CHAPTER 9- SIMPLICITY OF DISTRACTIONS

Hmm… I became a long winded writer this week. This is my third chapter for today. All hail Cedric Diggory and oh your favourite house elf is back again!

P.S I was thinking of doing a sequel to this when I'm done.

"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! Wake up, Harry Potter!" The high, squeaky voice was sharp with urgency, and Harry forced his eyes open, feeling as though they weighed hundreds of pounds each. Liquid green eyes as bright as his own and the size and shape of satsumas filled his vision, and Harry yelled, jerking upright as his fingers scrabbled at his nightstand.

"Accio wand!" His wand shot towards him, jabbing him painfully in the side of the head, and Harry rubbed blearily at the spot with one hand as he snatched it up, pointing it at the little figure which had tumbled off the bed at his sudden movement.

It was a house-elf, green eyes swimming with tears and bloodshot with exhaustion over an upturned, piggish little nose and small, pursed mouth. His bat-like ears quivered as he stared balefully at him, wringing his thin hands together. Harry saw that he was clad in the usual Hogwarts tea towel, but he thought bemusedly that he had never seen them in house colors before he realized that the crimson which colored the towel also spread in streaks and spatters over the spindly arms and legs. The elf looked utterly miserable and her voice shook as she spoke. "Dobby is sorry, sir, so sorry to wake Harry Potter! Harry Potter needs his sleep, said Headmistress, but Dobby must, Harry Potter, sir, there is no time!"

"Dobby? Is that you? What's wrong?" Harry asked, trepidation filling him as he took in the red spatters scattering the large ears, the grey cheeks, even the elf's bare feet. "Is that blood?"

"Yes, sir…." The elf paused, trembled, and recognizing what was coming, Harry threw back the bedclothes and barely managed to seize him as he flung himself, thrashing, to the floor of the dormitory.

"Dobby!" Harry roared, "When were you back? Were you with Cedric?"

"Dobby has failed, sir!" She wailed, "The house elves are helping Madam Pomfrey with the wounded. Dobby tried, he did everything he was told, Harry Potter, but it was bad magic, sir, a bad dark Hemorrhaging Hex, and it was too long before he was found. Moppet has been giving the potion and giving the potion, but he's dying, sir, and he sent Dobby to get Harry Potter."

Harry felt as though the floor had vanished from beneath his feet and he was falling headlong into a dizzying, sickening cold. He had allowed himself to think it was over, to rest, to lower his guard, and now someone was dying. Images swirled through his mind's eye too quickly to separate themselves into any kind of sense, the faces of those he had lost and those he had been so grateful not to lose blurring together in a cavalcade of fear. When he spoke, he didn't recognize his own voice, a hoarse, high whisper, almost a choke. "Who?"

"Terry Boot, sir." Moppet blurted, and a wave of guilty relief flooded over him so strongly that he felt his knees give way, and he barely managed to catch himself on the edge of the bed. He knew it was wrong that he wanted to laugh or maybe cry with delight that it wasn't anyone who…but no, of course Boot mattered. They all mattered. Terry was still someone's son, someone's friend.

He shook his head, standing again, and realized Dobby had his hands outstretched to him, the gesture odd until he saw that he was holding his glasses. He took them, slipping them onto his face as he ran a hand shakily through his hair, trying at once to dispel both the last traces of sleep and of shock. "Right," Harry said, "Let's go, then."

The elf led the way through the shattered corridors with a speed and surety that made it seem as though the piles of rubble, the demolished staircases, the gaping holes that yawned down though several floors at a time were obstacles as normal as a trick step. As he followed, Harry racked his mind desperately, feeling his cheeks heat as he was forced to admit to himself how very little he could remember about the fellow student who had asked to see him as a dying wish.

Boot was in the DA, he knew. A Ravenclaw who had come in with Michael Corner and Anthony Goldstein. Harry recalled dark blond hair and a pleasant, slightly rounded face exclaiming over Hermione's Protean charm; a silvery falcon bursting from the tip of a wand; a gleeful grin over the distorted forms of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle on the Hogwarts Express. They were little more than fleeting impressions, and Harry wondered how many had died for him about whom he knew even less.

