Someone was tugging on him. Harry slowly opened his eyes and pushed himself onto his knees. The remaining members of his valiant army surrounded him. Lupin’s hands were on his shoulders.
“Luci,” he muttered groggily.
“You killed her, Harry,” said Ron gently, miserably, as he handed Harry his glasses.
“No, I didn’t.”
Looking up blearily, he saw Snape’s lifeless frame pinned against the wall by the sword. Then Harry’s gaze fell upon Luci’s body, drenched in blood. Malfoy was on his knees beside her, and he was crying, literally quaking with sobs.
Harry was heaving for breath as he crawled over to the pair of them. He rolled Luci onto her back. She moaned softly and her eyes fluttered open. He brushed the matted hair from her face.
“That hurt,” she groaned feebly.
Harry heard Malfoy gasp and his weeping cease.
“I’m sorry,” Harry mumbled, “I had to.”
Luci gave him a faint smile. “I know.”
Harry put a hand to her stomach. Her clothes had been torn, and her skin was coated with blood, but there were no wounds. It had worked.
“How do you do that?” asked Harry, examining her shredded clothing.
She started to sit up, but fell dizzily back to the floor.
Harry shoved his arms underneath her body and lifted her. To his surprise, she was almost weightless.
“Draco,” she murmured.
Harry glanced at Malfoy, who had gotten to his feet, wiping hastily at his eyes.
“He’s OK,” Harry said to Luci.
“It’s over?” she asked, breathlessly.
“For now,” he nodded.
She smiled dimly, and then went limp in his arms.
Harry felt like a huge iron fist had closed around his middle.
“Luci, wake up!” He shook her lightly.
“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Mr. Weasley said to him. “We need to get her to St. Mungo’s. And the others too.”
Harry turned around, and a horrible seen met his eyes. He saw that Hermione, Luna, and Charlie were lying on the floor, joining Mrs. Weasley, Tonks, and Colin. Almost everyone was covered in blood, bruises, and various injuries. A few Death Eaters also lay upon the floor, including Bellatrix Lestrange, though she was alive, twitching oddly upon her back. Harry assumed that the few who had survived had Apparated along with Voldemort.
Luci had shed so much blood that Harry felt as if he’d just crawled out of a lake. His clothes were soaked through and his skin felt sticky and cold.
“Let me take her,” said Mr. Weasley.
“No.”
“I’ll take good care of her, Harry,” he coaxed.
Harry looked at him uncertainly.
“I promise.”
Harry nodded.
Mr. Weasley waved his wand over Luci, chanted, “Morbilicorpus,” and her body lifted smoothly from Harry’s arms.
The same spell was repeated over the others and Harry watched everyone file from the room.
“Take your time,” Ginny said as she was on her way out. He nodded gratefully to her.
When he was alone, there came a stifled voice.
“Potter…”
Harry turned to see Snape, attempting to pull the sword from his torso.
“Don’t,” warned Harry, hurrying to his old Professor’s side, feeling a pang of regret. “I’ll get you to St. Mungo’s, but you have to be still. Let me think…”
“There’s a small house on Spinner’s End,” Snape began, though his voice was fading.
“Spinner’s End?”
“It’s a road, Potter. A small house, at the end, Number Eight, a few doors down from mine. There’s a cellar beneath the house. That’s where you’ll find him.”
“Voldemort?”
Snape hissed.
“I don’t understand,” said Harry.
“You must kill him, Potter,” Snape growled. “For Lily’s sake.”
Harry flinched at his mother’s name on Snape’s lips, but then he felt an odd sense of compulsion.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” he said. “I… I was wrong.”
Snape shook his head. “It was mutual enmity.”
“She loved you. My mother, I mean.”
The dark eyes looked up at Harry in incredulity, searching his face for the truth. Finally, Snape smiled, truly smiled, and closed his eyes.
“Professor?” asked Harry, but Snape was gone.
Appraising the room, Harry saw that Greyback had been slaughtered in a fashion that would make anyone sick to their stomach. His shaggy corpse lay surrounded by three other evidently deceased Death Eaters. Harry wondered who else had lost their life this day. He wouldn’t have any idea until he joined the others at St. Mungo’s. If Luci didn’t make it, he didn’t know what he would do. A violent sob shook him at this thought. He slumped despairingly against the wall next to the Half-Blood Prince, who had helped Harry more than perhaps anyone else in his life, and his own acknowledgment of this surprised him.
He sat there for a long while, milling over the events, feeling regret and anger and frustration. Finally, he got to his feet and slowly left the room, entering into another place full of horrific memories.
“’Bout time,” a voice said.
Harry turned to see Ron sitting on the top bench, near the door. His best friend got to his feet and approached him.
