Harry, Rowan, and the remaining members of the Golden Trio had been sacked with piles of exams, quizzes, and frustration regarding their exams. Harry's dreams had been intensifying, showing strange colors and bodiless voices he couldn't yet place, the consciousness of the Dark Lord bleeding into his own subconscious. It all changed when Sirius' face appeared behind the young wizard's eyes in a vision, repeatedly being hit and tortured with horrific curses. Harry knew he had to act and fast, his godfather must be saved, he was all he had left. The raven-haired boy stumbled out of the Great Hall, under the pretense of grabbing a drink, preparing to demand for McGonagall to give him her time, Sirius had to be saved. Sirius had to be saved, it repeated like a mantra in a frenzied mind.
Upon being met with the news that the elder of Gryffindor house was in St. Mungo's, Harry stumbled into Ron and Hermione who met him with grave concern. Hermione's protests to Ron and Harry's sureness of Sirius' danger was frustrating to Harry, stirring up that all too familiar creeping of unbridled rage. The headstrong boy knew this was not a trick, he could feel the dread and pain of the realness of the situation in his bones. Rowan's black curls bounced and Harry called for her, the crown of twists snapping around to look at him.
"What is it?" Her voice was worn and tired, something that would've caught Harry off-guard if he was not hyper focused on his godfather's fate.
"Voldemort has Sirius, in the Department of Mysteries, he's torturing him! We are going to save him."
"Wait, Harry, how do we know this isn't a trap? It seems awfully convenient to lure you to a place where you are unfamiliar when we are so isolated from the Order at the moment," The raven Slytherin inquired, pondering over the logistics.
"We have no time, Rowan, I just know, we have to go."
"Then I'm helping too," she said, straightening her spine and visibly bracing for whatever challenge would be next.
Sneaking into the office of Umbridge would be the next feat, with Rowan, Harry, and Hermione stealthily creeping in and seeking communication with any Order member they'd be able to find. That plan fell flat after Kreacher's confirmation that Sirius had gone and the entrance of Umbridge and her stuffy Inquisitorial Squad.
Snape's entrance garnered hope, with the former DADA Club members hoping he received the message, Rowan looking at her Head of House with pleading eyes, begging for him to understand that someone needed to be contacted: her mother, Professor Dumbledore, anyone. He nodded slightly upon his departure and Rowan listened to Hermione stammer through an explanation of where this fake weapon was and how powerful it could potentially be. Hiding the smirk from her face at Hermione's brilliant diversion, she braced to duel with Malfoy, who was firmly grasping the hood of her robe.
The pink-clad demon walked out with Hermione and Harry, while the remainder of them waited to be released or for someone to make a move.
"Not so strong now, are you, blood traitor," Malfoy provoked in Rowan's ear, "Whoring around with Potter didn't lead to your ascent after all, hmm?"
Leaning her head forward slightly as if she was stretching her neck, she quickly slammed her skull back into Malfoy's face, hearing the satisfying crack and whine of his nose. Hell broke loose at that moment, with Ginny's bat boogey hex hitting the white-blonde weasel immediately after. Stunners and various charms flew around the room as the wizards battle for their wands back and to escape from the confines of Umbridge's office.
"Bloody hell, what a headbutt, Rowan," Ron said, nodding in approval.
"Thank you, I'm sure I made more friends in my house with that move," Rowan brisked, shaking her head of the pain from the impact with Malfoy's pinched face, a migraine brimming around the edges of her eyes.
The pair fled with Ginny, Luna, and Neville, planning to meet Harry and Hermione as soon as they had successful diverted Umbridge. Rowan wiped blood from her face as they darted among the trees, searching for the pair, the result of a flying hex or charm.
She knew her boyfriend would not be easily swayed by her or his friends wanting to help, Harry would want to go alone, a boy with penchant for martyrdom. Spotting the mop of black hair that belonged to her significant other, she rushed into his arms, slamming into him and holding him close.
His hand lightly grazed the side of her bleeding and bruised face and he asked the group, "How did you get out?"
"Nothing a few spells couldn't solve," Ron said, handing the pair their wands back.
Ginny glared at Rowan as Harry tightly wrapped his arms around her, who was relishing in the touch of his girlfriend after the fear-inducing altercation with the centaurs within the forest.
"How do we get to the Department of Mysteries?" Harry asked, still holding the young witch close to him.
"We could fly," Ginny suggested, the group nodding at the idea.
"We are not doing anything, we are not going as a group, and all of our broomsticks are locked up right now," Harry snapped, with Ginny trying to bicker back at him, her rage stoked even more by the young witch at his side.
Neville spoke up, "We joined the club to be a part of something real, let us help."
Everyone took a pause.
"Fine, but we still haven't solved how we are getting there." Harry had a crease in his brow, also angered by the idea of bringing his girlfriend into such a dangerous battle, he could not handle yet another loss.
