Heaven Tastes Sweeter
Chapter Eighteen
Staying hidden behind a bench wasn't the best thing one could do whilst in the middle of a battle. Specially when all one wanted to do was run as fast as possible in the opposite direction.
Pansy was trying to convince herself that panicking right at that moment wasn't the smartest thing when she heard a boom coming from the gate that gave access to Hogwarts' grounds.
"Oh by the love of Merlin! They've blown up the whole thing!" Pansy heard Sonia say loudly. Pansy didn't even bother to tell her to be quiet. She was too busy seeing the huge amount of Death Eaters finally breaking an entry.
There had to be hundreds of them. Hundreds of Death Eaters against a school full of students. Alright, Hogwarts had a thousand students, some of them quite proficient in the magic arts but, those thousand students, not even with the help from the teachers, were a fair match against the well prepared and trained Death Eaters.
The students also had an additional handicap: they couldn't use the unforgivables. There had been a very heated discussion over this issue and, ultimately, the front against their use had won the debate.
Whereas Pansy understood their point of view and, to a certain point, agreed that using the unforgivables would mean that they were no better than the Death Eaters, Pansy also thought that if her survival depended on the use of one of the three forbidden curses, she would not hesitate to use them.
Right now though, she had to concentrate and hope that their plan would work and that the ambush that Sonia, Goyle and her had prepared would buy them enough time to run to their next hiding place where they would prepare another ambush.
Venturing a quick look, Pansy saw that the first line of defence was already holding up quite precariously. Soon some of them would be too exhausted or too badly hurt to carry on. Having experienced them on her own skin, she could recognise the sound of the cutting curses that the Death Eaters were using.
"Oh my…they're using the Cruciatus!" Sonia exclaimed with a voice full of fear. Pansy took a look at Goyle and saw that the big young man's eyes had widened so much that his eyeballs seemed to want to come out.
"Okay guys…we know what to do…let's not panic…okay?" Pansy said thinking that she probably needed to follow her own advice more than anyone else.
Right as she was saying that, the first defence line started breaking up as some students were falling onto the ground.
Pansy heard Hermione's voice shouting:
"Everybody: retreat! Take cover wherever you can!"
The Gryffindor, instead of following her own orders, crouched near one of the students trying to pull the body up.
Pansy saw that the student was Ronald Weasley and by the looks of it, Weasley had some serious trouble standing up.
"Pansy…they're coming…" Sonia whispered panicky.
Right at the same moment, Pansy, Sonia and Goyle jumped up, wands at the ready, pointed at the first target they could find and shouted:
"Expelliarmus!"
Then, also at the same time, they shouted three different hexes. Each one of them using the one that were best at. Pansy used the cutting curse she had been practicing getting her Death Eater to scream loudly while bringing both his hands up his stomach to clutch the deep cut Pansy's curse had produced.
Not looking back, Pansy started to run up the grounds hoping they would get behind one of the walls in the school's quads.
She was almost there when she heard a scream. It was Sonia's voice.
Turning round, she saw that her friend was on the ground. Looking for Goyle, Pansy felt relieved that the sturdy Slytherin was already behind the wall. Goyle was very fast for someone as big as him.
Pansy had to face the dilemma of whether to seek cover for herself or try to help her friend. Without time to think, she decided to do a very un-Slytherin thing and started running back to where Sonia was.
Pulling her up from the ground Pansy realised that Sonia had been hit by a Blasting Curse. It had very obviously not been a direct hit, otherwise Sonia would have been very badly injured. Nonetheless, the poor girl was in some serious pain.
Pansy was starting to drag her towards the wall where Goyle was when, suddenly, the young man shouted:
"Watch out!"
For some reason, Pansy decided to duck taking both Sonia and herself down to the ground.
The red lightning coming from the Stunning curse hit the stony wall dangerously close to where Goyle was.
Pansy released Sonia from her grip and, taking a firm grip on her wand, turned round as quickly as possible. Pansy was about to shout the disarming charm when she saw her target's face.
