"How do we get in?" Harry came to a stop moving aside to let Luna come in front. He'd had an odd itchy feeling on the back of his neck ever since they saw Alecto in the hall. As far as he could tell she hadn't been going to the tower but he hadn't seen where she'd gone either.
"We must answer the riddle." Luna reached out from under the cloak to knock on the small handle in the eagle's claws.
"What happens if we can't?"
"We'll just have to try our best won't we?" Luna pulled her hand back under the cloak as the eagle's mouth started to open.
"Which came first the Pheonix or the flame?"
Harry grimaced, that wasn't a riddle, that was a paradox. He looked at Luna shaking his head to tell her he hadn't had a clue. "What happens if we don't answer correctly?"
"Then we have to wait for someone who can. That's how we learn."
"Yeah … trouble is, we can't really afford to wait for anyone else, Luna." Harry turned and looked down the dizzyingly tight staircase. "We've got to figure it out..."
Luna nodded her head slowly, her brows furrowing deeply, she reminded him of Hermione for the briefest of seconds before her eyes widened and she gave him her signature smile. "I've got it."
Luna turned back towards the door and spoke clearly, "I think the answer is, 'A circle has no beginning.'"
"Well reasoned."
There was a soft click as the door released and Luna gave the plain wooden door a gentle push taking Harry's hand to lead him inside. The room was gorgeous, wide and airer than any room Harry had ever been in at Hogwarts. It was circular in shape with high arched windows that allowed the moonlight to filter into the room casting a shimmering glow over the blue and bronze silks lining the walls.
"It's beautiful in here..."
"It is very calming," Luna glanced up to the enchanted ceiling briefly before pointing over towards the statue that stood just beside the staircase that led up to the dorms. "That's the statue, maybe there's a clue on it as to where it could be."
"Right," Harry slipped out from beneath the cloak and onto the plinth. The eyes of the statue seemed to follow him but he wasn't sure if it was actually a trick of the light or if it was truly alive. Harry swallowed thickly squinting his eyes to read the words written on the small tiara. "Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure..."
"Makes you pretty skint, witless." Alecto's cackling voice ran chills all the way down to Harry's toes causing him to slip off his perch onto the floor. His head lifted up just as Alecto pressed her thumb into her dark mark.
"Stupefy!" Luna's spell shot out from under the cloak hitting the more than startled woman straight in the chest knocking her back into one of the columns before sending her unconscious to the floor, "I've never Stunned anyone except in our D.A. lessons," Luna's voice fluttered, sounding mildly interested. "That was noisier than I thought it would be."
"Yeah..." Harry pushed himself up moving towards the floating wand, "Ah!" His vision suddenly shifted and his hand instantly shot to his forehead. The beautiful room around him had suddenly gone and he found himself standing upon an outcrop of rock. The sound of crashing waves filled his ears before a deep feeling in his chest made his heart thump faster. He knew— Voldemort knew.
"Harry?"
"He knows...oh Merlin, he knows...Ah..." Luna let the cloak fall away from her head coming to wrap her good arm around his shoulder. "We've...we've got to..." What could they do?
Just then the door a loud banging resounded through the entire space. Harry quickly scrambled to his feet pulling the cloak back over himself and put Luna behind him. Not a few moments later the common room came open and the both of them pressed back a little further. The sound of footsteps coming down from the stairs behind them turned Luna's head but Harry's eyes were fully on McGonagall. She didn't look at all pleased and the man in front of her was even more irate.
"What is this!?" Amycus turned towards his sister laying prone on the floor. Just then the first few of the Ravenclaws who had been woken by the disturbance had managed to just poke their heads around the bend in the staircase, their eyes heavy with their disrupted sleep.
"Which one of you cretins did this!?" Amycus pulled his wand from his sleeve pointing in the direction of one of the first years who merely shook their heads. "How dare you attack a Deputy Headmaster of this school! I'll have you all in racks!"
"What've they done, the little whelps?" he screamed, turning back towards his sister. "I'll Cruciate the lot of 'em till they tell me who did it-and what's the Dark Lord going to say?" he shrieked, standing over his sister and smacking himself on the forehead with his fist, "We haven't got him, and they've gone and killed her!"
"She's only Stunned," Professor McGonagall huffed impatiently while she moved over to lean partially over Alecto. "She'll be perfectly all right."
"No she bludgering well won't!" bellowed Amycus. "Not after the Dark Lord gets hold of her! She's gone and sent for him, I felt me Mark burn, and he thinks we've got Potter!"
