The Quest of Twelve

A bright, white light illuminated the room. Everything that was in shadow was seen, including the small group of teenagers huddled by a huge fire.

'Oi! Neville! Would you stop sitting on your wand! It's kind of blinding me!' Ron roared, without need, to a small boy sitting two meters away from him.

'S-s-sorry,' Neville, suppressing a yawn replied, as he stood up and put his wand on the table in front of him.

'Ron's right, we have to try not to be seen, or heard' Hermione, said to the group, giving Ron at stony glare, 'Right, so are we all here? Harry, Ron, Dean and Neville. Lavender, Parvati and Seamus. Draco, Gregory, Vincent, and myself. Yes we are all here.

'Most of you don't know why we are all huddled in the History of Magic classroom around the fire so I'll tell you.

'As Draco and I are the Head boy and girl, Prof. Dumbledore told us that the eleven of us have to do something. You may know,' Hermione continued as Draco gave a snort, 'That You-Know-Who has been killed but, all his powers went to someone'

'We must find out who!' Draco drawled, continuing from where Hermione had taken a breath, 'To do this, we have to follow a plan. After graduation we all must pretend to live together in a mixed collage house and pretend to be good friends.'

'Then we shall search the country in groups,' Hermione took over, 'During the day, but we have to be together at night so we all must learn how to apparate! We can't have someone go and splinch themselves!

'The only thing we have to do right now is to work out the groups. So we have to put our differences aside! The one requirement that Dumbledore told us was the groups have to be a five and a six. So lets get cracking at it!'

Over the next hour the group fought over a division, finally Harry spoke a piece of sense.

'How about this! In one group Ron, Hermione, Draco, Vincent, Gregory and I. The rest of you in the other. That sounds good, doesn't it?'

He was met with an all round head nod.

'Ok everyone go to your dorms! We shall meet again tomorrow here at 11 pm,' Draco's eyelids drooped as he said that.

***

'Everyone! Listen please,' Prof. Dumbledore was addressing the students as Ron and Harry entered the hall followed by Hermione, Lavender and Parvati, 'Hurry up you five! Everyone here? Yes, I see you are. Ok

'The following students are excused from their classes today. Ronald Weasly, Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom and Dean Thomas. Seamus Finnigan, Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. Parvati Patil, Lavender Brown and Hermione Granger. Oh yes and Virginia Weasly,' The whole hall glanced at Ginny, Ron looked absolutely shocked, 'Would you please go to Prof. McGonagall's class as soon as you have finished breakfast, thank you. Everyone tuck in!'

Most of the pupils ate as though they hadn't seen food for days, but Hermione, Ron and Ginny just pushed their plates away.

'Ron! What do you think Ginny has to do with this?' Hermione whispered into Ron's ear since they were sitting next to each other, 'Come on lets go to the class now and signal for everyone else to do the same, except for Ginny.'

Getting up from their seats, Ron caught Parvati's attention, who got up followed by Lavender. Harry seeing this signalled to Neville and the two of them got up.

Hermione walked past the Slytherin table and caught Draco's eye. Draco, Gregory and Vincent followed. When they all reached the classroom and had entered and closed the door Draco spoke.

'Ok, Hermione, why didn't you tell me that Ginny was in the group?'

'I certainly didn't know! I thought you knew!' Hermione cried back.

'Hey! Well we can't help it now can we? Dumbledore has a reason and we can't exactly walk up to him and say, hey why did you ask Ginny to come Prof., we can't take her, can we?' Neville spoke out, everyone looked at him in surprise. It was the first time he had been like that.

'Neville's right,' Parvati sighed, 'Dumbledore must have a good reason.'

At that moment Prof. Dumbledore and Ginny walked through the door.