I heard a terrible, piercing scream of pain – was it Harry? I was suffocating, I couldn’t breathe, Harry’s arms were still wrapped tightly around me, but there was something different about them, something wrong…
CRACK.
The interior of the tent spun into view as we Apparated. I felt Harry slump against me and, for a moment, one blissful moment, thought he must have been caught off balance upon Apparating.
But when he let out a long, low groan, I knew that something was drastically wrong.
“H-Harry?” I whispered, and my voice was cracked with fear. I was now holding him up in my arms, his head lolling backwards, legs limp. Slowly, I laid him down on the floor.
“Harry! Wake up!” I gently patted the sides of his cheeks, too scared to slap them properly. He was still groaning, and his eyelids were twitching in the way that I have always noticed they do when he has a nightmare, or a vision from Voldemort.
Had he been hit by a spell as we jumped out of the window? Was it the Blasting Curse I cast as we were leaving?
“Harry, please, open your eyes!” I said, shaking his shoulders.
“Nooo… don’t kill the little boy… just a little… nooo…” He let out another long groan. His bunk was a few feet away.
Trembling like a leaf, I desperately tried to lift him, placing his arm around my neck like some bizarre scarf, and my free hand underneath his other armpit. But it was no use – his body was heavy, like he was in a deep sleep, and I couldn’t lift him.
Panting from the effort of lifting him, I laid him back on the floor.
“Dad…” I froze. What was Harry seeing? His face was going clammy with sweat.
He was seriously ill, and I didn’t know what to do!
Hermione Granger – the girl with all the answers; the girl with her hand up for every question, the girl who knows every set book off-by-heart, the girl who’s greatest fear in life is failing her exams.
And she didn’t even know what was wrong with her best friend, or even how to help him.
No textbook prepared me for this!
“Mum…” I was jerked out of my panicked thoughts as Harry let out more moans. I touched his forehead – he was extremely hot, but I could see him shivering.
I raced over to his bunk, and ripped off the blankets, dropping them on the floor. I then ran back over to Harry, my wand gripped tightly in my sweaty palm. With a shaky wave, I non-verbally cast a Hover Charm, and Harry rose a few feet into the air.
Mortally terrified of dropping him, I guided him over to the bed, and he lazily floated, still mumbling, his face twitching, through the air, until he landed on the mattress with a soft flump.
“No, Dad… don’t leave your wand… pick up your wand, please…” I bit my lip, and my eyes went watery at Harry’s mutter. His voice sounded higher, afraid… childish.
He was extremely feverish by then. With difficulty, I pulled of his t-shirt.
To my horror, the Horcrux seemed to be stuck to his chest – almost burnt in – and there was a nasty wound on his forearm. It looked like a snake bite, and he was bleeding from it – not badly, but to me, it looked like an awful lot of blood.
I quickly fetched my bag from the living area of the tent, and hastily pulled out the Essence of Dittany. I was about to pour a few drops on the wound when I paused, my hand on the stopper. Should I clean the wound first?
I did so with a sponge and a bowl of hot water. All the while, Harry continued to mumble heart-breaking things, only confirming my suspicions as to what he was seeing.
“Please… not my Dad… don’t kill my Dad…” I began to cry as I tried to prise the locket off his chest, but it refused to come off – it was like someone had glued it to his skin.
Fruitlessly, I tried ever spell I could possibly think of for about ten minutes before, tears cascading down my cheeks, I resigned myself to a severing charm.
I didn’t know whether to do it quickly, so that it was over quicker, or slowly, so that it might have the same effect as ripping a plaster or band aid off – it wouldn’t hurt as much.
Harry didn’t seem to feel the pain though, which was, I suppose, a good thing.
“No, Dad… wake up, wake up… don’t leave me… orphan… alone… don’t go…” he mumbled. I suddenly realised that his fever was worse than ever, and I hurriedly pulled his t-shirt back over his head, clumsily trying to feed his limp arms through the sleeves.
“Run, Mum…” he cried, and, to my alarm, I saw salty droplets of water seeping out from underneath his eyelids.
I’d never seen Harry cry before, although he’d seen me cry loads of times. I think he may have been crying at Godrics Hollow, in the graveyard, but I couldn’t be sure as his face was in shadow, and he didn’t make a sound, just stood there… staring. He always seemed like one of those strong people, and seeing him cry felt like all my hope being crushed out of me, like there was no escape… not even Harry was strong anymore…
Noting how sweaty he was getting, yet how violently he was shivering, I took the blankets off Ron’s old bed and tossed them over Harry, hoping to sweat out the fever.
That’s what you do with a fever, isn’t it? Or is that a temperature? Aren’t they the same thing? No, with a temperature you feel hot too, don’t you? I let out a growl of frustration and ignored my fussing brain, always worrying about what was correct…
Wearily, I ran a hand through my hair, my fingers getting caught in small knots towards the ends. The Horcrux dangled innocently in my fingers, but I felt rather sickened at the thought of putting it on. I put it in my bag, trying to ignore Harry’s whimpers.
“Please Mum, block the door, don’t let him come… why don’t… where’s… your wand, why don’t you have it? Nooo…” I close my eyes and take several deep breaths, imagining we’re back at Hogwarts… no, the Burrow… yes, the Burrow was good… and everything was fine and perfect in the world… before fourth year, before Voldemort came back…
Harry moans once again, and I slowly open my eyes, tears steadily creeping down my cheeks.
“How could you leave your wands…?” Harry mutters, his hair clinging to his sweaty face.
Where was Harry’s wand? I walked back to where we had Apparated, and saw it lying there.
In two pieces.
I bit my lip and grimaced. I knew that Harry would be distraught when he woke up. I realised, with crushing guilt, that it must have been me that broke it, when I cast the Blasting Curse.
I headed back to the bed with it, and knelt down beside his head, the wand – held together by a single strand of fragile phoenix feather, resting beside my knee.
I took the sponge I used to clean the snake bite, and siphoned the blood off with my wand.
I sat there for hours, sponging his face, pleading with him to wake up. More than anything, I wished that Ron was there to help me, or maybe just to be there and be the usual klutz that he was.
I did, I admit, hate him for leaving us. How could he just… go? Just leave us? Leave me? Didn’t he…?
I bit hard down on my lower lip and closed my eyes, feeling tears seep out from beneath my lids and trickle down my cheeks. I felt so tired and afraid and alone.
All the while Harry kept on shouting and moaning, and I couldn’t stand seeing him go through it, I couldn’t watch him go through the pain, why wouldn’t he stop? I felt like I was intruding on something private, something indecent. When would it end…?
As I sat there, calling his name, trying to wake him from his fitful… sleep? (Oh, I didn’t know what was happening to him!) I wondered when the war would end, and how, and whether all my friends would make it out alive.
Deathly Hallows, Revisited by Slytherins
Chapter Notes: This chapter was written by Apollo13