//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8:  Rescue 
// Story: Gift of Divinity 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Hermione yawned as she and Hailey followed the rest of the Gryffindor first-years up towards their tower.  “I’m tired,” she muttered sleepily, hugging Hailey’s arm as they walked.
“Yeah, me too,” Hailey agreed, before letting out a sigh.  Professor Dumbledore had introduced the depressed girl as the head of the new research department, and informed the school that anyone wishing to join the research department should come to her…  and she hadn’t reacted at all.
Hermione looked up at her.  “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Hailey shook her head.  “I don’t know,” she answered stiffly.  “Something just feels…  wrong.”
Then, quite suddenly, she stopped, looking down a side passage.  “It’s…?” she muttered, then took a deep breath.  “It’s that way.  I’m going- are you?”
Hermione shook herself awake.  “Um…  Yeah.”
“C’mon.”  Hailey walked briskly down the passage, with Hermione on her heels.  Every once in a while, she accelerated- and she sometimes made sharp corners, navigating like she knew exactly where she was going.





“...  Hangon,” Percy muttered, counting first-years as they passed him through the Portrait Hole into the Gryffindor common room.
“What is it?” Erica Sutton, the other new Gryffindor Prefect, asked, from the outside of the portrait hole.  She’d been waiting for him by the Portrait Hole.
“Nine,” Percy told her, as the last one passed him.  “Nine first-years just walked past me into the common room.”
Erica scowled.  “We’ve got eleven.”  She sighed.  “Boys or girls?”
“Five boys, four girls,” Percy told her.
“So they’re both girls,” she observed, turning back down the passage.  “I’ll look for them, you guide the rest to bed!”  She ran off.
Percy took a deep breath, and let it out.  She had deferred to him when they decided how they were going to get the first years to bed- and he hadn’t had anything in particular for her to do.
Now he knew.  One of them should have led from the front…  and the other brought up the rear.





Hermione’s tiredness faded away as she, like Hailey, gradually accelerated to a run.  It was a good thing Hailey was still holding her hand; if she hadn’t been, she probably would’ve been unable to run nearly as quickly.  They were already going too fast for Philomena to ride on her shoulder- and without the odd strength boost from touching Hailey or her wand, she would never have been able to run so fast.  On top of that, Hailey’s touch seemed to have an exhaustion-nullifying effect; neither of them were even winded, despite running across what felt like half the school.
Hermione had long lost track of where they were, and even what floor they were on.  Hailey had charged up so many stairs she was certain they were pretty high up- just like now, as she led the charge up a spiral staircase at a dead run, Philomena flying gracefully up behind them.
There was a door at the top- and when Hailey threw it open without breaking her stride…
Hermione froze up, staring at the scene before her in horror.
Hailey didn’t.  Their hands broke apart- and Hermione at once found herself collapsing to the ground at a dead run.
Before she hit the ground, though, she could see Hailey bolt across the huge outdoor landing like greased lightning, seize the ankle of the girl that had been in the middle of jumping off of it with the evident intent to kill herself, and pulled her all the way back onto the tower proper with a yell of determination.
Then she landed.  She felt her robes tear, and a sudden pain sprang up on her knee.  Both her hands hurt- and she was fairly sure her nose was broken from how she’d landed on it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she heard Hailey yell angrily.
Hermione rolled over and sat up to inspect her wounds.  “Ow,” she pouted, through the stream of blood coming from her nose.  It didn’t hurt very much at all- was that adrenaline?  Philomena landed softly on her shoulder, then laid her head on top of Hermione’s.
“Let me go!” the unfamiliar girl cried.  Hermione looked; it looked like the girl- who only had one hand, her right arm ended quite abruptly about halfway down from the shoulder- seemed to be struggling desperately to reach the edge.
“No,” Hailey answered.  “You are not allowed to die, you hear me?”
“Let go!” the girl yelled again.
“Sit,” Hailey commanded sharply
The girl sat straight away, looking flustered.  “Wha-?” she began, blinking confusedly.  Hermione almost gasped when she saw the entire right side of the girl’s face was spiderwebbed with scars- and her right eyeball was missing, making it a fleshy cavity in her face.  No wonder she’d been wearing an eye patch earlier.
“Hermione!” Hailey cried.  “I need your wand!”
Hermione blinked, and reached into her pocket for her wand.  Why did Hailey-?
When her hand touched her wand, she suddenly felt the pains on her knees, hands, and even her nose begin to fade.  Within seconds, she felt a little click in her nose…  and all the pain was gone.  She didn’t seem to be bleeding, either.
That wasn’t adrenaline.
She stepped up next to Hailey, and gave her her wand.  “What are you-?” she began.
Hailey took her wand…  and promptly stuffed it into the girl’s hand, before forcing her hand closed and clamping her own hands around it.  “Promise me,” she commanded the girl, “that you will not try to harm yourself.”
The girl struggled, but Hailey had her pinned against the wall.
“Promise me,” Hailey commanded again.
“I won’t!” the girl cried.
Hailey winced.  “Repeat after me,” she commanded firmly.  “I promise not to try to hurt myself.”
“No, I-!” the girl began.
“Repeat after me,” Hailey yelled, straight into her face.  “I promise not to try to hurt myself!”
Hermione flinched away from her intensity.  She hadn’t realized that Hailey could be so scary.
“I can’t!” the girl told Hailey.
“Repeat after me,” Hailey roared impossibly loudly.  “I promise not to try to hurt myself!”
Thunder rumbled overhead as Hermione sat down abruptly, still staring at Hailey.  A part of her mind wanted to argue that it couldn’t be thunder- it was a clear sky, after all- but the rest of her didn’t care.  She was too focused on Hailey.
“I- I-!” the girl stuttered, then finally let out a sigh.  “I…  I promise I will not try to hurt myself,” she muttered.





