Chapter 24
Hermione gasped, and her stomach began to ache as if Mr. Weasley had punched her.
"What do we do?" Harry asked, his concern for the Headmaster apparent on his face. "We can't just leave him in trouble!"
"You four must go back to school," Mr. Weasley said tiredly. "I shall summon the Order here, and we shall proceed from there. But there is nothing you can do in this situation."
Ron was furious. "Don't treat us like we're four years old! We care about Dumbledore as well, you can't just dismiss us like this!"
"Professor Dumbledore," Mr. Weasley corrected. "You four must remember that your education is very important. This sort of matter should be left in the hands of adults."
"We handled Voldemort and his Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries!" Harry spat angrily. "We've proven that we can handle the Voldemort by ourselves!"
"If you remember, Harry," Mr. Weasley said angrily, "The Order had to interfere to save your hides. This is not the time to argue your merits to me."
"No," Harry said. "It is."
"You cannot come," Mr. Weasley said, suddenly tired. "You must return to school, and that's my final word."
A few hours later they all tumbled out of Dumbledore's fireplace into his darkened and silent office. The ticking of one of his many gadgets was the only signal that anyone had ever used the office at all. The portraits remained silent, watching them with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
"Professor McGonagall?" Hermione whispered into the gloom, coughing slightly as the ash hung in the air. "Are you here?"
"Lumos," someone whispered, and they found the professor standing in the doorway, her tartan robe pulled around her, her wand raised, looking at them, relief evident on her tired face.
"I just received word from your father, Ron," poor Professor McGonagall sighed. "I simply can't believe that the Death Eaters have taken Albus Dumbledore captive. There must be another more reasonable explanation."
Hermione wanted to sleep, but she knew that everything was going horribly wrong, and right then was not a good time to sleep.
"There must be," Hermione reasoned. "Professor Dumbledore is a far superior wizard to You-Know-Who, I can't comprehend how he would allow himself to be thrown under the powers of the Dark Lord."
"Perhaps he wasn't," Draco suggested. "Perhaps he's perfectly all right, but knows that You-Know-Who was looking for him, and has gone into hiding momentarily."
"But wouldn't the Professor know that his arch-nemesis has been destroyed?" McGonagall said, wringing her hands. "The Daily Prophet has been spewing all sorts of news about your complete destruction-"
"Minor note of correction," Ron said nervously.
"I'll tell her," Hermione said gently. "Professor, you remember how I brought Draco back from the dead?"
McGonagall eyed her star student suspiciously.
"Yes, of course I remember."
"Well, You-Know-Who is a necromancer as well," Hermione explained. "Which creates a bit of a problem because-"
"He can bring himself back from the dead," Harry finished. "I was supposed to vanquish his soul, but we were sort of backed into a corner, and were about to become pulp, so the Unforgivable curse seemed like the only option."
Draco rubbed his stomach nervously, the snake scar seemed to twinge every time someone even mentioned Avada Kedavra, much less performed it. Since he had been brought back from the dead, he hadn't felt quite right…
"Well, perhaps Albus knows this, and that is why he has not returned," McGonagall said finally, as if it pained her to announce this. "But for the time being, you must remain here at Hogwarts. Harry, the Dark Lord will stop at nothing to kill you, you must remain here, or I am afraid your friends will be unable to do anything to save you."
"Hermione," someone was calling. Hermione leapt out of bed and ran to the open window. A golden light seemed to stream through the starry night sky, sending it's shattered rays through the clouds.
"Yes?" she called, staring star-struck into the light.
Persephone stepped from the light, her beauty as mesmerizing as the planets and celestial objects she was surrounded by.
"You must set what has been wrong, right," Persephone said, inclining her head so she could look Hermione straight in the eyes. "The world is out of balance; there is too much darkness. Only two can destroy the darkness. Both are scarred: one has seen the depths of despair, the other has lived his life surrounded by ghosts. The Scarred Ones must vanquish this evil that plagues the worlds. But, unless they work together, and murder this monster, the world will fall into Chaos, and there will be no end in sight. One of the Scarred Ones also shares a trait with one who should be dead, and they also must return to the depths of Hell."
"Who are the Scarred Ones?" Hermione begged.
"I can tell you no more, but this: Beware the Winged Furies!" Persephone whispered, shaking her fair head, and vanishing as abruptly as she had come, leaving Hermione with only a feeling of despair, and the twinkling stars…
Hermione awoke with a start. The dream had been too real to be anything but prophetic. What was this message Persephone was sending? And who were the Scarred Ones? Harry had a scar, but who was the other that Persephone had spoken of? And did she mean scarred literally, or metaphorically? Hermione groaned and rolled back over. The dead were so confusing some times.
Hermione stumbled into the Great Hall the next morning, her head aching, and every body part stiff. It seemed that she, Harry, and Ron had become instant celebrities since the Daily Prophet had gotten wind of their deeds, and luckily, Draco had been left out of the news. He did not want more attention than he already had, he was plenty satisfied trying to deal with screaming first-years. She gently pushed away some awe-inspired second years, and made her way over to the crowded Gryffindor table.
Luckily for Hermione, Ron and Harry looked just as horrible.
"I kept having dreams about what happened in the damn Infirmary," Ron said under his breath as he half-heartedly cut away at a sausage. "Bloody Death-Eaters were having a go at me."
"Having a go at you?" Hermione asked, only mildly interested, sitting down and helping herself to some rather appealing looking bacon. It seemed that everyone was having a go at them lately. She hadn't had a chance to discuss Harry's aching scar with him, and that'd had been a whole three days ago!
"I had a dream that I was back in the Department of Mysteries," Harry said hollowly. "I kept seeing him die. Over and over again."
"It seems that all of us had bad dreams," Hermione said, placing her silver on the edge of her gold plate, thinking to herself, at the same time, wondering if anyone was going to eat that last muffin…. "I wonder it this has something to do with Dumbledore."
"Maybe he's trying to send us a message!" Ron said hopefully, his eyebrows disappearing into his shock of red hair.
"By making us relive our worst memories?" Harry said heatedly. "Sounds more like Dementors to me. Dumbledore knows I hate thinking about that day, do you really think he'd make me dream about it?"
"Well, whatever it was," Hermione said suddenly. "The dreams weren't caused by Dumbledore."
"What do you mean?" Ron asked.
"Look," she said, pointing to the door near the teacher's table. "He just walked in."
A/N: Leave a review. Please. :)