A/N: The mistletoe scene from the last chapter in Hermione's POV is on my page: a oneshot called "A Sprig of White Berries"! Also, I put a progress meter on my profile for anyone who's interested to see how far along the chapters are.
POVs: Harry
Disclaimer: I solemnly swear that I don't own the series...
Chapter 28
The rest of the holidays passed fairly quietly. The Gryffindor common room was usually empty besides the demigods, Hermione, Ron and I and sometimes Ginny. George and Fred were usually holed up in their dormitory, making explosions that filled the common room with black ash and smoke. Had Hogwarts had any fire detector of any kind, we'd already be drowned in water. As it was, there were more than a couple occasions when the explosions somehow alerted the Hogwarts staff, and McGonagall would burst into the common room to demand what the ruckus was.
The last time that the twins had blown up their dormitory, it wasn't McGonagall who showed up, but Umbridge, who had returned from her short break at the Ministry and would stay the rest of the holiday break. I made sure to avoid her when walking around the castle.
Percy was busy every day, making up his homework for all the classes. He'd already concocted his Veritaserum, and was halfway done with an Amortentia. The real problem, he'd complained time and time again, was Transfiguration. His learning spells for changing the human body was not going too well — mostly because he spent all the time he should have been using to practice the spells non-verbally instead complaining to us.
Annabeth helped him as much as she could, but he was still lacking and quite behind on his schoolwork. His demigod abilities, though, hadn't deteriorated. I caught him in the dormitory once, sitting on his bed and staring off into space instead of at the Transfiguration essay in front of him, his hand levitating water from his cup as if of its own volition.
Angelina had taken to hanging out with some fellow seventh-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, and was rarely seen around. Parvati was almost never in Gryffindor tower, spending time with her sister now that Lavender Brown had gone home.
On the occasion that Ginny hung out with us in the common room, she was always hesitant to look at me or talk to me. Any time I tried resulted in her blushing furiously and running either up the stairs or out the portrait hole.
Malfoy didn't come back into Gryffindor tower and stuck to his own dungeon of the castle. Over the weeks of the holiday break, I learned exactly how pink Malfoy could get when he was around Hermione. It wasn't nearly as red as Ron, whose face visibly burst into flames when he caught Malfoy eyeing Hermione, but suffice it to say that he could get pink enough to make it seem like he'd been out on the African savannah for a few hours.
I did, on more than one occasion, find Malfoy speaking to Annabeth. Sometimes I caught him whispering in hushed voices with Percy, but that was rare. He spent more time around Annabeth, but it didn't seem to bug Percy at all. Strange only began to describe it. Rachel was never anywhere to be seen.
Soon, the long days of snowball fights, cozy fireplaces, and delicious steaming feasts in the Great Hall blurred together, and the holidays drew to a close. On the last night before everyone else came back to Hogwarts, we all sat and conversed in the common room until midnight.
Percy yawned. "Well, my Everlasting Elixir should be done brewing by tomorrow morning. I can get down to the dungeons during first class and finish it up."
"Did you manage to get all your Transfig essays done?" Annabeth asked, her head on Percy's chest while his arm rested loosely on her shoulder.
He nodded, yawning again. "Been a busy two weeks."
"Mmph," grumbled Hermione from the armchair nearest the fire. She and Ron were currently engaged in a match of Exploding Snap. "I haven't seen Rachel in a while. Did Draco say where she was?" she asked, looking down at the cards. Ron turned red at her reference of Malfoy's first name. Percy and Annabeth didn't get a chance to respond, though, because the portrait hole opened and Ginny stepped in.
"Oh, hello! Mind if I join you?" she asked Hermione, sitting down with her and Ron at the table where the cards were laid out.
"Where've you been all day?" Ron asked Ginny. She hadn't been around at all today.
"Outside with some friends," Ginny responded vaguely, studying the cards intently. Ron had just opened his mouth and looked ready to ask her to clarify when she looked up. "Hey, I was coming up to the common room from the Great Hall just now and Malfoy ran past me. Looked like he was going to Dumbledore's office."
I looked at her, and she blushed and looked away again. "Malfoy? Why would he go to Dumbledore?" I asked, but Ginny only shrugged, her face still flushed. Ron seemed flabbergasted by this new piece of information, while Hermione looked only worried.
I glanced at Annabeth and Percy, who were looking at each other, now wide awake. "That can't be good," commented Annabeth, her eyebrows scrunched together. She was already standing up.
"Wise Girl, don't you think Malfoy —"
"Draco."
"— yes, fine, Draco — would have come up here and warned us if something was wrong before running to Dumbledore?"
