“He wend dad way,” Longbottom offered, pointing towards the far end of the room. Some effort had been made to scrub the blood off his face, but somehow the streaky pattern didn’t really make him look any better.

Severus gritted his teeth. This is why children should be kept in cages until they’re twenty-five.

“Why?” Minerva demanded, looking nearly as put out as he felt.

“We saw Bellatrix escape through one of the other doors while you were still fighting,” one twin started. “She hit Tonks with something, and just….”

“Harry said he could cut her off,” the other picked up the tale. “We told him not to go, but we were busy holding the door and couldn’t stop him, and Neville was in the middle of, um….” He glanced to his brother for help.

“De-braining Ron.”

“De-braining Ron, yes, and he wasn’t in a position to do anything either.”

The brain had been pried off and now lay in a mushy heap off to one side, Severus noticed absently, although the Weasley boy didn’t look a great deal better. And all three girls still lay unconscious. He cursed. He’d assumed that laying open Bellatrix’s back would have kept her on the ground, but he’d forgotten that lunatics—true lunatics, not just stubborn, paranoid pains-in-the-arse like Alastor—didn’t necessarily operate by the same rules of reality as everyone else. If she thought the Dark Lord needed her, she’d be there regardless of whether or not it should be physically possible.

“We don’t have time for this.” Albus led the way past the children with a curt order at them to stay where they were. Presumably Kingsley, who was still in the other room, could keep the rest of the Deatheaters down, and if not…well, the Weasley twins had already proved that they were fairly capable, if unconventional, in battle.

“What’s wrong?” Alastor demanded as the three of them burst into the entrance chamber. He was more than half dragging Tonks, which explained why they hadn’t made it any further.

“If Bellatrix doesn’t kill Harry, I’m going to. She escaped, and he’s gone after her.”

“Go,” Tonks said, pulling away. Or leaning away, at least. She looked worse than Severus had realized at first glance. “I’ll wait with the students.”

Assuming she could make it that far, Severus decided, but she was making her way determinedly towards the door. Very slowly. And with the support of the wall. Well, injured or not, she was an Auror and could—one hoped—handle herself. And even if she collapsed here, it was better than trying to haul her through a firefight. Severus shook his head and joined Minerva and Alastor as they hurried after Albus.

He gritted his teeth when their pace picked up as they left the Department of Mysteries. His thigh had been sore before, but walking on it—and fighting on it—really hadn’t helped a great deal.

“All right, lad?” Alastor muttered.

At the rate he was going, Severus suspected that his teeth were going to be bloody well splintered before this evening was over. “Just delightful, and yourself?”

“Enough of that. I wasn’t precisely being gentle earlier, and Malfoy and his cronies looked pretty intent on giving you a beating as well. If you’re hurt you’d best go back—we don’t need to get stuck having to defend you and the boy.”

“I’m fine; I blocked most of what they were aiming at me. Frankly, I’m a little more concerned about what might be awaiting us.” There hadn’t been more than a dozen Deatheaters inside the Department of Mysteries which left plenty more to be lying in wait. And not only was there Bellatrix with a chance to face Harry and do Merlin-knew-what to him, it was entirely possible that the little dunderhead was dashing off into an ambush set by the Dark Lord himself.

Alastor seemed to take him at his word, crowding into the lift with Minerva and Albus, and Severus wedged his way in as well. If they were lucky they would catch Harry and Bellatrix in the Atrium, but if there had been an ambush or they’d floo’d elsewhere….

“—righteous anger won’t hurt me for long,” Bellatrix was saying as they piled back out of the lift. “I’ll show you how it is done, shall I? I’ll give you a lesson—”

Severus didn’t see Harry until her shout of ‘Crucio!’ and then the brat dove behind the fountain. The arm of the centaur statue and the bow it was holding flew off and landed on the floor with a crash.

“Potter, you cannot win against me!”

Harry scrambled around the statue, and Albus and Alastor moved up along the side walls, staying in the shadows but obviously trying for a clear shot at her. Minerva was flanking Albus so Severus slipped in behind Alastor. If they could just disable her and get out of here before someone came looking….

