, clearly trying to gather himself, and remove the accusatory tone from his voice. "You said they wouldn't bother with her, that they'd only question her…"
"Luna says they gave her Veritaserum, and there was a question - Luna doesn't say what - that Ginny refused to answer. It was the Corklehaven Strain - from trying to overpower the Veritaserum."
"She muted herself?" Ron was aghast. The Corklehaven Strain was a documented wizarding phenomenon of a sort of magical implosion. In fighting the urge to tell the truth, Ginny had literally rendered herself unable to speak. "When will it wear off?"
Hermione shrugged.
"There have been cases that lasted minutes and cases that lasted months. But in the meantime…"
"They've got her for obstruction, don't they?" Ron finished for her.
"It sounds mostly trumped up, really only a technicality, but the legal procedure is sound. Luna says she contacted a cousin of the Patils, who's a solicitor, and sympathetic, but she's on the Continent right now. Something's wonky with her Muggle passport and the International Floo network, and… well, you can be assured that isn't a coincidence. Luna says the appointed solicitor is supposed to be randomly selected, but she doubts that it's true in this case. She calls him a… " Hermione referenced her parchment, a mass of scrawls, spell deletions, crossed lines, and arrows pointing to corrected translations. "'A piece of Nargle-ridden dung from a flatulent Skrewt', and says that he is undoubtedly in Malfoy's pocket."
"What will they do?" Ron was speaking carefully, clearly trying to hang onto his control by tenterhooks. His hands were jammed into his pockets, as he paced the length and breadth of the small room.
"Probably try to fast-track a trial. Get her sentenced before Luna's friend can make it back into the country."
"But it - it's at least a minor offense, isn't it? It couldn't be - wouldn't be long…"
"Luna says that Malfoy's upgraded anything dealing with subversive activities or harboring fugitives to automatic Azkaban time."
"Azkaban!?" Ron lunged for the battered cabinet above the sink, retrieved the small wooden chest there, and began to mutter the series of spells required to unlock it.
"Ron, what are you doing? Ron!" Hermione dove after him, grabbing at his wrists, shouting over his attempts to hear himself speak, and trying to wrest the box from his grasp.
"I need the Floo Powder, Hermione," he growled, prying her fingers off of him, twisting to block her from the chest with his body.
"You aren't going anywhere!"
"I'm going to get my sister!"
"That's ridiculous, Ron. If you go to the Ministry, wand blazing, you'll end up in Azkaban as well. We need a plan."
Ron stopped struggling instantly at this unexpected acquiescence.
"I thought - I thought you'd -"he spluttered. Hermione slanted a dirty look at him, reset the spell-locks on the chest, and carefully replaced it in its cabinet.
"I know exactly what you thought." She strode back into the main body of the living area, pausing to pick up her translation of Luna's missive, half-crushed where she had dropped it and stepped on it, in her mad dash to stop Ron's half-cocked flight attempt. Ron followed her, his slumped posture and sheepish expression doing more to convince her that he was sorry than any actual words could. "Now, would you like to listen to the rest of Luna's letter??" Her voice was syrupy and over-enunciated. Ron's ears were radiant, as he mumbled an obvious assent.
She settled back into the desk chair, and cast a Restoring Charm on the parchment. There was a soft crinkle as it smoothed itself back out.
"Now, Luna says that we can't get into the Ministry using any of the, er… traditional covert methods. They've got a Cascade now, like the waterfall at Gringotts, to remove any enchantments, Glamours, or effects of ingested potions. They're also in the process of putting in Magical detectors, to flag any and all magical output - she says this is mainly to prevent or detect any illicit activity after-hours. Anti-Apparation wards are up, the Fireplaces are under surveillance, and Portkeys can be tracked."
"So how can we even hope to get in?"
"Luna says that she's been working on using Shielding Charms, within the Ministry itself."
"How would Shielding Charms help us unless we're already under attack?"
"Not for Shielding a person, Ron. She's talking about Shielding a location. Like the vent that leads down from the roof to … well, anywhere in the building you'd take a fancy to go. And if it's during regular Ministry hours, we'll be freer to move around, since the magical detectors couldn't possibly differentiate our magic from the magic of the Ministry employees. But Luna says that - for Merlin's sake, Ron, what are you doing?"
Ron arrested his motion, half off of the sofa, as if he were ready to head to the Ministry then and there.
"Luna is still testing these shields. We're not going to be able to rescue Ginny tonight." Apology flashed in her warm eyes, but she sat quite still, looking like Serenity personified in the desk chair, ankles crossed, hands daintily folded.
