A/N: I'm back! Really quick right? Well, don't get used to it. I've got exams coming up and anytime I'm not spending studying is already booked by babysitting. One of the lovely charms of being the oldest still living at home. But you don't really care about my personal life, so on to the story!
Thanks a bunch to Morning Lilies and Fairyprincesst for reviewing! You guys are amazing!
Summary: What if Bellatrix's knife swerved just a few inches to the left and caught Harry on the way to its mark? Set in Deathly Hallows at the end of Malfy Manner and the beginning of The Wandmaker. Sort of overlaps parts of the book, but again, no major plot changing.
Everything belongs to JK Rowling, who, by the way, is not me. The italics stuff is directly from the book and there are a few descriptions in the beginning that are also taken from the book. I don't claim to own those either.
Harry's scar was blinding him with pain. Dimly he knew that they had moments, seconds before Voldemort was with them.
"Ron, catch – and GO!" he yelled, throwing one of the wands at him; then he bent down to tug Griphook out from under the chandelier. Hoisting the groaning goblin, who still clung to the sword, over one shoulder, Harry seized Dobby's hand and spun on the spot to Disapparate.
As he turned into darkness, he caught one last view of the drawing room, of the pale, frozen figures of Narcissa and Draco, of the streak of red that was Ron's hair, and a blur of flying silver ss Bellatrix's knife flew across the room at the place where he was vanishing – Bill and Fleur's…Shell Cottage… Bill and Fleur's
The blackness pressed in on all sides. He repeated the destination again and again in his head and hoped it would be enough to get him there.The goblin's weight bore down upon him and he could feel the sword bumping against his back, but the pain in his head and a searing in his side pushed out all thought but where he needed to go.
He felt Dobby's hand twist in his and wondered if the elf was trying to take charge, to pull them in the right direction and tried to indicate, by squeezing the fingers, that that was fine by him…
And then they hit solid earth and smelled salty air. Harry relinquished Dobby and fell to his hands and knees, letting the goblin tumble off his back to the ground. He heard Griphook moan, but it was all he could do to stay conscious. Black spots swam before his eyes as his hands scrabbled at his side. He felt something hot and sticky on his stomach and dimly registered that it was not a good sign, but then yellows specks of light in the distance caught his eye. He could see the shadows of people moving in the light and hoped more than ever that they had reached safety.
"Dobby, is this Shell Cottage? Have we come to the right place?" he gasped, finding it surprisingly difficult to draw in breath. "Dobby?"
He looked around. The little elf stood feet from him and one look at him drove everything – his worry over their location, fear of fresh attack, even the sickening pain in his own side – out of his mind.
"DOBBY!"
The elf swayed slightly, stars reflected in his wide, shining eyes. Together, he and Harry looked down at the silver hilt of the knife protruding from the elf's heaving chest.
"Dobby - no – HELP!" Harry tried to bellow, but his voice was straggled in his own throat. Something hot and sticky was coating his mouth, dripping down his chin. He couldn't draw in breath to shout for help. It did not matter if they had come to the right place, if those people up at the cottage were wizard or Muggle, friend or foe, because they would not hear him anyway.
A dark stain was spreading across Dobby's front and he stretched out his thin arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry caught him and lay him sideways on the cool grass, still spluttering out strangled cries for help that he knew would not come.
"Dobby, no, don't die, don't die –"
Harry didn't even know if the elf could understand him now as he struggled to suck in air in order to force out the words, but he kept up his chant all the same.
The elf's eyes found him and his lips trembled with the effort to form words.
"Harry...Potter…"
And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sparkling with light from the stars they could not see.
It was like sinking into an old nightmare. For a moment Harry was once again kneeling beside Dumbledore's body at the foot of the tallest tower of Hogwarts, but in reality he was staring at a tiny body curled upon the grass, pierced by Bellatrix's silver knife. He was still mouthing the elf's name, though he could no longer give sound to the words. He felt nothing at all but the icy waves of shock and horror that crashed over him in this dark little huddle, isolated from any aid.
He turned his head, vision swimming, once more to the little cottage, but he could no longer see people moving there and they would not find him… were already too late anyways. He welcomed the unconsciousness that dragged him under and he sagged onto the grass with a nearly silent thud.
…
"Ron?"
Dean's voice cut across Ron's numb thoughts and he jumped, tearing his eyes away from the bed where Hermione was being treated by Fleur, still unconscious.
