Balance

Chapter 7: Rescue Party

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Harry brought his eyes down and found himself staring straight at Draco Malfoy, thirty feet away, who had apparently looked up from his consultations with Hermione just moments before. And by the look on his face, he'd just realized the potential of the Hear-Muffs. Harry beckoned him to come over, and kept looking around, checking for any other little swirls, and thinking furiously. The sight of Madame Trelawney, nearly even with the table where he was standing, gave him an idea, and he went to intercept her.

"We're going to try to go out and find Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall," he told her bluntly. "And we need to know that spell you were doing with Professor Sprout to keep lightning off."

"Mr. Filch has gone to fetch them," she said reassuringly, but glanced automatically at the chalkboard as she said it and went pale. Harry looked too. Filch's name had been re-written in red. "Oh, dear. There was nothing in the stars about this."

Harry took her arm and pointed up at the tiny swirl. "Look. Something's going very wrong. We need to find them."

She turned her narrow face upwards and went quite still. "Water, fire... it'll be a windstorm next, and if we get as far as the earthquake I'm not sure ..." Her eyes came back down, huge behind her glasses, to look into his. "Yees," she said slowly. "Yes, you should go and look. But I'm afraid I don't know the lightning spell. I was merely supporting Professor Sprout."

Harry bit back a swear word.

"One of the advanced Herbology students might know it," Trelawney went on, a note of uncertainty creeping into her voice. "I think it was developed to keep lightning away from valuable trees. I'll go and fetch her, shall I, and we'll find out." She pulled away from Harry and went on out of the hall, walking much faster. Harry thought she might break into a run as soon as she passed the doorway and the students couldn't see her.

Hugh Hanley had come up to listen to the conversation, and he tapped Harry's shoulder to get his attention. "If anyone knows the spell, it'll be Fritz Gehrendts. He's planning to be a forester when he leaves Hogwarts."

"Is he a good flyer?"

"He could be on the house team if he wanted, but he says he'd rather study."

"What's going on?" Draco had arrived. "What spell? What are we doing?"

"The spell's to keep off lightning," Harry told him. "We're going to find Snape and McGonagall and fetch them back. Are you in?"

"If I had a broom, I would be," Draco said, frustration on his face.

"Fair's fair. You can use mine," Harry told him. "I'll borrow one off of Fred or George." He looked back to Hugh. "We still need a Ravenclaw."

"You'll have one," Cho Chang said, joining them. "I'm going to ask Elisa Mountjoy to help you. She's the only decent flyer I can think of who can work healing spells without checking in with Madam Pomfrey every five minutes. You might need that."

"Right. Tell them to meet us at the door to the Great Hall in five minutes, and we'll start for the top of Gryffindor." Harry didn't wait to watch them off, but turned and started walking toward the table where Fred and George Weasley were helping Ron and Neville fit up first years with earplugs. Draco trailed along beside him, frowning. "Draco, can you think of anything we're forgetting?"

"Brooms for those two, unless you want to waste time fetching their own. Why go to Gryffindor at all?" Draco asked.

"Because it's the highest tower," Harry said. "The one with the best view." Harry bit his lip, but decided to go on with describing his vague plan. "Haven't you noticed that the Hear-Muffs let us hear a lot farther than we ought to?"

"Well... yes," Draco admitted.

"I think, if we're lucky, we might be able to hear them if they're calling for help, as long as we're concentrating on them."

"If they're calling for help," Draco said, pointing out the weakest point of the plan with ease. "Still, it's worth a look. We'll be wasting a lot of time climbing all those stairs, though. We should double up with some of the Slytherins who have brooms and fly up the staircases. It would be faster."

"That would be good, if you can arrange it," Harry said. "I want to bring Fred and George up there too, though. I've got a job for them."

"The Weasley Terror Twins? What is it, setting fire to the tower?" Draco asked, rolling his eyes as he parted ways with Harry and headed for Marcus Flint and the other Slytherin Quidditch players.

