HP 6 - A different Half-Blood...

The Pitch

It did not take Harry more than a half a second to yell, "RUN!"

They turned and ran toward the castle. Harry glanced behind him and saw the Death Eaters mounting their brooms and shooting toward them. Harry knew the Death Eaters were after him. He had to get them away from the others. He quickly looked around his surroundings. They were completely in the open. The castle was in front of them and the entrance to the pitch was behind him.

He had nothing for it. He turned back around and ran to the pitch. He heard his friends calling for him, but his heart was pounding so loud in his ears, it drowned out everything else. He managed to glance out the corner of his eye to see five of the Death Eaters beeline toward him. He hoped the others could handle the other two, and as he reached the pitch, he went to the door of the stairwell up to stands. It was his only chance to get out of the open and reduce their advantage over him.

He was at the doorway when he heard a Death Eater send a curse at him, which exploded on the side of the doorway, leaving a large hole. He ran through it as the Death Eaters landed and sent another volley at him.

He dodged the curses and started up the wooden stairs, but then turned around quickly.

"Petrificus Totalus!" he yelled.

The first Death Eater through the door froze up and knelled over. He did not stay to see anything else, but heard the others climb over him and perform the counter-curse as he started up the second flight of stairs. The Death Eaters thundering footsteps and yells were closing in on him. He looked down through the cracks and saw only four of the Death Eaters below him. He did not have time to think where the fifth one was, because the ones below him stopped him dead in his tracks.

"REDUCTO!!!" they yelled and the stairs dematerialized right beneath him.

He jumped and grabbed the edge of the stairs ahead of him. He tried to pull himself up to the next landing, but the boards broke and he fell straight down. The Death Eaters were right under him and he fell right on them. He knocked them over, but he fell hard on his injured knee and felt his arm getting sliced open as it scraped the side of the stairs. He almost fell down the next flight stairs, too, after two of the Death Eaters, who had already fallen down them, but stopped himself. The other two Death Eaters were above him. He did not have a second to lose and he raised his wand.

"IMPEDIMENTA!!!" he yelled.

"Protego!" yelled a female Death Eater and the spell was reflected back at Harry.

He rolled out of the way his own spell and it hit one of the recovering Death Eaters behind him, who fell down the rest of the stairs frozen. He would not survive if he did not get out of the middle of them. He scrambled to his feet and aimed beneath the female and other Death Eater, as they were both about to curse him.

"Avada Ked-"

"REDUCTO!!!" Harry yelled and they both fell through the vanishing stairs.

He was turning to face the Death Eater behind him, who had not been struck with the Impediment Curse, when he was hit.

"Crucio!" the Death Eater roared.

Harry could not tell if he was screaming or if the pain was so much that he could not yell. Invisible white-hot knives pierced his skin and it felt as though every one of his bones was being broken. When the Death Eater finally lifted it, Harry still shook violently. He was dimly aware that he was now on his back and he had to defend himself. He lifted up his wand, which he had held on to out of pure instinct.

"SILENCIO!!!" the Death Eater roared.

Harry tried to put up the Shield Charm, but it was too late. He now had no voice, and the Death Eater let out a roar of laughter and pulled off his mask. It was Macnair. He eyes were wild and barred his teeth as though he was about to feast on a fresh kill. He uttered a low chuckle and smiled vindictively down on his prey.

"How I dreamed it would be me!" he laughed with extreme satisfaction.

Harry had to do something.

"Ava-" Macnair started, but Harry managed to wedge his numb leg out and kick Macnair's wand out of his hand and down the stairs. Macnair swore angrily and scrambled to get retrieve his wand.

He had to use Animomency. He pointed his wand at his throat and thought as clear as he could Dicaro. He suddenly felt as though a hand had released his throat, and he was able to let out a painful moan. He pulled up his wand in time to hit Macnair before he cursed him.

"Impedimenta!" he managed to vocalize and Macnair froze looking furiously at him.

The curse would wear off soon, but noises below him caught his attention, as his sight and hearing became more focused.

"Harry!" he heard Ron yell.

They followed me, he thought.

He looked down and saw Hermione and Ginny's long flaming hair. They were going toe to toe with three of Death Eaters. He heard the female Death Eater yell multiple curses, but a creak above him alerted him to where the fifth Death Eater had gone. He had obviously gone to the top of the stairwell to head him off. His mask was already off, but Harry did not recognize him. His eyes flashed with fury and his voice had a thick accent.

"Arry pott'r!" he yelled and sent a Stunning Spell at Harry.

"Protego!" Harry yelled and the spell was deflected away.

Then Harry turned to go down the stairs as the new Death Eater came down to the missing section in the stairs, but stopped. Macnair was in front of Harry and was starting to move. Harry turned to face the other Death Eater and....

