Chapter Three: Revelation
Harry laid there in his bed, trying to think up some way of winning this, where the Ministry finally found out about and acknowledged Voldemort's return, but nobody died or got hurt. Unfortunately those two concepts seemed to be mutually exclusive as he could see no way to do one without the other. After all, the only way that he knew the Ministry would acknowledge Voldemort was if the Minister or enough of the upper echelon of the Ministry saw him with their own eyes standing in the halls of the Ministry of Magic. But the only way to get that to happen was to go there and walk right into Voldemort's and his Death Eaters' trap in the Department of Mysteries.
If Harry, his friends, or the Order went to the Ministry of Magic, a lot of them would get hurt, and Sirius (along with many others more recently) would die. If they didn't go, Voldemort would never show up. If Harry ignored the trap, Snape would give him more unwanted Occlumency lessons. If he had the Order go in his place, even with the Ministry on alert, people would die and Voldemort would escape.
What made no sense to him was how more people died than when he and his friends, only four of which, counting himself, had taken their OWLs, the other two a year behind, snuck in on their own and had to be rescued by the Order. What difference could six school children make when the entire Auror Corp couldn't?
Well then, he decided, if that's what it would take, that's what he would do.
Getting up, he quickly got ready and called Sirius while he was in the shower. He didn't bother talking to Dumbledore at all, instead saying he trusted Sirius to convince the Headmaster. Meanwhile, he snuck down and planted the note to get Snape 'caught'. It was too late to plant it before she got there, but he had Hedwig deliver it to one of the school owls, who delivered it to an Official Ministry owl, who delivered it to one of the local Hogsmeade postal owls, who delivered it to Filch, who raced it to Umbridge, saying he'd confiscated it en route. Snape was arrested minutes later, just an hour before Lunch. Normally she didn't arrest him until a few minutes prior.
As for getting owls to deliver to owls, well, oddly enough the owls seem to be intelligent and aware of the concept of pre-postage, and it was simple enough to specify which "recipient" got the note and in what order. He used an extra owl to further protect Hedwig from being attacked, since anybody wanting to know where the postal owl had gotten the note from would only be able to trace it back to the Official Ministry owl, who'd actually been on its way back from delivering correspondence to Umbridge when the school owl had caught it before leaving Hogwarts grounds and having it deliver the note. There were hundreds of school owls, and hundreds of students and/or faculty who could have sent it via school owl. All it took was learning the name of the Ministry owl, which wasn't hard since it was posted on the owl's left leg and Harry had seen it quite often, even before the resets.
Now all that remained was trying to remember what he'd done the first time around and doing it all over.
That afternoon, Voldemort's vision came right on schedule. He wasn't able to stop it completely, and while he'd managed to get most of the way through the exam in the first hour (it gets easier when you just keep repeating the same answers when you know what was right and what wasn't), his anxiety over what came after kept distracting him. He managed to 'push back' against the vision, but it kept coming through, like it was being 'pushed back' even harder on the other end of the connection.
Still, he remembered well enough the first few times he'd gotten this vision that he'd woken up on the floor and had been screaming for some time. It wasn't that hard to just fall over and scream while holding his scar, and that was enough for the test proctors to pull him out of the Great Hall and give him some 'time to gather himself'.
After that, instead of racing to the Hospital Wing or Snape's office, he actually went all the way to Gryffindor tower and his dorm room and collected everything he'd planned on needing, including but not limited to; his Invisibility Cloak, every last remaining 'care package' the Weasley Twins had left behind that he could get a hold of in the morning hours, and most importantly the communication mirror, still deactivated. On his way through the Gryffindor Common Room, he recruited every Gryffindor he could see and find and gave them the 'care package' and talked them into unleashing Weasley Twin Hell upon Hogwarts once more. That should keep Filch and Umbridge busy enough, he thought.
By the time he raced back downstairs, Ron and Hermione were just getting out and meeting him on the second floor landing.
"Harry!" said Hermione at once, looking very frightened. "What happened? Are you all right? Are you ill?"
"Where have you been?" Ron demanded.
"Come with me," Harry said quickly. "Come on, I've got to tell you something . . ." He led them along the first-floor corridor, peering through doorways, and at last found an empty classroom into which he dived, closing the door behind Ron and Hermione the moment they were inside and leaning against it, facing them.
"Voldemort's got Sirius."
"What?"
"How d'you — ?"
"Saw it. Just now. When I fell asleep in the exam."
"But — but where? How?" said Hermione, whose face was white.
"I dunno how," said Harry. "But I know exactly where. There's a room in the Department of Mysteries full of shelves covered in these little glass balls, and they're at the end of row ninety-seven . . . He's trying to use Sirius to get whatever it is he wants from in there. . . He's torturing him . . . Says he'll end by killing him . . ."
"Oh Harry!" cried Hermione empathetically.
He shrugged off her attempt to hug him, instead glancing out into the hallway to check for any watchers. He turned back to his friends and told them, "I'm going to go and save him."
"What? But—but Harry, you can't just—" Hermione started to protest.
"Follow me!" he said to them, after another look at the hallway. "We need to move quickly, there's not a lot of time. Come on!" he urged when they weren't moving.
Harry lead them out of the classroom and back up the stairs as he spoke, struggling to contain the anger in his voice, causing it to shake here and there, which he hoped his friends would view as the fear and panic he'd been feeling the first few times around. Now . . . now he just wanted to get going so he could face Voldemort directly once more, and end this.
"We need to get there!" he told them as they passed the fourth floor.
There was a moments silence, filled only by the sounds of the stairwell as it shifted beneath their feet. Then Ron said, "G-get there? Get where?"
"To the Department of Mysteries! So we can rescue Sirius!" Harry said hotly.
"But — Harry . . ." said Ron weakly.
"What? What?" said Harry.
He still could not understand why they were both gaping at him as though he was asking them something unreasonable.
"Harry," said Hermione in a rather frightened voice, "er . . . how . . . how did Voldemort get into the Ministry of Magic without anybody realizing he was there?"
"How do I know?" bellowed Harry. "The question is how we're going to get in there!"
"But . . . Harry, think about this," said Hermione, taking a step toward him, "it's three-thirty in the afternoon. . . . The Ministry of Magic must be full of workers. . . . How would Voldemort and Sirius have got in without being seen? Harry . . . they're probably the two most wanted wizards in the world. . . . You think they could get into a building full of Aurors undetected?"
"I dunno, Voldemort used an Invisibility Cloak or something!" Harry shouted. "Anyway, the Department of Mysteries has always been completely empty whenever I've been —"
"You've never been there, Harry," said Hermione quietly. "You've dreamed about the place, that's all."
Well, that wasn't entirely true, he thought privately to himself, it's just no one else remembers when he did go. "They're not normal dreams!" he finally shouted in her face, stopping for a bit and taking a step closer to her in frustration. He remembered wanting to shake her, but this time all he wanted to do was run off on his own. He still might have if not for what he'd already seen happened when the Death Eaters showed up. He wasn't good enough on his own. Not yet at least.
"How d'you explain Ron's dad then, what was all that about, how come I knew what had happened to him?"
"He's got a point," said Ron quietly, looking at Hermione.
"But this is just — just so unlikely!" said Hermione desperately.
