CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Madison slowly opened her eyes, wincing at the bright light. A voice came from her side, eagerly whispering her name, and she struggled to focus, recognizing the voice but unable to place it.

"Miss Reyes?" A new voice came from her feet, one that wasn't as familiar, but it finally enabled her to focus, and she squinted at Madame Pomfrey. "How do you feel?"

"I-" She blinked, and blinked again, looking to her side. Theo was sitting there, smiling at her. "The - the eyes-"

"A little confusion is normal," Pomfrey said, stepping forward and waving her wand over Madison. "Do you remember what happened?"

"I was - Malfoy was in the bathroom -" She looked back at Theo, furrowing her brow. "Malfoy - and Colin-"

Madame Pomfrey gave her a sad look. "Mr. Creevey has, unfortunately, passed on. His parents came to claim his body just yesterday morning. They have all left the castle now."

"Yesterday?" Madison looked between her and Theo. "How long was I - I-"

"You were petrified for a little over three days," Theo told her, gripping her hand. "Lucius Malfoy paid for adult mandrakes to be sent in to create the restorative potion immediately."

"What?"

And so Theo explained everything - how Draco had ended up with the diary, how when Lucius Malfoy found out he'd made a deal with Dumbledore - their silence in exchange for the mandrakes. "And letting Dobby come work for Hogwarts." Madison's eyebrows shot up, and Theo smirked. "That part was Harry's idea."

"Of course it was," Madison said quietly. She let out a huge yawn, suddenly realizing just how tired she was. "If you don't mind-"

"Go ahead and sleep," Theo said. "I'll be here when you wake up."

Things were different once those that had been petrified were able to leave the hospital wing. There were some who wouldn't look at them, mostly kids who had been friends with Colin, kids who didn't understand why Colin had died and they hadn't. Dumbledore had attempted to explain during one of the evening meals, but it fell on deaf ears; without the name of the person who had opened the Chamber, nobody wanted to listen, not even when Dumbledore explained that it was the dark lord who had manipulated a student.

The staff kept in contact with the Creeveys, whose younger son, Dennis, was set to attend Hogwarts in a few years; but they'd instead chosen to move to France, and the younger Creevey boy would attend Beauxbatons instead.

None of the students were able to attend Colin's funeral, although Dumbledore held a small ceremony on the grounds near the lake to honor the young muggleborn. Madison, Theo, and Percy attended, none of them speaking to anyone else. All of them blaming themselves.

Madison blamed herself the most. It had been her, after all, who had changed things that caused Malfoy to end up with the diary. If she hadn't dragged Ginny and Hermione out of Flourish and Blotts that day, everything would have gone to plan and nobody would have died. Colin would have lived this time.

Theo and Percy attempted to explain that it wasn't her fault, but every time they tried, she walked away. She didn't want to hear it, because in her mind, there was absolutely no denying it.

But with the chamber of secrets out of the way before Christmas, they were able to spend the rest of the school year concentrating on the horcruxes, and their plan for getting Sirius Black's name cleared.

And then there was the visit to Krum manor in Bulgaria.

Madison hadn't gone to that. She'd stayed with Ginny and Hermione, studying for end of term exams, for it had in fact taken them that long to arrange the trip to Bulgaria, and even then only three of them could go, and one had to be an adult. As Percy wouldn't turn seventeen until the next school year, they'd taken Severus Snape with them.

They came back with a bunch of information on Horcruxes and destroying them, and the dangers that came with each type of destruction.

Fiendfyre was, of course, hard to control. Basilisk venom was extremely deadly if it got on the skin at all. And the risk with a dementor was that it would possibly take not only the piece of soul in the horcrux, but the soul of whoever was there, too. Dementors were too unpredictable.

But there was no information on how to destroy a living horcrux without killing the person it resided in, and that was the problem.

By the time they broke for summer, they were no closer to solving the problem they faced - getting you-know-who's soul out of Harry Potter and allowing the younger Gryffindor boy to live.

