"Are - are you sure?" Dean asked, scared.
Harry shook his head to clear it, then nodded. "I just saw out of his eyes. He's torturing Dumbledore in the Great Hall, and he's laughing, even though he knows I'm not dead yet."
"We need to help him." Ron said at once.
Shepherd laughed. Everyone stared at him, some incredulously, some with undisguised dislike. "You couldn't come close to trying to kill Lord Whatsisname. Nothing short of a dozen tanks supported by innumerable heavy machine-guns could get through his defences, and I mean it. He has way too many mythical creatures in that Hall." Shepherd clarified his reasons for laughter.
"So, the Hall is steeped in mythical creatures, eh?" Hermione said suddenly, a glint in her eye. "That's a flaw in the plan. If we can't fight Voldemort directly, maybe we can do some magic to disrupt his hold on the creatures."
Harry recalled his recent mental image of the hall. The mythical creatures far outnumbered the wizards in the room. "Good idea." he and Shepherd said at exactly the same time.
"How are we gonna muck up his magic?" Ron asked.
"When we formed this room I specifically asked for volumes on magical history." Hermione said seriously. "Let's have a flick through them and see if this kind of thing has been done before, and then see if we can do anything about it."
So everybody, including the soldiers, walked up to the bookshelves and picked out a promising-looking book. They then began reading through them all. Periodically people would get up and take a different book. The books which had been read through lay discarded on the oak table, which had of course been righted since Shepherd overturned it for cover. Shepherd chain- smoked while they all read, eyes scanning book after book for any mention of wizards taking control of entire battalions of savage creatures.
When the sea of discarded books on the table was six deep, the room was like a smokehouse from Shepherd's constant puffing and the clock struck four, Brian whooped in victory.
"I think I got a winner!"
"What? What is it?" Hermione demanded, tearing the book away from him before speed-reading the two open pages.
"Sure, girly, keep it." Brian muttered.
Hermione looked devilishly happy. "Hah, this is it. It describes how in a part of the world which is now part of Germany, in 1436, the sorceress Windegelt the Worrywart invented and cast a hugely complicated spell, involving a day-long purification ritual, to indefinitely bring the creatures of her local forest under her indirect control to act as a search party for her son, who had gotten slightly lost while away on a solo hunting trip."
"Voldemort simply ripped off Windegelt's idea." observed Dean.
"Now, all these creatures, while not directly controlled by Windegelt, did exactly what she wanted them to do. They acted as a search party, and when they found her son, they did not attack him, but participated in a cumulative roar to tell Windegelt where he was. But the son got spooked by this collective yell, and he started firing his crossbow at the beasts. He slew ten of them, and still they did not fight back or stop yelling. Windegelt had mounted her broom at the start of the yelling and sped towards it. She caught sight of her son on the top of a hillock and was about to shout for him to not be frightened, when he did something which he could not have known how catastrophic it would be. He fired a crossbow bolt into the leader of the wolf-pack, an infamous wolf known as Blue Fur because of the strange midnight-blue lustre of his fur. This wolf was undoubtedly the most powerful and influential creature in all of that part of the Germanic wilderness, and because the most powerful and influential creature who had been enslaved had been slain, the magic abruptly broke. The creatures looked around at each other, realised they were standing next to their mortal enemies, and instantly attacked in a mad frenzy. Windegelt's son was also slain in this, so Windegelt committed suicide, yada yada yada. Don't you see?" Hermione cried. "All we have to do is identify the most powerful creature in the Forbidden Forest and kill it, then all the creatures in Hogwarts will kill each other and the Death Eaters, and hopefully even Voldemort!"
"No." Harry said. "Voldemort will survive. It was foretold that either I would kill him or he would kill me. There is no other way. Once all the creatures are gone, it should just be us and him, and because of the Hogwarts enchantments he won't be able to Disapparate if he suddenly starts to lose. This is the best time there will ever be for me to try and take him down. The final showdown will occur today."
"You'll have to be quite close when the monster is slain, or else Voldemort will run away before you can return to the Great Hall." Shepherd said thoughtfully.
"How do you know that this monster isn't in the room with Voldemort?" asked Dean.
"Because there weren't any really huge creatures in there." Shepherd replied. "I'm sure your Forbidden Forest must have some worse things in it than manticores."
"Do you think maybe Ronan or Bane count as powerful and influential?" Ron asked.
Hermione shook her head. "Influential, maybe, but certainly not powerful. Grawp, maybe?"
"Not even slightly influential." Harry rejected. "Oh no. I know who it is."
Ron snapped his fingers. "So do I."
"Well, who, then?" Hermione demanded.
"Aragog." Ron said grimly.
"Yep." Harry said. "Listen up, corporal. Aragog is this absolutely massive spider, with hundreds of children, that is, the giant spiders we've seen patrolling around the school. It shouldn't be too hard to find him, you just follow the spiders. He's too old to move, but all his children are mindless thugs for him."