"'Got Potter'?" Professor McGonagall's eyes narrowed and she turned her head just so, "What do you mean, 'got Potter'?"
"He told us Potter might try and get inside Ravenclaw Tower, and to send for him if we caught him!" Alecto was pacing back and forth now, his wand tapping against his temple while the lot of Ravenclaws who had dared to venture down seemed frozen in place by fear.
Harry felt his throat growing tighter as the man seemed to be losing control of what little he had of his mind. His eyes shifted back when Luna took a small grip on his arm as if urging him to stay hidden.
"Why would Harry Potter try to get inside Ravenclaw Tower! Potter belongs in my House!" Beneath the disbelief and anger, Harry heard a little strain of pride in her voice and affection for Minerva McGonagall swelled inside him.
"We was told he might come in here!" said Carrow. "I dunno why, do I?" He'd never been the brightest of the bunch, which was only accented by how he couldn't stop his mouth from running now.
Professor McGonagall straightened her back, her sharp eyes taking in anything that may possibly amiss in the room. Twice she passed right over the place where Harry and Luna stood. If Potter truly had come, it would greatly explain the sudden disappearances she had taken notice of from her house. She had been out trying to locate them when she'd heard the raucous. She only hoped they had hidden someplace safe.
"We can push it off on the kids," Amycus grinned darkly nodding his head, "Yeah, that's what we'll do. We'll say Alecto was ambushed by the kids, them kids up there"—he looked up at quivering children on the staircase— " and we'll say they forced her to press her Mark, and that's why he got a false alarm... He can punish them. A couple of kids more or less, what's the difference?" He knew the Dark Lord had done much worse things. He'd heard the rumors, Potter's little mudblood. Oh yes, he was hoping to get his own prize for his good work. The blond bitch who'd hexed his bollocks into the size of marbles for a start.
"Only the difference between truth and lies, courage and cowardice," McGonagall straightened her chin trying not to let her unease show, "A difference, in short, which you and your sister seem unable to appreciate. But let me make one thing very clear. You are not going to pass off your many ineptitudes on the students of Hogwarts. I shall not permit it."
"Excuse me?" Amycus moved forward until he was offensively close to Professor McGonagall, his face within inches of hers. She refused to back away but looked down at him as if he were something disgusting she had found stuck to the lavatory seat. "It's not a case of what you'll permit, Minerva McGonagall?" He scoffed and sneered showing his crooked yellow teeth, "Your time's over. It's us what's in charge here now, and you'll back me up or you'll pay the price. Or maybe, the Dark Lord will do to you what he did to one of your little progeny's. The mudblood? The one that's been missing?"
"Now see here-" Her words cut off abruptly when he spat in her face, her eyes widened dangerously and her nostrils flared, but before she could take action a sharp light shot out from the corner of her eye.
"Crucio!" Harry's spell shot out faster than he could process. The evil man let out a shocked cry and fell back into the glass bookshelf hard enough to make the glass shatter before collapsing down in the cascade of glass to curl up on the ground in pain. Harry advanced keeping the spell active until he watched the man's eyes roll back into his head. Only then did he realize what he'd done. His chest heaved heavily and he raised his shocked guilt filled eyes towards his head of house.
"Mr. Potter..."
"He...knows...he's coming..."
oOo
"Do you think this will be enough?" Ron was carrying one of the sacks Hermione had transfigured from her jacket. They'd taken nearly every one of the fangs they had been able to find.
"I hope so..." Hermione had her own bag filled to the brim, "We can give them to the others, that way we can all be prepared..." She had already made it her personal private mission to take the chance if it was given to her. The fang she'd chosen for herself was small enough to hide in her palm but was just as deadly as the rest. She'd put a small cap over the tip so that she wouldn't accidentally prick herself before putting it into her back pocket. Her heart was racing, this was it. They were so close.
"Good thinking...Let's get back to the Room of Requirement..."
oOo
"First things, first. It's time to take back this school." McGonagall kept her jaw tense leading both he and Luna, hidden under the cloak, down the third-floor corridor to wake the other heads of house. Just as they started down the central staircase to the second floor a large dark figure appeared at the base, near the center.
"Minerva."
"Severus."
Hatred boiled up in Harry at the sight of him. He had forgotten the details of Snape's appearance in the magnitude of his crimes; he'd forgotten how his greasy black hair hung in curtains around his thin face. How his black eyes had a dead, cold look. Flashes of memories from when he'd looked into the mirror clouded his reasoning. He was not wearing nightclothes but was dressed in his usual black cloak, and he too was holding his wand as if ready for a fight. All the thoughts surrounding Hermione's capture and subsequent tortures threatened to take what little control he had left inside him. If it hadn't been for Luna's hand on his wand hand, he may have very well done something incredibly foolish.
