Book 4: Astoria Greengrass and the Curse of Quennell Park
Song rec: "Over the Love" by Florence + The Machine
Astoria's knees buckled, and her whole body shook. The glowing marks etched into Flora's arms flickered and disappeared, and the green flames from Alecto's misaimed Killing Curses extinguished into more dense, brackish smoke. Coughing, Flora ran over to Hestia, who was bleeding, and Aban, who was still stuck in the curtains.
"Flora, he's still Imperiused! By Se-Selwyn," Astoria remembered to report, as Flora had not been in Alecto's head.
Flora grumbled, "All right. What was that spell? Somnodurus."
Nothing happened when Flora cast it. Aban was still struggling in the curtain, trying to make a foe of himself again.
"Give me Hestia's wand and take this thing back — it's awful," Flora said, tossing Astoria's wand to her.
Although her hands trembled cold, Astoria didn't feel anything wrong with her own wand, thankfully. It was a bit power-hungry and full of personality, but overall tamed. Hestia's wand worked perfectly for Flora, and their father was back asleep. With the immediate danger gone, Flora then dived on Hestia to heal her mangled face. Hestia had a fractured jaw and broken nose, and Flora worked quickly to correct it. Once she could see out of her eyes again, Hestia looked at the bodies of Alecto and Amycus, who were not family.
Flora gave Hestia's wand back to her and went to retrieve her own from Alecto's dead hand. Hestia and Astoria stood quietly in place. Flora wrenched her wand free and wiped it off on Alecto's clothes.
"Well, now, everyone has their own magic stick again," Flora said. "Hestia, I am so sorry that I—"
"You fought it off," Hestia gushed. "You fought it off, Flora!"
Astoria was presently trying to fight off her unwanted crying. The tattoo upon Alecto's neck had ceased its writhing, though like its permanent ink, her hand stuck to Amycus's neck. Her tangled hair veiled his dead face, and her bleeding began to slow due to the lack of her heartbeat. The wind came in from a shattered window with the wrong sound, the sound of the sea. Its cold embrace seemed to mist Astoria's shoulders, but when she brushed them, they were dry. Flora returned to her side.
"Your face is injured. May I?"
Astoria just nodded, trying not to collapse. Flora chanted something for Astoria's sake; it seemed like she intended to take care of herself last. Astoria's face felt much better after Flora's spells, but Flora's expression progressively looked worse as reality set in.
"I killed my aunt," she scarcely whispered. "I've just killed my aunt."
Astoria took both of Flora's hands, getting reprehensible tears all over them.
"Flora, no. She was already dead."
"But I—"
"No. Flora, look. Look at me," Astoria said sternly. "She lost it. She was already dead. I'm the one who did it."
Flora's brow contorted and she looked down at the cracked floorboards. Her tone changed.
"Astoria, you can't go reading minds on the battlefield, or you'll fall to an enemy who's won your pity."
"It wasn't like that. Alecto stopped and stared at me until I used Legilimency. She started thinking I was some kind of — I-I don't know —" Astoria tremored, abhorring the taste of her tears' salt on her lips. "I don't have pity. I don't have pity. Hestia would've died."
The last thing Astoria wanted was to talk, but she felt a moral obligation to at least tell them about their parents. Flora and Hestia had blamed their own birth on their mother's death, and they believed their father was a spineless coward. Astoria spoke up:-
"Those two put curses on your mother s-so that she wouldn't make it through childbirth. So th-that they could have you. And — and they've had your dad under the, the Imperius Curse for just short of seventeen years."
Hestia gasped, and Flora asked, "Is that true, Astoria? What all did you see?"
"Enough to put me on potions."
Flora wiped the swollen wound on her face from Amycus's boot and took a few tears with it. The twins were stone silent, staring at their father. Astoria wished she had unearthed it sooner for them. Knowing now was better than never, though. Their dad had not timidly ignored their abuse. Hestia's tears welled up in relief.
"We can talk about it later. We have to get Dad out of here, or someone could use him again," Flora said.
"The evacuation point is surely closed by now," Hestia said as the battle raged louder outside. "And if we go out there…"
"Astoria, you can use Theodore's Shield Charm, can't you? You can control the dragons that come out of it to not hurt the Order members, right?" Flora asked.
Astoria buried the memoire Alecto had written in her skull and tried to pull her senses back together.
"Yes, but the Shield can do damage itself just by us moving it around. The Killing Curse still goes through it, too."
"It's all we have, isn't it?" Hestia said. "Let's go. Mobilicorpus."
