Means to an End

A single thought ran through both Hermi and Morgan's minds: where the hell is the Room of Requirement?

It was with some unease that the two remaining explorers consulted the Marauder's Map about the matter, each terribly nervous the castle would somehow realize what they were doing before they could accomplish it.

"I don't see it on here," Morgan said with a frown. "Hermi, what if the castle created that image to fool us into leaving?"

"I highly doubt that a castle, even one with conscious thought, could create such a genuine person," she replied. "And why go through the trouble of trying to explain everything to us? If Harry is right, and the castle wants us to stop asking questions, why hasn't it tried to expel us yet?"

Morgan sighed and nodded his head. He didn't understand half of what had happened within the last few hours and so decided it would be best to go along with someone who comprehended a bit more than he.

"Morgan, something's flickering over here on the Map," Hermi said. "It's a room, but it sort of fades for a moment and then reappears."

The archaeologist inspected the place. "It's almost like the place itself isn't fully in the castle," he hypothesized. "Maybe that's what Harry meant when he said we'd be able to speak freely. Which floor is this room on?"

"Seventh--there's a tapestry right across from the entrance. But I've been looking for a dot with Harry's name on it near the room..."

"And have you found it?"

Hermi shook her head. "No. But there's one directly outside the door with the name Hermione Granger. She must be the one I get my middle name from."

Morgan walked over to the portrait door and swung it open. Cautiously looking up and down the corridor, as though the castle might be watching them, he motioned to his companion and stepped out into the hall.

A surge of magical energy nearly paralyzed him the moment his foot connected with the stone. Morgan's gasps of pain choked him until it seemed all the air in his lugs was gone. He could hear Hermi cry out behind him, and he rather idly hoped she had enough sense to stay inside the room.

A voice was loudly proclaiming something into his head, a rather ugly mix of garbled Old English and evil-sounding Latin. Morgan had the vague memory of his mother drilling nouns of the fifth declension into his head as a child, but language had never been his strong point...And Hermi said we wouldn't need a linguist here...But once again, pain was shooting through his every limb and muscle with a particular vengeance. He heard the angry voice shouting still, though its volume grew weaker and weaker until his mind finally gave into the enticing darkness...

Hermi could only watch in horror as a foreign magic attacked Morgan's own supply. She didn't dare move to help him in fear that the castle would capture them both, and then where would they be?

'When I say "go", don't hesitate--run as fast and as hard as you can to the seventh floor. I'll show you the way.'

The voice belonged to the boy they had just met, Harry. Hermi was reluctant to follow his advice, but her fuddled head asked her to trust the apparition. Morgan will have to be saved later...

'GO, NOW!'

She ran.

This must be what dying feels like.

Morgan wasn't entirely sure how he'd gone from extreme pain to extreme bliss, but he wasn't complaining. It was warm and sunny, wherever he was, and he rather liked it this way.

"Do I know you?"

The archaeologist turned around to face the speaker.

He wasn't very tall, nor was he short. His face was kind and worn from laughter and smiles which must have always been genuine. A mop of light brown hair covered his head and fell into his blue eyes--Morgan's father's blue eyes--which glanced curiously at him. Morgan placed him between the ages of fifteen and twenty, at most.

"No," replied the older man with an apologetic tone. The boy shook his head.

"I know your face," he insisted. "It's mine, but older. You can't be my son, since I've been stuck here for ages. Perhaps you're a relative of my brother's?"

"I don't know who you are," Morgan said firmly. "I'd like to know how to get back to Hogwarts. The castle attacked me."

The boy laughed. "The castle doesn't attack people," he chided, much like a grandfather would do to his grandchild. "While Hogwarts is certainly made of magic, it's not capable of hurting its students. It's supposed to protect us, which I reckon is what it's doing right now."

"You--you know about Hogwarts?"

"Of course I do. I'm a student there. But doesn't everyone know about Hogwarts?" The boy's puzzled expression made something inside Morgan flinch.