It didn’t even look like the brat had noticed them; he was angling around the statue obviously trying to keep it between him and Bellatrix while still allowing him to use his own arsenal of offensive spells. Such as it was.

“I was and am the Dark Lord’s most loyal servant. I learned the Dark Arts from him, and I know spells of such power that you, pathetic little boy, can never hope to compete—”

“Stupefy!” yelled Harry.

“Protego!”

Severus winced. Bellatrix had what seemed like almost inhuman reaction times, especially when she was fighting, and it didn’t appear that her back being opened nearly to the bone was bothering her in the slightest. Why couldn’t she just throw herself off a cliff or something equally permanent? Maybe if someone tells her the Dark Lord wants her to….

The jet of red light, his own Stunning Spell, bounced back at Harry, and he scrambled back behind the fountain as the goblin lost an ear.

“Potter, I’m going to give you one chance!” shouted Bellatrix. “Give me the prophecy—roll it out towards me now—and I may spare your life!”

Yes, and if you believe that you fully deserve whatever she does to you.

“Well, you’re going to have to kill me, because it’s gone!” Harry shouted back.

Oh, wonderful, let’s make the madwoman angrier than she already is. Granted that believing her words would have been beyond idiotic, but that had not been the response he’d been hoping for, and Severus almost groaned. Bellatrix was back behind the desks, and so far none of them had been able to get a decent shot at her. Albus was almost up past the fountain, though; he should be able to take her from behind in the next minute or two, so perhaps if Harry and Bellatrix would continue this lovely little conversation rather than continually spelling each other….

“What? What do you mean?” Bellatrix demanded.

“The prophecy smashed when I was trying to get Neville up the steps! What do you think Voldemort’ll say about that, then?”

Harry swiped at his forehead, and Severus realized abruptly that he was probably being attacked on two fronts. “Occlude, idiot!” He’d hissed the order rather than shout it as he’d have liked to, and it didn’t appear that Harry had heard. Of course neither had Bellatrix so he’d achieved that objective, but still.

“Liar!” Bellatrix screamed, and from her tone her grip on reality was becoming even more tenuous than usual. “You’ve got it, Potter, and you will give it to me! Accio prophecy! Accio prophecy!”

“Nothing there!” Harry shouted back, and damn if the brat didn’t sound like he was starting to enjoy this. “Nothing to summon! It smashed and nobody heard what it said; tell your boss that!”

“No!” she screamed. “It isn’t true, you’re lying! Master, I tried, I tried—do not punish me—”

“Don’t waste your breath!” Harry yelled back. “He can’t hear you from here!”

And then three of the floos roared, and Severus bit back a snarl. Just had to go and say that, didn’t you?

“Can’t I, Potter?” asked a high, cold voice that Severus recognized all too well. And it hadn’t come from one of the five figures that had come through the floo, it had come from a skeletal figure in a black robe and hood that had stepped out of the shadows on the far side of the room. “So, you smashed my prophecy?” he continued softly, red eyes glowing as he glared at Potter. Who had apparently been deserted by what little sense of self-preservation that he’d had, because he was standing in the middle of the hall stupidly, making absolutely no attempt to find cover. “No, Bella, he is not lying…I see the truth in his face. Months of preparation, months of effort…and my Deatheaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again…I….”

“Master, I am sorry I knew not!” In one of her more disturbing mood swings, Bellatrix was now sobbing as she flung herself to the floor at the Dark Lord’s feet. “Master, you should know—”

“Be quiet, Bella,” the Dark Lord ordered. “I shall deal with you in a moment. Do you think I have entered the Ministry of Magic to hear your sniveling apologies?”

Severus winced at his tone—he didn’t care for Bellatrix in the slightest, but he’d been ‘dealt with’ a few more times than he cared to remember.

“But Master—he is here. He is below.”

The Dark Lord didn’t seem to hear her, his attention focused on Harry again. “I have nothing more to say to you, Potter.” His voice was disturbingly quiet. “You have irked me too often, for too long. Avada Kedavra!”

