The Long Road

Harry felt the usual awkward feeling of portkey travel for what seemed like forever. He was beginning to wonder if things would ever quit spinning when he came to a screeching halt and fell back into real space. After his mind ceased spinning, he suddenly remembered where he came from and what happened. His mind filled with images and feelings of what he'd seen just moments earlier. Harry suddenly realized he was very cold and opened his eyes.

He found himself buried in a waist-deep snowdrift and struggled to gain his feet. As he looked around, Harry saw nothing but snow. Snow falling, snow drifting, snow covering almost everything in sight. Slowly, others began to crawl out of the snow bank and stand up.

"Bloody hell," Ron called out a few feet away from him as he gained his feet. "Harry? Harry? Are you alright?" Ron looked in his face and saw nothing but emptiness. Snow began falling by the shovel full.

"I...I can't feel them, Ron. Sirius, Professor Jade, Dumbledore, any of them."

"Harry, don't do this now. They're hundreds of miles away and are in the middle of fighting. I'm sure that has to have something to do with it."

"No," Harry said, the empty look staying on his face. Ron was at a loss as to what to say to their leader right now. He stood silently with him for a minute until other quiet voices began to reach his ears. Harry still hadn't moved, looking off into the countryside.

Ron turned and looked at the others. They were all staring at the two of them as if waiting for some word of what they should do. He held himself up as straight as possible and spoke to them. "Hermione, Neville, Draco, Seamus, get everyone rounded up and into that building over there." He pointed to a building less than a quarter mile away that had obviously seen better days decades ago. Ron watched as the group began to wade their way through the snow. He stood quietly with Harry for another minute or so, trying to feel inside his friend's mind. He felt nothing but black depression.

"Come on, Harry, let's get out of the snow," Ron said and put an arm on Harry's shoulder. He guided Harry away like a small child. The two boys reached the dilapidated building long after the others had already entered.

Meanwhile, in Hogwarts...

The duel between Messina and Lucius was vicious as could be. Sparks flew in all directions as their blades repeatedly connected. Messina knew that her end was close at hand but she did not despair. She took peace in knowing that she had given those who needed it time. They would live to fight another day while she passed into the Force.

Lucius stood atop her empty robes and kicked her wand across the room. "You cost me my chance to capture my son and Potter for the Dark Lord, woman. I hope your end was suitably painful." He kicked the fabric and left the room to find Voldemort.

Voldemort strode through the gates like a returning king. The school finally belonged to him, after all these years. They actually believed the old fool Dumbledore when he said that the castle was impregnable. They'd think otherwise now if they weren't dead. He saw Minerva's body crumpled along one wall and spat upon it before continuing on his way.

"You failed me, Lucius," the Dark Lord said as the elder Malfoy descended a flight of steps.

"I apologize, milord. The woman Jedi interfered."

"I want no excuses, Lucius, only your son and Potter. You will not fail me next time, will you?" What the Dark Lord said was not remotely a question. It was as simple a statement as he could make to Lucius to impress the severity of another failure.

"No, next time they will be yours. I swear to it."

"Good. Your past deeds earn you one reprieve. Do not be foolish enough to think I will offer another." Voldemort's robes flowed as he walked about the room, stepping on bodies of both students and Death Eaters without care. "Your men also failed to kill Albus."

"Yes, milord. They did wound him, but he disappeared with a number of first years just as they were closing in for the kill."

"I shall deal with them." Lucius swallowed hard. The Dark Lord's punishment would be gruesome in the least, deadly in the most. "Finish mopping up while I handle this matter."

"Yes, milord." Lucius bowed and Voldemort walked off

Far Northern Ireland---

Ron stepped into the building with Harry at his side, still emotionless. He exchanged worried glances with the older students and could only shrug his shoulders at the unspoken question of "what's wrong with Harry?" Hermione finally broke the silence. "Okay, let's not spend all day standing around here. We might be here for a little while, so we'd better find out exactly how wonderful our accommodations are going to be." She began dividing the children up to explore the run-down base, pairing an older with a younger student. "Keep your wands ready. I don't think that anyone's been here in quite a while, so who knows what might be here." The group dispersed and she walked over to Ron and Harry, joined by Neville.

