The Bat Returns From Hell
- Chapter 12: When Trying Is Not Enough
A nasty bounce jarred her half awake. She moaned. Damn, she had a splitting headache, and everything was pitch black. She could not move. Was this some bad dream?
Another jolt brought her to full wakefulness. How she got here, wherever "here" was, was a mystery, but it was no nightmare - it was worse. She had far more immediate problems.
Like being bound hand and foot.
From the movement, the dull engine roar, and the tires' rumble, she deduced she was in some vehicle. Total darkness enveloped her, and something else, something physical. It smelt old and musty.
Worst, she could not move a muscle. Her legs felt glued together, so tightly she could not bend either her knees or ankles. Likewise her arms were pinioned to her side. This was no rope. She knew what being tied up felt like. That happened during the war, but….
This time, she had no hope of rescue. She had seen to that herself.
`No, Hermione,' she urged herself. `Don't go to pieces. You have to try.'
She concluded she was encased in plastic. Trying desperately to squirm, she could barely budge - not even come close to turning over.
Could she transform? She saved her life that way during the war. But she had not assumed that form for over a decade, and it was advanced magic requiring practice. She tried. Nothing happened. Maybe the cocoon imprisoning her was too tight - or maybe she simply forgot how.
Over the constant roar of the road, she thought she heard angry voices - male voices.
Her mouth was covered. She couldn't speak. Her nose and forehead were free. She could furrow her brow. She tried moving her head, and pulled her own hair. She had to be wrapped up in something sticky - but why?
With great effort she found that a couple of her smaller fingers could move a bit. Concentrating on that, she tried wandless magic. Could she burn through this tape, or whatever it was? She had never tried magic in any remotely similar situation.
She let out a smothered "Ouch." All she accomplished was burning herself. Her fingers could not move enough to avoid her own legs.
More incoherent yelling. Were they fighting over her?
She felt the vehicle swerve and decelerate. A door slammed. Footsteps. Then, suddenly, a faint light.
Oof!
Someone kicked her chest, and whatever covered her fell away. A bright ceiling light temporarily blinded her. When her eyes adjusted, some huge man loomed over her - at least he looked huge from her angle.
Worse, he held a knife in one hand, and the other had some sort of gun.
Her breath hitched. He was going to kill her!
"Yer awake," he growled in threatening monotone. "So much the bettah…."
She had almost died before - several times - but back during the war she at least had a fighting chance…. She could not resist now. Hermione held her breath, awaiting the fatal blow.
Instead, he stepped over her and lowered the knife. She felt it at her feet. The knife slit through whatever was binding her with a crinkly unzipping sort of sound.
The material binding her legs closed began to release. The pressure lessened. She could even bend her knees a bit.
She exhaled hugely through her nose. She felt on fire. Her heart pumped madly. Was it possible? She allowed herself hope that maybe, just maybe, he was preparing to let her loose.
No such luck.
The next second she realized he was undoing his pants.
She trembled madly as realization hit her like a ton of bricks. `Oh, fucking Hell! I'm about to be raped,' she thought. With her mouth still covered, she could not even scream. Her arms remained stuck to her sides.
She started thrashing randomly, kicking ineffectively with partially freed legs.
She received a sharp kick in the side for her troubles. The rapist brandished his knife, "Yeh want this up yer cunt…?" he rumbled, his voice like gravel down a garbage chute.
She had no doubt he would do it.
But before he could do anything more, she felt the vehicle abruptly slow. It threw her attacker off balance. "Shit!" he roared. His trousers around his knees, he stumbled forward, planting one of his heavy boots squarely on the side of her waist. Her eyes bugged out as a wave of intense pain rolled through her.
Even more abruptly, the vehicle accelerated again. The would-be rapist staggered backwards, slamming hard into the metal wall of her mobile prison. That gun he carried clattered loudly but did not fall. It must have some kind of strap.
