Disclaimer: They belong to JKR, I'm only playing.
A/N: So here we go, the final chapters. When you get to the end, some of it will make sense, some of it will just make you go, 'is that it'. I haven't answered every question nor tied every loose end, but I feel like I wrote what I set out to write. Enjoy. And a million thanks as always for a million reasons to beta miconic. All mistakes are mine, feel free to pick at them.
***
--Chapter Fifteen--
Everyone remembers the quiet afterwards. Apart from the rare siren and church bell, there's nothing. Not even the urgent flicker and crackle of TV screens and radios in the background, since after about three hours there's nothing new to watch or listen to. Not when you are the news. A few helicopters circle far above. One part of the city is shut down and its sentinels carry guns. Ash crumbles off the earthbound cloud and the sky flushes with a strangely vibrant sundown. Only a few blocks are affected this time but borne by the wind, soot settles on roofs, monuments, trees, gardens, drifting as far as the river. Those who venture out speak in hushed voices as if the fire's not all gone; it's only sleeping. After all, this is not the first time.
*
Years later, when trying to remember, this is what he comes up with, this waking up.
Not the flames, the heat or the pain, just this, the hand that's in his hair, the bare knee at his cheek. He twists his neck. She's slouched against the headboard, asleep, legs curled beneath her, a miserably flat pillow at her back. Light from a single candle presses down on her cheeks. She looks so uncomfortable, molded into the hard headboard and deflated pillow. As if she's just given up and taken permanent residence on his hospital bed.
He is in hospital, isn't he? The fierce smell of antiseptic is strong in his nostrils but the bed feels like his own. The edge of light at his door seems too sharp for No 12, Grimmauld Place. Fabric from her skirt's caught under his cheek. He considers waking her up. Despite her posture, her breath falls deep and measured, the slow, even drift of settling ash, clearing smoke. Besides, he doesn't seem to be in a position to move; on his stomach like a beached crab, his back feels damp, his upper body numb. Cheek against her thigh, her skirt clutched in one hand, he closes his eyes again. And like the burning and the smoke, other details are missed--such as the faint click of the door, red hair snapping out with the light.
*
When he wakes properly, Hermione's gone. His back feels flayed, his head no better. Sitting up in bed, he gropes around for glasses and wand, then finds some clothes folded on a chair. In jeans, bare feet protesting the cold floor, he stumbles into the bathroom, feeling cranky.
There's something wrong with the house.
It stinks.
He crosses the room and pulls the door open. His jaw drops.
Despite the dark in his room, the whole house is flooded with light. The light along the corridor seems extra bright, and it takes him a moment to realize that it's partly because the floor's been scrubbed to an inch within its wooden life, the timber still glistening. Taking a few steps forward, he hears raised voices--a familiar one among them--from the far end of the passage that curves into a cluster of unused rooms.
"What? No, no, no--are you mad? You have to bring him back!"
"But the Minister said it's safe now--"
"Oh yes, I know! He'll say it's safe because he's got nowhere else to put them!"
"But Mr Weasley--"
"Gentlemen, please, keep it down, there are patients here!"
"Just bloody bring him back, all right? You know how to do a standard Obliviate, don't you?"
"Well, yes, of course--"
"Well, go on then. Don't stand there gaping. Are there any more? Has anyone else been stupid enough to take people to Muggle hospitals?"
"Mr Weasley, please, lower your voice--"
"Hang on, Martha, this is important. Listen to me, everyone, don't take any witches or wizards into Muggle hospitals, all right? I don't care if Scrimgeour tells me it's fine till he's blue in the face, we're not risking anyone, all right? It's fine if you bring Muggles here, but none of our folk are to be left in Muggle hospitals, all right?"
Yes, Mr Weasley goes the chorus. A second later, it dawns on Harry that they're all headed in his direction. Before he can shuffle back into the shadows, not that there are many now, someone emits a high-pitched squeal at his back.
"Oooh, Mr Potter! You should be in bed! Oh dear, oh dear--let me help you!"
A small witch in St Mungo's robes bustle up to him; he manoeuvres his elbow out of her grasp, surprised by his own deftness.
