//------------------------------//
// Chapter 43:  Shiny! 
// Story: The Accidental Invasion 
// by computerneek 
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“It’s…  Complicated,” Hailey muttered.  Rita Skeeter was gathering material for a body article about how she ran the Student Instructor Program; the rumor mill had suggested there was a lot of unease about not having Dumbledore guiding the program.  “For starters, there are about thirty thousand eight hundred twenty six Student Instructors overall- or roughly seventy percent of the total student population, which stands at forty three thousand eight hundred and two right now.”  She sighed.  “That already gives us a very large degree of autonomy, since one man can’t possibly keep track of fifteen thousand five hundred sixty-one classes going on throughout the Castle.
“Naturally, neither can any one girl- there’s a reason we have an entire team and a hierarchy in place.  And in the end?”  She shrugged.  “Every week, we bring Dumbledore a detailed report, and summarize it for him as well.  If he tells us to do something, or to-!”  Her head snapped down to look at Sadarina, who had sucked in a sudden breath while whirling around to look down the Great Hall in the direction of the grounds.  The girl had, exactly as Hailey had expected, developed into a very smart little girl- though she was also very quiet.  She didn’t seem to like talking, and still followed Hailey everywhere.  When she’d asked why, Sadarina had blushed and buried her face in her robes.  Madam Pomfrey had reported that the patroni Hailey cast for her- which still made her smile- seemed to have extended the time she had to regenerate, but it still wasn’t going to be enough.
“What is-?” Hailey began, before Sadarina leaped from her seat.
“Come!” she cried, breaking into a dead run towards the entrance hall.
Hailey shared a brief glance with Rita, before also abandoning the empty Great Hall- everyone else had already gone upstairs to bed- and bolting after her, Rita right behind her.
Sadarina led them straight out the great oak front doors, and across the dark lawn towards one of the entrances.
“What is it?” Hailey asked, as they drew closer.  Sadarina didn’t answer- but she didn’t need to answer.  The Moon was out in full force tonight- and almost as soon as she asked the question, Hailey made out a strange figure lying on the ground between the two dementor guards.
Sadarina skidded to a halt in front of the figure, completely ignoring the dementors on either side of her- no, on one side of her.  The other one vanished in a puff of black smoke as she got close, though another swooped in a couple seconds later to take the post.  Interestingly enough, Hailey noticed that they weren’t drawing their rattling breaths- weren’t reducing their surroundings to icy sadness.
Hailey skidded to a halt behind Sadarina, who was looking at the figure.  It looked somewhat like a person.
Finally, Rita slowed much more gracefully.  “Lumos,” she announced.
Her narrow wand beam illuminated a woman, a leg and an arm missing and blood all over her robes, lying on the ground.
“Amelia Bones,” Rita gasped.  “What-?”
“She’s still alive,” Sadarina observed suddenly, then looked up.  “Hailey?  I need a patronus.  The strongest one you can muster.”
She blinked.  “A…  Patronus?”
She nodded.  “I can save her with it.”
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes.  She called up as many happy memories as she could, tacked on as many happy things as she could, and finally, concentrating on it with all her might, she drew her wand.
“Expecto Patronum.”





“Uh- Commander?”
“What is it?” Alaina asked, looking ‘up’ at where Harmon was in the observation blister.
“You might want to come look at this.  It’s…”  She trailed off.
Alaina sighed, and gently launched herself into the observation blister next to her, peering out the windows.
She saw it.
She ‘raised’ her camera- though one could hardly call it ‘raised’ in the lack of gravity aboard the International Space Station- and snapped a photo.  The entirety of Europe was hidden by a very bright silver glow.
She pushed herself back down wordlessly, and reached for the communicator.





Professor Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, leaning closer to his office window before he closed it for the night.  There was a glint of light, way down on the grounds.  It was moving, too.
He scowled, drew his wand, and was about to perform the spell that would tell him who or what was out there when he suddenly didn’t need to.
Hailey was right.  It was blinding.  And silver…  very silver.
He pulled the curtains closed and took shelter against the wall next to the window while he waited for it to fade.
It seemed to go on, and on, and on.  Finally, it was over a minute after it first appeared that it went away.  He pushed the curtains open again and looked- but alas, he couldn’t see anything; his eyes had adjusted to the brightness!





