Author's Notes:HALLELUIA. I thought I would never get this chapter done. I know it's been a couple of awful, miserable weeks since I last updated, and I apologize profusely for this. Despite popular belief (now really, the rumors must stop!), I am not suffering from FFDDD. I am suffering from depression at realizing my beautiful, free summer has been mercilessly snatched away from me. In less than two week's time, I will be forced to return to hell (also commonly referred to as 'school'). It seems like just yesterday I was running around naked in the sprinkler, celebrating the end of seventh grade and shouting, "SUNDAY, MONDAY, HAPPY DAYS…"

…

The updates may come more slowly now (I find that my energy to vigorously update has ebbed away, due to my school-caused depression) but know that I will never, ever abandon this fic. To feed the crazy and wild rumors flying about (honestly, please learn to control yourselves!), I may be planning a sequel for BCD. I'm not sure. I do know that I am not going to write the sequel, if there is one, directly after this. Instead, I will be doing a Bridget Jones–style Hermione diary of OotP. Isn't that marvelous? Yes, I know it's been done over and over, five times to be exact on , but I'm completely in love with this saucy British woman and the idea is so very appealing to me. You've never read Bridget Jones–style Hermione diaries by Akalei, now have you? So it'll be something different, and I look forward to it.

When it's one of those skin-crawling, dismal breaks between my chapters, and you've already reviewed twenty times begging me to update (hint, hint), might I suggest reading THE SHOEBOX PROJECT? The Shoebox Project was introduced to me by a friend of mine and in case you haven't heard of it, it's a community on LiveJournal run by two women, and it's a community of a slap-your-thigh funny MWPP fic broken up into a dozen different parts. I'm not very far into reading it (I admit, I skipped ahead to part three one day, because the notes were just damn hilarious), but props to you, Shoebox Project authors, props to you.

Okay, now onto rambles that actually have something to do with this chapter and this story in general. More and more of the plot is being revealed now, especially in this chapter, which features nothing but a big giant love-filled (not really) Hairy – erm, Harry – explanation. Excuse the lack of suspense and angst, but I had quite a lot to explain and in the end, it took up an entire chapter. I will make up for the lack of love (again, not really) in this chapter in chapters to come.

And of course, my mandatory ending: give me end-of-summer energy by reviewing with passion, please, and I'll feel loved and work up the desire to write more chapters.

Signed,

A Not Dead Even Though It Was Rumored As Such Akalei

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THEY'RE BACK

Hermione's hand automatically flew to her mouth to stifle a squeal of surprise at seeing her friend standing before her eyes alive. Harry moved slightly to the right and was suddenly bathed in December moonlight; his face was a mangled mess of cuts and bruises and he appeared to be limping on his left leg. His usual expression of high amusement was replaced with one of anxiousness and pain, but before Hermione had a chance to ask about his feeble condition, she was pulled down the hallway, silently warned to keep as quiet as possible.

They entered the completely vacant staff room and Harry made to cross to the door, but Hermione pulled on his robes, roughly stopping him. Something was wrong; why had Harry appeared outside her dorm so late at night looking worse for wear? She wanted to know where he had been and why and, honestly, felt like she was about to be told, but was in complete disarray, which concerned her very much.

"What are you doing? Come on," Harry hissed, groping for her sleeve and moving towards the door.

"What's happened to you? Why are you limping? You've got cuts and – and slashes all over your face, Harry, you look awful. Let me take you to the infirmary, please, before –"

"No, this is too important," said Harry, grabbing Hermione and steering her towards the door despite her unsuccessful protests. Once they were out in the still and empty corridor, Harry suddenly halted and turned to face Hermione.

"Do you know where Ron is?" he asked in a whisper. "I figured he'd be in his dorm, but I checked and he isn't."

Hermione could not have cared less about Ron at the moment. "He stormed out of the staff room earlier tonight. We –" She was on the verge of saying "had a fight" but decided Harry didn't need to know about the continuing arguments of his two best friends. It appeared as if he had enough on his mind and Hermione wasn't about to give him another worry. "I mean, I haven't seen him since. Probably raiding the kitchens, you know him."

"Right," Harry muttered hesitantly. "I'll tell him later. You need to know this now, so follow me, and don't speak again until I say you can."

