Forbidden and Mistaken

I could sense it. He was coming. Harry would eventually need to face Voldemort, and Hogwarts seemed like the obvious place that it would take place. I didn't know if that would decide my death or not, and of Draco's, but I'd sacrifice everything...everything, for them.

The Army knew it too, they could sense it as well.

He was here. With a crash of Bellatrix's curse, the windows shattered. I heard his voice, Voldemort's. "Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. You have until midnight."

Then that dreadful Pansy Parkinson yelled, "But he's there, Potter's over there! Someone grab him!"
I could feel my blood boiling, as I wanted to kill that snitch right then and there.

Before I could do anything, I ran. I ran as fast as I could, away. I couldn't bear to see the death of my friends. All of the students were heading to their houses, while I saw Harry going upstairs. It was unevitable, they were going to die. It was impossible to end this battle, only Harry could. And all he wanted to do was make sure no one was hurt. He only wanted to protect, but he couldn't.

"Stop running, Allen. Is that all you do? Run? From me, from Harry, from the Dark Lord? Coward." I heard Draco's imaginary voice inside my head. Ugh. Even when he wasn't with me, I could hear his teasing voice. And no, I did not want to run. But what could I do but flee? To kill, or to protect and be killed?

Then I stopped in my tracks. Where would he go? Somewhere...safe. Draco was like me. Scared to face Harry...Me. Scared to betray his father. Torn between two sides. And that was that.

The only place I could think of was none other than the Room of Requirement. I passed by hoardes of students, panicking third-years, and seventh-years like me trying to keep calm. I bolted to the door, for I needed it more than ever right now. "I need to find Draco Malfoy." I said. I pleaded.

Then it had appeared, and to my surprise, it wasn't Draco who was in the room, it was in fact, Ron.

"Blimey, Eliza!" Ron exclaimed.

Before I could stop myself, I ran up and gave him a big hug. I had missed him. "Ron! Oh Merlin, thank you. You're safe!" I exclaimed as Hermione came into view. "Hermione! You too! I thought you had died..."

"Ellie?" an all-too-familiar voice called out.

"Harry..." I murmered. "Oh Harry. I'm so sorry."

He enclosed me in one of his hugs, "Don't be. It was never your choice."

"But I was a coward. I should have died to protect you."

"No! You never hurt me, you just made me think you were one of them."

"But we don't have much time! Find the horcrux!" I shouted.

Deeper and deeper into the labyrinth we went, looking for objects I had recognized from my previous trips into the room. There it was, right ahead, the blistered old cupboard in which Harry had hidden his old Potions book, and on top of it, the pockmarked stone warlock wearing a dusty old wig and what looked like an ancient, discolored tiara.

"Harry, the tiara!" I yelled as he went for it.

Harry had already stretched out his hand, though he remained ten feet away, when a voice behind him said, "Hold it, Potter."

He skidded to a halt and turned around. Crabbe and Goyle were standing behind him, shoulder to shoulder, wands pointing right at Harry. Through the small space between their jeering faces we saw Draco Malfoy.

"Draco..." I whispered. There he was, looking at me, and back to Harry, as if deciding who to choose. I didn't speak another word to him. I was awestruck.

"That's my wand you're holding, Potter," said Malfoy, pointing his own through the gap between Crabbe and Goyle.

"Not anymore," panted Harry, tightening his grip on the hawthorn wand. "Winners, keepers, Malfoy. Who's lent you theirs?"

"My mother," said Draco.

Harry laughed, though there was nothing very humorous about the situation. He could not hear Ron or Hermione anymore. They seemed to have run out of earshot, searching for the diadem.

"So how come you three aren't with Voldemort?" asked Harry.

"We're gonna be rewarded," said Crabbe: His voice was surprisingly soft for such an enormous person; I had hardly ever heard him speak before. Crabbe was smiling like a small child promised a large bag of sweets. "We 'ung back, Potter. We decided not to go. Decided to bring you to 'im."

"Good plan," said Harry in mock admiration. He could not believe that he was this close, and was going to be thwarted by Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. He began edging slowly backward toward the place where the Horcrux sat lopsided upon the bust. If he could just get his hands on it before the fight broke out . . . "So how did you get in here?" he asked, trying to distract them.

"I virtually lived in the Room of Hidden Things all last year," said Malfoy, his voice brittle. "I know how to get in." He shot a quick glance at me. His face sullen and almost regretful.

"We was hiding in the corridor outside," grunted Goyle. "We can do Diss-lusion Charms now! And then," his face split into a gormless grin, "you turned up right in front of us and said you was looking for a die-dum! What's a die-dum?"

That stupid gorilla. I rolled my eyes at him.

"Harry?" Ron's voice echoed suddenly from the other side of the wall to Harry's right. "Are you talking to someone?" With a whiplike movement, Crabbe pointed his wand at the fifty-foot mountain of old furniture, of broken trunks, of old books and robes and unidentifiable junk, and shouted, "Descendo!"

