A/N: Okay, there is a reason this part has taken so long--I was going to put it, eight, and nine up at one go and spare you all rather nasty cliffhanger, but since chapter nine is being a bastard and is taking me forever to write, I figured I'd through everybody a bone and then listen as you all yell at me for yet another obnoxious cliffhanger. It is obnoxious, but I figured you'd all rather have this part now than a really big chunk two weeks from now. ^_^

War, Failte Style

Harry's first reaction was to throw himself under the table and hide, but with a roar like a drunken Viking, the dolled-up giantess picked up it and every other table in the Hall and piled them in a haphazard heap in the gaping doorway beyond. Several moments later nearly every statue in the entrance hall had joined them, leaving several badly shocked zombies trapped in the castle and a good deal more hammering on the barrier from outside. Any idiot could see that the barricade wasn't going to hold for long, but hopefully it would give them enough time to think up something.

While the giantess proceeded to render the zombies into chutney, Hermione and Ron stumbled over and pulled Harry to his feet. Hermione still looked like she was about to be ill, but the threat that loomed just outside seemed to be bringing her back to her senses a bit.

"Oh, what're we going to do now?" she moaned, staring out into the entrance hall at the rumbling and shifting barrier.

"You want my advice?" asked Doors, still sounding dryly amused. The three looked at her. "Run like hell."

Harry shrugged. "If you say so," he said, and without further ado he dragged Ron and Hermione as fast as they could go out the far doors and through the corridors. The Neverstone, which he'd had the sense to grab before diving under the table, sat in his left pocket with a comforting weight as he pelted along, quite conscious of the crowd that had decided to follow him.

"Harry!" cried Hermione, wrenching her hand from his. "Are you crazy? We can't just leave them back there!"

"Hermione, trust me," said Harry, turning on her with an almost savage light in his eyes. "I think those three can take care of themselves."

And besides, he added in his head, something tells me I don't want to be around when those little green bastards go on the warpath.

The three of them darted into an unused classroom, piled with dusty desks and cauldrons, the shutters rattling madly. Not even bothering to shut the door, Harry pulled the Neverstone from his pocket and sank to the floor with his back against the wall, peering intently at it.

"Harry, what are you doing?" demanded Hermione, shooting an uncomfortable glance at the shutters. She still looked as though she were in shock, and Harry had a nasty feeling she was going to snap out of it and take her anger out on both he and Ron sooner or later.

"Hang up a minute," he said, biting his tongue as he tried to work out some meaning from the swirling smoke inside the orb. "Don't ask me why, but I've got a....well, not a bad feeling, but definitely an idea that there's a lot more to those little green critters of Doors's than she was letting on about, and something tells me they're going to make things hell for our unwanted houseguests."

Both Ron and Hermione were staring at him in frank bewilderment, so he sighed and repeated what Doors had told him about the Failte and the Neverstone. He left out the bits about her own...abnormalities, thinking that it would be a bit much to be heaping on his friends' heads.

He was right on that count--by the time he'd finished, the two were gawking at him far more than he'd like as it was.

"Failte?" said Hermione, looking horrified. "Oh, good God, Harry, we're all in a bit more trouble than you think. Don't you know what those things can do?"

"Forgive me for not having read half the library by now," he said, somewhat irritably. "You want to tell us?"

Hermione still looked as though someone had died. "Well, you know how all those things look really drunk? There's a very good reason for that. Failte drunk are relatively harmless--unless you hack them off--but if you ever get them sober, they'll make Slytherin look like a piker."

Harry snorted. "Come off it," he said. "You're telling me those little things are really a load of homicidal maniacs?"

Hermione nodded fervently. "You just wait," she said. "Wait till they run out of booze, and things'll really get....interesting."

"Great," muttered Harry. "That's all we need."

The trio was brought back to earth with an abrupt jolt--literally. Somewhere out in the Great Hall something very big had fallen over, eliciting many a screech from the various mothers fleeing up the corridors. Several ashen-faced parents came crashing through the door into their classroom, only to tear out again as they realized the only other exit was the window. Harry, giving up on the Neverstone, leaped to his feet and shoved it back into his pocket.

"That doesn't sound good," he said shakily, and quite unnecessarily.