With a nod Hermione fell into step aside Harry, her stomach growing tighter and tenser by the minute. They slithered through the deserted halls of Hogwarts, occasionally passing a gaunt ghost staring in the opposite direction, though Harry said nothing and Hermione decided to keep quiet as well. She was forced to fight down the tempting desire to ask Harry where exactly he was leading her – they could have very well talked in the staff room, no one else had been there – but she remained silent and followed him down to the ground floor. For a moment she thought he was going to turn into the Great Hall, which looked odd in the state of being devoid of teeming crowds of students. Instead, Harry turned left into a cozy-looking chamber and motioned her to do the same; with one last glance around the corner, he shut the door behind them and locked it with his wand. Harry swiveled around slowly, his face appearing gaunt and skeletal in the light dancing from the roaring fire against the back wall. With a deep, ragged breath, he opened his mouth.

"They're back."

Hermione found that her voice had mysteriously disappeared in their journey through the castle. She had no idea what Harry was talking about; perhaps he was delirious? But the set look on his face suggested that he was perfectly sane and only brought the situation, whatever it was, into a new light, and Hermione's mind seriously pondered Harry's two words.

"Who, Harry?" Hermione asked calmly, unable to disguise the slight quiver in her voice.

"It's them," Harry muttered, running one bloody hand through his hair and sinking into a chair near the fire. He gazed absentmindedly at the flames, his eyes eerily unfocused. Hermione slowly took a seat across from him.

"Who are them?" She found it extremely challenging not to burst with the thousands of questions swirling around her head – Where have you been? Why are you injured? Who called you away? What's going on? Why did you have to leave? So she settled with getting Harry to elaborate instead.

"The Death Eaters."

A strangled sort of cry escaped Hermione's throat and her hand once again flew to her mouth, stifling the noise.

"Don't look at me like that, Hermione, I'm telling the truth," Harry muttered. He drew out his wand from his robes, waved it in a circular motion, and two cups of coffee suddenly appeared in front of the thriving fire. He handed one to a shocked and motionless Hermione.

"Why didn't you get coffee in the staff room?" Hermione said in a small voice. She briefly wondered why she had asked such a stupid and pointless question, but didn't want to indulge in stomach-clenching conversation just yet. She was still replaying Harry's last sentence in her mind, flinching inwardly each time.

"I didn't want to sit around and wait for someone to find us," said Harry, covetously draining his steaming mug of coffee. "This is private information I was told not to share with anyone and the Ministry would murder me brutally if they knew I was telling you this. No one else can know, understand? You cannot repeat this to anyone."

"But Ron –?"

"Bloody hell, Hermione, of course I'm going to tell him. But I wasn't about to go off searching for him at this time of night, and you need to know this now."

Hermione felt a swell of importance; Harry had wanted to tell her urgently and wasn't going to wait around for Ron (Idiotic prat, Hermione thought). She quickly brushed these feelings aside and focused her attention on Harry, who seemed on the verge of letting out something very significant.

"Someone spotted Bellatrix Lestrange," Harry muttered, tipping his empty cup over his mouth expectantly. He sighed and discarded the mug to the floor, slumping against the backside of his armchair, looking weary and fatigued in the firelight. "She was first seen snooping around some Muggle village out in Turkey but fled as soon as we got the reports."

Hermione had gone rigid, her breathing shallow and irregular, her own coffee cup quivering in her tight grip. Harry's words reverberated around her head and a sequence of dark images began flashing across her mind like a film set on fast-forward. A blazing fire burning a cherished house to the ground; two lifeless bodies being carried out of a scene of smoldering ashes; a cold and clammy hospital waiting room full of old magazines and worried adults...

"Did you hear me? Hermione?"

The traumatic slideshow of events forcefully vanished from her mind, focusing all her concentration on the situations at hand. There was nothing she could do about anything that had already happened, but what was occurring presently needed her attention.

"Is that why you were called away?" Hermione asked quietly, averting her eyes to the fireplace and allowing them to bore into the vivid flames. "Did you catch her? Please tell me you did, Harry. I can't stand the thought of that woman roaming free."

A hesitant noise and another sigh confirmed Hermione's worst suspicions. "We didn't get her," Harry said. It was clear that he was hating himself for it, but Bellatrix Lestrange had only been tracked and caught once, so it came as no surprise that Harry had failed. "The Ministry has their best Aurors and WIA agents investigating it right now, but she managed to slip away again and to be honest, we don't know where she's gone off to this time."

