Work Text:
“Did you hear that?”
“Shh!”
“But it could be him - “
“Which is exactly why shh!”
Dennis Creevey’s hands shot up, covering the mouths of the two eleven year old boys on either side of him. He gave the girl across from him a piercing look, and she kept as quiet as if there was a hand over her mouth as well.
There was indeed someone coming. Footsteps rang off of the stone floor as they passed, seeming to echo between the walls with startling fierceness and clarity. Dennis was certain he had never heard anything so loud when walking these halls to go to Potions class or detention.
The breath of the two boys was fevered and rushed against Dennis’ palms, a surreal combination of excitement and fear.
The footsteps seemed to at once be moving away and growing closer. Dennis held his breath and tried to separate the actual footsteps from the echoes. His mind was playing tricks on him. There was only one person out there, and they had to be walking away.
Without realizing it, the four children had each leaned forward, to the point where their heads threatened to collide with each other. They were a peculiar looking group, the three wide eyed first year Slytherins deferring to fourteen year old Dennis in his scrappy Muggle clothes, all gathered together in a darkened closet, hiding amongst stacks of cracked and rusting cauldrons.
The sounds from the hallway died away at last. Dennis waited a cautious minute before slowly releasing his hands from the boys’ mouths.
Almost at once all three of the first years broke out in a babble, and Dennis’ hand again shot up, this time a single finger pressed to his own lips to signal their silence.
“Whisper,” Dennis commanded. “If you don’t want to be ‘it,’ okay?”
The children nodded in a rush of conspiratorial understanding.
“Can we find new hiding places now?” the boy on Dennis’ right asked in an urgent whisper.
“Yeah!” The girl agreed. “If he comes back he won’t look where he looked before, so we should go there!”
“No, we stay here,” insisted Dennis.
“But then he’ll find us all!”
“Not if we stick together,” Dennis reassured them. “If we’re in four different places and he finds one of us, he’ll know the others are close. This is best, trust me.”
The others looked between each other uncertainly, but couldn’t seem to come up with any more arguments.
“Wh-who is ‘it’ again?” the timid boy on Dennis’ left asked.
Dennis turned to him with a smile. “My big brother Collin. He’s a sixth year, so he knows the castle really well. That’s why we’re being so careful.”
“Is he a muggle too?” the other boy nosed in.
“Muggle-born. We’re both wizards.” Dennis explained with measured patience. “Our parents don’t have magic, but that doesn’t change that we do.”
The four students let out a cry of shock together as the room around them seemed to tremble, the cauldrons on all sides clattering in their precarious stacks. All three sets of young eyes snapped to Dennis, asking the same unspoken question.
“It’s alright.” Dennis tried to control the shaking in his own voice as he reassured them. “It’s just that - we’re right under the Great Hall. And there must be the storm outside, so we’re, uh, getting the thunder from the real storm and the Great Hall storm.”
The boy to the right seemed to relax, but the boy to the left gripped at Dennis’ hand.
“I’ve never felt thunder like that in the common room,” the girl whispered.
“Well,” the confident boy on the right answered. “There must be a charm to protect the common room. No need to protect this closet, right?”
“That’s right.” Dennis noddeed.
“Can we go there then? The protected common room?” the girl pleaded, already shifting her legs to stand up.
“We stay here,” Dennis repeated with a firmness that kept her seated. “We can’t let anyone see us.”
“Anyone?” the girl’s eyes widened, terror seeming to crawl in through their edges.
“Colin. We can’t let Colin see us, cause then he’ll win.” Dennis clarified, “But if someone else sees us, they might tell Colin, and then he’ll win too. So it’s safest here, you see?”
The boy on the right and the girl nodded. The boy clutching Dennis’ hand just tightened his hold. “How long do we have to stay here?” he moaned.
Dennis squeezed his hand in as reassuring way he could manage. The boy’s palms were beginning to sweat and his fingernails threatened to dig at Dennis’ flesh, but the older boy did not pull away. “As long as it takes - until the game is over.”
“When he finds us?” the girl asked, careful to keep her voice at a whisper.
“Or maybe he won’t find us and we’ll win.” Dennis put on an encouraging smile. “But we have to be really good at hiding for that to happen. Can you do that?”
The girl nodded hesitantly. Dennis looked to the boy at his right, who grinned with playful confidence. He then turned to the last boy, who gripped his hand a tight as ever. He did not agree or object, but Dennis saw in his frightened silence a determination to comply.
The walls shook again, but this time it was not with footsteps or false thunder, but with that terrible, cold voice. As the words penetrated the room and their ears, all hope for keeping the children quiet was lost. There was whimpering and crying and screaming, and Dennis had no certainty which sounds were coming from the first years and which were coming from him.
“You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me you will all die, one by one.”