Ron let himself drop back onto the sagging sofa cushions. His eyes were snapping protest and his hair glowed vividly in the firelight. He was motionless, and yet managed to look like a mass of kinetic energy only momentarily suspended. Mrs. Weasley had once remarked that it was only Ron's skin that seemed to keep him from flying in all directions at once when he was younger. As he grew up, age had tempered this - age, and the somewhat more moderating influences of Harry and Hermione.
"When?" he ground out with some effort.
"I think we should use brooms," was the next surprising thing she said. "To get to the roof, I mean. Luna says the patrols are light, and she can tell us their configurations. We'll need schematics of the ventilation system, so we'll know how to get down to the dungeons, and - " She broke off at Ron's long-suffering look and raised eyebrows of inquiry, remembering his original question. "Luna says two weeks, at the most."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It took Luna half that time to send them another message that everything was in readiness, and so it was eight days later that Hermione found herself beneath the invisibility cloak with Ron in a deserted side corridor of the lower detention level. It was dank and dim, with a vague moldish smell, and Everlight torches glimmered serenely on the walls. Ron was bent nearly double, and could not have been comfortable, but Hermione was having a rather more unexpected problem.
The bloody cloak smelled like him. She would not have thought that smell could so infuse a fabric, but the gossamer veil brought him to her mind so sharply that it was painful. It was Harry's distinctive scent, a sort of outdoorsy, evergreen kind of smell, like Quidditch and sunshine and forests. Tears were pricking the backs of her eyelids, and she swore under her breath, forcing herself to focus on the situation at hand.
"Where the hell is she?" She voiced her frustration in the only way available to her, as she breathed in sharply through both nostrils and closed her eyes. Harry, Harry, Harry….
Even as she spoke, they both heard light footfalls from the main corridor, growing louder. A moment later, a stranger with honey-gold curls and a figure far more voluptuous than Luna's waif-like form drifted into view at the junction, her face mostly eclipsed by a large pair of Spectrespecs. Moving in a distinctively absent-minded way that could only be polyjuiced Luna, she fluttered her fingers at them, without raising her arm, and then flashed a deliberate five fingers, before continuing on in the direction she'd been headed. Hermione glimpsed her removing the bizarre eyewear, as she passed out of sight.
"Five minutes to get rid of the guard," Hermione muttered. Ron snorted a little, mocking her compulsion to explain everything, even the obvious. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as tense as a wire. Hermione rubbed sweaty fingers against sweatier palms, as she rotated her wrist to look at her watch. She felt a tension headache strengthening its grip around her temples; it had begun as she tried to tamp down her terror on the broom ride to the Ministry roof, and was intensifying as she contemplated their precarious situation.
It was make or break, do or die. They would free Ginny or all end up in Azkaban.
We might as well have died on that battlefield with everyone else.
I sometimes wish I had.
Five seconds before Luna's time limit expired, Hermione tugged gently on Ron's sleeve, and they crept into motion. The main corridor was empty (Hermione knew that the main guard station was farther down, by the lifts), and largely unremarkable, save for an open door marked "Maintenance" some distance away. Hermione caught a flash of Luna and a scarlet-robed guard twined in an embrace before the door was shut decisively.
"Is she going to - ?" Ron asked. He had seen it too. Something inside Hermione broke a little.
"She is one of the most selfless people I've ever known," she murmured softly. Ron stared at the closed door, appearing somewhat stricken, but recovered himself as they reached the door to Ginny's cell.
It was made of heavy wood, windowless and imposing. There was no knob or handle. To the right of the door was a small placard reading simply, "4", and an unmarked slot just beneath it. Hermione cast her eyes toward the floor, and Luna had not disappointed. The guard's wand had rolled up against the wall, in the shadowy place beneath one of the torch sconces. She bent down to retrieve it -- an onlooker would have seen the wand lurch upwards and vanish - and inserted it into the slot. There was an almost immediate chirp, followed by the clank of Alohomora'd locks and latches.
Hermione felt Ron let out a gusty sigh of relief, as she pushed open the door, and stepped out from under the cloak.
"Ginny, come on. There's not much time."
Ginny was sleeping on the unappealing looking camp bed, curled onto her side like a little child. Her vivid hair seemed to be the only splash of color in the cell, and it fanned out across her limp pillow and dangled off the edge of the mattress. She opened her eyes immediately at Hermione's voice, with no reaction of surprise, but merely arose, all business, shoving her feet into her shoes, and grabbing the work robes that draped over the cell's lone chair.
