I seem to take a long time between chapters. Sorry. Life is insane. My class is almost over and everything is coming to a head. Time is of the essence.

"Take her to her room and keep an eye on her." Harry whispered into Quentin's ear.

Quentin nodded solemnly and gripped Ginny lightly by the shoulders. She turned when he applied pressure, but it was only a motor reflex. Ginny's eyes stared straight forward and her mouth was slightly open. Her face was fixed with a dumbfounded expression. She hadn't said a word since the explosion in the woods.

Quentin led her slowly towards the trap-door and lifted her up in his massive arms when they came to the stairs. Throughout this, Ginny's face never changed.

Harry sighed heavily and laid his head on the stone railing of the ancient tower. He wanted to follow Ginny. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to hold her and talk to her until her pain was subdued.

But he couldn't leave this fucking tower. This is my place, Harry though grimly. This is my duty.

"Is she going to be OK?" Ron asked from Harry's side. Harry turned to look his tall friend in the face. Ron had been the rock in Harry's life for so long that it pained Harry to see him broken. The pain from the twin's death was plain on Ron's handsome face and there were streaks running down his face from when he had cried. Hermione stood next to him support him with an arm around his waist.

Harry ran a hand though his hair. It fell back into his eyes when he let was done. It was well past time to get it cut, Harry thought distractedly.

"Harry? Is Ginny going to be OK?" Ron asked again.

"I don't know, Ron." Harry said quietly. "She's been hit pretty bad by…what's happened? She needs a little time."

Ron's face crumpled and a fresh tear trickled down his face. His breathing became ragged and Harry looked away, not wanting to see Ron suffer. Down in the battlefield, Neville's medics ran from body to body, searching for those that could still be saved. Neville was easily identifiable by the massive, red, gold-trimmed cross on the back of his robes. Harry could hear Neville's voice echo across the courtyard. Neville voice which had always been tweedy and slightly annoying, boomed with authority as he commanded his medics. Neville's troops obeyed quickly and without question, running from crater to crater applying bandages, casting spells and distributing healing potions.

"War makes men of us all." Harry whispered.

"What did you say, Harry?" Hermione asked from below Ron's arm. The bond between her and Ron was easy to see by the look of pain on her face. Hermione had known and loved the twins and with her sadness added to Ron's own, it must have nearly unbearable.

"Nothing." Harry answered.

"What are we going to do?" Hermione asked, her voice tinged with pain and desperation. "They're just going to keep coming. We're all too tired to hold out much longer."

Harry didn't have an answer. Things were falling apart. They had defended against wave upon wave of Voldemort's forces, but they seemed without number. The wizards on the towers were getting tired and the defense had fallen mainly on the shoulders of Ron's Sentinels. And even the Sentinels with their supernatural stamina and strength were getting tired. This was easy to see but the number of human bodies piled in the courtyard. Neville and his medics were doing their best to heal as many as possible, but the death toll was growing.

Harry felt rudderless. He had been put in charge because he was destined to face Voldemort to the death. But here, in this tower, he felt useless. Something wasn't right. This isn't the way it is supposed to be, he thought grimly.

He forced a small smile onto his face. "We'll go on as we have. That's all we can do."

Ron leaned over and gripped the stone railing. "Fred and George…I wish they were here. They never let themselves get beaten down."

Harry chuckled. "Yeah…they'd crack a joke and have us all laughing. They'd make us forget we were in any trouble."

Ron and Hermione smiled simultaneously but their smiles quickly faded into grimaces. Ron's hands tightened on the railing. "Voldemort…that bastard killed my brothers." There was a sharp crack and Harry could see fractures running through the stone under Ron's hands.

Harry laid a hand on Ron's shoulders. "No sense in doing Voldemort's work for him. This tower has to hold."

Ron smiled again, but it was sardonic. "He will pay, Harry. I'll kill him if I have to do it myself."

Harry nodded and was going to respond with words of encouragement, but an inhuman scream rang across the field around the castle. It was a scream of agony. It had originated from the woods just beyond the tower's wand range.

"What was that?" Ron asked.

"Sounded like a troll." Hermione said, squinting into the distance.

There were more screams and another wave of giants and trolls came steaming out of the woods.

"Here they come again." Ron whispered.

"Look at them!" Hermione said as the monsters charged the walls. "They're terrified!"

It was true. Even at this distance Harry could sees the looks of fear on the giants' faces. It clicked into place in Harry head. "Voldemort is driving them out."

"What?" Ron asked, not understanding.

"We've killed enough of them to make them scared of these walls." Harry said. "But Voldemort is killing them until they're more scared of him than they are of us."

Ron snorted and pulled the great sword from his back. "Now he's doing our work for us." He grabbed Hermione around the waist and leaped off of the tower. Harry looked over the railing and saw them falling. They fell quickly, but it was close to a two hundred fall. This was the tallest tower in Hogwarts and the fall would kill anyone, even the other Sentinels, but Ron landed and rolled, cradling Hermione in his arms, protecting her from the ground. Ron completed the roll and released Hermione in the same motion. With a scream of rage, he charged the beasts.

