A/N: Thank you to vampiregirlz1 for following!
Here's chapter 20. JKR owns all; it's just my plot. Let me know what you think, & enjoy! :)
Hermione woke sometime later in the hospital wing. Neville and Ginny sat on either side of her bed, looking concerned.
"Oh, thank Merlin you're alright!" Ginny cried, grabbing onto her friend's hand.
"Uh…" Hermione groaned. "What happened?"
"We're not really sure," Neville admitted. "Here, Madam Pomphrey wanted you to drink this as soon as you woke up." He passed her a small goblet filled with a smoking liquid.
"What is it?" Hermione asked warily. The potion smelled like it was burning.
"Variant on the Pepper-up Potion," Neville said. "It'll target your magical core." Hermione eyed the goblet once more before draining it.
"Ugh, gross," she coughed, pulling a face. "Stuff tastes almost as bad as it smells. I do feel a bit better already though."
"Could be worse, I suppose," Ginny chuckled. She still hadn't let go of Hermione's hand. "Hermione, do you really not know what happened?"
"I remember a lot of really bright light, but then I passed out, didn't I? What did I do?"
Before either of her friends could answer her, the door to the hospital wing flew open with a bang and Draco stormed into the ward, looking thoroughly annoyed, followed closely by Professor McGonagall, who was carrying the Pensieve.
"Damn Aurors," Draco muttered as he pulled a chair over to sit next to Ginny.
"What happened?" Ginny asked. "I know you went to debrief them…"
"Yeah, and they've been questioning me ever since, cross-examining lists and asking if I could identify any of the people we captured. I didn't know who most of them were – why would I? Just because I've got this" – he pulled his sleeve up a bit to expose his Dark Mark – "doesn't mean I knew who all the Dark Lord's followers were, especially not the lower lackeys; he was extremely careful about that."
"Regardless of who you are," Ginny interrupted, "isn't it the Aurors' job to be able to identify dangerous people?"
"You'd think so," Draco replied with a snort, "but apparently not. Your boyfriend had better finish his training quickly – I don't think we can afford to wait another three years before we have competent people in that department."
"Did Draco Malfoy just give Harry Potter a compliment?" Ginny laughed. Draco rolled his eyes.
"Little Red, anyone would be better than those fools I was just talking to," he said. "At least Potter's proven himself, even if he did have exceptional amounts of both luck and help." He turned to Hermione. "How are you feeling, Granger?"
"I…well, I'm not really sure what happened," Hermione said.
"I was hoping someone could explain that as well," said Professor McGonagall. They all jumped; in the aftermath of Draco's rant, they'd quite forgotten he hadn't arrived alone.
"Perhaps," Professor McGonagall continued, "this might help clear things up, if someone else has a clear picture of what happened?" She gestured towards the Pensieve. "As I understand it, Mr. Malfoy and Miss Weasley, you were both in Miss Granger's group during the skirmish." Draco and Ginny looked at each other.
"Malfoy probably has a better memory of it," Ginny said. "I was dueling the Death Eater when Hermione cast that final Patronus, so I'm not sure I got the best view of it."
"You know how a Pensieve works, Mr. Malfoy?" Professor McGonagall asked. When he nodded, she added, "Would you be willing to share that memory with us?" He inclined his head again and placed his wand to his temple, removing a long, thin strand of silvery memory, which he deposited into the basin.
"I think we should all watch this together, if we're to figure out what happened and what to do next," the Headmistress said. "Grasp hands, please." They did so, and Professor McGonagall made contact with the swirling substance, sucking them into the memory.
The quintet landed on the lawn about fifteen feet behind memory-Draco, who was helping Sam take down her Death Eater.
"Where are you?" Ginny asked Hermione.
"There," Hermione pointed, and the group focused on what her memory-self was doing. They heard Sam shout her warning, saw memory-Hermione duck and dodge her way up to the tomb. They saw memory-Ginny join the fray, and they heard Hermione shout her spell to the sky.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
The otter sprang into existence, followed closely by the blast of light. They squinted closely into the blinding spell, and Hermione gasped when she realized just what had followed her otter out of her wand.
It was a phoenix.
The beautiful bird was enormous, easily several times the size of its live counterpart. The group watched the two Patronuses attack the dementors, and Hermione watched Draco and Sam bring down the last Death Eater – that accounted for the Stunning spell she'd heard before she fainted, and she heard Ginny cry out her name just before her past self collapsed. Draco and Sam rushed to join Ginny at Hermione's side.
"What the hell did she just do?" Draco demanded.
"I don't know, but we've got to get her to the castle! I think her magic's severely drained; she'll freeze to death if she stays out here much longer," Ginny replied. Draco knelt down next to Hermione, wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other under her legs, and scooped her up off the ground. Ginny instructed Sam and Susan, who had just come back from the castle, to keep an eye on their prisoners before she and Draco set off towards the school as fast as they could. They caught sight of Neville just in front of the main doors.
"What happened?" he asked.
"We don't really know, but she needs the hospital wing," Ginny said. "Can you take her? We need Malfoy out here in case the Death Eaters try to do anything funny." Neville nodded, and Draco transferred Hermione to him before heading back out into the grounds.
"I think that will do," Professor McGonagall said. She transported them all back to the hospital wing, where they sat in silence for several moments. Finally, Hermione spoke.
"Professor?" she asked. "What – what exactly did I do?" Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke.
