Imaginary (Part 7/11 of the Fallen Series)
Series Title: The Fallen Series
Chapter Title: Imaginary
Author: Tonya
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The danger in the wizarding world escalates as the students try to deal with recent events.
A/N: Sorry about the length of time between chapters. I blame a bad case of writer’s block and classes starting up. Thanks
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“Don’t say I’m out of touch
With this rampant chaos-- your reality
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge
The nightmare I built my own world to escape ”
-- “Imaginary” by Evanescence
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He didn’t know what time it was, how long they had all been sitting in silence. But time didn’t seem to matter anymore. At least not to them.
Ron sat on the floor near the fireplace, Hermione sitting beside him. He had only recently allowed any of them to come near him, to show him some form of comfort. When Harry had first returned to the common room, Ron had been in the far corner away from Hermione and Luna (who Hermione felt should not go alone to the Ravenclaw tower). Now, he had joined them in the center of the room, allowing Hermione to place a comforting arm around him. Luna sat on the couch, pulling distractedly on a loose strand of hair that had fallen from her long braid.
Harry, himself, couldn’t sit. He paced back and forth behind the couch, occasionally looking towards the window when his gaze wasn’t fixed on his three friends. He didn’t want to sit because if he sat he’d have nothing to focus on but his thoughts. And his inner thoughts were not something he wanted to stew over at the moment.
Luna stopped tugging on her hair and turned slightly in her seat to watch him. He felt her eyes follow his every movement but said nothing. She, however, decided to speak. “Harry,” she said in a hushed tone, “please sit.”
Harry simply shook his head and continued to walk back and forth.
Luna slowly pulled herself from her seat and walked around the couch to him. She reached out and gently took hold of his wrist, making him stop his thought-free wandering. She spoke again in the same hushed tone, as if not to disturb Ron and Hermione. “Walking yourself to the point of exhaustion won’t change anything.”
Harry wanted to argue, but tonight, he didn’t have it in him. He simply sighed and allowed Luna to drag him to the couch and force him to sit. Luna smiled sadly over at him with a gentle pat of his arm. For the first time since Harry could remember, he couldn’t return what had always been an infectious smile from her. He raised his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. They burned with tiredness, but he didn’t quite feel like sleeping at the moment.
He didn’t quite feel like doing anything at the moment.
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Only when Harry awoke with a pain his neck from sleeping wrong, did he realize that he had fallen asleep. He groaned a bit and shifted in his seat, finding Luna’s head resting against his shoulder. He glanced sideways at her but she did not stir. Hermione and Ron were sprawled out on the floor near the fireplace, her arm still around him, as if she was trying to shield him from all bad things.
He rubbed at his eyes and yawned, glancing towards the window. The sun was fully in the sky, and he could hear his fellow students shuffling about above them as they prepared for another day of classes.
Harry frowned deeply as he listened.
Life was continuing on for them as if nothing had changed. They would go to the Great Hall and indulge themselves in the warm breakfast. They would laugh and talk and gossip. They would go to each of their classes, and at the end of each, they would complain about the amount of homework they would be forced to do over the weekend.
They hadn’t lost a friend, a sister. They hadn’t carried her dead body back to Hogwarts in the darkness of the night. They hadn’t had the kind of night he and his friends had had.
Nothing had changed for those people who moved about above them.
Everything, however, had changed for them.
Hermione was the first of the three to wake. She sat up slowly, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She gave Ron another sad glance before looking up to see that Harry was awake as well.
“What time is it?” she asked quietly, blinking slowly.
Harry crossed his arms, trying his best not to disturb Luna who continued to use him as a pillow. “Time to get ready for class.”
Hermione shook her head, looking on the verge of tears again. “I can’t.”
“I know,” Harry replied with an understanding nod. He hadn’t intended on going to class today himself.
Hermione sniffled and quickly wiped at her eyes as the first round of students came down the stairs, talking happily amongst themselves. Harry didn’t turn to look at them, but he could tell by how the tone of their conversation changed that they were staring at them. Probably trying to figure out why they had decided to sleep in the common room and why exactly a Ravenclaw was with them.
Luna awoke next, the sound of a girl giggling finally waking her from her deep sleep. She blinked and raised her head, looking apologetically at Harry. “Sorry.”
Harry shrugged. “You weren’t bothering me.”
The three of them sat in a silence that was occasionally broken by fellow students as they made their way to breakfast or Ron’s quiet snoring.
“What do we do now?” Luna finally asked.
Both Harry and Hermione looked at her, confused. “What do you mean?” Harry asked her.
“Are we supposed to go about our day as if it didn’t happen?” she asked with a frown. “Because I’m not quite sure I can do that. Because no matter how we’ll pretend, it won’t be the same. Ginny still won’t be here.”
Hermione returned the girl’s expression. “I don’t think any of us can pretend, Luna.”
Luna nodded and began to pick lint from her school robes.
“Do you think Dumbledore has told Mr. and Mrs. Weasley yet?” Hermione asked quietly, throwing a cautious look in Ron’s direction.
Harry nodded slowly. “More than likely.”
He didn’t want to imagine that conversation or the pain the Weasleys probably felt as they were told their only daughter had been killed.
Harry stood as the image of the Weasleys, both overcome with shock and grief, burned itself into his subconscious. He didn’t even realize he had started away from his friends and towards the exit until he heard Hermione call his name. He turned to see her and Luna both watching him with quizzical expressions.
A couple of second years he didn’t recognize him gave him a peculiar look as they stepped around him to make their way to breakfast.
Harry continued to linger by the exit, his friends watching him. He had no idea where he had planned on going, but apparently his subconscious had planned to take him to that unknown destination whether he knew it or not. He finally found words as he watched Hermione and Luna share a worried look, both probably wondering about the state of his sanity at the moment.
“When Ron wakes up,” he said, and both girls turned to his voice, “Go to the room of requirement.”
Hermione looked more perplexed by this order. “But why?”
He wanted to scream that he couldn’t stand to be in the common room right now. Scream that every emblem of maroon and gold, every decoration, every piece of furniture did nothing but remind him of blood. Of pain. Of Ginny.
