In Every Darkness
Chapter Sixty: Attack At Durmstrang
2.10.1996
As they made the lake, Harry turned to see students pouring from the doors into the mountain side, there were quite a few of them, more than there were at Hogwarts.
At the same time, someone called from within the group at the ships with Harry, "the Death Eaters have been spotted. There's about twenty of them, with quite a lot of Dementors."
"Stay close," Tatsu ordered Harry. "We'll like as not have to fight to get the students away, but Harry – when they get on the ships, one member of the Order of the Phoenix will be on each ship. I want you to go with them."
"But!" Harry protested.
"No buts, Harry. I don't want you to have to kill again so soon. You'll see a bit of fighting, I think, just getting them as far as the ships, and so you'll do your bit," Tatsu replied sternly. "I also don't want you getting killed or captured, which could happen, and you know it."
"I know, Tatsu. Very well, I'll go with the others when the ships leave," Harry said heavily.
"Good lad," Tatsu replied, smiling slightly. "You'll see your fare share of battles, I'm sure, in the next few years, don't try to fight too much, or you'll become no better than those you fight with."
Harry nodded wordlessly. He understood why he had to leave, but he still felt resentful that he couldn't do more to help, when he was ready and willing to do so.
The first of the students reached them. There were teachers with them also, who seemed to know exactly what they were doing, shooing the students aboard ships this way and that.
Harry quickly focused his attention on the grounds as he entered his Centre, he was keeping an eye out for anyone coming towards them. Suddenly he saw something, one of the Order members on the wall tumbled over backwards.
"At the wall," he called out softly. Immediately, people focused their attention there, as Harry turned the other way to make sure no one was coming from that direction.
"Death Eaters!" someone else called. "With Dementors."
Harry fingered his wand, and noted that most of the other people in the group were doing the same, ready for anything. The group spread out to surround the area of ground before the ships, wands drawn and at the ready.
"Everyone who can, cast a Patronus now!" Tatsu yelled suddenly as a cold feeling swept over the grounds, a signal that Dementors were near by.
Harry raised his wand, along with many others, and yelled out, "Expecto Patronum!" his voice mingling with those of his companions.
Harry blinked his eyes to clear them as the grounds were lit up brilliantly by the light of the many Patroni that raced across them towards the Deaths Eaters and their Dementor allies.
He glanced behind him, noting that about half of the students were now aboard the ships. The Death Eaters were heading straight for Harry and his companions.
"Wait for it!" Tatsu called softly, though everyone in the group heard him easily. The Death Eaters came closer, wands raised, expressions hidden by silver masks.
He could hear them sniggering slightly, they were looking forward to the discord they were about to create. A fresh wave of hate for everything the Death Eaters stood for washed over Harry.
"Wait for it," Tatsu repeated. The Death Eaters were raising their wands now, ready to attack.
"First rank, shields up! Second rank, stun 'em!" Tatsu called, making sure that his voice didn't carry as far as the Death Eaters.
It was only then that Harry really noticed that the Order of the Phoenix wizards and witches were in a formation. He and Tatsu were in second rank.
Harry whipped his wand up, "stupefy," he murmured, and a beam of red light shot from his wand, hitting one of the Death Eaters.
"Good shot," muttered Tatsu.
"Gryfas! There are more coming from behind you!" Grypis's voice came in Harry's mind. "I'm above you in eagle shape, and there are ten invisible Death Eaters coming up!"
"Tatsu, there are invisible Death Eaters to the left," Harry hissed in his guardians ear. "Grypis can see them." He'd told his guardian about the bond that he and Grypis shared a while ago, when he'd realised that it could come in useful like this.
"Slip over to the side and deal with them, if you can – you'll be able to tell where they are," Tatsu hissed in response.
"Grypis?" Harry asked.
"Over to the left, now raise your wand to chest hight, over to the left a little stun!"
"Stupefy," Harry whispered, and was rewarded with a cry of surprise and the thunking sound of someone hitting the ground. The rest of the Death Eaters let the Invisibility charms go, thinking that they weren't working.
"Stun 'em!" Tatsu yelled, and immediately the other four were down. "Good going kid," he added to Harry, as the boy turned up at his side again. "It looks like the Death Eaters won't be getting close enough to do anything – there aren't enough of them. Go to the ship now, the first one. The woman Katharine is there."
For a second Harry hesitated, still wanting to stay and help, but then he nodded and hurried towards the ships, where Katharine beckoned him.
Scampering easily up the gangplank, he was quickly shooed by a Durmstrang teacher into one of the cabins, where there were several students sitting looking glum.
Harry took a seat in here. "Hello," he said, wondering if they spoke English.
"You are from Hogwarts?" one of them, a girl, asked Harry. Her voice was unaccented English. "Are you still a student?"
"Yeah," Harry replied. "I'm in my sixth year now."
"Why did they let you come here?" the girl asked him.
"Because it was me that found out about the attack, on Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. I want to learn to fight the Death Eaters properly, because I'll need to know everything I can … I'm Harry Potter," he held out a hand for her to shake.
She took it, with a slight smile. "Victor Krum spoke highly of you," she told him. "I hoped I'd be able to meet you some day. I couldn't care less for fame – I've known a few famous people, most of them are bigheaded. But Victor liked you, so I knew you must be ok."
"Do these guys speak English?" Harry asked.
"Nope. My father was English, he taught me how to speak the language when I was growing up."
"So, what's your name?"
"Lily Adams," the girl replied. "Hold on to something, the whirlpools about to start."