"Naw, really?" said Ron, running a trembling hand through his hair. "You think--you think we ought to go help them?" he said uncertainly, looking as though he'd rather just run away as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

"I don't know," said Harry, just as uncertainly. "They might not want us to--"

CRASH

The three leaped backwards as Doors and Sirius came tumbling into the room, both looking like they'd been on the losing end of a fight with a hippogriff.

"Well, I think we can safely say that doesn't work," Doors muttered, dusting off her robes.

Lupin hopped into the door a moment later, looking ruffled but distinctly better than the other two.

"And whose brilliant idea was that?" he asked dryly, wiping something that smelled suspiciously like fertilizer from his robes.

"Hers," Sirius said at once, pointing at the top of Doors's head.

"Grrr," offered Doors. "Stalled them, didn't it? Anyhow, it doesn't have to hold them for long, just till the Failte regroup."

Hermione looked even more alarmed at that, but said nothing.

"You guys--what are you--" Harry started, but Doors waved him silent.

"Come on over here and watch, Harry," she said, beckoning him over to the window.

Harry approached it with some trepidation, Ron and Hermione at his heels. Even in this light he could see his aunt was looking paler than ever, and her eyes were strangely red around the rims--he didn't know how late she'd been up preparing the night before, but the strain was starting to show on her.

"You ready?" she asked, surveying the three keenly. Harry nodded numbly.

"Excellent." And so saying, she pulled back the shutters and showed them the world outside.

****

It was like nothing Harry had ever seen. He stood stock-still for a moment, seeing but not comprehending, and staring until it felt like his eyes were about to pop out of his head.

Spread out across the vast whiteness of the Hogwarts grounds was the army of his nightmare, the undead host of the dream he'd had the night Marge had gone on her little nocturnal adventure. Stretched from horizon to horizon it stood, a writhing mass of squirming, maggot-eaten bodies clamoring stupidly for entrance into the castle. He could see at once why it had taken them so long to force their way in--their dead, cumbersome hands thudded weakly on the doors and shutters and walls, pounding futily against the might of Hogwarts.

But it wasn't that--well, not fully--that made him goggle so. For lined up on the battlements, in an almost solid mass, was an even odder sight than a horde of zombies. Carpeting every stone surface with a brilliant medley of feathers stood hundreds upon thousands of--

"Chickens?" said Ron, gawking.

Harry felt he had good reason to gape--his few glimpses of the Failte's war-steeds did them absolutely no justice. These chickens were about twice the size of housecats, decorated in pagan blazes of fur and yarn and rags. Their riders, with their shaggy green mops of hair and piercingly brilliant eyes, looked even more of a mess--every last one of them seemed to be dressed in odd scraps of tie-dye.

"Oi," said Harry, a sudden, mad, unstoppable laughter rising within him. "Those poor sods, they'll never know what hit them."

"And that, my dear Harry, is precisely the point," said Sirius, grinning rather wickedly.

"Which leaves only their masters to us," added Lupin, by way of a dampener.

Hermione, pale and fidgeting, spoke up. "Wh-where exactly are the....masters?" she asked tremulously..

The mirth leeched visibly from the faces of the three adults. "Relax, honey, they're not inside just yet," Doors said, her tone somber. "Ruby'll give em a run for their money--it's not exactly easy getting past a hacked-off giantess."

Hermione looked slightly relieved, but only slightly. "So....what are we going to do when they get in?"

Now it was Sirius who looked grave, his face grim and set. "We won't do anything," he said quietly. His eyes found Harry, who saw in their depths the dead, haunted, terrible dullness of Azkaban, a look that had all but vanished until now. "The lives of everyone within this castle rest in the hands of one of us. Or, rather, in the pocket."

Harry stared at him. Numbly his hand fell on the lump of the Neverstone, and in his godfather's haunted eyes he saw the truth, cold and terrible: If he didn't figure out how to use the Neverstone before the last defenses of Hogwarts were breached, no amount of Failte or warriors would save them. The consequences of holding the Neverstone was that he was quite literally carrying the fate of the world, and as the staggering, head-splitting implications of this descended on him, he opened his mouth and uttered the one and only thing he was capable of giving voice to:

"Bugger."