But he didn’t share that thought. He simply stated, “We won’t be disturbed by other students there.”
Hermione nodded in understanding.
Luna blinked at him. “And where will you be?”
Harry thought about that for a moment. “The kitchens,” he finally settled on with a nod of his head. “To see if Dobby can get us some food.”
He turned and walked out before either girl could say anything more.
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Harry circled the corridor for the third time, possibly the fourth. He had lost track sometime between thoughts of the previous night and thoughts of what was to come with the day. He had planned to go straight down to the kitchens like he had told Hermione and Luna, but on his way, all he could hear was the excited chatter of his fellow students. Their laughter. Their jokes. The smiles on their voices.
And he had had to reel in the urge not to curse every single one of them for being happy on such a day.
Fearing that he would do just that if he listened to their insistent sound any longer, he had wandered back to some of the more abandoned corridors within the school’s walls, hoping that by the time he contained his rage, most of the students would be in the Great Hall stuffing their faces.
Feeling that he had perhaps stalled enough, he took a deep breath and began around a corner. Before he had gotten far, a hand reached from behind him and gently grabbed his shoulder. Nerves on edge, Harry turned quickly, his wand drawn.
“Perhaps I should have spoken.” Luna stood before him, a parchment in her hands and the tip of Harry’s wand resting over her heart.
“Luna,” he sighed, his voice coming out more shaky than he had planned.
He wasn’t sure what frightened him more, the previous moment when he had felt he was about to be attacked or now when he came to the realization that he had almost placed Luna on the receiving end of one of his curses.
“Sorry,” he managed, slipping his wand back inside his robes. “What are you doing here?”
“Breakfast for four people can be quite a load,” she replied. “I thought I would offer my assistance.”
Harry nodded, that answer appeasing him until a new question rose in his mind. “But what are you doing *here*?”
“Hermione thought, rather correctly by the way, that you’d make a detour or two on your way to the kitchens. She fetched this from your room.”
Luna handed him the parchment, and only then did Harry recognize it as his Marauder’s map.
“It’s quite the map,” she said with a soft smile. “What do you use it for?”
“Staying out of trouble,” he joked dryly. He placed the map inside his pocket. “We should head to the kitchens.”
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Harry never thought of house-elves being strong creatures, but the vice-like grip that Dobby had on his legs at the present moment seemed to prove otherwise in his mind.
“Dobby has heard the news of Harry Potter’s loss,” the creature sobbed into Harry’s robes. “Dobby wishes there was something he could do for Harry Potter.”
“There’s nothing you can do, Dobby,” Harry replied, his words coming out much harder than he had liked.
Still clinging to Harry’s legs, Dobby looked up with wide, tearful eyes. “And Harry Potter’s Wheezy?”
Harry swallowed hard. “Ron’s--” He searched for the proper word. “He’s been better.”
“Is there nothing at all Dobby can do?”
At this, Luna, who had been standing quietly beside Harry and taking everything in, knelt down to Dobby’s level. He turned his giant house-elf eyes on her as she smiled pleasantly at him. “We were hoping you would be able to provide us with some breakfast.” Her smile fell away as she continued. “We didn’t feel it was right to sit in the Great Hall without our friend.”
Dobby studied Luna for a moment before launching himself at her into a tearful hug. Luna let out a stunned yelp, and hugged the house-elf back with a soft laugh.
“Dobby can do that for Harry Potter and his pretty friend,” Dobby sniffled into Luna’s robes.
He let her go and scampered off to gather items for their breakfast.
Luna stood, a faint smile still on her lips as she turned to Harry. “He’s very nice.”
Harry nodded. “He tried to kill me in second year.”
Luna blinked.
“With a rogue bludger at that,” he continued. “But yeah--” Harry watched in appreciation as Dobby scampered around the kitchen, gathering objects left and right. “He’s very nice.”
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The walk back from the kitchens was quiet, neither Harry nor Luna speaking. Harry was certain that she wanted to speak, to ask him how he was, but he appreciated her ability to read him. To understand that, at the moment, he wanted to be alone with his own thoughts. His own voice in his head. For good or for bad.
He was still lost in his own thoughts as he pushed the door open to the room of requirement. Luna stepped in and Harry followed after as Hermione, who was sitting and talking with Ron, looked at them quizzically.
“What?” he asked as he and Luna placed the food and drinks on the lone table inside the room.
“You asked for something,” Hermione replied vaguely, her eyes focused on the wall behind him.
Harry raised an eyebrow at her before glancing over his shoulder to see a bookcase, each shelf lined to capacity.
“That wasn’t there until just now,” she continued.
“You asked for books?” Ron asked, sounding as confused as Harry still felt.
“No,” he replied, watching as Luna made her way to the bookcase.
She trailed a finger over a row of spines, her eyes scanning the titles as she went along. Her hand finally stopped on a book with a thick, dark green spine. She pulled it from the shelf, flipping through the pages. After a moment, Harry joined her, and she glanced up from the yellowed pages of the book.
“You asked for revenge,” she said as her eyes met his.
Harry frowned. “No, I didn’t ask for anything. I was just thinking--”
Thinking about the many ways in which I would love to kill Voldemort.
Harry frowned as Hermione and Ron also joined him at the bookcase.
Hermione scanned the shelves, reading all the titles aloud. “Dark Charms. Black Magicks for Advanced Wizards. Unforgivable Curses. Advanced Defensive Magic.”
Hermione threw him a cautious look. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s a horrible idea, Harry.”
Harry’s jaw tensed, his eyes focused on the many colored books in front of him. “Hermione, I’m not in the mood for a lecture right now.”
“I’m not lecturing you, Harry,” she replied, her voice annoyingly calm. “I’m simply saying that--”
Harry turned to her, snapping. “I don’t care what you’re saying, Hermione! Not right now.”
“Hey,” Ron chimed in angrily, a tone Harry wasn’t used to hearing directed towards him. “We’re all bloody pissed off right now, but there’s no reason for us to turn on each other.”