"Harry, how on earth could Voldemort have got hold of Sirius when he's been in Grimmauld Place all the time?"
"Sirius might've cracked and just wanted some fresh air," said Ron, sounding worried. "He's been desperate to get out of that house for ages—"
"But why," Hermione persisted, "why on earth would Voldemort want to use Sirius to get the weapon, or whatever the thing is?"
"Because of me all right!" Harry yelled at her. "Sirius is just someone Voldemort doesn't care about, except as a means of hurting me. Of drawing me out!"
They were silent after his outburst, and walked the rest of the way to the seventh floor, where the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and office was.
"You know what, I've just thought of something," said Ron in a hushed voice. "Sirius's brother was a Death Eater, wasn't he? Maybe he told Sirius the secret of how to get the weapon!"
"Yeah — and that's why Dumbledore's been so keen to keep Sirius locked up all the time!" said Harry, remembering what he'd said originally.
"Look, I'm sorry," cried Hermione, "but neither of you are making sense, and we've got no proof for any of this, no proof Voldemort and Sirius are even there —"
"Hermione, Harry's seen them!" said Ron, rounding on her.
"Okay," she said, looking frightened yet determined, "I've just got to say this. . . ."
"What?"
"You . . . This isn't a criticism, Harry! But you do . . . sort of . . . I mean — don't you think you've got a bit of a — a — saving-people-thing?"she said.
He glared at her. "And what's that supposed to mean, a 'saving-people-thing'?"
"Well . . . you . . ." She looked more apprehensive than ever. "I mean . . . last year, for instance . . . in the lake . . . during the Tournament . . . you shouldn't have . . . I mean, you didn't need to save that little Delacour girl. . . . You got a bit . . . carried away . . ."
A wave of hot, prickly anger swept Harry's body at the reminder. His jaw and fists clenched and he stopped walking, keeping his back to both his friends. Hermione took the opportunity to walk around in front of him, only to step back in fear once she did.
". . . I mean, it was really great of you and everything," said Hermione quickly, looking positively petrified at the look on Harry's face. "Everyone thought it was a wonderful thing to do —"
This was harder than he remembered, Harry realized. He wasn't going to have this argument again. Not when he needed his friends to trust him, to follow him. He was extremely emotional now and it had been more than a week ago now, he didn't remember how the argument had gone past this point, at which his panic had taken full hold of him and he'd seen nothing but red and the goal of getting to Sirius as soon as possible. He sat down on a nearby bench and just worked on clearing his mind, surrounding his mind in a shell of all the emotions he was feeling. Hermione and Ron kept glancing nervously back and forth between him and each other. Hermione had honestly expected a more . . . well, a more violent reaction than this from her friend.
"Hermione," he finally spoke, his voice devoid of all trace of emotion and feeling. They both shivered at the sound. "They've taken McGonagall to Saint Mungo's, Professor Dumbledore left the castle, my mail is being watched, Hedwig nearly died in that attack! There's no way left to contact the Order, no way to verify that Sirius is safe, no way to check to see where Voldemort is."
"Shh! Don't say that name!" Ron squeaked.
Harry shot a glare at his best friend and nearly decked him. The look was enough it seemed, as Ron physically jumped back and tripping over his own feet he fell down on his backside while scrambling back.
"Are you going to help me save Sirius . . . or not?" he asked them both after a heavy silence. He looked both of them in the eye, asking them with his heart as much with his words.
Hermione bit her lip. Ron huffed and crossed his arms before looking to Hermione. Hermione looked back at Ron and then sighed, closing her eyes briefly before opening them on Harry's expectant expression.
"Of course we'll help you," Hermione answered, exasperated. "What is your plan?"
"Find Neville, Ginny, Luna, and anyone else you can think of from the DA you might think could help," he spoke animatedly, standing up and starting to walk towards the Defense classroom and office. "Have Ginny and Neville create a distraction on the other side of the castle, doesn't matter where or what, just enough to keep Umbridge out of her office for the next fifteen minutes or so. Er... Ron," he figured out of the two, his male best friend would have the most luck with this latter task, "tell Luna to go and get as many Thestrals saddled for travel to London as she can. Hermione, after you find the others, go..." He stopped to think.
"Harry?" Hermione asked nervously, "Wh-what is it you're planning to do? C-couldn't you just try to find out if Sirius really is in danger? Can't you think of some way to get word from Headquarters?"
Harry's face winced involuntarily, but he quickly hid his expression from her. He knew Umbridge had placed Stealth Sensoring Spells on her office. She'd caught the others when the alert of him sneaking into her office had gone off and literally caught him with his head in the fire. And to be perfectly honest, he never wanted the others following him into trouble as it was. And he knew exactly what Peeves was doing, and Hermione would be better believed than Ron would be, not that he expected her to be believed in the first place. Still, if it was just him and him alone getting caught, it would just be him taking the risk. Better than the alternative, he thought.
"Hermione, go to Umbridge and tell her – tell her that Peeves is smearing ink on all of the Astronomy telescopes with some kind of permanent ink or something like that. After that, join Ron in finding as many of the others that would be willing to go. Don't use the coins, just find them and ask them," Harry said.
"Yes, all right, but – what will you be doing? What about checking to see if Sirius is in real trouble or not?" Hermione asked.
"..." Harry was silent for several long moments before answering, "I'm going to sneak into Umbridge's office and use her Floo. I'll make a call to HQ. I've got my Invisibility Cloak, so I won't need a lookout. It's also why I need Umbridge distracted for as long as possible. If I can't get a hold of anyone, then we'll be ready at a moment's notice. If I can . . . well, then we'll know for sure and I will see what needs to be done from that point on. Now go. I'll give you until the clock strikes the quarter hour, so you don't have a lot of time. Go!"
They went.
This was different from before, Harry knew. Besides, it didn't matter. He was in a half-blind panic and angry at everything before. This time, he had a plan, he was calm, and while he still had plenty of anger, the panic had dissipated in the face of knowing what was to come. Panic and fear often can overwhelm people, mostly through fear of the unknown. Not knowing forces fear to evolve into panic and the mind can make choices that it normally never would if it were fully informed.
Being fully aware of what could happen, as far as worst-case scenario goes, tends to diffuse the evolution of raw fear into overwhelming panic. Instead it evolves into a slightly more useful type of fear; fear of the known and the consequences of actions to be taken.
A person that has followed the letter of the law all their lives will race around in a panic and make many, many mistakes if they ever steal something and maybe in the process kill one or more persons. Having no experience with the consequences of these actions, they'll do things that they normally wouldn't if they'd been thinking rationally. Where on the other hand, an experienced thief makes plans and accepts the consequences of every action taken, knowing that if they get caught the worst that will happen is they'll go to prison, and they probably even know what that will be like. Knowing and having experienced the consequences of their actions previously, they make wiser and more rational decisions when experiencing the same fear.
Harry had lived through the coming battle once. He'd experienced Sirius and other people being killed by Voldemort and his Death Eaters for more than a week on a daily basis now. Right now, the fear and anger he was feeling was focusing him, making things crystal clear to him that had been such a jumbled mess only a 'week or so' ago. He decided to pull another little prank on Umbridge, only this one would end up with her going to see the Centaurs rather than him ending up in a holding cell.
