Fighting Someone Else's War

Note: The first part of this chapter is a bit… gruesome. I suggest that you read parts of it if you don't have a strong stomach. Oh yeah this one is longer than the usual chapters.

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Chapter Six - Getting Better

He looked straight up to the morning sky. It was hard to tell the difference between night and day in the Forbidden Forest but the sense was there. He continued to look up at the towering trees… some of them had their limbs blown right off while some were in pieces, scattered across the area, and the stench. The foul smell that polluted the fresh air. He heard flies somewhere away from him but he knew they were feeding off the dead bodies.

Was he still alive? Probably yes which was a good thing but he couldn't move. He had lost a lot of blood the night before and that showed. The ground around him was inked with his blood and… Kelly's as well. He regained his sense and tried to get up. He collapsed after his arms crumpled below him. He was too weak he couldn't hold himself up. Remember what he taught his new batch of soldiers: '…without the aid of your hands…' He used his legs and pushed up and was finally on his knees. He turned back and saw her in the same state as the night before.

Looking down at himself he saw dry blood all over his flak vest and green fatigues, slashes and cuts here and there… he was a real mess. His face was scarred by splinters of wood that flew into it and his sleeves were slashed and covered in dry blood. The battle-worn soldier finally stood up and surveyed the carnage. The previous night he couldn't see a thing. The area was dark but today, in the morning, where the sun shined and the light glowed, he saw it all. Bodies littered the ground like leaves that had fallen off the tree. It was whole bodies as well, some of them were decapitated while others were in pieces. He caught sight of the body he blew apart with his M-203. His arm was right in front of the log Ryan was hiding behind, his head was nowhere in sight and his chest was ripped open showing his insides. What horrible sight…

He marched over to where Kelly was stunned. He kneed down and checked her pulse to see if she was still breathing. Still beating. Good, her pulse was there and she was still alive. Wonder when the stun will fade away, he thought. Ryan didn't know how long he was standing up looking around. His head was empty, he just couldn't think. He had no memory what happened after he was knocked unconscious. All he remembered was a lot of pain, losing blood, then fading out. Now in the morning it showed more carnage than normal. He saw all the broken pieces of trees that exploded after he let loose his M-203. He saw dead bodies and flies feeding on them and nothing more. He just couldn't think.

It seemed as though he was standing there for eternity, everything had gone to hell. Deciding to do some good he began to look for Kelly's wand. He was searching for almost thirty minutes when he spotted the stick some twenty feet away. It hit him that Kelly must have been hit by a powerful curse. He walked over to Kelly and was about to pick her up when his hand went moist. He turned the girl over and saw blood all over her back. She must have been hit by two spells. The first had impaled her in the back while the stun had pushed her back to the ground. Ryan went pale and didn't know how long it would be before Kelly was going to die. The Ranger picked up his Kevlar helmet that was on the ground and put it on. He picked up Kelly and began to walk back to the castle… whichever direction it was. He only took a few paces when he was stopped by three people landing around him. It was Professor Dumbledore, Snape and Professor McGonagall.

'What happened here Ryan?' asked Dumbledore. The Ranger remained silent, he just jerked his thumb back towards the littered ground full of bodies. 'I see… well no time to waist. Snape, you take care of the girl and Ryan you can ride on the back of broom,' said the Headmaster.

Snape, the usual sour one, became awfully pale when he felt the blood on her back. Ryan spoke in a low hoarse voice: 'Be careful, she took a bad hit last night. Don't want to make things worse than it already is.' With that they all took off and back to Hogwarts…

*

'Again may I ask why you failed?' said an icy and unpleasant voice. 'You have failed me again Lucius Malfoy. Twice in a row and you ask me to forgive you?'

'No, My Lord…' replied the voice of Lucius Malfoy.

'Consider yourself lucky that we have shaken up Hogwarts no matter how many we lost. But I want your side of the story. What happened out there? Why did we come back with five when I sent out fifty of our finest Death Eaters?' asked the voice of the Dark Lord.

'We saw them coming. He, the new boy, was there doing his routine patrol but unlike before he was accompanied by a girl.'

'And that girl aided your defeat?'

