Disclaimer: I don't own Anything! It is all J.K. Rowling's work!
A/N: thanks asianwitch and Icelynne for the reviews
McGonagall knew it was someone from the ministry, so she put Severus and Hermione in the back room and closed the door. She then opened the door. It was Kingsley. "Why are you here?" She asked.
"I am sorry to be the one to tell you this but the ministry is unfortunately making you"
McGonagall interrupted him. "If this is about Severus I am not firing him. I just questioned Severus and Miss Granger and they have nothing going on between them. You can tell the Minister that."
"No, this is not about Severus."
"Oh" McGonagall said, turning a little pink.
"Apparently Draco complained to his father about how Ron hexed him and his father has convinced the Ministry that he should be expelled." Seeing the shocked look on her face he quickly said "Don't worry, I convinced them that it was a little too extreme and instead he is suspended for a month. That is the smallest amount of time I could get."
"Have you informed his family yet?"
"Not yet, I'll leave that up to you."
"Well thank you for trying to help."
"No problem, I just wish I could have done more." Kingsley said, "The ministry has given him 24 hours to leave willingly before he is forced to. And Lucius said he was going to check up on him from time to time, to see if he is following the rules" He finished, looking furious by the end of it. He couldn't stand that the Malfoy's got their way just because they were rich.
"I better get going; thanks for letting me take up your time." Kingsley said in a neutral voice. Regardless what he thinks of the ministry he still had to do his job.
McGonagall nodded and he left. She was about to let Hermione and Severus out when someone knocked on the door again. She was surprised to see that it was Neville.
"Mr. Longbottom, what is it?" she asked.
"Don't fire Professor Snape!" Neville exclaimed.
"Pardon me?"
"You heard me. I know that you still haven't forgiven him for what he was forced to do to the Headmaster but that is no reason to fire him before you hear what he has to say."
"Mr. Longbottom I"
"No, listen to me. Professor Snape is a good person; he would never force himself on a student, or anybody for that matter. He might have terrified me during potions but he is a good teacher. There were more accidents in potions when Professor Slughorn was teacher for one year than the previous five years combined with Professor Snape, and that is including all of the blunders I did."
"Mr. Longbottom!"
"Let me finish! Last year he also risked his life to keep us students safe. He assigned detention with Hagrid whenever he could get away with it, knowing that would keep us from getting beaten from the Carrows. He doesn't deserve to automatically be assumed guilty."
"Enough Mr. Longbottom, I was not planning on firing Professor Snape. Now Mr. Longbottom, why were you willing to risk being expelled by doing this?"
Neville, who was beet red said, "I know that he is a good person, I can't stand the fact that everybody seemed to turn against him since the war was over, well everyone except the Slytherins and Hermione. I think that Hermione never gave up on him actually. She gave me Ginny Harry and Ron a good talking to about Professor Snape. She was the one who made me realize what he was doing by sending us to detention with Hagrid, and the risk it was to do it. You remember last Friday when Hermione gave everyone that lecture in the great hall? Well I for one agreed with her. Everyone did treat the Slytherins like they were supposed to be evil, even if they wanted to join our side we probably wouldn't have let them. I don't want to continue doing that. Professor Snape proved again and again he was on our side during the war, and he did it knowing he wouldn't get any glory. I am not going to sit by and watch him get attacked when I could help it somehow.
"I never knew you thought this strongly Mr. Longbottom." McGonagall said, looking at him proudly. It took a lot of courage to speak to elders like that.
"Yeah, well I better go tell Ginny that he is not going to be fired, or she will be in here to do the exact same thing." He said, "And please don't tell Professor Snape I did this, he is going to be angry that I interfered with his business."
"I won't tell him."
"Thank you!" he said, quickly leaving out of embarrassment. McGonagall waited a few minutes before letting Severus and Hermione out, she wanted to make sure no one else was coming.
When she opened the door Severus and Hermione weren't there. "Severus? Miss Granger? Are you here?" she called.
Suddenly one of the bookshelves in the room opened, revealing a large but empty room, the very air brimming with magic, and Hermione and Severus right in the middle of it, both looking at the wall with interest. "What is this?" McGonagall asked.
