Choices and Consequences

Batsnumbereleven

Story Summary:
Harry's heading back to Privet Drive for the summer after his fifth year. He's tired of being angry with the world, and now it's time for him to change his attitude. He might have lost Sirius, and have had the prophecy thrust upon him, but there are still people who want to help him, and who understand the burden he carries. He has to take responsibility for his life and find a way to defeat Voldemort. (Mild H/G)

Chapter 35 - 35

Posted:
01/30/2009
Hits:
594


Despite the distractions that surrounded him now that he had settled back into the routine at Hogwarts for the spring term, Harry couldn't shake off the feeling from the visions he'd experienced while he was ill over the holiday of Lucius and Draco Malfoy being tortured by the new Death Eater recruits. It also annoyed him that Malfoy senior was clearly out of Azkaban despite his supposed sentence there.

He'd tried to speak to his friends about it, but although they accepted that he was not imagining it, they didn't know what could be done about it, especially since Dumbledore told him that the Ministry were insisting that Malfoy senior was safely locked up in Azkaban where he'd been since his trial in October.

When he confronted the Headmaster about it again, Dumbledore ha waved his concerns away, assuring him that, as far as he was aware, there had been no breakouts from the wizarding prison.

"Anyway Harry," he'd advised with a strange look on his face, "you should concentrate on what you are learning, and let me deal with what happens outside Hogwarts. There are people looking out for likely Death Eater targets like the Grangers, so we should be well warned if anything serious happens."

Harry assumed that the Headmaster meant that he had members of the Order watching out, as they had done over Privet Drive the previous summer, but wasn't necessarily entirely reassured.

"But sir!" Harry had protested. "I'm sure he's out there!"

An uncharacteristically stern look had come over the Headmaster's face when Harry had tried to press his insistence further, and he had refused to listen to Harry's accusations.

"I cannot do any more without firm evidence," he insisted. "I don't have the resources to do so, and the Ministry is not inclined to believe you at the moment."

Stung by this rejection, Harry took a lot of his frustration out during his Quidditch practices. He flew long and hard into the evening, chasing the Snitch through wind, sleet, rain and snow, as the January weather made flying a tricky prospect. Harry didn't notice the conditions though; he just enjoyed the sensation of flying, being able to push his Firebolt to its limits and his endurance in the freezing air to its maximum.

The rest of the team noticed his determination, but Ginny told them that he was burning off some of the excess energy he'd built up over the holidays, and they were happy to let him be.

In mid-January, Ravenclaw played Slytherin, and as in their match against Hufflepuff, the Ravenclaws were a slightly better team and opened up a healthy lead before Cho caught the Snitch to end the game with the score at 280-40. The Slytherin replacement Seeker was only a slightly better player than Malfoy and struggled to keep track of Cho through the game, though his job was made a lot more difficult by a blizzard that swept through about half an hour into the match.

Ron asked him about it during the game:

"Are you sure that isn't Malfoy again?" the redhead asked as the Slytherin Seeker swept past their position in the stands, where he and Harry sat with Hermione, Neville and Ginny.

"He doesn't play like Malfoy," Harry pointed out. "He's not even trying to foul Cho - look!

As Harry spoke, Cho whizzed right in front of the Slytherin, and rather than try to block her or spoil her flight, the opposing Seeker just looked miserably at where she had come from, and set his jaw as he guided his Nimbus 2001 in pursuit.

"Malfoy would have flown straight in front of her to try and make her swerve, or at least tried Blagging as she went past to sabotage her," he noted. "Besides, this kid actually looks as though he can handle a broom a bit better."

"Yeah, Blatching was one of Malfoy's favourite tactics", Ron said with a disdainful sniff.

"Will you two please stop talking nonsense," Hermione piped up.

"It's not nonsense," Ron said defensively, "that's what it's called - Blatching".

"Don't you think it's more odd that Malfoy even bothered coming back?"

Ron and Harry looked at each other in bemusement.

"Obviously he wanted to play Quidditch, Hermione," Ron stated, as though it was the most clear-cut thing possible.

"What? And risk getting arrested?"