"Thestrals!" Luna chimed, pointing behind Harry, where a flock had gathered, attracted by the blood on Hermione and Harry.
The crew loaded themselves onto the thestrals, bracing for the journey to the city, hoping to save a life.
The thestrals descended into the city, with the gaggle of teens falling off of them and stumbling through the winding corridors, finding the mass of doors and confusing, fake leads.
"Harry, something is not right about this," Rowan voiced, grabbing her partner's non-dominant arm in a constrictor-like grasp, as if she were anchoring herself to reality through his limb.
"I agree with Rowan, Harry, we need to find Sirius and get out of here," Hermione's voice warbled, lacking the usual assuredness that came with someone as bright as her.
"We find Sirius, and we get out – agreed?" Harry chirped, watching the remainder of Dumbledore's Army nod their heads in taut agreement. The odd veil attracted Harry's attention, but he shook his head and pushed the group forward toward the spiral of odd doors.
Attempting to break a few false doors down, Harry found the right door, nervously darting his eyes along his rescue mission team. Their worry was palpable, lingering in the air, making it nearly unbreathable. He would get them all out of here, his godfather included, he promised himself. He stared into Rowan's dark, dimly lit eyes, nodding assuredly at her, trying to ease the anxiety he could feel pulsating through her shaking hands. If she was concerned, his strong, brilliant girl, perhaps he should be more concerned about his own mortality. He shook the thought with the young witch dropping her grasp on his arm, focusing his mind on his falsely accused godfather, leading the group in a charge through the rows of shelves, looking for the magic number.
"Wands ready, you all," He reminded them, green eyes darting wildly along the corridors.
Hermione called out, finding the number of the row he had dreamt. The group seized the corridor, finding it empty and cold.
"I don't think Sirius is here, Harry," Rowan said, curls in a flurry as she kept her head rotating left and right, looking for any looming threat, a furrow stationing itself between her eyebrows.
"Hey, look at this!" Ron called, pointing at a circular object on the shelf, "Harry, it's got your name on the tag."
Harry's eyes flickered to the orb, his brain processing through the shock of finding his name on some dusty ball instead of his captured godfather. His fingers reached out into the tense air, as though he were touching a phantom.
"Harry, do not touch that. This has to be a trap." Rowan's clipped tone was new.
The black-haired witch was panicked, her mind unable to form a thought apart from the alarm bells of danger chiming like an old clocktower in her mind. Her assured coolness had melted away, leaving a bitter twang to her voice, a fear, a voice that could be understood as an utter lack of control. The rock in her stomach was rolling, leaving perspiration along her palms, stumbling her eyes across at her friends' stone features. Her mind was too frozen to strategize, she had nothing to add apart from a desperation to remove her boyfriend's hand from its looming embrace in the air and a demand to wretch themselves away from this situation.
"Harry, don't." Neville's voice held the same timbre of fear.
With that, Harry's had clasped down on the orb.
"Thank you for your service, Mr. Potter, now if you'll turn around and hand it over, we won't have an issue."
That steely, cool voice was familiar to the group. It was the snappish tone of Lucius Malfoy. This was most certainly a trap. Black caped figures began apparating, they were most definitely outnumbered. His eyes darted to his friends', scanning their faces. Rowan's eyes were hollow, disassociating to somewhere that wasn't here, a place Harry had seen her go when detailing the actions of the men who were surrounding them now. The nausea stirred in his stomach and he kicked himself for dragging them here, knowing they would always follow despite his protests, but especially to her, knowing just how sharp this knife was and how deeply it was wounding her. He hated himself for the potential harm that would come to his friends, the trap he had ensnared them in through his brazen, irate leadership.
"Where is Sirius?" The demand was met with a cackling cacophony of sharp laughter from the cloaked figures.
"The Dark Lord knew you had a flair for the heroic dramatics, Potter, what a perfect little set-up to find you and your tribe of miscreants in." Lucius' steely eyes beat into his, the crazed, curled woman at his side sniveling with cracked, broken giggles.
"Especially a group of lovely blood traitors, right, sister?"
The group snapped their eyes to the now unmasked face of Rufus Rosier, smiling in a feline-like manner as he bore into the witch shrinking herself down behind the Chosen One. Keeping her wand arm raised, she twisted her fingers into the fabric of Harry's jacket, needing his presence as she began to conceptualize the orb in his hand must have been a component of the Dark Lord's playbook.
"I'll smash it right here," Rowan spat, "and then you can all go plead on your broken knees, telling Voldemort how pathetically you failed against a group of schoolchildren, you cowardly group of lapdogs."
Bellatrix Lestrange snapped her wand up, ready to assault her.
"How dare you speak his name, you filthy blood traitor!"