"Yeah?" he mumbled, looking at Dean who had appeared suddenly beside him in the doorway.
"You said Harry Disapparated when you did, right?" Dean asked, shifting from one foot to the other.
"He did," Ron confirmed, a trickle of new worry penetrating his carefully-built numbness.
"He hasn't turned up yet," Dean said very quietly. "You're sure he knew where to go? Sure he could get here?"
"He should be able to, yeah," Ron said, going over it again. There was no reason Harry shouldn't be. He was with Dobby, at the very least. The elf could get in for sure.
"And there's no way… no way they could have grabbed him last minute?" Dean persisted.
"No way," Ron said, affirming the point for the second time. This was the first garbled explanation he'd given to them ten minutes ago when he'd first turned up. Harry would be right behind him. They'd just barely escaped Malfoy Manner. He'd seen Harry Apparating away.
But Harry hadn't turned up yet.
"Dean and I are gonna go search around a bit," Bill said, coming up the stairs. "See if he got lost on the way to the house or something."
"I should come with you," Ron said automatically, but he cast a look at Hermione's pale figure and was reluctant to leave her side. What if she wasn't alright? What if she'd started to crack like Neville's parents?
"No, Ron, you stay here," Bill said firmly, catching the look. "We won't go far and they might need you here."
"Right," Ron murmured, ashamed to be a little bit relieved. The night's events had drained him and he didn't think he had it in him to launch himself into another race with fear just yet. If Bill and Dean weren't back with Harry in ten minutes, then he'd be more than willing.
…
"I'll go round back," Bill said as he and Dean stepped out into the black night. "Go up to the road and circle back. Meet me at the side of the house in five minutes," he added, indicating the spot where they should meet.
Dean nodded and Bill disappeared around the corner. Dean gripped his wand tightly and pushed forward into the pressing darkness. His own capture and what time he'd spent at Malfoy manner hearing Hermione screaming threatened to rise up again, but he shoved it away because someone was still missing and the night wasn't over yet.
He knew Hermione from school only and liked her well enough. If hearing her being tortured like that had made him feel sick, than he couldn't imagine what it had done to Ron and Harry. He hoped, not only for her sake, but for Ron's and Harry's too, that she was okay. He had watched the three of them grow inseparable over the years and though he hadn't thought to hard about it at the time, the idea of the three of them not being joined at the hip was now as strange a thought as Seamus deciding to take up soccer as a professional sport (though Dean thought only he had been privy to Seamus's soccer rants).
Lost in his own thoughts, Dean did not register the cluster of prone figures the first time his wand light swept over them. The second time, it jolted his stomach and began to run.
He saw Griphook first, sprawled on the grass and beyond him the tiny body of the little elf who'd brought him here. An inexplicable horror gripped him at the motionless little body, but he didn't stop to see why because he recognized the largest of the prone figures. Harry lay face down on the grass, unmoving, and a silver knife lay, dark with blood lay a few feet away.
"Harry!" Dean half shouted, leaping over Griphook to reach the slight, black-haired, too-still figure. He turned Harry over and fell backwards with a gasp. In the feeble light of his wand he could see the dark stain stretching over Harry's stomach and the pool of red on the grass where he'd been laying.
"BILL!" Dean shouted with all the volume he could muster, heaving Harry up by the shoulders and starting to drag him towards the house. Harry's head lolled limply onto his chest.
Bill was sprinting up to him in ten seconds, grabbing Harry's legs, and swearing at all the blood. Together, they carried towards the house as quickly as they could without jostling him too much. Bill kicked open the door and shouted for Fleur as they lowered Harry down onto the couch.
"Dammit, this is a lot of blood," Bill muttered, ripping up Harry's soaked shirt where the crimson was the darkest. He waved his wand over the wound, but nothing happened. "I'm no good at healing spells… Fleur! We need you down here, NOW!"
There was some muffled muttering in French and then Fleur appeared at the top of the stairs. The second she caught sight of the scene in her living room, her hands flew up to her mouth and her blue eyes got huge. She was down the stairs and kneeling beside Harry in a second, muttering instruction for Bill and Dean to get things or do things.
…
Ron heard the flurry of activity downstairs and knew if Fleur wasn't coming back up to tend to Hermione, whatever it was, was not good. He sat on the bed next to Hermione's while Luna continued to do whatever Fleur had told her do for Hermione.
