Chapter Ten: On the Run
Though I gasped in fright at our sudden, most difficult situation, I wasn't at all surprised when the smooth voice of Lucius Malfoy oozed out from behind the nearest Death Eater's cloak and mask. The cold, gray eyes behind the mask sparkled with a look of triumph as he loomed over us, hand outstretched towards Harry, demanding he be given the ancient looking orb.
Defiant as ever, Harry held the ball close to him, and gave his own demand --Sirius's whereabouts. But, the Death Eaters did nothing but scoff and chuckle. I watched Malfoy's eyes furrow with mild frustration, as he shook his hand again with slight expectation, this time calling the glass globe a prophecy.
A prophecy? How can that be?
Becoming more infuriated than ever, Harry tensed up and again demanded to know where his godfather was.
Another Death Eater, a woman with frantic looking eyes, only made it worse by teasing Harry; she echoed his demands with a patronizing laugh as she and the other Death Eaters moved in closer -- less than a meter away now.
Harry began to look panicked and Ron stepped close to him, more than ready to fight, and I gripped my wand as well. Harry whispered something to him, but I couldn't hear what it was. Ron didn't budge from his best friend's side, but the female Death Eater laughed even harder now at Harry's obvious attempt to keep us from fighting.
Annoyed at this point, Malfoy threatened Harry that, if he didn't hand over the prophecy to him, the Death Eater's would start using their wands. Harry called his bluff, daring Malfoy to take it, as Neville, Hermione, Luna and I encircled Harry, holding our wands at the ready. However, the Death Eater's didn't attack us.
This is mad. We are outnumbered at least two to one, why hadn't any of them just grabbed it away from Harry? Why is Malfoy insisting that Harry give the prophecy to him?
Just as I finished my thought, the female Death Eater did, in fact, try to 'Accio' the prophecy away from Harry, but he quickly blocked the spell. Malfoy seemed enraged with the act, shouting at her that they could not break the prophecy. Why can't they break it? Why is this prophecy so damned important to the Death Eaters?
The woman, who didn't seem to care about Lucius's warnings, stepped towards Harry regardless, and pulled off her hood. I'd seen pictures of her before . . . at Sirius' house. Although her face was pale and worn from years at Azkaban Prison, the woman was unmistakably Bellatrix Lestrange.
How can that be? She's supposed to be in Azkaban!
Lestrange stepped forward and suggested another means of motivating Harry; her eyes were filled with lunacy, no doubt from her years spent in the wizard prison.
I looked about me in shock. Did she just say to take the 'small one' and torture her? This bird really is nutters!
It was all I could do to keep from yelping at the thought of being tortured by this maniac. My heart was racing, and I could feel the blood rush up to my head, pounding in my ears.
Well she'd better not think I'd go quietly, dammit!
My breath quickened as my friends surrounded me from behind and Harry himself stepped protectively in front of me. Honestly, if I hadn't been so damned frightened already, I could have swooned at him being so close to me. He does have a rather lovely neck, doesn't he? Oh, by Merlin! What the hell am I thinking of that now at a time like this! Focus Weasley!
I glanced to Neville, who stood beside me and I was astonished to notice an otherworldly look cross his face. Not only was his jaw set tightly, teeth clenched, but he was also shaking, not out of nervousness, but in anger. Bellatrix Lestrange was the Death Eater who had tortured and nearly killed his parents.
When Harry asked Lestrange about the prophecy, she seemed surprised. When he mentioned You-Know-Who's name, she went wild with anger at him even speaking it. Lestrange cast a spell at Harry, which was quickly deflected by Malfoy. The spell shattered several glass orbs on the floor, sending wisps of people floating about their own prophecies. Did this mean that there was a prophecy about Harry in the ball he carried?
Malfoy screamed at the Lestrange woman, who began ranting on about how Harry dared speak the Dark Lords' name. At the same time, however, Harry kept asking questions about the prophecy, his voice sounding only partially focused on what they were discussing. Was he formulating a plan? Malfoy and the other Death Eaters seemed delighted in the fact that Harry had no idea what the prophecy was all about. When Malfoy mentioned his scar, Harry began to look a lot less nervous, and more like an angry Neville now.
While the Death Eaters began wailing with laughter at Harry's ignorance of this prophecy, I could hear him grinding out a whisper to Hermione without moving his mouth. "Smash shelves . . . when I say go . . ."
Harry continued to distract the Death Eaters by talking about the prophecy while Hermione passed the message on to the others. I also offered an idea to the others to use the Reductor curse to remove the shelves, which would buy us some time to escape.
What came out of Malfoy's mouth came as quite a shock to us all. He revealed to Harry that the prophecy was not just about Harry, but You-Know-Who as well, and could very well have been the reason he went after Harry and his parents in the first place.
As Malfoy went on about how his Dark Lord couldn't very well enter the Ministry of Magic and steal it for himself, and that was the reason he had used Harry to get the prophecy, I could feel Harry tense up behind me, waiting for the right moment.
"Now!" shouted Harry.
We all pointed our wands at the shelves around us and sent the charms flying across the room. Dozens of shelves smashed about us and the prophecy globes broke apart, sending wisps of echoing voices past, speaking only of the future.
Harry yelled at us to run, and run we did, as glass and wood fell on us like rain. I looked back to Harry, who had grabbed the front of Hermione's robes to pull her away from the collapsing shelves. Then I noticed that it wasn't just the glass and wood, a Death Eater had lunged at Harry and Hermione through the falling debris. I slowed down, turning back to help Harry as I watched Hermione throw a stunner with her wand at the Death Eater. However, Ron had grabbed my wrist and pulled Luna and me through the Prophecy Room, leaving Harry, Hermione, and Neville behind.