"Edgar!" Sonia, voiced her very thoughts. She sounded alarmingly weak and Pansy knew that unless her best friend was given some help soon, she would pass out.
"Sonia? What are you doing here?" Edgar said looking quite surprised.
"She attends Hogwarts, remember?" Pansy said still not trusting him enough to lower her wand.
"Ah…but it's the lovely Miss Parkinson…you know, you've caused loads of trouble in the Scarborough castle...Zabini's here, I'm sure he'll be pleased to find you…" Edgar said with a vicious voice very unlike the kind tone he had used two years before but, then, Edgar had been trying to get her attention.
"Edgar…we're your friends…for Merlin's sake, we've known each other forever…" Sonia said trying to stand up. She managed to do so only by leaning onto Pansy for support.
"Sonia…you've been misled…she and her traitor of a boyfriend have no idea of the kind of power that the Dark Arts give to you…the Dark Lord will bring prosperity to our world…"
"Ha! Is that what he's been telling you!" Pansy said.
"Edgar, it's you who's being misled…the Dark Lord only wants power for himself…" Sonia said trying to ignore the pain.
"You're wrong! You're so wrong! The Dark Arts are the future, not the nonsense they're teaching you here!"
Then, something happened, Goyle, obviously seeing that the Death Eater was distracted by the conversation, suddenly decided to throw a Stunning curse.
Edgar, caught unprepared, fell onto the ground with one loud thud.
"EDGAR!" Sonia shouted.
"Come on!" Goyle shouted running towards the two girls.
"Let's go Sonia…hurry!" Pansy said feeling very sorry for her friend, "We can do nothing for him!"
"But…" Sonia said weakly.
"Sonia, he's one of them now…he could have killed us! We've got to go now…" Pansy said while dragging her trying to follow Goyle in a crazy race to Merlin knew where.
The whole school's ground was covered by Death Eaters, students and teachers. Everyone was more or less engaged in the dozens of fights spread all over the place. Chaos was beginning to reign and Pansy grew more and more afraid that soon, she would have difficulties making out the enemy amongst the messy crowd.
Finally, they made it to one of the external corridors where a group of students were gathered. One of them was Hermione Granger.
"Pansy! What's wrong with her?" the Gryffindor said seeing Sonia being half dragged.
"They hit her with a Blasting course…she's in a lot of pain…" Pansy replied.
"Well, join the club…" Ron Weasley said weakly from his sitting position against one of the walls.
Pansy suddenly noticed two adults that weren't any of the teachers.
"I thought that no aurors would come to help…" Pansy said to Hermione.
"We're not aurors…we're Bill and Charlie Weasley…our mother has sent us here to help…" one of the two men said.
Pansy was going to say something but the sound of rushed steps interrupted her.
"Alright, the younger students are safe, for now…we've gathered as many sixth and fifth years as we've been able to find…"
That was one of the Weasley's twins, Pansy, of course, couldn't tell who of the two this one was.
"Hermione, things aren't looking pretty…Remus has told us to tell you to find a safe place for the wounded…" said the other twin.
"Oh…so much for our plan of staying in groups…" Hermione said, probably more to herself than to anybody in particular
"Miss Granger, we'll need to take them to the infirmary…" Professor Sprout said speaking from the side of one of the wounded students. The Herbology teacher was trying her best to heal the major wounds but, even if doing her best, she clearly wasn't doing enough.
Hermione nodded and said, "Okay…I need four volunteers to take the wounded back into the school…the rest of you, come with me"
With Hermione seemingly in charge of the situation, Pansy left Sonia on the ground sitting next to the youngest of the Weasley's men. Taking a closer look, Pansy realised that Ron was actually quite badly injured and his shirt was almost soaking wet with his own blood. It was a fairly disgusting sight but again, Sonia wasn't in a much better shape and so were the twenty-ish people there.
