Begin to Hope

To be honest, I wasn't expecting anything big to really be in Hogwarts. Hell, I wasn't even expecting us to really arrive there. I had doubts about whether the Floo Network still existed, even though Maverick insisted that it still worked very well. I figured that we'd end up in some foreign country, staggering into some awkward place that we shouldn't be interfering with, greeted by rather irritated strangers.

However, when we landed in Hogwarts, we not only landed in a fireplace, but a lit fireplace. The fire blazed around me and I screamed out of surprise, thinking I was going to burn up and die. Never before had any but Maverick and Kimberly traveled by Floo Powder, and it was a terrifying experience, to say the least. Because I had lost nearly all of my wits, having been thrown into a pit of fire with no warning whatsoever, I started screaming, and loud. Before I could hop out of the fire myself, Klaus grabbed my arm and wrenched me out, both of us toppling to the ground in the process.

Getting to his feet, he dusted himself off and glared at me. "There's no need to scream your head off."

"I know. I--I was startled."

He turned to the group, ignoring me. "Where to now?"

"Wait a second. Wait. Why was this fireplace lit?" I looked around the room we were in. It was a small, quaint little room. It looked like it might have once been an office. There was a small messed-up cot covered in brown woolen sheets in the corner, as if it had recently been slept in, and a metal desk in the other. The desk was covered with yellowed parchment, a sign that somebody had once been here.

The ground was littered with wrappings, mostly things like empty food wrappers.

Humphrey had managed to sneak up beside me and he pulled me down to whisper in my ear, "D'you think someone has been here recently?"

"Well, if they have, we're invading their privacy and they probably won't be very pleased when they get back."

Klaus turned as if to leave the room and explore the rest of Hogwarts, but I stopped him.

"Klaus, wait! I don't like this. If there's someone here... what if they get angry? How are we to defend ourselves?"

He gave me a cold, hard look. "With magic." Turning back once more, he motioned for the rest of them to follow him.

I noticed Maverick at the back of the group, looking around the room as he exited. I approached him

"Maverick, doesn't this seem odd to you?"

"Yeah, it does. Why would there be all this junk on the floor and the fireplace lit if there wasn't someone here? But then that begs the question -- who is here? What are they doing? What do they want? Why and where did they go, that they left the fire burning?"

I shuddered, not wanting to think about it. We exited the room and I closed the door behind us, locking it with my wand as I did so. Hopefully, if someone came back, (maybe they used the fire to get through, too!) they wouldn't be able to get out.

Klaus led us down a large elaborate corridor filled with many tapestries and ornate sculptures and statues. I stopped to admire a particularly obscene one when Klaus called us forward.

"Alright, I know you're all dying to explore this place. I think there are seven floors, maybe? I don't know. I'll give you two hours to wander around and see everything and explore all you want. Report back to me in two hours and tell me where you want your room located. Preferably on the first or second floor, so we are all somewhat together. And if you explore the upper levels, please go in groups of two. I don't want to lose anyone..."

We all hurried together, deciding who would go with who while exploring, and I was about to leave with Maverick when Klaus called me back.

"No, Kerry, you're coming with me."

I exchanged glances with Maverick and mouthed Sorry. He shrugged and went off on his own.

I didn't meet Klaus' eyes as I sluggishly walked over to him. I figured I had a major chastising coming and that I thoroughly deserved it.

He cleared his throat and his voice softened. "This way, Kerry."

I followed him down the corridor and to the left, past several more statues and to my surprise, into a bathroom.

"Now, let's clean up your face."

Before this, I hadn't bothered to glance in the mirror and see my expression, but now that I saw myself I was horrified. My hair was matted down and caked with blood, and there was a large black bruise above my left eye, not to mention the indeterminable amounts of sticky blood all over my mouth.

"Oh, yuck." A wave of nausea washed over me just looking at myself.

"It's not that bad." Klaus stood in front of me and pulled out a few cotton balls and some peroxide.

"Are you kidding me? I look terrible!" I glanced over his shoulder into the mirror and grimaced as he applied some to my chin. "Ouch! That stings."