As she took in the noticeable relief on Ron's and Hermione's faces, a real smile flickered briefly across her face and then vanished.
I knew you'd come, she mouthed, still rendered speechless by her ordeal with the Veritaserum. Thank you.
"We haven't done anything yet," Ron remarked dourly, keeping watch through the open doorway into the deserted corridor. He Disillusioned himself, fading from sight from the crown of his head downward, until he looked like nothing more than a quivering mass of twisted air and shadow. Hermione furled the invisibility cloak out at the corners, and threw it over her and Ginny's head.
"Follow me," Hermione hissed to Ginny in the barest of whispers. "We'll be headed to the roof through the ventilation network, and then we've got br-"
Her voice died in her throat and her blood iced in her veins. As Ginny crossed the threshold of the cell, an unearthly wail arose, undulating and horrific, until Hermione wanted nothing more than shrink down to the floor, hands clamped over ears, until it ceased; she could see it was affecting Ginny similarly. The torches changed color, blinked orange once, and then settled into a lurid and foreboding red.
Ginny grabbed Hermione's arm, her eyes wide and fearful, the question clear in her penetrating gaze. What's going on?
"They know there's been a breach. But we checked! We detected no wards up around the cell itself. The air shafts bypass the general wards of the building!"
"Obviously Lucius Malfoy has some innovative goons working for him. Who knew?" Ron muttered sarcastically. "I suggest we get out of here before the company arrives."
Now heedless of anyone who might be watching, they ran, the invisibility cloak streaming out behind the girls like a splendid banner in the wind. The lower parts of their legs periodically became visible, just as quickly winking out again. They careened around the corner into the smaller corridor where they'd waited, and Ron yanked the grate from the wall with a sharp, panicked flourish of his wand. What would have seemed like a deafeningly loud clatter onto the floor was hidden beneath a sudden noise of voices and rush of feet.
Ginny and Hermione clambered into the vent, situated low to the ground and in the far corner, and Ron had only just pulled the entirety of his lanky form inside and Summoned the grate, when their pursuers appeared, storming past the junction towards Ginny's cell, wands at the ready.
The grate clicked into place softly, and for an instant, nobody dared to breathe
"Let's go," Hermione mouthed. "We need to be a couple of floors up before they start sending out Detection Charms."
Neither of the Weasleys had to be told twice. Trying to move as quietly as possible, they crawled and slid and clambered through untold meters of ductwork, finally arriving at the hooded cover on the roof. Hermione thrust her head through the opening first, and, when all she saw was a deserted rooftop, she let herself breathe, feeling the steel band around her head ease somewhat, as the roaring in her ears abated.
Each of them Accioed a broomstick, and they were airborne almost before they were fully out of the vent onto the rooftop. Over her shoulder, Hermione heard a musical laugh - odd, she thought, that Corklehaven did not hinder all vocalizations - and she turned hesitantly to see Ginny looking utterly enraptured to be in the air on a broom. Hermione felt herself uplift, start hoping again… they had done it!
And just as quickly, Ginny's euphoric look vanished, as fear took its place.
Incredibly quickly - so quickly that Hermione could hardly make sense of it - they were practically surrounded by black-cloaked figures, also on broomstick. More surged from where they'd been hiding, hovering, waiting, just below the roofline of the Ministry, out of sight.
The three Gryffindors frantically tried to maneuver, but Hermione was out of her element, and it seemed like it did not take the pursuers long to realize it. Their spiraling flight closed in - Hermione could make out the Auror crests on the breasts of their robes - and she realized that they were being herded.
They're keeping us beneath the Ministry umbrella so we can't Apparate! Some wandfire had been exchanged, but the feints and constant motion had added an extra layer of difficulty. Ron managed to wing one, and Hermione hexed another in the face, forcing the injured Aurors - one blinded, one wandless - to peel away from the others, and return to the Ministry.
Suddenly there was a rush of fiery air, a crackle, and Ginny went rigid, as though she had been stabbed between the shoulder blades. Her lips were pulled back in a rictus, as though she'd been caught in the exact instant before she screamed. Hermione's wand rapidly changed direction, but Ginny had already tilted sideways off her broom. She was limp, plunging toward certain death with frightening speed.
"Arresto -" Grief tore at Hermione's throat and made her voice crack, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The last thing she saw was Ginny's flaming hair streaming upward, before it was extinguished in a cloudbank.