"I have heard a rumor, that Mister Potter has been spotted in the school." Snape's eyes shifted just slightly over her shoulder, he could feel them. He couldn't see them but his mental field was telling him that more than just the aged woman was standing before him.
"Well, it would never do you any favors to listen to rumors." Her words were strict and tight, but her heart ached for the man before her. The child that once graced these halls. His brilliance, his potential, all washed away by the choices he made. She had never known why Dumbledore had let him back into the castle. He had only asked her to trust him. Even still, he begged her to trust him in brief moments he would visit her from a portrait. Her anger was too strong. This boy, come man had completely destroyed everything. Minerva internal reelings were cut short when she noticed the small shift of his wand but she was quicker, her wand shot out sending a large bolt of fire in his direction. Snape deflected the spell with relative ease, his own spell shot out but was also easily blocked.
Harry held Luna closer to his side taking a small step back from the marvelous display. He'd never seen duelists so well matched that their spells were so easily countered and re-countered.
Professor McGonagall moved faster than Harry could have believed. Her wand slashed through the air and for a split second Harry thought that Snape should've crumpled, unconscious, but the swiftness of his Shield Charm was such that McGonagall was thrown off balance. She brandished her wand at a torch on the wall and it flew out of its bracket.
Harry was about to join the fray when he was forced to pull Luna out of the way of the descending flames. They transformed into a ring of fire that filled the corridor and flew like a lasso at Snape. Then it was no longer fire, but a great black serpent that McGonagall blasted to smoke, which re-formed and solidified in seconds to become a swarm of pursuing daggers.
Snape avoided them only by forcing the suit of armor in front of him, and with echoing clangs the daggers sank, one after another, into its breast. His eyes met directly into Harry's for the briefest of moments and he felt an emotion he had never expected to feel. His heart twisted painfully inside his chest but he we sure he couldn't be seen. There was no way—and yet, he could feel something so strong inside him. The will to carry on, the same power he pulled from inside his own chest when he dared to stand up for McGonagall.
"Minerva!" came a squeaky voice.
The connection was broken in an instant leaving Harry partially winded. His head turned when shifting Luna from his right to his left to keep her safe and out of harm's way. Professors Flitwick and Sprout were sprinting up the corridor toward them in their nightclothes, with the enormous Professor Slughorn panting along at the rear.
"You'll do no more murder at Hogwarts!" Flitwick's spell hit the suit of armor behind which Snape had taken shelter. With a clatter it came to life. Snape struggled free of the crushing arms and sent it flying back toward his attackers. Harry and Luna dove sideways to avoid it as it smashed into the wall and shattered. When Harry looked up again, Snape was in full flight, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout all encroaching on him. It wasn't a fair fight, but when had anything that man had ever done been fair? It was almost poetic justice from Harry's eyes.
There was a moment, a split second when their eyes met one last time. Harry could never have described the feeling in that moment, no words could ever express the complexity in which the man whom he had come to fear, and loathe so powerfully flooded his senses. It was in that fraction of a second that the corridor filled with a great black smoke. The sound of a window crashing from its frame ricocheted throughout the entire corridor nearly shaking the ground behind their feet. The black whisp moved fluidly through and into the darkened night in an instant.
"Coward! COWARD!"
Luna came to her feet slowly, the cloak falling away from her shoulders as she watched the man who had escorted her safely to the Room of Requirement being chased out. Her head shook slightly back and forth before turning her eyes down to Harry, "He isn't a coward..." Her voice was so small but so sure, even though it was only Harry who had heard her. Her face looked immeasurably sad, something Harry had never actually seen on her face before.
Harry looked at her most perplexed, pushing himself up next. He took a moment to just take in the air he desperately needed to stay conscious before turning his eyes up towards the window the man had fled through. If he wasn't a coward, then what was he?
oOo
"What was that?" Hermione pushed herself across bathroom floor to the window. They'd just made their way out of the small tunnel when suddenly, a small pain garnered her attention.
"Ah..." The small pain wrapped around her wrist before she could make it fully to the window. Like a tight rope wrapping itself around the bone. She could feel it, a warning. She turned her head as a wisp of something black headed out towards the forest, her mind couldn't comprehend what she was seeing but her heart told her what it must have been. Her head turned down to her wrist where she'd taken hold of herself and she could have sworn to have seen the faintest of lines across her pale skin. The feeling passed after only a few seconds leaving nothing but a phantom pressure behind. Her face screwed up in confusion as she tried to rub the feeling away.