Panting slightly with the effort of following the far more nimble elf as he sprinted down one twisting passage after another, a horrible thought came to him. "Is there anyone else since I left, Dobby?" he asked, "found, or turned for the worse, or…you know."

"Not many since Harry Potter went, sir. Only three." She planted her foot on the face of a stone statue that had fallen across a gap in the stairs, ignoring its howl of protest as she hauled herself easily across. "Everyone thought Master Boot was dead, but he began moaning when they tried to take him off with the others, and Master Wood had been Confunded so badly that he didn't find his way back for hours."

"Oliver Wood?" Harry asked.

"Yes, sir. He lost an eye, but he says it will just improve his concentration on the Quaffle." Dobby paused a moment and cast him a look that showed a gravely sympathetic doubt for the sanity of Harry's old Quidditch captain. "Dobby thinks he may still be Confunded a bit."

Harry found himself almost grinning. There was something wonderful that even as he stood here in a world that had been literally blown apart, portraits vacant and shredded, walls scorched with spells and stained with all the horrible detritus of battle, the basic priorities of Oliver Wood hadn't changed. Then he frowned. "Who else, you said three?"

"Miss Parkinson. That one is very strange, Harry Potter. She didn't fight, but she was still jinxed." They had reached the entrance hall now, and Harry was able to pull up even with the little being and look down at the genuine confusion in the huge eyes. "She must go to St. Mungo's, they say, because Madame Pomfrey could do nothing."

Harry's brows drew together. As much as he didn't like Pansy Parkinson, he didn't want her seriously hurt. "What happened?" he asked, guardedly.

"Bat-Bogey Hex with a Permanent-Sticking Charm." The elf replied solemnly, "Fifty people were there, sir, and no one saw anything. Perhaps someone else has a cloak like Harry Potter?"

"I don't think so." Despite himself, Harry smiled as he took hold of the double doors, bracing his heels to haul against the warped hinges. He would have a word with Ginny later.

0o0o0o0o0o0ooo0o0o0ooooo

The Great Hall was far less crowded than when Harry had left only a few hours before. The sun was high now, streaming through the enchanted ceiling with the bright, clear light of a nearly cloudless early afternoon in June. It was exactly the sort of day where students should have littered the grounds in happy, chattering knots, pointedly ignoring upcoming exams in the bliss of warm weather and sweet green grass. Instead, most had gone back to their dormitories to sleep off the exhaustion of the battle, returned to devastated rooms to salvage belongings, left with family to pick up the pieces of lives torn apart by loss old and new, or been whirled away through the fireplaces in the waves of Healers bound for St. Mungo's. Only a few small clusters of people still sat together here and there, and Harry was relieved to see that no one seemed to have noticed him enter as Dobby led him across the hall to where the teachers' table had once stood, now cracked down the middle to sag like a giant open book in front of the toppled chairs.

A few empty beds were still clustered there, but one was occupied, and Harry's stomach gave a sudden lurch, a sour gob of sick rising harshly in the back of his throat as he saw Boot. Every inch of skin Harry could see was the rich, hideous purple of a fresh black eye. Blood, both dry and crumbling, and fresh, wet scarlet trickled from his nose, mouth, ears, and the corners of his eyes, even standing out like sweat in tiny drops on his forehead. He opened his eyes as Harry approached the bed, and they too were red, though not quite like Voldemort's, the blue irises stained an odd maroon, the whites brilliant crimson. It was not their color which made him shiver, though. They were still clear, still very much alive in the ravaged figure, and Harry felt his chest tighten with remorse for what he had put them all through.

Sinking to his knees at the side of the bed, he started to reach for Boot's hand, then saw the blood seeping around the edges of the fingernails, pooling in little lines where the skin had split at the knuckles, and he placed his hand awkwardly on the red-stained sheets behind the other boy's head. "I'm so…" His voice shook, almost breaking. "I'm so sorry, Terry."

