Chapter 31

Landry felt, simultaneously, on top of the world and more terrified than she had ever been before. Running through Hogwarts with her best friends, amongst the chaos, dressed in her still dirt-covered clothes from her camping excursion made her feel, for lack of a better word, 'cool.' This did not detract from the onsetting horror of the quickly approaching war. This was real, this was war. People die in war. Landry grabbed her boyfriend's hand and squeezed it tight. She did not know what she would do if she lost him, nor was she sure that it was past her to abuse the Resurrection Stone if any of her friends were to get hurt. Dumbledore's reassurance had not done much for Landry. In fact, it made her start to worry even more. His speech had only reminded her of her newfound lineage. In every story she had ever heard about Death, he had never been depicted as the protagonist. He was always more of a neutral character, if not entirely bad. Landry had always tried her hardest to be the best person she could be. But what if, with this prophecy coming true, that would not be enough? What if there was a side of her she did not yet know? Surely her patronus could not be the only thing she had to show for being the ancestor of Death. Landry knew she was probably just being her usual, paranoid self. She tried her best to brush those worries from her mind for the time being. There were a lot more things she had to worry about, after all.

Suddenly, Landry felt a vibration in her pocket. It was her glass stone, which she had quite forgotten about. She tapped it, and Dumbledore's face appeared. "Am I doing this correctly?" he asked, putting the stone very close to his eye.

"Yes, Sir, you're doing just fine," Landry replied.

"Excellent. I wanted to inform you that the Aurors have arrived, and the younger students have all been accounted for in the Slytherin dorms. The Headmistress would like all of the students who have chosen to fight to gather in the Great Hall," Dumbledore explained.

"Got it. Just wondering, though…why are you telling me all this?" asked Landry.

Dumbledore sighed wistfully. "Once I made the mistake of withholding crucial information from someone quite like you. I grew to love them like they were my own child, something I had not originally anticipated. I am quite remorseful of how I treated them. I wanted to protect them, to make sure they knew exactly what they needed to know, but nothing more, so that they could do what was needed of them at the proper times. I did not, however, account for their own feelings, or accept the fact that I loved them. There is no excuse for my actions, nor can I go back and undo them."

Albus interrupted. "Messing with time is never a good idea," he said.

"I wholeheartedly agree," Scorpius said, nodding furiously.

Dumbledore pursed his lips. "What I can do is try to do things differently with you, Landry. I have told you everything I know, and will continue to do so. I'm afraid that I don't know very much, though. I cannot tell you how you're meant to unmake the Hallows, but I promise that, if I do figure it out, I will tell you."

Landry bit her lip. "You're comparing me to Harry Potter, aren't you, Sir?"

"Indeed, Landry. You have been faced with being front and center in a war you never asked for. I don't know what old Professor Binns has been teaching you in History of Magic, but that seems a great deal like what Harry went through," Dumbledore pointed out.

"As much as I absolutely adore talking about how amazing my father is, shouldn't we be going to the Great Hall?" Albus asked, with the same slight hint of jealousy in his voice that often came to surface when people talked up his dad's great achievements.

"Right you are, Albus," Dumbledore said. "I shall let you go. Now, how do I turn this thing off?"

"I'll do it, Sir," said Landry. She ended the stone's 'call,' and the five teenagers headed towards the Great Hall. Almost all of the Hogwarts students over the age of 17 were there, huddled into clumps of friend groups, talking in hushed voices amongst themselves. Genevieve quickly spotted her Quidditch team, and excused herself to go attempt to fill them in. Albus, Scorpius, Landry, and Miles proceeded to the front of the Hall, where McGonagall was standing alongside all of the teachers, Aurors, resurrected people, and the extended Weasley family. Upon spotting them, McGonagall breathed a sigh of relief. She whipped out her wand and shot a cluster of red sparks into the air, so as to silence the room. This worked very well, and soon the Great Hall was completely quiet. McGonagall opened her mouth to begin explaining the situation, but she was interrupted when the large doors to the hall swung open with a crash. A tall man with pale skin and long, white blonde hair came strutting into the room. He was dressed in very expensive looking black robes, and was clearly extremely annoyed. The man marched right up to the front of the room, to where McGonagall was standing.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said. "I would have been here on time if someone were to have bothered to, I don't know, tell me that the two darkest Wizards of all time had been resurrected. Luckily, Potter finally had the thought to owl me."

"Hello, Draco," said Harry.

"Hey, Dad," Scorpius said nervously.

"Hello, Scorpius. Is there anything you'd like to tell me?" Draco asked his son.

The little color that was in Scorpius's face disappeared. How had his father found out about him and Albus being together?

Draco continued, "Like, I don't know, maybe that you ran away from school to confront Lord Voldemort?"

Scorpius breathed a sigh of relief. He had not been outed to his dad after all. Scorpius was, of course, very happy to be dating Albus. He had no problems with sharing this fact with anyone. Anyone, that is, except his father. He was not sure how his strict, pureblood, Malfoy father would react to his being bisexual. Scorpius's heart ached for his late mother's presence. He knew she would have accepted him. "Sorry, Dad," he apologized. "I just…forgot, I guess."

Draco sighed, but his expression softened. He loved his son very much, and did not like that he had made him feel so nervous. "It's alright," Draco replied. Scorpius gave him a small smile, but still looked very nervous. Draco was about to ask his son what was bothering him, but did not get the chance before McGonagall began her speech.

