Harry was sitting in a wing-backed chair reading Niamh’s Auros of the Centuries when Crabbe and Pansy entered Arx Serpens together.  He glanced at them, wondering what Draco’s lackey and supposed girlfriend were doing together.  As they walked slowly into the room, looking about with wide-eyes, Harry realized what was going on.  He chuckled and ducked down behind his book, only looking up when Draco told Pansy to go away so her, Blaise, Crabbe, and Goyle could talk.  Pansy looked rather disgruntled but complied, turning away with a humph.  Harry watched her storm over to sit down by the fireplace then turned his eyes back to Draco and his gang.  He couldn’t hear any of the conversation from across the common room but he could guess well enough what was going on.  Turning back to his book, he waited.

A good many pages later he looked up and saw Crabbe’s hair slowly tingeing red.  He turned his eyes towards Pansy at the fireplace and saw bushy brown hair emerging from the straight blond.  Their eyes locked and ‘Pansy’ leapt to her feet with a shriek.

Everyone turned to stare at her, including Draco and his cronies.  Pansy clapped her hands to her head, staring straight at Crabbe as she shrieked again then fled from the common room.  Crabbe followed her a moment later, grunting something to Draco.  Harry chuckled softly to himself as he heard a loud thump through the stone wall of Arx Serpens then turned back to Niamh’s book.

/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

Harry paced back and forth along a hairline crack in the floor of the Slytherin changing room.  He was worried.  For the entire week he had seen neither hide, nor hair of Niamh and he was wondering what on earth was wrong with his friend.

“Potter!”

Harry looked up at the trollish Marcus Flint and mumbled, “Wha’?”

“Game time,” said Marcus simply and strode out.  Harry grabbed his Nimbus 2001 and followed, his thoughts still focused on Niamh.

When he got into the air, he took the short time it would take the Hufflepuffs to get on the field to fly over to where he saw Ron.  Sitting alone.

Brow furrowed, Harry flew down to hover above his friend’s head.

“Where’s  ‘Ermione?”

Ron looked up and mouthed, “Library.”

Typical, thought Harry.

“Have ye seen Ni?”

Ron shook his head and Harry frowned even more.  Now he was really worried.

“Potter!”

Harry gave Ron a curt nod and flew up to his position.  Just as he got there, McGonagall ran onto the field carrying a large purple megaphone.  This did not look like something good…

“This match has been canceled.”

“What!”

Flint and the Hufflepuff captain flew down to McGonagall, the two of them opening their mouths to protest.

“Professor, we’ve got to play!”

“The cup, professor!  Slytherin…”

McGonagall ignored their pleas.

“All students will make their way back to their common room, where their Heads of House will give them further instructions.  Please do this as quickly as you can!”

She then lowered the megaphone and looked up at Harry, beckoning him down.  Harry felt a limp form in his stomach.  Something didn’t feel right…

“Come with me, Potter.  You too, Weasley.”

Harry turned to see Ron standing behind him, looking at him quizzically.  He shrugged and set off after McGonagall.  They snaked through the muttering crowed heading back up to the castle from the pitch.

McGonagall led them inside and up the staircase to the Hospital Wing.  Harry and Ron glanced at each other and the lump in Harry’s stomach tightened.

McGonagall spoke as they got close to the infirmary corridor.

“This may be a bit of a shock.  There’ been another attack…  a triple attack.”

McGonagall pushed open the doors and the three of them entered.  Madam Pomfrey was bent over a fifth-year girl that Harry recognized as one of Niamh’s Ravenclaw friends.  Her last name was Clearwater, if he remembered rightly what Niamh had told him.

Ron suddenly gasped, “Hermione!” and Harry turned his attention to the bed beyond the Ravenclaw girl.  He then looked at the occupied bed behind that –

“Ni.”

Harry’s insides twisted as he stared at the girl who had become such a good friend to him, his only companion in the Slytherin dorms besides Ginny.  He barely heard McGonagall ask a question and automatically shook his head when she held up a small mirror.  But his eyes never left Niamh’s still form.

