[Broken Glass Series]: Chapter Twenty-One of 'Glassfall'- Foolish

[lomonaaeren]

Harry doesn’t appear to do much to accomplish the ritual. He splashes a little blood on the floor—Theo tenses—from a cut hand and then heals the cut with a wave of his arm. He stands with his eyes closed and his breathing gentle as he waits for whatever information he needs to make its way to him.

And then Basilisk appears, winding down his neck.

Theo tenses harder, but Basilisk doesn’t act as if she notices any of them. She lifts her head and hisses something softly, her tongue darting out. Then she winds around the blood in a circle that melts into other shapes, rings and ovals and joined forms that even resemble squares in the moment before they fade back into the dance of her body.

Justin yelps something before he gets control of himself. Theo smiles thinly. That’s right, they didn’t all know about Harry’s familiar.

Justin shoots him a look of intense irritation, probably because he felt Theo’s smugness down their bond. (That’s still a weird concept to Theo). But before he can say something, Harry raises a hand, and everyone turns and orients on him.

“I know where he is.”

When Harry turns to face them, his eyes are shining with green magic. It makes his eyes look deeper and shinier than usual. Theo nods and waits for some kind of direction, while Harry kneels to collect Basilisk from the ground.

Theo glances down to make sure all his lord’s blood is gone, and—

There’s still blood left there, on the carved circles of the floor, and it—

Blazes into Apparition coordinates in Theo’s mind. He staggers.

“Theo? Are you all right?”

Theo comes back to himself to see Harry standing with his hand extended and his forehead wrinkled. Theo swallows and nods. “The—shock of the Apparition coordinates coming to life in my mind was startling, my lord.”

“But you’re well.”

“Yes, my lord.” Theo straightens and ignores the smugness coming from some other people (Justin and Pansy, he’s going to remember that). “I can Apparate you from the edge of the wards whenever you need me to.”

“And the rest of us?” Pansy demands.

Theo turns and meets her eyes. Pansy gasps aloud as Theo sends the coordinates hurtling into her mind with nothing more than that look.

“What—what the fuck—”

“Don’t swear in front of our lord, Pansy,” Theo says, primly, and has the delight of watching her flush and send him a hateful glare.

“It’s not like I care,” Harry snaps, before Pansy can get too upset about it. He turns and runs up through the school to the edge of the wards. Theo promptly follows. In the end, serving Harry will always matter more than teasing Pansy.

When they’re right at the edge of the wards, Harry turns and sweeps his glance over the rest of them. “Be prepared to follow. Pansy, can you Apparate?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Justin? Neville?” Harry doesn’t bother asking Corban, who must know. And Draco isn’t back yet from the mourning process for his father. Theo performed a few mild Confundus Charms on their professors so they wouldn’t ask about it.

“No,” Justin and Neville both say at the same time.

“I’ll bring them, my lord,” Corban says, quiet and sturdy.

“Thank you, Corban.” Harry flashes a smile at Corban, and Theo feels the older man’s devotion down their bond. The only thing that keeps him from being jealous is the way that Harry nods to him. “Come on, Theo.”

They trot to the edge of the wards, and Harry lays his hand on Theo’s arm while sweeping his eyes over the others. Basilisk is already around his neck again, invisible. “Be safe. If you come into the middle of a battle situation, you should know from the bonds that you have with Theo and me. But your priority in those cases is to retreat and keep yourself safe. Do you understand?”

There’s a chorus of, “Yes, my lord.” But Theo knows as well as they do that they’ll strive to keep Harry as well as themselves safe.

Then Harry turns to Theo and nods.

Theo closes his eyes, focuses on the Apparition coordinates blazing like map markings in his mind, and takes them through.

*

Sirius takes a long, hoarse breath. The wards around Lestrange Hall seem to have been warped by the Order’s attack, and maybe Ron and Hermione’s attack, and maybe the amount of time they got left alone. They prowl and shudder and dance and fill the air with power, and Sirius hasn’t managed to break through them yet.

To be fair, neither has the rest of the Order. But Sirius is the only one who commands the kind of power and has the willingness to use the kinds of spells the wards need, so it’s still mostly down to him.

“Sirius?”

Sirius turns to Albus, and tries to ignore the sparkling-granite aura around him that marks him as the sacrifice Death demands. (Somehow). “Yes, Albus?”

“Are the wards getting stronger, or is that my imagination?”

