Chapter 8: Desperate Measures
The sun was just setting when Harry led Hermione out of the tube station at Kensal Green. They took a wandering route to the cemetery to make sure they weren’t being followed. As they passed a scrap yard full of rusting cars, Harry pointed across the street to a derelict square building that was surrounded by a high but deteriorating railing, broken iron gates and an overgrown courtyard.
“That was the orphanage where Tom Riddle grew up,” Harry said. “I visited it with Dumbledore more than fifty years ago in the penseive.”
They continued on to the cemetery, which was closed by the time they got there. But a locked gate is an insignificant obstacle to a young wizard and a witch. They glanced up and down the street to make sure they weren’t being watched, and then opened the gate with a spell. The smell of heather and lavender was heavy in the late summer air as they walked through a grove of leafy trees to a footpath. To the left was an interesting Georgian colonnade but Harry took Hermione to the right, past crumbling tombstones and over a deep ditch. The footpath was badly cracked up, they passed open tombs and fallen masonry. Harry stopped in front of a large but plain crypt that bore the inscription:
Suffer the little children unto me.
“It took me a whole day to find this crypt,” Harry said.
The name “Billy Stubbs” was on a long list beneath the inscription. There was no familial theme to the list of names, though Doe and Smith were fairly common. The dates indicated that all of the occupants of the crypt had died young, many in infancy.
Harry and Hermione slipped into the crypt and shut the door behind them. Hermione made a light with her wand while Harry cast a spell that revealed the tiny opening of a cave in the back corner of the crypt. They got down on their bellies and crawled into the cave. For more than two hundred yards they crawled through the cave, over sharp and slippery stones, through foul smelling mud, sometimes with bare inches between the mud and the jagged roof of the cave. Where the ground was firm there was a trail of dried blood.
At last they reached a small chamber with a ceiling that was high enough for them to get up onto their knees or to stoop uncomfortably.
“The dragon’s in a large chamber through that small opening,” Harry whispered.
Hermione wordlessly cast a spell that cleaned the mud off of them.
“We’ll just get dirty again,” Harry said very quietly.
“We’ll be able to move faster without all of that mud weighing us down,” Hermione pointed out in a hushed voice.
Harry carefully crawled through the small opening into the next chamber. The dragon appeared to be sleeping in the middle of the chamber but Harry knew this could be a deception. The shortest route to the small exit hole was straight across the middle of the irregularly shaped room. Unfortunately, this was where the dragon sat. The path along the right wall was shorter than the path along the left wall, but there were large rocks that they could hide behind along the left wall.
Harry motioned for Hermione to come into the dragon’s chamber and they began to sneak along the left-hand wall. They didn’t have to use their wands as torches because the room was dimly lit by a magical phosphorescence of some of the rocks, but there were many dark gloomy corners. They tried to be quiet but it was inevitable that one of them would stumble in the dark, especially when his attention was on trying to help her from stumbling in the dark. The dragon seemed to not notice the noise. They waited for several long tense minutes in the shelter of a rock before moving forwards again.
When they were mid-way between two sheltering rocks, the dragon suddenly raised his head. Harry and Hermione had less than a second to dive for cover before the giant beast shot fire at them. Hermione dove for the shelter of the rock they had just left. Harry dove for a gap behind the rock just ahead.
The dragon moved towards Hermione’s hiding place. Harry jumped out and hit the beast in the eye with the conjunctivitis curse. The dragon roared and turned to shoot fire into the hole where Harry was hiding. Taking a note from Cedric Diggory’s book, Hermione quickly transfigured two rocks into dogs. The first dog bounded towards the dragon barking and snarling and was quickly incinerated by a blast of fire. The second dog bolted towards the little hole that was the entrance to the dragon’s chamber.
As the dragon pounced on the retreating dog, Hermione dashed towards Harry. The dragon spun away from the dog and lashed out at her with claws as deadly as swords, catching her with a glancing blow on the back.
Harry jumped out from behind his rock and shouted at the dragon. A mouth full of teeth the size of daggers lunged at Harry. He aimed his wand at the onrushing gullet and shouted Bang. Then he leapt and rolled to avoid the bite. The dragon reared back and roared in pain.
Harry grabbed Hermione and pushed her towards the tiny hole that was the exit. A blast of fire came at them but Harry was ready with his wand. He caught the fire with an elemental control spell and molded the flames into a blindingly bright wall that stood between them and the giant reptilian beast. Then he darted through the hole after Hermione.
The next room was like a hallway with narrow little balconies on both sides. At the far end of the hall there was a small cage like an old fashioned elevator. As the two friends walked into the hall, the floor began to move beneath them back towards the hole where they had entered. Hermione looked at Harry in fear. She held her left arm pressed tightly up against her chest using her right wrist for support with her wand held above her left shoulder.
“Run!” Harry commanded pointing down the hallway towards the cage.
