Retreat - Act I: Occupation

4. Escalation

Blood flowing freely from several wounds on her shoulders, Hermione crashed onto the kitchen table, crying out in pain as glasses and plates smashed into her arms and legs. The tables were set for breakfast. Chinaware and cutlery crashed to the floor as Hermione slid off the short end of the table and plunged headfirst onto the stone tiles below.

While reality suffered static disruptions, Hermione reached up to touch her aching head. Feeling something sticky - which she was pretty sure wasn't shampoo leftovers - she blinked firmly, striving to stay conscious. As she opened her eyes after a final, long blink, the face of a house elf filled her vision, its huge eyes making her flinch.

'Can I get you anything?' it asked.

'Out of here.' Hermione pushed herself up on her elbows, groaning as she turned over and staggered to her feet. 'I need to get out of here. To warn the others.'

'Dangerous things out there,' said the elf. 'Mistress better stay here.'

Shaking her head, Hermione limped towards the stairway - and jerked to a halt. She didn't have to limp. Healing spells were easy. If - she patted her pockets - one had a wand to perform them with. She hurried back, crouched down, and flung aside the broken china. Where was it?

'Does the mistress desire assistance?' enquired the elf, perched on the table.

'My wand! I can't find my wand!'

'A wooden stick?'

'You know what a wand is!' snapped Hermione. The beast could have heard the noise. It could be en route to the kitchen at that very moment. She had to find her wand and heal her wounds, quickly.

'Like - this?' The elf held up Hermione's wand.

Relieved, Hermione rose and reached for the wand. 'Yes. Thank you. Now I--'

The elf pulled the wand out of her reach, backing away down the table. 'What do you say?' It grinned at her.

Perplexed, Hermione sputtered a weak 'Please?'. This was a highly unusual house elf, she decided. Not even Dobby behaved like that.

'No,' the elf shook its head, 'you say what it will get me! One favour for another, mistress.' It kicked an obstructive bowl to the floor.

And the crash kicked Hermione's brain back into gear. The elf was using personal pronouns. This wasn't just a house elf behaving strangely. It wasn't a house elf at all.

And it was stalling.

And making a lot of noise, kicking more and more glasses, plates, and cutlery to the floor. Hermione tried to block out the bangs and crashes, searching for subtler sounds.

And then she heard it.

Something was coming down the stairs.

She lunged for the wand, throwing herself onto the table, missing by mere inches. The elf scuttled backwards, picking up cutlery and flinging it at her.

There was a roar behind her. The table shook.

~~~*~~~

Ron stared at the abomination creeping towards him. Neither the beast in front of him nor the one behind seemed in any great hurry to attack. Rather, they appeared perfectly pleased to just have him remain where he was. Ron, on the other hand, was in a great hurry to get back to Hogwarts, both to warn the others and to be Someplace Else should the monsters get hungry and re-evaluate their laid-back strategy.

Problem was, he had no clue how to do it. He had tried stunning the creatures, levitating them, and turning them into woollen socks. Which hadn't worked. So he simply stared. And then, he saw it: As the creature neared his glowing wand, its black eyes narrowed, squinting nearly shut.

On occasions when the light produced by the common Lumos charm is found to be inadequate, there is a stronger alternative: the Lumofortus charm, which generates light worthy of a minor lighthouse. Sunglasses are strongly recommended for the wielder who wishes to avoid spontaneous blindness.

Ron raised his wand, opened his mouth and . . . stopped.

There was a saying Ron's brothers Fred and George favoured: Overkill is better than underkill. And in matters such as this, Ron amended: Overkill is better than getting yourself killed. This, thought Ron, is the time to bring out the big wands.

Fred and George, being a veritable fountain of knowledge and assorted items of magical mischief (all reasonably prised), had also taught Ron the fireworks spell he now hauled out of cerebral cold storage.

Even with a better wand than his, pulling off two such strong spells in rapid succession could prove difficult, even dangerous. But he had to try. If he chose only one and it proved insufficient, he would just anger the spider-creatures - and that was, for entirely selfish reasons, not something Ron wished to do at that particular moment.

Ron shut his eyes, held his wand aloft, and uttered the spells. He could hear fireworks go off all around, heating up the tunnel, followed by a light so bright he could see every vein in his eyelids.

'Finite incantatem,' he muttered and opened his eyes. The creature in front of him was hissing, growling, and charging towards him. But it was also squinting, stumbling, and looking quite disoriented. The spells had worked.

Ron spun around to face the other creature. The light had affected it equally, but he could also tell it was recovering fast - too fast. One flash wouldn't work.

If only he could have remembered some way to conjure sunglasses.

'LUMOFORTUS!' Ron shouted, and as the light filled the tunnel, he rushed forward, bouncing off the belly of the nearest, blinded spider-creature, dodging the next one, then running with his back bent to avoid the rest of the creatures as he approached the end of the tunnel.