"Wait a moment – so you did have a lead, then?" said Hermione, intrigued.

Harry glanced at his watch. "I suppose I could tell you the whole story now," he mumbled. "We've got a few hours.

"Like I said, Lestrange was first spotted in Turkey, but disappeared as quickly as she had come. There've been a few other reports of Death Eaters that were supposedly dead walking around in public, but the imbeciles at the Ministry regarded them as useless information and threw the papers out. We were right in thinking that they were ganging up with Lestrange; the Auror inboxes have been flooding with sightings concerning a group of robed figures for days now."

Harry took a deep breath and moved his eyes from Hermione to the fire. His gaze was distant and absent, but he continued speaking nonetheless. "We had very accurate information from an inside source that Lestrange had moved along to Greece and was currently in hiding. One of the blokes from Auror Headquarters, McAllister, has been tracking their route and found that they seem to be moving westwards."

"So it's a pattern, then," Hermione murmured aloud.

"Yeah, but it's meaningless right now," said Harry. "Anyway, I was called away secretly because the Aurors don't want anyone else – not even the other Ministry officials – to know of the Death Eaters' return."

"Because it would cause an uprising of disbelief and panic in the wizarding community."

"Right. We were hoping to track down and capture the Death Eaters and Lestrange before anyone found out they were loose. Unfortunately, we weren't so lucky.

"I was sent to Greece along with three other Aurors. We Apparated to Hania, out in the Sea of Crete, and arrived at some old site of castle ruins. We were greeted by two Greek Aurors who were in correspondence with our Ministry and they filled us in on all we needed to know. The castle was unplottable, deserted and, supposedly, haunted, and based on rumors around the local village, Lestrange and her group of Death Eaters were hiding inside."

Hermione let out another muffled squeak. "But that's too simple, Harry," she said matter-of-factly. "If the Ministry had guessed where the Death Eaters were hiding, then they could have raided the castle and caught them easily."

Harry shook his head forlornly. "I thought so too, but it turned out to be more of a challenge than we expected. No known wizard had figured out how to break into the castle; Lestrange must've loaded the whole damn thing with hordes of charms and curses. Luckily Romina – one of the other Aurors – is a professional spellbreaker, so we managed to get inside fairly quickly.

"At first, we thought we had the wrong place, because it looked as if the castle hadn't been used for years. Rather spooky, really. Anyway, after nearly an entire day of searching, Lysander amazingly stumbled upon something in the dungeons. And I always thought he was a bit of an idiot, but what he found was very helpful. It was clear the Death Eaters had been in the castle; we found tables laden with maps of Europe and Asia, so we had no doubt they did indeed have a route they were following. One map in particular, the largest one, had various plots and points randomly scattered around Asian countries. We figured Lestrange had been keeping track of where her fellow Death Eaters were concealing themselves. It's no use to us now, though, the plotted countries have been thoroughly searched and it looks as if nobody's in hiding anymore."

A tense silence settled in the room as Hermione let Harry's last words sink in. As much as she tried to veil and distort what she was being told, it was no use; the situation was blinding her with truth and she couldn't keep what she knew buried anymore. A good number of powerfully dangerous Death Eaters were currently roaming Europe. She, her friends, her co-workers, and her students were no longer safe.

"We didn't find much else that was significant," Harry said, letting the flames reflect and dance in his vacant eyes. "A few dark gadgets, more maps. I don't know what we were hoping for; perhaps a letter written by Lestrange, revealing all her deepest, darkest schemes." He sighed. "But there was that one thing, though…"

"What?" Hermione asked, thoroughly intrigued.

"I don't know what it means," Harry muttered, furrowing his brow and screwing up his eyes in thought, bringing some life back into his face. "None of us do. We brought it back with us to headquarters and had a few experts Apparate in, but it didn't matter much, nobody could figure it out. Romina found this book lying on top of an altar and it was completely written in Greek. The experts could only translate a few pieces of the book, I guess it was written in an old form of Greek that no one uses anymore."

"What did it say?"

Harry shrugged. "Doesn't seem too important but it's certainly suspicious. Something about wizards who possess rare, mystical powers that enable the m to… well, like I said, the translation was rough, so I really doubt it was 'powers that enable the possessor to fry and cook their victims', though that could be rather handy. We still have a few people doing some research on it, but it isn't our main priority right now."

