Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Author's Note: Written for the Hunger Games Competition on HPFC using the word prompt, emotion prompt, dialogue prompt, genre prompt, and subject prompt.

When in doubt, write DH-at-Hogwarts!Ravenclaws - my motto.

April 1998

Anthony couldn't sleep.

It wasn't exactly a new problem; sleep didn't come easily to any of the Hogwarts students this year, not with everything going on. This particular night, however, it wasn't the normal concerns and worries that kept him up.

Tonight, it hit much closer to home.

The Carrows had thrown a first-year girl in the dungeons for mouthing off during class. She wasn't the only first year to have gotten detention so far, but she was the first that they had decided to keep down there for hours at a time. It was no surprise that the D.A. members had decided to mount a rescue mission; they would take her out of the dungeons and bring her to the Room of Requirement.

Morag MacDougal and Michael Corner had volunteered for the rescue mission.

Anthony sighed. Both Morag and Michael had grown more impulsive and fervid this year. One year ago, he would have described them both as detached, intelligent, and almost calculating. Now they rushed into things without thinking, putting themselves on the line for the D.A., getting detention for the sake of rebelling.

Anthony preferred to stay behind the lines. He was the Ravenclaw Healer, responsible for helping the students in his House that had gotten hurt in detention. The Carrows had made it nearly impossible for people to get help from Madam Pomfrey - they wanted the students to suffer - and so the responsibilities of helping the injured had fallen on a couple of the seventh-years. Susan Bones was in charge of Hufflepuff, and Fay Dunbar from Gryffindor. They were good at what they did, but it was still overwhelming - they were all supposed to be children for one more year. This was never part of the plan.

He was just starting to doze off when a wild-eyed Morag burst into the boys' dormitory.

"They have Michael," she said.

Anthony looked over at the sleeping forms of the other two boys in the dormitory, Kevin and Terry. They didn't need to be woken up. He hated to even think it, but if Michael was in the Carrows' hands, there was nothing that they could do. Let them sleep - he and Morag could inform everyone in the morning. "Let's go to the common room," Anthony said quietly. He put a robe on over his pajamas and guided Morag down the stairs. She collapsed into one of the chairs, and he sat opposite her. "Tell me what happened," he said.

"We got down to the dungeons," Morag said. "We were getting the chains off of the girl when we heard the Carrows coming. Some patrol probably spotted us going down there, I guess. I Disillusioned myself and the girl, and then..." She took a deep breath. "Michael told us to leave him there. Said the priority was freeing the firstie, and he would be able to distract the Carrows long enough for me to get her up to the Room without being caught. The thing is, I didn't argue. I just took the girl and ran like hell."

"That's what he wanted," Anthony said. "He wanted you two to get out safely. That first year needed to get out of there, Morag. An eleven-year-old can't handle as much punishment as one of us can. And one of you needed to go with her, to get her into the Room of Requirement. You just had four days of detention, and you need to give your body a rest, so Michael was the better choice to stay there and distract them."

Morag shook her head. "Helping someone escape from detention is one of the worst offenses according to the Carrows. Michael is going to die, and it is entirely my fault."

"They wouldn't kill him," Anthony said, although he had his doubts.

The Carrows would never point a wand at a student and say the Killing Curse. That was over the line, even for them. Anthony was sure they were capable of killing, but he was equally sure that they knew better than to straight-up murder a student; that would be harder to explain than harsh punishments in detention.

But punishing a student so harshly that he eventually died from his injuries, injuries which fellow students might not be capable of healing? That was a lot easier to imagine.

Morag absentmindedly ran her fingers across one of the scars on her arms, scars that she had earned in a detention. Anthony watched her for a moment, silently. He knew how close she and Michael had been. He couldn't imagine the intense guilt that she must have been feeling. He couldn't imagine leaving Terry in the hands of the Carrows. What would he have done in the same situation?

"What do we do?" Morag asked suddenly. She looked lost, mournful - younger than she was. This year had aged everyone far too fast, but at that moment it seemed like the opposite. Morag - who Anthony had always thought of as strong - looked like a saddened, scared little child.

"I'll check on him in an hour," Anthony said. "I don't want to run into the Carrows down there - I want to make sure that they've left before I try to help him. I'll use the D.A. Galleon to get Fay and Susan - I want all the help I can get."

"It's going to be a really bad one, isn't it?" Morag said quietly. "One of the harshest detentions so far?"

"I don't know," Anthony said. "I'm not a Divination expert. I have no idea what they'll do, which is why I want Fay and Susan. It's just in case."

"I'm coming with you," Morag said. He nodded, not daring to contradict her. It wouldn't be the first time that he had had worried friends hovering around him while he helped an injured student. Having people around no longer distracted him like it had in September, when everything had started. Healing his injured friends had become a routine now; he had helped the others in his year so many times that he was able to push past his own worry and concern for them and focus entirely on what he needed to do.

September seemed like an eternity ago now. It was impossible to believe it was only early April, impossible to believe that seven months had passed. In the same way, it was hard to believe that they had two and a half months left, and then they were free. The Death Eaters were still in charge of the Ministry, of course, but in two and a half months, they would all at least be free from Hogwarts, free from the Carrows.

Anthony looked over at Morag again. "Michael will be fine," he said in the best reassuring tone he could come up with. "We'll all be fine. We'll all be out of here soon enough, and we won't have anything to worry about."

"I hope you're right," Morag said.