The dark corridors of Hogwarts flashed past in a matter of moments — I was moving at speed toward the main hall to intercept the group of students. A rogue idea had crossed my mind to tip off the Aurors and let the valiant fighters against darkness deal with the students themselves, but I set it aside for now — if it came to it, I could always make a bit of noise and draw the attention of whoever happened to be nearby, with the spiders keeping watch.
Once in the hall, I positioned myself near the wall, close to the exit. The main entrance gates were closed but unlocked, the smaller door within them likewise — as was always the case. All that remained was to wait, monitoring the progress of this group of well-meaning idiots as they made their way toward me.
Their voices were already clearly audible, echoing through the empty corridors and galleries. Honestly, I felt like shaking my head in weary resignation — they could at least have silenced their chatter with a Quieting Charm. Far too hasty. And there were purebloods among them, children who had grown up in the magical world from birth. Well, I could at least understand why Neville wasn't in the habit of casting — the boy had only recently begun to develop the first shoots of self-confidence, which matters enormously in spellwork. Without it, doing anything with magic is extraordinarily difficult, no matter how precisely you follow the instructions. Magic is a mental science, whatever physical crutches people attach to it. But Ginny? Had all her free character points gone into having a pretty face? Apparently not — and yet thinking like a witch didn't seem to occur to any of them. Haste never leads anywhere good.
When the group emerged into the hall and their voices became clear — words and all — a pair of spiders signalled that the patrolling Aurors had also caught the sound. Faint, faint — barely above the threshold of did I imagine that — but it might be enough to bring them here to check. That was their job, after all.
"…why won't you just listen…" Hermione was muttering, quiet and exasperated.
"Well, well, well," I stepped away from the wall with a smirk, moving into a shaft of moonlight falling through the narrow arrow-slit windows high above the floor, and looked the group over as they lit their way with Lumos charms. "Who have we here?"
"Granger," Potter exhaled, raising his wand at me as a precaution. The others did the same. "What are you doing here?"
In person, rather than through the spiders, it was easy to see the unusual pallor and dishevelment about Potter. His expression spoke of urgency, panic, and resolve all at once. Neville wore resolve too, but laced with uncertainty — though such contradictions were ordinary for him. Ginny… well, she was the sort who'd be in for any excitement, especially when it felt righteous. Ron went without saying — he'd follow Potter into any adventure, provided there was room for him. If there wasn't, he'd sulk.
"Hector!" Hermione didn't give me the chance to answer. "Tell them, would you?"
"I will," I nodded. "Tell them what, exactly? And yes — I'm a prefect on patrol. That's what I'm doing here."
"They're—"
"We're going to the Ministry," Potter cut across her sharply, eyes fixed on me. "The Department of Mysteries. Voldemort has Sirius and he's torturing him. He wants to know something. Something very important."
Potter was clearly counting on the fact that I'd know who he meant — I'd spent some time in the Black house and knew Sirius's nickname among friends. And that he was no criminal, whatever the papers said.
"And you're…?" I invited him to finish the sentence.
"And we're going to save him."
"Against the Dark Lord — one of the most powerful wizards in England — and his associates?" I raised an eyebrow in Snape's manner and looked over this little strike force. "This particular group? Wouldn't it be rather better to inform, oh, I don't know… the Headmaster? Professor Snape? And where's this certainty coming from?"
"I know," Potter said, as if that settled the matter.
The faintest flicker of doubt crossed the faces of the others at my words. Gryffindors are simple that way — you only need to slow them down long enough to let them think, and most of them turn out to be perfectly reasonable people. Most of the time.
Ginny stepped forward.
"Don't get in our way, Hector. Help us instead."
"Help? Help you get yourselves killed? Where's this information from, Potter?"
"I just…" Harry rubbed his scar. "Just trust me. I know."
Hermione glanced at me and evidently decided to explain.
"Because of the scar he has a connection to Voldemort — he can see through his eyes—"
"Ah, that does explain quite a lot," I said, nodding slowly. "And the Occlumency lessons… Remind me, Potter — what exactly did Professor Snape tell you?"
"That doesn't matter right now!" Potter flared. "Every second we stand here talking, Voldemort is torturing Sirius — he could kill him at any moment!"
If the connection exists, it seemed the Dark Lord was feeding something into Potter's mind. Or perhaps Potter was simply like this — I'd never had the pleasure of observing him in situations quite this desperate.
"Have you tried contacting Sirius?"
"Don't treat us like idiots," Ron snapped. "Of course we tried."
