‘We’re alive!’ crowed Ron, sitting up suddenly, and practically falling off of the tree he was on.
Harry sat up too, rubbing his eyes wearily. ‘We are?’ he muttered. ‘Don’t talk before we get out of this tree, Ron. We might be in Heaven. Or the other place.’
‘With the tree?’ laughed Ron, clambering down the tree. He stood on the ground for a moment and looked around before calling up to Harry: ‘We’re not in Heaven, mate!’
‘Great,’ murmured Harry sleepily, ‘we’re in the other place! I’m going back to sleep, then.’
‘No!’ said Ron, cupping his hands to his mouth. ‘We’re still in 1692!’
‘Exactly,’ muttered Harry, clambering off the tree. ‘That’s what I said.’
‘Nah, this place looks much nicer after a night’s sleep,’ said Ron cheerfully, hands on hips.
‘You mean you actually slept?’ said Harry, yawning. ‘You didn’t stay up half the night, afraid that some animal would come and have us for dinner?’
‘Nope,’ said Ron. ‘Shall we move on?’
‘I suppose,’ said Harry, picking up the small sack of food. ‘Lynn can’t be too far now.’
‘I hope not,’ Ron muttered.
The boys walked and walked some more, sometimes talking, sometimes keeping silent. It was tedious, to say the least and in the flat, look-alike landscape, they could have been walking in circles for all they knew.
Sometime during midday, Harry and Ron stumbled upon a trodden-down path, through snow, grass and weeds. Knowing they had very little to lose, they followed the path. For a long time it led nowhere but forward. Or maybe it was backward. But they really had no choice but to keep on it once they had decided to follow it.
Exhaustion and lack of food was taking hold of both Harry and Ron. Although they took regular breaks to eat the small amount of food Douglas had graciously given them, they knew they couldn’t finish the whole thing in one go (which is very much what they had wanted) and so they had portioned the food to last at least three days. This meant that neither of the boys got enough food, barely a few morsels in fact, which they ate as slowly as possible, hoping to trick their minds and stomachs into thinking that they had eaten a full meal.
Still, despite the fact that they were getting some food, Harry was beginning to notice that both he and Ron were wasting away, fast. Ron’s cheeks were so hollowed out that Harry found it difficult to look at his best friend and Ron’s hands and arms were thin, bony. Harry himself found that he could count each and every one of his ribs just be pressing his hand to his rib cage or looking down at himself (this examination had been a one time thing, for even the first time Harry had had the chance look at his own chest, the initial thought that had entered his mind was: We’re going to die.). His necessary jaunts to small grassy patches behind rocks (or not so grassy patches, as they sometimes were) were becoming increasingly difficult because he knew he’d have to see his bony legs; they hadn’t been much before the situation he was in these days, but were even worse now, with less muscle and fat than a bowtruckle’s wooden body. Harry was seriously trying to calculate how much longer they’d be able to survive without three square meals a day and a warm bed.
Meanwhile, Ron had developed a strange hacking cough. For sometime Harry had thought nothing of it. In the wintry weather they had been experiencing added to the lack of filling meals and eight hours of sleep, Harry would have been very surprised indeed of one of them hadn’t caught a cold or cough or something even worse. However when Ron began coughing up small amounts of blood, Harry became increasingly concerned. He was neither a doctor nor a Healer and he had no idea what to do. All he could suppose was that something had burst in Ron’s lungs and it would heal up on its own soon enough. Harry knew, though, that this was hoping for too much and the blood was a sign that something was seriously wrong.
What it came to, in the end, Harry thought, was that they would have to find Lynn soon. Soon should have meant in a few hours of walking, but it had been two days now since he and Ron had left Douglas’s old shack and they had reached nothing and had seen no sign of a city or civilization.
Had Hermione been with them, Harry was positive she would have thought of something. Although Hermione had never really been interested in the Healing part of magic or surviving in a desolate part of the world for days at a time, she was a treasury of helpful spells and information, and she was extremely clever. She would have thought of something. Not to mention that she was capable of lending a sympathetic ear and she might’ve paid more attention to Harry’s theories than Ron, or at least she would have had a logical explanation for his suppositions being wrong. All in all, Harry was seriously missing Hermione’s comforting presence, whether that comfort was because Harry was used to Hermione getting him out of tricky messes or he just enjoyed having her around as a friend. Harry was sure that Ron wouldn’t be so depressed either, had Hermione not died. Both he and Ron had accepted Hermione’s death to some extent. Nevertheless whenever Harry realized that he could not rely on Hermione’s wit to help them out of the present situation and that she would not be just over his shoulder, ready to offer words of comfort, the pang in his heart was inexplicably painful.
At the end of the third day since Harry and Ron had left Douglas’s empty shack, the sun was clearly visible, setting in the west, leaving pretty trails of purple and blue clouds behind it. Harry and Ron stopped under a group of trees all of which had shaken off any last traces of snow to the grassy ground. The weather was finally beginning to improve, with sunny mornings, soft breezes and no snow, and pleasant nights.
‘We could try and Apparate again,’ suggested Harry, breaking the dreary silence that had settled over them. He already knew the reply to his comment even before Ron had spoken.
‘We might get lost.’ It was as simple as Ron had put it. This time they had some idea of where they were heading and neither of them was willing to lose their way again.
Harry sighed and was just settling into the tedious, lethargic silence that seemed to surround the two friends so often, when he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye.
Simultaneously, he and Ron turned to the right. There, right in the middle of the grass, in full view stood a (horribly camouflaged) white rabbit. Harry’s heart jumped into his throat and his mouth filled with water. The rabbit was so plump, and delicious-looking.
He sucked in his breath and gave Ron a warning look. They had to time it perfectly if they were going to have any chance at even getting close to the scrumptious thing.
The rabbit stood on its hind legs, twitching its ears left and right, its black bead-like eyes staring straight at Harry and Ron.
It took only two seconds. Two minuscule seconds for the rabbit to lower it self on all fours; for Harry and Ron to spring simultaneously towards the animal; for the creature to feel the adrenaline in its veins and bound away towards the bushes; for Harry to grab a stone from the ground, almost unknowingly; for him to throw it with a brute force that he didn’t know he possessed; for the stone to hit the rabbit’s skull with dull clunk; for the rabbit to fall, dead; and for Harry and Ron to freeze, staring, amazed.
Staring, staring, staring…
Ron walked forward, lifted the limp rabbit. Blood from its head streaked the snow white fur.
From the bushes the rabbit had run towards, came a rustling.
Both Harry and Ron looked up.
And both saw three small bunnies, brown-colored and innocent.
And as the two friends’ eyes met, they each knew what the other was thinking.
Is this what they had been reduced to?
Is this what they would have to become to survive?