The Death Eaters were being incredibly ruthless and the signs of the battle were already showing everywhere and on everyone.
"They're trying to blow up the entrance to the school building!" a familiar voice announced. Professor Snape was approaching the group running as fast as he could.
For a brief moment, Pansy saw Hermione's face screwing up in a pained gesture. Pansy felt very impotent and totally clueless as to what needed to be done.
"Who's volunteering then?" Hermione said with a faint desperate tone leaking through her seemingly calm voice.
"We will. We need to protect our little Ronnickin.." one of the twins said provoking a groin from their youngest brother.
"Okay, who else? Hurry, we don't have all day!" Hermione shouted.
Quickly after two seventh years from Hufflepuff volunteered to help with the wounded, Pansy had to leave Sonia behind and start following the group.
They kept disarming, stunning and bonding as many Death Eaters as possible on their way to the door that gave access to the school.
They had charmed all doors and windows so they couldn't get open by strangers but, still, any door, not even the main, robust one, would last too long under the continuous blasts the Death Eaters were throwing at the poor thing.
They arrived to it and found a relatively small amount of Death Eaters fighting against an even smaller amount of people.
They were still running to join the fight when someone shouted:
"It's a trap!"
Remus Lupin's warning came too late and it was rewarded by a Cruciatus curse being applied to him.
While hearing his screams, Hermione and the rest of the group realised what the Professor had tried to warn them against.
Suddenly, behind them, a whole new group of Death Eaters appeared from nowhere, each one carrying a student or two with them.
Everyone got thrown in the middle of the circle the Death Eaters had created. If Pansy's guess was accurate, in her group there were about 50 or so people against at least four times that number of Death Eaters.
The odds were definitely not in their favour that night.
"What do we do now?" Goyle asked in a whisper.
"I don't know…but for what is worth, thanks for earlier Gregory…" Pansy whispered back getting a funny look from Goyle. Probably he wasn't used to hear his own name pronounced by anybody else but his parents.
"Now…what are you going to do? You're surrounded so, no funny business…you will all throw your wands as far away as possible and any of you will tell us where Potter and the old madman are or else, we'll see some green lights…" the Death Eater speaking was a woman and Pansy recognised her very well.
It was Bellatrix Lestrange. That piece of knowledge made Pansy finally gave in to panic. That woman was crazy and bloodthirsty.
Pansy was about to comply with the Death Eater's order when a huge rumble came from somewhere near the forest.
That sound distracted the Death Eaters long enough for Hermione to signal everybody to attack.
It was a suicide attack. Pansy knew it as well as Hermione did but, it didn't matter. Pansy had finally learned that it was better to die fighting and, they had nothing to lose anyway.
Right at the same time that the all-out attack started, the cause of the rumble came out the forest.
Taking only an instant from the successions of hexes that Pansy kept coming out her wand, the Slytherin saw something even more terrifying than the Death Eaters.
A giant. A giant was running towards them alarmingly fast.
Pansy was about to scream when she saw Hermione smile as if pleased to see the newcomer. Pansy thought that Hermione had finally cracked up when she heard the Gryffindor shout:
"Grawp! Bad people, those are bad people!"
The creature looked in the direction that Hermione was pointing to, changed course and started charging towards the Death Eaters.
Some of them, the least brave ones, started running away from the giant. Some tried to get him down with some hexes but Grawp just took them out of the way using his enormous hands.
From behind Grawp, Rubeus Hagrid with Professor McGonagall and a whole group of creatures had gathered and were starting to cooperate in their on ways fighting the Death Eaters who, suddenly, found themselves almost outnumbered.
For the first time in the whole evening, Pansy started toying with the idea that they could actually win this battle.
Meanwhile, far from there, another battle was about to start.
To be continued…
A/N: Oh…two chapters in two days…as you can see, I'm working hard to earn your forgiveness ;-)
I hope you enjoy this and the next chapters as much as I'm enjoying writing them! Take care and thanks, as always, for the reviews.
Love, Sanae.