She looked frantically for Ron, and saw him, angled into a steep dive, already several hundred meters away, going after his sister. He'd made it through the hole left by the Aurors they'd wounded, and there were startled cries of protest, orders barked; three of the remaining guard broke away to pursue him. Hermione told herself that it was the frigid air causing her eyes to stream water. Her blurred vision did not create havoc with her aim, and this time she caught one of the pursuers right in the chest. He let out a muffled cry before toppling backwards off his broom.
She broke into an evasive pattern that they'd trained with during the last year before the Final Battle, but Hermione knew that her feints were too slow, her hands too tentative, causing the broom to be sluggish in response. Where was Ron? Had Ginny survived? She let a stream of rapid-fire curses fly in one direction as she darted in another, hoping to throw them off. It seemed like an eternity, when Hermione knew it had been only seconds. She also knew that unless she could get through the Anti-Apparation wards, she had no hope of eluding all of the Aurors.
Her broom lurched and wobbled suddenly, as though someone had jumped down onto the bundle of straw, and Hermione felt herself lose control. Paranoid that perhaps she did somehow have a passenger on her broom, she tossed a look over her shoulder, only to see that her broom was, in fact, ablaze. It faltered, wobbled, and began to slow. The three remaining wizards were almost upon her.
Still hanging onto her damaged broom for dear life, she managed to douse most of the fire. The device simply would no longer obey her guiding hands, and the next several curses she fired missed widely.
Her broom's treacherous behavior saved her from being hexed outright, but the lead Auror was obviously getting impatient at his team's inability to get off an accurate shot. He flew perilously close to her, and darted out one hand to grab her wrist. She let out a startled cry, and flailed wildly, sparks spewing from her wandtip. Her broom moaned in protest, and Hermione felt the wood splinter. It gave one last might heave - a death throe - and bucked her off. A Stunner must have grazed the top of her head at the moment of her fall, for she became suddenly groggy and thick-headed, having to force herself to stay conscious.
Panic worked like a dash of cold water, even as it seized her by the throat, gripping her so fiercely with its talons that she thought it might suffocate her. Yet she managed to scream, and the high shriek spiraled away above her as she succumbed to gravity's inexorable pull. There were still hands, wrenching and wresting at her, merciless fingers plucking at her wand. Her fall had toppled the Auror as well. He must have lost his wand, she thought distantly. I'll be damned if I let him have mine. She wondered futilely what had happened to Ron and Ginny. Strangely, the scene replaying itself in the forefront of her mind was one that was more than a year gone: Harry, the blazing look in his eyes extinguished, as he collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.
Her fingers were slipping on the wood, but she managed to shout, "Expelliarmus!" The Auror ricocheted away from her in a graceful arc, and Hermione felt her mind clear further still.
Still the world spun up at her with dizzying speed, and she misjudged the distance of the winding grey-brown snake that was a river, wending its way through an industrial section on the outskirts of a city. She had no time to figure out which city, time enough only to shout a frenzied, Arresto Momentum!, before she plunged beneath its surface.
She penetrated deeper than she'd thought, must have been going faster than she realized, and when she emerged, it was with much floundering, noisy splashing, and great draughts of oxygen. Her clothing dragged at her limbs, and she shrugged off her robes, shivering and gasping, as she made for a rickety dock at the shoreline.
She pulled herself out of the water with much effort, struggling for a few desperate seconds to focus, turning her eyes hopefully up and down the nearby shoreline. She had no idea where she'd fallen or when she'd crossed the wards, but she wished with all her might that she would see Ron and Ginny dragging themselves to dry land as well.
No, she thought, they'd have Apparated away. If they made it, they'll go back to the cabin - Ron will take Ginny back to the cabin. At any rate, she couldn't stay here; Aurors would be following her down the same way they followed Ron. Even as she became conscious of this fact, she thought she spied a few dark specks appear in the sky above, growing ever larger. Her time was up.
Harry fell; Ginny fell; Ron… oh God, what was all this for? Despair was a knot in her gut, a clog in her throat, burning eyes, burning nose, fingernails digging fiercely into palms. Don't leave me alone!
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the tiny cabin far away in that smothering forest; with a small crack, like a snapped twig, she was in the tiny living room, a banked fire still glowing in the hearth, even though it felt like they'd left a lifetime ago.
There was no relief, merely an aching emptiness that threatened to consume her completely. Hermione sank to her knees on the hearthrug, and shrank to the floor, heedless of her sodden clothes pooling water on the floor, of the shivers that were violent enough to nearly be spasms. She lay there, curled up like a frightened child, and waited for the Weasleys to come.
-->