"So to stop this Voldemort person and save England, I'm gonna have to break out of this school, get into the Forbidden Forest, find the biggest spider the world has ever seen, get through his bodyguard of dozens of huge spiders, and kill it. Then you lot are gonna have to wait for the fighting in the Hall to finish, walk in, and mop up?"
"That sounds about right." Hermione concluded.
"The main problem with this plan is that my men and I have almost no ammo, and our weapons aren't nearly big enough." Shepherd said. "Wait, what's that?"
Harry and the others turned to look at the object of Shepherd's gaze. It was a ridiculously large mound of small arms, heavy arms, explosives, and ordinance. Shepherd's jaw hung lower than a playground swing. "Evidently while we were turning around outside the door, somebody was wishing we had more guns."
"Not me." Sean piped up.
"Nor me." Brian added.
"Then it must have been colonel Black." Shepherd said indifferently. "Okay, men, load up with only the heaviest of weapons. We're gonna be killing things as big as small elephants. You, wizard-people, get near enough to the Hall that you can hear it if hundreds of magical creatures start killing each other. Possibly the fate of the world rests on our shoulders, gentlemen. Make your forefathers proud."
Everybody prepared. All the soldiers took off their bergens, and any other equipment which wasn't absolutely necessary for the impending assault. Then they loaded up with incredible amounts of firepower. Harry had taken out his wand and was doing practice flicks with it, ignoring the others, when suddenly Dean Thomas let off an entire clip of a submachine gun up and down the walls. Then he reloaded efficiently and picked up another clip from the mound. "Childhood spent playing violent computer games, a kid gets to know how to use firearms." he explained to the shocked occupants of the room. Harry carried on revising magic and helping his friends to revise.
"Just like you did in the first year, Ron; if you want to levitate something, swish and flick, swish and flick." Harry told Ron. "And don't forget Hermione's pompous correction in Charms class the week before."
"Win-GAR-dium, lev-i-O-saaaa!" Harry and Ron chorused, then laughed. Hermione's expression turned sour and she looked away.
"Oh, come off it, Hermione, you're not that self-important brat on the train telling me I had dirt on my nose anymore!" Ron soothed unsoothingly. "We like you now!"
"Hmph." Hermione responded; a thousand words couldn't have said more.
"Don't you have more important things to worry about, kiddies?" Sean snarled, trying to fit all of his equipment onto his person in a way which wouldn't result in instant medical complications. In a few minutes everyone was ready to go.
Harry shook his head to clear it, then nodded. "I just saw out of his eyes. He's torturing Dumbledore in the Great Hall, and he's laughing, even though he knows I'm not dead yet."
"We need to help him." Ron said at once.
Shepherd laughed. Everyone stared at him, some incredulously, some with undisguised dislike. "You couldn't come close to trying to kill Lord Whatsisname. Nothing short of a dozen tanks supported by innumerable heavy machine-guns could get through his defences, and I mean it. He has way too many mythical creatures in that Hall." Shepherd clarified his reasons for laughter.
"So, the Hall is steeped in mythical creatures, eh?" Hermione said suddenly, a glint in her eye. "That's a flaw in the plan. If we can't fight Voldemort directly, maybe we can do some magic to disrupt his hold on the creatures."
Harry recalled his recent mental image of the hall. The mythical creatures far outnumbered the wizards in the room. "Good idea." he and Shepherd said at exactly the same time.
"How are we gonna muck up his magic?" Ron asked.
"When we formed this room I specifically asked for volumes on magical history." Hermione said seriously. "Let's have a flick through them and see if this kind of thing has been done before, and then see if we can do anything about it."
So everybody, including the soldiers, walked up to the bookshelves and picked out a promising-looking book. They then began reading through them all. Periodically people would get up and take a different book. The books which had been read through lay discarded on the oak table, which had of course been righted since Shepherd overturned it for cover. Shepherd chain- smoked while they all read, eyes scanning book after book for any mention of wizards taking control of entire battalions of savage creatures.
When the sea of discarded books on the table was six deep, the room was like a smokehouse from Shepherd's constant puffing and the clock struck four, Brian whooped in victory.
"I think I got a winner!"
"What? What is it?" Hermione demanded, tearing the book away from him before speed-reading the two open pages.
"Sure, girly, keep it." Brian muttered.
Hermione looked devilishly happy. "Hah, this is it. It describes how in a part of the world which is now part of Germany, in 1436, the sorceress Windegelt the Worrywart invented and cast a hugely complicated spell, involving a day-long purification ritual, to indefinitely bring the creatures of her local forest under her indirect control to act as a search party for her son, who had gotten slightly lost while away on a solo hunting trip."
"Voldemort simply ripped off Windegelt's idea." observed Dean.
