The Scar Of Voldemort, And Also Zombies, And Also Some Other Stuff
It has been raining for seventeen days. It's not a hard rain, but it's cold, and it's heavy. No one has gone outside for forty-one days anyway, because of the wards and the traps, but even if they could go outside, no one would want to.
Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom have been missing for twelve of the seventeen days of rain, but Harry Potter often selfishly goes off by himself, ignoring the needs of the people around him, and Neville Longbottom -- well, he's always been a bit strange anyway, so there's every chance that he's just off being strange. There's also every chance that he's actually off with Harry Potter, and no one would be surprised if that were the case.
Maybe Mrs. Weasley would be surprised. But she's dead, and her ghost is haunting the remains of the Burrow, along with Mr. Weasley and Percy.
Ron Weasley killed Percy himself. Then he killed Minister Fudge. Then he killed a lot of other people before Hermione took him out with Fred's abandoned wand and a well-aimed Immobilus. No one is quite sure how Mrs. Weasley died, not even Mrs. Weasley's ghost -- it is known only that she did. No one would even be quite sure that she is dead, except the reality of her ghost can't be ignored -- not even by Ron, who has shown himself to be quite immersed in denial. If Hogwarts was still giving classes, and there was a class in denial, Ron would be getting top marks, beating out even Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy.
Maybe Headmaster Dumbledore would beat him. Maybe.
It has been raining for twenty-three days. It's getting colder, but the rain isn't turning into snow -- yet. Yesterday Theodore Nott spat on Draco Malfoy's shoe and Draco Malfoy had fits, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. Theodore Nott had already thrown three other students into the wards for various infractions -- one had breathed on his mug of chocolate; one had looked at his cat in what he decided was a funny way; the first had called him a poof.
No one wants to be the next body Theodore Nott throws to the wards, but everyone wants to watch the glittering explosion as the wards rip apart flesh and disintegrate bone and vaporize blood. There really isn't much else in the way of entertainment, since they're all confined to two large rooms and no one thought to bring a book or a deck of cards for Exploding Snap.
It has been raining for twenty-four days. Draco Malfoy took his revenge on Theodore Nott with a charm bomb, not thinking of the effects the Colloportus bomb would have when set off inside someone's shoe.
Unfortunately for both Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott, the Colloportus bomb was one Neville Longbottom had made before he disappeared (whether with Harry Potter or just coincidentally at the same time is still hotly debated), and it also had a Decollo charm in it. Neville Longbottom would never had made a Decollo bomb on purpose -- he had tried to wipe it away before casting Colloportus, but instead of using Pergomagificum, he used Seremagificum, which made the Decollo calm -- which hid it.
Theodore Nott's headless body is now permanently sealed to the floor next to the chair he Transfigured into a four poster bed.
Draco Malfoy is rather embarrassed.
It has been raining for thirty-two days and Hermione Granger is going a bit stir crazy. She's cast endless rounds of Antiputeo, but Theodore Nott's body is still stinking up the Great Hall. If Harry Potter hadn't gone off with Neville Longbottom somewhere unfindable, he'd be able to get Theodore Nott off the floor somehow.
Or perhaps not, but Hermione Granger has always liked to think that Harry Potter has some special magical powers not conferred upon him by the scar from Voldemort.
She thinks perhaps she can spend all of this free time writing a book: The Scar Of Voldemort. It would be a big hit in the Muggle world -- or maybe not. Muggles would never believe the real way magic works -- which is that it doesn't at all. It doesn't work, it just is, and Muggles all want explanations for everything.
She wants explanations for everything, too, but none are forthcoming because anyone who could explain anything is dead.
At least they still have House Elves, which means they all have socks with eight toes and sweaters with two collars and three arms trimmed with lacy ruffles. No one complains, because the House Elves are the ones keeping the wards up.
They don't want the Death Eaters to come in either.
It's been raining for a long time, and that means the kitchens are cool and damp.
Dobby is really enjoying being able to make all the Hogwarts students sweaters.
Bilfie, Jinny, Calumy, Xendie, Culfie, and Nuddy are enjoying being able to cook eight courses for every meal with no one to yell at them for making six different desserts. Headmaster Dumbledore may have liked his sweets, but he never liked serving them to the children en masse. Every time Nuddy cooks a dessert, she names it after Headmaster Dumbledore, and curses his name, and spits on the floor.
Gorly knits all day. She has knitted Kneazle fur into the wards, which means several Death Eaters are currently having sneezing fits. She watches them from a window in the Astronomy Tower and laughs at them. Two hundred Death Eaters have tried to kill her in all of the various ways they could imagine, which aren't too many, since they're quite stupid.
Horlie protects Gorly -- not because she needs protection, but because he thinks it's funny to watch stupid Wizards try to kill him. Really it's Gorly protecting Horlie, but no one needs to know that.
It has been raining for fifty days. Many students have died of boredom. When boredom kills, it's almost difficult to tell, as everyone's eyes have glazed over, and most of them are limp. Parvati and Padma Patil have taught everyone how to do yoga; Colin Creevey learnt aikido over the summer between fifth and sixth years, but he's not allowed to teach it to anyone since he accidentally killed his younger brother with a chop to the back of the neck.
