Springfic: "Organised Resistance" for snorkackcatcher
Title: Organised Resistance
Author: Kereia
Recipient: snorkackcatcher
Character(s): Susan Bones, Parvati Patil, Padma Patil, Neville Longbottom
Rating: PG-13
Word-count: 3,250
Warnings (highlight to view): none
Summary: Two months into her seventh year at Hogwarts, Susan can’t watch the atrocities committed by the Carrows anymore. When she aids Neville and Parvati in their escape from Amycus, she has no choice but to flee into the Room of Requirement, where the students are organizing their resistance.
Betas: kennahijja
Organised Resistance
It was getting harder every day to focus on the book in front of her and ignore the sickly sweet voice of Alecto Carrow as she elaborated on the inferiority of Muggles. The excited giggling from the Slytherins in the front row didn’t help either.
While Susan had known that returning to Hogwarts under Snape’s leadership would be dangerous, she had never suspected that it would be this bad. Her desire to finish her education had overruled her own concern as well as that of her parents. It was a decision which she had come to regret dearly.
The new regime had been revealed during the opening feast, which, aside from long-winded speeches about Hogwarts’ future, had been marked with the announcement of new rules that had the student body in an uproar for all of three seconds until the first detentions had been issued. No half-bloods were allowed as prefects, none were allowed to join the Quidditch teams, and in the two months since the term had started no House other than Slytherin had any House Points to show for its accomplishment. The number of detentions among the students had risen dramatically, and now Neville Longbottom, Michael Corner, and Parvati Patil had disappeared.
Rumours were flying high as to what had happened to them. The only thing anyone knew for certain was that all three of them had disappeared during detention, a punishment they had earned for defending a first year half-blood in front of Amycus Carrow. Some said that the trio had been expelled, some even whispered that they had died, for it was common knowledge by now, that under Snape’s rule detentions did not consist of writing lines or performing menial tasks, but of confinement and no small amount of pain.
Others, especially the Gryffindors claimed that they had escaped their punishment and formed an underground resistance, a fact substantiated by the frequent incidents that disrupted life within the castle every day. While the professors categorically denied the existence of such an endeavour, it was getting more and more difficult to credit Peeves with all of the locked doors, exploding dungbombs, and the booby trapped teacher’s lounge which had rendered both Carrow siblings mute until Madame Pomfrey had found a cure for the curse that had struck them.
Alecto slammed a book onto the table, her voice rising shrilly. Susan flinched.
“All this bending, lifting, working. Why, they are no better than beasts of burden. How much simpler is it to accomplish these tasks with a flick of a wand?”
Standing in front of the class, Carrow spread her arms dramatically. “They are primitive. They are weak, and they require our leadership to give them purpose.”
Susan clenched her teeth. Her gaze met Padma’s across the classroom, and she could see the same anger contained in it that she felt. In the beginning, Susan had vowed to stay quiet and keep her head down. This was her final year at Hogwarts, and her plan had been to get her N.E.W.T.s and go abroad, but, every day made it more difficult not to stand up and curse Professor Carrow into oblivion. The hateful triades, the poorly disguised manipulation with which the Carrows tried to pull the pureblood students not already sympathetic to their cause onto their side-it all made her sick to her stomach.
Her shoulders stiff, she tried to shut out the professor’s droning voice, and tried to entertain herself with speculations about whether or not Padma knew what had really happened to her sister. She threw the Ravenclaw another covert look, and then the classroom door exploded.
Surprised shouts and falling furniture turned the room into a chaotic mess as students instinctively tried to get away from the splintering door. Alecto Carrow screeched unintelligible orders above the rising din, but her voice was lost beneath the sound of numerous explosions in the hall.
In spite of the apparent danger, all students surged towards the smoldering doorway, their curiosity bigger than their fear. Swept up in the tide of moving bodies, Susan was among to first to reach the door. The sight that greeted her was one of scorched carpets, shattered windows, and broken statutes. The sound of angry voices filled the air, and before anyone had a chance to react, three hooded figures came flying around the corner, the tails of their brooms barely skirting the walls. Dressed in black robes, Neville Longbottom was in the lead, his wand held aloft as he soared past them.
