| missgranger in nocturne_alley @ 2004-06-24 15:08:00 |
| Current mood: |  drained |
An update.
For the benefit of the parents reading our journals and wondering - worrying - about what's happened:
Voldemort and the Death Eaters again attacked Hogwarts last night, just as dinner was ending.
I must be as brief as I can make myself be. I have so much to say, but I'm tired, very tired and want to go lay down with Ernie while I'm on break.
A few students had already finished with their dinner and left the Hall, but the majority of the school was still there, as well as the professors. Only the teaching staff was armed, since on Monday we students all turned in our wands to be examined for cheating charms and other dishonest enhancements. Every year during exams there's a lot of rumours about what surefire cheating method to try this year and who's done what to try and get an O on what exam, and I suppose it was irresponsible of me now, but I wasn't concerned about turning mine into the teachers at all! They're teachers! And I know full well that one cannot always trust authority figures, but I have always and will always trust Dumbledore. Dumbledore is our headmaster and I typically view his word as gold, so it frankly did not even strike me as odd for him to request us to allow our wands to be examined, weighed, and polished before practical exams. Some people were vaguely annoyed, but like me, most people just accepted it and moved forth to take their exams. Tuesday was free (I spent it outside), and exams yesterday went smoothly. When we heard we'd be getting our wands back at dinner, we were all looking forward to it, but also didn't think much of it. We all headed to dinner as usual and chattered as usual and sat in our usual places. Everyone was comparing exam answers.
As you know, the ceiling of the Great Hall had been bewitched to reflect the weather outside; I almost always look up at it in curiosity when I enter the Hall, to see what it's like out. Then I sit under it and eat, forgetting about the weather. I've always thought that ceiling was marvellous, but no one could have seen the Death Eaters coming through it, though some are claiming they did - the ceiling's only bewitched to reflect the conditions outside and not whatever is actually in the sky, so anyone claiming this is probably making it up. There was a loud crash - a shattering noise - and glass fell everywhere, and then there was another, and another. I couldn't see the thestrals at first (though I can now) so all I saw were what I knew were Death Eaters, clad in long black robes and masks, seated-mid air. I cannot describe the paralysing fear that overtook the entire Hall at that very moment. People were screaming. Some were scrambling away and trying to get out the doors and under the tables, and still others were sitting there as if dumbstruck by the sight.
Luckily our fine teachers sprang into action, drew their wands, and began efforts to take them down, or drive them away, while we students could do nothing but try and run or hide. Odd, the instincts that overtake you and control you when you are scared out of your mind. All I could see for what felt like hours were the first years who like to sit close to the seventh years, and I got up as quickly as I could with shaking legs and told them all to get of their seats; with Seamus' help, I got them up away as quickly as possible. One had cuts and shards of glass all over his hands from a full pane of glass that had shattered on the floor and was holding his hands out, bleeding and shocked. In the next moment, a gold plate, still dripping with pudding, smashed into his head and knocked him unconscious, sending a girl next to him into fits of tears. Someone shoved me over a Hufflepuff bench as they thrust their way past, yelling at the top of their lungs, and here, I looked up again at the Death Eaters who were all hovering in the air blocking the curses in flashes of light and noise, and there were more of them than before, a dark swarm of black robes that looked like a storm cloud giving off bolts of lightning.
Glass was everywhere, and everyone on the floor was getting cut, so the floor was smeared with drops of blood and tiny crystals of glass, which I crawled over to reach the unconscious first year boy. With some effort, aided by fear, I hauled him up to give to two of his friends. Seamus was gently but quickly urging all of the first years to the back of the room and I left them to his care so I could look for Harry and Ron. Everyone around me was shoving and yelling, and if only I'd had my wand, I would have hexed them to get them to stop; the doors of the Great Hall, by this time, had been sealed with a spell, presumably by the Death Eaters, so we were all trapped inside in a sea of pushing and screaming. Students were crowded up against it in a violent mass, covering their heads and crying. You could hear the cries of prefects and professors over the screaming but it was impossible to try and regain order - everyone was just too terrified to listen, and it felt too dangerous to try and do anything but run for your life, as the Death Eaters had time to fire curses at the tables as well as the professors.
It was only then, as I thought about trying to regain some sort of order, that I realised Dumbledore was not in the Hall. Dumbledore misses dinner on some ocassions, so it was not anything unusual for his chair at the head of the Hall to be empty throughout dinner. I thought, fiercely, that Dumbledore was possibly on the outside of the doors, possibly trying to break the seal the Death Eaters put on it or at least on his way to them, and I almost began to try to get the students pressed against it to move away from it so they would not be hurt if he had to blast them open, but at that moment the Death Eaters descended to the floor and the tables. This caused more terrified screaming. Students were running this way and that, trying to find their friends, trampling some that were on the floor unconscious, and I could see the professors (especially Professor Flitwick, Professor Black, and Professor Lupin) firing off loud curses, while still others were attempting to get control of students (Professor Snape had somehow stretched himself around a whole group of Slytherins). I looked around wildly with my hair in my eyes, and I couldn't find Ernie, Ginny and Evan, or Ron, but I saw Lavender huddling a group of third years under her arms and I saw Lisa Turpin giving instructions to some older Ravenclaws before sending them to up-end a table to use as a shield. She had a crying girl clinging to her and she looked like she was in her element of leadership - she was clearly as scared as the rest of us were, but she was taking action, and I shall always remember the look in her eyes as she looked for the next person to instruct.