****

Harry didn't have long to brood on the unfairness of things, however. For, with a high, spine-tingling wail that made his hair stand on end, the

Failte launched their assault.

Ron, who happened to be standing nearest the window, ventured a look out and promptly went very green. He clapped a hand over his mouth and turned away, but was mercifully spared from tossing his cookies by a small diversion in the form of Draco Malfoy, who burst into the room a moment alter and made them all jump about a foot. His silvery hair was tousled and there was a nasty-looking bruise already forming on his pale cheek. His eyes fell on Hermione, and an odd, unpleasantly sane grin crossed his face.

"There you are," he said, his voice making horrible contrast with the sickly-sweet tone he'd been using earlier--now it was cold and calculated, far worse than anything his father could come up with, and there was a very disturbing glint in his eyes. "I've been looking for you, Hermione. We need to talk."

Hermione took one look at him and gave out a frightened sort of squeak, her eyes wide. As Malfoy started to advance on her she darted behind Sirius, yelping something that sounded suspiciously like "Eeeep!"

Malfoy circled around, trying to follow her, a lock of hair hanging in his face and giving him a particularly crazed look. "Come on, Granger, don't make this any harder than it has to be," he snapped, for a moment sounding so much like the old Malfoy that Harry almost heaved a sigh of relief.

Hermione had thrown her arms around Sirius's waist, and was probably breaking his ribs as she used him as a human shield between her and Malfoy. Sirius, who was looking not at all comfortable with the situation, opened his mouth to try and reason with the half-cracked Slytherin, but he never got the chance--the door burst open once more, and in tumbled something that at first glance resembled a gigantic blob of sourdough in white brocade.

A moment later a fat blonde head emerged, and, with one sausage-like finger pointed dramatically at Malfoy, Dudley took a deep breath and bellowed at the top of his voice.

"YOU SHTAY AWAY FROM HER!" he cried, the force of his bray somewhat compromised by a rather pronounced lisp, caused, no doubt, by the two teeth he was now very conspicuously missing.

For a moment the room just stared at him, shocked into silence by this extraordinary....interruption, and Hermione, who was looking very white by now, ventured a glance under Sirius's outstretched arm.

Harry hadn't thought it possible for anyone's eyes to get as big as Hermione's were now, but the sight of the pop-eyed, purple-faced, gap-toothed visage of Dudley Dursley proved to be too much for poor Hermione--she took one look at him, shrieked, and in an extremely ill-executed scramble for the window managed to tip forward off a broken desk and crack her head on the leg of another.

"Hermione!"

Quicker than sight, Malfoy had darted over to the dazed girl, kneeling beside her and taking her hand in his.

"Hermione," Malfoy said, his voice switching to yet a new tone, one that made Harry stare--the only person he'd ever heard pull off a voice like that was Sirius. "Granger, are you all right?" His pale fingers ran through Hermione's hair, muttering something Harry didn't catch.

"You SHMACK!" Dudley trundled to his feet, making the entire room shake, and with floor-cracking footsteps he stomped over to Malfoy and Hermione.

"Move," he said to Malfoy, his face even more purple and his piggy eyes fixed on the semiconscious Hermione.

Harry saw Malfoy tense, and reflected that this really was the single worst thing that could possibly be happening right now.

"Why should I?" he asked, his voice so dangerous that it took an idiot like Dudley to miss it. As it was, the fat boy's face darkened to an ugly mauve, and he all but bellowed, "BECAUSE I SAID SO! MOOOOOOOO!"

This was just too much for poor Ron, who had been choking on his laughter for the last five minutes--he gave up and collapsed in a fit of howling glee to the floor, his face red and tears streaming from his eyes. Harry smacked his forehead, fighting a snort of his own, but Malfoy was staring at Dudley as though he'd just grown an extra head.

"Did....did you just....moo?" he asked, disbelief etched across his pale face.

Harry's suppressed snort forced its way out. "He always does that," he choked, sniggering uncontrollably. "Has ever since he was he was a tot. Makes Aunt Petunia think he's going to have a seizure or something." This only made Ron laugh the harder, gasping for breath and clutching his ribs on the floor.