“It’s not.” Sirius grimaces and stretches his back. “They are, but I’m not sure why. It could be that it’s something the Lestranges built into them.”

“If they knew that kind of spell, they would have used it during the war.”

Sirius just shrugs and doesn’t say anything. Bellatrix definitely would have if she’d known about it, because she was eager to serve Voldemort in every fashion, but she isn’t a Lestrange by birth. Rabastan and Rodolphus might have kept some secrets, or even have been bound by oaths to their relatives not to talk about them.

Or maybe it’s as simple as the fact that Voldemort was all about attack and not defense, so he didn’t ask his Death Eaters about wards.

I wonder if he’s the same now?

“Who is that?”

Sirius whirls around, because suddenly there’s familiar magic in the air, and it’s not magic that he wanted anywhere near here. Plus there’s a crack of Apparition. And yes, it’s Harry appearing with his Nott beside him.

“Harry!” Albus takes a long step forwards. “You should not be here, young man.” His voice thunders with magic. “Go back to Hogwarts!”

Harry utterly ignores him, which is something that makes Sirius want to laugh despite his fears for Harry’s safety with this crowd. Instead, he turns to face Sirius. “Sirius, are you all right? I wasn’t sure where you were.”

Sirius takes a deep breath. They’re apparently giving up the pretense to the Order that he and Harry are distant from each other. Well, that’s fine. He never liked it anyway. “Yes. But there are wards on this hall that are keeping me from getting in. And we think that’s where your friends Ron and Hermione are.” He’ll play along with their past lies to the point of hinting that Ron and Hermione are still Harry’s friends, anyway.

“Really?” Harry turns and faces Lestrange Hall. The wards dance in agitation. Sirius wonders for a second if they sense the power of Voldemort in Harry, and if the Lestranges did link the wards to the Dark Bastard after all.

Harry hisses something.

Sirius is about to tell him that he doesn’t think there are any snakes in this snowy field, but then there’s a stirring and shifting around Harry’s neck, and a green snake unwinds down and coils around his feet. There’s more than one gasp from the Order members, and someone fires off a curse that storms red and golden towards the snake.

Nott lifts a shield so fast that Sirius blinks. “I think not,” he says, and then Stuns Daedalus Diggle, who fired the curse.

Someone breaks into vociferous protest behind Sirius. He can’t pay attention to them, not when he’s watching the way that Harry lifts his arms and looks down at the snake in front of him, hissing something else. The snake hisses back.

It must be his familiar. And Harry has mentioned her. Sirius just didn’t know what she looked like and that she would be with him here.

Albus yells, a sentence that begins with, “Harry—!”

Harry looks up at the wards, and something seems to flow between him and them, dark and heavy and scarring the air as Sirius watches.

And the wards bow to him.

Sirius stands there and watches with an open mouth as the wards sink into the ground. One minute the air around the hall is full of shadows with fangs and snapping dark green ribbons of power that remind Sirius of nothing so much as the Killing Curse. And the next moment, they settle like colored snowfall and are gone.

“There,” Harry says, his eyes wide and his magic steaming and prancing around him. “I think that took care of them.”

And he almost collapses. He would have, except young Nott gets his arm around and under Harry in time.

And Sirius crosses the distance between them, ashamed that he stood far enough away to almost let Harry fall in the first place, and takes up his godson’s weight. “You can let go of him, Nott. I have him.”

“I concede nothing to anyone when it comes to supporting my lord,” Nott says, in a devastatingly clear voice.

Sirius closes his eyes and then opens them. “Kid,” he mutters, not enough under his breath.

Nott cocks his head at Sirius. “It doesn’t matter. They would have figured it out anyway. I think Dumbledore told them more than enough to do so.” And he turns and faces the Order with his feet and shoulders braced, his wand spinning in his hand.

“Young man.” Albus is trying to get people’s attention, but so many of them are busy staring at Harry that he doesn’t have the effect he probably wants. “You will put away your wand at once and allow us to tend to Harry.”

“I know some Healing spells for magical exhaustion,” Molly says immediately. Her eyes are very wide, and her hand trembles, but Sirius thinks the offer is sincere as far as it goes. “We’ll get Harry to Grimmauld Place and—”

“None of you except Black will be taking him anywhere.”

Nott’s voice is light, but his tone snaps like a whip, or one of the ribbons of power that’s no longer haunting Lestrange Hall. He turns, and Sirius finds himself falling into a back-to-back position with him without thinking.

