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This story and it's characters are not mine. I don't want them, I just want to play with them, anyway. I'm not trying to do anything that could be sued over, so please don't sue me.
Harry and Hagrid accompanied Ginny back to the Gryffindor common room, where they spent the next twenty minutes waiting for news. Harry had ducked over to Ron and Hermione, and they had followed them upstairs. The five of them sat and listened to Ginny tell them all how she had been in a lesson with Professor McGonagall when a call had come through from Kingsley Shacklebolt. Kingsley had reported that the Death Eaters were in the Ministry, and that the Order members there were fighting, but it didn't look good. He had then vanished from the fire. McGonagall had wanted Ginny to go for Harry and Ron right away, while Ginny wanted to wait for news. While they were arguing, another call had come in from Tonks. She said that the entire Ministry had been destroyed, and whoever was left standing was trying to sort out the damage and determine the casualties, at which point Ginny had stopped arguing and run to get Hagrid, Harry, and Ron.
The mood in the common room was grim. A large portion of the Order was involved in the Ministry in some way – most of them in the Magical Law Enforcement section, which Voldemort would have wanted to secure right away.
Mrs. Weasley arrived in the room ten minutes into their vigil, along with Fred, George, and Bill. She joined them in a chair by the fire, sitting in tense silence.
Ginny was unwilling to let go of Harry. Her father and brother were both working in the Ministry. She sat ramrod straight, all of her muscles tense, and clinging to Harry's hand for dear life.
Finally, the portrait opened and a haggard looking Mr. Weasley climbed through. Mrs. Weasley ran to him and flung her arms around him, crying, “Arthur!” He embraced her tightly. Ginny slumped against Harry's shoulder, letting out a breath, and all her brothers broke into grins. For a moment, no one noticed the wizard who climbed in behind Mr. Weasley, and then Mrs. Weasley looked up and saw him. “Percy!”
She let go of her husband and instead wrapped her arms around her son, sobbing with relief. Ginny and her brothers looked distinctly less happy to see him, although they refrained from protesting.
“Dad,” Bill asked, “what happened? Should we think about heading out there? Professor McGonagall said there was no need, but...”
“No,” said Mr. Weasley. “The ministry didn't just get destroyed, it got Vanished. Someone smuggled in something that exploded, and we were all told to evacuate, so of course we did.” He sank down in a chair. “When we got out, there were Death Eaters waiting for us. We tried to fight, but there was so much smoke, and they were all Disillusioned. You-Know-Who was there too, and a bunch of Dementors. Once You-Know-Who got close enough, he Vanished the whole thing. I've never seen anything like it.”
“So the entire Ministry's gone?” asked Fred.
“I don't know,” replied Mr. Weasley. “As much as we could find, anyway. The entire city block collapsed – but I think the Muggles are going to have to come up with their own explanation. Most of the Ministry didn't get out. I wouldn't have, except Percy left his job and found me as soon as the explosion hit. He told me to get out right away.”
All eyes turned to Percy, who blushed and stared at the floor.
“The wards didn't activate?” asked Bill.
“No,” Mr. Weasley answered, “and no one knows why. We probably never will. All we know is that the Ministry of Magic is reduced to twenty people, and the most high-ranking is Kingsley Shacklebolt.”
“The Minister didn't leave?” asked Ron. “I thought for sure he'd save himself.”
“The Minister was caught in the explosion,” said Percy, speaking for the first time. “He died before Voldemort had a chance to do anything himself.”
Harry closed his eyes. He hadn't liked Rufus Scrimgeour, but he had respected him as a far better Minister than Cornelius Fudge had been.
“What happens now?” asked George.
“Well, I've been wondering about that,” replied Arthur. “Kingsley didn't want to bring all the survivors to Hogwarts, so he's taking them to a secondary office in Wales for now. He'll sort through it there. We have to get back – we just came to tell you lot what was going on. Hopefully it won't take too long. We should be back here tomorrow or the day after.”
“But in the meantime, who's running things?” asked Fred.
“As far as Shacklebolt's concerned, we are.”
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Eventually, Hogwarts became the last stronghold for everyone who was interested in helping to fight Voldemort – which became the primary duty of the remainder of the Ministy of Magic. Voldemort had picked a good day, by his own point of view. The full Wizengamot had been in session, and several members of the Internation Confederation of Warlocks had been taking a tour of the Department of Mysteries.
The next day, several members of the Order returned to the site of the former Ministy under cover of darkness and completely Disillusioned. Harry, Ron, and Hermione went with them, and they brought Neville along too. Neville stayed near them, working in silence and not looking at Hermione. The group Levitated the chunks of concrete out of the hole, looking for anything useful that might have survived. In the end, all that was recovered was the arch from the Death Chamber in the Department of Mysteries. It was decided to move the arch to Hogwarts, where it was hidden behind a conclealment charm in a clasroom that had not been used for centuries.
