Chapter 11

Nessun Dorma

But my secret is hidden within me;
My name no one shall know, no, no,
On your mouth I will speak it
When the light shines,
And my kiss will dissolve the silence

That makes you mine.

Translation "Nessum Dorma"

Molly Weasley was thoroughly enjoying her day so far. Her washing had come out of the wash spectacularly clean, she repaired a few vases she had been meaning to repair since Fred and George had broken them over the summer and her garden was looking thoroughly gnome-free with the newly developed gnome-repellent. Yes, Molly Weasley was having a fantastic day.

The twins had popped in earlier and snuck off with breakfast. Bill and Charlie, who had moved back to England to be closer to the family, were still sleeping at a ridiculous time of 1:00 pm. She couldn't blame them, though, as they were spending their nights patrolling for signs of Death Eaters and Voldemort.

When Arthur had arrived home at five pm she had kissed him and prepared his dinner, as she has done every night for the past twenty-five years. Her eldest children were slightly intoxicated and exceptionally jovial at the dinner table. Finally, Molly Weasley felt she could really enjoy her night with her family with the exception of her two youngest and her estranged middle child.

As Molly rocked contently in her rocking chair, to end her ordinary day, something unsuspected caught her eye.

Two hands of her famous clock were spinning from "school" to "moral peril"

Since the tragic demise of it's owner, Grimmauld Place had remained the headquarters of the esteemed Order of the Phoenix. Members would come and go at regular intervals but the only permanent inhabitant of the house was a werewolf without a pack.

Remus was lonely and he didn't like to admit it. His only true friend had been snatched from his grip, not once, but twice in a lifetime. The first time he was sent to a place that could be comparable to hell, the second time he had been sent to heaven. Remus was sure, above all things, Sirius would be somewhere happy and somewhere he was going to reap the benefits that he had deserved.

Remus resented Sirius for leaving him after such a short time they had spent together. He hated Bellatrix with a feral desire to rip the spleen from her body that he attributed to the inner animal yet knew that the man would be cheering alongside the beast.

Today he would continue the monotonous task of keeping an eye-out on the headquarters whilst keeping the stranglers company. Tonks would most certainly be sitting around the table, munching on some left-over toast and scanning the Daily Prophet before being reminded she has to be somewhere else, namely work.

Remus was extremely bored. He almost wished that Voldemort's forces would start to become more active because it would have made him have some use. Right now, staring at the same blank wall he had stared at for the last few months, Remus felt drained of all ability to care. The Aurors, Shackbolt and Tonks were playing a quiet game of cards, Mad-Eye Moody was reading a book and Mundungus Fletcher was breaking into the collection of wine that had been stored in a cool cupboard.

At 10:00 pm, Remus dragged himself down the stairs and into the living-room. He greeted the people with nothing more than a polite "hello" before walking into the kitchen to grab something to eat.

He walked back into the living-room and attempted some strangled conversation with Mad-Eye Moody. Today was an ordinary day in the life of Remus Lupin.

This, however, changed with the arrival of a very hysterical phoenix.

The reports from the Aurors had come in thick and fast. Hogwarts had been attacked by Death Eaters, Dumbledore was dead, McGonagall was critically wounded, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were missing and many students were being brutally attacked by both wizard and non-wizard creatures.

Amelia Bones called an emergency meeting once she had heard the news from the Aurors positioned at the Battlefield. The War Security Council met in an unplotable bunker that the location was only known to a few select authorities in the Ministry. This was the moment they had all been waiting for since the appointment of Madam Bones as Minister of Magic two years before. The plans had been drawn out in exceptional detail yet no-one had devised a way of breaking down the wards of Hogwarts, which had been reinstated as soon as Voldemort's forces had ploughed their way into the castle.

Everyone sat calmly around the mahogany table in the room with the dark blue walls, lit by only the few candles which had been salvaged from the forgotten storage room two floors down. It was the beginning of the long haul in the battle which they had been planning for. The enemy had the area surrounded and now it was the Ministry's responsibility to fight back for the Wizarding world.

All at the table had suffered loss at the hands of the brutal enemy, whether it had been limbs, family, friends or their country, each man and woman sitting around the mahogany table in the blue room had felt the sharp sting of the foes vengeance and each person knew that this was their chance to fight back at an enemy that had troubled them for such a long time.

"Ladies and gentlemen" murmured a voice, betraying fear within the strength of a leader. "It has been a long battle and I will not attempt to deceive you buy telling you we can win it. Each one of us has been scarred both physically and mentally and now I ask one more burst of strength to push back the enemy forces." Blue eyes darted to the eyes of every person sat on the mahogany table in the blue room. "I know that it might be too much to ask but are you with me as we draw to the closing hours of our long fight? If you cant, or don't want to continue the struggle then I will be happy to sign your release papers and you can go and find whatever remains of your previous lives. I, for one, will continue to fight whether I have to do it alone or not"

One by one, the fifteen at the mahogany table in the blue room walked to the front and clasped the weary leader's hand, signalling their agreement with the sentiments expressed.

"Very well" a relieved tone from the front "It is unanimous that we will continue to fight against a merciless enemy for not only ourselves, but for the land which we love the most"

The leader paced the front of the room. They exchanged weak smiles; their leader had a habit of cultivating nervous habits.

"Do you have any idea how we are going to do this?"

The leader directed the question to a man sitting directly in front of the head chair at the table. He gave a delicate cough and stood, addressing the council.

