"Those who fought for something better, those who taught by how they lived, loved ones taken long before their work was done. Underground, underground, leave them underground." - Underground, Austin Wintory
The world has ended, so why has the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? My mind is in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley cannot be dead, the evidence of my senses must be lying --
And suddenly a body falls past the hole blown into the side of the school and curses fly in at us from the darkness, hitting the wall behind our heads.
"Get down!" I shout, as more curses fly through the night: I drag Draco to the floor and grab ahold of his cheeks, tears pouring from my eyes so erratically that my whole face feels wet. "Get out of here, now!" I sob, and behind me, I can hear Harry shouting at Percy to move. I glance over my shoulder to see him laid across Fred's body, protecting it from further harm.
"No -- I can help, I want to help -- " A horrible sob racks my chest, and Draco cups the side of my face. "I'm not leaving you," he says passionately.
"Percy! Percy, you can't do anything for him! We're going to --"
"GO!" I shout as Hermione's scream pierces the air. Turning, I don't need to ask why. A monstrous spider, the size of a small car, is trying to climb through the massive hole in the wall: one of Aragog's descendants has joined the fight.
Ron, Harry, and I shout together; our spells collide, and the monster is blown backwards, its legs jerking horribly, and vanishes into the darkness.
"It brought friends!" Harry calls, and I turn back to Draco quickly, pressing my lips to his in a frantic goodbye. It tastes like tears and blood.
"Go," I say once more, grasping his cheeks. Jets of light are flying over our heads as more giant spiders flood the scene. "Find Blaise, and your mother, and stay alive for me -"
He's crying now, also. "When all this is over, I'm going to be waiting for you," he says, grasping the back of my head and moving our foreheads together, "you better show up."
"I'll see you then" I whisper, flinching as more curses come soaring over our heads, so close that I feel the force of them blow my hair. "Now, go. NOW!"
I turn my back on him before he gets another chance to stop me, pushing Hermione, Ron, and Riley ahead of me, and to my right, Harry stoops down to seize Fred's body under the armpits. Percy, realizing what Harry is trying to do, stops clinging to the body and helps; together, protected by my cover fire, they haul Fred out of the way.
"Here," I say, and they place him in a niche where a suit of armour had stood earlier. I can't bear to look at him a second longer than I have to, and after making sure the body is well-hidden, Harry and I take off after the others. Draco and Goyle have vanished, but at the end of the corridor, which is now full of dust and falling masonry, glass long gone from the windows, I see many people running backwards and forwards, whether friends or foes I cannot tell. Rounding the corner, Percy lets out a bull-like roar, "ROCKWOOD!" and sprints off in the direction of a tall man, who is pursuing a couple of students.
"Harry, Haylee, in here!" Riley screams.
He and Hermione have pulled Ron behind a tapestry. They seem to be wrestling together, and for one mad second I think that all three of them a locked in an embrace; then I see that Riley and Hermione are trying to restrain Ron, to stop him running after Percy.
"Listen to me -- LISTEN, RON!"
"I wanna help -- I wanna kill Death Eaters--"
His face is contorted, smeared with dust and smoke, and he's shaking with rage and grief. With a grunt, Riley grabs Ron's shoulders and shoves him against the wall, using all his strength to keep him contained there. "Ron, we're the only ones who can end this!" Riley shouts. "Come on, we've just gotta kill the snake, and then -- and then --"
Riley dissolves into sobs which seem to engulf his entire body, and I rush to his side, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and grabbing one of Ron's hands. I know how he feels: pursuing another Horcrux won't bring the satisfaction of revenge; I want to fight, too, to punish them, the people who killed Fred, and I want to find Dad, and Sirius, and the other Weasleys, and make quite sure that they're not -- but I can't permit the idea to form in my mind.
"We will fight!" Hermione says. "We'll have to, to reach the snake! But let's not lose sight, now, of what we're supposed to be d--doing! Riley's right, we're the only ones who can end it."
She's crying too, and she wipes her face on her torn, and singed sleeve and she speaks, but she takes great and heaving breaths to calm herself as she turns to Harry and me.
"You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he'll have the snake with him, won't he? Do it -- look inside him!"
Why is it so easy? Because our scars have been burning for hours, yearning to show us Voldemort's thoughts? We close our eyes, and at once, the screams and the bangs and all the discordant sounds of the battle are drowned until they become distant, as though I'm standing far, far away from them...