“Stop them,” a voice shouted from beyond the turn, and seconds later Amycus Carrow came into sight, panting, with his face almost as red as his robe. “Alecto, stop them, they stole the letters.”
By that time Alecto and her hand-picked Slytherin enforcers, had made it into the hallway. Susan watched as Alecto raised her wand to attack Parvati Patil who flew past them at this very moment, but immediately her legs began to fly out from under her in a wild dance that sent her spinning down the hallway, round and round into Amycus’s arms. On instinct, Susan turned around, and met Padma’s gaze. The young witch’s wand moved quickly through the air, and two Slytherins suddenly succumbed to the ground.
The remaining two, finally realizing that they were under attack, whirled on Padma, but Susan already had her wand in her hand and jinxed them as well. A deafening silence descended over the hallway.
In a daze, Susan stared at the four unconscious students on the ground. She could not believe what she had done, but it slowly began to dawn on her that she was in serious trouble. Someone tugged at her sleeve, and she reluctantly tore her gaze away to look at Padma.
“We have to go,” she said.
“Go where?” Susan asked and tried to fight back the panic.
“Anywhere but here,” Padma answered and pulled Susan along. After a few reluctant steps, Susan regained her equilibrium and hurried along the hallway, away from the Carrows, who had sorted out Padma’s spell, and where shouting for reinforcements.
They hurried up a staircase and disappeared into one of the hidden passageways that served as shortcuts between classrooms.
“We have to leave the castle.” Susan said, her mind calmer now. “If we stay here, they’ll find us eventually, and there’s no way that I’m taking the kind of punishment the Carrows are going to dish out for what we just did.”
“We can’t leave the castle. They will watch the exits, and we’d only endanger our parents. Parvati and Neville are hiding out in the Room of Requirement. That’s where we’ll go.”
Susan stopped. “But we’re going in the wrong direction.”
Padma shook her head and motioned for Susan to follow her. “The Room of Requirement is a lot more flexible than we thought. Parvati told me that the entrance can appear all over the castle.”
Susan followed her into another hallway. “That’s useful.” She froze when she heard urgent voices up ahead. “Can we make it appear right here, then?” she asked, worried that they would be caught if they didn’t disappear quickly.
Padma threw an anxious gaze over her shoulder. Footsteps pounded up the stairs behind them. They were trapped. “I hope so,” she whispered.
Determined, they turned their thoughts to the Room of Requirement and walked side by side down the hall. After several steps they turned and backtracked, each of them trying feverishly to ignore the voices in front and behind them. A loud crashing sound made them flinch, just as they turned again to walk past the wall for the third time.
“Will you watch where you’re going, Snape? You’re slowing us down, and they must not get away,” Amycus shouted behind them.
The headmaster’s voice was too low to understand, but neither Susan nor Padma were paying attention to the exchange. They turned towards the wall, hoping to find a door, where only blank stone had been before.
“I don’t see anything,” Padma said. Her eyes were wide and her face grew paler by the second.
Susan ran her hands over the stone and examined it carefully. “I think these grooves are wider than they need to be,” she whispered and began to push against the stone. The wall gave way beneath her hands, and her own momentum carried her forward into the room beyond. She stumbled and would have fallen, had Padma’s sister not caught her by her shoulders.
“Hurry,” a voice shouted to her left, and when Susan turned, she watched Padma jump through the door into the Room of Requirement. Neville Longbottom swiftly shut the door as soon as she had passed. He greeted them with a grin. “Welcome to the Resistance,” he said.
* * * * *
“The room rearranged itself, just before you came through, so we had some warning.” Parvati hugged her sister fiercely before she pointed at the walls around them. Banners holding the crests of Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor adorned three of the walls, while the fourth remained black.
“The Hufflepuff banner is new,” Neville explained.
Susan tried to take it all in. “You’ve been hiding here?” she asked.