"She's got a point, Ron," Harry admitted. "It is a bit odd that he didn't really even try and kill me."

"Not really?" Neville asked with a grin, which made Ginny glare at both he and Harry at the reminder of Harry's encounter with both the younger Malfoy and the Quidditch goalposts.

"Well he didn't seem to be trying very hard," Harry temporised.

"Still, it's definitely not him," he added, watching Ravenclaws Chasers give the Slytherins a lesson in passing.

The following week, Dumbledore announced that the students could visit Hogsmeade on the Sunday, which started a buzz around the Great Hall. The usual furore about who was going to the village with whom took up a great deal of the week's gossip and argument, and Ron and Hermione barely struggled to be civil to one another.

On top of their existing differences, Ron had found out that Hermione had agreed to go to Hogsmeade with Terry Boot from Ravenclaw, and was getting all worked up about it.

"What d'you want to go with him for? Stupid Ravenclaw!" he blustered, casting a nasty glare across to the other side of the Hall, where Terry was eating his breakfast in peace, unaware of the argument.

"Because it means I can spend time with him looking through the shelves in Dervish and Banges and stop off at Scrivenshafts without having to listen to you whinging about it," Hermione replied hotly. "There's nothing to stop you and Harry going to Zonko's or Honeydukes without me, you know."

"Actually, I was rather hoping that I could have Harry to myself for the afternoon," Ginny interrupted, sitting down opposite her brother.

Harry smiled at the thought, but could see Ron's face scrunching up in concentration.

"But with a Ravenclaw?"

"Did you never think that I might be more suited to friendship with a Ravenclaw, Ron?" Hermione asked.

"But, but... you're not going to go off all day without us, right?"

"I don't know, Ron. I guess it depends on how good a time I'm having with Terry, doesn't it?"

Ron opened his mouth, but no words came out, and he stared at Hermione for a minute, before narrowing his gaze and glaring daggers at Terry, who was just getting up from his table and leaving with a couple of friends.

As the Ravenclaw left the room, Ron propelled himself up from the table, half-overturning his plate and spilling tomato juice all over the tablecloth, then stomped off out towards the door and out of the Hall.

Harry and Ginny shared a pained, but wry grimace at Ron's actions, and focused their attention on their other friend.

"He's got to get over it," she told them as the door closed behind Ron. "This isn't a serious thing, but one of these days I'm going to have a boyfriend, and the two of you are already together. He's going to have to learn that eventually he might be on his own, whether he wants to let us go or not."

Harry thought it was a bit harsh, but he understood the point that Hermione was trying to make. Ron had acted so badly when he'd thought that Harry and Hermione were going to be together, that this was probably the best solution. It only made things worse that Luna and Neville had also decided to go to Hogsmeade together, though they both seemed very nervous at the prospect.

This meant that Ron was left without any of his closest friends, though he didn't attract much sympathy with the way he was reacting. He snapped at any of the other boys when they approached him in the common room, and only the Creevey brothers seemed willing to put up with him in the mood he was in.

Ron aside, Harry was pleased to have the opportunity to spend the day with Ginny. Although they'd tried to make time for each other throughout the year, with the amount of work the teachers were piling on them and the additional activities that they were involved in - the DA, Quidditch, and Harry's extra training - there seemed to be very few hours left in the day to develop a real relationship.

When Sunday came around Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Neville left Ron sulking in the common room and went to meet Terry and Luna in the main Entrance Hall. It was snowing very gently as they walked through the grounds to the village, but once they got outside the castle grounds and away from the protective wards that surrounded Hogwarts, they felt the bitter chill as the wind picked up, and heavier flurries of snow drifted around their ears. Harry was glad that he'd wrapped up against the weather: his cheeks and nose were already stinging from the wind, though one of his hands was nice and warm since he'd grabbed hold of one of Ginny's as they left the castle.

The group split up into their pairs as they headed out of the castle grounds, the wind whipping around them, with Neville and Luna tagging along with Dean, Seamus, Parvati and Padma, while Hermione and Terry followed a group of Ravenclaws towards Scrivenshafts. Without any particular destination in mind, Harry turned to Ginny as they watched the others go.

