"Professor, we've got to barricade the school, he's coming now!" I heard Harry shout from somewhere.

I apparated to where he was. See, all year, I’ve felt that ‘pull’ in my stomach, but I’ve ignored it. When I actually succumb to it, I apparate to him. It’s weird right?

"Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming," McGonagall told the other teachers. Sprout and Flitwick gasped. Slughorn let out a low groan. "Potter has work to do in the castle, on Dumbledore's orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are capable while Potter does what he needs to do."

"You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-Who indefinitely?" squeaked Flitwick.

"But we can hold him up." said Professor Sprout.

"Thank you, Pomona," said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches there passed a look of grim understanding. "I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance."

"Agreed," said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the door. "I shall meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House."

“We’ve got a small army in the Room of Requirement.” I informed her, and she jumped because no one knew I was there. “There are about 70 of us willing to fight. Plus those of age, plus anyone else.” I smiled. “And well, me. I’m more like a hulk though.”

“What?”

“I’m a giant green uncontrollable beast.”

McGonagall looked at me as though she wanted to laugh and cry.

I have a great effect on people.

"I can act from here," said Flitwick, deciding to continue the conversation. And although he could barely see out of it, he pointed his wand through a smashed window and started muttering incantations of great complexity. Harry heard a weird rushing noise, as though Flitwick had unleashed the power of the wind into the grounds.

"Professor," Harry said, approaching the little Charms master. "Professor, I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is important. Have you got any idea where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?"

"Protego Horribillis - the diadem of Ravenclaw?" squeaked Flitwick. "A little extra wisdom never goes amiss, Potter, but I hardly think it would be much use in this situation!"

"I only meant - do you know where it is? Have you ever seen it?"

"Seen it! Nobody has seen it in living memory! Long since lost, boy."

“Harry,” I said grabbing hold of his shoulder as he looked panicked. “Nothing is ever lost.”

“You’re talking in riddles, again.”

“It’s being repeated all over my head. I don’t know what it means.” I said honestly. “But it’s with everything lost. Everything else that is lost.”

"We shall meet you and your Ravenclaws in the Great Hall, Filius!" said Professor McGonagall, beckoning to Harry, Luna and myself to follow her.

We had just reached the door when Slughorn rumbled into speech.

"My word," he puffed, pale and sweaty, his walrus mustache aquiver. "What a to-do! I'm not at all sure whether this is wise, Minerva. He is bound to find a way in, you know, and anyone who has tried to delay him will be in the most grievous peril -"

"I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great Hall in twenty minutes also." said Professor McGonagall. "If you wish to leave with your students, we shall not stop you. But if any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us within this castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill."

"Minerva!" he said, aghast.

"The time has come for Slytherin House to decide upon its loyalties," interrupted Professor McGonagall. "Go and wake your students, Horace."

“I love you.” I told McGonagall.

We followed Professor McGonagall, who had taken up a position in the middle of the corridor and raised her wand.

"Piertotum - oh, for heaven's sake, Filch, not now -"

The aged caretaker had just come hobbling into view, shouting "Students out of bed! Students in the corridors!"

"They're supposed to be you blithering idiot!" shouted McGonagall. "Now go and do something constructive! Find Peeves!"

"P-Peeves?" stammered Filch as though he had never heard the name before.

"Yes, Peeves, you fool, Peeves! Haven't you been complaining about him for a quarter of a century? Go and fetch him, at once."

Filch evidently thought Professor McGonagall had taken leave of her senses, but hobbled away, hunch-shouldered, muttering under his breath.

"And now - Piertotum Locomator!" cried Professor McGonagall. And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, I knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same.

"Hogwarts is threatened!" shouted Professor McGonagall. "Man the boundaries, protect us, do your duty to our school!"

Clattering and yelling, the horde of moving statues stampeded past Harry, some of them smaller, others larger than life. There were animals too, and the clanking suits of armor brandished swords and spiked balls on chains.

“Homie MG, what can I do?” I asked. “Tell me a spell or some shit.”

“I don’t know Willow – point your wand at the sky and shout something.”

“Okie.” I smiled.

"Now, Potter," said McGonagall. "You and Miss Lovegood had better return to your friends and bring them to the Great Hall - I shall rouse the other Gryffindors."

I jumped out the window, but I landed safely on the ground because I’m Willow, and there is no logic to be applied in this world anymore.

“GIANT PROTECTIVE SPHERE THINGO AROUND THE SCHOOL THAT WILL PREVENT THE DARK WIZARDS FROM GETTING IN!” I shouted, and some cool purple beam of light streamed out of my wand. It seemed to encase the entire castle – well from what I could see anyway. “I’m fucking awesome.” I grinned, and I winked, but I wasn’t sure at who.