Aban neatly Levitated belly-up. The three girls walked to the door, and Astoria wondered what her cousin Adamina would say of the destruction she had left in her precious common room. Hestia dug out her Foe-Shard from her robes, which would have pierced her in the skirmish if not for the frame Rhiannon had set on it.
"All clear. Move," she said.
Once through the door, Astoria had everyone draw close together and said "Protego Nidhogg," which had become a familiar friend to her as much as Theodore himself. They ran down the steps of Ravenclaw Tower as they heard curses blast upon the stone. Voldemort's forces were breaching the castle. They moved as fast as they could without tripping and poured out to the corridor. It was so loud, echoing with spells shot up ahead.
"Other way," Astoria said, and they turned quickly down an auxiliary staircase.
On their way down, they heard a disheartening sound, not unlike thunder but carrying worse implications. Screams followed, and the rumbled crashing continued.
"They broke into the castle!" Flora exclaimed. "Go, go!"
"You can't run any faster than I can anyway, Flora!" Astoria said.
"Sorry, I'm a TAD nervous right now!"
Astoria didn't reply. The stairs she had counted on being there had fallen away, and Death Eaters swooped inside on cheap brooms, which they soon expended and started firing left and right. All three girls got the same idea at once, and put the hoods of their dressing-gowns up. Without any stairs to cross, they started working their way right through the Death Eaters. Incoming Hogwarts' forces at first thought that the girls were the enemy, but they never cast magic Dark enough to penetrate a Nidhogg Shield. Meanwhile, Death Eaters took the sight of Hogwarts people firing at the Shield to mean that the trio was on the side of evil, and did not raise their wands at them as they passed through the cluster of duellers. All round, people elbowed their way through the corridor, wands up, and spells exploded everywhere. The Shield was not easy to handle, though, and Astoria had to stretch her neck and arms to restrain the dragon from hurting any Hogwarts fighters. Her hood slid down, and before she could put it up…
"WAIT! THAT'S GREENGRASS!"
Astoria recognised the mask. It was none other than Selwyn, the current holder of Aban's Imperius Curse. Astoria reacted instantly, and as she still held her wand tight on the dragon, she lifted her right sleeve up with her free arm. Astoria could not see Selwyn's eyes, but he tilted his head toward her black-veined arm. He believed that she was imminently casting blood magic.
"LET ABAN CARROW GO, SELWYN!" Astoria screamed.
"A-ALL RIGHT, JUST D-DON'T CAST THAT!"
His fellows looked over to see what the heck was going wrong so early into their infiltration of the castle. Selwyn waved his arm and ran off to try to make up for his shame, and the girls bolted away.
"Dad moved when Selwyn did that!" Hestia reported. "I think he might be better!"
"Now isn't the time to test him out!" Flora said, and she sent curses out from the Shield.
The enemy forces had taken particular interest after Selwyn had shouted the Greengrass name, and they hadn't been round to see Astoria's trickery. They came upon the group with full force.
Flora started a terrible incantation, "Avada—"
"NO! SOME ARE IMPERIUSED!" Hestia cried.
"—Kedavra."
The Killing Curse had already lit up Flora's wand, but as its green light flashed towards an Imperiused assailant, it flickered out and fell like glitter to the floor. Flora cried out in relief. The power and the intent for the Killing Curse both had to be there to land. Flora and her would-be victim had both been spared that event.
But I've cast it. Astoria fretted. I've really meant it. Well, that was when my friends were in danger… Is this just me making excuses for myself like Rabastan said?
They barrelled their way through flying pieces of blasted stone, and when they came upon another destroyed staircase, Astoria said, "Hold tight."
She released her reign on the dragon which made the Shield incredibly more exhausting to maintain. The dragon arched like a crescent across the wreckage and sank its angry teeth into the next dropped-off landing over. They lifted into the air, following the same arc as the dragon.
"ASTORIA, WHAT THE HELL‽" Hestia shouted as she slid to the bottom of the sphere.
"I SAW RODOLPHUS USE THE WHOLE SHIELD!" Astoria explained as she, too, slipped down like a marble in a hamster ball. "AND I SORT OF USED IT LIKE THIS ON THE CAR!"
"CAR‽ CAR‽"
"YEAH, I LOVE THIS THING!"
