Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them. Honest.
Here With Me
Chapter 23
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Harry was dragging the next morning, his brain worn down with sorting through the various permutations his fate now seemed to offer and his body feeling thoroughly worked over, if not necessarily in the usual Quidditch-practice-type places. He felt as if he was trying to make his way through a misty marsh, slogging knee deep through uncertain waters into places he could not quite see. He was for once quite glad to find his next class to be History of Magic.
"You are such a goner, mate," Ron laughed at him as they claimed their usual seats. "I give you less than five minutes awake and aware after Binns gets warmed up."
"Optimist," Dean Thomas chipped in from Ron's other side. "I'd put my money on three, starting the minute Binns floats through the wall."
"How is it that you aren't falling over?" Harry asked Hermione suspiciously. "You were up er, studying every bit as late as I was."
"Quidditch training clearly isn't all it's cracked up to be. You simply have no endurance," she replied sweetly, pulling fresh parchment and a quill from her bag.
"Cough did all the work cough just lie there and scream cough," hacked Harry into his hand.
Her lips twitched. "We'll see about that, then. I think I can manage to top your astronomy skills next time."
"I thought you guys left off astronomy last year," Neville said from Hermione's other side. "I heard they were going easier since so many people trolled the practical fifth year. D'you think I should try it for an elective next term?"
"Absolutely. I've found it very fulfilling up there this time round." Harry told him, straight faced. "I keep telling Ron he should give it a go."
"La la la," said Ron, his fingers stuffed in his ears.
"It's Luna, Ron, not Lala. L-u-n-a. She won't like it if you get her name wrong."
Dean seemed to perk up and Neville looked bemused.. "Lovegood? The Ravenclaw? You dog, Ron. Since when?" Dean asked, and Harry leaned back in his seat, his work done. Binns drifted through wall notes in hand to begin his lecture and Harry felt his eyelids droop.
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She'd noticed Harry drifting, saw that his forehead was propped in his hand, looking down as though studiously taking notes. His quill had stopped moving some while ago, but she noticed his hand twitching oddly now, as if not quite in control.
"Harry!" she whispered fiercely, and surreptitiously thrust her right elbow against his left. It knocked the arm that propped him out from under him and his head hit the desk with a solid thunk that echoed throughout the classroom. Even Professor Binns looked up from his notes.
"Wake up!" she hissed.
His head came up off the desk and turned toward her, eyes black and fathomless. "Are you really so sure you want him to, MUDBLOOD?"
Hermione knew those eyes; Harry's worst nightmare had come to pass. Voldemort was loose in Hogwarts. Inside of him.
There was no point in being subtle; this time Harry had two functional arms and a wand he didn't even really need. Hermione scrabbled for her own wand in her bag beneath her desk while loudly and shakily declaring, "VOLDEMORT! It's not Harry, it's VOLDEMORT! RUN!" even as he reached across and grabbed hold of her by her hair.
Pandemonium should have ensued but it took Harry's body physically wrenching Hermione from her seat and pointing his wand directly at her heart for her words to actually bear fruit. Students suddenly ran, crying and screaming from the room, some actually dropping their wands in their haste just to get out. Binns faded quietly back through the chalkboard. The empty black eyes never wavered from her own.
Ron, deeper asleep than Harry, came to as the stampede began and blearily took in Harry's wand and its target.
"What the hell, Harry?" he asked, eyes widening.
"It's not Harry Ron!" Hermione said fiercely. "Run!"
"Let her go!" Ron protested, only beginning to understand the danger,
"I think not," said a voice that was definitely not Harry's, though Harry's lips moved. This voice was high and cold and devoid of anything identifiably human. "Be a good little Weasley and go and tell that doddering old fool that his precious Potter is dead, and the mudblood is next unless he brings what I want to the Entrance Hall. He'll know what you speak of."
