=[The King's Adviser: Top Hats and Stars]=
Ron was dying. Harry could feel it, though the thought never had time enough to surface, as he struggled to save his friend's life.
"Diffindo!"
The blackened creature holding onto to Ron's top half so tightly – too tightly, it was going to crush him – did not even flinch as the spell was absorbed by its shell-like skin. Only tiny cracks appeared, giving Harry a blast of hope, until they healed before his eyes. They were both screaming.
"Harry!" Ron's voice was muffled and filled with pain and fear. "Help me, Harry!"
Ron kept stumbling about, knocking over more and more of the old junk sitting about the room. The door was already blocked by a bookcase he had sent crashing into it. His heart pounding a wild, white beat in his chest, Harry had had to make a choice to either force his way out and get help or try to remove the creature himself. He had thought he had made the best choice, stay and do just that while shouting for help, but nothing was working and they were at the top of Grimmauld Place, far from the Order meeting downstairs.
The creature was making the strangest movements, pulsing and undulating, writhing and squeezing. It was unlike anything Hagrid had ever shown them, unlike anything they had read about or seen. And it was going to kill his best friend.
He tried as carefully aimed a reducto as he had ever cast, but still to no avail. Incendio. Stupefy. Anything and everything that would hurt what looked like a cross between a scorpion and a python.
There were voices, the thunder of footsteps, shouts of anger and calls of assistance. They were coming. Ron was going to be alright.
Harry turned back from his momentary diversion to the noise outside of the room, only to realise he did not hear Ron's voice calling for help. His best friend had slumped against the wall, the blackened thing on top of him continuing its rhythmic squirming. Only now its grip had tightened past the point- no. No, no, no. Harry shook his head. He raised his wand to try ... something. But no spells, no words, were forthcoming.
Harry Potter was standing thus, wand arm outstretched, no words upon his lips, when the door and accompanying debris were blasted not inwards but upwards. Everything that had stood between the two boys and the outside corridor was propelled safely out of the way and in stormed the Order of the Phoenix, Albus Dumbledore - thunderous and his face filled with a deep lined fury - at its head. It took him a scant moment, a look to the room, to Harry, to the bottom half of Ron and the creature consuming his top half, and he acted.
"Ecari Voprabia Elano!"
There was a screech, high and pathetic, and the creature flung itself across the room. Harry's eyes followed it, too stunned still to move, watched it roll over and over and then turn neatly into the innocuous top hat that Ron had placed upon his head only moments ago.
Before Harry had time to look back at Ron there were people pulling at him, shoving him and guiding him from the room. He tried to resist, to see Ron, to ask him if he was alright. The last he saw before leaving the room was a grizzled old wizard with one leg raise his wand, a crazed expression upon his face and with a furious bellow cast something black towards the top hat destroying it completely.
"Harry," the voice was soft, but firm. "Harry, look at me."
He raised his eyes automatically, his mind numb with confusion and a sudden blankness. A pale face, gaunt, grey eyes, with long black hair looked back. It took him a few moments to recognise Sirius Black.
"Harry, you have to answer me. Did you get hurt? Did it touch you? You have to tell me, Harry. This is important."
He could not understand. What was he asking? Harry was fine, it was Ron that- Ron.
"Ron!" Harry's voice cracked and he turned and tried to run back into the room. But before he got more than a few feet there were hands grabbing him, pulling him back. "Ron! No, let me go! I have to-" but he was pulled clean off of his feet. Kicking and screaming, furious anger rising up, trying to find his wand – where was his wand? – he was carried into another room off of the corridor.
"Remus, we have to check him. If it got him we'll only have a minute, maybe two."
The both of them pinned him to the bed, his angry kicking and punching ineffectual, Remus pulling at the top Harry had on, Sirius running his wand to and fro over Harry's body. What were they doing? They had to help Ron. No, no, no. Not Ron.
"I can't see any sting marks. It would be obvious, and he would already be getting weaker."
"Yes," Sirius' voice was relieved. "There's no sign of anything here either."
"What about?" Remus asked, his eyes going to the door.
Sirius looked to the door too, a flash of something crossing his face, and shook his head.
Seeing Sirius shake his head, understanding in a moment of perfect clarity what it meant, Harry felt a force hit him. A hole had opened up underneath him, and something unrelenting was pulling him in. All the world was shrinking down into the gap in his soul, pain and dizziness like he had never known, and reality was gone for a time.
The world came back, around the edges first, lines and then colour. He was surfacing, the sound coming at last but with no air. Harry was writhing, twisting and screaming, but they would not let him up. A yell he realised was his own broke out of him and Sirius and Remus both were flung back with a strength Harry did not have in his body.
