Dumbledore had been calmly sitting in his office and perusing a book before he got news of the ongoing attacks.
It was a rather engaging Muggle novel- something he rarely had time to indulge in these days.
The fireplace flared up, changing the flames within from its usual colours to the distinct shade of green known by anyone who had ever used the Floo network before.
"Dumbledore, we've got a problem. A big one. Voldemort's decided to make a major power play. Credible reports of attacks on both the Hogwarts Express and the Ministry of Magic itself!" Moody's head appeared in the flames as the former Auror cut to the chase as he always did.
Dumbledore's blood nearly ran cold.
"Has Voldemort himself been sighted?" he queried as he stood up and readied himself to leave.
"No but some of his top minions have been." Moody answered gruffly.
"Is there an approximate location on the Express?" Dumbledore asked.
Moody gave him some co-ordinates.
"I'll be going to the Ministry fight. I know where your fight is." Moody's head disappeared from the flames.
"Indeed. I must go and defend my students..."
All the portraits of past Headmasters and Headmistresses made various sounds of agreement and encouragement.
M aking great haste. he made his way out of the castle while sending off Patronuses for help and Apparated away.
Hermione cried in frustration as she fought off yet another Death Eater.
She was hungry, tired, sweaty and in pain.
She had been fighting for so long and help hadn't arrived...
She had seen some students laying dead in the wrecked corridors of the train; some were injured; some had gone careening out of windows and holes in the side of the train and she hadn't seen them since...
All in all, it was not looking very good.
She coughed up blood as she blocked a curse from the Death Eater by levitating part of a seat from a blasted apart cabin between herself and the incoming curse.
Where was Ron in all of this? She'd lost track of him ages ago, since he'd gone to fight from the air with Ginny and some of the better fliers...
What if he'd been blasted off his broom? If that were the case, then he would have plummeted several feet to the ground below and have died for sure...
She willed the thought away from her mind. Ron wasn't dead. Ron was not dead...
However, a lot of other people were, including a few faces that she recognised, some of them she knew more than others...
She swallowed the lump that threatened to form in her throat and kept on fighting.
If she were to die today, let it be said that Hermione Jean Granger had gone down fighting.
Ron, Ginny, Seamus and a few others- both from within their defence group and others willing to fight with them, were doing their best to fight from the skies.
Using a wind conjuring spell that they had learnt of and practiced within their group, Ron blew a pair of Death Eaters off their brooms and sent said brooms careening off into the distance.
Ginny had a gash on the side of her head that was bleeding heavily, but aside from wiping away the blood that threatened to run into her eye, she completely ignored the injury in favour of fighting.
"We have to push on! We can't give up!" she exclaimed.
"It would be a bloody shame to those who've already fallen if we did!" Seamus exclaimed.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" a Death Eater fired the curse at them, but they rapidly scattered, the spell hitting a portion of the train instead.
"I don't know how much longer I can keep this up..." Mandy Brocklehurst wheezed, hanging onto the waist of a Slytherin boy they didn't recognise for support, her breaths raggedy and her left eye blackened and swelling. "I've seen some of my friends die already... I'm so tired and I ache all over... when will it end?"
The Ravenclaw boy she'd been holding onto fired off a curse at the Death Eater, who dodged and fired back another Killing Curse, which narrowly missed him and his passenger.
"We have to keep trying. We can't... I bloody well refuse to die like this!" Ron too, sounded as if he were having trouble breathing when he spoke.
"We might not have much of a choice in the matter of how we die if we don't get some help out here soon..." Lisa Turpin piped up. "They've got years of experience and knowledge that we don't even if we are or were brilliant students at school..." her voice quavered.
An explosion, louder than any that they'd ever heard before, rocked the train and echoed through the valley that they were in.
Flames shot up from the part of the train that the sound came from, sending out several bits of debris that made impact with Hogwartians and Death Eaters alike in the sky.
Many of those hit screamed out in pain.
Ron in particular had taken a particularly large piece of shrapnel to the shoulder and barely managed to hold onto his wand in light of the new wave of intense pain he was experiencing.
He did, however, lose his grip on his broom and slid off the side.
Ginny screamed. "RON! NO!"
Before any of them could react to catch the plummeting Weasley, they were attacked again by a fresh wave of Death Eaters.
"They just keep coming!" Susan wailed.
Ginny tried turning her broom to catch her brother, but she found herself cut off by a familiar face from the Ministry of Magic debacle back at the end of her fourth year.
"Going somewhere, Weasley?" Dolohov sneered as he cast another killing curse at her.
"Get. Out. Of. My. WAY!" Ginny roared, unleashing the full Weasley fury on him as she did her best to fight him off.
Meanwhile, back in Magix, Harry had given over control of the ship to Aki (much to his delight and to Darian's and Lucas' despair) and had taken a seat near a window as the Magix City skyline came into view below them.
He had tried calling both Ron's and Hermione's phones, just to check up on them, but he got no answer from either one of them. In fact, the phones had gone straight to voicemail.
"That's odd. They should be free now. It's not as if they're in class now..." Harry mused, rubbing his chin as he thought. "Perhaps their phones are off. I'd been hoping to surprise them when they got off the train for the last time, but it wasn't meant to be, I suppose..."
A sudden chill went down his spine.
"I do hope they're okay. Voldemort's been fairly quiet these past few months..." Harry thought aloud.
"Trying to get through to your friends at home?" Lucas walked over to him when he noticed Harry frowning at his phone.