“All right?” he asked.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. “What are you doing here?”
“You said you wanted to figure out this veil; I thought I’d offer to help.”
Harry wanted to hug Ron, but he resisted this urge.
“Don’t you want to make sure that Hermione is OK?”
Tears formed in Ron’s eyes. Harry averted his gaze and pretended he hadn’t noticed this.
Finally, Ron said, “There’s nothing either of us can do for any of them right now.”
Harry nodded. “Thanks, mate.”
Ron made an awkward motion in response.
Harry took the pair of dirty, square mirrors from his pocket.
“I had an idea,” he said to Ron, who looked up curiously.
“I’m going to throw this mirror through the veil and maybe Sirius will catch it on the other side.”
Ron raised his eyebrows. “You really think so?”
“It’s worth a try.”
The two boys approached the veil. It fluttered in the non-existent wind. The voices were tumbling over one another, so that Harry couldn’t make out anything clearly.
He tossed Sirius’s mirror through the archway. The veil immediately spat it back out at him, and it landed at his feet. It hadn’t shattered, however. Harry looked down into it and saw his own luminous green eyes staring back at him.
He threw the mirror into the veil again. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the mirror flew past Ron’s head and Harry leapt for it, barely catching it before it hit the marble floor.
“I don’t think that’s going to work, mate,” Ron said.
Harry frowned in aggravation. “Then what will? We can’t very well go through it ourselves, can we?”
Ron looked tentatively at Harry. “I don’t really want to, no, but I will, if you ask me to.”
Harry gaped. “Are you mental? I wouldn’t ask you to do that!”
“Your life is more valuable than mine,” his best friend replied.
“Shut up, Ron. Neither of us is going through it.”
They both stood there silently for a long while, Harry trying to figure out how to get this mirror back to Sirius. Finally, he decided that he would throw both mirrors in and hope for the best.
He tossed them simultaneously through the veil. Then, he and Ron watched patiently, expecting to see both mirrors come flying back out at them.
To their surprise, however, the archway ejected Harry’s mirror gently onto the floor before them.
Harry stepped forward, picked up the small square, and stared into the still-cracked glass.
“Sirius,” he said, breathlessly.
“Hello, Harry,” came his godfather’s voice.
Harry was so stunned that he stumbled backwards and fell into Ron, who caught him and set him upright again.
He composed himself and looked down into the mirror, where he expected to see Sirius’s face, but it was just the shattered glass, reflecting his own features.
“Sirius?” he said again. “Is it really you?”
“Took you long enough,” came Sirius’s reply.
Harry, his voice wavering, asked, “Are you… dead?”
Sirius chuckled, and Harry felt as if someone had poured something hot down his throat. He was suddenly warm all over and he realized that he was grinning ear to ear.
“Trapped is more like it,” answered Sirius.
“I don’t understand.”
“There are a lot of spirits in here, but I’m not one of them. Some of us are just caught between worlds.”
“But… all of your possessions transferred to me!”
“Did they?” asked his godfather. “Curious.”
Harry frowned. “Well, how do I get you out?”
Sirius laughed again. “It’s the Department of Mysteries for a reason, Harry.”
“But I have to get you out!” Harry exclaimed.
“I’m not arguing with that,” agreed Sirius. “I’m just telling you that I don’t know how you could do it.”
Harry sighed. He glanced at Ron, who looked dumbfounded and held up his hands to signal that he had no idea.
“Hermione,” Sirius said then.
“What?”
“She’ll know exactly where to look. Tell her to research the Veil of Voices.”
Harry hesitated. “We… we don’t know if she’s OK…”
“What do you mean?” asked Sirius, his voice eclipsed with concern.
Harry realized that Sirius had no idea what had just happened.
“I… we… She got hurt in the battle, and we don’t know how badly.”
Sirius took a sharp breath. “What battle?”
“It’s a long story,” responded Harry.
“Is everyone all right?”
“We don’t know. It’s just Ron and me here. Everyone else is at St. Mungo’s.”
“Go check on your friends,” Sirius said at last. “Then you can come back and get me the hell out of here.”
Harry nodded, but then realized that Sirius couldn’t see him. “We’ll be back,” he said. “Just hang on, and we’ll get you out.”
His godfather said, “I know you will.”
Harry had been on the fourth floor of St. Mungo’s, sitting beside Luci’s bed, for two days now. Sometimes, Malfoy would come in and sit next to him. They never said anything to one another, but there was an unspoken ceasefire between them.