Percy Weasley paused in the middle of his pacing back and forth across the Gryffindor common room.  A sudden column of light had caught his attention, shooting up from what looked like the top of the tallest tower- the Astronomy tower.  “What the-?” he began, rushing to the window for a better look…  but the light was already gone.
He drew his wand, and cast a few quick spells to find out what was going on over there.
Then he gasped, cast the charm that let him tap into the Prefect Layer of the Castle Ward Communications Network, and focused on the Gryffindor channel.  “Erica!  The Astronomy tower!”
“What-?  Oh, Percy!”  It was evidently Erica’s first time using the spell too.  “I’m on my way.  Might take a few minutes, I’m in the dungeons right now- keep an eye out for me?”
Percy nodded, resisting the urge to respond to the evident amusement of the four older Gryffindor prefects that were also on the channel.  It was the two new Prefects’ job to ensure all the first years got safely up to bed on the first night- and it pained him to admit, even to himself, that he had failed.  “Will do.”  He paused.  “Weird column of light got my attention,” he told her.  “No idea what caused it.”
The other prefects’ amusement shifted instead to curiosity.
“Column of light?” one of them asked- Aurora Lowe, the Head Girl.  “Weird.  Lemme know what you find out?”
“Er…  Yeah, will do,” Erica muttered.