"I…I…I…" Ron babbled, then took a deep breath, his eyes on Hermione. "I'm not…"
"GO!" hissed the awful voice in Harry's body.
"Ron, go, please!" Hermione begged, and he heard in her voice her faith that Dumbledore could do something.
He went, backing out of the History of Magic classroom.
"I'm sorry Hermione, I …"
"NOW!"
Harry's wand pointed in his direction and a sharp pulse of red light splintered the desk in front of Ron. The sound frightened him but at the same time managed to awake all the dormant instincts Harry had been attempting to foster in the DA. Without actually pausing to think, more of a reflex, Ron whipped out his own wand and fired off a blasting curse directed at Harry's left leg, as far from where he held Hermione as he could get. Voldemort was unbelieving that he would have dared and thus unprepared; the spell hit Harry and Hermione heard his cry of pain mixed with Voldemort's scream of rage. Taking a still firmer grip on Hermione's hair he pointed Harry's wand after Ron, performing a series of vicious swishes and slashes. Spells shot across the room with the swiftness of gunfire; Ron ducked and disappeared through the door.
"You liar," she hissed. "He's not dead. I heard him. Leave him alone!"
Harry's body looked up from inspecting the damage to his leg and without speaking or allowing the tiniest flicker of emotion to cross his face dropped her hair and flicked a wordless spell at her, flinging her weightlessly into the desk behind her. Not stopping for an instant to register her pain or fear Hermione rolled and dove for her book bag and her wand.
No words were spoken again, no spell shouted; she was suddenly simply paralyzed and fell woodenly forward to the floor. Her wand rolled along the ancient boards, warped and worn through centuries of use, and disappeared under Binns' podium.
Voldemort/Harry limped forward and pulled her up by the hair again. "Finite incantatem" he snarled. "Look at me."
Hermione felt what must have been a petrificus recede and dizzily lifted her head to see a face she dearly loved contorted by hate.
"This is for you. This is what you wrought, thinking you know what magic is, or that you have even the smallest right to use it. Cleverest witch of your age, show me your power now. Show me what good your precious love can do against real magic."
The staring black eyes blinked and the blown pupils slowly retracted, revealing green. Harry's own hand seemed to fight with itself, wrestling down to the desk before him to splay flat against its surface while his other hand leveled his wand toward it. His whole body began fighting itself now, jerking and reeling. Twice he managed to pull back from the desk, twice more he was forced close. He was sweating now and his leg bleeding profusely with the struggle.
Hermione inched her way a long the floor toward her wand, moving only when it seemed the battle within him was going Harry's way. She was almost there when the flare of red spellfire crackled toward her. She heard Harry's voice call out her name once in panic and turning toward him surely saved her; she smelled singed hair and felt a lash of pain in her shoulder, heard rather than saw the power of the spell slice through the podium with enough residual force to sever it from its stand. The top crashed to the floor, further blocking her path to her wand and tears of frustration joined the ones of pain already stinging her eyes.
The battle for Harry surged on; Voldemort forced him toward her where she lay, Harry threw his body backwards into the long, glass-doored bookcase that housed all Binns' treasured histories, shattering them and toppling the combined weight of wizards noble deeds and their callous misuse of magic over them both. They wrestled amongst the books and broken glass and Hermione took her chance to try and move the heavy mahogany book rest of the broken podium clear of her goal. The verbal fight at least was growing somewhat more even; Hermione heard Harry responding now to more of Voldemort's rhetoric as control wavered between them.
"Pathetic accident of nature, it is my power within you."
"Get out of me. Get out. If you're so all bloody powerful why'd you have to sneak into Hogwarts inside of me, you great slimy…"
"Be silent, you filthy corruption. I will have it back today. I will know what Dumbledore has kept from me for all these years…"
"He'll tell you nothing. Kill me and he'll tell you the same…"
"He thinks to influence me with the feeble threat of you, when his only real secret is the founders'…"
"He's worth two of you without any secrets at all…"
Voldemort won control of Harry's wand hand then and turned it on Hermione just as she had managed to snake her hand under the fallen podium. Her fingers scrambled desperately for her wand, there was no way to pull her arm out fast enough to escape; perhaps if she could manage a blasting charm to blow away the…
"Avada…"
"No…" she whispered, unable to stand that this should be her end.
