Chapter 22. Break-in and Breakout   (September 23, 1997)

After Monday's incessant bustle, the small hours of Tuesday morning finally finally brought to the castle a substantial measure of peace. Harry had managed to chase almost everybody out of the DADA classroom shortly before midnight, and most people had gone off to attempt fitful sleep. Bill had left with a crew of students to work on last-minute ward enhancements, Sarah had volunteered to serve as lookout on the Astronomy Tower through the deepest part of the night, and Ryan was busy being Ryan.

Focused, obsessive... adrenalized.

Ryan paced around the classroom to the far side of the large Entrance Hall map and fiddled with the positions of some wizard figurines. He pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and thoughtfully tapped a couple of the ward disks a bit further apart. He grinned to himself for the sheer private pleasure of coming to grips with a challenging puzzle. Unlike the many people in the castle tossing about in their beds in states of anxiety, Ryan's sleeplessness was driven by eager anticipation. He was ready for the fight. Bring it on! Above all, he was finally confident that this reckless bottleneck scheme could work -- thanks to Harry!

Ryan never committed to anything impulsively. A year ago, he had decided to throw in his lot with Hogwarts' newest assistant professor, not because Harry Potter was a hero, but rather because the Gryffindor icon had demonstrated an attitude and skill set that Ryan appreciated and hadn't found in any other Hogwarts faculty member. Ryan had taken a fair bit of ribbing from other HA students who accused him of idolizing Harry, but in truth he had always made an extra effort to question and second-guess his instructor. That said, ultimately he was amazed at how often, after examining things as objectively as possible, he ended up in wholehearted agreement!

Ryan had agreed with Harry that the risk associated with permitting the Death Eaters to access the structurally vulnerable Great Hall could be reduced to acceptable levels by optimizing the wards and by very carefully controlling the amount of time that the enemy would be in there, but he had considered Ron's idea of tying two dynamic teams up in the Entrance Hall to direct confrontational traffic to be a deal breaker... until Harry had come up with an unconventional suggestion.

Ryan had noted how pensive his mentor had seemed earlier in the evening. When Harry had returned to the classroom after placating Ron and reversing the George's rooster-tail hex, he had remained only long enough to find Ginny and bring her to his office. They had locked the door and erected privacy wards around the office, but Ryan knew that there was nothing lurid or intimate going on in there; rather he was convinced that Harry and Ginny were brainstorming. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later Harry had burst back into the classroom, asking Terry to track down Professor Flitwick.

Harry wanted illusions!

Harry had enlisted Flitwick's charm skills to create realistic visual effects that could lure the Death Eaters into a trap without risking the two dynamic teams in face-to-face confrontations. The scheme would involve preventing Death Eaters from running up the grand staircase or into various other corridors branching off the Entrance Hall by convincing them that there were lots of well-armed students and aurors swarming everywhere except in the Great Hall. To further sweeten the inducement, they had decided to also craft a deceptive impression of numerous little first years huddling and crying in the Great Hall to induce Death Eaters into targeting this suggested wealth of vulnerable hostages.

Flitwick had not disappointed: by ten that evening he and some of his best students had created a lively scene downstairs that was remarkably realistic. The armed illusions near the Entrance Hall were charmed to sense intrusion and respond aggressively, while the little wraiths in the Great Hall ran chaotically from any apparent threat. Neither ruse could be expected to hold up indefinitely, but both would hopefully buy them all a few minutes in order for Harry to do what he needed to do.

Although he believed qualitatively that it should work, Ryan Jenkins was a very quantitative person. How long was 'a few minutes'? How far could one of his fighters run in that amount of time? What about a phalanx moving in formation? Those were the sorts of niggling details that could easily occupy him for every last minute until the expected invasion.

In the haunting stillness of the nocturnal castle, Ryan pondered the configuration on the map. He unrolled a scroll to consult Quinn's notes, repositioned a pair of wizard figurines from the map and reveled in the thrill of grasping the logic behind another tactical maneuver that had been designed for the bottleneck scenario. It was a great feeling! At this point, the only thing weighing down his mood a bit was worrying over whether Sarah had dressed warmly enough for a night pacing around on the top of the Astronomy Tower.

Ryan had just put quill to parchment to jot a couple of tactical suggestions down in Quinn's margin when... he was suddenly hit with the sinking, devastating conviction that everything was completely wrong!

This would be an unmitigated disaster! Everyone would die! It was all his fault and there was nothing he could do about it!

As these horrifying sensations clenched around his heart, Ryan knew exactly what the problem was. The buzz on his right wrist from a field bracelet confirmed Sarah had just sensed it too.

Ryan had never before had the displeasure of experiencing anything like this, but the awful symptoms were exactly as Harry had described again and again.

Dementors were near!

Harry heard the distant screaming of a woman's voice. He shivered in dread and confusion. It had been months since he'd encountered that particular horror — long enough that it took his mind a while to grasp what was happening.

Meanwhile, Ginny watched in alarm as the spectre of a teenaged Tom Riddle gloated down over her dying body. What's worse, the treacherous scum was leering greedily at Harry's bleeding, poisoned form.

"No!" Ginny yelled in outrage. She and Harry were not going to die that way! The diary had been destroyed; she and he had both survived and moved on! "What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded. "You have no place in my mind!" she seethed.

Riddle looked chastened; he took several steps backwards, but obstinately refused to go away. In her agitation, she struggled to her feet, and willed a surge of power and control back through her body. She bent over and shook the twelve year old dying Harry out of his catatonic stupor, helped him to his feet. Her touch worked immediate wonders; she watched as he not only revived and re-equilibrated but also matured; in a matter of seconds he grew and aged more than five years worth. Suddenly Harry was, but all appearances, fine and healthy. But his eyes were sad and he remained somewhat confused.

"Thank you, Gin'," Harry said in a subdued voice. "But what's going on? Riddle is over there killing my Mum," he groaned, pointing obliquely across the ethereal fog to a point where Ginny could now discern an ominous dark figure menacing a defiant young woman. "This doesn't make sense!" Harry reasoned. "Doesn't he realize that she died years ago? She chose to die so that I could live..."

"Damn it, Harry!" Ginny shouted. "Dementors! These are our Dementor visions... except they're all garbled. We must be battling them!"

"Of course!" Harry exclaimed. "I should have realized that right away — how bizarre!" Harry paused to think, then suddenly he swore. "If there are Dementors here, they could be terrorizing the whole school! We need to wake up! Now!"

Harry and Ginny burst to consciousness and sprang out of bed just in time to hear Ryan start pounding on their door. "Need to generate Patronuses!" Harry blurted by way of greeting as he yanked the door open.

Ginny's panther burst out the window and into the night sky several seconds before Harry summoned his own lioness, and Ryan followed with an English sheepdog. Sarah came sprinting down the hallway in time to see the flashes of white magical energy. "Expecto Patronus!" she yelled, and a peregrine falcon emerged from her wand to partake in the chase.

"Does anyone have any idea how many Dementors there are?" Harry asked.

"Hundreds," Sarah said. She was still breathing hard from the sprint down from the tower, but otherwise exuded a grim calm.

"We'll need more Patronuses," Harry reasoned. "And I expect the Dementors are only the vanguard of something big. This is it! We're under attack!"

Still shaking off the vestiges of sleep, Harry paused for a split second then raced through a rapid list of instructions: "Ryan, go rouse the Slytherins and ask everyone capable of a Patronus to produce one every few minutes. Sarah, please wake Ravenclaw tower and ask the same. Also see if you can find two volunteers: one to take over your lookout and a second to run messages back and forth to the classroom. I'll go find Sprout to raise Hufflepuff and Ginny can get McGonagall and Gryffindor. All leadership please meet back in the DADA class as soon as possible. Sorry to yap so fast — did you get the message?"

"Got it!" Ryan answered and took off for the main stairwell.

Sarah was already streaming down the hall. "Got it!" she shouted back to them.

Harry and Ginny unleashed their Patronuses again and quickly changed into workout gear. They grabbed their storage trunks and raced off to pass along the message, arriving back in the main command classroom several minutes later. Over the next fifteen minutes a variety of disheveled students began filtering in, as well as Flitwick, Sprout, McGonagall, Lupin, Bill, Fred and George. Everyone was issuing Patronuses fairly frequently, although some of the students were having difficulty concentrating after the abrupt awakening.