"So, where do you want to go?"

"Not sure really," she responded. "Somewhere nice and warm would be good, but everywhere's going to be crowded today."

Harry thought for a moment, then made a suggestion.

"I know somewhere that won't be crowded. How about I take you somewhere out of the wind and tell you a story?" he asked loudly, trying to make himself heard over the wind.

Ginny looked a little bemused by the suggestion, but shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"

Harry put an arm around her shoulder and felt Ginny place her own arm around his waist, then steered them away from the main part of the village, fighting the elements as they moved further from the shelter of the buildings.

"Umm, Harry?" Ginny said, as they got closer to their destination. "There's nothing down here but the Shrieking Shack."

"I know."

"What are we doing down here?"

"Like I said, we're getting out of the wind."

"Isn't the Shrieking Shack haunted?" Ginny asked in a shout as they walked. "I seem to recall Ron telling me it was the most haunted place in Britain."

"Ginny, you have a ghoul in the attic at The Burrow, and we're surrounded by ghosts at school - why would you be worried about the Shrieking Shack?"

She looked at him in confusion.

"Would it help if I told you it's not really haunted?" he continued.

They approached the Shack through the overgrown garden, carefully avoiding some of the more dangerous looking plants, and Harry opened the decrepit door with a quick wave of his wand.

"If it's not haunted, then why does everyone say it is?"

"That's all part of the story," Harry told her as they pushed their way inside.

The ground floor of the Shack was much as Harry remembered it from his third year. The furniture was sparse and badly ripped in places, where Harry knew that Remus had torn it during his monthly transformations, and the windows were roughly boarded up, letting chinks of light into the room, but the majority of the room was in reasonable shape. He assumed that Dumbledore had refurbished it at some point prior to Remus's year at Hogwarts as Defence professor, since there was no mould on the walls, damp in the air or decomposition, which he would have expected if the place had been totally uninhabited since the seventies, and the gaps in the boards let no draught in.

Doing some of the detection charms that they had learned from Professor Silverwood, Harry identified a number of spells on the room that apparently kept it in reasonable, if somewhat sparse, condition, and kept the air circulating.

"It's not exactly what I'd call home, Harry," Ginny commented as he finished casting spells around the room.

The spartan furnishings and bare wooden floor were not especially inviting, and although they were now out of the biting wind the room was still rather chilly.

Harry added some charms of his own to prevent anyone discovering the two of them and to warn him of anyone approaching, then lit the fire that was laid in the grate.

"It's more of a sanctuary than a home," he told her. The fire started roaring into a healthy blaze and the edge in temperature was taken out of the air. He shucked his outer robe off and sat on the tattered sofa, gesturing for Ginny to join him.

The sofa was actually quite comfortable, and they curled up together enjoying the warmth.

"You had a story to tell me?" Ginny asked, laying her head on his chest.

"Indeed I do. It's a story of a young werewolf attending Hogwarts, and how the Shrieking Shack became known as the most haunted building in Britain."

"Do I know this werewolf?" she asked Harry with a smile, looking up into his eyes.

"I believe you do, Miss Weasley. I believe you do."

He wrapped his arms around Ginny and revelled in the comfort that he felt from her, then launched into the story of Remus's use of the Shrieking Shack as a Hogwarts student, and how three friends had learned how to become animagi to keep the werewolf company during the full moons.

"So, was Professor Lupin using it when he was teaching here, in my second year?" she asked when Harry had finished his explanation of the Shack's real history.

"Yeah, but that's something of another story," he responded with rather mixed feelings, thinking of the mistakes he'd made.

He sighed and settled down to tell the second part of the story: the discovery of Wormtail, Sirius's offer to look after him, and his and Hermione's use of the time turner to save Sirius and his earlier self from the Dementors' kiss.

Despite her relaxed position, Ginny had been listening closely, and had a few questions for Harry when he had finished.

"Why didn't you let Sirius kill Wormtail?"

"I couldn't. I didn't want him to have that on his conscience. Not in cold blood like that. He was so focused on getting out of Azkaban and finally dealing with him, that I couldn't just let him waste his life by doing that."

