AN: This is for the "Midnight" competition on HPFC. Hope you like it! It also sort of fits with my story "Ginny Weasley and the Longest Year".
The silence in the room above the Leaky Cauldron was deafening. After grumbling for fifteen minutes that they had been sent back – hadn't they all pulled their weight this year? hadn't they proved that they were also capable of fighting? – the students had settled in this horrible uneasy silence, trying to hear from afar what was going on in Hogwarts.
In a corner of the room, Romilda looked out the window. A small figure was creeping in the street, turned around and sent her a thumbs-up. She smiled and passed the thumbs-up to Dennis. Operation "get Colin Creevey out to Hogwarts" was a success.
She sled back down to the floor. Rose Winters sent her a questioning look from across the room and she smiled back. She knew the young Hufflepuff wanted to be out there just as much.
The silence was broken from time to time by a young student sniffing. They all had friends out there, fighting. Romilda felt sick. She wanted to scream in frustration, cry in anger, and sob in terror. She was no fool – people died in battles, and some of her friends might be dead come morning, or whenever this folly ended. The despair was slowly overtaking her, when she remembered something Demelza once told her, before she went to Quidditch practice.
"I want to crumble up and die sometimes, thinking of the war, and wondering if we're ever going to win it. But you need to remember why we're fighting. We're fighting so that one day, worrying over who wins the Quidditch Cup is the most important thing in our lives again. And if we let the sadness and despair get the best of us now, and let Death Eaters take the fun out of Quidditch, of all things, then they've already won. Even Harry still played Quidditch last year. If Harry didn't stop having fun despite the war, neither should we."
Demelza was too wise for her own good, she thought as she looked across the room. And then it hit her – if things did goo pear-shaped in the Castle, and despite all their best hopes, You-Know-Who won that night, the people sitting with her in that very room above the Leaky Cauldron were going to have to fight. And no-one fought well when they were depressed.
She stood up again, taking in her hands the pillow she was sitting on and threw it at Demelza.
"C'mon, Demmy. Don't let the Death Eaters take the fun out of life. We're going to beat them."
Demelza looked stunned for a moment, and Romilda thought she was about to yell at her for being, as usual, completely inappropriate. But then, she smiled, picked her pillow, and threw it back. With her perfect Chaser aim, she hit Romilda square in the face. Rose picked up the pillow that fell, but her aim wasn't as good, and she hit Dennis instead.
Students everywhere in the room started standing up and throwing pillows around. Slowly, the despair seemed to leave them, and the joy and fun they were fighting for came back.
The laughed and threw cushions and pillows, and tickled each other, and acted like the children they were for what felt like forever, and Romilda never wanted that moment to end, until...
The voice was cold, and the most terrifying thing she'd ever heard.
"You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery."
The deafening silence hit the room again, as the cruel voice talked, and asked for Harry to be handed over. But this time, she could see in the eyes of everyone across the room a defiant gleam. They were ready to face whatever came their way.