Startled Hermione turned around. "The second you put us in this room the bookshelf opened. As you can feel there is a lot of magic in this room. We were trying to translate the writing on the wall to figure out why." She said, looking annoyed. She couldn't even recognize the language; let alone what any of it meant.
"What writing?" McGonagall asked, only seeing a blank wall.
"The writing with the glowing silver letters, what else could we be talking about." Severus snapped, he was frustrated with the writing because he could have sworn he had seen it before, but he couldn't figure out where. He knew though that he never knew what it meant though, adding to his frustration.
"I don't see anything." McGonagall said, confused.
Seeing that she was being serious Severus accioed a piece of paper and started writing on it, looking intently at the wall while he did. He handed the paper to McGonagall. The writing on it said
Þegar tvær sálir verða eitt,
galdur þeirra mun aukast tífalt,
og myrkur mun afturkalla.
Ástin tveggja sálna sem eru einum
vilja koma aftur ljósið í myrkri sjálfur.
"This is what we see, it looks familiar but I can't place where I've seen it. I wonder why you can't see it." Severus said.
"Maybe because you've seen it before?" McGonagall asked.
"That can't be, this doesn't look familiar at all to me. I know I never seen this before in my life." Hermione said. Then, suddenly remembering why she was placed in the backroom in the first place asked, "What did the ministry want?"
"Mr. Weasley is suspended for a month; he has until tomorrow to leave." She said.
"That was quick; Draco only talked to his father last night. I wonder what he said that made him do this so fast."
"I don't know, we need to contact the Weasley family. Severus, we need to leave and come back to it later. It's more important that we figure out who is going to keep an eye on Mr. Weasley then figuring out the mystery of this room. You can look at it later." McGonagall told him, knowing that if he didn't leave now he would start obsessing about it.
"Fine." He said, looking like a child who got denied sweets.
Hermione thought it was cute, then realized who she was thinking about and pushed that thought out. Hoping her face wasn't red she said "I better be allowed to look at this too, I want to know why you can't see it but me and Severus can."
"You can too then, now how do we inform the Weasley family about what is wrong with their son while still getting an oath of silence."
After thinking for a few minutes Hermione said, "Call an Order meeting. There is an automatic oath of silence put on the order during a meeting. We need people we can trust not to tell anyone to look over Ron and the order will happily volunteer."
"But an order meeting takes time to get organized." McGonagall said. "It is normally called days in advance so everyone can find an inconspicuous way to take time off."
"Just call an emergency meeting, just use the same code Albus did when he called us the first time. Nobody will tell anyone else about it and everybody will be expecting bad news. It's important." Severus said, he wasn't too happy about more people than necessary knowing about this but he knew Hermione was right, they needed people they could trust to keep an eye on Weasley.
"Miss Granger,"
"I'm sorry headmistress, but could you call me Hermione also? I feel like a child whenever someone calls me Miss Granger."
"Of course, you are graduating soon, Hermione, I know that Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy, and Lucius know about Mr. Weasley's condition, does anyone else?"
"Pansy, she saw Ron's eyes flash red and demanded an answer. She knew what Voldemort's eyes looked like and Ron had them. That's the same reason why we told Draco. They won't tell anyone though, they don't want another to be trusted even less, and if people found out that Voldemort is influencing Ron, they would automatically look to the people who were on Voldemort's side during the war."
"Hermione, this is normally not allowed but I'm afraid you and your friends will have to join this meeting. Once you do you will automatically be under an oath of silence. The less people know about this the better." McGonagall told Hermione. "Now go find them and tell them to go to my office tonight at 11 tonight, the meeting will be at 11:30."
Hermione, who a year before would of questioned the orders instantly, but she had grew up in the past year to know that asking a constant stream of questions wasn't the best way to find answers. It was better to observe the facts given then ask for verification once an answer was found. She left without a word to find Draco Harry and Pansy.
A/N: I know this is one of my shorter chapters, but I have to go soon. The writing on the wall is not random nonsense, it is going to be important in later chapters. So, what does everybody think of my story so far?