Harry Potter and the Boy Who Lived

Chapter 5

The Present

The Quidditch season arrived as the weather began to turn colder, but the castle was heated with bets, cheers, house spirit and rivalries. The first match was between Ravenclaw and Slytherin, the former garnering support from the other houses in common hatred of the latter team. Yet again the Malfoy estate had purchased the most state-of-the-art racing brooms for the Slytherin team. In exchange, a certain sixth-year ferret was immediately made captain - quite expected, though, considering his talent (coercion) and ability (money); he was a natural choice.

Ravenclaw captain Cho Chang had been drilling her team mercilessly since the year began - she said she wouldn't let Slytherin cheat without putting up a decent fight. She had put together a sterling team this year, and Ravenclaw were favourites to win the cup, were it not for those new Slytherin brooms.

On the other hand, Draco Malfoy had also put together a good team. The term good is used loosely - their skills were no more or less than the others, but they certainly were big. Crabbe and Goyle, thick as ever, had helped Malfoy scrounge together the most vicious team Hogwarts had ever seen. Foul play did not come close to describing it, but it certainly did come close to disqualification. They skirted the rules and employed every tactic known and unknown to man to make the game a hell for Ravenclaw and put out of commission as many Ravenclaws as possible.

The game was quite one-sided. Within the first minute, a Ravenclaw chaser had dislocated a shoulder and the keeper had been slammed into the rings. Cho caught the snitch as quickly as she could to end the game when she saw how brutally beaten her players were but Malfoy, the seeker, spent most of his time trying to distract Cho and prolong the game. While diving for the snitch, Malfoy sped alongside her, knocking her broom until she slammed face-first into the stands. She caught the snitch but Slytherin still won by twenty points. Cho was beyond furious.

"So this is how Malfoy wants to play?" she ranted from behind a bandaged broken nose. "kill the good players and trample Everyone else?" She was still ranting after the game and muttering darkly about castration and broomsticks where they shouldn't be. The second game of the season would be Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor would not get to face Slytherin until the end of the fall season.

Team Gryffindor was made up of the finest the house could offer. Harry, seeker and captain, was immensely proud of the team. Ron played keeper; Ginny, Neville and a seventh-year, Paul Hartford, as chasers; and Ryan Shannassey and Gordon Goodwin, also seventh-years, were beaters the Weasley twins would have been proud of. In light of the new Slytherin motto of "blood makes the grass grow, kill, kill, KILL!" Harry trained his team for evasion of flying bodies as much as handling the balls.

Neville was turning out to be the biggest improvement in Quidditch since the invention of the self-balancing broom. No one had seen such a transformation as complete as when quiet Neville was in the air with a quaffle. On the ground, he was reticent and moody, but in the air, Neville was a force of nature. In addition to the Creevey brothers who followed him around, he'd gained quite a large number of Quidditch groupies who constantly waved at him and accosted him in the halls. A collective sigh of agony washed through the female population of Hogwarts when Ginny and Neville became "official" - Neville was quite the heartthrob, much as he protested and denied it.

*

Between Quidditch, N.E.W.T's, O.W.L's and homework, our heroes had precious little time to think about the war raging outside Hogwarts. They held war councils when necessary, but nothing new seemed to come up. Rose only got two more visions in the three months they'd been at school, both about the same thing: a snake in the talons of an indistinguishable bird, the two animals attacking each other with equal force and no advantage.

When winter rolled around and the snow began to fall still no progress had been made. No one could make head or tail of the prophecy, and the Rose's visions of an eternal stalemate did not give encouragement in the least.

One cold, clear Sunday afternoon our four heroes were bored. It was too cold to go outside, too crowded inside and too close to the Christmas holidays. They were in the Prefects' Lounge in the South Wing of the castle. They'd recently been spending more and more time in there for the quiet - Harry and Neville knew the password and no one really cared that they weren't prefects. The lounge was large and circular with four fireplaces, comfy chairs, soft carpets and a door that led to the prefects' bathroom. The lounge was empty except for the four friends, who were lying on the floor staring at the mural-covered ceiling, the colours and shapes swirling in an ever-changing pattern.

"I'm bored," Ron declared, not moving.

"Thanks, thanks a lot Ron," Hermione said, wishing Ron would do something about his boredom - and hers.

Harry rolled over onto his side and pulled the Marauders' Map out of his pocket. Fred and George had taken the Map from Filch and had bequeathed it to their successors-in-mischief. Harry left it in his trunk over that first summer they had it, and he came home one day to find Sirius, Remus and his dad gleefully making alterations to it in the kitchen.

