Finding Heather

Year 7 Chapter 7

Author's Notes: A slight change in how the break into the Ministry takes place, and I hope you enjoy it.

Harry Potter and all related trademarks are the property of JK Rowling, and not of me. I'm just borrowing them.

Chapter Seven

 It was on the first of September that Heather decided that there was no point in planning any longer. For weeks now they had been spying on the entrance to the Ministry, watching wizards and witches come and go, picking up whatever snippets of information they could get. This, combined with their knowledge of the inner working of the Ministry, thanks mostly to Ron who had visited several times with his father, had given them a fairly good picture of what they expected to face.

 When Heather returned to Grimmauld Place that evening after spending the day on watch under the cloak, she was in a foul mood. In her hand was a crumpled copy of the Daily Prophet that a older wizard reeking of cigar smoke had dropped. On its front page, in the same place that her picture usually was these days, was a picture of the hook-nosed Professor Snape, newly announced Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She hung the invisibility cloak on a peg by the door before setting off down the stairs to the kitchen, where Hermione, Ron, and Kreacher were waiting.

"Shoes off, please Mistress Heather." Requested the elf as he bustled over, ladling out soup into bowls. Grinning despite her foul mood, Heather slid her shoes off, banishing them up to her room with her wand. Without further preamble, she slammed the paper down on the table in front of Ron and Hermione, who gasped and began to read. "Merlin's pants!" she cried a few minutes later before tearing upstairs.

 Sharing a bemused expression with Ron, Heather sat down and pulled a diagram of the atrium towards her from where they had been studying it. Both of them were used to Hermione rushing off, usually to the library, and returning hours later to finally tell them what brainwave she had gotten. Thundering steps announced her return, and she was carrying Phineas Nigellus' portrait of all things.

"Snape can use him to look inside this house" she explained as she crammed the large portrait into her beaded bag.

 As they ate, Heather informed them of her determination to attempt their break in the following morning. Nothing would be gained, she argued, by skulking around the entrance for another month. If they were going to go, they needed to do it now. It took some convincing but Hermione finally acquiesced and they set once more to going through the plan until each one could repeat it perfectly.

 That night in her bedroom, Heather's scar began to prickle and burn. Not wanting another lecture from Hermione on letting Voldemort into her mind, she quickly cast muffliato on the door and gave way to the vision. Voldemort was knocking on the door of a cottage. When a woman opened it, he asked for Gregorovitch. The woman cried and tried to close the door on him, shouting that he didn't live here anymore. In a cold fury, Voldemort killed the woman and her family. Heather came back to herself in a cold sweat, her sheets icy to the touch. In an attempt to distract herself from what she had just seen, she repeated the plan to herself for another half hour before falling asleep.

 The next morning, they each made one more check of their plan and gear before setting off. Kreacher promised to have a steak and kidney pie waiting for them, standing there in a fluffy white towel that had replaced his old stained loincloth. Out on the top step, Hermione and Ron dissaparated under the cloak, before she came back for Heather. With a wistful glance at the closed door to the house and the group of cloaked figures staring from across the street, Heather allowed herself to be pulled into the darkness.

 They arrived moments later in the dingy alleyway they had been skulking in for weeks. Behind a dumpster stood Ron, who's wand was ready to stun anyone who wasn't supposed to be there. Hermione threw the cloak over him, all of them crouching low so their feet didn't show and waited. With a gasp, Hermione remembered that the padlocked door opposite them was supposed to be unlocked already and quickly aimed her wand at it.