Merlyn Llewellyn chewed her quill as she bent over the sheet of parchment. Straight light eyebrows coming together in decision, she bent down and scratched out a line, correcting it and then leaning back to survey her work. Her strawberry-blonde, corkscrewing hair flopped over her eyes, and she pushed it back impatiently. Usually, the corners of her mouth curved upwards in a cheeky smile, but now she was uncharacteristically focused. For her friends, this signified one thing: she was up to trouble. An incurable mischief-maker, her OWLs had suffered the previous year in the time after the Weasley twins’ departure as she struggled to become Howarts’ most infamous prank-puller.

A most unremarkable girl, she fitted the post perfectly; no one would suspect the short, stocky witch-in-the-making of being anything more than an ordinary Hufflepuff student. Only when the viewer looked closer did they see the glint of mischievous intelligence in her eyes, and the quirky curve of her thin lips. Her Transfiguration and Charms teachers often praised her for her prowess with a wand, until they realised that it was that same prowess that changed their hair green when they weren’t watching, or made the sheets they were handing out full of nursery rhymes instead of whatever they were studying. But the students appreciated the laughs - these days, when murders were in the paper every other day, and ‘You-Know-Who’ was whispered fearfully in the corridors, amusing their peers had become a way of dealing with the terror and uncertainty. And Merl dealt with it magnificently.

“Oi, Mischief-Making Merl! Bowtruckle toes, have we got news for you!” Merlyn accepted her title and their password (bowtruckle toes) with a royal inclination of her head as one of her many spies snapped to attention before her.

“Owen Cauldwell, isn’t it? What have you found? It had better not be news about Dean Thomas and his secret collection of Nifflers, I heard about that hours ago! Well?”

“Oh no, Miss Llewellyn, this is latest news, I promise! Terry Boot has been given detention for - and this is the bit that you won’t believe - being caught tying Dungbombs to the chandelier in Professor Binns’s classroom! And he put a Freezing Charm on them, so they wouldn’t go off ‘til the class after lunch!” gushed the eager third-year boy.

“Hmm…” Merlyn considered this news as she tapped her quill against her chin. “So, Terry Boot’s trying his hand at Prank Pulling too, is he? I’ll bet he was the one who threw that Fanged Frisbee in Trelawney’s Divination class as well… Well, Cauldwell, you’ve proven yourself useful! Now… what can I give you as a reward?” She regarded the eager boy critically.

“Now, if my memory serves me correctly - which it always does - you fancy that Orla Quirke, Ravenclaw girl, don’t you?” The boy turned a bright red, mumbled something, and scrubbed at his nose. “No accounting for taste, eh, Owen? Next time, choose a Slytherin - believe me, they’re more fun. Ravenclaws may be smart but far too toey of the rules. But if you put a little extra into Orla’s pumpkin juice tomorrow, who knows what will happen?”

On this enigmatic note Merlyn handed the still-blushing boy a bottle of pink potion, with Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes painted in gold on the side.

Slytherins are more fun? Whispered a treacherous part of her mind. What would you know? For all your rebelliousness, you’ve never even had the guts to more than look at a boy, and what boy would look at someone like you?

“Oh, be quiet,” Merlyn muttered under her breath. “It’s like I can never obey or agree with anyone, even myself! Keep this up and everyone’ll think I’m mad, which I don’t think I am and that’s what matters right? Anyway, boys just complicate things. I definitely don’t want anyone hanging over my shoulder, that’d just be annoying. So shut up.”

As the boy scuttled away clutching his love potion, Rosamunde Porlock walked into the library where Merlyn was “studying”, grey eyes fixed intently on the parchment in front of her.

“Hey Merl, what’re you hatching now?” Rosamunde was the beauty of Hufflepuff. Her long, straight brown hair framed an exquisite face with a full, red mouth and long lashes over stunning blue eyes. However, hidden behind this beauty was a contagious sense of fun, and this was what had made the two best friends ever since they had first set alight (accidentally, of course) their Care of Magical Creatures’ frilly robe sleeves. Now, almost at the end of their sixth year at Hogwarts, the two were nigh inseparable.

“Oh, Rosie, there you are. Mischief managed? She fell for it? Excellent. Phase Two can be put into action next Wednesday, I think. And you’ll never guess! I finally persuaded Potter to give me a glimpse of his Marauder’s Map, and there’s this ‘chanted doorway out of the Great Hall right into the Divination attic! I mean, I know someone let off a Fanged Frisbee there on Thursday, and by the way I think it was Terry Boot, but I have something much more interesting planned… You know that jinx you made up the other day? Well, if we go in the middle of a lesson and…”

They were still going over the finer details of the plot when Owen Cauldwell skidded back into the library half an hour later. A pink liquid Merlyn recognised as the love potion she’d just given him was sloshed all down his shirt, but he was flushed and panting and didn’t seem to notice it.