"And there was no answer."
"As you can see," Potter snapped in turn.
The spiders reported that a pair of Aurors had indeed begun making their way toward us and would arrive shortly.
"And it didn't occur to any of you that he might simply not be home, or asleep, or drunk. He has a well-established fondness for that last one, as I recall."
"That's ridiculous," Ginny shook her head.
Neville — the only one in this group who hadn't said a word either for or against — simply waited to see how things would fall. But he clearly wanted to go. Could his determination have something to do with the fact that Bellatrix Lestrange was walking free, and the boy had an obvious score to settle with her? For obvious reasons, naturally.
"Is it?" I said, smirking. "And Voldemort supposedly capturing Sirius, dragging him to the Department of Mysteries — the very heart of the Ministry, where virtually everyone is his enemy — and starting to torture him there — that's not ridiculous?"
"He needs something that's in the Department of Mysteries!" Potter was trying to explain it to me as though I were being deliberately slow.
"Then he'd send people there and torture the victim somewhere secure. Get the information, relay it to his men, collect the result. And besides — what makes you so certain the Dark Lord hasn't planted these thoughts in your head through your connection?"
"That's impossible. I know for certain…" Potter rubbed his scar again. "This is a waste of time."
"Impossible? You couldn't shield your mind in Occlumency lessons, and now you're ruling out the possibility that someone has gotten inside it?"
"Right," Potter said, his voice going very flat. "Either you step aside, or we attack."
"Go ahead." My wand was already in my hand.
"Hector!" Hermione was clearly unhappy with how this was developing.
"Expelliarmus!" Potter launched the Disarming Charm at me with considerable speed.
Not for the first time, I was grateful for my mind's high processing rate — and for the capacity to react to everything around me almost instantaneously. The Disarming Charm was fast, no question. But during the fraction of a second it took to reach me, I ran through two or three possible responses and settled on the one I'd had down pat for a long time.
My wand became a whip, and I flicked it up before me in the same instant, forming a Protego Reflecto precisely at the tip at precisely the right moment — then returned it to its usual shape. I hadn't moved from the spot.
The Disarming Charm reversed at the same brisk speed and knocked the wand clean from Potter's hand. He was skilled and fast with that particular spell — for a student, and really by any measure. He simply wasn't fast enough for me.
The others activated at the same moment. Only Hermione darted about in confusion, unable to decide who to curse and whether to curse anyone at all.
"Incarcerous!" — from Ron.
"Reducto" — Ginny aimed at the floor under my feet.
I transformed my wand to whip again, met the Reducto with a Diffindo as a counter, then Evanesco against the Incarcerous. The coloured jets annihilated one another. Without words or gestures, using only the fluid motion of the wand in whip form, I sent a Disarming Charm at each of them in turn — very fast ones, which they nearly managed to counter. Nearly doesn't count.
A moment, and I held five wands. Only Neville stood apart. Not with indecision — I revised that reading immediately. He had made a deliberate choice not to act. The resolve was there.
"So," I said drily, turning the confiscated wands over in my fingers. "What exactly were you planning to do to the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters? Frighten them with stern looks? You can't even get past me, and you were going to go after grown wizards? On their territory? Without preparation? You don't even follow one of the most basic rules of a magical duel — don't wait to see whether your spell has landed."
That was something I'd noticed in many people, incidentally. Cast a spell, stand and watch what happens, and only after the result — positive or negative — begin preparing the next move.
"Give them back," Potter said simply, extending his hand. Not a trace of despair.
"How did you do that?" Ginny demanded, furious at the outcome. "We trained—"
"Did you think Malfoy was joking when he said I operated on a different level?"
"Give us our wands—"
"What's going on here?" Two Aurors in brown cloaks stepped into view, positioning themselves roughly between the two groups, slightly to one side, wands at the ready. "After-hours violations?"
My prefect badge had been noticed — hence the question, which saved me the trouble of explaining anything.
"As you can see, sir," I spread my hands.
The wands in mine were also noticed.
"Return to your common rooms immediately," said the second Auror firmly. "Prefect—"
He approached me, hand extended.
"The wands of the rule-breakers. We'll make sure they return to their common rooms and give these back."
I handed the wands to the Auror while the second kept his eye on the disgruntled Gryffindors.
"We're not playing games here," he was saying, stern and clipped. "Your recklessness does not make our job easier. Back to your common rooms."
"We need to speak to our Head of House," Potter answered. "Professor McGonagall."
