The Red Skies Above

Chapter II

Two hours later, Hermione and I had arrived in Diagon Alley and were standing by a signpost that had been painted over, destroying the previous sign for Madame Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, turning it into Deadly Machinery, Torture Devices, and Black Potions. The sign bore the picture of a rat with spider legs bursting from its eyes, creating a pool of blood below it. Hermione and I snuck into the crowds of people hustling from shop to shop, horrible creatures and books in their hands. As I passed the window of the shop we had been behind, I saw things like tourniquets and kits on how quarter people without use of horses.

Before leaving the Burrow, Hermione and I had dressed in some old robes we found in the cellar. They were perfect, mine black velvet, and Hermione's a dark green satin. I had know idea why we had these robes in the cellar, but I didn't ask.

As we walked down the paved street of Diagon Alley, I looked at the shops that I had once known that were now replaced with shops for Dark Magic. Children were all running to a mob of people that was forming where a horrible scream was coming from. Hermione and I moved in to see what was going on.

There in the middle of the mob was a black haired man in grey robes with his wand pointed at a beggar wrapped in brown strips of cloth. The man in gray had no jet of light coming from his wand, but the beggar continued to scream. It occurred to me then: he was using the Cruciatus Curse on the poor beggar. People were circling the mob, and children; rich and street urchins alike were actually laughing, exposing very yellow teeth.

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The screams tore through the hall, and the Death Eater fell. A figure was approaching the fallen Death Eater, wand in hand.

"Did you kill that girl?"

The man in gray screwed up his face, adding more intensity to the curse he had on the poor beggar, who screamed louder and louder with each passing moment.

"I said, did you kill that girl?" the figure demanded.

All the Death Eater could do was whimper at his bloodied right hand that had been scraped up by the fall and shards of broken glass that littered the floor.

"CRUCIO!" the figure screamed, his voice cracking with the height of volume that it had reached.

The Death Eater caught the full blow of the curse, crumpling him into a heap as he screamed for mercy. All I could do was watch, and that fact was enough mental stress to make anyone mad.

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No. I couldn't bare it. I couldn't watch the beggar scream. I turned tail and ran for the crack between the shops that Hermione and I had hidden in. The beggar's screams followed me all the way there, and the intensity of the cries made me nauseous. I could barely fight the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Falling to my hands and knees, I tried to shake the image from my head, but the picture of the man torturing the beggar stayed very much in place. I tried to force my mouth to stay closed, but it was an ill attempt. Like a child, and not at all like a man, I vomited onto the ground. The vomit left a bitter taste in my mouth, and instantly, I passed out.

* * * * *

When I awoke, I noticed someone was sitting by my side, holding me up in a sitting position. "Thank you, Hermione. I don't know what came over me. I-" I began.

It wasn't Hermione that was holding me up. It was the beggar, wrapped in the pitiful strips of cloth that hadn't been singed or destroyed in the curse, and looking much worse than when I had seen him in the street. He had a stream of blood coming from his lower lip, and his face was pale, yet his green eyes shone with the intensity of a green flame. The eyes alone were unscathed. But those eyes, there was something odd about them. Asthe beggar turned and faced me, the difference hit me. His pupils looked like a cat's, slitted when the sunlight hit them, and slightly wider as he moved into shadow.

"Thank you, sir, but why are you over here? Wasn't that horrible man torturing you?" I asked, looking around for Hermione.

"That was o'er an hour ago, lad. Oh, so ya were affected by that curse as much as I thought. Ya know, the one they put on me. Ah, it's a right good thing t' 'ave someone care fer ya when ya live on the streets." The beggar let me sit up and conjure an ice pack to help me recover from the headache that was pounding in my ears, as he went on. "Aye, no one e'er cares for the likes o' me, thems fer sure! Why, I'm thinkin' you may be the only one! Hah! Now ain't that a trate!"

"Er...yeah. Did you see that girl who was standing besides me? She's not around here, is she, sir?" I asked the man.

"I'll tell ya if ya stop callin' me a sir! Ma name's Barney. Barney McKinnon, and by what I'm hearin', you're that one they calls Ronald Weasley, amn't I right?"

I turned around to face him. "How do you know that?" I inquired both slightly interested and annoyed.

"Let's just say I'm one o' auld Dumbley-dore's friends, that good enough fer you, Mr. Weasley?" Barney replied mischievously. Now he was rummaging around in a pouch that was tied to his waist. "Well, we gotta get goin' now if you want ta be meetin' up with yer lass. Come now, Mr. Weasley." Barney began to stand up and walk forward, towards a wall.