Parvati nodded. “They wanted to string us up in the dungeons, after we saved Flora from Nott’s bullying, but we ran for it. This is an ideal base of operations, really. The Room adapted itself to our needs, so we have blankets and pillows, and no professor has been able to enter it.”
“We saw Snape try it once. I think he figured out where we were hiding sooner than everyone else did. He couldn’t get in though, and we can enter and leave anyplace we want as long as it’s inside the castle.”
“So what now?” Susan asked. “I have to let my parents know that I’m alright. They’ll be worried if they don’t hear from me.”
Parvati nodded in agreement. “We’ll have to sneak down to Hogsmeade tonight. All outgoing and incoming mail is inspected by the professors and we can’t use any of the fireplaces without raising an alarm. They’ll be twice as careful, now that we stole their latest correspondence with You-Know-Who.”
“What correspondence?” Padma asked, curious.
Neville handed over a small stack of parchments. “It’s magically protected. We haven’t figured out how to make the ink visible, yet.”
“Who would help us in Hogsmeade?” Susan asked. “I don’t suppose it could be as easy as using the post office?”
Parvati gave her a sympathetic look. “No, I’m afraid not. We have to be very careful. There are Death Eater patrols walking across the village every night, but Madame Rosmerta has agreed to smuggle mail to our parents.”
Neville handed her some blankets. “Make yourself at home. We’ll leave as soon as it’s dark.”
Susan accepted the blankets gratefully. “How do we get there? I don’t think Snape or the Carrows will give up searching for us just because it’s dark outside.”
“The door leads everywhere we want it to. We’ll exit in a classroom on the ground floor and leave through a window. It’s still dangerous, but at least we don’t have to walk through the entire castle.”
* * * * *
The night was cold, and Susan drew her cloak closer around her body. Her breath formed little puffs of mist in the air, illuminated by the full moon that stood above them. She huddled in the shadow of the castle wall, and waited for Padma to climb through the window onto the Hogwarts grounds.
Susan listened for every suspicious noise, and when Padma landed in a crouch next to her, she breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“This way,” Parvati whispered and took the lead. They stayed close to the castle walls, their black hoods pulled up to hide their faces. Along the expanse of the green houses, and to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, they hurried quietly, all too aware that one false step might get them caught. Susan had walked the path to Hogsmeade many times, but since they couldn’t risk to be seen it took them more than twice as long to tread their way through the underbrush parallel to the path. Yet, even though they did not encounter any patrols along the way, Susan could not shake a foreboding sense of danger.
Finally they reached the village, which lay silent before them. It was well past midnight and there were hardly any lights inside the widows, and only the scattered street lamps illuminated the streets. Their luck held until they reached the back of the Three Broomsticks.
Parvati reached the dark building first, but no sooner had she touched the back door, than they heard a shout close by.
“Who goes there?” a man’s voice asked, and as Susan whirled around, she saw a shadow step out of the trees behind them.
Though Susan immediately reached for her wand, Parvati was quicker. A red Stunner hit the wizard, and his limbs folded up beneath him. Yet, there was no time for relief. Running footsteps approached from beyond the corner.
“Run.” Parvati whispered, and she dashed off into the darkness with her sister close behind. Susan followed, but had to draw up short when a hooded shadow appeared before her. Only the wizard’s surprise prevented her capture. Throwing a quick jinx his way, Susan darted around him and dove into the next space between two houses.
Padma and Parvati were nowhere to be seen.
Not daring to stop, Susan hurried onwards, but the village was small and she knew that she needed to find a hiding place soon, or she would be caught. Her heart hammered in her chest as she pressed herself against the wall of a small shed and listened. When she heard neither footsteps nor voices, she carefully edged to the corner ahead and took a deep breath.
Her muscles tense and poised for flight, she looked around the corner, and screamed in surprise.
The man before her glowered at her. His hands caught her wrist in a hard grip as she tried to back away. Unable to point her wand at him, Susan struggled, even as he pulled her close to him and covered her mouth with another hand.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed quietly, and dragged her back against the shed.
Panic rose inside of her and she struggled harder, until she finally resorted to biting his hand. With a curse, the wizard released her, and Susan pushed him away and ran.