"No!" Harry howled, and hurled his wand across the floor, toward her.
She reached her other hand toward it just as another silent spell sent it careening off out of reach.
Her fingers closed on her own wand beneath the toppled stand and she closed her eyes so that she could not see it was Harry who was her target. Her lips moved to the words as silently as possible, to anxious to even attempt a wordless incantation. "Petrificus totallus."
Time slowed as she heard Voldemort laugh, as she saw him almost effortlessly despite Harry's struggles to stop it lift Harry's hand in the line of her spell. It glowed briefly as it hit and rebounded back upon her, seemingly returning the speed and force of the earth's rotation with it. It hit before she could begin to move and she was frozen once more.
It wasn't fair. How could they fight that, how could anyone? How was it possible to be that evil and yet that… lucky? Suddenly Harry's dreams, his terrors of failing strength and feeble spells, of crying 'time out' to gather his wits and breath made so much sense. How had she though she could ever best this? And how unfair was it that only her eyes could move, so that they could not help but take in what he was doing now.
Harry was on the floor, still fighting. One arm was shuddering its way across the floor towards his wand, the other was around his own throat, tightening convulsively. His lips trembled but no sound came out. His eyes were focused unflinchingly on her own, and she was both hopeful and totally repulsed to see that one was now green, one blown and black. It was as if they had each claimed a portion of his brain; the arm opposite the green eye was the one inching its way to the wand, the one opposite the black slowly strangling him.
She was sure the green one was trying to tell her something as his body arched in agony off the floor. The black one sparked in victory.
"Mine!" Voldemort cackled at her. "Not yours. Mine."
"RIDDLE!" came a thunderous cry from the hall outside the classroom. "SHOW YOURSELF!"
Dumbledore… Hermione almost sobbed with relief but cut herself short, determined to understand what she thought Harry was trying to tell her before he was submerged by Voldemort again. His fingers only reluctantly released his throat, leaving swiftly purpling marks behind and it occurred to her Voldemort could not be planning to engage in much of a duel with Dumbledore if he was so willing to incapacitate his already injured host. What was he up to? Harry's eye implored her but she could already see him slipping from the forefront of his own mind. His body drew itself to its knees and crawled across the glass and ruined books toward her, retrieving his wand. She felt herself wrenched forward, her hair snared once more in an iron grip. That the hands that could touch her so gently and bring her such pleasure could exert such cruel force as well was almost more than she could bear.
"Finite," Harry's lips hissed, and he pulled her to her feet.
She made her way struggling fiercely out into the hall, found herself pushed along the hallway to the head of the stairs down to the Entrance Hall. Dumbledore and the four Heads of House stood across the landing at the foot of the stairs to the hall that led to Dumbledore's office. Hermione could make out Ron behind McGonagall and Snape, who at least made an imposing backup for Dumbledore. Flitwick and Sprout, able wizards though they might be, were hardly likely to intimidate on looks alone. That fact that both were visibly shaken was no help at all.
"You break faith already," Dumbledore asserted, his voice reverberating across the empty Hall. "The boy is not dead."
He knows! she thought.
"Would you have come for any other?" sneered Harry's empty face.
"Any other. I would come for any of them. They are children, Tom."
"They are corruption in the act, if not accomplished. It makes no difference. Though I credit you Albus, this one is a pleasure to… inhabit. Such power for an empty-headed means to an end."
"He's not a means to an end!" Hermione spat. "He's Harry."
The wand raised toward her again but faltered once more, and Hermione did not miss the flicker of annoyance in the black eyes. Harry was in there, he was still struggling to fight back, she thought. Make sure they all remember that, they haven't seen what you have.