Annabeth sat down on Percy's lap again, still looking perturbed, but made no move to get up again. "I'm sure it's fine," Percy reassured her, rubbing her arm, and she nodded. She didn't look convinced.
The next morning, Hogwarts' halls were once more filled with bustling students, all of them wearing scarves and gossiping about what happened over the holidays. The black mistletoe failed to recede, though, and caught many a surprised couple of students underneath its leaves. Classes started once again, catching everyone but Percy (who'd been working the whole break long) and Hermione by surprise.
Professor Trelawney was her usual self that morning in Divination, and it didn't take much investigation to know why. "Hello, dears. Please take out your books and look at chapter seventeen…" Ron and I both looked around the room to see if something had changed to revert Trelawney back to her usual self; two things had. For one, Umbridge was in the back of the room, furiously taking notes. But besides that, the seat next to Malfoy was empty.
Rachel Dare didn't show up all morning, and wasn't at lunch either. It was only when we talked with Annabeth and Percy during lunch that we found out why.
"Well, I saw Draco walking to the infirmary during our free hours this morning," she explained in a hushed voice. "I went with him. Apparently, Rachel fell unconscious last night and hasn't woken up since. She's in the Hospital Wing."
Percy looked utterly shocked at hearing this news before putting the pieces together. "That must be why Ginny saw him running to Dumbledore. But why wouldn't he come to us first?" He pondered the matter for a while after, and was still staring at his pot roast when Hermione, Ron and I walked off to Potions.
Classes passed, boring as they had always been. By dinnertime, I was already exhausted and wishing for another holiday break. No such thing was going to happen, of course.
Dinner seemed bland after the weeks of holiday food and feasts. Percy seemed slightly moody, keeping to himself, while Annabeth and Hermione discussed runes. As I looked idly down the table, I caught sight of Ginny talking with Dean Thomas, blushing when he leaned in and kissed her cheek.
Ron was looking the same way. He exploded into a mess of anger, growing redder and redder. I felt the same, but on the inside, as though some wild beast had been freed of its tether and was roaring furiously. What was the matter with me? After minutes of wondering at the rage within me, I finally decided that it must be because it was Ron's sister. Of course I'd feel the need to protect Ginny.
"We were thinking the next meeting should be tomorrow. It's the best possible time. Thoughts, Harry?" Hermione's voice ripped me back to the present.
"Er, sure," I answered, not paying attention and trying to keep my eyes off of Ginny's seemingly new boyfriend.
After almost everyone was gone from the Great Hall, the five of us made to stand up and leave. It was well past eight, and I had a large amount of homework that wasn't going to do itself. Just as we walked away from the table, Malfoy joined us. He greeted us (mostly Percy and Annabeth) and walked alongside us. It was when we were approaching the staircases to the dungeon that I heard something — it was a low and long bellow, and it was very not human.
Someone screamed, the sound carrying its way to our ears.
Annabeth and Percy shared a simple look before sprinting down the stairs three at a time.
Malfoy ran after them, soon followed by us.
We followed the sound of the roar, bending around turns like racehorses. I heard the unmistakable sound of a sword being drawn: SHIIINNG! And when Malfoy, Hermione, Ron and I all rounded the corner, we saw something alien to our eyes.
"Annabeth, you go around. Put on your cap!" Percy shouted. There, its claws digging into a small first-year Slytherin girl who lay unconscious on the ground, was a monster. It had enormous scaly wings, an ugly gray-green body, and a crown of red and silver feathers. And it was a monster I recognized immediately. The image of a similar creature standing elegantly beside a foggy forest and a manticore, hissing in Parseltongue, was too familiar.
But this monster actually was the incarnation of evil. It was nothing like the kind, harmless quetzalcoatl Percy and I had met near the Forbidden Forest the day I turned myself to a snake.
The quetzalcoatl, still clawing at the unconscious girl, leapt away from Percy's sword when he brought it down on its neck. It hissed at the son of Poseidon, and though Percy didn't understand, I did.
"Little demigod. So fragile and frail. So useless," it hissed menacingly. "You won't stand a chance when I rip you to shreds. And your petty girlfriend. Don't think I can't see past an Invisibility charm."
I was too slow to process the monster's words, and my warning to Annabeth came too late. The quetzalcoatl swiped its clawed foot around and hit her invisible form. The hat fell off her head, and Annabeth hit the wall, crumpling to the ground and moaning.
Percy, eyes blazing with anger, slashed at the quetzalcoatl with hands too fast to follow. This time, he hit its foot, and a fountain of sand erupted from it, coating the bloody marble floor with yellow dust.
Still, the quetzalcoatl wouldn't give up. The sand around its foot rose back up and cocooned the injured leg. When the sand fell away, the wound was gone. "I am a son of Gaea, insolent child. You cannot harm me when my feet are on the ground."
