Hah! Another chapter! The finishing of this book is beginning to seem like a more possible end. It draws ever nearer… Harry's finally three weeks into the school year!

One thing: forgive me for not describing St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and injuries. It seems kind of redundant, seeing as it's already been described once. Go reread OOTP if you really want a description.

Chapter 21

Death's Grip

At one o' clock in the morning, the streets of London were far less busy than usual. No one passed the derelict building that housed the Purge and Dowse Ltd. abandoned department store. Which was indeed fortunate for the five human beings that seemed to step out from thin air in front of it.

Bill began talking urgently to the armless mannequin with out-of-date clothes and an ugly face that stood behind the glass. It gave a barely perceptible nod, and he stepped straight through the window.

Harry followed. There was the sensation that he had just stepped through a wall of water, and then he was out and dry on the other side.

Five Healers in lime green robes were striding quickly towards them. Two bore a stretcher between them, and as they reached the group that had just entered, they laid it down on the floor.

"Put her on it," one of them said.

Bill gently laid Hermione's limp form on the stretcher. Without another word, the Healers bore her away.

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It was a long night.

Before anything else happened, Bill turned to his brother and embraced him. "Thank goodness you're safe." He turned to Harry. "You too, Harry." Malfoy, to his own relief, was excluded from the hugs. "Did the Order send you?" he asked quietly, looking from one to the other.

Ron shook his head. "No."

He sighed. "I thought not. Ron, I need you to go back to Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall needs to know about this. Go, tell her everything, and stay there until she or someone else from the Order is there to come with you."

Ron looked as though he were about to argue, but Bill held up a hand. "You won't do any good by staying here. Please go."

He inhaled deeply, and then nodded. Without another word, he stepped back out into the street and Disapparated.

The assistant Healer who came to them a few minutes later nearly screamed when Bill turned towards her. The scars on his face were livid, and his haggard appearance—his clothes were tattered and dirty, his long hair matted—only made it worse. She kept her composure, however, and led them to a waiting room on the fourth floor. Very few people other than the Healers were there at this time of night, and the waiting room was empty but for them. As soon as they were alone, Bill sat down and turned to Harry. "You have a lot to tell me, Harry," he said softly.

Harry drew a deep breath and launched into the tale. While he talked, Malfoy examined his fingernails, glancing up briefly whenever his name was mentioned. Harry felt a wave of exhaustion hit him a few minutes after he sat down. When he finished, he closed his eyes wearily. "It's been a long two weeks, Bill."

He smiled grimly. "I know the feeling."

They sat in silence for a long time. Harry had nearly dozed off when a Healer entered.

"I have bad news," she said gently.

Harry felt the color drain out of his face. Bill looked up sharply, and even Malfoy paid attention.

"We don't know what she was hit with. She's alive, but barely, and not for very much longer if we can't find a counter-curse."

Harry moaned.

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It was early in the morning when Harry awoke. He had sprawled out on the couch and fallen asleep. When he opened his eyes, Bill was pacing back and forth in front of a window, which let in the brilliant light of a beautiful autumn dawn.

"How's Hermione?" Harry asked, sitting up wearily.

"Worse," was his only reply.

It had only been about two and a half hours since Ron left. Harry knew they couldn't reasonably expect anything from the Order for at east another few hours. However, when the door opened and he looked up, expecting to see a Healer, half a dozen members of the Order poured in.

Mr. and Mrs. Wealsey were the first to enter, followed immediately by Professor McGonagall. Lupin came in next, and after him were Ron and Tonks.

Everyone started talking at once. Mrs. Weasley exclaimed, "Oh, Bill, thank goodness!" and Professor McGonagall and Ron both asked how Hermione was. Lupin began asking Harry for details and intermittently scolding him for his rash actions, and Tonks and Mr. Weasley tried to get Bill's story out of him. Chaos reigned until a Healer poked his head in and requested that they be quiet; they were disturbing the patients. Everyone quieted down.

Mr. Weasley embraced his son, utter relief written all over his face. However, when Lupin patted his back and said, "We're all glad you're safe," Bill grimaced as though in pain.

"What is it?" Mr. Weasley asked sharply.

"It's… it's nothing," Bill said, trying to brush it off. "Just a little scratch."

"Bill, you've always been a terrible liar, dear," Mrs. Weasley said worriedly. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing to get concerned about."

But Mrs. Weasley had gently lifted the back of his shirt and jacket and gasped. "Oh, Bill, what did they do to you?"

Everyone, Harry included, moved collectively to see what it was. Bill managed to slap his mother's hand away, but not before everyone saw his back.