After a few moments of looking around under the tables I found Neville, and he along with some others were fervently hissing possible plans of action, each as dangerous as the next. I told them to hold on while I got Lisa, thinking she could instruct us also, and when I turned back toward the Ravenclaw table-made-fortress, I saw a flash of green light, and Lisa fell against the crying girl before crumpling face-first to the floor. I don't want to say this again because I've heard it, said it, thought it a million times by now but Lisa is dead. She was our Head Girl.
After that all I could do for a minute of blind terror was cling to Neville. I couldn't even cry, I was so terrified and stunned. It didn't seem like it would ever stop, the screaming and the sound of explosions from let-off curses. I couldn't know this under the Gryffindor table but the Death Eaters had suspended two students into the air and performed the Cruciatus Curse on them and that's where the loudest of the screams were coming from at that point, at least until Voldemort showed up.
Voldemort is dead now so please don't lecture me for saying his name.
I'm not sure how I knew it was him, because I have never seen him, but it couldn't have been anyone else, and wasn't. There was a small ceasefire as he came, lowering himself on a black horse with wings onto the staff table and surveying the damage done. In a flash I thought of Harry, about trying to find him, and Ron, but there wasn't time to seek them out, and we had to do something.
After that Neville, Dean, three fifth year boys, and I all carefully turned over our table too, and just in time, as well, as we could very clearly hear the Killing Curse being shouted and felt the table shake with blasts. It was a tense moment as we wondered what we could do. It was too dangerous to grab one of the maces from the suits of armour. Without the table for a shield, whoever went for it surely would have gotten hit with an Unforgivable. It was difficult to think of things we could do without the use of magic, and besides the maces we didn't have any real weapons, only shields. It was Neville that suggested we hit them with the only thing we had. So together we six pushed our table shield quite hard from behind into the throng of Death Eaters, while others of us packed underneath the next table. It was terribly brave of Neville to suggest such a thing when at any moment, one of the curses could have actually hit him and any one of us. The tables are so heavy and thick that the force of it knocked almost the whole group of them over, like cloak-clad bowling pins. Before they could recover from the sudden attack, it was duplicated, and well, by Hufflepuff, who drove them down again before they were quite up and ended up with another of their tables on fire from a retaliating curse. Neville, Dean, the boys, and I had just enough time to scramble behind another table before an onslaught of curses were rocketed at us. We were intending to push it, too, but at least ten Gryffindors hiding behind it and we were running out of hiding places.
It was at this time that I saw more of the winged black horses, as if they had come out of nowhere, and got this vague idea that I was the only one who could see them. There was one standing next to the Slytherin table, licking at a patch of blood. After a moment I noticed another roaming by an overturned Hufflepuff table, and when I looked into the air, there were more hovering just inside the broken ceiling, and even more just outside that. There must have been one for every Death Eater. The sight of them was almost as frightening as the Death Eaters had been when they crashed through.
Voldemort was yelling, and we couldn't see him or really understand what he was saying from behind the table but we could feel him. I was praying he wouldn't come to our table but he didn't seem to be interested in anyone but Harry. I didn't know where Harry was but I think he was nearby me.
We looked around for what we could do next, if anything, but now this table, too, was being hit with Killing Curses, so violently that it was clattering on the ground and we were trying desperately to hold it where it was.
It gets fuzzy here, for me, because only a few moments later, full of desperate thought I can hardly remember, there came a blast of light and I remember thinking I heard Harry's voice, and sear of pain through my head, and after that, I woke up on the floor with glass embedded in my face. Seamus was there, and he helped me sit up, and pulled the glass out for me.
The Great Hall is in shambles.
Since then, we have been transferring students out of Hall, many alive (most injured or hexed) and some dead, and moving them to Hufflepuff (which is closest) and the library (which is the largest). We don't have any official lists of the injured and dead yet, and without Dumbledore here we are all frightened still. I still don't know where Ron, Ginny, and Evan are, exactly, or what happened to Harry. No one seems to want to be separated from anyone else in case the Death Eaters return, as even without their leader and, so I hear, a few of their members, they are still a real and frightening threat. Many of our professors have been taken out in one form or another and I am so exhausted and emotional that all I want to do is lay down with Ernie, and think about anything but this. I can hardly be relieved that Voldemort is dead when his death has come at such a cost, not just last night but everyone whose lives Voldemort has taken and used, including those of the Death Eaters. But I have one more thing to say.
Since the attack, rumours have begun to circulate, quick and varied. Some people are saying that the attack was just perfect timing. Some are saying it was calculated to coincide with the fact that the entire student body had been stripped of their wands - that they were informed of it somehow, in other words. Some people are even saying that our own beloved headmaster is behind such a perfectly calculated attack. Professor Dumbledore is still missing, that is true, but I will not believe it, even for one moment. I refuse to believe that Professor Dumbledore would do anything to harm his school and its students. Innocent until proven guilty. There's no proof against Dumbledore, except for him asking us to turn in our wands, which if you ask me isn't good enough proof at all!
I need to go now because people are queueing up for computers. A lot of the school owls have fled, so a lot of us, especially Muggle-borns, are relying on computers for communication until the owls that have already been sent out with letters return and the floo, which is clogged up with parents, Aurors and Ministry officials, clears up a bit.
No one's said anything about the rest of N.E.W.T.s, but no one's asked, either.
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