In light of this, Harry put on his cloak the moment he was out of sight and then waited outside the door to the Defense classroom until the quarter bell chimed. Then he counted out an extra minute and a half, just to give his friends, Hermione in particular, more time before sneaking into the classroom and ghosting between the desks and up the stairs to the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor's Office.
He opened and closed the door quietly, but not exactly stealthily. Then with a short flick of his wand beneath the cloak, all the 'kitten plates' and 'kitten pictures' were flipped so they were facing the walls or the floor. Then he reached a single hand outside of the protection of his cloak, and threw in some Floo powder into the fireplace, giving the address for the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Then he stepped back into a corner and waited.
While he waited, he decided to take care of the other end of matters to bring his plan, such as it was, together. It certainly wasn't a very good plan, it was more of a mission statement; to protect the Ministry with just the DA and the Order and leave the Ministry out of it.
Harry pulled out his mirror and activated it.
"Sirius, are you ready?" asked Harry. He'd already spoken to Sirius and Dumbledore earlier this morning to convince them of Voldemort attacking the Ministry, but privately he'd shared with Sirius that he was planning on he and his friends making it there to help out.
"Hey pup! I've been ready for this for months!" said Sirius via the mirror. "You want to speak to Dumbledore now?"
"No," Harry shook his head, making a rash decision, "Just convince him on your own. I know you can do it. Besides, if he doesn't come, there's the chance that we'll all be tortured and killed by Voldemort if he doesn't come and rescue us. Be sure to tell him that in your argument."
"Hah!" came Sirius's barking laugh. "That's a good one, I'll be sure to... Hold on a minute!"
"We're heading out soon Sirius, see you in the Department of Mysteries! And you'd better be ready!" Harry cut off the link and pocketed the mirror. It immediately tried to activate, but he ignored it, blocking the connection.
Ten minutes later, long after she had caught him the first time around, he got bored and started searching her office. Not really caring or looking for anything in particular, mostly just out of curiosity. Some of what he found was interesting. Most of it was not. A lot of it just made him plain angry and more sure of his plan than ever before. There were two locked drawers, which opened with simple Unlocking Charms, but he was also sure they sent out all sorts of alarms, which was fine because the next step of his plan relied on Umbridge 'catching him in the act' so to speak.
Less than two minutes after unlocking both of the drawers, enough time for him to see what was there in general and then close it all back up and get to his hidden corner, Umbridge came storming in with Filch and the same group from the Inquisitorial Squad behind her. Harry was grateful to see that none of his friends were being held captive this time around. Just goes to show the difference thinking things out do compared to running around blindly like a chicken with its head cut off.
Harry grimaced as he recalled that was all Hermione had been trying to talk him into doing when they'd argued. He'd have to make that up to her sometime.
"Find him! He's somewhere still in here! Search every corner!" Umbridge screeched at her minions, while immediately going to her desk and locking the drawers back tight.
Harry made sure he breathed very quietly and rather expertly dodged Goyle's groping searches when he came to the corner Harry was staying in. After a brief, yet thorough search of the room, Umbridge's minions, IE the Inquisitorial Squad and Filch, reluctantly reported that they had found nothing to indicate anybody had even been in there. Umbridge's focus, however, was focused entirely on her fireplace. And the telltale ash and traces of Floo powder around the mantle.
"Get out!" she finally screamed at them, and they all scrambled out of the room as fast as they could.
She got up and paced in front of the fireplace, staring at it as she clacked her heels, the gears visibly turning in her toad-shaped head. Finally, she moved to sit back at her desk, and Harry felt now was the time.
"Stupify," Harry mouthed, as close as he could get to silent casting at the moment. The red jet of light shot out before Umbridge even knew that it hit her, and a heartbeat later she was face-down on her desk, looking to the rest of the world like she had simply fallen asleep in the middle of paperwork. Struck with a sudden brilliance, Harry "borrowed" the same black quill he'd become so familiar with in his detentions and with a simple animation charm, had the Headmistress write out two notes, each of which he posted on the outside of the Defense Classroom door and the Professor's Office door respectively.
Then, mostly to satisfy his curiosity, he reopened the locked drawers and took the time to look through them more deliberately. He was not disappointed.
Making note of many of the things he found there, he reinforced the stunning spell, and even added a jinx Hermione had shown him from a book that sort of 'locked' a stunning spell and required either an over-powered Enervate charm or the specific counter-jinx to finally wake the victim up. It was a spell designed for Aurors and Healers to use, to ensure that the targets didn't surprise them or wake up unexpectedly when it was unsafe to do so.
Now came the hard part. He'd only practiced this that one day, and Human Transfiguration was supposed to be a NEWT level skill, Professor McGonagall had given her classes the hints needed to put two and two together. At least she had with Hermione it seemed, as Hermione was the one to show him how it was done during the DA, and while neither had even attempted it, Harry had practiced everything in the sixth and seventh year texts the other day. Including Human Transfiguration. Well... it had been on a human sized training dummy the Room of Requirement had given him, one that also had living cells and 'meat' attached to it, and that had been successful—er mostly.
How much harder would it be to turn an unconscious toady witch into a sleeping toad?
It took him seven tries.
After he was done, he quickly made his way down and out of the castle and met up with his friends out behind Hagrid's hut, just inside, but not too far, of the Forbidden Forest. It turned out he was early though, so he had time for a little errand before hurrying back to the spot a little less than half an hour later.
"What happened?" Hermione immediately asked.
"Hey Harry, why do we need Luna's invisible horses?" Ron asked the moment after.
"I made sure Umbridge won't be able to stop us," he answered first, and then replied, "And Thestrals follow instructions well, have an amazing sense of direction, and can fly thousands of miles without need for rest. On top of that, most people can't see them, so when we're on their backs, no one will see us."
"You're making it sound like Luna's invisible horses here are real!" exclaimed Ron. Harry ignored him.
"Wait, but . . . Harry!" Hermione suddenly screeched, "What do you mean you made sure Umbridge won't be able to stop us?"
He glanced at his friend and briefly considered how to answer that question. He thought back to his errand and decided to give the answer he'd told the centaurs everyone would come to by the days end. After all, Hermione didn't really need to know that he'd transfigured the witch into a toad, carried the toad into the Forbidden Forest to the centaur hunting party, reversed the transfiguration, woke her up after taking her wand, and more or less 'gave' her to the centaur tribe as part apology, mostly retribution. Umbridge's "defense" didn't actually help her any and much like before they dragged her off kicking and screaming.
Harry had stayed behind long enough to explain to Bane and Magorian that he'd made it look like she'd sequestered herself in her office and by the time anyone thought to actually look for her, they would just think she'd left the castle, and it would most likely be several weeks if not a month or two by the time somebody actually realized she was missing, let alone start looking for her. Therefore they could do what they'd like with her and nobody would be able to trace it to the centaurs because by that point they would undoubtedly already gotten rid of all the evidence.
In the end, Harry told Hermione, "I hid under my invisibility cloak and stunned her when she came back to the office. I then put notes on the doors in her own hand writing that she was not to be disturbed no matter what. That will keep Filch and the Inquisitorial Squad from snitching on us to her, and give us time to go."
"But what about—?" she started to ask.
