A/N: I'm so sorry about the updating issue. Life happened, Christmas happened, novels happened, writing happened. In essence, I've wanted to update desperately, but I haven't had the time nor the frame of mind to do so. I won't bore you with the details, but things should be better now that essay season is over and my family life has been taken care of. Thank you for being so patient, and thank you for the supportive favorites and followers, and reviews. They are, as always, much appreciated!

P.S. Sorry this is not an update, I wanted to let you know that I will certainly be updating much more frequently soon, but as of now I must focus on schoolwork because I can't get behind. You can expect an update within three weeks unless I become deathly ill or some similar thing happens. Sorry its not an update, but I am working on this story, I promise!

No Need to Say Goodbye.

Hermione reached the door that wouldn't open, no matter how hard she pulled it. Draco followed right behind her, his eyes wide, afraid of whatever the Baron had seen.

"Harry, Harry!" she yelled desperately, her heart being pushed up her throat, suffocating her, "Harry!"

Draco tried as well, pulling as hard as he could, only trying to open the sealed door to get to Hermione's best friend.

"Come on, potter! Open the damn door!"

But the dooor wouldn't budge, and the outline began to fade. Hermione was panicking, her head full of thoughts about death and decay and what would happen to Harry.

"Expecto Patronum!" she whispered desperately, sending it to professors McGonagall and Flitwick, and down to Hagrid's hut. They would know what to do.

Meanwhile, the door continued fading in front of Draco's eyes, making his yanking more and more desperate, until it finally disappeared altogether, the handle clattering uselessly to the floor.

There was a loud, hollow laughter that echoed through the halls, a whisper that sounded like Harry's plea for help, and then nothing, nothing at all.

Hermione fell to the ground and mumbled sadly, terrified and sorrowful.

"Harry."

Professor McGonagall was in her office, discussing the finer points of animagus transformations with the portrait of Albus Dumbledore, when blue, luminous otter came barreling through the door at full-speed.

"Professor, it's Harry, he's in trouble in Ravenclaw Tower, hurry, please!"

The professor recognized Hermione Granger's panicked voice and sat straight up, her robes billowing around her, and ran faster than she'd run in years up to the deadly, unsafe living space that was presumably Ravenclaw tower.

Professor Flitwick was in the middle of teaching First Years the levitating charms and was instructing them to make the O nice and long when a small, glowing animal burst through the wall, chattering rapidly.

"Professor, it's Harry, he's in trouble in Ravenclaw Tower, hurry, please!"

He stopped in the middle of levitating a pet cat and let it fall unceremoniously to the floor, his tiny legs darting off towards his preferred house's tower, muttering countercurses for dark charms all the way.

Hagrid was in the Forbidden Forest, feeding some steaks he had procured to the thestrals. He was whistling some rough bar tune to himself when a strange otter he faintly recognized came trolloping through the woods.

"Professor, it's Harry, he's in Ravenclaw To-"

The otter didn't even have time to finish before Hagrid was running as fast as his legs would carry him to Ravenclaw Tower, grabbing his umbrella as he passed his homely little hut on the way to save one of his favorite people.

"Potter!"

Hermione heard Professor McGonagall's voice before she saw her dark, sensible shoes before her eyes.

Professor McGonagall took one look at the terrified young lady before her, and the determined young man pounding at an empty bit of wall with his bloody fists and became angry, so angry that even Voldemort wouldn't have dared cross her. Nobody touched her students.

She strode purposefully to the wall that Draco was beating himself upon and took him by the scruff of his neck, pulling him off before he killed himself.

"Mr. Malfoy, take care of Miss Granger, please. Tell me if you hear anybody come up. I am going to endeavor to retrieve Mr. Potter from whoever took him so unkindly."

At this, Draco sat next to Hermione and looked at her. He didn't touch her, only looked, and it seemed to calm her down a bit. Professor McGonagall smiled.

Then she got to work.

She was only interrupted twice, once by a squeaking Professor Flitwick, the other by a mad, unlogical Hagrid. She gave them both instructions to stay out of her way at the moment, and they did so gladly.

She'd worked for an hour before she had deduced what had happened, using every revealing charm known to man, performed tests on the lonely handle, and used every exploding, bombarding curse she knew, which were quite a few.

Professor McGonagall looked at her two colleagues and the two students on the steps, and motioned for the adults to come towards her. The students had already had enough trouble for a lifetime.

The Professors congregated around her cautiously and curiously, getting close enough so that no others could hear them over their little group.

Then Professor McGonagall spoke in a quiet, grave tone of voice.

"I fear that this is more complicated than we would like it to be. I have determined that there is a lingering force in this tower, from what happened with the Carrows."

Flitwick and Hagrid looked slightly confused, so she sighed and enlightened them.

"When Lily Potter died for Harry Potter, her soul's love was imprinted in him so strongly that he was protected for a number of years, correct?

They both nodded.

"Well, this is exactly the opposite. When Alecto Carrow was stupefied and tied up, just before the battle, he was killed by Voldemort in this very tower as punishment for letting Harry get away. The hatred for Harry was so strong in both of them that the leftover hatred after Alecto Carrow's soul was gone, and the piece of soul ripped from Voldemort from killing him, combined to form an entity of pure hatred, directed only at Mr. Potter. There was no living thing to latch itself to, so it stayed in the walls of Ravenclaw tower, waiting for a moment to strike. I believe that Mr. Potter came in just as the entity was about to manifest itself after months of being too weak to form a body, and the magic produced by the emotions of hatred caused a door to be formed so that Mr. Potter could be captured easily, and when the entity posessed him and took him away, the door was gone."

They all knew the implications. If this was true, then Harry couldn't be killed by an entity of pure hatred, but he could be turned into something far worse than Voldemort or any other Death Eater. They needed to find him, quickly, and the best way to do it was by a tracing charm. However, they hadn't encountered anything of this, so they needed any helpful information they could get.

They turned to the two students tiredly.

It was going to be a long night.