A/N: Considering how long it took me to write the first two chapters, a month is practically lightning speed for me. I'll apologize nonetheless, but this is probably what it will be like update-wise. Right, well, thanks to everyone who's reviewed and lent their support! You might not believe me, but it keeps me going.

6:05 P.M.

It was like a clap of thunder had crashed to the ground. Like the sun had fallen from the sky. Like the very cobblestones were opening up and a great breath from the earth's molten core was rushing up upon them. It was light so blindingly bright and then black so blindingly dark. It was noise so loud it was silent, wind so violent it was suffocating, and heat that froze the blood. The ground shook, buildings crumbled, people were flung in all directions. There was chaos, and at first, no one knew where it came from.

…

Ron had just stepped into the street across from Cry O' the Raven.

…

Rose had just caught sight of her father a few shops away and seized Scorpius's elbow, diving into the junk shop.

…

Bill had just started back toward the bank, trying to decide if he should tell his brother about Rose's excursions or not.

…

Neville had been weaving his way hurriedly back toward the pub, thinking Hannah would kill him for chatting with George and being so late.

…

And then the blast came, shattering the air and rolling between the buildings with an almighty force. Ron was thrown backward, smashing into the wall behind him. The junk shop windows were blown out and the shelves came crashing down. Bill was sent skittering twenty feet across the cobbles, tumbling like a loose leaf. Neville was knocked off his feet, tangled in the mess of the crowd, which swiftly turned into a mob rushing toward the alley mouth, heedless of the fallen. All around, bricks and beams and flaming debris tumbled down, and screams rose to the blackening sky.

6:05:20

Neville felt the crowd swarming over and around him even as his vision was obscured by thick dust and sound came as though from miles away. The vibration of hundreds of pounding footsteps reverberated through the stones beneath him up into his skull. Someone leapt over him and came down a breath away from his cheek. A boot landed on his back and pushed all the air out of him with a cry that no one heard. He tried to get his feet under him, to pull free of the tangle of limbs and push himself upright, but someone else tripped and fell on top of him, slamming him again into the ground.

This was what it was like to drown, he thought dimly as he tried to get air into his lungs. All he could see above him was blurred bodies and a rare snatch of black sky. He was drowning. He pushed for the surface, but each time he was knocked down, pulled down, held down. His cheek was against the smooth cobblestone again and all he knew was the press of moving bodies; he was drowning, drowning, drowning in a sea of people.

6:05:30

Merchandise rained from the walls, shelves toppled like dominoes, and the teaming crowd in Weasleys' Wizard Weezes turned to a stamped for the exit. Angelina felt the spray of glass from the front display window cut like icy rain as she dove under the counter. The foot of the stairs was all she could see from there.

"Roxanne!" she yelled through the thunderous cascade of shelves and products. "Lucy!"

She could hear their voices, she thought, yelling upstairs and made to crawl for the steps, but as she squirmed her way free of the counter, there was a shriek of metal. She looked up and the last thing she saw, as if in slow-motion, was the stock shelf wrenching away from the wall in front of her.

6:05:33

It sounded like the building was falling in. The Warehouse was filled with shrieks and shocked cries as the braziers sputtered into darkness. Victoire's window cast her in a spotlight as she leapt from her chair, disoriented, ducking the books toppling from the filing cabinet in a fountain of dust.

There was a blinding flash of light and Victoire choked on the smell of smoke as a renewed volley of screams rose up.

"Chris!" she shouted, groping for his elbow in the dark. "Put your bloody camera away!"

"If that picture doesn't make it into some publication, I'm starting my own just for it," Chris's eager voice sounded in her ear. "Well, this is one way to end the workday with a bang. What d'you reckon's happened? Someone overheat the printing press again?"

A crack like a gunshot made Chris dive to the ground, pulling Victoire with him. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that her window had cracked, jagged lines veining their way not just through the thick glass blocks, but the brick wall and plaster ceiling around them.

"Or maybe not…" Chris murmured, staring as a crevice split the cement floor between them.

6:05:35

"Mum!" Louis shouted as the floorboards beneath him creaked and heaved. He stumbled into the counter and his mother was thrown to the floor.

"What's happening?" Garret demanded, only staying upright because he'd been holding Dominique.

"Mum?" Dominique squealed, craning to see over Garret's thick arm.

The roaring blast was still ringing in their ears. The glass in the windows had splintered. The sunlight that had been pouring in had been snuffed out. Then they heard the screaming.