"Good morning everyone," Harry spoke, once a reasonable group of people had assembled. "We don't have many details to report yet. I hope to have an update on the Dementors in the next few minutes. It doesn't seem to me as though they're having much effect in this room, but we're close to the center of the castle and might be a bit buffered. Ginny, could you find Dobby and ask him to check on the stores of chocolate in the kitchens in case anyone has suffered major exposure?"

Ginny nodded and retreated to the privacy of the corridor in order to summon the house elf. Just as she stepped out the door, Kevin Entwhistle, the sixth-year Ravenclaw, ran into the room. "Harry!" he wheezed.

"Hi Kevin," Harry replied. "Are you running messages from the lookout?"

Kevin nodded as he caught his breath. "Dementors driven off! But there are lights!"

"Lights?" Harry asked. "What kind of lights?"

"Wand lights," Kevin responded. "From lumos I assume."

"How many?" Ginny asked as she walked back into the room.

"At least two hundred," Kevin answered blankly.

"Well," Harry declared soberly, "it seems we have company. Minerva, Ryan and Bill, can you accompany me to the Astronomy Tower?"

In silence, they followed Kevin up the stairs to seventh floor and further up the spiraling steps to the top of the tower. Orla Quirke, Kevin's Ravenclaw classmate, stepped aside to give them unfettered access to the ramparts. Sure enough, the dark grounds to the west and north of the castle were lit with a profusion of small lights, approaching the castle via the open western gate. More lights were marching in like phosphorescent ants along the path from Hogsmeade. Hagrid's hut was dark and there was no smoke coming from the chimney; Harry had a sudden jolt of concern for their gamekeeper, hoping that he had been adequately warned about the emergency. Hagrid had never seemed to be much of a fighter — with luck perhaps he might have taken Fang and retreated into the Forbidden Forest at first sign of intrusion.

Harry returned his attention to the lights. "Can you update the original estimate, Ryan?" he asked.

Ryan nodded. "Two hundred and twenty eight, give or take a few," he responded.

"So many!" McGonagall whispered in a hoarse, haunted tone.

"Yes, so many," Harry stated matter-of-factly. "Minerva, would you be willing to contact Kingsley or Amelia and let them know that roughly ninety percent of all Death Eaters in Britain are gathering on the Hogwarts grounds? This could be a golden opportunity for the Aurors to restore their credibility."

"Yes, I'll floo call from the headmaster's office, Harry," McGonagall replied, still shaking her head as she turned to descend from the platform.

"Bill," Harry continued, "Based on the way the enemy is gathering, can you take a few minutes and make intelligent guesses on where they're likely to focus their attacks? As soon as you have a few priority locations, then I'd like you to go down with Laura, Lucia, Jimmy and their ward teams to re-re-reinforce the defences. Please work quickly — the situation looks static right now, but everything could turn on a Sickle. Ryan can signal Laura with our bracelets if we need you to withdraw, or if necessary I'll send a Patronus."

Ryan caught Harry's eye. "Should I return to command post?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, and please ask Ginny to come up here when you have the chance."

"Will do!" Ryan answered and he made his way back down from the tower.

Bill glanced at his notes one last time and briefly conferred with Harry. "It's just as your students had guessed all along, Harry," he explained. "Based on where they're congregating, it looks like none of the enemy will bother to chance the difficult terrain to the south and east of the castle. Everyone is massing on the main grounds to the west and north. It's possible that they'll try to blast in around the greenhouses or straight into the north wall of the Great Hall, but their most natural route is right through the front door." He shook his head. "Not very imaginative, but it makes things easier to defend."

"Great to hear that!" Harry enthused. "Good luck Bill!"

"Good luck to you too Harry!" Bill replied as he departed to find the student warding teams.

Harry wandered the top of the tower for several minutes. The two Ravenclaw students watched him curiously as he stared fixedly at the converging lights. He didn't explain to them that he was plumbing the depths of his sixth sense, trying to determine if any of those distant glimmers belonged to Riddle. It had actually not occurred to him that their nemesis might skip this particular engagement, but the more carefully Harry scrutinized the massing enemy forces, the more it seemed that their leader was really not among them.

When Ginny arrived a short while later, Harry beckoned her over. She stole a quick glance at the converging Death Eaters, but promptly shifted to focus on her partner.

"I need you to withdraw from my scar," Harry whispered. "Just long enough for me to confirm once and for all that Riddle has not come to the party."

"He's not here?" Ginny asked in surprise.

Harry shook his head. "I don't think so."

Ginny nodded and focused on pulling her essence back toward her own mind. The exercise had become quite routine and barely incurred any real discomfort for either of them at this point. Gazing down across the dark grounds, however, Harry nonetheless braced himself for the pain that would sear him if Riddle was in close proximity. Ginny, too, barely breathed as she withdrew her power, but after ten seconds Harry met her eyes, and shook his head. Almost every Death Eater in Britain had come to Hogwarts, but Voldemort was being coy.

"What's he playing at?" Harry wondered aloud.

Ginny paused in thought for a moment as she gazed analytically downwards. "If his objective is to fight you, then he'll show up when the time comes. I'll bet his most immediate goal is for his thugs to break in and grab the Horcrux. He doesn't need to be here for that if he can rely strictly on overwhelming Death Eater numbers to intimidate the castle administration."

"Good thinking!" Harry agreed. "The big show of wand lights definitely supports the idea that this is all a big power play. Just wait -- he'll probably try to look magnanimous by pledging to spare everyone's lives in return for a dusty old knick knack from the Room of Requirement. This all offers a measure of plausibility as well: it would neatly split the difference between Kingsley's assumption that Riddle wouldn't attack so quickly after getting stung yesterday and our own knowledge that he desperately wants to secure the last horcrux."

"So you figure someone down there will offer a deal," Ginny surmised. "I say we hand over the Horcrux when hell freezes over; it's not as if they'd just grab the diadem and leave in peace."

"Absolutely!" Harry concurred. "As soon as he has the Horcrux in hand, the whole calculus changes: suddenly he's comfortably immortal. Then he can happily pretend he's brave and walk boldly into battle. Basically, his best chance to fight us only comes if we agree to his terms for avoiding a fight. Artful treacheries and complex contingencies."

"Vile filth is what it is!" Ginny spat. "Suppose we tell them to get lost — will they attack then?"

"Probably," Harry reasoned. "I'm guessing with this bunch of lunatics, it's harder for Riddle to convince them to hold their fire than to attack. Besides, no threat truly comes off as being credible unless backed by a willingness to follow through. But I'd wager that Riddle himself is still not make a personal appearance until he has a Horcrux safely hidden away."

"So what's our plan now then?"

"Good question," Harry answered with a wry laugh. "Considering that all our plans were based on the assumption that Riddle would have a bit more backbone and would be standing down there with his cronies, we need to adapt a bit, right?" So our options are either to wait and see what the Death Eaters are going to do without him, or else we force a variant of the original scheme."

"What are you thinking?"

"Since the original plan was to lure him from the castle up to the outcrop, a new tack could be to lure him up to the outcrop from wherever he's lurking. It works out to the same basic scenario."

Ginny nodded. "Yeah that could be even better, if we can pull it off. It's one thing to pick a fight with someone who's ready to brawl, but another thing entirely to drag somebody kicking and screaming out of their rabbit hole."

Harry nodded with a grin, as Ginny leaned over the parapet and surveyed the assembled forces again. "Do you think we should communicate with the miscreants?" she asked.

"No, not for the time being," Harry answered. "I'd prefer to confirm a few of our guesses before anyone issues a provocation." He turned and caught the attention of their courier. "Kevin, please run a quick message to Ryan. Tell him that Voldemort is not here. I think we should bide our time for a while and see if the Death Eaters show their cards. Then, can you then find Professor McGonagall, give her the same message and ask her to please rejoin me up here as soon as she's done badgering the Ministry?"

Kevin nodded enthusiastically and hurried down the stairs.

In the deep quiet of the night, Ginny and Harry stood silently on the ramparts, watching for some sign or action from the masses of dark wizards. The enemy appeared to be content to merely gather innocuously until all of the various latecomers were assembled on or near the north and west grounds.

Sure enough, when the last group of lights left the Hogsmeade path and entered the gates, someone's wand lit up with a brilliant green flare. Harry was expecting to hear Bellatrix's horrid screechy voice, but he was mistaken: the spokesman was an older male wizard; Harry guessed it might be Avery Senior. "Faculty and students of Hogwarts!" boomed the voice. "The Lord Voldemort in his infinite and merciful power requests unfettered access to your castle to retrieve a small item of his personal property. If you accede to this simple request, then we will depart with the item immediately, leaving you unharmed. You have five minutes to respond."

