A Skirt's Not So Bad [Harry Potter]

[Tekomandor]

Year Six, Chapter Eight

The Order raiding party reappeared in front of a small cottage by the sea. It was a lonely building, standing alone on magnificent cliffs with no other sign of human life visible for miles. The walls were embedded with shells and whitewashed, and as the high summer sun shone up above, they glittered with reflected sunlight.

Ginny screamed in pain as soon as she hit the ground, and blood began to soak through the ruins of her jeans. A shard of white bone poked up through the mess of blood-soaked denim. People rushed out of the cottage at the sound of the raiding party apparating in - Molly Weasley and an old man - Eliphias Dodge, one of the Order's few true healers.

"Ginny!" screamed Molly as she rushed to her daughter's side. She drew her wand with incredible speed as she moved.

"Mum..." Ginny said weakly. Holly was still holding her hand.

"For Merlin's sake, Molly, you're no healer - out of the way! And you too Potter! Someone with brains help me lift her!" Dodge said. Molly turned around, and for a moment, Holly thought she was going to curse him, but then she seemed to deflate. Tonks muttered a quick spell that gently lifted Ginny into the air.

"Come on Mum, let him work. Ginny'll be fine, yeah?" Bill said as he put an arm around his mother.

Holly wanted to follow Ginny into the cottage, but she knew she'd be of no more help there than Molly Weasley. The only thing like truly specialised healing Holly knew was the wound relocating curse, which would be worse than useless with a wound that large.

Instead, she simply sat on the pale green grass and numbly stared out to sea. She still had her wand in her hand. It was too warm to really comfortably hold - she had pushed it far beyond what it'd been intended to handle with the Unbinding Curse she'd used to destroy the Morgen and their dark wizard allies.

There was a gentle breeze that felt so good that Holly couldn't help but feel guilty. It blew her sweat-soaked hair across her face as she shrugged off her coat. She'd need to clean the blood off of it, she idly noted.

"You... you alright, mate?" Ron asked her. He'd put the Sword of Gryffindor back into its scabbard, thankfully.

"Yeah. I - I'll be fine. Promise," Holly said. Everyone else eventually walked into the cottage, but Holly couldn't follow them. If she got up, she'd rush to Ginny's side - despite how unhelpful that would be. She knew Dodge would've had to stun Ginny to work on her leg, anyway, so Holly couldn't even offer her moral support.

Holly reached into the enchanted pocket of her coat and withdrew a small silver flask. She felt her hands shake as she tried to open the lid. The flask fell out of her hands and onto the grass. Holly cursed and picked it up in one shaking hand as she vanished the spilt firewhiskey with her wand.

She drank what remained in the flask eagerly, the burn in her throat a welcome sort of pain. She couldn't drink enough to stop her hand shaking, not now, but it punched through the numbness that was starting to creep through her.

Slowly, carefully, Holly put the lid back on and got up. The sea was magnificent, and the sky was entirely devoid of clouds - a brilliant blue expanse that stretched out to the horizon.

The inside of the cottage was much larger than its exterior, though it was only simply furnished with second-hand furniture. There seemed to be none of the detritus of living that built up in any home over the years. Everyone was sitting in the spacious living room, clutching mugs of tea. Molly Weasley was looking much calmer.

"Holly, dear. Tea?" she asked. Holly nodded. She didn't really trust herself to speak. Elphias Dodge was sitting in a chair, his tea untouched.

"Will... will she be okay?" Holly asked him.

"Ginevra will be fine. She'll need to be kept sedated for a few hours to let the skelegrow do its work, and I've had to use up more of my supplies than I'd like to control the bleeding, but she'll be fine," Dodge said, as though he was getting tired of repeating himself.

"That's good," Holly said and winced at how she sounded. She sat down in a free chair and tried not to acknowledge how everyone else was looking at her.

"Madomisle Potter... how did you go from the girl I faced in the tournament to being able to do what Bill described to me?" Fleur asked her. Hermione and Ron looked at Holly, and their ashen expression were enough to set the whole room on edge once more.