An audible curse escaped Severus’ lips at that, but he wasn’t the only one. He’d had expected the Dark Lord to get to this at some point, but not so quickly—there were supposed to be flowery speeches and pointless gestures first. After all, saying the creature was given to the dramatic was putting it mildly.

Harry was standing in the center of the floor, his wand pointed downwards and with absolutely nothing available to intercept the curse. Severus was too far away, Alastor, Albus, and Minerva even further….

The golden statue suddenly leapt into the path of the curse, taking it full in the chest.

“What?!” the Dark Lord cried, staring around furiously. His attention had obviously been on the duel, before—as all of theirs had been—but the shadows didn’t offer much protection against a determined search. “Dumbledore!”

Harry looked around as well, recognizing for the first time that he wasn’t alone.

The Dark Lord raised his wand and another jet of green light streaked at Albus. He was gone in a whirl of his cloak, only to reappear behind the Dark Lord and animate the rest of the fountain statues, and Severus wondered for a moment if the people who ran the Ministry were actually idiotic enough to permit apparition in their atrium. And then he remembered that the Minister of Magic was Cornelius Fudge and had his answer. Wait…if we could apparate, then why in Merlin’s name did we have to take that damn lift?! He was about to voice his question when the group of Deatheaters who’d come through the floo finally decided to attack, and he found himself with other things to worry about.

Alastor ended up dueling two—the Carrows, it appeared—and making mincemeat of them, while Minerva was giving the elder Crabbe and Goyle fairly sound beatings herself. Since the statue of the witch had Bellatrix pinned neatly to the floor and he wasn’t insane enough to get between Albus and the Dark Lord—and the remaining statues—Severus contented himself with a short duel with Yaxley and then joined the headless statue in keeping Harry well away from the action.

“It was foolish to come here tonight, Tom,” Albus was saying. “The Aurors are on their way—”

“By which time I shall be gone, and you will be dead!” spat the Dark Lord. His next curse missed but set the security desk on fire, and Albus responded with about the most powerful concussive-capture spell Severus had seen. “You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?” the Dark Lord called in what was probably supposed to be a taunting tone. The effect was somewhat broken by the fact that he was still hiding behind the silver shield that he’d had to conjure to deflect Albus’ spell. “Above such brutality, are you?”

“We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,” Albus responded in the same calm tone that occasionally made Severus want to knock him through the nearest wall, advancing towards the Dark Lord as though he was just taking a stroll. “Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit—”

“There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!”

Severus twisted slightly at a high pitched scream off to one side, but it was only Alecto falling motionless beside her brother as Alastor turned to scan the room for other targets. Neither of the two combatants in the center of the room even noticed.

“You are quite wrong,” Albus responded, still moving forward. Severus wanted very much to point out that this would be an appropriate time to, say, shield, but as insane as Albus’ plans occasionally were, he wasn’t willing to chance disrupting this one. Albus smiled slightly. “Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness—”

The Dark Lord tried another killing curse, this time intercepted by the centaur statue. It ended the encounter in a pile of rubble.

Albus’ well-over-powered Deripio nearly pinned the Dark Lord, but a transfiguration spell that Severus had never seen and wouldn’t have guessed was possible turned the whip into a serpent. Which, of course, went after Albus as the Dark Lord apparated out. He reappeared above the pool where the fountain had once stood; the snake reared from the floor, ready to strike….

“Look out!” Harry yelled.

But the killing curse had already been cast, at the same moment the serpent’s head shot forward, and— Severus breathed in sharply. It couldn’t end like this.

Fawkes burst into the room in a ball of flame above Albus’ head and dove into the path of the killing curse while Albus dealt with the serpent and encased the Dark Lord in water from the pool, hardening it into who looked like nothing so much as a cocoon of molten glass.

For a few seconds it looked as though the cocoon would hold, but then the Dark Lord disapparated again and the water crashed back into the pool. Severus very much wished that Albus would get over this ‘worse than death’ theory of his and just kill the bastard.

“Master!” screamed Bellatrix.

