June 21, 2009 - Late Afternoon
Phil was in the orchard with his dad, helping to prune the apple trees with a three-quarter size pair of shears, when there was a sudden lurch in the air and on the ground. It felt like a combination of a thunderstorm and an earthquake.
Neville paled. "Someone's breaking down the wards!"
Phil's eyes widened. He knew his parents had worked together to ward the property from any uninvited witches and wizards. Anyone who could get through their wards was both powerful and unwelcome.
Neville put both hands on Phil's shoulders and spoke to him, urgently. "Son, I need to run to the house as fast as you can. Tell your mum to Floo through to the Rookery with Gus and Alice. Then go to the Burrow down the lane. The Weasleys will be gathered for Sunday supper, and there should be enough of them to keep you all safe."
Phil knew the Rookery was his mum's childhood home. Their fireplace was hooked up to it, through an emergency, one-way connection. The Rookery was empty now, since his grandfather Xenophilius had been killed in the war no Muggles seemed to know about. His grandmother had died years ago in a magical experiment, when Luna was only nine.
"What are you going to do, Dad?" Phil asked, shaking at the thought of losing either of his parents.
"I'm going to hold them off as long as I can," his dad said, his usually cheerful face grim. He patted Phil's shoulder in reassurance. "Don't worry," he added in a meaningless reassurance. "I'll be fine."
He hugged Phil, quick and hard, as another shudder rocked the wards. "Go, now! Before it's too late!"
Phil dropped the shears - never run with sharp objects - and ran like a colt for the farmhouse.
Behind him, his dad drew his wand. "Locomotor Piertotum Malus!" he cried, waving it in a circular motion around the orchard. "Defend your home and family!"
The apple trees began to sway and swing their branches in a menacing fashion. Those trees between Phil and the house, however, leaned out of the way and drew in their roots, leaving him a clear, grassy path to the house. He ran even faster.
Phil had just reached the back door when the wards collapsed with a crack like lightning. With a thunderous roar, four motorbikes raced onto the property. Looking over his shoulder, he saw his dad Apparate directly in front of them. Neville slashed his wand downward and the earth rose up like a rampart. Two of the bikers - one black, one green - crashed into the barrier of dirt, but two others wheeled their bikes away. Neville ran back into the orchard with those motorbikes in pursuit, drawing them away from the farmhouse.
Gasping for breath, Phil opened the back door and tumbled into the illusory safety of his family's home.
(x) (x) (x)
His mum, Gus, and baby Alice were all in the kitchen. Luna had been slicing bread and spreading it with jam, preparing their afternoon tea.
Even though she was a witch, and preferred to put her faith in amulets and spells, being kidnapped off the Hogwarts Express at the tender age of sixteen had driven home to Luna the importance of always having a contingency plan. For that reason, she kept a foot-long bread knife in her belt, except when she was using it to prepare meals. Now, with the sound of the wards coming down, she was cowered against the butcher-block counter, eyes wide and staring into the past, clutching the knife like a lifeline. "How many?" she whispered.
"Four," Phil replied.
"What do we do?" Luna asked.
Phil loved his mum dearly, but he was an unusually clear-eyed child when it came to her limitations. Something in her had been broken during that war his parents never talked about and no Muggles knew about. Luna had been patched back together, but she was still fragile and liable to shatter at even the lightest of blows.
For that reason, he spoke to her as gently as he knew how, picking up her cold hand in his warm and slightly dirty one. "Mum, we're going to Floo through to the Rookery. Dad said so. Can you carry the baby and I'll get Gus?"
"What about your dad?" Luna asked, staring unnervingly through him.
"He said to go on ahead, and he'll meet us at the Burrow. Something about Sunday supper," Phil lied with boyish confidence. He tugged his mum to her feet. "Let's go."
For the last two words, he concentrated hard and put a ringing note of command in his voice. Phil had discovered that people would obey him when he used that voice. It worked now. Luna walked shakily over to Alice and removed the baby from her seat. Phil grabbed three-year-old Gus by his sticky hand.
"You go first, Mum," Phil said, in that same ringing tone.
Taking a pinch of Floo powder, Luna threw it onto the cool blue flames that occupied the fireplace in the summer months. "The Rookery," she called. The flames turned green, and she stepped through, carrying Phil's baby sister.
"The Rookery," Phil echoed, imitating his mum's actions with the Floo powder as soon as the flames were blue again. They flared green, and he pushed his younger brother through. Phil did not follow.
As he had hoped, Mum had left her knife behind in all of the excitement. Phil hefted it experimentally and stuck it in his belt. He hadn't yet gone to Diagon Alley with his parents to buy a wand, but a foot-long bread knife was better than nothing.
(x) (x) (x)
Neville's lungs were burning as he ran through the orchard. He was not a coward, but he ran because with every step he took, the Dark wizards pursuing him were drawn further away from the farmhouse and his family.