“I will escort you back to Gryffindor Tower, Weasley.  Potter, Professor Snape will be coming to escort you to the Slytherin dungeons.”

Harry only nodded numbly in response.  He didn’t notice when they left, nor did he notice the entrance of someone else into the infirmary until a hand fell onto his shoulder.

Harry turned and looked up into Dumbledore’s weathered face.  The bright blue eyes did not hold their customary twinkle.

“Come with me, Harry.”

Harry nodded and let Dumbledore lead him away from Niamh and Hermione’s still forms.

/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

Dumbledore led him down into the dungeons, to a place along the wall that was a good twenty feet down from the door into the Potions classroom.  He laid a withered hand on the wall and spoke a phrase in a strange, rolling tongue.  Harry found – even in his delirium – that he could understand the words.

“Open in the name of Albus Dumbledore, son of Cairden Dumbledore and Vrai Ishaekes-Dumbledore.”

A door-shaped section of the wall slid into the right-side wall, revealing a large room behind it.  The room was furnished in dark, earthy tones with most of the furniture made up of old, polished wood and cloth.  Dumbledore led Harry over to a chair by the fire and sat him in it.  The old wizard then moved over to the fireplace and hovered before it for a moment before turning back around.  Firelight played over Harry’s face from the newly lit blaze and cast light on some of the objects in the room.  Dumbledore knelt down in front of Harry, firelight glinting off his half-moon spectacles.  He reached up and brushed back a hair that had escaped from the ponytail Harry kept his hair back in, then spoke in a gentle voice.

“I’m going to go get Severus.  Will you be alright here on your own?”

Harry nodded numbly, eyes dull and unfocused.

“You may stay here as long as you like.  As far as anyone else will know, you are in the Hospital Wing.

Harry nodded again.  Dumbledore watched him for a moment with weary eyes then rose, patting Harry’s hand as he left.

There was silence in the room except for the crackling of the fire until there was the rasping sound of the door sliding open.  A narrow beam of light lay across the floor until someone entered the room and the door slid closed behind them, leaving only firelight to light the room.  Footsteps cross the floor to the chair by the fire and someone knelt b it, reaching out a hand to run through the figure in the chair’s long, dark hair.

“Harry.”

Harry lifted his head from where he had laid it on the arm of the chair and looked up into his father’s dark eyes.  Concern shone clearly in the black depths.  Severus fought the urge to take his son into his arms as he in turn saw the pain in the familiar green orbs.

“Are you alright?”

Harry shook his head weakly.

“What happened?  Albus told me there was an attack but he didn’t tell me who.”

Harry whispered, “Clearwater…”

“That fifth-year Ravenclaw girl?”

Harry nodded numbly.

Severus sensed there was something else.  He didn’t want to press his already distraught son, but he had to.

“Who else, Harry.”

There was silence in the room.

“Harry,” said Severus softly.  “Who else was attacked?”

Harry looked up to meet his father’s eyes and breathed, “Mione.  Ni.”

“O’Feir?”

Harry nodded, laying his head back down against the chair arm.

“Granger, too.  Two Muggle-borns and a Half-blood.  Merlin save us.  Three.  Three at one time.”

Severus looked at his son curled up in the chair and reached out to run his hand over the silky hair on some strange impulse.  A moment later Harry leapt out of the chair to the floor, burying his face in Severus’ robes as he cried for the first time in nine years.  Severus did what he had been first impulsed to do when he entered the room.  He took his son into his arms and rubbed his hands up and down the boy’s back.

Soon the sobs subsided and Severus saw Harry was asleep.  Smiling, he picked up the thin boy easily and carried him into the bedroom.  He placed him on the bed, covering him with a simple black quilt.  Despite the cold in his classroom and office, his personal quarters were quite warm.  Then, conjuring a chair, he settled down by his son’s side and watched over him as he slept.