He's standing in the middle of a desolate but strangely familiar room, with peeling paper on the walls and all the windows boarded except for one. The sounds of the assault on the castle are muffled and distant. The single unblocked window reveals distant bursts of light where the castle stands, but inside the room, it is dark except for a solitary oil lamp.
He's rolling his wand between his fingers, watching it, his thoughts on the Room in the castle, the secret Room only he had ever found, the Room, like the Chamber, that you had to be clever, and cunning, and inquisitive to disocver...he's confident that the twins will not find the diadem...although Dumbledore's puppets have come much further than he had ever expected them too...too far...
"My lord," says a voice, desperate and cracked. He turns: there is Lucius Malfoy sitting in the darkest corner, ragged and still bearing the marks of the punishment he had received after the twins' escapes. One of his eyes remains closed and puffy. "My lord...please...my son..."
"If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault. He did not come to join me, like the rest of the Slytherins. Perhaps he has decided to reunite with Haylee Potter?"
"No -- never," whispers Lucius.
"You must hope not."
"Aren't -- aren't you afraid, my Lord, that the Potters might die at another hand but yours?" asks Lucius, his voice shaking. "Wouldn't it be...forgive me...more prudent to call off the battle, enter the castle and seek them y--yourself?"
"Do not pretend, Lucius. You wish the battle to cease so that you can discover what has happened to your son. And I do not need to seek the Potters. Before the night is out, the Potters will have come to find me."
Voldemort drops his gaze once more to the wand in his fingers. It's troubling him...and the things that trouble Lord Voldemort need to be rearranged...
"Go and fetch Snape."
"Snape, m-my Lord?"
"Snape. Now. I need him. There is a -- service -- I require from him Go."
Frightened, stumbling a little through the gloom, Lucius leaves the room. Voldemort continues to stand there, twirling the wand between his fingers, staring at it.
"It is the only way, Nagini," he whispers, and he looks around, and there is the great, thick snake now suspended in mid-air, twisting gracefully within the enchanted, protected space he has made for her, a starry, transparent sphere somewhere between glittering cage and tank.
With a gasp, I pull back and open my eyes; at the same moment, my ears are assaulted with screeches and cries, the smashes and bangs of battle.
"He's in the Shrieking Shack. The snake's with him, it's got some sort of magical enchantment around it. He's just sent Lucius Malfoy to find out."
"Voldemort's sitting in the Shrieking Shack?" Hermione says, outraged. "He's not -- he's not even fighting?"
"He doesn't think he has to," I say, rubbing my swollen eyes. "He thinks we're going to go to him."
"But why?"
"He knows we're after Horcruxes -- he's keeping Nagini close beside him -- obviously we're going to have to go at him to get near the thing --"
"Right," Riley says thickly, wiping his nose on his jacket sleeve, "so we're not doing that, it's what he's expecting. Ron and I will go and get it --"
Harry cuts across Riley.
"You three stay here, Haylee and I'll go under the Cloak, and we'll be back as soon as we --"
"No," says Hermione, "it makes much more sense if I take the Cloak and --"
"Don't even think about it," Ron snarl at her.
Before Hermione can get any further than, "Ron, I'm just as capable --" the tapestry at the top of the staircase on which we're standing is ripped open.
"POTTERS!"
Two masked Death Eaters stand there, but even before their wands are fully raised, Hermione shouts, "Glisseo!"
The stairs beneath our feet flatten into a chute, and we hurtle down it, unable to control our speed but so fast that the Death Eater's Stunning Spells fly far over our heads. We shoot through the concealing tapestry at the bottom and spin on to the floor, hitting the opposite wall.
"Duro!" cries Hermione, pointing her wand at the tapestry and there are two loud, sickening crunches as the tapestry turns to stone and the Death Eaters pursuing us crumple against it.
"Get back!" Ron shouts, and we all flatten ourselves against a door as a herd of galloping desks thunder past, shepherded by a sprinting Professor McGonagall. She appears not to notice us: her hair has come down, and there's a gash on her cheek. As she turns the corner, I hear her scream: "CHARGE!"
"You two, get the Cloak on," Hermione says. "Never mind us --"
But Harry throws it over all five of us; large though as we are, I doubt anyone will see our feet through the dust that clogs the air, the falling stone, the shimmer of spells.
We run down the next staircase and find ourselves in a corridor full of duellers. The portraits on either side of the fighters are crammed with figures, screaming advice and encouragement, while Death Eaters both masked and unmasked duel students and teachers. Dean has won himself a won, for he is face to face with Dolohov, Parvati with Travers. We all raise our wands, ready to strike, but the duellers are weaving and darting so much that there's a strong likelihood of hurting one of our own. Even as we stand braced, looking for the opportunity to act, there comes a great "wheeeeeee!" and looking up, we see Peeves zooming over us, dropping Snargaluff pods down on to the Death Eaters, whose heads are suddenly effulged in wriggling, green tubers like fat worms.