Harry made as though to run out from behind the statue—where he planned to go, Severus had no idea—and he grabbed the brat around his waist with his good arm and hauled him back, putting his own body between Harry and the rest of the room. “You stay where you are!”

There was silence for a moment…well silence except for a sobbing Bellatrix, still trapped under the witch statue, the baby version of Fawkes croaking feebly on the floor, and either Crabbe or Goyle moaning where Minerva had left them lying on the floor, and then Harry screamed in agony and Severus whirled. The boy’s eyes were red. Oh, Merlin….

“Kill me now, Dumbledore….”

And that was not Harry’s voice, either, for all that it was coming from his mouth.

“If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy.”

Occlude, damn it! Occlude!

The floos roared a second time, and Harry collapsed suddenly. Severus brought up his wand automatically, unsure of which way to turn. He had to protect Harry, obviously, but he couldn’t precisely Occlude the brat’s mind for him, and with another wave of Deatheaters on the way….

“What in Merlin’s name is going on here?” Fudge demanded, still in his pyjamas but with a pinstriped cloak pinned haphazardly over his shoulders. And, frighteningly enough, the small entourage following him looked almost even more ridiculous.

Severus had no idea what Albus planned to say, but he was saved from saying anything as the Dark Lord reappeared beside the statute of the witch, blasting it away and hauling Bellatrix to her feet beside him before apparating the two of them away. Harry groaned slightly, trying to push himself up off the floor, and Severus helped him to his feet quickly. And then continued to hold him up because Harry’s legs didn’t seem inclined to support his weight. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he returned after a moment, although if the violent tremors were any indication he was probably overstating things a bit. “Yeah, I’m—where’s Voldemort, where—who are all these—what’s—”

“Perhaps if you asked an entire question I could answer you.”

Harry frowned, shaking his head and staring at the floor.

The roar of the floos overlapped with the popping sounds of multiple apparitions, and suddenly the Atrium was nearly flooded with people…a group of men were putting out the green flames burning along one wall, there was a cluster of Aurors surrounding Alastor and another few taking the Deatheaters into custody…. Severus caught sight of Minerva headed for the lift and realized that she was probably going back for the other children.

Albus approached. “Are you all right, Harry?”

“Yes, sir.”

And if Albus believes that, I’d say at least one of the Dark Lord’s curses got through and addled his mind. Moreso than it usually is.

Two of the surviving statues from the fountain approached a moment later, leading the Minister of Magic in towards Albus. Which, unfortunately, meant towards Severus and Harry as well. Just who I wanted to see. Couldn’t the Dark Lord have taken him away? Tried to hold him for ransom? Letting him keep the idiot would probably be considered a decisive victory for our side.

“He was there!” shouted a man in scarlet robes, intercepting the Minister and gesturing wildly at the remnants of the witch statue. “I saw him, Mr. Fudge; I swear it was You-Know-Who! He grabbed a woman and disapparated!”

“I know, Williamson, I know, I saw him too!” gibbered Fudge in return. His breath was coming in gasps, and Severus had high hopes for a faint in the near future. If he was very lucky, Fudge would strike his head on something heavy on the way down. “Merlin’s beard…here!” Fudge continued. “Here! In the Ministry of Magic! Great heavens above—it doesn’t seem possible—my word—how can this be?”

“If you proceed downstairs into the Department of Mysteries, Cornelius,” said Albus, stepping in front of Severus and Harry and drawing most of the attention in the room to him at his words, “I believe that may offer some explanation.”

Severus had to smirk at the reactions of the crowd as they recognized him. A few of them raised their wands and glanced around wildly, Merlin knew why; others looked amazed—well, it wasn’t every day that the headmaster of the most prestigious school of magic in the area got into a duel in the Ministry so perhaps that was somewhat reasonable; the statues of the elf and goblin applauded; and Fudge jumped so high that his slipper-clad feet left the floor. Because he was an idiot. But he still didn’t faint, damn him.