For a second, I thought Percy spoke Parseltongue. "Spawn of Gaea. Just my luck." But then I realized he must have simply deduced this with his mind.
The quetzalcoatl hit Percy again, and his sword clattered five feet away. Instead of falling, the demigod took the blow and stood up again, drawing his wand instead. He shot the quetzalcoatl with spell after spell, but nothing would harm it. Hermione and Malfoy both drew their wands at the same time, but before they could fire a single spell, Percy had sent a curse at the four of us. "Petrificus totalus!" he yelled, and we froze up, unable to do anything but watch.
The quetzalcoatl took advantage of Percy's small falter in attention and raked his claws across Percy's back, ripping the cloak he had on in two and tearing his clothes in half. Percy's back was exposed save for some thick white bandages wrapped around his entire torso.
Percy yelled, in pain or a war cry I didn't know, and lunged at the monster yet again. This time he hit its throat. Sand fell to the ground again.
Percy kept attacking the monster, and I gradually noticed that the dungeon floor was soaked in cold water — probably summoned from the Black Lake by the son of Poseidon himself.
The water eventually reached the quetzalcoatl's knees, and Percy administered a final blow to its head. The creature bellowed in agony before exploding into sand and dust. The water receded, taking the monster's remains with it.
Percy turned around. The bandages on his back had been ripped through the middle. I remembered the day he'd woken up in the hospital wing, his back soaked in blood, and I now saw the source of the blood.
Carved into his back was one word: Immortal. I barely had time to wonder before Percy repaired his bandages and clothes and cloak. He unfroze us before running to Annabeth. And just as he did, someone else screamed. "MR. JACKSON!"
It was Professor McGonagall, accompanied by Snape, Dumbledore, and almost all the other teachers.
"What in the name of Merlin happened here?" she screamed, positively furious.
"Professor — there —" Percy started talking, but he was exhausted.
Malfoy cut in, to everyone's surprise. "Professor, there was a monster down in the dungeons. We all heard it and came to investigate. It was a — well, I actually have no idea what it was — but Percy and Annabeth started attacking it."
"There was a little girl — here, look, she was attacked by the monster," Hermione interrupted, showing the teachers the badly bleeding girl and picking her up.
"Do any of you have any sense? Why didn't you contact a teacher?" Snape sneered.
"We — it would have taken too long."
"I see," said Professor McGonagall, not sounding like she "saw" at all. "And do any of you know where the monster came from, or what it was?"
"No, Professor —" Ron began, but I interrupted.
"Actually, yes. It was a quetzalcoatl. I heard it speaking Parseltongue," I said. Snape looked horrified, and Umbridge stared at me like she was considering taking off points from Gryffindor because I spoke Parseltongue.
"We must discuss this immediately, Albus —" McGonagall began, only to be cut short by the headmaster.
"Actually, Minerva, I must borrow all six of these students immediately. There has been a slight — er, issue they must know about." The rest of the professors seemed baffled.
Dumbledore motioned for all of us to follow him. Annabeth, who was just getting up, managed to hobble along. We reached his office without anyone saying a word. Only when we were inside did Dumbledore speak.
"Miss Rachel Dare came to me early this evening. Madam Pomfrey had just released her from the infirmary," he began. "She said all she knew was that she had been in a trance. And she still was."
No one spoke. Dumbledore continued.
"The Oracle gave me what I believe is the last part of the prophecy. Miss Rachel said that, for the first time, she recalled being her conscious self when the Oracle took over her body. She remembered every last bit of the prophecy."
"Well, where is she?" Percy demanded.
"Miss Dare has been taken," Dumbledore said. "She disappeared right after leaving my office. And no one knows where she went."
"WHAT?" Percy yelled. "She — she's been kidnapped?"
"We do not know, Percy," the old man said. "All I can give you is the last part of the prophecy. I assure you I've already implemented all the tracking spells that exist, but to no avail. Miss Dare seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet."
Percy looked furious and like he wanted to organize a search party, but Annabeth said, her eyes hard, "Can we have the prophecy?"
"Of course. Listen carefully and write it down." Hermione already had her parchment out.
And so Dumbledore delivered the last part of the prophecy to the six of us. To the demigods, and Hermione and Ron and I, and the most unlikely ally we'd ever have.
"Snake takes its leave; refuse to drown,
All go back to the starting town
They'll find the secrets, and now unfold
The tale not believed as always told:
Life belongs to the bearer
To fight against the threat of terror,
You must all stand together."
There was nothing left to say.
A/N: Done. The prophecy is done.
Oh, and also: I'm accepting one-shot requests. Look at my profile for details! :)