Currently, though, it wasn't working nearly as well for Astoria's rescue party as it had for Rodolphus's, seeing as there wasn't a giant monster or a car beneath them. They slid all over the place, and Astoria had to hold onto her wand with both hands as her arm began to feel weak. If she let go before impact, they could die. Then, on the landing, they collided with the head of the dragon, and it merged back into the Shield. Astoria stood back up and hoisted up the other two. Aban might get a concussion, but he wasn't any help (and he had been the opposite of help earlier), so tough luck for him.
"Where are we going? There's nowhere safe!" Flora declared as a ceiling fell in a classroom they passed.
"My plan was to keep running until we find somewhere empty!" Astoria admitted. "Then we can wake your Dad up, and see if he's back to norma— er, not Imperiused!"
Unfortunately, they came upon another crowd of duellers, and it became a nearly unbearable struggle to get round them. No one could seem to decipher just whose side Astoria's group was on. The Dark spell encircling them and their status as Slytherins rallied the Hogwarts side against them, whilst their defamed names and track record left them dodging whizzing curses from Voldemort's people. The twins were starting to tire from holding off both sides so carefully. Right when the Death Eaters and the Order started to realise they were both casting at the same group, it was all interrupted. An outer wall was blasted through, and from an upper courtyard poured in Acromantulas, their hairy backs taller than the highest point of Astoria's Shield. Flora screamed at the sight of a spider impaling someone with fangs. Astoria unravelled the dragon again, and it began to rend an Acromantula into pieces, but another one crawled over its body, over the Shield, and into a cluster of fighting students.
"REDUCTO!" Hestia cast, and as the Acromantula turned to dust, fifty more of them came in. There was no way to save everyone.
A loud, musical call came from out on the grounds, and it was followed by many more similar sounds, to the effect of enormous wooden wind chimes. Although the sound was similar, it was not a wooden source, but a natural one, like a haunting call of birds. It had an unprecedented effect on the Acromantulas, who turned away from the juiciness of humans to locate an even tastier delicacy. Through the rubble of the castle, Astoria saw an enormous flock of birds cresting the upper courtyard. Doppelvangas. Astoria had never heard their true call before, and it made her eyes water like the music from her old church did. The evocative call was suited to their cyan, indigo, and gold, like they had been born of the sky rather than the Earth. Their colours lit up in the night from the glow of countless spells, and the Acromantulas were hypnotised by their song. They scrambled to reach the flying prey for a taste of ambrosia over regular meat. Their behaviour was so desperate and erratic it was like someone had blown a whistle meant to disorient them.
After the unplanned ceasefire due to the preternatural sound of the birds, the Death Eaters and Order started fighting once again round the Shield. This time, though, Astoria saw a way out of the castle. They let the Shield's dragon ravage the rubble to step through and meet the grass. The Acromantulas were all in one place, and it was wonderfully easy to get around them. Astoria looked up and discovered who controlled the Doppelvangas: Professor Sinistra and Professor Grubbly-Plank on the back of a flying horse. Astoria allowed herself a smile only for a second. Then the ground shook beneath them and they were all brought to their knees, and Aban once more slipped along the interior of the Shield. Only a roof and two towers away were giants. The full-sized kind.
"NOW WHERE DID HE GET GIANTS!" Hestia protested, as if everything else was just peachy and this was where she was drawing the line.
Astoria ran across the courtyard to find the steps and looked back at Professor Sinistra, who was in line with the giants' huge heads. Professor Grubbly-Plank now manoeuvred the Doppelvangas over the lake, hoping to drown some spiders. Professor Sinistra began to do one of Astoria's favourite things: she called forth a storm.
It was the first time the thundering sounds on the field came from actual thunder. Astoria saw what was left of her Astronomy class make their way across the grounds below: Swati Pevekar and her perfect aim, Anthony Goldstein and his fortitude, and Tracey Davis, the genius. At the back was Theodore with his fuzzy head and hatred of Atmospheric Charms. He led on Flora's sixth-year class, who had recently learnt how to move the clouds.
"WHOA!" Flora gasped as they located the courtyard steps and tried to balance their descent with spectatorship of the storm.
With Professor Sinistra's incredible strength as the backbone, the students were able to direct the storm right over the giants' heads. Though they could not summon the lightning, the sheer height of the giants attracted it to their heads, and they stumbled round, their assault on the castle thwarted as voltage racked their brains. Two of them collided and started fighting each other rather than the Hogwarts forces. They had been properly confused, and Astoria cheered.
The girls reached the grounds, a site of chaotic battle, and Astoria did not feel so good anymore. Although nearly impenetrable in their cocoon, the blackness of the Shield and of the night made it impossible to discern friend from foe, and they ended up doing little more than sightseeing. It was time to find a place to rouse Aban and make a change of plans. They were panting as they nestled themselves by a knoll, thus far untouched since it had no point of entry to the damaged castle.