McGonagall sprinted the final few steps up to the tower platform just as the echoes were dying from Avery's ultimatum. "Harry," she asked breathlessly, "is he after the diadem that Albus spoke of?"

"Yes," Harry nodded. "Ginny and I don't believe their promise of peace though. As soon as Riddle secures the diadem, we're guessing they'll all turn around and attack."

"So you believe that they will attack if we accede to their conditions," McGonagall surmised, "but I also believe their ultimatum: they will likely attack with or without our cooperation."

"Yes, I think we all agree on that" Harry assented, "The remaining variable is that Riddle isn't down there. I think he may be reluctant to incur any personal risk until he's certain that he has at least one functioning Horcrux. Without him actively participating in the attack, I'm fairly hopeful that they won't be able to break through our wards."

"Perhaps," McGonagall mused. "But what will happen if he actually does arrive to take part?"

"Then," Harry declared with grim confidence, "I will offer him a challenge that he won't refuse. He will have no choice but to leave the castle to meet me face to face."

In the dim torch light of the tower, Harry could see McGonagall go starkly pale. "Harry," she gasped, "you can't be... but... are you... are you truly able to face him? He has so many more decades of experience"

Harry nodded in solemnity, without the slightest shred of apprehension. "I can face him, Minerva."

"How can you be certain?"

"We've found his weakness," Harry stated quietly.

McGonagall stared searchingly at him. "But how do you believe you can persuade him to engage you face-to-face?" she asked.

"To be brutally honest," Harry replied, "there are only three things in this castle that Riddle desperately desires, and when the time comes, I'll be standing squarely in his path for all three. He will come to me when I call, because he will know with all certainty that he can't win without facing me."

McGonagall shook her head sadly. "Harry, there is no justice in the world if you are forced to bear this entire burden yourself."

Ginny stepped forward and took Harry's hand.

"Minerva," Harry said softly. "I am not bearing this burden alone."

McGonagall stared at the steadfast, determined teenagers, at the beauty of their youth and goodness. Moisture sparked in her eyes for a moment before she blinked it back. "Very well," she acceded. "Tom will be your responsibility. The castle is mine. Right now, the castle is under siege by rogues making untenable demands. I will trust you to know when to speak to Tom, but unless you have a major objection I believe that the time has come for me to speak for Hogwarts."

Harry nodded; a response was clearly required, and it was McGonagall's place to deliver it.

McGonagall steeled herself, cast her most powerful sonorus, and stood tall upon the ramparts. "Forces of darkness begone!" she shouted. Her voice echoed with crystal clarity from the distant hills. "You have no claim on anything within our school. We will not suffer any thieves. Begone!"

Harry's eyes snapped wide open at the strident severity of McGonagall's declaration. Before the end of second sentence, Harry was already summoning a Patronus to tell Bill to get his teams away from the walls. Sure enough, not a second after the echoes died on McGonagall's last word, a raucous chorus of jeers burst from the Death Eater ranks and, in very short order, they started to batter the outer wall with reductor curses, and other percussive and thermobaric blasts. Three figures at the top of the Astronomy Tower watched the macabre fireworks with hearts in their throats.

Bill had taken a few steps back from the north wall of the Great Hall where Jimmy's team had been casting yet another variant of strengthening ward to overlap with all of the others on this segment of fortification. It was an ancient spell that Bill had learned at Gringotts — very unconventional these days, but it had sprung to mind a couple hours ago as he had lay awake, failing to sleep during their brief resting period. Jimmy had finished reminding his group of younger students, all of whom had just learned the spell minutes earlier, to cast the ward at six foot intervals horizontally and vertically across the wall. Another few minutes and they'd be done.

Ron and Hermione had wandered in and were rechecking the placement of the anti-portkey wards. Hermione waved to Bill. "What's happening out there?" she asked, pointing toward the grounds.

"Dementors were driven off quite easily," Bill replied, "but two hundred and twenty odd Death Eaters have arrived and are swarming this side of the lake and on the front grounds. Harry's on the Astronomy Tower monitoring the situation; down here we're going to keep warding until ordered to stand down."

"Okay, thank you," Hermione responded in a subdued, almost stunned tone. Apart from the chaotic frenzy at the Department of Mysteries, neither she nor Ron had ever been in anything remotely approaching a live battle and the experience was proving to be quite nerve-wracking. For Hermione, the only way to cope with the oppressive tension was to focus closely on assigned tasks. Ron was of like mind, and had spent the night either wandering around helping Hermione or gazing around the bottleneck area, re-examining the plan in his head.

Bill regarded them thoughtfully. "Have you applied strengthening wards to your anti-portkeys?" he asked. "If the enemy gets in here and starts blasting haphazardly, they might take out enough of your stones accidentally to give themselves a big enough hole to escape through."

Hermione froze. "Good thinking!" she exclaimed. "Can you suggest a good spell to protect them with?"

"Better yet," Bill said, "In a couple minutes Jimmy should be able to spare you a couple students to..."

"FORCES OF DARKNESS BEGONE!" McGonagall's amplified voice boomed through the halls. "YOU HAVE NO CLAIM..."

Bill bit his lip as the acting headmistress's rigid message issued forth. Instinctively, he took the initiative. "Jimmy!" he yelled, casting his own sonorus so that people in the hall could hear him over McGonagall's voice. "Stand down immediately and retreat to inner corridors! Pass the message to Lucia and Laura!"

Jimmy nodded and began to physically steer the younger students back toward Entrance Hall.

At that moment, Harry's Patronus appeared, and his voice boomed over the din. "All warders stand down immediately and retreat to interior safety!"

"Thanks Harry!" Bill mused, grinning at Hermione and Ron. "You two retreat to interior corridors. I'm going to do a quick sweep to make sure nobody gets left behind."

"No," Ron shouted, "We'll help you with the sweep. I'll check the west corridor, Hermione can clear the Entrance Hall."

"Okay, thanks!" Bill agreed. "Meet on the balcony in the Entrance Hall and I'll be the one to shut the doors behind all of us."

Ron and Hermione were already sprinting westward when the first blasts came. Brilliant flashes lit up the ward-strengthened windows and filled the room with a shrill otherworldly shriek as the warded materials vibrated against the onslaught. Bill's eyes went wide to see the massive stones of the castle walls emit a dull red glow every time they were hit with a strong blast. Phew! I hope everyone stood down in time!

After the most anxious four minutes of his life, amidst deafening racket and dizzying flashes of spell fire, Bill had confirmed that all students had passed through the Entrance Hall to their rendezvous point on the second floor interior hallway... and all wards, walls and windows were holding. He slammed shut the heavy second-floor fire door, quickly scanned the teams of anxious faces and breathed a deep sigh. With a smile, he sent Ryan a Patronus containing a brief message of profound relief and satisfaction. "All's well at the door!"

Bill returned to the DADA classroom to find that Harry, Ginny and McGonagall had descended from the tower and were speaking to Ryan. Harry caught Bill's eyes and beckoned him over, saying, "Thanks for the update and for all the hard work, Bill! It's amazing sight to watch the walls holding firm under all that blasting!"

"You're welcome Harry, but just out of curiosity, how long are you expecting everything to hold."

"Well, do you suppose the walls can stand another half hour?" Harry asked. "Riddle threw us a bit of a twist but I think if the Death Eaters get bored of futile spell fire, he'll be more easily persuaded to play it straight."

Bill didn't respond; he merely gazed at Harry in puzzlement.

"Riddle didn't show up with his peons; I don't think we can win this battle unless I have a chance to face him," Harry clarified. "I think I can lure him out to where I want him, but I'm betting that he'll be especially receptive if the Death Eaters' initial adrenaline and excitement wears off and they start communicating their frustration back to him. It would be great if you can give them twenty or thirty minutes of futility, but if you need me to preempt the show sooner just let me know."

Bill studied Harry carefully for a moment, putting enough logical connections together to partially surmise Harry's plan. "Yes Harry," Bill confirmed. "Unless somebody down there gets uncommonly creative, the wards should hold for half an hour easily."

"Brilliant!" Harry exclaimed. "While we wait, I would like to propose another project if you're interested?"

Bill exhaled heavily but he didn't recoil or protest. "What were you thinking?"

