The Dark Gryffindor

Sjauthor: Thanks for coming back. It was certainly very pious of Snape. The question is....Will Ginny and the others ever appreciate it?...Hint, I think I give the answer in the very end. Obviously we know Harry appreciated Snape's help.


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Continuation of….


Chapter Thirty-one: Escaping Hogwarts


*


Neville and Ginny continued to plan until the actual night. They set the date to be the last Saturday in March. That gave well over a week to plan. They, of course did not know Snape was helping them so much, if only they could be sure of the added protections they could have left so much sooner.

It was nearing midnight when Ginny emerged reluctantly outside the Room of Requirement. She was alone against the door, as it resealed into nothingness. She was carrying with her a small rucksack, strapped to her shoulders, and she was wearing a long traveling cloak, underneath green plaid sweater, jeans and trainers.

At that moment, just as she expected, she felt a little protean charmed coin burn. Since then, Ginny, Neville and Valerie had transfigured and charmed themselves new fake coins to go off especially for this operation. Ginny jumped and knew this was her signal to go forward through the castle, that the area she was about to traverse was clear of obstacles.

She reached the third floor corridor section, which included the Transfiguration classrooms. Not too far away from this point, was the closest range she would come on her journey to the Carrows offices. That was why Neville had made it a special point to scout the area out before Ginny moved to this location.

Ginny pressed her back against a wall and waited, heart hammering. She was waiting for Neville. Finally, she saw his confident face burst forward from around a bend, walking quickly (running would alert the portraits and other beings in the castle that something unusual must be going on).

She saw his round face was shining with sweat but he was grinning widely.

“It worked then? We don’t have to do any alternative plan? No locking me in a broom cupboard, whilst the Carrows ransack the castle for me?” Ginny sounded positively cheerful.

“Yeah, it worked! Dean, Seamus and Michael Corner set their dung bombs off at the times I told them. I heard that Snape is raving like a lunatic!” This was true and also the three boys had not been informed Ginny was leaving. Neville had lied and said it was just a needed prank to stir things up in the school.

Neville paused. “And the prefects and Filch and even the Carrows aren’t skulking anywhere near the exit point. They have no idea! Come on!” He took Ginny’s hand and led her off.

“That’s funny…You’d think they would know there’s something going on,” said Ginny with consternation as they bounded two at a time down the stairs. If only they knew it was because of Snape’s reaction, in which he was conveniently present to intervene and play-up what a foul besmirching of the school’s property this was. And his insistence that the Carrows discover the miscreants, Snape giving them a false lead that he suspected a band of Gryffindors, as he claimed he saw students heading for the Divination tower. This was thankfully, a great walking distance off from where Ginny was headed.

“Did you contact, Valerie too Nev?” said Ginny.

“Oh, right. In the excitement of things, I forgot! Sorry.”

Neville hastily went for his uniform robes and took out his secondary fake galleon. He put his wand to it, and it glowed with a ruby coloured hue.

“She should be receiving the signal…”

But Valerie did not answer. Ginny bit her lip, growing quite anxious as well as irritated with her cousin as the minutes dragged on.

“Something must have went wrong…” she mumbled.

But after five minutes, Valerie’s galleon finally returned the signal and Neville and Ginny’s protean burned in their pockets.

“Let’s go!” and Neville and Ginny dashed down the corridors as fast as they dared. By this point, they were feeling intense fear. There was little time left in the window to accomplish the mission. Ignoring any disturbances from Peeves, or portraits witnessing them, they sprinted onward. Luckily, it was past curfew, therefore all students, except prefects wouldn’t be out. And of course, Snape had ordered the nearly three dozen prefects away from it all, but Ginny and Neville had know way of knowing that.

But Valerie knew Snape was aiding them. She was waiting before the statue of the giant boar, having just completed securing her territory. Her fingers twirled a curly strand of hair. Snape had privately advised her when she told him their plans on how she must stall contacting them for a few minutes before the next phase of the operation could get underway.

“What took you so long?” shrilled Ginny.

“Prefects were passing through,” lied Valerie easily. Though that was not true as she really waited longer, in order to stay within Snape’s prescribed timeframe.

She followed Ginny and Neville across the huge marble foyer and through the colossal oak doors.

As soon as they were down the steps of the front entrance, Neville was already checking nervously over his shoulder as they walked.

“I feel someone’s watching us,” quivered Neville and he shivered visibly in the freezing night air.

“Nonsense, Neville!” Ginny quipped. But Valerie felt Ginny was wrong.

They approached a massive rolling hill and proceeded down in the direction of Hagrid’s hut.

“Aim! Stun! Get them!” Somebody had scouted them out and there were voices coming from a source they could not place.

Suddenly there was wand lights, seemingly from above flashing like searchlights spotting them. Instantly the three of them began to run, Ginny yelling, “Run! Or they’ll catch you too!”

They tumbled down the Scottish hills dodging red flashes of light like bullets. It was stunning spells and other incapacitating jinxes. They were gaining ground and the assailants were falling behind.

Valerie coaxed, “Come on Neville! Keep going!” Neville was clutching a stitch at his side, gradually slowing down as his robes whirled around him.

And all at once their unknown foe converged on them out of nowhere. They had caught up to a group of shadowy figures waiting in the distance. Valerie was sure she recognized the uniform. Snatchers, in drab yellow and black robes, double ‘S’ badges gleaming in the starlight.

