Chapter 6

It was night.

In the silent bedroom there was just the noise of tender snores and soft breath. Except for Ron's chest – going up and down as he swallowed and let go the air – nothing moved. The air was still, and so was the old clock over the small bedside table.

Harry, too, didn't move. With the famous green eyes wide open, fixed over nothing in particular, he thought of what he'd just done, of what he could have done. He would have shivered from the thought if it wasn't the hundredth time he wondered about it.

He could have killed him. He would have killed him.

Worry, despair, fear filled his heart. The agony of guilt wouldn't let him sleep, and he was glad about that – he was afraid he could attack his best friend if he closed his eyes.

Harry passed the hands over his tired face, breaking the immobility that had taken hold of the room.

He had almost killed Arthur Weasley. He had almost torn down his best friend's family. He had almost done something he would regret for the rest of his life.

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The Christmas had already passed, with its snow covering the whole England – but the area where rested the imposing castle of Hogwarts magic school. However, even if that fact for itself was weird enough, it was barely noticed considering all the strange events that followed it.

First, when Harry visited St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries what he saw was not just weird, as expected – it was preoccupying. The Healers walked around as if they were lost, and the cases of accidents with magical creatures had increased so much that if Mr. Weasley hadn't been a member of the government, he would still be waiting to be attended together with the tons of other people at the entrance Hall.

And as if the number of accidents wasn't bad enough, its mystery was. There were so many wizards and witches who had been bitten, torn out, broken, whipped, or poisoned in so many ways they couldn't know how to heal everybody – or even most of them. In fact, it could be said that the place had been drown into chaos and wouldn't find a way out any time soon.

Apart from that, by coming back to Hogwarts, Harry saw that much had changed. When he first stepped into his beloved castle, Filch went after him, inspecting him thoroughly – but he couldn't blame him after what happened to Umbridge a while before the Holidays.

The centaurs that lived at the Forest had left their refuge and wandered apparently randomly around the castle, never speaking to anyone and always with suspicion in their faces.

But the strangest thing was the fact that everyone was whispering, commenting and observing – and it wasn't about Harry. In fact, that was so strange for him not to be the center of all the attentions that he thought that didn't seem real. That didn't feel real, at least. And he would've thanked God for that, if he believed such entity existed, though a sensation of a weird sort of emptiness filled him together with the relief.

A week passed without happening anything else that could possibly be considered strange. Everything – except for Umbridge, but there was nothing anyone could do about her – was going quite well, and even the pain and the visions Voldemort provoked had lessened, which was always something good. The only things that were making him feel not so perfectly relaxed since the comeback from his Godfather's house were Voldemort (of course) and the fact he couldn't see Nico di Angelo anywhere.

But it probably was the best for Nico – a very wise decision. Ever since the incidents with the empousa and the pranks Umbridge had suffered from "someone with urgent needs of being disciplined", the professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts glared at all the students with so much fury that they actually started being afraid of her. And, whenever she heard Nico's name, her eyes changed from simple and soft anger to complete and murderous hatred.

Yes, it was certainly the best for him not to show up anymore.

Yet, that was exactly why Harry couldn't understand why it seemed people kept seeing him around; the whispers weren't for nothing, and they were only intensifying with time. And what he heard wasn't really making him feel comfortable – what it seemed was that Nico had decided to spend his time analyzing all the corners, corridors and secret rooms of Hogwarts. Wondering about it, Harry could only think he was after that key he had mentioned before, but that still didn't explain anything.

That's why, even though Harry's worries had decreased considerably, he had decided to endure bravely the time he and Hermione spent at the library – researching over the empousai. He couldn't just pretend nothing happened, nor rest tranquil knowing he could do something… Even though he couldn't tell what that would be, exactly.

It was one of these days at the library; while he watched his hopes vanish within him as Hermione looked up feverishly in books about monsters and magical creatures and found nothing, a scene nearby attracted his attention. It first started with a few rapid and nervous whispers behind the shelves. Then, in a sudden, a voice Harry knew too well rose above the others, and it said:

"…stupid mudblood."

Harry didn't know the context, and he had no clue who Draco was talking to. All he knew when he rose from his chair was that an enemy of a Malfoy would certainly be a friend, and so, ignoring the warning glance he received from Hermione, he walked to the place his old enemy was standing along with his bodyguards. Two things surprised him when he got there: first, that Draco was talking that way to another Slytherin; and second, that the Slytherin who had just been called "mudblood" was Amanda.

Draco looked at Harry, with the usual disdain and disgust, and smiled.

"Well, well, it looks like Potter came to help his mudblood friend as always… It really looks like he enjoys being with the scum, isn't it?"

"If I did like, Malfoy, I would certainly be your friend." Harry managed to say while gritting his teeth, though he couldn't understand why they were calling the little girl a Muggle-born. Weren't all Slytherins purebloods?

"Oh, Harry, that's an awful thing to say!" a new voice emerged near them.

"I mean, you would need to be worse than scum to be his friend…"

Harry turned and saw Fred and George smile at him. He smiled inside, delighted, when he saw Draco step back, visibly uncomfortable with the inferiority in numbers. That was a legitimate coward.

Amanda took the opportunity to escape from him, though Harry knew she couldn't run away for too long. But what surprised him the most was that the Weasley twins followed her, and in their eyes it could be seen that they really wanted to talk to the weird and apparently Muggle-born girl.

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Harry went as fast as he could to the Entrance Hall when he heard an unusual commotion coming from there.