She did not get far. The Stunner hit her in the back, and she crumbled to the ground with a starlet gasp.
* * * * *
When Susan saw Albus Dumbledore’s face above her, she was certain that she had died.
When Dumbledore roughly pushed a dirty glass filled with what was clearly Ogden's Old Firewhisky into her hands, and mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “damned kids and their damned troubles,” she was certain that she’d lost her mind.
“What happened?” she asked as it slowly began to dawn on her that she was, in fact, still alive.
“That’s what I want to know.” Dumbledore said in a deep, gruff voice that did not resemble the departed Headmaster at all. “It’s bad enough that those bumbling, nasty leeches wander around the village all night. I don’t need any more trouble with a bunch of kids getting killed in my back yard.”
Susan carefully wiped the rim of her glass with her sleeve and took a shallow sip of the amber liquid. It burned down her throat, making her cough. “You’re the bar tender at the Hog’s Head,” she finally said when her thoughts had cleared enough to recognize the surly man. “Are you related to Dumbledore?” she asked.
“He was my brother.” Aberforth groused and looked out the window as if checking for any approaching Death Eaters.
“I’m sorry,” Susan said.
Aberforth studied her briefly. “For what?”
“That he died.”
Aberforth simply shrugged and turned his attention to the street below again. “Always getting mixed up in other people’s trouble. His own damned fault.”
Her wide eyes unable to hide her shock, Susan sipped more of the Firewhisky. “I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said quietly.
“Oh, don’t I?” he asked and glowered at her. “All I want is to be left in peace, but no, Albus couldn’t leave it well enough alone. ‘Help them’ he said to me. ‘They will need you.’ And he made me swear it, too. So I’m doing my part. I don’t like it, but you see if I’ve ever broken a promise.”
Susan grasped for words, unsure of how to respond to his outburst. “Thank you,” she finally said. “For not turning me over to the Death Eaters.”
Aberforth didn’t reply.
“Do you know where my friends are?” she asked and slowly swung her legs off the couch.
“They’re in the kitchen, sending off letters.”
“Oh good. Then we won’t trouble you any longer and be on our way.” Grateful that her legs supported her, and that she did not seem injured beyond a mild headache, Susan wanted nothing more than leave Aberforth’s company and the resentment he exhibited.
“It’s bloody dangerous of you to sneak into the village at night. You’re just begging to get caught,” he said.
Susan hesitated on her way to the door. “Well, we don’t have any other way to get in touch with our families. The mail is searched, and the fireplaces are guarded. I don’t think that even the secret passages are safe.”
“So make a new one.”
Susan looked at him skeptically. “How?”
“That Room of Requirement your hiding in is a marvellous thing.”
“You think it can open outside of Hogwarts?”
Aberforth was silent for a moment, as if he was weighing his options. Finally, he nodded. “If the outside entrance is marked with an anchoring spell.”
Her mind reeling at the possibilities, Susan slowly sat down on the couch again. “Would you show me how? Please?” she added hurriedly.
* * * * *
“Blimey, where are you coming from?” Neville asked, as Susan, Padma, and Parvati climbed through the hole in the wall into the Room of Requirement.
Susan beamed at him. “We found someone who’ll help us to get in and out of Hogsmeade undetected.”
Neville seemed uncertain. “Who? Are you sure he can be trusted?”
Padma pulled off her cloak and threw herself onto a mattress. “Yes, he just has a nasty temper and a questionably sense of hygiene, but he’s Dumbledore’s brother..”
“... and he did save us from a Death Eater patrol,” Parvati added.
“So, I’d say we take our chances.”
Susan sat down next to Parvati and looked at her fellow members of the Resistance. She had no idea what the next months or even the next day would bring, but she’d finally found a purpose. Knowing that she would never again have to sit in a classroom and endure one of the Carrows’ lectures on Pureblood superiority was an immeasurable relief. In spite of the inherent danger, she was looking forward to sabotaging the Death Eater regime, and finishing her last year at Hogwarts not with outstanding N.E.W.T.s, but with her head held high in the knowledge that she had not succumbed to her fear.
