a/n: yes i AM updating. Please don't die of shock, i can't read your thoughts if you're dead/unconcious from shock. I'm so very sorry for the wait but i'm not sure i can say for sure when the next chapter will be up. I apologise in advance for any horribly long delays. Happy reading!
Chapter 4
Standing on the steps of Gringotts Harry had a clear view down Diagon Alley. Witches and wizards were hurrying about doing their shopping, stopping to chat with friends or admire things in shop windows.
They were not scurrying about in fear or hiding away indoors doing their shopping by owl order. It would have been safer for them if they had. But in a way, this hustle and bustle of a busy magical street was a good thing. Diagon Alley was staying strong as a reason for hope and life.
Standing on the steps of Gringotts Harry could see what he was fighting for. He could also see what he was about to fight through. The ADADA, or what was left of it, was calling it guard duty. But it wasn't the fun kind of guard duty that came with protecting something that was guaranteed to come under attack. It was actually the boring kind that was really babysitting and largely involved answering one inane question after the other about Hogwarts, the wizarding world and anything that seemed to pop into the head of the new muggle-born students.
Harry had successfully avoided guard duty the first week by the fortunately (alright unfortunately) timed attack on a foreign ministry by some of Voldemort's supporters. He'd been out of the country being as diplomatic as possible with a ministry party while really attacking back and stopping any more attacks of a similar nature.
This week, however, things were pretty quiet on the Voldemort front. It was assumed he was plotting some sort of grand extraction plan to rescue Bellatrix. Or to infiltrate the organisation for long enough to kill the liability she'd become.
Either way, it meant Harry was free and available to escort an eleven year old muggle-born named Tegan and her older sister Clara around Diagon Alley as she picked up her school supplies and got her first real glimpse of what it meant to be a witch.
Just exchanging muggle money had been an excruciating experience he'd soon forget. In all his years as a wizard Harry had never once had to exchange muggle money into wizarding gold or vice versa. Other people had always done it for him or it had been done automatically so he'd never bothered to think about things like exchange rates and fees.
Apparently Clara was ever practical, and while Harry had been eager to get a move on and Tegan had been gaping around the bank in open mouthed wonder, Clara had been asking a series of probing questions that had both annoyed the goblin serving them and earned her his respect.
Finally, just when Harry had been considering hauling her bodily from the bank, she'd announced she was done and pocketed the gold. Harry was left wondering if he'd have had this much trouble with Tegan's mother had she been the one able to make the trip.
Practicality told him they should go to Ollivander's first. Tegan may not be much use but he sure as hell was going to make sure she had some sort of a chance against and possible Death Eater attacks.
'Right, let's get this over with, then.'
Though not the most enthusiastic of words, Tegan was too excited to notice and Clara was smart enough to know from the get go that no kid wants to spend even one day of their holidays playing tour guide to a new student. That kind of irritation is universal.
Ollivander's was empty when they arrived which wasn't all that unusual, there wasn't much of a market for spare wands. They were a necessity, yes, but Harry couldn't imagine they were a well paid one.
'Ah, Potter, looking for a back up wand?'
Unlike the first time Ollivander had appeared out of nowhere Harry didn't jump. He merely turned to greet the old wand maker with a handshake and a grim smile.
'I have no need for a spare, Ollivander; I'm just here to show around a first year.'
The look on Ollivander's face reflected just how Harry felt about the task but his was tempered by the excitement of fitting a new wand to a young witch. Harry wandered about the shop while Ollivander did his thing, coming to stop at the window so he could stare out at the street.
Dotted here and there amongst the crowd were ministry Aurors; hiding in plain sight they were seated outside Florean Fortescue's enjoying ice cream and what little sun was peeking out through the Dementor's breeding mist. Which always gave Harry a rather large case of the wiggins when he had to think about that crime against nature. Other Aurors were pretending to window shop or arguing over the price of unicorn hair.
The fact that none of the others had had any trouble over the last week and a half gave him no comfort. He was ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. Of course, as Ally like to remind him, he was like that twenty four seven so why should a quick trip through Diagon Alley with a muggle and a muggle-born be any different?
There was the sound of delighted clapping behind him and he turned to see that Clara had made a shower of blue stars shoot from the end of a wand. Unlike when he purchased his wand at age eleven Tegan was given something a little extra with hers.
'Ministry decree,' Ollivander explained, showing Harry a copy of the pamphlet he'd given Tegan.
Harry flipped through it quickly. He'd heard a rumour that the ministry was trying to put together a guide to staying safe but he hadn't realised they'd gotten as far as actually printing it. It was something the junior aurors had been tasked with and clearly they'd taken the challenge with gusto. The brief pamphlet was actually useful. It had a few good tips on how to protect your home, a few tricks to getting away safely and where to go when you needed to run.