~~~*~~~

A number of drowsy house elves were nursing minor wounds and muttering about the impropriety of it all down in the kitchen, taking cover behind large pots, overturned benches, and anything else large enough to shield them from the barrage of sharp-edged cutlery heading their way. Only Dobby was foolhardy enough to risk a fork in his eye or a spoon in his oversized ear (the Evil Elf was clearly running out of sharp edges). Thus, it was only Dobby who saw the blood-streaked cat darting under the tables towards the far wall - and the indefinable monstrosity of the canine persuasion leaping from table to table in pursuit of it.

Figuring out where the cat was headed required no great feat of deduction.

~~~*~~~

During a time of failing magic (the hows and whys of which were not, Hermione distinctly recalled, specified in Hogwarts: A History), several Muggle-style food-lifts had been installed in the castle, leading up from the kitchens to the Great Hall and some floors diagonally above it. Fallen into disuse, most of these lifts had been sealed off and forgotten about, but a few remained, either because no one could be bothered to get rid of them or because someone had thought they might come in handy.

That one would come in handy as an escape route, no one had imagined.

The lift Hermione aimed for was, like many of its fellows in the kitchen, now used as an extra cupboard. This unfortunately meant she had to compete with a large number of jars and tins for room as she plunged headfirst into the cramped space. Pushing as many objects as possible out of her way and into the kitchen, Hermione turned around and gave the stick holding up the hatch a swift kick. It slammed down just as the creature reached the lift. Claws tore into wood.

Now for the real test of her escape plan.

She was inside a small wooden box, barely large enough to accommodate her cat form, and now she was to turn human again. With the top of the box in place she had nowhere to go, and judging by the splinters multiplying on the inside of the hatch, the paw of the beast would terminally invade her privacy in a matter of seconds. Her only hope was that changing back into her much larger human shape would force the top off, freeing her to climb up the narrow shaft.

She grew rapidly. If the top of the box was attached too well, it could turn ugly. Uglier than being ripped to pieces by the beast outside, though the difference was probably negligible.

A flying splinter hit her. The hatch was cracking.

As was the top of the box. She could hear ancient glue ripping and the wood creaking as it bent upwards. She felt the bottom of the box wobble. The kitchen was apparently not the lift's lowest point. There was empty space beneath.

Then, just as she was starting to get excruciatingly uncomfortable, the top of the box flew off. The bottom plunged into darkness. Hermione unfolded and made a desperate grab for the rope. Her hands closed around it. She looked down. The bottom of the shaft was shrouded in darkness. It could terminate as far down as the deepest dungeons. Food for erstwhile prisoners of the castle might have come this way. In any case, it was not a direction that looked in the least appealing to non-suicidal food-lift climbers.

With barely enough room to move her arms, Hermione started to climb upwards. Seconds later, the hatch shattered beneath her. The paw of the creature made a grab for her legs, missing by mere inches. She held on tight to the rope. She would not let go. The beast, perhaps sensing her determination, snorted, growled and retreated through the jingling china.

Hermione climbed as fast as she possibly could.

As far as she could remember, all the old lift openings in the Great Hall were thoroughly sealed. But she also recalled seeing more improvised blocks on the floors above: a painting covering an opening, a drape pulled just that bit further. Some openings in less used corridors weren't even covered. Of course, she didn't know which of the lifts she was in. This one could be blocked all the way.

Not an entertaining prospect.

She passed the old Great Hall opening. As she had suspected, it was sealed off.

The shaft was cramped, musty-smelling and very, very dark. Hermione felt uncharacteristically claustrophobic. Anxious to get out, she took a steady hold of the mouldy rope and pulled with even greater force. There was a sharp, tearing noise far above her. Two seconds later, the rope grew slack and she plummeted, crying out in terror.

Feeling the ragged walls of the shaft scratch her hands and legs, Hermione braced her elbows, back, and knees against them, coming to a painful, sliding halt. The shaft was just narrow enough. She would be able to climb upwards using her arms and feet to push off from opposite sides of the shaft.

But it would take time. Time she didn't have.

Still, it was either climb slowly up or travel with astounding speed down to a sudden and sloppy death. She opted for the slow path, having no choice but to stick to the straight and exceedingly narrow.