“B-bowtruckle’s toes! Miss Merl, I ran into Ron Weasley, with Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom, and they were looking kind of shifty, so I thought I’d follow them and then I got in front of them using the Relocating Corridor on the seventh floor. And then I hid behind the tapestry of the dancing trolls and I used an Extendable Ear and they said - they said - ‘I hope Harry’s alright’ - ‘Of course he is, he’s with Dumbledore’. And then Ron said, ‘Yeah, I s’pose it’s not him to worry about, it’s us, with Dumbledore gone anything might happen’ - and Ginny said, ‘At least it’s not just us, Tonks and Kingsley and other Members are here too’. So then Ron said ‘Still, Death Eaters aren’t exactly what you’d call easy pickings’ - and then I didn’t hear any more because everything went black - and it wasn’t just because I was behind the tapestry, real black, I reckon someone let off that Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. I heard heaps of people rushing by and I got myself untangled from the tapestry and I ran here and -” Alberich finally paused for breath before going on “- and I think that there are Death Eaters in the castle, I heard s-screams. They’ve gone to the Astronomy Tower!”

Merlyn and Rosamunde exchanged startled glances; then were on their feet and sprinting towards the Astronomy Tower, wands in their hands and hearts in their mouths.



Inside the Astronomy Tower they found pandemonium. Some of the witches and wizards there, yelling and casting spells before leaping back behind cover again, Merlyn knew were Ministry of Magic Aurors - her chain of spies also served to fill her in on the castle’s security. And there were a few students she recognised as from Gryffindor- Ron and Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom, and a Ravenclaw student, Luna Lovegood. Several teachers also fought - Professor McGonagall was firing off Stunning spell recklessly.

But the rest - the rest of the wizards and witches wore dark robes and masks. Death Eaters. Even as Merlyn and Rosamunde watched, eyes wide and out of breath, there was a crack, and all the Death Eaters save one big blonde one were running up the stairs. Cursing, the Aurors tried to follow, but they seemed to encounter an invisible wall. Neville Longbottom ran at it, and suddenly was thrown up into the air, and crashed down, lifeless on the staircase.

Meanwhile however, the remaining Death Eater was firing off curses, jinxes and hexes at an alarming rate; Merlyn could see that the rebounding jinxes would eventually hit someone and, terrified though she was, she leapt out of their niche in the stone wall and aimed her wand at the huge Death Eater.

“Expelli-” But before she could finish yelling her spell, her wand was knocked out of her hand as someone came running around the corner. It was Professor Snape. In her panic, Merlyn welcomed even this unsavoury ally.

“Sir, they’ve gone up to the top of the tower!” she gasped. The rogue part of her mind cringed. Sir? Sir? Since when did you call any teacher, especially him Sir? Snape charged straight up to where the barrier was, and she lost sight of him. Good riddance.

“Shut it, now is not the time!” Merlyn growled. Shaking her head, she snatched up her wand and took aim again. There - the Death Eater was such a large target that she couldn’t possibly miss.

“Expelliarmus!” This time her spell flew truly. It hit his wand; the hex he had been casting went awry, and all everyone cried in shock and ran for cover as the ceiling fell in. The dust was still clearing when Snape, followed by a boy she recognised as Slytherin student Draco Malfoy and chased by the band of Death Eaters, came tearing back down the stairs. Again, the air was thick with beams of light as curses were fired, and in all the yelling Merlyn wasn’t sure whether her spells actually hit anyone. Mercifully, the Death Eaters hadn’t noticed Merlyn and Rosamunde hiding in the shadows, and they seemed safe at the moment from being hit back.

Snape and Malfoy dashed past them, and Merlyn heard Snape grunt in pain as he tripped and hit the floor. But then he was gone, and Merlyn and Rosamunde each pressed themselves into the wall as they realised the fighters would soon be rushing past their little niche.

A Death Eater, his long legs eating up the distance between him and Snape, was suddenly illuminated by a glowing light, a curse from one of the wizards behind him. His arms jerked, and his legs simply stopped mid-stride, as the upper half of his torso just shattered, as if it had been made of glass and someone had thrown a stone at him. Merlyn clapped one hand over Rosamund’s mouth and one over her own, confining their screams of horror to their own heads. In a flash of understanding as clear as the curse shot at the exploded Death Eater, Merlyn realised that this wasn’t a game, it was real, people had died that night in the Astronomy Tower, and it could just as easily have been her. The world swayed, and had she not been tightly wedged between Rosamunde and the wall, Merlyn would have experienced fainting for the first time in her life.

After a few minutes, it became clear that there was no one else to come. Peering at the place where the fighting had been, Rosamunde rushed to the aid of those injured. Merlyn felt frozen to the spot: her years of daredevil mischief simply hadn’t prepared her for this. Dimly, she realised there was something on the hard stone floor in front of her. Crouching to pick it up, she saw it was a heavy silver locket, with an ornate S on the front.

“Professor Snape must’ve dropped it when he tripped,” she muttered absently, and slipped it into her pocket. She waited for the cynical part of her mind to whisper sarcastically, Well, why don’t you go the whole hog and keep it next to your heart, keeping a locket belonging to a teacher! But it didn’t come.

Dimly, she left Rosamunde and jogged, utilising every shortcut she could, to the Entrance Hall. Stepping out onto the dark lawn of the grounds, she saw a fire - Hagrid’s hut? - heard distant yells, and saw flashes of light. Spells. Eventually, all went dark and a relative calm descended on the grounds.

Turning dully, she noticed a crowd near the bottom of the Astronomy Tower and heard shocked wails. A tragic, melodious song wafted out into the night air and, with tears in her eyes, Merlyn Llewellyn realised that this was a night of terrible change. Lord Voldemort truly was back, and nowhere, not even Hogwarts, was safe.


A/N: Thanks a million to my fantastic beta Anna/Hermione_Rocks for making this story make sense!