Hermione thought the strange Greek book with mysterious translations was indeed something apprehensive the Aurors should consider, but she was keener on getting information about the Death Eaters (the latter appeared to be more dangerous than a book about frying and cooking other wizards).

"But Harry," she said, lowering her voice to a mere whisper even though there was no one else around to hear, "the Death Eaters – how did they get away?"

"That's the thing," replied Harry. He raised his arm and absentmindedly ran his hand through his hair again. With the firelight illuminating the room and the natural light peeking in under the crack in the door, Hermione once more was attracted to the mangled state of Harry's hands, and couldn't help noticing the numerous gashes and bruises covering his face. She was again inclined to ask about it, but Harry rambled on, and her interest was replaced with shock at his story.

"We're not sure how they did it, exactly," Harry said. "From the state of the room, we were able to conclude that Lestrange and the Death Eaters had fled only a few hours prior to our arrival in the dungeon."

"So that means they were still in the castle with you when you were above ground," Hermione interpolated.

Harry nodded. "We could've caught them," he said, clenching his teeth and gripping his hair in fury. "They were literally under our bloody noses and they still got away. I could've prevented mass massacres and complete turmoil if we had just gone down to the dungeons first –"

"Harry, it isn't your fault," Hermione reminded him, for Harry had quite a notorious tendency to take the burden of the world upon his shoulders and blame himself for all awful happenings. "You and the other Aurors had no way of knowing they were still in the castle. It's a miracle you even managed to track them there, and it's a miracle you were able to break in. There haven't been any massacres and nobody's in turmoil yet. You still have time, you know. You're guilty of nothing."

Harry looked up, as surprised as Hermione felt. When had her voice returned? How could she be so logical and rational when potential danger and death were staring her straight in the face? She had meant to let out another cry of terror but instead gave a speech of comfort. And yet the look on Harry's face was priceless.

"Thanks," he murmured. "You're right. We were just so close. Moody said almost the same thing, in a much more Moody way, of course. He said we helped the Ministry more than we hurt them."

"That's true."

Having regained his composure, Harry shook off his feelings of self-hatred and continued on with his story. "But then Dominic McAllister discovered a hidden passageway concealed behind a tapestry on the other side of the room. There were fresh footprints left in the dirt floor, which means the Death Eaters did indeed leave the castle by means of the passageway. We followed their route, somewhat apprehensible because, as Romina so eloquently pointed out, the Death Eaters would've known we were coming and would've also supposed that we would try to follow them. We were all expecting to encounter some giant snake or equally dangerous creature along the way, but the passageway was completely deserted. We walked for well over an hour and came out far away from the castle territory; we were at the beach on the edge of the island. The Death Eaters were gone, and had most likely Apparated to the mainland."

"That doesn't explain your – you know, the – all the cuts and bruises and…"

A shadow of a grin flitted across Harry's face. "I look like I'm wearing a Halloween mask, don't I? Stop fretting, all right? I'm okay, honestly, I'm fine. Stop looking at me like that."

"You really should get up to the hospital wing," Hermione squeaked, resting her eyes on a particularly nasty gash under Harry's left eye.

"I'm not finished with my story yet, and if I walk into the hospital wing looking like this, I'll be questioned, and I can't tell anyone what's happened. Well, I'm sure I could sell off a story about getting into a fight with a dragon or something… But that night, the four of us camped out in a forest back on the mainland. We contacted the Greek Ministry and they were as clueless as to where the Death Eaters had gone as we were. We planned to question some of the local Muggle villagers the following day, you know, find out if they'd seen anything suspicious lately. Unfortunately we, er, didn't get that far into the plan."

"What do you mean?"

"We were awoken in the middle of the night by nearby screams. Our makeshift camp wasn't that deep into the forest, so we were pretty close to the Muggle village. When we got to the forest borderline, the village on the next hill over was a really awful sight. Apparently, they were being attacked by a horde of Chimaeras."

"You aren't serious," said Hermione, drawing in a sharp gasp of breath. "But the Chimaera is really rare, what are the odds of an entire group existing in one location?"

"I don't know, Hermione," Harry said, exasperated. "But buildings were going up in flames; people were being driven from their homes. I wasn't about to stand there and dwell on the how.

