Here's the next chapter! Enjoy!

Harry

I woke with a start in the early morning. I was still exhausted, even more so after sleeping. I hadn't felt this tired since the night after the Battle. It was still dark in the house and I had to go to the loo.

"Lumos." I said. Nothing happened. I repeated this again with the same result. Something was wrong. I started to panic. Why wasn't my magic working? I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I tried a different spell, again nothing happened. I could feel my breath coming in short gasps, there was a burning sensation in my left arm and my chest felt like there was something crushing it. The world started swimming around me. I heard Ginny say my name but it was like someone had put a dark and heavy blanket over my head. Everything went black.

Albus

"What do you mean dad is at the hospital?" I exclaimed. He had seemed fine the night before. Maybe Lily had had a nightmare and was mistaking it for real life. James had woken up at this exclamation and looked utterly confused at the discussion that was transpiring between my sister and me. I walked out of my room, Lily was right behind me. Uncle Ron was indeed sitting on our sofa in the living room.

"Uncle Ron? Where are mum and dad?" Uncle Ron sighed and told us to sit. James entered the room looking groggy. He was rubbing his eyes and seemed not to notice that he was only wearing one sock. He sat down heavily next to Lily.

"Was sup?" He said to Uncle Ron. He was still half-asleep and maybe still drugged up from the previous night.

"Where's mum?" He asked looking around the room as if I hadn't just asked that.

"Your mother's taken your dad to the hospital, something happened to him this morning." James sat upright and looked wide awake.

"What happened?" He exclaimed. Ron shook his head.

"I don't know. Your mum floo called me to come here and was already gone by the time I got here. Your Aunt brought Rose and Hugo to grand-ma's and is at the hospital with Gin right now. Why don't you guys get dressed and we can go to grand-ma's?" We all shook our heads.

"No, I want to go see mummy and daddy." Lily said pouting. I nodded in agreement and so did James. Uncle Ron sighed again.

"There's nothing you guys can do there, it's best you go to grand-ma's. I'll let you know when there's any news." We fought for awhile but Uncle Ron won the argument and so we all flooed to gramma's.

It was hours until we heard anything. James and I sat on my gramma's sofa the whole time waiting for news. Lily decided to go play with Hugo and Rose after a half hour of waiting. Grand-ma tried to get James and me to eat and it took her awhile for us to finally cave and sit at the breakfast table. After eating we went back to the sofa silently watched a scarf being knitted magically. After three hours of hearing nothing, Aunt Hermione finally came through the floo and looked at us. She gave us a small half smile. She hugged us and then Lily went barrelling into her arms and burst into tears. Aunt Hermione comforted her and James and I just looked on.

"Well?" I asked impatiently. Aunt Hermione told us to sit on the sofa. Hugo and Rose sat on the ground, looking up at her and she sat on the rocking chair opposite the sofa. Lily was sitting on James' lap silently crying.

"It seems that your father had a heart attack this morning."

"What?" We all exclaimed, even gramma.

"Isn't he too young for that?" James asked at the same time as gramma said: "I never heard of such a thing! Wizard's don't have heart attacks." Aunt Hermione looked saddened.

"No, James, he isn't too young. Babies can have heart attacks." Then she turned to gramma. "The Healers ran every test they possibly could. It seems that Harry's magical core is practically nonexistent." The room was deathly quiet. No one knew what to say.

"But how?" Rose said in a small voice. She looked baffled and it took a lot to puzzle Rose.

"We still don't know, but the Healers are trying to figure it out. It seems that your mother and father were in a duel the previous night with Death Eaters. We think that perhaps the spell that hit Harry did more damage than we thought. Ron is interrogating the men that they imprisoned last night."

She looked up at Gramma who I realized with horror was silently crying. If Gramma was crying then things must be hopeless. Lily started bawling again and I couldn't help but feel angry at her. Couldn't she stop making all that noise? She wasn't a baby anymore. I couldn't stand the sombre feel of this usually joyous place. It felt smothering. I had to get out. I ran out of the room and outside. The fresh air felt great and I felt like I could actually breathe once again. I saw a garden gnome in gramma's garden and picked it up and threw it with as much force as I could muster. It went pretty far, the furthest that I had ever thrown a gnome before. It seemed to calm me so I kept throwing the pesky buggers away with all of my strength.

I don't know how long I was doing this, but after awhile I realized that someone else was throwing gnomes. James had a determined look on his face and looked even angrier then I felt. One of the gnomes landed with a sickening crack, got up and limped away. I smiled smugly at it when it looked at me with a snarl. Soon the garden was gnome-less, a little too soon for my taste. James sat down on the dirty ground and huffed, looking at the herd of gnomes walking away from the Burrow.

"Do you reckon they'll come back after that? I think I broke that one gnomes leg." He said with a crooked smile.

"'Fraid so. They always come back, persistent buggers." I said, sitting next to him, watching the gnomes march away grumbling angrily. Gramma came outside and gave us some hot cookies. I guess we had been outside for quite some time. We had the cookies in silence as gramma looked searchingly at us.

"Hermione left an hour ago. She'll be back any time now to bring you to the hospital. Go and wash up." She told us, waving her arms at the crooked house. Mum told us that this Burrow wasn't as big and spectacular as the first one. After the war, they had rebuilt it. Mum said it didn't have as many rooms because most of the children were too old to live at home after the war. Instead of the eight rooms, there were now five, but they were much larger so they could contain more people.

Not even a minute after we had washed our faces and hands Aunt Hermione was back. We took our turns to floo to St-Mungo's. Mum smothered us in kisses and bone crushing hugs when we stepped out of the floo.

"Can we see dad now?" I asked her impatiently. She shook her head and told us that dad hadn't woken up yet. The Healer came and explained to us in more detail what was wrong with dad.

"We're running tests on him right now to see what kind of spell has been performed on him. Auror Weasley." The doctor said, looking behind us. Uncle Ron came into the room looking successful and out of breath.

"The scum who did this to Harry finally caved and told us what spell he used. It didn't take much really, only a threat that I would remove his-"

"Ronald." Aunt Hermione said in a warning tone, looking down at us.

"Oh, um." He cleared his throat. "Right." He looked at the Healer.

"He said he invented the spell himself. The spell can't be detected and its purpose is to latch onto any magic in someone's core, rapidly draining any magic in him. Auror Thomas is still interrogating him about a counter curse. I came as soon as I found out what it was, hoping you could find a cure in case that Son of a" throat clearing, "doesn't say anything else."

Mum looked like she might faint and Aunt Hermione's face was beet red. It didn't look like she was breathing. Uncle Ron was still huffing and puffing from having run to us. A nurse came out of a room down the hall and walked up to us.

"He's awake." She said quietly. "And he isn't happy." She directed this fact to the healer.

Please review, I always like to hear what you have to say, but please no flames. ;) Until next time!