Back-to-back with a Death Eater’s son. James and Lily would think—

But then Sirius shakes his head. No, he’s back-to-back with Harry’s courtier. And the important thing is that James and Lily gave their lives for their son.

It’s Sirius’s greatest regret that he didn’t, when he had the chance. He died for stupidity.

Now, he won’t.

“He’s fainted,” Tonks says, darting a look at Sirius and then looking away. Sirius has no idea what she’s feeling. But she adds, “He needs someone to evaluate him and make sure that he’s all right.”

“And will we ever see him again if you do that?” Nott asks. His voice is light and mocking, his eyes full of the light that Sirius once saw on the battlefield when he came close enough to notice Nott’s father’s face. “Or will you keep him somewhere in a secure room for evaluation?”

“We’re wasting time,” Sirius adds loudly. “We came here to rescue Ron and Hermione. That should be our priority. And we don’t know how long the wards will have retreated.”

“That they retreated at all—”

“He’s really You-Know-Who’s—”

Nott’s eyes dart to Sirius. Sirius nods. Then Nott looks beyond him, and it occurs to Sirius for the first time that Harry’s courtiers might not have allowed him to come here with only Nott and his snake for protection.

Sure enough, silent Stunners fly into the midst of the Order and lay out Molly and Vance. Tonks manages to shield in time, and Moody does, too, snarling. He’s already pivoting to face the new intruders, his wand glowing.

“Longbottom?”

That second of surprise, and the dropped shield, is all that Neville Longbottom needs to drop Moody in his tracks. It’s only another Stunner, thank Merlin. Harry is stirring in Nott’s arms and standing up now, as if the presence of his courtiers nearby strengthens him.

Albus, in the meantime, stands where he is. None of Harry’s people targeted him, maybe because they thought they couldn’t Stun him. His face is quiet and full of sadness, and also resolve.

“Perhaps it would have been best if you had died last year in the Ministry battle,” Albus says softly.

Harry flinches, but doesn’t otherwise respond. He straightens up and studies Sirius carefully. “You’re sure that you’re all right, Sirius?”

“Of course.” Sirius steps forwards and hugs him fiercely. “I feel like I should be asking you that question, when you fainted.”

“I didn’t faint,” Harry says with immense dignity. “I only had to rest for a moment.” He glances around at his other courtiers. Besides Neville, there’s a girl Sirius doesn’t know but who has the look of a Parkinson, a boy he doesn’t know, either, and—

Corban Yaxley?

Sirius finds himself staring at the man. Yaxley raises his shoulders in a faint shrug. “Following a lord makes strange bedfellows,” he says lightly.

“We need to go in and rescue Ron and Hermione, then,” Harry says, again seeming to ignore the way that Sirius and Yaxley are staring at each other. “If you’re sure that this is the house where they’re being held, Sirius.”

“No. I will not allow it.”

Albus is moving with the kind of immense, granite look on his face that once made James compare him to a mountain on the battlefield. Sirius swallows as he realizes that that granite look will be directed against them for the first time.

He’s not sure that even all of them working together can defeat Albus.

“I should have known that blood would run true,” Albus says, his voice full of sorrow as his eyes focus on Harry. “That you would make friends with Death Eaters, and enslave them in the way that Tom has. I am sorry to have been proven right. But luckily, I did take some precautions against this day.”

“What are those?” the boy Sirius doesn’t know asks, stepping forwards and smiling innocently. “Because I joined Harry to make sure that I could keep an eye on him and there would be a chain on his actions, if necessary. Would it be better to follow you?”

“Of course it would, Mr. Finch-Fletchley.” Probably Muggleborn, then, Sirius thinks. “I am not Tom’s descendant.”

“Tom?”

“Tom Riddle, the true name of Voldemort.” Albus shoots Harry a chiding glance. “Did you not trust them with even this much information, Harry? Perhaps you didn’t want them making a decision in full light of the truth?”

“I just want to know more about him,” says Finch-Fletchley, shaking his head a little. “And why I should follow you. You just not being Voldemort’s son doesn’t say anything much. It’s not like Harry chose him to be his father.”

“But he chose to follow him.”

“I’m not sure that he had a choice. From what Harry said, it sounds like Tom would have threatened and even killed people he cared about. Like Ron and Hermione.”