"What about Snape? He was going to let Sirius get Kissed, just to settle his petty rivalry? And to take credit for capturing a known criminal?"

Harry sighed. "I don't know," he admitted. "I'm not sure how much of the conversation Snape heard, and whether he knew that Pettigrew was there. It's possible that he knew, but it's equally possible that he had no idea, and was really doing what he thought was best."

"But he must have known that Sirius wasn't a Death Eater."

Harry wasn't sure how much he wanted to blame Snape. He remembered how just the previous summer he'd vowed that he'd never forgive the potions master for his actions, but now he wasn't quite so sure.

He sighed.

"Not really. It was all supposed to be hush-hush, wasn't it? Just because Sirius didn't have the Dark Mark on his arm was no proof. Remember: everyone thought he really had betrayed my Mum and Dad."

They talked about things for a while longer until Harry realised that the fire had gone out. Without thinking, he made a small motion with his hand, and the fire burst back to life.

"Harry!"

"What?"

"You just did wandless magic!" Ginny exclaimed.

"Umm. Yeah."

"Don't tell me you didn't know! It's supposed to be really difficult."

Harry thought for a moment. He hadn't realised that his wand was still in his pocket when he performed the spell, and was glad that he hadn't channelled the energy through his wand. When he thought about it though, it wasn't simply a spell he'd cast, it was the remnants of the existing fire that he'd used to re-ignite the tinder.

"It's not really wandless magic," he tried to explain. "It's elemental magic. You know that's what Gaarder is trying to teach me, right?"

"Yeah, but I thought you still needed to use a wand?"

Harry shrugged.

"Never mind," she told him, "there's more important things than worrying about whether or not you can do wandless magic."

"Oh?"

"Well, for starters, if I heard your incantation properly when you were warding the place, there's almost no chance that we're going to get disturbed here, so we can make much better use of the time," she said with a glint in her eye.

Ginny pulled herself up to Harry's eye level and closed the small gap between them, placing the softest of kisses on the tip of his nose and around his mouth.

"Why, Miss Weasley, are you trying to seduce me?" he whispered, responding to her kisses, trying to catch her mouth with his own as she trailed kisses across his jawline.

"More than trying, I hope," she growled softly in reply, undoing a button halfway up his shirt and reaching inside to place a hand on his chest.

Harry could feel the blood pulsing through his veins as Ginny touched his midriff and leaned in closer to her, responding to her ardour and kissing her with relish. They lay there for a short time engrossed in each other as their passion built and they forgot about the outside world. Harry squirmed a little as Ginny moved her hand around under his shirt to his side, tickling him slightly with her fingernails as they scratched across his skin, and he jerked a little against her as the unexpected sensation made him gasp.

He pulled away from her briefly, and took a deep breath, panting slightly as the adrenaline rushed through his body.

"Ginny, you're going to have to stop," he said reluctantly, taking her wrist and pulling her hand out from under his shirt, holding it gently.

"What's wrong?" she asked, confused at Harry's sudden reluctance.

He sighed, and looked her in the eyes. "Nothing's wrong. Not really. It's just..."

"What?" Ginny asked him gently. "What's the matter?"

Harry could see the emotion in her eyes. She was hurt that he'd pulled away from her advances, just a little, and was starting to feel insecure about herself.

"I'm sorry, Ginny, I'm just not ready to... to..." He stammered a little and took another deep breath, trying to bring himself back under control.

"I'm scared of losing control!" he blurted out, almost shouting.

Ginny looked at him strangely, but put her arms around his waist and pulled him closer.

"It's okay, Harry," she reassured him. "I understand."

"Do you?" he asked. "I've never felt like that before."

He wrapped one arm around her shoulder and distractedly played with her hair with the other as he looked into her brown eyes. "I've never felt as though I could lose myself in the feelings that you were giving me; that I could totally lose control; that, no matter how much I knew I wanted you to continue, that it might be something I couldn't stop."

Ginny leaned in and kissed him gently on the nose.

"It's okay, Harry, it's okay. That's supposed to happen." She drew back and smirked a little at him. "Haven't you ever heard of men being driven wild with desire?" she teased.

