Horrors and Horcruxes
By: PenPatronus
Chapter 4:

Peeves' Woes

Present

"Potty and Weasel! And the horse-toothed Granger girl all come to play with Peevesy! Who has had no one to play with! No one to play with for ages and ages!"

Harry Potter ducked as Dungbombs flew past his cheek. The poltergeist followed, his cackles echoing through the hollow castle.

"Peeves!" Ron growled.

"Honestly!" Hermione screeched as she was almost knocked off of the balcony, which used to be the hall of the seventh floor in Hogwarts. "Honestly, whose side is that ghost on!" She turned away from Peeves who started aiming at the empty picture frames as well as the three ex-students. Hermione walked to the door to the Room of Requirement and took out her wand but then, suddenly, she stopped and stood still.

Harry came up beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Hermione?"

She whirled away from him. "Peeves!" The poltergeist stopped, and floated silently in the shadows by the corner of the ceiling. Hermione lowered her wand and stepped through the boys to stare directly up at him. "Peeves, please. Please talk to us. We need you to tell us if you've seen any Death Eaters around Hogwarts lately. We need to know if you know anything special about the Room of Requirement. Please, Peeves. Please help us."

The tip of Peeve's hat, which stuck out a bit from the shadows, dipped downwards. Harry squinted through the darkness. For once, the ghost was reserved, anxious…scared. What could a ghost possibly be scared about? The thought terrified Harry.

Finally a voice came from the direction of Peeves, though it certainly didn't sound like him. To Harry, it almost sounded like a grim Albus Dumbledore.

"You children…you must leave this castle and leave quickly! Everyone else has gone: the professors, the mermaids, the House-elves, the ghosts, the figures in the paintings…even all of the Headmasters in the office. They all wailed for days…When the Death Eaters came they brought fire and…and earthquakes." He was silent for a moment and when he spoke again it was in a whisper. "This evil is stronger than before, children. You must run…you must hide…we will all be destroyed, even those who are already dead." The tip of his hat rose a bit and Harry thought he saw Peeves' small eyes blinking at them. "The Death Eaters haven't been around for the past week, but they keep returning. Voldemort himself has been here on several occasions and I'm sad to report, he is…he's quite…he's so…so…" His voice trailed off into the black. "When he comes again he will destroy the entrance to the Room and then nothing will be able to get in, or get out."

"Peeves—" Hermione began but the ghost sailed out of the shadows, sank towards the floor with a defeated sigh and out of sight.

Harry raised his eyes to the full moon shining through the missing ceiling and frowned at it. "It's too late for us to run. And nobody can hide anymore."

To his right Ron turned from the edge to the door. Hermione turned too but for a long moment, Harry couldn't release his eyes from the moonlight.

7 Months Ago

Ron's mouth dropped and hung while he pointed at the grassy ground. "Is that—is that—"

"A giant footprint!" Hermione exclaimed.

"A big footprint?" Harry asked as he ran up and leaned over between them.

"No, a giant's footprint!"

Ron tried again to form a sentence: "Then that means—this means—"

"We should get out of here," Harry said. He looked warily around them. They were in a field of high grass and shallow streams. Footprints almost three feet long had bent the grass almost into the dirt.

"There aren't even any caves near here. And there's a Muggle village past the tree line. They're marching around right out in the open." Hermione squinted her eyes through the thick sunlight at Ron and Harry.

Harry started following the footprints. "Should we track them?"

"Harry, no, wait—" Ron started forward and grabbed Harry's elbow. "Listen."

All three of them stopped, and pivoted around. Voices were coming all around them from the trees surrounding the perimeter of the field. And then the ground beneath their feet began to shake as if from an earthquake.

Hermione latched onto Ron's arm. "They're coming!" she squeaked.

"We have to hide!" Ron hissed. But there was no where to go. What sounded like an entire army was about to burst into the field and the three wizards were stuck.

"Here." Harry whipped his Invisibility Cloak out of an inside pocket of his Muggle coat. "Hermione?"

Hermione lifted her wand and used a spell to expand the cloak, making it five times bigger. "Under it, hurry!"

Ron, Harry and Hermione wrapped the cloak tightly around them and their gear. "Oh God…" Hermione squeaked. Ron pushed her down and kept his body protectively above hers. Harry used a few spells to secure the fabric to the ground as it continued to shake.

"Look!"