"I'm fine, really, I'm just going to--"
"Oh no, you mustn't move too much yet, really, Mr Potter--"
"I'm fine, really, I can walk--"
"Oh, of course, of course, but you must--"
"Harry!"
He looks up as Ron hurries over, flanked by half a dozen Ministry-robed witches and wizards.
"Ron, tell her I'm fine!"
"Oh dear, oh dear!"
"Janice, it's fine. Harry, how're you feeling?"
"Fine, I'm fine. What the hell is going on?"
Watching Ron's entourage advance on him with indecently avid eyes, Harry wishes he'd pulled on a t-shirt. But how the fuck was I to know the house would've been taken over by them? Ron frowns at Harry, then turns around and waves a peremptory hand.
"All right, enough gawking. Off you go. Jobs to do, remember? Yeah, yeah, try not to look so keen, you break my heart."
Despite his discomfort, Harry has to stifle a sudden grin. Through the years, through the war, Ron stuck to the style of leadership he'd discovered while chivvying first years as a prefect. As the last of his wards drift down the stairs with suppressed mutiny, and Janice disappears clucking, Ron turns to Harry.
"Ministry interns. Hopeless lot! Anyway, Harry, how are you feeling?"
Without waiting for an answer, he takes Harry's elbow and peers at his back, making a face.
"You still look like a fresh lobster. But not as bad as before. Does it still sting? Healer Smith--he's the head of the burns unit--swore by his ointment. Said it'll put you right in four days, right on the clock. So you have one more day to sleep through. All right, come on, into bed."
He glares. Unconcerned, Ron clamps a hand around a numb elbow again. Harry tries to extricate himself, sways, and puts a hand out to steady himself. Ron nods meaningfully.
"Exactly. Come on."
He marches Harry back to his room. Harry breathes in noisily, wishing his head would clear.
"Where's Hermione?"
"At St Mungo's."
He sways again. "What?"
Ron looks at him, then shakes his head.
"Oh no, she's fine, mate. A few bruises, and she's snorted smoke like a chimney, but otherwise she's fine. She and Fred are out there helping."
Harry lowers himself to the bed and leans gingerly against the pillow Ron puts at his back. Then he looks up.
Ron leans on his crutch and meets Harry's gaze, looking uncertain. A pair of footsteps passes by the door, urgent. A door opens somewhere then shuts. From somewhere else in the house, someone wails in pain.
When Ron looks at Harry again, there's no hesitation in his eyes.
"They say the count of injured stands at about two hundred now, us and Muggles. Muggle hospitals are flooded, and with magic unreliable they're having all sorts of problems at St Mungo's. Not just spells and charms, some of their lights failed. They've rigged up a Muggle thing--a generator, that's it, a generator. That's how two floors are carrying on. Hermione and Fred have been run off their feet. She's one of about a dozen in there who can do wandless magic, and Fred can mix potions something mad."
He reaches for a candle and holds it like a sword.
"Already, about sixty dead."
Harry scratches his arm, fingers itching to reach his back.
Ron lights the candle with his wand and sets it on the bedside table. There seems to be a heating charm in place but its diffusion around the room has made it useless. Ron frowns at the compilation of glass bottles on the bedside table and picks the biggest one. Harry looks around for a shirt, then forgets all about it.
"Where's Hedwig? Her cage is gone."
"Oh, she's in Buckbeak's room. The St Mungo's crowd wanted to give your room the full treatment too but Hermione wouldn't hear of it. Said it'll make you feel out of place. So they made her get rid of the cage and Hedwig. Here, drink this." He proffers a glass with a milky grey liquid in it.
"I think it's sleeping potion plus something to heal the burned bits. The Healer said to give it to you if you woke up. And Hermione only reminded me about twenty times before she left."
Harry takes the glass without question, and without looking, feeling, gulps it down.
"Is everyone all right?"
"Yeah, they're all fine. Mum and Ginny are downstairs somewhere. And Sally's here too, somewhere. I was at home when Mr Lovegood came to get us. He was home for lunch when Luna owled from the office." Ron opens the window and pokes his head out to scan the street.