"Ron, is he?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know what's wrong with him. It's like he's in shock," Ron told the small group.

"We'd better find him a room somewhere," Hermione said, "it wouldn't do for the younger students to see him like this."

"I think that I overheard someone say that there were rooms off that hallway," Neville said and they guided Harry along. Ron laid the near-comatose Harry on the bed and after taking his shoes off, pulled a blanket over him. Ron noticed that the blanket was quite new, in stark contrast to nearly everything else in the place.

"Get some rest, Harry," Ron told him and patted him on the cheek. Harry didn't move.

They closed the door behind them as they left and Ron collapsed against it. "What are we going to do?" he asked.

"I don't know, Ron. I guess we'll do what we have to do until Harry comes around." Hermione didn't look as confident as she sounded.

"Do you all think that anyone will come for us?" Neville asked, knowing the answer but still looking for reassurance.

"I really don't know that either, Neville. I hope so, but I can't say for sure."

"So what do you reckon we should do first?" Ron asked, trying to steer the conversation away from such a dark topic. He wasn't sure how things would work out either, but it wouldn't do any good to worry about it right now.

"First, we have to figure out exactly what he have here. I have a good idea that Dumbledore and the others stocked this place up in case they needed it. So, that likely means that we have a good deal of food, but I can only guess at what else." Ron and Neville agreed. "After that is finished, I think we should get some of the older students together and hash out what we're going to do while we wait."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Ron said tiredly as he stood away from the door. Neville agreed also. "You two can go on and help search if you like. I'll stay here, if that's okay."

"That's fine Ron. Keep an eye on Harry." Hermione and Neville walked further down the corridor and out of sight.

"Oh, Harry," he said quietly as he looked in through the small window in the doorframe.

Hermione and Neville continued on their exploration, finding many more rooms they could use to house the students as well as the kitchen and a small room full of wizarding supplies. Their were a good two dozen brooms set along the wall. They certainly weren't the top of the line Quiddich brooms that they'd seen, but they would fly. The old Reliant models were well known for nothing if not their ruggedness. A small cache of potions were on a shelf above the brooms, mostly healing and restorative droughts, but a few other types were scattered along the shelf.

"Those will likely come in handy, eh Hermione?" Neville asked her.

"I'm sure they will."

- Later that evening -

Hermione stood at the front of the ad-hoc committee in what was at one time a meeting room for Royal Navy officers, looking over the small audience. A handful of the higher years from each house were sitting around two tables watching as she gathered herself. "I don't want to be here all night," Hermione said, "so let's try to keep this short. We've been through a lot today and I know we all need to sleep. What I want to do is iron out what we are going to do while Harry is, well, whatever he is right now."

"We need to run our little camp much like Hogwarts," Draco said after a second or two of silence. "If we change things too much it might affect the younger students in a very bad way. What do we have here?" he asked rhetorically, "A dozen or so fifth years, about as many fourth years, and twenty something third and second years. Hell, I believe we even have a firstie here."

"I agree completely with Draco. We need to keep this as structured as we can while we're waiting for whatever we have to wait for," Hermione said thinking of Harry and also having already written returning to Hogwarts off. She didn't want to voice that opinion yet, although she was rather sure that she wasn't the only one who felt that way.

"We might want to divide the younger students up among the older ones," Zachariah Smith added in. "Or, better yet, the more experienced with the less. That way we could teach the younger ones what we already know."

"That's a good idea," Hermione told him. "I remember Professor Jade talking about something like that. She said that the old Masters would pair off with young students to instruct them. We might not have the number of older students to pair off one on one like she described, but we'll have to work with what we have, I guess."

Talk went on for another half an hour until Hermione called a halt to it for the evening. "We've covered quite a bit tonight, the basics at least, so let's call it for now. Let's pick up tomorrow to finish this." The small group dispersed to their rooms, a bit more reassured than they were earlier in the day, but still quite worried overall.