The End
Author: Kereia
Recipient: snorkackcatcher
Character(s): Susan Bones, Parvati Patil, Padma Patil, Neville Longbottom
Rating: PG-13
Word-count: 3,250
Warnings (highlight to view): none
Summary: Two months into her seventh year at Hogwarts, Susan can’t watch the atrocities committed by the Carrows anymore. When she aids Neville and Parvati in their escape from Amycus, she has no choice but to flee into the Room of Requirement, where the students are organizing their resistance.
Betas: kennahijja
Organised Resistance
It was getting harder every day to focus on the book in front of her and ignore the sickly sweet voice of Alecto Carrow as she elaborated on the inferiority of Muggles. The excited giggling from the Slytherins in the front row didn’t help either.
While Susan had known that returning to Hogwarts under Snape’s leadership would be dangerous, she had never suspected that it would be this bad. Her desire to finish her education had overruled her own concern as well as that of her parents. It was a decision which she had come to regret dearly.
The new regime had been revealed during the opening feast, which, aside from long-winded speeches about Hogwarts’ future, had been marked with the announcement of new rules that had the student body in an uproar for all of three seconds until the first detentions had been issued. No half-bloods were allowed as prefects, none were allowed to join the Quidditch teams, and in the two months since the term had started no House other than Slytherin had any House Points to show for its accomplishment. The number of detentions among the students had risen dramatically, and now Neville Longbottom, Michael Corner, and Parvati Patil had disappeared.
Rumours were flying high as to what had happened to them. The only thing anyone knew for certain was that all three of them had disappeared during detention, a punishment they had earned for defending a first year half-blood in front of Amycus Carrow. Some said that the trio had been expelled, some even whispered that they had died, for it was common knowledge by now, that under Snape’s rule detentions did not consist of writing lines or performing menial tasks, but of confinement and no small amount of pain.
Others, especially the Gryffindors claimed that they had escaped their punishment and formed an underground resistance, a fact substantiated by the frequent incidents that disrupted life within the castle every day. While the professors categorically denied the existence of such an endeavour, it was getting more and more difficult to credit Peeves with all of the locked doors, exploding dungbombs, and the booby trapped teacher’s lounge which had rendered both Carrow siblings mute until Madame Pomfrey had found a cure for the curse that had struck them.
Alecto slammed a book onto the table, her voice rising shrilly. Susan flinched.
“All this bending, lifting, working. Why, they are no better than beasts of burden. How much simpler is it to accomplish these tasks with a flick of a wand?”
Standing in front of the class, Carrow spread her arms dramatically. “They are primitive. They are weak, and they require our leadership to give them purpose.”
Susan clenched her teeth. Her gaze met Padma’s across the classroom, and she could see the same anger contained in it that she felt. In the beginning, Susan had vowed to stay quiet and keep her head down. This was her final year at Hogwarts, and her plan had been to get her N.E.W.T.s and go abroad, but, every day made it more difficult not to stand up and curse Professor Carrow into oblivion. The hateful triades, the poorly disguised manipulation with which the Carrows tried to pull the pureblood students not already sympathetic to their cause onto their side-it all made her sick to her stomach.
Her shoulders stiff, she tried to shut out the professor’s droning voice, and tried to entertain herself with speculations about whether or not Padma knew what had really happened to her sister. She threw the Ravenclaw another covert look, and then the classroom door exploded.
Surprised shouts and falling furniture turned the room into a chaotic mess as students instinctively tried to get away from the splintering door. Alecto Carrow screeched unintelligible orders above the rising din, but her voice was lost beneath the sound of numerous explosions in the hall.
In spite of the apparent danger, all students surged towards the smoldering doorway, their curiosity bigger than their fear. Swept up in the tide of moving bodies, Susan was among to first to reach the door. The sight that greeted her was one of scorched carpets, shattered windows, and broken statutes. The sound of angry voices filled the air, and before anyone had a chance to react, three hooded figures came flying around the corner, the tails of their brooms barely skirting the walls. Dressed in black robes, Neville Longbottom was in the lead, his wand held aloft as he soared past them.