Harry was about to ask what she meant, even as he grabbed onto the hand holds on either side of his seat, when the entire boats started to rock and shake and buck. Harry held on grimly, seeking the Centre to calm himself.
From within his Centre, Harry's body was one with the ship, and he quickly let go of the hand holds, letting his body rock to the ships dance, hardly noticing the amazed looks he was getting from his cabin mates.
"Wow," Lily breathed. "How do you do that?"
"It's part of my fighting training," Harry was unwilling to speak of this, even to one who seemed so friendly, since he wasn't sure if it was supposed to be secret or not.
"Ok. Maybe I can learn that – it looks fun."
"It's hard," Harry told her.
One of the other students turned to Lily and gabbled something in Bulgarian at her. She answered in the same language as Harry looked on, wondering what they were talking about.
"I just told them who you were, and what you said about being able to move with the ship," Lily told Harry.
"Ah, ok," Harry replied. Suddenly the ship calmed.
"We're here," Lily said, opening the cabin door. Their cabin mates staggered passed, looking a bit sick. Lily didn't seem to have fared any worse than Harry, and she shook back waves of raven-wing black hair.
Outside, Harry could indeed see the familiar sights of the Hogwarts school grounds. "It's beautiful," breathed Lily.
Harry smiled in pride for his school. "Come on, looks like we can get to shore now," he remarked. Sitting on the edge of the lake was Grypis, in cat form now.
"Pretty cat," Lily remarked, smiling. "Is it a school cat?"
"No, he's mine. I call him Gryphon," Harry replied. The moment the gang plank was lowered, Grypis was shooting up it, leaping to Harry's shoulder.
Harry swayed slightly so that he didn't fall over with the sudden extra weight. "You look used to that," Lily laughed, as they made their way down the gang plank.
"I am," Harry replied dryly. "He's been with me since July, and he has been sitting up there for the entire time I've owned him."
The front doors of the school opened and McGonagall walked out onto the grounds. "Welcome to Hogwarts!" she called, her voice magically magnified. "Please, come inside, we'll try to make you as comfortable as possible."
To Harry's surprise, all of the Durmstrang students seemed to understand her, even the ones who Lily had said didn't speak English.
"It's a very complicated spell, but if you know more than one language, say English and Bulgarian, you can charm your voice so that when you speak to a gathering, the people who speak English can hear you speaking English, and the people who speak Bulgarian can hear you speaking Bulgarian," Lily told Harry, when she noticed his surprised look.
"You sound like a friend of mine, Hermione Granger," Harry remarked, smiling slightly.
"Your girlfriend?" Lily enquired.
"No, we've been friends since first year, but I think she and my friend Ron like each other … They argue so much that it's hard to tell though," Harry replied.
"Ok. So where are we supposed to go?"
"The Great hall, I suppose," Harry
replied, leading the way. Lily walked by his side, and everyone else followed
them. "So, what year are you in?" He asked his companion.
"Sixth," she replied. "Or, what would be sixth for you, we start a year later, and end a year later."
"Ok, so you're sixteen?"
"Yup. Turned sixteen on August the first."
"Your birthday's the day after mine," Harry remarked in surprise.
"Is it really? That's cool," Lily grinned. "Hey, this place looks even better on the inside!" she looked around Hogwarts with nothing short of amazement.
"It's a nice place," Harry agreed. "In here," he steered her through the doors into the Great Hall. The entire school was standing up to welcome the Durmstrang students.
Harry received a slight shock, because the Hall was a lot bigger than it usually was, and the tables were bigger than usual as well. "This is different," he remarked. "Normally it's a lot smaller – I guess it's become you're here, and Beauxbatons is coming."
"Probably, Durmstrang does that," Lily said, nodding.
"Again, welcome to Hogwarts. Please seat yourselves at a table and make yourselves comfortable. The Beauxbatons students will be arriving shortly, I'm sure," McGonagall said, walking in behind the last of the Durmstrang students and closing the doors behind her.
"You were a friend of Victor Krum's?" Harry asked, as he and Lily headed towards Gryffindor table, along with several other Durmstrang students. Malfoy looked disappointed that more didn't come to the Slytherin table.
"I'm his second cousin, actually," Lily replied, shrugging. "We grew up close to one another, we've always been fairly good friends."
"My friend Ron will like you then – he loves Quidditch," Harry grinned.
"Hi Harry," Hermione greeted him with a faint smile. Harry's heart sank – he'd forgotten about telling his friends that'd he'd killed someone.
"Ron's up in the Room of Requirement," Hermione told him. "He's worried about you – you didn't tell us you were leaving." She sounded slightly chiding.
"Um, Hermione, this is Lily Adams, she's Victor Krum's cousin, one of the Durmstrang students," Harry said, changing the subject.
"Nice to meet you," Hermione said, holding out a hand to shake Lily's. "You seem to have a bit of an entourage," she nodded to the students following Lily's example and sitting down around the Gryffindor table.
"I know," Lily replied with a sigh. "I'm quite popular at Durmstrang, being Krum's second cousin. We go a lot of blood ties, but I've never really understood it."
Harry turned for a moment to glance out of the window to see if the Beauxbatons students were coming yet. What he saw made him give a horse cry of shock, as he leapt to his feet, hand racing to his wand.
***
Nice place to end, don't you think? I didn't give you MUCH of a cliffie last time, so I thought I'd make up for it in this chapter! Review please, tell me what you think! I'll update sometime after I've got forty one reviews (that means I'll be on 2520). Thanks!
~WolfMoon~