High Alert [Hogwarts Staff, Order, Magical Law]

[Rubeus Hagrid]

"Come on Fang, time fer bed," Hagrid said while shutting everything closed within his little hut. It was late at night and Hagrid had just finished planning his class for the upcoming term. It took a lot of thinking, but he knew it was going to work. He wanted to start with the Hippogriff and then slowly move over towards other species. Some that are intriguing to the students. It was just going to take some time to plan them properly. Fang was about to go to his spot when immediately he began whining here and there. Hagrid began getting into his cot placed his head on his pillow. "Fang, shu' it!" he said, trying to relieve his stress although Fang wasn't helping.

Fang didn't stop whining but instead he began to bark softly every now and then but would still whine. Hagrid began tossing and turning and placed his pillow on top of his head to try to silence the noise. When he couldn't take it, he leaned forward and looked at Fang who was at the door. Fang was laying down, but quickly sprouted up and scratched at the door. Hagrid looked at Fang and knew that he had to check and see what was going on. Fang never really did anything like that unless reasonable. Hagrid got out of bed and walked over to his door. "Now, I be' there's nuttin out here," he said, and he grabbed his usual bow-n-arrow and walked outside. Fang ran outside and looked around the hut to see if anyone was around. When Fang did a full circle and reached back to Hagrid, he looked down. "See?" Hagrid said, and he sighed, patting Fang on his head. "It's a goo' boy," he said, giving a small smile. "Now, can we ge' teh bed?" he asked, and as he was walking inside, he immediately heard a loud bang. Hagrid looked up in the sky and saw a red light that flickered and left, only leaving smoke behind. "Bloody hell!" he shouted and he ran into his house to grab his coat and put on his shoes.

Hagrid needed to do something. He couldn't go out there alone, it'd be suicide. He had to go and warn Sirius and the others about what was happening. Something like that never happened; especially in the forbidden forest. "Fang, stay," he said to his dog and Hagrid waddled towards the castle. He knew where to find Sirius, which was on the first floor. Fortunately, his legs could carry him that far without getting extremely tired. He began to look around the corridors until he finally saw him. His heart filled with rush. "Siriu-" he paused to catch some air. "Sirius, ou'side. Sumtin's not righ'" he explained, "in teh fores'" he added, letting him know where. He then turned around and looked at Sirius. "It's teh mark of teh Death eaters," he finally said, looking concerned.

[Sirius Black]

He was doing his rounds, as was normal for this particular time of day. The older students were still out and about, but the younger students' curfew had already been put into effect and he was just monitoring the doors to see who came in and out. Occasionally, his eyes would wander over the hour glasses, and each time they did, he hated Severus Snape just a little bit more. Gryffindor hadn't been so behind since... Well, since before he became Deputy Headmaster. He could not think of a single year that hadn't won since then... But now it looked like there would be little hope of catching up unless Oliver Wood's team decimated the opposition this year. He was kind of wishing that to happen.

Arms crossed, he looked up at the moving stair cases and decided to head up for a bit before coming down to enforce the next curfew. He had his foot on the stair when he heard his name being shouted and he turned around quickly, shocked to see Hagrid moving so fast. He stepped back down and approached him, his arms falling to his side. "What's wrong?" he asked right away.

The color drained from his face. A Dark Mark!? So close to Hogwarts? "Hagrid... inform Argus. Ask him to do a quick sweep of the grounds and then close the doors. Any staff member you run into, direct them to the Great Hall!" Sirius turned on his heel and ran for the open doors, grabbing the nearest prefect who happened to be a Hufflepuff and saying, "Get everybody to their dormitories right now." The student nodded and in order to lend some help, Sirius walked in and said to the students still lingering, "Everybody, curfew starts now!"

He waited for it to empty before heading to the fire place. Grabbing some Floo Powder, he stuck his head in and called for Grimmauld Place. He looked around until he saw somebody wandering about and shouted, "Lucien! Lucien! I need you to send word to the Order of the Phoenix and have them come directly to the Great Hall. A Dark Mark has been sighted above the Forbidden Forest." Lucien sprung to action, and with a quick salute set to work. Next was the Ministry. Gabriel Hudson was the one who he managed to get a hold of and within the next minute, Jeremy Scudder, Gabriel Hudson, and a handful of Aurors and Wizarding Hit-Men were in the Great Hall.

"Set up a perimeter around the grounds," Sirius ordered. "Argus should already be sweeping. Scudder, do a final sweep just to make sure no students were missed. Patrol until I've sent word. Hudson, Reeves, lock all of the doors. Nobody goes out and nobody comes in without Ministry or Hogwarts clearance. Shacklebolt... Please gather all of the staff members and send them here."

Shacklebolt nodded and went on his way, leaving Sirius with a few Order Members and Ministry workers as they waited for the staff to arrive.

[Persephone Silverton]

Persephone stared down at the tattoo on her arm, how it seared and stood out. She knew for Severus it would be showing as well... And she knew that both of them would have reasons for not showing up. More than one for each... And right now, all that mattered was finding Minerva and explaining what was going on. But as she made her way across the bridge, her eyes caught sight of something very familiar... Something that had never caused her panic or alarm until this moment. Her heart leaped in her chest and she walked closer to one of the arches, looking at it with wide eyes. And then suddenly, she tore into a run, heading back to Hogwarts proper.

By the time she arrived, it seemed as though somebody had already informed... somebody who could get things done. Aurors were everywhere! Literally. It was there that she bumped into Kingsley Shacklebolt who froze when he saw her, reaching for his wand as though by instinct. He must have remembered at the last moment that she was a faculty member and he stopped and gave her a hard glare. "Sirius Black has asked that all staff members meet in the Great Hall."