"No wands, yet," Lucius snapped, pushing the crazed woman behind him.
Rowan's father, Felix, placed a solid hand on his son's shoulder, pointing his wand at the group.
Harry struggled to comprehend the importance of the sphere weighing heavy in his palm, his brain only focusing on the fact that if Sirius wasn't here, if this was certainly a trap, and he had lead his friends to slaughter. He had returned his girlfriend to her abusive family, knowing they would fight hard to capture her at this opportunity, remembering her battered face and body from Christmas. Feeling the group's hot, hurried breathing on his nape, he knew he had to get them out of here. Neville and Rowan's shaking limbs were clanking into his own stressed frame.
"I don't understand why he wants this, Mr. Malfoy."
Harry had a plan. He would draw out this conversation long enough until a deterrent could be manifested, one his racing mind was piecing together as he glanced around the surrounded group. The orbs. Of course, he could smash the orbs.
"You haven't wondered why you could be concerned in this matter? Perhaps it's the reason your mummy and daddy died, Potter-"
He stepped on Rowan's toes, murmuring a hurried "smash them" while Lucius droned on and on. While Harry's curiosity was peaked, especially with the mention of his parents' sacrifice, he knew he needed to focus on getting the group out of here and away from the sinister forces enclosing them presently. He watched all eyes in the group meet in certainty, with the sextet prepared to strike. He breathed in before he let out the command.
"Do it now!"
Spells launched from the wands of the wizards, with spheres and glass tumbling in all directions, with the heroic group launching into a frenzied sprint away from the Death Eaters. They grasped each other, dodging the falling glass and orbs, launching themselves through the door, hexes and curses floating through the air like the seeds on a dandelion. Finding themselves in the room with the odd veil, the group took a second to breathe and process before jumping to their feet to flee. Harry's eyes took inventory of the group, falling over every stressed expression planted on his friends' faces, this was his fault. Rowan met his eyes, tersely nodding, he knew it as her way of saying things were okay, bringing him a crumb of comfort. Before he could linger on the thought, his friends were wretched into the arms of the Death Eaters, encircling the strange arch in the middle. Bellatrix had a tight grasp on Neville, pulling his head back against her shoulder, calling out a mocking jab about his parents and hitting him with a cruciatus curse, the nausea returning to Harry's stomach. Rowan was entangled in the arms of her brother and Hermione struggling in those of Felix Rosier. All of his friends were trapped and the weight of the prophecy loomed in his hand.
"Now, Potter. Are you going to hand it over? I would absolutely hate if any one of your scoundrel friends got even more injured, perhaps even fatally so."
The icy cool of the Malfoy patriarch brought the winter back to the room, with everyone struggling against their captors. Harry lingered, dropping the Prophecy into Lucius' waiting hand. Before Harry could open his mouth to quip back, the room came to an eruption of apparition, with Sirius, Tonks, Remus, Kingsley, Aurelia, and Moody shooting curses and hexes from their wands. Sirius crashed into Lucius, who dropped the Prophecy onto the rocky floor, the blue mist filling the air. The group of students began dueling with the elder wizards, colors sparking around the sky. The Death Eaters dropped as the cracking of spells flickered across the ears of all in attendance. Harry turned to see Rowan being overpowered by the two Rosier men, snapping her wand furiously as she held them off. Sirius snapped a Petrificus Totalus at his wretched cousin, Bellatrix collapsing in frozen heap on the floor.
Grasping his wand, he began dueling with his girlfriend's brother, a sentence he didn't dare to fathom before this moment, as Rowan warded off her father. Rufus' barrage was relentless and as Harry struggled, a noise cracked by his head. Aurelia was twisted her wand in the air, sending a brutal attack on her son. Aurelia pushed the young man behind her, his green eyes watching Sirius battle out with another member of Voldemort's deranged militia. Harry turned his attention to another Death Eater lingering, watching his friends ward off the rest of the dark wizards.
"Please Rufus, you don't want to do this." Aurelia's pleas with her eldest son were muted in the amplified atmosphere, "your sister wouldn't want this for you."
The sentence triggered something in the eldest son of the Rosier clan. His face contorted into something of a shared misery and pain. He steeled himself, visibly shaken by the statement from his mother. The mother who always treated him gently when his father raged. The mother who sent him extra money for Hogsmeade trips and asked him to look after his sister. His mother who had betrayed him and his father to help a rebellious legion of blood traitors. His father who had been incapacitated by his watching sister, a traitor in the greatest sense of the word.
Channeling the rage felt and gaining his ground over the elder witch, he let out a strangled scream and a green beam shot out from his wand, aiming for the Chosen One over her shoulder. Aurelia lurched, jumping in front of the Killing Curse, the dagger of death itself striking the woman in the chest.