“You will find several escaped Death Eaters contained in the Death Chamber, bound by an Anti-Disapparation Jinx and awaiting your decision as to what to do with them,” Albus continued.

The Minister looked around wildly, but since he’d just admitted to seeing the Dark Lord he couldn’t precisely deny the existence of Deatheaters despite his…enthusiastic support…of that particular point of view for the past year.

“A few minutes ago you saw proof, with your own eyes, that I have been telling you the truth for a year. Lord Voldemort has returned, and it is time you listened to sense!”

“I don’t—well—” blustered Fudge, looking around as though hoping somebody was going to tell him what to do. When nobody did, he said, “Very well. Dawlish! Williamson! Go down to the Department of Mysteries and see….” What they were supposed to see apparently didn’t matter as he moved on to his next victim, obviously trying to reestablish his sense of control. “Dumbledore, you…you will need to tell me exactly—” he frowned for a moment, doing a double-take and staring at the pool that was all that remained of the fountain. His tone approached a whimper as he continued. “The Fountain of Magical Brethren—what happened?”

Yes, because that is clearly our primary concern at the moment. If he hadn’t been afraid that releasing Harry would cause the boy to end up on the floor, Severus would have quite cheerfully put the idiot out of everyone’s misery.

“We can discuss that after I have sent Harry back to Hogwarts,” said Albus.

Oh, brilliant, bring him into this. Couldn’t we have just snuck out?

“Harry? Harry Potter?” Fudge wheeled around. “He’s here?” Albus stepped sideways slightly and Fudge goggled at Harry, apparently missing Severus altogether. Which was quite a feat considering that Severus was supporting a fair portion of the boy’s weight. “Why? What’s all this about?”

“I shall explain everything,” repeated Albus, “when Harry is back at school.” He waved over the golden head of the wizard statue and pointed his wand. “Portus.”

“Now see here, Dumbledore!” said Fudge, as Albus offered the head-turned-Portkey to Severus, who had to maneuver Harry into a leaning position against him in order to take it. “You haven’t got authorization for that Portkey! You can’t do things like that right in front of the Minister for Magic, you—you—Snape!”

Well, I suppose that could be considered an insult.

“I will give you half an hour of my time tonight,” Albus interrupted before Severus could make a verbal response, “in which I think we shall be more than able to cover the important points of what has happened here. After that, I shall need to return to my school. If you need more help from me you are, of course, more than welcome to contact me at Hogwarts.”

Fudge’s complexion reddened even more, and Severus wondered idly if it was actually possible for a person’s eyes to pop out of his head. “I—you—”

“I shall see you in half an hour,” said Dumbledore quietly to Severus and Harry. “It activates on ‘Hogwarts’. Minerva will bring the other children along shortly.”

“Put your hand on it, Harry,” Severus ordered. Fudge was still muttering objections, but as soon as the boy was touching it he activated it. The Minister was Albus’ problem, not his. Although since Albus had deliberately created an illegal Portkey directly in front of him when there were two other viable means of exit—well, one, really, since Severus had no desire to have to drag Harry across the grounds from the apparition boundary, but still—Albus was probably done catering to the Minister’s delusions of adequacy. Finally.

Harry grunted as they landed in the headmaster’s office. “I hate Portkeys.”

“Yes, well, if you wouldn’t do idiotic things like invade the Ministry of Magic at hideously early hours of the morning you might not have to deal with them.” Severus more than half-hauled the boy over to the desk and dumped him in the headmaster’s chair. “Now, truthfully, how are you feeling?”

“Mostly my head hurts…really bad. And it’s hard to balance.”

A problem that could be quite easily caused by a severe enough headache. “Do you feel nauseous?”

“Yeah. I…at the end….” Harry started to shake his head and then groaned slightly and aborted the gesture. “I tried to keep him out of my mind, Professor, honestly I did—and I was doing all right up until then—but he was right there, and I just couldn’t—”

“He’s been practicing Legilimency for longer than you—or I, for that matter—have been alive,” Severus returned, summoning one of his personal headache potions from his stores. He’d used it a time or two before when the Dark Lord’s heavy-handed Legilimency use had left him lying on the floor next to the toilet unable to do much more than moan and vomit for hours on end. While it was too strong for anything approaching regular use, it was effective. “You’ve only learned Occlumency in the past year. No doubt you did what you could.”

