Lost Memories

lxxiii. broken family

All of the pent up stress and worry melted away from me as Fred stirred. My hands were blistered and aching from the Fiendfyre and moving the stones, but I didn't care; my mind raced as I pulled Fred out with the help of his brothers.

I saved him.

"Wazzgoinon?" Fred mumbled.

"You promised me!" I shouted at him. "You would stay away from the seventh floor corridor and—"

"Calm down," Percy said to me with a glare.

"He could have died! He was going to die if I hadn't called him—"

But I was cut off as a body fell past the hole blown into the side of the school, and curses flew in at us from the darkness, hitting the wall behind our heads.

"Get down!" Harry shouted as more curses flew through the night: He and Ron pulled Hermione and me to the floor and Percy jumped down as well. Fred rolled out from his spot and crawled to his discarded wand.

Over the edge of the castle through the hole in the wall the curses had blasted: More giant spiders were climbing the side of the building, liberated from the Forbidden Forest, into which the Death Eaters must have penetrated. All of us fired Stunning Spells down upon them, knocking the lead monster into its fellows so that they rolled back down the building and out of sight. Then more curses came soaring over my head, so close I felt the force of them blow my hair.

"Let's move, NOW!"

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, Percy, and I all ran down the corridor we had come from. Draco and Goyle had vanished, but at the end of the corridor, which was now full of dust and falling masonry, glass long gone from the windows, I saw many people running backwards and forward, whether friends or foes I could not tell. Rounding the corner, Percy let out a bull-like roar: "ROOKWOOD!" and sprinted off in the direction of a tall man, who was pursuing a couple of students, with Fred hot on his tail.

"Harry, in here!" I screamed.

Without Percy and Fred, the four of us hid behind a tapestry, but Hermione and Ron seemed to be wrestling together; Hermione was trying to restrain Ron, to stop him running after his brothers.

"Listen to me — LISTEN, RON!"

"I wanna help — I wanna kill Death Eaters —"

His face was contorted, smeared with dust and smoke, and he was shaking with rage.

"Ron! Percy and Fred will be okay," I shouted

"Ron, we're the only ones who can end it! Please — Ron — we need the snake, we've got to kill the snake!" said Hermione.

"We will fight!" I said. "We'll have to, to reach the snake! But let's not lose sight now of what we're supposed to be d-doing! We're the only ones who can end it!"

"You need to find out where Voldemort is because he'll have the snake with him, won't he? Do it, Harry — look inside him!" Hermione encouraged him.

After a moment, Harry gasped, "He's in the Shrieking Shack. The snake's with him, it's got some sort of magical protection around it. He's just sent Lucius Malfoy to find Snape."

"Voldemort's sitting in the Shrieking Shack?" said Hermione, outraged. "He's not — he's not even fighting?"

"He doesn't think he needs to fight," said Harry. "He thinks I'm going to go to him."

"But why?"

"He knows I'm after Horcruxes — he's keeping Nagini close beside him — obviously I'm going to have to go to him to get near the thing —"