I got a load of requests to continue this, and I know that even though it's been over a year, I needed to get back my enthusiasm for long Harry Potter pieces - it was stolen by Merlin and Avengers fics x Sorry x But please read and review anyway x I don't know if I'll continue past this - it depends on the recpetion this gets x So review quickly, or else you might be waiting a while again :)
They sat there in a daze, none of them sure of what to do, what to say. They hadn't wanted to know this - hey didn't want to notice this. They'd all been much happier before this, before they'd known who of them was going to die.
Molly had still not let go of Fred.
All of them were speechless with shock and horror.
Harry couldn't think. It was his fault, it was all his fault.
It seemed that his thoughts were visible on his face because Hermione took one look at him and slapped him on the arm. "It's not your fault Harry!"
Everyone looked at him, Ron and Ginny frowning. "Harry?"
Harry looked away, unable to look them in the eyes. Instead he caught Sirius' gaze, sad and solemn. There was something like understanding there, mingled with an odd anger.
"It wasn't your fault," Sirius told him.
Harry exploded. "How do you know it wasn't? This is the future!"
"How do you know it was?" Remus countered.
"Because the list was of people who died because of Voldemort! And that's my fault."
Sirius got up and crossed the room, standing protectively behind his godson. He put a gentle hand on Harry's shoulder. "No it isn't."
Harry shook his head in disbelief.
Sirius went around and knelt on the floor, tucking up Harry's chin. The others looked away from the intimate gesture and pretended that they couldn't hear the conversation.
Harry looked as lost and scared as a child, confused and alone. His eyes were glassy with tears. "How do you know that?"
"Because what Voldemort does is Voldemort's fault." He ignored the winces that passed around the room. "Not yours."
"But he's after me," Harry whispered.
"And that's his fault not yours." Sirius stepped back, realising he couldn't get this through Harry's head all in one night. He did wonder where Harry's tendency to self-guilt came from, and had a funny feeling he wouldn't like the answer.
As Sirius stepped back he caught Tonks' sympathetic gaze, which reminded him that they were not alone in the room. His eyes flicked away and his cheeks flushed.
Hermione squeezed his arm.
Dumbledore stood up regretfully. "I need to get the children back to school."
Some of them, like Cho Chang, looked grateful for a chance to leave and did so, backing away down the corridors and to where they had Floo'd in. Albus followed them, getting them back into the school without being noticed.
Next it was McGonagall and Snape to leave, the stern Transfiguration Professor wiping her red eyes on a tissue. The Potions Master was stoic and looked positively unfazed by the news of his impending demise.
Other students had to be gently ushered out, by Tonks who looked shaken by her own death, but it didn't appear to have properly sunk in yet. Those students were ones like the Quidditch team and Colin and Dennis Creevey, who looked petrified.
The room cleared until it was just Harry, Hermione, Sirius, Remus and the Weasley's. The Weasley's all crowded around Fred, as close to him as possible. Harry and Hermione were pressed together as well, taking comfort in each other. Hermione rested her head on the shoulder of the boy who was practically her brother.
Ron looked on almost jealously, but too drained by the revelations of the day to do anything about it.
Harry wrapped an arm around her and buried his face into her bushy hair. Sirius came over and sat on his other side, next to him on the sofa. Remus remained where he was on the sofa.
"What do we do now?" Ginny asked in a tone completely different to usual, defeated and tired.
"We make sure that none of this happens," Sirius told her, eyes hardening.
Harry nodded wordlessly, feeling Hermione nod her agreement as well.
"Voldemort doesn't get to win. And now he won't."
None of them said that despite everything they didn't know where it when these deaths would occur and thus they were powerless to stop it.
They knew what bring powerless felt like. And they really didn't need that now - not like this.
Everyone needed a little hope sometimes, when the struggle got too hard and the hill too steep.
None of them spoke until Albus returned. He looked distressed and there was a undercurrent of something unmovable in his eyes. "I'm sorry," He offered. "The children need to go back to school. Professor Umbridge seems curious as to where they've gone."
