Disclaimer!

These characters do not belong to me nor do I make any money off this story. I am merely writing Fan Fiction. The characters belong to their respective author. I hope you enjoy Joining Forces.

Harry POV:

The next day, Percy seemed much better than before. While wasn't as cheerful as when he first had been coming to Hogwarts it was definitely better than a few days ago. This mood persisted through the day and all the way into the evening where we all gathered in the great hall for the duelling club. Today it was Snape who was running the session. In his dark robes he was positioned at the end of the hall as he looked through sheets of paper having the students still in the competition. He'd select two random names and they'd duel to decide the victor between them. Snape nodded his head as he looked through the names choosing which he'd place together. "Draco Malfoy," He said, pointing his wand at one group where a bunch of Slytherins were gathered. "And how about Harry Potter? We'll renew some old memories, yes?" By renewing memories if he meant Draco cheating, then throwing a snake at me before still losing—sure.

Draco and I stood on opposite sides of each other, our wands ready. "You think you'll win Potter?" Draco muttered. "You seem awfully arrogant today."

"Not arrogant, but confident. There's a trend in you losing against me. It's likely to continue."

Draco gave a smirk. "We'll see," We both bowed and turned around taking three steps before pivoting and both lights begun flashing. Blasted from the tips of our wands and colliding in the middle. This repeated itself for a short while, but already there had been dozens of speels and jinxs gone to each other. Some had hit, some were deflected, but I could feel that I was slowly winning.

"Come on Draco!" A voice called. "Stop stalling! Show Potter what a Slytherin can do!"

"Well, Potter," Draco said a smug grin on his face, "Shall we?" He didn't wait for an answer and immediately fired a spell. "Avis!" A flock of birds flew from his wand towards me, I quickly fired another shield charm. "Hiding Potter?" Draco mocked. "I thought we agreed to let everyone see something rather than just shields."

"I didn't say anything," I responded, simultaneously firing the leg binding spell at Draco who dodged and fired the same spell at me. "Coward," Draco teased.

"Fine," I said, "let's make something more interesting out of the duel." Lights flared so quickly that it was hard to determine which was what, and whose wand they came out of. It was a short while later where a red beam flew from my wand, his shooting out of his hand. "You won Potter," Snape remarked, his expression unmoving. On the side, Draco scowled leaving the center of the hall, me doing the same on the other side.

"Next, we'll have—" Snape suddenly stopped talking. His face turned a shade paler as he took a sharp inhale. "Professor Snape?" I asked. "Is something wrong?"

"No," he said through gritted teeth. "Everything. Is. Fine." He took a deep breath. "Let's continue."

"Won-won, won-won, please come with me." From the corner of my eye, I saw Lavender pulling at Ron while he tried to get her to leave, Hermione glaring at the side. "Really, Lavender, we should just stay here. Now that a lot of CHB students are gone, practicing duelling is really important."

"He's right," I quickly moving next to them, Ron letting out some relief in a long breath.

"Won-won," Lavender continued to clutch his arm some more, giving a few more light tugs. "Please, you promised me once that you'd be there for me. Now that I just want to walk around Hogwarts to find my lost bracelet, you don't even want to spare me a glance? How quickly does a person change?"

"It's just Hogwarts," Ron reassured. "I'm sure you can find your way around. I'm sure, many of other friends can help you as well."

"Ron," Neville whispering to us. "Maybe you should just go with her. She did come back from the dead, it wouldn't be appropriate if you so blantantly refused her, especially considering your past relationship. If you want, I can go too! Maybe we'll find what she's looking for faster this way as well!"

Looking back to her whimpering eyes then to Hermione and I for a few moments, Ron gave a nod of his head. "Okay."

Turns out, his okay meant walking with Lavender around Hogwarts for about 15 minutes before Ron slowed down due to "fatigue" with Hermione and I to help him to later catch up later as Lavender and Neville continued to search. "It's a blasted bracelet," Ron grumbled, sitting on the grass. "I could have demolished someone in duelling twice by now."

"Maybe it's important to her." I interjected.

"Clearly so." Ron muttered one more time before sighing, his head hanging. "It's not that I want to be mean or rude, but things ended...kinda strangely. The situation right now certainly does not help either."

"You mean us?" Hermione asked.

"No, not that, but the whole zombie thing." Ron replied. "I mean when we broke up, Dumbledore died and then there was the whole battle of Hogwarts where she died and now she's back, her along with a bunch of other people, some who I think none of us really wanted to see again. It's just...I don't really know how to talk to her."

"You just some time," I suggested. "Everything will undo itself naturally."

"How long is that?"

"Dunno. Or there's always the other option of something bad happening and pushing you to talk, but we don't want that to happen."

"Something bad has happened!" Neville suddenly came running back. I pressed my lips together.

"What is it?" Hermione went up and looked around, nothing looked to be out of the ordinary. Neville, who seemed to have run from a great distance away, didn;t look as unperturbed. Did we spend so much time staying put?

"Lavender and I got split up," Neville said, pointing towards the direction he came from. "We were walking together when she suddenly disappeared the next moment. Then, I felt something breathing down my back, I turned around, but there was nothing there. I stayed there for a while, but there still wasn't anything strange so I came back here as fast as I could. I'm guessing that means you haven't seen her either."

I shook my head.

"We can look for her right now," Ron said, standing up. "Let's go back to where you last were and—"

"Harry! Ron! Hermione!" Another voice began calling, a figure in the distance quickly getting closer. Her red hair flapping in the wind as she ran. Once stopping, Ginny quickly asked us frantically, "Have you seen Colin?"

"Colin Creevy?" I responded. "No, why?"

"He wanted me to help him find you, wanted more photos. Before we could go too far, he disappeared."

"Same thing happened to Lavender." Neville chimed in. "Do you think there's anyone else missing?" Suddenly, he began waving his arms. "Percy! Annabeth!" Apparently, everyone seemed to have the same idea to have a walk today! However, unlike us, Annabeth and Percy hadn't encountered any mishaps. "So, no one missing?"

"Nope," Percy replied. "It's been fine so far. Everything alright?"

"No," Hermione answered. "People are disappearing. You should be careful. We're going to go around looking for them, it's likely there's something unnatural going on. Do you want to join us?"

"Unfortunately, we can't." Annabeth answered. "We need to meet with a couple people from CHB outside of Hogwarts so Professor Dumbledore has let us skip a few days. We're leaving tonight and should be back soon enough, but this is a really opportun moment so we really can't stay. If we have any news, we send an owl."

Someone - My update schedule is fluctuating, but I'm going to try to get more chapters in.

Nira - Thank you for reading :)

FairyKindQueen - I'm glad you like it!