There was similar scream from far to Harry's right and Ron's Sentinels jumped from their tower. They fell in waves, so as not to land on each other and when they recovered, they formed ranks quickly.

Ron reached the giants well before any of the others. Ron had cut down enough of their brethren for them to not know who he was on sight. They charged tentatively and brandished their rusty swords and war hammers hesitantly.

Ron leaped among the monsters gleefully. With a great over sweep, he cleaved a troll from neck to groin. He wrenched his sword free and decapitated another. While he barely stood as high as a giant's knee, they backed away in fear. Ron took advantage of their fear and met them head-on.

Ron leaped from a giant's foot to his knee to his shoulder and finished him with a deep cut to the throat. He is so fast, Harry thought.

The battle didn't last much longer. The rest of the Sentinels joined in and the monsters were mowed down. For the first skirmish in while, the Sentinels didn't lose a man or woman. Harry thanked the powers that be for that. Watching a man or woman go instantly insane when their loved one died was not a pretty sight.

Joseph Dent, who led the group of Sentinels from the other tower grabbed Ron by the shoulder and turned him violently. Dent proceeded to scream and make harsh gestures in Ron's direction. He's trying to make Ron more cautious, Harry thought. Ron had leaped from an insane height to challenge no less than thirty giants and trolls all by himself. Dent was no doubt trying to make Ron see the error in such actions. Ron merely stared back at Dent and walked away when the older man was finished. Harry doubted that the speech had much of an effect. Ron had already been more than half-mad when it came to battle, and since the death of his brothers he had only become more so.

Ron came back to tower using the stairs. No even Ron could have merely jumped from the ground to the top of the tower. He pushed open the trapdoor and stuck his head in with a smile. "We didn't lose a single warrior! Maybe things are starting to perk up."

Ron was proven wrong less than an hour later. It was a harsh lesson.

Quentin pushed the trapdoor open violently and climbed through the portal, breathing hard.

"What is it, Quent." Harry asked

"It's…Ginny." He said taking massive breaths in between each breath. "She's…gone."

"What?" Ron screamed

Quentin collapsed to the ground. He had evidently run all the way up the ancient stairs. It was quite a climb.

"I told you to watch her!" Harry yelled.

"She wouldn't let me!" Quentin wheezed back. "You told me to take her to her room, remember. But on the way she made us stop in some side room. She said she would rather stay there. I checked the room out. It was some dirty, old classroom. But it had a couch and I figured she would like to sleep on it. She wouldn't let me stay in the room. She said something about how a girl needs her privacy. So I stood outside the door. I checked on her every fifteen minutes or so and the last time I did, she wasn't there!"

"We have to find her." Harry muttered. What was she doing? They didn't have time for this crap.

"What floor were you on when she made you stop?" Hermione asked.

Quentin turned his head slightly, his expression puzzled. "Third, I think."

"Oh, shit!" Hermione yelled covering her face with her hands.

"What is it, Herm?" Ron asked, worried.

"Room 215, right?" she asked Quentin.

"Yeah." Quentin responded, still dumfounded.

Hermione turned to Harry. "At some point long before we came to this school, some students decided that they would like to visit Hogsmeade on there own. Without school permission. So they sneaked into an old, retired class room and knocked a hole in the wall behind an old tapestry. The hole is right above a sloping rooftop. From the rooftop, it's an easy climb to the ground. The walls are covered in thick vines."

"What the hell are you talking about, Hermione?" Harry asked. What does this have to do with Ginny?"

"That's the room Ginny was in. She must have known about it. It's mainly used by students who want to get off school property to meet their boyfriend or girlfriend."

"How do you know about it?" Ron asked a small smile on his face.

"I overheard some seventh-years talking about last year. Ginny must have found out like that."

"Why the hell would Ginny want to get off if school property?" Ron asked.

Suddenly, Harry understood what Hermione was hinting at. He looked toward the thick, dark forest. "Voldemort's out there."

"So?" Ron asked, still puzzled. "That's one more reason for her to not to want to go out there!"

"She's going to try and kill him." Harry whispered.

"Revenge for the twins." Hermione said.

Ron's eyes widened. "Oh, God! She'll be killed for sure! We've got to catch up with her."

Harry nodded, glad to finally have something to do. He was sick with worry for Ginny, but this was finally something he could do with his owns hands. Commanding an army wasn't the most gratifying thing for him. "Quent, find Draco. I'm sure he'll want to come along. I think he's helping with the wounded. Ron, tell Dent that he's in command until we get back. We'll meet by the east garden in ten minutes."

Everyone scattered and Harry looked to the woods, his face filled with worry. "What are you doing, Gin?" he whispered.

((()))

Ginny trotted steadily through the thick woods. A low branch slapped her face, but she paid it no mind even when the blood began falling into her eye. There was only one thing to and everything else was nothing. Voldemort would die. He had killed her brothers. That bastard would suffer before he died.

OK, OK maybe one or two more. Ginny's off to kill Voldemort and the rest of the gang has to try and stop her before she gets herself into big trouble. It's going to happen. A great meeting between The Dark Wiz and the Boy Wonder.