Fleur struggled to her feet, pulling herself up on a display tower. Her beautiful face was ashen as she staggered to the windows. "Stay back," she ordered hoarsely when Dominique made to follow her, and when she turned to them, her eyes were full of a fear that chilled Louis to the bone.

6:06:00

Teddy was halfway down the corridor when the department went mad. He ignored the first blaring siren. He'd clocked out for the day, changed out of his work robes, and was so close to freedom, he could almost taste it. Now it was the evening shift's problem. In five minutes, he and Travis would be downing whiskey in the Hog's Head with Rob. If he could just make it to the lifts –

And that was when the second alarm went off, in the obliviator's office. The rest came almost all at once, too loud and fast for him to make sense of them. Obliviators, Hit Wizards, and MLE officials came skidding into the corridor, tearing in all directions in a storm of chaos. Kingsley Shacklebolt's voice thundered through the passages, calling for people to be in his office. Lights were flashing like crazy in the small room at the end of the hall where a glowing map of Britain showed all traceable signs of magic. And above it all, there was the thrumming honk that warned the MLE emergency teams assembling that they were heading into a class A danger zone.

Teddy knew he wasn't making it to the pub even before the red werelight found him, whizzing urgently around his head and calling him back for immediate deployment. He had already turned on his heal, wand drawn, and was hurtling back up the corridor.

6:07:15

Neville was back in the dark waters of the Irish Sea. Blackpool Pier was but a shadow against the watery sun floating on the gray surface high above his head. He should keep fighting, he thought. He should do something other than drift. If he had any magic at all, this would be the time to use it. But there was a rushing in his ears and a numbness in his limbs and he couldn't think anymore. This was what it was like to drown.

And then strong hands were on his arms, pulling him up, hauling him back to the surface. But it wasn't his Great Uncle Algea like it had been thirty-five years before, and it wasn't the wet, cold, gray-green seaside. There was fire and smoke and heat to greet him this time, and it was dust he was choking on, not water. Dizzy, he stumbled and would have crashed headfirst into the pavement if someone hadn't grabbed his shoulders.

There was a lot of red and orange and yellow everywhere and it took Neville a second to distinguish George Weasley from everything else around them. He was shouting something, but Neville couldn't hear. George ducked his head and shouted right in his ear.

" – you okay? Can you walk?" His voice sounded like it came through water. He was already pulling Neville's arm around his neck, dragging him a few staggering steps with the crowd.

Neville felt like he'd gone over the edge of a cliff and landed on the jagged rocks below, and the world was moving too much for him to think about doing anything but standing still.

"What happened?" he shouted back, still gasping, struggling to connect the dots of the last few minutes.

"I don't…." George's eyes suddenly grew wide. He let go of Neville, taking a half-step past him. The look of rising horror on his face made Neville turn. Lights danced against the low, black belly of pluming smoke. Rust, gold, emerald, violet, they made him think of the Northern lights but much closer and brighter and… louder. It didn't make sense.

"Fire," he heard George say hoarsely beside him. "Fire."

The flames were leaping from building to building, raging across rooftops like winged beasts and rearing their fearsome maws ever higher into the smoke, much stronger and fiercer and wilder than the little spitting flames clinging to the debris. This was real fire. Almost as one, George and Neville swiveled around to follow its trajectory up the street. The book shop, Madam Malkin's, a magical print shop… the luridly bright WWW sign stood out like a beacon in the smoke, and at the very head of the alley, the Leaky Cauldron squatted low and dark and teaming with people. Together they began to run, fighting their way through the crowd and soon losing sight of one another as their thoughts narrowed to racing the flames.

6:08:23

"Stay down," Fleur commanded, pulling Louis non-too-gently to the floor. They were pressed together among the crates and litters of inventory in the back room of Quality Quidditch Supply, but they could hear people pounding on the doors and windows.

"Shouldn't we let them in?" Louis asked uncertainly, looking over his shoulder.

"No," Fleur said fiercely. "Somezing 'orrible 'az 'appened, and we do not know 'oo eez part of it. Get down and pretend you are not 'ere. Zat eez what zey 'ad us do at ze bank when zere were raids during ze war. Don't speak, don't move. Zey will go somewhere else."