“Ronald’s right,” Luna said, sliding the book back into its spot. “We should eat our breakfast before it gets cold. Dobby worked very hard on it.”
Luna walked away to begin to eat, soon followed by Hermione, and then Ron. Harry continued to linger alone in front of the bookcase for a moment, contemplating which book would be the one he’d need in order to finally destroy his worst enemy.
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“Would You-Know-Who really be thick enough to come into school and take her?” Ron asked.
The four friends had sat in silence for most of the morning and afternoon, each reading a book or two from the shelves. Only recently had they began to discuss the idea of Voldemort striking again, capturing another person to whom Harry was close. From there, they had begun to throw around theories on how Ginny had been seized in the first place.
“He’s come into Hogwarts before,” Hermione countered.
Harry frowned with a shake of his head, thinking back to previous years. “But that was when he was weak. Now that he’s at full strength, it’d be too risky. I don’t think he’d come that close to Dumbledore.”
“Or you,” Luna added from behind her book on Defensive Spells.
“So the question remains of how did he get Ginny?” Harry replied.
“Someone from the inside,” Hermione offered. “Someone with ties to him. Allegiance.”
At this, Ron jumped to his feet. “Malfoy!”
“Ron,” Hermione sighed. “We have no proof that Malfoy is behind this.”
“Harry proved his dad was a Death Eater,” Ron continued, determined. “Dear ol’ dad is one of You-Know-Who’s most loyal followers, and I’m sure Malfoy would do anything to please his dad. Especially if it meant personally attacking us.”
“And I don’t doubt any of that, Ron,” Hermione countered gently, “but that’s not proof. That’s-”
“Enough for me,” Harry frowned, getting to his feet as well.
Luna looked up from her book as Hermione’s eyes widened. “And what exactly do you plan to do? If he is behind it, Malfoy won’t simply confess.”
“I don’t plan to question him.”
“You can’t just curse him.”
“Who says we can’t?” Ron asked.
“We should tell Dumbledore and let him handle this. I want revenge for Ginny as much as the both of you, but we need to go about it the right way.”
“Right now, Hermione, this *is* the right way,” Harry replied.
Ron nodded in agreement. “It’s the only way.”
Hermione turned to Luna. “Luna, please help me here.”
Luna sighed and closed her book, dog-earing her page before doing so. “I do agree, Hermione, that Professor Dumbledore should be brought into the situation. But I also feel that if Draco Malfoy is involved, he deserves whatever Harry and Ron see fit.” She looked at the boys. “Perhaps involve Professor Dumbledore *after* you handle Draco? A compromise between both plans.”
“See,” Ron said, motioning towards Luna. “Even Loony-” Off a look from Harry, he revised. “-Luna agrees.”
Hermione looked at each of them before finally sighing, realizing that not only was she outnumbered but she wouldn’t be able to talk Harry and Ron out of their grand plan. “Fine. When?”
Harry looked at his watch. “Dinner ends soon. We can catch him as he’s headed back to the Slytherin common room.”
“And Crabbe and Goyle?”
“They’re not the brightest of students,” Luna said, her gaze as she opened her book and returned her attention to its pages. “I’m sure they’ll be easy enough to incapacitate.”
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“We can still go to Dumbledore, you know,” Hermione’s whispered voice came from over his shoulder.
Harry simply shook his head as he and his friends lingered in the darkness of an offshoot of a corridor that Harry knew that the Slytherins used to head to their dungeon of a common room. He had yet to see Malfoy and his bodyguard goons make their way down the hall.
Probably lingering behind to cause trouble, Harry thought.
“You remember the plan, right?” he said, his eyes never leaving the corridor.
Luna was the one to answer. “Hermione and I petrify Crabbe and Goyle while you and Ron deal with Draco.”
“And no, Hermione, I am *not* going to Dumbledore first,” he said without turning to look at the girl, sensing that she was about to make her plea again.
If he had been looking in her direction, he would have noticed her mouth shut and a frown form on her lips as he spoke.
But at the moment, he was too focused on the three figures coming towards them. He nodded his head in the direction of the three Slytherins, and Harry felt two wands raise. One to his left and one to his right.
“Petrificus totalus!”
The girls’ spells came in unison, Hermione’s hitting Crabbe and Luna’s leveling Goyle. Both boys froze on spot, toppling over, as a shocked Malfoy looked to his right and then to his left to see his two friends petrified.
Wands out, Harry and Ron stepped out into the corridor. Seeing them, Malfoy made a move for his own wand, but stopped short when he noticed the girls behind them with their own wands raised.
“What the hell is this, Potter?” he managed, his eyes darting from Ron to Harry. He took an instinctive step back, nearly tripping over Goyle in the process, as Harry and Ron advanced on him.
“Tell me what you know, Malfoy,” Harry demanded.
Draco stood his ground as Harry and Ron finally stood directly before him. “What I know?” he replied, a slight sneer on his face. “What I know is that you, Weasel, and your little groupies there have gone mental.”
“I know you had something to do with what happened to Ginny.”
“I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re talking about, Potter, but whatever happened to the Weasley brat?” His sneer deepened, “That was her own doing.”
Harry growled and braced himself to deliver a nasty curse in Malfoy’s direction, but found it unnecessary as Ron punched the other boy fiercely in the face. Malfoy cried out, holding a hand to his nose, the second time this term that his mouth had gotten him a bloody nose. Harry glanced at Ron, shocked, and his best friend was grimacing and shaking his hand angrily.
“Don’t ever talk about my sister,” he replied through gritted teeth, still shaking his hand.
Harry turned to Malfoy with a smirk. “Still claim to know nothing?”
Malfoy wiped his nose with the back of his hand, blood still slowly trickling out his left nostril. “You think just because you’re the big hero you can get away with this kind of crap?”
“At the moment, I don’t care if I get a year’s worth of detention. I don’t care if I get expelled,” Harry replied darkly. “I just want to know what you know.”
