Balance: by rabbit
Disclaimer: Can't imagine why you'd think this was mine. Don't you read the papers?
Chapter 15: Unexpected Help
Summary: A rescue party comes from the castle to help Harry, Draco, Snape and McGonagall back.
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Cedric, seemingly unaware that he was the cause of the weary quartet's silence, went on speaking as the rest of the rescue party landed in a semicircle behind him. "Fritz said you'd be using foxfire for markers, but I don't think he figured on how dim foxfire is on a rainy night. Good thing you sent up that firework or we'd never have found you."
"Not before time, Mr. Diggory," Snape rasped. Like Harry and McGonagall, he'd shot up to his full age, but he, at least, was still able to speak directly to the Hufflepuff Seeker. Snape was pale as parchment, but his expression was as fierce as ever, and he straightened defiantly on the broom.
Harry just stared at the apparition before him and stumbled backwards into McGonagall, feeling like he'd been hit in the belly with a bludger. McGonagall wrapped an arm around him, and he could feel her trembling behind him as she too stared at the revenant Hufflepuff. "Easy, Mr. Potter," she said in his ear. "We've been knocked free of our proper time, remember? Diggory is just… from earlier." Her voice shook, low as it was. Harry reached up to cover her arm with his free hand, grateful to her for trying to make sense out of what could never be right.
Draco was chalk white, years falling off him steadily. He started to back away down the slippery hillside, despite Snape's grip on his shoulder, and the injured Professor swayed, trying to stay balanced as he was dragged along. Cedric stepped forward, probably intending to help, and Draco squeaked and fled, taking Snape and the broom along with him. Harry swore. If it weren't for McGonagall he might have wanted to run from Cedric himself, but Draco had just panicked. He wasn't paying attention to Snape, and Snape was still hanging on to his student's cloak, shouting in a harrowed, gruff voice, "Mr. Malfoy, the castle is that way…" as he began to tip sideways… Boy and teacher crashed to the ground as the broom slipped free and sped off into the darkness.
"Accio broom!" Cedric cried quickly, pulling out his wand. Harry thought he saw the broom falter and fall, but it didn't return.
Harry started toward the two who had fallen, bringing the torch for light toward the fallen pair. McGonagall still held onto him, so he had to go more slowly than Draco had over the wet, debris-strewn ground. Behind him, Harry could hear some of the other students making comments in alarmed soprano voices. When he checked over his shoulder, Cedric was coming along behind him with a lantern, but the rest were hanging back, their cloaks puddling around their feet and their eyes huge in young faces.
McGonagall slipped, and Harry dropped the torch as he kept her from falling. It didn't quite go out, in spite of the sogginess of the ground. Once Harry was sure that McGonagall's footing was firm again, he bent to retrieve it, and the flame quickly circled the wood again, doubling the light as Cedric caught up with the lantern. They still had twenty yards to go to catch up to Draco and Snape.
Then things happened very fast. Snape pushed himself upright and then made a strange, high, cut-off noise when Draco, trying to disentangle himself, accidentally kicked the bandaged leg.
A shadowy figure dropped from a low limb and loomed over Snape and Draco. Harry took a tighter grip on the torch, visions of werewolves in his head. Snape twisted around, fumbling for his wand and glaring at the figure as he tried to push Draco behind him.
Harry advanced with Cedric, waving the torch in hopes of scaring off the new arrival. The flickering torchlight turned the strange hump of the silhouette into a battered black cloak, and then the figure threw back its hood back with a snap of its head.
Snape's wand wavered, just a little, before he tucked it away. "Lupin," he growled. "I warned you once about dropping out of trees behind me."
It was Professor Lupin, looking exhausted and soaked. "Sorry," he said, crouching down and showing both hands empty. "Pax."
Snape stared at him, and then took the hand, as if to pull himself upright. Lupin tugged him upwards, putting Snape's arm over his own shoulders so Snape could hang on as he gathered him up and lifted. Snape looked startled, but submitted, and his other hand pulled Draco upright by the cloak as Lupin straightened.
Lupin looked from Harry to Cedric. "Here," Lupin said, trying to hold out his burden to Cedric, still the taller of the two. "You'd best get him back to the castle."
McGonagall had come up behind more slowly. She nudged Harry's shoulder. "Take Malfoy," she told him. "Remus can manage to carry Severus." Harry did as he was bid, trying not to shy away from Cedric too obviously, since the older boy plainly had no clue of what it was about himself that was so unnerving.
Snape tightened his grip determinedly on his sometime colleague. "You'd best come too," he commanded.
"I can't go with you," Lupin shook his head, clearly unhappy. "It's not safe. I can't tell if the moon… I can't even feel the moon. It's not safe."
"There is no moon," Snape told him, "Some of the usual constants are absent here," He glanced down at his left arm, and then scowled when he noticed the boys were watching him.
Lupin turned to McGonagall then, still shaking his head in denial. "I keep… blacking out. Forgetting things," he said, as if it were an explanation.
"You keep dropping and rising in age," Snape told him sharply. "It's happening to all of us. Look at Malfoy and Potter."
