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𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐓 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍

i'm gonna shoot you right down, right off of your feet

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be careful of that girl.

there's a fire burning behind her eyes.

she makes kingdoms fall

― and monsters wish they'd never been born.

·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .

"𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄 — 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄 fuck — how — ?"

But Neville had spotted Ron and Hermione, and with yells of delight was hugging them too. The longer Elara looked at Neville, the worse he appeared: One of his eyes was swollen yellow and purple, there were gouge marks on his face, and his general air of unkemptness suggested that he had been living rough.

Nevertheless, his battered visage shone with happiness as he let go of Hermione and said again, "I knew you'd come! Kept telling Seamus it was a matter of time!"

"Neville, what's happened to you?"

"What? This?" Neville dismissed his injuries with a shake of the head. "This is nothing. Seamus is worse. You'll see. Shall we get going then? Oh," he turned to Aberforth, "Ab, there might be a couple more people on the way."

"Couple more?" repeated Aberforth ominously. "What d'you mean, a couple more, Longbottom? There's a curfew and a Caterwauling Charm on the whole village!"

"I know, that's why they'll be Apparating directly into the bar," said Neville. "Just send them down the passage when they get here, will you? Thanks a lot."

Neville held out his hand to Hermione and helped her to climb up onto the mantelpiece and into the tunnel; Harry and Ron followed, then Neville. Elara addressed Aberforth.

"I don't know how to thank you. You've saved our lives twice."

"Look after 'em, then," said Aberforth gruffly. "I might not be able to save 'em a third time."

Elara clambered up onto the mantelpiece and through the hole behind Ariana's portrait. There were smooth stone steps on the other side: It looked as though the passageway had been there for years. Brass lamps hung from the walls and the earthy floor was worn and smooth; as they walked, their shadows rippled, fanlike, across the wall.

"How long's this been here?" Ron asked as they set off. "It isn't on the Marauder's Map, is it, Harry? I thought there were only seven passages in and out of school?"

"They sealed off all of those before the start of the year," said Neville. "There's no chance of getting through any of them now, not with curses over the entrances and Death Eaters and dementors waiting at the exits." He started walking backward, beaming, drinking them in.

"Never mind that stuff . . . Is it true? Did you break into Gringotts? Did you escape on a dragon? It's everywhere, everyone's talking about it, Terry Boot got beaten up by Carrow for yelling about it in the Great Hall at dinner!"

"Yeah, it's true," said Elara.

Neville laughed gleefully.

"What did you do with the dragon?"

"Released it into the wild," said Ron. "Lara was all for keeping it as a pet —"

"Don't exaggerate, Ron —"

"But what have you been doing? People have been saying you've just been on the run, but I don't think so. I think you've been up to something."

"You're right," said Harry, "but tell us about Hogwarts, Neville, we haven't heard anything."

"It's been . . . well, it's not really like Hogwarts anymore," said Neville, the smile fading from his face as he spoke. "Do you know about the Carrows?"

"Those two Death Eaters who teach here?"

"They do more than teach," said Neville. "They're in charge of all discipline. They like punishment, the Carrows."

"Like Umbridge?"

"Nah, they make her look tame. The other teachers are all supposed to refer us to the Carrows if we do anything wrong. They don't, though, if they can avoid it. You can tell they all hate them as much as we do.

"Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defense Against the Dark Arts, except now it's just the Dark Arts. We're supposed to practice the Cruciatus Curse on people who've earned detentions — "

"What?"

Elara, Harry, Ron, and Hermione's united voices echoed up and down the passage.

"Yeah," said Neville. "That's how I got this one," he pointed at a particularly deep gash in his cheek, "I refused to do it. Some people are into it, though; Crabbe and Goyle love it. First time they've ever been top in anything, I expect.