"Don't be such a baby."

"But it hurts." I made faces as he silently cleaned up my appearance, trying to do it gently as possible, which surprised me. One would think he would be mad enough to spit nails, but he hadn't yet tried to do anything impeccably wrong, such as hex me. 'Yet' being the key word.

"Look, Klaus--" I brushed a hand in the air to stop him and he looked at me with a hurt expression. "I'm really sorry that I didn't believe you. All that time, you were suspicious of him, and I kept brushing you off. I can't explain to you how stupid I feel right now. We'd still have the necklace right now if it weren't for him. And maybe Farley and Greg would still be alive, if--if we hadn't let Orlando in the house."

I sniffed and suddenly found my eyes welling up with tears. Why the hell was I crying? Because I had basically killed two of my best friends, who didn't deserve to be killed? Because I had let in the guy who had made it happen, just because I thought he was handsome? Because I had basically determined the fate of the rest of the human race by giving the worst villain in the history of the world the power to be unstoppable? Maybe it was just those bad chicken wings I had for lunch.

"Kerry..." he embraced me and I felt a warmth I hadn't in ages, not even in Orlando's arms. "Kerry, honestly, how could you have known?"

"But there were so many signs! You knew! How could you have seen it and I didn't?" I looked down at my lap and was surprised to find that I was shaking uncontrollably.

"Honestly, Kerry, don't beat yourself up over it. It's not that big of a deal."

"I killed them! Farley and Greg! Klaus, I'll have their blood on my hands as long as I live! It's completely my fault. I let Orlando in the house, he came with Farley and I to hide the necklace, the Death Eaters found us because of him, he was keeping them updated on all our thoughts and what we were doing! Voldemort and his followers wouldn't have known anything if Orlando hadn't been with us! He was probably giving signals to Voldemort while he was with me, behind my back! It is all--" I was hysterically yelling now, crying and rocking back and forth in my seat, my vision blurred as I sobbed.

"It wasn't your fault, Kerry! Farley was asking for it, he was yelling when the Death Eaters told him to shut up, and Greg was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"We wouldn't have gotten caught if it wasn't for me. How could I have been so stupid?"

"Kerry, stop it!" He slapped me hard across the face and his face crumpled when he did, but it had its desired effect. I stopped shaking, for the most part, and settled down with my head in his lap, tears streaming down my cheeks.

"Klaus, I can't do it. I can't do this anymore. I don't want to go on fighting. I don't want to have to wake up every morning with nothing to live for."

"You have everything to live for." He wiped a tear from my cheek. "You have eight of us to live for. You have to live in memory of everyone who's died now, everyone who's ever fought Voldemort."

"No--I can't do it. I can't."

"You can, Kerry, and you will! We'll defeat him, I know we will; we have to! We can do this."

I sat back up, staring him down, barely whispering. "How, Klaus? Nine kids against Voldemort. Most of these kids don't even have enough training to make it out alive in a match against a single Death Eater, and you're asking all of us to sacrifice everything we have in order to fight Voldemort. How could we possibly do this?

"I don't know, but I know we'll figure out something." He moved closer, holding one of my hands in his. "We're smarter than you're giving us credit for, Kerry. We're still alive now, aren't we?"

My lower lip trembled. "Does that mean Greg and Farley were just stupid?"

"No--no! They just had some bad luck. But we can do this, I know we can. We'll think of one hell of a plan, and Voldemort had better watch his back when we do!"

I chuckled at Klaus' logic, and noticed he was a lot closer to me than when we had started talking. I stood up, brushing my self off. He looked crestfallen for only a split second before hurrying to stand up beside me.

I sighed deeply. "Shouldn't we get back to finding the others? Has it been two hours yet?"

Without bothering to check his watch, he shook his head. "I'm sure we have time." He kept staring at me, as if trying to bore a hole through my head.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I took a step back. "Let's get going."

"No! Kerry--um--wait."

"What?"

He stepped into me, towering over me as he did so. "Kerry, I--"

He was interrupted by a shrill shriek.