A horrified, agonized scream filled the room as it spilled from his sister's lips. His eyes darted around, watching the Death Eaters be overpowered by the group of insurgent blood traitors and half-bloods. He looked at the crumpled form of his mother on the rocky terrain, pulling his lips back in a sneer and darting from the room.
Harry's head snapped around at the noise from his partner, finding the lifeless eyes of Aurelia looking at him. The Order turned as well, expressions dropping in shock.
"You bastard! Expulso!" Rowan screamed, dashing after her older sibling, blue light radiating from her wand, blowing part of the wall off after him.
"Rowan! No!" Harry shouted, setting off behind the witch.
A clamor of calls for Harry to stop followed him, Sirius being the loudest, clawing at his godson's arms, but he knew that he had to stop her, breaking free from the grasp. He saw her eyes; she was set on avenging her mother. While Harry couldn't blame her, he had to stop her from corrupting herself, from getting a one-way ticket to Azkaban.
Stalking into the lobby of the Ministry, Harry watched as Rufus hurled a curse at his sister, a purple flame erupting from the tip of his twisted wooden wand. Her screamed echoed across the pavilion, collapsing on the ground with a thud. The man hadn't spotted Harry yet, lingering over the body of his last remaining sibling. The elder Rosier kicked Rowan, her body rolling over, remaining unconscious. Harry had not a clue what she had been hit with, but Rufus would
"You really tried so hard to fight everything you were made to be, what a waste, Rowan. What a shame it must be me to cement your destiny now. Nothing but a whorish blood traitor with a loud mouth and a weak spine. You could've been great."
"What a pity, Avad- "
Harry flicked his wand, screaming a stern "Crucio!". Rowan couldn't die too. Not her. He thought of the white-haired woman who had jumped in front of that curse to save him. Aurelia's ferociously protective nature with her daughter at Christmas, her gentle nature and acceptance of him, a boy with no one but a mishmash of friends to call his family. A mother had died for him again, yet this time it was not his own.
Rufus crumbled to the floor, breathless and gritting his alabaster teeth against his lip.
"Kill him – you want to. You know the curse, so just get on with it, Harry."
It was Voldemort. He had strayed too long in his head, left his defenses down to allow his emotions to battle off his wards. The voice was sickly, twisting around his skull and reverberating in a vice-like grip.
"He is nothing, just do it." The Dark Lord's voice hissed and convulsed as Rufus uncomfortably twisted along the floor of the Ministry, slithering like the snake he had proven himself to be.
Another urge for murder was resounded, this time an embodied voice behind him, finding Voldemort standing in the flesh. The man snapped his hand, disarming the young wizard.
"So pitiful, letting your emotions control you, Harry."
From the green flames of the fireplace emerged Albus Dumbledore, scaling the scene in front of him, his eyes darting at the forms of all his students present in the room. Rufus and the Headmaster made eye contact, the younger male darting into the flames of the fireplace, chuckling. Harry was hurled against a wall by the elder, eyes darting between the crumpled body of his girlfriend and the Headmaster.
The elder wizard began a furious duel with Voldemort, flames and curses spouting of like the opening of a fountain. Harry caught his breath, grabbing the contorted arm of his girlfriend and dragging her body to him, stashing her behind one of the grand pillars lining the hall, shielding her from the flying debris that had already drawn blood from both. He pushed the hair out of her face, feeling a slow thump of a pulse at her neck, her head lolling back against his arm. She would be okay, he repeated to himself like a prayer. She had to be. Making sure she was guarded by the architecture of the pavilion, he lurched to his feet, only to be chucked back by Dumbledore again.
The enemy sent glass flying before evaporating into the air, Harry feeling the grasp around his mind, his scar on fire. He could feel the echoing of pain rattling through his body, frantically searching for some escape, hearing a voice that wasn't his escape his lips. He could die. No, he couldn't. But did he want to? Yes. He wanted to escape the weight wrapping around him, trying to find a safe corner of his mental prison. Rowan would need him. She was just like him now. His friends would need him. Sirius needed him. Love and friendship and family. He pushed against the intrusion, thinking of the warmth of his godfather, of his friends, of Aurelia's sacrifice, of his mother's sacrifice, of the heart of the woman he loved that was still beating across the floor from him.
Coming to, Harry was met with a commotion in the lobby of the Ministry. Dumbledore was still there, but Aurors, the Order, and his friends, had flooded the space. Rowan was being tended to by Tonks and Moody was holding Aurelia in his arms, his heavy coat covering her body. He could hear Sirius speaking to him, though he couldn't make out the words, and Fudge and Dumbledore's rantings and arguing, including a mention of the pink-clad demon herself.
"We shall speak after Mr. Potter has been returned to Hogwarts."
With that, Harry felt the sensation of a portkey, jolting him away from this horrid scene. He took the guilt and the pain with him as he popped out of the Ministry's atrium.