"And Nick? Is Nick all right? I saw him."
For the first time since seeing Harry in the passage, Ron pauses. Neither speaks for a moment. Harry runs his tongue over his teeth, trying to rid his mouth of the aftertaste of the potion.
"He helped me. Probably saved my life. He said--Ron, he said something about not meaning any of it. Where's he now?"
Ron drags a chair and lowers himself laboriously, reduced suddenly to his three limbs. He stretches his bad leg out and stares at it for a moment.
"Yes, he's fine now. He got burnt, but not as bad as you. And you're right. He helped get you out of there. He's in Sirius's old room. But--he couldn't talk much, still quite weak, almost lost his voice…Harry, one of his friends works in newspapers. Nick told him about us."
Harry shrugs. "Yes, I know. I saw the Muggle paper a couple of days ago, after Hogwarts. Nick's picture was in it. He even told them about the ghoul in your attic."
"Yeah, well. Except he says he didn't know that this friend also runs some sort of underground group. They've been on our trail since the last time London burned. Some had been there, they remember some of what happened, how the fire couldn't be put out and all of that." He runs absent fingers over his crutch and lowers it to the ground before meeting Harry's glance. "Most of the group members--their families burnt in that fire."
To his surprise, Harry finds that he doesn't feel like looking away. For the first time, he doesn't feel like running.
"They took their story to the Muggle police and all, but nobody really did anything about it. Orders from above I guess, Scrimgeour's been keeping tabs on what the Muggle Prime Minister did and said about that first time. The newspapers reported on it, but that was all."
A homecoming starling stirs an orchestra of wing-beats up in the eaves.
"Nick let them into Diagon Alley this morning. He says he had no idea--he's in pretty bad shape about it actually. They had…some kind of home-made bombs."
"Petrol bombs," Harry adds. The smell's lodged somewhere under his skin, firmly pinned in memory.
"Yeah."
"And fireworks. Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes."
Ron looks up, eyes steady. "Fred had nothing to do with it, Harry."
After a moment, Harry finds a rough spot and a loose thread on the bedspread to fiddle with.
Ron carries on. "Nick had taken some for a show and tell, I suppose, a couple of weeks back. They'd found a way to pack them in with extra gunpowder without breaking the charms. Pretty clever. Not all of them worked, of course."
"But enough did."
Stretching back in the chair, looping his hands behind his head, Ron looks up at the ceiling. "Hermione hasn't even looked at him. I think she's scared she'll go into rage a
and just claw him to pieces." He sighs. "I'd have done it, but someone has to keep their head."
Harry glances over. A smattering of stubble covers Ron's parched face and his eyes look pinched. In fact, he looks somehow pinched all over, squashed into his hand-me-down shirt and too-short trousers. But that's because his clothes never fit him, not the other way round, thinks Harry. Like Harry himself but in reverse; no one's ever got Ron clothes large enough for who he is.
"And last but not least, and no surprise to any of us, apparently Scrimgeour had his fat finger in the pie too."
The thread twisted tight enough to cut off circulation in his index finger, Harry listens to Ron's account of Sally's visit to Grimmauld Place the morning of the fire. A single star pulses at the window like some obscure cosmic code.
"So yeah, it looks as if Scrimgeour's prepared to just about to anything to hook you in and--"
"Well, I can think one way to stop his bullshit."
"What's that, mate? Didn't hear you."
"Nothing. Go on."
"I was just saying, apparently Scrimgeour's about to be stood down because of all this."
"What?"
"Yeah, he won't be Minister for Magic much longer. The idiot slipped on his own shit. The editor of The Daily Prophet double-crossed him. The stuff about the Incinerator, you know, about you and Hermione, that was top hush-hush stuff, you see, and Scrimgeour wasn't meant to tell anyone. So the Wizengamot's onto him for breaking wizarding law and get this, it seems he tried to bribe two of the members into pushing his bill for conscription."
Ron pauses and peers at Harry.
"What's the matter, Harry? I thought you'd have looked happier to hear about the old fart."
