Obliviate my Destiny {Book 5}

34. The Battle of Hogwarts

The Great Hall was scattered in stars, many students huddled on the house tables, many in robes thrown over pyjamas. Every single eye was fixed on McGonagall, who was preaching to every scared and frightened face below her.

"...evacuation will be overseen by Mr. Filch and Madame Pomfrey. Prefects, when I give the word, you will organize your House and take your charges in orderly fashion to the evacuation point-"

Cole was trying to get Alia, Colin and Camille to leave, but they weren't having any of it, defiantly staring ahead.

"It'll take more than their brother to get them to leave," Gennie murmered into my ear. She looked deathly pale, her eyes flickering to her parents every few moments. "He'd have to handcuff them to a desk."

"No he bloody won't." Alia huffed, and I knew she was thinking about the time when Cole trapped her from following us to the Ministry two years ago.

As my eyes scanned around for Ron and Hermione, Hollie or even Draco, Ernie Macmillian shouted: "What if we want to stay to fight?"

Applause ran up from each end of the hall.

"If you are of age, you may stay." said Professor McGonagall.

"We're seventeen in December, you can't stop us!" Alia hollered, and many underage students followed her words with a cheer.

"What about our things?" called a girl at the Ravenclaw table. "Our trunks, our owls?"

"We have no time to collect possessions." said Professor McGonagall. "The important thing is to get you out of here safely."

"Bloody hell, what about the cats?" Cole said, looking grief-stricken. "Can't we round them up or something, make them attack death eaters?"

"Where's Professor Snape?" shouted a girl from the Slytherin table.

"He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk." replied Professor McGonagall a great cheer lifting up through the crowd.

I began wandering around the hall with Camille at my side, while she asked people if they'd seen Hollie anywhere. Cameron had still not reappeared which was both a relief and a disappointment. People kept staring and whispering when they saw me approach.

"We have already placed protection around the castle," Professor McGonagall was saying, "but it is unlikely to hold for very long unless we reinforce it. I must ask you, therefore, to move quickly and calmly---"

But her final words were drowned as a different voice echoed throughout the Hall. It was high and clear, and strikingly familiar.

"I know that you are preparing to fight." The voice hissed, and people started screaming. "You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I do not want to spill magical blood."

A heavy, pressing silence was over the hall now, a stifling, suffocating one that you wanted to get out of but couldn't.

"Give me Harry and Aurora Potter," said Voldemort's voice in a rasp, "and you shall not be harmed. Give me Harry and Aurora Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry and Aurora Potter and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."

The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to find me and my brother, who wasn't very far away from me. Then a figure rose from ten feet away from us-Pansy Parkinson.

"But she's there!" she shrieked. "And there's her brother-somebody, grab them!"

Before anybody could react, there was a flash of purple and brown, a shriek, and then Pansy was crumpling on the floor, clutching her bloody nose. Stunned, I watched as Camille straightened up, pushing her glasses up.