AN: Trying to update this story as much as possible. Once again anything you recognize is JK Rowling's anything you don't is mine.

Ron POV

He ran forward and hugged me. He squeezed hard and I gasped sharply. Merlin he was strong. "Neville—what the—how—?"

But Neville had spotted Hermione and Sirius and was suddenly hugging them. The longer I looked at Neville, the worse he appeared: One of his eyes was swollen yellow and purple, there were gouge marks on his face, and his general air of unkemptness suggested that he had been living rough. Nevertheless, his battered visage shone with happiness as he let go of Hermione and said again, "I knew you'd come! Kept telling Seamus it was a matter of time!"

"Neville, what's happened to you?" Sirius asked taking a step closer to look at a deep gash on his cheek.

"What? This?" Neville dismissed his injuries with a shake of the head. "This is nothing, Seamus is worse. You'll see. Shall we get going then? Oh," he turned to Aberforth, "Ab, there might be a couple more people on the way."

"Couple more?" Aberforth growled darkly. "What d'you mean, a couple more, Longbottom? There's a curfew and a Caurwauling Charm on the whole village!"

"I know, that's why they'll be Apparating directly into the bar," Neville said with a smile. "Just send them down the passage when they get here, will you? Thanks a lot."

Neville held out his hand to Hermione and helped her climb up onto the mantelpiece and into the tunnel, Sirius and I followed, then Neville.

Harry clambered up onto the mantelpiece and through the hold behind Ariana's portrait. There were smooth stone steps on the outside: It looked as though the passageway had been there for years. Brass lamps hung from the walls and the earthy floor was worn and smooth; as they walked, their shadows rippled, fanlike, across the wall.

"How long's this been here?" I asked as we set off. "It isn't on the Marauder's Map, is it, Sirius? I thought there were only seven passages in and out of the school?"

"Its not on the map," Sirius muttered looking around in shock.

"They sealed off all of those before the start of the year," Neville said. "There's no chance of getting through any of them now, not with the curses over the entrances and Death Eaters and dementors waiting at the exits." He started walking backward, beaming, drinking us in. "Never mind that stuff. . . . Is it true? Did you break into Gringotts? Did you escape on a dragon? It's everywhere,

everyone's talking about it, Teddy Boot got beaten up by Carrow for yelling about it in the Great Hall at dinner!"

"Yeah, it's true," Harry said with a smile.

Neville threw back his head and laughed, "What did you do with the dragon?"

"Released it into the wild," I said with a smirk. "Hermione was all for keeping it as a pet—"

"Don't exaggerate, Ron—" Sirius rolled his eyes.

"But what have you been doing? People have been saying you've just been on the run, Harry, but I don't think so. I think you've been up to something. Whatever it was Dumbledore wanted to do, right?"

"You're right," Harry said, "but tell us about Hogwarts, Neville, we haven't heard anything."

"It's been . . . well, it's not really like Hogwarts anymore," Neville said, the smile fading from his face as he spoke. "Do you know about the Carrows?"

"Those two Death Eaters who teach here?"

"They do more than teach," Neville said darkly. "They're in charge of all discipline. They like punishment, the Carrows."

"Like Umbridge?"

"Nah, they make her look tame. The other teachers are all supposed to refer us the the Carrows if we do anything wrong. They don't, though, if they can avoid it. You can tell they all hate them as much as we do."

I frowned. How bad could they be?

"Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defense Against the Dark Arts, except now it's just Dark Arts. We're supposed to practice the Cruciatus Curse on people who've earned detentions—"

"What?!" The four of us turned to stare at Neville in shock.

"Yeah," Neville said. "That's how I got this one," he pointed at a particularly deep gash in his cheek, "I refused to do it. Some people are into it, though; Crabbe and Goyle love it. First time they've ever been top in anything, I expect.

"Alecto, Amycus' sister, teaches Muggle Studies, which is compulsory for everyone. We've all got to listen to her explain how Muggles are like animals, stupid and dirty, and how they drove wizards into hiding by being vicious toward them, and how the natural order is being reestablished. I got this one," he indicated another slash to his face, "for asking how much Muggle blood she and her brother have got."

"Blimey, Neville," I said shocked, "there's a time and a place for getting a smart mouth."

"You didn't hear her," said Neville. "You wouldn't have stood it either. The thing is, it helps when people stand up to them, it gives everyone hope. I used to notice that when you did it, Harry."