She stood up straight and nodded. "Thank you," she said in a crisp voice before hurrying around him and striding in. She walked directly up to Sirius, her eyes sharp, her posture rigid. "Has anybody been out to the forest?" she asked. "I suppose once all of the faculty have been accounted for, we could rule them out?" There was no mistaking the meaning though. The Dark Mark was there, so it meant that somebody had died. But who? Persephone prayed that it was not a student.

She could see Sirius was considering her, trying to figure out if she was a friend or enemy right now, and then his eyes looked passed her. She turned and saw Hagrid coming towards them. Probably the first to see the Dark Mark given his hut's location. "Has Minerva been informed?" she asked, not really directing her question at either of them in particular.

[Rubeus Hagrid]

Hagrid nodded when Sirius had asked him to go and search for Argus. He wasn't a fan of the old bugger, but this wasn't whether he was a fan of anything. He needed to make sure that everything was secure within Hogwarts. He walked away from Sirius and Persephone who had appeared right when he turned the corner. Hagrid knew that Argus would be on the second floor. He walked up the stairs and waited in the middle, letting the staircase move from the third floor to the second. The stairs were always a hassle, but after so many years, Hagrid had gotten used to it. Immediately, when he reached the second floor, he saw Filch's cat. It meowed and Hagrid stayed where he is.

Moments later, Argus had appeared and looked at Hagrid with large, beaming eyes. "What is it?" he asked, not really caring about his attitude as usual. "Sirius needs yeh to do a quick sweep," he said, giving him specific orders from Sirius. "Do it quick. Cuz there's trouble," he said, and Hagrid pointed at the window between a few pictures and saw a blurry picture of what seemed to be the Dark Mark. Filch took a deep breath and nodded. "Aye," he said and he walked away.

Hagrid walked down the stairs, letting it move once again and went back to the Great Hall where he saw Persephone and Sirius still there. "I let 'em know," he said, and stood there waiting for what was next on the list to do. It seemed that now all they can do was wait for those in the order. He just hoped that nothing extreme was happening while they wait.

[Minerva McGonagall]

Minerva looked up when a student entered her office. "Mr. McKinley?" It was a fifth year Gryffindor student, his face ashen. She stood up instinctively at the sight of him. "What is it?" Finally the student seemed to have found his voice. "Professor, I was out on the school grounds and I saw - I saw the Dark Mark." Her eyes widened considerably as it hit her. The Dark Mark. Near Hogwarts or, heaven forbid, in Hogwarts. "McKinley, please go to your common room."

When she left her office the corridor was deserted. It was an eerie silence that stretched from one end of the hall to the next. She made it to the Great Hall where she saw, with great relief, that Persephone and Sirius were talking amongst themselves in hurried voices. "Sirius," she said and walked across the hall and over to his side. "I heard... is it true?" The expressions on the faces told her as much. But she did not want to believe it. It could mean that a student was dead. "The Dark Mark?"

[Sirius Black]

He ignored Persephone as much as he feasibly could. Truth was, he wasn't all that comfortable speaking with her considering that, as far as he knew, she was in on this entire thing. But when McGonagall walked in, he stepped ahead of the Head of Slytherin and nodded. "Hagrid spotted it and let me know right away. I already have a team of Wizarding Hit Men sweeping the grounds and the Aurors are covering all exits, including ones that I doubt they'd know about. Priority, of course, is to see to the student's safety. But once everything has been secured, I will lead a team into the forbidden forest to conduct a search where the spell has been cast."

[Remus Lupin]

"What's she still doing here?" Remus asked in a not too friendly voice, as soon as he reached the throng that was Sirius, Minerva and her. He felt that addressing Sirius instead of Persephone would add further insult to the question, so he did just that. To say that he had had a bad morning would be a lie. It had been a terrible morning, afternoon and now, evening. There were a number of things that he liked the numerous heads that popped up in his floo network linked, Ministry of Magic approved fireplace to say. That there was a Dark Mark in the nightsky at Hogwarts School, was definitely not one of them.

So he felt that after missing out on what could have been a delightful, adequately uneventful supper, he had earned the right to be pissed at someone. In his view of things, Persephone Silverton was responsible for all of this. He still did not quite understand how Minerva trusted her. He liked McGonagall and he truly did want to believe that she had finally lost her marbles, after all, she wasn't the youngest anymore.

[Persephone Silverton]

She was getting extremely annoyed. For men so intelligent, it certainly took them forever to catch on. Perhaps that spoke to her own acting ability, but still. "Why am I still here?" she said, turning to face him, straightening out as if to make herself taller, not that it mattered when she stood between such giants of men. "Obviously since you're unwilling or unable to use that mind of yours with which you have thus far prided yourself so undeservingly, I will elucidate my position and what it entails. I have been working for Professor McGonagall since Gabrielle was murdered. I have been feeding her information for months now, including the bit about where Bellatrix Lestrange plans on using Potter's DNA to brew a polyjuice potion. For these same months, my mission, in addition to filtering the plans of the Death Eaters into the order through her, was to locate and rescue James Potter. That is why I am still here, but it would seem like tonight, none of it will matter. I will have no choice but to out myself if a student is involved."

She turned away from him and looked at Minerva, ignoring the anger that still coursed through her veins at his inability to see passed his own narrow minded judgments. "My suggestion is that the students either be brought here to the Great Hall where the Aurors can guard them and where the professors can take a head count. If it is a student, we need to find out who it is. I would ask that somebody else check after my own house. If this is indeed a Death Eater plot, perhaps my services would be best utilized with me conducting a search of the Forbidden Forest myself. They think I am still their agent of death... None of them would turn their wands against me."

And if they did... Persephone was more than capable of defending herself.