"Kreacher was the only one there," he growled, his anger at the horrid little elf making it easy for him to get back into the 'fight or flight' emotional mood. "He confirmed it, You-Know-Who has Sirius." He turned to face the rest of the DA that had come out, especially Luna and the thestrals she'd acquired for them to use.
Harry looked over the herd of skeletal winged equines. It looked like Luna had managed to convince half the herd away from the rest. Thankfully they all looked fed and ready for action. Well, he couldn't tell that, but he hoped it was true nonetheless.
"Good job Luna, looks like we have plenty to go around. Thanks for doing this," said Harry with a smile. Then he looked around at the wizards and witches milling around. Besides his closest friends that had come with him initially, he saw Susan Bones and her friend Hannah Abbot from Hufflepuff, Pavarti and her sister Padma, along with Cho and Terry Boot from Ravenclaw. Colin and his brother Dennis and the entire Quidditch team from Gryffindor were present as well. Seventeen wands in all, counting his own.
"Harry?" said Cho, hesitantly stepping forward, "Is—is everything... OK?"
"No, not really," he said after some heavy hesitation on his part. He and his ex-girlfriend hadn't exactly parted on the best of terms, but apparently at the same time not on bad enough terms that she would never want to see or speak with him again. Before turning away, he looked back at her and added quietly, "Uh, thanks. For coming that is. It—means a lot, so—thanks."
He hurried off to the largest and closest Thestral and leaped up on it's back. Most of those watching gasped in astonishment and fear. The only ones that did not were those that could already see the Thestrals apparently. He quickly glanced at Luna and confirmed that they'd all been fed, which thankfully they apparently had been.
"Now listen up!" he called out to his friends and allies. When he was sure he had their attention he continued. "You all know me by now, and I know all of you. What I'm asking of you today is not something that I would normally ask of anyone. To be perfectly honest, I'd rather go off by myself and make sure you all were perfectly safe while I went off to the Ministry of Magic, into the Department of Mysteries, and fought Vol..." he paused at the winces he caught and restrained himself from any outbursts.
He continued, "... Fought You-Know-Who and all his Death Eaters by myself. Now here's the deal, I will gladly do just that. Any of you that would not or do not wish to do the same, stay here where you'll be safe. I'd really rather most of you stay behind anyway. Not because I think you can't do it, but because I know you can, and I'd rather you avenge me, than die with me."
"That's all I've got to say. Make your decision. We leave in two minutes," he told them and nudged his Thestral out from the crowd.
He hoped for them to cheer and immediately leap on on the unseen beasts and follow him to battle. He expected most of them, save those that had gone with him that first time, to explode in shouts and argument before turning and running off. Instead, what happened was they all just stood there and stared at each other and at him.
Ron was the first one to make a move, by walking up to Luna and asking her how to get on one of the invisible magical creatures. She gladly and simply showed him where the nearest one was and helped him to get on its back and showed him where to hold onto. After that, everyone save Neville and strangely the Patil twins were asking Luna for help. No one left or went back to the castle.
"This is mad," said Ron faintly, moving his hand gingerly along the reptilian equine's flank, "Mad . . . if I could just see it—!"
"You'd better hope it stays invisible," Harry repeated his dark warning from the first time. "We all ready then?" he called to the rest.
"Okay . . ." He looked down at the back of his thestral's glossy black head and swallowed. "Ministry of Magic, visitors' entrance, London," he said with certainly.
For a moment his thestral did nothing at all. Then, with a sweeping movement that nearly unseated him, the wings on either side extended, the horse crouched slowly and then rocketed upward so fast and so steeply that Harry had to clench his arms and legs tightly around the horse to avoid sliding backward over its bony rump. He closed his eyes and put his face down into the horse's silky mane as they burst through the topmost branches of the trees and soared out into a setting afternoon sun.
It was as magnificently terrifying as the first time and then some, because he had a lot more to lose this time around. They flew at breakneck speed, racing the sun as they flew South to London, and then when they finally got to the outskirts, they navigated the streets until finally they reached the rundown alley that held the Visitor's entrance for the Ministry of Magic.
It was night, roughly ten o'clock according to Big Ben. They'd made good time. They were earlier than Harry had thought they'd be.
Ron landed a short way away and toppled immediately off his thestral onto the pavement.
"Never again," he said, struggling to his feet. He made as though to stride away from his thestral, but, unable to see it, collided with its hindquarters and almost fell over again. "Never, ever again . . . that was the worst —"
Hermione and Ginny touched down on either side of him. Both slid off their mounts a little more gracefully than Ron, though with similar expressions of relief at being back on firm ground. Neville jumped down, shaking, but Luna dismounted smoothly. The Patil twins may as well have been Indian Princesses coming back from a long afternoon ride in the country on their horses. Cho, Hannah, Susan, and the Gryffindor Quidditch Team Chasers dismounted as quickly as they could and backed away from their invisible mounts. The Creevey brothers wound up face down on the ground, and Terry Boot had similar trouble, but only just managed to stay on his feet.
"Where do we go from here, then?" Luna asked Harry in a politely interested voice, as though this was all a rather interesting day-trip.
Harry took a deep breath, and rather than rush in as he had the first time, he tried to think of what to do now. He knew the route to the Hall of Prophecies now. From every other room in the Department of Mysteries even, so it didn't matter which of the rotating doors they chose. But what to do once they were there?
He was certain the Death Eaters were already here, but they would not reveal themselves until the moment after he'd removed the Prophecy from the shelf. His first instinct was to go and smash it directly, but that would make them expendable. The only thing that had given them a chance in the first place was that Malfoy didn't want to risk damaging the Prophecy by getting serious with a bunch of school children. Harry could use that to his advantage.
"Now—now comes the hard part," he told them. "Right over there," he pointed at the old phone booth, "is the Visitor's Entrance to the Ministry of Magic. I am going in there and down to the Department of Mysteries to rescue my godfather. This, however, is your last chance, everyone, to turn back. Just... wander off into the city, make your way to King's Cross Station or Diagon Alley, tell them you ran off for a bit of fun. You'll get in trouble, but you'll be alive and healthy. If you follow me . . . I—I—I can't guarantee your safety."
"Harry," Hermione stepped forward, "We're all here because of you. Because of what you taught us. Because of what you've shown us. We're with you all the way."
"Sure," he muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes while they all cheered, "put the blame all on me."
Seeing as he had more than twice the group with him than he had the first time, they had to make two trips, he went with the last one that had all the girls in it. Once they were all in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic, Harry made sure everyone knew the need for stealth here. Not that he had to do much to convince them. The creepy feeling in the air from the massive architecture with no one else around more than did the job on its own. Save for their footsteps and their own whispers, the only sound echoing throughout the Atrium was that of the fountain.
The more he thought about it, the more Harry was certain that the missing guard was a sign that the Death Eaters were already here. This was the Ministry of Magic for crying out loud! If any place in the entire Magical World, save maybe Azkaban, deserved round the clock security, and at least one guard at a designated checkpoint, it would be here!
They walked past without anybody making a sound and made their way to the golden gated lifts. Thankfully these lifts were plenty large enough for all 17 of them to fit without having to squeeze. Harry hit the button for the ninth level, and did his best to rid himself of his rising panic at all the noise they were making now. He knew what would happen, but it couldn't stop him from feeling the anxiety and fear of what could and should be happening all the same.