"You alright?"
"Yeah, fine..." She turned her head towards the doors, "Come on..." She leaned down picking up the bag she had dropped and forced herself to move.
oOo
"How come he didn't fall?" Harry was still in a bit of shock over what he'd witnessed. The other professors who had joined them turned towards him each their own degrees of confusion.
"There are a few things that Snape had picked up from both Dumbledore and Voldemort, this would be one from the latter." McGonagall's eyes narrowed before she tucked her wand back into her sleeve.
Harry shook his head to clear it, "Professor he's coming, you must protect the school..."
"I can do my part. Where are the others?"
"The Room of Requirement." Luna spoke up at last, gently handing Harry his cloak, "I can take you there."
"Very good Miss Lovegood. Filius, take your students down to the Great Hall. I shall alert the Order. Pamona, your students are the closest to mine if you would-"
"You needn't ask." Professor Sprout didn't wait to hear the rest of the plan, hurrying off to do what she was told.
Slughorn too merely nodded his head and turned to make his way down to the dungeons to retrieve his own. Minerva let out a small breath before turning her eyes to Harry.
"There's something I need to do..." Harry thought back to what Hermione said about Snape having her wand. He believed it was her best chance to surviving. The wand they'd given her wasn't bad but he could see that she had trouble calling forth its power. "What's the password to the head office?"
"I don't know..."
"Use the secret passage, you'll get there quicker and you don't have to worry about blowing a hole through the wall this time." Luna gave him a gentle smile coming to stand by his matriarch. "We'll see you soon."
Harry nodded briefly glancing up at McGonagall who still seemed to be trying to process what was going on. Harry didn't wait for her objections and hastily pulled the cloak back around himself. The sound of his feet slamming against the stone as he ran their only indication that he'd left.
"This way Professor."
Luna was entirely too calm about everything. Her eyes, voice, and posture something Minerva couldn't possibly fathom. While on the one hand she was impressed at her cool mind under the pressure but on the other, she was deeply disturbed. She shook her head to try and bring herself back into perspective.
oOo
Harry ran as fast as his legs could carry him. He could already feel the castle coming alive. The sound of suits of armor coming from their alcoves to march towards the entrances thundered against his skull. This was it, this was real. His feet skidded against the stone as a large suit of armor came to block his path, he darted around it trying not to think about what damage could be done with the massive ax that it carried in his enchanted hands.
His eyes searched through as he came to the proper floor, while he knew of the passage Luna had spoken of, he couldn't rightly remember which tapestry it had been hidden behind. So, as he ran he flicked his wand in the direction of the clothes until one of them revealed a small archway with a wall behind.
He pushed the false wall out of place before rushing up the stairs. He pulled his cloak from his head to see better before taking the turn he needed. The lights in the tunnel were dim but the sounds of students and suits of armor filling the halls made the small tunnel vibrate. He was sure the noise was going to split his skull when he finally made it to the long hall that led to the headmaster's office. It was eerily quiet, paradoxically making the noise he'd heard previous seem less deafening by comparison. He needed to do this quickly and get back on task to finding the diadem.
"Bombarda!"
Harry shielded his face as the stone gave way with concussive force. The light from inside the room illuminated the hidden passage in a dim glow. He tried not to put too much thought into it as he stepped over the rubble. His eye turned up to the portraits lining the walls searching for one in particular before a movement at the desk caught his eye.
A small house elf stood at the front of the desk, leaning up on their toes to place down a lightly glowing vial. The explosion seemed to have had no effect on the elf completing their task and when the vial was placed they turned looking directly into Harry's cloaked form.
It was then that Harry recognized the elf. They were there one that had brought him the sword and mirror. To whom did they belong? He had to know. He threw off the hood of his cloak, "Who are you?"
The elf merely turned their head before pulling out a wand from its green bedsheet. Harry's heart skipped a beat as he recognized the design upon the handle. It was Hermione's.
"What are you doing with that wand?" He raised his own, unsure at exactly who's side the elf was on.
"Master said to put it on his desk, Poppet does what she is told. She is a good elf." The elf placed the wand down beside the vial before turning back to regard the floating wizard in front of her.
"Who is your master?" Harry's words were rushed as if he knew the elf would vanish at any moment.
"I am assigned to the Head of this school."
Harry's eyes widened considerably as the elf popped out. His mind turning in too many directions at once. Did she mean Snape? Had Snape been helping them this whole time? No, surely there had to be another explanation.