~~~*~~~

Outside, Ron Weasley made a terrible racket, every grimace in his repertoire flitting across his face in rapid succession, every foul noise he could muster pouring in a steady stream from his twisting mouth.

The wolfbeasts were edging closer. Ron gripped the tree trunk tighter and set his feet against the branches below.

Upon exiting the tunnel, Ron had placated the murderous Whomping Willow by tapping the special knot, as usual. Then, finding that the horrid creatures he'd seen prowling outside the tree's reach before were indeed still prowling, he had scrambled up the huge, gnarly willow. And that was where he still found himself.

However, recognising an urgent need to get out of said tree and into a nearby broomshed (he had tried Summoning a broom, but the spell seemed not to work), Ron didn't plan on staying long. He had a Plan. Admittedly not a very safe plan, but a plan nonetheless. The first stage involved getting the creatures closer to the Whomping Willow.

Stage One was now complete. The wolfbeasts were approaching rapidly.

Perhaps too rapidly.

Ron's plan involved hitting the Special Knot with a simple kinetic spell, then swinging quickly to the other side of the tree's massive trunk while trying to keep from getting too hurt as the Willow whomped the beasts into oblivion. What Ron's plan did not involve was the beasts' attempt to climb up the tree, while he tried to keep his arm steady and hit the knot, which proved near impossible in practice.

He aimed and howled the spell. A stream of blue light shot towards the knot. And missed, again. One wolfbeast had got so far up the willow it could almost reach him with its huge, scarred paw. Ron shifted his aim and fired a repulsion spell towards the beast. Nothing happened. The beast swiped at him, tearing into the trunk just below his feet.

Ron aimed for the knot again. An inch too high.

The beast snapped its jaws shut an inch below Ron's left foot. Many inches too high.

Kicking downwards while performing the Kinetic Repulsion Spell again, Ron suddenly succeeded both in thrusting the stunned beast onto its nearest companion and releasing the wrath of the Whomping Willow. Ron was so stunned by this double-strike of fortune that the Willow was halfway to a major Whomp when he realised he was on the wrong side of the trunk. He swung around one of the branches, but before he could get a good grip, the willow hit the ground with a massive WHOMP. Ron's head smashed into the trunk.