“Stop them,” a voice shouted from beyond the turn, and seconds later Amycus Carrow came into sight, panting, with his face almost as red as his robe. “Alecto, stop them, they stole the letters.”
By that time Alecto and her hand-picked Slytherin enforcers, had made it into the hallway. Susan watched as Alecto raised her wand to attack Parvati Patil who flew past them at this very moment, but immediately her legs began to fly out from under her in a wild dance that sent her spinning down the hallway, round and round into Amycus’s arms. On instinct, Susan turned around, and met Padma’s gaze. The young witch’s wand moved quickly through the air, and two Slytherins suddenly succumbed to the ground.
The remaining two, finally realizing that they were under attack, whirled on Padma, but Susan already had her wand in her hand and jinxed them as well. A deafening silence descended over the hallway.
In a daze, Susan stared at the four unconscious students on the ground. She could not believe what she had done, but it slowly began to dawn on her that she was in serious trouble. Someone tugged at her sleeve, and she reluctantly tore her gaze away to look at Padma.
“We have to go,” she said.
“Go where?” Susan asked and tried to fight back the panic.
“Anywhere but here,” Padma answered and pulled Susan along. After a few reluctant steps, Susan regained her equilibrium and hurried along the hallway, away from the Carrows, who had sorted out Padma’s spell, and where shouting for reinforcements.
They hurried up a staircase and disappeared into one of the hidden passageways that served as shortcuts between classrooms.
“We have to leave the castle.” Susan said, her mind calmer now. “If we stay here, they’ll find us eventually, and there’s no way that I’m taking the kind of punishment the Carrows are going to dish out for what we just did.”
“We can’t leave the castle. They will watch the exits, and we’d only endanger our parents. Parvati and Neville are hiding out in the Room of Requirement. That’s where we’ll go.”
Susan stopped. “But we’re going in the wrong direction.”
Padma shook her head and motioned for Susan to follow her. “The Room of Requirement is a lot more flexible than we thought. Parvati told me that the entrance can appear all over the castle.”
Susan followed her into another hallway. “That’s useful.” She froze when she heard urgent voices up ahead. “Can we make it appear right here, then?” she asked, worried that they would be caught if they didn’t disappear quickly.
Padma threw an anxious gaze over her shoulder. Footsteps pounded up the stairs behind them. They were trapped. “I hope so,” she whispered.
Determined, they turned their thoughts to the Room of Requirement and walked side by side down the hall. After several steps they turned and backtracked, each of them trying feverishly to ignore the voices in front and behind them. A loud crashing sound made them flinch, just as they turned again to walk past the wall for the third time.
“Will you watch where you’re going, Snape? You’re slowing us down, and they must not get away,” Amycus shouted behind them.
The headmaster’s voice was too low to understand, but neither Susan nor Padma were paying attention to the exchange. They turned towards the wall, hoping to find a door, where only blank stone had been before.
“I don’t see anything,” Padma said. Her eyes were wide and her face grew paler by the second.
Susan ran her hands over the stone and examined it carefully. “I think these grooves are wider than they need to be,” she whispered and began to push against the stone. The wall gave way beneath her hands, and her own momentum carried her forward into the room beyond. She stumbled and would have fallen, had Padma’s sister not caught her by her shoulders.
“Hurry,” a voice shouted to her left, and when Susan turned, she watched Padma jump through the door into the Room of Requirement. Neville Longbottom swiftly shut the door as soon as she had passed. He greeted them with a grin. “Welcome to the Resistance,” he said.
* * * * *
“The room rearranged itself, just before you came through, so we had some warning.” Parvati hugged her sister fiercely before she pointed at the walls around them. Banners holding the crests of Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor adorned three of the walls, while the fourth remained black.
“The Hufflepuff banner is new,” Neville explained.
Susan tried to take it all in. “You’ve been hiding here?” she asked.
Parvati nodded. “They wanted to string us up in the dungeons, after we saved Flora from Nott’s bullying, but we ran for it. This is an ideal base of operations, really. The Room adapted itself to our needs, so we have blankets and pillows, and no professor has been able to enter it.”