They began running towards the far end of the hall as flames appeared from the hole they had just crawled through. Harry let Hermione run in front of him. He could now see the awful wound that the dragon’s claw had made on her left shoulder blade. Blood ran down her back staining the shredded remains of her T-shirt and her pants. As they ran towards the cage making very little progress against the moving floor, ugly little faces began appearing on the balconies to their left and right. If Harry had ever had any sympathy for the gnomes that lived in the Weasleys’ garden, this hallway completely eliminated it. The gnomes began throwing stones at Harry and Hermione, turning the endless hallway into a pain-filled gauntlet.
Hermione held her wand uselessly over her shoulder focusing on running as fast as she could in spite of the pain from the wound on her back. Harry had learned from bitter experience that the shield charm did nothing to stop the stones that the gnomes were throwing at them. In fact the shield charm seemed to accelerate the stones towards their target. Harry used a simple levitation charm to make the stones curve away but he had to point his wand at each rock to deflect it and there were so many coming at them.
Harry could protect Hermione’s injured back fairly well just by running behind her so he focused his efforts on deflecting the stones that came at them from the front. Hermione raised her arms as best she could, tucked her head down and ran as fast as she could. A stone hit Harry hard on the left side of his head almost causing him to stumble. He glanced at the balcony to the left and saw a leering gnome with a slingshot taking aim at Hermione. Harry’s next levitation charm hit the gnome with the slingshot instead of the rock he held. The nasty little twerp was lifted over the balcony railing and dropped onto the moving floor which dragged him back to the hole that led to the dragon’s chamber.
On and on they ran desperately gulping for breath, their pulse pounding in their heads, their sweat dripping into their eyes, their sides aching. But Harry had ceased to merely deflect the oncoming stones he was now using the summoning charm to pull the gnomes off of their balconies. Battered and exhausted the two took a final lunge onto the stationary part of the hallway floor where the cage stood.
Harry pulled open the door of the cage and motioned for Hermione to huddle behind it. He then used the door of the cage as a crude shield to protect them from the stones being thrown at them by the angry gnomes. They had to get into the cage and ride in it to the next room but Harry knew they needed to catch their breath before doing so. If there had been any time during his first trip here when Harry thought he was going to die, it had been in that horrible little cage. As they huddled behind the cage door gasping for breath, the gnomes that Harry had knocked off of the balconies climbed back to their posts and the number of rocks being thrown at them increased.
Having stationary targets the gnomes began to coordinate their attacks, throwing their rocks in great volleys so Harry couldn’t block all of them with the cage door. The two friends began taking hits from the rocks. After a few short minutes of rest to recover partially from their exhausting run down the hall, Harry and Hermione used the gap between two volleys of rocks to dash around the door and squeeze into the cage. The cage was only big enough for one averaged sized person and Hermione moaned in pain as Harry pressed tight against her to pull the door shut.
The cage began to descend through the floor.
“Take a deep breath,” Harry warned as the cage was lowered into water.
The cage slowly sank to the bottom of a flooded chamber and then began to creep across the floor. It would have been so much faster to swim across the flooded chamber but the cage was the only way in or out. The cage moved so slowly. They waited, trying to be patient, trying to conserve their bodies’ limited supply of oxygen. The blood in the water attracted fish that bit at their fingers and any part of their flesh that pressed against confining bars of the little cage. They waited. Their lungs began to ache. Their vision began to fade. They had to breathe. Oh to have just a little air! The cage began to rise slowly, filling them with the hope of getting air and with doubt that they could survive long enough for it to finish its slow journey.
Their heads finally broke the surface and they gasped for air coughing and sputtering. When the cage stopped, Harry opened the door and they fell out. They lay on the floor soaking wet in a blood stained puddle, exhausted, aching and out of breath.
“The door is there,” Harry said, panting for oxygen and pointing at the sealed arch. His head was throbbing where he had been hit by a rock.
“I wish…I was…more… athletic,” Hermione gasped as she crawled over to the door and pulled herself up to her knees.
She stared at the runes in the dimly lit room. After a few minutes she idly slid her wand behind her left ear, like Luna Lovegood. She shifted her right hand to get a better grip on her injured arm. Harry managed to get up and walk over to stand behind her. Hermione’s T-shirt and bra strap were in tatters, severed by the dragon’s claw. What remained of her clothing was red with her blood.
“I can read the runes… but they’re nonsense,” Hermione said in a worried tone as she gasped for air.
“You’re bleeding badly,” Harry said looking at the deep gash on her left shoulder blade. This concerned Harry greatly. If she passed out, Harry could never get her out of the crypt alive. If she was unconscious in the cage, she’d drown. He could never run the gauntlet carrying her and he couldn’t get her safely past the dragon if he had to drag her. “I can cast a healing spell on you,” Harry began. “But I tried a healing spell on myself the last time I was here and it just made the bleeding worse.”
“Don’t try the healing spell Harry,” she said without taking her eyes off of the runes. “There’s a warning here of some sort…I think…cursed is….something, potion, hat, planet, something, the room…” she mumbled in confusion. “Make some crude bandage,” she suggested.
Harry took off his T-shirt and wrung it out. He tore off a section and placed it on Hermione’s wound. She winced but kept her eyes on the runes.
“I’m going to repair your bra strap,” Harry said awkwardly, “to hold the bandage.”