The only good thing that happened that year was Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter, in addition to Hermione, Ginny and Ron, had become friends.

They weren't extremely close, of course. They still had a year's worth of distrust to work through. But having saved Draco's life when they had really no reason to knocked a bunch of that distrust away.

Lucius Malfoy was very unhappy with the way things had turned out, Draco told them. The fact that it was his own fault never seemed to cross the elder Malfoy's mind, instead he pinned the blame on Harry Potter, forbidding Draco to associate with him. "He doesn't even seem grateful," Draco had confessed.

The exams were over, they'd boarded the train, and were halfway home before Madison could have a second to herself.

Theo and Percy hadn't allowed her to really be alone much since waking up after being petrified. She didn't blame them, not completely, but she'd longed for just five minutes during the day to breathe.

But now, on the train, she almost wished she wasn't alone, because the thoughts had come back full force.

What had Percy been thinking, asking her to come back in time with him and Theo? Why had she thought she was good enough to make things better? All she'd done was make them worse, and you-know-who wasn't even back yet.

Nearly two years in the past and they'd destroyed one horcrux. One. And gotten Colin Creevey killed five years earlier.

Colin was haunting her. Not physically, of course, but he was in her dreams, blaming her, cursing her. She hadn't told either Percy or Theo about that, because they'd just send her to Madame Pomfrey for a dreamless sleep potion, and she didn't want to rely on potions to get through a night.

But McGonagall had noticed, towards the end of the year, how exhausted she was, and had taken her aside after Transfiguration one afternoon and forced her to talk to her. The older woman had attempted to reassure Madison that none of this was her fault, but she refused to listen, walking out in the middle of one of McGonagall's sentences. The professor hadn't attempted talking to her again.

She was absentmindedly drawing on a piece of parchment when Hermione entered the compartment she was in, quietly sitting across from her. She waited until Madison had looked up at her before she spoke.

"I talked to my parents," she said. "About having you come to my house for part of the summer. If you wanted." Madison didn't say anything, and the other muggleborn continued. "I noticed after - after Colin -" Hermione hesitated before going on. "I know you probably blame yourself for Colin because you think you could have stopped it but you - you couldn't. I've been reading books on time travel, and the situation you and the boys are in - and it said that basically there's no way of everything going exactly the same. Little changes have huge consequences, and it's just a part of it, but I think-" she stopped, chewing on her lip. "You were brave, Mads, you and Theo and Percy - just by coming back here. And I know that Colin dying was sad, and I know you feel like you could have stopped it but you - you couldn't," she finished, twisting a strand of brown hair around her finger, looking nervously at Madison.

"Thank you," Madison said after awhile. "Thank you."

When Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, Madison's father didn't allow her to leave the house, not even to go over to Hermione's. While he didn't remember about the time travel, he seemed to remember he was upset at Madison for something, and so that summer was the longest Madison had ever experienced. And the dreams didn't help.

The dreams were getting worse by the day, and it wasn't just Colin haunting her anymore. Her father's face floated in them, along with most of the Weasleys, Professor Snape, several of the other teachers - all people who had died the first time around, in front of her.

In early August, she finally wrote Dumbledore, asking for his help, despite how angry she still was with the old man. She knew something was wrong with her, for these nightmares weren't normal. She'd wake up in tears every morning on the nights she was able to sleep, and when she confessed this to the headmaster, it took two days, but he wrote back, advising her to talk to someone about them, if not him, then McGonagall or Professor Snape, someone who knew the truth about them and what they were doing, but not the boys. "They are too closely involved with you," Dumbledore had written, "and therefore are not in the best place to help."

And so she wrote to McGonagall with her plight, and the transfiguration professor came to her home midway through august with a couple vials of potion and listening ears.

It would take time, the older woman said, for her to feel like she was getting somewhere. She'd also let Madison know that there was nothing shameful in having nightmares, and not even anything shameful in taking dreamless sleep and emotion stability potions. "They can help you."

And so the summer passed, and it was soon time to go back to Hogwarts.

She didn't make it to the Grangers home that year.

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