"What's your name?" inquired the archaeologist.

"Seamus Finnegan, at your service," replied the boy with a small flourish. "I'm a seventh year Gryffindor. And you would be...?"

Morgan opened his mouth to answer, but the words stuck to his throat like mud. "Morgan," he rasped finally. "My name is Morgan Finnegan."

Seamus smiled brightly. "Are you my nephew? Thomas was quite a bit younger than me..."

"No, I'm not your nephew, per se," replied Morgan. "It's been five hundred years since Hogwarts disappeared."

A laugh greeted this statement. Seamus strode closer to his many-times-great nephew and laid a warm hand on Morgan's shoulder. "Hogwarts didn't disappear, Morgan," explained Seamus gently. "Our families deserted it. The castle's been there the entire time, waiting for someone to care enough to return it to its former glory.

"Through the pain of our demise and the Ministry's relocation of wizarding England to Muggle England, our families first came to despise the name of Hogwarts, and then to forget it almost entirely."

At Morgan's astonished and puzzled stare, this ancestor of his laughed again and began to lead him across and over a small hill. At the crest, Seamus stopped and spread his hands wide. His descendant's jaw dropped even further.

A very large group of people loitered in the green meadow below the hill. They walked about and talked to each other and laughed the same older laugh which bubbled and burst from deep within Seamus Finnegan. There were children and teens and adults from one side of the valley to the other, and somehow Morgan knew that each and every one of them would tell him the same thing Seamus had just said. But even as he gazed in wonder at them all, Morgan's vision became hazy. The pain pulsed into his muscles again, disorientation overcame his mind, and the green valley and warm sun shifted suddenly like a bad television screen signal in his eyes.

"We're ready to come back, Morgan," said the voice behind him--Seamus? "Tell Harry that from us."

"It's not his decision!" Morgan mumbled. It seemed like the whole crowd laughed at him all together, and he lost all consciousness.

Hermi wasn't sure why the magical bursts weren't catching her like they had Morgan, but she certainly wasn't complaining. Following the order the strange apparition had said into her mind, the Weasley heiress ran with all her strength; but dodging shimmering tentacles and running up seven flights of moving stairs does tend to wear a person down.

Seventh floor reached, Hermi's mind began gasping even, the first objective achieved. Now where's that tapestry?

As though by magic (Hermi inwardly rolled her eyes at the cliché), what appeared to be a sheet of energy rose and fell against the stone wall it hung from in an invisible breeze. The woman breathed a sigh of relief and nearly missed the next surge of magic the castle sent at her. The door should be directly across from it...

But the next breath she took caught in her throat.

A young woman, about Harry's age, was frozen in place against the bare walls of the corridor where a door should have been. She was fairly tall, had brown hair that must have needed helping after a shower, and wore what must have been the girls' version of the uniform; the same red and gold crest on Harry's outfit adorned the left shoulder of the black nondescript robes.

It wasn't so much the surprise of finding a trapped person all alone on a little-used floor of magic castle as it was the particularly painful expression frozen onto her eternally young face coupled with the dreadful state of her hands.

Tears (which would have been wet had Hermi dared to touch them) streamed down the young woman's face while red blood peeked through between cut-up fists and rough stone. A perpetual cry of confusion and pain was etched into her lips and eyes, and Hermi felt the desire to finish crying and bleeding for her.

'You need to move her.'

What?!

'She needs to be moved for you to see the door. The Room of Requirement is no longer a part of the castle, per se, and Hermione's connection to both room and castle cancels out the portal. You must move her.'

Grimacing, yet knowing what Harry said was true, Hermi moved closer to the girl (did he say her name was Hermione?) and reached out a tentative hand to her. The woman shuddered at the warmth found upon skin contact. She closed her eyes and tugged gently--so she didn't see the pretty face turn its look of confusion upon her until the girl spoke.

"Who are you?"