Harry followed Ron's gaze upwards and gasped. Above the dense, tall cedar trees a brigade of dragons burst across the sky. The lead one, a black monster with a sickly green tint across his scales and claws, let out a war roar. The other three-dozen dragons let out fireworks of fire in response. Sparks rained down into the field and sparkled across the invisibility cloak. And then from between the trees came as many giants as there were dragons. Armored goblins, evil grins on their pointed features, waddled in the giants' wake. And of course the Death Eaters. Hundreds of them, cloaked in black and masked, their wands already out and pointed. There were other creatures that Harry had never seen before and some he had: manticores, bridled hippogriffs with black feathers, serpents, Chimaeras, centaurs, Inferi, a herd of leashed Acromantulas…

And at the head of the pack in front of the giants and the snouts of the dragons, strolling through the grass as if simply out for a walk, was Voldemort. The Dark Lord had a twisted smile on his white face. His red eyes seemed to glow not with rage but immense pleasure. He held his wand out like a sword

"Oh bloody hell—oh bloody bloody hell!" Ron muttered into Hermione's hair and Harry's ear. "We're going to get trampled!" Voldemort seemed to be walking straight towards them and even if he missed them, the giants on either side of him would squish them. Even if one Inferi tripped over the three wizards, they would be discovered and undoubtedly killed immediately. "Whatta we do?"

"I don't know!" Hermione squeaked. Voldemort was only forty yards away.

"Hermione, can you strengthen the cloak?" Harry asked. "Make it, you know, strong? As hard as a rock? There has to be a spell for that."

"There is." Harry felt rather than saw Hermione nod. "But how will that help? They'll still find us."

"Dig!" Ron almost bounced up from the momentum of his own idea. "If we're far enough into the ground the cloak will just look like a little bump in the field!"

Voldemort was thirty yards away. Above them the dragon wings vibrated along with the giants' footsteps. An impatient Chimaera bellowed.

"All right, hurry!" Harry stood up slowly, making sure that the cloak still covered all three of them. While Hermione used her wand to strengthen the cloak, Ron and Harry used theirs to dig a trench. "Worry about getting it wide, not deep," Harry instructed Ron. Their spells pierced the dirt, loosening and spreading it. The noise from the army muffled their voices as they spoke the spells.

When Voldemort was ten yards and closing, they were out of time. Harry pulled the cloak down tight over their bodies as the three friends lay on their backs, side by side, squished and barely a foot beneath ground level.

"It's a good thing we've lost some weight in the last month," Harry muttered, trying to lighten the mood. Ron had to bend his knees just a bit because the trench wasn't long enough. The cloak was still a bit flexible and settled over their bodies easily. To the unknowing eye, their camouflaged spot simply looked like the ground around them.

Hermione gasped when Lord Voldemort literally walked directly over them.

Harry, who was in the middle of the group, pressed Hermione's palm over her mouth. Ron put his wand on his stomach just in case. Harry felt his hands shaking. The cloak held strong, didn't even ripple under Voldemort's weight.

Voldemort chose at that moment to stop, turn around, and address his army. He stopped directly above Ron's knees. Harry felt sweat settle across his entire body. He felt like Voldemort would look right into his eyes if he glanced down. This was way too close.

And then the Dark Lord simply continued walking. A giant thundered over top of them, and then some centaurs. Their view was soon shadowed by the robes of Death Eaters, almost blocking out the sunlight because they were so dense. Hermione couldn't help whimpering behind her hand.

Finally, the light returned. The voices and footsteps faded. Hermione released the strength of the cloak and Harry stuck his head above the trench. "They're gone." All three let out deep sighs of relief.

Ron went limp and simply sprawled in the dirt, breathing heavily with his eyes closed. "Let's never do that again."

"I second that," Harry agreed. Hermione sat up beside him and marveled at the destruction of the field around them. She stared thoughtfully in the direction the army took. Suddenly she gasped. "They're heading for London!" Hermione looked at the boys, tears on her face. "We have to warn everyone!"

Ron woke up and nodded. "Right—we can get on the broom, and if we go around, avoid the dragons—if we're fast enough we might reach the Ministry in time…Harry?"

Harry looked at them. He wondered what facial expression they were seeing, because he'd never felt this emotion before. Harry slowly stood up, wrapping the cloak around his arm as he did. He handed the broom to Ron and the cloak to Hermione.

"Voldemort will be in London for awhile. Now is the perfect time to go after the next Horcrux. This is the distraction we've needed for weeks. You see the tracks, there are already giants in London so the attack must have begun an hour ago." Harry shook his head sadly. "If you want, you can go help, but I have to keep going for the Horcruxes. That's all I can worry about right now."

Harry left the cloak and broom with them, turned around and started jogging in the opposite direction of London. He wasn't even a little surprised when Ron and Hermione silently ran up beside him a minute later.