Luci’s mother had been contacted immediately and brought to the hospital. She was a small woman, no bigger than Luci herself, with auburn hair and sparkling green eyes. She checked in on Luci often but spent most of her time talking to the healers, who she always referred to as “doctors,” much to their annoyance. She and Harry had become briefly acquainted, considering that he rarely left Luci’s bedside, and Ms. Keegan had insisted that he call her by her first name, Melissa.
The staff had been giving Luci the same blood-replenishing potion that they’d given to Mr. Weasley when Nagini had attacked him. They told Luci’s mum that she must still be out due to shock. The infirmary had many patients just from the one night alone, but Luci’s mother had managed to snag her daughter a room all to herself.
Harry now sat, watching Luci sleep and ruminating over the consequences of their quest to rescue Malfoy.
Mrs. Weasley was still unconscious, and the healers were unsure about her stability at this point. Charlie, however, had died instantly in the battle, plunging a vast sorrow upon all of the Weasleys. It was fortunate that Mrs. Weasley was asleep, because this information would surely send her into hysterics. Harry had been so shaken and guilt-ridden by the news that he had been unable to eat ever since.
Mr. Weasley had greeted Harry and Ron with patient updates on the night that they had returned from the Ministry of Magic. Luna had apparently lost her memory, but she had come to no real harm and had been sent home, along with the rest of the members of Dumbledore’s Army. Except for Colin, who had never woken up again and died shortly after being brought into the hospital. Tonks, however, was going to be fine, but they were keeping her until the full moon to analyze the extent of her condition, as the one bite she had sustained was relatively deep.
To Ron and Harry’s relief, but especially Ron’s, Hermione had only been hit by a sleeping spell and a freezing charm at the same time and she’d been released almost immediately. She hadn’t left the hospital, though. Now and then, she would try to coax Harry into taking some food, but he would always refuse. How could he eat when he’d almost killed the girl that he loved? And maybe he had killed her. Maybe she wouldn’t wake up. This fear plagued Harry relentlessly.
Neville had given an in-depth interview of the events and he was being hailed as a hero for defeating Bellatrix Lestrange. The evil woman was still alive, but after she had made the mistake of throwing a curse at Ginny, Neville had apparently tortured her into lunacy, just as she had done to his parents. There would be a hearing due to his use of illegal magic, but no one believed that he would actually be punished, considering the circumstances.
Lucius Malfoy had barely made it out alive. The werewolf had torn his skin to shreds, simultaneously contaminating his pure blood. The healers had no doubt that he would transform during the next full moon and were keeping him in a caged room.
Malfoy spent his time going back and forth between visiting his father and his sister. Currently, he was in with Lucius, and Harry was grateful. And since he had the assurance that no one was listening, he said it again to her, as he had many times now. “Please wake up, Luci.”
It had been four days since Luci had been admitted to St. Mungo’s when she finally awoke. It was a beautiful spring day and the sunlight was pouring in through the window across from her bed. Harry was alone in the room with her, and he had dozed off.
“Harry?” came Luci’s frail voice.
Harry’s eyes flew open. He blinked, thinking he’d imagined it. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Perhaps it was the lack of food.
“Hi.” She sounded hoarse, her eyes at half-mast.
Harry’s face exploded in a smile. He felt a tremendous weight lift from his body. “Hi! How are you? How do you feel?”
With a dim smile, she mumbled, “Drained.”
Harry laughed before he could stop himself. The sound of her voice was enrapturing. He took her hand. It was warmer than it had been in days.
She yawned, and then asked, “What’d you do to me?”
He turned his eyes down. “It was… one of Snape’s spells; I’m so sorry, Luci.”
“Don’t be.” She clenched his hand imperceptibly. “You did the only thing that you could, and it was the right thing. And isn’t it my fault that we were there in the first place?”
“You aren’t the first one to fall for one of Voldemort’s tricks,” Harry replied.
Luci shook her head upon her pillow. “I should have known.”
“You couldn’t have,” said Harry, who continued thoughtfully running his fingers over hers.
“I’m just glad you’d been paying attention. It was the day that I cut my hand, wasn’t it?”
He glanced up at her and nodded. “What heals the wounds?”
Luci pursed her lips contemplatively. “I don’t know.”
“So… can you die?”
“I can bleed to death, which was news to me, actually. But, yeah, lots of things can do me in, the worst of them being lack of oxygen.”
“The Chipretta,” he said.
She nodded and studied his face for a moment. “You look older.”
Then she frowned and lifted her head. “Wait. How long have I been out?”
Harry smiled. “Only a few days. I’m not older. Just… tired.”
“Are you OK?” Luci sat up quickly, snatching her hand from his, concern shadowing her face. Then she gave a weak, “Oh,” and laid back against the headboard, her palms to her temples.
Harry gave her a scolding look. “Relax; I’m fine.”