“And if I don’t feel like sharing?” Draco replied, sneering. “You won’t do anything but run to your precious Dumbledore. You don’t have the guts to do anything to me. Hero or not, you’ve always been all talk, Potter. ”
Harry tilted his head. “You ever been on the receiving end of an Unforgivable Curse?”
Draco simply stared, his sneer falling a bit.
“Not fun. Quite painful actually. You wish for death.”
“Harry,” Hermione’s voice said warningly from somewhere over his shoulder.
“You wouldn’t,” Draco replied with a shake of his head, the determination in his voice betrayed by the uncertainty in his eyes. “You can’t.”
“I can, and I would.”
Draco stood tall. “You’re full of it.”
A slow smirk spread across Harry’s face. “CRUCI--”
“NO!”
Draco quickly interrupted, raising his hands slightly as if that would have shielded him against the Cruciatus curse.
“I’m sorry?” Harry replied.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Draco frowned.
“Harry, someone’s coming!”
This time it was Luna’s voice.
“Let them come,” Harry replied, defiantly, his wand still on Malfoy.
“Potter!”
From behind him, Snape’s bark bounced off the walls of the corridor, and Harry could hear him stomping his way over to him and Malfoy. Harry didn’t lower his wand, even as he felt Snape lingering over his shoulder.
“May I ask what you think you’re doing?” the man growled.
Never taking his eyes off Malfoy, Harry replied, “Finding out what Malfoy did to Ginny.”
There was a moment where no one spoke, then Snape snatched the wand out of Harry’s hand. Harry finally turned to look at the man, his own rage-filled eyes matched by his Professor’s.
“I‘m not sure what made you believe that this was acceptable behavior, Potter, but I beg to disagree,” Snape replied gravely. “To Dumbledore’s office immediately. All of you.”
Draco sneered at Harry, chuckling under his breath.
“*That* includes you, Mister Malfoy,” Snape replied, turning his gaze from Harry. “I believe Dumbledore would like a word or two with you as well.”
Draco’s face fell, and Harry couldn’t stop the satisfied smirk that crept onto his own.
As he and his friends were marched to Dumbledore’s office by a livid Snape, Harry didn’t care what punishment befell him.
Cause now he was one step closer to finding out what happened to Ginny.
And paying back her murderer.
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“Harry, I must inform you that I’m not pleased with how you handled this situation.”
Snape had delivered them all and described to Dumbledore the spectacle he had found. Then he had dismissed himself to go unpetrify Goyle and Crabbe who still laid in the corridor frozen in time. Once Snape had left, Dumbledore had turned to Luna and Hermione first for an explanation of what had happened, Harry figuring that Dumbledore felt that they would be the least bias of the five students in the room.
The girls had recollected the story as unbiased as they could given the circumstances. Harry found himself a little relieved that they both failed to mention his botched attempt at placing Malfoy under an unforgivable curse. Once hearing their story, he dismissed the girls, informing them that they had each lost 50 points for their house for cursing a fellow student.
At that point, Professor McGonagall had arrived, having been summoned after three of her students had found themselves in a situation. Dumbledore had had her escort Malfoy to Madam Pomfey for his bloody nose and advised her that she wanted to speak with the boy as soon as he finished attending to other matters.
The two “other matters” had simply looked at each other, each wondering what fate was about to befall them.
But Dumbledore had only told Ron that his parents were waiting for him. Waiting to take him home to spend a few days with the family, which Harry silently knew included Ginny’s funeral. Ron had then been dismissed without a single point taken from Gryffindor on his behalf.
That had left Harry.
Who now sat in Dumbledore’s office, slouched in his chair, arms folded angrily.
Dumbledore’s voice came from somewhere over his shoulder, but Harry didn’t care to turn and look at the Headmaster directly as he replied to the Headmaster‘s declaration of disappointment. “I’m sorry that we didn’t come to you first with our suspicions, Professor, but you’re lucky we brought Malfoy to you alive.”
Dumbledore exhaled deeply, stepping over to his desk and taking a seat, his eyes trained on Harry. “What are you feeling right now, Harry?”
“One of my best friends is dead, Professor.”
“This, I know, Harry,” Dumbledore nodded. “And I asked you how you felt.”
Harry’s frown deepened. “How the bloody hell am I supposed to feel? Angry. Guilty. Lost.”
“Good.”
“Good?” Harry scoffed.
“Yes, because tonight, I feared that you had stopped feeling. Emotions are a very powerful thing as know, and they’re what separate you from Voldemort.”
“He feels emotion.” His hand unconsciously reached up and touched his scar, which had taken to tingling almost every day after Voldemort’s rise to power at the end of the last term.
“His feeling are solely power-driven. Driven by his need to rid the world of who he feels is impure. He feels a warped sense of joy, and like yourself, he feels anger at its most intense. But you also mentioned two other emotions that eased my concerns.”
“Lost,” he mumbled.
“And guilt,” Dumbledore nodded. “Two emotions Voldemort would never allow himself to feel.”
“So what?”
“So you have yet to stoop to his level.”
Harry frowned at those choice of words.
Yet.
“Can I be excused, Professor?” he finally said, ready to be away from everything and everyone for a moment.
Dumbledore nodded. “50 points from you as well for tonight’s behavior.”
“Whatever,” Harry mumbled as he got to his feet.
“Before you go, the Weasleys also request your presence this week.”
Harry stopped in his tracks. “Why? They know I’m the reason Ginny’s not here, right?”
“They know that Voldemort has struck close to home in hopes of breaking you, yes.”
Harry frowned. “Which is just a fancy way of saying I killed her.”
“No one here thinks you’re responsible, Harry, and neither should you.”
“Because you don’t know!” Harry snapped. “Because you weren’t there to get the messages. To see her just laying there. Ginny died because of me, and there’s nothing you can say that will ever convince me otherwise.”
Dumbledore nodded sadly. “I feel you should at least attend the funeral out of respect for your friend, for her family.”
Harry simply nodded, the only commitment he could give at the moment as his stomach tied itself in nauseating knots.
“Get some rest, Harry. It‘s been a long few days for you.”
Harry nodded again before turning and making his way out of Dumbledore’s office.