When the lift halted, the cool female voice said, "Department of Mysteries," and the grilles slid open again, they stepped out into the corridor where nothing was moving but the nearest torches, flickering in the rush of air from the lift. They all waited a moment, and then Harry squared his shoulders, calmed his breathing, and stepped out with his wand at the ready. Everyone followed him, and if they didn't already they went and pulled their wands out and held them at their sides.
Harry lead them down the dark corridor that had plagued his dreams, nightmares and visions for longer than he cared to say, Luna right behind him, Cho and the rest all right behind her. Save for himself and Luna, they were all ambling along like school children on a field trip. A field trip to a dark and scary place that could get them all killed at any moment, but the simile was apt. He paused just before they got to the first door and looked back at all of them.
Speaking quietly and quickly, he said to them, rather than asking, "Okay, listen. We're going to be smart about this. I want Susan and Terry to stay outside and keep a lookout. If you get a signal on you coins that are all zeroes, I want you to run to the nearest floo or other means of contacting the people in charge, or at best the security that should have already stopped us like a dozen times over already."
"Oi!" exclaimed Boot and Bones both.
"I'm coming along too! I'm not missing out on this after coming all this way!" said Terry Boot.
"I didn't come just to be a lookout! I'm my aunt's daughter, and I'm just as good as anyone else! Besides, why couldn't you partner me with Hannah if anyone? How come she gets to go?" asked Susan Bones.
Harry silenced them with a look. He kept the silence for a minute longer, driving up the tension.
"Do you want me to be in charge, or not?" he finally put it down to the ultimatum.
Both Susan and Terry looked down at their feet, shame-faced.
"Susan," Harry said, "I know you're aunt is the Head of the Auror's and DMLE. That's why I asked you to be the lookout, because out of everyone, Ron and Ginny included, you've probably been here the most. And you would know how to contact your aunt and the Aurors in an emergency. Terry, I asked you instead of Hannah to stay with Susan because first of all, I know Susan and Hannah are friends and they'd probably spend some time talking or distracting each other from actually keeping a lookout. There is also the fact that next to Ginny, Hermione, Ron and myself, you're the quickest on the draw, and your Protego shield was as good as any I've seen. I'm counting on you to protect Susan while she gets help for us."
"I'm repeating myself here, but apparently I need to do that," explained Harry to the whole group. "We're not supposed to be here. Nobody knows we're here. I fully expect to see enemy combatants, Death Eaters, at some point. You-Know-Who is here. I expect my being here will draw him out. Hermione has informed me that with the exception of myself and some very, very, very lucky Aurors back in the day, You-Know-Who has killed every person that he's ever decided to kill. This is not an 'adventure' like whatever you hear in rumor. This is real. Start treating it that way."
They collectively gulped, but the bravest nodded their heads, while the smartest gripped their wands a bit tighter and looked around a lot more. Hannah just hugged Susan and then stood with those moving forward, while Bones and Boot started looking around for a place to hide.
"Come on," Harry motioned and the others all followed.
They came to the black door at the end of the corridor. It wasn't locked, as before, and it opened easy onto the pitch black and blue-flame-candle-lit rotating room. Remembering what had happened the first time around, and their simple solution, Harry went in last and on the inside of the door put a red flaming 'X' on the door. Then he walked in and closed it behind him.
"Harry, why did you—?" Hermione started to ask as the reason became evident when the candle flames and the red X started to spin around them until it was like lines of blue and red light. When it stopped, the door with the red X was to their right somewhere. "Harry, that was quite good thinking. Now we know which was is out, and we can mark other doors that we'll try.
"Hm..." Harry was curious though. Did the doors move, or did they move when the room spun? And if it was the latter, how is it they didn't feel motion sickness during or after the spinning? And Harry was sure he'd be able to tell if he was spinning about at all. So he quickly walked over to the door with the flaming red X and opened it and looked outside. Yep, it was the corridor leading to the Ministry of Magic. Didn't answer his question, but at least now he could be sure. He shut the door and walked back inside.
"Just checking," he told everyone else once the room began to spin.
This time he went to the door directly across from the red X marker, and was disappointed to find the Brain room instead of the Time room or the Hall of Offices. He didn't really understand the Hall of Offices, but he remembered it clearly. Unfortunately, there was no easy way past the Brain room to the Time room, and that or the Hall of Offices was what he needed here, so he marked the door with a green and silver-ish letter B, and then shut the door, saying to everyone else, "Not the room we need," while waiting for the room to stop spinning. The next door was the Locked Door. He marked that with a green 'L' and chose the next one to his right. A comet shot past and he saw a couple planets in the background.
"OK, this might take a while," he sighed, marking the door with a green 'P'.
"Um, H-Harry? What is it you're doing exactly?" asked Hermione.
"Looking for the Hall of Prophecies," he replied, opening another door that he immediately slammed shut and just put a black scorch mark that showed up even on the black coloring of the door itself.
"What was that?" asked Ron.
"The Room of Death, holding the Veil," Harry remarked, opening up one of the last three unmarked doors, "We really don't want to go in there. Ah! Here we are. Hall of Offices. Just need to go down to the end and take the third door from the end on the left... Yeah," he nodded to himself and walked inside, leaving the door open behind him.
"Harry! How do you know this?" screeched Hermione, only to cover her mouth and look around worriedly for several moments.
"Told you I've been having dreams about this, haven't I?" he reminded her. It was the only thing he could think of. "I feel like I've been here before. And I know exactly where to go and how to get there."
"Harry..." she called, but he was already walking on. The rest followed.
They made it down the hall and to the specified door without anything more being said, and found themselves in the Hall of Prophecies moments later. Harry quickly identified which row they were on and raced through the rows until they got to the area between 96 and 97. Harry grabbed the prophecy and pocketed it before any of his friends made it around the corner, and then he only had enough time to knock the nameplate with his and Voldemort's names on it off the shelf.
"Harry? Where-where's Sirius?" Hermione asked as soon as she rounded the corner.
"Sirius," called Harry, holding up the mirror. The image connected in a moment and he explained the situation as quickly as possible. "We're here, and we're about to be ambushed by a bunch of Death Eaters. Is the Order here yet? Are we ready?"
"Not just yet," replied Sirius over the mirror. "You wouldn't believe what it took to convince Dumbledore to come as it is. He's kept insisting on talking to you. And to answer your first question, we're going past the Atrium right now."
"We'll try to get out of the Department of Mysteries, but if they find us, we'll have to bunker down. I'll call again if that happens. Harry out," he turned off the mirror and pocketed it. "Let's go people, we're about to be found... out..." he trailed off when he saw the gleaming white skull masks coming down the path.
"Never mind that, ATTACK! REDUCTO!" Harry shot one of the more destructive spells in his arsenal.
Ginny, Ron, Hermione and Neville all matched him in the spell used, while the others used stunners and bludgeoning spells. The shelves on either side of the group all exploded and started a domino effect, forcing the Death Eaters back. Harry was especially pleased to see that his own spell had gotten at least two of the group, and from their size looked to be Crabbe and Goyle Seniors. Ron also winged one of them, although it was more difficult to tell who.
"OK, now we run!" shouted Harry, leading the charge away from the Death Eaters and hopefully towards the nearest door, all amidst the cascading shelves of prophecies that were breaking and falling all around them in every direction.
