Second chapter in two days, to make up for the long time it took for the last one. Not that you'll find out about it until the e-mail function on this site is working again, unless you check it, but it feels good to know that I'm actually getting somewhere. Not fast, but getting there.

Oh, by the way, I'm supposed to be doing homework. That's how dedicated I am to this story.

Ha, who am I kidding? It takes absolutely no dedication to convince myself to do this instead of homework. I hate homework.

Chapter 20

Pendragon

The dark night seemed to penetrate deeper than it should have; it seeped into Harry's senses and turned into a rising fear that he could not seem to quell. They stood, the four of them, on a hill overlooking Pendragon—small for a castle, weatherworn and crumbling. Hermione had procured a picture out of a large, dusty book of a breach in the stone wall that surrounded the castle's grounds. It had been knocked down by Scottish invaders in the fourteenth century, and it had never been repaired. Now the castle was simply a remote tourist attraction. Harry feared for the fate of any tourist who had visited it recently.

"They keep four guards there, at the most," Malfoy had said as Harry led them to a statue of a humpbacked witch.

"That shouldn't be too hard," he answered in a distracted whisper. "Dissendium!"

The witch's hump opened to reveal a long stone slide.

"Harry, someone's coming," Hermione whispered urgently.

Indeed, footsteps were approaching from a distant hallway. "C'mon," he muttered. Ron put his hands on either side of the opening and heaved himself through, sliding down the chute. Hermione followed quickly, and Malfoy, looking with disgust at the moss on the walls of the tunnels, entered next.

The footsteps were about to round the corner. Harry decided to take his chances meeting whoever it was instead of being seen leaving. He tapped the witches hump and stepped back.

The person who came into view was the last one Harry expected. The new Transfiguration teacher, Professor Abigail Lasley, looked at him with curiosity. "Hi," she said after a moment.

She was in her mid-thirties, with long, brown hair and almond-shaped eyes. She also had an American accent. "Hello," Harry said nervously.

She hesitated. "Pardon me if I offend you, but what on earth are you doing?"

"Er… taking a walk. It's soothing," Harry answered. "What about you?"

"Professor McGonagall asked me to patrol the corridors. Just as a safety precaution."

"Ah."

She nodded towards the witch. "Did you know there's a passageway in there? It leads to the basement of Honeydukes, in Hogsmeade."

"Really?" He tried to look surprised.

"Yeah, watch." She tapped the hump with her wand. "Dissendium!"

Fervently praying that Hermione, Ron, and Malfoy were out of sight at the bottom, Harry looked.

He thought he saw the flash of a robe and heard a hushed whisper, but the next moment he could swear it was only his imagination. Professor Lasley tapped it again leisurely. "Just an interesting little thing… Goodnight, Mr. Potter."

Harry walked about fifty yards in the opposite direction before he was sure Lasley was gone, then he turned around and sprinted back. "Dissendium," he whispered, and slid down the slide.

"Who was that?" Malfoy asked irritably.

"New Transfiguration teacher," Harry said quietly. "She knew about this chute, and she opened it. I hope she didn't see any of you."

"She would have come down and gotten us in trouble," Hermione said, shaking her head. "She's a lot like her predecessor in that way."

"Let's go," Ron said urgently, leading the way.

They walked for fifteen minutes down a long, unlit corridor until they reached the base of a flight of stairs.

"We can Apparate from here," Harry said in a low voice. "We're well off school grounds." He withdrew a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Much to Hermione's great dismay, he had ripped it out of the book she had found. It was a picture of Pendragon Castle.

And so they stood outside the wall that had caved in centuries before, gazing on the castle where Bill Weasley was being held captive.

"We'll split up," Harry whispered. "If you're attacked, make a lot of noise. We don't want them to know that there are more of us, so don't shout our names or anything, but make sure we know you're in trouble. Hermione, you go with Malfoy—er, with Draco, and Ron, you'll come with me. Let's go."

The split up, each pair going along the inside of the wall in opposite directions. Harry, his wand clenched tightly, went slightly behind Ron. They crept, two furtive shadows in the moonless night, towards a crumbled section of the castle wall.

"Malfoy says that leads to the dungeons, and Bill is being kept on the floor above them," Harry whispered, pointing to the gaping hole. They climbed through it.

"Do you think it's odd we haven't seen any guards?" Ron whispered.

Harry shrugged. "If there're only four of them, then no. They're probably all somewhere near Bill."

