Author's Note: This is a really long chapter where not too much happens as far as like action goes. That'll be later in the story, hint hint. I'm trying to get this back to it's humorous self, so hopefully it's funny. I've decided, yes how mean of me, that I won't update until I get at least two reviews... If this is mean, I guess just come egg my house.
Thanks to:
mrspatrickdempsey for her continued support
all members who have put this story on either their favs or alerts. It means the world to me
and last but certainly not least, to my bud Honor, who reads every chapter before I put it up telling me if it sucks or not. ily!
-I feel like crap on toast.- Michel on Gilmore Girls
Chapter 9: The First Cut is the Deepest...
Blood, all they could see were puddles and puddles of blood and what seemed to be a lifeless form on the snow trodden path. Pale wasn't even close to describing the shade of pure white skin clinging to her frail frame. Bruises and cuts covered her face and hands. For some reason she just looked...tragically peaceful.
"Is she...?" Hermione began softly but stopped. Lupin, Tonks, and Harry slowly walked towards the still body, the sticks and dead leaves crunching as they knelt to the ground. Tonks took Annie's hand in her own and stroked her wrist, while Remus sobbed silently. Harry tried to feel for a pulse on her bruised kneck, the rest of the group just didn't know what to do...
"Harry..." Hermione started to walk towards him...
"No... I won't...I...she can't...she's not supposed to...she's strong..!" Harry spoke through bouts of tears. Hermione draped a supportive arm around her friend, he had been through so much, why this all over again? Why did he always have to lose the people he loved?
And then they heard it... a sharp intake of breath and a gurgling cough, and those brillantly piercing blue eyes opened. Blood began to seep out of the sides of her mouth as Annie tried to cough something up.
"Roll her to her side! Someone go get help!" Remus almost yelled, as Tonks, Harry, and Hermione obeyed and rolled the young woman to her side and the rest of the group went to seek help. Annie forced as hard as she could without extreme pain (there's a sword in her stomach, remember?) and coughed up what looked to be...
"A snitch?" Harry picked up the tiny golden quidditch ball, covered in blood and could see it had been engraved with something, something that looked like the words We've taken what you'll sorely miss...he passed it to Moony who put it in his pocket for later.
"How do you feel," Hermione asked sweetly, although not a thing you really ask at a time like this.
"I have a sword sticking out of my stomach, I feel like a freakin shiskabob!" Annie said weakly, blood dripping from the side of her mouth.
"Do you know what happened?" Tonks inquired, looking into her eyes.
"No, just...just get me out of here..." Her usually firm voice was small and quivered with fear.
"We will, I promise." Harry spoke in words of comfort and rubbed her hand that was colder than ice. She was losing blood, alot of blood. Blood was all they could see, smell. Hermione choked back the bile that made it's way up her already dry throat.
Harry and Lupin snuggly wrapped their jackets around Annie's shivering, teeth chattering, body while avoiding the knife protruding from her stomach. That was when the St. Mungo's guys arrived and Annie blacked out.
The next day:
The sunshine of early dawn streamed through the white hospital ward of St. Mungo's hospital, grazing the hands of a young pair. Harry sat wide awake in the chair nearest the bedridden girl, stroking her hand gently while the rest of the world slept. Harry always liked the quiet peace that the crack of dawn provided him, for it was the only time of his life that was always good. There was no one to talk to, no one to threaten him... Just complete and utter silence. Time to think and time to breathe.
A group of characters (now sleeping) had gathered in the room, the metamorph, the werewolf, the eternal mother, brothers and sisters, the jock, a bushy haired friend, and a raven haired boy who gave the girl his heart. They all looked worse for wear, dark circles of a sleepless night forming underneath the eyes of youth and age alike. Even though each were polar opposites from eachother, there was alot of love formed between the bonds of the large somewhat dysfunctional family they had formed.
Exhausted, wasn't even close to describing the complete and total grogginess that Annie felt, it was like her eyelids had fifty pound weights keeping her from opening them the slightest bit. It was so frickin frustrating! Yes she was warm, yes she was comfy, yes someone was romantically rubbing her hand...Wait a second! Who was rubbing her hand? On second thought...where was she? And why the hell was she not wearing any panties?
