Dark Pasts { A Harry Potter Story }

Chapter 109 - Hogwarts Prepares For Battle

As we emerged from the tunnel into a large room, there were several screams and yells.

"HARRY!"

"It's Potter, it's POTTER!"

"Elizabeth!"

"Ron!"

"Hermione!"

Everyone circled around us and engulfed us in tight hugs.

"Okay, okay, calm down!" Neville said after a moment.

The crowd backed away and I was finally able to make out my surroundings. The room we were in was only slightly smaller than the Great Hall. Multicoloured hammocks were strung from the walls, on which three bright tapestries could be seen. The first bore the Gryffindor lion, the second the black badger of Hufflepuff and the third, the bronze eagle of Ravenclaw. There were also a few bookcases and, in one corner, a large wireless. As far as I was concerned, no room like this existed at Hogwarts.

"Where are we?" Harry asked.

"Room of Requirement, of course!" Neville said.

"Tell us what you've been up to, though," Ernie Macmillan said.

Before any of us could answer his question, I heard Harry moan in pain beside me as he turned his back on everyone. They all looked on, wondering what was happening as I moved to hold him in place as he swayed alarmingly.

"Harry?" I said hesitantly as he breathed heavily and looked into my eyes.

A horrifying thought occurred to me: had Voldemort already figured out that we knew his secret? Had he already discovered that we were hunting Horcruxes? My thoughts were confirmed when Harry spoke.

"We need to get going," he said.

The four of us exchanged a knowing look.

"What are we going to do, then, Harry?" Seamus said. "What's the plan?"

"Plan?" Harry said breathlessly, and I knew he was in immense pain at the moment as he clutched my arm tightly. "Well, there's something we — Ron, Hermione, Liz and I — need to do, and then we'll get out of here."

No one was laughing nor smiling anymore.

"What d'you mean, 'get out of here'?" Neville said, sounding confused.

"We haven't come back to stay," Harry said. "There's something important we need to do —"

"What is it?"

"I — I can't tell you."

There was a ripple of muttering at this: Neville's brows contracted.

"Why can't you tell us? It's something to do with fighting YouKnow-Who, right?"

"Well, yeah —"

"Then we'll help you."

Everyone nodded, and I could tell Harry was having a hard time getting out of this.

"You don't understand," he said. "We — we can't tell you. We've got to do it — alone."

"Why?" Neville asked.

"Because "Dumbledore left the four of us a job," he said carefully, "and we weren't supposed to tell — I mean, he wanted us to do it, just the four of us."

"We're his army," Neville said.

Suddenly the tunnel door opened behind us.

"We got your message, Neville! Hello you four, I thought you must be here!"