There was no room for defiance. Louis looked across the dim, cluttered room to where Dominique and Garret were half on top of each other between barrels of practice snitches, Garrets muscular arms wound protectively around her, and he was too busy whispering words of comfort against her ear to pay attention to anything else. But his sister confirmed his thoughts with a look. They did not have their mother anymore, but a member of the Order of the Phoenix.

6:08:45

All Roxanne could see was a heap of shining steel. The heavy, box-laden industrial shelving her father had charmed to the wall some five years ago filled the stairwell, twisted, immovable, a gate penning them in. The thunderous volley of crashes and screaming that had risen between the floorboards from the shop had drowned out their shouts, but even now that it had grown quiet downstairs, neither of her parents answered her. Her stomach felt heavy with fear for what that might mean, but she ignored it, focusing all her energy on the shelving blocking her way.

"There's riots in the street," Lucy called from the tiny balcony they had overlooking the alley., smoke pouring in through the open window.

Maybe she could blast it out of the way, Roxanne thought, feeling at her waist for her wand. But it wasn't there. It was in her trunk, and that was still downstairs in the back room because their flat had protective enchantments around it to stop things just appearing there unbidden. An extra safety protocol her uncles had insisted on ever since the disappearances started. She cursed it under her breath and cursed herself twice as hard for being stupid enough to forget about her wand.

There was a skidding sound from the roof and Roxanne whirled just as Lucy screamed and dove back inside, arms over her head. A flaming sheet of shingles had landed on the balcony, cracking the little glass table Roxanne's mother had added since the last time she'd been home.

"Where did it come from?" Roxanne asked, a newer, greater fear budding alongside the others. She crossed to Lucy in two swift strides and pulled her up, but before her trembling cousin could offer so much as a squeak in reply, she had her answer. A low roar rushed above their heads, below the floor, from the other side of the wall. The snarling of flame.

Acting on a sudden, fear-crazed instinct, Roxanne seized Lucy's wrist and bolted – knowing full well there was nowhere to bolt to – just as the floor erupted in a fountain of multicolored flames and shrieking fireworks.

6:09:01

"What are you doing, Weasley?" Chris demanded, catching her wrist as Victoire made to stand up.

"We're not supposed to move," Sharon Higgs, the crossword writer, reminded her in a high, breathless voice.

It was almost completely black down in the Warehouse. They had been herded against the back wall, pressed together like baby mice in a burrow, blind and helpless and ignorant of what was happening around them. Victoire couldn't sit here like this with plaster raining down on top of them and the walls crumbling all around. Claustrophobia was already clawing up her chest and clouding her thought. She had to move, to do something, to get out.

"I'm going to have a look," she said quietly, lest the security wizards who'd leapt into action hear and put her under a body bind. Niles Elken had already been subdued. But she had a plan. She'd gone over the routes from here to the far doors again and again, mentally winding her way between the desks as if it were one of the ballet routines her Aunt Gabby used to teach her.

She felt Chris's fingers loosen around her wrist, slide down to her fingertips. "The stairs are blocked, they said." He murmured uncertainly.

"The lift might not be," she murmured back. "Even if the pulleys aren't working, I could levitate it." The thought made her queasy, but staying here made her want to fight her way out of her skin.

He pinched her fingertips hard. "You've got guts, girl. More guts than a fish market's bin even has a right to have." His hand fell away and for a moment her courage wavered. She'd hoped to have backup, but she could do without. Then she felt him rise beside her, his elbow brushing hers. "I just hope your guts don't get us killed."

6:09:04

"Ange! Ange, get up! Come on, you've got to get up!"

There was a great, screaming creak and a weight vanished off of Angelina's shoulders, but she could still feel the burning metal against her skin. Someone was lifting her off the ground, resting her head against a broad shoulder. She could feel them tremble.

"Angelina?" That voice was higher than it should have been, lost and cracked. She didn't have a choice but to follow it.

Angelina cracked her eyelids open with great effort, fighting not to be sick when light flooded in. George's face was inches from hers, white and terrified. "Don't think you're getting rid of me that easily after everything you've put me through," she managed. "I'm hanging on until you pay your debts." Her voice was rough and low, but he actually laughed a little. "The – the girls," she croaked, trying to sit up as urgency seeped back into her.

But before she could get much further, another deafening bang rattled the building. George threw himself over her, blocking the flying debris, but Angelina still felt the rush of heat and heard the roar of flames. The shop was on fire. The shop was on fire.