"My thought was," Harry began, "that there are a lot of students in the castle who are scared and probably just want to stay safe and survive. Minerva, I know you had hoped to put those students... and others... onto the Hogwarts Express this morning, but that plan has obviously been co-opted. Perhaps we could designate some of the lowest, most interior areas of the castle as refuges and ask the ward teams to secure them? Lucia Blevins has already done an exemplary job on Slytherin Dungeon, but it's not large enough to house the whole student body. We probably need maybe twice again as much space."

McGonagall nodded. "That does seem like the best plan in a difficult situation. The kitchens come to mind as a good strategic location, as would the Hufflepuff Basement. I'll be sure to clear this with Pomona, but I'm certain she'll be supportive. William, how soon do you think it would be feasible to begin moving students from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw towers?"

"Well, that depends..." Bill mused. "Harry, any thoughts on how I should allocate the teams?" he asked.

Harry paused for a moment. "Maybe Lucia's team can give the Slytherin Dungeon another quick pass using some of the new spells you've taught everyone. Laura knows Hufflepuff Basement well, so she can lead that. When those two teams finish their own houses, they can converge on the kitchens."

"And Peakes' team?" Bill wondered.

"Continue to monitor the front line?" Ryan suggested. Harry nodded in agreement.

"Okay," Bill mused. "Based on that division of responsibilities, let's aim for half an hour."

"The Hospital Wing is quite exposed," Ginny interjected. "I hope we don't need it, but perhaps Madame Pomfrey can erect backup quarters along the corridor outside Hufflepuff basement?"

McGonagall's brow furrowed. "A rather sobering but adroit suggestion Ginny," she sighed. "I will see to that too." She gazed around the assembled leadership. "Is there anything else that I should be distressed about?" she asked with a grim smile. "If not, then I'll be off."

"Let's hope that's it. Thanks Minerva," Harry said.

McGonagall shook her head. "No, let me thank you all for your sage advice. I only wish we could have Minister Fudge here to observe true leadership in action," she said proudly. "Of course if he was here, it would probably be best for everyone's sanity if he was bound and gagged."

Harry and Ginny gazed down from the Astronomy Tower at the current state of the siege of Hogwarts. The frantic activity from earlier had died down: the overwhelming staccato and blaze had become decidedly intermittent. At any given time, a dozen or more Death Eaters could still be seen bombarding the front entrance or adjacent patches of wall with various spells, and different groups cycled in and out from time to time, but otherwise the scene was anticlimactic. Many Death Eaters had allowed their lumos spells to dissipate and seemed to be standing around, chatting with each other.

"The wards will hang on indefinitely at this rate," Ginny observed.

"Quite likely," Harry agreed, "but I still think it's time to shake things up, don't you?"

Ginny nodded. "I'd say so."

Harry took a deep breath and cast a sonorus spell. "Unruly rabble!" Harry shouted. "Disperse before we disperse you! Send for your leader, Tom Riddle who goes by the fool's name of Voldemort. Tell him to meet Harry Potter on the high plateau to our north. If your leader is too cowardly to appear in ten minutes, he will lose that which he treasures!"

The amassed crowd roared. Angry jeers and oaths carried all the way up to the top of the tower. Random spell fire erupted in a brief display of anger then several dozen Death Eaters converged on the front entrance and began anew a concerted series of blasts.

"Disperse before we disperse you!" Harry shouted again. "You have five seconds to withdraw from the entrance! Five... Four... Three... Two... One..."

Nobody had retreated; the ineffectual spell fire continued unabated down in the grounds. Harry's right hand locked with Ginny's left. They thrust their joined fists outward, targeting a spot near the feet of the Death Eaters nearest the main entrance. "Aspello!!" they shouted in unison, verbally invoking a spell not used since the days of Grindelwald. A massive ball of pulsing golden power swelled out from their joined fists. With a resounding crack, it burst forth like a gigantic arrow of crisp lightning, slashing through a hundred yards of air in the barest instant, impacting on the main walkway, from which it thundered outwards as a cataclysmic shock wave.

Ginny and Harry both cringed; combatants nearest the gate were lifted and flung back into the unwitting arms of those behind them, a semi-circle of flailing humanity coursed outwards more than fifty feet back onto the grounds, depositing a tangled ring composed of dozens of dazed, bruised bodies.

Biting her lip, Ginny turned to Harry. "Er... next time we try a new spell like that, do you reckon we should test it first?" she asked breathlessly.

Harry gave her a small, wide-eyed nod. He turned to Kevin and Orla who were gaping alternately at the confused grounds and at the two responsible fists which still emitted a soft residual glow. "It's time for us to leave the castle," Harry told them. "Please tell Ryan to await our signal."

Ginny summoned two broomsticks from her trunk. "They left a single hole in the wards directly above us," she explained. "We need a vertical rise of at least one hundred yards, then I guess we both follow our senses to the outcrop," she instructed.

Harry nodded as they both mounted their brooms, disillusioned, and elevated straight up. As they made their way through the brisk night air in a northwesterly direction toward the outcrop, they noticed the first tinges of deep royal blue in the eastern sky. In another life, it would soon have been time to awaken and seek a furtive kiss in their dusky bedroom, before beginning a busy Tuesday. The thought was not lost on Ginny as they landed together on their site of power. She placed her broom down upon the rock, and threw her arms around Harry. His own hands, chilled from gripping the broom, clasped her firmly and warmed quickly in urgent passion as their lips met and waves of anxiety and hope emanated from them across the firmament.

You are not alone...

The words came to them as from a unearthly, haunting choir of ancient voices... accompanied by something that sounded like a single musical instrument of undefinable, peculiar beauty. Strangely, both Harry and Ginny knew that had somehow heard the sound before but neither could place it. Pondering the unexpected message, they tentatively kissed again. Their lips pressed together because it seemed the most natural and fortifying act under creation, because they didn't know when again they might have another opportunity of such unsullied purity, and because they wondered, somehow, if doing so might bring back the mysterious choir.

The voices came not, but Harry and Ginny both understood the message. They alone could prevail; but they need not prevail alone.

For a long moment they sustained their embrace, meditating upon the beauty of the early predawn eastern sky. Their love insulated them for the moment from the angst that had swirled through their world over recent days. It once again seemed blasphemous to sully the feeling of grace, but finally they broke apart. Without exchanging word or gesture, both Harry and Ginny retrieved from their storage trunks the magical containment boxes, each holding its own noxious quarry. They placed the trapped Horcruxes on the rock before them.

Harry looked to Ginny and she nodded. She closed her eyes and honed in on a thought that she had stored in her mind. That thought was a deliberate decision that the Horcrux trap should not snap down on its prey. Through an ingenious trick of the twins' magic, this little thought had been woven into the trigger mechanism of the trap: if anything were to interfere with her conscious free will through imperius, befuddlement or any worse attack on her mind, the thought would fail and the trigger would snap. And furthermore, if she simply decided on her own to abandon the thought, as she did now, it would be adieu Horcrux!

A sharp metallic ping pierced the night air. Powered by a goblin-wrought spring of great strength and integrity, a venom tipped silver awl shot forward and jabbed cleanly into the heart of the Slytherin locket. A dagger of ice slashed across Harry's forehead. A hoarse, agonized, furious, seething howl exploded into the night air. Hideous green splotches splashed across Harry's field of vision; he reeled drunkenly to the hellish music of a dying Horcrux; his feet forgot themselves and he was falling. Falling...

But somewhere in the darkness a single hand reached out and touched his, enfolded his trembling fingers in warmth and security. Harry's vision cleared, his legs found themselves again, he staggered a bit then stood firm, squeezing Ginny's hand. They both rose to their full height, to stand proudly facing south, waiting...

They did not wait long.

The air below their outcrop crackled; a stench of burnt sulphur tainted the night; an area on the plateau blurred briefly then resolved around a tall black figure whose pallid, pasty face glowed vaguely green in the twilight. Gleaming red eyes darted around, locked onto them and flashed menacingly... yet with a subtle glint of deeply denied fear. The creature that was once Tom Riddle drew his wand.

Harry raised his right wrist to his mouth. "Audite me, HART," he said calmly.

"Good news!" Lupin declared. "Alastor, Elphias, Emmeline and Dedalus flooed into McGonagall's office a little while ago and have assembled down on the balcony in the Entrance Hall. Counting myself and either Bill or Minerva, we now have, by Mr. Jenkins' exacting standards..." he turned to wink at Ryan, "one full Order of the Phoenix tactical team."

