A yell rang out in the Great Hall and caused Neville's letter g to slice question thirty in half, followed by Padma Patil whirling around and accidentally smacking him in the face with her braid. Massaging his cheek, he turned grimaced at the sight: Harry Potter was on the floor, wide-eyed, shaking, and moving a hand away from his forehead. Professor Tofty ushered the dismayed boy to his feet, reassuring him while pelting him with questions as students like Ernie Macmillan rolled their eyes and returned to completing their paper; Neville was unfazed to see that Hermione Granger wasn't one of them, surveying Harry anxiously over her shoulder instead.
As Harry left the Hall, still looking thoroughly shaken, Neville sighed at the absurdly long letter g stretching across his paper, redipping his quill in the fresh ink and hovering it over the answer space provided, realising that had he had a Remembrall right now it would be glaring red.
Deciding that it probably wouldn't make a difference anyway, Neville skipped question thirty as well as thirty-one, finally finding luck with thirty-two: 'The murder of Rosalie Rowle was the pivoting point of the 1807 war between wizards and goblins'. Testify the truth of the statement.
Rosalie Rowle, Neville pondered, biting the inside of his cheek and turning the name in his head. She had been the war-time Minister for Magic back then and ... had been strangled to death by Devil's Snare implanted by a goblin in her office! So he began to concoct an answer, not knowing that the war circling them was soon to mark its next target as well.
———
"Harry?" Hermione poked her head into the dormitory, peering around and spotting, to her relief, Harry defeatedly sprawled across his bed.
"You all right, mate?" Ron said as they entered the dorm room and sat themselves on his bed, Harry acknowledging their presence with a nod.
"Fine," he confirmed in a flat voice, staring at the top of his four-poster, gaze unusually empty. Hermione bit her lip, refraining from frowning as Ron placed his bag on his blanket and leaned forward, eyeing Harry with concern.
"Harry, what's wrong?" she pressed, a new possibility occurring to her. "You didn't have another vision, did you?"
The panic in her voice seemed to have brought Harry back to earth and he sat up, looking detachedly at the far wall.
"I did -" Ron stiffened and she gasped, "but it was fake, a trap," and he told them what had happened, how he had fallen asleep and ended up having a vision of Sirius being tortured in the Department of Mysteries, causing him to panic and check on him using the mirror. Hermione nodded as he concluded the story, opening her mouth to ask him why he hadn't used Occlumency to block the vision but Ron beat her to it, looking Harry in the eye.
"That's not all, is it?" he asked, wringing his hands in his lap. Harry stayed quiet. Hermione's eyeline switched between the two, secretly admiring Ron's way of getting people to talk.
"Look, I'll - I'll tell you in a while," Harry finally relented, sounding so uncertain that Hermione had to restrain herself from reaching out to comfort him, knowing that she had no way to do so when she didn't even know what the problem was. "Just, not now."
Ron nodded, breathing out and falling back in his bed.
"Oi," he began, rising almost immediately. "I'm knackered, you don't mind a round of Gobstones, do you?"
"No, lets go," Harry stood up, turning to Hermione. "Are you coming?"
"Oh, alright," she agreed, deciding that she could knit a few more elf hats if she put her mind to it and going to fetch her yarn. "See you in a bit." And she swept outside, picking up a purring Crookshanks on the way.
"How about I make you a hat instead?" she proposed. Crookshanks burrowed further in her arms, tail swishing around lazily.
———
"Something wrong, Neville?" Ginny looked over his shoulder at the Evening Prophet, a stack of violet books marked with moving golden runes in her arms.
"Er -" Speaking while working through a mouthful of mashed potato was not a skill that Neville possessed so he pointed at the article instead, displaying a picture of the Hogwarts Board of Governors, Lucius Malfoy standing proudly at the front.
"They're conducting an investigation," he swallowed and explained as she skimmed it, scowl intensifying with each line, "to make a report about school conditions. It's rather odd, isn't it? Why do it on the last two days of term?"
