Innocent Words Act II
Author: Captain Cornflake
Chapter Seven: Sabotage Part Two / Tragedy
-Disclaimer-
I do NOT own Harry Potter (waaaahhhh, I wish I did!), I own Em thought, so ner.
A/N: To the person who reviewed chapter six, cheers, and what's up with Snape you ask? He got pissed off at being one of the good guys, and Em is not destined be another Harry, it's just the whole Gryffindor bravery/hero thing…
Harry stepped back as the flames climbed up the walls around him. He regained his composure, looked at the sinister expression on Snape's face, waved his wand in the professor's direction and shouted: 'Petrificus Totalus'.
Snape fell to the floor, frozen, his arms tightly at his side.
The flames that were travelling the room reached the rows of wooden desks that were inside, causing the temperature to skyrocket. Funnily enough, the door was not crumbling under the intense heat pressure on it.
Harry coughed and spluttered as the smoke in the air reached his lungs.
He tried with all his strength to open to door, but the handle was too hot for him to hold, it was so well locked that he couldn't even prise it open. He was trapped.
Ron, Hermione and Elizabeth were shouting of him at the top of their lungs, he heard them and he yelled back:
"Get outside, get near the window, I have an idea"
By now, news of the fire had reached McGonagall, the teacher panicked, but remained calm enough to order that everyone was to remain in their respective towers.
Ron, Hermione and Elizabeth arrived at the outside window where Harry had instructed them to go. They saw a shadow rise up at the window, it looked like a head.
Inside the room, Harry had cleverly transfigured an untouched desk into a ladder.
He rested it up against the high window ledge and climbed each run as quickly as possible. He reached the window and could see; or rather just make out the forms on Ron, Hermione and Elizabeth. The window was stuck tight shut. He coughed and put a hand to his mouth.
'Oh Shit' thought Harry, '…this is it' thinking he was going to die.
Then a new bolt of hope surged through him, he gained a new strength. He threw his elbow at the window; smashing it into hundreds of piece, he made sure it was big enough to fit a person through before scaling the ladder down to the floor.
He ran to Em's body and put her over his shoulder, hanging on as tightly as he could to her right arm, while climbing the ladder with his left hand.
Ron breathed a sigh of relief as Harry re-appeared at the window with Em on his shoulder. The redhead stepped forward and beckoned for his friend to pass his teammate down.
Harry did just that, he tossed Em down to Ron, who staggered back and fell flat on his behind, still hanging on to the body in his arms.
Ron rolled Em over so she was on her back, he looked at her face, he'd seen that expression before. He glanced sadly at Hermione before turning back to the window.
"Harry! Come on, jump!"
The teen wizard glanced down at the other stiffened body on the floor, he felt obliged, even thought he hated the man with a passion, there was a feeling deep down that he should save him. He climbed back down a couple of rungs.
"Harry no!" shouted Hermione.
He hadn't got even steps down when he felt a rising heat on the lower part of his legs. Glancing down over, he bolted back up the ladder, muttering 'shit, shit, shit' as he went.
A rafter crashed down to the floor suddenly, causing everyone outside to step back.
'Come on Harry, jump!" yelled Elizabeth, stretching out her arms to catch him.
He launched himself from the ledge then, seconds before the window shattered into hundred of pieces, showering all below in glass.
Flames and smoke poured out of the open gap in the wall, and licked skyward. Thankfully there were no rooms directly above that one, so there was no immediately danger to the rest of the castle.
Professor McGonagall arrived outside the door accompanied by a few other teachers; she broke the deadlock on the door and jumped inside casting spells to put out the flames.
Outside, the four conscious teens gazed at what used to be a History of Magic room.
A piece of brickwork began to crack suddenly; it crumbled and took a good portion of the entire wall with it.
When the dust subsided, they expected to be beaten back by massive flames, but they weren't. The flames were all but out, save a few tiny flickers.
McGonagall stepped back and looked around, what has possessed someone to do this?
She spotted the five dust-covered form outside and rushed out to see if they were ok.
"Mr Weasley, Miss Granger, Miss Aryton" she said breathlessly, '…and Mr Potter, what are you doing here?"
"Saving our friend" replied Ron, pointing to Em.
"Oh my" gasped the head.
"Minerva, you'd best come see this" called one of the teachers inside the charred shell of a room.
She stepped over the piles of rubble and stifled a scream of terror at what she saw.
A heavily scorched, blackened, almost beyond recognisable corpse, frozen in time.
"Severus" she dropped to her knees and looked over the body. "He's dead," she said to herself.
Back outside, she spoke to the group:
"What happened here?"
"Professor," piped up Harry, "Snape was not himself, he was slightly mad you might say. He tried to kill Emilia and myself."
McGonagall sighed, the reality of the situation hitting her.
"She has been petrified, but how?"
"I think this might explain that professor" said Flitwick, handing her the shiny gold pendant he'd found on the floor.
"Oh my, how in the name of Merlin did he get this?"