“As he has done. What does Harry’s sacrifice mean, then? What else could he have done that would be less ridiculous, less doomed to failure, and more important?”

“What do you mean by more important? And are we sure that Voldemort is the one who kidnapped Ron and Hermione? They weren’t the subject of Voldemort visiting Harry in a dream to brag to him—”

Sirius stands in the middle of the snow, staring back and forth, and tries to overcome the surreal feeling of watching Albus Dumbledore and a Muggleborn kid have a philosophical debate. Or a political one. Whichever.

Then a flying stone curves around behind Harry and slams into Albus’s head. Albus drops to the ground, groggy but still fighting. The stone then swerves into view again and punches Albus between the eyes. Albus flops over and lies still.

Sirius stares with his mouth open. The Parkinson girl tosses her head and runs over to Albus, spending a moment to move his robes back and forth with her wand. Then she makes a satisfied sound and pulls out the dark wand from a deep pocket. In seconds, she’s dropped it into the snow and stepped on it.

Only it doesn’t break.

Parkinson frowns down at it with a pronounced pout of her lips that also sends Sirius reeling back, mentally, to the battlefield for a moment. Then she shakes her head and takes up the wand, tossing it in Harry’s direction. “I don’t know what to do with it,” she says. “Maybe you can just keep it until he wakes up.”

Harry catches it with a faint smile. “You and Justin decided on this plan by speaking down your bonds?”

“Yes. We do share a particular compatibility, it seems.” And Parkinson gives the Muggleborn boy a flirtatious smile that makes him flush.

“We can talk about this later,” Sirius says, deciding that it’s up to someone to make sense of this mess, and it might as well be him. “We need to get into the house and see if we can rescue Ron and Hermione.”

“Sirius…”

Sirius glances over his shoulder. Tonks is still standing behind a shield, indecisive expressions flickering over her face. Then she sighs and straightens her shoulders.

“You’re going in there?”

“I don’t see that we have a choice,” Sirius says casually, but he’s watching his cousin closely.

“This is—all of this isn’t the way it was supposed to work out.” Tonks folds her arms tight and radiates unhappiness.

“I know. But it’s the way it happened.”

Tonks blinks and turns her hair black. Then she says, “I’ll come into the house with you.”

“No. You’ll stay out here.”

This time, it’s Harry who speaks, his voice so cold that Sirius and Tonks both stare at him in shock. Harry gives Sirius an apologetic smile, but he’s watching Tonks in the manner of a predator crouched to spring forwards. His Nott takes up position at his side, casually twisting his wand in his hand.

The rest of his courtiers don’t look much less threatening, when Sirius chances to look over his shoulder at them.

“Har—”

“We can’t trust your intentions,” Harry says crisply. “For all I know, you’d Stun me in the back for my own good or something, or for the good of the Order, or because we Stunned them. You’ll stay out here, and I hope you’ll stay behind your shield.”

“I could revive the others.”

“And then what? You think that the mass of us battling in the house is going to do Ron and Hermione any good?”

“It wouldn’t come down to that,” Tonks says, but Sirius can see from the slump of her shoulders that she doesn’t believe it.

Harry just nods once. “They were willing to fight me and my courtiers instead of going into the house to rescue Ron and Hermione, who we should be here for. Allegedly. I can’t trust that they won’t try to control and manipulate me. Leave them here. You can trust them, maybe, but I never will again.”

And he turns and walks towards the front gates of Lestrange Hall as if that’s decided, leaving Sirius and Tonks to stare at each other.

“Sirius—”

“My commitment is to my godson, Tonks. Not the Order.”

“Then you lied to all of us.”

“Considering what you were willing to have me do to him? What you were willing to do to him? Yeah.”

Sirius walks into the house after Harry and his courtiers, although his nerves sing at turning his back on someone who might be an enemy. But at least Tonks proves they can put this much faith in her. She doesn’t cast anything at them.

Sirius will take what he can get.

*

“We need to go down.”

Harry isn’t sure what compels him to say the words, but he does, as soon as they’re inside Lestrange Hall. He can feel the wards whispering to him, he thinks, more than hear them. The words, or the language, or the impulses, seem to rebound and buzz in his blood.

“Are you sure, my lord?”

Theo’s bond is bright with concern. For that matter, so is Basilisk’s. Harry nods to both of them and touches Basilisk where she curls around his neck, hissing in such a way that he can’t make out words.

“Why do you think the wards surrendered to you?”