“How is everyone else?” Luci asked, propping herself up with her pillow. She coughed and rubbed her throat, looking very weary herself.
He glanced at her, and he didn’t even have to answer. She could see it in his face. She hung her head sadly.
He sighed. “And it’s my fault.”
“Stop it!” exclaimed Luci, snapping her head back up to look at him. “It’s not your fault, dammit! Why won’t you see that? The entire world isn’t on your shoulders, Harry!”
Instead of acknowledging her comments, Harry continued, “You saw what happened to Snape. And they don’t think that Mrs. Weasley will make it.”
“And my father?”
He swallowed. “I hear he’s pretty mangled, but he’ll live… as a werewolf.”
Luci shut her eyes for a moment, and then said bitterly, “Serves him right. Did everyone make it out alive then?”
Harry shook his head. “Colin died. And“”
He stopped. He didn’t know how she’d react.
“Who?”
He took a deep breath. “Charlie.”
Luci’s eyes welled with tears and she put a hand over her mouth.
“Did you… were you two…?”
She was shaking her head. “He… oh, god… he asked me out, but I kept refusing. I was so hung up… And now he’s…” She made a choking sound.
Harry knew that he had to ask her.
“Did you mean it then?”
Luci raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“What you said in the Department of Mysteries,” Harry explained.
He didn’t think he’d ever seen her turn so red.
She put her hands over her face and then cupped them under her chin, nodding slowly.
His heart fluttered.
For a moment, she was too flustered to speak, but then she replied, “But I said it because I thought that one or both of us might not survive. We still… can’t.”
Harry, to his own surprise, became instantly angry.
“Why not?” he demanded, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.
She hugged herself protectively and looked away from him.
Harry sighed. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Pushing me away.”
She met his gaze and he felt the anger melt away.
“Don’t you…” she began. Then she inhaled deeply. “Don’t you want… something… better?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t deserve you, Harry,” she replied quietly.
He emitted a low, harsh sound. “You’re the most insecure person I know and with the least reason to be.”
“Probably,” she agreed, “but this isn’t about me being insecure.”
“What’s it about then?”
“I need to be honest with you from now on, so the truth is - and I really don’t know what heals the wounds “ um…” She jammed her thumbnail between her teeth. “When I was thirteen, I slit my wrists.”
Harry gasped.
“Instead of bleeding to death, like I intended to, I watched as the gashes just closed right up. I’ve been able to heal ever since. It’s like some higher power doesn’t trust me. So, you see, I don’t deserve life and I don’t deserve happiness and I certainly don’t deserve you.”
His heart was so heavy that he could barely speak. “I… I don’t know what to say to that…”
“I get it,” she went on, in arrant self-reproach. “You’ve seen so much life lost that you can’t be around someone who didn’t value it at one point. I understand.”
“No, you don’t. I know what it’s like not to want to live.”
Luci frowned. “You do?”
“Of course! My whole life, I’ve had nothing but burdens and pressures and obligations and… loss and pain and…” He took a deep breath. “I may never have thought of killing myself, but that’s probably because there were always plenty of people willing to do it for me. But I’ve wished that I hadn’t been born loads of times. Life isn’t easy for me either.”
“Yes, but Harry, I didn’t try to kill myself because my life wasn’t easy! My life was fine! It was because my head isn’t easy!”
“Whose is?” he asked, still taken aback by this revelation.
“I don’t know. Other people’s.”
“Luci, if you think you’re the only person who’s ever hurt more than you can bear, you’re very, very wrong.”
She smiled, a sad smile. “I know. But either way, I’m a mess.”
“Do you still…?” He halted, trying to find the right words, but there was no need, because she knew the question.
“No,” she answered. “And I don’t think I ever really did. I just wanted the pain to go away. But I know now that pain doesn’t ever go away entirely. You just have to surround yourself with people who make it better.”
“But you don’t “ you push away the people who make it better.”
The corners of Luci’s mouth turned up just slightly. “Well, yes, because I make it worse. So it’s for your“”
“Don’t you dare say it’s for my own good!” he fumed suddenly. “I decide what’s good for me and what isn’t! OK, so you’re… frustrating sometimes, but you make me feel… alive.” He stopped, sighing fervently and running a hand through his hair.
Luci released a sharp breath. “You’re making this so hard.”
“Then stop fighting it!” he growled back.
She shook her head, but before she could protest again, he had leaned over the bed and kissed her fiercely. She didn’t resist this time, and instead, reached up and cupped his face in her hands. Harry thought he might lose consciousness as the myriad of sensations bombarded him from every conceivable direction. It was somewhat like falling through the Pensieve, but warmer and brighter and…
A bellow pulled him from his state of daze.
“Get your hands off my sister, Potter!”