"I don't really know," the elder witch admitted. "I do believe your physical contact with the grave brought you some help, as strange as that sounds – Hogwarts does have its own magic, much of which the living can't even begin to understand. Phenomena like this are rare but not unheard of, and I cannot think of another explanation for such a particular Patronus." Hermione bit her lower lip and blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. She'd had help from Dumbledore? It seemed impossible – and yet, a small part of her knew it was true, and the thought warmed her from head to toe. Ginny squeezed her hand comfortingly, and Hermione smiled at her friend. The thought that Dumbledore had been with them, however distantly, was beyond comparison.
"Thank you all," Hermione said, "for what you did for me, after that."
"Not at all," Neville replied, ruffling her hair affectionately. "It's what friends do."
"Now what are we going to do?" Hermione asked, changing her tone abruptly.
"Sorry?"
"I said, now what are we going to do? Death Eaters just got onto the grounds; we've got to figure out how and fix the problem," she said determinedly.
"Miss Granger, I don't think-"
"I'm fine," Hermione interrupted. "I've made it through far worse – this is too important for me to sit out. What do we have to do?" Professor McGonagall extracted a scroll from her robes.
"This is a map of the wards," she explained, spreading it out across Hermione's bedspread. Ginny, Neville, and Draco leaned closer so they could see as well. "I've located the breach and the cause of the problem – they somehow managed to dismantle part of the Apparition ward, which was enough for them to get in. It's a fairly simple fix compared to most of the other wards, but I'm afraid we have a slight problem." Hermione spotted it almost instantly.
"This 'map' doesn't have any locations on it," she pointed out. "It's just a bunch of lines signaling the wards. How are we supposed to know where this breach is?"
"Precisely," Professor McGonagall noted. "Albus had some sort of clever spell that created an overlay of the grounds, but that was his secret alone, a secret that died with him, I'm afraid. There are ways to make the wards temporarily visible, but as that makes them incredibly easy to break, that's not an option worth considering when we don't know where to look."
"Professor, do you think you could do an overlay on a different piece of parchment that would make this one show through?" Ginny asked suddenly.
"I – well, yes," Professor McGonagall said, looking rather confused. "Why do you ask, Miss Weasley?"
"Hermione, you have the map, right?" Hermione's eyes widened as she caught Ginny's meaning.
"Yes, I do – it's in my trunk, top compartment on the left," she said. "Go get it, quickly!" Ginny left the ward at a run. The others gave Hermione quizzical looks, but she refused to elaborate until Ginny returned about fifteen minutes later, slightly out of breath and clutching a worn piece of parchment. She passed it over to Hermione, who silently thanked Merlin Ginny had had the foresight to activate the map before finding herself in the presence of a teacher.
"What is that?" Draco asked sharply.
"Enchanted map of Hogwarts," Hermione replied. "Professor, I know you probably have questions about this, but can we please not get into that right now?"
"Miss Granger, I can see from the heading just who this map belonged to," Professor McGonagall said with a wry smile. "I shan't ask how you came to possess it, and I'm sure it's played a role in quite a bit of your troublemaking. But that's neither here nor there at the moment, I suppose." She pointed her wand at the Marauder's Map and muttered a spell. The old parchment faded until it was nearly transparent, and they could clearly see the wards map still spread beneath it.
"Now we just need to line these up," Hermione murmured, shifting the two pieces of parchment under one another. "Aha! There we go!" She gestured towards the maps, which now mirrored one another perfectly. They located the breach in the wards at the farthest edge of the Forbidden Forest.
"That's not going to be an easy spot to reach," Professor McGonagall said heavily. "Even if you know where you're going, the Forest isn't easy to navigate."
"I'll go," Hermione said at once. When the Headmistress raised her eyebrows, Hermione said, "None of the teachers should leave Hogwarts right now, not until we're one hundred percent sure all the remaining Death Eaters have been caught – there's a chance they didn't all participate in today's attack, and the staff needs to protect the students. We also don't know just how long it's going to take to get to the breach, but we don't want to disrupt classes if we can help it – it'd be better if fewer people knew what a problem this is, since the last thing we want is a mass panic. I helped repair the wards at the Burrow and at Grimmauld Place last summer, so I already know the charm, and I've been in the Forest enough times before that most of what's in there doesn't faze me anymore."
"I'm going too," Ginny added. "Going into the Forest alone is never a good idea, and besides, two wands are better than one."
"Actually," Professor McGonagall said, "you're going to need three. The Hogwarts wards have an extra layer to them that requires an exceptional amount of magic to create, and it's going to take three of you to generate the required power. Mr. Malfoy, I'm going to need you to accompany Miss Granger and Miss Weasley on this little excursion."
"Me?" Draco spluttered. "You want me to go with them?" Hermione snorted in spite of herself – she knew Draco didn't like the Forest at all.
"Yes, Mr. Malfoy, you. The spells you'll be casting demand a high level of competency from all involved, and you fit the bill quite nicely. Due to your…experiences, your magic has a slightly different quality than either of the girls', which, contrary to what you might think, will actually help to enforce the wards even further."
"I have to stay, Malfoy," Neville added. "At least one of the leaders of the DA should be here, and Ginny's already going with Hermione, which she definitely should. Besides, we both know I'm not nearly as good at magic as you. Professor McGonagall's right – you should go with the girls." Draco sighed, knowing they were right.
"Alright," he acquiesced, "I'll go."
"Perfect." Hermione wiped the map with a nonverbal "Mischief Managed" and tucked it carefully in her pocket. "We'll prep everything tonight and head out right after breakfast tomorrow morning. The sooner we get this fixed, the better."