The new and improved Marauders' Map automatically recorded on itself new passages and portals as they were discovered. Looking at the Map, Harry decided it was time for a little bit of exploring. Matching grins spread across the boys' faces, and Hermione sighed, resigning herself to the inevitable. They sat up and studied the map for a minute. The East Wing of the castle was looking rather plain on the map, so they decided that was as good a place as any to see if they could find somewhere in the school they hadn't been.

Sundays were the happy days on which no one really did anything. Winter Sundays were the awful days where no one really could do anything, as if the gods of boredom decided they wanted to have some fun. But petty gods are no match for teenage curiosity and certainly no match for the Marauders any generation.

Armed with a map, wands, wits and nothing else to do, the four friends (after six years together you'd think they would've come up with a name for themselves) decided to comb the East Wing for something they hadn't seen, so they made their way across the castle as inconspicuously as possible. This proved to be difficult.

Over the course of their years at Hogwarts, the combined efforts of the first Marauders, the Weasley twins and the Scurvy Seven (as McGonagall liked to call our heroes) had left very little of the castle unexplored. Almost every room, every crevice, every hall, every painting was personally acquainted with at least one of these intrepid explorers. Thanks to the Marauders' Map, discoveries were always charted, and somehow the castle seemed pleased by this fact. So on that boring Sunday, the castle decided it would have a little fun with its favourite inhabitants.

Every staircase seemed, all of a sudden, to move them in every direction other than East. Were they not as well accustomed to the castle as they were, our heroes would have been lost within the minute. Realizing the castle seemed against them, they tried everything they could to thwart back. They took roundabout routes that avoided the main staircases, but the hallways then started to move and doors disappear. They used navigation charms, but paintings switched sides of their hallways, convincing the four that their charms weren't working.

They were reconnoitring the hallway of Waldridge the Windbag (they named halls after the most notable portraits in them) trying to find some way out of the damned North Tower when Hermione's patience reached absolute zero.

"That's it! I can't take this anymore! I've got shit to do - I'm going back to Gryffindor Tower." Hermione turned to leave when she tripped on the edge of a carpet. "Godric's Balls!" she managed to say before landing face first on the floor.

Before any of them could laugh, a miniature of Godric Gryffindor that hung on the wall behind Neville's head swung open. Neville rubbed the back of his head where the small frame had hit him, and Harry and Ron gaped for a moment and then collapsed into uncontrollable laughter, joined shortly thereafter by Neville. Thinking they were laughing at her, Hermione stayed on the floor for a few more seconds, thinking up clever hexes to throw when she looked up and saw the tiny portrait hole.

"GODRIC'S BALLS!" was the only coherent pair of words that came out of their mouths for a good five minutes. When they had sufficiently recovered they examined the miniature. The likeness of Godric Gryffindor waggled his eyebrows at Hermione who was so surprised she forgot to blush. The tiny hole behind the portrait held a large, gold key that glinted in the light from the candles on the wall. Ron recovered his wits first and he took the key from the hole.

"What do we do with it?" he asked.

"Shove it up yer arse, what do you think we do with it?" Hermione said, still a bit agitated. "We find the door that goes with the key."

Ron winked at her and said something about last night, shoving and arses that Neville and Harry didn't catch but made Hermione blush and cough loudly. Neville, deciding to break it up, walked towards the main staircase again. This time, the stairs let straight to Gryffindor Tower. Sensing a trend, the four followed the stairs' instructions instead of resisting. Once they were back in the tower they began scouring the halls for another portrait of Godric Gryffindor and only managed to find one.

The Big G must not have enjoyed portraiture much, because he always seemed to be fidgeting and trying to avoid being seen in the painting. They stood in front of the painting and tried to coax the subject to hold still and ask for the password, but he kept insisting that he wasn't the one to ask. Hermione tried shouting "Godric's Balls" at the hallway to see if any portrait opened, but no one did.

The rest of the afternoon was spent futilely searching for keyholes and whispering various combinations of Godric's anatomy to portraits. Indeed, passing students confirmed their suspicions that the Fab Four (as they were known to everyone else) were stark raving mad.

Evening came and the Four joined the three fifth-year girls and went down to the great hall for some food. A day of fruitless searching will give you an appetite, and the Four tucked in with gusto. Rose and Ginny looked in disdain at their brothers, all decorum and manners lost in the face of Sunday lamb and potatoes. Even Hermione was shovelling in food as if she hadn't eaten in a week.