Still, it was no contest between a man on foot and two wizards on enchanted motorcycles. Neville had only managed to run a hundred yards or so away from the house before he fell hard onto his face, brought down by a simple Tripping Jinx from one of the Death Eaters chasing him.
"Immobulus," said the other Death Eater, freezing Neville in place on his hands and knees before he could scramble to his feet.
The first, taller Death Eater laughed as he kicked Neville over onto his back with a booted foot. He raised his visor and leered down at him. "If it isn't ickle Longbottom, all grown up."
Helpless and immobilized, like a turtle flipped over onto its shell, Neville looked up helplessly at Rodolphus Lestrange, one of the Death Eaters who had tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom into insanity when Neville was still a toddler. The shorter Death Eater took off his helmet and Neville was unsurprised to see Rabastan Lestrange once again tagging along with his older brother.
"It'll be a right old family reunion in the Janus Thickey ward tonight," Rabastan gloated.
The Lestrange brothers raised their wands. "Crucio!" they cried in unison.
Neville arched off the ground, his agonized screams drowning out the Death Eaters' cruel laughter. His last conscious thought before he blacked out was a plea to Merlin and Godric Gryffindor that he had bought Luna and the children time enough to escape, so that his sacrifice would not be in vain.
(x) (x) (x)
The Bentley skidded to a stop in the driveway of what a worn wooden sign announced was Longlove Farm. Draco swung the car in a tight circle, spraying gravel, so that the driver's side was angled between the orchard and a makeshift earthen wall. Then he, Hermione and Harry exited to the passenger side, using the car as a barrier.
They were none too soon. Spells began pinging off the Bentley's steel body, causing no harm except to the finish. Draco and Harry returned fire, while Hermione focused on defensive and shielding spells to improve the safety of their position.
They were more than holding their own, until Draco swore and clutched his arm.
"Oh, fuck," he said, looking at his inner forearm.
"What is it? Were you hit?" Hermione asked anxiously.
"No, it's Rodolphus. He's summoned us here."
The Dark Lord returns. Come now and all will be forgiven. Stay away and you will beg for death. The uncompromising message, with its threat of unspecified but horrid penalties for no-shows, was written around Draco's Dark Mark. That means you, Draco, his uncle added in personalized postscript.
"Potter, can you get any Aurors here?" Draco barked.
"No, I don't brand them with a tracking device," the Head Auror snapped. "And I can't send a Patronus with Apparition coordinates because I don't bloody well know them."
"We are so fucking dead," Draco moaned, as other Death Eaters began to Apparate in. He stopped counting when they were outnumbered three to one, but they still kept coming.
"You can go, you know," Hermione nobly offered. "Our Arrangement doesn't require you to take part in a suicide mission."
"Don't be stupid, Granger," Draco said. He raised his wand and began trying to pick off the arriving Death Eaters before they reached cover.
Harry looked at him, gobsmacked. "I'd just like to say, Malfoy," he began. He stopped and awkwardly cleared his throat. "If we don't get out of this, that . . . I'll have known, deep down inside, that there was a spark of goodness in you." He extended his hand to Draco.
"That's right," said Draco bitterly. "Make my day." Still, he briefly shook Potter's proffered hand before the two of them, along with Hermione, resumed hexing the arriving Death Eaters.
All around them, the pops of incoming, hostile Apparition continued.
(x) (x) (x)
As soon as he got outside the farmhouse, Phil wished he could run back in. There were colored beams of light flying every which way, exchanged between a vintage black Bentley that was looking much worse for wear and the wall of earth his dad had flung up to stop the bikers.
The lights were pretty, but also pretty clearly dangerous. Wizards in dark robes and scary silver masks were appearing out of thin air, their arrival announced by a popping sound. A few were hit by red or blue beams of light from behind the Bentley before they could run to shelter behind the dirt wall. They crumpled to the ground and did not get up again.
Over in the orchard, the normally pleasant apple trees looked as ominous as Mirkwood. They were lobbing apples at the people hunkered behind the dirt wall, but large swathes of the trees had been splintered or burnt by magic. A few resolute saplings had pulled up their roots and were marching to attack the wizards hiding behind the rampart of earth.
As Phil watched, the saplings halted in their tracks and the apple trees in the orchard froze. A few minutes later, a short, broad man in a black leather jacket emerged from the orchard, levitating Phil's dad in front of him as a shield. He was unconscious and bleeding from his nose and mouth. They were followed by a tall man, also in a biker jacket, holding a black metal staff with silver snakes twined around it.
"Neville!" came an anguished cry from behind the Bentley. It made the two men in biker jackets laugh, evilly.
Phil suddenly wished he had a dog. The sort of dog which, when you meet it, reminds you that despite thousands of years of manmade evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf. He wanted a dog like that, because he could tell it to rip out the throats of the wizards who had hurt his dad and it would hasten to obey.
But Phil didn't have a killer dog to command. A tiny, cold smile crossed his face as he remembered, however, that he could talk to snakes.