A round of applause swept the DADA classroom.

"So, have you heard anything from the Aurors, Minerva?" Lupin asked. "The initial excuse of needing them to protect the Ministry has been obviated — there can hardly be a threat to the Ministry if nearly all the Death Eaters are here at Hogwarts."

McGonagall shook her head. "No, still no commitment," she groused tersely. "Amelia and Kingsley, of course, are in staunch agreement and fully recognize the severity of our situation. They are both at states of elevated exasperation with Fudge's adamant decree that the Ministry be safeguarded at all costs. Amelia, frankly, was fit to be tied, and perhaps our best chance is that she may resort to something... unbureaucratic."

"For what it's worth," Ryan interjected, "We're expecting an update on the Death Eater numbers when things settle down outside. It sounds like there's dissent and uncertainty in their ranks — after Harry and Ginny, uh... swept... the front step, Orla said she saw a number of Death Eaters walking off or being carried off the grounds to Disapparate."

"That's useful for us to know, but I wouldn't blindly volunteer the news to anyone from the Ministry," Lupin cautioned. "I would guess that any fighters skulking away from here right now are going to head so deeply under cover in fear of Voldemort that neither we nor the Ministry will have anything to fear from them for months. But Fudge will certainly not see it that way."

Kevin Entwhistle made his anticipated appearance in the classroom door. "Update?" Ryan asked.

"Things have stabilized outside," Kevin reported. "Most wands are no longer lit, but the twilight is bright enough now to estimate numbers. We guess there are still about one hundred and sixty death eaters. It's possible that there are additional people disillusioned or hidden, but we kept an eye on things after the blast and we both independently figured that between fifty and seventy disapparated away."

"Does this affect the calculus in any way?" McGonagall asked.

Ryan shook his head. "No, Harry asked us to plan for two hundred Death Eaters. I admit I would have felt pretty nervous trying to contain them with only two student tactical teams, but now with six or seven Order members available, we're looking strong. That's not to say I would mind a bunch of Aurors prowling the halls too, but we can make a go of it now."

"So what do we do now?" Mary-Jo asked.

"We're expecting a signal from Harry," Ryan responded. "Let's assemble all action teams down on the balcony now in readiness. I need somebody..." his eyes swept the room and landed on Hannah, who was talking to Ron and Hermione. "Abbott," he called out, "can you hold down the fort here? Leadership and tactical teams are headed to the Entrance Hall."

Hannah looked up in surprise. "Umm, what do you want me to do?"

"People are conditioned to come here if there's a problem," Ryan explained. "If anyone drops by with a serious issue, then either help them solve the problem or else tell them to find us in the Entrance Hall."

"Yes, but if anyone tries to meet us down there, you'd better warn them to approach with caution," Mary-Jo suggested. "Things might get a bit hot in our neck of the woods."

Hannah nodded. "Okay, I'll do what I can. Good luck all of you," she said nervously.

"Thank you Hannah," Lupin responded in a gentle, reassuring tone.

"Chess and Granger, you'd better come with us too," Ryan requested. "Kevin, can you run down to the basement and ask Bill and Laura to come up to the Entrance Hall?"

As the group made their way down the main stairwell, Ryan jumped, and raised his right wrist. "Not a moment too soon!" he exclaimed, "That's Harry's signal!" They hastily rushed the rest of the way to the balcony.

The group paused in momentary surprise at the frantic activity occurring in the doors, stairs and hallways just off the Entrance Hall. It took everyone a couple of seconds to realize that all of the action — students and Aurors running to and fro, wands drawn, conversing and interacting — was the product of Flitwick's masterful illusions. Ryan too a deep breath to clear his mind of the distraction... then his eyes settled on the four elderly Order members talking quietly among themselves near the center of the balcony. He steered the group to rendezvous with their most recent guests.

"Quinn and Mr. Moody," Ryan instructed, "I would like your teams to mingle with the illusions and spread as broadly across all secondary entrances as possible. Until Harry gives his second sign, please avoid engaging the enemy unless they try to poke their noses somewhere other than the Great Hall. Understood?"

Lupin and Quinn nodded, while Moody looked on warily.

"As of right now, Professor McGonagall is in charge of all further aspects of the defence of Hogwarts," Ryan declared. "I am no longer Mr. Bigmouth; I am now merely one of MJ's foot soldiers awaiting our advance into the Great Hall."

The surrounding group of students applauded.

"Thank you for your bold and inspiring leadership, Mr. Jenkins," McGonagall stated with evident appreciation. "May you and Harry have placed us squarely on the path to victory!" A louder round of cheering arose, including Bill and Laura, who had just emerged into the Entrance Hall on their way up from the basement; they turned and sprinted the last flight of steps up to the balcony.

"Miss Madley," McGonagall said in a voice that contained the barest hint of quavering, "please disable the switchable wards."

Laura waved her wand through the prescribed sequence, twice to cover the two wards.

Nothing happened.

For several minutes, everyone waited in tense expectation. Outside the sporadic shouts and cracks of spell fire continued as before, but it was some time before anyone realized that the spells that had been failing all night to break the huge main doors might now behave differently. Several spells lit up the windows of the Great Hall, but still fell away harmlessly. An audible argument ensued among the Death Eaters outside. Finally one angry combatant shouted incoherently and fired a hex that produced a sharp crack of thunder in the Entrance Hall as it impacted fiercely with the upper part of the left door. The sturdy structure cracked and buckled. Shouts of confused astonishment followed. Somebody in a position of authority yelled something that wasn't quite audible within the castle due to the muffling effects of the thick doors, but it was clearly an order.

A brief discussion fell over the surrounding hoard, followed by a pregnant silence. There was a strange hiss, as if everyone had chosen that precise moment to inhale sharply.

CRACK!!

A hateful burst of light and din engulfed the doorway. The structure hung in a momentarily intangible balance between solid and wreckage. It creaked ominously, shuddered... then collapsed to the ground in a smouldering ruin.

A horrible jeer erupted. A wild mob or ruffians, many of whom had long since tossed away their trademark gruesome white masks to reveal men with grimy, unshaven and unshorn faces and gaunt, delirious women with banshee hair. The horde shrieked with infantile delight, surging forward, leering greedily as they finally... finally... set eyes upon their intended victims.

Ron stood on the balcony, knuckles clenched on the railing, trembling as beads of sweat streaked down his face. His mind raced through scenarios — wonderful and terrible — but above all, he desperately wanted to know one thing: which of the two Ron Weasleys had concocted this crazy scheme?

Mind games! Among the many factors underlying Legilimency and Occlumency, concentration is the most critical. All the practice in the world can be for naught if one doesn't know how to play mind games. Harry and Ginny glanced at each other one last time before focusing on their closing act. Harry's steely eyes told Ginny all she needed to know; the hint of a smirk around Ginny's mouth assured Harry that she was ready. This was it — this was their best chance. They were playing to win!

In preparation for this paramount confrontation, they locked their nerves away behind robust Occlumency shields. Standing with confident composure, they watched their adversary dispassionately. From the moment Voldemort appeared, they could tell that their timing had been nearly ideal: the ghoulish wizard was uncharacteristically brittle. According to the last report, the attack on Hogwarts had fizzled. His futile search for Horcrux caches had spun him to a state of pin-prick sensitization; each of the many disappointments had piqued both his anxiety and his receptivity to Horcrux aura. As a result, the sudden sting of locket's death scream had whipped him into near panic. Without the slightest nod to caution or tactics, he had raised his wand and instinctively apparated to the site of the final desperate cry. Materializing on the stoney plateau, scrambling to grasp the situation, the flickering embers of his eyes darted from Harry to Ginny then down to the two magical containment boxes lying at their feet on the outcrop. One of the boxes was still exuding an putrescent, viscous mist that clung to the rocks and leaked slowly over the stone like a malignant greasy cascade. For an instant his brow spasmed... as if he perhaps glimpsed, then forcibly denied, the perilous notion of a closing trap.

Lord Voldemort gritted his teeth. Self-proclaimed as the most powerful wizard in all history, he pushed aside the vestigial human frailties of fear and uncertainty, summoned his prodigious arrogance, and swelled rapidly from disorientation to indignation and scorn. "You pathetic little children!" he sneered, with malformed larynx emitting a high pitched, bronchial rasp. "Can you seriously believe anyone could defeat the immortal Dark Lord by destroying old trinkets? Surely even arrogant brats such as yourselves cannot be quite that foolish and naive!"