"When - when Voldemort failed to kill me the first time, he left behind some of his power and all of his knowledge. It's not always there, but I just have to... to ask for it, and it'll answer," She said. She couldn't look at Bill and Fleur, who she was sure would know what she was talking about.

"Merlin... I had no idea that something like that was even possible..." Dodge said.

"Don - don't sell yourself short, mate. Dumbledore taught you plenty of stuff too," Ron said. It sounded as though he'd had to fight to get the words out. She smiled at him softly.

"You and Dumbledore discussed -" Bill began, and Holly nodded. That was a conversation, she knew, they didn't need to have in front of Mrs Weasley.

"Trust me, and if not, trust him."

"What on earth was that about, Bill?" Mrs Weasley asked.

"Nothing, Mum. Just cursebreaker stuff."

In the few hours it took for Ginny's leg to heal, most of the other members of the raiding party departed. Just before Ginny was ready to go, Mad-Eye returned, holding a small stack of books. Holly met him outside of the seaside cottage on the cliffs overlooking the sea. A sheer face of white rock to one side and a picture-perfect expanse of summer grass and trees to the other.

"I've got what you asked for, lass, though I'm not sure what you want with a bunch of conspiracy nonsense and fairy stories," Moody said.

"Dumbledore's instructions. Have you got a watch on Gringotts?" Holly asked.

"Aye, we've got an undercover cell posted in the alley with a good view of the entrance at all times. Now would be a good time for you to tell me what Dumbledore's plan for dealing with him for good is," Moody said. Holly attuned her senses to the sea breeze, to the magic of the yellowing grass and the white cliff and the endless blue sky. The only magic on Moody was his eye, his wand holster, and some storage charms on his coat.

"Voldemort has Horcruxes," Holly said flatly. Moody didn't seem surprised.

"Well, I always assumed he did after he came back. Didn't seem the sort for any of the other ways to cheat death - hang on, Horcuxes. In the plural?"

"Yes. The first was the diary at Hogwarts, which opened the chamber of secrets. The second was the locket that's taken over the Ministry. The third was a ring hidden in the old Gaunt home. That's where Dumbledore lost his hand. Then there's three more," Holly said. She knew she had to be cautious here because there was a chance that Moody would just try to kill her if he knew the whole truth.

"Fucking six? Six? The bastard has a seven-part soul?"

"Not any more. But yes, he did."

"You or Dumbledore uncover any leads as to the remaining three?" Moody asked.

"Dumbledore linked Riddle to the disappearance of Helga Hufflepuff's cup and thought he might have stolen something when he came to apply for the defence professorship. The last one will have been made after his return," Holly said. She wasn't looking at Mad-Eye. She gazed out onto the ocean, into the endless blue sky.

As final sights went, it wouldn't have been a bad one, she thought.

"And you think he's storing one in a bank vault?" Moody said.

"I think if he gave one to Malfoy, he probably gave one to another Death Eater. I'm hoping that one was sane enough to lock it in the deepest Gringott's vault they could afford," Holly replied.

"I'll let you know if anything turns up," Moody said as he turned and walked back over the ward line. He disappeared with only the barest hiss of moving air, and then Holly was alone by the cliffs once more.

Ginny was still fairly out of it when Ron carried her out of the cottage, but her leg was fully healed. People had already begun to leave, once more splitting up into small cells. Holly placed one hand gently on Ron's shoulder, then she apperated both him and Ginny side-along with her back to their hideout.

The sound of a car passing, muffled though it was by the treeline, was a sharp contrast to the squawks of seabirds and the gentle crashing of waves against the cliffs that had been the dominant sounds of the cottage. They were once more at their small campsite just off a muggle road, two battered old tents their home for the duration of the war.

"Good thing my dad bought those for that trip to Egypt, huh?" Ron said. His humorous tone wasn't entirely believable, but Holly didn't care to know if it wasn't. She appreciated the joke enough either way.