Harry restrained a hiss at the mention of the vile woman who tortured school children, but only barely. It didn't seem like she was doing it to any of the younger children, only the older ones. But still, it made Harry's insides burn with fury.
Remus leant forward at the open hostility towards Umbridge. Though he, himself, didn't like her, he wondered what she had done to upset them this badly. "What has she done."
Harry's mouth clamped shut, tighter than a clam, and Hermione refused to look any of the adults in the eye.
"Nothing. She's done nothing."
Remus very much doubted that, but took one look at Harry's hard-as-flint eyes and decided to ask again later.
The raven haired teenager nudged the bushy haired girl, who was practically sitting on his lap, and stood up stiffly. He started to edge out of the room, not really knowing what to do, but Molly stopped him before he got too far, finally relinquishing her grip on Fred. On his way past get to exit through the door, she grabbed into his wrist and swing him round, into an awkward half-hug. Tears streamed down her face and Harry's shoulders shook, but when they pulled apart his eyes were dry.
"You're a part if this family too, you know," she told him, knowing what he was thinking.
Harry's lip twitched upwards in a parody of a smile. He didn't know what to say, at a loss for words. He'd known before, but this was the first time the sentiment had been expressed aloud.
Still feeling as though he was intruding, he stepped back and allowed Molly to hug Hermione no less tightly and then the two teens grasped wrists as they walked out of the room to the Floo, Sirius watching the pair worriedly.
Remus and Sirius left then, making sure all of the teenagers were gone, leaving the Weasley's alone.
Molly collapsed heavily into a chair, her legs giving out beneath her. Arthur stood behind her, one hand holding hers, the other clasping into the back of the chair so tightly his knuckles shone white. Fred and George was wrapped around each other, as though they couldn't be separated if they held each other tight enough. Ron sat alone, his fingernails biting into his palms and drawing blood. Ginny was hugging Bill fiercely, hoping that her older brother could make everything better.
He couldn't.
All of them stared at Fred, like he might vanish if they looked away for a single moment.
Fred's lips twitched. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not dead yet."
The joke was in bad taste, but somehow entirely Fred, and Ginny looked away. George weakly coughed a laugh.
"We know now, yeah? We can stop it." His voice was slightly too high and too fast to be normal, but none of them commented on it, instead remaining silent and still.
It was Ginny that ruined the stillness. She pulled away from Bill and launched herself forwards, tangling herself into the mess that was the twins. Ron followed, no less hurriedly, and Bill came up behind. Molly and Arthur watched five of their children clutch at each other and despite themselves couldn't fight the urge to smile. The pair went over as well, Molly settling onto the sofa where she could feel Fred pressed up against her side and pulling Ginny onto her lap. Her little girl was getting a bit too big for this, but she needed it.
They sat there as a family until they had cried all their tears for a future that would not happen. Getting up stiffly, Molly dried her cheeks.
"Come on. You need to get back to school." She had no doubt that Albus had come up with some sort of excuse, but Harry would need someone now. He would need his friends because he'd never learnt to trust adults, the only reason why they'd already let him go back to school.
She kissed each of them and hugged Fred extra tightly, thanking God that tomorrow was a Saturday, so that she could have them Floo over. She knew that tonight she would have nightmares about it and that she would be restless tomorrow until she had seen them safe with her own eyes.
The children files off, back towards the Floo. Ron and Ginny went first, then the twins.
The second they vanished, Molly burst into tears, feeling Arthur and Bill hug her tightly between them.
Back at Hogwarts, the students had all found their way back into the Room of Requirement, unsure of where to go from this. It was one thing to consider the idea that they could die, another entirely to know it.
Colin Creevey, only fourteen, was going to die. And everyone there knew it. They stared at him, like he was something they'd never seen before, foreign and alien.
Colin looked away and wrapped an arm around Dennis, who was sniffling.
None of them knew where to go from here.
So instead, they waited for the Golden Trio, because those three knew what to do when anything happened.
Even this.
