CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
A couple of weeks had passed, and Jane fell back into her daily routines: Quidditch practice, schoolwork, and Hogsmeade. And everything was normal, and everything was safe.
The boys were still working on their potion and were growing more and more tired of each other by the day. But everything was normal, and everything was safe.
And during those two weeks, Remus' copies of the Daily Prophet brought horrible news day after day. However, at Hogwarts, everything was normal, and everything was safe.
But on the night of January the seventeenth, the students of Hogwarts experienced their first glimpse into reality when the school was finally affected by something that happened in the outside world. Jane would never forget how terrified she had been.
"Wake up! All of you! Wake up!"
Jane and her dorm mates awoke from their peaceful slumbers and groggily rose from their beds one by one. Jane squinted through the dark to see Professor McGonagall clad in a flannel nightgown, trying to usher them out of their rooms.
"What's going on, Professor?" Alice asked.
"There's no time to explain. Follow your prefects down to the Great Hall. Quickly now," McGonagall said, shooing them through the doorway.
Jane watched as Alice grabbed her wand from her bedside table and slipped it up the long sleeve of her nightshirt. Jane followed suit. Better safe than sorry.
When they got down to the common room, Jane spotted the boys and immediately appeared at James' side.
"What's happening?" she asked him.
He rubbed his sleepy eyes before putting on his glasses.
"I dunno," he said. "It's gotta be something serious though."
They walked with their fellow housemates down to the Great Hall where students from all four houses were gathered in little groups, looking tired and somewhat scared.
Jane caught a Ravenclaw girl that was in her Art class by the arm as she walked past them in a hurry.
"Lennox, do you know what's happening?" Jane asked.
"There's Death Eaters in Hogsmeade. A whole lot of them," Lennox said in a frightened tone.
"Are you sure?" Remus asked.
Lennox nodded.
"That's what Michael Burbage told us," she said.
Jane let go of Lennox's arm. Michael Burbage was a seventh year Ravenclaw; he was also Head Boy. If one of the students were to know what was going on, it was him.
Jane exhaled sharply. Death Eaters? In Hogsmeade? That had never happened before. And it was extremely too close.
"What do you think they're doing in Hogsmeade?" Peter asked.
"I dunno. But they've got to be doing some kind of damage, otherwise they wouldn't have brought us here," Sirius said.
Jane let her wand slip out of her sleeve and into her hand. She was frightened. What if they tried to get into Hogwarts?
When all the students and staff had finally arrived in the Great Hall, Jane, along with everyone else, looked to Dumbledore for answers.
"I am afraid that for your safety, you will need to sleep in here for the remainder of the night," Dumbledore said, offering them no further explanation.
With a wave of his wand, the tables stood themselves up against the walls of the Great Hall, making the enormous room seem even larger as it cleared up space.
"I will ask the staff to please follow me. Prefects will stand guard at the entrances, and I'm leaving the Head Boy and Girl in charge."
With a blink of Jane's eye, hundreds of squashy, purple sleeping bags covered the floor.
Dumbledore and the rest of the Hogwarts staff left the Great Hall. The prefects closed the entrance and secured it. Jane and the four boys grabbed their sleeping bags and dragged them to the far corner of the Great Hall, laying them in a starburst pattern with their heads all at the centre.
"You don't think they'd try and get into the castle, do you?" Remus asked.
"What would Death Eaters want with a whole bunch of students?" Sirius asked.
"What do they want with a whole bunch of townspeople?" James pointed out. "It's what they do. They like to torture people."
"You think that's what they're doing down there? In Hogsmeade? Torturing people?" Jane asked in a quiet voice.
James sighed.
"Let's hope that torturing's the only thing they're doing," he said darkly.
Jane's breathing became unsteady.
"You think they're killing people?" she asked in a shaky voice.
James didn't say anything; he only looked at her.
A lump formed in Jane's throat, and tears threatened to fall from her eyes. Just a few miles from where she was right now, real people were being tortured, some of them even killed.
"But they can't get in the castle, right?" Peter asked in a squeaky voice. "It's pretty secure, right? I mean, Hogwarts is the safest place in the world."
Jane's mind drifted to the passageways that led from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts. Surely, Dumbledore knew about those?
"They couldn't come through a secret passage, could they?" Remus asked, obviously thinking exactly what Jane was.
"No, I'm sure Dumbledore knows about those," James said. "At least I hope he does," he said as an afterthought, not entirely sure how many people knew about the passages.
Jane's lip began to quiver a bit.
"I'm scared," she said in a small voice.
"Me too," Remus admitted.
James looked around at them and sighed.
"We're all scared," he said.