A/N: Thanks to all my followers and favoriters! I love you all! In fact, at the end of this chapter, I'm gonna post the usernames of anybody who followed or favorited this story!
Harry Potter doesn't belong to me.
Chapter Eleven
Missing In Action
Fred wandered through the walls. It was early morning, about eight am, and the castle was buzzing with life. He could feel it; being part of the wall, he could tell everything that was happening around him. And then he froze.
Someone was trapped in the secret room beside the Headmistress's office.
Hurrying, he reached the room in a matter of seconds. That was one good thing about being a spirit: he could travel faster than the speed of sound.
Peering out into the room, he could see two people. Third or fourth years, by the looks of them. One, a boy with mousy brown hair, was hunched in the middle of the room. The other, a girl with boyishly short hair, was tapping every brick on the wall, trying to get out.
As soon as Fred had found out about this place soon after being 'expelled' back into the world, he had explored it. There were two ways in; behind the tapestry and through a tunnel, which was also the only way out. This tunnel had been one of the ones on the Maurader's map, but exploration found that it was caved in. However, had they done a little more probing, they would've found that tapping the bricks in a certain sequence would cause the blockage to move and revealed a safe passage.
Fred made sure he was invisible and stepped out of the walls. He looked around, searching for a way to get his message across. And then he found it; a skeleton. There were many bones and such in this room, all tangled up, but this one had all major limbs attached. Fred shuddered, but decided it would do.
The next thing he did, he hated doing. Hated it with a passion. He had once done it to a bird by accident, and it had terrified him.
He took a deep breath, steadied himself and walked into the skeleton.
Instead of that uncomfortable feeling of passing through things, Fred instead found feeling from limbs that weren't his. He could feel every fibre of the skeleton's structure, and stood up. The bones clattered, and the girl whipped around, her green eyes wide with fear.
"He-e-e-w!" she screamed, pointing. The boy jumped to his feet and pointed the wand at Fred- or, more specifically, the Fred Skeleton.
"Hey, hey, no need to be afraid!" Fred called warily, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. The two kids exchanged a glance and dropped their wands, still staring at him distrustfully.
"I don't want to hurt you," Fred called softly. "I'm trying to get you out of here."
"There's a way out?" the girl asked. Fred nodded.
"Come on, follow me!" he called. He walked over to the back wall and found a hole where the wall jutted out slightly. He slotted his finger into the wall and there was a rumbling noise. He pulled his finger back and the wall slid back, revealing a pitch-black passageway.
"Light your wands," he said to the two teens, "And follow me."
They grabbed their stuff and followed him through the door, their wands lit with an illumination spell. The door slid closed behind them. Fred beckoned to them and pointed out a space where the wall dented in slightly, and a small hole was there.
"If you ever want to get back in, insert your wand into here and the door will open," he told them. They nodded.
"Right," the boy said shakily. Fred led them down the passage. After a while, the girl spoke.
"So, what's your name, mister?"
"I don't have a name," Fred replied airily.
"But you must have one," the boy protested. Fred scratched his head, trying not to wince when slivers of bone were scraped off with a nails-on-a-chalkboard noise.
"I suppose I must've had once, once," he said at last. "What are your names?"
"I'm Paris Luna Dela Rosa," Paris said cheerfully.
"I'm Hew Rozario," the boy added.
They turned a corner and reacher the blockage. Fred stopped, searching for his wand, then realising he didn't have one.
"We're trapped!" Paris wailed. Fred shook his head.
"No we're not. Can I borrow your wand?"
Paris nodded and passed it to him. Fred tapped the bricks in the unlocking pattern.
Tappity-tap-tap! Tappity-tap-tap! Tappity-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!
The walls shook and the rubble moved aside. Fred led them on, and as soon as the rubble shifted back into place, handed Paris her wand back. "Can you remember that pattern?" he asked her, and she nodded.
"Got it all up here," she told him, tapping her head. He nodded.
"Good."
They were facing the entrance now. There was an empty torch bracket near the wall, and he twisted it downwards; the wall creaked open. He waved at the two students.
"Goodbye!" he called to them as they scurried out of the passageway.
"Bye!" Hew called.
"Thanks, Mister!" Paris added, waving at him. The wall slid closed.
Sighing with relief, Fred transported the skeleton's body back to the chamber whilst still wearing it, and then left the bones. He winced, watching the skelton's frame collapse to the floor. Then, taking one last look around, he passed into the wall and merged into the castle.
x
Hermione sat in the Grand Hall, eating some scrambled eggs and chatting to Hagrid. Sinistra wasn't there yet, which was strange. Hermione wondered what was keeping her.
Sinistra walked through the doors at that moment and dashed up to the staff table. She sat down in her usual place, next to Hermione.
"Look at this!" she wailed, slapping down today's issue of the Daily Prophet. "That poor girl!"
Hermione peered at the paper, and felt her stomach lurch.
"Hermione Granger: MIA," she read quietly.
"MIA? Wha's tha' mean?" Hagrid asked in confusion.
"Missing In Action," Hermione replied, quickly scanning down the page. At the top, under the headline, was a picture that had been taken earlier that year, back in March. Hermione, Harry, Ron and Ginny had gone down to the seaside for a day to celebrate Ron's birthday. In this picture they were stood on the end of the pier, smiling at the camera. It was all in black and white, but Hermione owned this very same picture back at Ron's.
She and Ron were stood in the middle, smiling out of the page. Her hair was bushier than ever, tangled by the seaside wind. She wore a pair of Sunglasses and a tank top and shorts. Beside her was Ginny, dressed in a similar manner. All four of them had arms around each other's shoulders, laughing at something someone had said.
"'Mione will be al'righ'," Hagrid said decisively. "Yer don' call her the brightes' witch of our age for nothin', after all, do yer?"
"I suppose not," Sinistra said with a sigh. "Oh, I do hope she's alright!"
x
Willa stood anxiously outside her DADA classroom. Hew and Paris hadn't been at breakfast, and they still hadn't returned! Nobody had noticed yet, what with this morning's headlines. The fact that a national hero had gone missing was stirring up unrest.
"WILLA!" came a yell, and Willa spun around to see Hew and Paris racing towards her, panting hard. Willa raced towards them, and the two stopped, bending over to rest on their knees, out of breath.
"You'll- never- guess- what- we- found!" she gasped, grinning like a madman.
x
A/N: There you go; Chapter eleven, fresh of the keyboard. Hope you enjoyed this chapter.
And now, as I've promised, a list of everyone who has favourited or followed this story!:
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-Invisi