Malfoy's silvery eyebrow arched. "You're kidding," he said, the lazy drawl in his scathing voice somewhat more pronounced than usual. One look at Dudley's face (now an extremely interesting crimson) said that Harry most certainly was not, and Malfoy let out what had to be the most derisive sort of snort imaginable.

"What a manly way to handle the situation," he said, his mouth curling into a sneer.

Dudley, who was probably too infuriated and embarrassed to register the finer points of the conversation, still managed to realize he was being mocked. His fat, sweaty face went an even uglier shade of crimson, and with a roar that made Uncle Vernon's look like the mewling of a kitten he launched himself straight at the pale-haired Slytherin.

"GAAA!"

Malfoy, properly terrified at the prospect of being smashed into the wall by a gigantic hunk of lard in dress robes, leaped out of the way and crashed rather ungracefully into Sirius. Hermione, who was still sitting on the floor in a giggling daze, mustered just enough wits to give her wand a drunken flick and freeze the obese human cannon ball in midair.

"Heeheehee, that's it," she said, before her head slumped and all her consciousness fled.

In all likelihood things would have gotten even more out of hand (if such a thing were even possible at this point), but, as is wont to happen when things start going down the drain, the situation very quickly went from bad to worse. Just as Malfoy made to leap to his feet and start pawing at Hermione there came a crash that seemed to rattle the very bones of Hogwarts, shivering the stone walls and making the floor buckle underneath their feet. Harry found himself tackled to the floor as both Doors and Lupin slammed into him, which turned out to be a very good thing--a moment later the entire window blasted inward, spraying shards of glass across the room with a shattering crash.

"SHUTTERS!" Sirius yelled, disentangling himself from Malfoy and hurling the heavy wooden shutters closed with all his strength. He was obviously having a hard time of it, but Harry found himself significantly less impressed by Sirius's show of strength when Lupin, who had a nasty little cut just above his eyebrow, got to his feet and stilled the violent rattling with one hand.

"Don't work so hard, Sirius, you'll strain yourself," he said, offering a weary smile.

Muttering something about superhuman werewolf strength, Sirius mopped his forehead on the sleeve of his robes and cast a glance at the mess that had once been a classroom. "Lorna, much as I really hate to say this, we probably ought to go see just what's cooking out there, hadn't we?"

Doors wiped her hands on her robes and wrenched her hair free from its prison under a chair. "Sirius, I hate to agree with you, but you're probably right."

Sirius procured from somewhere a handy two-by-four to bar the windows with , and after Lupin had pried Malfoy off Hermione and conjured a stretcher for her (he opined that under the circumstances it was probably better to leave her as she was for a while), the odd little party started off through the hallways of Hogwarts.

Harry had to admit that this procession was even odder than the one he'd marched in during third year--instead of Snape drifting creepily ahead, the blobular form of the still-frozen Dudley blocked out most of the light, while the unconscious Hermione gave an occasional twitch on her stretcher and Malfoy followed guard after her with a truly alarming glint in his eyes. Sirius had to fend off the unwanted attentions of more than one passing, panic-stricken female, while Ron wiped blood off a cut on his chin and did his best not to look completely out of it. The small form of Doors stumbled over the hem of her robes just ahead of him, frizzy tendrils of hair escaping from her hastily-tied horse's tail and waving in the drafts like some weird sea creature. He could hear Lupin's footfalls behind him, last of all, sounding as calm and unruffled as always, but the only feelings Harry could manage were ones of dull shock, and an odd numbness that seemed almost calming.

The adults stopped them outside the ruined doors to the Great Hall, holding a silent conference before splitting up. Sirius continued down the corridor, still floating Dudley and Hermione before him, while Lupin casually held Malfoy by the collar to keep him from following. Malfoy, however, opted to rip free and run like hell, leaving Lupin holding a handful of black velvet and shaking his head.

"Well, Sirius will have fun with him," he muttered.

The remaining four of them faced the wreckage of the doors, all still as though steeling themselves for what lay beyond it. Harry glanced at the others and reached out a tremulous hand, terrified to touch the splintered wood but somehow knowing that he must go on. He took a final deep breath, willing his wildly beating heart to slow itself at least a little, and placing one sweaty palm against the wreckage he shoved with all his might.