This put what one may call a new spin on Ron's Plan. Due to his stunned state, his grip was poor when, to the accompaniment of howling half-smashed wolfbeasts, the Willow drew back for a second Whomp. Thus it happened that, when the Willow snapped back towards the ground, Ron Weasley was hurtling backwards towards his original destination: the broomshed.

~~~*~~~

She felt really stupid hanging there, half her body outside the food-lift's opening. Stupid and exposed. There was nothing for it but to change again. Hermione heaved a sigh. As if all of her fresh wounds and bruises weren't enough, all this changing between her human and cat forms was leaving her aching and exhausted on more levels than the mere physical.

Hissing as she touched down on the floor, Hermione sped down the corridor, heading for McGonagall's quarters. The climb through the shaft had taken too long. Perhaps the creature had already begun a horrifying killing-spree, lining the castle corridors with student carcasses. Perhaps her warning would come to late.

Returning to human form as she reached McGonagall's quarters, Hermione banged on the door with all her might. When Minerva McGonagall did sleep, she did so with the same determination she did everything else in her life. Waking her up was notoriously difficult, and sometimes nasty. Professor McGonagall had never appreciated disturbances in her daily, or nightly, routines.

Hermione was therefore surprised, not to say shocked, to hear a great commotion follow her fourth bang on the door. Having a vision of poor old McGonagall falling over her slippers, sprawled on the floor, unable to get up (due to her, well, age), Hermione made a grab for the handle. She half expected the door to be locked. It wasn't. In fact, it wasn't just not locked - it wasn't, period. The handle and lock wasn't there. Instead, she found herself staring at a scorched hole, as the door, upset by her banging, creaked slowly open.

Then she felt the smell, and heard quick footsteps inside the room.

Acting almost purely on instinct, Hermione turned her back to the door and pressed against it just as a greyish, half-rotting arm shot through the crack. The door slammed into the arm, jamming it in place. She felt something - heavy - apply its weight against the door. The arm snaked further out. Her legs skidded forward. A spidery hand with long, sharp claws tore at her robes. She heard a loud crack, followed by a metallic clanging and the sharp voice of Professor Minerva McGonagall.

'Get away from that door, Granger!'

Hermione turned, and her eyes bulged as they took in the sight before her. Professor McGonagall, barefooted and dressed in a dark blue nightgown, her greying and surprisingly long hair billowing, strode towards Hermione with a positively huge broadsword in her hands.

As Hermione's brain tried to process this image, deducing that the sword in question came from a disarrayed suit of armour some steps away, her now rather active instincts urgently suggested that moving might be a good idea when someone swings a sword your way.

Barely a second after Hermione had thrown herself out of harm's way, the sword sank into the door. Blue sparks and lightning embraced both door and sword, and then everything was quiet, except for the door's creak as it swung open to reveal a withered, troll-like creature hanging, impaled, on the sword.

'Miss Granger!'

Hermione stared at the dead body. It seemed to be getting deader by the minute, rotting rapidly, disintegrating while she watched. It was quite, she reflected, yucky.

'MISS GRANGER!'

Snapping out of the State of Shock she had been thrown into by the sight of her elderly mentor slaying a decomposition-prone creature in manner of Xena: Warrior Princess, Hermione turned her attention to Professor McGonagall.

'Get to the Tower and evacuate your housemates, Miss Granger. Get everyone down to the Great Hall as quickly as possible. I need to warn the other teachers.' McGonagall spoke hurriedly. 'Oh, and thanks for waking me up. It proved very good for my health.' Her mouth twitched and with a loud CRACK, she was gone.

Hermione stared for a few seconds at the spot that the professor had vacated. Then she turned towards the Gryffindor Tower.

And it hit her: McGonagall had Disapparated. Within the school.

The protective wards were down.

Suddenly, the situation seemed ten times worse. Hermione had assumed the creature that had attacked her and Terry had been some wild beast from the Forbidden Forest, and that it had simply strayed into Hogwarts through some sort of gap in the protective shielding. With the appearance of the second creature and the apparent failure of Hogwart's magical security system, it looked as though Hogwarts was under a planned attack.

Figuring out who would plan an attack on the school was, unfortunately, not hard.

Hermione shook her head to dislodge thoughts of Voldemort leaping out from behind corners and dishevelled suits of armour, like some particularly nasty Boggart. It didn't matter who was behind the attack. What mattered was following McGonagall's direct orders.

Hermione took a deep breath. Time was of the essence, but so was a clear mind.

The creatures, whatever their outward appearance, could not be hurt by magic. Professor McGonagall's use of blunt force validated that theory beyond questioning. Of course, the blunt force in question looked rather sharp.

Hermione turned to the door, grabbed the hilt of the sword and yanked it forcefully out of the door. The decomposing creature on the other side fell into a pitiful and foul-smelling heap on the stone floor.

Hermione gave the sword a tentative swing. It was awfully heavy. She didn't even know if she would be able to wield it effectively. But she needed some kind of weapon and this one had just proven its worth in dealing with these mysterious creatures in a very direct, and to-the-point, manner.

But a wand was more than a weapon, and Hermione felt vulnerable without one. She hurried into McGonagall's room, past the bed and its slashed linens to the small desk by the window. She pulled out the top drawer. It was there, not in her office, that McGonagall kept confiscated wands. Hermione picked one. It could never serve her as well as her own but, nonetheless, it was a wand.

Seeing how long it had taken her to climb through the shaft, it was quite possible there were already creatures in the Gryffindor Tower. To get there quickly, she would just have to--

CRACK

--Disapparate.

~~~*~~~

Ronald Weasley was not having a good night. After a number of severe and brutally sobering shocks, he was now nursing a somewhat premature hangover. And he ached, all over. Between his stumbling through the underground tunnel, his ride on the Whomping Willow, his following flight into Professor Sprout's Romping Rosebushes, his several attempts to knock down a broomshed door that for some reason could not be opened by magic, and his subsequent stumbling over an errant badger whose only purpose in the plot of the night seemed to be to cause him bodily harm, Ron felt like a walking bruise.