"Don't be." When he spoke, a trickle of blood ran out over his lips, his teeth crimson, and there was a horrible gurgling undertone to the words, his breath coming in quick, shallow pants that sounded terrible wrong in a way Harry knew without wanting to was the sound of someone whose lungs were filling, drowning them in their own blood. He thought of the moment in the forest pool when the last of his air had seemed to constrict away, of the agonizing distance to the surface after his gills had vanished during the Triwizard Tournament, and he wished he didn't understand what it must be like. There were several more bubbling breaths, and then, incredibly, Boot smiled. "Don't be…sorry. Get to…die…hero…not some…accountant…in some…little office…"

Harry shook his head fiercely. "I should have – "

"No!" It was actually shouted, and Harry was struck dumb by the vehemence. "Don't…blame…yourself. You…shouldn't have…none of us…should have…Harry." Boot paused, gathering a few more thin mouthfuls of air. "Maybe when…you're older…you have…too many…real things…to lose…maybe we…just have futures…and that…is worth less…to the people…who decide…who dies."

Thoughts of Dumbledore intruded cruelly into Harry's mind, but he forced them down and changed the subject. "Why haven't they taken you to hospital?"

"Just take…a bed…nothing…to be done." Boot coughed, and a violent gush of blood soaked his chin and neck. Dobby hurried forward, wiping his face with her thin-fingered hands, and Harry was startled to see the blood vanish as though a soapy cloth had been used. "Should have…paid more…attention…when you…taught us…to duck." His eyes closed tightly, and a shudder went through him, clenching his fingers on the sheets, and when he opened them again, scarlet droplets very much like tears had welled at the corners, and froth was coming at his lips with each still-shallower breath. His once-blue eyes met Harry's, and they seemed not afraid, but utterly naked. "Harry…did you…die?"

Harry hesitated, unsure whether he himself quite knew the answer to that question. "Well…" he began.

"Does it…hurt?"

Harry's hand deliberately over Boot's, his tone one of complete confidence now. "No. It's like falling asleep."

Boot's eyes had become unfocused, glassy, and Dobby turned, burying her face in her stained towel, but Harry felt no urge to look away. A relaxation had come over the Ravenclaw's features now, a kind of peace that made sense of sick injustice that had been curled in Harry's chest ease a little. It wasn't all right, but it was better somehow, and he felt strangely like he had when Lupin had asked him to be Teddy's godfather, like he had been asked a favor that was really an honor as he watched Boot let go. When he spoke again, the words were barely audible, but the sense of being forced through the gurgling was gone, and now they came on the thick bubbles like the natural speech of water on the rocks of a streambed. "Then…I…won't…be…afraid…"

There was a last, thick rattle from somewhere deep in Boot's chest, and he was gone.

Harry sat there, he didn't know how long, his hand still wrapped around Boot's, feeling no urge to let it go, to move, to do anything, really. He stared dazedly at his feet, realizing numbly that they were clad only in socks. He had forgotten his trainers upstairs, and now there was blood on his socks.

His trance was broken as a shadow fell over him, but he did not look up until a slim, white arm reached past him, the delicate fingers scattering torn leaves and violet, bell-shaped blossoms over Boot's lifeless body. Harry was not surprised to see Luna Lovegood standing there, her blonde hair still disheveled, but her face as serene as always. She took another handful of greenery from the bundle in her arms, strewing it on the sheets in a loose circle around Boot's head. Without looking at Harry, she answered his unspoken question. "Foxglove," she said, "it repels Hemowrights."

"Hemowrights?" Harry asked.

"They feed on spilled blood," Luna explained matter-of-factly. She regarded Boot between handfuls, tipping her head slightly. "I don't suppose he'd mind now, really, but it seems like the right thing to do. He never liked things he couldn't see."

"So they're invisible." Harry couldn't quite keep the exasperation from his voice, and she shot him a surprisingly Hermione-like look.

"Of course they are. ..but you had Hagrid for fourth year Creatures. We had Grubbly-Plank. Not your fault, really. They're a main food source for Red Caps, and what most people think draws them to battlefields and so forth…" She smiled at Harry with the unmistakable expression of someone humoring a good friend's eccentricities. "Of course some people believe that Red Caps just haunt places where bad things have happened out of more supernatural reasons. To each their own beliefs, you know."

