I heard voices out front, someone creeping up the driveway and it frightened me slightly. It couldn't have been Kieron, sneaking up the path, attempting to unlock my door with his personal house key as he so often did when he was out on the bender, not realising he didn't have a magical key that opened every person's door 'like Santa does.' I heard a rattling noise and the door flew open, though it had been locked a few seconds before. My eyes opened wide and, for lack of a better hiding place, I slipped into the freezer amongst the ham joint for tomorrow's lunch...

We stepped over the threshold and were met by a miniature creature. I jumped out of my skin almost and hissed at Ron, when finally regaining my composure, "Is this it? Is this one of Voldemort's Death Eaters?"

He laughed under his breath. "No. That's a house-elf. Kreacher in fact. Nobody likes him of course, rotten piece of work." I didn't know about rotten, but ugly was certainly something I would have described the thing as, given half a chance. It's face wrinkled into a permanent state of distaste and anger.

There was a swashing sound in the air as masked Death Eaters appeared left right and centre. Lucius Malfoy replaced his mask and stepped in line. "Ah Fenrir," the Dark Lord greeted lazily. He never greeted lazily. Something was going on and he was clearly very confident of his outcome. "What are your views on becoming a father?"

"A father, my Lord?" he questioned, frowning, clearly confused.

"Why, yes, a father."

"Never really thought about it, my Lord."

Voldemort led him away.

"He grows tired by the day," she sighed mysteriously, unhappily. "His days will be through soon."

"He was born in 1431," Minerva mused. That must have made him four-hundred and sixty-six by then.

“Haha,” sneered Malfoy, “the plan seems to have been put into action.”

“What?” I frowned, confused.

“None of your business, muggle,” hissed Malfoy under his breathe.

“Really?” Blaise interrupted our argument, “So soon? I would have thought he’d at least have taken a little more time to plan it.”

I wondered what I had done but all that I could see was black nothingness. This felt like the end, it must have been the end, for what else could it have been? Pain ran through my muscles, my veins, my bones and there was a dull ache. I’d used all the power I had to fight her off. Was she dead?

It appeared to be some sort of a map, I noticed, as they open it. There were a lot of rooms, a couple of drawn in dragons and a large, red 'X'.
"This is it," I heard Harry saying to the other two out of the window. "This is what's going to stop Voldemort."

Her red hair showed brighter in the light of the fire, curls hanging about her shoulders. The only thing that was dull about her were her eyes, grey and soulless. The girl seemed to have no emotions, not anymore, and that was where the similarities ended. Draco slapped her across the face, "I told you to look at me."

Christmas was nothing like it was back home. There was no dinner, not like I imagined there would be. Molly Weasley was just too upset about the loss of her son to celebrate. She hadn't even gotten her own children anything, not a knitted jumper, not even a mitten. It was a sad sight to see. Voldemort looked over at Harry, completely by chance, and Voldemort caught him staring at me.

“Oh, good morning to you too Harry! Have a good night did you? Why did nobody bother to wake me?” I hissed.

“You can take care of yourself,” he repeated my words from the previous night with such an icy precision that I was faintly worried I had hurt his feelings. I knew I had when he mumbled out, shifting his eyes away to avoid contact with mine, “So I suppose you’ll make the potion fine on your own, too.”

"I thought Regulus was dead?" Hermione questioned.

"I thought he was Death Eater," Ron wondered.

She had never felt more alive and more needed as then, upon her death bed. It was as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She had played her part in the war... She had played her part in the downfall of Tom Riddle, the Dark Lord Voldemort.

"Hagrid. You have to let us in. We need to see Madame Pomfrey immediately," upon hearding Kingsley's voice and his urgent tones, Hagrid swung the gate open and, forgetting to lock it behind him, ran after them to the hospital wing, to check that they would be ok. Little did he know that right then he made one of the biggest mistakes of his life, and he had made a fair few.

The grey shades swirled in amongst themselves, like happy dancing figures on the ceiling. Sometimes she wished she could join them, though they were not real and there was obviously nothing there. Imagination was the only form of entertainment she had, for there was never anything to do. She felt so drained, like a caged animal, pacing back and forth. If she ever got out, she decided, she'd never visit the zoo again. Those poor animals, trapped for the rest of their lives, and they were so beautiful too. Who could wish such a thing upon someone? Never mind those defenceless creatures.

There was no time to think about that now. She wiggled about, but the cage did not move, and neither did she. She didn't know how many hours she had left, but she would get out of the cage if it was the last thing she ever did.

"Hermione?" it was the first word that ran out of my mouth, and far from it being on purpose, my primal instincts begged for her to be ok, but Ron's eyes puffing up told me different. She wasn't ok, she- I threw up again, my stomach gave way. How could she leave me all alone like this?

"You need to save Harry," was Ron's reply. I didn't feel like it. I felt spiteful. The world had taken Hermione away from me and that was all that I needed to know.

He pointed his wand at the werewolf, his heart beating noisily inside of his brain. It wouldn't stop beating. He couldn't stop it even if he tried. The blood rushing into his brain was all too much for him, and he lost his balance as he shot the spell. The werewolf fell sideways to its death, but caught Fletcher in the side.