“We saw Snape try it once. I think he figured out where we were hiding sooner than everyone else did. He couldn’t get in though, and we can enter and leave anyplace we want as long as it’s inside the castle.”
“So what now?” Susan asked. “I have to let my parents know that I’m alright. They’ll be worried if they don’t hear from me.”
Parvati nodded in agreement. “We’ll have to sneak down to Hogsmeade tonight. All outgoing and incoming mail is inspected by the professors and we can’t use any of the fireplaces without raising an alarm. They’ll be twice as careful, now that we stole their latest correspondence with You-Know-Who.”
“What correspondence?” Padma asked, curious.
Neville handed over a small stack of parchments. “It’s magically protected. We haven’t figured out how to make the ink visible, yet.”
“Who would help us in Hogsmeade?” Susan asked. “I don’t suppose it could be as easy as using the post office?”
Parvati gave her a sympathetic look. “No, I’m afraid not. We have to be very careful. There are Death Eater patrols walking across the village every night, but Madame Rosmerta has agreed to smuggle mail to our parents.”
Neville handed her some blankets. “Make yourself at home. We’ll leave as soon as it’s dark.”
Susan accepted the blankets gratefully. “How do we get there? I don’t think Snape or the Carrows will give up searching for us just because it’s dark outside.”
“The door leads everywhere we want it to. We’ll exit in a classroom on the ground floor and leave through a window. It’s still dangerous, but at least we don’t have to walk through the entire castle.”
* * * * *
The night was cold, and Susan drew her cloak closer around her body. Her breath formed little puffs of mist in the air, illuminated by the full moon that stood above them. She huddled in the shadow of the castle wall, and waited for Padma to climb through the window onto the Hogwarts grounds.
Susan listened for every suspicious noise, and when Padma landed in a crouch next to her, she breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“This way,” Parvati whispered and took the lead. They stayed close to the castle walls, their black hoods pulled up to hide their faces. Along the expanse of the green houses, and to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, they hurried quietly, all too aware that one false step might get them caught. Susan had walked the path to Hogsmeade many times, but since they couldn’t risk to be seen it took them more than twice as long to tread their way through the underbrush parallel to the path. Yet, even though they did not encounter any patrols along the way, Susan could not shake a foreboding sense of danger.
Finally they reached the village, which lay silent before them. It was well past midnight and there were hardly any lights inside the widows, and only the scattered street lamps illuminated the streets. Their luck held until they reached the back of the Three Broomsticks.
Parvati reached the dark building first, but no sooner had she touched the back door, than they heard a shout close by.
“Who goes there?” a man’s voice asked, and as Susan whirled around, she saw a shadow step out of the trees behind them.
Though Susan immediately reached for her wand, Parvati was quicker. A red Stunner hit the wizard, and his limbs folded up beneath him. Yet, there was no time for relief. Running footsteps approached from beyond the corner.
“Run.” Parvati whispered, and she dashed off into the darkness with her sister close behind. Susan followed, but had to draw up short when a hooded shadow appeared before her. Only the wizard’s surprise prevented her capture. Throwing a quick jinx his way, Susan darted around him and dove into the next space between two houses.
Padma and Parvati were nowhere to be seen.
Not daring to stop, Susan hurried onwards, but the village was small and she knew that she needed to find a hiding place soon, or she would be caught. Her heart hammered in her chest as she pressed herself against the wall of a small shed and listened. When she heard neither footsteps nor voices, she carefully edged to the corner ahead and took a deep breath.
Her muscles tense and poised for flight, she looked around the corner, and screamed in surprise.
The man before her glowered at her. His hands caught her wrist in a hard grip as she tried to back away. Unable to point her wand at him, Susan struggled, even as he pulled her close to him and covered her mouth with another hand.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed quietly, and dragged her back against the shed.
Panic rose inside of her and she struggled harder, until she finally resorted to biting his hand. With a curse, the wizard released her, and Susan pushed him away and ran.
