Chapter One
Neville Longbottom stood at the window in his room, looking up at the gray sky. He held in his hand the letter from Ginny Weasley, confirming that her brother Ron and his two best friends Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were not going to be at Hogwarts. For some reason, the three of them not returning to school made this war seem all the more real. For six years, he had looked up to the trio, learned from their bravery. With the three of them gone, and Dumbledore, would it even be Hogwarts anymore?
"Neville! It's time to go," his Gran called.
Neville sighed, folded the letter into a rucksack, and lifted his trunk from the floor.
Ginny Weasley sat alone in the back of the Ford Anglia. The chaos that had often accompanied the first of September had been absent that morning. It hadn't felt right, just her leaving for Hogwarts. In the past few weeks. any thought of the three of them ignited fury in Ginny, but today she only felt a little cold. There was none of the usual cheer, and the sky was gray.
The platform was void of any chatter or laughter. As Ginny hugged her mother goodbye, she caught sight of Malfoy and his friends, loud and boisterous in the somber atmosphere. The year was going to be interesting. She climbed aboard the train and found Neville, sitting in a compartment with Luna.
"Hey," she said.
Luna squeezed her in a hug, and Neville gave her half a smile over a copy of the Daily Prophet.
"Did you see Malfoy and his goonies outside?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said.
Luna hummed.
The silence continued in the Great Hall. In front of a new headmaster, it seemed everyone feared what was to come. The Sorting concluded with little applause, except from the Slytherin table. Snape stood up to cheers from the Slytherins, and as Ginny looked up at him, standing where Dumbledore had, she could feel the anger boiling up inside her. Snape introduced Amycus and Alecto Carrow as the new Defense and Muggle Studies professors, and her anger turned to fear. She shivered, just looking at Alecto's sickening smile, Amycus's cocked eyebrows.
When the feast ended, Ginny followed the crowd up to the Gryffindor common room, where everyone either rushed to their dormitories, or talked in hushed whispers. And then Ginny could not take it anymore. Everything that had happened seemed to pile on to this moment. All the fear, anger, and sadness from everything that had happened: Dumbledore's death, Death Eater raids, Harry abandoning her for his mission, and overwhelmingly, this silence that she couldn't seem to escape. She turned on her heel and climbed back out the portrait hole.
She could hear Neville calling behind her, but she didn't turn around until she got to the seventh floor. She stopped at the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and turned to Neville, who had caught up with her and was trying to catch his breath.
"Don't follow me," she said.
I need to hex somebody, I need to hex somebody, I need to hex somebody, she thought. The door appeared, and she stepped into a large room with a tall window, cushions, and a dummy that closely resembled Snape. Her urge to laugh was overshadowed by the rage that pushed itself out, and Ginny sent hex after hex after hex at Fake Snape.
"Stupefy! Stupefy! Diffindo! Relashio! Confringo!"
She slashed and spun, and at last, with a "Reducto!" Fake Snape was flung into the wall, destroyed. Ginny stood with her wand pointed, chest heaving, and realized there were tears streaming down her face. She collapsed to the floor, sobbing into her knees. She had never felt as alone as she did now, without her brothers, without the safety that Dumbledore's presence had promised, without Harry Hermione and Ron, and with no idea if they were even alive. With all that Hogwarts had been through, the future seemed still bleaker.
Neville had followed her in, and now convinced she wouldn't hex him, sat down cautiously next to her.
"I think we should start Dumbledore's Army again," he said.