"I hope not," Harry muttered, and went to pull on George's arm.

"Hey, Harry? What's up?"

"Some of us are going to go look for McGonagall and Snape," Harry said, "I need to borrow your brooms, and I'd like you and Fred to see if you can't rig some kind of beacon or light at the top of Gryffindor so we're sure to be able to find out way back."

George blinked. "Lee Jordan said you were going to have us all looking for the animals and bringing them here."

"That too, but it's not as important as getting the teachers. I think Dumbledore's life may depend on it."

"I hope you're pulling my leg," George said.

Harry shook his head, soberly.

"Oh, bloody hell. All right, we're in." He reached around and tapped his twin on the shoulder. "Come on, Fred, we've got a job to do."

"Okay," Fred said cheerfully. "Don't ruin all the food, Ron," he advised, scruffing Ron's hair in passing.

"Where are you going?" Ron asked, looking at Harry.

Harry wished he had time to explain it all, but then Ron would want to come - and it was bad enough risking four necks, let alone more. "Tell you later. See if you can't make up something hot to go with those sandwiches, though. I'm starving."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Something hot. Like what?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. How about tea?"

"Tea," Ron nodded, reluctantly and turned back to what he was doing, although Harry could hear him talking to himself. "Tea. Right. That's just hot water with stuff in it. How hard can it be?"

George and Fred had taken either side of Harry and towed him along relentlessly. "I hope you know what you're doing, Harry," Fred said. "Leaving Ron and Neville in charge of getting us food? I can't imagine what they'll come up with."

"Some of the first years might be able to cook," Harry made a weak rejoinder. He looked ahead and saw Adrian Threadneedle having words with Draco and an assortment of quidditch chasers players from every house.

"Right," the chasers answered.

Angelina Johnson spoke up then, "Shouldn't we get blankets and our own brooms, too?"

"The animals are the first priority," Adrian said.

"We could put the animals in the blankets," said a Hufflepuff chaser. "And the more brooms we get down here, the more teams you can have going at once."

Adrian pulled a face, but he nodded. "Just don't get distracted by side trips. If you see something that needs doing, send someone back to the Great Hall to let us know what you're up to so we don't have to send out another rescue party."

Harry and the Weasley twins reached Adrian about the same time as a tall, burly Hufflepuff boy and a slightly built Ravenclaw girl. Harry knew that the boy was Fritz Gehrendts - Fritz' family was from Barbados and he had skin that nearly matched his black robes. He was also the only student in the school who bid fair to coming up to Hagrid's height at nearly two meters. He sometimes assisted Professor Sprout in the greenhouses, and Harry had talked to him once or twice about Herbology. Elisa Mountjoy was only familiar from the library, though. Harry had seen her there fairly often, but she almost always had her nose in a book, and he didn't think that even Hermione had had call to talk to her. He nodded to both of them and held out a hand. "I hope they told you what we're going to do," he said.

Fritz reached out a hand to envelop Harry's. "Go out in the wet and bring back the teachers still out there," he confirmed. "Hugh says you need someone to work the lightning spell for you."

"Right." Harry said.

"Can't he just cast it on us now?" Draco said, coming over to join them and looking slightly sour, like things weren't quite going his way. Or like he was beginning to get scared.

"Then who's going to cast it on the professors when we find them?" asked Elisa quietly. "I think that they must be hurt, to have not come back so far."

"Hurt or lost," Harry said. "I was out there, and it's terribly easy to get mixed up with all that lightning." He jerked a thumb at the Weasleys standing behind him. "Fred and George are going to see about turning Gryffindor into a lighthouse, so we can find our way back."

"Then you ought to get going," Adrian said, herding them impatiently towards the team of flyers he'd assembled and glancing nervously towards the ceiling. They couldn't help following his gaze.

The swirl was still there, still rotating, and now Harry thought he could see a tiny thread of spinning light coming down from it, into the hall. It seemed to not be stable enough to keep its existence for more than a second or two at a time, but it lasted long enough for Harry to predict where it would touch down eventually.