A long few days was the understatement of the year in Harry’s mind.
Chapter Title: Imaginary
Author: Tonya
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The danger in the wizarding world escalates as the students try to deal with recent events.
A/N: Sorry about the length of time between chapters. I blame a bad case of writer’s block and classes starting up. Thanks
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“Don’t say I’m out of touch
With this rampant chaos-- your reality
I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge
The nightmare I built my own world to escape ”
-- “Imaginary” by Evanescence
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He didn’t know what time it was, how long they had all been sitting in silence. But time didn’t seem to matter anymore. At least not to them.
Ron sat on the floor near the fireplace, Hermione sitting beside him. He had only recently allowed any of them to come near him, to show him some form of comfort. When Harry had first returned to the common room, Ron had been in the far corner away from Hermione and Luna (who Hermione felt should not go alone to the Ravenclaw tower). Now, he had joined them in the center of the room, allowing Hermione to place a comforting arm around him. Luna sat on the couch, pulling distractedly on a loose strand of hair that had fallen from her long braid.
Harry, himself, couldn’t sit. He paced back and forth behind the couch, occasionally looking towards the window when his gaze wasn’t fixed on his three friends. He didn’t want to sit because if he sat he’d have nothing to focus on but his thoughts. And his inner thoughts were not something he wanted to stew over at the moment.
Luna stopped tugging on her hair and turned slightly in her seat to watch him. He felt her eyes follow his every movement but said nothing. She, however, decided to speak. “Harry,” she said in a hushed tone, “please sit.”
Harry simply shook his head and continued to walk back and forth.
Luna slowly pulled herself from her seat and walked around the couch to him. She reached out and gently took hold of his wrist, making him stop his thought-free wandering. She spoke again in the same hushed tone, as if not to disturb Ron and Hermione. “Walking yourself to the point of exhaustion won’t change anything.”
Harry wanted to argue, but tonight, he didn’t have it in him. He simply sighed and allowed Luna to drag him to the couch and force him to sit. Luna smiled sadly over at him with a gentle pat of his arm. For the first time since Harry could remember, he couldn’t return what had always been an infectious smile from her. He raised his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. They burned with tiredness, but he didn’t quite feel like sleeping at the moment.
He didn’t quite feel like doing anything at the moment.
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Only when Harry awoke with a pain his neck from sleeping wrong, did he realize that he had fallen asleep. He groaned a bit and shifted in his seat, finding Luna’s head resting against his shoulder. He glanced sideways at her but she did not stir. Hermione and Ron were sprawled out on the floor near the fireplace, her arm still around him, as if she was trying to shield him from all bad things.
He rubbed at his eyes and yawned, glancing towards the window. The sun was fully in the sky, and he could hear his fellow students shuffling about above them as they prepared for another day of classes.
Harry frowned deeply as he listened.
Life was continuing on for them as if nothing had changed. They would go to the Great Hall and indulge themselves in the warm breakfast. They would laugh and talk and gossip. They would go to each of their classes, and at the end of each, they would complain about the amount of homework they would be forced to do over the weekend.
They hadn’t lost a friend, a sister. They hadn’t carried her dead body back to Hogwarts in the darkness of the night. They hadn’t had the kind of night he and his friends had had.
Nothing had changed for those people who moved about above them.
Everything, however, had changed for them.
Hermione was the first of the three to wake. She sat up slowly, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She gave Ron another sad glance before looking up to see that Harry was awake as well.
“What time is it?” she asked quietly, blinking slowly.
Harry crossed his arms, trying his best not to disturb Luna who continued to use him as a pillow. “Time to get ready for class.”
Hermione shook her head, looking on the verge of tears again. “I can’t.”
“I know,” Harry replied with an understanding nod. He hadn’t intended on going to class today himself.
Hermione sniffled and quickly wiped at her eyes as the first round of students came down the stairs, talking happily amongst themselves. Harry didn’t turn to look at them, but he could tell by how the tone of their conversation changed that they were staring at them. Probably trying to figure out why they had decided to sleep in the common room and why exactly a Ravenclaw was with them.
Luna awoke next, the sound of a girl giggling finally waking her from her deep sleep. She blinked and raised her head, looking apologetically at Harry. “Sorry.”
Harry shrugged. “You weren’t bothering me.”
The three of them sat in a silence that was occasionally broken by fellow students as they made their way to breakfast or Ron’s quiet snoring.
“What do we do now?” Luna finally asked.
Both Harry and Hermione looked at her, confused. “What do you mean?” Harry asked her.
“Are we supposed to go about our day as if it didn’t happen?” she asked with a frown. “Because I’m not quite sure I can do that. Because no matter how we’ll pretend, it won’t be the same. Ginny still won’t be here.”
Hermione returned the girl’s expression. “I don’t think any of us can pretend, Luna.”
Luna nodded and began to pick lint from her school robes.
“Do you think Dumbledore has told Mr. and Mrs. Weasley yet?” Hermione asked quietly, throwing a cautious look in Ron’s direction.
Harry nodded slowly. “More than likely.”
He didn’t want to imagine that conversation or the pain the Weasleys probably felt as they were told their only daughter had been killed.
Harry stood as the image of the Weasleys, both overcome with shock and grief, burned itself into his subconscious. He didn’t even realize he had started away from his friends and towards the exit until he heard Hermione call his name. He turned to see her and Luna both watching him with quizzical expressions.
A couple of second years he didn’t recognize him gave him a peculiar look as they stepped around him to make their way to breakfast.
Harry continued to linger by the exit, his friends watching him. He had no idea where he had planned on going, but apparently his subconscious had planned to take him to that unknown destination whether he knew it or not. He finally found words as he watched Hermione and Luna share a worried look, both probably wondering about the state of his sanity at the moment.
“When Ron wakes up,” he said, and both girls turned to his voice, “Go to the room of requirement.”
Hermione looked more perplexed by this order. “But why?”
He wanted to scream that he couldn’t stand to be in the common room right now. Scream that every emblem of maroon and gold, every decoration, every piece of furniture did nothing but remind him of blood. Of pain. Of Ginny.