"No we have no idea" he closed his eyes, willing away the shame of his answer "I'm sorry, we've tried so hard to come up with a good plan but we cannot see one"

"It is fine Nicholas" the leader reassured him "No-one can come up with anything better"

The young man sat down.

"What we need is a plan to break through the wards. We need to get a message to someone so they can disable the wards to allow our men to enter and offer help before something awful happens."

There was a flurry of excitement from outside the secured area. A raised voice was demanding to speak to the Minister of Magic as it was urgent and from Hogwarts. Amelia Bones rose from her seat at the front of the room and walked out to greet the man.

His face was flushed and the sweat was pouring down his back. He had ran from the reception of the Ministry until the very top at the Ministers office. He could barely stand with exhaustion but he had to get his message to the Minister or die trying.

He saw her emerge from the disguised broom closet and he collapsed in relief. She strode over to him quickly and looked him square in the face. He whispered something quietly into her ear and she walked back into the room with her War Council.

Her face had been stained with tears when she finally arrived back in the room. She stood at the front, as she had done moments before, and addressed the entire room. Her hands were shaking, not with fear, but with anger.

"Hogwarts has fallen. The entire school has been blown up by something. Everyone inside is reportedly dead. They are coming this way"

Narcissa Malfoy had known about the attack on Hogwarts, not from the people running on the streets, but from her husband. He had told her not to worry about him and assured her that he would get their son, Draco, from the castle before it was destroyed.

Narcissa had heard the Dark Lord had personally perfected something akin to the muggle Atomic Bomb. It had the ability to destroy great amounts of area without much effort. It was a beautiful, destructive angel that Lucius cooed over more than he had cooed over his baby son.

Narcissa may have been a wife and a witch but above all things, Narcissa was a mother. She was a woman who loved her son more than anything and she was a woman who would rather die herself than see hurt come to her son. It may not have fitted in with the stereotypical view of a "trophy wife" but Narcissa was anything but stereotypical.

When her husband had kissed her gently on the cheek before he left, he had made her promise not to interfere with anything that could get her killed. So, when she heard the rumour that Hogwarts had fallen and that everyone was dead, she did the only thing a perfect mother could have done. She apparated directly to the castle.

The rumours had been correct. Hogwarts lay before her in ruin. The towers had fallen to dust at her feet. The stone rubble and debris lay around her like a chilling mock-up of an ocean. She stepped over something that could only have fallen from Dumbledore's office and over another mound of rubble she could see the scarlet and gold remains of Gryffindor tower.

The bloodied corpses of students lay sprawled out across the ground beside the bodies of the teachers who fell to protect them. All students, from first to seventh year lay on the remains of Hogwarts like a grotesque act of loyalty. Finally, with the destruction of Hogwarts, the school stood united in it's utter destruction. Students of green and silver, lay beside students of red and gold. The bullies and the bullied lay silent together as in death they became equal. If Narcissa wanted to, she could dream of them as friends in another lifetime. She could imagine them fighting side-by-side against the forces of darkness. She could imagine peace and unity in Hogwarts.

Not only students but the brave teachers lay still on the ground. Flitwick and Sprout were beside each other, with their wands still held in the final grip of death. Trelawney and Sinstra finally came from their towers and stood on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with the sixth-year students that lay near-by. The black hoods could only be the Death Eaters who could not escape their death. The other Death Eaters would be closing in on the Ministry to elect their own leader as Minister as the survivors walked through the remains.

Narcissa was not the only person seeing the destruction. She could see a flock of red-hair that could only be the remaining Weasleys searching for a glimmer of hope. Narcissa did not have the heart to tell them she had seen their daughter's lifeless body in the group of students beside the dead Death Eaters.

She could recognise some people who could only have been the elusive Order of the Phoenix. Remus Lupin was digging through the rubble like an animal, searching for the body of his fallen Dumbledore or Harry Potter. Some of the Ministry Aurors were there too, finally able to pass through the wards that had been re-erected. They were too late, everyone had been too late to save Hogwarts. The planning didn't matter, the battle didn't matter and the deaths don't matter. War has been declared on the Wizarding world and all they could do was fall to the ground and die like lambs to the slaughter.

Blitzkrieg. Lightning War. Narcissa was not unfamiliar to these concepts because she had an unhealthy interest in muggle history. She had seen the pictures of war before yet this was her first time in the middle of a battlefield. She almost wondered how they'd report this in history, depending on the victors.

She walked through the rubble and debris like a small child walking through a park for the first time. Watching the remains of the school she could only imagine the amount of destruction the Dark forces were enforcing on the rest of the wizarding world.

With his armies of 100,000 strong, Voldemort had managed to incorporate the magic of wizards, the strength of trolls and the power of the Dementors to create his killing force. Wizards, beasts and other creatures flocked to him for their own place in the new world order and he was not one to disappoint.

As of yet, Narcissa hadn't seen sign of her son or her husband. This could only mean that they had managed to get out of the castle before the bomb had been dropped. She dreaded to think what had happened to her sister.

Tonight, Narcissa Malfoy would return to her home and await further commands from her husband. She would discover her son curled up in the middle of his bedroom, safe but a coward. Narcissa Malfoy knew what the Dark Lord planned to do with young Harry Potter and she knew all about Miss Granger's intervention. Tonight would be the last night of the Wizarding world as they know it because out of the ashes of Hogwarts and out of the bodies of it's enemies, the new wizarding world shall arise like a phoenix from the flames.

Narcissa shivered at the prospect.