Ginny and Neville stopped running, lest they would collide straight into them.

“Stupefy! Petrificus totalus! Expelliarmus!” said Neville to the Snatchers in the distance. And at least one of his spells worked on them.

And almost at the same moment, as Ginny was whipping her wand out, she screamed a horrible cry of panic. She was tied up in a net of thick ropes. Neville turned around and valiantly threw his body over Ginny. Valerie who hadn’t been disarmed yet, felt like she was standing guard, determined not to be disarmed.

But the Snatchers were pounding the earth in their boots and before any time past at all, five or six of them were towering above Ginny, carelessly kicking Neville aside.

“Got her! It’s the Weasley girl. The one they want!”

And another Snatcher jeered, issuing a harsh laugh from his throat. Ginny was doing her best to writhe herself free from the bonds. She screamed again as she felt cruel hands grabbing at her limbs. And a voice, “let’s take her there now.”

But miraculously, spells suddenly rained down on the Snatchers. Several of them fell one by one like dominoes. The other Snatchers in the distance demanded, “Who’s knocking us down?”

And as if in answer, there was a loud exploding sound. The men instinctively turned and ran from where they were standing, getting further away from their target.

Ginny, by an unseen force was suddenly free of her bonds and she jumped up, fighting to get away immediately. Wand out, she was running as fast as she could to the meeting point.

“Who on earth did that?!” exclaimed Valerie.

“No time to find out. Hurry,” muttered Neville on Valerie’s heels as they ran.

The remaining Snatchers were still moving, following them, but too scared of the unexplainable phenomena to intervene.

“That’s Hagrid I think!” said Ginny. They were approaching the first trees into the Forbidden Forest. High above, just over the treetops was Hagrid, whose wand was lit, blinking on and off.

Ginny screamed, “Peregulum!” Red sparks shot up in the air, as her signal to Hagrid.

A thestral hit the ground softly, pawing it. Valerie and Neville saw Ginny jump onto it, sitting behind Hagrid on the dark creature. At the same moment the Snatchers cursed and spat in rage when they saw the smaller shape behind the huge shape sitting on the creature slide on.

Slowly the creature lifted itself, raising its magnificent wings glinting eerily in the darkness. The Snatchers ran scrambling towards Neville and Valerie’s spot on the edge of the forest.

“Hide!” whispered Neville desperately. Valerie followed Neville, the two of them darting behind a pile of scraggly brush, where they hunched on the earthen floor. They heard feet pounding the vicinity of the threshold into the forest.

“Fuck! Damn it! We’ve lost her!” It was a chorus of different anguished voices shrilling into the night. They were looking up, not down below where Neville and Valerie huddled together in the bushes.

A huge shape of silvery light followed the figures on the flying creature, Hagrid’s patronus to get past a slew of dementors. The Snatchers watched angrily as the dazzling white light of the patronus shielded Ginny and Hagrid from any chance of being hit by a spell as well. The thestral picked up momentum and they were gone. Ginny had finally managed to escape Hogwarts.

Valerie and Neville were still watching wide-eyed. The Snatchers were milling about the area discussing their failure. They were so close that they could see their faces hovering a few feet above them and smell their putrid body odor. It was apparent they had not washed for several days.

“Let’s go inside. Report it to 'em,” said one of the men.

“We can’t do that you bloody fools! Some of them got away. Let’s find them!”

"They can't be far," ominously assented one of them.

Some of the Snatchers appeared to agree that looking for the abetors to the girl's escape was a worthy objective. Others did not. A few of them ran into the forest, going right past the spot where they were shrouded behind the foliage.

“Come back you lot!” said a harsh voice. He might have been the leader. Neville gasped as the man came to stand directly over them. Valerie peered up in terror, looking into the man’s dark eyes. They looked wildly irate and commanding and she thought briefly that she'd seen them before. Indeed she had seen him, at Spinner's End when she saw Snatchers rounding up Muggle-borns to go to the ministry's death camp.

The man didn’t look down. “I said get over here! We’re going in the castle to speak with the Death Eaters. Move!”

Scabior gestured violently. The men immediately obeyed him as one, and Scabior, the Chief Snatcher sneered and stalked away. Neville finally exhaled with relief. But neither of them dared get up until they were long since gone.

The Snatchers as a unit marched back up to the summitt of the hills towards the entrance, passing the bodies of their unconscious comrades. It was startling how none of them paid them any mind, some actually polluting cigarette butts directly where they lay.

Nobody knew it, but high above the scene, hidden in the dark sky was Severus Snape, flying in the air, circling the grounds. He had controlled most of the dementors to stay at bay. And he had freed Ginny from the Snatcher's snares.


*


Meanwhile, at the same time Valerie and Neville trooped back into the castle, Ginny met her brothers Fred and George at a hole, in front of a mountain cave outside Hogsmeade.

“Goodbye Hagrid!” said Ginny. And Ginny wrenched from her magically magnified rucksack, her other brother, Ron’s Comet Two-Sixty. She launched herself on the broomstick, and shot away towards her brothers.

Hagrid went back to lie safely in his hiding place for the night.

Ginny called out; “It’s Auntie Muriel’s, isn’t it?”

Fred and George answered in the affirmative and wisked her off to the family’s hiding place.


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