"The girls!" she cried, choking on the smoke and burning ash. She fought to get up, pushing George off of her.

"Where are they?" he asked frantically, pulling her off the floor and grabbing her shoulder to steady her. She bit back a scream of pain as his fingers dug into the burns the metal shelving had seared across her shoulder blades.

"Up –"Angelina broke off, looking toward the stairs. Her vision was blurry, but she could see the wall of flames licking its way down the steps and climbing hungrily up the walls, silhouetting the twisted metal blocking the stairs like a skeleton.

"Aguamenti!" George cried, and Angelina fumbled for her wand to add a second stream of water. But it was no good; everything was burning. George swept his wand in a great arch and a ceiling of water crashed down over them, drenching everything. But the fire burned on, undampened.

"Cursed," Angelina spluttered, shielding her face from the cloud of burning steam. It couldn't be ordinary flames. She thought of the fireworks they kept in their back room, of the barrel of gunpowder, the bottles and bags and jars of all kinds of potent ingredients, and who knew what effect they might have on flames?

"Roxanne!" George yelled, lunging for the stairs, ignoring the fire. "Lucy!" He blasted the melting shelving out of the way, but the wood gave way two steps up, the railing falling in flaming bits.

"George!" Angelina yelped as he staggered back.

"Roxanne!" George screamed again.

The seconds stretched thin and they stood frozen as the fire blazed around them. And then – there was a thin cry, so drowned by the roaring, cracking fire that Angelina didn't know if she'd really heard it, but it was enough.

George grabbed Angelina's wrist and dragged her away from the crumbling stairs, stooping to snatch something from under the register.

"Can you fly?" he shouted in her ear.

"What?" her head was swimming. She was struggling to keep up with him.

"Fly!" he bellowed, and she realized it was a broom he'd grabbed from under the counter and was shoving into her hands. They'd reached the door and George pushed her out of it. He said something else that she couldn't hear.

"Where are you going?" she screamed as he ducked back inside.

George turned back to her. He grabbed her around the waist and kissed her hard on the mouth. Then he shoved her away. "Go! Get the girls!"

And he disappeared back into the collapsing shop.

6:11:13

The Leakey Cauldron had been closed in. MLE officials in dark, sweeping robes stood a firm line, blocking the door and the two large fireplaces for Floo travel. No one was allowed to leave, but people kept pouring in from the alley, frantic and battered and filthy. They were crammed so tightly together, Neville could barely shoulder his way between them, and they spilled out the back door and into the alley. Several people sat on the stairs, restrained with magical binding, having apparently attempted to duel their way past. The sound of the raging fires swelled from the alley and whipped a frothy hysteria in the already-panicked crowd.

"My daughters!" Neville kept shouting although no one seemed able to hear him over the din. "My wife! Where are they? My wife owns the bloody place, let me through!"

An edge of the bar appeared through the shifting mass, and Neville grabbed for it as if it were a life raft in a stormy sea. Hilary was guarding the till, armed with a serving tray and looking fierce. When Neville grabbed her shoulder, she swung at him without even looking. Neville ducked, and the tray went soaring over the crowd like a Frisbee as Hilary realized who he was and her hand flew to her mouth.

"Oh, Mr. Longbottom, I'm so sorry!" she gasped.

"It's fine," he said distractedly, looking around at the rough, wooden walls, ancient floorboards. "Where're Hannah and the girls?" The flames hadn't reached here yet, but when they did, they would be standing in three-hundred-year-old kindling. He didn't care if MLE sent him to Azkaban, he was getting his family out of here.

Hilary sucked her lip, twisting the hem of her apron. "I'm not sure. I –" She broke off, looking toward the kitchen door. There was no time and no way to get around, so Neville clambered over the bar. Patrick nearly took his eye out with a spatula when he pushed his way through the swinging doors, but Neville was getting good at ducking.

"I thought you were one of them," Patrick panted, jerking a thumb toward the teaming dining hall. "They're mad," he said, wide-eyed. "They tried to come back here, wanted to get out the window or somethin', but I held 'em off." He brandished his spatula.

Neville barely heard. He could see Ami's honey-blond head under the sink and crossed to her in two long strides, dropping to his knees. She threw herself into his arms, shaking.

"Where's your sister?" He demanded, peering into the shadows for Miranda, but Ami just shook her head against his shoulder. Neville pulled back to look down into her face. "Ami, where is she? What's happened to her? Where's your mother?"

