“I can’t go home!”

“I can’t go home!” Ginny shouted, angry tears sparkling in her eyes. “my whole family’s here, I can’t stand waiting there alone and not knowing and –”

Her eyes met Harry’s for the first time. She looked at him beseechingly, but he shook his head and she turned away bitterly.

“Fine,” she said, staring at the entrance to the tunnel back to the Hog’s Head. “I’ll say good-by now, then, and–”

There was a scuffling and a great thump. Someone else had clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen. He pulled himself up no the nearest chair, looked around through lopsided horn-rimmed glasses, and said, “Am I too late? Has it started. I only just found out, so I – I –”

Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected to run into most of his family. There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension. “So– ‘ow eez leetle Teddy?”

Lupin blinked at her, startled. The silence between the Weasleys seemed to be solidifying, like ice.

“I – oh yes – he’s fine!” Lupin said loudly. “yes, Tonks is with him – at her mother’s –”

Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another, frozen.

“Here, I’ve got a picture?” Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph from inside his jacket and showing it to Fleur and Harry, who saw a tiny baby with a tuft of bright turquoise hair, waving fat fists at the camera.

“I was a fool!” Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph. “I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a – a –”

“Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron,” said Fred.

Percy swallowed.

“Yes, I was!”

“Well, you can’t say fairer than that,” said Fred, holding his hand out to Percy.

Mrs. Weasley burst into tears. She ran forward, pushed Fred aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Percy said.

Mr. Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug his son.

“What made you see sense, Perce?” inquired George.

“It’s been coming on for a while,“ said Percy, mopping his eyes under his glasses with a corner of his traveling cloak. ”But I had to find a way out and it’s not so easy at the Ministry, they’re imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight of it, so here I am.“

“Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these,” said George in a good imitation of Percy’s most pompous manner. “Now let’s get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters’ll be taken.”

“So, you’re my sister in-law now?” Said Percy, shaking hands with Fleur as they hurried off toward the staircase with Bill, Fred, and George.

“Ginny!” barked Mrs. Weasley.

Ginny had been attempting, under cover of the reconciliations to sneak upstairs too.

“Molly, how about this,” said Lupin. “Why doesn’t Ginny stay here , then at least she’ll be on the scene and know what’s going on, but she won’t be in the middle of the fighting?”

“I–”

“That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Weasley firmly, “Ginny, you stay in this room, you hear me?”

Ginny did not seem to like the idea much, but under her father’s unusually stern gaze, she nodded. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Lupin headed off to the stairs as well.

“Where’s Ron?” asked Harry, “Where’s Hermione?”

“They must have gone up the Great Hall already,” Mr. Weasley called over his shoulder.

“ I didn’t see them pass me,” said Harry.

“They said something about a bathroom,” said Ginny, “not long after you left.”

“A bathroom?”

Harry strode across the room to an open door leading off the Room of Requirement and checked the bathroom beyond. It was empty.

“You’re sure they said bath–?”

But then his scar seared and the Room of Req1uirement vanished. He was looking through the high wrought-iron gates with winged boats on pillars at either side, looking through the dark grounds toward the castle, which was ablaze with lights. Nagini lay draped over his shoulders. He was possessed of that cold, cruel sense of purpose that preceded murder.