"Think you're something special, Mr Potter? Yes, I recognised you — don't look so surprised. Very well."
Hermione showed her prefect badge and wasn't compelled to go anywhere. She chose not to abandon her housemates, though, and went with the group to McGonagall. Perhaps she believed she could find the right argument — for whatever situation might unfold. That would depend on McGonagall.
Left alone in the hall, I turned the situation over in my mind. There was some chance that Sirius was genuinely in the Dark Lord's custody. That he knew something Voldemort wanted. That this knowledge was linked to something in the Department of Mysteries, which Voldemort also wanted. But the specific scenario Potter had described — the probability of it being exactly that — was vanishingly small. It still needed checking. Purely because one should operate on accurate information.
I layered everything I had for concealment over myself and ran from Hogwarts — not through the gates, which might have alarms I had no interest in dealing with. There was a secret passage. More than one, actually. I'd use one of those.
Moving quickly through the dark and rather narrow passage, I came out in the sweet shop in Hogsmeade. Apparating from inside someone's premises is generally considered bad form, but who cares about that sort of thing in the middle of the night? No one. So a moment later I was standing in Grimmauld Place, looking at number twelve — hidden not only from ordinary people but from wizards who didn't know to look.
I climbed the front steps and knocked. A solid, proper knock. Silence. I knocked harder. Same result. I could, of course, force my way in — but who knew what protective enchantments the members of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black had been pleased to bestow upon their dwelling.
I directed a touch of magic into my voice and said quietly:
"Kreacher — is the ungrateful master Sirius at home? I have no intention of disturbing him. I only need to know."
Several seconds of silence followed. Then the door opened a crack, and out of the darkness of the front hall, through the gap between the door frame and the door itself, appeared Kreacher's hooked nose — and one eye.
"…People wandering round at all hours… The ungrateful master Sirius has seen fit to drink himself swinish and is currently sleeping it off."
"That's not exactly a glowing account of your master, Kreacher."
"Master deserves the account he gets…"
Kreacher shut the door in my face. I let out a breath. Things were, relatively speaking, fine. Relatively, because it meant no one had taken anyone prisoner — but it also meant the Dark Lord was rooting around in Potter's head. And if I was being honest, that concerned me. Not enough to actually do anything about it, but still — who knew where something like that might lead?
With a clear conscience I Apparated back to the sweet shop's attic, ducked into the passage, and made my way back to Hogwarts. The spiders hadn't reported anything unusual, though their coverage was far from complete — however much I'd optimised the surveillance network, each new spider placed an additional load on my mind. Small, yes — negligible, even — but there might come a critical moment when I'd be a fraction of a percentage point short on processing capacity, with any number of consequences.
I was almost at the exit from the secret passage — or entrance, depending on how you looked at it — when a spider signalled that Hermione was on the move again, this time with a rudimentary concealment charm. Alone.
Naturally, I decided to intercept whatever scheme was developing. I had no great enthusiasm for the prospect of Hermione heading off to war with the Dark Lord alongside a group of idiots. They were unlikely to start slaughtering children, true — but that depended on their objectives. And then there was the current state of things: the Ministry on high alert, Aurors authorised to use Unforgivables, most of those same Aurors having never seen actual combat…
In short, there was no conceivable justification for letting her attempt a nocturnal break-in to the Ministry — a government facility, almost certainly heavily guarded — and the Department of Mysteries above all, which logic suggested would be even more heavily guarded. There were possible scenarios, of course — if the Dark Lord was luring Potter somewhere, which was the only reasonable reading of events given what I now knew, perhaps he'd arranged a convenient corridor for Potter and company to walk through. But perhaps wasn't good enough.
It took me a few minutes to run through the castle corridors. Thanks to the spiders, I knew exactly where Hermione was headed, and intercepting her was simple enough. I dropped my own concealment as I went.
Walking down yet another stone corridor — the pale light of the night sky and a moon behind the window doing little to push back the dark — I could see no one with my own eyes. But a spider was tracking Hermione, and through it I could see her inching along the wall with elaborate caution, moving sideways in tiny steps to avoid attracting my attention.
"I can see you," I said — and looked directly at her.
She froze. Not breathing. Didn't believe it?
I drew my wand sharply and aimed it at Hermione.
"Finite."
My sister materialised out of thin air — rather a striking effect, a Disillusionment Charm dissolving.
"Visible to everyone now, Mione."
"How did you see me? Though—" she shook her head, and her unruly hair with it "—that doesn't matter right now. Harry and the others have escaped."