It was then that she realised she was crying. She's been so wrapped up in thoughts of her loss that she hadn't noticed the people trying their hardest not to stare. It was hard when someone was wailing so loudly, when they could barely form words. Mourning was a devastating sight, and this was the worst kind. If life meant living without Remus, Tonks didn't want to live anymore.

Sometimes, in her dreams, he called to her. Those nights she woke up screaming. He was never there to comfort her anymore, and the warmth of his skin, his soft words his comforting hugs- those were the things that she missed most of all. Those are the things she could never hope to get back.

Killing would be the hard part when it came to the final battle. I knew that I would have to do it, to save the lives of those on my own side, that it was necessary, but it wasn't something that I liked to think about doing.
 

I stepped onto the cool, stone cobbles. The air was hot and I expected the stones to be too, to burn my bare feet, but the sun had set already and nothing but cold water lay on the stones. I heard the faint howls of the wind in the distance, and behind me were footsteps. Was this who I had come to meet?
 

"Crucio!" He dodged left first, and then right. It was going to be a challenge, escaping the pair of them. Could he manage it? As he moved his way about the fields, which he knew so well from his childhood, he dodged carefully and easily, but soon he grew tired.

"Crucio!" it struck him and he fell down, writhing in pain. He tried to struggle against the pain but it was so hard. He felt something slide down his throat, it smelt like veritaserum. Was it? It must have been.

"Polyjuice Potion is the potion which allows, when drank often enough, to take on the same appearance as another person. This can trick us into believing that we are speaking with a loved one or a friend, when we are in fact fraternising with the enemy. Unfortunately, I don't have any more time to explain than that, so you'll have to look the potion up in your own time. The ins and outs of it are that at some point or another, Harry might not be Harry and you'll have to protect yourself from that possibility."
 

The potion slid down my throat, thick and disgusting as it slithered. I began to gag, and I heard Hermione outside the door, "Aavalyn, are you ok?"

Of course, I could not reply, but only watch as within me, my bone structure, my shape began to change. The next thing I knew I was male. I felt my hair, my disgusting lips, and realised who I was then. Draco Malfoy.

"So, how far are you expecting to go?"

Harry shrugged, "I don't know. We're to pass on into Spain this evening. We’ve heard that there could be something there for us. After that, we don't know," or rather it would have been to dangerous to tell her.

The lights were too much, too hot, and working alone Penelope began to fear what would happen to her when she had healed Karkaroff. Would he try to take her life? “Oh, Merlin. God save me,” she cried out to herself, taking the cleaning potion and starting to mop the wound upon his forehead. As of yet, there were no treatments for mental illness, but there was always hope that delusion was caused only by the injury caused.
 

Ollivander retreated back to his room, and the door was bolted shut behind him. He didn’t know how long he had left to act, so he would have to be swift. As quickly and quietly as possible, he turned over the plans for his wand, finding the map he had drawn of the underground hideout on the back, his route engraved upon it. He would have to learn this over the course of a couple of hours, implant it within his brain, and burn the evidence. Once again, it was going to be a long night. But that was nothing knew, he was growing used to those.

“I don’t know who you’re trying to hide from with those goggles, Lovegood, but I hate to be the one to tell you its not working,” he breathed, puffing his way through the door.

“Sorry, Ollivander. Now, what do you want?” he grinned. There were no pictures in his house, not the way there had been at his old one. Not even of his deceased wife, who he valued more highly than anybody else in the world. “Please, take a seat.”

Penelope’s hand dragged down the window as she watched them leave. What were they doing here? Surely they couldn’t be right, that Voldemort had reached as far as Bulgaria and was going beyond? There was Karkaroff though... Still lying out on that bed in the other room. And that wasn’t the only thing they’d been right about either. There was the small matter that she had done nothing to aid anyone throughout the war, and yet they were fighting so save her life, when what had she done but help those already twisted by Voldemort?

“Then I needn’t hold back for her sake,” I had to fight back the sadness within me, for really I had seen this coming all along. “I am going to kill you Draco Malfoy.”
“No, Aavalyn, don’t do it!”
“Ah, Harry. I was wondering when you would join us,” Voldemort mused, his eyes gleaming red and heavy like my own, now.

"Hey you," Hermione smiled, her tan the first thing to greet me. It was almost as if they'd been on holiday, or I might have thought so if it weren't for the cuts and bruises all over their bodies.

"What happened?" Harry asked, his face very severe. He wanted to know all the details before we planned ahead to our next move.

"I'll do it."

"No, Neville, you can't."

"She's right you know. Someone has to deliver this potion."

"Let me drink it," Luna propositioned, staring death in the face with both eyes. Both men looked at her like she had gone completely mad.

"I'm not sacrificing her. Seriously, just let me."

Sure enough, as planned, on the night of the thirtieth of July, 1998, Lucius Malfoy entered the trap door through which Harry had travelled many a time before to Hogsmeade, with the very intention of destroying the life of that very same boy, and the lives of millions of others, in order to keep his own family safe and wealthy.