"It was a pretty brutal fight, to be honest. Chimaeras – they're bloody quick things, they are. They can sense you coming up behind them when you're nearly a mile away. And their claws hurt something awful. Lysander called for backup from the Greek Ministry right away; none of us are animal trainers or anything, so the best we could do was keep the villagers safe and try to drive the Chimaeras into the forest. Romina managed to scare one off into the woods, but the downside was that it took two small children with it. Don't give me that look, I'm not being insensitive. It was a horrible experience. Chimaeras aren't susceptible to most wizard spells, so the most we could do was keep them away with repetitive shouts of Stupefy and Expelliarmus. None of the Unforgivables worked on them, either. And then we had the curious Muggles asking why we were waving sticks at the mutant beasts… So a group of Greeks showed up half an hour later and performed a mass Memory Charm on the remainder of the village. They tried to kill off the Chimaeras –"

"But they're probably some of the only ones left!" Hermione interjected. "There are rules against killing endangered species, they can't do that!"

"– but they all escaped into the forest before any of the attempts were successful," Harry finished, clearly pretending to ignore Hermione's comment. "A few more men Apparated in and began setting magical boundaries around the edge of the village so the Chimaeras would be restricted to the woods. It took us the rest of the morning to put out the fires and rebuild the village. Thankfully, I got out of there before the Muggles were woken up; what a mess that was bound to be. So does that explain a few things?"

Hermione nodded slowly. She was utterly disturbed by Harry's gruesome account of events; she could hardly begin to imagine the amount of damage that had been done to the innocent Muggles, both physical and emotional. The slashes on Harry's face were signs of the horrible encounter and Hermione's flesh crawled every time her eyes painfully wandered back to Harry's face.

"I really don't think you're all right, Harry," she said bluntly, but the crack in her voice didn't help much.

"You're not going to be happy until I'm lying in the infirmary, are you?" Harry asked, a shadowed smile returning to his face. An abrupt crashing outside the door jerked his attention away; he rose out of his chair slightly and Hermione noticed that his hand automatically flew to his wand.

"It's the students," Hermione whispered, checking her watch. Clear footsteps of the school on their way to an early breakfast could be heard outside the door now, and it was no wonder; the two of them had talked well through the night and neither had quite noticed it.

"We'd better go," Harry said, pushing back his chair and putting out the fire with a wave of his hand. "It would look suspicious if someone caught two grown adults, one looking like he just fell off a cliff, conversing alone in a regularly off-limits room."

"Harry," Hermione said suddenly, her heart beating very fast as she stored and re-ran all of the information she had just gained in her head. "Harry, this is serious. Potentially murderous – no, they are murderous – Death Eaters are on the loose. No one knows where they are. They could be lurking outside the school for all we know. Don't you think – I mean, considering the students' safety – perhaps we should tell Professor McGonagall?"

"Hermione, we can't tell anyone," Harry emphasized, moving towards the door.

"I know, I know, but she won't tell, will she? And she's the Headmistress; if her school's under risk, don't you think she has a right to know? She's in the Order and all, Harry. This is McGonagall we're talking about."

With a sigh, Harry placed his hand upon the door knob and turned to face Hermione. "Of course you're right," he said finally. "You're always right. The school should be on alert, and she should know. We'll tell her after classes, is that good? I really need to find Ron, I hope he didn't do something stupid like set the kitchens on fire."

"I wouldn't put it past him," Hermione muttered to herself. She gave Harry a nod and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. She caught sight of her reflection in a mirror hanging on the opposite wall and realized she looked as nearly as dreadful as Harry; her hair was matted and stuck up at odd angles, as it hadn't been brushed for several hours and prominent, dark circles surrounded her watery eyes, a sign of lack of sleep.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked with a yawn in Harry's vague direction. "We can't have you parading around the school looking like that. Yes, I know I'm still in my nightdress, so stop smirking at me. You do look worse, you know."

"Fine, you may take me to the infirmary," Harry said with mock vexation. He followed Hermione through the entrance hall, glaring at several alarmed students who were fixated on his face along the way, and allowed her to lead him to the hospital wing. They joked half-heartedly as they traveled through the many corridors of Hogwarts, as if they hadn't spent the past couple hours telling and gaining information concerning Dark wizards on the loose. Hermione knew Harry was trying to keep the mood light so as not to worry her further, and she was grateful; but still, she was unable to banish the gnawing sensation in her stomach, and a little voice in her head that sounded oddly like Harry's kept replaying over and over the words, "They're back. The Death Eaters. They're back."