The Very Long Night Of Harry Potter

Chapter 5 - 10:35 P.M.

Hands clasped behind his back, Harry was pacing back and forth in the small room off of the Great Hall, and was currently in danger of wearing a rut in the floor. He knew that this was going to be one of his most dangerous battles, and that, as much as he would have liked to have started running through the castle looking for Voldemort, he would need to be as prepared and informed as possible. Besides, he thought, he can come to me, for once.

Finally getting straight answers to his questions was nice. His various fragments had been busy answering them, no matter how small a detail was concerned. He had learned that, so far as this little mental universe was concerned, only the Hogwarts castle and grounds existed, but not Hogsmeade, so he could only go up to the edge of the grounds before he would encounter a barrier; that a Legilimens would be unable to penetrate the spell; that, even though it was a coma-dream, this was still Hogwarts: no Apparating allowed and many other details besides.

Harry was in the midst of trying to think of questions that he hadn't asked yet, of new details and new angles, when he heard the noise.

He froze, not sure whether it was real or not, a soft bubbling and hissing sound, skirting the edge of audibility...

"Harry?" Luna asked with a questioning look that was decidedly unusual and out-of-place on her face, although it could have just been that she was wearing a black cloak and lacked her usual necklace of butterbeer bottle caps. "Is there something wrong?"

Harry held up his hand with his index finger extended in the universal one moment expression, and listened, with all his might, concentrating on that elusive sound... it seemed to be coming from the door... Then he remembered Ginny saying, Potions will work...

"GET DOWN!" he roared and, without questions of any sort, everyone hit the floor, moments before the door exploded inward in a shower of splinters.

Harry heard pieces of the door whizzing by just inches over his head and looked towards the recently-vacated doorframe as Voldemort strode into the room.

Harry jumped to his feet, not wanting to be caught in a vulnerable position. He heard everyone else doing likewise behind him and decided to try and stall for time, like he had that time in the Hall of Prophecy.

"Hello, Tom," Harry said, hoping that using that name would irritate him. He remembered from Quidditch that angry people didn't think too clearly, and, frankly, he admitted to himself, he needed all of the advantages he could get. He rapidly began considering his options.

It worked. Eyes narrowed, the piece of the soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle said in an annoyed tone, "That is not my name, and I know that you know that, Potter."

Forcing a smile, Harry retorted, thinking quickly, "But since you know my name, I assume that you've been looking around in my memory, so then you also know that I've escaped Lord Voldemort four times, and I have to say it, you're not him." And he wasn't. His features were no longer those of Tom Riddle from the diary, or even Hokey the house-elf's memory of Tom Riddle, the handsome and charming Borgin and Burkes employee, but they were not so far gone as the version from Dumbledore's memory, coming to apply for the Defense Against the Dark Arts job.

Meanwhile, Harry had overviewed the situation. Two Words: Not Good. Voldemort was standing by the door, which was the only entrance- or exit- to the room. They were too far away to effectively rush him in the cloaks most of them were wearing and, while his wand might not work in here, Harry didn't want to underestimate whatever else he might be packing.

"Oh, but I am, Potter, and when I kill you and take your body, then there will be two of me, and I am sure that my older self will be quite interested in your memories; particularly one of a certain prophecy..." he replied, an evil smile on his face.

Harry's insides froze, but he made himself keep talking, buying time. "Brave talk from someone outnumbered eleven to one," he said. Harry eyed Voldemort's lumpy robes and remembered the explosion that blew in the door.

Potions, then, he told himself. But how to deal with them...? Wait, there, on the floor, was a substantial piece of the door, just a few feet away. Maybe he could kick it, distract Voldemort, or hit him with it... Harry carefully shifted his posture slowly to his right.

"Ah, yes, your splinters. But, really, Potter," Voldemort said, in an amused, but evil tone, "do you think I failed to anticipate that? I did, after all, cast the spell in the first place. And, of course, I came prepared."

Feeling sweat break out on his forehead, Harry kept speaking, knowing that every moment he gained helped. "Prepared how?" Harry shifted a little further to the right. Just a few more inches...Keep him talking...

Voldemort smiled, and said, "To kill you, of course," and, almost quicker than the eye could see, reached inside his robes, pulled out a small sealed vial and threw it down on the ground. It exploded in a cloud of greenish gas, completely shielding him from view and filling the room.

As the potion-cloud spread quickly through the room, Harry felt like his lungs were on fire, his eyes streaming tears. Staggering towards the door, he tried yelling, "RUN!" but instead fell over onto his hands and knees, coughing. He couldn't see through the billowing fumes for more than a foot or two. Harry began crawling towards where he thought the door was when a foot came out of nowhere and kicked him hard in the ribs, flipping him over onto his back.

"Hello again, Potter," Voldemort said, standing over him, obviously having taken an antidote to the noxious green gas. He produced another vial from within his robes, and, obviously savoring the moment, made to throw it on Harry's face.

~*~*~*~*~

"...And that's when you three arrived so I don't need to reiterate what Healer Alexander said," Hermione said as she finished her recitation of the evening's events to the Weasleys. Molly and Arthur were shocked speechless, their eyes darting between Harry, the monitoring spell, and Hermione. And Ginny? Ginny was...

"RON! WHEN WERE YOU PLANNING ON TELLING ME ABOUT THIS?!" Ginny shouted at her brother, her eyes moist with unshed tears, but lit from within by a burning fire.

...upset.

Hermione shot Ron a look that quite clearly said, I told you so.

Ginny caught it and yanked out her wand, pointing it at Ron, who gulped and followed business end nervously with his eyes as it moved back and forth unsteadily. She continued, still in a fury, "So, if Hermione hadn't convinced you, would you have even told me?! I am not a CHILD! YOU DON'T NEED TO PROTECT ME! I SHOULD HEX YOU RIGHT NOW!"