"That's the problem." Harry answered. "I'm not getting through, even though I normally always do. It's not as if they'd be in class now. They should be on the Hogwarts Express now, on their way back to London..."
"These things happen sometimes..." Lucas shrugged. "That does not mean that there is anything to worry about..."
Harry sighed and put away the phone. "You're right. Plus I'll get to see them in a few hours anyway. I'm sure they're fine..."
"Hey Lucas! I suggest you get back to your seat and strap yourself in within the next five minutes if you don't want the Roxspars to be down a son!" Aki called out.
Lucas rolled his eyes. "I had better go sit. If I die like this, my mother would probably call my spirit back up from the dead just to kill me again..."
"Your mother sounds like a rather interesting character."
"Believe me," Lucas spoke as he walked away. "she is..."
Dumbledore found himself in the midst of a scene of pure and utter carnage.
Were he a weaker man, he would likely have already fainted or vomited from the scene around him.
Many students of varying ages and Houses were scattered across what was left of the floor of the train, in some cases quite literally, as he spotted some limbs (and heads) about.
Some of the Aurors who arrived shortly after him didn't hold up as well has he had at the sight, judging by the retching sounds behind him...
"We need to get the survivors out of here!" one of the Aurors commanded, snapping those who had started to feel queasy out of it.
Nodding, they sprung into action.
Other Aurors, along with Dumbledore, went along the train and as they did, got caught up in battles with various Death Eaters, who were still present.
When some of them saw that the Aurors had came, they fled, but the most diehard ones stayed to fight.
One of them even dared to send a Killing Curse Dumbledore's way, but he blocked it with what was left of a cabin's chair that he levitated between himself and the fatal curse, cutting off its pathway.
Dumbledore wordlessly blasted the Death Eater into what remained of a wall and the mask bounced off to reveal Rabastan Lestrange's face.
"I must say, Rabastan... Attacking children? And my students at that? That's not very wise of you..." Dumbledore wasn't hiding his fury now.
Rabastan stumbled as he attempted to get up.
"So what are you going to do, old man?" Rabastan sneered. "Kill me?"
"If I must..." Dumbledore's spell, cast with a purple light went straight through Rabastan's hastily erected shield.
Fire raged in the Hogwarts Express.
Smoke spread throughout the cabin and Hermione now had a severe burn on her leg in addition to her other injuries.
She stumbled to the ground, coughing as the smoke got into her lungs and stung her eyes, making them water.
"I have to get out of here... Ron, Ginny, Neville, Luna..." she wheezed.
Two sets of hands grabbed her and she screamed.
"LET ME GO! LET ME GO!" Hermione cried out, hissing in pain as she did.
"We're Aurors! We're getting you to safety!" an older female voice spoke.
"Come on! You need to get to St Mungo's!" a male voice spoke.
They Apparated out and suddenly Hermione found herself in a place where the walls were pure white.
A bunch of people in green Healer robes surrounded her and removed the backpack she had (she was vaguely surprised it was still in her possession).
"My pet... Shrunk him... In cage in bag..." she managed to get out.
One of the Healers nodded and took the bag into another room.
"My friends... I left my friends..." Hermione coughed up blood.
"We're going to go back and do our best to save your friends." the female Auror reassured her, even as more Hogwarts students were brought in.
Hermione's eyelids felt heavy and the sounds around her seemed to grow more distant.
"Please... help them..." were the last words she managed to get out before she faded away completely.
Molly sat with a cup of tea, trying to get herself calmed down as she sat in the kitchen, but the tea wasn't doing anything to soothe her nerves.
She kept eyeing the clock, but her husband's, Ron's Ginny's and Percy's hands all remained steadfastly on Mortal Peril.
She took a sip of tea and had just rest down the cup when she noticed Arthur's and Percy's hands move from Mortal Peril to Travelling.
Tea forgotten, she dashed into the sitting room to inform the others, when the fireplace flared green.
All of them had their wands in hand, when suddenly, two people were flung out of it and over the sofa facing the fireplace, one landing on his back and the other on his stomach.
Percy's glasses skidded across the room when he'd fallen on his stomach and he coughed up soot rather violently.
Arthur had already sat up and was looking around dazedly.
"Where am I..." he wondered.
"Oh, Arthur!" Molly ran over to him and immediately began checking up on him from head to toe. "I heard about the attacks on the Ministry! I'm so glad you're alright! What's happening?"
"Death Eaters showed up. They must have had inside help to stage such an attack. I wouldn't have gotten out of there alive, if it wasn't for Percy. He blocked an Avada Kedavra headed for me with a giant slap of stone and practically hauled me to a fireplace himself to get me out..." Arthur breathed heavily, leaning against his wife for support.
Percy finally managed to get himself seated upright, still coughing from the copious amounts of soot he'd swallowed.
"Oh Percy! You saved him! You saved your father!" Molly hugged him lightly, mindful of any potential injuries her third son might have had.
"Well, Mum..." Percy breathed. "...I couldn't just leave him there like that, could I?"
"You had no problem leaving your family before..." Fred muttered darkly under his breath but Molly shushed him.
"I'm just glad you're both safe! I only wish I knew what was happening with Ron and Ginny!" she exclaimed.
"Ron... and Ginny?" Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Why? What's happened to them?"
"There's been an attack on the Hogwarts Express as well as the Ministry, Arthur." Molly told him hesitantly. "Look... look at Ron's and Ginny's hands on the clock..."
Arthur's and Percy's eyes went straight to the clock, perched atop the mantle.
The last two Weasley children's hands were still at Mortal Peril.