Harry glances over at Justin, walking beside Pansy with cutting eyes intent on Harry. “I honestly have no idea.”

Justin blinks at him. Then he says, “If you had to guess?”

Harry shakes his head. “I don’t know enough about the Lestranges to say if they would have tied the wards to Voldemort’s blood.” Justin jumps a little, but he’s more relaxed about the name now. “Sirius, what about you? Would the Lestranges have done something like that?”

“Not to his blood,” Sirius says. “To his magic, maybe. They’re paranoid enough to think that someone might be able to take his blood and use it to subdue the wards, but his magic would be impossible to fake.”

“Except that you’re a lot like him.”

Harry sighs and turns to Theo, who still hovers beside him as if he thinks Harry will need someone to catch him and keep him from fainting any second. “What?”

“Your magic aura. What some people call a magical signature, although that term isn’t strictly accurate.” Theo smiles at him and tilts his head. “Yours is almost identical to his, in some ways. Which is fascinating.”

“And you didn’t know this before now?”

“I didn’t think to cast the spell that would let me check until I saw the wards surrender. And then I had other things to focus on besides what it was telling me.” Theo lifts his wand and traces a long line in front of him. It lights up with blue and green and crawling surges of red that make Harry a little uneasy. “This is a visual representation of what the spell is telling me about your magical aura.”

He turns to the side and cuts the air with another line, which is longer but has the same colors. Or almost the same, Harry sees when he squints. There’s some fringes of gold visible among the other colors that don’t show up in Harry’s. “And this is your father’s.”

Sirius still sighs at the name “father,” but the others only crowd closer to see. Harry squints. He can definitely see that there’s no blue in Voldemort’s colors now, the same way that there’s no gold in his own.

“So I’m like him?”

“Yes. And it’s uncanny. Even ordinary fathers and sons don’t usually have this close a match.”

Theo’s holding Harry’s eyes, inviting him to explain. But Harry’s not sure that he can explain the Horcruxes even if Voldemort is his enemy now. He says only, “I don’t know for sure what causes it.”

“But you have an idea?”

“I think we’re here for Ron and Hermione, and not to discuss my relationship with my father,” Harry says, a little flatly, and turns away. “The wards are hinting that there’s some kind of deep-down dungeon. Or something. Some space. Down.”

He walks away rapidly, with Basilisk tightening her hold on his neck so that she doesn’t fall. He can feel the prickle of something like tears along the sides of his eyelids. He wants and he doesn’t want his courtiers to know the truth.

Even people who like and trust him might have some problems with knowing that he carries part of Voldemort’s soul inside him.

“It is not your fault,” Basilisk hisses at him.

Harry strokes her back, and doesn’t reply.

*

Hermione turns her head sharply when something rumbles in the far wall. She shrinks back towards Ron, as much as she can when the chains won’t let them move much further, and takes his hand. Ron leans protectively towards her.

The rumble increases until it sounds like all the walls are singing together and Hermione wants to put her hands over her ears, but it would mean letting go of Ron’s hand. And then suddenly it’s over, and the wall across from them is falling inwards.

Hermione stares with her mouth a little open as Harry steps through the gap. Behind him is a ragtag collection of people with Sirius in the front. Nott, Parkinson, Neville? And Professor Yaxley, for some reason.

“Harry?” Ron demands.

“Harry?” Hermione echoes. She supposes that she should sound more surprised and less accusing, but the wash of relief that accompanies his appearance is hard to sustain. “Is your father on the way to curse us?”

“Why would he be?”

Harry’s eyes are cold, Hermione sees as she shifts her weight a little to look over Ron’s shoulder. He’s glancing around the dungeons with a certain expression of disgust that she wouldn’t expect if Voldemort were the one who put them here. Unless Voldemort did that without informing Harry, and he really did come to rescue them?

“Where are we?” Ron adds.

“The wards put you here,” Harry says, and glances back at them. His face is still cold, and part of Hermione recoils from the way that he looks at them. As if it’s their fault, and they’re a disappointment. “I think something happened to the wards on Lestrange Hall during the war, and they went a little crazy. They obeyed me because apparently my magic is almost identical to Voldemort’s—”

“So you did choose his side!” Hermione says, and pushes back against Ron. They can’t move far, but it’s better than sitting here waiting for Harry to curse them or something.