I looked away, out the door. "What was that?"

"I have no idea." We both hurried out of the bathroom and into the main hall. Again we heard another cry, coming from the left.

"What's wrong?" Klaus shouted to whomever it was.

We followed the screaming into the end of a barely lit hallway, behind a small wooden door. It was closed, but this didn't affect Klaus. He threw his body up against it, pummeling it as hard as he could. It fell to the ground with a huge thud, Klaus falling in over it. I stuck my head in the door and saw what the problem was.

Kimberly was cornered on the far side of the room, trapped by a rather short, grubby man. He was dressed in dirty rags, his hair matted with dirt, and his face was unshaven. His eyes were bloodshot and he had his hands up in claws, as if he thought he was a cat. He was slowly moving in on Kimberly, and she just kept screaming.

"Hold it, you there!" Klaus said, jumping to his feet and bringing his wand out in front of him.

The man turned and bared his teeth at Klaus.

"Don't move!" Klaus warned. "I'll hex you!"

The man seemed unperturbed by this, closing in on Klaus instead of listening.

"You give me no choice. Stupefy!" Klaus yelled, a flash of red light jutting out from his wand. The man immediately fell unconscious to the floor, and I rushed to greet Kimberly.

"What happened?" Klaus asked, walking over to inspect the man.

"I--I came in this room, exploring, and as soon as I walked in that--that thing!--jumped out from behind the door and tried to attack me!"

"Why weren't you with your partner?" I asked suspiciously.

She turned faintly pink. "Well--Tally left to be with Maverick, so I didn't have a partner, then."

Kicking the body, Klaus turned to us. "Well, whatever it is--it's unconscious now."

"Who do you think it is?" I asked Klaus, getting up the courage to approach him.

"I don't know. Probably whoever has been living in that room we arrived in, although--" He made a face. "If he really is the one surviving in that room, he smells a lot more than he lives."

"What should we do with him?"

"Let's drag him along with us. He might come in handy."

We found a spare piece of rope under other assorted pieces of junk in the room and tied the guy up with it, trying to touch him as little as possible. When we were finished, Klaus lifted him in the air with his wand and made him levitate as we made our way back to the main hall.

"Guys! Everyone! Where are you?" We shouted through the halls, trying to get everyone together.

Within a minute we had all assembled back in the room we had arrived in, all of us agreeing to call it 'the den'. After a small discussion of where everyone's rooms were to be located, Klaus produced the man's body and brought up the question of what to do with him when he awoke.

"Well it all depends on whether he's good or bad, doesn't it?" Maverick asked logically.

"Even if he claims he's on our side he might not be." I said thickly. I saw a few glances being exchanged as I spoke.

"We might as well give him a chance to see what he has to say." Tally pushed her hair behind her shoulder and made a face at the man's motionless body on the floor.

With a glance toward me, Klaus brought out his wand and flicked it at the man. "Enervate!" he shouted, a jet of green light shooting from his wand and hitting the man.

The dirty man awoke with a start, and looked around suspiciously, as if he wasn't sure where he was. He twitched several times, trying to remove the bonds that bound him, and for a split second he reminded me of a rat.

"What are you doing? Release me at once!" He shouted, showing off his crummy grey teeth.

"Not until you give us some answers." Maverick took a threatening step toward the man, his arm upraised.

"I'm not telling you children anything!" The man howled, struggling furiously. "Let me go!"

"If you don't tell us anything, we'll simply kill you." Klaus said coolly, playing with his wand.

The man's eyes widened when he saw the wand, as if he knew what it was for. "You wouldn't dare!" He tried to speak boldly, but a hint of fear escaped his eyes.

"Wanna bet?" Maverick challenged, getting out his own wand. "AVA-"

"Wait!" The man screamed, trying to hop away from Maverick's reach. "Wait, I'll talk! Don't kill me, just don't kill me!"

Maverick lowered his wand and gestured for the man to start his story.

The man glared at Maverick, but cleared his throat and made a motion with his head for us to sit down. "We might be here awhile. My story goes way back."