"Neville, run!" A petite figure screams over the din of the battle taking place around them in bowels of Hogwarts. Wandless, Neville reluctantly obeys and hobbles on his bare feet down the dark passageway leaving a trail of blood in his wake along the sharp, stone floor. Wearing a knit black ski mast, generic blue jeans, and a green sweater, the girl fires off curse after curse before shouting to her two similarly dressed companions, "go!"

A few minutes later, one of the rescuers catches-up to Neville and hunches over in exhaustion. Neville, resting against the opposite wall across from her, pants. "Thanks!"

Covered in shadows, the figures pulls off the mask and in a feminine voice whispers back to her bloodied, but not beaten classmate. "Not a problem."

"Yeah," the second rescuer wheezes. His broad shoulders rise and fall under a red and blue West Ham sweater as he tries to catch his breath before laughing. "Now, all we need to do is escape ourselves."

A moment later, their leader comes barreling around the corner with a trail of curses clipping at her heels and barks out, "run!"

Without hesitation, the three students obey using their adrenaline to carry them to the end of the corridor where a pair of ancient, wooden doors guard the stairs leading up into the castle proper and apparent safety. Just as the broad shouldered boy reaches for the door handle, they explode inwards sending shrapnel through the air and smashing the boy into the unforgiving rock wall.

Neville, even with his body bruised and bloodied from two days in the dungeon, recovers first and gently shakes his friend awake. Face pinched in worry, he looks up in time to see in horror the tall, intimidating form of the school's despised Headmaster cut through the cloud of dust and debris. "No!" He cries.

"Longbottom," Snape sneers looking down at the two figures, one kneeling and one prone, at his feet while as four shadows emerge to flank him. Raising his wand, he commands. "Take them!"

Before the four can attack, the petite girl in the green sweater, now cut and covered in pieces of wood, stone, and blood, rises onto one knee, rips off her shredded mask. Red hair framing her young and defiant face, she yells, "incendio!"

Snape and a tall, fair skinned boy wearing the blue and gold robes of Hufflepuff, leap in opposite directions to avoid the attack. Unfortunately, a third figure covered in the green and silver robes of Slytherin, was a moment too slow and the red curse ignites her hair and fur trimmed. She screams out in shock. "Help!"

Startled for a moment, Snape raises a curious eyebrow, and sneers. "Impressive Weasley, most impressive." He points his non-wand hand at the second pair of students on the opposite side of the conflagration and bellows, "get her!" Finally, he flicks his wrist in exasperation and bites out, "aguamenti."

Finally stirring, the boy lying next to Neville looks up groggily and is immediately consumed by rage. With his wand hand broken and sliced open by the explosion, he pulls out his wand with his left hand and screams "Tarantallegra!" He watches in satisfaction as the brunette girl wearing the red and gold robes of his beloved Gryffindor house screams just before she runs at full speed into the solid wall. The stone corridor echoes with a bone breaking snas before the girl falls down in a motionless heap. "Fuck you, Vane, you traitor!" He grimaces in a deep, Irish brogue.

Seeing the second girl in his party fall to the miscreants, the Hufflepuff student takes careful aim at the two boys lying on the ground only a few feet from him. In anger, he returns the favor. "Incendio!"

"Watch out!" Neville cries out as he shoves his rescuer off the ground and rolls them away from the curse to safety behind a stone pedestal.

Before he can move around the impediment for a clear shot, the Hufflepuff suddenly freezes in place before a stringing hex hits him in the groin sending him to the ground groaning in pain. Crawling out from a pile of debris, the second female rescuer of the group, strawberry blonde hair randomly sticking out of her hastily replaced pink ski mask, laughs. "I don't believe that I actually dated Smith!"

"Bombara!" The dark skinned, green and silver robed forth member of Snape's party shouts at the pile of rock and wood next to the triumphant girl. The explosion blinds her just as a piece of rock slices through her mask and cheek drawing blood. She goes down on one knee in pain before an 'Incarcerous' hex hits her unexpectedly from behind binding her arms and legs painfully behind her back. Twisting as she collapses onto the floor, she sees that the wizards they escaped from in the dungeons have caught-up to them. "Ginny, watch out!"

Locked in duel with the Headmaster, Ginny disengages by throwing up a non-verbal shield charm in front of her while she dunks into an alcove just as a horde of hexes and curses sail past her from the opposite direction. "Thanks!" She shouts over the din and then, after seeing the dark skinned boy move to finish her friend off, flicks her wrist again and he falls down unceremoniously under the effect of a non-verbal petrificus totalus curse.

