Muahaha....this part's not very long, but what the hey, it's crucial to later--er--developments, if indeed they may be called that. Please don't shoot me. ^_^

Lupin's Issues and Other Quintessential Disasters

Nothing happened.

"Honey, I think you have to push a little harder," said Doors, arching an eyebrow at his stunned face.

"Oh," said Harry, still staring blankly at the quite solid barrier. "Right." He had absolutely no desire to do that, but still some strange, inexorable force seemed to draw him onward against his will. However, just as he had braced himself to push again, Lupin's hand suddenly seized his in an almost convulsive gesture, and the next moment Harry found himself crashing to the cold stone floor as the Defense professor collapsed. His grip on Harry's hand was so hard he was certain his fingers were being crushed to powder.

"Remus!" Doors whirled around and pried Harry's hand free, examining his fingers briefly before turning on Lupin.

"Remus, what the hell...?"

For a moment Harry thought Lupin was having some sort of seizure. Lacking Harry's hand to grip, he had seized Doors's hair instead, clenched hands white and bloodless. His entire body looked tense with pain, but it wasn't until he opened his eyes that Harry and Ron both choked.

"Lorna," he said, hissing with what had to be pure agony, "Lorna, it's not working...."

Lupin's eyes, normally a mild brown, now flared a weirdly inhuman yellow in the gloom of the passageway. It might have been Harry's imagination, but his eye teeth were looking abnormally sharp and pointy, and his pupils had narrowed to slits, disturbingly like those of a cat....or a wolf.

"CRUD!"

Ron leaped backwards as though he'd just walked through a spiderweb, knocking over a tall brass vase with a clang and nicely alerting everything within five floors of their presence. He had a look of sheer panic on his face, and Harry had a feeling that this was just a little too much for his carrot-haired friend.

Lupin, who seemed intent on ripping all of Doors's hair out by the roots, shot a glare at Ron that sent him paler than milk and educed a whimper Harry wouldn't have thought a Weasley capable of.

"Brilliant, Weasley," he snarled, his voice so unlike that of familiar Professor Lupin that Harry stared even more. His eyes were flashing with a terrifyingly foreign menace. "I might just have to eat you for that one."

Harry started to gawk, but his stunned reverie was broken by an astoundingly loud smack! that would have knocked Lupin off his feet, were he not on the ground already.

Doors had backhanded him with all the strength she could muster, the result being a livid bruise that at once started rushing to Lupin's cheek. He stared at her, some of that awful madness clearing from his disturbingly yellow eyes, and Harry saw some of the tension drain out of his body.

"Remus, snap out of it!" Doors said, staring at him in disbelief. "Just because it's your time of the month doesn't mean you get to turn the Weasleys into snack food! Hell, if that were the case I'd've had Fred and George soufflé two years ago."

Harry gawped at her, realization slapping him and making him feel like the world's most colossal prat. "Is there a full moon today?" he asked, sudden and unaccountable relief flooding through him. Lupin had been taking his anti-transformation potion since that summer, but there was always a chance that it could go a bit...haywire.

"Well...yeah," said Doors, looking somewhat puzzled. "But even if his potion's malfunctioning, it's, well...daytime. He shouldn't be having any problems for another eight hours or so." She glanced at Lupin, who seemed to have relaxed considerably and no longer looked as though he were having all his insides torn out.

"You going to be all right?" she asked, holding his eyes open and peering into them. Her face was drawn with worry and weariness, but Lupin managed a small, experimental smile.

"I...think so," he said, flexing his fingers tentatively and looking somewhat relieved when they didn't shoot fire up his arm. His face had the pinched look of someone who's just endured something inhumanely nasty, and Harry could see at once that there was no way he'd last five minutes against whatever lay beyond the rubble.