Hearing no objection, Harry pulled the pieces of her bra strap over the piece of cloth.
“Reparo,” he said.
Hermione’s bra and T-shirt crumbled to dust leaving her topless.
Harry stepped back in surprise and horror, shutting his eyes against the sight of Hermione’s naked bleeding back.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry,” Harry stammered. “I…I didn’t mean to do that.”
Hermione just snickered slightly and kept studying the runes.
“That’s it!” she said in triumph. “Cursed is …this room… backfire will… spells cast… for healing… or for repairing objects. I can read the runes!”
“That’s great!” Harry said. “But… you’re like… topless. What do I do?”
“Rip up your T-shirt and put a bandage on my shoulder,” she said. “Save a piece to make a sling for my arm. It hurts to lower it.”
Harry tore the remains of his shirt into strips and knelt behind her.
“The message is hidden by the insertion of nonsensical runes,” she explained. “The sensible runes are scattered, but there’s a pattern. It’s a standard numerological progression that relates birth signs to lucky numbers. It’s basic arithmancy”
“I’m going to have to…to…” Harry stammered nervously, “ um… like… touch you.”
“It’s alright,” she said. “Get the bandage on. We’re friends. It’s not like I’ve never taken your pants off while you were lying in my bed.”
“You took my pants off?” Harry said as he wrapped a strip of cloth across her bleeding shoulder blade, under her arm and between her breasts.
“With daddy’s help,” she added. “You were very bloody… Mom appreciated it when I used magic… to clean up,” she said in a distracted fashion as she concentrated on the runes.
Harry continued to bind her wound while she worked through the scrambled runes.
“To open the door you must give it an offering… ” she said, “…of blood…”
“I tried to give the door an offering of blood. I gave it plenty of blood,” Harry insisted. “It didn’t work.”
There was indeed a frightfully large stain of dried blood on the frame of the door.
Hermione turned on her knees to face him. Harry froze, not wanting to gaze into her eyes, not wanting to stare at her breasts.
“You must give the door some blood from the one you love,” she finished.
“Blood… from the one I love?” Harry exclaimed in dismay. “I can’t give the door blood from the one I love. I… I… I don’t love anyone!”
Hermione gave Harry of look of sorrow and pain. “Put a sling on my left arm so I can use my right to aim my wand please, Harry,” she said quietly.
“We might as well leave, before you pass out,” Harry said in defeat as he tied up Hermione’s arm. “Everyone I’ve ever loved has been murdered. I can’t love anyone. I won’t love anyone.”
“Do you have any cloth left?” Hermione asked.
“A bit,” Harry replied.
“Tie it around me like a bikini top, please,” she instructed, wincing in pain as she gingerly raised her injured arm with her good arm.
Harry did as instructed trying to not think about the fact that he was touching Hermione’s breasts.
“Poor Harry, you’ve been hurt so badly,” she said softly. “I know you have to avoid grief and self pity. You have to focus on the awful job that you have to do. But you mustn’t give up on love.”
She began to struggle to her feet, so Harry stood and helped her up.
“When the war with Voldemort is over, you’ll be free to love,” she said softly. “Don’t forget how.”
She reached out with her good arm and rather roughly rubbed the throbbing spot on the side of Harry’s head.
“OW!” he said. “What was that for?”
“You’re bleeding too,” she said.
She rubbed the frame of the door with her bloody hand adding a small amount of Harry’s blood to the large stain that was already there.
The door began to slide open.
“Oh Hermione,” Harry sighed. She wasn’t just his best friend, she loved him. And he had brought her here to this awful place because he couldn’t read the writing on the wall.
On an ornate alter in the middle of the next room, stood the cup of Helga Hufflepuff.
The unblinking eyes of a hundred Inferi stared back at them.
Hermione took her wand from behind her ear.
Harry pulled Hermione’s body close to his and summoned a ring of fire to surround them.
Together they walked through the arched door towards the alter.
The End
I have started a sequel to this story, called "The Fifth Horcrux". It is classified as a H/Hr romance.
Author’s Notes
Ginny would be a great girl for Harry, but he breaks up with her at the end of HBP. Harry’s not really being fair to Ginny. As a Weasley, she is in danger weather she is Harry’s girlfriend or not. But he knows she will accept his decision (Chapter 30, page 646). In Harry’s mind Ginny is the girl who won’t say “Be careful” or “Don’t do it”. Who would say such things to Harry? Harry has no family. He is a lone hero on a lonely quest.
Harry is going off to war and he accepts it. No young man wants to go off to war without first having a girl, but it’s a complicated issue. You will have to say good-bye, and that’s hard to do. Lots of girls in Hogwarts are hot for Harry Potter, but he chooses to have his fling with Ginny. He picks Ginny in part because she is pretty and he genuinely cares for her, but he also knows that he can break it off without it hurting too much. And Ginny knew the break was coming. But even as Harry gathered the courage to make the break with Ginny, in the back of his mind Harry was thinking about that other girl, the one who would say “Be careful”. And he is in effect admitting, somewhat bitterly, that he could not break it off so easily with her.