Neville began to seek out their company more and more as the weeks went on. While he wouldn't speak directly to Hermione, he was civil to Harry and Ron. Hogwarts was getting busier and busier with people from the Ministry running around. Dementor and Death Eater attacks were increasing, and most of the Wizarding World was deserted.
People stayed in their homes, away from anyplace that might draw attention, and simply waited.
A week after the Ministry was destroyed, Percy apologized to Harry and the Weasley family for his actions over the past two years, in great detail and very formally. Although his family had yet to fully forgive him, they were definitely on better terms.
One day in early April, Harry had eaten a late breakfast after spending the early morning training with the Aurors. It was something he had gotten used to – all seven of the remaining Aurors would get up at dawn and work on spellwork, endurance, and dueling. This practice continued for an hour and a half, and had been opened to all Order members. Harry almost always went, and usually at least three other Order members came. Sometimes one or two of the D.A. would come along and practice with them. Harry was taking what the Aurors were teaching him to the D.A. anyway, and encouraged the other students to come along for the extra practice.
Neville sat down next to him while he was practicing combining minor jinxes. He had gotten the idea from an incident at the end of fifth year, and it seemed a good way to quickly incapacitate an enemy without using up a lot of energy.
“What're you up to?” he asked.
“Just trying to combine a Bat-Bogey Hex with a Freezing Charm,” Harry replied. The secret, he suspected, was combining the wand movements and the incantations, but he hadn't hit the right mix yet.
“Oh,” replied Neville, “isn't that illegal?” Harry looked over at Neville, about to point out that the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement had seen him working on this and hadn't lifted a finger to stop him, when Neville said, “Oh. Right.”
Come to think of it, Neville had seemed a lot more on top of things than was normal lately.
“Neville,” asked Harry, “can I ask you something?” He had decided not to put off concerns about his friends anymore, still feeling guilty for not realizing what was wrong with Hermione sooner.
“Sure,” replied Neville.
“Do you feel, I don't know, different, now?” Harry rushed on, not wanting to bring up any anger. “I just mean, you seem a little different. You're less forgetful, your spellwork in the D.A. is about twenty times as powerful, and it seems like you've been powering through all your schoolwork since – well, since Hermione...” he trailed off uncertainly.
“I know,” said Neville. “It's weird, isn't it? As angry as I am that she did what she did, she was right. I do remember things... things I didn't remember before.”
“Well,” said Harry, “that's good, I guess.”
“I remember what happened when the Lestranges came for my parents,” Neville continued. “There were a whole bunch of them... all in dark robes. The Petrified me, and then they started talking about how...” he gulped “how Voldemort told them not to kill me. Then they started talking about getting... Voldemort's key back to him, and needing my parents to tell them where he was. Then they Obliviated me, and I don't remember the rest of the night. I never remembered that before Hermione.”
Harry sighed. “Every time the Dementors get close to me, I can hear Voldemort killing my parents,” he told Neville. “There was a time I couldn't cast a Patronus because I was so happy just to hear their voices.”
He looked at Neville, and realized he could see his thoughts. He was totally focused on the memory of the night his parents had been tortured – and Harry could see the key in Bellatrix Lestrange's hand. It was dark, but in the reflecting candlelight, he could clearly see a large R engraved on the ornate key.
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When Neville headed for a meeting with Flitwick, Harry ran to the library and pulled out the trial records from the trials sixteen years before. He scanned through until he found the record of the arrest of “Lestrange, Bellatrix.” Included in the items she had in her possession was “One key, marked with the letter 'R'”.
Could it be that simple?
No. Of course it couldn't. There were too many unknowns. But it did solve one problem – if the key had been Ravenclaw's Horcrux, that at least told them where it had been sixteen years before. Voldemort might not be able to track it now – the only records of where the Horcrux would have gone from Bellatrix's arrest were here at Hogwarts and in the completely vanished ministry.
Five hours of reading later, and Harry was able to determine that the items belonging to all Azkaban prisoners were stored in a warehouse near Hogsmeade, far from prying Muggle eyes. If one wanted to open the warehouse, one needed only to submit a request to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and it would be reviewed.
Sometimes, things just got too simple.
Harry ran to the fifth floor, where the Ministry had taken over a corridor full of empty classrooms, and ran to the room where Kingsley Shacklebolt could often be found yelling at six different people at once. Today must have been a slow day – he was only yelling at four. “Mr. Shacklebolt?” Harry asked him, poking his head in. “Can you do me a favor?”