There was no response from the figure in the chair, and Severus took the opportunity to perform a quick diagnostic spell. Bumps and bruises, but nothing life-threatening or even requiring more treatment than rest and bruise ointment.

The bottle he’d summoned flew in a moment later, and Severus shook his head and passed it over. “Drink this. All of it. Yes, it is absolutely vile,” he continued as the brat opened his mouth to argue, “but you’re going to drink it anyway. Now you can either elect to do it yourself, or I’ll simply stupefy you and pour it down your throat.”

Harry seemed to debate the issue internally for a moment, and then he screwed up his face and swallowed the contents in three big gulps. And gagged after the last. “That’s awful, Professor!”

“Certainly. But I daresay your head is clearer, now.”

“I…yeah, it is.” He looked surprised. “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome. Now, since you can once again think clearly, what in Merlin’s name were you thinking going to the Ministry tonight?!”

Harry gulped and shrank back in the chair as Severus loomed over him suddenly. “I had to destroy the prophecy so no one else got hurt!”

“So you decided to go haring off with your little army of followers—half of whom ended up injured in case you didn’t noti—”

“They weren’t supposed to come!” Harry objected. “It was just supposed to be me!”

And you think that makes anything better? “Explain.” Quickly.

“After Ron fell in the Chamber of Secrets…well, I didn’t want anyone else getting hurt, but I had to do it. Destroy the prophecy, I mean. Make sure what happened to Mr. Weasley wouldn’t happen to anyone else. So I waited until Hermione went up to the girls’ rooms and Ron and everyone in my room was asleep and then tried to sneak out. But Luna was waiting for me outside the portrait. She said that Tiger told her that the nargles were whispering about their plans to join the Rotfang conspiracy, and….” He frowned for a moment. “Well, I don’t know exactly. But she said she had to come with me.”

Severus knew better than to ask. There were practically little howlers floating about Harry’s head shouting at him not to ask. He could recall references to both nargles and this Rotfang conspiracy in some of Lovegood’s less intelligible homework, but…. “Tiger?”

“The rabbit. The one you were experimenting on? She saw me carrying him back to the tower, and when I said I was trying to figure out what to do with him she said she’d like him. So I gave him to her.”

“She named the rabbit Tiger?” And it speaks to her? Then again, this is Lovegood.

“She’s Luna,” Harry said with a shrug, echoing Severus’ thoughts.

“Of course. Please, continue.” He leaned back against the desktop, shifting as much of his weight as he could off his sore leg without making it obvious.

Harry sighed. “Well, she and I were arguing, and the twins had been in the Common Room talking about—stuff—and…. See, I’d been wearing my invisibility cloak so they didn’t see me when I snuck out, but then they heard Luna and I, and they said they were going to come too whether I liked it or not. Something about honorary brothers and having to face their mother. And I couldn’t take them without Ron, so obviously Hermione had to come….”

Severus didn’t find that at all obvious, but he simply nodded.

“Neville woke up when I went to get Ron and decided that he was coming too, and then I’m not sure if Luna went and got Ginny as well when we sent her up to wake Hermione or if Ginny was still awake and getting Hermione to look over her essays or something, but they all came down together.”

“And so you all decided to sneak off to the Department of Mysteries.”

“We had to, Professor! Or at least I had to, and….”

“You did not ‘have to’,” Severus growled in return. “I’ve believe this has come up a time or two before. You are not an adult. It is not your responsibility to take care of the rest of the Wizarding world.”

“Well, it’s a good thing we did go,” Harry responded. “The Deatheaters were there—they would have taken the prophecy otherwise!”

Severus gritted his teeth. “The Deatheaters were there because they had a tracking spell on the floo you used. Yes, they wanted that prophecy, but I assure you that they would have been quite willing to settle for your dead body! Which reminds me—just why did you go running off after Bellatrix? Do you have any idea what she could have done to you?”

