An American At Hogwarts: Book Three

Chapter Sixty-One

Harry and I practically stumbled through the sling portal, still grappling with everything that had just happened.

Dumbledore was gone. The Minister had practically declared war on him as he chased him out of the castle. The DA was likely over. There was now no one here with the power to stop Umbridge from doing truly whatever she wanted to us. And Percy Weasley had walked out of the room to follow Ministry orders, choosing wrong after his split second of hesitation gave me hope.

Every other time Harry had been going through some bad shit, I'd done my best to be someone he could lean on, especially since I understood the crazy stuff in his life better than most other students at Hogwarts. I'd had practice dealing with that kind of thing. But this was a new level, and as the sling portal shut dangerously quickly after we stepped through, I just couldn't keep my focus on anything anymore. My brain felt numb.

Harry and I just stood in the empty common room for a few minutes, trying to muster the energy to go up to bed. After a few seconds, I took a long, deep breath and sighed, plopping one hand onto Harry's shoulder.

We shared a look, and I could see him mentally beating up on himself already. I gave his shoulder a little squeeze.

"Harry, I know neither of us really have the capacity for much right now, but this is not your fault. The only people who deserve any blame for all this terrible shit are the Ministry people who are so insane about keeping their power and so scared they're letting it destroy their ability to do their jobs. Nobody else."

He let out a long breath, closing his eyes as he did.

"Thanks, Alexa."

I nodded, pulling Harry into my side with one arm around his shoulder.

"Sure thing. And it's true. Now let's get the hell to sleep. I have... a bad feeling that we're gonna need all the rest we can get before we have to deal with the fallout tomorrow."

Angelina and Alicia were waiting up for me when I got to our room, and after a little bit of convincing from them, I opened a sling portal to the boys' room so we could all talk. The last thing I wanted to do was relive anything that had happened, but my friends were clearly worried about me, and I didn't want to leave them hanging.

Apparently, the whole DA had been sitting in the common room, wanting to wait for Harry and I to get back before going to bed. Lee, thankfully, had the wherewithal to tell everybody to knock it off and get to their dorms. If an Umbridge-aligned person had come in and seen everyone gathered, they would've immediately known why and been able to bust the whole group.

Unfortunately for us, it didn't matter that much anymore, since Pansy Parkinson had gone back into the Room of Requirement and grabbed the list of DA members. Still, it was good thinking, and I'm glad nobody had taken the extra risk. We just had to hope the Ministry and everyone else would be more focused on Dumbledore now, especially since he'd managed to sell them on a version of the story that kept us all out of expulsionable trouble.

With my friends around me, I managed to give a fairly quick account of everything that had happened. The expressions around me got more and more grim with every new detail, and I noticed a shift in the twins especially that caused me more than a little concern. I didn't tell any of them about Percy, mostly because I didn't want to talk about it. The twins had already written him off, anyway, so it's not like it would be important information for them.

Once I'd filled them in on everything else, we all decided it was more than time to go to bed. I'd be surprised if any of us fell asleep peacefully with all the new outrageous developments that had happened over the course of the past twenty-four hours, but I was exhausted enough that I was thankfully able to fall asleep anyway.