The wall began to totter, then the top third crumbled into theaisle next door where Ron stood.

"Ron!" Harry bellowed, as somewhere out of sight Hermione screamed, and Harry heard innumerable objects crashing to the floor on the other side of the destabilized wall: He pointed his wand at the rampart, cried, "Finite." and had steadied.

"No!" shouted Malfoy, staying Crabbe's arm as the latter made to repeat his spell. "If you wreck the room you might bury this diadem thing!"

"What's that matter?" said Crabbe, tugging himself free. "It's Potter the Dark Lord wants, who cares about a die-dum?"

"Potter came in here to get it," said Malfoy. "so that must mean —"

"'Must mean'?" Crabbe turned on Malfoy with undisguised ferocity. "Who cares what you think? I don't take your orders no more, Draco. You an' your dad are finished."

"Harry?" shouted Ron again, from the other side of the junk wall. "What's going on?"

"Harry?" mimicked Crabbe. "What's going —no, Potter! Crucio!"

"You dumb asshole!" I swore. "Avarda Kedavra!" I screamed at Crabbe. The green light missed him by inches. Draco looked stunned, as if he never knew I could do such things.

Harry had lunged for the tiara; Crabbe's curse missed him but hit the stone bust, which flew into the air; the diadem soared upward and then dropped out of sight in the mass of objects on which the bust had rested.

"STOP!" Malfoy shouted at Crabbe, his voice echoing through the enormous room. "The Dark Lord wants him alive —"

"So? I'm not killing him, am I?" yelled Crabbe, throwing off Malfoy's restraining arm. "But if I can, I will, the Dark Lord wants him dead anyway, what's the diff — ?"

A jet of scarlet light shot past Harry by inches: Hermione had run around the corner behind him and sent a Stunning Spell straight at Crabbe's head. It only missed because Malfoy pulled him out of the way.

"It's that Mudblood Avada Kedavra!"

Harry saw Hermione dive aside, and his fury that Crabbe had aimed to kill wiped all else from his mind. He shot a Stunning Spell at Crabbe, who lurched out of the way, knocking Malfoy's wand out of his hand; it rolled out of sight beneath a mountain of broken furniture and boxes.

"Don't kill him! DON'T KILL HIM!" Malfoy yelled at Crabbe.

"I can't believe you, Draco..." I said."Expelliarmus!" I shouted at Goyle.

Goyle's wand flew out of his hand and disappeared into the bulwark of objects beside him; Goyle leapt foolishly on the spot, trying to retrieve it; Malfoy jumped out of range of Hermione's second Stunning Spell, and Ron, appearing suddenly at the end of the aisle, shot a full Body-Bind Curse at Crabbe, which narrowly missed.

Crabbe wheeled around and screamed, "Avada Kedavra!" again.

Ron leapt out of sight to avoid the jet of green light. The wandless Malfoy cowered behind a three-legged wardrobe as Hermione charged toward them, hitting Goyle with a Stunning Spell as she came.

"It's somewhere here!" Harry yelled at her, pointing at the pile of junk into which the old tiara had fallen. "Look for it while I go and help R —"

"HARRY!" she screamed. A roaring, billowing noise behind him gave him a moment's warning. He turned and saw both Ron and Crabbe running as hard as they could up the aisle toward them.

"Like it hot, scum?" roared Crabbe as he ran.

But he seemed to have no control over what he had done. Flames of abnormal size were pursuing them, licking up the sides of the junk bulwarks, which were crumbling to soot at their touch.

"Aguamenti !" Harry bawled, but the jet of water that soared from the tip of his wand evaporated in the air.

It was fiendfyre, most magical, powerful, and Dark.

"RUN!" I didn't even know who had screamed.

Malfoy grabbed the Stunned Goyle and dragged him along the way. "DRACO!" I yelled.

Then flaming serpents, chimaeras, and dragons rose and fell and rose again, and the detritus of centuries on which they were feeding was thrown up in the air into their fanged mouths, tossed high on clawed feet, before being consumed by the inferno.

Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had vanished from view: Harry, Ron, and Hermione and I had stopped dead; the fiery monsters were circling us, drawing closer and closer, claws and horns and tails lashed, and the heat was solid as a wall around us.

"What can we do?" Hermione screamed over the deafening roars of the fire. "What can we do?"

"Here!"

Harry seized a pair of heavy-looking broomsticks from the nearest pile of junk and threw one to Ron, who pulled Hermione onto it behind him. Harry swung his leg over the second broom and, with hard kicks to the ground, they soared up into the air, missing by feetthe horned beak of a flaming raptor that snapped its jaws at them.

