Department of Mysteries
June 18th, 1996
Seventh Year
-
The girls skidded through a door, which slammed closed behind them, and then the room started to spin. "What. The actual. Hell?" Leili asked as the room stopped. There were Xs drawn on three of the 12 doors.
"Well, there's only one way to find out which door to choose," Jo said. "We each pick a door and open it. If it's not our door we copy the Xs." They both went to a door and yanked it open.
"Space," Leili called back.
"Corridor. Figures."
"Flagrante," they cast and then closed the doors. Two more doors down, seven to go. The room spun again.
Jo tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at the door in front of Leili, "Do me a favor, trade doors with me."
"Sure." They traded. "Crystal balls over here," Leili called. "What's in that one?"
"I dunno yet. But it's bugging me."
"Jo, we don't have time! Open the door and see if it's the right one so I can close this door."
Jo did. Inside were hundreds of shattered timepieces, ranging from time-turners to a bell jar. Jo's grip on the door turned her knuckles white. She bent double, taking deep breaths through her nose as she tried not to throw up.
Leili ripped off a shoe, shoved it in the door way and let it keep the door open while she rushed to Jo's side.
"Are you ok?"
"I think I'm gonna be sick," she groaned.
Leili glanced inside Jo's room and realized it was time; the room literally contained bottled time. "Ok, What we're gonna do is, you're gonna go to my door, get my shoe and I'll stay here. We'll close both doors together, OK?" Jo nodded. Leili pulled off her other shoe, shoved it in the doorway and helped Jo to the door hiding the crystal balls. She made a quick X on Jo's new door, hurried back across the hall, marked it, yanked out her shoe and counted to three.
They closed the doors, the room spun and Jo instantly felt better, not perfect, but better. 9 doors down, three to go. One more time they each opened an unmarked door, then marked it and closed it and one last time, the room spun.
One door left.
Jo and Leilani burst into the room, their Disillusionment charm stripped away by the Door Room, just as Harry was trying to negotiate his friends' release. "You're not in a position to bargain, Potter," Lucius Malfoy laughed, "there are ten of us and one of you, or did Dumbledore never teach you to count?" The Death Eaters laughed.
Neville, sweet, brave Neville took a stand next to Harry, "He's dot alone! He's still god be!"
"Neville, go back to Ron," Harry told him but Neville wasn't listening.
"STUBEFY! STUBEFY! STUBE—!" He was cut off when a large death eater grabbed him around the middle, pinning his arms. The death eaters laughed again behind their masks.
Without really thinking about it, Leili cast a jinx she was really quite fond of, but never had the chance to use. It was the biting jinx. She aimed it at the mask of the Death eater holding Neville who promptly began to yell in pain as the mask grew teeth and chomped down on his face, forcing him to release Neville rather quickly as he tried to force the mask off. Seeing the simple brilliance of this plan, Jo followed suit and pretty soon, every Death Eater holding a student had something biting them.
It would have been funny if the situation weren't so very dangerous. The groans and yells of uncomfortable Death Eaters nearly covered up the slamming of two doors high up above. The 5 remaining members of the Order began raining down spells at the death eaters who, amidst their biting accessories, attempted to return fire.
Harry and Neville crawled across the floor until a Death Eater whose shoes had grown teeth grabbed Harry around the neck and lifted.
"Give…Me… the Prophecy!"
Harry's windpipe was getting narrower and narrower by the second and no one around him seemed to notice, until Neville, unable to articulate any particular spell, shoved Hermione's wand into the man's eye.
"Accio Prophe—oof!" Sirius cut off Dolohov mid-spell by suddenly and violently ramming his shoulder into him.
The two began duelling before Harry regained enough breath to cast, "Petrificus totalus!"Dolhov's arms and legs snapped together and he fell quite unconscious to the hard stone floor.
"Nice one!" Sirius called. "Now I want you to—" he was cut off by a stream of green light that he narrowly dodged.
Across the room Tonks fell, hit by one of Bellatrix's spells. The other death eaters had either managed to free themselves of the biting jinx or were simply too distracted to notice.
"Harry, take Neville and get out of here!" A fine plan, except that Neville's legs wouldn't stop doing a jig. Lucius Malfoy tackled Harry and demanded the prophecy.
