Future Nostalgia / Harry Potter Fanfic

Infiltrating Hogwarts and the Sacking of Severus Snape

She felt Harry raise his wand and heard him whisper, "Expecto Patronum!"

The silver stag burst from his wand and charged: The dementors scattered, and there was a triumphant yell from somewhere out of sight.

"It's him, down there, down there, I saw his Patronus; it was a Stag!"

The dementors had retreated, the stars were popping out again, and the footsteps of the Death Eaters were becoming louder; but before Estella could panic or decide what to do, there was a grinding of bolts nearby, a door opened on the left-hand side of the narrow street, and a rough voice said, "Potter, in here, quick!"

Estella was the first to move: The four of them hurtled through the open doorway.

"Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!" muttered a tall figure, passing them on his way into the street and slapping the door behind him.

Estella had no idea where they were, but now she saw, by the stuttering light of a single candle, the grubby, sawdust-strewn bar of the Hog's Head Inn. They ran behind the counter and through a second doorway, which led to a rickety wooden staircase that they climbed as fast as they could. The stairs opened into a sitting room with a threadbare carpet and a small fireplace, above which hung a single oil painting of a blonde girl who gazed out at the room with a kind of vacant sweetness.

Shouts reached them from the street below. Still wearing the Invisibility Cloak, they crept toward the grumpy window and looked down. Their savior, whom Estella recognized as the Hog's Head's barman, was the only person not wearing a hood.

"So what?" he was bellowing into one of the hooded faces. "So what? You send dementors down my street, I'll send a Patronus back at 'em! I'm not having 'em near me, I've told you, I'm not having it!"

"That wasn't your Patronus!" said a Death Eater. "That was a stag, it was Potter's!"

They were truly observant, weren't they?

"Stag!" roared the barman, and he pulled out a wand. "Stag! You idiot-Expecto Patronum!"

Something huge and horned erupted from the wand: Head down, it charged toward the High Street and out of sight.

"That's not what I saw-" said the Death Eater, though with less certainty.

"Curfew's been broken, you heard the noise," one of his companions told the barman. "Someone was out in the street against regulations-"

"If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned to your curfew!"

"You set off the Caterwauling Charm?"

"What if I did? Going to cart me off to Azkaban? Kill me for sticking my nose out my own front door? Do it, then, if you want to! But I hope for your sakes you haven't pressed your little Dark Marks and summoned him. He's not going to like being called here for me and my old cat, is he, now?"

"Don't you worry about us," said one of the Death Eaters, "worry about yourself, breaking curfew!"

"And where will you lot traffick potions and poisons when my pub's closed down? What'll happen to your little sidelines then?"

"Are you threatening-?"

"I keep my mouth shut, it's why you come here, isn't it?"

"I still say I saw a stag, Patronus!" shouted the first Death Eater.

"Stag?" roared the barman. "It's a goat, idiot!"

Estella had never been more grateful for the stupid individuals Voldemort permitted to join his ranks.