Things were different from here on out, Harry thought to himself as he lead them back into the Hall of Offices, ironically much closer to the main entrance than he thought it would be. He made sure every one of his people were through before he closed and locked the door in the face of an enraged Malfoy, apparently his mask had come loose in the chaos. Just as the door started to unlock itself with an Alohomora, Harry took a deep breath, counted to three in his head and cast a point-blank Reducto at the door, making it explode outward from the point at which his wand had touched it. Looking through the open door way, he gulped and swallowed the bile that threatened to emerge at the site of six dead bodies in front of him. It looked like half of the rest of the squad sent in with Malfoy, counting Malfoy himself. But Harry knew they weren't out of the woods yet. There were more coming, coming with Voldemort himself.
He ran down the hall and quickly caught up with the others, who were running already, but he was well motivated. He pulled out the mirror and breathlessly re-established the connection.
"Sirius!" he gasped, "I really hope you're there!"
"Harry my boy," said Professor Dumbledore the moment his sparkling blue eyes materialized in the mirror, "Where are you? You appear to be out of breath. Are you all right?"
"Professor Dumbledore, I'm not sure—how much—Sirius told you," he gasped between lungfuls of breath, "but we were all—just attacked—by several Death Eaters in—the Department of Mysteries!" They finally made it to the door that would take them to the spinning room, so he stopped to get his breath back. When he was able to talk again, he said, "Voldemort is on his way here right now. I have the prophecy, and we do not have a lot of time. Is the Order in place?"
"My boy, what have you done?" came the saddened voice of the proclaimed most powerful wizard of the age since Merlin himself.
"Professor Dumbledore? What are you talking about? Is the Order in place?" Harry repeated.
"The only protections that object which you carried was that only you or Voldemort himself could remove it. So long as neither one of you removed it, it would remain their for the rest of time. Now that it has been removed... anyone can handle it."
"Sorry Professor, did I say I had the prophecy?" Harry remarked, hiding his anger behind a bit of shame at having to lie to one of the few people he truly respected. "I meant to tell you that I had smashed it to pieces the moment after I picked it up. So that way Voldemort will never hear the whole prophecy. But he's still coming here so, is the Order in place yet?"
Dumbledore blinked in surprise, and there was a brief struggle on the other end before Sirius's face replaced the image in the mirror. "Sorry about that pup, he kind of surprised me a bit there. We're here, we've got young Miss Bones and young Mister Boot here. Where are you?"
"Coming out now..." answered Harry as he opened the door to the spinning room, only to wilt and be filled with a fear that was becoming all too commonplace with him now. Voldemort, along with twenty masked and unmasked Death Eaters stood there, waiting for them in the middle of the room.
It was over very quickly after that.
At least to Harry it was quick.
The Death Eaters attacked, shooting lethal curses and Unforgivables.
Harry screamed for Sirius. Sirius screamed for Harry.
The door to the Ministry slammed open and the Order of the Phoenix charged in at the backs of the distracted Death Eaters.
Harry slammed the door shut. It blasted apart a heartbeat later.
Ginny and Hermione were dead.
Ron, tears and blood running down from a cut on his forehead, screamed and actually shot off an Avada Kedavra, killing one of the masked Death Eaters. He was shot and killed the same way by Voldemort himself a moment later.
The Patil twins recovered next, shooting out the dueling hexes that he'd taught them in the DA, sticking back-to-back as they dove into one of the offices. Neville and Cho dove after them. The rest of the Gryffindors were taking cover and shooting back with stunners and what curses they knew.
Harry stood up and cast the strongest Protego he'd ever cast, actually covering the entire doorway with it. Voldemort stopped casting with a scowl, knowing that if he cast a spell against Harry's it was spark another duel of wills like what had happened in the graveyard.
The Order actually took down half of the remaining Death Eaters before they even knew what hit them, and then it was a free-for-all.
Harry kept up the Protego and ordered Neville to take the bodies of the others to safety.
Hannah was crying.
Luna stood serenely in the corner, staring at Ginny's corpse.
The Creevey brothers were both bruised and bleeding, but alive. Harry ordered the rest of the Gryffindors to take Luna and Hannah to join Neville and the others.
The hallway behind him was clear.
He dropped the shield and wove into the melee with vengeance in mind. His repertoire consisted mostly of Reducto, Depulso, the cutting curse, the bludgeoning curse, and Protego. He rarely missed.
All the doors, save for one, were opened.
Harry protected the door leading to the Hall of Offices, never going more than a few feet from it. The room didn't spin so long as even one door was open.
Sirius fought his way through until he was by Harry's side.
No words were said, just a look, and then they were back-to-back fighting off the Death Eaters, most of which were focusing in on Harry, apparently told that he had the Prophecy.
It was too much. They had to run. Harry gestured to Sirius, the door behind them, the office the others were hiding in. They back stepped until they were in the Hall, and then Sirius, making it look like he'd overpowered or just cast when dodging and throwing off his aim, blasted the ceiling right over that door, a door that had already been shut and locked.
They ran, dodging spellfire all the way, stopping every ten yards to fire back, Harry holding the Protego shield, Sirius shooting until Harry's shield faltered.
They ran through so many rooms and down so many rows and hallways, Harry didn't know where they were until they finally arrived at a stadium-like room, with a whispering archway at the center of it. They were in the Death Room.
The fighting had reached here by now. Remus and Dumbledore battled Fenrir and Voldemort. Harry and Sirius were being chased by the Lestranges.
An explosion.
A distant roar of shouting.
A flash of red uniforms and more wands shooting spells.
The Aurors had arrived.
For once they attacked the Death Eaters and left anyone not wearing a mask alone for the moment. Amelia Bones came in with a full squad of Aurors and then some.
Rudolphus Lestrange fell to Sirius's stunner. Harry petrified and silenced his brother.
Bellatrix cast a spell that knocked them back and down to the stage where the Veil stood, unaffected by all that was happening around it.
"Is that the best you can do!" Sirius taunted, dodging a red jet of spellfire.
Harry cast another Protego, but the spell broke after just one hit.
Bellatrix dodged Sirius's return spell, her eyes crazy as she mouthed the words for the Killing curse.
Harry's body moved, not as it had that first time, at the direction of Dumbledore's wand to pull him to safety, but through pure instinct. He felt an impact on his chest as he stood between Sirius and Bellatrix's spell.
As it hit, Harry witnessed Fenrir, in werewolf form, tear into Remus, who was still in human form. His guts spilled and stained the floor, running down the stairs in a river. On the other side or the room, Dumbledore's eyes went wide and his face fell. In his distraction, he did not block Voldemort's jet-black curse and less than a heartbeat later, his eyeballs exploded and black blood started running from every hole in his head. The last thing that Harry saw was Cho, the Patil twins, the Creevey brothers, the Gryffindor Chasers, and Neville all killed by numerous curses. Somehow they'd gotten out of the office and made it here, to the Room of Death. The brothers were blown apart. Neville died from the Killing curse. Cho. the Patil twins and the Chasers were hit by some kind of magical explosion, burning off their clothing and hair, and shredding their thin bodies with shrapnel until they were so much meat.