"Avada Kedavra!" the Death Eater yelled.

Harry jumped to the side of the stairwell as a green surge of rushing wind back right past him and straight into Macnair, who was starting toward him. The spell blasted him against the wall and fell down to the bottom on the landing with his eyes open. The other Death Eater was shocked, but recovered in time to use the Shield Charm against Harry's Disarming Spell.

"They're coming!" shouted the female Death Eater at the bottom of the stairs. "Dumbledore! We have to leave!" she shrieked and sent another Stunning Spell, which hit Ron.

She vanished from the doorway of the stairwell, and the Death Eater that Harry was facing made a run for it, but Harry was not going to let him go.

"Reducto!" he yelled, reducing the stairs the Death Eater was climbing to cinders.

He fell through and tumbled down the stairs right into Harry. They fell down a flight of stairs and almost fell right onto Macnair's body, but Harry stopped and leapt to his feet faster than the Death Eater did.

"Stupefy!" Harry yelled.

"Protego! I kan block vhatever ya throw at me!" he laughed.

The Death Eater smiled wide and got up to send the unblockable Killing Curse at him, but a yellow curse hit him from behind. He knelled forward and grabbed his face as little flapping wings starting prodding out of his face.

It was Ginny. They raised their wands together and Stunned him.

"A-Are you alright?" Harry managed to say, stepping over the two Death Eater's motionless bodies.

"Yes-yes... are you? We had to come back. We couldn't let you face them alone.... Harry you're shaking..." she said, touching his shoulder.

"The C-Cruciatus Curse does that... what about Ron and Hermione?" he asked, very concerned.

He did not wait for a reply and bound down the stairs as fast as he could. They found a Death Eater stiff as a board at the bottom of the stairs and Hermione hovering over Ron.

"Ennervate," she said, and Ron's eyes snapped open and he sat up looking around in panic.

"It's alright Ron. They're gone," she said, in a trembling voice, and turned to see Harry and Ginny. "Harry! Are you alright? We heard you...."

Harry knew she meant to say screaming, but he only nodded. He was gripping his wand very tightly, but raised it quickly as though expecting another attack, when Professor McGonagall, followed closely by Professor Sprout, burst abruptly through the doorway.

"Potter! Ms. Granger... Weasley... are you all alright?" she asked, clearly concerned and inspecting all of them thoroughly.

Hermione, Ginny, and Ron said yes, but Harry again just nodded. She knelt down to Ron, who was still sitting on the ground, but he profusely denied anything was wrong with him and slowly got to his feet with Hermione's help. Professor Sprout just surveyed the scene looking frightened.

McGonagall, after evaluating Ron, turned to Harry, who tried not to shake.

"There's a Stunned Death Eater up there and one is dead," he said hoarsely, but quickly realized that they might assume he killed him. Therefore, he added hastily, "He was killed by another Death Eater in the crossfire."

McGonagall's very white face glanced upward, but turned around to Professor Sprout and then back to them.

"Alright... all of you quickly go back to the castle with Professor Sprout and go directly to the hospital wing," she said.

None of them raised an objection. Harry felt their stares as he slowly crossed the threshold of the doorway and was blasted by sunlight. There were only two broomsticks on the ground, and he looked over to the wood line and saw Dumbledore and Hagrid enter the forest where he had first seen the Death Eaters. As they continued walking to the castle, Harry became irritated by their stares and over concern for his well-being.

"I'm alright... what happened to you guys when I left?" he asked dryly, in an attempt to break the awkward silence. He barely listened to them, but got the basic understanding of what happened.

After he turned around, Ginny called for him to come back and they all stopped to see where he went. Two of the Death Eaters came at them to stop them. They sent Sloper and Williams to get help, while the rest of them dealt with the Death Eaters. Katie was Stunned, but they used the Impedimenta Curse and Stunned the other the Death Eater. They left Katie and Seamus there, and came after him. They heard the crash and attacked the Death Eaters that had fallen through the steps.

Ron managed to slip in some daring heroics about fighting off the Death Eaters, and Hermione and Ginny held their own. They managed to, at all odds (in Ron's words), hold off three of the Death Eaters and hit one with a Full-Body Bind, but then the two Death Eaters that were with Katie and Seamus had sent up sparks to warn the others and they fled.

By the time Professor Sprout dropped them off at the hospital wing, Ron was retelling his battle with the unknown female Death Eater and conveniently leaving out that she Stunned him. Hermione just shook her head and Ginny smiled, but all three of them continued to shoot glances at Harry from the corners of their eyes.

The rest of the team was all right and already in the hospital wing. Sloper and Williams said they ran and found Professor Sprout first, who sent some sort of loud alarm through the castle, and Professor McGonagall appeared there in a flash. However, Madam Pomfrey cut short their conversation when she swept over them and made them lie down in the beds. She checked over all of them thoroughly, especially Harry, who was not very forthcoming with his injuries.