The smoke and heat were becoming overwhelming: Below them the cursed fire was consuming the contraband of generations of huntedstudents, the guilty outcomes of a thousand banned experiments,the secrets of the countless souls who had sought refuge in the room. I could not see a trace of Malfoy, Crabbe, or Goyle anywhere:

Harry swooped as low as he dared over the marauding monsters offlame to try to find them, but there was nothing but fire: What a terrible way to die. . . . I had never wanted this. . . .

"Harry, let's get out, let's get out!" bellowed Ron, though it was impossible to see where the door was through the black smoke.

And then Harry heard a thin, piteous human scream from amidst the terrible commotion, the thunder of devouring flame.

"It's — too — dangerous — !" Ron yelled, but Harry and I wheeled in the air. His glasses giving his eyes some small protection from the smoke, we raked the firestorm below, seeking a sign of life, a limb or a face that was not yet charred like wood. . . .

And he saw them: Malfoy with his arms around the unconscious Goyle, the pair of them perched on a fragile tower of charred desks.

"IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I'LL KILL YOU, ELIZA!" roared Ron's voice, and, as a great flaming chimaera bore down upon us, he and Hermione dragged Goyle onto their broom and rose, rolling and pitching, into the air once more as Malfoy clambered up behind Harry and in front of me as I laced my hands around him for support.

"Get to the door!" screamed Malfoy in Harry's ear, and Harry sped up, following Ron, Hermione, and Goyle through the billowing black smoke, hardly able to breathe: and all around them the last few objects unburned by the devouring flames were flung into the air, as the creatures of the cursed fire cast them high in celebration: cups and shields, a sparkling necklace, and an old, discolored tiara —

"What are you doing, the door's that way!" Malfoy said, but Harry made a hairpin swerve and dived. The diadem seemed to fall in slow motion, turning and glittering as it dropped toward the maw of a yawning serpent, and then he had it, caught it around his wrist —

Harry swerved again as the serpent lunged at him; he soared upward and straight toward the place where, he prayed, the door stood open: Ron, Hermione, and Goyle had vanished; I was screaming and holding Draco so tightly it hurt. Then, through the smoke, Harry saw a rectangular patch on the wall and steered the broom at it, and moments later clean air filled his lungs and they collided with the wall in the corridor beyond.

Malfoy and I fell off the broom and lay facedown, gasping, coughing, and retching, our hands laced together. Harry rolled over and sat up: The door to the Room of Requirement had vanished, and Ron and Hermione sat panting on the floor beside Goyle, who was still unconscious.

"C-Crabbe," choked Malfoy as soon as he could speak. "Crabbe."

"He's dead," said Ron harshly.

"He's gone, Draco." I told him again.

There was silence, apart from panting and coughing. Then a number of huge bangs shook the castle, and a great cavalcade of transparent figures galloped past on horses, their heads screaming with bloodlust under their arms. I staggered to my feet when the Headless Hunt had passed and looked around: The battle was still going on all around me. I could hear more screams than those of the retreating ghosts.

Panic flared within me. "Draco...I'm sorry for leaving you. I just couldn't stand it there. Something had to be done."

He looked back at me, both our faces charred from fire. "I didn't know you would come here." He said.

"Only to help fight this. But I can't believe you...you were going to capture Harry. Our only hope of salvation..."

"I wanted to find you. He would know. Only the other two wanted to kill him. You guys saved me...You- You saved me, Eliza."

"I could never leave you to die."

"I almost died at home without you."

"Where's Ginny?" Harry interrupted. "She was here. She was supposed to be going back into the Room of Requirement."

"Blimey, d'you reckon it'll still work after that fire?" asked Ron, but he too got to his feet, rubbing his chest and looking left and right. "Shall we split up and look — ?"

"No," said Hermione, getting to her feet too. Goyle remained slumped hopelessly on the corridor floor "Let's stick together. I say we go — Harry, what's that on your arm?"

"What? Oh yeah —"

He pulled the diadem from his wrist and held it up. It was still hot, blackened with soot, but as I looked at it closely we was just able to make out the tiny words etched upon it:

Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

A bloodlike substance, dark and tarry, seemed to be leaking from the diadem. Suddenly the thing started to vibrate violently, then break apart in his hands, and as it did so, he thought I heard the faintest, most distant scream of pain, echoing not from the grounds or the castle, but from the thing that had just fragmented in his fingers.

"It must have been Fiendfyre!" whimpered Hermione, her eyes on the broken pieces.

"Sorry?"

"Fiendfyre — cursed fire — it's one of the substances that destroy Horcruxes, but I would never, ever have dared use it, it's so dangerous — how did Crabbe know how to — ?"

"Must've learned from the Carrows," said Harry grimly.

"Shame he wasn't concentrating when they mentioned how to stop it..." Ron said.

"It doesn't matter now." Draco snapped.

"I'm staying with Draco." I told the others. Harry nodded as Hermione and Ron agreed. "I won't lose you again, Malfoy."

Then the piercing screams of terror flooded the castle as I knew, then, the real battle had begun.