I realized that I was standing in August’s and my old rendezvous.

“FOR AUGUST!” I shouted, and I apparated back into the room of requirement.

Only a little knot of people remained below in the Room of Requirement, and I joined them. Mrs. Weasley was struggling with Ginny. Around them stood Lupin, Fred, George, Bill and Fleur.

“Hey Loop.” I smiled, he winked back.

"You're underage!" Mrs. Weasley shouted at her daughter as I approached. "I won't permit it! The boys, yes, but you, you've got to go home!"

"I won't!"

Ginny's hair flew as she pulled her arm out of her mother's grip.

"I'm in Dumbledore's Army -"

"A teenagers' gang!"

"A teenagers' gang that's about to take him on, which no one else has dared to do!" said Fred.

"She's sixteen!" shouted Mrs. Weasley. "She's not old enough! What you two were thinking bringing her with you!"

Fred and George looked slightly ashamed of themselves.

"Mom's right, Ginny," said Bill gently. "You can't do this. Everyone underage will have to leave, it's only right."

"I can't go home!" Ginny shouted, angry tears sparkling in her eyes. "My whole family's here, I can't stand waiting there alone and not knowing and -" She looked at harry who shook his head. Then her eyes fell on me. “WILLOW IS SIXTEEN! I AM SIXTEEN WE ARE STAYING!”

“Please don’t bring me into this.” I muttered.

“Ginny’s right, you are sixteen –“ Lupin started. “You both should leave-“

I raised my eyebrows at Lupin, who gulped.

“No one can vouch for Willow.” He said quietly.

That’s fucking right bitches. I’m staying.

"Fine," she said, staring at the entrance to the tunnel back to the Hog's Head. "I'll say good-by now, then, and -"

There was a scuffling and a great thump. Someone else had clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen. He pulled himself up no the nearest chair, looked around through lopsided horn-rimmed glasses, and said, "Am I too late? Has it started. I only just found out, so I -"

Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected to run into most of his family. There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension. "So 'ow eez leetle Teddy?"

Lupin blinked at her, startled. The silence between the Weasleys seemed to be solidifying, like ice.

"I - oh yes - he's fine!" Lupin said loudly. "yes, Tonks is with him - at her mother's -"

Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another, frozen.

"Here, I've got a picture?" Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph from inside his jacket and showing it to Fleur and me. I saw a tiny baby with a tuft of bright turquoise hair, waving fat fists at the camera.

"I was a fool!" Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph. "I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a –a –"

"Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron," said Fred.

Percy swallowed.

"Yes, I was!"

"Well, you can't say fairer than that," said Fred, holding his hand out to Percy.

Mrs. Weasley burst into tears. She ran forward, pushed Fred aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father.

"I'm sorry, Dad," Percy said.

Mr. Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug his son.

"What made you see sense, Perce?" inquired George.

"It's been coming on for a while," said Percy, mopping his eyes under his glasses with a corner of his traveling cloak. "But I had to find a way out and it's not so easy at the Ministry, they're imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight of it, so here I am."

"Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these," said George in a good imitation of Percy's most pompous manner. "Now let's get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters'll be taken."

"So, you're my sister in-law now?" Said Percy, shaking hands with Fleur as they hurried off toward the staircase with Bill, Fred, and George.

"Ginny!" barked Mrs. Weasley.

Ginny had been attempting, under cover of the reconciliations to sneak upstairs too.

"Molly, how about this," said Lupin. "Why doesn't Ginny stay here, then at least she'll be on the scene and know what's going on, but she won't be in the middle of the fighting?"

"I -"

“That's a good idea," said Mr. Weasley firmly, "Ginny, you stay in this room, you hear me?"

Ginny did not seem to like the idea much, but under her father's unusually stern gaze, she nodded. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Lupin headed off to the stairs as well.

"Where's Ron?" asked Harry, "Where's Hermione?"

"They must have gone up the Great Hall already," Mr. Weasley called over his shoulder.

“I didn't see them pass me," said Harry.

"They said something about a bathroom," said Ginny, "not long after you left."

"A bathroom?"

“Off to have a quickie.” I winked.

“For God’s sake.” Lupin shook his head.

“JUST TRYING TO RELIEVE THE TENSION!” I shouted.

I apparated down to the Great hall.

The four long House tables were lined with disheveled students, some in traveling cloaks, others in dressing gowns. Here and there shone the pearly white figures of the school ghosts. Every eye, living and dead was fixed upon Professor McGonagall, who was speaking from the raised platform at the top of the Hall. Behind her stood the remaining teaches, including the palomino centaur, Firenze, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix who had arrived to fight. I peered out of the doors, and Ruby’s gang were casually standing out of sight.