Harry felt incredibly awkward and looked away, trying to change the subject. The only topic directly at hand was morbid to say the least, but the odd burst of scholarship from Luna had also reminded him that she and Boot had been in the same house and only a year apart. He nodded towards the bed. "Did you know him well?"

She scattered the last of the foxglove, then took her wand from behind her ear and began moving it rhythmically back and forth over the bed. It was so casual that it could have been just an idle gesture, but she was murmuring a quiet incantation, and the blood was disappearing as the wand passed over the bedding, leaving the sheets as clean and white as if they had been freshly laundered. Just when Harry thought that she had completely ignored his question, she spoke. "Not really. He thought I was strange." There was no bitterness in her voice. "He was in the DA of course. Terry did most of the hard magic after Hermione left. He was very smart."

Harry watched as she ran the wand over Boot's face, transforming the horror mask into the waxen face of a boy who looked painfully young to Harry, even though he knew that Boot was at least within a few months of his own age. If he had been considered smart in Ravenclaw, he must have been bright indeed, and Harry wondered if he would really have wound up as an accountant tucked into a desk somewhere at the Ministry, or if he would have gone on to something more. How many of them could have gone on to great things if their lives hadn't been cut short? Was it even right to mourn things that could only maybe have happened? Was Boot right that potential was somehow less valuable?

"Luna?" Harry asked. She looked up, raising one pale eyebrow a fraction, and Harry continued. "Do you think he was right? That we shouldn't have…that we were too young?"

Luna paused. She pursed her lips, crossing her arms and tapping the tip of her wand against her shoulder thoughtfully. "I think we're Snikkett birds." She said finally.

Harry blinked. "What?"

"Snikkett birds." Luna seemed deeply satisfied with her choice of metaphor, and she explained casually as she returned to tidying Boot's robes and arranging his arms over his chest with no more reluctance than if she were making a bed. "They're very rare. No surprise, really. When they start –"

"Um… look I got to find Dumbledore. What happened anyway?" Harry stated, standing up on his feet. He hadn't realized, that his face was marked with scars, dried up, till he saw his image once again in a protruding mirror in the hall. He was horrified at what he saw. Not because of his scars, but Cedric Diggory leaning on one of the bed frames.

"Lucius and his minions attacked Hogwarts. They were splattered everywhere around the premises. You were hit by Lucius' spells and you zoned out for three hours. The Death Eaters managed to kill a few students until Dumbledore, get rid of them. I saw one of the Carrows trying to drag you out of the scene. For what purpose, I do not know. Other than that, hello Harry," Cedric's voice was smooth just like before, the matures still embodied in him.

"How did Death Eaters managed to enter Hogwarts?" Harry asked still not convinced by the answer given.

"They apparate with the army, when they tried saving me and some of them got splintered here as well,"

"They dead yet?"

"Most of them are, but Lucius, Peter and Bellatrix escaped, unscathed, although Dumbledore's curses repelled away from them. That is what Snape, your father, Dumbledore and the other professors of the Order is trying to figure out," Cedric explained.

"Wait, so Pettigrew and Lestrange are alive?" Harry considered this, and to his surprise, found himself agreeing.

"Looks like it, Neville asks for you. He's in the library with the other guys," added Cedric.

At that moment, a voice snapped his name from what seemed like only inches away. "Potter!"

Heart pounding, Harry let out a yelp of surprise and spun around on the spot, nearly jamming his wand up Madam Pomfrey's nose. Seeing who it was, he yanked back, tripping over his own feet as he flushed fiercely. "I…"

The plump little witch did not seem the least flustered, though her face was drawn and tired, her mouth set in a thin, pale line. "I wasn't going to wake you, Potter, goodness knows you need rest, but since you're awake now," she flicked her wand, and one of the empty beds slid over to bump Harry in the back of the legs. "you can strip off and let me have a look at you."

"But I'm fine," Harry protested.