"Just... just lucky he didn't insist on muggle tents too," Ginny said as she blearly opened her eyes. Ron gently set her down on her feet, and Holly helped her stand up.

Hermione appeared with a pop of displaced air and smiled as she saw Ginny standing.

"Good of you to join us," Holly said to Ginny.

"Can't let a little thing like nearly having my leg blown off keep me down for too long," Ginny said, then she kissed Holly. Ron made exaggerated gagging motions.

"Once you two have stopped snogging for a minute, is anyone else hungry?" Ron asked. Holly tried not to laugh whilst kissing her girlfriend and wasn't very successful, so the two of them broke apart in a fit of giggles.

"I'll go into town. Ron, can you monitor the wireless for a bit?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah, I'll be in my tent. Just don't forget me when you get back with the food!" Ron said.

Hermione cast a number of rapid, silent glamour charms to disguise her appearance and then began to walk towards the small town nearby. Ron headed into what had been the girl's tent at the Quidditch World Cup, but was now his.

Ginny sat down gingerly on one of the battered old couches inside the larger tent. Her jeans were horribly mismatched now and crusted with dried blood.

"Are you alright, Ginny? Really?" Holly asked, though she knew it was a dumb question.

"Of course I'm not, I - I came this close to having pumpkin juice for a skull! But I knew - I knew what I was signing up for when I said I'd come," she replied.

"I just - I can't lose you, Ginny. Sometimes it feels like you're the only reason I can even try and bear everything people expect of me." Holly said, her voice wild and desperate.

"I know. But I can't just sit back and watch. You know that," Ginny said.

"I know. It's one of the reasons I love you," Holly said, and the two of them said very little for a long while afterwards.

It was only when they heard the crunch of Hermione's returning footsteps through the forest that they rose and exited the tent. Ron was already outside, and then Hermione rounded the last patch of thick trees. She was carrying, rather disconcertingly, both a bag full of delicious smelling takeaway and a pair of books - one that looked like a dry history textbook, and the other was the book of wizarding fairy tales Dumbledore had left her.

"Hermione, you can eat while we have dinner, you know?" Holly asked.

"Oh - oh, I'm sorry, there was a bit of a wait for the food, and so I tried to get some reading in, only..." Hermione said. She paused for a moment, as if she wasn't quite sure how to say something.

"Only what?" Ginny asked bluntly.

"Only - only I've found something!" Hermione said loudly. She rather roughly shoved the food into Ron's waiting arms, then flipped open the book of fairy tales. It looked like any other page, only Hermione had bookmarked it with the ratty old bookmark Dumbledore had included with it.

"Hermione, I have no idea what could be important at all about that page," Holly said.

"Oh, the page doesn't matter. Well, the annotation does. But look at the bookmark!" she shouted excitedly.

"It's a sketch of Dumbledore's wand by the other annotator. Kind of a weird bookmark, but -" Ron began, but Hermione interrupted him.

"But it's not Dumbledore's wand! At least it wasn't when they were writing the annotations," Hermione said.

"It wasn't?" Holly asked.

In response, Hermione flipped open the history book and showed them a black and white photograph of Dumbledore as a new professor at Hogwarts. His wand was clearly visible and very clearly not the wand Holly had seen him use at all times, the one in the bookmark.

"Maybe Olivander told him to come back for it twenty years. I've heard of him doing stuff like that," Ginny said.

"It's not an Olivander wand, the finish is far too unrefined. In fact, now that I've got this sketch and taken a good look at it, it's not in any modern wandmaking style. Even in the best photographs of - well, even in the best photographs of the wand, I can't see any runes either. I'm not an expert at wandlore, but it seems more like an early Roman wand than anything else," Hermione said.

"So Dumbledore used an old wand. What's the issue? People are always talking about ancient magic and stuff," Ron asked.

"It doesn't work like that, Ron. Magic using ley-lines and natural magic can be powerful, but it takes time—minutes at best. Roman wands didn't, they aren't like something you'd get at Olivander's. There's no way Dumbledore could use a wand that old. He was a great wizard, but even he wasn't that good," Holly said.

