Aidan woke up the following morning in the hospital wing. He could hardly remember the events of the previous night; he could only concentrate on the aches in his body.
Harry and Ron lay on either side of Aidan. Ron looked the worst off. His arm was in a sling and a black eye occupied much of his face. If Aidan hadn't known better, for the red-head was drawing deep, rattling breaths, he would have thought that Ron was surely dead.
He then looked at Harry, who looked just simply asleep, but in a very discomforting sleep. Aidan could have sworn that he saw Harry wince once or twice, and he kept flinging his head from side to side.
"Ah, you're up are you?" said a voice. Aidan looked up and saw Madam Pomfrey hovering over him, holding a thermometer and a potion. "Drink," she ordered, and he did. The oily potion slid down his throat and he gagged, but Pomfrey held him down to keep him from retching and took his temperature. "Hurry, now and get back up to your dormitory to pack. The Hogwarts Express should be leaving in a few hours. Get up, now."
Aidan stared in disbelief. Voldemort had been captured, had he not? He stood in the hospital wing for a full minute in protest before Madam Pomfrey shooed him away so she could tend to Harry, Ron, and Malfoy (Snape had already been reawakened and left).
The trip to Gryffindor Tower was the longest it had ever been. Hogwarts was his favorite place, and he couldn't continue his training locked up in a mansion with only his parents and the Daily Prophet news articles for company.
He stepped into the common room to find just about everyone waiting there with his or her things packed. People looked at him sadly as he walked up to the boys' dormitories. When he stepped into the bedroom, he found that Ron's, Harry's, his and Neville's things had not been packed. Seamus and Dean's beds were both bare and their things (West Ham poster and all) had been packed. Where was Neville though?
When his things were all packed, he hauled his trunk down the steps and sat down next to Ginny, who looked extremely forlorn. "Ginny, why so glum?" he asked sympathetically.
"You haven't heard?" she answered, looking up at him with he tear-filled eyes.
"What… what happened? Is Ron okay, I saw him the hospital wing, but he was breathing right?"
"No, Aidan, it's not that. It's just that—" she faltered "—oh Aidan, Neville's—Neville is dead."
Aidan stared at her. Surely his ears were deceiving him. He had never seen Neville near the Great Hall at all last night. Surely it was a mistake. "You're not serious?"
"He… he was up at the Astronomy Tower, with…with Eloise Midgen. A Death Eater went up there and…"
Aidan put an arm around her soothingly. He had never seen Ginny this upset, or any of the other Gryffindor's for that matter. He looked around the crowded common room to see that most of the girls were crying and the boys were staring at nothing in particular, fighting the urge to cry themselves. Aidan realized that there could have been no way that everyone had hated Neville, or perhaps it was the thought that a Gryffindor had been slain.
Aidan hung his head as well. Neville had always been kind to him. He said a quick prayer before getting up and pacing the room. He had nothing better to do. He thought, thought for a long time. His perfect world that he had wished himself into was crashing down around him. But why did he make his wish? He knew things were going to get bad for Harry and his friends after he had read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but he never really considered the fact that his wish would actually come true.
~*~*~*~*~*~
"I understand that Marc, but we must get proper security at all necessary locations!" Sam was talking rapidly to Marc Rosier. Rosier was flat out refusing to sign a security bill that Sam was proposing.
"Sam, I hardly think that we should cast these spells on each individual Hogwarts student's homes."
"Marc, these are some of the brightest students Hogwarts has ever turned out. If the majority of them are dead, we are losing a valuable weapon!" he nearly screamed, he was so outraged.
"And what pray tell would that be?"
"New magic! For Pete's sake man, what have I been telling you all along! The only way we can defeat this—this thing— is to train more and more young witches and wizards for defense, for battle. You-Know-Who has to be going on sixty-eight. New innovative minds are creating new innovative spells, and who better to perform them but new innovative wizards!"
"I really see where you are coming from, Sam, but it simply can't be done."
"We'll see," Sam snarled. "I told you when I first met you that if you wouldn't help the community I would. Good day to you."
~*~*~*~*~*~
The ride on the Hogwarts Express was the quietest it had ever been. Without Ron, Harry or Leigh, there wasn't a remote chance that anything exciting would even be attempted. Hermione was studying (though her book was upside-down, so perhaps she was grieving) and Ginny had reverted back to being shy and quiet.
A trickle of fear still slid through Aidan's thoughts. If Voldemort had been captured the night previous, and yet they were still being sent home, that could only mean that there were still some extremely powerful Death Eaters about, or the chance of Voldemort escaping was extremely high. Aidan decided on the latter. Harry couldn't kill Voldemort yet, so he still had his powers intact, and he would have a greater chance of escaping.