Surrounded and afraid for her friends, Ginny fixes a grim smile on her face and needles the Headmaster. "Headmaster, maybe you should teach Blaise and his pals a few non-verbal spells before taking them out to play!"

Fighting to control his anger, Snape looks down in disgust at the four students in his party. "Amateurs," he contemptuously mumbles before striding in the direction where the young woman who, when his emotionless façade cracks, reminds him of what he has lost. Angrily he bites out, "stupefy," once he has her in his sights.

Ginny anticipates the move and launches herself across the hallway firing off a non-verbal protego charm behind her, which easily blocks the red light. Landing, she takes aim and fires in the opposite direction, "Bombara!"

Enraged at the loss of face in front of the other Death Eaters and the presumed punishment he can expect at the hand of the Dark Lord for allowing this to happen, Amycus Carrow storms around the corner and shouts out in abandon, "crucio!" So focused on his own rage, he fails to see Ginny's counter-attack in time.

As his professor's broken body hurtles over his head, a young, equally enraged man in green in silver robes ducks and screams out at the little girl at the opposite end of the hallway, "avada kadavra!"

Snape hastily abandons his pursuit of Ginny and ducks behind a torch to avoid the green streak of death that blazes between the two fighters. For a moment, everyone is still as each fighter stares in shock and the boy's actions. Snape flicks his want and disarms the boy both figuratively and verbally. "The Dark Lord wants them alive, you fool!"

Taking advantage of the lull and shock, Yaxley stands-up and takes careful aim before whispering, "expelliarmus."

"Shit!" The Irish boy groans as his wand flies out of his grasp and lands several meters away in a pile of refuse. He ducks down and shares a helpless look with Neville. "I'm sorry, Nev, we tried."

Still struggling to free herself from the block ropes, the other girl cries out to Ginny. "We're surrounded, Ginny."

"Everyone, hold you fire!" Snape orders as he walks out into the open, wand raised and faces their tormentor. "Weasley, it's over! Surrender now and we may show some leniency to your friends."

From behind a pile or rock, Ginny rubs her hands over her face in despair, desperately trying to find a way out. She looks over at her team and Neville. All of them are bloody and scared; but, still defiant. She then thinks to herself. What would Harry do? After a moment, a few tears escape her eyes before she resolutely nods to herself and confidently walks out into the open. She laughs, "whatever you say, Headmaster!" Jabbing her wand in the opposite direction, she screams, "reducto!"

Yaxley dives out of the way as an explosion disintegrates the closet door that another silver and green clad student, Gregory Goyle, was standing behind, sending him hurtling backward as wooden knives rip through his flesh. The elder Death Eater then venomously yells back. "Snape, you fool, finish this!"

Snape grunts in annoyance as his first stunning spell misses the red headed girl as she slides across the floor under his aim. Suddenly, a wall of fire appears between the two of them and he is forced to take a step back to avoid being burned.

On the other side of the wall of fire, Ginny points her wand at the floor between her and her friends and with all of her will, screams, "defodio!" Instantly, meters of rock disappear opening up the corridor to the cavern below. What is left of the floor, quickly tilts upwards. "I'm sorry," she whispers as her three friends slide down into the chamber lying several meters below them.

The bound girl and the broad shouldered boy, who only has one working arm, slide helplessly down into the hole. Neville, at the last second, grabs the edge of the nearly vertical floor with his finger tips and pleads wordlessly with his close friend. A moment later, the stress becomes too much for his broken body and his slips into the darkness below crying out, "Ginny!"

Finally, Snape is able to cut through the fire and leaps through the gap only to be surprised by the hole that greats him on the other side. Desperately, he flicks his wand and a rope shoots out the end enabling him to swing across the pit. Puzzled, he looks at the redhead who meets his stare out of the corner of her eye.

Ginny smiles and then aims her wand at the wall across from them as the other Death Easters encircle her position. "Expulso!" She calmly commands and a section of the wall falls over and blocks the hole she previously made in the floor.

Yaxley laughs as he, Snape, and Alecto Carrow, surround her from three different angles. "That was foolish little girl. Now there's no escape for you."

Resolutely, Ginny hold her chin up in defiance and smiles. "Saving one's friends is never foolish Death Eater. Harry taught me that!" Taking a deep breath, knowing it could very well be her last, she smiles. "Now, come and get me!"

Her challenge is immediately answered with a chorus of curses. "Crucio!"