Back in the common room the crowd thinned out quickly, given that the next day was Monday and people tended to need sleep. Ginny and Neville lingered together by the fireplace, ignoring and ignored by the few other people around. Ginny sighed into his neck as she sat with his arms around her. He kissed the top of her head and noted absentmindedly how her hair and the fire were the same colour. He flushed slightly when Ginny began to plant little kisses up his neck to his ear - Neville was still not used to the idea that someone would find him attractive, much less Ginny Weasley - and he relaxed under her ministrations. Pulling her closer, he kissed her gently until she pushed him back onto the sofa. Ginny's hair, recently cut short, fell around her face like a flaming halo and Neville suddenly found it very hard to breathe.

Then he realized something - what he was feeling wasn't right. His scar began to tingle and he tensed. Ginny asked what was wrong, noting the squint of his eyes and the catch of his breath. Neville told Ginny to rouse the girls and called a war council. In the war room Neville let it be known that Voldemort was planning something. Big. And he was exceptionally excited. Neville got the distinct rush of adrenaline that accompanies anticipation coupled with the twitch at the corner of his mouth that meant Voldemort was (horror of horrors) smiling to himself. This was not good.

Rose said she didn't sense anything, but she'd owl her mother and check to see if Lily had seen something new. It was agreed that Neville should go tell Dumbledore immediately. Neville, accompanied by Ron (as a Prefect) went to the Headmaster's office, while Rose and Harry used their charmed mirrors to talk to their parents about the new situation. Hermione, Ginny and Luna pored over the Scroll to find some sort of clue they may have missed before. By the time Ron and Neville returned it was too early to go to bed and to late to stay awake.

*

Deciding between which is more important - food or sleep - is one of the more difficult choices teenagers must make. Food won out the next morning, and Neville (somehow) dressed and made it down to the Great Hall for breakfast. He was too tired to be surprised at the presence of Ron, Harry and Hermione - their night was as long as his had been. Ginny, Luna and Rose looked no better, either.

Coffee and toast helped wake Neville up, Harry seemed to be his usual grumpy-morning-self and Ron seemed in danger of falling into his plate, just as the owls began fluttering in. One careless school owl dropped a package onto Ron's plate, sending bacon and eggs everywhere, causing Ron to jump up and yelp, drawing his wand instinctively. Red-faced and disoriented, Ron sat back down to a chorus of laughter, and looked at the package. It was addressed to Neville.

"Damn thing isn't even for me," he muttered disappointedly. He was about to continue complaining but the look on Hermione's face stopped him. She had gone very pale and her hands shook as she held a letter. "'Mione, what's wrong?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she stood up slowly and walked out of the Great Hall. Puzzled looks all around, the remaining six of the Scurvy Seven got up to see what was wrong. They hurried into the corridors but they couldn't see her on any of the stairs. The girls dashed up to Gryffindor Tower, Harry and Neville went outside and Ron was about to head towards the library when he turned around and saw Hermione crouched by the doors of the Great Hall.

Ron ran over to her and sat in front of her. She was crying - she was so upset she hadn't even made it out of the hallway. "Shh...don't cry, love, don't cry. It's okay - tell me what's wrong?"

Hermione sobbed into Ron's chest, her hands fisting in his robes as she tried to staunch the flow of tears. A minute passed before she could answer. She sniffed loudly.

"My grandfather just died," she said, heaving a shuddering sigh and leaning her head back against the stone walls. Her eyes were puffy and red and her nose was running.

Ron leaned in and held her gently, letting her breathe and cry. After a few minutes she quieted down. The others were coming back from Gryffindor Tower and the gardens, worry clearly written on their faces. They dashed over to where Hermione was sitting, head on Ron's shoulder. Her eyes were closed and tears stained her cheeks. Ron shook his head and gave the others a look to say "not now - she'll be okay" and they went quietly back into the Great Hall.

Ron eased Hermione onto her feet and led her back up to Gryffindor Tower before the crowds returned. He led her as far as the girls' dormitory staircase and watched her go through the door. Neville, Harry and the girls were watching silently from the foot of the steps. "Her grandfather died," was all Ron said. They went to class sombrely and said little for the rest of the day.

Ginny, Rose and Luna brought lunch up to the dormitory for Hermione, and the boys had given them homework they'd collected for her. Hermione was sitting on her bed writing owls to her professors, explaining why she was going home, and attaching homework she'd done early ("tell the boys thank you, anyway"). Not touching the food, Hermione sealed the last of the envelopes and got up to go to the owlery and then home. Of course Dumbledore noticed the hasty exit that morning in the Great Hall, and enquired of Ron the reason - Ron explained as best he could, but Hermione really hadn't said anything.