It was crisscrossed with long cuts that had scabbed over, but still cracked and bled in places. His shirt was bloodstained, and only his thick jacket had hidden it before.

"They whipped him," Mrs. Weasley said in a mortified whisper.

"No," Bill said irritably, yanking his shirt back down. "It was a spell."

Harry gasped. He knew that spell. He also knew who its inventor was.

"Who did it?" Harry asked through gritted teeth. Everyone turned to look at him. Bill, not meeting his eyes, shrugged.

"Was it Snape?" he asked quietly. Bill didn't answer.

"It was Snape, wasn't it." It wasn't a question. "Sectumsempra."

Bill looked at him and slowly nodded. "Don't let it get to you, though, Harry," he said softly. "I know you hate him, but don't let it lead you to do something rash. It's not worth getting yourself killed over. Just a few more scars."

Harry was silent, glaring at a spot just above Malfoy's left knee. Yes, he hated Snape. He wanted to snap his neck, cut out his heart, and make him eat his own entrails. He hated Snape.

No one seemed to have noticed that Malfoy—a Death Eater, one who had attacked Hogwarts, no less—was walking around unchecked. He didn't seem to mind, either. He was content to sit away from all the attention and examine his fingernails.

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Harry grew more and more anxious with each passing day. Despite the Healers' best attempts, Hermione would not wake. She was unmoving, an ashen color, and sometimes Harry couldn't help but put her hand above her mouth to feel her breathe, to make sure she wasn't dead.

Ron sat in brooding silence. At first, Bill's release had helped to keep his spirits up, but slowly, his joy began to fade to be replaced by fear and anguish. He sat by her bed, head in his hands, gazing at her with a mixture of pain and hope on his face. Sometimes he paced, sometimes he sat, sometimes he simply stood looking lost, but from sunrise to sunset he never left the room. Someone came every night to tear them away from her bedside and take them back to Grimauld Place, where they would eat a sullen dinner and spend the night, only to rise and return to St. Mungos as early as they could.

Still, Hermione did not wake.

It became an object of minor publicity. It was a spell that had never been seen, and no one could find a cure. After the headline news—which got more and more depressing every day—a few pages in, they would find an occasional article in the Prophet about the "young woman who was hit by a servant of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named by an unknown spell with frightening effects." It scared the Healers; though they said nothing of it, it shone in their eyes. They knew that, if the Death-Eaters were to use the spell in force, there would be nothing they could do about it.

Harry asked Malfoy again and again whether he knew anything about it. By the seventh time, Malfoy practically shouted, "No, Potter, I can't bring her back! And if I knew what the spell was, I'd hex you with it, too, to stop you asking me!"

He tracked down a portrait of Dumbledore and asked him if he knew anything about it. He didn't. He asked all the other portraits. None could place the curse, or suggest a cure for it.

"I'll bet Snape made it up," Harry said quietly to Ron one day. "Even if he didn't cast it. He was always inventing spells."

"What if she never wakes up?"

Harry shook his head. "Don't say that."

A had week passed when Professor McGonagall arrived at Grimauld Place while Ron and Harry were eating their dinner in somber silence. She pulled Harry aside.

"Potter," she began after a deep breath, "I know you don't want to do what I'm about to ask of you, but it's necessary. You have a duty to fulfill at Hogwarts. Your students need their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher back."

Harry glared at her, unwilling to agree with her. "If you had let the Order rescue Bill, we wouldn't have had to do it, and this wouldn't have happened."

"Potter," she said sharply. "It is too late to change the past, so don't regret it. I made a mistake, and I have learned from it. I've moved on. You need to, too."

He was too angry to see the sense in her words. The grief, the pain, the anguish that he had suppressed for a week were welling up inside of him, flowing through his veins, forcing themselves into his throat. He turned away. "You don't know what it's like," he said hoarsely, "not knowing if your best friend is going to live or die. She's barely hanging on to life, Professor. I can't leave her."

"Think about it," she said softly. "She wouldn't want you to give up your commitments to sit by her side, especially when the latter does nothing for her. She would want your life to go on."

He was silent.

"Harry, listen to me. There is nothing you can do for her here. Go back to Hogwarts. Carry on with what she would want you to. Training students to fight is just as important as her life, Harry. You know that."

His throat constricted and tears burned behind his eyes. "I'll come back," he whispered, "but I'm going to find a cure."

"Harry, you're not a Healer. You don't know the first thing about the nature of spells and how to counteract them."

"I don't," he hissed. "But Snape does."