But he didn’t share that thought. He simply stated, “We won’t be disturbed by other students there.”
Hermione nodded in understanding.
Luna blinked at him. “And where will you be?”
Harry thought about that for a moment. “The kitchens,” he finally settled on with a nod of his head. “To see if Dobby can get us some food.”
He turned and walked out before either girl could say anything more.
----------
Harry circled the corridor for the third time, possibly the fourth. He had lost track sometime between thoughts of the previous night and thoughts of what was to come with the day. He had planned to go straight down to the kitchens like he had told Hermione and Luna, but on his way, all he could hear was the excited chatter of his fellow students. Their laughter. Their jokes. The smiles on their voices.
And he had had to reel in the urge not to curse every single one of them for being happy on such a day.
Fearing that he would do just that if he listened to their insistent sound any longer, he had wandered back to some of the more abandoned corridors within the school’s walls, hoping that by the time he contained his rage, most of the students would be in the Great Hall stuffing their faces.
Feeling that he had perhaps stalled enough, he took a deep breath and began around a corner. Before he had gotten far, a hand reached from behind him and gently grabbed his shoulder. Nerves on edge, Harry turned quickly, his wand drawn.
“Perhaps I should have spoken.” Luna stood before him, a parchment in her hands and the tip of Harry’s wand resting over her heart.
“Luna,” he sighed, his voice coming out more shaky than he had planned.
He wasn’t sure what frightened him more, the previous moment when he had felt he was about to be attacked or now when he came to the realization that he had almost placed Luna on the receiving end of one of his curses.
“Sorry,” he managed, slipping his wand back inside his robes. “What are you doing here?”
“Breakfast for four people can be quite a load,” she replied. “I thought I would offer my assistance.”
Harry nodded, that answer appeasing him until a new question rose in his mind. “But what are you doing *here*?”
“Hermione thought, rather correctly by the way, that you’d make a detour or two on your way to the kitchens. She fetched this from your room.”
Luna handed him the parchment, and only then did Harry recognize it as his Marauder’s map.
“It’s quite the map,” she said with a soft smile. “What do you use it for?”
“Staying out of trouble,” he joked dryly. He placed the map inside his pocket. “We should head to the kitchens.”
----------
Harry never thought of house-elves being strong creatures, but the vice-like grip that Dobby had on his legs at the present moment seemed to prove otherwise in his mind.
“Dobby has heard the news of Harry Potter’s loss,” the creature sobbed into Harry’s robes. “Dobby wishes there was something he could do for Harry Potter.”
“There’s nothing you can do, Dobby,” Harry replied, his words coming out much harder than he had liked.
Still clinging to Harry’s legs, Dobby looked up with wide, tearful eyes. “And Harry Potter’s Wheezy?”
Harry swallowed hard. “Ron’s--” He searched for the proper word. “He’s been better.”
“Is there nothing at all Dobby can do?”
At this, Luna, who had been standing quietly beside Harry and taking everything in, knelt down to Dobby’s level. He turned his giant house-elf eyes on her as she smiled pleasantly at him. “We were hoping you would be able to provide us with some breakfast.” Her smile fell away as she continued. “We didn’t feel it was right to sit in the Great Hall without our friend.”
Dobby studied Luna for a moment before launching himself at her into a tearful hug. Luna let out a stunned yelp, and hugged the house-elf back with a soft laugh.
“Dobby can do that for Harry Potter and his pretty friend,” Dobby sniffled into Luna’s robes.
He let her go and scampered off to gather items for their breakfast.
Luna stood, a faint smile still on her lips as she turned to Harry. “He’s very nice.”
Harry nodded. “He tried to kill me in second year.”
Luna blinked.
“With a rogue bludger at that,” he continued. “But yeah--” Harry watched in appreciation as Dobby scampered around the kitchen, gathering objects left and right. “He’s very nice.”
----------
The walk back from the kitchens was quiet, neither Harry nor Luna speaking. Harry was certain that she wanted to speak, to ask him how he was, but he appreciated her ability to read him. To understand that, at the moment, he wanted to be alone with his own thoughts. His own voice in his head. For good or for bad.
He was still lost in his own thoughts as he pushed the door open to the room of requirement. Luna stepped in and Harry followed after as Hermione, who was sitting and talking with Ron, looked at them quizzically.
“What?” he asked as he and Luna placed the food and drinks on the lone table inside the room.
“You asked for something,” Hermione replied vaguely, her eyes focused on the wall behind him.
Harry raised an eyebrow at her before glancing over his shoulder to see a bookcase, each shelf lined to capacity.
“That wasn’t there until just now,” she continued.
“You asked for books?” Ron asked, sounding as confused as Harry still felt.
“No,” he replied, watching as Luna made her way to the bookcase.
She trailed a finger over a row of spines, her eyes scanning the titles as she went along. Her hand finally stopped on a book with a thick, dark green spine. She pulled it from the shelf, flipping through the pages. After a moment, Harry joined her, and she glanced up from the yellowed pages of the book.
“You asked for revenge,” she said as her eyes met his.
Harry frowned. “No, I didn’t ask for anything. I was just thinking--”
Thinking about the many ways in which I would love to kill Voldemort.
Harry frowned as Hermione and Ron also joined him at the bookcase.
Hermione scanned the shelves, reading all the titles aloud. “Dark Charms. Black Magicks for Advanced Wizards. Unforgivable Curses. Advanced Defensive Magic.”
Hermione threw him a cautious look. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s a horrible idea, Harry.”
Harry’s jaw tensed, his eyes focused on the many colored books in front of him. “Hermione, I’m not in the mood for a lecture right now.”
“I’m not lecturing you, Harry,” she replied, her voice annoyingly calm. “I’m simply saying that--”
Harry turned to her, snapping. “I don’t care what you’re saying, Hermione! Not right now.”
“Hey,” Ron chimed in angrily, a tone Harry wasn’t used to hearing directed towards him. “We’re all bloody pissed off right now, but there’s no reason for us to turn on each other.”
