OMG it's been Ages, I'm so sorry forgive me.
I've been so busy and this year I have my finals, YUCK
We're already on the hundred day countdown which really sucks
anyway here's chap 21
22 and 23 should follow faster
Chapter 21
Attack too Close to Home
- OotP HQ-
On their first morning back at HQ the four Mages could be found sitting at the breakfast table consuming gallons of coffee.
"Well this went pretty well" Harry said.
"How do you see that, we're wanted for several accounts of murder and currently have a direct sentence of Azkaban hanging over our heads? You do not pass start you don't collect 10.000 pounds, you go straight to jail" Audrey said and took a swig of her coffee.
"How didly a life we got. Screwed over by a bloody, not even finished, prophecy" Ron muttered.
"Well there you have it" Hermione said, banging her mug on the table.
"What?" her three friends asked.
"We need to find the original scroll" Hermione explained.
"Just like that? We find a prophecy which has been lost for centuries?" Harry asked.
"582 years to be exact" Hermione said.
"Who had it the last time it was seen?" Audrey asked.
"An old friend of ours, Nicholas Flamel" Hermione said.
"He died last year remember, ran out of elixir" Ron said.
"Yes, but Dumbledore is the keeper of his personal diaries" Hermione said.
"The guy lived for over 600 years. How many diaries does he actually have?" Audrey groaned.
"Well, quite a lot, over 200 I believe, but he indexed them" Hermione replied.
"Well that's just great…but how exactly are we going to get them?" Harry asked.
"Simple…we ask…" Hermione began, but at that point Molly came running into the kitchen.
"Quickly, Albus'…in the fire…urgent…" she gasped.
The four shot past her before she finished mumbling the words. They ran to the living room, once there they fell on their knees in front of the fireplace where Dumbledore's head could be seen, floating amongst the flames.
"What's wrong sir?" Harry asked.
"Death Eaters and Dementor are attacking Hogsmeade. Some teachers and townsfolk are protecting the students and some Order agents are there as well, but it still doesn't look good" Dumbledore replied.
"But…isn't today a Hogsmeade weekend?" Hermione asked.
"Yes"
"Fuck!" Audrey swore.
"We'll be there in less that a minute" Harry said.
Dumbledore nodded and disappeared from the fire. The four Mages snapped their fingers and were once again dressed in their battle royale style. Within a second of dressing they had disapparated to Hogsmeade.
-
They apparated in the middle of a frightened crowd. With all the panicking people running around their sudden appearance went by unnoticed.
"Well isn't this just spiffy" Audrey said looking around at the running and screaming people.
"Yeah, just great. But where are the DE's" Ron wondered.
"Let's have a look around shall we" Hermione suggested.
The four Mages walked to the centre of Hogsmeade. Suddenly they noticed some posters. Posters that looked much like the ones of Sirius in their third year. Only these posters contained their faces. They stared at the posters and Harry waved at his picture.
"Great, do you think that people will believe that we're here to help them?" Audrey asked sarcastically.
"Nope" Harry replied evenly. Suddenly a hand grabbed his shoulder. They turned around with weapons drawn…only to find Percy looking at them surprised.
"Damn it Perce, do you have a death wish" Ron growled.
"Sorry, but the Order's in dire need for help, we've already brought many people to safety at the Three Broomsticks" Percy said.
"It's been a long time since we last met, what have you been doing?" Hermione asked as the four Mages followed him to the town's square.
They reached the fighting. Scattered on the ground dead and injured were lying, DE's, Order agents and innocents alike.
"This is a slaughter" Hermione gasped.
"We've go to end this fast" Ron said.
"How?" Audrey wondered.
"The usual way, we've already have an Azkaban sentence over our heads, a few more dead DE's will hardly change that" Harry grimly said.
"So be it" Audrey said.
"Run for safety at the Three Broomsticks Percy" Ron said.
Percy nodded and stared as the four Mages drew weapons and joined the melee. After that he quickly turned around and ran for the Broomsticks as Ron had said.
-
Audrey knocked a DE unconscious with a high flying kick, to save a witch and her daughter from getting cruciod (a/n I think this qualifies as a new word. Can't seem to recall having read it before. Well it just means getting Crucio on your ass). The woman and child looked up but their expression of relief and gratitude quickly changed as they identified their savior. Then they started to scream.
Audrey winced, "Uhm…telling you that I'm actually a good guy isn't going to help now is it…?" she said. The two continued screaming. "Thought so…"
She looked around and saw Remus just clearing away a DE.
"Hey Rem, get your ass over here" she yelled. Remus looked up startled and came running as he saw her. He looked at her inquiringly.
"Get these two to safety at the Broomsticks" Audrey explained and ran of again.
-
Meanwhile Harry was trying to convince a yelling Rosmerta, who had wandered from the Three Broomsticks at the beginning of the attack, that he wasn't the bad guy, thus far with little success.
"Come on Rosmerta, we'd better get you back to the Broomsticks, it's safe there" Harry soothed, while he stabbed a DE that was trying to sneak up form behind him with a nodachi.
"No way!" Rosmerta screamed.
"Rosmerta you've known me for years, ho do you think I could be in league with Voldemort" Harry pleaded.
Rosmerta shuddered at the mentioning of Voldemort.
"I'm not going" she stated firmly as she looked for an escape.
Harry sighed and tried to find a solution for his predicament while still holding off De's. Then he saw Hermione running towards him, she was ushering a herd of scared witches and wizards along.
Mist, how the hell did you get them to follow you Harry asked.
At that point Hermione looked at him and tapped on her sunglasses.
Ah I see
Get them to the Three Broomsticks Ron's mind voice came.