If anyone had been paying attention when it happened, they'd have noticed Draco Malfoy surreptitiously casting Spiculumnus onto Colin Creevey's hand, but no one was paying attention. No one except Ron Weasley, but he doesn't like the Creeveys anyway.
Ron Weasley would never consciously team up with Draco Malfoy, but Draco Malfoy's been going around killing all the people Ron Weasley doesn't like. It doesn't much matter anymore that Draco Malfoy would be a Death Eater if he could -- they're all trapped inside the castle.
This worries Hermione Granger -- all of it worries Hermione Granger. She'd be less worried, she tells herself, if Harry Potter was around. She has already written Neville Longbottom off -- if he's anywhere outside of the two rooms all of them are stuck in, he's dead anyway.
They're all dead anyway. Some of them just haven't died yet.
It has stopped raining, but no one has noticed because no one looks out of the windows anymore. The view never changes: Death Eaters waiting for the wards to crack. Voldemort's camp, thestrals running loose, Hagrid's body tied to the ground. Snakes slither all over it; no one is sure if they are actually eating pieces of Hagrid, or just playing in his slimy entrails.
Ginny Weasley sits in a corner every day and counts the cracks in the floor. She tends to get distracted after the thirteen-thousandth and then she has to start over. No one goes near her. She's stopped using cleaning charms and has started to smell. Hermione Granger is worried that her skin will begin to fall off.
Draco Malfoy is worried that she will turn into a zombie and eat everyone's brains.
Cho Chang has already turned into a zombie; she points this out. The House Elves have spelled her so that she eats only fruits and vegetables. Draco Malfoy remains unconvinced.
It has been one hundred seventeen days since Hogwarts was closed down. The Death Eaters are amassing outside of the wards. The House Elves show no signs of tiring, although they have stopped making such elaborate suppers and lace trimmings. Hermione Granger continues to worry and it affects her yoga breathing. She also continues to try various charms to dispel the horrible scents of decaying bodies.
Draco Malfoy has begun tossing dead bodies into the wards. This takes care of the smell. Hermione Granger believes this is a travesty but doesn't care to argue the point. Draco Malfoy is bigger than she is, and stronger, and she's not sure she could draw Fred's wand in time to stop him if he wanted to throw her into the wards.
There are more and more zombies now. Luna Lovegood's theory is that boredom doesn't just kill -- it kills and then eats the brain of its victim and then the victim wants to eat brains. There is something not quite right with this logic, but the House Elves continue to spell the zombies, and no one is decaying except people who aren't alive or the reanimated dead, so it doesn't quite matter.
Or maybe it matters but Hermione Granger can't be arsed to care about the difference now; Draco Malfoy tells her that when one stops caring about one's problems that is when one knows one is a Muggle. She replies that his concern for his grammar is boring, and everyone looks up: what if Hermione Granger is turning into a zombie?
But she's not; she's just losing her temper.
It has been one hundred eighteen days since Hogwarts was closed down. It's been one hundred nineteen days since Headmaster Dumbledore stepped on a charm bomb, and one hundred twenty days since Professor Snape set off a chain reaction of charm bombs that killed every professor in the school and most of the Mudblood students as well. Several escaped because they were on the Quidditch pitch, watching Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy face off over a rare silver Snitch. It is Hermione Granger's theory that Professor Snape didn't do it on purpose; it is her theory that Voldemort somehow set this off using Professor Snape's Dark Mark.
For once, Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy agree: Professor Snape, that greasy git, did it on purpose.
On the one hundred thirtieth day since Headmaster Dumbledore stepped on a charm bomb, Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom reappear. Together. Whether this is a coincidence or not is, to this day, hotly debated. There are those who believe they just happened to reappear on the same day. There are those who believe it was done apurpose.
These things don't matter. What matters is that when Harry Potter reappeared, Hermione Granger killed him in a fury -- although now she insists that she didn't mean to -- and Voldemort died. Whether Voldemort died at the very same instant Harry Potter did, or lingered on for a bit afterwards, is also hotly debated, though not with quite the fervor people debate Harry Potter's relationship with Neville Longbottom.
But the wards on Hogwarts are taken down by the House Elves three hours and eighteen minutes later, and the Death Eaters disperse. Draco Malfoy finds his father and gleefully recounts Hermione Granger's brutal slaying of Harry Potter -- but that's another story.
Hermione Granger feels just awful about killing the savior of the wizarding world, except he wasn't much of a savior since he was gone for the whole Siege of Howarts, wasn't he? Cho Chang points this out to Hermione, and then eats her brain.
Neville Longbottom disappears into Greenhouse Six and is never heard from again, until he is, but that is also another story, and one that can only be properly told by Ron Weasley after he's had three or four too many Firewhiskys.
To go through what happened to every other student will take far too long and no one is really interested anyway -- except for Millicent Bulstrode, who tracks down each and every one of them three years later and keeps a record of their accounts. Later she will publish a book, using the title Hermione Granger had laughed about so long ago: The Scar Of Voldemort. It doesn't really make sense, but it sounds good, and sells loads of copies.