Chapter One
The Battle of Hogwarts

I was running through the school halls, calling out to the younger students as I went.

"First to third years! First to Third years are to follow me!"

It was the early hours of the second of May.

As a seventh-year prefect I had been tasked with getting the younger students to a safe haven. Luckily for my professors; though they had not given me a specific location to hide them from the battle, I had a place in mind. I had found it in my own second year, and had used it many times over the years to avoid both teachers and students alike. As far as I was aware it was a tiny corner of the vast castle that was almost never visited.

The cat patronus of Deputy Headmistress McGonagall had ordered me an hour ago warning of the imminent attack. My head of house, Professor Sprout sent a message with her own incorporeal patronus telling me to find all the first to third year students and take them to the safest place I could find. Last year, Hannah Abbott's mother was murdered and she had been taken out of the school. Professor Sprout put my name forward at that point to join Ernie Macmillian as prefect for our sixth and seventh years. I had looked for Ernie, but upon not finding him, I sent my own patronus, a fennec fox of all things, to find him and give him a rendezvous point near the kitchen. I also sent one to Neville, most of the DA was hiding in the Room of Requirement with him, my affiliation had luckily never been discovered; and thus, I was able to continue my lessons. My patronus to him was a quick warning that the final battle was upon us and that I was going to be protecting the younger students.

I stopped all the students that were with me as we ran into Ernie and a few other first years.

"I got your patronus," he said.

"What," I started a bit out of breath from all the running and shouting, "is the name of my familiar and what is my familiar?" I finished asking.

"Your familiar is a large black German Shepherd named Anubis," he responded, then followed up with his own question, "What is my patronus?"

"A boar," I said smiling and breathing deeply, "You need to think of a tougher question, but at least it's not as bad as the last time. 'What is my house?' while wearing the school uniform."

"To be fair," Ernie chuckled, "I wasn't expecting you to quiz me that morning."

"As Professor Moody used to say, 'Constant Vigilance'," I laughed.

It was then I turned to look at the tired and scared looking students around us. I pulled out my wand and turned to them all.

"All right everybody listen up! I can only afford to give you these instructions once! In a moment I am going to cast a non-verbal direction spell. Ernie, you will follow the purple arrow to the safe zone. Students, you will follow Ernie. I will be bringing up the end of this train warding and trying to start the school's defense mechanisms as we go. Jog, don't block each other and don't worry I won't let anyone fall behind, but keep in mind that this is not a drill!"

With that speech out of the way, I cast the direction spell and nodded to Ernie. He started off at a jog, I waited for the students to all pass me, looking for the life of them all worried and scared. As I started running a couple feet behind, I started warding the hall behind us with the hopes that it would slow down anyone following us. As we turned corners I warded the intersections. I also quickly pointed my wand at the lot of the students and cast Cave inimicum, which I had learned in my sixth year, to hopefully keep enemies away. I had no idea if it would work over such a large group of people that were also moving, but anything that could help.

Digging into my bag I pulled out my potions knife I cast scourgify on the knife even though it looked clean and quickly steeled myself. I took a deep breath before drawing the knife quickly across my palm. The blood welled out of the shallow cut quickly. I turned to the nearest wall and pressed the bleeding wound to it. The school started making a haunting noise, Ernie turned to look at me quickly I waved him forward with my hand and continued jogging. I knew it was stupid to try healing my bleeding hand with the mending charm, but I didn't see another option so I quickly cast repairo. Either I was exceedingly lucky, or the cut wasn't as bad as I thought because it quickly stitched itself back together.

It was at that point that I saw him. I shouted to Ernie to take the next corner, he quickly deviated from the course and ran for it with the students trailing after him. I stared forward and warded the corner after the last student went past and stopped looking down the hall at our Headmaster. I had thought he had run off after his duel with professor McGonagall, apparently, I was wrong.

Without waiting for him to pull his own wand on me, I pointed mine at him and yelled, "FLIPENDO!"

When that did nothing to the wizard, I cast a non-verbal Fumos.

The smokescreen spell did nothing either.

"Protego totalum," I said raising my wand and praying that something would work.

He finally spoke then, "Are you taking the first to third year students to a safe place?"

I looked into his dark eyes confused by the question and the lack of hexing me into the next lifetime.

Looking away I said, "That all depends Sir, on who is asking. The Headmaster? Or the Death Eater?"

It was below the belt and I knew it. Though many students had indeed been tortured this year, and he did kill Headmaster Dumbledor the year previous, Professor Snape had never himself hurt any of the students he was supposed to be protecting. In fact, if I was correct in most of my guesses Ginny and Neville at the very least owed this man their lives. Hell, most of the students probably owed him their lives for at the very least keeping everyone alive this year. Tortured by our Muggle Studies and Dark Arts teachers yes, but Professor Snape to my knowledge only ever assigned normal detentions.

"You forget, Miss Brisker," he started folding his hands behind his back, "As Headmaster of this school I am in control of the wards. The school itself is in an uproar, no thanks to your stunt with the blood, now answer my question."

He had the sound of a desperate, but impatient man behind his command. Realizing that I would have to either beat him in a duel, which was a highly unlikely if not impossible feat for me, or answer him. In life there are many paths one can take. All the different choices and roads, everything leading me to this moment. As a Hufflepuff, I was a particularly good finder, I never really considered myself overly kind, but in that moment. Just for a second, I could hear in his voice something Professor Snape never wanted anyone to find. I swallowed my fear, and faced the inner Gryffindor house my father wished I had been sorted into, and answered.

"I've been tasked with their protection, so I'm leading them to my personal hiding place."

He looked like he was thinking for a moment before he said, "Don't forget to use the room-sealing spell once you've shut the door. You can also cast a repelling charm with a shield spell to ward the door from most if not all the ward breaking spells the Death Eaters know. Nothing short of a large explosion should break a ward like that. Lastly stop leaving this trail of wards behind you."

I blinked at my headmaster more than a little stunned, "Th-thank you Sir."

With that, he nodded, turned the other way and left me to scramble after Ernie and the students.

Let me know what you think. College is really difficult and this brain child has been bothering me for a month.

-TheScoreKeeper