Harry looked to his right and saw that Ron had joined Hermione with a couple of refugees of his own. He looked back at Rosmerta.
"Enough of this" he grumbled, he grabbed Rosmerta, threw her over his shoulder and ran after Ron and Hermione to the Three Broomsticks.
Rosmerta didn't take this well and screamed, hit and kicked Harry non-stop during the short stop. When everyone was safely in the Broomsticks Harry looked around.
"Where's Audrey?" he wondered.
"No idea" Ron replied.
It was then that Audrey came crashing through the door, backwards. She hit the far wall and slid to the floor. She shook her head a bit dazed and stood up to find her three friends looked confused at her.
"Sorry 'bout that, whirlwind curse" she muttered while rubbing the back of her head where it had hit the wall.
"Okay, well we're nearly done with clearing the town. Let's wrap it up" Hermione said.
The four mages ran outside and helped the remaining Order member to take the remaining DE's in. Unfortunately a vast amount of them managed to escape. At the end of the fight the four mages stood in front of the Broomsticks. Hogmeade was a battlefield.
"The fights are getting worse, always more injuries and death than the previous one" Harry said.
"How many Order members did we lose?" Ron wondered.
"I hope not many, we're outnumbered greatly by the DE's as it is. And with the Order being less than legal we can't exactly recruit of the streets" Audrey said.
Her friends nodded in agreement.
"We'd better go, the aurors are bound to show up, too late on again" Hermione said.
"Isn't it strange that they always arrive too late" Ron said.
"Yes, maybe we should ask Dumbledore to look at that" Harry said.
"But first, over 200 personal diaries" Audrey said.
The four mages disapparated.
They reappeared in Dumbledore's office. Fawkes made a happy sound and flew to Harry's shoulder.
"Hey Fawkes" he said, scratching the phoenix' head.
"How long will it take Dumbledore to get back here?" Hermione asked.
"Well, he'll have to do some major damage control, both in Hogsmeade and Hogwarts" Audrey said.
"Let's sit down then" Harry said.
They all sat down.
"So how many people did you scare shitless?" Ron asked conversationally.
"Don't remind me" Hermione groaned.
"Yeah this really isn't good" Audrey added.
"Well first things first, we get the diaries, figure out the rest of the prophecy and see if this makes any sense. At the same time we'll ask Dumbledore to have a look at things with the Aurors at the Ministry, and then we clear our names" Harry said.
"Clearing our names is pretty far sown on the list" Ron said.
"Well as long as that idiot Fudge remains minister and people continue to follow him, clearing our names won't be easy anyway, if manageable at all" Hermione said.
"True, Fudge is the big problem" Ron said.
"Well in the extreme case we could always move for a Coup d'Etat" Audrey said.
"A What?" Ron and Harry asked.
"Basically a revolution to overthrow the ruling government" Hermione explained.
"Goody, more work, how would we do that?" Harry asked.
"No idea, it's not exactly on the agenda, but it certainly wouldn't hurt…" Audrey began.
"What wouldn't hurt, miss Black?" Dumbledore asked from the doorway.
"Nothing important sir" Audrey quickly replied.
"I see" Dumbledore frowned, "Now why are the four of you here, instead of safely back at Headquarters?"
"We wanted to ask you for two favors" Harry said.
"If they're reasonable and within my powers I'll gladly comply"
"Firstly we would like to borrow the personal diaries of Nicholas Flamel" Ron said.
"Whatever for?" Dumbledore asked.
"He was the last known holder of the prophecy" Hermione explained.
"Ah yes of course. You are welcome to take them with you" Dumbledore said.
"Thank you sir" the four said.
Dumbledore went to his desk and opened a large drawer he took a violet velvet bag filled with small rectangle objects out of it and gave it to Hermione who tied it to her knife belt.
"This bag contains all 257 parts of the diaries, shrunken and lightened off course" he said.
The four thanked him again.
"And your second request?" Dumbledore asked.
"Well we were wondering if you could have someone looking into the happening in the Ministry especially around the Aurors, since they always seem to arrive too late. We know Kingsley and Tonks keep an eye there but they haven't reported anything and that's all just too strange" Audrey told him.
"So you've noticed it as well, I've already sent some people to investigate but until now they've come up with nothing" Dumbledore said. "Now you'd better return to Headquarters, I must speak with the staff and student body to calm everyone down." He got up and left the four Mages once again alone in his office.
"Hey we could pop in and say hi to Draco, Blaise and Pansy" Ron said.
"Good idea"
The four mages disapparated to their former common room.
"Wow, can you believe we haven't been here in well over a month" Harry said.
"Harry, Audrey, Ron, Hermione?" Draco asked from the entrance, Blaise and Pansy pushed him aside to look in as well.
"Hiya guys, long time no see" Audrey said.
"Took ya long enough to visit us" Pansy grumbled.
"Yeah sorry about that, we were pretty busy and there were some problems at HQ but everything's as good as it can be now" Harry said.
"You've got some major explaining to do" Blaise said.
"Well it's a long tale, we'd better sit down" Hermione said.
The seven teenagers sat down and the Mages started to tell their friends what had happened, they told them everything, from their running away to what had happened that morning in Hogsmeade. In their turn the three Slytherins told them how things had been going at Hogwarts since they had left.
End of chapter 21
Will there ever be an end?
Well I've got plenty ideas :D
But I've decided to finish this story at the end of 6th year and then to write the sequel which is placed in 7th year and were hopefully all the knots are tied or I'll be heading for a trilogy ;D but I'm trying to keep it to a duology if my muses cooperate of course.
Well bye now onto the next chap.
Chapter 22 – The Prophecy