Harry'd gotten a grip on Draco's arm by now, and he knew what Snape meant. He was as old as he'd ever been in his life, but Draco still looked like he'd gotten fresh off his first trip on the Hogwarts express. "It's alright, Professor Lupin," Harry said, trying to be reassuring. "You just can't remember what happens when you get too young, I think. Professor Snape can't."
"Nor I," added McGonagall. "Come with us, Remus. We won't leave you out here alone."
"Go along with Potter, Mr. Malfoy," Snape said, still looking down at Draco, who had gotten a grip of his Housemaster's cloak. "There's nothing here to worry you."
"Yes, sir." Draco said, letting go reluctantly.
"Good," Snape said. "I'd like to get back to the castle before I bleed to death, then," he said, and closed his eyes.
"Stretcher," Diggory commanded and the other students who'd come with him began to unfurl the stretchers they were carrying.
While Lupin and Diggory got Snape settled onto one of the stretchers, and McGonagall too, Harry checked Draco for damage from his fall. "It's all right," he told him, wondering if Draco were going to go even younger than eleven. "You're not afraid of ghosts."
"Of course not," Draco sneered automatically, still staring at Cedric. He bit his lip, and looked at Harry. "But he's not a ghost, is he? He's not supposed to be here – and I can't remember why."
"I can," Harry said grimly. He hadn't been able to until Cedric came, though, and that was almost worse. When had everything outside of Hogwarts gotten so hard to concentrate on? Maybe that's why Draco had gone so young, so that he couldn't remember. "Can you remember the balrog?"
Draco nodded. "Sort of," he said. "But… it's starting to feel like a story. Like it happened to someone else."
"What's the first thing you do remember clearly, then?"
Draco scowled. "Wanting someone older to take over with the Quidditch team, so that they'd pay attention."
"Flint!" Harry exclaimed, remembering that first conversation with Draco in the Great Hall quite well. "That's why it felt wrong. He's already left school!"
Draco grew three inches. "Do you mean people can show up, even if they're not supposed to be at Hogwarts? People from the past?"
"I think so," Harry said, a little frightened by the idea, now that it had been put into words.
"Dead people?" Draco said, although it wasn't really a question.
"They wouldn't be dead yet, would they?" Harry said. "Not if they're coming from the past."
"I guess not." Draco straightened up. "At least he doesn't think he's dead. And there are bound to be Living people too, if Flint wasn't meant to be here. That's not so bad." He turned to look up towards Snape and muttered, "Just as long as we don't run into Father."
"Here, Harry, you'll need this," someone said, putting a broom into Harry's hand. He jumped, and was astonished to discover that it was Cho Chang, and was astonished again because he hadn't noticed her when the rescue party had arrived. There's too much to think about, he realized. Snape and McGonagall at the edge of the world, Diggory here, and maybe other people… He was grateful for the chance to mount the broom, Draco behind him and just fly for a while.
They got above the trees, where they could see the flaming outline of Gryffindor tower and fly straight, taking turns switching off with the stretchers, since no one quite trusted the spell that was meant to make the stretchers float in the increasingly strong wind. The size of the rescue party seemed to change too, although there were never fewer than four flyers with each stretcher. Draco and Harry ended up staying with Snape's stretcher, since Draco could do the lifting while Harry flew the broom. Lupin had somehow gotten a broom of his own, and he stayed with McGonagall.
It took concentrating to just fly; to not look as leaves and even branches got pulled off the trees and splattered above them into black nonexistence against an undefined barrier in the sky. Harry had to keep steering to the left just to go in a straight line, and he was grateful to the Weasley twins for lighting the windows of the tower as well as the beacon on the roof, because it meant he didn't have to keep his head as high. Without conference, the rescue party dropped to just above the grass as soon as they were clear of the trees. It reminded Harry of flying through the fog before; the light didn't illuminate much more of an area than he'd been able too see in the mist. Except then he'd been on a much better broom. He could feel odd skips, each one longer than the one before. He checked on the flyer in front of him and realized that she was having trouble too.
Harry's feet brushed the grass moments after they'd passed over the main gate. "We have to stop!" he called. "Stop, everyone!" Two of the others had reached the same conclusion, and called out too, and the party quickly landed. Cho tried getting her broom to fly again, but it was no use.
Draco drew his wand and tried a Levitation charm on Snape's stretcher. It didn't work. "I'm getting very tired of magic not working!" he growled.
"Muscles still work," Harry said, not much looking forward to carrying two teachers up all those steps. Maybe they could talk them into being children again.
"Mine are tired, thank you," Draco said, rubbing at his arm.
"But they work," said Lupin. His age was slipping downwards, but he was still older than anyone else in the group – anyone standing, anyway. "Alternate young and old, half to each stretcher. We're almost there."
McGonagall tried to sit up. "I don't need to be carried," she pointed out, but she was very pale.
"Potions," Snape said hoarsely. He blinked up at them, and Harry wondered if the man had spent some of the trip in a faint. "Potions work."
"Yes, but you can't be carried with a potion, Professor," Draco said, getting out a handkerchief to wipe some of the rain and wet leaves off the injured man's face and hands.
"Bring me Filch, and I won't need to be," Snape growled.