Healed & Broken (HP) {Book 4 of the Wild & Free Series}

16. The Lightning-Struck Tower

There it was, hanging in the sky above the school: the blazing green skull with a serpent tongue, the mark Death Eaters left behind whenever they had entered a building... wherever they had murdered...

"When did it appear?" asked Dumbledore, and his hand clenched painfully upon my shoulder as he struggled to his feet.

"Must have been minutes ago, it wasn't there when I put the cat out, but when I got upstairs —"

"We need to return to the castle at once," said Dumbledore. "Rosmerta" — and though he staggered a little, he seemed wholly in command of the situation — "we need transport — brooms —"

"I've got a couple behind the bar," she said, looking very frightened. "Shall I run and fetch — ?"

"No, Harry and Liana can do it."

Harry and I raised our wands at once.

"Accio Rosmerta's Brooms!"

A second later we heard a loud bang as the front door of the pub burst open; three brooms had shot out into the street and were racing each other to our side, where they stopped dead, quivering slightly at waist height.

"Rosmerta, please send a message to the Ministry," said Dumbledore, as he mounted the broom nearest him. "It might be that nobody within Hogwarts has yet realised anything is wrong... Harry, Liana, put on your Invisibility Cloak."

Harry pulled his Cloak out of his pocket and threw it over himself and me before we both mounted our brooms: Madam Rosmerta was already tottering back toward her pub as Harry, Dumbledore and I kicked off from the ground and rose up into the air, Harry and I staying closely together to prevent the cloak from falling off.

As we sped toward the castle, I glanced sideways at Dumbledore, ready to grab him should he fall, but the sight of the Dark Mark seemed to have acted upon Dumbledore like a stimulant: He was bent low over his broom, his eyes fixed upon the Mark, his long silver hair and beard flying behind him on the night air. And I too looked ahead at the skull, and fear swelled inside me like a venomous bubble, compressing my lungs, driving all other discomfort from my mind...

How long had we been away? Had Ron, Hermione, Rowan, Lucy and Ginny's luck run out by now? Was it one of them who had caused the Mark to be set over the school, or was it Neville, or Luna, or some other member of the D.A.? And if it was... Harry and I were the ones who had told them to patrol the corridors, we had asked them to leave the safety of their beds... Would we be responsible, again, for the death of a friend?

As we flew over the dark, twisting lane down which we had walked earlier, I heard, over the whistling of the night air in my ears, Dumbledore muttering in some strange language again. I thought I understood why as I felt my broom shudder when we flew over the boundary wall into the grounds: Dumbledore was undoing the enchantments he himself had set around the castle so we could enter at speed. The Dark Mark was glittering directly above the Astronomy Tower, the highest of the castle. Did that mean the death had occurred there?

Dumbledore had already crossed the crenellated ramparts and was dismounting; Harry and I landed next to him seconds later and looked around.

The ramparts were deserted. The door to the spiral staircase that led back into the castle was closed. There was no sign of a struggle, of a fight to the death, of a body.