"Neville, catch!" Harry cried as he tossed the prophecy away. Neville tried but between his dancing feet and his not-always-great hand-eye coordination the spun glass ball flew a good ten feet away and smashed on the stone floor. No one could hear a word of the prophecy it had contained.
"Dubbledore!" Neville breathed, then, louder, "DUBBLEDORE!" a few swerved to look but most didn't hear. Dumbledore glued the shoes of the Death Eaters nearest him to the floor when he reached the foot of the steps; he also relieved them of their wands.
Only one pair was still fighting, Sirius and Bellatrix, and everyone was watching.
Sirius ducked a spell and laughingly mocked her saying, "C'mon, you can do better than that!" and he was right. The next spell, a jet of green light, hit him square in the chest.
Watching Sirius stumble back through the veil, Leili ran towards the archway, intent on pulling him back out.
Sliding across the conveniently polished floor, she took hold of the edge of the stone arch.
"Leilani! No!" Lupin cried, racing towards her.
She was about to plunge her hand in when she heard her name being called and hesitated.
Suddenly, she was tackled away from the veil. They landed hard on the floor.
"What was that for?" She asked as Lupin helped her to her feet.
"I'll explain later, right now you need to round up the others and get them out of here. GO!"
Leilani didn't hesitate this time, she ran.
She could hear Harry yelling for Sirius and Lupin restraining him with calm words and strong arms; he'd caught Harry shortly after he'd let go of her.
Leili caught Jo's arm and they raced around the kids, ushering them into a corner, much like two dogs herding a bunch of sheep, and began throwing protective spells up around them.
The girls surveyed the injured teens, Neville had a broken nose and dancing legs, Ginny had a broken ankle, Hermione was unconscious, Luna was winded but ok, and Ron had tentacle marks on his face and arms, Harry was the only one left out of the protective circle and he had escaped Lupin and was chasing down Bellatrix.
"SHE KILLED SIRIUS! SHE KILLED HIM—I'LL KILL HER!" Harry bellowed as he chased Bellatrix through the door. He heard a door close and the room around him began to spin.
Jo cast a quiet finite on Neville's legs and the room was dead silent, all of them having just seen a horrible thing.
Dumbledore stood there a moment before Apparating away, presumably to find and protect Harry, the death eaters Disapparated as well.
"Leilani, Jocelyn," Lupin said as he carried a limp Tonks over to them. "I'm truly sorry you had to see that."
"Partis Temporus," Jo cast: opening a temporary hole in the barriers to allow Lupin and Tonks inside.
"Why did you stop me? I might have been able to—" Leilani said.
Lupin interrupted her with a slow shake of his head, "No, Leilani, the second Sirius fell into that veil, he was dead. If you had gone after him, you would be too. I wasn't going to allow that. I wasn't going to deprive your parents of their daughter."
In the following silence, Kingsley and Moody joined them, slipping through the closing hole in the shields.
"How did you get here anyway?" Kingsley asked, genuinely surprised.
"Floo powder; where they go," Leili indicated the so-called golden trio with a simple jerk of her chin, "we go, sir."
"Now what?" Jo asked quietly.
"Now, we take you all back to the school," Moody said, gruff as ever.
"Jo and I can Apparate with each other," Leili offered, trying to figure out a way to get everyone home in one trip. And then she remembered, "But you can't Apparate into Hogwarts. Right."
"Yes, I think a portkey is in order," Moody-who-actually-WAS-Moody grunted.
While Moody created a portkey, Lupin shifted Tonks in his arms; the way he held her, looked at her, the girls could tell he was an absolute goner for her.
Luna wrapped her arm around Lupin's elbow when he had Tonks more comfortably settled. Kingsley gathered Hermione up like a doll and Neville took his arm. Ginny wrapped her arms around Moody's and Ron's shoulders, Jo and Leili clasped hands and all at once, they touched the portkey and vanished.
Upon landing in the Hospital wing, surprising Madam Pomfrey with the loud pop and thud that signaled their arrival. Taking down the shield charms Leili looked at Jo and said somberly, "I think I may need therapy for this one..."
"Some Ministry worker's going to have an interesting morning."
"You can say that again."
"Hope you can get your shoes back."
"Yeah… Wait. What?"
Jo pointed wordlessly to Leili's stockinged feet.
Leili groaned, dropping her head into her hand.