"But they've used you as a knife sharpener," I said. My eyes widened as Neville passed by one of the lamps. Merlin he looked horrible.

"Doesn't matter. They don't want to spill too much pure blood, so they'll torture us a bit if we're mouthy but they won't actually kill us."

I didn't know what was worse, the things that Neville was saying or the matter-of-fact tone in which he said them.

"The only people in real danger are the ones whose friends and relatives on the outside are giving trouble. They get taken hostage. Old Xeno Lovegood was getting a bit too outspoken in The Quibbler, so they dragged Luna off the train on the way back for Christmas."

"Neville, she's all right, we've seen her—" I started with a smile.

"Yeah, I know, she managed to met a message to me." From his pocket he pulled a golden coin, and I recognized it as one of the fake Galleons that Dumbledore's Army had used to send one another messages.

"These have been great," said Neville, beaming at Hermione. She flushed and dropped her eyes. "The Carrows never rumbled how we were communicating, it drove them mad. We used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the walls: Dumbledore's Army, Still Recruiting, stuff like that. Snape hated it."

I bet he did. Stupid Death Eater.

"You used to?" Harry asked.

"Well, it got more difficult as time went on," said Neville. "We lost Luna at Christmas, and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were sort of leaders. The Carrows seemed to

know that I was behind a lot of it, so they started coming down on Hannah and I pretty hard, and then Michael Corner went and got caught releasing a first-year they'd chained up, and they tortured him pretty badly. That scared people off."

"No kidding," I muttered as the passage sloped upward.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't ask people to go through what Michael did, so we dropped those kinds of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a couple of weeks ago. That's when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I suppose, and they went for Gran."

"They what?" Harry, Hermione and I asked but Sirius surprised me by laughing.

"Yeah," said Neville with a smile, panting a little now, because the passage was climbing so steeply, "well, you can see their thinking. It had worked really well, kidnapping kids to force their relatives to behave, I s'pose it was only a matter of time before they did it the other way around. Thing was," he faced them, and Harry was astonished to see that he was grinning, "they bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran. Little old witch living along, he the probably thought they didn't need to send anyone particularly powerful. Anyway," Neville laughed, "Dawlish is still in St. Mungo's and Gran's on the run. She sent me a letter" he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, "telling me she was proud of me, that I'm my parents' son, and to keep it up."

"Cool," I said.

"Yeah," said Neville happily. "Only thing was, once they realized they had no hold over me, they decided Hogwarts could do without me after all. I don't know whether they were planning to kill me or send me to Azkaban, either way, I knew it was time to disappear."

"But," I started confused, "aren't—aren't we heading straight back into Hogwarts?"

"'Course," said Neville. "You'll see. We're here."

We turned a corner and there ahead of us was the end of the passage. Another short flight of steps led to a door just like the one hidden behind Ariana's portrait. Neville pushed it open and climbed through. As Harry followed, he heard Neville call out to unseen people: "Look who it is! Didn't I tell you?"

As we made our way through the opening there were several screams: "HARRY!" "It's Potter, it's POTTER!" "Ron!" "Hermione!" "Sirius!"

And then we were being hugged by everyone in the room.

Sirius POV

It was pure chaos as everyone started to converge on us. Hannah ran forward and embraced Hermione tears on her cheeks. I smiled down at Hermione as one of Sarah's friends ran forward and hugged.

"Your alive!" She gasped pulling me closer.

"Elisabeth, right?" I asked kneeling down to her level. She nodded quickly her dark her slapping against her face. "How hard has it been this year?"

Her face darkened and she blinked quickly. "Its been bad. No ones safe anymore."

"I'll keep you safe okay?" She nodded and smiled at me her eyes brightening.

Suddenly Harry gasped and swayed dangerously on his feet his eyes flashing red. Ron caught a hold of his arm. Harry looked up his face deathly pale.

"Are you all right, Harry?" Neville asked his eyes wide. "Want to sit down? I expect you're tired, aren't—?"

"No," Harry said. His eyes flicked around at the three of us a dark look crossing his face. Voldemort knew about the Horcruxes.

"We need to get going," he said. The three of us nodded and moved towards him. We needed to get going now.

"What are we going to do, then, Harry?" asked Seamus.

"What's the plan?"

