Of Wizards, Akuma, and Exorcists
Forty-five: Night Raid
Disclaimers: I do not own any D. Gray-Man or Harry Potter characters/settings. They rightfully belong to Mr. Hoshino (D. Gray-Man) and Ms. Rowling (Harry Potter). Also, some conversations between the Harry Potter characters are direct quotes from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and that also does not belong to me!
Recap:
The singing grew louder as a sea of red and gold erupted from the stadium, bearing upon its shoulders the figure of a single, red headed teenager...
Weasley is our King,
Weasey is our King,
He didn't let the Quaffle in,
Weasley is our King...
"No!" Hermione said in a hushed voice.
"YES!" exclaimed the others, punching the air in victory.
"HARRY! HERMIONE!" Ron yelled from his perch atop his classmates. "WE DID IT! WE WON!" He triumphantly waved the gleaming Quidditch Cup in the air, smiling as widely as he'd never done before.
"You can't hide it from him forever, you know," Lavi and Allen said the next day as they, Harry, and Hermione watched Ron be congratulated by fellow Gryffindors for the hundredth time that day.
"Same for you," Harry said back.
"Whether Ron knows or not isn't really our concern," Lavi shrugged, but Harry and Hermione just don't sound right. Harry and Ron works out just fine, but you Harry and Hermione? No way, that just has to be Harry and Ron and Hermione to make it sound perfect."
"You make no sense, Lavi," Allen muttered.
"Yes I do, what are you talking about?" Lavi gasped, faking hurt. "You of all people should see sense in what I'm talking about! Don't you agree with me when I say your name and my name never sound complete unless we put Yu's name with them?"
"I feel a lot more complete when Kanda's name is not put with mine, thank you very much," Allen replied coldly.
"That's not something a friend should say about a friend," Lavi whined.
"I will talk about him kindly when he starts treating me like a human and not a vegetable."
"Will the two of you please shut up?" Harry and Hermione said in unison and jumped to their feet. They marched over to Ron and, after a few moments of conversing, nearly dragged him outside. Allen and Lavi heard the tallest of them mumbling about fresh air.
"More than Grawp, however, they should worry about their O.W.L. exams," Allen sighed after them. Lavi grinned and leaned back in his chair.
"That's what's probably going through Hermione's mind," he said. "Harry might be obsessed with Voldemort, though, and Ron's full of himself about winning the Quidditch Cup. Where's Lenalee?"
"Right here," said the girl, plopping down in Harry's empty seat. She fiddled with the simple shirt she was wearing, which had a strange stain on the front (it was borrowed from Ginny, who mentioned she was wearing it one day when Fred and George were in the middle of an experiment that exploded). Allen could only guess that the stain was decorative enough for Ginny, or she didn't really care about squeaky-clean clothes. Either way, Lenalee had obviously taken a liking to it.
"Have Miranda and Krory come back?" Allen asked her.
"Yes, and we will be staying here until Komui returns," Lenalee answered. "He won't be able to contact us, with all the security, so we'll have to wait until something happens. Until then, our job is to protect Hogwarts."
"And the fifth years, definitely," Lavi chortled, snatching a bottle of something strange out of a passing seventh year's hands, instead slipping a couple of Galleons into his hands. "Look. This is supposedly Baruffio's Brain Elixir, but Hermione insists it's dried pixy droppings. I saw her confiscating powdered dragon claw, but that was fake too. It's a black market around exam times, apparently, because O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. are really important to the wizarding world."
Lenalee solemnly looked around the room. "One hundred years, and look how far people can get," she said. "Back where we come from, only the rich men were able to afford good schooling. The smaller villages had a single school if they could afford it, but in the cities, people who weren't fiscally privileged couldn't even read."
"Yeah," Lavi nodded. "There were some countries where young kids had the right to an education to a certain age, but here, in this age, education is a granted."
"That's a good thing," Allen smiled, mirroring Lenalee and looking around as well.
- - - -
Chaos reined among fifth years for the next few days. Although exams had a great part in its cause, to the Exorcists the only thing significant was the mischief arounsing around Umbridge.
"I mistranslated 'ehwaz'," Hermione said one day as she stormed into the common room after taking her Ancient Runes exam. "It means 'partnership', not 'defense'. I mixed it up with 'eihwaz'."
"Er - what's the difference?" Lavi asked nervously.
"Ah well," Ron added, "that's only one mistake, isn't it, you'll still get-"
"Oh shut up," Hermione snapped, "it could be the one mistake that makes the difference between a pass and a fail. And what's more, someone's put another niffler in Umbridge's office, I don't know how they got it through that new door, but I just walked past there and Umbridge is shrieking her head off - by the sound of it, it tried to take a chunk out of her leg-"
"Good."
"It's not good! She thinks it's Hagrid doing it, remember? And we do not want Hagrid chucked out!"
"He's teaching at the moment, she can't blame him," Harry told her.
"Oh, you're so naive sometimes, Harry, you really think Umbridge will wait for proof?" Hermione asked scathingly.
"Such a lovely, sweet-tempered girl," Ron said as she stormed off to the girls' dormitories.
Lavi's rest of the weekend and the next week consisted mainly of laughing at every silly story from the exams Harry and Ron told. The one about Divination exams had him rolling about on the floor hysterically, for the thought of Harry telling the examiner she ought to have died last Tuesday amused him beyond belief. But Allen and Lenalee soon dragged him off to Hagrid's hut, however, when Hermione, Harry, and Ron left for their Astronomy practical exam that night.