"What do you mean?"
Hermione was beside me in moments, looking at me with an expression that demanded answers.
"They took us to McGonagall. Harry told her about the scar, the visions, the connection to Voldemort, what he'd seen. That his godfather was being held prisoner—"
"His godfather," I allowed myself a small smile, "is indeed being held prisoner, you're quite right."
"There, you see! We need to—"
"Shh." I made the universally understood gesture for quieter. "Held prisoner. By the green serpent."
"Meaning?"
"He's dead drunk in bed at home. So — what did McGonagall say?"
"What?" Hermione, thrown off track, looked rather endearing as she gathered her thoughts. "She told us not to talk nonsense and to go to sleep. And if we couldn't sleep, Madam Pomfrey could help with that… Wait — so Harry and the others have gone to the Ministry for nothing?"
"Gone to the Ministry, have they? Your idiot friends have gone to the Ministry when Aurors and the MLE are on standby for an attack at any moment — when they've been authorised to use Unforgivables — when they'll treat any sound in the night as a Death Eater assault and respond with lethal force?"
Hermione covered her mouth with both hands, genuinely shaken.
"What do we do?"
"What do you think — back to McGonagall."
"But—"
"Don't even think about going anywhere, are we clear?" I gave Hermione a firm look, which — as I well knew — only made her more determined, not less.
"Don't tell me what to do!"
"Then at least write a farewell letter explaining to your parents why they'll be burying their daughter."
"What are you—"
"Not getting through? Over there, you are effectively surrounded by enemies on all sides. Any one of them can kill you and be entirely justified in doing so. If you don't care about yourself, fine. Think about other people. Either you come with me and we find a way to sort this out, or you go back to the common room and wait to see how it ends."
"With you," she said, without hesitation.
"Then let's go."
Why McGonagall? The answer was obvious — she was Deputy Headmistress. And from everything I'd observed, she was Dumbledore's trusted confidante not only in her professional capacity but in general, which meant she was across all of this business.
Getting to McGonagall's office didn't take long. We knocked and went in.
"Mr Granger," McGonagall acknowledged me with a nod, seated at her desk sorting through papers — though it was plain that she'd been pulled from bed very recently, despite having had time to change into her ordinary clothes. "Miss Granger…"
"Potter and the others have gone to rescue Sirius," I began, "who is allegedly being held prisoner by the Dark Lord, in the Department of Mysteries, which is nonsense, because Sirius is passed out drunk in his own home."
For a moment I felt the professor's magic flare — but not a single gesture, not a single flicker of expression gave away her reaction. An instant later she rose sharply, drew her wand and flicked it, sending a corporeal Patronus in the shape of a cat bounding through the air. The silvery creature came right up to the professor's face. She whispered something to it — quickly, barely moving her lips, so quietly I caught nothing but a faint movement of air — and the cat launched itself away, vanishing through the wall.
"You two—" McGonagall fixed us with her characteristic stern gaze, though beneath it was something that read as unmistakable concern. "Stay here. Do not go anywhere. Under any circumstances. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Professor," I nodded, the very picture of compliance.
"But—"
"No 'buts', Miss Granger." McGonagall left the office quickly, leaving the two of us behind.
"And the Headmaster is away," Hermione said miserably. "He would have—"
"He would have what? Given Potter a proper dressing-down? Snape told him clearly and plainly what he needed to do to protect his mind. And given that he has a connection to the Dark Lord through which he sees things — all the more reason not to trust what he sees through it."
"But before this, from what he said, what he saw was real."
"And did none of you — in your considerable collective wisdom — consider that an exceptionally powerful and knowledgeable dark wizard, a man who has lived at least fifty years, might have worked out that connection existed and started using it?"
"You sound like Snape," Hermione said, disapproving.
"Perhaps that's because he's right? Snape — as a former Death Eater — knows the Dark Lord's capabilities and talents better than anyone. And as a teacher, he knows Potter's capabilities, yours, mine, and every other student's. If he says the Dark Lord will hollow out Potter's mind if Potter doesn't do what he's told — then that's what will happen."
I let out a breath and sat down in a free chair. Hermione did the same, hands folded on her knees like a model pupil.
"So now we sit and wait," I said. Stating the obvious. "And hope that Potter hasn't led the others into a death trap. Bloody hell — off they go, two and a half wizards, to take on the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. Undying Spartans, the lot of them…"
"Hector…"
"Alright. I'll stop."
And indeed there was nothing left but to wait.
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