"Mum – Mum left after you did," Ami whispered, tears sparkling in her gray eyes. "You left the ale, and she wanted to talk to Mr. Horatio. I don't know where Miranda went!"

"Weren't you watching her?" Neville cried more angrily than he meant to as terror shot through him. Ami's face crumpled.

"It wasn't her fault," Patrick said loyally from the door. "Me and Hil were meant to keep an eye on them, but it was a madhouse here. I looked away for five seconds and she was gone. You know how quick she is."

But there wasn't time for Miranda to be missing, for Hannah to be gone.

"I'll bet she was after that bloody cat," Neville muttered, almost to himself. "I've got to go find them."

He made to get up, but Ami clung to his arms. "What are they doing out there, Daddy? What do they want?"

"They're just scared," Neville told her, running a hand over her hair. He pulled her out from under the sink and propelled her toward the little door to the wash room. "Take her through the window," he said to Patrick. "Get Hillary, too, and damn the till. The place is going to be burning in five minutes, anyway. I'll meet you at Millman's when I've got them."

6:12:47

Lucy screamed as the kitchen wall fell in. Roxanne wished she wouldn't. Oxygen was too hard to come by to waste on screaming. She leaned as far as she dared out the window, but smoke was billowing out past here, burning her eyes and getting in her mouth.

"We're going to burn alive," Lucy wailed, huddled on the other side of the window.

"No, we're not," Roxanne told her calmly. More calmly than she felt. She was squinting down, trying to see the side of the building through all the smoke. There was an eave somewhere just below them, she knew it. If she could spot it, maybe they could climb down. Think, she told herself urgently. How often had she leaned out this window? She closed her eyes, trying to picture it in her head, but she'd always been looking out at the alley, at the sprawl of London, not down at the eaves.

"I'm sorry I was swatty about your nail varnish," Lucy sniffed, and when Roxanne looked over, she could see tear tracks streaking her cousin's grimy face.

Roxanne gritted her teeth. "You weren't swatty, you just had more important things on your mind than a stupid bottle of polish, but I really don't give a damn about it at the moment, Lu." It was all she could do to keep from snarling. Sweat was running down her face and she could feel the counter burning and buckling under her palms. She didn't dare look behind her.

6:13:25

Dominique didn't panic when the flames first budded in the corner of the store room, spreading their bright, yellow-orange petals like the first blossoms of the year. Her mother was busy barricading the door, for another blast, nearer this time they all thought, but none of them said it, had finally shattered the windows. It was easy to notice the flames in the near-darkness with the lamps cracked and the one window boarded. She and Garret and Louis, who was all but body-bound in the corner for all the times he'd tried to sneak a peek at the street, all noticed them at the same time, but none made a sound.

Silently, Dominique aimed her wand as best she could in the dark and shot a spout of water into the corner. They all knew it was pointless, that more flames would follow soon enough, and even four thin streams of water weren't going to hold them back. But when the jet ricocheted off the dancing light as if it were made of golden tourmaline, she did feel a distinct plummeting of her stomach.

"Mum," she said with a strange and utter serenity.

"What eez eet, ma chere?" Fleur turned, her look hard and intense, warning that whatever Dominique was daring to voice should be worth their lives.

There was a sound like ripping paper. Maybe it was louder, but to Dominique, it seemed no more significant that tearing a scrap of parchment to jot down a note. And then the room was awash in angry orange, red, purple.

"OUT! GET OUT!" Fleur screamed.

Dominique and Garret were already stumbling to their feet, pulling each other up, tripping over boxes and barrels. As by magnetic attraction, Fleur had found her youngest even through the thick black smoke. Unable to see anything but the leaping flames and the darkness that claimed everything else, Dominique felt her way along the back wall. The door to the back of the shop was in the same corner the flames had erupted through, but getting all the way across to the main shop through the clutter of inventory and her mother's barricade was far more dangerous.

"Here!" she tried to shout, choking on ash. Her hand had found the scalding medal handle of the door. Flames were leaping at her feet, hissing over her head, and the handle felt like it was burning straight through her palm, but she pushed down on it with all her might and pulled. The door opened in, swinging Dominique back into the wall, but for an instant she gulped down less-charred air.