"Exactly. Which makes where he got it even weirder," Hermione said.

"You know where he got it?" Holly asked.

"Well, I can make a pretty good guess. It was the most famous duel of the 20th Century," Hermione said as she flipped the history book to a new page, which showed a propaganda poster of Grindelwald - Dumbledore's wand very clearly visible in his hand.

Something began to come together in Holly's mind, and she wasn't sure she liked where it was leading her.

"A wand that seems to predate modern wandlore but is extremely powerful..." Hermione began.

"Won in combat by the greatest sorceres of the age," Holly finished for her.

"Exactly. I think it's been under our noses the whole time."

"Sorry, for the stupid people in the back - what's been under our noses the whole time?" Ron asked.

"The Elder Wand," Holly answered. Ron and Ginny went quiet.

"You... you think it really does exist? That Dumbledore won Death's own wand from Grindlewald in Berlin?" Ginny asked after a moment.

"Powers and Death and all that is just mythology. No more real than Zeus or Thor. But this wand is very real, and as alien beings from another dimension are currently invading Britain, I'm not prepared to discount the idea that maybe something other than an ordinary wizard made this wand," Hermione said.

"Then we need to go," Holly said. She summoned her basilisk-skin coat from her tent with a wave of her hand.

"It's lasted this long undetected mate, I reckon we can at least eat and wait for it to get dark before we go breaking into Dumbledore's tomb," Ron said. Holly flushed a little and shrugged off her coat.

"Okay. But we're going in tonight - and only I'll cross the wardline, under the cloak. Riddle has to have forces at Hogwarts waiting for an Order member to appear there," Holly said.

They all piled into the larger tent to eat, get ready, and wait out the setting sun. Holly tried not to think about the flash of black fur and yellow eyes flitting from tree to tree in the corner of her vision.

Some part of her was not so convinced as Hermione that the Elder Wand was so far removed from mythology. The idea sat uneasily in her mind as she ate quietly, but the Grim made no further appearances as she waited outside the tent in a cheap camp chair for the sun to dip below the horizon.

 

[Tekomandor]

Year Six, Chapter Nine

The cave was lit only by the faint green light of a recently cast killing curse. There was no sound save Voldemort's own faint breathing. The Morgen behind him needed no air in the rotten lungs of their hosts, and the Hitwizards who had been stationed here had all fallen still and dead.

It was underneath a hill, just to the side of a muggle road that cut through the countryside like a smear of excrement across a painting. No animals dared approach the hill, and even the bright green grass that covered the surrounding hills was sickened and yellow above them. A single yew tree grew atop the hill, lonely and old. Local legend claimed that it had been used to hang a witch and that her spirit haunted the hillside.

The cave itself was remarkable - full of quartz and bisected by an underground river. If they could've beared the darkness that permeated it, it would've been swarming with muggle tourists.

As it was, only a squad of Ministry Hitwizards had been in the cave - guarding the one thing of value in it. A massive archway, carved from the quartz so that the water ran through it. Iron bars covered it, wrapped around it like bandages.

"It will not yield to magic, my lord," one of the Morgen said. He was one of their wizards, dressed in robes of shimmering scales and carrying a coral wand fitted with a hilt of black iron.

Voldemort strode forward and swung his wand like a sword. Slashes of black energy and bright green fire cut at the iron bars, but they would soon restore themselves wherever they were cut. Voldemort drew on more power, on darker and darker arts, but eventually, he lowered his wand.

He could not destroy all of the iron bars without destroying the archway itself. He snarled in anger, for he recognised exactly the hand that had created the defences on the archway.

"This is the work of that old fool Dumbledore. It should have faded with his death," Voldemort said.

One of the Morgen's lesser warriors was ordered forward by their wizard. He touched the iron bars and burst into fire. He screamed only briefly, his host corpse going up like it had been doused in petrol.