Erica Sutton, an active Prefect for almost eleven hours, stopped, clutching at a stitch in her side, when she reached the top of the stairs in the tallest Astronomy tower.  It had taken her rather longer than she’d liked- she’d had to slow down and even take a quick break to recover her breath.
The door was standing open…  and there were three girls, leaning against the parapet.  No…  Only two of them were.  One, she recognized instantly as Sunset Shimmer.  She had all her hair back- and, it seemed, her right arm as well.
The second, right in the middle, was identifiably a first-year, by her lack of House patch above her nametag, but she couldn’t remember what her name was.
The third was easily recognizable- it was the girl with the phoenix, whose name she also couldn’t remember.  She was fast asleep, head resting peacefully on the second one’s shoulder, despite the blood down the front of her robes.
Erica blinked.  The phoenix girl wasn’t the only one leaning on the middle girl’s shoulder- no, Sunset was too.  The middle girl had one arm around each girl, idly stroking the phoenix girl’s hair while the phoenix napped in her lap.  The arm around Sunset wasn’t doing much- only resting on her shoulders.  It looked like Sunset had lost her eye patch, but managed to mend her face.
Then she heard what Sunset was telling the middle girl about…  and nearly stopped breathing in shock.
“Are you there yet, Erica?”
Percy’s voice, in her mind, couldn’t have come at a less convenient time…  but at least she managed to survive the surprise.  “Quiet!” she snapped back.  “We’re talking Sunset down from suicide over here!”
Percy’s stunned silence was all she needed to hear.





Erica would later have to admit that, even in her wildest dreams, she had never imagined that her first major task as a Prefect would take nearly so many hours out of her night.  She’d also never imagined that she’d have a good conversation with Sunset- but eventually, she, Sunset, and the black-haired girl- she still didn’t know her name- were chatting about much lighter subjects… and Sunset actually seemed happy!
Finally, Sunset sighed, looking up at the moon, shining overhead.  “Anyways…  We should probably head to bed before the sun comes up.”  She glanced past the black-haired girl.  “Your friend seems to have gotten the memo,” she observed.
The black-haired girl chuckled, and gently prodded the phoenix girl awake.  “Hermione,” she said, as the girl began to stir.  “Hermione, wake up, it’s time to go to bed.”
The phoenix girl blinked confusedly.  “Why would I wake up to go to- OH!  Oh!  Um!”  She was definitely wide awake now.  “Hailey!  How did-?”  She paused, looking at Sunset.
The black haired girl- Hailey?- smiled.  “All good,” she told her friend.  “But it’s about three in the morning right now, so…”
Erica winced, and looked at her watch.
The girl was right.
“Wha-!?” she gasped.  “Oh, that’s going to hurt.  Classes start at eight.”
“We’d best get you three to bed, then,” Sunset told them, rising to her feet- then looked at the black-haired girl.  “You’re Hailey, then?”
Hailey nodded.  “Yep.  This is Hermione.”
Sunset nodded.  “I’m Sunset Shimmer, Head of the Hogwarts Research Department, and this…”  She paused, looking at Erica.  “Oh, I see you’ve become a prefect, Erica.  Congratulations.”
Erica blushed and averted her eyes.
Sunset laughed.  “And thanks, Hailey, for, ahh, stopping me, earlier.”  She sighed.  “Probably would’ve been the biggest mistake I’ve made yet.”
Hailey chuckled as well.  “About time we start fixing them, then, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, about time,” Sunset agreed, then paused.  “Oh, and Hermione?  I believe this was your wand?”  She held out a wand that had a faint white glow to it.
“Huh?  Oh, yeah, thanks,” Hermione muttered, accepting it- causing the glow to intensify- and pocketing it.
“And, um,” Sunset looked at Erica, then back at the two girls.  “Ten points to Gryffindor, each,” she told them.  “For…”  She sighed, and looked at Erica.  “For literally saving the life of staff.”
Erica blanched.  “L-Literally?” she gasped.
Sunset nodded.  “I was…  er, in the middle of jumping off when they arrived,” she told her, averting her gaze.  “I don’t know how they did it, but they pulled me back onto the tower and slapped some sense back into me, even before you arrived.”  She smiled.  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still thankful for you too.”
“Then-!” Ercia blinked, the weird column of light Percy had mentioned crossing her mind.  “Did…  Did you see what caused the column of light up here?”
Sunset blinked.  “Column of light?” she asked, confused.
Hermione scowled.  “Column of light…?” she muttered.
“No idea,” Hailey told her.  “Saw the column, but nothing to create it.  Perhaps it was some kind of divine intervention?”