"You can call me Ron, Barney. It's what most people I know call me," I stated, following him as began to walk closer to the wall. I wondered what he was doing as tapped the wall with his forehead.

"Nope, Mr. Weasley. Auld Dumbley-dore said fer me t' call ya Mr. Weasley, 'n' that's what I plan t' do. Ah, here we are." Barney began to whack his fist upon the brick that was about eight rows from the top. Barney was such a short man that he had to jump every time he wished to pound it. After hopping up and down about eight times, he quickly brought his left hand to his mouth, licked it, and placed it on the brick precisely fourth from the right of the wall.

With the absolutely smallest sound I had ever heard, the wall slid open, and we stepped through it to a surprising place.

Right in front of me was Diagon Alley like I had remembered it. There was Flourish and Blotts, Ollivander's, Eeylops Owl Emporium, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, and in the middle of every shop was Gringotts, the wizard bank. I just stared at what I thought had been destroyed. Everything was as I had remembered it, eight years ago. People were walking from shop to shop, and children playing tag and hide-and-seek.

And there, running through the crowds was a man with messy black hair, green eyes, and that one thing that made him who he was: his scar. Harry ran up to me, pushing people aside and was coming within three feet of me for the first time in close to a decade!

It all stopped.

Everyone stopped in the street, and everything around them stopped as well. The clocks stopped moving, children rough housing stopped wrestling and then, in the time of about thirty seconds, the shops went through a time warp to become what I had seen earlier that day. The people became more and more violent until I could barely watch, and then, I saw the mob that had surrounded Barney form as Barney was silently tortured; the sound had gone, too.

From around the corner of a building, two shadowy figures joined the mob, and watched the poor man. All of a sudden, one of the figures moved away at a pretty fast pace, though it was obvious that they had tried to be inconspicious. they disappeared behind the wall they had emerged from, while the other figure just tried to locate the missing alley.

The man in gray walked away, leaving the beggar on the ground, and the mob began to thin, revealing the other figure. The moment the figure was all alone, the man in gray returned, and disappeared behind the same wall that the figures had come from. Then time froze, again, letting the excitement of the moment go to waste.

"What was the point of that?" I asked Barney, infuriated, as I turned around to face him, throwing up my hands. The door in the wall that we had stepped through had closed, making it almost impossible for anyone to see that it had been there.

"Now, now, Mr. Weasley, have you ever heard of the Mirror of Erised?" Barney asked, both trying to change topics and to calm me down.

"Yes I have, Barney. I was with Harry on the day he first saw it."

"Well, then, ya may or may not know what it says across the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. That translates to I show not yer face but yer hearts desire. This was a bit like the Mirror of Erised, but this 'mirror' shows yer deepest desire an' then what the world is like that makes it so ya can't have that thing," Barney stated, moving forward and into the shop in the mirror that said, 100,501 Ways to Kill Your Mother-in-Law.

I followed him, and soon we were in another alley, littered with paper and rats that scampered between buildings. As we walked along, I glanced at street signs and realized I had never heard of anything even near where we were.

Barney turned to me again, but this time, he turned into a tawny alley cat, his fur all in clumps, and his eyes the same green color. He just stared at me for a moment and then jumped up numerous times until I got what he meant.

He wanted me to turn into my form. He wanted me to turn into the shape of an animal I had completely forgotten I could do, and follow him through a street, making people believe I was an animal, and not at all someone who was currently breaking the law set down by blood thirsty Death Eaters, not at all afraid to completely rip me apart.

I scraped the part of my brain that held my Hogwarts memories to try and unleash what my animagus form was. As I searched, I remembered many things that had scared me quite; Aragog the giant spider, the Yule Ball, Norbert, Boggarts becoming my worst fears, thestrals, the Department of Mysteries, a huge clump of Death Eaters bursting through a pair of doors and turning their cold eyes upon the small group of students on the stairs...

It came to me all of a sudden, and I quickly shut my eyes and thought hard about my animal. Since I hadn't changed into my form for quite a long time, it was a bit painful as I began to shrink, grow a tail, ears, fur, and as my legs began to become shorter. My nose grew longer and furrier, and suddenly, I was my animagus form. I had become an Irish Setter.

Barney's eyes widened, although his pupils stayed slits, and he turned tail and began to run through the shadows, under boards, through old buildings, and in spiderwebs. I cocked my head to the side, confused at what was happening. Why was Barney running? I decided to follow him, barking to keep my dog-like appearance.