On Dumbledore.

^^^^^^^^^end chapter 7^^^^^

Chapter 8: Up...

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Once they were out into the corridor, Harry got on the bristles of a broom behind one of the Ravenclaw chasers and hung on. It wasn't nearly as comfortable as riding solo, but he figured he could put up with it for as long as he needed to. Two of the players had no passengers, and they took the front and middle of the line, casting light spells to illuminate the darkened halls as they flew along. They couldn't go very fast - not as fast as the brooms would allow anyway - because the shadows did strange things around them, and made it hard to recognise landmarks. When they came to the stair tower, they stopped for a moment, to let the last few brooms and riders catch up. Harry looked up into the darkness, trying to see if there were anything up there besides stairs, and heard a distant caterwauling.

He tapped his chauffeur's shoulder and pointed up, "Do you hear anything?"

More of them looked upwards. "Sounds like a... a banshee, maybe," someone said.

"Sounds like a cat with a rock tied to its tail to me," said Draco.

"Or a lot of cats," said Fritz.

"Maybe," Elisa said, bringing out her wand and pointing it upwards. "Illuminae Solarum!" she called, and a bright beam of sunlight shot towards the top of the high chamber.

It was so bright Harry was startled and looked away, trying to blink away the purple and green column at the edge of his vision. Some of the others had better luck, and some worse, but everyone seemed to end up shouting about it.

"Look, the stairs are all stuck."

"That's not eyes, is it?"

"Relax, I think that's the cats."

"I can't see anything,"

"It's over there."

"Wait'll my eyeballs stop trying to pop out of my head, will you?"

Harry kept blinking, letting his eyes adjust gradually by looking at the walls instead of up toward the light itself. As his gaze went higher, the ghostly retina burn images began to fade and he grew more and more aware that he wasn't seeing what he should see.

"Look at the walls," he said quietly, and the clamoring around him stopped abruptly. "Do you see anyone in the portraits? Anyone at all?"

The column of light wavered and Draco said, "Not you! Just keep the light going while we look."

"All right," Elisa said. "But look quickly. This isn't the easiest of spells to keep going, you know."

"I don't see anything moving," said a Hufflepuff chaser. "Not stairs, not portraits. Nothing."

"Just those eyes up on the stairs," said one of the Slytherins. "We'd better be right about them being cats."

The chamber went dark as the spell failed and they all fell quiet. Harry had the feeling that every single one of them was looking up towards the stairs, and he wondered if anyone else saw the greenish glint of pairs of eyes looking over the edge of a staircase. "We'll find out soon enough. But maybe we should have some paralysis spells ready, just in case."

"But you two stick to providing light," Draco recommended to the two who'd been doing the lumos spells before. "We don't want to end up hitting each other."

"Right," Harry said. "Wands ready then? Let's go."

Harry'd already begun to suspect it, but the ride upwards through the stair chamber proved that he really really hated not being the one in charge of the broom. It wasn't that it was a bad ride, or that they came too close to hitting anything - it was just that his own reactions would have been different, and he had to be careful not to lean too and tip over both of them. He distracted himself by keeping an eye on the eyes. To his relief, as they got closer, he could see that they were indeed mostly cats. About eight floors up, the stairs had failed to come to meet each other properly, and a gaggle of cats, rats, frogs, and of all things, Lee Jordan's tarantula, were waiting impatiently on the upper landing.

"Well, that'll save some time," said George Weasley cheerfully. "Looks like the animals are trying to get to the Great Hall on their own."

"I think the cats are in charge," said Fred. "Look at that tabby keeping that toad from wandering off."

"I'll start ferrying them over to the next set of stairs," volunteered one of the lightbearers. "You go drop off the rescue party."

"All right," the other lightbearer headed up and the rest followed quickly, so as not to be flying in the dark. At last they reached the highest landing, and started down the corridor toward the entrance to Gryffindor. Harry wondered how they were going to get in, if the Fat Lady weren't there to take the password. He thought maybe they could go outside and up somehow, but in the event, it wasn't necessary.