Dumbledore sent Fawkes to keep Hermione company, and to deliver a letter saying arrangements had been made for her to go home, if she would kindly come to his office whenever she was ready to portkey home. Rose, Ginny and Luna hugged Hermione and sent her off to the Headmaster's office, telling her to come back soon and not to worry.

"Come in, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said before Hermione could knock. Fawkes, who was perched on her shoulder, fluttered over to his corner and promptly burst into flames. Dumbledore smiled. "It is early for him to be doing that, but he was particularly upset by your news, and so he's Burning to show you that he understands."

Hermione smiled and went over to the tiny bird in the pile of ashes. Tears welled up and burst forth as she thanked Fawkes, a few of her tears dropping onto the ashes where bright yellow and red flowers sprang up. Dumbledore seemed immensely pleased at this.

Suddenly the door burst open and Ron, Neville and Harry spilled in. "She hasn't gone yet, has she?" Ron asked breathlessly before he noticed Hermione standing, an appalled look on her face, in the corner. Dumbledore chuckled to himself, conjured some tea and chairs, and gestured for the four to sit.

The boys, realizing their intrusion, coughed nervously and sat down while apologizing profusely for their unannounced arrival. "It is to Miss Granger who you should be giving apologies to, gentlemen. But I am sure she appreciates your concern."

They sat in silence, sipping tea. Dumbledore finally stood up, checked his watch and took a Fizzing Whizbee wrapper from his desk and turned it into a portkey. "Your departure has been approved by the ministry, Miss Granger, and the Minister sends his condolences. Do send my regards to your parents, and come back safe." Ron, Neville and Harry pulled her into a group hug and Hermione laughed through her tears when Harry said "awww, aren't we just so sweet?" Ron held on just a little bit longer, and let go when Dumbledore said it was time to go. Hermione quickly stepped behind his desk and gave the Headmaster a fierce hug. Dumbledore recovered quickly from the shock, patted her back gently and stepped back as the familiar pull at the navel yanked Hermione out of sight.

"Now, gentlemen, I believe you still have classes to attend," Dumbledore said, making a fuss over the paper on his desk to hide the tears that were collecting in his eyes. The boys left with a "thank you" and went about the rest of their day.

*

With Hermione gone, Ron seemed agitated and the rest of the group subdued. She'd left the Scroll of Wonders in the care of Rose, and they sat around in the War Room staring at in blankly, not really thinking about it. Suddenly, Ron sat up and said, "Oi, Neville, what about that package you got this morning?" Neville looked puzzled for a minute and then remembered. They'd been in such a hurry to find Hermione that morning that he'd completely forgotten about the package.

He ran up to the room and went to fetch it. He came back a minute later clutching his hand and muttering to himself. A long scratch on the palm of his hand was bleeding and Ginny shrieked in worry. "Crookshanks was sitting on the package and wouldn't let me near it!" Neville was about to complain further when he noticed that Rose wasn't looking too well...a sure sign of something about to happen. Everyone turned and saw her - Rose's eyes were shut and her breathing was shallow and fast. Her eyes flew open and she looked at Neville, unsure if he was really there.

"The package!" She cried, and Neville looked down at his hand. "You...portkey...oh Merlin..." She fainted again.

"Accio Package!" Harry said, and the parcel came zooming into their corner of the Common Room. Crookshanks came bounding down the stairs after it, hissing and spitting when Harry caught it. "Don't worry, Crookshanks, I won't open it. Neville, you and Ron take this to Dumbledore, I'll get Rose to the Hospital Wing, Ginny come with me, Luna you let Hermione know what's happened." Harry, the natural leader, issued commands without the bat of an eye, and everyone else complied just as easily.

Ginny, Harry and Luna were outside the Hospital Wing when Professor McGonagall came to fetch them. Her face was drawn and her eyes full of some unknown emotion that made his look both angry, sad, relieved, exhausted and awake all at once. "I take it Miss Potter will be fine - evidently visions get easier to handle after a while. Professor Dumbledore would like to see all of you in his office." They followed her to the office to find the Headmaster seated at his desk and Professor Snape, Sirius, Remus, James, Lily, Tonks, Kingsley Shaklebolt and Mad-Eye Moody arguing around him. They fell quiet as the children entered, and Dumbledore stood up.

"It seems we have a problem," Dumbledore said.