WE'LL TAKE ON THE WORLD ; h.j.p.

18 | Back To London

Snow was twirling through the air as Allie woke up the next morning, finding Ginny's bed empty. She must've left rather hectically for her blanket and one of her pillows were lying on the floor, which was very unusual for Ginny - not the chaos. That was truly like her but being awake before Allison or any of the other girls was definitely not.

It was too early for Allison to question Ginny's behaviour, so instead, she rolled out of bed to take a quick, hot shower. Hermione was binding her red and golden tie as Allison stepped out of the bathroom, fully dressed but still tired.

"Have you seen Ginny?" Hermione asked with a nod at the red-haired girl's bed, and Allie shook her head, slipping into her shoes.

"Her trunk's gone as well," Hermione added, worry coating her voice.

Allison looked up again, now noticing that Ginny's whole stuff was not there anymore.

"Maybe she packed early..." Allison said, weakly attempting to come up with theories to her sudden disappearance.

Hermione stared at the empty bed for another ten seconds in scepsis before they shouldered their bags and made their way down to the already busy common room.

Younger students were running around, some were checking the blackboard for any news and a group of older students was scribbling some last-minute homework onto a parchment. As usually, they waited for Harry and Ron so they could go to breakfast together - only that they did not show up. Even after ten minutes of waiting and the common room slowly emptying, there was no sight of them.

"This is unbelievable," Hermione said, crossing her arms and taking a look at her watch. "What's taking them so long?"

"No idea," replied Allison, pondering if Hermione would let her chug some cold water into their faces to wake them up if it meant they would get to breakfast on time as she spotted the familiar faces of Dean and Neville coming down from their dorm. Allison stopped them as they were about to pass Hermione and her.

"Hey, could one of you maybe check if Ron and Harry are awake? Or if I need to kick them up the arse so they'll get out of bed?"

Any other day, at least Dean would have laughed at that. But now, neither of the two boys even slightly reacted to Allison's comment.

"Would love to see that," Dean began, "but they aren't there."

Hermione narrowed her eyebrows. "What do you mean they're not there? Are they at the Great Hall already?"

"No, I don't think they are at Hogwarts anymore," Dean said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Harry was... well, he had some sort of nightmare-vision last night. He was screaming and twitching and all that, which, I mean, we know he sometimes does that, but this time it looked pretty bad."

"Harry said this vision was something about Ron's dad and that he was bleeding and then McGonagall took both of them to Dumbledore," Neville added. "I... I guess they are at St. Mungo's now..."

Allison shared a worried look with Hermione. That didn't just sound bad, it sounded absolutely terrible. If Harry had been right - which seemed to be the case if not only he and Ron, but also Ginny were gone - then Allison could only hope that Mr. Weasley was alright and in safe hands and not - no. No, he wasn't. He couldn't.

"Okay, thank you," Hermione said as Allison grabbed her arm and pulled her through the portrait.

Without a need to communicate through spoken words, they darted down the corridors to Professor McGonagall's office.

They slithered around a final corner and were suddenly met with the grey-haired witch. Allison stopped in her tracks, which made Hermione bump into her. She was about to swear but quickly closed her mouth and straightened her shirt as she spotted McGonagall, who looked down at them over the trim of her spectacles, eyebrows raised.