She had no time to think. A huge crash brought the vehicle to an immediate, complete halt. The collision was violent enough that her entire body and whatever she was on shot forward. The top of her head slammed painfully into something she could not see.
"Goddamn, bloody, fuckin' Hell," she heard him curse.
It came without warning.
The silver knife blade passed before her eyes, glinting in the harsh lamplight. …The same unzipping sound….
That knife was every bit as sharp as it looked.
Having ones throat cut was surprisingly painless. It hurt much less than being trodden on. Her neck just seemed to … fall apart … as the blade passed through. Air began entering her throat where it shouldn't. Despite the extra air, she started choking. A squirt of something warm and sticky spattered her right cheek, then another, and another….
So this was what it was like to die…. She had enough medical training to know she would bleed out - exsanguinate - in maybe three minutes….
According to an old wives tale, on the eve of death, ones life passed before ones eyes.
Those old wives were liars.
She saw something from her past, but only one image - and it was very recent. Her ebbing mind remembered Harry's face … how it looked the very last time she would ever see him. He was dressed in a fashionable Muggle suit, but his eyes were wide, his mouth hung open, and every line of his face was etched with shock, pain, and despair.
He was the only one she had ever really loved….
Things were getting fuzzy. She vaguely felt an inrushing blast of cool night air; sensed flashes and pops as something, maybe the man's gun, discharged. Something flashed an angry orange….
A great deal of warm sticky liquid splattered her, but it only warmed her for an instant.
Inside, she felt cold, everywhere, save her right cheek, which was bathed in her own lifeblood….
Darkness closed in. The light faded away….
She felt like she was floating….
Only the vision remained - Harry's face, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, every line etched with shock, pain and despair….
Was she dead yet…?
* * * *
One look at her and Harry knew he was way, way over his head - fatally for her. He was no Healer. Auror first aid mended cuts and bruises, maybe even a broken ankle. But this was something else entirely. He had no idea how to go about Healing a major artery cut clean through. All he remembered about arteries was to use a tourniquet. Even if he knew how, that was impossible.
He needed help - from somebody, anybody, and everybody - fast.
Screaming with despair, Harry hurled his wand arm heavenward and sent an International Auror Assist into the dark sky - then another, and another. A volley of blood-red crisscrossed sparks erupted high over his position.
This was no time to worry about secrecy. If Muggles could get to her faster, he would take Muggles. "Inflammare!" he screamed again, flames leapt from his wand, setting the surrounding forest alight.
Who was he kidding? Everything was pointless and futile. Nobody could get there fast enough. Hermione was lying there, her life spurting out of her - bleeding to death before his very eyes, and he had not raised a finger to stop it.
Harry had no idea what to do.
The only other Healing concept in his reeling mind was that direct pressure stopped some bleeding. He had to try something - anything….
He reached for the entirely inadequate handkerchief in the front pocket of his Muggle suit coat. He winced, and remembered he had been shot in the side. A flesh wound it seemed and utterly insignificant compared to Hermione's injury.
Ignoring his pain, he reached again.
He found nothing.
His breast pocket was almost obliterated, along with his robes directly atop it. The felt-tipped highlighter pen clipped to his pocket came off in his hand, the bottom half gone - blown to pieces.
Cursing his lack of even that one insignificant thing, Harry decided to tear off his shirt and use that. He threw off what remained of his jacket. Something flat hit his wrist and clattered off to one side. He raised his arm to fling the remnant highlighter pen after it, but….
The remnants of the highlighter's bottom dropped out of their own accord. They fell at Harry's feet, leaving him holding only the top. An instant before casting it aside in disgust, his face flushed warm as perhaps the most brilliant idea of his entire life came to him….
Not bothering with his wand, Harry neatly sheared away the very top with a motion of his left hand. A second pass of his hand vanished the fabric clip. He was left with a small yellow plastic tube, less than ten centimeters long and perhaps one and a half wide.
