Saturday, 1pm

Hermione poked her head around the side of her shield. Several purple robes stood on the other side of the bridge, heads poking above tables and chairs that had been locked down tightly after she'd Accio'd the first table into the river that separated the two sides. A few spells flew at her general direction, but to no avail. She looked at the ceiling, it was low, an athletic seventh year could probably brush his fingers on the rock if he jumped. It would be a tight squeeze for anyone riding a broom.

In any case it was a narrow passageway. It only widened to because of the slow river that the bridge was built to cross. The water's rushing noise sounded soothing, a calm randomness over the determined whispering she could hear from the other side of the river. Fred Weasley (definitely Fred, George was somewhere in a purple robe, or perhaps red by this point) looked over Hermione's shield for a second and then crouched back down beside her.

"Tell me again," Fred said.

"OK," said Vincent Crabbe. "Over that bridge, then the hallway widens a bit. First door to the left is the room I lived in last year with Draco, go past that door and you are straight into the commons. But the thing about Draco's room, is that it has a connection into the river."

"Draco has his own pool?" Hermione asked.

"It's more of a ... hot tub," Vincent said, looking down.

"My man," Fred said laughing, slapping Vincent on the shoulder. "Those guys know how to live." He kept laughing even after Hermione glared at him. "So the water's connected to this river. Should be right under there, somewhere," he gestured about twenty feet to the left of the opening, careful to keep his hand hidden behind the shield.

"Draco must surely have some defenses to that," Hermione said. "Even before this war he was attacked in his own room, he must have done something. Put a locked cover on the top of it. He wouldn't want something coming out of it at night, or someone."

"It's a natural opening. Worst case, we have to turn around. No, what you have to worry about is if they've stationed a guard in that room, we'll be sitting ducks when we pop up out of the water. And there aren't any monsters in the river," Vincent said. "That's just a story they tell frightened first years."

Vincent didn't bother to mention the stories they'd told him, last year. Upperclassman were much crueler in Slytherin than Hufflepuff.

"I don't know, do you see that light down there, under the bridge," Fred asked. The water itself wasn't clear, but gave off a pleasant green glow, with the waves making silvery lines on the cave walls and tables opposite them. Hermione had to admit that the effect looked stunning.

"That's always been there. How would you be able to see your way around at night if there weren't any lighting? We are underground here, you know." Vincent had never thought about it before now, but it seemed logical when he said it. And the light had always been there.

Hermione checked her watch. "I'll take care of the problem of getting past the guard in the room. I doubt they'll have more than one anyway. The diversion should be starting, and they are going to attack the other side of the bridge in about 20 minutes? Are we going to do this?" She looked to Fred and Vincent, and they all just nodded. The backed carefully away from the bridge and headed back up the stairs to regroup with the others. They'd need Hannah for the Bubble-Head charms. Hermione wondered why she'd picked that spell, or had it just been given to her randomly...

As they headed back up the stairs, Hermione heard Blaise Zabini's taunting call

"You. Shall. Not. PASS!"

1.30 pm

Blaise heard the spell's behind him, then the shouts and cries. He wheeled around. Spells streaked blue, red and sometimes just clear lines - like waves of pressure echoing through the air - across the common room. He took out his mirror and shouted "We're under attack. I can't tell how many. From inside, not from the bridge." Blaise dropped the mirror back to his side and darted towards the common room. Everyone had taken cover, Blaise spotted Tracey Davis firing a stupefy towards the others. She actually looked quite fetching in purple, but he hadn't gotten the courage to tell her that yet.

"How many?" he shouted at her.

She fired off another spell and then shouted "I don't know. Eight?"

By their pre-arranged system, that meant four. Blaise thought it was a terrible system. The enemy already knew how many people they had, and he doubted that they'd get stupidly overconfident if they heard Tracey Davis miscount them. It seemed much more likely that there actually were eight people and Tracey simply forgot and blurted out the number she actually saw. But whatever, that was the plan they'd agreed to. Four people didn't pose a huge threat. Blaise went back to his position on the bridge just in time to see a flask flying through the air. It wasn't aimed towards him, it smashed squarely into the center of the bridge and the hallway disappeared into inky darkness with a crack. After the crack there should have been the sound of shattering glass, but the sound stopped abruptly, all sound ahead of him vanished. Blaise couldn't hear the running water, the footsteps crunching on the shattered remains of the potion flask, or the shouts of the charging students.

He certainly couldn't hear people diving into the river on the other shore.

Blaise crouched behind the table. The silent filaments of black clouds convulved once, and then seperated. Blaise cast Luminos! instantly, before he could see who it was. The spell impacted onto a solid metal shield, nearly five feet tall and curved from left to right. A roman shield that covered the full body. His spell hit solidly with what should have been a loud clang, but there was only silence ahead of him and the shield kept coming. The ink split again, a second body appearing behind the shield-bearer.

"A little help!" Blaise shouted behind him, fumbling for his Erumpent potion. It was just a small flask, it won't really hurt anybody. At least, it won't hurt anyone behind a huge shield. Blaise stood up and quickly threw the bottle as hard as he could, ducking back down but keeping his eyes above the table. The flask squarely struck the shield, right between the center and the top, slightly to the right, and then world flashed red, there was still no noise except for Tracy's footsteps and surprised gasp behind him as Blaise watched the shield go flying back into the darkness which engulfed it and the Weasley Twin who'd been carrying it.

Blaise turned around to smile at Tracy when suddenly the Slytherin common room flashed with a blinding white light and an echoing thunderclap, and she was thrown into him.