The Fat Lady's portrait hung empty in its frame, standing ajar. They could see the flicker of firelight down the passageway into the common room. Harry slipped off the back of the broom and stood a little uncertainly on the stones of the passageway as everyone else dismounted as well.

The feeling of wrongness was worse up here. Harry hoped that the collywobbles in his legs had to do with riding on the uncushioned part of a broom, but it was obvious as he crawled through the passageway into the common room that the tower was shaking even worse than the Great Hall had been. He felt very strange, like he was changing size from moment to moment.

The non-Gryffindors were trying not to crane their necks around too obviously; curiosity being enough to overcome even the strangest feelings for at least a moment as the rest of the group got in. There were more people than Harry had thought, or they were moving around. He took the chance to stand nearer the fire, hoping to warm up a little before he had to go outside. The flames dipped and leapt up again, with odd colors in their hearts. It was mesmerizing, patterned without patterns, like the interplay of quidditch players below him in the first wild seconds of a game.

"Best brooms for the seekers," said a voice, and Harry blinked as Oliver Wood handed him a broom. Hadn't Oliver...

"Hey! Harry!" George's shout from the stairs caught his attention. "Come on. Let's get you lot going."

"Coming," Harry said, clutching the broom. Draco, Elisa and Fritz were with George already. George led the way upstairs, passing Fred coming down with a stack of blankets.

"No sign of any more animals," Fred said. "All the cages have been opened."

"Maybe it was the cats," George said. "Meet me in the attic once you've got rid of that lot. I'll need your help getting that beacon thing up to the roof."

"No problem," Fred said. "At least there's plenty of wood for it in the common room."

"Going to be fun carrying it up all the stairs, though," George said, and started on up. "Harry, get a broom for Draco and a dry cloak on, while I get brooms for Fritz and Elisa from our rooms, right?"

"Right." Harry turned towards his room and Draco followed.

"Is it always this shaky in your tower, Potter?" the blond boy asked.

"Never," Harry answered. He wondered if he should take the time to change the rest of his clothes and decided he should at least put on dry socks.

Draco bit his lip and settled on the bed to wait, staring around unabashedly. "You'd think they'd try to make things different from house to house," he said as Harry found his spare shoes under the chair. "But all they do is give the beds different color curtains."

Harry shrugged, and pulled on his winter cloak. "Maybe they buy them wholesale," he said.

"Buy them? Wholesale? What's that supposed to mean?" Draco's sneer wasn't quite as effective when he was frightened, Harry noticed.

"It means we're all the same, as far as Hogwarts goes, I think," Harry said, going over to the coat stand to get the broom he was lending Draco. "We all start out with the same advantages." He frowned as he took it into his hand. Hadn't his broom been locked somewhere? Maybe he'd just forgotten.

"All of us but you," Draco said bitterly. "I expect you'll get all the glory this time, too. Everything always falls into your lap, doesn't it?"

"What?" Harry forgot about the puzzle of his broom and looked at Draco. "What are you on about? You're the one who's rich."

"And you're not? Weasley doesn't buy all that candy you always have on the train. You're famous, too. I can't even look at the Daily Prophet without seeing you mentioned somewhere, even if it's only the letters column." Draco's face turned pinker. "I don't like you, Potter," he grumbled, looking at the floor.

"I don't like you much either," said Harry, surprised at the outburst. "But this isn't about liking or not liking each other. It's about surviving, isn't it?" He held out the broom, handle end first, so that Draco could see it. "Look, I'm not interested in the glory. I just want to go and get the teachers, so they can keep whatever's wrong from getting worse."

Draco looked up at him, mouth pursed, but thoughtful. "Even Professor Snape? Even though you don't like him?"

"I don't have to like him to know that he's one of the smartest teachers Hogwarts has probably ever had," Harry said, surprising himself a little. He shrugged. Maybe Draco just needed a Slytherinish enough reason to do something right. "Look, think of it this way. I'm coming along to make sure that you rescue McGonagall, and you're coming along to make sure that I rescue Snape."