“Ronald’s right,” Luna said, sliding the book back into its spot. “We should eat our breakfast before it gets cold. Dobby worked very hard on it.”
Luna walked away to begin to eat, soon followed by Hermione, and then Ron. Harry continued to linger alone in front of the bookcase for a moment, contemplating which book would be the one he’d need in order to finally destroy his worst enemy.
----------
“Would You-Know-Who really be thick enough to come into school and take her?” Ron asked.
The four friends had sat in silence for most of the morning and afternoon, each reading a book or two from the shelves. Only recently had they began to discuss the idea of Voldemort striking again, capturing another person to whom Harry was close. From there, they had begun to throw around theories on how Ginny had been seized in the first place.
“He’s come into Hogwarts before,” Hermione countered.
Harry frowned with a shake of his head, thinking back to previous years. “But that was when he was weak. Now that he’s at full strength, it’d be too risky. I don’t think he’d come that close to Dumbledore.”
“Or you,” Luna added from behind her book on Defensive Spells.
“So the question remains of how did he get Ginny?” Harry replied.
“Someone from the inside,” Hermione offered. “Someone with ties to him. Allegiance.”
At this, Ron jumped to his feet. “Malfoy!”
“Ron,” Hermione sighed. “We have no proof that Malfoy is behind this.”
“Harry proved his dad was a Death Eater,” Ron continued, determined. “Dear ol’ dad is one of You-Know-Who’s most loyal followers, and I’m sure Malfoy would do anything to please his dad. Especially if it meant personally attacking us.”
“And I don’t doubt any of that, Ron,” Hermione countered gently, “but that’s not proof. That’s-”
“Enough for me,” Harry frowned, getting to his feet as well.
Luna looked up from her book as Hermione’s eyes widened. “And what exactly do you plan to do? If he is behind it, Malfoy won’t simply confess.”
“I don’t plan to question him.”
“You can’t just curse him.”
“Who says we can’t?” Ron asked.
“We should tell Dumbledore and let him handle this. I want revenge for Ginny as much as the both of you, but we need to go about it the right way.”
“Right now, Hermione, this *is* the right way,” Harry replied.
Ron nodded in agreement. “It’s the only way.”
Hermione turned to Luna. “Luna, please help me here.”
Luna sighed and closed her book, dog-earing her page before doing so. “I do agree, Hermione, that Professor Dumbledore should be brought into the situation. But I also feel that if Draco Malfoy is involved, he deserves whatever Harry and Ron see fit.” She looked at the boys. “Perhaps involve Professor Dumbledore *after* you handle Draco? A compromise between both plans.”
“See,” Ron said, motioning towards Luna. “Even Loony-” Off a look from Harry, he revised. “-Luna agrees.”
Hermione looked at each of them before finally sighing, realizing that not only was she outnumbered but she wouldn’t be able to talk Harry and Ron out of their grand plan. “Fine. When?”
Harry looked at his watch. “Dinner ends soon. We can catch him as he’s headed back to the Slytherin common room.”
“And Crabbe and Goyle?”
“They’re not the brightest of students,” Luna said, her gaze as she opened her book and returned her attention to its pages. “I’m sure they’ll be easy enough to incapacitate.”
----------
“We can still go to Dumbledore, you know,” Hermione’s whispered voice came from over his shoulder.
Harry simply shook his head as he and his friends lingered in the darkness of an offshoot of a corridor that Harry knew that the Slytherins used to head to their dungeon of a common room. He had yet to see Malfoy and his bodyguard goons make their way down the hall.
Probably lingering behind to cause trouble, Harry thought.
“You remember the plan, right?” he said, his eyes never leaving the corridor.
Luna was the one to answer. “Hermione and I petrify Crabbe and Goyle while you and Ron deal with Draco.”
“And no, Hermione, I am *not* going to Dumbledore first,” he said without turning to look at the girl, sensing that she was about to make her plea again.
If he had been looking in her direction, he would have noticed her mouth shut and a frown form on her lips as he spoke.
But at the moment, he was too focused on the three figures coming towards them. He nodded his head in the direction of the three Slytherins, and Harry felt two wands raise. One to his left and one to his right.
“Petrificus totalus!”
The girls’ spells came in unison, Hermione’s hitting Crabbe and Luna’s leveling Goyle. Both boys froze on spot, toppling over, as a shocked Malfoy looked to his right and then to his left to see his two friends petrified.
Wands out, Harry and Ron stepped out into the corridor. Seeing them, Malfoy made a move for his own wand, but stopped short when he noticed the girls behind them with their own wands raised.
“What the hell is this, Potter?” he managed, his eyes darting from Ron to Harry. He took an instinctive step back, nearly tripping over Goyle in the process, as Harry and Ron advanced on him.
“Tell me what you know, Malfoy,” Harry demanded.
Draco stood his ground as Harry and Ron finally stood directly before him. “What I know?” he replied, a slight sneer on his face. “What I know is that you, Weasel, and your little groupies there have gone mental.”
“I know you had something to do with what happened to Ginny.”
“I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re talking about, Potter, but whatever happened to the Weasley brat?” His sneer deepened, “That was her own doing.”
Harry growled and braced himself to deliver a nasty curse in Malfoy’s direction, but found it unnecessary as Ron punched the other boy fiercely in the face. Malfoy cried out, holding a hand to his nose, the second time this term that his mouth had gotten him a bloody nose. Harry glanced at Ron, shocked, and his best friend was grimacing and shaking his hand angrily.
“Don’t ever talk about my sister,” he replied through gritted teeth, still shaking his hand.
Harry turned to Malfoy with a smirk. “Still claim to know nothing?”
Malfoy wiped his nose with the back of his hand, blood still slowly trickling out his left nostril. “You think just because you’re the big hero you can get away with this kind of crap?”
“At the moment, I don’t care if I get a year’s worth of detention. I don’t care if I get expelled,” Harry replied darkly. “I just want to know what you know.”
“And if I don’t feel like sharing?” Draco replied, sneering. “You won’t do anything but run to your precious Dumbledore. You don’t have the guts to do anything to me. Hero or not, you’ve always been all talk, Potter. ”
Harry tilted his head. “You ever been on the receiving end of an Unforgivable Curse?”