Drawing back, Ron cowered from the temper in front of him that was so like his mother's--who was currently slightly stunned, still assimilating Ron and Hermione's little bombshell, along with her husband.

Before Ginny could follow through on her threat, however, the door to the ward swung open to readmit into the ward Healers Pomfrey, Andrews and Alexander, who were conversing with...

Rufus Scrimgeour strode into the small ward, followed by a series of familiar faces in his small entourage, which consisted of Dolores Umbridge (Ron, Hermione and Ginny all scowled), Percy (Ron and Ginny both fingered their wands, obviously debating which hexes to use), and his pet Auror, Dawlish.

"Arthur, Molly," the Minister acknowledged them with a nod, and continued, "and this must be Hermione (behind him Umbridge glowered, obviously remembering her trip into the Forbidden Forest), and these two are Ronald and Ginevra, if I recall correctly."

The three of them didn't buy his sweet tone. In a voice acidic enough to etch glass, Hermione said, "Why are you here, Minister? Harry turned down your requests to be the Ministry's new poster boy and, at any rate, he isn't exactly in any condition to talk with you at the moment."

Scrimgeour dropped the facade in an instant. "Ms. Granger, might I remind you as to whom you are speaking," he said in a tone that had several things in common with polar glaciers.

Ginny jumped in, her eyes still full of the fury from moments before. "Minister, we're not stupid, so don't treat us like we are. You came here because they," she indicated the Healers clustered in the corner, "told you what happened to Harry, and now you want to kill him to get rid of an annoyance and a piece of Voldemort (everybody except for Ron and Hermione winced) at the same time, or arrest him so you can interrogate that piece if it wins," she said, obviously torn between bursting into tears and hexing the four of them into oblivion.

Scrimgeour, looking at Ginny with a distinctly livid expression, said, with barely restrained vehemence, "I do not need to explain myself to underage witches who have no concept of what is going on and the measures that are required. Dawlish!" he ordered, "You know what to do!" Dawlish gave a curt nod in acknowledgement and began walking towards Harry's bed, hand reaching down to his pocket.

"STUPEFY!"

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

"IMPEDIMENTA!"

Dawlish hadn't even gotten the wand out of his pocket before Ron, Hermione and Ginny simultaneously hit him. For a moment, he had been eerily lit by a red glow from the three spells, his wand flying up in the air (Ginny, smirking, caught it), then he just stood there for a few seconds, swaying. Then he fell face-first onto the floor with a crunch that quite clearly indicated that he was going to need to have "Episkey" cast on him in the near future. Perhaps if he was lucky his face wouldn't be worse off than Harry's had been on the Hogwarts Express when Malfoy had broken his nose.

Before he landed, Ron, Hermione and Ginny had swung to cover Scrimgeour, Umbridge, and Percy with their wands.

"I don't know about you, Minister, but that felt like a required measure to me," Ginny said to him, her wand now pointing directly at his face.

"Silly girl, do you have any idea what you've just done?" Umbridge asked in her sickly sweet, poisoned honey voice.

"Yeah," Ron said coldly, "We just kept you from making a mistake that we'd all pay for. Hands away from the pockets, Percy. Don't give me an excuse, 'cause I'll take it." Percy jerked his right hand away from his pocket.

"That goes for you too, Umbridge," said Hermione, a smirk on her face, as she kept her wand on the squat Undersecretary.

Scrimgeour, eyeing Ginny's wand in much the same way that Ron had been mere moments earlier, said to Mr. Weasley, "Arthur, call off your children!"

Mr. Weasley, who had been sitting in his chair, stony-faced, since Scrimgeour had entered the room, sighed and stood up, running his hand through his thinning red hair in an exhausted sort of way. Scrimgeour smiled and said, "Thank you, Arthur."

Ron's and Ginny's expressions were aghast at this seeming betrayal, particularly when their father said, "Alright, then, let's have it...," Scrimgeour and Umbridge both smiled, as did Arthur, when he finished, "...Percy."

Ron, Hermione, and Ginny all coughed to cover up their laughter, as Scrimgeour's eyes flared. "Arthur, how dare you..." and that was as far as he got before Mrs. Weasley joined the fray.

"How dare Arthur?! More how dare you, Minister! If not for Harry here, You-Know-Who would have been back over five years ago! And when He did come back, you ignored and ridiculed the poor boy! Then you had the gall to ask for his help last year! And now you are going to arrest the only wizard that has ever dueled He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and survived, who is probably our best hope for surviving this whole war!?"

All eyes were on Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and the Minister, who were currently glaring and continuing to shout at each other. Umbridge was apparently counting on that distraction as she stealthily slipped her hand down towards her wand. Unfortunately for her, it wasn't quite stealthily enough.

"Petrificus Totalus!"

Umbridge stiffened from Hermione's spell, and fell over backwards onto the floor with a dull thud, ramrod straight. Ron and Ginny laughed again as Hermione looked down over the Minister's frozen toady and said, "I was hoping that you would give me a reason. Thanks. I enjoyed that." Umbridge's eyes were whirling around in her immobile face, conveying a sense of absolute fury.

At this point, Scrimgeour, realizing the seriousness of the situation that he was in- having three well-trained and rather displeased teenagers pointing wands in his direction and that he had just tried to have something rather negative done to their friend- burst out, "Well, what do you want us to do!? It's not like we can do anything to help him. He's in a coma! He's in there and we're out here and there's nothing we can do about that!"

"Uh, Minister?"

Every head in the room that was capable of movement whipped around to face the three Healers standing quietly by the door. Even Healer Alexander looked genuinely surprised at herself for speaking up. Forcing an even expression, she said to the surprised room, "There may be a way for us to help him in there."