The Morgen wizard sniffed the air, his dead eyes lingering on the corpse of the warrior.

"This is no mere wizard-work. These gates have been sealed by Deathly power, my lord."
"Impossible. Dumbledore did not bargain with Powers. It was one of the few things I respected about him. His strength was always his own."

"Bargain? No, you are right, my lord. The Alchemist was not a servant of any Power. But a bargain is not the only way the support of a Power might be won. Perhaps he did not bargain but instead seized it," the Morgen wizard said.

"Seized power? From Death? How would one accomplish such a thing? Especially without the use of the Dark Arts?" Voldemort asked. He sounded almost curious then, all trace of anger gone from his voice.

"The strength has already been stolen, many ages ago, my lord. It was used against us by Merlin's pet king when he banished us from these shores long ago. Even then, it had already been long since stolen."

"Then we must act quickly. Gather Dupont's forces - it is time for them to earn their gold," Voldemort said.

"At once, my lord," the Morgen wizard said before he stepped into the river and vanished beneath the dark, rushing waters.

---

"And what is it that demands I come all the way down here to even hear of it, Unspeakable?" Riddle asked. He stood in the Department of Mysteries, leaning on Scrimgeour's ivory cane. How he hated having to inhabit the body of a crippled old man.

"We are grateful for your support, Minister. Especially recently. We have a long-term project in the History department that has just recently been confirmed by field researchers that may be of great importance," the unspeakable said. He wore purple robes and was not particularly notable - middle-aged, with a hint of a belly and a receding hairline.

"I doubt History of Magic can be all that urgent. It has by definition already happened," Riddle replied.

"Yes, minister. We do have reason to believe that other parties may be interested in this area of research, however."

The Unspeakable led Riddle deeper into the Departmant, through innumerable stone chambers until they emerged into a room filled with clocks of all kinds, each tuned to a different time and softly clicking in a bizarre, discordant symphony. One wall held a large, glass-fronted case filled with time-turners, the Ministry's heavily controlled time travel devices. Riddle had once been interested in time travel, only he had worked out on his own the proof of Time's immutability during his sixth year at Hogwarts. After that, he had very little interest in the subject.

"I assume you have just completed a trip back in time to confirm some suspicion?" Riddle asked.
"Exactly, Minister. Now, let me bring the photographs up..." the Unspeakable said as he tapped his wand agains the side of an intricate projector. Light blossomed to life within it, and Tom Riddle realised he had dismissed the Unspeakable's project far too easily.

---

Holly held her cloak tightly as she left her friends behind at the ward line. They would wait for her within the Forbidden Forest, but they were all too tall (even her and Ginny) to share the cloak now. Even in the height of summer, the forest was still bitterly cold at night. Perhaps, she thought, she had gotten used to the pleasantly cool summer nights at their campsite.

It was very strange to be sneaking into Hogwarts and even stranger to be doing so in the summer, she thought. The castle itself was dark, with only a few faint lights visible through the windows.

She could see more lights on the grounds than in the castle's windows as patrols of hitwizards and magical patrolwizards kept up a constant guard on the castle. Holly wasn't particularly worried about bypassing them - her cloak and her animagus form would keep her well hidden.

Holly transformed into her raven form as soon as she got to open ground. She flew low, barely a few feet above the ground, and her dark feathers let her blend seamlessly into the dark of the grounds. It was a cloudy night, too, which made sneaking around much easier.

Of course, if the new Headmaster of the school had raised the full siege wards, Holly would've had far more trouble getting onto the school grounds. The standard wards were configured to let people who weren't an active danger in, because Hogwarts was a school that saw a good number of visitors throughout the year. However, once fully raised, the wards would prevent anyone from crossing the ward line with increasingly dangerous countermeasures.

Only the school's Headmaster could raise the wards to their full strength unless the outer detection wards were tripped by a creature of sufficient danger. If Slytherin's basilisk had tried to slither over the ward line, it would've run headfirst into the full might of the castle's staggeringly complex wards.