"Alecto, Amycus's sister, teaches Muggle Studies, which is compulsory for everyone. We've all got to listen to her explain how Muggles are like animals, stupid and dirty, and how they drove wizards into hiding by being vicious toward them, and how the natural order is being reestablished. I got this one," he indicated another slash to his face, "for asking her how much Muggle blood she and her brother have got."

"Neville, I have never been prouder of you than right now," said Elara, awed.

"Thanks, Lara — the thing is, it helps when people stand up to them, it gives everyone hope. I used to notice that when you and Harry did it."

"But they've used you as a knife sharpener," said Ron, wincing slightly as they passed a lamp and Neville's injuries were thrown into even greater relief.

Neville shrugged.

"Doesn't matter. They don't want to spill too much pure blood, so they'll torture us a bit if we're mouthy but they won't actually kill us."

Elara did not know what was worse, the things that Neville was saying or the matter-of-fact tone in which he said them.

"The only people in real danger are the ones whose friends and relatives on the outside are giving trouble. They get taken hostage. Old Xeno Lovegood was getting a bit too outspoken in The Quibbler, so they dragged Luna off the train on the way back for Christmas."

"Neville, she's all right, we've seen her —"

"Yeah, I know, she managed to get a message to me."

From his pocket he pulled a golden coin, and Elara recognized it as one of the fake Galleons that Dumbledore's Army had used to send one another messages.

"These have been great," said Neville, beaming at Hermione. "The Carrows never rumbled how we were communicating, it drove them mad. We used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the walls: Dumbledore's Army, Still Recruiting, stuff like that. Snape hated it."

"I missed all this?"

"You used to?" said Harry,.

"Well, it got more difficult as time went on," said Neville. "We lost Luna at Christmas, and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us plus Clover were sort of the leaders. The Carrows seemed to know Clover and I were behind a lot of it, so they started coming down on us hard, and then Michael Corner went and got caught releasing a first-year they'd chained up, and they tortured him pretty badly. That scared people off."

"No kidding," muttered Ron, as the passage began to slope upward.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't ask people to go through what Michael did, so we dropped those kinds of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a couple of weeks ago. That's when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I suppose, and they went for Gran."

"They what?" said Elara, Harry, Ron, and Hermione together.

"Yeah," said Neville, panting a little now, because the passage was climbing so steeply, "well, you can see their thinking. It had worked really well, kidnapping kids to force their relatives to behave, I s'pose it was only a matter of time before they did it the other way around. Thing was," he faced them, and Elara was astonished to see that he was grinning, "they bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran. Little old witch living alone, they probably thought they didn't need to send anyone particularly powerful.

"Anyway," Neville laughed, "Dawlish is still in St. Mungo's and Gran's on the run. She sent me a letter," he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, "telling me she was proud of me, that I'm my parents' son, and to keep it up."

"Cool," said Ron.

"Yeah," said Neville happily. "Only thing was, once they realized they had no hold over me, they decided Hogwarts could do without me after all. I don't know whether they were planning to kill me or send me to Azkaban; either way, I knew it was time to disappear.

"Clover's still out doing the graffiti, though. I'm surprised it took us this long to get to know her — She's quite the character. Was a little timid beginning of the year, but once she learned they killed her father she took the initiative. Dating Ginny seemed to help, too — "

"Dating Ginny?!" strained Ron. "You mean she's dating my sister without any supervision?!"

"Er — Yeah. . . . ?"

"Oh, come on, Ron," complained Elara, "at least it's not horny little boy — "

"Tell me we are heading straight back into Hogwarts, I want to talk to this Clover."

"'Course," said Neville. "You'll see. We're here."

They turned a corner and there ahead of them was the end of the passage. Another short flight of steps led to a door just like the one hidden behind Ariana's portrait. Neville pushed it open and climbed through. As Elara followed, she heard Neville call out to unseen people:

"Look who it is! Didn't I tell you?"

As Elara and Harry emerged into the room beyond the passage, there were several screams and yells:

"HARRY!"

"It's Tonks, it's TONKS!"