Draco simply stared, his sneer falling a bit.
“Not fun. Quite painful actually. You wish for death.”
“Harry,” Hermione’s voice said warningly from somewhere over his shoulder.
“You wouldn’t,” Draco replied with a shake of his head, the determination in his voice betrayed by the uncertainty in his eyes. “You can’t.”
“I can, and I would.”
Draco stood tall. “You’re full of it.”
A slow smirk spread across Harry’s face. “CRUCI--”
“NO!”
Draco quickly interrupted, raising his hands slightly as if that would have shielded him against the Cruciatus curse.
“I’m sorry?” Harry replied.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Draco frowned.
“Harry, someone’s coming!”
This time it was Luna’s voice.
“Let them come,” Harry replied, defiantly, his wand still on Malfoy.
“Potter!”
From behind him, Snape’s bark bounced off the walls of the corridor, and Harry could hear him stomping his way over to him and Malfoy. Harry didn’t lower his wand, even as he felt Snape lingering over his shoulder.
“May I ask what you think you’re doing?” the man growled.
Never taking his eyes off Malfoy, Harry replied, “Finding out what Malfoy did to Ginny.”
There was a moment where no one spoke, then Snape snatched the wand out of Harry’s hand. Harry finally turned to look at the man, his own rage-filled eyes matched by his Professor’s.
“I‘m not sure what made you believe that this was acceptable behavior, Potter, but I beg to disagree,” Snape replied gravely. “To Dumbledore’s office immediately. All of you.”
Draco sneered at Harry, chuckling under his breath.
“*That* includes you, Mister Malfoy,” Snape replied, turning his gaze from Harry. “I believe Dumbledore would like a word or two with you as well.”
Draco’s face fell, and Harry couldn’t stop the satisfied smirk that crept onto his own.
As he and his friends were marched to Dumbledore’s office by a livid Snape, Harry didn’t care what punishment befell him.
Cause now he was one step closer to finding out what happened to Ginny.
And paying back her murderer.
----------
“Harry, I must inform you that I’m not pleased with how you handled this situation.”
Snape had delivered them all and described to Dumbledore the spectacle he had found. Then he had dismissed himself to go unpetrify Goyle and Crabbe who still laid in the corridor frozen in time. Once Snape had left, Dumbledore had turned to Luna and Hermione first for an explanation of what had happened, Harry figuring that Dumbledore felt that they would be the least bias of the five students in the room.
The girls had recollected the story as unbiased as they could given the circumstances. Harry found himself a little relieved that they both failed to mention his botched attempt at placing Malfoy under an unforgivable curse. Once hearing their story, he dismissed the girls, informing them that they had each lost 50 points for their house for cursing a fellow student.
At that point, Professor McGonagall had arrived, having been summoned after three of her students had found themselves in a situation. Dumbledore had had her escort Malfoy to Madam Pomfey for his bloody nose and advised her that she wanted to speak with the boy as soon as he finished attending to other matters.
The two “other matters” had simply looked at each other, each wondering what fate was about to befall them.
But Dumbledore had only told Ron that his parents were waiting for him. Waiting to take him home to spend a few days with the family, which Harry silently knew included Ginny’s funeral. Ron had then been dismissed without a single point taken from Gryffindor on his behalf.
That had left Harry.
Who now sat in Dumbledore’s office, slouched in his chair, arms folded angrily.
Dumbledore’s voice came from somewhere over his shoulder, but Harry didn’t care to turn and look at the Headmaster directly as he replied to the Headmaster‘s declaration of disappointment. “I’m sorry that we didn’t come to you first with our suspicions, Professor, but you’re lucky we brought Malfoy to you alive.”
Dumbledore exhaled deeply, stepping over to his desk and taking a seat, his eyes trained on Harry. “What are you feeling right now, Harry?”
“One of my best friends is dead, Professor.”
“This, I know, Harry,” Dumbledore nodded. “And I asked you how you felt.”
Harry’s frown deepened. “How the bloody hell am I supposed to feel? Angry. Guilty. Lost.”
“Good.”
“Good?” Harry scoffed.
“Yes, because tonight, I feared that you had stopped feeling. Emotions are a very powerful thing as know, and they’re what separate you from Voldemort.”
“He feels emotion.” His hand unconsciously reached up and touched his scar, which had taken to tingling almost every day after Voldemort’s rise to power at the end of the last term.
“His feeling are solely power-driven. Driven by his need to rid the world of who he feels is impure. He feels a warped sense of joy, and like yourself, he feels anger at its most intense. But you also mentioned two other emotions that eased my concerns.”
“Lost,” he mumbled.
“And guilt,” Dumbledore nodded. “Two emotions Voldemort would never allow himself to feel.”
“So what?”
“So you have yet to stoop to his level.”
Harry frowned at those choice of words.
Yet.
“Can I be excused, Professor?” he finally said, ready to be away from everything and everyone for a moment.
Dumbledore nodded. “50 points from you as well for tonight’s behavior.”
“Whatever,” Harry mumbled as he got to his feet.
“Before you go, the Weasleys also request your presence this week.”
Harry stopped in his tracks. “Why? They know I’m the reason Ginny’s not here, right?”
“They know that Voldemort has struck close to home in hopes of breaking you, yes.”
Harry frowned. “Which is just a fancy way of saying I killed her.”
“No one here thinks you’re responsible, Harry, and neither should you.”
“Because you don’t know!” Harry snapped. “Because you weren’t there to get the messages. To see her just laying there. Ginny died because of me, and there’s nothing you can say that will ever convince me otherwise.”
Dumbledore nodded sadly. “I feel you should at least attend the funeral out of respect for your friend, for her family.”
Harry simply nodded, the only commitment he could give at the moment as his stomach tied itself in nauseating knots.
“Get some rest, Harry. It‘s been a long few days for you.”
Harry nodded again before turning and making his way out of Dumbledore’s office.
A long few days was the understatement of the year in Harry’s mind.