"Argh!"
A fistful of tubers have hit the Cloak over Riley's head; the slimy, green roots were suspended improbably in mid-air as Ron tries to shake them loose.
"Someone's invisible there!" shouts a masked Death Eater, pointing.
Dean makes the most of the Death Eater's momentary distraction, knocking him out with a Stunning Spell; Dolohov attempts to retaliate, and Parvarti shoots a Body-Bind Curse at him.
"LET'S GO!" Harry yells, and we gather the Cloak tightly around ourselves and pelt, heads down, through the midst of the fighters, slipping a little in pools of Snargaluff juice, towards the top of the marble staircase into the Entrance Hall.
"The Malfoy boy's gone rogue again! Take him down!"
Draco is on the upper landing, fighting back-to-back with Blaise, and a small group of Death Eaters have them surrounded. Draco jinxes three of them with one swift movement, mercilessly using the Death Eater's own tactics against them.
Blaise scoffs as we pass, Stunning their final opponent. "Did the Dark Lord teach you that?"
There are more duellers all over the stairs and in the Hall, Death Eaters everywhere I look: Yaxley, close to the front doors in combat with Flitwick, a masked Death Eater duelling Kingsley right beside us. Students run in every direction, some carrying or dragging friends. I direct a Stunning Spell towards the masked Death Eater, it misses but nearly hits Neville, who has emerged from nowhere brandishing armfuls of Venomous Tentacula, which loops itself happily around the nearest Death Eater.
We speed down the nearest marble staircases: glass shatters to our left and the Slytherin hourglass that records house points spills its emeralds everywhere so that people slip and stagger as they run. Two bodies fall from the balcony overhead as we reach the ground a grey blur that I mistake for an animal speeds four-legged across the hall to sink its teeth into one of the fallen.
"NO!" Hermione shrieks, and with a deafening blast from her wand Fenrir Greyback is thrown backwards from the feebly stirring body of Lavender Brown. He hits the marble railing and struggles to return to his feet. Then, with a bright white flash and a crack, a crystal ball falls on the top of his head, and he crumples to the ground, motionless.
"I have more!" shrieks Professor Trelawney from over the bannisters, "more for any who want them! Here --!"
And with a movement like a tennis serve, she heaves another enormous crystal sphere from her bag, waves her wand through the air, and causes the ball to speed across the hall and smash through a window. At the same moment, the heavy wooden front doors burst open, and more gigantic spiders force their way into the Entrance Hall.
Screams of terror rent the air: the fighters scatter, Death Eaters and Hogwartians alike, and red and green jets of light fly into the midst of the oncoming monsters, which shudder and rear, more terrifying than ever.
"How do we get out?" Ron yells over all the screaming, but before either Harry, Hermione, or I can answer we're being torn apart from the inside out: something across the way has emblazoned Riley, and before any of us can stop him he has disappeared from inside the Cloak.
"Holy fuck, holy fuck!" he yells.
"RILEY, NO!"
I forget everything else: I sprint out from under the Cloak, running bent double to avoid the curses illuminating the whole Hall. I can't let him die like Fred - I won't....
"RILEY, COME BACK!"
I tackle him to the ground, and we tumble and crash into the stone with bone-shattering force. I scramble to my feet, dragging a screaming Riley along with me, and smash into the bannister, just as a horde of spiders stampede across the area we laid only moments ago.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" I roar, trying to keep him restrained.
"She-she -- " Riley splutters, thrashing against me.
I can hear someone calling my name, whether friend or foe I don't care: if I let Riley go, he'll sprint straight into the dark grounds and towards his doom. It's almost as if something magnetic is pulling him away from me, hellbent on his demise.
"RI -- PLEASE -- STUPEFY -- go, go, go!"
Stunning a gigantic spider, I throw my entire body weight against him and begin sprinting, but just as he seems to be coming to his senses, our way is impeded by a monumental foot, which swings down out of the darkness and makes the ground on which we stand shudder. I look up: a giant stands before us, twenty-feet high, its head hidden in shadow, nothing but its tree-like, hairy shins illuminated by light from the castle doors. With one brutal, fluid movement, it smashes a massive fist through an upper window and glass rains down upon us, peppering our skin with tiny, stinging cuts as we vault the foot.