“You didn’t see what she did to him. Dung. I didn’t see at first…after I got out of the brain room I just picked a door…I was running, and I didn’t see the stairs and then I started falling. I landed right beside him, and….” He swallowed hard and his face went a shade paler. “He was still alive, Professor. I mean, I didn’t know him very well, but I did know him a little, and he was lying there moaning and twitching with his whole chest…open…and it was her doing it, and….” He looked away. “She finished killing him right after I got to my feet, but when I saw her getting away after doing that…. I thought Tonks was going to be able to stop her at first, but then Bellatrix got a spell through her blocks. Tonks fell, and I had to do something—”

“And, of course, ‘something’ involved handling—or at least attempting to handle—the entire situation yourself instead of doing the sensible thing and alerting an adult.”

“There wasn’t time, Professor! You were all fighting, and she was getting away!”

“This may have escaped your notice, but she got away,” Severus snapped. “With the assistance of the Dark Lord, and it’s damn near pure luck that they didn’t manage to take you with them! You are not a miracle worker; you are a fifteen year old!”

“But—”

“‘But’ nothing! I have had this conversation with you before, and I find it strikingly hard to believe that Minerva and Albus haven’t attempted it as well. You are not responsible for the entire Wizarding world and wherever you got the ridiculous notion that you were—”

“The prophecy—” Harry began.

“Be silent!” Harry’s mouth shut with an audible click of his teeth, and Severus forced his hands to release their grip on Albus’ desk slightly. Albus was not going to be pleased with the nail marks that had already been bitten out of the smooth wooden surface. “You have managed to disobey not only myself but your head of house, the headmaster, and Merlin knows who else with this little stunt, broken multiple laws—” none of which Severus actually cared about, but this was hardly the time for that—“and very nearly managed to get yourself and your little friends killed. Not to mention that you risked the lives of the rest of the idiots, myself included, who were forced to go haring off in the middle of the night into a situation that—”

Harry’s head jerked upwards, but whatever he planned to say was cut off by the roar of the floo. Severus drew his wand automatically, sheathing it almost immediately at the sight of the new arrivals. One of the Weasley twins was the first out, carrying his sister in his arms. Her complaints about the treatment and insistence that she was perfectly capable of walking were going entirely unheeded. The second Weasley twin came through next, followed by Granger and Lovegood both of whom were still obviously shaking off the effects of their stupification, and then Longbottom whose face was still streaked with blood.

“Where are Minerva and your brother?” Severus demanded when the floo didn’t flare again.

“He was still acting addled, and she decided to take him directly to St. Mungo’s,” the twin not holding his sister replied.

Probably wise. “Fine. All of you, to the infirmary immediately, and you are remain there until myself, your head of house, or the headmaster come to fetch you. Is that understood?” Poppy could deal with them for the rest of the night; she deserved at least that much for the insanity she’d been putting him through with the mindhealers. Besides, at least four of them obviously did need some sort of medical attention.

“Yes, sir,” they all agreed quickly.

“Harry…?” Neville asked as they all trooped towards the stairs.

“Harry will be remaining here. Now go!”

Longbottom nearly fell down the staircase at Severus’ snarl, and Severus turned back to Harry with a glare as the door shut behind the last of them. “Now—”

The floo roared again, and this time Albus stepped out. “Ah, Harry, good. Severus, have the other children…?”

“With the exception of the youngest Weasley boy whom Minerva has seen fit to take to St. Mungo’s, they floo’d back just a moment ago. I sent them all to the infirmary with orders to remain there until you, Minerva, or myself fetches them.”

“Wonderful. If you wouldn’t mind….”

He obviously wanted to speak to the brat alone, and Severus nodded slightly. Not that he particularly wanted to walk away, but it would probably be better if he didn’t continue his tongue-lashing tonight. The mood he was in, he would no doubt end up saying—or doing—something that he shouldn’t. Like shake the brat until he rattles. “I’ll be in my rooms, then, attempting to salvage at least some sleep from this night.”