Ginny's eyebrows drew together in suspicion before she shook her head, sitting down next to him and pouring herself a gobletful of pumpkin juice while the books aggressively forced themselves into her already overstuffed bag. Two of them knocked violently into each other over which could stay outside until one crashed into a passing student and bought them toppling onto the Hufflepuff table.
"Who knows? Maybe he wants to show off just how well students perform when a Death Eater's there to supervise them?" Ginny suggested.
Neville nodded as she turned to apologise to the student and irritably began tapping each of the books with her wand, temporarily deactivating them. An uneasy feeling was brewing in his gut that he knew had nothing to do with his O.W.L performance or how hungry he was; his eyes roamed the Hall before landing on Umbridge, wondering how much would get under her nose without drawing even a whiff of attention before something went horribly wrong.
———
'Horribly wrong' was most definitely an understatement, Sirius decided as he turned the mirror in his hand, imagining what would've happened had Harry never opened it. He sat idly by his bedroom window, leaning his chair back while the wind howled and blew angrily on the glass panes as if offended by Grimmauld Place's secrecy, rattling them noisily on occasion.
A few silvery wisps faded into nothing as the dredges of his Patronus dissolved away, a gleaming silver dog gambolling across the sky to, despite being a manifestation of pure joy, deliver disconcerting news. He rubbed his temples, unable to think what Dumbledore would make of it all, and tried to remember when things had changed so much, when the war had gotten this suspenseful, when he had foolishly concluded that keeping himself holed up in his childhood home would go perfectly well, when Harry had started caring so much about him as to consider risking his neck to save his, and when, if ever, he would finally get to hear the Prophecy that had ruined his and Harry's lives and ended those of James and Lily; it was intricate and confusing, and Sirius usually wanted nothing to do with such things, but apparently his distaste for the complicated qualified him as the perfect person to be at the core of it.
All of a sudden, an animalistic screech reverberated from above, followed by a thud, a high throaty laugh, and a resonating pop!
"Bloody bastard," Sirius cursed Kreacher and ran toward Buckbeak's pained cries, thinking that perhaps the house could handle one more elf head on its walls, not realising that the two-way mirror lay glinting on the window sill in his bedroom or how much it would cost him in the coming day.
———
"Neville?"
"Mm?" Neville mumbled, sitting up. Without the Weasley twins wandering about anymore, he found that he had developed a habit of falling asleep in the Common Room while studying, although this time he had just been tired and everyone else had gone out to celebrate the end of exams.
"Granger sent this for you." It was Seamus. He handed Neville a small roll of parchment which he stared at, perturbed, before opening it. It was a note, written in a neat script that he recognised as Hermione's due to having spent hours poring over her notes in the past week, saying that the Board was interviewing students and asking them to fill surveys about the school and that Lucius Malfoy would be interrogating him at half past seven. He shivered.
"You okay?" Seamus asked, stepping into the portrait hole, a tiny purple bottle labelled with three very familiar W's in his hand.
"Yeah," Neville lied, tossing the note into the fire. "I have an interview session with Lucius Malfoy in the evening."
"Oh," Seamus grimaced. "When's it end?"
"Nine."
"Well, good luck."
"Thanks, see you in a bit," he said to Seamus as the boy left, a mischievous smile on his face. Groaning, Neville slid further down in his chair, Trevor jumping from one armrest of his chair to the other before attempting to circuit the whole Common Room using just the furniture. At seven twenty-five, he headed uneasily for McGonagall's office which was, offensively enough, being used as an interrogation room in her absence.
"Enter," a cool voice drawled when he knocked - Neville internally cringed at how much it sounded like Draco Malfoy. He braced himself and turned the doorknob, thinking yet again about how horrible a decision the Sorting Hat had made by placing him in Gryffindor, wondering if it had had the foresight that he would someday shudder before surrendering himself to experiencing a supposed Death Eater's presence.