'Can I have this?'
It wasn't until their last stop of the day at Flourish and Blott's that things turned bad. Harry was browsing through the section on offensive magic when an explosion rocked the alley. Books tumbled down around him and he heard Tegan scream. Gritting his teeth he shoved the fallen books away from him and stormed across the shop to where a witch was hastily shoving Tegan and Clara out of sight under the counter. Muffled shouts suggested the clerk was buried somewhere in the biographies.
'Stay there!' Harry snapped. 'Protect them,' he ordered the witch who had been doing her own shopping when the explosion occurred.
The witche's dropped shopping was beside the counter where she'd been about to pay for her books. Harry didn't recognise her but the witch wasn't stupid. She looked to be around Mrs Weasley's age but had none of the dumpy curves or gentle smile. Her eyes were sharp and though her hand shook slightly as she gripped her wand she stood guard over the two innocent girls with a look of severe determination.
Confident they were in the best care possible given the circumstances, Harry stormed out of the shop not caring what part of the fight he was walking into.
Gringotts was under attack.
A dozen or more goblins lay dead and dying on the front steps while half a dozen more fought side by side with a handful of Aurors. Around thirty Death Eaters were scattered about the alley creating chaos and destruction wherever they went.
Not three feet away from Harry, a tall, willowy witch was cackling delightedly as she lit fire after fire. A boy Harry recognised as a third year Ravenclaw from Hogwarts was hurriedly trying to put out the fires while his younger brother hid under a table and his parents engaged yet another Death Eater in a duel.
Stepping into the battle Harry shot a deadly curse at the cackling witch's back. The spell slammed into her, freezing her in place before her body dissolved into sand. He didn't stop to help the young boy putting out fires or his parents. Instead, Harry darted off down the alley toward Gringotts, shooting spells at every Death eater he passed.
Another explosion rocked the alley but this one was followed by multi-coloured fireworks which told Harry the Weasley twins had just joined the fight. Loud bangs and startled laughter filtered toward him from down the alley but he was too focused on getting to Gringotts to admire the twins joke shop and whatever pranks they'd turned nasty on some Death Eaters.
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was a brightly coloured blur out of the corner of his eye as Harry blasted his way through a cluster of Death Eaters, standing back to back in a circle of aurors. Something sharp hit his side and he stumbled, falling to one knee. Rather than slamming into solid ground his knee sank deeply into no longer solid stone, pulling him off balance.
Harry tried to tug his knee free but it wouldn't budge. He looked up sharply when something wet and sticky slammed into him, forcing him forward onto his hands. Completely taken by surprise by the unfamiliar spell, Harry felt real fear. The spell was slowly spreading across his body, soaking into his clothes and forming a hard shell that clung close to him. He couldn't move, couldn't flame, he was encased in solid something and half sunk into the ground.
He refused to let panic take over. He did give himself a bit of a mental slap to the head for being too confident and not properly protecting himself. Of course, he wasn't sure he could have protected himself from whatever this spell was, anyway.
Around him the alley was oddly blurred, the strange shell an opaque blue that morphed the outside world into nothing but shadowy blobs. Three such blobs were moving toward him. Harry's heart pounded in his ears and he knew that his real fear was translating itself to both Ally and their daughter because the tattoo that bound him to Molly was burning something fierce.
'Think, think, think!' he hissed through unmoving lips.
Flaming didn't work, finite incantatum didn't work. Anything non-verbal and wandless he threw at the shell merely dissipated against the strange material.
The blobs were getting closer and Harry could feel sweat dripping down his neck. This was definitely not how he intended to go out. Could this even kill him? How was he breathing? He was getting air from somewhere. Wasn't he?
Apparently not, suffocation seemed to be the main cause for his panicked state. The more aware of it he was the worse it became. Something green smashed against the outside of the strange shell and he forced himself to calm down. Slow even breathes and think, think, think.
Suddenly, four more blobs appeared in front of him, stepping between him and the original approaching blobs that he assumed were Death Eaters. The closest blob seemed to be right in front of him. It made some sort of movement and then Harry's ears were ringing with a high pitched musical sound that made his eyes water as his teeth chatter.
Cracks appeared in his shell and the world came back as his cage shattered. Dennis Creevey gazed down at him in worry, a huge mallet in his grip. Magic, apparently, couldn't break the thing but a muggle tool could.
'Alright Harry?'
Harry nodded in reply, gasping in air and taking in the altered scene around him. Neville Longbottom was facing off against three Death Eaters. To his left his formidable grandmother was firing off a series of nasty, borderline illegal, spells that were knocking back Death Eaters with a considerable amount of force.
Colin Creevey was duelling side by side with an auror, blood flowing at an alarming rate from his nose. The fight in front of Gringotts was over, the steps littered with the dead, both goblins and wizards alike. Several buildings were on fire but the third year Ravenclaw boy had been joined by numerous other witches and wizards who had emerged from shops and under tables now that the majority of the fighting was over.
