"Stupefy!" yelled Quentin through the mesh of the lift doors, sending two Death Eaters flying into adjoining offices. Andromeda followed him out into the dimly-lit corridor; signs of death and destruction were flowing through the rooms on either side of them. "This way" Quentin ordered. They only met one more of the hooded villains on their way to the Auror Office so it felt like only a few short minutes had passed by the time they reached the stacked up paintings.

"She's somewhere near the top" said Quentin.

"How do we get up there?"

"We don't; I'll levitate you up there"

"But she was your wife!" Andromeda protested, "don't you want to speak to her?"

"It's like Sirius said; this is your quest, not mine". They stood in silence for a few moments longer before she gave the aging wizard a nod and stood at the bottom of the high ceilinged wall. Every fallen auror had a painting on this wall to commemorate their bravery and chivalry; Andromeda found it daunting to think that all the friends she had made in the Order would one day die and end up on this wall looking down on those who survived.

"Wingardium Leviosa" Quentin's charm sent her soaring towards the very top; not violently like the stunning jinx had done to the Death Eaters but gracefully as if she could just keep floating upwards, leaving all her troubles behind.

"Nice weather we've got up here. Wouldn't you say so, Tonks?" she heard the rhythmic voice of Kendra Shacklebolt before she saw the gaudy jewellery around her dark neck and the eyes which were so much like her brother's and daughter's.

"Much better with you up here" Andromeda smiled.

"I hate it" she moaned; "I want to be out there helping you fight them, I'm no use to anyone while I'm stuck in this picture frame".

"That's actually not true; an old friend of mine told me that you could give me the answers to the secrets I want to uncover".

"Those silly things? Please, you know some of them already".

"I do?"

"You have your suspicions why Tonks junior has taken an interest in magical creatures; you just don't want to admit it even though it's cute. Your husband faces immeasurable danger like you thought; one of my neighbours here" she gestured towards the paintings at either side of her, "let slip that he's been left in one of the offices on his floor, trapped by your sister's paralysis jinx. Bellatrix Lestrange is currently with her master in the Department of Mysteries and you've already met Alastor Moody's son".

"I have-?"

"No time to talk; two Death Eaters are approaching. But before you go, tell Quentin that I've seen the way he acts around Carmen Ironwood; tell him that she isn't too young for him, she does like him back and that I love him enough to understand that it's time for him to move on".

"Tonks!" Quentin shouted frantically from the bottom of the wall; "we need to go, now!" Andromeda gave a hasty goodbye to the painting of the auror and was lowered to the ground, but not before she noticed that the plague on the picture frame said Kendra Jones rather than the name she had adopted in life.

...

"I have given you enough opportunities to kill your sister and her friends, Bellatrix" hissed the haunting voice of the Dark Lord from underneath his hood, "but if any of them leave the Ministry alive I will make it my personal duty to eliminate this Order of the Phoenix"; he said it with scorn and distaste. Lydia White had been hiding behind a giant stone pillar for several minutes just listening to this conversation and she grew more and more terrified as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named slithered his words.

Kinsley had instructed her to make her way up to the Minister's office to see if the third party (consisting of James Potter, Carmen Ironwood and Alastor Moody) had found their way into the building and were indeed still alive. On her way their, however, she had seen none other than the monstrous figure of Bellatrix Lestrange and had decided to follow the woman who had killed her daughter and now her husband to see if she could have her revenge.

"My Lord, as we speak my youngest sister and her husband have gone looking for the blood traitor with the Carrows and before you summoned me I was about to kill the Mudblood Tonks".

"Do you insinuate that it is my fault that you did not kill him quickly enough?!" she spat with venom and contempt. Bellatrix cowered slightly before regaining her composure and addressing her master.

"I will return now, my Lord, and finish the deed".

"Before you go; levitate that stone pillar for me. It appears we have an intruder". Bellatrix didn't question his judgement and caused the pillar to fly into the air as if a giant or a troll had removed it from the ground. Mrs White was no longer shielded in her place of concealment but stood almost face to face with the darkest wizard in the world.

"And who might you be?" he hissed at her.

"Lydia White?"

"Do you fear death, Lydia White?"

"That woman's caused enough of it in my family for me to keep up the pretence that there's something to be scared of" she said bitterly, pointing her finger angrily at Bellatrix. She spent the silence that followed thinking about her adoptive son; there was a time when she thought she knew who his father was, but then she remembered what Nelly's painting had said to her. The blue eye's child is one of three. She thought of this little prophecy; using her feeble talents in occlumency to send it to the first person she could think of. Standing in the Department of Mysteries she realised how hopeless it was to fight the dark arts as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named smiled at her and screeched "avada kadavra!" with a wave of his wand.

...