Throwing himself up he fell to his knees, his stomach churning. He had to reach the door. Reach the door, get into the corridor, up the hall, through the door and to Ron. But before he could reach the first door there were hands on him again.
"Breathe, Harry. You've got to breathe." Sirius' voice was loud in his ear, the desperation sharp.
Harry Potter would later recall that before unconsciousness came for him he took a great gulp of air and emptied the contents of his stomach on to the floor.
Flashes of light and distorted voices, pressure and release, twisting and turning. Fever dreams danced within his mind. They showed him many things, both awe inspiring and terrifying. But Harry understood little of them, and remembered less. He awoke, unable to move and for a few panicked moments unable to breathe.
He could hear voices. They were concerned and hushed, but clear to him. He wanted to get up and ask them what had happened, what day it was and to find water. He was thirsty and far too warm. But he had the strength for none of this. The thought of lifting himself from the bed exhausted him and left his insides feeling scratched out.
"It'll need to be dealt with, the sooner the better." Gruff and to the point, a clanking of wooden peg upon wooden floor to emphasise their point. That could only be Mad Eye.
"He'll need time, Moody. We can't just tell him." That voice came with a dog's growl made human. Sirius, or maybe an angry Remus. Had Harry heard Remus angry? He thought so, though the memory eluded him.
"What do you suggest then? Just ignore it and hope he doesn't notice?" Another clanking thud. "Better to hear it straight, from one of us. It's the best way through the pain."
"I know this pain better than anyone, Mad Eye." Definitely Sirius this time, and definitely angry. "I know what that loss-" he choked and ground to a halt. There was some shuffling noise and he continued with a thicker voice. "Remus and I will tell him, when he wakes up. But not until then."
"Your chance is coming sooner than you think."
Moody was right. Harry was trying to get himself up, but blankets had been wrapped around him tightly. He was on the couch in the living room of Grimmauld Place and the fire was roaring.
Sirius and Remus moved over to him quickly, Mad Eye hung back near the wall where the light of the fire barely reached him.
"Too hot." Harry said, but felt his voice was too dry to be heard properly. Still, Sirius nodded his head and took one of the blankets around Harry off as carefully as he could as though afraid Harry may fall apart without it.
Harry looked up into his face, still unsure quite what was going on. It felt like he had been asleep for many days, his body sluggish and unresponsive. But he was so tired too and hardly able to move. Even breathing seemed difficult. Sirius looked strained and pale as he crouched down in front of Harry, putting himself between the fire and Harry. A fiery yellow halo glowed around him, bringing him out in stark relief. Remus sat himself carefully upon the couch near Harry's feet. He looked about as bad as Sirius.
"Harry, you've not been well." Sirius was speaking slowly. "You've been asleep for a good few hours now." His hand brushed Harry's hair. "We thought you might have been stung slightly. Grazed, maybe. But you're fine now," Sirius was quick to reassure Harry.
Harry nodded, beginning to feel agitated. There was something they were not telling him. Something they did not want to tell him. Flashes of something were coming back to him, powerful bursts of feeling. His heart was beating harder with each one, his mind more confused again.
"There was a ... thing, an animal or something. It was a ... it wasn't what it looked like."
"A top hat." Moody supplied from across the room. "Clever disguise."
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Ron found it in the closet. He thought it was funny. Said he thought Malfoy probably wore one at home. Then he put it on-" Harry trailed off. It was coming back now, the sequence of it all. Ron had tried the hat on, and they had laughed, and then they had screamed as it changed into something terrible. It took only a few moments of sluggish, slow thought for Harry to know what had happened. But he had to know for sure. "Ron, is he ... did it?" Not daring to believe he forced himself to breathe again. "Is he dead?"
Sirius and Remus looked at each for a moment, Harry felt Sirius' hand tighten in his hair slightly with tension entering his body. Then he nodded.
Harry looked at them both, Remus hunched with a face so full of concern and love that Harry's heart ached and Sirius, even worse, with so much understanding empathy on his face that Harry could bear it no longer. He wriggled his way loose of the blankets, uninhibited by the pair of them this time, and stood. He did not feel anything, except the desire to be elsewhere.
"I need to go outside."
"Harry, you mustn't-"
"I need to get some air." He started to walk towards the back door. Sirius and Remus joined him, flanking him on either side and opening doors for him as they went. In moments his bare feet were on the damp grass of Grimmauld Places tiny lawn. Steam rose from his bare arms, so hot he still did not feel cold in the dead of night.
There were so many stars. He was sure he had never seen so many stars in all his life. Face still cast up he sunk to the ground where, in time, he was joined by Sirius Black and Remus Lupin.