As he approached, he could hear despondent wild screams grow louder, and the first thought that crossed his mind was that the Death Eaters were attacking Hogwarts. But soon he fond out that couldn't be it – there was only one person's voice rising desperate among what he soon recognized as whispers of a crowd.

The scene he saw when he entered the Hall was quite shocking and pitiful. 'Professor Trelawney was standing in the middle of the Entrance Hall with her wand in one hand and an empty sherry bottle in the other, looking utterly mad. Her hair was sticking up on end, her glasses were lopsided so that one eye was magnified more than the other; her innumerable shawls and scarves were trailing haphazardly from her shoulders, giving the impression that she was falling apart at the seams. Two large trunks lay on the floor beside her, one of them upside-down; it looked very much as though it had been thrown down the stairs after her. Professor Trelawney was staring, apparently terrified, at something Harry could not see but which seemed to be standing at the foot of the stairs.' (J.K. Rowling)

"You can't do this! Hogwarts is my home!" screeched the poor woman. "No, no… you c-can't…" the screams turned to sobs as she lowered her voice. Then, a falsely sweet girly voice rose from where Professor Trelawney had been staring – and Harry figured out who the terrifying vision was.

"It was your home." There was amusement in her voice as she spoke. "Now please remove yourself from this Hall. You are-"

But she couldn't finish her sentence. For when she looked around to the shocked faces of the students something caught her eyes, and they gleamed in fear. Suddenly all of the talk ceased – the candle lights flickered, as it did in the incident with the empousa. With the eyes wide open and the breath faster, most of the students took their wands, hoping vehemently there would be no need to use them.

Harry tried to follow Umbridge's eye, but it seemed whatever she saw had moved, because he couldn't see anything around and she suddenly started to look all around nervously, as if she'd lost sight of the object of her attention.

The darkness grew around them, as it did before. There was only one thing that made Harry feel a little relived, and it was the fact that many of the DA members were at the Hall with him. If a fight started, at least he'd have people he could trust around him to protect his back.

The professors were all nervous. Harry could see their attempt of keeping things under control, but it seemed they couldn't decide whether it was better for them to leave the students to see what was going on or if they should stay with them, in case of protection being needed.

Professor McGonagall was the first to make a move. She walked towards the center of the circle of students that had been formed and said, in a clear and firm voice:

"Alright, I suppose the issue of Professor Trelawney's dismissal can be discussed later. Now, the monitors of each house should take their-"

A new bruit came from the darkness that had just formed all around them. Harry's first thought was that it should be a thunder's din, but when the sound got lower he distinguished a malicious laughter that made his body shiver with fear.

"Oh, you won't go anywhere." A deep creepy voice arose, and Harry could see most students tremble incessantly with their wands loose in their hands, visibly scared.

Then another voices – if you could call them that – echoed in the hall, and soon people realized they were laughs. Harry suddenly wished Dumbledore was there, even though he was mad at him because of the distance he had been keeping since the vacation had started. A cold grip took hold of Harry's heart, though it was quite odd for him to feel that about an invisible enemy.

A quiet exclamation was heard coming from a terrified Ravenclaw boy, and when the others looked around them to see if something or someone had showed up, all the lights went out and the Hall was sunk in complete darkness. Some girls whined – or maybe they were boys, though their voices sounded too screechy for Harry.

But the complete darkness was fortunately broken fast, as Professor McGonagall said "Lumus" in her calm exasperated voice. Harry instantly followed her in her action, and soon almost everyone had their wands up, just in time to see four pairs of intense red eyes stare at them for just one more moment – as if they were just having some fun before pouncing. Two huge shaggy black bodies, with one fast movement each, jumped to the middle of the crowd that looked at them with disbelief and fear, and started to sniff around as if they were looking for someone.

"Where is the other half-blood?" the bigger one roared as he looked to his fearful audience with rage. "I can smell three, but I only see two!"

The other three other monstrous animals, that looked like wolves – though they were much bigger, and much more terrifying – growled menacingly, and everyone shrunk. The apprentices of witches and wizards who had a Muggle parent looked even more terrified, though none of them could understand why they said there were only three half-bloods.

Harry felt despair come to his heart in a strong and nauseous impulse, and at that moment he knew he couldn't win in a combat against those things. He knew his jinxes and spells wouldn't harm them enough to get out alive, as well as he knew there was no possible escaping route. It was just like when he fought Voldemort – but he couldn't think of anyone or anything to help them this time.

He was with those thoughts in his mind when each of the wolves in the middle of the crowd took one person – one student. The smaller monster, that had been quiet all along, held by the shirt a more or less 13 year-old boy, whose hair was straw like and whose wood brown eyes were awash of horror. The other one picked a small girl, and only when he put her again in the floor, between the two attackers, that Harry recognized her as the impotent anger got stuck to his throat.

The little scarred girl in the floor was Amanda.

"Now both of you must know who is the third half-blood, ain't that right?" the hoarse growl was carried with anger and malice. The kids shook their heads negatively, speechless. "Oh yes, you do." The menace behind his voice grew as he approached them. As their answer was a silent 'no' again, the one that seemed to be the alpha of the pack gave his thunder-like roar again, and Harry could swear the floor below them shook. "You want us to believe that you have got no idea of who is the third of you and where is he?" his roar got even more furious when the two kids nodded positively. He gave a hard blow with his paw on the ground, the red eyes glittering with fury and the dark dirty fur in his back bristled menacingly.

A new monstrous voice behind the crowd whispered delighted "Finally we'll have them for dinner!", and so the real chaos started.

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