"I've sent thirty-one 'fine' students to St. Mungo's already." She informed him brusquely, wagging her wand in his face. He cast a plaintive look at Luna, but she merely shrugged, tucking her own wand back into her hair and moving off to a nearby table where she sat silently next to Anthony Goldstein, who was hunched forward, face hidden in his folded arms on the tabletop. Harry looked back at Madam Pomfrey, who showed no signs of budging. "I didn't hesitate to use a Full Body Bind on Malfoy when he wouldn't cooperate," she said, "and I have no qualms about doing the same to you."

"Malfoy?" Harry repeated, "Is he…?"

"Strip first." She cut him off with a tap of her wand against the collar of his robes, and Harry sighed, unfastening the neck and resignedly beginning to strip off his robes and jumper. "The burns and the black eye were nothing," she went on, as Harry pulled his t-shirt over his head, "but the Flagellus Curse was rather nasty, and they'd been completely unattended for weeks. I cleared up the infection, but they've scarred quite a bit, and there's nothing I can do for that, I'm afraid."

Harry frowned, thinking unpleasantly of the screams from Malfoy Manor that had echoed distantly in his head as he dug Dobby's grave at Shell Cottage. He had never heard of the Flagellus Curse before, but he had an awful feeling he knew what it did. "Where is he?"

Madame Pomfrey began to move her wand up and down slowly across Harry's torso, the tip vibrating slightly, and he felt an odd tickling sensation, as if invisible fingers were gently probing him, not only against the surface of his skin, but deep inside him as well. "Now listen to me," she said firmly, "I know all about you Potter men and your feuds. I patched up James and Severus for years. Hair-loss hexes, blood-boiling curses, every jinx and anti-jinx in the book…even Sectumsempra a few times…" She fixed him with a stern look, "Oh, I had a perfectly good idea where you learned it, yes, Potter. And you and the Malfoy boy have sent one another through my hospital wing more times than I care to think about. So if you intend to start something…"

Harry shook his head. "No, ma'am, really." He wasn't actually sure why he wanted to see Malfoy, but as he raised his arms and turned at her wordless command, the invisible fingers continuing to poke and prod, he felt something sharper jab him in the hip, and he thought suddenly of the hawthorn wand still in his pocket. "I have his wand." It was true, and though he didn't know yet if he had any intention of returning it, it seemed to satisfy the healer.

"All right." The invisible fingers withdrew, and she let out a deep sigh. "Well, you've picked up a few new souvenirs, and it would appear not even You-Know-Who can keep a teenager from growing like hackleweed, but otherwise, you seem to have come out of this…just fine." Her voice quavered, and Harry was surprised to see that her round cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were shining behind the little cobweb of lines at the corners. "Really quite all right." She sniffed. "Goodness…"

"Ma'am?" Harry asked, gingerly. She was reacting as though he had been given some kind of reprieve, and he began to wonder if her even more brusque than usual attitude had been because she was trying to steel herself to find something horribly wrong with him, some kind of terrible final price Voldemort had exacted on him.

She batted at her eyes quickly with the back of her hand, gathering herself, and muttering a quick "never mind." Her eyes fixed on his, and he saw a painfully intense gratitude here. He'd seen that look many times this morning, but it still made him squirm and look away, gathering up his clothes and pulling them on quickly so he wouldn't have to meet her gaze.

"You did a wonderful thing this morning, Potter," she said quietly, "but I suppose you've probably heard that already." She paused, then went on, her tone gentle. "Malfoy's over in the corner there. I've put a security line around the bed. The password is Mandragora, but don't go passing that around. According to the Minister, there were a lot of children of Death Eaters who were enlisted one way or another, and they'll be granted clemency if there is reasonable proof coercion was involved, but there are quite a few people who lost children today and would call it good enough justice to see Lucius Malfoy lose his son without bothering the Wizengamot about it. I'm a Healer, Potter, not a judge or an Auror, and if you so much as lift a wand against him while he's in my care…"

Harry shook his head, meeting her eyes so that she could see the sincerity there. "I promise."

"Good," she said, slipping her wand into her belt. "You can go then, Potter, and…" she smiled wearily, "…thank you again." Then she turned and bustled off, the many bottles in her apron pockets clinking.

What happened to poor Draco? Or is this just part of his wretched plan? Stay tuned.