Harry's eyes snapped open, and he sat up with a gasp and tried not to hyperventilate or puke over his bedcovers. Ron moaned, rolled over, and the sound of a wet balloon popping filled the dorm room with a horrid stench. Seamus and Dean gagged and ran for the bathroom. Neville covered his face with his pillow.
What. The. Bloody. Hell?
DOM_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _DOM
Harry was tempted, sorely tempted, to take the day off as it were, but he knew that nobody would let him do that, especially not Voldemort or Snape. But he was not about to do any of that again.
He couldn't understand it. What was going on here?
The first time he'd lived through this day, admittedly he'd been going through most of it in a blind panic, he remembered clearly that he'd been able to bluff his way past the Death Eaters to drop their guard long enough for him and his friends to get away. The Order had not been informed that he'd even left Hogwarts until probably dinner time, if not later, at which point he and his friends had already been inside the Department of Mysteries. Well, to be honest, that was probably after curfew rather than at dinner time, but still...
The Ministry shows up at the end of the fighting and Voldemort and his remaining Death Eaters flee rather than continue fighting. Dumbledore actually leads the charge, showing up and saving the day as usual. The only casualties are Sirius and some property damage. Any and all other injuries, he'd been told by Dumbledore in his office, were recoverable and everyone would be fine before the end of the school term.
And then Harry starts changing stuff around.
He ignores Voldemort's vision, there is no attack, the status quo remains the same; the Death Eaters remain anonymous, but Snape ferrets him out and pretty much tortures him until curfew. He tells the Order about Voldemort's attack, still ignores the vision, but has Snape retrieved by the Order. The attack happens, and a lot more people than Sirius die. He tricks Umbridge into mobilizing the Auror Corp, tells the Order, and the Ministry takes out more people than Voldemort and all his Death Eaters did while said Death Eaters escape with more resources than they were even after originally. And, he spends the entire night in a holding cell.
And to top it all off, when he tries to go back to what he originally did, disabling Umbridge, getting his friends to help him escape after the OWL exam, and riding on thestrals straight to London and the Ministry of Magic, even with the foresight of alerting the Order of what he's doing, he gets everyone killed. Everyone!
Just him and the Order, Sirius and people he cares about die.
Just the Order and the Ministry, Sirius and people he cares about die.
Maybe—maybe it's time to try just the Ministry?
Seeing how time keeps looping, he can try it just to see what will happen. He'll need to have some way of knowing how it turns out though, and he's really not wanting to risk staying in a holding cell all day.
Harry got up and got ready for the day, which in this case meant showering and getting dressed and writing a note that will get Snape arrested before lunch... Wait a minute... the note!
Harry chuckled and modified the note he wrote from 'Dumbledore' to 'Snape', rather than just a 'love note' between colleagues, Harry made it a very, very important note, detailing plans to have Snape sneak out of the school and meet Dumbledore in the Ministry of Magic, and to bring the 'Secret Weapon' so they'll be primed to take over the Ministry, 'to protect them from You-Know-Who and his forces. For the Greater Good!'. He even signed it with the ex-Headmaster's full-name signature, copied straight from the Chocolate Frog card.
It was a rather ingenious spell Hermione had found and shown him when the DA was still going strong. All it did, basically, was you cast it on text written in a book or on another piece of parchment, or anything really, and the words magically copied themselves and arranged themselves exactly as they had been written on whatever you wanted them to. Of course the OWLs anti-cheating charms prevented this spell from working at all, but it made note-taking for the DA a whole lot easier.
The note, if it were ever closely examined, wouldn't stand up to even the simplest of scrutinies, but he was confident that it would fool Umbridge long enough for her to convince Fudge and whoever else she needed to at the Ministry to have the whole place on lockdown before Voldemort even showed up. And, as a bonus, with Snape arrested, he couldn't inform Voldemort that Harry hadn't taken the bait and would go ahead with the attack.
At least that was the plan. A plan he really hoped would work.
By lunchtime, Snape was being dragged off by the Aurors and three quarters of the school was celebrating. At three o'clock on the dot, Voldemort's vision slammed into Harry's occlumency shielding, which broke down immediately and Harry almost wished he'd fallen asleep as the pain was every bit as bad as Snape's worst attempt at penetrating his mind. He suffered through it and was grateful that he'd managed to finish the exam in less than one hour instead of the requisite two. That way he could just rest his head against the cool smooth wood of the desk.
He spent the afternoon with Hermione and Ron, nursing his Legilimency-spawned headache under the tree in the courtyard. After dinner he was feeling much better and happily joined in on the party Gryffindor was throwing in honor of Snape's departure. The party lasted all night until the wee hours of the morning, until it was actually morning.
Harry had a lot of butterbeer and a lot more fun this time around. It helped that he wasn't stressed out over what was going on at the Ministry. If the Aurors and the entire Ministry couldn't handle the Death Eater's attack with full warning and a day's advance notice, well then, he shrugged, what chance did they really have?
Even as the party started to wear down, people were staying up and regaling each other stories of Snape's cruelty and how they were so very glad that he'd been arrested. The one story that kept being repeated, and honestly never got old, was how Snape resisted and had to be beat down and then dragged out of the school.
Harry sat himself down in front of the fireplace, idly toying with his broken mirror. He still laughed when he remembered what it was that he'd done after placing the note for Umbridge to find. It had to have been right up there with the greatest of pranks his father and friends had ever managed to pull off against the greasy git. And what made it all the sweeter? The slimy bastard actually helped him pull it off!
He'd gotten the idea shortly after placing the note, having caught sight of Ginny and Hermione dragging Ron down the stairs. Apparently whenever Harry wasn't in bed when Ron woke up, he told Hermione and Ginny and they started to 'worry' for some reason or another. Anyway, Harry had been reminded that Mrs. Weasley, that one time, had told them that Snape had actually gone and betrayed the Order, helping Voldemort to escape.
Well, he already had it so that Snape was going to get arrested that day. But it would be even better if he got thrown out of the Order at the same time, that way everyone would see him for the traitor that he was. How to do it though?
Harry had contemplated that for a little while until he remembered his mirror, and that Dumbledore never seemed to be too far from Sirius whenever Harry called his mirror. And what better way to take down Snape than to have him reveal his true colors before the man that always had his back.
Since his entire morning was free until lunch time anyway, it wasn't too much trouble for Harry to make his way down to the dungeons and get Snape's attention. Of course this was easier than it sounded, as all he had to do was walk up to the door of the man's private potions storeroom and trip the wards placed there. Then he walked quickly away, but not too quickly. Long enough for Snape to recognize him, but not for him to catch him too soon.
Harry actually made it to the 7th floor by the time Snape caught him, and had been talking with Sirius for two floors now. While he hadn't spoken to him at that point yet, Harry was fully aware the Dumbledore was listening in the background, mostly due to Sirius's answers to some of his questions, but also because the man really couldn't help glancing 'off-screen' to where Harry was sure Dumbledore was standing.
"POTTER!" Snape screamed, genuinely startling him.
Harry looked up, holding the mirror at his side, conveniently facing Snape so Sirius/Dumbledore could see who had shouted at him.
"What are you up to Potter? You're always up to something you stupid, arrogant, pathetic, dimwitted..."
"Is there something I can help you with Professor Snape?" Harry interrupted in the tone he knew would push Snape's buttons in all the wrong ways.