"Mr. Weasley told me I was to bring what you wanted to the Entry Hall, Tom. But what is it? "
"I am not Tom Riddle. He is as dead as your puppet will be. And you know what I seek, Dumbledore."
"I am afraid," Dumbledore said firmly and quietly, "that I do not."
"The pageless story! The Founder's secret. I will be done with this meddlesome brat at last."
"Ah," said Dumbledore calmly, nodding. "I see. It is before you."
Harry's face with the burning eyes so not his own swung from side to side, searching.
His wand quivered in trembling hands, swung up and released a bright burst directly at his own face. Hermione saw his head manage to dodge just before the beam hit, glancing off beneath his ear. Harry is going to be a mess when this is over. But it WILL be over. He's fought so hard, we've made it this far. There must be a way to make it stop. Think, Hermione, THINK.
"I will kill him!" Voldemort howled.
"You will NOT." Dumbledore howled back, and raised his own wand with a singing, metallic ping that rang throughout the halls. "It is only his body you control. Only one soul can go free if you do. Are you so certain it will be yours, Tom? Is this truly the way you wish it to end?"
Voldemort began to laugh then. It was the most hideous sound she could ever remember hearing, high and mirthless and only too sure.
"Oh yes, Dumbledore. It is. And I am quite, quite certain that I shall go on long after your mortal little toy is but a bloody husk."
She saw the Headmaster seem to blanch and his wand lowered slowly. He knows something, she thought. Or suspects it.
"It is before you. The window. Do you remember one there when you were at Hogwarts, Tom? That is the pageless story they found, although what tale it tells I can not say."
The black eyes swung to the window. The light streaming through for a moment turned the black eyes red with in its reflection and Voldemort's face was fully revealed in Harry's, as if the bones and skin themselves gave way. There was a moment of absolute silence as he studied it; Hermione seized the opportunity to try and jerk away. The iron grip upon her hair never faltered, the eyes never turned from their mark. She turned toward Dumbledore and the others, trying to discern their plan. It was certainly well masked if they had one. Ron met her gaze, looked purposefully away down the stairs and back. She followed his lead in hope, but saw only Malfoy starting to climb them from below. She had thought the students all cordoned off in their houses; Malfoy, as always, clearly had to be special. Voldemort appeared to take no notice of him, eyes darting feverishly around the segmented shape of the window as if attempting to discern some pattern in its myriad colors. If there was one there, she had never found any trace of it. Why didn't they do something now?
McGonagall's wand twitched but to no apparent result; the others all hesitated.
Hermione felt the hand upon her hair suddenly shudder and convulse and seized the opportunity to pull free. That's what McGonagall had done! And Harry had seen it or felt it!
She heard Ron shout "Run, Hermione!" but turned instead and launched herself toward her best friend. He was covered in glass and slick with both sweat and blood but she had become expert at capturing those lips, and swallowing her revulsion at the thought of their temporary controller kissed him as she had done weeks ago in the cave, with everything she had inside and for all she was worth. She remembered what he had said about Voldemort fleeing from her touch and was only too aware he had only ever touched her willingly by her hair since possessing him. She ran her hands everywhere she could reach, touching every inch of him she could. Glass tinkled to the floor, her hands prickled and bled. Harry. It's Harry. This is for Harry. Get out!
She sensed far more resistance this time than ever before; the body beneath her fingers seemed literally to be wrestling with itself muscle by muscle and several times he seemed to gag almost to the point of choking against her lips. She hoped that was a good thing. She clung to him harder when his hands seemed as if they would push her away, waiting, dying, for a sign that Harry knew what she was trying to do.
He stumbled and they went down at the top of the stairs, rolling dangerously near the top step in a travesty of passion. Hermione felt her strength waning, her faith failing; she wasn't strong enough to fight him. Why wasn't it working? Please, please, couldn't something go right, someone somewhere take their side for once? What was Dumbledore playing at? Why did he wait?