"Rennervate," Flora said over her father's head, and he made lots of father-ish noises, followed by fifteen questions. None of the answers mattered, though, because he suddenly shut his mouth and gave his girls a hug, sobbing in between them. Astoria could tell that having almost two decades of the Imperius Curse in his head had done him damage. His speech was highly pressured without regards to the battle on the other side of the hills. He was unfamiliar with certain ideas like Shields, and he kept repeating his daughters' full names — "Flora Asrai Carrow, Hestia Adhene Carrow…"
"Wait!" he exclaimed in profound confusion. "My… Where…? My— no, they, not my… I… wait, your… my… Where are they?"
Flora backed away from his hugs, and said, "They're gone, Dad. They were Death Eaters, remember? They made you hurt us back there. They had your mind under control."
Though ailing psychologically from the Imperius Curse, Aban Carrow was no Crouch Jr, and once he understood exactly what the commotion was about, he was speaking staunchly against Voldemort. Sometimes, his words jumbled up into a puzzle. "I love you" and "I'm sorry" always came out right, though.
Aban was not fit to fight, as he was barely fit to unbutton the shirt collar that was so obviously bothering him. Flora and Hestia kept looking at each other, unsure of what to do.
"Apparate away," Astoria decided for them. "Not home, but somewhere. Someone might come looking for Alecto and Amycus at the house for letting Harry Potter slip away."
"R-Right," Hestia said, "we can't go home, but maybe we could…"
The twins started suggesting locations back and forth and decided to Apparate to Hestia's favourite apothecary, from whence they could finesse their way into a Muggle hotel. A nice one.
Keeping the Shield up made it difficult to know exactly when they had passed the Apparition point, so they simply picked a direction and walked. Astoria felt rocks beneath her feet and discovered the damage from her Fiendfyre. It served as a convenient marker for where the Apparition point began.
"You two can Apparate?" the twins' father asked, aghast. "You don't have a licence."
Aban held out his fingers and tried counting something.
"No, no licence. You're not seventeen. It's only May," he reasoned (reasoning was a good sign for him, all things considered).
"Dad, we're Slytherins," Hestia said. "We don't need a licence."
She took her father's hand, and Flora held out hers to Astoria.
"I can't come with you," Astoria said.
She felt Hestia's ire and was suddenly accused of tricking them to the edge of the grounds. Astoria had had ulterior motives, but it was because she wanted them to be safe. She bit her lip at the irony of having the same argument in the same place, except this time, it wasn't with a frantic Ginny. It was with two of her best friends. She struggled for words to express why she wanted to stay and fight, but it mostly came out as people's names rather than a solid argument.
"You were both going to stay, too, and fight for the Order, but this cropped up," Astoria said, nodding towards Aban, who was watching the dormant dragon swirl round the Shield.
"Yeah, but, now that we're here, and we're safe, and alive—" Hestia said. "I can't even believe we're all alive! I can't have you going back there!"
"Hestia," Flora finally helped out. "For us it's necessity, but for Astoria, she feels like it's desertion. Which it isn't, since, need I remind her, she's underage. But anyway. She has people here that, well, we don't have."
"IS THIS ABOUT MALFOY AGAIN BECAUSE I SWEAR—"
"Hestia, you would never leave Rhiannon!" Astoria interrupted. "This is something I have to do! I'm going back with the Astronomy students, and I'm going to stay with Professor Sinistra! I won't do anything stupid!"
"We didn't even know if you were alive last summer, and now this!" Hestia cried.
But Hestia saw a school falling apart behind them, and she heard the suffering coming over the hills, exacted upon innocents by those in league with the people who had taken her childhood away. She wiped her face.
"Astoria, don't you die," Hestia said, and she handed off her Foe-Shard as she hugged her. "Astoria, I'm serious, you're not allowed."
"Okay, Hestia."
"You're not allowed," Flora emphasised, and she gave Astoria a rare hug. "Use any ugly curse you need to save your skin. Although I would recommend against blood m—"
"Yes, Flora, I've learnt that, yes. I love you both."
"We love you, too," Hestia said.
Astoria released the Shield, and she watched them leave with their spiffy new father. She dashed back up the grounds, which was not as easy as running down had been, and by the time she got to the top, she regretted not leaving with the twins. She was instantly caught in a sea of battle, having to parry, Shield, and curse her way through to find any semblance of formation. Only after losing and re-conjuring a boot, taking two hits, and stepping on a body did Astoria find the Astronomy group, but it was even more frightening since they were fighting giants.