Rita blinked several times to try and remove the stars from her eyes once Hailey’s ridiculous patronus disappeared.  She managed it- though the beam of light from her wand looked feeble and dim by comparison.
She gasped.  Amelia’s clothes were still shredded and bloody, but her missing limbs were all back, and her skin looked pristine.  That level of repairs were flat-out impossible; once a limb was lost, the limb was lost, though magic could easily create a working prosthetic.  There was a potion to restore hands- but it didn’t work for elbows or knees.  So how had Sadarina done that with a patronus?
“Woah,” Hailey muttered.  “That was…  weird.  So- Oh wow.  How is she now?”
Even Sadarina seemed to be struck with wonder- she was staring at Hailey in awe.  She blinked, and looked down at Amelia.  “Oh.  She’s…”  She paused.  “Recovering.”
Then Rita looked up, at the two dementors still standing on either side of the entrance.  “Doesn’t…  Doesn’t a Patronus drive Dementors off…?”
Hailey looked up.  “Huh?  …  Yeah, that’s strange.  But last time I did that, I resurrected Sadarina, so…”  She shrugged.  “Anyways.”  She looked back down.  “How about we get her up to the Hospital Wing to recover?”





“Is anyone dead or dying?”
“Not anymore,” Sadarina answered promptly, drawing her attention.
“You can talk?” Madam Pomfrey asked.  That was the very first words she’d ever heard the girl utter.
She only nodded.
So Madam Pomfrey looked up at her companions- Hailey and Rita, who were carrying what looked like an unconscious Amelia Bones.  “What happened?” she asked.
“No idea,” Hailey answered her promptly.  “She was in about twelve different pieces when we got there, then Sadarina put her back together with a Patronus.”
“With a…  Patronus.”
“Yes.”
She looked at Sadarina.  “You’re a very strange girl, you know that?”
She smiled.  “I know.”
She sighed, looking up at Hailey and Rita.  “Right over here, please.”  She guided them to an empty bed, and drew her wand to start scanning her.
It was…  It was confusing.





Hailey tried not to fidget while she watched Madam Pomfrey look the woman over.  She felt like she should recognize the name, but she didn’t.
It took the nurse a very, very long time- and even then, she seemed very confused as she turned away.  “Hmm,” she muttered.  “Sadarina?  Do you mind if I-?”
Sadarina nodded.  “Go ahead.”
It seemed to take yet another forever, before Madam Pomfrey seemed to be satisfied with her results.
“Well,” she muttered, looking at Hailey.  “You know that…  energy, that Sadarina is using to keep herself functioning?”
Hailey nodded.
“She now has so much of it I can’t see how she could possibly run out before she finishes healing.”  She sighed.  “And wizards don’t have any of that energy…  yet Amelia has about as much as she does.”
She scowled.  “So she’s okay?”
She shook her head.  “She will be.  Aside from being, ah, in twelve different well-managed pieces underneath her pristine appearance, she’s also fighting with what looks like a curse of some sort.  I’m no cursebreaker- but it’s fading and she’s not, so it should be only a matter of time.”





“Hey Ginny?”
Ginny looked.  It was Monday evening after the final class had let out- and Hailey had run into her in an empty corridor.  She felt her face warm up, but the blush was only slight; she was getting better about that.  “Mm?”
“How do you take care of your wings?”
She blinked, her face heating up like a stovetop.  “Wh-What?”
“Well,” Hailey smiled.  “I have wings now too, so could you teach me how to take care of them?”
“How- How do you have wings?”
Next to her, Ariel broke out in a fit of giggles.
“I ascended,” Hailey answered shortly.  “Harmonia doesn’t like things like messy wings, so I haven’t asked her why just yet.”
She could only stare.