Draco looked at Harry with narrowed eyes, thinking for a long moment. "All right," he said slowly, at last, and took the broom. "Let's go."

^^^^^^^^^End chapter 8

Chapter 9: ...and Out

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George and the others were waiting for Draco and Harry at the bottom of the fire escape stairs. Fritz cast the lightning ward on each of them before they climbed up the metal ladder, and when they got out onto the roof, Harry was glad of it. The rain was easing now, but St. Elmo's fire danced across the stones, and lightning bled off from the towers sideways and down, to skitter across the leaded roofs of the classrooms and halls below.

"I'd better ward the tower, too," Fritz said to George. "Especially if you and your brother are going to be up here with a metal beacon frame."

"That's not a bad notion," George's voice cracked, and he looked surprised, like a kitten who's gotten a noseful of milk from a saucer. Harry looked - in this light, George looked younger than Harry was - but then the lightning struck nearby and the effect faded. George grinned at Harry and handed him a backpack. "You might need this," he said, his voice back to its usual note.

"What is it?" Harry asked.

"Emergency supplies. Everything Fred and I thought we might need to get out of trouble with." George said. "There's Muggle fireworks in there, in case you need to send up a signal without letting any thaumivores know you're about."

"Thaumivores?" Harry repeated, pulling the backpack on. It was heavy enough.

"Magic eaters. Snape and McGonagall were headed towards the Forest last I noticed - and there's rumors about that sort of thing." George grinned, "But it might just be a story to keep us out. At least you won't have to worry about werewolves."

"That's something at least," Harry agreed. "If we send up a firework, it means we've found them. If we send up a second one, it means we need help. All right?"

"And if you send up three of them, I'll bring the whole team," George agreed.

"Hey, Harry," Elisa pulled on Harry's sleeve. "I think Malfoy's got a direction for us."

"Good," Harry went with her to the parapet, where Draco was looking out over the lightning lit landscape to the forest. He tried to line up himself with Draco's intense stare and deliberately made himself think of McGonagall and Snape. He turned his head a little, left, then right, and suddenly, he heard a distant conversation.

"...Nevertheless, I think that you are underestimating his potential. He does fine in Transfigurations class."

"But in Potions he fails to concentrate." Was it the distance, or did Snape's voice sound strained?

"Rather the opposite of a certain student I remember." McGonagall's voice was a little clearer, but it was still faint.

Harry rested his hand on the stones and pointed his finger in the direction he was listening so he wouldn't lose it and then started looking for landmarks that way. If they went on a line to the right of Hagrid's hut and about ten of the biggest trees over, then they should be on the right track. Elisa had done much the same thing, he noticed. He described his results to her and she concurred.

"It matches me, too," Draco said, relaxing from his taut concentration with a sigh. He shook his head like a fly was buzzing at him. "They sounded funny when I first heard them. Wrong."

"Do you think it's some kind of illusion?" Elisa asked. "A trap?"

Draco bit his lip. "No," he said slowly. "But.. I think we should go carefully. I think maybe the Professor's hurt. And I don't think we'll be able to listen and fly at the same time. It's too hard to hear them."

Harry agreed. "We'll fly down to the edge of the forest then," he said. "We can stop and listen there, and then work our way along a little at a time. It might get easier to hear as we get closer, too."

"With any luck," Elisa said. "Fritz," she called over to their last rescueman. "Are you ready to go?"

"Just a mo'" he said, casting the lightning spell on Fred, who had just come up the tower. "Have you noticed that the lightning's getting less? There's more time between flashes."

"That's all to the good, isn't it?" Elisa said.

"Yes, except that it's so dark. Should the sun have gone down so soon?" Fritz asked.

Harry reached over to pat his shoulder, feeling vaguely surprised that he could. "It's just taken a while to get everything ready, I guess. And the clouds are hiding the moon."

