Chapter 35
George POV
As the members of the Order of Phoenix stormed into the Room of Requirements, his entire world was focused on the bushy set of hair in the room. Her eyes met his and he felt like his heart was stuck in his throat. While Kingsley and Lupin stormed over to Harry to demand questions from him, George found his feet running towards Hermione.
A huge smile filled her face, and he wrapped his long arms around her small frame. She began to cry slightly, and he brushed the salty tears away with his thumb as his whispered comforting words into her hair while he kissed her forehead and cheeks.
"Oi, there's a war going on!" Fred separated the two and gave them a wink, showing that he didn't care that they were reunited before turning his attention to Harry. "You couldn't expect everyone to miss the fun, Harry, and the D.A. let the Order of Phoenix know, and it all kind of snowballed from there, mate."
"What first, Harry?" George asked while keeping his arms firmly wrapped around his love. "What's going on?"
"They're evacuating the younger kids, and everyone is meeting in the Great Hall to get organized. We're fighting." The Chosen One said with his green eyes blazing brightly as he looked around the room at the people prepared to fight with him.
After more instructions were passed around, the room became more open while the crowd thinned out of the Room of Requirement. All that was left soon was Harry, Hermione, Ron, Lupin, and the Weasley's. Ginny and his mother were fighting more about if she could fight while being underage and Hermione was rubbing comforting circles on the back of George's hands.
While they were fighting, a bright haired Percy Weasley came storming through the portrait hole. He fixed his horn-rimmed glasses and gulped largely while he looked at all of his siblings and parents. "Am I too late? I only just found out, so I—I—" The family of red-heads were frozen in place. "I'm so sorry… I was a fool! I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a—a—"
"A ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron?" Fred provided with a raised eyebrow.
Percy swallowed again as tears filled his eyes slightly. "Yes, I was…"
"Well, you can't say fairer than that." Fred held out his hand for his brother with a goofy smile on his face.
Their mother began crying and pushed Fred out of the way to wrap Percy into a tight embrace. "What made you seen sense, Perce?" George asked while Hermione squeezed him tightly.
"It's been coming on for a while," Percy said while he brushed the tears away hastily from his eyes. "But I had to find a way out and it's not so easy at the Ministry, they're imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight of it, so here I am."
"Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as tease," George pretended to be Percy's most pompous manner while Hermione giggled from his embrace. "Now let's get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters'll be taken."
Hermione gave George a kiss on the mouth that was a bit more passionate for a room full of their family. Fred had to grab his twin's arm and haul him away to the staircase with Bill, Fleur, and Percy. "I'll see you once this is all over!" George called out to Hermione while she looked at him with an expression that showed him that she was worried and full of love at the same time.
His feet were carrying him as fast as they could go in the stone corridor. Percy was trying to catch up with Fleur and introduce himself while the other three Weasley boys were making a plan on how they would seal up the passages that they knew about from the map. "We don't need the map anymore, we've had that thing memorized for years." Fred said with a determined look in his eyes. "We will get this job done so that we can slow down the Death Eaters."
"You von't think it vill stop them?" Fleur's eyes were filled with worry. "Vat vill ve do ven they come in?"
"Fight." George said with a single nod.
After they had sealed up a couple of the passages, they were all frozen when they heard a sinister voice fill their heads. Voldemort's voice saying, "Give me Harry Potter and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."
The silence felt like it swallowed the group whole before Percy fixed his horn-rimmed glasses and set his shoulders straight. "We better get moving. We have until midnight now."
A group of Dumbledore's Army came up asking the group how they could help. George and Fred stared at each other before they knew they would have to separate. No one else besides them knew all of the locations of the tunnels and secret passage ways. Even Lee and Angelina who were with them for most of their pranking years, didn't have them all memorized. "Alright, Hannah Abbot, Percy, Lee, and Katie will come with me. Angelina, Bill, Fleur, and Alicia will go with George. We can try and meet up at the Great Hall if possible." Fred clasped his hand on George's shoulder. "I'll see you soon, Georgie."
Hermione POV
Smoke filled her lungs and she was coughing out the after effects of Fiedfyre. She was leaning onto Ron while he helped her up in the hallway out of the Room of Requirement. "What the bloody hell was that?"
"Fiendfyre… cursed fire. It's one of the substances that can destroy a Horcrux. It's so dangerous, I never would've suggested to use it." Hermione stood up on her own and brushed the tears that were washing the soot off of her cheeks away.
"Must've learned from the Carrows." Harry said grimly before sighing and turning to the others. "The snake is the only thing that's left now."
Hermione smiled before the three of them snapped their heads at the sounds of yelling and shouting coming from the corridor around the corner. It wasn't midnight yet but the Death Eaters had penetrated Hogwarts. The Golden Trio ran forward to help as they saw Fred and Percy dueling marked men with dark masks.
"Hello, Minister!" Percy shouted in between jets of light coming from his wand. "Did I mention…" he shot a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort from whatever spell Percy had just shot. "I'm resigning!"
"You're joking, Perce!?" Fred shouted with glee as Death Eater he was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. He clasped his hand on his older brother's shoulder. "You actually are joking, Perce! I don't think I've heard you joke since you were—"
The air exploded. The world was wretched apart, and a terrible ringing noise filled Hermione's ears causing white noise to be her primary sound while she tried to struggle and get up. They went flying through the air in the corridor and Hermione tried desperately to hold onto her wand. She desperately tried looking for Harry or Ron.
As the world stopped spinning, Hermione felt her stomach go inside out. She leaned over and wretched in the corridor before rubbing her hand over her mouth and hearing someone sobbing in the remains of the stone corridor. "No—no—no! Fred! No!"