'No My Lord! We subdued the girl - '

'After you had lost over forty of your men? You needed forty lives to take one? To subdue a girl, a mudblood? Lucius, Lucius… my you disappoint me.'

'It wasn't just her! The boy! The boy had some sort of special weapon! He could attack us and we could not see! He could also - '

The voice of Voldemort butted in. He seemed to have found all this enjoyable, explaining to Lucius Malfoy all of the little details. 'That boy does not belong there Malfoy. That boy is an outsider. I have no logical explanation for his reason at Hogwarts but in any case he is a threat. The weapon you talk about his a Muggle weapon, a gun. I know a lot about Muggle weaponry growing up in an orphanage, listening to all they other boys talk.

'In any case you should be careful. The Muggles, especially the Muggles from North America, are dangerous. They are well equipped and well armed than us wizards and witches and must not be taken for a fool. What you have witnessed so far dear Lucius, is nothing until we invade North America. You will find a challenge there…'

'Should I prepare another assault group?'

'You? You'll probably botch it again Malfoy!' Voldemort laughed, a high and frightening laugh. 'No, the boy is smarter than he looks, probably smarter than you. Before we can attack Hogwarts we must neutralise the boy.'

'And how do you plan on doing that My Lord?'

'The first thing we must do is to lure him in. The next thing to do once that is done, we must ambush him. He will expect it but he expects it to come hard and fast. Well we will attack him slow and weakly with uneven pattern… He will not expect it.'

'Who will we use to lure him in?'

Voldemort smiled evilly, 'The girl. We shall use the girl.'

*

Ryan felt it was his fault for getting her all cut up. It was his first time leading someone and he failed… and he suddenly felt an urge to turn down training the new batch of soldiers. He felt that if he couldn't save Kelly then how was it possible for him to save the lives of ten to thirty others? The Ranger visited her daily bringing her get well cards from time to time and on an occasion, some flowers. However it was a hard task to bring in the flowers because everyone visited Kelly through out the day and Ryan was busy doing his guard duties.

However on once occasion he finally made an arrangement for a private visit. Kelly had recovered from her wounds; she was expected to be up on her feet in another week or so. Her cuts were beginning to heal away and she was almost back to her old self.

'So how's it like being wounded?' he asked her.

'Why ask?'

'Because I've never been wounded in my time in service,' replied the Ranger. 'Anyway I wanted to ask you whether you'll forgive me or not on letting you down out there.'

She looked at him shocked then said, 'If anyone has to apologise then it would be me. Remember I'm the one who asked you to bring me out… and… well let's just say I'm glad to be back in one piece.'

'Yeah… glad you are…'

*

Harry scribbled furiously on his piece of parchment. How was he supposed to predict his future? What was he supposed to say: 'Dear family and friends. Today I have decided that my life is unworthy therefor I shall- ' kill myself, he thought? Well Trelawney would love that. Anything that involved his death was grade A work. The only reason he remained in Divination was that it was too easy to get excellent marks. All he had to do for full marks was to make up some trash story about how he would be killed some way or another.

He looked over to Ron's work. '… as I was hacked up by a murderous elf…' it read. Hmm, how original, thought Harry. It was hard concentrating on Divination but it was especially hard after he learned that a daily patrol conducted by Ryan ended up in an ambush. He wasn't alone of course, Kelly, who wanted to tag along ended up badly injured and the sight of Ryan made him gasp.

Their leader was slashed with dried blood all over his torn up uniform. He was completely exhausted and needed immediate medical treatment by Madam Pomfrey right after Kelly. Harry and everyone else in the school, with the exception of the Slytherins, wondered whether Kelly was going to make it or not. It turned out that a severe spell had missed her lungs by mere millimetres and that it was lucky that she was not dead, to the disappointment of the Slytherins.

'Alright, class dismiss everyone,' Professor Trelawney finally said.

'Finally…' Harry said.

'Yeah… finally. This was probably the worst class ever!' exclaimed Ron as they both got up. 'Did you believe her? She asked me to right a four-page essay! Four pages! This is totally bias!'

'Guess so… Say, you wanna check out Kelly? See if she's OK?' suggested Harry.

