White Heather for Protection

The Fall

Dumbledore and Hadrian had returned to Hogwarts at last.

"Fred, George, Rian's back." And from the feel of it, they were on top of the Astronomy Tower.

They both shared a look then nodded at her.

"You should go to him."

"We'll carry on."

She saw the determination in the gazes and smirked. "Rain hell on them."

Fred and George gave lazy salutes before getting popped away.

The Astronomy Tower was just a short distance from here, and so Heather started making her way there at a quick jog. The house elves were being immensely helpful, but it couldn't be easy teleporting people all over the castle. She didn't want to overwork them.

It took a short while to get to the base of the tower. When she headed for the stairwell, she realised that there was a barrier preventing her from passing through. She didn't dare touch it, fearing some sort of backlash. The ward felt...malevolent, for lack of a better word. The Deatheaters must have beaten her here. She cursed herself for being too slow. That was what she got for being complacent. She didn't know how many of them there were, but she was comforted by the fact that at least Dumbledore was with Hadrian.

She was going to try and take the ward down, but for all that she had read up on them, she had focussed more on ward creation, not destruction. Hopefully whoever had made this one was an amateur.

The sound of footsteps made her pivot around, wand at the ready. The faces that greeted her were familiar and welcome. "Professor McGonagall, Cedric!" she greeted in relief.

"Miss Potter?" the other witch said, lowering her own wand. "What are you doing here?"

Heather raked her eyes over their rumpled appearances. They seemed to be otherwise well, however, thank Merlin. "Hadrian and Headmaster Dumbledore are at the top of the tower, but there's a ward that's stopping me from entering."

"Hadrian's up there?" Cedric asked, clearly worried for his boyfriend.

She shot him a terse nod. "I think there are Deatheaters up there too. They must have put the barrier up to prevent us from helping. Do either of you have experience with dismantling wards?"

Professor McGonagall frowned, shaking her head. Cedric, however, stepped forward.

"I'll take a shot, but I'm no expert."

Well, it was better than nothing. Heather turned back to the puke green light of the ward as Cedric joined her. The first thing she did was use an analysing spell to get a general idea of the ward.

"It's a form of selective entry ward. A physical barrier, but doesn't stop spells. Multilayered." She narrowed her eyes. "Three...no four layers. The first is the actual physical wall. Second a trap. Third...some sort of offensive barrier? I can't tell what the fourth one is."

Cedric rubbed his chin as he considered the information. "The thing is probably keyed to the Dark Marks, if the DEs put it up," he stated.

Heather blinked rapidly at the sentence. Yes...that made sense. She wondered why it hadn't occurred to her.

"But we can't start taking it down unless we know what that last one is," Cedric huffed in frustration.

"I have a suggestion," Professor McGonagall said over their shoulders.

Starting a little, Heather turned to look at her. She'd almost forgotten the woman was there.

The Professor then transfigured a stray rock into a rabbit. "We should see what effect the ward has on something attempting to cross."