She mended his arm, and looked inquisitively at him, but did not say anything else. She muttered "Death Eaters" nervously and went back to Katie, who was wide-awake and sitting up in her bed. They were not there long before Dumbledore and McGonagall came to check on them. Harry did not have to guess from the look on their faces that they got away, but he really wanted to know how they got in. He scrambled from his bed, against Madam Pomfrey's anguished admonishments, to hear what happened.

"Your attackers have fled," Dumbledore said pointlessly.

"How did-"

"Why?"

"Where did they-"

"Please calm down..." Dumbledore said over their questions. "We do not know how or where the Death Eaters came into the grounds. They left your brooms at the edge of the forest so we couldn't track them in the sky."

"Did you catch any of the Death Eaters?" Seamus asked apprehensively.

"We have captured two of them and one was killed," Dumbledore said, quietly.

"Killed? Harry... you killed..." Seamus spluttered, looking at Harry.

"No! Macnair was killed by one of his own Death Eaters! I moved out of the way of the curse," he said, defensively.

"Macnair?" Hermione said looking confused. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it was him, why?" Harry said, raising his eyebrow.

"Isn't he in Azkaban? He was captured at the Department of Mysteries!" she stammered out.

"What? How did he get out?" Ron asked, horrified.

"I do not know, but it's reasonable to say his escape was not too long ago and Azkaban might be missing more prisoners. I must contact the Ministry and find out how this happened," Dumbledore said, turning toward the door.

He stopped for a second and glanced over his students. His face was a mixture of anger and worry. He turned and was about to leave when Ron jumped up out of his bed.

"Sir... what about the Death Eaters? What if they come back?" Ron said, his face was white. Hermione walked up next to him and held his hand. Dumbledore stopped and looked thoroughly at Ron.

"It is possible that they might return. Hagrid has volunteered to search the woods, but I doubt we will find anything. The Death Eaters did not cross the boundaries of the grounds that I am sure of. Restrictions will be put in place to limit the amount of time students spend outside," he declared.

"What about Quidditch? The cup isn't cancelled, is it?" he asked horrified.

"No, Weasley," said Professor McGonagall. "We have not cancelled the match. The Death Eaters would not attack with that many people, and after today's incident, the school would enjoy the entertainment. Madam Hooch and Professor Flitwick have volunteered to oversee your practices."

Ron stared at the ground, apparently deep in thought. Hermione was staring blankly at Dumbledore and McGonagall and Ginny was looking at Harry. Harry, however, was looking at Ron. He caught his eye when Ron looked up and had a feeling that they were thinking the same thing, but he was not about to bring it up in front of the entire team. McGonagall and Dumbledore left, and soon, after a lot of fuss, Madam Pomfrey let them all leave, too.

"Harry, are you sure you don't want to stay in the hospital wing?" Hermione said, very concerned, as they headed down to a late brunch.

"Yes, I spend enough time there," Harry said, quietly.

"But you're still shaking from the..." she broke off.

Harry turned to face her and said bluntly, "I'm fine."

She was about to say something else, but after a disapproving look from Ron, she reluctantly backed off.

As soon as they entered the Great Hall, almost all the students looked over at them with a mixture of fear and anxiety. Obviously, word had gotten out that the Gryffindor team was attacked. There had been an announcement, but Harry doubted that anyone believed that they were all ok until they saw it for themselves. They shook off the rest of the team, and Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny sat down on a lonely part of the table.

"How did they get onto the grounds?" Ginny asked. "Dumbledore said that no one crossed the boundaries."

"I don't know, and if Dumbledore doesn't know... it's really kind of scary. They can get in whenever they want," Hermione said, but then she looked at Ron. "Ron are you ok?"

"How..." Ron began.

"We don't know," she said irritably. "That's what we are trying to figure out."

"No... how did they know we'd be out there?" Ron asked. This announcement took Hermione and Ginny aback, but Harry had been thinking along those lines, too.

"No one was supposed to know about it, and I just announced last night. We were talking about the practice in the common room..." Ron said.

"No one but Gryffindors were in there!" Hermione said.

"Wait... you can't think that..." Ginny started.

"Who else could it be?" Hermione started.

"But they're Gryffindors! We know them. They're the people and friends we've been living with," Ginny said, almost shocked.

"They're the only people, who would have known," Hermione said.

"But how would anyone tell You-Know-Who?" Ron said.

"They can't use owls or the fires," Ginny added.

"They could be eavesdropping like Rita did! Or been waiting for us the whole time," Ron said.

"I don't think so," Harry finally said. "There are other ways to communicate besides fires and owls. This is the second time that Death Eaters have attacked us, when what we were doing was a secret. There's a Death Eater here, we just don't know who it is."