"What is it professor?" asked Hermione, shuddering at the mention of petrification.
"This, Miss Granger, is a very rare, one-of-a kind pendant, behind as sheet of glass lies the glare of a basilisk."
The faces of the students dropped. This was bad.
Madam Pomfrey appeared then and took the five teens away to the hospital wing.
A couple of hours later, Harry had been treated for a few broken ribs; smoke inhalation and a few cuts from the broken glass. Hermione, Ron and Elizabeth were treated for smoke and dust inhalation a few cuts and bruises, and the such like.
Hermione Seemed troubled, she stared long and hard and Em's frozen face. She glanced at Ron and said:
"So this is how you felt…"
"Yes, it's not nice" sighed Ron, laying a hand on her shoulder.
"Someone…needs to tell Oliver" groaned Harry, sitting up.
"I'll take care of that…you should all get some sleep now, I know it's hard, but you should try." said McGonagall, sweeping into the room.
The others nodded and lay down in bed, contemplating what had gone on in the past few hours.
It was almost one in the morning when the headmistress sat down in her office to write to the ex-Gryffindor Quidditch captain, delivering the bad news.
An hour later, a tawny owl flew away into the night sky, off to Scotland.
Meanwhile, In Loch Etive.
Back in the Wood estate, a tired, exhausted and grief stricken Oliver left the room where his now dead father lay.
He rested up against the wall and slid down it, his shoulders heaving with tears that had been held behind a wall of strength of pride and strength.
Fiona's tear-stained face appeared then, and she laid a supportive hand on her son's shoulder.
He looked up at her with heavily reddened eyes, he gulped back the lump that was in his throat and choked out the words.
"This is gonna hurt Em"
The older woman smiled slightly at the thought of her daughter-in-law-to-be:
"She'll be ok, she's a strong girl"
"Yeah, I guess you're right"
Oliver rested his forehead on his knees, before out of the corner of his eye he saw some movement. He jerked his head up, just in time to see a tawny owl land on the windowsill. It was sunrise, so the bird appeared to be glowing.
He opened the window tentatively, unsure of the content of the letter. God only knows why, but he had a gut feeling that it was bad news.
When he saw the Hogwarts stamp on the back, he tore open the envelope and pulled out the parchment inside, thoroughly panicked.
His eyes jumped all over the page before settling on the first line:
Dear Mr Wood,
I regret to inform you that your fiancée has been involved in a serious accident.
Before I continue, I must assure you that she is very much alive, but unfortunately she has been petrified.
I realise this will be upsetting for you, but rest assured that she is in good hands.
However, there is another matter connected with this accident that I need to speak with you about, urgently.
Yours Truly,
Minerva McGonagall
(Headmistress)
Oliver dropped the letter and backed away from the window, putting a hand to his mouth in disbelief.
"What is it?" asked Fiona, as her son backed into her.
"It's Em, she's been…she's been...she's been petrified…"
"Oh my…" she exclaimed, looking at the letter on the floor, "Go to her, she needs you.."
"But…but…but…what about you and grandma?"
"We'll be fine, your fiancée needs you, go"
"But…"
"No buts…go"
"Ok" said Oliver, uneasy about leaving his mum at such a time.
A couple of hours later, he left the house, jumped into his car and flew away into the night sky. Southwards, towards Hogwarts.
At noon that day, he landed roughly and hard on the lawn outside, he jumped out and rushed inside.
The first person he met was McGonagall, her hands were folded and her expression worried.
"Wood" she said, still referring to him only by his last name, "Come with me…"
She led him trough the maze of corridors towards the hospital wing, in total silence.
"In here…" she said, leading to the far end of the room.
"Oh god…" he sat down on the edge of the bed and ran fingers over his cheek. "Professor, what was the other thing you needed to speak to me about?"
"Yes, um, this is going to be another upset to you. Your fiancée was pregnant, but she has regrettably suffered a miscarriage."
Oliver's face went a deathly shade of white, his jaw dropped and his eyes filled up with more tears.
"I didn't know, she never told me"
"Oh, I'm so sorry" said McGonagall, in a sympathetic tone.
"Can I just, get a minute here?"
"Yes of course…I'll tell the others to stay away for a while, to mind their own business"
"Thanks" he waited until she'd left before he spoke to Em:
"Em, look, I know you can't hear me right now, but I'm going to say this anyway.
I love you.
I know you know that anyway, but I just though I should tell you.
Oh God, please don't die, please, I need you, don't leave me, I need you, especially now my dad's…gone"
He broke down into fits of sobs at her bedside; he fell to his knees and rested his head on her arm.
Harry appeared then, his right arm in a sling; he looked at the scene in front of him, instantly feeling like it should have been him that was lying there.
"Hey…she'll be ok you know…" he layed a hand on Oliver's shoulder.
"Thanks for saving her Harry, I don't want to even think what would have happened if you hadn't gone in there to save her…"
After that, Oliver was sat down and told the full, no details held back account of what had happened the other night…