Harry paused long enough to convey disdain, then lowered his eyes to the enemy. "The foolishness and naivety is all yours, Tommy," he stated evenly. "When you heeded our summons, you demonstrated exactly how misguided you are: anchoring your barren, hollow, wasted existence to frail abominations."

"Ha!!" Riddle spat, throwing his boney head back to revel in the echoes that filtered back from distant hills. "My life will be a celebration everlasting! You and your pitiful little wench will die here on your lonely rock," he proclaimed. "Your flesh will be carrion; your bones will bleach alone and forgotten." His face morphed into a malicious leer as he brandished his wand menacingly. "Nobody will ever come to dispose of your worthless remains! And why not? Why wouldn't the world pay homage to the ridiculous little boy who lived? Why? Why??"

Harry and Ginny regarded the deranged form with expressions of calm condescension, not deigning to acknowledge the question. Their silence unnerved him. Discomposed beneath the icy eyes bearing down on him, still rattled by the site of the poised Horcrux traps, bravado faltered and his voice withered, shrill and reedy. "Nobody will ever mark your passage," he rasped, "because I will tell the world to ignore you — that's why! And the world will listen!!" He sought to stand tall, imperious and intimidating, but nerves got the better of him: he flailed his wand arm distractedly, and shot a huge bolt of billowing green fury ineffectually into the sky as he cried out, "Do not delude yourselves, you pathetic waifs — you cannot defeat the great Lord Voldemort!!"

Ginny locked her eyes defiantly with his. "The name Voldemort means nothing," she declared; her tone searing with scorn and ridicule. "We are here to sweep away your ludicrous delusions and redeem a lost little child named Thomas Riddle."

Voldemort had been expecting a retort.

He had not, however, been expecting this retort.

He gaped at Ginny for a moment, then at Harry. His irate, trembling mouth closed and clenched. His wand hand twitched indecisively. Words left him; conversation had lost its appeal. He cast the briefest final furtive glance at the single remaining intact Horcrux, his eyes flashed and then, with cloak billowing like the depths of midnight, he swept himself away from them. A thick cold fog spread over the plateau.

Harry knew they must expect the unexpected. However angry, rash or disoriented the dark wizard might have become, Harry knew full well that their adversary had a magical repertoire of unparalleled power and subtlety. He understood, as the thick mist swirled about him, that he was about to experience some sort of terrible magic that he might well have never seen or perhaps even imagined before. Fortunately he did not forget, as the dim twilight quenched, filling his world with monochromatic nothingness, that he and Ginny still held the upper hand. If Voldemort killed or even stunned him, the last Horcrux would perish in the trap, leaving the way clear for Ginny (or even somebody else) to rid the world of its greatest cancer.

To achieve this, Harry was prepared to die.

But when it all came down to it, he didn't want to.

A year ago, dying would have seemed easy — if he knew he could achieve lasting peace, preserve what was good in the world, and reap the one true reward still available him, he would gladly have exercised his right to die; to drift away and rejoin his father, his mother and Sirius. It would be so straightforward, simple and pure: he would return to his loved ones delivering vindication.

But things were no longer so simple.

Harry's life contained Ginny now. Harry's life was Ginny! Woven within that magnificent red-tressed dynamo was pure vitality, inspiration and every conceivable earthbound joy. If there was even the slightest chance that she was alive, he knew he could never leave her. He couldn't bear the thought of causing her all of the pain that others had caused him.

Ginny.

But where was she?

Blinded, deafened, paralyzed and isolated by Voldemort's spell, Harry could not feel Ginny's presence. He fought back to urge to quail in desperation and forced himself to reason. Paradoxically, Harry could not feel Ginny's presence... but he could also not feel her absence. Both were always so obvious: her presence meant comfort, strength and resolve; her absence would be a distinct ache. Furthermore, with Voldemort so close, if Ginny weren't around, Harry knew that his scar would be a searing hot brand on his forehead. What on Earth could simultaneously prevent him from sensing her presence and her absence?

Confundus! The only way Harry knew he could resolve the paradox was if he was caught in a powerful confundus-like spell. All his senses seemed to have been choked off. Damn! How could he possibly hope to fight if he couldn't see, hear or sense either friend of enemy?!

I need something real!

With his sixth sense, Harry swept through the frigid void seeking any trace of familiar aura. After a moment, he finally found something: the feel of the solid, undying rock beneath his feet; the subtle, subliminal power of the Earth. However overwhelming Riddle's deceit might have been, it could not shroud Harry from the mother of all magic. Not here on the outcrop, where the rock spoke to Harry with exquisite magical eloquence. Relief swept through him to confirm that he was still standing exactly where he needed to be, on his place of power, still accompanied by Ginny and still within reach of his target. But he still needed to somehow break free from rest of the confundus effects.

Ginny felt as though she was being whisked away in a narcotic cloud. Amidst the momentary dizzying swirl, she focused on the sensation of Harry's comforting magic near her, of the Earth's ancient stolid goodness in the granite pulsing through her feet and legs. Quickly the mist thinned and she gazed around her at a scene that was similar, but changed: her eyes told her that Riddle was gone. Her eyes also revealed that Harry had stepped down off the outcrop to investigate the spot where Riddle had been standing a moment ago.

"He's gone Ginny. There's no sign of him anywhere."

Ginny stared down from her place on the outcrop, silently surveying the plateau.

"Hand me the Horcrux, Ginny. Let's get out of here — we need to return to the castle. They need us down there."

Ginny stared at the figure on the southern plateau below her. Harry. His hand was raised, beckoning her down, but his face remained oblique to hers, occluding his expression. He was still glancing distractedly back and forth across the rocky vista toward points angled away from the outcrop. He flicked his hand again impatiently: a terse, distracted adult summoning a child.

Ginny frowned at him, vaguely annoyed at Harry's behaviour, but mostly just confused, still trying to piece together exactly what had happened after Riddle had swept himself away. Had she missed something obvious? "Why did Riddle disappear?" she wondered aloud.

"He's gone down to the castle. Come here and give me the Horcrux, will you? Our friends might be dying down there!"

Ginny studied Harry more closely. She delved into her essence perception and could sense Harry's presence nearby, but there was a discrepancy between what her eyes told her and what she felt from her magic. Something didn't add up. And Harry still wouldn't turn to face her. "Harry, please look at me," she requested.

Harry remained facing obliquely away. "Don't bug me, okay? I'm concentrating!"

"Harry, you always look at me when you talk to me. Turn around and face me!" she demanded.

"Bloody hell," he swore in frustration. "We don't have time to mess around. Give me the blasted Horcrux and let's go!"

"Look at me!" Ginny ordered.

The figure froze. A moment hung between them like a droplet of rain spattering onto ice. The head of ruffled black hair turned ever so slowly, a hardened face came into view. Ginny gasped!

Red!

Coal-red glowing eyes!

The vision lasted only the barest instant, but panic tore through her chest. Without the slightest thought, she was leaping to the side. A lurid tongue of nauseating green light was lashing out from below her, tearing apart the space she had just vacated. Her arms flailed, clutching the thin air beside her where Harry had once stood. Her eyes knew she was alone on the outcrop... but her hands grazed something, grappled... seized... arms! The flesh she had grasped was rigid and chill, but she knew instantly that these were arms that she knew and cherished with every breath.

From his rigid captivity within a gelid barrier cloud, Harry suddenly felt a hot flame brush his arms then seize him. Warmth flooded his frozen body and he was suddenly aware of not just the reassuring stone at his feet, but a loving, restoring magic at his side. The cold cloud evaporated, his senses cleared, his eyes latched onto the beautiful woman who stumbled, astonished and relieved, into his embrace. Ginny's momentum carried them both forward out of the path of a second killing curse that scorched the air. They stumbled and recovered; their trainers gripped the rock beneath them and together they turned to face the hideous, livid, raving creature writhing on the plateau below them.

"Accio Horcrux!!" Voldemort screeched as incoherent sparks sputtered from his wand.

This is it! Harry and Ginny closed their eyes, preparing for the most daring break-in they could ever expect to attempt.