Harry almost knocked over the side table he was leaning on as he felt Annie, who was just a second ago laying perfectly still in bed, jult up straight forward panting heavily, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
"Hey, hey you're okay, you're fine. I'm right here." Harry whispered comfortingly as he rubbed her back.
"What? Wait! Where...Huh? On second thought, sitting up, not such a good idea right now." Harry slowly lowered Annie back down on to the hospital bed and plumped her pillows so she could still be comfortable.
"Thank you." Annie thanked Harry, he was a real gentleman, chivalry proved hard to find these days. "What uh...happened?" Annie looked around at all the sleeping figures, who all looked half dead themselves.
"You don't remember?" Harry ruffled his fingers through his mop of thick black hair.
"Um, well here's what I recall, big ow, fall down, go boom, big blood. That's about it..." She giggled nervously, her nose crinkling making her faint freckles stand out even more in the morning light.
"Honestly, none of us really know what happened... But we'll talk about that later, sound good?" Harry waited for her nod.
"Er... Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Annie glanced curiously and cocked an eyebrow towards a slumbering couple on the couch... Ron and Hermione.Okay so, not as Cinemax at Night as I'm making it seem, but still. It was Ron and Hermione, what we've all been waiting for.
Harry and Annie were both silently laughing, with "Ow's" inbetween Annie's fits of laughter.
"I think we should let them sleep..." Annie conquered
"Fine, but really we could..."Harry seemed defeated, but produced a look of mischief on his face that could rival Fred and George.
"No,"
"Or we could"
"No,"
"All we need are some feathers, a bat, and a frying pan."
"Hell No!" They kept whispering in yelling tones (a/n: does that even make sense...)
"Your no fun." Harry huffed and folded his arms like a two year old.
"I'm fun, you just don't know it yet..." They gazed into eachothers eyes for a moment and started to creep closer and closer, and closer...
"Goodmorning Harry, oh Annie!" Tonks interrupted as she knocked over a chair, waking up the rest of the slumbering room.
Annie flopped down on her pillows muttering to herself..."My life is just fanfreakintastically perfect..." blocking out the squels of Hermione and Ron at the realization they had cuddled. She decided it would be wise to fall back asleep.
"We've taken what you'll sorely miss...We've taken what you'll sorely miss." Annie repeated over and over rolling the snitch in her hand. "Does that sound familiar to anyone?" The adults had been avoiding these kinds of questions all morning, but left to grab something to eat. Their mistake though was leaving Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Annie in a room together for an extended period of time (Luna and Ginny had to go back to school). They were bound to figure it out...
"Triwizard Tournament..." Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at eachother and all mumbled together.
"Which means," Fred started.
"Whoever did this to you," George pointed towards Annie's stomach
"Knew that riddle,"
"And also knew," Fred stated as George was about to answer but Hermione did...
"That you couldn't be hurt magically." Fred and George stared at Hermione in awe,
"No one,"
"Ever finishes,"
"Your sentences...?" Annie finished. Her and Hermione laughed.
"But that's besides the point, I think we all need to be careful." Hermione stated matter of factly.
"Especially now that we don't have any Order protection..." Harry said as everybody glared at Annie.
"Hey if you would rather be lied and cheated, be my guest." She held her hands up defensively,
"You're right, it's better that we know." Ron declared.
"So what we're all saying is, it's not safe for any of us right now, and we...what?" Harry looked around the room for answers.
"We need a plan..." Annie said distantly and distracted as though she was trying to come up with one.
Meanwhile the "Adults" (Arthur, Molly, Remus, Bill, Fleur, Oliver, Remus and Tonks) were at the Leaky Cauldron, until they heard a "Stupefy!" and a thud on the ground.
The Adults returned to St. Mungo's looking worse for wear, almost sauntering they made their way to Annie's room. The group who had chosen to stay at the hospital were in deep discussion of something.
"Hey...what the?" Harry began, looking quite alarmed.
"How are you feeling?" Lupin asked exhaustedly
"I think I should be asking you all the same thing." Annie almost glared looking for an explanation.
"Okay out with it, what in Merlin's sodding pants happened to you lot?" Fred broke the unwavering silence.
"Oh we were just attacked at the Leaky Cauldron by Death Eater's... that's all."Bill sarcastically spat out. Harry had to admit, Bill's scars made him slightly intimidating.