"ASTORIA!" Theodore exclaimed as he got a storm cloud low enough to obscure a giant's view. "YOU NEED TO DISAPPARATE!"
"GIVE UP ON THAT, THEODORE!"
At last, she felt helpful as her spell took some of the burden off of her class and the sixth-years. The Acromantulas had come in a second wave, though, and those that had not been led to the lake by Professor Grubbly-Plank were dragging people away or shooting webs at them. The Doppelvangas were too far from this group of spiders to have any effect. Sweeping down from the flying horse, Professor Sinistra did not see Astoria in the confusion. Acting as though the hundred-foot-tall giants and the giant spiders were nothing to be concerned about, Professor Sinistra knelt bizarrely to the ground, and her hand sank into a mist that had rolled in beneath the grasp of anyone's attention.
"There are over one-hundred dementors!" Professor Sinistra yelled with an Amplified voice.
A few Patronuses began to light the darkness, but it would not be enough. Astoria, and nobody else, saw Professor Sinistra try to cast a Patronus — just one last try — to no avail.
Astoria was bumped out of the way of a loose curse, and she clumsily cast a Shield over her group a few moments late. When she stood up, she saw Professor Sinistra running toward the dementors as they emerged from the woods, and a bright silver doe of unknown origin went bounding after her. Astoria could not rest assured that one Patronus was enough, or that it would remain, as Professor Sinistra disappeared, intending to chase creatures off with the borrowed Patronus. Astoria tried to cast her Patronus, but it was incorporeal, and with so many curses descending upon her group, it became an unproductive use of her time. Wizards and witches with better focus sent Patronuses everywhere, and she unfortunately found herself relying on them.
Once the giants were properly disoriented and started stomping back to the mountains to quarrel with one another, Astoria discovered why it had been so hard to make it through the corridors earlier with her group: many Slytherins were fighting for Voldemort. Astoria was coming wand-to-wand with classmates and people she walked by each day. Astoria fought alongside Tracey and Theodore, with Max and Montel close behind, until her hand went numb and the sweat poured into her eyes. If only this had happened during the day, then she would be able to see better, but then again, so would the Death Eaters. There was no telling what time it was or how much she could do before she would collapse from exhaustion. And then everyone was suddenly thrown by Voldemort's voice again.
"Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery."
Astoria shivered at the sound, but her mouth twisted at his toddlerish use of the third-person. How would it sound if she pranced round calling herself "Lady Greengrass?"
"Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful," he continued, and Astoria snorted, "I command my forces to retreat immediately."
Suddenly, there were no longer any curses to dodge or send back.
"You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured. I speak now, Harry Potter directly to you…"
As Voldemort continued to taunt Harry Potter, wherever the hell he was, Astoria stopped paying attention. Treat the injured. Treat the injured! There was one free hour nobody expected! She ran to the castle, where she knew the falling walls and blasted corridors had done just as much as any Death Eater with a Killing Curse. And, oh, it was a disaster inside. The structural damage was one thing, but Astoria's eyes kept drawing to all of the blood splashed on the walls. Where to start? People were scrambling in round her, trying to find family members, for better or worse…
And then her eyes happened upon something very light on the landing up above, and she started moving towards it. As she got closer, she realised that it was shaped like a head and surrounded by black clothes everywhere. There was a hand, just as light as the hair.
"NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!"
Astoria shoved people out of the way as she went up the stairs, at times on two feet and at times on all fours. Her backbone quaked, and her vision blurred with water, and she screamed, but she screamed for nobody to hear, for nobody else to care.
Not this, not him. She had the words viscerally ingrained, like lines of a prayer she had never wanted to learn. Anything but this.
Astoria slid down, skidding open a wound in her leg, as she descended upon the figure of Draco Malfoy, who was sprawled over top of a Death Eater, unmoving. There was nothing else to do in this battle except cry. Whatever Voldemort had said about Harry meeting him in the woods for a duel — forget it. Astoria was going into those woods, and she was going to use all the blood magic she knew how to, and she was going to tear Voldemort's body into pieces and feed it to the werewolves he had sicced on the students.
She brushed Draco's hair out of his face and saw terrible burns upon him, and when she took his hand into hers, it was all black and sooty on the underside. It was warm, so what mockingly recent moment had she missed? What split second could she have changed to have stopped this?