She did not get far. The Stunner hit her in the back, and she crumbled to the ground with a starlet gasp.
* * * * *
When Susan saw Albus Dumbledore’s face above her, she was certain that she had died.
When Dumbledore roughly pushed a dirty glass filled with what was clearly Ogden's Old Firewhisky into her hands, and mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “damned kids and their damned troubles,” she was certain that she’d lost her mind.
“What happened?” she asked as it slowly began to dawn on her that she was, in fact, still alive.
“That’s what I want to know.” Dumbledore said in a deep, gruff voice that did not resemble the departed Headmaster at all. “It’s bad enough that those bumbling, nasty leeches wander around the village all night. I don’t need any more trouble with a bunch of kids getting killed in my back yard.”
Susan carefully wiped the rim of her glass with her sleeve and took a shallow sip of the amber liquid. It burned down her throat, making her cough. “You’re the bar tender at the Hog’s Head,” she finally said when her thoughts had cleared enough to recognize the surly man. “Are you related to Dumbledore?” she asked.
“He was my brother.” Aberforth groused and looked out the window as if checking for any approaching Death Eaters.
“I’m sorry,” Susan said.
Aberforth studied her briefly. “For what?”
“That he died.”
Aberforth simply shrugged and turned his attention to the street below again. “Always getting mixed up in other people’s trouble. His own damned fault.”
Her wide eyes unable to hide her shock, Susan sipped more of the Firewhisky. “I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said quietly.
“Oh, don’t I?” he asked and glowered at her. “All I want is to be left in peace, but no, Albus couldn’t leave it well enough alone. ‘Help them’ he said to me. ‘They will need you.’ And he made me swear it, too. So I’m doing my part. I don’t like it, but you see if I’ve ever broken a promise.”
Susan grasped for words, unsure of how to respond to his outburst. “Thank you,” she finally said. “For not turning me over to the Death Eaters.”
Aberforth didn’t reply.
“Do you know where my friends are?” she asked and slowly swung her legs off the couch.
“They’re in the kitchen, sending off letters.”
“Oh good. Then we won’t trouble you any longer and be on our way.” Grateful that her legs supported her, and that she did not seem injured beyond a mild headache, Susan wanted nothing more than leave Aberforth’s company and the resentment he exhibited.
“It’s bloody dangerous of you to sneak into the village at night. You’re just begging to get caught,” he said.
Susan hesitated on her way to the door. “Well, we don’t have any other way to get in touch with our families. The mail is searched, and the fireplaces are guarded. I don’t think that even the secret passages are safe.”
“So make a new one.”
Susan looked at him skeptically. “How?”
“That Room of Requirement your hiding in is a marvellous thing.”
“You think it can open outside of Hogwarts?”
Aberforth was silent for a moment, as if he was weighing his options. Finally, he nodded. “If the outside entrance is marked with an anchoring spell.”
Her mind reeling at the possibilities, Susan slowly sat down on the couch again. “Would you show me how? Please?” she added hurriedly.
* * * * *
“Blimey, where are you coming from?” Neville asked, as Susan, Padma, and Parvati climbed through the hole in the wall into the Room of Requirement.
Susan beamed at him. “We found someone who’ll help us to get in and out of Hogsmeade undetected.”
Neville seemed uncertain. “Who? Are you sure he can be trusted?”
Padma pulled off her cloak and threw herself onto a mattress. “Yes, he just has a nasty temper and a questionably sense of hygiene, but he’s Dumbledore’s brother..”
“... and he did save us from a Death Eater patrol,” Parvati added.
“So, I’d say we take our chances.”
Susan sat down next to Parvati and looked at her fellow members of the Resistance. She had no idea what the next months or even the next day would bring, but she’d finally found a purpose. Knowing that she would never again have to sit in a classroom and endure one of the Carrows’ lectures on Pureblood superiority was an immeasurable relief. In spite of the inherent danger, she was looking forward to sabotaging the Death Eater regime, and finishing her last year at Hogwarts not with outstanding N.E.W.T.s, but with her head held high in the knowledge that she had not succumbed to her fear.
The End