As she wriggled out from behind the heavy, industrial door, she saw her brother stop short, shying away from the flames that wreathed their only escape. And even though he was barely a year younger than she was, in that instant he was her baby brother. His mouth was open in silent terror, and she wanted to scream at him to get the fuck out because she'd just about burned her hand off getting the way open for him, but the smoke smothered her. Then Fleur was there, and she wrapped Louis in her shimmery shawl and sent all six feet five inches of him tumbling through the flaming doorway in a rugby tackle, her long, slender braid whipping like a blazing serpent behind her.

Garret was just ahead of her. "I've got you," she heard him promise over the crackling, and his strong hand locked around her wrist to pull her forward. Her face was nearly pressed into his back, and his broad, muscular girth blocked the worst of the heat and smoke. They were going to be alright.

Daylight – although it wasn't real, golden daylight but a garish, red-and-black-and-gray twilight – was already curling its fingers around them when the beam fell. She didn't see it from behind the shield of Garret's shoulders, but she heard the snapping, wrenching splinter, the cry of breaking wood and metal right above their heads.

She had less than a heartbeat to think. Garret was more than double her size, but as her mother had found the force to hurl Louis to safety, Dominique drove into Garret's back with all her might, and it was just enough to send him stumbling through the doorway. His silhouette, which had taken up all her vision, was swallowed by the light coming through the doorway, and she could see the beam flying at her, all ablaze. There was a moment when she could count all the jewel-bright colors in the heart of the flames rushing at her face. That was the moment Dominique started to panic. And then the beam struck in an explosion of light and pain.

6:13:26

The smoke was so bad that Angelina couldn't even see the side of the building. She could feel the brick walls looming over her in what couldn't have been more than a five-foot-wide alley, but she could only grope her way along, how far above the ground she couldn't tell. She could see the broom handle in front of her and nothing else. The last time she'd been this disoriented and terrified on a broom was in her fifth year, the game they'd played in a raging thunderstorm and she'd thought she'd seen Harry tumble and smash on the ground below.

She clawed her way, hand over hand, along the rough, grimy bricks; she might pass inches below or above the windows and never know, and all the while, sand was trickling through the hourglass. It was no good shouting. Her voice was so hoarse and choked by the smoke that even if she could get enough air in her lungs to do it, the sound wouldn't make it past her nose.

This had to be a nightmare. When she first found out she was pregnant, she used to wake up in a panic from dreams like this, nightmares in which the house was burning or flooding or under attack and try as she might, she couldn't reach her baby. She would wake soon, wake and find George in his dead-to-the-world sleep next to her with an arm thrown across her chest, and her limbs curled protectively around the tiny bulge of their child. But until then, she must keep going.

Angelina's hand found a ledge a foot above her head. She'd just started to pull herself up, brushing aside the shards of glass that marked it as a window, when a plume of flame rushed like dragon's breath inches over her head. Her fingers were saved from being charred by a breath, but a strangled sob welled in her chest. This was the far wall. If the flames had made it this far….

She tightened her grip until the ledge bit into her palm and for a moment could not think. All a nightmare.

Fingers closed around her wrist so sudden and tight they made wrenched a cry from her rough, raw throat. Her heart pounding in her mouth, Angelina looked up. The first thing she saw was the fingernails, glittering with pink polish that was quickly changing to violet under the smears of soot. Then a gust blew the smoke away and for just a second she could see her daughter's face, surrounded by her main of curly black braids. Another sob coiled around her lungs.

6:13:58

"Are you ready for this, Weasley?" Chris murmured through the bars of the lift.

Victoire couldn't see him even though he was only inches away from her. The lift was already rattling as the building shook. She tightened her grip on the grate until her knuckles were surely white and nodded. Then remembered he couldn't see her and breathed out a yes. His hand ghosted over her knuckles and then she felt him step back.

The lift began to rise, jerking and clanging against the sides of the shaft and every now and again plunging a foot or two. Victoire huddled on the floor, remembering something she thought her grandfather or her Aunt Hermione had said once about surviving a falling elevator.

Then two things happened at once. A chink of burning, orange light hit the top of the lift, and the whole building started to shake.

6:14:11

In the end, Patrick had had to hoist Hilary off her feet and half-carry her away from the till. Even as she howled, people were jumping the counter. Ami had seen a few stop at the till, but most sought the unguarded kitchen door. The possibility of escape was worth more than all the treasures in the bowels of Gringotts.

But there was no escape to be had. The only door led back into the alley and Patrick had boarded up the window behind them after they'd bundled Ami through it.