"You should go," Luna told him serenely when he looked hesitantly at the door, afraid of what he might see if he ventured down the stairs. "You aren't doing any goo here," she added in her brutally honest fashion.
Ron swallowed, nodded, and pulled himself off the bed and towards the stairs. What he saw made him stop halfway down the steps. He thought Hermione's motionless, pale figure would be the worst thing he'd have to see tonight, but he'd been wrong. He could see Harry sprawled on the couch, dark red blood staining everything around him, covering his face and front. Fleur knelt next to him, waving her wand repeatedly over his torso and murmuring something. Bill was siphoning off the blood as quickly as it came and Ron could hear what he assumed was Dean banging around in the kitchen cupboards.
"What happened?" Ron croaked, jumping down the last few steps and stopping short at the back of the couch. "Did he… did he get Splinched?"
"Does that look like splinching to you?" Bill asked in the familiar harshness Ron and his siblings used when someone was being particularly stupid.
Ron opened his mouth to say yeah, actually it did look a lot like what had happened to him, but at that moment Dean appeared carrying an armful of potion bottles and bandages.
"There was a knife next to him," he supplied and Ron felt his stomach jolt once again as he thought of the silver knife Bellatrix had held to Hermione's throat.
Ron stared down at his friend's pale face and wondered how the bloody hell he'd managed to be the one to get out of there unscathed.
After a while – Ron wasn't sure exactly how long – Fleur sat back on her heals and whipped her face on her apron. "Eet iz starting to close," she said warily. Sure enough when Ron looked down at where the blood had been thickest, he could see a half-sealed gash in Harry's side.
They all jumped when Harry let out a faint, strangled sort of moan. Ron found himself thanking Merlin because at least they knew he was alive now.
" 'ee 'az lost a lot of blood," Fleur said, unscrewing one of the potions bottles and pouring some of the purple liquid into a goblet.
"Yeah, and you didn't even see where we found him," Dean muttered.
Fleur forced three different potions down Harry's throat and took his pulse once more before she stood up to check on Hermione, giving Bill the instructions to bandage the wound.
"But it was just a knife," Ron said hoarsely, watching Bill wrapping the bandages around Harry's stomach with his wand. "Shouldn't you be able to fix it up in a second?"
"Not if there was s curse on the blade or it was made with a kind of venom in the medal," Bill said grimly. "I tried the ordinary way first and it didn't do anything. But Fleur reckons he's lucky. He just got grazed, nothing to bad internally she says."
Ron glanced at the amount of scarlet splotches and thought Harry could have been luckier.
"Bill?" Dean said uncertainly. "What are we gonna do about Griphook and the elf? They looked pretty bad."
"Let's go check them out," Bill said as he fixed the end of the bandage in place and stood up. "Stay here with him," he added to Ron. "Call Fleur if he… if you need anything."
The two of them disappeared out the front door again and Ron moved to sit on the end of the couch, keeping a close eye on Harry to make sure he was still alive.
…
Harry was dimly aware of the voices, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. He could feel a searing ache in his side and he was shivering badly, but he struggled to drag himself out of the black depths of unconsciousness. In some distant chamber of his mind, Voldemort's vision was playing, but it seemed he didn't even have the strength to watch that.
Very slowly a ceiling glowing in a pool of lamplight came into focus above him. He blinked at it, confused as images of the night swirled in his head.
"Nice to see you again," a familiar voice said from close by and Harry lifted his head enough to catch sight of Ron's red hair and freckles at the end of the couch he was laying on.
Harry groaned and closed his eyes against the wave of nausea this little effort had occasioned. Ron moved to sit on the coffee table and frowned down at Harry with concern.
"What happened? Dean said something about a knife, but I didn't see –" he broke off as Harry's eyes flew open and he struggled to sit up, fighting the pain and sickness down.
"Dobby," he gasped. "I've got to – " to what? The elf was beyond any kind of help or comfort now, Harry knew it. But he still wanted to be at his side, to do something for the creature who had paid so much to help him.
"You've got to stay put," Ron told him sternly, putting a hand on his shoulder and forcing him back down onto the couch. "Bill and Dean are taking care of it as we speak, don't worry."
Harry stared at him, unable to find the words to explain why this was not comforting. Then something else came back to him with enough force to leave him breathless. "Hermione –" he started, but Ron cut him off.
