Means to an End

"I'm all a-tingle with excitement."

"Methinks you're a-tingle with the magic that's pooled in this entrance way these past five centuries."

"Are you always like this, Hermione? If so, how did you manage to snag two best friends like Harry and Ron Weasley?"

Morgan was awarded with a brilliant smile. "Yes, lies generally aren't a good way to begin a relationship, are they?"

The library was cool and silent, just the way he remembered it from the days when Hogwarts was known to all as a great school of magic. He remembered the hours he'd spent within its confines, willingly or unwillingly; recalled learning of Nicholas Flamel and his Philosopher's Stone...which brought him back to the task at hand.

"So," Harry began conversationally, "did you mean to lock yourself into the library or was that just dumb luck on your part?"

"Insolent as always, Potter, are we?"
"Admit it--you love me for it."

Harry casually glanced around the large room and drummed his fingers lightly across a nearby table. "I don't suppose you'd like to show yourself to me?" The villain chuckled.

"What's the point, Potter? You know where I am. Why don't you just strike me down where I stand?"

"Well, that's the thing, now isn't it?" stated Harry. "You're not standing, and I have nothing with which to strike."

"Don't toy with me, boy..."

Harry snorted into the darkness surrounding him. "I don't think I'm a boy anymore, Voldemort..."

A large tome flew through the air at him without warning. With reflexes long out of use, Harry barely managed to dodge the projectile. Before he had a moment to recover, yet another book cut the air dangerously close to him.

"So we've skipped the honeymoon and gone straight to the hurling of blunt objects, eh?" he muttered while diving in between bookcases. One would think that two great wizards such as us would be immersed in furious spell casting by now...at least he's preoccupied.

But there was always the chance that Voldemort was simply playing with him--he wouldn't be surprised. Harry's mind worked furiously as he began running in pointless circles around the room. Come on, Potter, he thought as a copy of The Dark Creatures' Guide to Ministry Ethics flew past him. You have the magical energies of the entire school at your beck and call! Surely there's something you can besides run around in the dark...

He almost struck himself. How dense could he be?

Harry ducked underneath a study table near the center of the room and concentrated hard on the ancient magic around him...

"Where are you, Potter?" Voldemort's voice called out to him. "I can still sense you--you haven't left yet. I have to admit, I am impressed with your endurance so far. Five hundred years of near inactivity, content to let me run wild in a building brimming with unlimited knowledge; I thought you'd lost your edge..."

Keep talking, you old bastard...

"But despite your desperate denials, I do know you rather well, Potter. I wonder--what are Miss Granger and those two...beings doing down there?"

Harry gritted his teeth and concentrated harder.

"I'll just take a quick look down there--I suppose my body's been perfectly preserved along with all the others..."

Good luck, Hermione...Hermi...Morgan...I hope this actually works, and doesn't completely blow up in my face later on.

Using the Map to make the roster had been absolute genius on Hermi's part, Hermione decided. It was quick and easy, and it saved them from making a stupid mistake like destroying yet another tapestry.

"You just wait," declared the student to the older couple. "Hogwarts is absolutely beautiful. I hope the Ministry reopens it..."

Morgan snorted disdainfully. "They'll try to make it into a museum," he stated. At once a dreamy state overcame him. "On second thought, that doesn't sound half-bad..."

The two women shared an amused glance.

"I do feel bad, Morgan," stated Hermi, "because there really wasn't much for an archaeologist to do here..."

"Are you kidding?" He stared up at her from his spot between the grand door posts. "This is the find of the century! Well, five centuries actually...but this is so big! Do you know what this will do for my career, ecstatic as I am to finally meet Seamus?"

Hermi grinned at him. "Fledgling archaeologist feeling coming back to you?"

"I can't help it." He ran a finger down his copy of the list but stopped suddenly. "Hermione?"

"Yes, Morgan?"

"Your family--is there any chance...?"

She smiled sadly at him. "I was the only child of an only child father and a mother whose only brother was estranged from our side of the family. There was some bad blood between him and my maternal grandfather, if I remember correctly. I never met him."

Hermi and Morgan nodded in silence and looked at each other. She's taking it rather well, was their mutual thought, interrupted by a sharp gasp from the younger woman.

"What's wrong?" inquired Hermi immediately. Hermione's face was frozen in shock.

"The library," she whispered, "is gone."
A very pregnant silence grew around them. The archaeologist and the heiress stared incredulously at the battered parchment Hermione clutched desperately in her shaking fists.

But they were not given an opportunity to wonder any longer. A low rumbling could be heard from somewhere else on the grounds--the sound of crumbling stones trying to fall before their neighbor...

With furious intensity, Hermione moved to the doorway and began screaming the names of her dearest friends and acquaintances at the top of her lungs. The crashing and tumbling of the ancient stones seemed to grow louder and compete with the hysterical Hermione.

Two red-headed teenagers appeared out of thin air and stumbled outside the castle into a heap, followed by the familiar figure of Seamus. Many others awakened right in front of their eyes before Morgan and Hermi shook themselves from their stupor and frantically began checking any names Hermione may have missed.

There were still so many names to call out when the roof of the Entrance Hall simply collapsed. By now, Hermione was in tears, her lips moving to summon Professor Sprout but no sound exiting her mouth. Behind the trio, the twenty-odd persons who had been saved were coming to their senses and joined them in gazing sorrowfully on the pile of rubble which had been Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

All around the silent, shell-shocked mourners, the grass and shrubbery rose up as though a great weight had been lifted from it. The once well-kept grounds of the school went quite suddenly from being locked within the same dawn through five hundred years of unchecked growth.

Sunrises, middays, sunsets and midnights sped by the group of survivors as though Time itself had been released from an icy prison.

Wild forest encroached upon and swallowed and destroyed a once-beloved stadium.

Grey rain began to fall steadily as everything the small group had tried to hold onto was swept away into oblivion.

And each one, no matter how long they'd been locked within the castle, wished fervently that they, too, could follow their last hope for a return to the known into the end of all things.