"Now, all these creatures, while not directly controlled by Windegelt, did exactly what she wanted them to do. They acted as a search party, and when they found her son, they did not attack him, but participated in a cumulative roar to tell Windegelt where he was. But the son got spooked by this collective yell, and he started firing his crossbow at the beasts. He slew ten of them, and still they did not fight back or stop yelling. Windegelt had mounted her broom at the start of the yelling and sped towards it. She caught sight of her son on the top of a hillock and was about to shout for him to not be frightened, when he did something which he could not have known how catastrophic it would be. He fired a crossbow bolt into the leader of the wolf-pack, an infamous wolf known as Blue Fur because of the strange midnight-blue lustre of his fur. This wolf was undoubtedly the most powerful and influential creature in all of that part of the Germanic wilderness, and because the most powerful and influential creature who had been enslaved had been slain, the magic abruptly broke. The creatures looked around at each other, realised they were standing next to their mortal enemies, and instantly attacked in a mad frenzy. Windegelt's son was also slain in this, so Windegelt committed suicide, yada yada yada. Don't you see?" Hermione cried. "All we have to do is identify the most powerful creature in the Forbidden Forest and kill it, then all the creatures in Hogwarts will kill each other and the Death Eaters, and hopefully even Voldemort!"
"No." Harry said. "Voldemort will survive. It was foretold that either I would kill him or he would kill me. There is no other way. Once all the creatures are gone, it should just be us and him, and because of the Hogwarts enchantments he won't be able to Disapparate if he suddenly starts to lose. This is the best time there will ever be for me to try and take him down. The final showdown will occur today."
"You'll have to be quite close when the monster is slain, or else Voldemort will run away before you can return to the Great Hall." Shepherd said thoughtfully.
"How do you know that this monster isn't in the room with Voldemort?" asked Dean.
"Because there weren't any really huge creatures in there." Shepherd replied. "I'm sure your Forbidden Forest must have some worse things in it than manticores."
"Do you think maybe Ronan or Bane count as powerful and influential?" Ron asked.
Hermione shook her head. "Influential, maybe, but certainly not powerful. Grawp, maybe?"
"Not even slightly influential." Harry rejected. "Oh no. I know who it is."
Ron snapped his fingers. "So do I."
"Well, who, then?" Hermione demanded.
"Aragog." Ron said grimly.
"Yep." Harry said. "Listen up, corporal. Aragog is this absolutely massive spider, with hundreds of children, that is, the giant spiders we've seen patrolling around the school. It shouldn't be too hard to find him, you just follow the spiders. He's too old to move, but all his children are mindless thugs for him."
"So to stop this Voldemort person and save England, I'm gonna have to break out of this school, get into the Forbidden Forest, find the biggest spider the world has ever seen, get through his bodyguard of dozens of huge spiders, and kill it. Then you lot are gonna have to wait for the fighting in the Hall to finish, walk in, and mop up?"
"That sounds about right." Hermione concluded.
"The main problem with this plan is that my men and I have almost no ammo, and our weapons aren't nearly big enough." Shepherd said. "Wait, what's that?"
Harry and the others turned to look at the object of Shepherd's gaze. It was a ridiculously large mound of small arms, heavy arms, explosives, and ordinance. Shepherd's jaw hung lower than a playground swing. "Evidently while we were turning around outside the door, somebody was wishing we had more guns."
"Not me." Sean piped up.
"Nor me." Brian added.
"Then it must have been colonel Black." Shepherd said indifferently. "Okay, men, load up with only the heaviest of weapons. We're gonna be killing things as big as small elephants. You, wizard-people, get near enough to the Hall that you can hear it if hundreds of magical creatures start killing each other. Possibly the fate of the world rests on our shoulders, gentlemen. Make your forefathers proud."
Everybody prepared. All the soldiers took off their bergens, and any other equipment which wasn't absolutely necessary for the impending assault. Then they loaded up with incredible amounts of firepower. Harry had taken out his wand and was doing practice flicks with it, ignoring the others, when suddenly Dean Thomas let off an entire clip of a submachine gun up and down the walls. Then he reloaded efficiently and picked up another clip from the mound. "Childhood spent playing violent computer games, a kid gets to know how to use firearms." he explained to the shocked occupants of the room. Harry carried on revising magic and helping his friends to revise.
"Just like you did in the first year, Ron; if you want to levitate something, swish and flick, swish and flick." Harry told Ron. "And don't forget Hermione's pompous correction in Charms class the week before."
"Win-GAR-dium, lev-i-O-saaaa!" Harry and Ron chorused, then laughed. Hermione's expression turned sour and she looked away.
"Oh, come off it, Hermione, you're not that self-important brat on the train telling me I had dirt on my nose anymore!" Ron soothed unsoothingly. "We like you now!"
"Hmph." Hermione responded; a thousand words couldn't have said more.
"Don't you have more important things to worry about, kiddies?" Sean snarled, trying to fit all of his equipment onto his person in a way which wouldn't result in instant medical complications. In a few minutes everyone was ready to go.