Harry shrugs, his brain whirring. Shooting him a curious, almost suspicious look, Ron carries on. "Anyway, on top of all that, he lost it with the Muggle Prime Minister yesterday and Kingsley had to restrain him from pummelling the man into a pulp."
He heaves a noisy sigh and leans his elbows on his knees.
"That's partly why we are in so much trouble right now. The Muggle Prime Minister's suddenly gone tough on witches and wizards. Which means anyone who looks 'different'. There have been a couple of what Scrimgeour calls 'incidents' and several arrests by Muggle police. There are a couple of groups about, Muggles. A woman was attacked because she 'looked' like a witch. One of the kids from the Ministry said she was dressed in this long, cloak-like thing with a funny hat, but she looked nothing like one of us. Turned out she was in fancy dress, off to some gig somewhere. What kind of person goes to a fancy dress party when London's burning? Anyway, our idiots are not letting things be either. Two were hauled up somewhere in Newcastle for Muggle baiting.
"It's strange, they still think we're some sort of weird cult. At least some things never change. Magic always has to be explained away in some way, they just can't believe it's real."
Harry makes a small noncommittal sound. He's finding it difficult to concentrate, but not because the potion's numbed his brain, but because his brain seems to working faster than he can follow. He listens to the many sounds surging outside his room, inside the house. The longer he listens, the stranger they seem in a house where the loudest sounds were of squabbling birds and settling timber. Now there are footsteps, doors, running water, voices, the chink and clink of glass, china, metal. It's like overnight, a living tree had driven roots in the dying house, its brilliant leaves rustling and scraping, blowing into every empty, silent niche.
Footsteps sound out on the street, then the front door opens. Ron struggles to his feet and sticks his head out the window again.
"Excellent, that's Ginny and Mum with more stuff from St Mungo's. Now all I need is for Fred to come and get that dead starling out of the roof. Oh--" He runs a hand down the back of his neck and looks away at the window again. "Harry, by the way, something you should know."
"What?"
"Ginny's going away."
Harry rubs hands over his face. "What do you mean?"
"She just told us yesterday. She's going to Amsterdam of all places. Apparently she met someone there when she went looking for Snape with Tonks. I really don't get the timing but she's been in a right strop the past week or so that I've been at home, I didn't want to argue."
Without waiting for comment or question, he turns his back and drags the chair into the corner he pulled it up from. Harry shifts his legs. He seems to have shifted some balance in the air; the smell of the antiseptic hits him again.
"This place stinks!"
Ron looks around. "Yes, about that. I hope you don't mind, Harry. St Mungo's was overflowing so I said they can bring people in here. We had to strip the place down of course, that's what the smell's about. They sent us some Healers, but most downstairs are volunteers. People just off the street. I think there are Muggles there as well, I'm a bit iffy about them right now but beggars can't be choosers, and I've got people keeping an eye on things. Times like these, I wish we still had the Order together. I just don't trust Scrimgeour's lot."
Ron shuts the window and draws the curtain. "Okay, enough chit-chat. You've a lot of skin to re-grow. The Healer said the old skin will begin to peel off soon." He grimaces. "Sort of…slough off, I imagine. A bit like a snake. Or a bird moulting. And please tell Hermione I made you go back to sleep the moment you woke up, all right? Actually, tell her you slept like a baby and didn't wake up at all."
Harry slides under the covers. Ron limps to the door. Through half closed eyes Harry watches the thread of light at the door become a thick ribbon.
"Harry?"
"Yes?"
"Mate, they say you were brilliant out there. There are a couple of people in here who'd seen you, and anyway, it's all over the papers, about how you stopped some of the fires and all, but…I don't know if there's much more you can do." He pauses, the door swinging. "It's crazy out there, things that are happening are…beyond all of us and…and it wouldn't be good if you were to put yourself in danger. Again."
After a long moment, Harry slips his forearm behind his head to peer better at Ron.
"Where's the spirit of adventure, Ron?"
The leaves rustle and rustle, drowning the meaning of Ron's words; Harry barely hears the door close after him. What a lot there is to do, to think about. But soon his eyes droop shut, and he sinks into the warmth of the covers thinking that he wouldn't complain about new skin.
--end chapter fifteen--