Kingsley looked up distractedly. “Sure, Harry. Just a sec.” He turned back to Auror Dwalish. “And then go and tell those people in Kent to set up someplace unofficial to take their wounded, because if St. Mungo's can't take new patients, we're going to need someplace where they can take theirs. Every other area of Britain has at least one place everyone knows to go. And then tell them that next time, they don't need an Auror to clean up their messes for them – they can insist on someone who's a little less in demand! And then get some sleep!”
He turned to the rest of the people in the room. “Go get some food if whatever you're here for can wait ten minutes. I'm going to take a break for at least seven, and unless You-Know-Who is barging into the castle you'd better not bug me!”
He turned to Harry. “You have one minute.”
“I just need to look through the things Bellatrix Lestrange had with her when she was arrested,” Harry said quickly. “I read that you're the one to talk to.”
“Yeah, that's right,” said Shacklebolt. “I am. Go ahead. You're supposed to have some official paperwork, but I don't have time to bother with that. Tell Percy Weasley I said to take you – he's got the time, and he knows where to go. But just you, because only two people can go in at any time.”
“Okay,” said Harry, “thanks.” He ducked out before Kingsley could get any more agitated.
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In the end, Ron and Hermione came along, swearing not to set foot inside the warehouse under any circumstances. The wards on the warehouse were nearly impenatrable – no one who had any items inside could enter. No one who had any trace of Dark Magic on them could enter. The building was almost foolproof. Percy created a Portkey, and they wound up outside a large gray building in the middle of a wood.
“Here we are,” Percy said as soon as they landed in a heap on the ground, rather like he was announcing a train stop. “Ron and Hermione, please wait outside. We'll be just a moment.” He tapped the door with his wand once, and it opened. He and Harry stepped inside.
The building seemed to go on forever. Thousands of boxes from hundreds of years of wizards lined the interior in neat piles. They seemed to be organized alphabetically. Percy turned to Harry. “You can Apparate inside the warehouse,” he said, “otherwise it would take ages to walk to “L”. Harry apparated halfway down the room and began looking around.
Here was a box marked “Lestrange, Bellatrix Black”. He Levitated it down from the top of the pile on which it sat and tucked it under his arm. He was about to Apparate back to the door, when an idea struck him. “Just a second,” he told Percy. “I'll meet you at the door.”
Harry Apparated to “B” and quckly scanned the piles. It didn't take more than a minute to find the box labeled, “Black, Sirius”. He Levitated the box down and carried it away.
Percy scowled at the second box, but when he saw whose name was written on it, he nodded. “I understand,” he told Harry. “I promise I won't tell – probably, no one will ever notice.” He turned and opened the door.
The Slicing Hex caught him across the neck, spraying blood over the ground. Percy looked startled. He turned back to Harry, blood pouring down his right side. “What's that?” he asked. Then he collapsed to the ground.
Harry stayed frozen for a moment before ducking out of the doorway. He had not gone unnoticed, but he was hidden now. The door, propped open by Percy's body, remained open, and Harry could hear Ron and Hermione's voices shouting spells outside. Harry looked around for a way to escape, but he couldn't find one. He grabbed Percy's leg and dragged him back inside the building.
One look told him it was too late. Percy had been cursed twenty seconds before, but he was still, not even breathing, and his eyes were open, staring at nothing. He was dead.
Harry had no time to grieve. He cast a charm to make Percy's body light, grabbed Percy by the front of his robes, and ran outside, raising a shield as he went. He ducked behind a nearby boulder, and saw that Ron was hidden behind a tree about ten feet away. Hermione was nowhere to be seen, but the curses were coming from behind a low wall running parallel to the side of the building.
One of the attackers' curses hit the rock he was hiding behind, knocking Harry off his feet and throwing his head out into range of the attackers. He lost his grip on the boxes, and the box marked “Lestrange” flew away. Frantic, Harry grabbed his wand and shouted, “Accio!” just as his attacker cried “Avada Kedavra!”
The box flew through the air, intersecting with the curse. It blew the box itself away, scattering the items inside everywhere. Harry ducked back behind the rock, and without thinking, whispered, “Accio key!” The key landed in his palm. “Ron!” he called, “Can you see Hermione?”
Ron nodded, sending a stunner at one of the attackers.
“Back to Hogwarts!” Harry mouthed at Ron, who nodded again and repeated the words to someone nearby. Ron turned and vanished, Harry right behind him.
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A/N: I know, I've done it now. I killed a Weasley. Sorry. But not that sorry, because the odds really are against them.
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