"Why?" Amy had gasped tearfully as he and Hilary pulled her along the dark, reeking alleyway that led to Muggle London. She thought of her father's words, that the whole place would be up in flames, and choked on a sob at the thought of all those people trapped and screaming like livestock.

"MLE was arresting people for trying to leave," Patrick panted, seizing her wrist and yanking her faster. "They issued an official order. We're breaking the law by running, but if they think we left through the front before they got there, there's nothing they can do."

"But all those people," she snuffled.

"There were too many," Hilary told her. Her voice was meant to be gentle, but it came out jagged from the running. "You couldn't evacuate the entire alley through a back window, and even if ten or twenty got out…."

"No one knows what the hell happened," Patrick grunted as the blinding light of Muggle London came into view at the mouth of their alleyway.

Once they burst out onto the packed streets screaming with cars and busses and all else, Londoners hurrying about their evening without out the faintest inkling of what was happening right beside them, there was no more way to talk. Ami clunk tightly to Patrick and Hilary's hands as tears made a shining blur of everything around her and tried not to think about the people back at the pub, or about her mother or father or little sister.

6:14:12

George hadn't known the kids were back there. In all honesty, he'd gone back into the flames for completely selfish and reckless reasons, knowing full well that if he made it out alive, Angelina would kill him herself. The kids in the back room turned him from idiot to hero, and he should have taken it as a sign and given up the fool's errand. But he couldn't.

They were around twelve with messy hair and Skiving Snackboxes still jammed in their pockets. Not twins but definitely brothers, and the sight of them sent a jolt to his stomach. One of them had a shirt bearing the message 'keep calm and whistle casually'. Shelves had fallen on top of them, pinning one by his leg and the other across the back. Flames already shimmered across the curtained doorway and ran along the ceiling and they were swiftly consuming the pile of fallen shelving.

George never remembered getting them out. One second he was meeting their wide, terrified eyes, the next he was staggering out the door again with an arm around each of them. He should have stayed with them and looked after their burns, should have delivered them to the Healers or Ministry Officials who were no doubt swarming by now. He should have found his wife and daughter to see that they were alright or gone looking for his son, his brothers, his nieces and nephews all lost in the chaos.

But instead he turned around and ran again into the inferno.

He couldn't see anymore. Flames and smoke and blackened debris all swirled into senseless confusion. But he knew which direction to go and there was no turning around.

The shop was lost. He had known it since he'd seen the flames repel water. He could not save it any more than he could rewind the clock. But it wasn't just his business that was crumbling to ash around him, this was Fred's business, his brother's last dream, his brother's only legacy.

George ducked under a falling beam and scrambled over a flaming display table. Long ago he had cleaned out the flat to make room for Angelina, then the small bedroom they had once shared at the Burrow; Fred's clothes, his books, posters, and knickknacks had all been boxed up and given away. Even the collection of Weasley jumpers. Everything that had once been Fred's had long ago scattered to the winds. This building was the last of his things, and it was burning.

And then he was there. He knew it only because of the fireworks still exploding in the flames, their screams rising with the smoke. George stumbled, the heat and smoke making him lightheaded, but he could see the photo, miraculously still hanging on a post that should have crumbled into the fire a long time ago. George made a wild lunge and his fingers closed around the sharp edge of the picture frame. The glass had shattered and the photo was singed around the edges, but they were still there, outside the shop on the day it had first opened, eighteen and grinning as if they had the whole world in their pockets.

George turned his head in the direction he thought the door might be in, but he could see only black smoke and walls of fire. He tried to climb to his feet, but he was coughing too hard. Everything was growing blurry and spinning, the flames were towering over him, surrounding him as if in claim.

You stupid, selfish bastard, he thought, but one hand clutched the photo and he couldn't find remorse.

Get up! Someone was screaming it, he thought. Get up, get up, it's not worth it! Angelina and the kids and Mum and Dad... who'd be there to give Percy a hard time? Who would Ginny practice Bat Bogey Hexes on? They need you, they need you. But he couldn't get up. He couldn't...

Someone was yanking him, pulling him by his collar, his hair, his elbow, dragging him across burning ashes.

"Come on, Georgie, move!" and they kicked him. Move! He got a leg under himself and lurched forward. "That's it, Georgie-porgie, keep going." They grabbed him under the armpits like a little kid to hoist him up, throwing one of his arms around strong shoulders.