"Oh my god -- oh my god!" I gasp, as we gaze up at the giant now trying to seize people through the window above. Blood is pounding in my ears. My heart is thundering in my chest. My vision begins to blur as if I'm wearing Harry's glasses.
"HAGGER?"
Grawp comes lurching around the corner of the castle; only do I realize that he is, indeed, a small giant. The gargantuan monster trying to crush people on the upper floors looks around and lets out a roar. The stone steps tremble as he stomps towards his smaller kin, and Grawp's lopsided mouth falls open, showing yellow half-brick sized teeth, and they launch themselves at each other with the savagery of lions.
"RUN!" Riley screams.
"BUT H-HARRY?" I shout back, but it feels like a helpless whimper: in the chaos, I've completely lost sight of Harry, Hermione, and Ron, and their absence feels like a stone hand grasped around my throat, pressing tighter and tighter every second their whereabouts are unknown.
"DOESN'T MATTER!" Riley roars. "GO!"
The night is full of hideous yells and blows as the giants wrestle, and Riley seizes my hand and tears back into the Entrance Hall and through to the viaduct courtyard. I twist my body and neck erratically as we run, feeling cracks running up and down my spine: the courtyard is in utter turmoil.
Harry, Hermione, and Ron are still nowhere to be seen; glass is raining down upon us like hellfire; green jets of light flash beneath my eyelids, no matter how tightly I squeeze them shut; my heart feels like it's about to burst from my chest. And across the ravaged no man's land, my eyes focus on the one thing I did not need to see, and my legs give out beneath me. It feels like the sun is exploding, but, the air around me is beginning to freeze.
Two men, one with messy black hair and glasses and the other with a wild ponytail, are dragging a body through the wasteland, his face savagely scarred not from tonight's frenzy, but from an injury obtained long ago.
His name leaves my lips with what feels like the final breath of air in my lungs: "Remus..."
Riley is shouting at me again, but I've gone deaf. My sob catches and solidifies in my chest. Shapes move out in the darkness, swirling figures of concentrated blackness, moving in a great wave towards the castle, their faces hooded and their breaths rattling...
Riley stands in front of me as the sounds of fighting all around us grow suddenly muted, deaded, because a silence only Dementors can bring has fallen thickly through the night.
"Come on, Haylee!" says Riley's voice, from a very long way away. "Your Patronus, Haylee, come on!"
I raise my wand, but a dull hopelessness is spreading through me: Fred is gone, Remus is gone, Harry is nowhere to be found; how many more lay dead that I don't know about; I feel as if my soul has already left my body...What's the point in fighting if my world has already ended?
"HAYLEE, PLEASE!" Riley screams, sobbing.
A hundred Dementors are advancing, gliding towards us, sucking their way closer to my despair, which is like a promise of a feast...
I see Riley's silver bear burst into the air, flicker feebly and expire. My own wand trembles in my hand, and I almost welcome the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling...
And suddenly a silver scorpion, a panther, and a wolf soar past us: the Dementors call back before the creatures' approach. Three more people have arrived out of the darkness to stand with us, their wands continuing to cast their Patronuses.
"Come on, Haylee," says a girl's voice: it is eerily familiar, and yet, I don't recognize it. "Think of something happy..."
"Something happy?" I ask hoarsely.
"Yes...I'm still here," she whispers, "and a Dementor's Kiss isn't your destiny. I would know."
There is a silver spark, then a wavering light, and then, with the greatest effort it has ever cost me, my doe bursts from the end of my wand. It canters forwards, and now the Dementors scatter in earnest, and immediately the sounds of the surrounding battle are loud in my ears.
Riley is sobbing again, and it's an absolutely gut-wrenching sound, wracked with devastation, heartache, and could it be...relief? The next few moments seem to go in slow motion: I turn my head to the right, and there are Draco and Blaise once more, their faces pale, bloody, and tear-stained, but also bearing smiles.
And in the space between them stands a girl with vibrant red hair and piercing blue eyes, the likes of which I never thought I'd meet again. Riley has collapsed at her feet, hugging her waist like a small child and bawling into her sweater. Though, despite his hysteria, I know he is whole again.
Mere seconds ago I had come to terms with the fact that Remus might have been the last word to leave my lips, spoken in my final moment of despair, pain, and tradegy. But when I speak again it is not a symbol of my survival, nor a cause for celebration; the sound of my voice again terrifies me, almost as much the sight of the ghost now standing before me.
"Tessa?"