There was clearly a battle raging inside Harry, she just had no sense that her own efforts were helping at all. Then she heard a choked "Hermione," followed by "filth, stinking, tainted, you will not," then "I WILL!" in Harry's own voice, loud and clear.
He pushed her away. Harry himself, eyes green and frantic, pushed her away, hard, as the momentum of the battle within his own body lurched the other way, down the long stone staircase to the door of the Great Hall. He fell backward with a bone crunching thud, rolling and falling on before Dumbledore once more cast a spell to slow his fall. The first missed, the second caught him just short of Malfoy, who had been watching open-mouthed from the lower steps. Instead of slowing him the spell seemed to sharply halt his forward motion, like a dog abruptly reaching the end of its leash. He crashed into Draco, bringing them both down, and was still.
"Miss Granger, do NOT move." Dumbledore instructed, and he was suddenly behind her as quickly and smoothly as if he had apparated there. Of course he couldn't have, because Hogwarts, a History said so. Why didn't it warn you about the rest?
He handed her off to McGonagall, who didn't even attempt to lead her away, simply finished helping her to her feet and straightening her robes, watching avidly right along with her. Snape pushed past them and followed Dumbledore cautiously down the first two steps, wand extended. Ron came and stood at her other side.
Harry began to stir and rolled to his side clear of Malfoy, struggling to push himself upright on shaking arms, blinking and peering nearsightedly up the stairs, glasses lost in the fall. "Hermione?" he called anxiously, just as Snape hit him squarely with a stupefy.
"You BASTARD," Hermione screamed, all sense of restraint and decorum shattered. McGonagall clapped her own hand across Hermione's mouth, knowing that to voice a rebuke at this point would be less than useless. Hermione pulled it away angrily, unable to stop. "Traitor! How could you do that, it was Harry! He was trying so hard…"
"One can never be too sure with the Dark Lord." Snape said smoothly to Dumbledore's questing gaze. "And after that, he would only leave Potter if he believed him dead. Clearly he is not, so I suspect something else. I suggest we mobile corpus both of them up to Pomfrey immediately."
Dumbledore nodded his agreement, but stepped forward before him to cast the spell on Harry's immobile form himself. Snape flicked his wand at Draco and led the way.
"If you three would be so kind as to join us," Dumbledore requested tiredly of McGonagall, Hermione and Ron as they passed.
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Harry had never been fond of the Hospital Wing on previous visits, but Ron reckoned this one would put anyone off for life. For one, the atmosphere was undeniably dark, fraught and on-edge, with most of the staff gathered anxiously just outside the door and asking unanswerable questions. Professor McGonagall was attempting to deal with them.
Madam Pomfrey was not at all happy with the general stress level invading her well ordered domain and appeared ready to blow. Only Dumbledore, Snape, Hermione and Ron had been allowed in, Hermione because Madam Pomfrey insisted on examining her as well and Ron because Dumbledore had requested it. All of which was insignificant, really, against the fact that Harry had been magically bound to his bed in an extremely thorough manner by Snape. Madam Pomfrey kept having to send Ron round the curtain to retrieve the Potions professor to loosen or remove one of the spells during the course of her examination and treatment. It was probably quite a good thing he seemed oblivious to it all.
Madam Pomfrey finally threw back the curtains herself. "That is it! Professor Snape, I really must insist you simply remove the spells until I am finished. For Merlin's sake, the boy could hardly throw off a first year's petrificus in the shape he's in, possessed or not! I can not work like this. I am quite capable of restraining my own patients."
Dumbledore came over then and had a long look at Harry, who was still under Snape's original stupefy as well as the variety of binding and tethering charms and, as Madam Pomfrey had pointed out, was hardly likely to be able to move in any case.