"I thought that was a plot device for romance writers," he suggested.

Ginny blushed, and Harry thought for a moment that she was going to admit to being an avid reader of romantic fiction, but she didn't mention that at all.

"No, Harry, it's real. Maybe I should be flattered that you feel that way though; that I can drive you to distraction like that though," she added with a grin.

Harry hung his head. "I didn't realise," he admitted shamefully. "I thought that was a ... a bad ... thing."

"Well, that depends on your perspective. I'm sure Mum wouldn't be too happy with us going off somewhere so secluded so that I can unleash myself on you and get you to ravage me with your wild, uncontrollable hormones coursing through you.

"On the other hand," she added with a glint in her eye, "it sounds like it would be fun."

"Ginny!"

Ginny pouted a little. "Don't tell me you wouldn't like to come down here every weekend so we could finish what we started?" she asked rhetorically.

Harry stared at her with his mouth agape.

"But-"

Ginny rolled her eyes and kissed him on the lips to cut off his protestations.

"It's okay, Harry. We can take it as slow as you want," she told him, leaning back away from him, but slowly sliding a hand down his arm, and then down his side as she did. "You sounded as though you were enjoying it, though."

Harry flushed as red as Ginny herself had done years ago at The Burrow at the sight of Harry at the breakfast table.

"Well..."

"See!" she exulted, "I knew it!" She reached back up to Harry's side, on the outside of his shirt this time, and started tickling him.

"Hey! Stop it!" Harry exclaimed, and wriggled around to try and escape her hands. "Oi!"

It took a minute or two, but Harry was finally able to grab hold of her hands and force her to stop her tickling, though the position they had ended up in after rolling around on the sofa was perhaps a little compromising, as Harry lay flat on top of Ginny, with her hands held up over her head. He captured both her smaller hands in one of his and decided that retaliation might be in order.

"So, we'll see how ticklish you are, then," he announced, then proceeded to torment her by tickling under her arms, along her sides and across her belly.

During their mock-fight, Ginny's shirt had come untucked from her jeans, and as Harry tickled her stomach, it rode up to reveal the skin underneath, which made him stop and let her up, as he suddenly realised that he was straying into the same sort of territory that they had earlier. They both stood up from the sofa and brushed themselves down.

Once she had recovered from her ordeal, Ginny looked at Harry a little askance.

"I think you're more ready for this that you'll admit," she noted with a giggle, her line of sight dropping down to Harry's trousers.

Seeing where her gaze was focused, Harry spun around quickly and once again turned beet red.

"Ginny!"

"It's a natural reaction, Harry. I'd be more surprised if you weren't turned on a little - we've been rolling around on the couch, snogging and tickling each other."

Harry couldn't believe that Ginny was talking so matter of factly about his - ahem - circulation difficulties, and stayed facing away from her, willing himself to calm down.

After a moment he turned back to her.

"I'm sorry, Ginny. You must think I'm really thick."

"Hardly." She covered the couple of steps between the quickly and wrapped her arms around Harry's waist again. "I should have known that the Dursleys would never have talked about anything like this with you. I promise not to rush into things.

"Now let's take a break and get back to the village," she continued. "Even in this weather everyone will be wondering where we've got to, and if we're not back soon, McGonagall or someone will send out a search party."

Harry kissed her briefly on the top of the head and agreed.

"That doesn't mean that you get out of talking about our sex life though, Harry," she added, rolling her eyes at the blush that threatened to overwhelm Harry's face. "Just that we do it at a pace you're happy with."

She looked up into his eyes.

"I'm not going to embarrass you in public, Harry," she promised. "I know how much you hate the attention anyway. I just want you to enjoy yourself, with no pressure on you at all. You've spent the last few months either sick or working your arse off, and it's about time you relaxed."

They kissed very softly, then donned their outer robes. Harry cancelled the spells he had set earlier, then he allowed Ginny to lead him back out of the Shack and into the wintry weather.

He shivered as they stepped outside.

"Damn! I forgot how cold it was out here!" he yelled to Ginny, and pulled her close for the warmth.