As Barney came into view, I saw that he was sitting in front of a quite large building, licking his paw. I began to catch up, and when I was but three meters away, Barney sprung to his feet and ran through the building. I stopped, catching my breath, and trying to figure out what he had done.

As the time ticked by, I lay down, placing my head on my paws, a small whining in my throat. Barney had completely disappeared from sight, and I was utterly lost. I didn't know which paths lead to swamps and cliffs, and which lead to civilization. I was lost, I was scared, I was-

Barney's cat head poked through the building, and stared me in the face. He shook his head slightly, indicating for me to follow, and then he was gone again.

This time, I strutted straight through the building and looked at the street that greeted me.

There it was again. That horrid projection of the previously happy Diagon Alley. The shops I had seen but moments ago in the Mirror of Erised were portrayed yet again in the vulgar memory. Barney continued to run through crowds of people, all dressed oddly in dark colors, me following close at his heals.

As we ran, I noticed we were close to the store where I'd bought Scabbers' rat tonic back in third year. Barney turned and entered a shop who's sign was too worn to read. I ducked in after him, avoiding a possible collision with a five-year-old who had bent down to pet me, dripping some of his ice cream onto my muzzle.

As I entered the dimly lit shop, I searched for Barney, ducking under chairs, and walking into a separate room. With ever step I took, I left a paw print in the dust on the floor, right next to a smaller one that by no doubt belonged to Barney.

I followed the trail of prints until they stopped before a board that was slightly raised above the floor. I crouched down to the floor, making myself as short as I could manage, and slipped uneasily under the board. It was so dark beneath the floor that I was quite glad to be a dog, or else I wouldn't have been able to see my hand in front of me.

The dirt tunnel continued on for about fifty or so meters, getting farther and farther down below the surface.

Then, all of a sudden, I could see a light in front of me that made me squint. I moved closer towards it, my eyes getting more and more adjusted to the light.

The tunnel's exit revealed a dank room made of stone with three jail cells along the wall, the bars old and rusted. In the middle cell, there was a single barred window that let in the smallest amount of light that could be used to light the room. In the corner to the right of me, stood a very old and worn wooden table, and on top of that table was an ancient can of soup labeled, "Hearty Beef Barley Soup."

Over in the opposite corner stood Barney, in human form once again, a white wand in his hand, pointed at the opening to the tunnel. "Claudere."

A red bit of light shot out of Barney's wand, making the soil and rock of the tunnel cave in on itself, sealing us in, and others out. I turned back to my normal form upon his grunt of, "C'mere."

"What's the can for?" I asked, perplexed by the presence of one sliver of modern day items, muggle or non. Barney gave me a crooked smile, grasped my hand, thrust it onto the can, and stuck his beside mine. All of a sudden, I began to experience a sensation that I had completely forgotten. A hook seemed to snag me around my waist, and the world around me began to spin, the other items in the room becoming nothing but a blur.

It then occurred to me what Barney had done. He had set us up on an illegal Portkey to God knows where. He had pressured me into breaking the law twice, if not more in less than twelve hours.

Maybe, thoughts flooded my head. Maybe Barney's not a beggar or Dumbledore's friend at all. Maybe Barney's really a Death Eater! I wanted to scream out, let someone know what was going on, call for someone to save me, but the air pressure made it hard for me to breathe, impossible to scream.

And then, it all stopped.

I hit the ground, whipping out my wand at the same time and turning to face Barney who was staggering slightly from the force of being thrown across miles, destroying the can so we could not return to where we had been by a Portkey. "Alright, where are we, Barney, and just precisely how do you know Dumbledore?"

Barney just fumbled with his words. I pressed in closer, so that my wand's tip was at his throat. "Tell me now, or you'll never tell anyone anything ever again," the coldness of my voice made him shiver, making my Death Eater suspicion flicker and fade.

I began to move my wand away from his neck, but not fast enough to escape the scolding of a familiar voice. "Ron! Let him go right away! He's done nothing to you!" The first voice was joined by a second, much more forceful tone.

"Ronald Matthew Weasley, I have gone through hours of work to retrieve you and Miss Granger from the drugged world outside. Do not destroy my link to the world for a foolish suspicion! Desist, I say, desist!"

That voice. No. It couldn't be. He had been murdered. I had read about it in the Daily Prophet myself.

As I turned to face the speaker, I was met by the cold blue eyes I remembered from my youth. There stood Albus Dumbledore, same festive robes and half moon spectacles. His beard and hair were much longer than when I had seen him last, his beard alone almost reaching the floor, and he seemed a bit more withered, although his eyes stayed as vibrant as normal, along with his attitude.