Harry Potter and the Silver Serpent

Chapter 18 - No More!

The house and teachers tables had all been stacked up along the walls of the Great Hall, leaving a bare space in the centre of the room with dozens upon dozens of little wooden chairs. There were plenty of familiar faces, plenty of the same faces had fought at the last Hogwarts battle. Harry didn't expect to be witness or party to a second battle, not in his lifetime.

At the head of the room, Harry stood where Dumbledore once stood and gave speeches at the beginning and end of year feasts with McGonagall on his right and Ginny on his left. The rest of the Weasley family were gathered in the front row along with Hermione, Fleur, Angelina Johnston, Hagrid and Kingsley.

The crowd were still busy conversing and greeting friends and acquaintances they had not seen for a time whilst the Hogwarts ghosts meandered about excited by the amount of ex-students that had been called back to defend its boundaries once more. There weren't many portraits in the Great Hall so they all looked rather cramped when just about every other portrait in the castle came to hear what the Boy Who Lived had to say with Dumbledore and Snape among them.

"Hello, can everyone hear me?" Harry called out and the first two or three rows closest to him abandoned their conversations and turned to face him whilst the rest carried on as if there were no interruption. "Can everyone hear me?" he raised his voice higher but still only attracted the attention of the first few rows.

From beside him came a deafening shrill blow and Harry turned to see his wife with her fingers between her lips whistling as loud as she could whilst her cheeks turned slightly pink at the pressure.

"You can all catch up later." She said into the silence. "Let's focus on why we're here."

Harry cleared his throat and said under his breath to Ginny, "Thank you, Mrs Potter."

"You're welcome, dear." She smirked.

"Okay, can you all hear me? Good. Welcome back to Hogwarts. I'm sure by now you'll all know why you're here or you'll have heard rumours. Then let me set the record straight. Tomorrow is the grand reopening, hundreds upon hundreds of new and senior students will be travelling into Hogsmeade Station for their first day, or first day back, at Hogwarts." Harry paused to allow the importance of this information to sink in. "There is a threat for another attack on this school. It is to take place during the reopening when all those students are pulled up the slope in carriages by Thestrals or in the little tug boats across the lake."

"Is it Death Eaters?" a woman called, raising her hand somewhere in the middle.

"No." Harry lied, though it really was a technicality. "All living Death Eaters are locked up."

Another hand shot up and McGonagall stepped in before they could speak, "If you could please save any questions till the end and let Mr Potter speak. He'll tell you all that we need to know."

"Thank you, Professor. As I was saying... from what we've been told the raiders will intrude via the lake using the old Durmstrang boat. We can't take the chance though that this information might be false. We can't focus all our defences on one area of the grounds. There will be teams of a variety of Witches and Wizards stationed all around the grounds. But we also need a team in the sky. Hermione, if you will?"

Hermione bounded up to Harry's side with a long scroll in her hands which she let the length of it fall and roll halfway down the centre aisle of chairs. She cleared her throat, "Here I have list of everyone's names present. We'll put it on the wall behind us so you can find which part of the castle or grounds you are to report to. Since the threat is for the lake, most of us will be present in the surrounding area or in the water itself."