Holly flew over the still, dark waters of the lake. The island that had been raised from its depths for Dumbledore's funeral was still there, his body still entombed in crystal. She transformed back into her own form and landed gently on the island. A faint sliver of moonlight illuminated the crystal tomb for just a moment, and then the moon was fully covered by the clouds once more.

Dumbledore looked like he was only sleeping. The preservation spells placed on his body, combined with various specialised glamour charms for the dead, had hidden every sign of his death save the lack of any breathing. He held his wand in the traditional wizardly funeral pose, his arms meeting on his chest like a medieval king holding his sword.

It was a beautiful piece of magic, and Holly had no desire to destroy it. So, instead, she called upon everything Dumbledore had taught her and began to sing. Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper, but the magic of the lake, of the innumerable ley liens that met at Hogwarts, heard her.

She could not work with simple incantations and wand movements nor with the cold precision of runic arrays and arthimantic calculations. She worked magic in the way it was first done. She sang to the crystal tomb, and it slowly began to ripple. She withdrew a stick that had been transfigured to look like Dumbledore's wand from her coat and then swapped his actual wand for the fake.

Dumbledore's wand felt cold, like a shard of ice in Holly's hand. She found the sensation so disturbing that she nearly dropped the wand and quickly shoved it into one of the many magically expanded pockets of her coat. Wands were warm in the hand, without exception. Even beyond that strange lack of heat, there was something about holding the wand that unnerved Holly.

She had no time to ponder the sensation, however, as light flashed across the lake. Holly dove for cover behind the crystal tomb, but the streaks of green light passed well to either side of her. She heard the whistling sound of killing curses as they flew by her, and for a moment, Dumbledore's wand felt warm in her coat pocket.

Holly crouched there for a moment, then glanced over the lid of the crystal tomb. With her eyes transformed into those of her animagus form, she was able to pick out the dozen or so figures advancing on brooms across the lake. Most she didn't recognise, but one she did. Madam Dupont, the French mercenary who had killed Cedric, was leading the attackers.

Dumbledore's wand seemed to call for her, and as though she was in a trance, Holly withdrew it. She stood, still hidden by her cloak. She gathered her hatred and -

Holly yanked her arm down and dropped the wand as though its unnatural cold had burnt her. She stared at it as it rolled down the smooth rock of the island and only just managed to grab it before it fell into the water.

More spells crossed over the lake, and now larger shapes began to spill from the earth. More of the Ministry's new magical creature inferi, though Holly was thankful none of them were dragons.

The brooms shifted to reveal the figure concealed within them. Voldemort was there, flying without aid, and at the revelation of his presence the hitwizards broke and ran. The inferi still charged forward, manticores and giant spiders and all sorts of dark creatures, but Holly knew they would barely slow Voldemort and his mercenaries down.

She transformed back into her raven form and flew over the lake, but not towards the forest just yet. She headed towards the castle, even if she did have to do some rather fancy flying to weave her way through the spells flying back and forth.

As Holly landed near the castle and transformed back, she saw numerous flying shapes on the horizon - including what looked like the Minister's carriage. Dozens of hitwizards on brooms were escorting it, along with one larger flying shape. Riddle had arrived, and he'd brought one of his dragon inferi with him.

The few surviving hitwizards on the shore were soon forgotten as Voldemort and Dupont's band of mercenaries turned their focus to the new Ministry arrivals. Voldemort conjured a shield of black smoke that absorbed the rain of spellfire the Ministry reinforcements were firing down and reflected them as wispy gouts of cursed fire whilst the marcnries fired killing curses and war-hexes to smash through the phalanxes of shield charms raised by the hitwizards.

With a roar, the undead dragon dived towards the shield of black smoke, and its own cursed fire blasted it into nothingness. Voldemort called on the waters of the Black Lake to rise up and restrain the dragon, hundreds of tendrils rising from its surface to grapple the dragon.

Holly turned away and entered the castle. She had one more task to complete before she could meet back up with her friends in the Forbidden Forrest.