Aidan was so lost in thought that he hardly noticed that the train had arrived at Platform 9 ¾. He jumped when Ginny prodded him in the shoulder, but muttered thanks when he realized that they had stopped.
Sam and Jennifer were waiting among the subdued crowd of parents that had come to get their children. Aidan walked over to them slowly, dragging his trunk along. They gathered him into a group hug when he came near enough. He stood there for a long time, not caring if people thought he was weird, he just needed to be with his parents that moment.
But when he pulled away, he saw almost everyone on the platform acting the same way. The Patil twins were sobbing quietly and who was there of the Weasley family were all gathered into an extremely large five-person group hug.
Sam insisted on using Travel Tonic on the way home because of all the work he had to do. This left Aidan feeling extremely sick and he needed a Pick-Me-Up Potion to get his senses back together. After this though, Aidan retreated to his room. It was nice to sit on his very comfortable bed (the sheets were now a deep royal blue) and stare up at the ceiling. The trip had taken a lot out of him (but that he didn't realize) and before he knew it he drifted off to sleep.
~* Aidan stood that the end of a diving board. This was odd, because Aidan had only been swimming once in his life and he had never used the diving board before. This diving board, however, was twenty feet long, and Aidan was wearing, he noticed, a pair of swimming trunks that reached to the middle of his calves.
Upon realizing that it was stupid to be on the board in the first place, he went to get off of it, but his feet wouldn't budge. A cold, high-pitched laugh rang through the summer air and he whirled around. Standing at the other end of the fifty meter pool was a tall, masked figure holding what looked like a frail girl. The girl was not solid though, it was just her silhouette the figure was holding. Leigh.
Aidan wanted to jump off the board to save her, but when he bounced, his feet still wouldn't move. The figure laughed again. "She's dying, O'Reilly. She's nearly there. Almost dead," it said.
Aidan groped for his wand, but there were no pockets in his overlarge swimsuit. "Give her back!" was all he could say.
"It's not that easy, you see. She's mine. You'll have to fight." The figure then waved it's wand and Aidan felt as though twenty pounds of concrete had just been drilled off of his feet. "Jump, go ahead. Come and get her. Three…"
Aidan could see no other way out. "Two…" He was poised to jump. He bounced up and down. Just as he was about to hit the water, it changed. It was no longer icy blue, but it was now a sickly green, with grindylows, mermaids and all sorts of creatures that looked more than capable of death. He couldn't stop. "One…" ~*
Aidan woke in a cold sweat. It had only been a dream. Only a dream, he had to keep reminding himself. Yet there was still the underlying premonition that Leigh was in fact dying. He hadn't been in contact with her since her last letter, and if the Death Eaters were rallying because Voldemort had been captured… he shuddered to think what they could have done to her.
Jennifer came in a second later looking startled. "Aidan, are you alright, honey?"
"Yea, Mum, why?" he asked, puzzled.
"Well, you were screaming."
"I was?" He didn't remember screaming.
Jennifer looked at Aidan curiously. "You don't remember? Maybe we should take you to the medi-witch."
"No, Mum, I'm fine. I just had a bad dream."
"Okay, dear. I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything." She went back downstairs and once he made sure that her footsteps were long gone he scurried to his desk for parchment. He scrawled hurriedly and blotted the page twice, but his message was clear:
Send word that you're okay, ASAP.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Harry hadn't been sent home. Now, it seemed that Dumbledore thought it safer for him at Hogwarts, and he had to complete his training as soon as possible. Without more than a day to recover from the ordeal, he was set to work again, but this time, with no other classes to disturb him, Harry spent nearly all of his hours in one of the dungeons with Dumbledore to practice. Harry was surprised at how much progress he was making and before he knew it he was up to some of the more difficult spells.
Dumbledore looked wearier than ever, which sort of scared Harry. Dumbledore had always been the fearless—yet sometimes quirky—leader. Harry had never seen Dumbledore act as though all had been lost, but that's what appeared in his eyes every time they met with Harry's.
Nonetheless, Dumbledore's passion for teaching Harry never ceased. Once Harry had mastered a fairly difficult spell, the Red-Hot Hand Spell, Harry could have sworn he caught a glimpse of the fire in Dumbledore's eyes. This drove Harry to work harder so that he could restore the hope in Dumbledore.
He thought he had finally achieved that one day. Dumbledore actually laughed when Harry had mastered the Coma Spell. Harry even smiled, but the next day Dumbledore appeared extremely tired once again. This was no doubt brought on by the news of Voldemort's escape.
The new prison had been set up in Edinburgh, but no one could kill Voldemort. He had escaped, of course, killing the dozen or so wizards guarding his vault. Dumbledore went to work pushing harder and harder on Harry, and Harry wanted to improve. The sadder Dumbledore looked, the more Harry wanted to kill Voldemort and avenge all of the death and destruction he had caused.