The next thing he knew, he was falling onto rough stones, coughing and retching and gasping in sweet lungfulls of air.

"You bloody moron!" and someone smacked him upside the head.

George rolled over, squinting in the light. It was Bill sprawled next to him on the pavement, coughing and sucking on the air and still clutching his arm in an iron grip. His gray-streaked ponytail was half burned away and his dragon-hide jacket in tatters, but it was his big brother come to save his arse.

"I could wring your neck," Bill wheezed, but instead he pulled George toward him in a rough hug, pounding on his back. "What the hell?" he demanded when he let him go, though.

Wordlessly, George held up the picture. He could feel the sting of tears now, feel the cool tracks they left down his filthy cheeks. He didn't dare look behind him at the burning building.

6:14:30

They were whispering, and at first, Ron couldn't make sense of it. It was dark and his whole body hurt and he couldn't really hear anyway. But then some words started to come to him.

"…Risa says there's medi-wizards…"

"…looks bad, doesn't it? Who'd've believed it?"

"…the deputy Head knocked out… what that'll mean…"

"…dented his face, or something."

"I think he always looked like that…"

"I'm not knocked out," Ron told them thickly, cracking an eye open. It was too dark to see, but he could feel people crowding around him, poking and prodding like curious kittens. He sat up and they all drew back with a collective gasp.

"I don't think…" someone said uncertainly.

"You should stay still," someone else told him with more authority. "Risa's gone looking for help."

"I'm fine," Ron insisted distractedly. There was something very important he had to finish, something of dire urgency. But he couldn't remember. He raised a hand to his forehead and felt something sticky and warm there. "What happened?" He was mostly talking to himself, but someone practically leapt to answer.

"Explosion," they reeled off in a fast voice that reminded him of his wife. "Two, actually. No one knows where exactly. Half the alley's destroyed. Merry saw fires on the other side of the street. You're safe here, though, don't worry, Mr. Weasley – er, Deputy Head, sir."

Someone was trying to push him back down, but Ron brushed off the hand impatiently. Memory was flooding back to him. Diagon Alley, Cry o' the Raven, Hugo and Lily. He stood abruptly. "Where's the way out?"

"Way out? Please, sir, you ought to sit down. Your head –"

"I told you, I'm fine." After everything else he'd survived, he'd be damned if a bloody shopping trip did him in. "Where's the bloody exit?"

They tried to argue, but when he paid no attention and began putting them to better use as handrails to feel his way through the dark, they seemed to understand that he wasn't waiting for Risa and her healer.

"You'd be trampled to death right now if I hadn't dragged your sorry, unconscious arse in here," someone grumbled, but by then someone else had cracked a door open and let a stream of light through to guide him out.

He gagged on the first breath of hot, sooty air, stumbling into the queer orange light and roaring noise. His rescuers hadn't been wrong; everywhere he looked was carnage, and for a moment he was utterly disoriented. But then he started to recognize some of the buildings that were still standing, catch glimpses of charred signs.

He stood almost exactly where he'd been when everything erupted. To his left, the Prophet office was reeling, bricks raining down as it seemed to flail backwards. To his right, smoke billowed so thickly out of the entrance to Knockturn Alley, he couldn't see the rest of the alley beyond. The noise and sense of an invisible, massing crowd came from the other side of the smoke, but Ron couldn't see a soul around. If there had been a trampling mob here, they had gone quickly.

Fragments of glitterin, magical records gilded the cobbles as if the street were made of gold, but the little record shop was blackened shell of a building. And right in front of him… right in front of him, Cry o' the Raven was all ablaze, the fire silhouetting its bones.

Ron took a staggering step forward, feeling as if he were being trampled all over again. There was no way in. The door, the windows, they were all collapsed. As he watched, a lick of flame shot up through one of the stuffed ravens perched on the melting sign. It flapped its wings and loosed a shriek that seemed to linger in the air as it burned.

A/N: I promise, in a few chapters, there will be far fewer cliffhangers. Probably. Anyway, just wanted to ask quickly if anyone checked out my updates section on my profile and saw the two teasers I put up. I'm going to be doing that, particularly when I'm getting close to updating, so if I'm killing you with all this mortal peril, check that out. Oh, and P.S. having consumed two and a half books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series just in the last two months, I no longer feel cruel because of anything I've written or could ever write. This is practically fluff compared to that.

Well, hoping to talk to you soon.