'Why? She's only in Ravenclaw?'

'So? Gryffindor or not she's still a Hogwarts student so I don't see why.'

So they both agreed and left to the Hospital wing. They were half way to the infirmary when Hermione appeared from the corner to greet them. She had just came back from Arithmancy Class.

'You both going to the Hospital wing?' asked Hermione.

'Yeah,' replied Harry and Ron in unison. 'So what are we waiting for? Let's - '

'Actually we are waiting for someone,' interrupted Hermione. They didn't need to think long to find out whom. They were waiting for Ryan to get out, that way they didn't have to interrupt him and no one liked and annoyed or angry Ryan.

They hanged around the Hospital wing out of sight. After a few minutes they saw Ryan leave and waited to hear until his footsteps died away before entering the hospital. They entered the Hospital wing and saw Kelly lying on her bed turned away from them. It didn't seem like she heard them so perhaps she was asleep? Deciding not to wake her up they left and decided to return tomorrow.

'Poor Kelly,' Hermione said after they left the infirmary.

'Yeah… it's not everyday you end up fighting a whole pack of Death Eaters,' said Ron.

'At least she hasn't seen Voldemort, that's a good thing for sure,' Harry added.

*

It was another day at Hogwarts. Everyone seemed to have gotten over the battle in the Forbidden Forest and continued on with their daily life. For Kelly it was back to her classes and for the Ranger it was back to his guard duties and training the new batch of soldiers.

'Today I have good news everybody,' started Ryan. This was a first, there was never good news during their training this must be something good. 'I'm glad to say you don't need to be studying for any magical work for one month!' Everybody cheered and shouted with glee, everyone except Hermione. 'Why you think? The answer is simple. Since you volunteered to be part of my unit, I asked Dumbledore to cut you some slack and he did. So no work for one whole month.'

There was cheering again, the Ranger waited for the noise to subside. Once it did he spoke again, 'Of course you still have to do my training. And since you won't be needing to go to your classes anymore there's no reason for you to be sleeping in your dorms.' Everyone suddenly stopped murmuring and looked shocked.

'Grab a shovel and start digging. You'll be living in foxholes for one whole month. You will not return to Hogwarts until then so don't even think about leaving -' he stopped. 'For those who want to leave you can leave now.' No one budged. Ryan knew that if Harry stayed then so will everyone else. 'This is your last chance to leave.' No one did. 'Alright this is how it works. You will sleep in the foxholes you dig for one whole month. You will eat what I give you and trust me, they aren't good. You'll probably get a flu or some disease but nothing to big…' Everyone turned pale at his last words. He loved it when they were in shock, it was just damn funny.

'Well? What are you waiting for? Grab a shovel and start digging!'

Everyone grabbed a shovel and did just that. They were digging for hours and Ryan was sure that if he did this in the morning they wouldn't be staying up late night. The Ranger already dug his foxhole, it was the most professional he ever did and if his captain ever saw it… his captain. He was stuck in a world he didn't belong to and he wondered about his parents, about his friends and his fellow soldiers, what was going on now?

After three long hours they were done with the digging and were lying in their holes tired. Now they suddenly wanted to quit but they had their chance and now they were stuck doing hard, dirty work for a whole month. Hogwarts homework was more fun then digging holes; they would choose homework over digging holes without hesitating.

*

'No we could use their help,' said Dumbledore. 'I have already asked Dobby and he said he'll do the best he can to convince the rest of the elves.'

'If that fails?' asked Snape. 'If the elves do not wish to fight then who will help defend us against this upcoming attack? Hagrid and his pet monsters can't hold all of the Death Eaters back and the giants are now in a tight spot.'

'If that is the case then we will have to resort to…' Dumbledore trailed off. No one needed to know who they were referring to because it was quite clear. If no one would step up to defend Hogwarts than Ryan's unit would have to step up. Of course they weren't ready and an attack right now would surely surprise them. 'Minerva, tell Ryan and Harry to hurry up and train their unit. Time is of the essence.'

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Author's Note: So how you like it? Developing a bit huh? I still need reviews people! It wouldn't hurt just to review would it?