Carmen didn't know what she found the most horrifying as she made her way down the desolate Ministry corridor; the fact that she recognised some of the lifeless bodies as her fellow students from when she was at Hogwarts or the fact that she knew in her heart that some of those students had joined the Death Eaters and caused all this to happen.

"You need to be lighter on your feet!" snapped Moody from the doorway of an office behind her "you'll blow this entire operation, Ironwood!"

"Has anyone ever told you that by shouted at us you're giving away our position just as much?" Moody went red in the face and resumed his search of the office.

Surprisingly he came through for them at Grimmauld Place by finding the portkey in no time and without rousing the Mrs Black from her bed. According to James she was now living alone with her house-elf because her husband had been taken ill and died a few days earlier. Umbridge's office had been teeming with Death Eaters when they had arrived but James had stayed behind to fight them so that the others could go and search for survivors. Carmen hoped he was okay; she hoped everyone was okay; especially Quentin Jones, but she couldn't make herself think about him right now.

"Lumos" she exclaimed; casting a faint white glow on the office at the far end of the passage. The room was decorated with blood and bodies but there was one who appeared to be moving for a fraction of a second out of the corner of her eye.

"You're Ted Tonks, aren't you? Oh right, you can't answer me; sorry" she flourished her wand to cast the counter-curse that would free him of the paralytic state.

"What happened?" she asked him desperately after he caught his breath.

"Bellatrix – Lestrange – coming – back – any – minute – now"

"Are you sure?"; he nodded painfully in response, "how will we know that she's on her way?"

"I'll sing" cackled a menacing voice from the office entrance, "miss me Mudblood? told you I'd be back". Behind her was a roughly dressed man with shaggy hair and a murderous expression who Carmen knew only too well to be Rodolphus Lestrange.

"You were one of the thugs who killed my family!" she cried at the man; her electric blue eyes filled with sparks of fury (she surprised herself by mentioning her family, who she hadn't been able to associate herself with for many years now); "when we were on holiday in B-"

"Crucio!" he interrupted. Now both of the Order members were cowering on the floor in pain, about to be killed by two people who had already caused them both too much torment. The husband and wife raised their wands with murderous pleasure as they prepared to cry out "avada kadavra!" but fell to the floor before they could utter the words after being gruesomely knocked unconscious by a severed leg.

"That wretched scoundrel blew my leg off!" roared Moody in anger from the doorway.

...

"Stupefy!" Andromeda yelled at the Death Eaters blocking their exit from the portrait room. The man crashed into one of the lower and therefore oldest of the auror paintings as his sinister companion cried out in outrage; "Amycus! That was my brother you filthy blood traitor!"

"And that's my friend, bitch!" Quentin retaliated, throwing silent jinxes at the stout female Death Eater.

"Leave them, Quentin! Let's go" Andromeda ordered as she pulled the auror by his wrist to drag him along beside her; she could have sworn she heard one of the Death Eaters shouting "Malfoy!" behind her. The journey in the lift felt like a lifetime as the heard the desperate cries of Order members and Ministry workers ricocheting off the underground walls. Finally they emerged once again into the atrium where Kingsley was shouting "Impedimenta!" from the top of the fountain's golden statue as if it were a makeshift plinth. Andromeda and Quentin didn't hesitate; they took out their wands and started casting various defensive and offensive spells in the direction of the oncoming Death Eaters.

"Expelliarmus!" cried a familiar voice at Andromeda. She looked up to see the lightning-blonde hair that embodied Narcissa as her wand flew from her hand. She was more surprised at the swollen stomach that revealed something about her younger sister she had not known until now.

"You're . . . pregnant?"

"I bet you think I'm mad for coming here when I'm carrying a baby" Narcissa whispered; "but the Dark Lord doesn't care, he punished Lucius for causing this 'hindrance' in his battle plan" she almost sounded bitter about it.

"You're not one of them, Cissy".

"I am a loyal servant of the Dark Lord"

"If you were then you would've killed me rather than disarm me". There was silence between the two sisters for a while as the lights from a hundred wands came soaring past their teary faces.

"Take it" she muttered to Andromeda coldly.

"What is it?"

"It's a portkey; in thirty seconds it will take you to the highest floor of the Ministry where your husband is waiting with three of your Order members. Then after another ten seconds it will take you to the street outside. Tell your companions in the atrium to retreat through the fireplaces".

"Cissy, I-"

"Next time I'll let Bellatrix kill you, I don't have a choice". Narcissa was already ambling towards the lifts before Andromeda had a chance to find the Order members in the atrium. Her sister had disappeared behind the golden mesh when Andromeda had passed the message of retreat onto the breathless Kingsley and had sailed into darkness with the portkey clutched firmly in her bleeding hands.