"...evacuation will be overseen by Mr. Filch and Madame Pomfrey. Prefects, when I give the word, you will organize your House and take your charges in orderly fashion to the evacuation point."

Many of the students looked petrified. However, as Harry skirted the walls, scanning the Gryffindor table for Ron and Hermione, Ernie Macmillan stood up at the Hufflepuff table and shouted; "And what if we want to stay and fight?"

There was a smattering of applause.

"If you are of age, you may stay." said Professor McGonagall.

“And what if we aren’t?” Said a small Slytherin girl, who looked oddly familiar.

“Certainly not.”

"What about our things?" called a girl at the Ravenclaw table. "Our trunks, our owls?"

"We have no time to collect possessions." said Professor McGonagall. "The important thing is to get you out of here safely."

"Where's Professor Snape?" shouted a boy from the Slytherin table.

"He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk." replied Professor McGonagall and a great cheer erupted from the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws.

"We have already placed protection around the castle," Professor McGonagall was saying, "but it is unlikely to hold for very long unless we reinforce it. I must ask you, therefore, to move quickly and calmly, and do as your prefects - "

But her final words were drowned as a different voice echoed throughout the Hall. It was high, cold, and clear. There was no telling from where it came. It seemed to issue from the walls themselves. Like the monster it had once commanded, it might have lain dormant there for centuries.

"I know that you are preparing to fight." There were screams amongst the students, some of whom clutched each other, looking around in terror for the source of the sound. "Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood."

There was silence in the Hall now, the kind of silence that presses against the eardrums, that seems too huge to be contained by walls.

"Give me Harry Potter," said Voldemort's voice, "and they shall not be harmed. Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded."

"You have until midnight."

The silence swallowed us all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to have found Harry, to hold him forever in the glare of thousands of invisible beams. Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, "But he's there! Potter's there. Someone grab him!"

“Fuck off Pansy you little shit.” I shouted.

There was a massive movement. The Gryffindors in front of Harry had risen and stood facing, not Harry, but the Slytherins. Then the Hufflepuffs stood, and almost at the same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them with their backs to Harry, all of them looking toward Pansy instead. I saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and from under sleeves.

"Thank you, Miss Parkinson." said Professor McGonagall in a clipped voice. "You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House could follow."

Harry heard the grinding of the benches and then the sound of the Slytherins trooping out on the other side of the Hall.

“I’m not leaving.” I heard a few small voices saying nearby.

“Hey, there’s a group by the doors, we could hide with them.”

I probably should have been a responsible adult, but I was not going to be. If I was in their position, I would have stayed and fought.

"Ravenclaws, follow on!" cried Professor McGonagall.

Slowly the four tables emptied. The Slytherin table was completely deserted, but a number of older Ravenclaws remained seated while their fellows filed out; even more Hufflepuffs stayed behind, and half of Gryffindor remained in their seats, necessitating Professor McGonagall's descent from the teachers' platform to chivvy the underage on their way.

"Absolutely not, Creevey, go! And you, Peakes!"

I watched them slowly get up, and leave, but, like the Slytherin girls, they hid amongst Ruby’s gang. Ruby was nowhere in sight, but the rest of them were concealing the stole aways.

Kingsley stepped forward on the raised platform to address those who had remained behind.

"We've only got half an hour until midnight, so we need to act fast. A battle plan has been agreed between the teachers of Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix. Professors Flitwick, Sprout and McGonagall are going to take groups of fighters up to the three highest towers - Ravenclaw, Astronomy, and Gryffindor - where they'll have good overview, excellent positions from which to work spells. Meanwhile Remus" he indicated Lupin, "Arthur" ¨ he pointed toward Mr. Weasley, sitting at the Gryffindor table. "-and I will take groups into the grounds. We'll need somebody to organize defense of the entrances or the passageways into the school."

"Sounds like a job for us." called Fred, indicating himself and George, and Kingsley nodded his approval.

"All right, leaders up here and we'll divide up the troops!"

“Am I a troop or a leader?” I called to Lupin.

“Go lead that group of girls you brought in.” he told me.

I ran out to Ruby’s gang, but she was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Ruby?” I asked them all.

“I don’t know.” Jane said, shrugging.

“She randomly ran off, after she saw Fred.” Elana shrugged too. “It was weird.”

“Fuck.” I remarked. “Anyway, we’re going to be out the front, defending shit there. Okay? We’ll pair up.” Everyone grabbed their best friend. “Now, pair your pair with a pair.”

“What?”

“We’re going in groups of four, so pair up with another pair.”

“Oh.”

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

The gang of us (who remarkably were a multiple of four) walked out the double doors into the night.

“Oh God,” I said aloud. “I’m terrified.”