"She's upstairs," he said. "She's alright… well she looks better than you do anyway."
Harry sagged into the couch cushions and closed his eyes in relief. Then the front door banged open once more and Dean appeared, carrying Griphook's limp form. Bill was right behind him.
"Bring him up to the other bedroom with Olivander," he muttered to Dean and Dean staggered off up the stairs.
Bill turned to Ron and Harry who were watching him silently, and Harry could see he was trying to find a way of breaking the news to them.
"What've you done with the body?" Harry asked quietly.
"Nothing, yet. Dean reckons you were friends with him, figured we'd leave it up to you," Bill said, dragging a hand through his long hair and looking exhausted.
Ron looked between Harry and Bill as if struggling to comprehend what they were talking about.
"I want to bury him," Harry said suddenly, pulling himself upright once more and staggering to his feet.
Ron caught him and pushed him once more back down to the couch. "You're not going anywhere just yet," he said firmly.
"You don't understand," Harry said angrily, trying again to get to his feet. "He died to help me. The least I can do is –"
"Not kill yourself right away," Ron interjected, putting a restraining hand on Harry's shoulder and leaving it there this time to prevent anymore attempts to stand up.
"Ron, you don't understand," Harry said even more angrily, trying to throw off his restraints. He knew Ron was right, knew he could barely stand up, but the idea of sitting here doing nothing while Dobby lay out on the grass alone and cold was unbearable.
"What's going on?" Dean asked, coming back down the stairs with Fleur right behind him.
"Harry wants to bury him," Bill said, "Dobby, the elf that brought them here," he added for Fleur's sake. "He caught the knife in the chest it looks like."
"Harry, this is ridiculous!" Ron told him, matching Harry's anger as he struggled to keep him from getting up without hurting him any further. "You just bled half to death and you can't even stand up without nearly falling over. You can't bury him right now!"
"I half to do this," Harry said fiercely, finally managing to shake Ron off and stagger towards the door.
" 'Arry, you are injured!" Fleur said exasperatedly as Bill blocked the door. "You cannot really be thinking of –"
"I have to do this," Harry repeated even more forcefully than before, turning around to glare at Ron. Ron glared right back for a minute before he looked away, scowling, and nodded. Ron knew Harry well enough to know there was no talking him out of this.
Bill stepped aside, ignoring Fleur's sputters of indignation and looking curiously at his little brother.
"We'll help you," Dean offered, fallowing Harry out the door.
Ron was on the point of doing the same when Fleur grabbed his arm and said "She eez awake."
Ron hesitated a second before calling , "I'll be out in a second," and hurrying up the stairs.
Hermione was sitting up in bed, still looking pale and shaky, but at least awake and alert. Ron hadn't realized how scared he'd been until he saw her and nearly collapsed with relief.
"Hey," he said, moving over to sit on the bed opposite her.
"Hey," she murmured back.
"How's Harry?" Luna, who was sitting on the edge of Hermione's bed, asked.
"What happened to him?" Hermione croaked, looking between the two.
Ron hesitated. Did she really need that right now? But he could already tell Hermione wouldn't let it drop.
"He got sliced by Bellatrix's knife as we were leaving," he explained heavily. "He's alright," he hastened to add, seeing Hermione's hands fly up to her mouth. "Well, he was alright enough to through me off so he could go dig a grave. Dobby," he elaborated dully. "Bellatrix threw her knife at them and it grazed Harry and caught Dobby in the chest. Harry wanted to bury him. Wouldn't take no for an answer even though he can hardly stand up and half his blood is all over the living room. Sorry," Ron muttered at the looks on Hermione and Luna's faces. "too graphic? …well, should go and help him. Or at least make sure he doesn't collapse or something. You know how he gets… Are you okay?" he added as he stood up, thinking he probably should have asked this sooner.
"I… I'll be alright," Hermione told him in a weak voice that didn't sound very convincing. "Go help Harry," she added more forcefully. "I'll be fine, Ron."
He hesitated one second longer, the impulse to bend down and kiss her right then and there almost overwhelming. He didn't even care much that Luna was watching. Then Hermione gave him that look that said quite plainly, 'do as I say now' and he turned, half-smiling to help his friend.
A/N: What'd you think? Good? Bad? Wish I'd never started writing this in the first place? PLEASE TELL ME!