"Better take my lantern then," Fred said, handing it to Draco. "I can get another one from the tower." He went over to help George with something, and Harry thought for a moment that he loomed half-a-foot over his twin, but then he blinked, and the two boys were the same size as each other, the way they always were.

The queasy feeling in his stomach was getting worse. He wanted off the tower, now. "Come on," he told the other three. "Fritz, follow us." It had to be better to be flying.

But when they launched themselves from the wall, the brooms didn't "catch" until they'd already fallen several stories. Draco and Harry got control first, and Elisa and Fritz managed seconds later. They all pulled up, hovering, a few feet above the roof of the hospital wing and looked at each other with huge eyes.

"I thought you said this broom was a good one!" Draco shouted at Harry. "What was that all about?"

"I don't know," Harry said, equally shaken. "It's like they were jinxed or something."

Fritz frowned "If that whirlpool thing is draining magic, maybe we flew through it. All the brooms were affected. But they're working now, aren't they?"

"They seem to be," Draco muttered bad temperedly. "I wish I had mine."

"We're outside. Why don't you call it to you?" Harry said hotly. It wasn't his broom's fault that Draco'd gotten a scare.

"I'm not casting a summoning spell for anything called a 'Thunderbolt' right now, thanks," Draco said sarcastically.

"'Thunderbolt'," Harry repeated just as sarcastically. "Do you always give your brooms stupid names, Malfoy?"

"Leave it!" Fritz roared, taking advantage of his much larger size to intimidate the two younger boys into stopping their argument. "We've still got a rescue to do!"

Harry and Draco shut up. Quickly. Before Fritz decided to bang their heads together. They hadn't even known he had a temper. It was like walking across a field and suddenly finding that you were standing on a volcano.

"Let's fly closer to the ground," Elisa said, nervously. "If something else is going to go wrong, I don't want to be fifty feet up in the air."

"Good idea." Now that Fritz had taken charge, he kept it. "Draco, you were the first one to get the direction, and you've got the lantern, so you lead the way. Harry, you stick near Elisa, in case she has more trouble with her broom. I'll take the back. All right?"

"All right," they chorused, and took their positions.

Draco took a careful path, going down from roof to roof, until they reached the end of the building and made the drop to just above the grounds, instead of going in a straight line the way that Harry would have if he'd been able to trust the brooms. It took a little longer, but not much, and it wasn't long before they were hovering near the tree that marked the line from Gryffindor tower to where the two professors had been talking.

They landed and tried to listen again.

It was Fritz who pointed the way first, and with his lead, Harry caught the voices again, still faint, but a little clearer.

"...Easier if you just let go." That was Snape.

"No, it wouldn't," McGonagall said. "And you know it."

"Yes, Minerva. So what shall we talk about next? We're running out of students to slander." Snape sounded tired.

"I don't know. Something cheerful?" So did McGonagall.

"Cheerful?"

"How about the party we're throwing when the Weasley twins graduate. Verna has already promised to bring some of her special summer squash..."

Harry looked at the others. They were all lined up the same way, but it was harder to mark landmarks among the trees in the forest. "Draco, give me the lantern."

"What for?"

"I'll go into the trees for a distance, and you use a lumos spell on your wand to let me know if I'm too far left or right. Make circles. The direction you're going at the top is the direction I should move to. And straight up and down when I'm right. That way we won't get too far off track."

"Might work," Fritz said. "Worth a try, anyway. Don't go too far without us, though, Harry."

"I won't," Harry said. He never much cared for the Forbidden Forest at the best of times, really, and he had to remind himself that all the creatures had been chased out by the balrog. "When I don't think I can go any farther without losing sight of you, I'll wave the lantern from side to side, all right?"

"Right."

The plan worked pretty well, although Harry had to go around trees a lot. And it didn't take him very long to get to the point where the forest would obscure the others. He landed on a fallen log, thinking that that might save the broom's 'fuel' somehow while he waited, and gave the signal.

And then something touched his leg.

^^^^^^^^^End of chapter 9