"Plan?" repeated Harry blankly. "Well, there's something we—Ron, Hermione, Sirius and I—need to do, and then we'll get out of here."

Nobody was laughing or whooping anymore. Neville looked confused.

"What d'you mean, 'get out of here'?"

"We haven't come back to stay," said Harry, rubbing his scar, trying to soothe the pain. "There's something important we need to do—"

"What is it?"

"I—I can't tell you."

There was a ripple of muttering at this: Neville's brows contracted. "Why can't you tell us? It's something to do with fighting You-Know-Who, right?"

"Well, yeah—"

"Then we'll help you."

The other members of Dumbledore's Army were nodding, some enthusiastically, other solemnly. A couple of them rose from their chairs to demonstrate their willingness for immediate action.

"You don't understand," Harry snapped his eyes flashing. "We—we can't tell you. We've got to do it—alone."

"Why?" Hannah asked her eyes narrowing.

"Because . . . " He rubbed his scar and sighed. "Dumbledore left the three of us a job," he said carefully, "and we weren't supposed to tell—I mean, he wanted us to do it, just the three of us."

"What about Sirius then?" A voice from the crowd asked. His eyes flicked to mine and his shoulders slumped in defeat.

Ron turned to Harry and started to whisper quickly in his ear. Suddenly his eyes brightened and he looked up his eyes shining.

"Okay –" He started but Ariana's portrait opened. Luna and Dean came through. Seamus whooped loudly and Ron kissed Luna fiercely on the mouth. I understood exactly how he felt. The moment Harry and Ron had let Hermione and I alone I had snogged her with a deep desperation.

"Alright –" Harry started again but the portrait opened and half the Weasleys came through followed by Cho and Lee. Ginny flung herself at Harry the moment she saw him. Harry wrapped his arms around her tightly. After a moment he seemed to come to himself.

"Lets try this again." He muttered running a hand through his hair making it stick up in the back. "There's something we need to find. Something — something that'll help us overthrow You-Know-Who. It's here at Hogwarts, but we don't know where. It might have belonged to Ravenclaw. Has anyone heard of an object like that? Has anyone ever come across something with her eagle on it, for instance?"

He looked hopefully toward the little group of Ravenclaws, to Padma, Michael, Terry, and Cho, but it was Luna who answered, from Ron's arms.

"Well, there's her lost diadem. I told you about it, remember, Harry? The lost diadem of Ravenclaw? Daddy's trying to duplicate it."

"Yeah, but the lost diadem," said Michael Corner, rolling his eyes, "is lost, Luna. That's sort of the point."

"When was it lost?" asked Harry hope building in his eyes.

"Centuries ago, they say," said Cho. Harry slumped and ran a hand through his hair again.

"Professor Flitwick says the diadem vanished with Ravenclaw herself. People have looked, but," she appealed to her fellow Ravenclaws, "nobody's ever found a trace of it, have they?"

They all shook their heads.

"Sorry, but what is a diadem?" asked Ron.

"It's a kind of crown," said Terry Boot. "Ravenclaw's was supposed to have magical properties, enhance the wisdom of the wearer."

"Yes, Daddy's Wrackspurt siphons—"

But Harry cut across Luna. "And none of you have ever seen anything that looks like it?"

They all shook their heads. Harry slumped and started to rub his scar again.

Cho suddenly spoke up her eyes sparkling. "If you'd like to see what the diadem's supposed to look like, I could take you up to our common room and show you, Harry. Ravenclaw's wearing it in her statue."

Harry swayed again and I steadied him before he could fall.

"He's on the move," he said quietly out of the corner of his mouth. He glanced at Cho and then back at us. "Listen, I know it's not much of a lead, but I'm going to go and look at this statue, at least find out what the diadem looks like. Wait for me here and keep, you know—the other one—safe," Cho had got to her feet, but Ginny said rather fiercely, "No, Luna will take Harry, won't you, Luna?"

"Oooh, yes, I'd like to," Luna said happily, and Cho sat down again, looking disappointed.

"How do we get out?" Harry asked Neville.

"Over here."

Neville lead Harry and Luna around the corner and Hermione turned to me quickly. "We have no way to destroy the horcrux."

Something occurred to me and I blinked quickly. "What about the Chamber of Secrets?"

"Brilliant!"

AN: Please Review! It helps so much more than you realize.