The wind was even stronger than when they had entered the Shrieking Shack and it was blowing the snow around and into their faces as they set off back down the path towards Hogsmeade. Harry had to shout to make himself heard over the wind that whistled around them, screaming in their ears, even though Ginny was walking right beside him.

As they approached the village and the wind died down, or perhaps it was that they were sheltered from it by the natural contours of the land, Harry suddenly realised that the screams he could hear were not just those of the wind. In fact it sounded as though the wind had been carrying those screams to his ears as they had trekked down from the Shrieking Shack to the village.

He broke into a jog, pulling Ginny along with him, hurrying to find out what was causing such terror among the citizens of Hogsmeade.

They rounded a turn in the road and Hogsmeade came into view in front of them, or rather a mass of people fleeing the village did. It was difficult to make out individuals from this distance, but Harry could see that the vast majority of those heading in his direction were adults, not Hogwarts students.

He redoubled his pace, and they swerved round the oncoming sea of humanity that flooded down the road towards, and then past him. A few of them called out to Harry.

"Dementors!"

"Run for your life!"

"Flee! Flee!"

Among those bringing up the rear of the exodus were a number of third and fourth year students who Harry stopped to get some idea of what was really going on.

"What's happened?" He pulled a third year Hufflepuff to one side as he rushed past, and hung on tight as the youngster attempted to pull out of his grasp.

"Dementors!" the Hufflepuff told him breathlessly, as he struggled against Harry's hold on his robes. "They've attacked the Three Broomsticks!"

"Where are the others? What's happened to the students?"

The Hufflepuff looked at him in fright, still trying to pull away from Harry and make food his escape.

"Some are trying to fight! Some tried to run back to Hogwarts! The Dementors are going to Kiss them all! Let go of me!"

Harry released his grip on the Hufflepuff's robes and let him run off. He turned back to the road and headed into the village.

A few stragglers dashed past them in the opposite direction as he and Ginny hurried on, getting glances that suggested that they were mad for running towards the village, not away from it.

The air became colder, though given the already sub-zero temperature, Harry wasn't sure that it was really possible, and the cold chilled him through to the bone. The wind and snow were replaced by a fine, freezing mist that seemed to hang in the air, and he instinctively knew that it was because of the Dementors.

They rushed down the street and finally saw the attackers. Two of them stood outside Zonko's bending over the prone form of a middle-aged man.

Harry's head swam as he fought off the memory of his parents' deaths, and he tried to concentrate on a happy memory that he could use to cast a Patronus.

He was too slow though. By the time he'd cleared his mind, Ginny had whipped her own wand out and cast a beautiful reddish-silver Patronus that resembled a fox, which charged towards the nearest of the foul beings assaulting the villager.

Harry reached back into his memory and pulled out an intensely happy memory of his own - one merely minutes old - as he recalled the sensation of Ginny's fingernails on his skin and his arousal at her touch.

"Expecto Patronum!" he yelled, and the silvery light that was his Father's image streaked off down the street in pursuit of Ginny's fox, and together they rammed themselves into the unsuspecting forms of the two Dementors, driving them backwards and away. Harry's stag bent its head downwards and speared the Dementor nearest it up into the air with its antlers, while Ginny's fox snapped its teeth menacingly at its counterpart.

The two Dementors backed away and drifted upwards into the air, fleeing the Patroni. If they could have felt fear, Harry would have described that as their response as they disengaged from their assault and fled Hogsmeade, up over the roofs of the houses and shops and off into the distance until they were nothing but dark specks on the horizon, and then, finally, Harry could no longer see them.

Tearing his gaze away from the defeated dark creatures, he saw one or two more Dementors fleeing the village, and he took Ginny's hand once again and they hurried towards the sounds of ongoing struggle.

As they approached the Three Broomsticks it was eerily quiet. They dispatched three more Dementors as they made their way into Hogsmeade, and had seen perhaps half a dozen more flying away from the area around the inn, but nowhere near the numbers Harry had expected given the panicked exodus of the villagers.

A shout from Harry's left attracted his attention.

"Over here!"