"You little...!" Harry was prepared for just about anything at that moment, but he had to admit that Snape was damn fast when he wanted to be. He actually shot a spell, probably nothing more serious than a stinging hex, at Harry and probably would have kept it up for a bit if Harry hadn't done what he did next.
Which was simply to block the spell with his mirror, which by that point held the face of Albus Dumbledore rather than Sirius Black. The spell easily cracked and broke the mirror, but Harry easily noticed the enchantments were still working as he could see pieces of Dumbledore's face in the pieces that falling. Harry then screamed bloody murder and made it sound like Snape was using the Cruciatus, or something worse, on him, repeating the words 'Snape', 'Professor', and 'Why?' between screams.
This behavior actually stunned the former Death Eater enough that he didn't actually fire another spell, though you couldn't tell that from Harry's screams. Harry had even fallen to the ground and screamed directly into the mirror shards, while hiding the fact that he reached for his wand and succeeded in casting a silent stunner, although he might have fit it in with the screams, he couldn't be sure now.
After Snape was safely unconscious on the corridor floor, Harry cut the connection to the mirror and cast a Reparo at it, but unfortunately whatever spell Snape had cast at him interfered with the magic and somehow a lot of the pieces were lost, leaving Harry with a broken mirror that he was still laughing at after midnight in front of the Gryffindor fireplace.
"What's so funny Harry?" asked Ron, having seen him chuckle for the past few minutes now.
Harry laughed out loud and then turned and answered his friend, "Just remembering the look on Snape's face when he was dragged away by the Aurors. It still makes me laugh."
Ron chuckled and nodded, "Yeah, I didn't see the end of it, but I was there for the middle. How did it even start, I mean, to actually go toe-to-toe with a full squad of bloody Aurors? He had to have been insane! And it took them the better part of two and a half hours to actually get a hold of him. Wonder what he was thinking..."
"Probably that he couldn't count on Dumbledore to come to his rescue as always," remarked Harry, taking another sip of his Butterbeer.
"THEY GOT YOU-KNOW-WHO!"
Harry choked and spit out his drink, spraying the face in the fire that had just delivered the message.
"Ew!" Tonks spat the regurgitated magical drink off her face. "Wotcher Harry. Nice spit-take there."
"Tonks, what—" Harry coughed and tried to speak again, "What do you mean they got Voldemort?"
"The Ministry!" the pink-green-amber-indigo-crimson-blonde-brunette-blue . . . haired witch, who kept changing the color of her hair and eyes with each breath, exclaimed. "They caught You-Know-Who and most all of his Followers tonight! About two and a half hours ago by now! He's in custody and the Minister is making apologies to Dumbledore now. I didn't think anyone would be awake. What's all this then?"
"We're celebrating Snape's removal from Hogwarts," Ron shouted over all the noise of everyone celebrating anew behind them. Somebody actually ran out of the Common Room and started shouting up and down all the halls of the school that Voldemort (or 'You-Know-Who') had been caught by the Ministry.
"Oh, him," Tonks's eyes shifted to black while her hair turned a fiery red. "Don't talk to me about that traitor. How are you feeling Harry? He didn't hurt you too bad, did he?"
"Huh? Oh, that, well... you know Madam Pomphrey just loves to get me back on my feet again. I doubt she'd even recall today's from any other days," Harry shrugged off the stares he was getting. "So, what happened, really?"
"Well that's quite a story, sure you want to hear it now?"
"Like anybody's going to sleep now?" Harry gestured to the bedlam behind him.
"Good point," she acknowledged. "Well, as much as I've heard, it started this morning when Umbridge started making a fuss about some note she intercepted going to Snape. You ask me, he probably handed it to her. After he attacked you Harry, she brought in a bunch of Aurors and took him straight to the Minister and my boss, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones. The result of whatever interrogation they put him under had the entire Ministry under lockdown. People were sent home early, the wards were super-charged and left in a Ready state, and every available Auror was pulled in to provide assistance. Right around closing time for the Ministry, something was done with a Pensieve and Snape and the next thing we know we've got every Death Eater, known and unknown, apparating in, and then the Big Bad himself, You-Know-Who! The wards were put to full power a second later and then we got to fighting them. Bloody big mess. You-Know-Who himself took out a third of the entire Auror corp! But we got him in custody, snapped his wand and everything."
"And then what happened?" Ron asked, riveted by the story.
"And that's it," said Tonks with a happy smile, "The Ministry has You-Know-Who and most all his Death Eaters in custody and they're being shipped out to Azkaban as we speak. Except for You-Know-Who of course. He's being held in a special cell that some Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries cooked up for him. I'd just thought Harry would like to know, so that's why I'm Floo'ing."
"Wait, what was that about Snape attacking Harry?" Hermione interceded.
"Oh yeah, just before lunch, Snape sort of attacked me out of the blue while I was talking to Sirius and Dumbledore on this mirror that Sirius got me for Christmas," Harry showed them the broken mirror. "I sort of screamed at him when he broke it right in front of me."
"According to Sirius, it sounded like he'd put you under the Cruciatus curse!" Tonks protested.
Harry shrugged and replied, "Whatever it was, it wasn't the Cruciatus curse. That's an Unforgivable, and those can't be blocked remember?" He waved the mirror, making his point.
"Still, won't see me crying over whatever the Ministry did to him," said Harry.
"Well neither will anyone else in the Order," said Tonks. "Even Dumbledore said he'd gone too far and threw him out of the Order. No one will help him out now, not that many were wanting to in the first place."
"So... what now?" Harry asked, seeing that it wasn't even three in the morning yet.
"Enjoy the party! You-Know-Who is gone, or as gone as is possible to get. He'll probably be thrown into the Veil as execution before the end of the night. You don't have anything more to worry about Harry!"
Harry laughed and nodded his head. She was right. Voldemort was as 'out' of the game as he could be without being permanently dead, and according to Tonks that might still happen before the Time Loop reset anyway. Snape was kicked out of the school, out of the Order, and was on everyone's Most Hated list. He was sure he'd never see him again.
Life... the future was looking a lot brighter than it had just a few days previously. Harry was content and he felt that there was nothing and no one else that could ruin that for him.
He enjoyed the rest of the party and finally went off to bed around four thirty, looking forward to tomorrow. As he lay down, he did one last thing, casting a permanent illusion to the top of his canopy bed. It was glowing a bright red and gold and said, 'GRYFFINDOR VICTORY!'
He closed his eyes and went to sleep.
He was awake what felt like only a moment later.
Harry rolled over in bed and glanced at the small clock next to his bed that was pinging the hour. He heard Ron groan something unintelligible, and then a sound like a water balloon and a horrid smell filled the room before being vanished by the refreshing charms that had been in place since midway through Harry's first year. Dean and Seamus both gagged and fled for the washroom. Neville coughed and then put his pillow over his head before trying to go back to sleep. The door to the washroom slammed shut, eliciting a snort and another fart from Ron.
Harry blinked and then slowly sat up and looked carefully around.
He was in his bed. In his dorm room. The clock said it was now seven o'clock in the morning. The morning light filtering through the window seemed to support this.
Frowning, Harry looked up at the ceiling of his canopy bed and went white as a sheet in the next moment.
There was nothing there.