"No, Ginny," Ron shouted, "Come on! We have to get out of here!"
Ron rounded the corner of the row and we raced back down the main hallway towards the door to the room with all the clocks. I nearly stumbled into my brother as he stopped several meters from the door.
"Ron, what are you doing?" I muffled into his shoulder.
"We can't go that way," Ron said slowly in what I liked to call his "chess voice", and I realized he was strategizing our escape. "They expect us to run back to where we came from. We have to lose them."
"Where are we to go, then?" asked Luna plainly, looking quite unfazed by the Death Eaters' attack.
"What about Harry, Hermione and Neville?" I hollered. "What if they can't find us? We can't split up!"
"We have to, it's our only chance." Ron said with a tone of finality. "Now come on -- and be quiet!"
Ron ran on forward, passing the door into the clock room. Luna and I followed, and I could hear Malfoy shouting, telling the Death Eaters to split up as well. Ron was right. I only hoped that Hermione, Neville, and Harry hadn't been caught.
We were nearly to the end of the rows when we heard a few of the Death Eaters coming down one of the nearby rows behind us. There was a door not more than a few meters away and we sprinted toward it. Ron tried the doorknob, but it was locked. It was a good thing Hermione wasn't there at the time, because a few choice words flew out of my brother's mouth so fast, they even made me flinch.
"OH, MOVE OVER!" I shouted, shoving my brother aside with my shoulder. I pointed my wand at the door.
"Alohomora!" and the door swung wide open. The room was dark inside, and I turned around and motioned to Ron and Luna to follow. Luna stepped in ahead of me. Ron however, looked at me blankly, his head slightly tilted to the side.
"What is it?" I wondered aloud.
Ron shook the look from his face. "Er, nothing. Déjà vu, that's all. Let's…"
A red jet of light blazed in between me and Ron's faces, hitting the wall behind us. The Death Eaters had caught up to us.
"Ron, the door! Get the door!" I screamed.
Ron slammed the door behind us and I heard the lock click, but it would take them even less time than us to get through it. The room was dark at first, but once the door was closed behind us, the room lit up dimly with colored orbs of light. When I looked up and around, there seemed to be a star field all around us, much like the enchanted ceiling above the Great Hall at Hogwarts -- only better. The room was a map of the known universe. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
"What is this?" I asked in awe. "It looks like a..."
My brother pushed me ahead again, "No time, we have to go!"
Suddenly, what seemed like out of nowhere, I felt the floor give way beneath me, and we were immediately in the air, floating like balloons, without any control over where we were going.
This time, Ron and I both swore.
"What now, big brother?"
"I don't know!" Ron yelled in frustration, scrambling through the air as though he were drowning. "Try and grab on to something -- anything!"
Luna pointed ahead of us, and said calmly, "I think I see some doors ahead of us."
Time seemed to stand still in the room. It seemed like an eternity. I reached for one of the planets (Neptune, I think) and tried to grab hold, but the dark rings around it kept me from getting a decent grip. My hands slipped and I floated onward towards the center of the room.
Suddenly, I felt the heaviness of my body again as gravity finally came back to me. What seemed like a stroke of luck at last, became danger as the door opened behind us and four Death Eaters entered.
Unfortunately for Ron, he hadn't been able to catch himself as he hit the floor with a hard thud. I looked back to my brother on the ground, now moaning in pain and grabbing at his head. As I was going back to aid him, Ron looked up.
"Ginny! Luna! RUN!"
It was too late -- the Death Eaters were already throwing curses at us. With my mind racing at what to do, at least to give me another moment to help my big brother and a chance to escape before we both got stunned, I did the first thing that came to mind.
"Claudoportus!" I yelled, slamming the door shut behind the last Death Eater. Almost instantly, gravity betrayed us, and we were again floating in darkness. However, I was able to push myself back towards Ron.
"Ron! I'm coming!"
"No, Ginny," he moaned in agony. He was only centimeters away from my grasp when Ron was finally hit square in the back with one of the Death Eater's spells, throwing him hard past me and straight into what I was sure to be the planet Uranus. I heard Ron beginning to chuckle lightly as he hit the planet, and I suspected that he'd been hit with a strong Babbling or Laughing Charm. I, on the other hand, was still heading straight back to the Death Eaters.
Scrambling hard to stop my inevitable collision, I threw out a shield charm to keep them from casting spells at me. Fortunately, they were too busy at first with finding their own footing to realize how fast I was actually coming at them. It was then, that I heard Bellatrix Lestrange, screech madly, "The little one! Rodolphus, take her! TAKE HER!"
Passing the tiny planet I knew had to be Pluto, I grabbed hold for dear life in order to stop myself. Ron was still hurtling across the room, but was now close to Luna, who had almost reached the door on the other side of the room.
"Luna! Help me!" I shouted, pushing myself away from the planet to gain some forward momentum, but the Death Eater had grabbed hold of my ankle. A sudden flash of blue flashed past me, and a second later Pluto had blown up right in the Death Eater's face. The sheer force of him tugging my ankle as he was thrown back was more than my body could take.
"CRACK!"
A white-hot pain shot through my ankle as I felt the bone break, and I screamed in agony. I slung forward towards Luna and Ron. If I hadn't already had enough adrenaline in me to take on a giant single-handedly, I swear I could have easily passed out from the pain.
The Death Eater had tumbled backwards, knocking the other three back with him. I used what was left of my strength to use another disarming spell on the Death Eaters, giving me a few more seconds time to struggle towards Luna and Ron.
With perfect timing, Luna, with Ron not far behind, had finally made their way to one of the doors by the time I had nearly reached them. I braced myself for the fall, holding my broken ankle up in an effort to keep from hitting it again. Just as I reached the door, Luna opened it, and the three of us spilled out onto the floor of the blue room.