Struggling to keep his hands from trembling, he reached into the gory mess that was Hermione's throat. Her blood, the one part of her he never, ever, wanted to see, feel, or smell was all over his hands. Grimly Harry kept aiming for the squirting end of her severed artery. Finding it, he shoved one end of the little tube into the pulsing hole in the side of her neck.
It worked. The next spurt passed through the end of the tube. Immediately, Harry cast a Sticking Charm to fix it in place.
That was the easy part.
Squinting into the unsteady firelight that illuminated the scene, he looked for her artery's other end. Everything looked so deadly red…. That had to be it….
Harry twisted the tube in the bloody, slippery, sticky wound to align it with the opposite side. But he could not fit the tube into the hole. It was too damn slick, too damn floppy and blood constantly spurted out, filling the other end and blocking his already difficult view.
He had one chance. Moving around beside her, he rested the back of her head on his knee and reached in with both hands. He pinched off her artery just below the tube, and tried again.
It fit. The moment it did, he raised his knee, which pushed her head forward and closed the wound somewhat.
He immediately performed another wandless Sticking Charm.
Harry nearly fainted with relief.
He saw the flaccid end of the artery, just above the blood smeared yellow bit of plastic, start pulsing again. He had stopped the one most immediately fatal aspect of her condition - with a bit of Muggle highlighter pen and some second-year magic.
Now he was immobilized. If he relaxed his knee her head would flop back, reopening the gaping wound, and possibly tearing the artery either above or below the charmed tube.
Why move, anyway? Holding Hermione in his arms … there was nothing he would rather do.
But the Hermione in his arms was unconscious, in shock, drenched in her own blood - and probably dying slowly.
What he wanted, needed, to do was give Hermione his life - or as much of it as she needed to live. But again, Harry was no Healer and had no idea how to do that.
She was still alive, though. Every time she breathed, the gash in her neck burbled where her trachea had been slit.
For how long?
Dammit, where was anybody?
Harry pushed back Hermione's eyelids and looked deeply into her eyes, searching for some glimmer of consciousness. He needed to give her something - even if only hope. For the first time in a decade, he used the Legilimenced speech technique Dumbledore had taught them. Silently he spoke to her, `Hermione, it's Harry; I'm here. I'll never let you go again. I love you. I've always loved you, even though I've been a complete git about showing it. I swear, if you get through this alive, I'll…."
He stopped. It was no longer his place to offer to marry her. He had made that declaration before, when….
That was it! One thing Hermione had taught him was that spells could be modified for new, related uses. At that, she was the best he had ever seen - from the Protean Charm she adapted in their Fifth Year at Hogwarts, to the Power of Love Curse that destroyed Voldemort.
He could cast the Power of Love Curse. If he willed his magic strongly enough, perhaps he could alter it so that, instead of making love into a weapon, he could use it to sustain her life.
It was a long shot. He had never cast it except in the throes of sexual intercourse. That was absolutely out. Still, there were things more intimate than sex. Long ago, he and Hermione had shared such things.
One side effect of the spell could be to destroy his love entirely, leaving nothing in its wake. But his love would not matter if she died.
He knew no other spell that stood the slightest chance of working.
Harry took a very deep breath to calm himself as much as possible. Then he summoned his wand.
Her head in his lap, he tried to envision her as she had been before - without the obscene amounts of blood soaking both of them. Gently, he placed his wand along the length of her neck, across her wound. Cradling her with one hand, he flattened his other across his wand and directly over her injury.
"Puissance d'Amour Totalus," he incanted her spell; she had adapted it. Harry concentrated with everything he had left, trying to will his love - and his life - into her so that she might survive.
The wand, and his hand, glowed softly pink, as Harry shut out the rest of the world.
He never heard the sirens approaching.
- 8 -
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\HP & The Fifth Element.Bat from Hell Ch 6 Endings and Beginnings.doc.doc 12/28/06
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