"Take them off, Severus. He's quite out of it for the moment and it's best Poppy care for him while that is the case."
Snape removed the binding spells, shaking his head. "The Dark Lord does not play by others' rules, Albus."
"He doesn't play by others' rules? He doesn't play at all. How can you even speak of him like that? There's that little bit of admiration you just can't hide, can you, he still awes you. He is evil incarnate." Hermione ground out at him furiously. Ron heard himself make an inarticulate sound that could have been construed either as support or terror.
Snape looked at her with only too apparent contempt and continued. "He must be restrained, perhaps kept in dreamless sleep until…"
"No! He begged you. You know that he's helpless then…" Hermione interjected.
"If he is in a dreamless state there is no danger…" Snape spoke over her.
"It isn't a dream, it's not the dreams, it's the vulnerability of sleep…" She raised her voice over his.
"Potter has proved he is no match…" Snape raised his voice as well.
"He'd done it! He'd done it by the time he pushed me back, it was Harry you stupefied…"
"WILL YOU BE QUIET! You have no idea what you are talking about. There is no textbook for this, you silly little girl!" Snape finally turned on her and spat.
"What did you call me?" Hermione breathed.
Ron noticed, in the middle of it all, that Dumbledore's worried eyes regained some of their spark at that exact moment.
"As if throwing yourself at him was any help at all, of all the hare-brained ideas…" Snape sneered.
"Think about it, you bitter, twisted little man," she bit out, completely beside herself. "Voldemort hates mudbloods. He despises me. He's found Harry and I together before, and it disgusts him. What better way to force him out than his own prejudice? He couldn't even bring himself to touch me except by my hair, and then only because he wanted to hurt Harry. Anything honest and selfless revolts him, but he fools himself to believe he won't sully his hands with a muggle born. What else could be more powerful against him?"
"She has," Dumbledore concurred calmly, "an excellent point, Severus. While we have been attempting to arm young Harry with warrior spells and skills, Miss Granger has been pursuing a different path with him altogether. As long as the demon is in fact within him, all the weapons in the magical world will not assist him in his battle."
"Albus, you can not be serious, she…"
"Deserves a chance. And I believe our respect," he admonished gravely. "It took great courage, and great love, to turn away from her own freedom and confront her worst fear in Harry. I think you underestimate Miss Granger."
Snape's black eyes burned, his face appeared paler than ever. "It is a ridiculous idea."
"It is not, as we all know, any final answer, but it certainly was more effective under the circumstances today than anything I myself could think of. Or you, Severus, if I may be so bold as to suggest it. She weakened Voldemort's hold on Harry without injuring him further. And it was Harry you stupefied, Severus; surely even you can admit that. I think it is you who should enervate him now."
"And bring Voldemort back into the castle?"
"It will be Harry," said Hermione positively. Ron edged away from the bed.
"The blame will be mine if we are wrong, Severus. Please proceed." Dumbledore told him firmly. Madam Pomfrey stepped back as well.
Snape rolled his eyes and pointed his wand. Hermione noticed he did not move any further from the bed. He knows, she thought.
"Enervate," he intoned resentfully.
There was a harsh, rattling gasp of indrawn breath and Harry's eyes flew open. Unfocussed and watery, but dearly, familiarly green. He swallowed once, appearing to watch them watching him. His eyes wandered fretfully from Snape to Dumbledore to Madam Pomfrey, and finally found what they sought.
"Hermione… Ron…" They closed again in relief, exhausted. Hermione moved forward anxiously, reaching toward him. Snape prodded Harry's leg with his wand and they flew back open, still green and now alarmed.
"Tell us, Potter, is he quite gone?"
Harry's expression grew thoughtful, and one hand moved shakily to his scar. "He's not with me. But he's not far, either."
"It makes sense that Voldemort would attempt to draw close to Hogwarts if he believed he could use Potter as a stepping stone, or diversion," Snape said grudgingly. "We should prepare at once. Search Hogsmeade and reinforce the castle's defenses."