"Ron!"

"Hermione!"

She had a confused impression of colored hangings, of lamps and many faces. The next moment, she, Harry, Ron, and Hermione were engulfed, hugged, pounded on the back, their hair ruffled, their hands shaken, by what seemed to be more than twenty people: They might just have won a Quidditch final.

"Okay, okay, calm down!" Neville called, and as the crowd backed away, Elara was able to take in their surroundings.

She did not recognize the room at all. It was enormous, and looked rather like the interior of a particularly sumptuous tree house, or perhaps a gigantic ship's cabin. Multicolored hammocks were strung from the ceiling and from a balcony that ran around the dark wood-paneled and windowless walls, which were covered in bright tapestry hangings: Elara saw the gold Gryffindor lion, emblazoned on scarlet; the black badger of Hufflepuff, set against yellow; and the bronze eagle of Ravenclaw, on blue. The silver and green of Slytherin alone were absent.

There were bulging bookcases, a few broomsticks propped against the walls, and in the corner, a large wooden-cased wireless.

"Where are we?"

"Room of Requirement, of course!" said Neville. "Surpassed itself, hasn't it? The Carrows were chasing me, and I knew I had just one chance for a hideout: I managed to get through the door and this is what I found! Well, it wasn't exactly like this when I arrived, it was a load smaller, there was only one hammock and just Gryffindor hangings. But it's expanded as more and more of the D.A. have arrived."

"And the Carrows can't get in?" asked Harry, looking around for the door.

"No," said Seamus Finnigan, whom Elara had not recognized until he spoke: Seamus's face was bruised and puffy. "It's a proper hideout, as long as one of us stays in here, they can't get at us, the door won't open. It's all down to Neville. He really gets this room. You've got to ask it for exactly what you need — like, 'I don't want any Carrow supporters to be able to get in' — and it'll do it for you! You've just got to make sure you close the loopholes! Neville's the man!"

"It's quite straightforward, really," said Neville modestly. "I'd been in here about a day and a half, and getting really hungry, and wishing I could get something to eat, and that's when the passage to the Hog's Head opened up. I went through it and met Aberforth. He's been providing us with food, because for some reason, that's the one thing the room doesn't really do."

"Yeah, well, food's one of the five exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration," said Ron to general astonishment.

"So we've been hiding out here for nearly two weeks," said Seamus, "and it just makes more hammocks every time we need them, and it even sprouted a pretty good bathroom once girls started turning up —"

"— and thought they'd quite like to wash, yes," supplied Aspen Lovelace, whom Elara had not noticed until that point.

Now that she looked around properly, she recognized many familiar faces. Both Patil twins were there, as were Lavender Brown, Terry Boot, Ernie Macmillan, Anthony Goldstein, and Michael Corner.

"Tell us what you've been up to, though," said Ernie. "There've been so many rumors, we've been trying to keep up with you on Potterwatch." He pointed at the wireless. "You didn't break into Gringotts?"

"They did!" said Neville. "And the dragon's true too!"

There was a smattering of applause and a few whoops; Ron took a bow.

"What were you after?" asked Seamus eagerly.

Before any of them could parry the question with one of their own, Elara felt a terrible, scorching pain in her forehead. She swiftly came to Harry's side as she was pulled from the Room of Requirement to a place with rotting floorboards that were ripped apart and disinterred golden box that lay open and empty beside the hole.

Voldemort's scream of fury vibrated inside her head.

"Are you all right, you two?" Neville was saying. "Want to sit down? I expect you're tired, aren't — ?"

"No," said Harry.

"I'm quite all right."

Elara and Harry looked at Ron and Hermione, trying to tell them without words that Voldemort had just discovered the loss of one of the other Horcruxes. Time was running out fast: If Voldemort chose to visit Hogwarts next, they would miss their chance.

"We need to get going," said Harry, and their expressions told them that they understood.