Or rather, a hobbling bruise, soon to be a flying bruise.

Ron mounted the broom as soon as he got it out of the shed and kicked off. The broom shot into the air. In fact, it shot so violently into the air that it was soon shooting off on its own, Ron having dropped to lower altitudes, where he was getting further acquainted with the Romping Rosebushes and an increasingly distraught badger.

With rosebush-twigs romping about his robes and manic huffing and puffing behind him, Ron staggered back to the broomshed, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. He might not be as good as Harry on a broom, but he certainly wasn't that bad.

There were weird things afoot.

And it wasn't just badgers.

~~~*~~~

Seamus Finnegan screamed.

Seamus Finnegan screamed in the way of a seventeen-year-old boy who has been forcibly woken from a dream of the moister variety by a heavy weight smashing into his body in the middle of the night. He screamed in the manner of someone who, upon awakening, opens his eyes to find a wild-eyed female, much less accommodating than the one in his aborted dream, straddling his midriff and brandishing an enormous steel broadsword. He screamed like a Gryffindor under the sudden impression that his House Prefect has discovered new and painful ways of punishment for the pranks he pulled two days earlier in the Common Room. He screamed in the certain knowledge that this punishment would now befall him and forever scar his young soul of seventeen years.

In short, Seamus Finnegan produced a scream that woke the entire Gryffindor tower, and none quicker or more so than his two fellow male 7^th-years, who were very surprised indeed to find Hermione Granger straddling Seamus Finnegan as they pulled aside the drapes around the latter's bed.

'What the HELL?' said Dean Thomas, who was feeling rather shocked by what he saw as much too kinky a scene to be played out in the boys' dorm. Without his knowledge.

'Wha-' said Neville Longbottom, who was feeling rather stumped for words.

'AAAAAHHH!' said Seamus Finnegan, who was feeling rather sat upon.

'It's not what you think,' said Hermione Granger, who was feeling rather embarrassed by the whole situation. 'I - I suppose I'm just not able to Apparate accurately when I'm distraught and in a hurry, okay?' she snapped and turned to exit the bed, prodding at the drapes with her sword.

'Apparate?' said Neville, who was starting to feel slightly more reassured now he had noticed that both Seamus and Hermione were still clothed, more or less. 'But you can't Apparate inside Hogwarts.'

'You can now,' said Hermione, who gave up on pushing aside the drapes and chopped the whole thing down with her sword, causing Seamus to scream even louder and grab Dean's hand for comfort. 'Something has disabled the protective wards around the school,' she jumped off the bed and rushed for the door, 'and we're under attack.' She paused at the door and turned to face the boys. 'We must get to the Great Hall immediately, so wake up the others as fast as you can!'

Dean stared at her. 'Under attack? By who?'

Neville blanched. 'Is it V- V- Voldemort?'

'Probably,' sighed Hermione. 'Though he's using creatures I've never seen before.'

'Creatures?' said Dean. 'What sort of creatures?'

Hermione yanked the door open. 'I don't KNOW! I told you: I've never seen anything like them before! Now get out here and help me wake the--'

They all heard the scream. It had rung through the Tower once before, when Sirius Black had attacked the portrait of the Fat Lady. There was a crash.

Something had entered the Common Room.

~~~*~~~

Having first used the broom to brush a vindictive and mildly concussed badger off his foot, Ron mounted it cautiously. It was the third broom he tried. The second had thrown him off in much the same way as the first, and with much the same results, except that he had landed on something quite a bit softer, and much angrier.

He gripped the handle, tensed his thighs, and kicked off. This time, he made it to quite a respectable altitude before things went wrong.

In a hurry to get to Gryffindor Tower, Ron leaned left to turn the broom around.

The broom turned around and headed for the Tower.

So far, so good. Except for the fact that the broom had apparently taken this turning around business a bit too seriously and Ron now found himself dangling dangerously beneath it, arms aching with the effort.

Unaccustomed to steering a broom from his current position, Ron could do nothing but try to pull himself up as the broom sped past the Gryffindor Tower and on towards the Forbidden Forest. He struggled to bend his arms and swing his legs over the handle as he watched the Tower recede in the distance.

There was a distant, bloodcurdling scream.

It came from the Tower.

With the strength of utter desperation, Ron swung himself up and hooked his legs over the handle.

What if the scream had belonged to Hermione?