Her heart stopped when she zeroed in on Percy shaking his younger brother. Ron kneeled down in the mess next to Percy, staring at disbelief at Fred's eyes that were staring into nothingness with a ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his freckled face. If Hermione hadn't just thrown up, she would've been sick at the sight of someone who looked so much like George lying dead in the hallway. After that thought, her heart sank again, and she began to cry thinking of how Fred was no longer in their life…
The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased? Hermione felt tears streaming down her face at the disbelief of Fred Weasley lying dead in front of her. Someone who was so filled with life and laugher. Someone who teased her like a little sister and egged her onto make moves onto his twin brother. "Get down!" Harry yelled, the only one who wasn't sobbing in the hallway therefore the only one paying attention. His hand grabbed at Hermione's waist and yanked her down to the ground, saving her from the curses that were flying through the whole in the wall that had killed Fred.
Ron was trying to pull his older brother up. "Come on, Percy. We've got to move!"
While the two boys were trying to pull Percy off of Fred's body, a monstrous spider the size of a small car was trying to climb through the hold in the wall. The sight caused the blood to run cold in Hermione's body and a scream ripped out of her throat. The boy's spells combined together, and the monster was blown backward, its legs jerking horribly, and vanished into the darkness where it came from. "It brought friend! We have to move, now!" Harry screamed at them.
Harry had pushed Hermione and Ron in front of him to get them away from the hole in the wall and away from the danger that was coming. Percy hauled Fred out of harm's way so that his body wouldn't be damaged in the fight. Once he was safe, the older boy's eyes grew dark with anger and he spotted the dueling in the courtyard and screamed before running towards the fight.
Ron tried running towards the fight as well, but Hermione grabbed his arm. "Listen to me! Listen, Ron! Ron, we're the only ones who can end it! Please, please, please! Ron! Listen to me! We've got to kill that snake!" Her voice was screaming, trying to be louder than his rage. "Don't you think I want to get revenge, too!? Don't you think I want to run to George and make sure he's okay? We will fight but we have to reach the snake, first! We can't lose sight now when we're supposed to be ending this all!" The tears were streaming down her dirty face, but Ron had stopped struggling and began sobbing instead. She turned over to Harry who was also fuming. "You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he'll have the snake with him, won't he? Do it, Harry—look inside him!"
While Harry was diving into Voldemort's mind, Hermione squeezed Ron in a friendly way to calm him down. He was still shaking but she couldn't tell if it was with rage or the tears that were breaking him. Their friend's loud gasp pulled their attention back to him. "He's in the Shrieking Shack. The snakes is with him, it's got some sort of magical protection around it. He's sent Lucius Malfoy to find Snape."
"Voldemort's sitting the Shrieking Shack? He's not—he's not even fighting?" The rage in her voice was threatening to crack at the thought of him hiding like a coward while people like Fred were dying in the battle.
"He doesn't think he needs to fight. He thinks I'm going to go to him." Harry said with a stoic look on his face that caused Hermione's stomach to drop.
"You can't go, that's what he wants." Ron said, wiping away the last of his tears and squaring his shoulders. "You stay here and look after Hemione, and I'll go and get it—"
"No. You two stay here." Harry furrowed his black eyebrows. "I'll go under the Cloak and I'll be back as soon as I—"
"No!" Hermione screamed at looked at the two boys with pure rage. "It makes much more sense if I take the Cloak and—"
"George would kill me if I let you out of my sight. Don't even think about it." Ron cut her off with a lump in his voice. "I'm not disappointing another one of my brothers."
Before the group could argue anymore, masked figures began to run up the staircase. "POTTER!" She acted before thinking, casting the spell that transfigured staircases into a slide. The figures fell backwards while Hermione, Ron, and Harry were hurtled down them as well.
While she stopped them with a spell on a tapestry, the Golden Trio hopped up and looked towards the battlefield, ready to take on whatever laid ahead of them. They still hadn't figured out who would go and stop the snake, but it wasn't any time to argue. Professor McGonagall was leading a herd of galloping desks into the fight.
The three of them followed her into the heat of the fight. They passed Dean who somehow had found a wand and was dueling face-to-face with Dolohov. They couldn't jump in and fight with all the duelers, afraid to hit one of their own. Peeves came zooming over them and dropping Snargaluff pods down onto the Death Eaters whose heads were suddenly engulfed in wriggling green tubers like fat worms.
Harry put the cloak over the three of them, to sneak in during the distraction. When they were sneaking around, they heard Draco pleading with a Death Eater. "I'm on your side!"
Harry stunned the Death Eater and Draco was confused by the help that was nowhere to be seen. Ron muttered about Death Eater scum and punched Malfoy in the mouth before they left him to continue their way to the Shrieking Shack.
Students were running in every direction, trying to aid in the fight. A loud shattering noise came to their left at the emeralds that filled the Slytherin house points hourglass spilled all over the Great Hall, causing people to slip and stagger as they ran. Two bodies fell from the balcony overhead as they reached the ground, and a gray blur that Harry took for an animal sped across the hall to sink its teeth into one of the fallen figures. "No!" Hermione shrieked and blasted Fenrir Greyback who had just sunk his teeth into Lavender Brown.
Ron froze to their side and screamed after his ex-girlfriend. Before he could run over to her, Parvati was at her side, closing the bite and crying for help. "We have to go, Ron!" Harry reminded him and pulled him away from the bodies. The feeling of despair filled the three as they raced through the chaos to their destination, the snake.