"We've taken what you'll sorely miss..." Harry muttered under his breath to many "What did he say,"
"Their weeding us down one by one." Annie almost whispered.
"And none of us are safe..." Hermione put her hand over her mouth after she spoke this. Yes they all knew they were certainly Voldemort's targets, but it took being attacked to really realize it.
"Well...I guess it's a good thing we have a plan," Lupin and Fred said at once...
Chapter 10: They tried to make me go to rehab...
"Muffiliato..."Was muttered by Harry before the debate began, who knew it would turn out the way it did.
"That's your plan!?" Lupin shouted, the vein in his forhead popping out.
"That's your plan!?" Fred replied back, almost knocking over a small table.
"Okay let's calm down, take a deep breath... listen to some John Lennon...?" Annie for some reason was given the duty of 'Being Switzerland' in this squabble between age and youth. And with that the brunt of the shouting occured. Mrs. Weasley was rounding on her sons, while Bill and Fleur argued with each other. Tonks sided with Harry much to Remus's dismay. Hermione pulled out a book as sat in the corner, while Oliver and Harry began to talk about quidditch. The whole lot of them were insane...
"Okay, REWIND and FREEZE!" Annie flashed her hands suddenly and wandlessly petrified them, 'I have to learn how to do that some day,' Harry thought to himself in his petrified state. "Now I realize we all have different opinions on how not to get killed. Honestly it's reassuring to know we have options... As I see it, we have four choices to consider here, A. We use our plan, separating small groups into different safe houses and lying low for a while possibly preparing ourselves for the inevitable battle. And consider the fact we'd be harder to trace in smaller numbers. B. We use your all's idea, we stick together for a while, in the same house possibly risking the chance of tracing such a large number of magical folk. C. We turn ourselves in and face death like cowards. Or now this is my personal favorite, D. We give Voldy a gift card to a nice Rehab facility so he can delve deep into his emotional self and find the problems within, but something tells me he won't go for that. I will unfreeze you, if we can have a civilized, fair debate about this. Okay?" And with that she unfroze the room, with little success on the civilized part.
"That's the most dimwitted thing I've ever heard!" Remus squabbled.
"Think about it, they're expecting us to send Harry to Grimmauld Place, right?" Annie waited for a nod before she continued on, "They're expecting us to keep the Weasley's at the Burrow, and they're expecting us to put Hermione and crew somewhere in the middle... "
"But then they'll think 'They're Dumbledore's people, they've got to be smarter than that...' So they'll think it impossible that were that dimwitted and search elsewhere. They don't think were stupid enough to actually stay in our own homes." Hermione finished.
"And that's why it works," Harry who hadn't spoken up since now said, "Because it's so pathetically dimwitted..." He remembered Fred and George saying this once.
"Exactly..." Annie smiled at Harry, things had been weird between them lately, and things were just about to get weirder.
The Safe House Assignments are as written:
Bill, Fleur, Fred, and George: Shell Cottage (Our deepest sympathies to Fleur... poor girl three Weasley boys in a tiny cottage not aloud to leave, what they'll do for entertainment...)
Tonks, Lupin, and Hermione: Tonks' parent's cottage in Scottland
Oliver was currently subing the DADA job at Hogwarts so he was safe there
Neville was also safe at Hogwarts, they figured he would also be a target
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Ginny (during hogwarts holidays), and Ron at Aunt Muriel's much to their dismay...
and
Harry and Annie at Grimmauld Place... they obviously drew the short straw. The plan would be to lay low for a while, until they could all meet again safely without being tracked and then they would start training for the future of Hunting Horcruxes and building an Army. It was a good enough plan in short, with some major holes though. Cooping Harry and Annie alone in Grimmauld Place during their current realtionship status, that was the 'I'm still pissed at you about the Dean thing, but I'll propose marriage and flirt' stage was not a smart idea...
The next day Annie was granted permission to leave the hospital, her injuries had healed much to the Healers confusion as to why she healed so fast... they just had to say healthy girl and leave before the questions began. Annie wasn't a registered Haven, considering the fact that there hadn't been a haven in a few centuries, she was slightly illegal.
"I guess you'll finally see the most Noble and Ancient House of Black..." Harry said dramatically...
"Should I be scared?" Annie laughed
"Probably," Harry didn't laugh back and actually had quite the grave expression on his face. Dun, dun, dun...
