A/N: Sorry it has been so long. Had other projects I have been working on and work got busy for a while. Glad to be back though! Cheers.
~
Harry wasn't sure if he was awake, asleep, or somewhere in between. Flashes of what seemed to be real seamlessly blended with things either past or so fantastic to not be possible.
"It can't be. Harry?"
A brief glimpse of red hair and gangly arms gets grotesquely skewed into a brain from the Department of Mysteries. The tentacles reach out and snare him, but before he can reach for his wand he hears Hermione yelling not to struggle and that it would only make it worse. He frees the tentacles from his throat, but when he goes to take a deep breath; his lungs fill with water, as he is suddenly swimming for his life to reach the surface of the lake. Except this time, the surface keeps moving further and further away….
"What about a broom?"
"Are you insane?"
He's flying high above the quidditch pitch when he spots it: the golden snitch. He dives for it, wind blowing through his hair as he reaches out and takes it in his fingers. Oddly, he can still feel the wind in his hair, although now he is standing still and the snitch opens up to reveal the Resurrection Stone. He revolves it, but instead of his parents it's Ron and Hermione.
"Wait, how are you?"
"Here? We never left Harry." Hermione smiles at him.
He reaches for her hand, but his fingers close on cold air. He feels a moment of vertigo as his body sways dangerously to his left. He can't see anything but rough fabric.
"…We need to take a more southerly course…Do you think we could make it to Krum's tonight?"
"Do we have a choice?"
He drifts off again and this time he is riding the dragon from Gringotts. He is riding high above Hogwarts. He dives and sees the chaos of a battle unfold before him. The dragon disappears as he hits the ground and he watches helplessly as Tonks and Bellatrix are dueling furiously over the body of Lupin. A green jet of light leaves Bellatrix's wand and hits Tonks square in the chest and the light is leaving her eyes and no matter how hard Harry screams his wand doesn't do anything.
"Harry, it's me. It's alright."
He's walking into the graveyard in Godric's Hollow alone. When he reaches his parent's headstone, there is a pristine white one directly to its left with his name on it. He sits on the ground and leans back into it and he just cries. He cries and he cries but no one ever comes to comfort him. It was just like when he was a little boy in his cupboard when he would see all of Dudley's toys and have nothing of his own to play with. He would sit there and cry and wish that someone, anyone would hear him and take him somewhere where he could have toys and be hugged and kissed like Dudley; except no one would hear him and he would cry himself to sleep.
Sleep, he's falling into a deep sleep and there is a cold stone floor underneath him and he can feel his blood coursing through his veins and he thinks to himself that if this is dying than it's really not all that bad.
"I wouldn't know, I've never died." A high pitched, cold voice says.
Snakelike, red eyes fill his vision and he's dodging killing curse after killing curse. Each one closer than the last, but everyone that misses is killing someone else instead. James, Lily, Sirius, Dumbledore all fall to the ground dead before Harry finally can't move with exhaustion and a green light hits him dead in the chest.
"Harry? Harry, wake up."
He's lying on the ground and Ron and Hermione are sitting over him. Ron is shaking his shoulders but he can't move. Hermione is crying and whispering
"Please Harry, wake up."
~
He finally opens his eyes to find himself in a dimly lit room. There's a door with a window in it and he's lying in what seems to be a hospital bed.
"Harry?"
Hermione is sitting next to him, looking tired and disheveled.
"Hermione?" he tries to sit up.
"Don't sit up Harry. You shouldn't exert yourself, you're very weak."
"Where?....What?..."
"You're at a hospital. St. Aleksi's in Burgas, Bulgaria. Ron and I brought you here three weeks ago."
"Three weeks?" he looked around and saw a rough couch bed.
"It was a tight fit, but Ron and I made it work." Hermione laughed. "Ron can be quite the bed hog."
"You slept here?"
"We didn't want to leave you. Besides, where else were we going to go in the middle of Bulgaria?"
"How did we even end up here?"
"Well, you aparrated right into the tent three weeks ago. You were a mess: dehydrated, malnourished….I knew it was beyond my ability to heal. We didn't really know where to go, so we came to Bulgaria to find Viktor. He was able to point us here. The Healer said you were in the worst shape he had ever seen a wizard. You were in and out of consciousness before slipping into a sort of coma about two weeks ago. We weren't sure if you were going to wake up."
Harry struggled to put together the pieces. He remembered everything up until he decided to head to Alaska, but everything after that was a blur. He noticed the dark circles underneath Hermione's eyes.
"I'm sorry Hermione."'
"Sorry for what Harry?"
"Sorry to put you through this."
"This is what friends are for Harry. What, did you think I was just going to sit there and let you die? I did this because I care about you. There's nothing to be sorry about."
Knowing defeat when he saw it, Harry again looked around the room. Hermione was the only one there. "Where's Ron?"
"He went to stretch his legs. He should be back before…"
"Harry? You're awake." Ron walked in right on que. He looked ganglier than ever, like he had lost weight since last Harry had seen him. "Good to see you mate."
"Likewise."
All three of them looked from one to another.
"Look, why don't we wait on filling in the gaps of where we've been until we're out of here?" Hermione said tentatively.
Not being in any particular rush to talk, Harry simply nodded. Ron did the same. There was a soft knock at the door before a plump woman in a nurse uniform strolled into the room.
"Shoo! We must run tests!" the nurse gesticulated in the direction of Ron and Hermione, both of who scowled at the nurse before turning to Harry.
"We'll be back." They said simultaneously. The nurse was already tutting in broken English over the shape his body was in. Harry just laid there and ignored it, much more focused on what it meant now that the three of them were back together.
His friends looked a little different; as he was sure that he himself looked different. The real question was what inside of and between them had changed in the time he had been away?
More importantly, what hadn't?