Hands grasped, Harry and Ginny stood breathless and unmoving as the horcrux trap lifted from the rock and soared toward the desperate madman. As it flew through the air, the box emitted the tell-tale metallic ping as trap snapped shut. A sharp silver tip punctured the encircling band of the diadem. As the first rays of the morning sun leaped out over the far eastern horizon, two grotesque howls rent the air as a foul master and his little metallic thrall shrieked their shared anguish, fury and despair.

Death Eaters swarmed into the Entrance Hall. Some raced in as an ragged mob while others followed in disciplined shielder-and-hexer pairings. Their incursion into the castle began as a haphazardly expanding semi-circle, but as the formation ran up against a fierce volley of student and Order stunners emanating from the grand staircase and back hallways, the circle bent as several of the braver invaders remained to engage the defenders while the vast portion streamed past along the sole uncontested route leading into the Great Hall. Ryan hung back from the defence, counting heads. A frown gradually spread across his face as the numbers came up short. A pang of dread raced through his chest at the thought of disillusioned Death Eaters sneaking in undetected, but he pushed the thought aside. This rabble wanted blood and mayhem; few of them had the skills and even fewer had any patience for sustaining disillusionment. Furthermore, he strongly believed that the enemy was still banking more on visual intimidation than true combat prowess; they wanted to look as scary and overwhelming as possible.

The only way Ryan could reconcile the numbers was by assuming even more desertion than Kevin had reported earlier: dozens had left earlier, but perhaps now that the castle was open, some of the enemies may have smelled a rat and chosen to run the opposite direction. The good news was that the reduced enemy force should make it easier to defend the castle. The bad news was that if their trap ultimately succeeded, it was doubtful that they would capture any more than a hundred Death Eaters.

The limited engagement on the stairs and hallways quickly took on a stale character as hexes on both sides mostly met with a solid wall of shields. Emmeline went down briefly with a cutting curse, but the spell wasn't dark and Pomfrey was able to quickly repair the damage, permitting the veteran fighter to rejoin the line. Moody and Lupin were able to score several longer-distance stunners into the stream of Death Eaters going past into the great hall, but otherwise, the initial minutes of the battle took on the unusual tenor of a sliding front: invaders streaming recklessly past a stationary defender, resulting in only minor transient combat.

As the Great Hall began to fill up, a grotesque comedy of shouts and screams rang out as Death Eaters fell for the illusion ruse, firing an endless stream of erratic and undisciplined hexes into the confused masses of running, crying, faux-student illusions. Courtesy of a battery of small surveillance mirrors that Mary-Jo had set up to monitor the intended combat zone, Ron and Hermione watched the farce unfold from a safe vantage near the back of the balcony in the Entrance Hall. Ron grinned at the ineptitude: if the Death Eaters had planned any tangible original strategy, it had obviously degenerated into random mayhem and frustration. Fenrir Greyback had led the charge into the Great Hall, agape with delirious rapture at the sight of so many potential victims, but after at least six of his hex attempts sailed ineffectually through his wraith-students targets, he bellowed in psychotic rage and started firing completely random curses around the room, incinerating a tapestry, knocking over chairs, goring one of his own Death Eater colleagues. Ron was about to laugh at the idiocy, but he stopped short: without rhyme or reason, and in almost spooky accidental precision, Greyback suddenly managed to pulverize three of Hermione's anti-portkey ward stones in less than ten seconds. It had to have been a random, freak happenstance; the wards were well disguised as innocuous vases, lamp brackets, pepper mills and other incidental items... but after obsessing over the precise location of these wards for so long, Ron and Hermione spotted the trend almost immediately. Hermione blanched. Ron cursed violently.

"Five more bleeding minutes and we would have had those damned wards strengthened!" Ron shouted, drawing alarmed glances from several nearby students. "I wish Bill had thought of that a bit earlier," he grumbled under his breath.

Hermione was frowning as she performed frantic calculations in her head. "There's a coverage hole near the Ravenclaw table," she muttered, "and every remaining ward needs to be strengthened." She grabbed a bag containing several spare ward stones and, without the slightest hesitation, sprang down the main steps and sprinted across the Entrance Hall, leaving an aghast Ron in her wake.

"Stop Hermione — stay up... you can't... you'll get...!" Ron stammered frantically, but she was already out of sight.

"Hey lass, halt will yeh!" Moody barked as Hermione raced heedlessly past his position at the bottom of the grand staircase and into the Entrance Hall. Several Death Eaters wheeled to face the unexpected incursion, but Moody and Lupin launched a barrage of offensive curses around the room to give her some cover. It worked; three of the Death Eaters turned to face the live fire, while the others moved back and joined the flow of bodies into the Great Hall lured by the illusory racket and excitement, thus sparing Hermione any obstacles as she ducked into a small vestibule, disillusioned herself and rushed invisibly to perform her feverish modifications.

Noting Hermione's disillusionment spell out of the corner of his eye, Moody slacked off on his barrage. "A tad impetuous," he growled to Lupin as he resumed his defensive stance, "but I reckon she'll be all right."

In the thirty seconds it took Ron to recover his wits after Hermione's departure, he failed to notice her disillusionment spell or hear Moody's exclamation of relief. Ron knew only one thing; his girlfriend had charged alone straight into a room full of Death e=Eaters. He bolted madly down the steps, nearly colliding with a bewildered Moody.

"What the bloody...?!" Moody bellowed at Ron's back as once again Death Eaters swung around to mark a new adversary, and once again Moody and Lupin were forced to adjust their tactics to cover for an errant student.

Ron's eyes swept the room frantically looking for Hermione. Not seeing her anywhere in the Entrance Hall, he plunged headlong into the Great Hall, yelling like a berserker and firing off hexes with more reckless abandon than even the most undisciplined Death Eaters.

"Eh!" Moody grunted to Lupin. "D'yer s'pose that lad'll attract a bit of attention?"

Ron and Hermione had certainly attracted Ryan's attention. "Damn!" he swore from his position on the center of the balcony as he watched Ron disappear from sight into the strictly-off-limits Great Hall. Ryan beckoned to McGonagall, and the two met at the top of the first flight of steps. Ryan composed the calmest face he could managed, met McGonagall's eyes and willed the look of panic out of her face. He breathed deeply, took her arm and steered back into one of the inner corridors to talk quietly. "Harry's second sign hasn't come yet," he told her, "but Potter's more reliable than rain in the Lake District so let's just assume it's going to come soon. I propose we initiate step two; it may take a little while before we see the distraction he promised, but I think we're strong enough to improvise for a little while." Rigorously holding her gaze, studying the worry lines in her face, he unconsciously reached over and squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. For a student speaking to his professor, the gesture was wholly inappropriate; for two comrades in arms, it was completely natural.

"I don't know..." McGonagall faltered.

"I don't know either, Professor," Ryan responded. "All I know is that I don't want to lose anyone, and this might be our only chance to bring Chess and Granger back."

McGonagall regarded the student carefully. Their eyes locked; her mind raced through different contingencies. She exhaled. "Yes, you're right," she agreed. She turned and walked quickly back to the balcony, shouting, "Tactical teams advance!"

Everyone had been waiting for precisely that signal; the bustle suddenly gelled into a well-rehearsed dance as battle formations assembled in a matter of seconds and advanced toward their objectives. As originally planned, the Order of the Phoenix team led a charge into the Great Hall. Quinn's team, which included Sarah, Jennifer, Jack, Blaise and Daphne was instructed to continue to hold the stairs and back corridors. Meanwhile Mary-Jo led her team of Ryan, Nick, Terry, Neville and Luna straight through the Entrance Hall to try to cut off any escape through the shattered front entrance.

As the Order members and Mary-Jo's squad moved through the Entrance Hall, the sparse remnant population of Death Eaters scattered. Some managed to escape back through the entrance way and flee out to the grounds, but the students were able to stun five who were slow in flight. A similar number of others either fled into the Great Hall in front of Moody's spellmanship or fell trying.

Lupin and Moody led their squad through the doorway to the Great Hall but stumbled to a halt a few feet into the room. There were at least seventy Death Eaters wreaking havoc among the shattered tables and benches. As soon as the Order members crossed the threshold, the Death Eaters abandoned their futile pursuit of the screaming student-apparitions and unleashed blinding spell fire toward the door, forcing all Order operatives to erect shields. Less than a moment later came the first Unforgivable; a killing curse that Elphias was just barely agile enough to dodge. The six Order members in the room were hemmed into such a narrow fringe that they barely had any space to maneuver and Moody had immediate doubts about an ambitious advance. "Retreat!" he shouted, shepherding his colleagues back into the Entrance Hall. He cast a shield over the adjoining doorway and paused to reconsider strategy.