Doors apparently saw it too, for she beckoned the white-faced Ron over to them. "Honey, you're going to have to do me a favor and stay with Professor Lupin, okay? I don't know what's wrong with him, but he definitely isn't going in there." She jerked her head at the blocked doorway, and Ron gulped. He was going a nasty greenish color, his expression a mixture of guilt, shame, and slight fear.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Look, I'm sorry I--"

Doors waved a hand. "Save it," she said. "You should've seen what Sirius did the first time he saw Remus here transform. I don't think we ever did get the stain out of the carpet...."

Ron managed a weak grin, and Doors got to her feet. "And Remus, don't you dare eat that boy," she added, and there was something in her voice Harry had never heard before--it didn't sound like concern, but it was something awfully close. "I really don't want to see what Molly would do to you if you did."

She took Harry's hand, and Harry knew at once that leaving Lupin here was probably the last thing in the world she wanted to do. She glanced at him briefly, and he felt the quaking in his stomach worsen.

"You ready?" Doors asked, squeezing his hand in an attempt at reassurance. Harry nodded, his throat too tight to speak.

"Well, all right then." Doors raised her wand, her hand closing even harder over her nephew's, and with a whispered "Lucidus," the rubble was cleared, leaving the Hall spread out before them.

Had Harry not known already that the room beyond the door was the Great Hall, he would never have guessed--it looked more like the site of some sort of bomb test. Any trace of wedding decoration had been shredded and trampled into bits, and the walls were scored by blasts of soot that spoke of several terrific explosions. The smoke was so thick that at first he could see little of his surroundings, but apparently some of the surroundings saw him--he scarcely had time to drop his jaw at the mess before some foul, leathery little winged thing darted out of the fog and straight at his face.

"Gah!" He leaped backwards, beating it off with his hands, before he remember to grab his wand and hit it with a freezing charm. He gazed intently at it, wondering just what it was, but Doors's hand closed around his collar and pulled him behind the ruins of a fallen pillar.

"Good move," she said, referring to Harry's wandwork. "You'd make Hermione jealous." Harry saw her eyes dart over the various cracks and holes in their little barricade, peering through at what lay beyond, and he sincerely hoped she could see through the misty stew better than he could. Despite the pounding of his heart his own attention wandered as well, searching out a hole in the haze that might show him something worth seeing. And most unfortunately, such a thing was granted.

A puff of air wafted across the Hall, swirling the smoke and clearing the obscuring blur. Harry squinted through it, looking for some sign of human life, and his heart suddenly leaped into his mouth.

"Ginny," he whispered.

Some forty feet from him, lying pinned under one of the ruined tables, was the white-faced, blood-smeared figure of Ron's little sister, her purple robes torn and dusted with bits of mortar. For a moment Harry thought she was unconscious, but her hand twitched and clawed at the splintered wood, and he realized with an awful jolt that not only was she awake, she was probably in an ungodly amount of pain.

She wasn't the only one, either. As though he'd been put under some sort of Imperius curse, Harry's unwilling eyes continued searching the blurred haze for some other sign of life. The Hall itself looked mercifully deserted--most of the castle's inhabitants had fled to higher ground, and most of their enemies were being diligently rendered into chutney by the Failte outside. He did, however, spot Neville Longbottom lying unconscious near the far doors, and what looked like Angelina Johnson's arm, twisted at a hideously unnatural angle, protruding from the wreckage of the high table.

Sickened, he glanced at Doors, who was drawing in the dust with her wand and muttering rapidly, and then at the ruined archway behind where he knew Ron was waiting with Lupin. He put his hand on his pocket, feeling the reassuring lump of the Neverstone, and licking his dry lips he drew a shaky breath and addressed his aunt.

"Lorna--" he whispered, but that was as far as he got; scarcely had the word left his lips than there came a blinding flash of light and Harry was thrown backward a good twenty feet. His head cracked hard on the soot-streaked wall, and he knew no more.

....That's not too bad of a cliffhanger, is it? Not like the nasty one I could have left you with in the last chapter. Do be a dear and review; I live on them. ^_^