The stole silently into the pitch-black dungeons. They had agreed to leave their wands unlit for fear of being seen, and Harry couldn't even distinguish his hand two inches from his face. They felt their way blindly towards where Malfoy had said the stairs were.

Suddenly, a bright light flared in front of them, blinding them in quite a different manner. Harry yelled desperately, kicking and fighting, as two people grabbed his wrists and twisted them behind his back. Ropes magically coiled around his arms and torso, and he thudded to the ground painfully. Ron put up more of a fight than he did, but there were more than four men trying to subdue them. He didn't last long.

Malfoy lied, Harry thought with a sickened feeling, groaning. We've been ambushed, and the guards are far more than he claimed. He felt blood seeping into his hair from where he had slammed his head on the stone floor.

"She was right," said a hoarse voice from somewhere above him. The glaring light still shone in his eyes, blinding him. "They were coming here."

"But only two of them. She thought there might be more," answered another.

She? Who was she? Who had alerted these men to their coming? Maybe it hadn't been Malfoy after all. Maybe he was as much a victim as they. Who knew we were coming? Harry asked himself miserably. It didn't much matter now.

"Blimey," a third voice joined. "It's 'Arry Potter."

"The Dark Lord will be pleased," said the first voice that had spoken with a malicious cackle.

"The other one looks like the man we've got upstairs."

"You mean me?" said a very familiar voice.

The light swung away from Harry's face and to the top of the stairs, and Harry followed it in amazement. Bill stood there, fiery defiance glaring in his face, bright determination shaping his body. A brilliant flash of lightning behind him would not have looked melodramatic. His wand and the hand holding it were crackling with blue electricity like an static globe lamp, as though the magic that had been pent up inside him wereaching to wreak vengeance upon his captors and could barely be contained. On either side of him stood Hermione and Malfoy, Hermione trembling slightly and Malfoy grinning maliciously, but both with an unbreakable resolve blazing in their eyes.

An electric blue beam shot out of Bill's wand and hit the nearest Death Eater in the chest before they had time to react. Malfoy sprang down the stairs, throwing hexes as anyone who happened to be in his path. There were more Death Eaters than Harry had thought; twenty or so were swarming the dungeons. Hermione anxiously cut a path to Ron and Harry while holding a shield bubble around herself, reflecting all spells aimed at her. She muttered the counter curse, and the ropes fell away from Harry's arms.

"Thanks!" he shouted over the melee. No one seemed to be paying attention to him or Ron anymore, so he stood up, grabbed his wand, which had fallen to the ground, and hit the nearest Death Eater in the back with a stunning spell.

It was four to one, but Bill equaled about ten wizards. All the rage he had pent up for the last two months seemed to be coming out of him now, unfortunately for his opponents. He was almost superhuman.

Harry was battling a tall, menacing Death Eater when a spell hit him in the back. Hermione had fallen to a red jet of light, and Malfoy had been physically thrown against the wall and knocked unconscious. Harry felt his vision fading. He had been stunned. Before he could utter a word, his mind blackened and he lost all sense of consciousness.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Ennervate," a voice above him muttered.

Harry's eyes fluttered open. Bill was kneeling over him, his wand pointed at his chest. "You're alive," Harry said hoarsely.

"So are you." He stood and crossed to Hermione, who lay in a heap beside a black-hooded form. Ron was getting up some feet from him. Malfoy was still unconscious. The bright light that they had blinded him with before was simply a Muggle floodlight, powered, he assumed, by magic.

"Hermione was hit with something worse than a stunner," Bill said, lifting her into his arms as though she weighed no more than a doll. "We need to get her to St. Mungo's. Quickly."

"What's wrong with her?" Ron asked fearfully.

"I don't know," Bill said, beginning to ascend the steps. Harry looked around. Twenty-odd Death Eaters lay unconscious—or maybe dead—on the floor around him. Bill had done most of it.

Harry stood and crossed to Malfoy. He was beginning to come around.

"Can you stand?" Harry asked.

"Help me up," he mumbled.

Harry extended a hand and pulled him to his feet. He was a little shaky, but his knees did not betray him. He followed Bill up the stairs.

"We can't Apparate inside the castle," Bill told them. He began to run for the breach in the outside wall. "Hurry!"

They sprinted until they were through it. Bill, Hermione still in his arms, Disapparated with a crack. Harry, Ron, and Malfoy looked at each other. "To St. Mungos?" Ron asked.

"Aye," Harry answered, and they followed Bill.