Moody had just started to map a new plan when long flowing blond hair crossed his field of vision. "Bloody hell!" he roared. "What now...??"

Luna waved and smiled as she sauntered past. "Ronald and Professor Lupin are so very brave to be in there fighting all those Death Eaters," she said cheerfully as she pointed toward the Great Hall into which she was entering, "but it seems somewhat risky for them to do it all by themselves. Things are boring out here, so I think I'd like to go give them a hand. I'll see you in a little while."

Moody's good eye nearly popped out as she vanished blithely into forbidden territory... but her words somehow registered: Ronald and Professor Lupin! He quickly surveyed the cadre of Order fighters and was aghast to learn that she was right — Lupin had gone missing too!

Swearing incoherently, Moody stumbled quickly back to the doorway he'd just vacated: by far the most striking activity in the room was Luna skipping around the room, distracting dozens of Death Eaters, drawing their spell fire and inciting shrieks of frustration as they attempted, and failed, to subdue her. "Merlin's ingrown toenail!" the gruff former Auror stammered as he finally grasped the situation. "Of all the dunderheaded, nincompooping, brilliantly beautiful ruses!"

As Luna continued to dance about, sloughing off a barrage of incredibly errant spell fire that barely even tested her shield, Lupin's crouched form was making its cautious way forward, under cover of the Gryffindor table, toward a pile of a half dozen recumbent bodies at the west end of the Hufflepuff table. Among the jumbled pile of bodies was a very familiar shock of flaming red hair.

Having entered the room at the fore of Moody's team, Lupin had been the only one to spot Ron's body. Despite being vaguely aware of the others retreating behind him, he had dashed headlong into the room completely disregarding personal safety. Firing off as dazzling and bewildering an array of spells as he could muster, his dash forward had been cut short by an incoming cutting spell; he had flinched at the last moment and the spell had only grazed his shoulder, but in the sudden evasive motion he had tripped over a broken chair and gone down hard enough for the Death Eaters to assume that he had been wiped out.

Lupin had just cleared his head to re-evaluate the situation when Luna had appeared. While everyone's attention continued to be ensconced by her apparent insanity, he leaped from his cover behind the Gryffindor table, grabbed Ron's arm and slung it over his shoulders. He lurched to his feet and erected a hasty shield.

At least a dozen death eaters spotted the unexpected motion, whipped their wands away from the increasingly irritating game with Luna and singled out the heavily burdened, slow moving werewolf. Remus turned momentarily; he glanced from one hateful face to the next, rapidly estimated the best way to protect the unconscious Ron from the inevitable hexes and steeled himself for the end. Shifting his burden appropriately, he adjusted his shield without much hope that it would survive the onslaught, and doggedly resumed lugging his burden as quickly as possible toward the door back out to the Entrance Hall.

From across the room, his eyes met Moody's for a moment, but the veteran ex-auror shifted his gaze and stared over Lupin's shoulder with a puzzled look on his face. Yelps of pain and shock raced through the enemy ranks. Dismayed Death Eaters clutched their left forearms in a mixture of searing discomfort, and urgent agitation. All thoughts of the conflict at hand were swept away: they jabbed repeatedly and frantically at their dark marks, expecting to be portkeyed away to their master in his moment of dire need.

Except nothing happened.

Hermione's wards had held!

Lupin stared in amazement as the drastic transformation swept the room. "Harry's sign!" he yelled. He turned and shouted at Moody. "Harry's sign!" he bellowed again. "Attack!!"

Moody's eyes went wide with sudden recognition. "Attack!!" he yelled back into the Entrance Hall.

"Attack!" Mary-Jo and Quinn both yelled from their respective corners. Led by McGonagall who raced out to take Lupin's place in the Order Phalanx, both student teams charged into the Great Hall. Luna waved cheerfully at Mary-Jo and resumed her assigned role as the three tight formations of alternating shielders and hexers advanced. Initially encountering only sporadic and confused resistance, they quickly swept inwards and in less than thirty seconds they had passed Lupin, leaving nearly twenty stunned Death Eaters lying on the floor. Bill ducked out of the Order phalanx, gave Lupin a fierce hug as he passed, quickly checked Ron's pulse, then rejoined the offensive.

Finding the first safe opportunity in a swirl of several agonizingly endless minutes, Lupin paused, took a huge breath, and began again to coax the now-semi-conscious Ron back toward the Entrance Hall. Suddenly he felt a small hand on his arm. Bewildered he looked over... just as Hermione cancelled her disillusionment charm.

She gave him a questioning look of grave concern. He met her gaze with a shaky smile. "He's okay," he told her breathlessly. "He had his bell rung, but his vital signs are fine and he can hold a bit of his own weight."

Hermione whimpered for a moment in relief, then stifled her emotion. She threw Ron's other arm around her shoulder, and the three of them stumbled back into the Entrance Hall.

"Is it ever like this with you and Tonks?" Hermione asked weakly.

Lupin chuckled in spite of himself. "Well you know, Hermione," he said as he angled his head forward far enough to catch her eye, "you eventually train them to know when not to try to rescue you."

When Bill had raced ahead to retake his place among the Order team members, McGonagall had fallen back to try to assess the situation. The three teams had brilliantly exploited the initial Death Eater confusion, and as many as thirty enemy fighters had fallen. The three phalanxes had advanced through nearly half of the Great Hall, hemming the remaining invaders into the east end, around the smouldering ruin of the staff table.

The rapid advance had enabled Lucia Blevins to lead an improvised team of volunteers into the hall to bind up fallen Death Eaters and levitate them out of the room to a holding area just off the back of the Entrance Hall. Colin and Dennis Creevey had apparently left the basement refuge and had helped Jennifer, Nick and Dedalus to safety as the former two shook off the effects of stunners, while Dedalus sought Pomfrey's assistance for a streaming gash running down the side of his chest. Having delivered Ron to safety in the Entrance Hall, Lupin sprinted back into action to fill Dedalus's hole in the Order of the Phoenix phalanx. Suddenly Fred, George and Percy dashed into the room to join battle, flanked by... Lee, Angelina and Katie? Where had they come from??

McGonagall frowned. Things had gone so well for so long, but what now? The Death Eaters, now largely confined, were rallying in fierce desperation like cornered beasts — the advance had ground to a halt. It looked to her that despite the best planning by Harry and Ryan, the wrong sort of stalemate might set in — the trapped Death Eaters were displaying rare discipline that might be adequate to beat back the advance and allow them cower under their own shields long enough to discover some hole in the trap.

They're keying on somebody; someone is keeping them under control.

She gazed around trying to spot the likely leaders among the Death Eaters to determine what sort of strategy they might attempt. Knowing from Harry that Voldemort had not personally participated in the invasion, McGonagall's eyes swept around for the unmistakeable sight of Bellatrix Lestrange's insane hair.

She was not here either.

According to mannerisms, it appeared to McGonagall that the Death Eaters were largely taking their cues from Avery Senior (McGonagall knew his face well) plus some other tall masked fighter clad all in black. These two combattants were attracting the most consistent attention. They had let their fighters fall back under the Order and student advance, but seemed to have drawn a line of defence in a large semi-circle toward the east end of the room, with many of their fighters maintaining overlapping shields. Behind this line, they had assembled a small group who had turned inward to face the tall gothic windows on the far wall. Just then, McGonagall grasped their aim: the group by the windows began to blast mercilessly, not at the castle defenders, but rather at the glass and wards. McGonagall knew full well, as Harry and Bill had warned, that this wall was weak!

The tall masked Death Eater must obviously have known or sensed this too: with very explicit gestures, he was signalling his colleagues with great fervour to blast their way out of the trap. He was speaking very little, but one shout that he had uttered sounded familiar to McGonagall. She also noted that his behavior was rather unusual — he clearly seemed to exert some leadership over the enemies, but McGonagall had not actually seen him cast any offensive curses against the students or Order at all — his combat role had been strictly in directing movements and in sustaining shields. Amidst the confusing din and distractions, she searched her memory for clues to the identity of this mystery man... who remained so intent on attacking that window...

Oh, Merlin no!

Dozens of grimy fists shot into the air in exultation and relief as one wide towering window splintered. Cacophonous tinkling rent the air; a torrent of glistening shards came cascading down, catching the sunrise like an inverted blast of scintillating flame.