- - - -
"Now that I've got the sillies out of me," Lavi said as he skipped ahead of Lenalee and Allen across the grass, "my stomach's queezy."
"How does that figure?" Lenalee asked curiously.
"I dunno, but I've got a bad feeling about tonight, and my bad feelings usually are right."
"Like that one time you popped out of a barrel when you were looking for me and resulted in getting tied to a chair as well as requested to go vampire hunting?" Allen suggested, recalling the time when they had first met their good friend Krory.
"Yup, I had a bad feeling from the moment I noticed you weren't on the train," Lavi agreed. "Oh, and almost getting eaten by a man-eating flower was not in my plans, either."
"Do you think your bad feelings has anything to do with Hagrid?" Lenalee asked, cutting across the boys' conversation. "Dolores Umbridge?"
"Anything that has to do with Dolores Umbridge is bad news, Lenalee," Lavi pointed out. "In any case, let's just hope my feelings are wrong, for once."
"Percentage chance of it being so?" Allen asked.
A pause. Then, "Almost twenty-percent," Lavi replied.
- - - -
"Well, now, this is a pleasant surprise," Hagrid said when the three Exorcists appeared on his front steps. "It's nearly midnight, you three."
"We're very aware," Allen told the man as he waved them in. "We just wanted to see how you were doing."
"Harry, Ron, an' Hermione taking their exams?" Hagrid asked.
"Astronomy," Lenalee answered.
Hagrid grimaced.
"Rock cakes?" he offered.
Despite their reluctance to eat such hard cakes, Allen, Lavi, and Lenalee ended up staying in Hagrid's cabin for quite a while. When they felt that at least an hour or so had passed, they heard the sound of people moving.
Closer..
Closer..
Until they were right outside the door.
"Who is that?" Allen wondered as shadows moved outside the curtained windows. Lavi tiptoed over to it and peeked through a corner. His face immediately turned a ghastly white.
"It's Umbridge," he said in a hushed voice.
"What?" Lenalee squeaked.
"Quick!" Hagrid said quickly, pushing Allen out of his seat and nearly shoving him under the bed. "Hide!"
"Hag-"
"Hurry!"
There was a knock on the door just as Lavi rolled in after Lenalee, and Hagrid opened it. Dolores Umbridge and several other wizards stepped in. The door was closed.
"How may I help yeh?" Hagrid asked stiffly.
"We would like you request that you come with us, Hagrid," one of the wizards said, and without warning, the room exploded in flashes of light as spells flew from numerous wands. There were some that hit Hagrid, but they all bounced off him as he gave a yell of surprised anger. He ducked his head and tackled his way through the attackers, making a mad dash toward the door, which he blasted down with his shoulder. The wizards followed him outside, Fang the dog barking after them, and Allen, Lavi, and Lenalee crawled out of their hiding place in a daze.
They rushed to the door and watched as spells were thrown at Hagrid by the five Aurors and Umbridge, all of whom were too intent on capturing Hagrid to notice the three. Some curses only nearly missed them, but none of them moved from their spot.
"Be reasonable, Hagrid!" yelled one of the Aurors.
"Reasonable be damned, yeh won' take me like this, Dawlish!" Hagrid roared.
Allen and the others were dying to help the man, but they didn't miss the fleeting look he gave them, which said, without a doubt, to stay out of the way. They could only watch helplessly as he fought.
There was a flash of light as Fang was hit by one of the spells and fell.
Suddenly, when Hagrid gave another roar of anger, an enraged shriek pierced the night with him.
"How dare you! How dare you!"
Minerva McGonagall was marching across the dark grounds, a look of hatred on her wrinkled face as she approached.
"On what grounds are you attacking him? He has done nothing, nothing to warrant such-"
Allen slapped a hand over Lenalee's mouth to stifle her cry of shock. A handful of Stunning Spells were shot at McGonagall, hitting her in the chest. There was a short moment when she was suspended in mid-step halfway between the castle and the cabin, illuminated by a red glow, before she collapsed on her back.
Then, she moved no more.
"COWARDS!" bellowed Hagrid, who had seen the sudden attack. "RUDDY COWARDS! HAVE SOME O' THAT - AN' THAT-"
Two massive swings of his arm beat the wizards closest to him, and Hagrid suddenly bent. When he straightened, Fang's limp body was on his shoulder.
"Get him, get him!" Umbridge screamed. The only remaining Auror, however, was scared of getting near the large man, and Hagrid seized the chance. He turned on his heels and with Fang held tightly in his arms, he ran toward the school gates. Allen watched him as he ran.
Farther and farther, until the night swallowed him.
Lenalee had disappeared from his side as she dashed toward McGonagall. Allen and Lavi followed her, and all of them knelt by the teacher as Lavi reached for the woman's wrist and placed two fingers on the skin.
"How is she?" Lenalee asked timidly.
Lavi's green eye betrayed no emotion, but he gave a sigh.
"She's still alive," he whispered, "but let's go take her to the hospital wing."
"Let's," Allen agreed, and both boys gingerly picked McGonagall up. At Lenalee's insistence, Lavi ended up carrying her into the castle.
"She's a tall woman, Allen, you'll have a hard time carrying her," she explained to Allen's confused look. The two of them glanced at Umbridge, who was giving them a look of hatred as the Aurors began to stir.
They looked away from her and followed Lavi into the castle.