Hermione, Terry Boot and Cho Chang appeared from the front of Madam Puddifoot's tea shop, and Hermione was beckoning Harry and Ginny towards them.

"Out the back of the shops!" she shouted. "There's about a dozen more Dementors, still!"

The five of them rushed into the teashop and straight out the back door. In the back yard shared by Madam Puddifoot's shop and the neighbouring house, Luna, Neville, Ron and a couple of others were doing their best to fight off a host of Dementors, though their effort were fairly sporadic. Wisps of silvery mist were all that most of them were able to produce and it was doing little more than keeping the horrible creatures away from them.

The lone exception was Katie Bell, who stood tall and proud, directing her Patronus, a Shetland pony, around what had now become a battlefield. Three or four younger students lay on the cobbled ground, and to Harry's dismay and revulsion, it appeared that they had already been Kissed by the Dementors before those who knew how could fight them off.

Katie gave him a warm smile in welcome, then turned her attention back to the fight and re-cast her Patronus, which was beginning to fade. Seeing the devastation before him, Harry cast his own and felt Ginny's hand on his arm as she reached out for him then repeated the process.

Coming up behind them, Cho and Hermione followed suit, and soon there were five Patroni attacking the Dementors. The others that had been trying unsuccessfully to cast their own spells moved back behind the front line and continued attempting to keep the remaining creatures at bay with the wisps of silver that they managed to produce.

With the addition of Harry and Ginny and the renewed confidence of the defenders, it didn't take them too much longer to drive away the foul beings. Harry's stag romped among the hated creatures and sent many of them soaring into the air with its silvery prongs. Eventually, the remaining Dementors broke off from their attack and dispersed up and over the houses and off into the distance.

The students slumped down on the cobbled stones of the courtyard in weariness now that the threat had been eliminated.

"Is that all of them?" Harry asked, looking from face to face around the group.

"I think so," Katie replied. "Hermione, Cho and I managed to get rid of a few of them before you arrived, but I don't think we could have held out much longer.

"So what happened?"

"We were all in the Three Broomsticks," Hermione explained, "when we heard screaming coming from outside. It looked like the whole village was running for the hills."

"We tried to get some of the adults to stay and help us drive the bloody things away, but they didn't want to know," Ron put in bluntly, obviously irritated by the lack of help from the citizens of Hogsmeade.

"Well, if they can't cast a Patronus, Ron..." Hermione began, but tailed off when she saw the anger in his face.

"So why the bloody hell can't they?" he demanded. "If the Ministry really took the threat seriously, they'd be training people to cast it and making sure that there were people all round the country that knew how, like Harry did with us. Why is it that we have to bloody protect everyone?"

"It's something we need to discuss with Dumbledore, Ron," Harry interrupted gently, not wanting an angry Ron to get into a fight with people that agreed with his comments, and who couldn't do anything to change things anyway. "Let's get the casualties inside and see if we can get some help from the castle."

Between them, they lifted the limp bodies from the back yard into Madam Puddifoot's and laid them out on the tables, too drained mentally and emotionally to use magic to perform the task.

"What happened to them?" Harry asked. He didn't know any of the four particularly well, though he recognised them as three third year Ravenclaw boys and a fourth year Slytherin girl.

"By the time we got out here, it was too late," Katie told him sadly. "Hermione shot off her Patronus quickly as we came through the back door, but missed one of the Dementors that was bent over this girl," she noted, indicating the Slytherin.

"The other three were already Kissed, and just wandering around in a daze, so I had Ron stun them so they didn't get in the way. I know it sounds really cruel, but I couldn't think what else to do, and the sight of the four of them roaming around soulless was just frightening people even more," she explained.

Harry nodded sympathetically. "I don't know what else you could have done," he agreed.

"A load of the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh years barricaded themselves in the Three Broomsticks so that the Dementors couldn't get in, but I think everyone else ran for it. I don't know how many of them survived," Hermione noted.

"Quite a lot of them, I think," Ginny said. "We passed about half the village running the other way as we arrived, and there were a number of students included."

"Someone needs to get Dumbledore," Neville said wearily.