"Sit," Lucius Malfoy ordered, face stony and gaze calculating. Neville did, feeling as if he had just entered the lair of a wild but intelligent beast and berating himself for not coming up with some kind of excuse to avoid this. He could almost hear his Gran's disapproving voice, scolding him for not being extremely suspicious or getting in a new hex before letting himself near a suspected Death Eater alone. Suddenly self-conscious, Neville eyed the papers on the desk and saw that the area in front of Malfoy senior was clear, not a single sheet of parchment or document on it. Nervous, he looked up -
- and found a wand pointing right between his eyes.
"Imperio."
His mind went blank and he remembered no more.
———
"Hermione, the exams just ended! You really ought to let loose a bit."
"I only borrowed the Arithmancy book! And I'll give it back tomorrow, I just want to check the syllabus ..."
"You only got the Arithmancy textbook. Don't tell me you'll be able to read this -" there was a heavy and dusty scree as Ron skidded the two thousand-page Rune Records of the Middle Ages across the table in front of Hermione, causing Harry to stir from where he was falling asleep on the couch. "As well by tomorrow."
"I won't read the whole thing!" Hermione shot back, face flushed. "I'll just get in about half of it so I can practice in the summer. It's not that difficult, the text isn't even that small ..." her and Ron's voices trailed off in the distance as Harry's eyelids drooped and the world went blissfully dark, finally giving in to weeks of sleeplessness and exhaustion.
He was in a long, dark hallway, the air still and chilly. A black door at the end of the corridor was ajar, a sliver of blue light calling him to it. Harry walked to it and pushed it to reveal the room beyond, circular and lined with doors every few inches from each other. He chose the one immediately in front. It opened without protest ...
Colourful and blinking lights winked at him from all directions, ticking noises adding to the flurry of the strange place. There was another door on the far wall. Harry slid it open ...
Shelves upon shelves of spun glass orbs dominated the length of the room, some coated so thickly with dust that they didn't reflect the light emitted by others ...
Row ninety-seven, a voice hissed and Harry obeyed, hurrying along the aisles, curious to hear the prophecy that had caused the catastrophe that was his life so far in the first place ...
Sirius, he remembered upon reaching the area where he'd seen his godfather lie tortured earlier that day, except this time there was no one there. Out of the corner of his eye, a soft blue light glowed comfortingly ...
Heart racing, Harry reached out for the source, the glass oddly hot on his fingertips, spidery writing forming on it at his touch.
Before he could read more than just the date on it, a shrill laugh echoed from the darkness, cloaked and masked figures emerging after it; Harry backed off as eleven Death Eaters advanced behind the lone unmasked one, jeering sinisterly. Not one of them seemed to notice him, walking by him without sparing a glance ...
Leading them was a haunted-looking, tall woman whom he instantly recognised as Bellatrix Lestrange. She appeared to be dragging someone behind her, one of her arms pulled back as she walked ...
Harry's heart stilled as did the group before Bellatrix forced someone out from behind, pushing the black-robed figure to the floor.
"Get the prophecy," she ordered, drawing her wand, "get the prophecy or you'll suffer the same fate as your parents!"
"No," the person whimpered and Harry's heart stopped. "Never."
Bellatrix scowled darkly before raising her wand, she slashed it in an arc and Harry didn't need to hear the incantation to know what she was about to do.
"NO!" he yelled, throwing himself in front of Neville, only to skid right through him as the boy's tormented screams filled the hall ...
Through the noise, a high voice leered at Harry, a cold shadow passing over him.
"Come, give me the prophecy, Potter, and I'll let your friend go ..." Voldemort hissed, "there's no one to stand in front of you now but your arrogance ... give it to me or let another die for you again ... you have until dawn ..."
NO! The cry died in Harry's throat as his eyes shot open, a cold sweat trickling down his neck despite his proximity to the fireplace. Ron and Hermione were still arguing over Hermione's clacking knitting needles, Crookshanks jumping to claw at them every now and then, almost landing in the fire more than once.
Shivering, Harry sat up, trying to still his shaking hands.
"I'm going to bed," he announced, stumbling as he got to his feet.
"Oh," Ron and Hermione echoed at the same time, as if just realising that he had been there.
"G'night," they chorused as Harry climbed up to his dorm room, rubbing his aching scar and wondering how he was supposed to help Neville without getting himself killed in the process but his mind was too fuzzy, his brain too muddled to think straight ...