Dumbledore nodded and said softly, "Perhaps you will notify the Order? We should see if any of our mutual acquaintances have anything to report."
Snape turned in a swirl of black robes and made for the door.
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Madam Pomfrey visibly relaxed after Snape left. She gave Hermione a cooling poultice for the lump on her head where she had connected with the desk and another for the burn on her shoulder. She even allowed Ron to stay and sit on the end of her bed beside Harry's.
She tutted in her usual manner over Harry, repairing as best she could the damage Ron's spell had wrought ('nice one,' Harry congratulated him, wincing,) and the results of tumbling down the stairs into Draco, who was still blessedly silent and unmoving on the next bed. She cast an evenesco to rid him of the glass still winking and shining from his clothing, ridding him just as swiftly of all its many splinters. His eyes watered and a string of curses hovered in the air, powerfully thought if unspoken.
"All this having the Dark Lord in control is just not good for you," she scolded him, handing him a dose of Pepper-Up potion. Harry eyed her incredulously and she made fierce drinking-up motions. "It takes tremendous wear and tear on your innards, young man. Whatever is keeping that… thing alive seems not to operate by any normal rules of the wizardly body, and each time he has left his stamp on you."
"That's it then," Harry said, laying back with a groan. "No more being the Voldemort hotel for me."
"That was a damn scary thing, Harry," Ron admitted. "I woke up in Binns' classroom and you had Hermione by the hair with a wand to the heart. Nearly stopped mine, you did."
"That wasn't Harry, Ron. That's the point, isn't it." Hermione said, exasperated and sick to think he would inadvertently start Harry on the road to self recrimination already.
"Erm, yeah, I know, I just meant…"
"It's okay," Harry told him dejectedly. "It was my body, anyway. I was just still too bloody feeble to kick Voldemort out of it before he got what he wanted."
"But he didn't, Harry," Ron said earnestly. "I don't think he had a clue what the window's meant to reveal either. He certainly seemed confused enough and frustrated by it."
"First good the bloody thing's done. With my luck I would have thought it'd hear his voice and immediately start spitting more glass."
"He thought it was going to tell him something, like the prophecy, some missing piece about how to finally end the struggle between you two." Hermione told him. "He seemed very… frustrated. Or disappointed, perhaps, that there was nothing to see."
"That makes two of us, then," Harry said. He let his eyes droop closed. "I just want this to stop, this bit of it more than anything. I can't stand it. I honestly think it will shove me off the deep end if he ever does it again. I'd jump off the astronomy tower to get him out of me next time, and he knows it."
His eyes opened again, flicked from Madam Pomfrey, who was checking over Draco on the next bed, and back to Hermione. "I know what you were thinking, Hermione," he whispered. "It wasn't you. You did everything right, he was responding to you the same as always. It was me, I just wasn't strong enough. I don't want… promise me you won't ever try that again. He will kill you, you really rile him. There's disgust there, but there's a tiny bit of fear and something else as well. You've got his attention now and there's no difference in him, killing is good as… as good as I think it gets for him. You saved me this time, I couldn't have done it without you loosening his hold, but promise me, promise, that you won't ever do it again. He'll be ready."
"Then we'll just have to make sure that the connection between you is closed. For good." Hermione declared, far more firmly than she felt. She had begun to understand his fear today; so much of what he had faced alone, like the night in the graveyard fourth year when Voldemort regained his body and Harry was forced to look him in those red eyes, was clearer and far more immediate to her now.
"He'd better skip History of Magic for the rest of the term, then," Ron decided.
There was a wooden thunk from the bedside beyond Harry's; their eyes moved in unison to find Madam Pomfrey stupefied upon the floor.
"Never mind, Potter," came a voice they knew only too well from the bed. "I've found a willing volunteer to help me. And we both think its past time for you and your little friends to die."
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