Hermione jumped into the water and then watched as Vincent jumped in after her, at least until her billowing robes cut off her sight. The silencing spell would make sure nobody heard them and the charge should distract anyone watching, if they could somehow see through the potion of liquid night they'd stolen from Professor Slughorn's lab. They'd gone in well to the upstream side of the bridge, as far as they could get without being seen, which was well, because the current flowed briskly. It wasn't a wide river, maybe twenty feet across, but once they pushed off from the shore they were practically under the bridge before grabbing hold of the other side. Hermione quickly wrapped her sleeves tight around her arms, then looked up at the underside of the bridge, barely ten feet above them. Wisps of black smoke were drifting over the side, their smooth tendrils refracting through the bubbling current above.

Vincent tugged on her arm. "There's something down there, below us," he said. Hermione looked down towards the blue light. The moving water played tricks on her mind, but the shadows did seem to be moving. Actually, all of the shadows moved in a consistent pattern.

"It's just the light. It's not attached, it's just swimming in place. It makes everything look like it's a bit jumpy," she said just as a the world went briefly white, a flash of the battle above them. Fortunately they were still directly under the bridge, which had shielded them. After a second the world returned to focus. "Let's go." Hermione crawled along the rocks, eight feet or so beneath the surface. If she just let go of the wall the current pushed her along. Vincent was behind her, but he kept glancing back at the blue light. A shadow beside it shifted, but in the wrong direction of the other shadows.

"Hermione...something is definitely down there," he said.

"Found it! Well, if so it's been down there for ages, and it's left us alone, so let's just go ahead." Hermione glanced back, Vincent was right behind her. There was too much noise, water rushing around her, all the little eddies and currents stretching her senses. It felt beautiful, but unreal, like a movie theater's surround sound that provided detail you'd normally never hear. Normally she'd be able to tell if there was something crouching behind a rock this close to her, but not underwater. "Hopefully there will be enough light from Draco's room. It gets dark for a while. You stay here, I'll scout ahead."

Vincent was athletic and surprisingly nimble, but he wasn't small. If the tunnel narrowed he'd be unable to make it, and she didn't want him to panic and get claustrophobic. Hermione dived into the tunnel headfirst, pulling herself along the rocks. She'd pulled herself several body lengths, the light dimming but the walls didn't close in. A few more pulls and she could feel the tunnel curving up, and saw a light up ahead. She could see the top of a bookshelf, this was the tunnel and she called out "Vincent" in a loud whisper but there was no response. Hermione wasn't sure if a guard could hear her if she shouted. She carefully got to the edge of the pool. There was nobody standing or walking in the room, but she couldn't see the lower half. She raised her wand almost to the surface, then poked her head above the water.

The room was empty. She quickly pulled her head back and then said, "Vincent, come on!" and waited, but there was no response.

"Vincent?" Hermione started crawling back down. Maybe he'd been spooked, or someone from the surface had seen him. That would be a problem, if he'd gotten hit by a spell the current would quickly carry him away and the river went into underwater caverns. There'd never been any students lost in the river, at least, it had never been mentioned in Hogwarts, A History but that didn't mean it couldn't happen. Hermione turned around and pulled herself back through the tunnel. Now that she knew it was only thirty seconds the trip seemed much shorter. She got to the opening and carefully poked her head out.

"Vincent?"

The river looked the same, although above the water there were flashes and streaks of color. The inky blackness was gone, probably someone who could cast Ventus showed up, and there were students on each side of the bridge lobbing spells across. Hermione studied them for a second, automatically identifying and the jinxes,when she saw a Vincent's body sprawled just above her, on the Slytherin side of the bridge, his red sleeve dripping water into the river.

Relief washed over Hermione. Whatever had gotten Vincent had fished him out, and was an 'in game' death. Not a monster, just a trap. A sudden burst of movement from the other side got her attention and then she felt an arm wrapping around her neck and she was yanked quickly out of the tunnel across the river, going upstream quickly. Her mind couldn't focus on anything for a second, then she saw the hand and the purple sleeve, lashed tightly with string to keep the robe from catching the water. Hermione threw her arms out, casually stronger than her attacker and suddenly she was free. The current caught her and pulled her downstream. She started swimming against the current for a second and then quickly turned so that she wasn't fighting the current and swam for shore and handholds before she got sucked under, but the current pulled her towards the center of the stream.

"Hermione!" she heard the voice and took a second to realize that it was Gregory Goyle and he was rushing up towards her, well underneath the water, easily navigating the current on his Nimbus. He'd lashed string around his wrists and ankles to keep the robes close. I should have done that, Hermione thought as Gregory grabbed her hand and spun around, facing against the current as he helped her grab the back of his broom and then put his head down and they were both effortlessly pulled upstream. He dove down towards the blue light and as they pulled up towards it Hermione saw that there was a small underwater grotto a few feet behind the light. The perfect hiding place if you had a Bubble Headed Charm, like she did.

Or Gregory's gills. Neville is on the purple team, she realized. Only Neville would raid the Herbology lab while everyone else went for the potions, and of course Gregory would have no trouble moving around the campus to meet up with him. Gregory pushed her gently into the depression, and Hermione realized there was no current here. Gregory quickly spun his broom and darted back to the middle of the river and she saw him reaching for his wand. Hermione had her wand out and said Somn... when she stopped.

If she put him to sleep the current would drag him away and she hadn't been practicing underwater broom riding for hours. Even if she accidentally slipped out while asleep Gregory would have no trouble grabbing her and safely depositing her on shore, like he'd done to Vincent. Hermione's frustrated scream formed tiny bubbles around the edge of her charm right as Gregory knocked her unconscious.

Author's Note - 200 Followers! A nice little milestone!