This Is War

Calissa Dumbledore’s soft white skin hardened against the unusually cold, May night. After all, as she was sprinting through the dark castle grounds, she was in only her silky nightgown and ballet-like slippers. Professor McGonagall had stirred her awake only moments before, but it felt like an eternity as Calissa’s feet pounded against the earth in the hardest, longest strides she could muster. Her ribs shook and burned around her hammering heart and her long, blonde hair flew behind her in tangled waves. It had only taken a couple strained words from the rarely-shaken voice of Professor McGonagall to bring Calissa into this kind of state- “your grandfather.”

Calissa had KNOWN something was going on with the way he had been acting lately. All year, in fact, he had been acting strangely around her, but she figured it was the stress of work on top of the fact that the whole wizarding world was now aware of Lord Voldemort’s return. But just in the past couple of weeks, things had gotten even stranger. He wasn’t showing up for their daily supper. When Calissa did manage to see him, he was asking her more and more questions about her relationship with her boyfriend, Harry Potter- a relationship her grandfather had always seemed to adore. His sudden apprehension was discomforting at best. Harry’s behavior was none better.

Fighting off the irking anxiety had been easy enough for Calissa what with final exams being right around the corner and her best friend Hermione Granger, of course, panicked over them. Now, though, as the whispers of a gathering crowd began to fill Calissa’s ears, it seemed her worrying wasn’t entirely for nothing.

Neville Longbottom was the first person she saw. “Neville!” She panted, grasping his arm as she hurriedly tried to regain her breath. “What’s going on? Where’s my granddad?”

Neville’s crooked jaw hung open, and he turned his face in the same direction as the mass of people. “I... Well...” He said in a tight voice.

Calissa didn’t wait to hear the rest. She tore into the chilly black wall of robes. Like a stone tossed in the Black Lake, the news of her arrival rippled through the crowd.

She burst through the front of the group with a gasp and was met with the most unimaginable, worst of sights.

Calissa had rarely seen her grandfather SITTING DOWN in her entire lifetime living with him at Hogwarts, but now here he was SLUMPED on the filthy, rain-trodden ground against the Astronomy Tower. Harry was knelt beside him, holding onto the old, unmoving professor’s good arm.

“Harry!” The panic bubbled over in Calissa’s voice. Tears poured over her eyelids. “What’s happening? Is Granddad-”

Harry heaved his sweating arms around her. He smelled like salt water and singed hair. All of Calissa’s senses were being overwhelmed.

“I’m so sorry,” he wailed. “I trusted Snape. I trusted him to protect Dumbledore but he is a liar! He’s a murderer!”

“Granddad,” Calissa whispered through her sobs. Her hand trembling from fear and cold and grief found Albus Dumbledore’s weathered cheek and half-moon spectacles. The blue eyes behind them had lost their twinkle- their life- but were as piercing as ever before.

Her other hand gripped Harry’s back needfully as he continued to cry into her hair. “It was Snape?” she croaked with disbelief. “Snape k-k-killed him?”

“Yes,” Harry breathed into her. “It was Snape all along. The moment it was all over he and his Death Eater friends went running towards Hagrid’s.”

Calissa’s slender fingers pulled Harry’s shivering body off of hers as she scrambled to her feet and took off once more. As she escaped through the crowd this time, however, she reached down to wear she had stored her wand and let the fiery energy of maple stick charge her legs forward.

“Calissa!” Voices called behind her- Neville’s and Hermione’s and Professor McGonagall’s- but she didn’t stop. She wouldn’t until she reached Hagrid’s hut.

Soon enough, however, stronger and heavier footsteps caught up to hers. It was Harry, his breathing labored, his wand also at the ready. As the familiar pumpkin patch and modest house came into view, so did five or six shadowy, hooded figures.

“Stupefy!” Calissa shouted, but a bit too soon. Her spell crashed and burned into the grass meters away from the nearest Death Eater and they all immediately turned to face their pursuers.

“Reducto!” shrieked the unfortunately familiar voice of Bellatrix LeStrange. A stream of bright purple light landed directly between Harry and Calissa, sending them flying in opposite directions with a horrendous BANG.

“Do not attack them!” Snape’s voice shouted at Bellatrix. “Dark Lord’s orders!”

Calissa groaned as she turned from her stomach back onto her back. Her insides rolled around in painful disarray. The wet, gravelly earth was cold through her nightgown. She could hear Harry coming to his feet, and she forced herself up as well.

“Fight back, you lousy cowards!” Harry yelled, sending a curse in their direction, which Snape fended off. “Fight back!” He continued to cast forward more spells, but they too were expertly thwarted. Calissa, still dazed and perhaps in shock, watched the scene with wide eyes.

“Look at the wittle Dumble girl!” Bellatrix taunted. “Not even lifting a finger! Just like her olllllll Pappy!”

“That is enough!” Snape exclaimed. “He is waiting for us. Let’s go, NOW.”

With that, the six figures seemed to disappear within their long, black robes, ghostlike, and flew into the overcast midnight sky in a cloud of smoke. Calissa and Harry were alone with the wind and the emptiness.

Calissa took a few moments to just feel. Feel her skin on her bones, feel her muscles tense with anguish. Feel her emotions twist and turn and channel themselves into an undeniable determination.

“You were on some sort of mission with him tonight, weren’t you?” She closed her eyes and whispered, clenching and unclenching her palms. The wind carried her voice to Harry’s ear.

“Yes,” he managed to say.

“It’s not over, is it? You have more to do?”

“Yes,” he answered once more.

Calissa nodded as she took this in. Harry took a few steps in her direction and placed a hand on her wrist.

“Then I’m helping you.” she said. “You can’t fight me on this. Whatever it is, if it will take down Lord Voldemort, I’m going to do it. I’m going to avenge my grandfather.”

Harry responded, “you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, my love.”

“I don’t care! Voldemort might think he killed off an enemy tonight, but he’s gained another one. Harry,” she opened her eyes again and looked at Harry full on in his bloodied, dirty, yet still inexplicably handsome face. “You are the love of my life. All the wizardry in the world could fall away and I’d still feel magic when you came near. It was never a question that I’d stand by you through anything, but now, we aren’t kids caught in an adult’s game anymore. This is real. This is war.”