Draco's hand twitched decidedly in hers, and Astoria's upside-down world flipped right-side up again. Quite frankly, her nerves had no clue how to react anymore, and she started shed a different kind of tear. Draco was alive. The world was not over.
"Draco."
No, Draco was more than out cold, and it was going to take a lot more than saying his name to wake him. She considered how to bring him to consciousness, but what would that ultimately achieve? He would have to go back to the line of fire, and Astoria could not take the feeling of losing him again, especially if it became reality. She would put him with the injured, out of the battle. Astoria felt round his head, neck, and chest for any fractures. Unconsciousness and burns aside, Draco was okay. In fact, he was less beat up than Astoria, though much of his sleeves had been singed off.
I would have been dead long ago had it not been for you, she thought as she brushed his cheek. Draco had taken his precious time to harness her duelling skills back when they thought things were "bad." Oh, if only they had known September and October weren't all that bad in the scope of today's calamity. Draco had made her stronger then. He made her stronger now, though he wasn't awake to realise it.
Astoria saw his Dark Mark, ugly as ever, and realised that it would not be so easy as setting Draco amongst the Hogwarts injured. Someone might take one look at his Mark and kill him whilst he was down. Even if they didn't, no one was going to treat him. The Foe-Shard she had given him was still round his wrist, and when she glanced into it, she saw countless dots of faces. His enemies were on both sides.
"It's just me and you," she sighed, wondering if he had any perception of her voice. It certainly didn't do any harm to talk to him, even if it was a bit silly. It made her feel better, anyway.
"I've had a terrible night. I've forgotten all about my Arithmancy homework," she whispered, as she gently brushed a Colour-Changing Charm into his hair. It turned reddish-brown, which looked wholly unsuitable. She dabbed a fake mole onto his nose, and then changed the colour of his clothes from black to blue.
"You look so funny, Draco."
Her hand hovered over his left arm, and the skull of the Dark Mark snarled at her. Touching the Dark Mark directly would alert Voldemort, but the spell to remove it was thankfully contact-free. Astoria, however, considered the likelihood of the pain waking Draco up and causing him to automatically grab his arm before the Dark Mark was totally gone. With reluctance, she paralysed his right hand with a quick jinx, one he had taught her himself. Then she numbed his entire left arm, hoping that would be enough. Over the Death Eaters' brand, she spread out her palm, and then twisted it into a balled fist.
"Morkredd," she said, and there had not been a greater feeling since he had last kissed her lips. His arm twitched, and the Dark Mark blurred like it had been dipped in water before its viscous remnants emerged from the skin and dripped off.
"I'm sorry if it hurt," Astoria whispered.
She had perhaps been too eager to see Draco rid of the thing, since she had opened a small cut into the scar that the spell had left behind. Embarrassed even though he wasn't looking, she cleaned the wound and dressed it. She was lucky that the scar did not resemble an inactive Dark Mark, or she would have had to take the long-sleeve shirt off of the Death Eater beneath them and give it to Draco. Only when she Mobilised Draco's disguised body did she discover that the Death Eater beneath them was Xander Lofthouse, the son of the wizard Astoria had killed in her house. She added two layers of Bewitched Sleep to Xander, so that he would not wake up for days. She lifted Draco again and brought him into the Great Hall. Even though he was technically with her, Astoria faced the view alone.
There were dead everywhere, the smell of their shed blood heavy in the air. In fact, it was difficult to find the group of injured because of the number of dead, and bodies were still being brought in. Astoria walked quickly to stay out of the way, though she felt stony in her body and frozen in time. Professor Babbling, her Ancient Runes professor of three years, lay on a white sheet on the floor, mourned by Professor Vector and Madam Pince, who bore injuries themselves. Farther off, the Weasley family were crying over one of theirs. Ginny hugged the hence-missing Hermione Granger and wept. Astoria then paused.
There lay a brunet head coming out of a pile of rumpled clothes she had seen earlier. Next to this body lay Nymphadora Tonks. Astoria let the thought hang and took Draco over to a table for the injured. She turned back, and she wished that her return trip would not give her the same picture. By putting the thought on hold, didn't that mean it wasn't real? By giving it another moment, didn't that mean something would change? Astoria could not find the original spot at first. It must have meant that Professor Lupin and Tonks had simply finished their rest, sat back up, and walked away. But the Weasleys and their hair were quite an obvious bunch, and indeed, Rhiannon's dear professor and his wife were not far off. They were among the dead. There was no more moment to hold.