Neville made one more sharp motion with his wand and the last Death Eater crumpled. Harry felt a little off kilter, the strange magical trap he'd been encased in had unsettled him more than he'd thought possible.
With Dennis and Neville's help Harry was pulled free of the ground and he gingerly tested how much weight he could put on the leg. It hurt like hell but it wasn't the worst injury he'd received in the last year.
'Better go, Harry,' Neville said. 'Aren't you looking out for some muggle-borns?'
'Merlin!' Harry swore, the sudden reminder had shaken him free of any lingering fear from the shell construction and he ignored the pain in his leg to run back up the alley toward Flourish and Blott's.
The front of the store looked almost untouched but just looking through the window you could see that the explosion hadn't been so kind inside. It reminded Harry of that time Mr Weasley had gotten into a fight with Lucius Malfoy; books were everywhere, the shelves tilting and emptied.
A disarming spell struck him when he stepped into the doorway but his wand remained secured in its spelled holster.
'It's me, Harry!' he called into the shop before taking a further step inside.
'Potter?'
The witch he had left guarding his charge's peered around the side of a fallen bookshelf. Her hair was burned and she had a cut across her left cheek. The body of a Death Eater lay at her feet.
'Tegan? Clara?'
'Here!' Tegan poked her head out from behind the counter. Her face was drained of colour but she was completely unharmed. Her sister hadn't faired so well, by the look of it she'd thrown herself in front of a spell meant for Tegan. Her lips were blue and she was taking shallow painful breathes. Blood soaked the front of her shirt.
'Is she going to die?' Tegan whispered, her voice trembling and tear soaked.
Harry crouched beside the two and tore open Clara's shirt, modesty be damned. Harry murmured a few healing spells and the bleeding eased up a bit but it was still bad enough that she would need a healer. He took an ordinary looking coat button from his pocket and pressed it into Tegan's hand.
'She's going to be fine but I need you to do something for me, alright?'
Tegan nodded shakily. Her wand was clutched tightly in her other hand, Harry noticed.
'That button is called a portkey; it's going to take you and your sister to a magical hospital. A healer is going to ask you a lot of questions but just explain to her what happened and answer what you can. Clara's going to be fine. Are you ready?'
'Y-yes.'
'Hold on tight to her.'
Tegan wrapped her arms around her sister, not releasing her grip on her wand or the portkey. Harry tapped her closed fist with his wand and Tegan and her sister vanished. Harry promised himself he would check on them later, before once more getting to his feet and walking out into the alley.
Unaware of the attempt to gain access to her vault, Bellatrix Lestrange wasn't really in a position to care either way. Something neither Ron nor McGonagall were particularly worried about.
The former had come down to ask a few questions and oxygenate the cell while the latter had come down from her office and her pre-term preparations to inquire as to whether or not the screaming was something they would have to put up with during the coming term.
'I'm not sure how she's doing it,' Ron admitted, closing the door on a particularly mournful wail and watching as the door once more merged into the wall. 'The room should be entirely sound proof but every now and then she starts laughing and it just sort of echoes around the castle.'
'Yes, well,' McGonagall pursed her lips, 'perhaps we could find a way to stop it before the students return next week?'
Unperturbed by her tone, Ron just smiled. They rounded the corner and almost collided with Albus Dumbledore. Ron opened his mouth to give a greeting or give an excuse for his presence but he froze and instead gaped at the headmaster. He looked awful, colour drained from his face, skin clammy and he was clutching his right hand as though it was hurting. Poking from the end of the sleeve of the headmasters robe, Ron could see that the hand looked blackened and dead. He was so surprised McGonagall was forced to elbow him in the ribs to snap him out of it.
Admittedly, McGonagall looked just as surprised to see the headmaster as he did. No one but Snape had seen the man all summer and that had only been for a brief ten minutes. Ten minutes which had not been enough to convey to Snape just how poorly the old man was.
'Albus, are you alright?' McGonagall gasped.
'You look like hell, sir,' Ron added rather rudely. 'No offense,' he added when McGonagall glared at him.
'I am fine, mister Weasley, may I ask what you are doing here?'
Ron shrugged but didn't offer an answer. There was an awkward moment where no one really wanted to speak and then McGonagall announced she had work to do and Ron scurried after her without bothering to give an excuse. At the end of the corridor both stopped and turned back to watch Dumbledore.
For a moment the old headmaster stayed put, gazing down the corridor without really seeing anything. Then he started walking again, down the way Ron and McGonagall had just come.
'Think he heard her screaming?'
'Without doubt.'
'Should we be worried?' Ron questioned.
For that McGonagall didn't have an answer.