In the dorm room, Dean and Seamus were dealing a deck of cards, Muggle ones, Harry realised when none of them offered advice, insulted each other in old English or cursed raucously when the fingers holding them got too sweaty.
"Dean, have you seen Neville?" he inquired, smoothing his expression into one of slight curiosity, trying to sound casual.
"No," Dean replied, looking up. "He had an interrogation session with Malfoy this evening."
"It's supposed to end at nine," Seamus supplied.
"Right," Harry responded, closing the hangings around his bed. "Thanks," and, heart racing, he pulled out the Marauder's Map and started to search.
Ten long and desperate minutes passed before the search ended, the Map going blank after neither Neville's nor Lucius Malfoy's names appeared on it. Pulse quickening, Harry fell back onto the bed, struggling to think of a plan as the seconds ticked by and Dean and Seamus called it a day, the dorm room going dark following the end of their game.
———
A pool of moonlight shone over the room as Ron trudged to his bed not long after Harry had turned in, yawning with satisfaction. He stretched and let himself fall on top of the covers, gladly worming into them and falling asleep almost instantly despite the pearly glow seeping in from the window, the comfort of the fact that he was done with his O.W.L.s only aiding the process.
He was already having spider-free and Quidditch-heavy dreams by the time Harry sneaked out of the dorm room under the Invisibility Cloak.
———
Cautiously, Harry peeped into the noiseless classroom, finding it free of any human presence and slipped inside. Propping himself onto a desk, he reached into his pocket and took out the two-way mirror, hoping against hope that Sirius would pick up.
"Sirius Black," he whispered, enunciating each syllable clearly. The mirror remained as reflective as ever. A drop of panic trickled coolly down Harry's throat.
"Sirius Black," he tried again, a bit louder. Anxious green eyes stared back at him from the mirror.
Harry cursed, heart pounding, mind racing a mile a minute as he tried to formulate a plan, crescent moon shaped marks forming on his palms from how tightly clenched his fists were. A shiver streaked up his spine followed by a harrowing sense of realisation and he stood, horribly aware of the sound of his breaths and the rustle of his robes in the chilling silence, draping the Cloak over himself as he exited the classroom and made for the second floor. His hands trembled.
———
Wizarding restrictions were awfully easy to get around, Harry mused somberly as he opened the door to Umbridge's office, thanking Sirius while also questioning his sanity for giving him the lifesaver of a knife. Of course, he thought admittedly, there was Gringotts and among the few he knew who had ever broken in and escaped was a powerful dark wizard, possessed by Voldemort no less, but he still couldn't see how anyone could think that the other magical barriers he had encountered so far were competent; he, Hermione, and Ron had been able to surpass the protections for the Philosopher's Stone in their first year, all that was needed to subdue the Whomping Willow and enter the Shrieking Shack was to tap a specific root, the Goblet of Fire had failed to keep him out of the Tournament despite his being underaged, and now, at fifteen, he had broken twice into one of the most important rooms in the castle.
Yes, Harry exhaled slowly, wizarding restrictions were scarily simple to loop around.
He tip-toed into the room, cringing at the snoozing kittens on the ornate plates on the wall, multi-coloured bows gleaming in the silver of the moon. Shoving the Cloak in his pocket, Harry hurried over to the fireplace and tried to calm his thumping heart, taking a fistful of Floo powder and throwing it into the grate.
Tongues of green fire burned to life, giving the lacy and doily-covered office an odd emerald look, reminding him of the Dark Mark snaking in the sky after the Quidditch World Cup the year before. Jaw set, Harry took a deep breath, stepped into the flames and before he could rethink his decision, shouted, "Ministry of Magic!"
A whoosh of heat swallowed him and he spun around wildly, disappearing just as the door of the office banged open and a frantic Dolores Umbridge stumbled in to find it completely deserted, devoid of any intruders.
"Homenum Revelio!" she squealed desperately, orb-like eyes darting around the office. Neither spell nor sight betrayed anything.
———