"I'm not going to lie to you, children," she began. "Obviously you all have some idea of what's going on right now, so I suppose I'll just cut to the chase. We have very good reason to believe that Lord Voldemort and/or Gellert Grindelwald will be executing an attack on the school very soon. You students have chosen to fight against them, if that becomes necessary. Know that you may go back on that decision at any time. If you decide that you no longer wish to fight, you should immediately go to the Slytherin common room. For those who do not know where it is, the portrait entrance is located near your Potions classroom. Simply continue down that hallway and take a right when you reach the end. You will find a portrait of a short man in purple robes. Tell him the password, "basilisk," and he will allow you entry. Does everyone understand this?"

There was a general nodding of heads from around the hall. A couple of scared looking students discreetly left the room, having reconsidered their decision to fight. Landry understood their fear, of course. She was utterly terrified, too. But she still could not understand how they were morally able to just stand by and wait, in suspense, while this was all going on. Landry thought that it would probably make her explode if she had to just sit, doing nothing, while her peers fought for the Wizarding World. This was, of course, partially fueled by jealousy. If this had happened only a few months prior to now, Landry probably would have been one of the students down in the Slytherin dorms. But things had changed. Alongside Landry's fated involvement in this whole situation, what with the prophecy of her finding the stone, and of course her being the one who had brought Grindelwald back in the first place, her morals, and the amount she cared for others, had changed greatly during the first half of her seventh year. The Landry that had written a contract to sign off on the fate of one of her best friends, who took only her own infatuated emotions into account, was gone, or rather, evolved. The girl that didn't even acknowledge her best friend's very first Quidditch match, but rather used it as a ploy to get her crush to go out with her, was forever altered. Landry had grown up, there was no denying it. Looking back at her old self made Landry feel ashamed, at first. She had been very selfish. But she also knew that, without that past version of herself, she would not be who she had become. Landry thought she quite liked who she had become, though she was still working on coming to terms with being the descendant of Death. She still was incredibly unclear on what exactly that entailed. And that was okay, because Landry had hope that she would figure it out.

"The castle has been secured to the best of our ability, but I want to make it very clear that this will absolutely not keep out either dark wizard indefinitely," explained McGonagall.

"So that's it? We just have to wait here, not knowing when we're going to be attacked?" asked a Slytherin girl.

"Or what to do when we are," a Gryffindor boy added on.

"Yeah, are we just going to go into battle with no plan?" Sirius Black questioned.

After shooting a glare at Sirius, McGonagall turned to Dumbledore, whispering something in his ear. Dumbledore thought for a moment, then replied to her. Both of them then turned to look at Landry. "Landry, do you have any ideas?" Dumbledore asked.

"Me?" Landry gasped.

"Indeed," McGonagall said, encouragingly. "Dumbledore thought you may have an idea as to what we should do."

Landry was completely taken by surprise by this. Apparently Dumbledore was very convinced that this whole situation was really and truly meant to fall upon Landry. After regaining her composure, Landry thought for a moment. Suddenly, an idea came to her. She took a deep, nervous breath, and after reluctantly releasing her hand from its comforting hold on Miles's, she stepped up to the podium at the front of the hall, where McGonagall and Dumbledore stood, waiting. Landry glanced towards her peers, then back at Dumbledore and McGonagall. Dumbldore gave an encouraging smile. "Well, we almost certainly know that Voldemort and Grindelwald are after the cloak, right?" Landry asked.

"That is correct," McGonagall confirmed.

"Well, I was thinking we could set up a system to make the cloak harder for them to find. We can make a bunch of decoy cloaks, and guard them all with various traps. That way, our enemies will have to try them all, and each time be tricked into thinking it's the real cloak's hiding spot. Meanwhile, we'll move the real cloak around the school, so that it's always somewhere that Voldemort and Grindelwald aren't," Landry suggested.

"That sounds like an excellent idea, Miss Beckett," McGonagall said, with great approval. Dumbledore had an impressed twinkle in his eyes. "We'll split you all up into groups, each paired with a teacher or former Order members. The Aurors will be our front lines, they can buy us some time once the Death Eaters do arrive," McGonagall ordered.

The students immediately began splitting themselves into groups, and the teachers began dispersing, joining the different clusters of students. McGonagall helped all of the resurrected people find groups. Fred and George were paired with some Gryffindor boys, while Neville and his parents joined the rest of their small family, along with Victoire and Teddy, who were friends with Neville's daughter, Neicy, while at school. Remus and Sirius were sent to work with Landry's roomates, and Tonks and Mad-Eye Moody joined some Hufflepuffs. After everyone had been partnered up, Dumbledore started sending the groups off to various parts of the castle where they could set their traps, handing them each a decoy invisibility cloak that he had conjured up. McGonagall turned to Harry, who had just finished ordering his Aurors to their posts. "Harry, I think it's best if you don't join the rest of the Aurors on the front line. You know that both Voldemort and Grindelwald will be targeting you, Grindelwald to gain the alliance of the Elder wand, and Voldemort because…well…you know," she told him. Harry reluctantly agreed, and instead paired himself off with Landry and her friends to work on a trap. Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the Weasleys had joined other groups, but Draco was still standing, alone, in the corner of the Hall. Harry sighed, knowing what he had to do. Draco wasn't really so bad, anyways.

"Draco?" Harry questioned, approaching the blond man. Draco turned around to face Harry.

"What do you want, Potter?" Draco asked, his words not sounding as fierce as Harry would have expected.

"Well, I just thought you might like to help our sons and their friends with their trap," Harry suggested. Draco's expression softened.

"I guess I could," Draco said.