Harry Potter and the Brothers of the Wolves

Chapter X: An Unfortunate Turn of Events

Harry was delighted to see the Hogwarts castle looming up into the vast, cloudless sky, threatening but safe, ominous but consoling. He swelled inside with the assurance that everything would be okay.

Ron got out first, holding out his hand to Hermione, who hopped down and walked with him. Harry, being the polite gentleman that he was, jumped out and offered his hand to Luna to help her down. She took it and leaped down. They walked together, and it was too late before he realized that Luna was still holding his hand. He heard a gasp from behind him, and he let go of Luna’s hand very quickly.

Ginny stamped in between Harry and Luna, storming her way through the doors and up the stairs, away from the Great Hall.

Harry grimaced and turned to Luna. “Err- Luna, I have to deal with this, it was nice meeting you, err- see you later,” he said rapidly, and then he sprinted after Ginny. Harry could hear her footsteps going up, left, down the corridor, Harry following in the wake. He was quickly gaining ground, and he was glad that he had taken up running for the summer, or else he was sure that he would never have caught her.

He slowed down to a stop at a corner, as he saw her shadow leaning against the wall, her chest heaving with sobs.

Harry breathed in deeply, bracing himself, and then turned the corner.

She looked so sad. Sinking to the ground, she looked up at him. Her eyes seeped out anguish. Harry felt like someone had punched him in the stomach, and he sank down next to her.

“Do you think you can explain that, Harry?” Ginny managed to choke out.

He hesitated for a moment before speaking. “I can try.” Harry assumed she had already come to all sorts of conclusions.

“Isn’t that a shame,” she sobbed. “You won’t be able to explain it.”

“What does that mean, Gin?” Harry dreaded the next words out of her mouth.

“It’s over, Harry. I’m sorry, but you should be sorrier.” With this, she got up and left him there, alone and lost, to think about what he had done, or what he hadn’t done. He really didn’t do anything. Luna was holding his hand; he was just going along with it.

Despite all the sound reasoning he could come up with, Harry knew that nothing could salvage his relationship with Ginny. ‘She must think that I had given up on her,’ he thought to himself.

After a few hours of contemplative thinking, Harry trudged his way back to Gryffindor Tower. Reaching the Fat Lady, he realized that everyone else was inside, probably fast asleep, leaving him on the outside without a password.

After a few minutes of pounding on the portrait (making sure not to hit the Fat Lady), Harry resigned himself to sleeping in the corridor outside the Common Room.

The sleep was terribly uncomfortable and the nightmares were just as bad.

~*~

Harry was walking through a non-descript corridor, probably inside of Hogwarts itself.

He heard a shriek and then a muffled cry from ahead and hurried to see what the commotion was.

Rushing into a classroom, Harry saw Voldemort standing there, holding a red haired girl up by the neck. Voldemort gave a nasty grin and squeezed harder.

‘Ginny!’ his dream-self said. Her brown eyes turned to his, a look of panic and fear, and Harry gasped as they slowly closed, a last breath escaping unnoticed. She was dead.

Voldemort dropped her body to the ground and Harry watched in agony as he himself could do nothing. He had searched frantically for his wand, but without success. He lunged himself at Voldemort, but was knocked backwards by an invisible force field surrounding him.

‘Looking for your wand?’ Voldemort said, unsheathing Harry’s wand from his sleeve, smiling maniacally. He snapped it in half, throwing the broken pieces to the side.

‘How did you get that?’ Harry had had it when he was running down the corridor.

‘My spy had taken it from you, long ago. You have been running around with one of Fred and George’s fake wands the whole school year.’ Harry then reached into his robe pocket and found the wand. He raised it up, yelled the Killing Curse, and watched in horror as the wand turned into a rubber chicken.

Voldemort stepped forward and touched a sickly finger to Harry’s scar. Voldemort showed no pain from touching Harry, but Harry himself was screaming in agony.

~*~

“AAGGGHHHH!!!” Harry yelled, waking up from his own screams in the middle of the corridor outside his common room. Looking out the windows, which, until this point, went completely unnoticed by anyone and everyone, the sky was starting to show tinges of pink and orange, signifying the beginning of the day.

Harry tore his eyes away from the rising sun and attempted to knock on the portrait once more. Footsteps were heard inside and the portrait swung out to reveal Dean Thomas.

“Hey, Harry! Where’d you go last night? And why are you up so early? We don’t have lessons till tomorrow, remember?” Dean obviously didn’t know what had happened, so Harry decided to roll off his questions.

“I just got lost. Do you think I can, uh, get changed for the day?” Dean grinned and swung the portrait more to allow Harry to come in.

After changing his robes and shaking Ron from his sleep, Harry walked down to the Great Hall with Ron and Dean. Harry’s back was sore from sleeping on the jagged, stone floor and decided most of the day would be spent resting his aching bones.

~ ~