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

"Plan?" repeated Harry. "Well, there's something we need to do, and then we'll get out of here."

Nobody was laughing or whooping anymore. Neville looked confused.

"What d'you mean, 'get out of here'?"

"We haven't come back to stay," said Harry, rubbing his scar.

"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 You-Know-Who, right?"

"Well, yeah —"

"Then we'll help you."

The other members of Dumbledore's Army were nodding, some enthusiastically, others solemnly. A couple of them rose from their chairs to demonstrate their willingness for immediate action.

"You don't understand." Harry seemed to have said that a lot in the last few hours. "We — we can't tell you. We've got to do it — alone."

"Why?" asked Neville.

"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," said Neville. "Dumbledore's Army. We were all in it together, we've been keeping it going while you four have been off on your own —"

"It hasn't exactly been a picnic, mate," said Ron.

"I never said it had, but I don't see why you can't trust us. Everyone in this room's been fighting and they've been driven in here because the Carrows were hunting them down. Everyone in here's proven they're loyal to Dumbledore — loyal to you."

"Look," Harry began, but it did not matter: The tunnel door had just opened behind him.

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

It was Luna, Dean, and Jane. Seamus gave a great roar of delight and ran to hug his best friend.

"Hi, everyone!" said Luna happily. "Oh, it's great to be back!"

"Luna," said Elara distractedly, "what are you doing here? How did you — ?"

"I sent for her," said Neville, holding up the fake Galleon. "I promised her and Ginny that if you turned up I'd let them know. We all thought that if you came back, it would mean revolution. That we were going to overthrow Snape and the Carrows."

"Of course that's what it means," said Luna brightly. "Isn't it, Lara? We're going to fight them out of Hogwarts?"

"Listen," said Harry with a rising sense of panic, "I'm sorry, but that's not what we came back for. There's something we've got to do, and then —"

"You're going to leave us in this mess?" demanded Michael Corner.

"No!" said Ron. "What we're doing will benefit everyone in the end, it's all about trying to get rid of You-Know-Who —"

"Then let us help!" said Neville angrily. "We want to be a part of it!"

There was another noise behind them, and Elara turned. Ginny was now climbing through the hole in the wall, closely followed by Fred, George, Aurora, Lee Jordan, Corrine, and Oliver Wood.

"Aberforth's getting a bit annoyed," said Fred, raising his hand in answer to several cries of greeting. "He wants a kip, and his bar's turned into a railway station."

Right behind Lee Jordan came Harry's old girlfriend, Cho Chang.

"I got the message," she said, holding up her own fake Galleon, and she walked over to sit beside Michael Corner.

"So what's the plan?" said George.

"There isn't one," said Harry.

"Just going to make it up as we go along, are we? My favorite kind," said Fred.

"You've got to stop this!" Harry told Neville. "What did you call them all back for? This is insane —"

"We're fighting, aren't we?" said Dean, taking out his fake Galleon. "The message said Lara and Harry were back, and we were going to fight! I'll have to get a wand, though —"

"You haven't got a wand — ?" began Seamus.

Elara turned to Harry, spurred by inspiration.

"They can help."

"What?"

"They can help." She dropped her voice and said, so that none of them could hear but Ron and Hermione, who stood between them, "We don't know where it is and we've got to find it fast. This very well could be where the final battle happens. They should be prepared."

Without waiting for approval, Elara turned back to the room, drawing her wand and tossing it Dean, who caught it.

"Don't you — "

"I can manipulate fire, I'll be fine. Okay," she called to the room at large, and all noise ceased: Fred, George, and Aurora, who had been cracking jokes for the benefit of those nearest, fell silent, and all of them looked alert, excited.

"There's something we need to find," Elara said. "Something that'll help us overthrow Bitch Boy. It's here at Hogwarts, but we don't know where. It might have belonged to Ravenclaw. Has anyone heard of an object like that? Has anyone ever come across something with her eagle on it, for instance?"