"There's no need," the Headmaster's voice came from behind them. "I am here."

Dumbledore came up to them and examined the bodies laid out on the tables, sighing sadly as he cast a spell over each of them.

"Sir?" Harry prompted.

Dumbledore looked up at Harry's questioning face.

"I had hoped that I could save them, but their souls have gone. I must get them to St Mungo's where they can be cared for.

"The coast is clear now, and the Dementors have fled, many thanks to yourselves," he continued. "The residents of Hogsmeade are starting to return to their homes and shops now, but I think it would be best if you all returned to the castle."

Ron opened his mouth to start to say something, but Harry cut him off.

"I'll tell him, Ron," he said, knowing that his friend was about to start a rant at Dumbledore over the lack of protection in Hogsmeade, and that Ron's temper would probably lead him into saying things that would antagonise rather than encourage any changes.

The rest of the students filed out, Ron stomping somewhat, and closing the door behind him rather forcefully, leaving Harry and Ginny with Professor Dumbledore and the bodies of the Kissed students.

"What is Mister Weasley's concern?" the Headmaster asked after the other students had left.

Harry ground his teeth together in frustration. Clearly Dumbledore couldn't see what the issue was.

"Ron was saying, before you came in, that it seems that the Hogwarts students had to defend Hogsmeade today. That those who actually live here either fled or barricaded themselves indoors," he explained. "Why aren't there Aurors assigned to Hogsmeade? Why hasn't anyone here been trained to produce a Patronus?"

The Headmaster looked at him with a resigned expression.

"It is not something that I can answer, Harry," he replied. "I cannot force the Ministry to train more people, to provide security or increase the number of Aurors available. The Minister has his own priorities, and apparently the defence of places like Hogsmeade is secondary to the Ministry's own security."

Harry scowled at this information. He knew that Minister Fudge was cowardly and would concentrate on his own survival, but if he wasn't prepared to increase security for the public now that he'd finally admitted Voldemort's return, what was the point in having a Ministry there to serve the people?

"I understand your frustration, Harry," Dumbledore continued. "I asked for Aurors to be stationed here for the students' protection, but I was refused, even though the new Department Head agreed the need. He was overruled by the Minister."

"How many more need to be Kissed before he changes his mind, Professor?" Harry asked through clenched teeth. "How many more attacks will it take for him to understand that we're all at risk, not just him? What do we have to do to convince people that they need to learn to protect themselves, not to cower and submit or run away screaming?"

Harry paced the room as he asked his questions, pausing only to punctuate the air with a further rhetorical query.

"Where are the bloody Order?"

"Enough, Harry!" the Headmaster commanded. "I've got help out there now trying to settle people back down, getting students back to the castle. There aren't enough of them to make a difference. Even if the whole Order came down to help, we would only have half a dozen or so people who could cast a Patronus. How much do you think that would have helped?"

"Half a dozen?" Harry exclaimed incredulously. "We had barely that many here to hold off a score of Dementors, to protect the whole village! And they were all students! I taught them all the Patronus myself!

"Half a dozen Order members might have prevented this!" he spat, waving his hand at the four prone bodies around him.

"I said that's enough, Harry!" Dumbledore responded firmly, commanding him with no sign of twinkle in his eyes. "Get yourself and Miss Weasley back up to the castle and see Madam Pomfrey for some chocolate. You're not thinking straight."

Harry glared at the Headmaster, but turned to Ginny and took her hand, then marched back out into the bitingly cold street.

"I don't think Dumbledore cares anymore," he told her as they strode between the shops and houses, Harry's anger powering his steps as they made quick ground through the village. "He's given up already."

Ginny had been quiet since Harry had started to rant at the Headmaster, and merely placed a comforting hand on his arm as they walked.

They headed back along the road towards the castle, aiming to get back to Hogwarts and into the warmth of Gryffindor common room. Harry was tempted to call an immediate meeting of the DA, to let them know that it seemed that the world was relying on them rather than the Ministry, but by the time they approached the gates to the grounds, he'd cooled off a little and realised that it probably wasn't such a good idea - he didn't need to add that burden to their shoulders.