Harry says nothing, but only gives them a look that makes Hermione shut up. “No. I didn’t know what had happened or where you were. I thought that Voldemort had kidnapped you, maybe. I actually came here looking for Sirius, and he was the one who told me that he was here searching for you.”

“But how did you know?” Hermione asks Sirius.

He isn’t looking directly at them, instead staring into a corner of the dungeon with his hands in his pockets, but he turns back with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Ginny. She came and told your mum and dad what had happened.”

“They didn’t come?”

“Your mum’s lying Stunned in the snow right now,” Sirius says, and nods at Ron. “For being a problem for Harry. Your dad got exhausted from our fight against the wards and went back to Grimmauld Place to recover.”

“Ginny was supposed to tell you,” Hermione mutters. Somehow, they’re safe, but it still feels as if the world’s falling apart around her. “Not them.”

“Why would she tell me?”

“Because that’s why this happened,” Hermione says. She’s desperate to break through the flat, motionless expression on Harry’s face, and so she says more than she intends to say. “Ron and I were prepared to sacrifice ourselves going up against something terrible if that meant you would see sense and do something about how awful your father is. We thought we would die fighting the wards, or Death Eaters here.”

“So you came here on purpose?”

“Yes, of course. How else would we have got here? Or why would we have looked up the location of Lestrange Hall in the Order’s records?”

“You attacked thinking you’d be killed and I’d have to turn on my father.”

“Yes.”

Harry puts his hand across his face. Then he lowers the hand and gives Hermione a look that makes her flush. It also makes her feel so stupid that she’s not sure she can ever meet Harry’s eyes again. She stares down at her hands until Ron covers her hand with his.

“It was a good plan,” Ron says. “And it worked, didn’t it? You were concerned enough about us to come here. You probably thought You-Know-Who kidnapped us, right? Because what else would you think?”

Harry takes a deep breath. Then he gives Ron that look, and Ron flushes, too, although he doesn’t seem to take it as badly as Hermione. Hermione’s not sure that anyone else would feel the sense of shame brewing deeply in her belly.

“You could have come to me and had a logical debate,” Harry says quietly. “You could have explained what you saw that convinced you Voldemort would start the raids and the killings and the torture again. I might have listened to you, because of—well, no, it doesn’t matter. But all you did was assume I couldn’t be trusted because of my blood, and do something that could have left your parents mourning for the rest of your lives. And your siblings, Ron! Did you think about them? What it would mean to them to lose their brother?”

“I—”

“No, of course not.” Harry just keeps speaking like Ron never tried to interrupt him. “Because all you were locked into thinking about was war and being heroes.”

“We never intended to be heroes! We were going to be martyrs!”

Harry turns and looks at Hermione again, and she wishes she’d kept silent. The expression on his face now is worse than the prior one.

“Right, of course. That’s so much better. My mistake.”

“You came here!”

“I told you what happened. And yes, I was worried about you. But as it turns out, it was the wards that imprisoned you, not my father.”

Harry shakes his head and steps back. “The next time that you vanish, I shouldn’t worry, right? Because you’re probably on another stupid mission to make someone react the way you want, without thinking about the consequences.”

“Harry—”

“Mate—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Hermione lowers her eyes. Before, she thought, Harry wasn’t really upset with them. Not really. Not the way that his eyes practically shine now.

Harry whips around and says to Sirius, “They’re all yours,” before he strides out of the dungeons or wherever they’ve actually been imprisoned.

“That was really stupid of you,” Sirius says conversationally as he comes forwards to kneel down beside them. He eyes the chains and then splinters then with a wave of his wand and a silent spell. Hermione swallows and stands up slowly.

“Do you think a Summoning Charm will find our wands?”

“Most likely. The wards wouldn’t have been intelligent enough to tuck them further away than behind a locked door. And the doors should be unlocked and relaxed enough now that Harry made the wards obey.”

“That was stupid of you,” Neville says behind Sirius.

“Yeah, we know, we heard it enough times already,” Ron snaps, standing on wobbly legs. Hermione stands up beside him, leaning on his shoulder, and realizes abruptly that she’s hungry and thirsty and really needs a loo.

“I don’t think you have heard it enough times,” Nott says thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that enough times exist.”

Hermione glares at him, but it’s half-hearted. She can hear Sirius searching for their wands, and she knows that everything will be fine, and part of her wants to squirm and roll over and hide forever because of that.

She and Ron tried to do what could be done to bring Harry back to their side of the war.

They’ve failed.