Hermione watched Harry and the Headmaster shoot off into the sky, growing smaller and smaller by the moment until she could no longer make them out amidst the midmorning sky.
"Be careful, Harry. Come back to me in one piece." A deep, fortifying breath later, and she was marching determinedly to the library.
If she cannot be of help to him in Yharnam, and she's under no illusions whatsoever that she would be, then she can at least try and take her mind off of her worry for him the best way she knows how: research. The Hogwarts Library is among the best in the magical world, according to Hogwarts: A History, and as dubious as it is to trust such a biased account, the library is at the very least titanic.
Surely there must be something about Yharnam to be found there. Some hint, some clue, anything to point her in the right direction to solve the mystery of this Nightmare Harry spoke of. A start is all she needs, and then, when the next danger comes, as she surely knows it will, she will be ready.
She won't be useless again.
She started with the normal library, searching through the historical texts for any mention of Yharnam. The city was referenced in over a hundred books that she could find, but none of them held anything more substantial than hearsay and rumors about the city's mysterious disappearance. Nowhere was the island nation referenced prior to its disappearance in the summer of 1817.
It was almost like Yharnam simply didn't exist until it disappeared, paradoxically enough.
After two hours of fruitless research in the main library, Hermione approached Madam Pince and presented her with the pass to the forbidden section the Headmaster had been kind enough to give her before they left that morning. He didn't even ask why, just handed over a year long pass without batting an eye.
If she'd known it would be that easy, she'd have done it first year!
The librarian used a simple iron key to open the gate to the forbidden section, which was a rather banal way to keep students out. They learned how to unlock things in first year, surely there had to be more to it than that? Or else anyone could-
Ah, yes. Harry had broken into the forbidden section in first year, hadn't he? It really was that simple. Just a key. When all the powers of the cosmos were at their fingertips, they decided to lock the forbidden section off with a normal lock.
Hermione will never understand the way wizarding society thinks.
"Your pass grants you unlimited access for the rest of this term and the next. These tomes and scrolls are not to leave the forbidden section, do you understand me?" She nodded her head, already thinking of ways she could hide any interesting books in her bag.
"The door will lock behind you, but you can open the door from the inside. Do not let other students into the forbidden section if they do not have a pass." Is there even a ward in place to tell? Her pass doesn't have the tell tale feel of magic in it. "The library closes at eight, as I'm sure you're aware. Do not lose track of time."
Without waiting for a response, Madam Pince closed the door behind her and marched away, disappearing between the stacks and shelves of the library.
"Must she be so rude?" Hermione huffed to herself.
The forbidden section was darker than the rest of the library, only half the candle sconces were lit. When she took a single step away from the door the other half flared to life, and it was no different than being in the regular library. It was noticeably smaller, almost like being in a muggle library, but the layout was different than any library she'd ever seen. The shelves were arrayed like spokes around a wheel, with a small sitting area at the very center.
Curious, she browsed the nearest shelf, looking for any sort of organizational method she could use to speed up her search.
There was none.
The tomes were not in alphabetical order by name, author, or subject as far as she could tell. Of course they weren't using the Dewey-Decimal system. The regular library didn't, so she's not sure why she'd expect it here. If the books were organized by the date they were written, published, or added to the library, she had no way to tell, as the few books she opened had no listed date inside for anything of the sort.
With a frustrated huff, she moved to the center of the forbidden section. There was a handful of small tables, with only two or three chairs a piece, arrayed around a marble plinth. Sat on that plinth was a rather thick volume, open faced.
The pages were blank.
"How very odd," she muttered to herself, flipping through the book and finding all the pages similarly blank. She closed it, lifting it up, and there, written in gold filigree on the spine, was the word 'index.'
"Would have been nice if Madam Pince had mentioned you." Now, how does it work? She sat the book back down, laid her hand on its front cover, and intoned with all the authority she could muster:
"Yharnam!" The book flashed, light spilling out from between its pages, and when she opened it, it flew of its own accord to a specific page. It was no longer blank. Instead, it contained a short list of volumes, and their locations.
She scanned the list, quickly memorizing it.
Eleven volumes. Significantly fewer than she had found in the normal library, but if even one of them contained anything of use it'd be worth more than all of them combined.
It was a matter of a few minutes to gather the nine books and two scrolls, and lay them out on one of the tables. The books all looked fairly modern, by wizarding standards, but the scrolls looked positively ancient. One was written in what she recognized as ancient Greek, while the other was in Latin. They looked the most promising, so she set them aside to read through last.
The first few books were theses written by two Hogwarts students in 1821 and 1835, respectively. The first amounted to little more than theorizing about Yharnam's disappearance. Everything from 'it was an act of god on the level of Sodom and Gomorrah' to 'it was all just a stupendous case of the Mandela effect' were mentioned, and explained at length, but never with any proper evidence beyond simple reasoning.
Useless dithering of a tired student putting whatever they could to parchment to meet a deadline. She tossed it aside with a disgusted sound.
The second was a rebuttal of sorts to the first. It addressed the multitude of problems with every theory proposed by the first quickly and concisely, and moved on to its own theory. It proposed that Yharnam was not hidden or destroyed, but physically removed from their plane of existence. That their reality and another had collided, for an instant or longer, and Yharnam had been uprooted and transplanted to that other reality.
Certainly a more interesting theory than anything the first proposed, but what little evidence they had to support it came from Dreamwalking. Yet more of the insipid bollocks peddled in Divination that she had no patience for. That tome was tossed aside along the first.
The next book was a detailed history of Yharnam from before it disappeared. Interesting, if a bit dry and totally ordinary. Once an English speaking German colony established in the early Thirteenth Century, before breaking away in 1793 after a short, but apparently bloody, revolution. It maintained close ties to its mother country, along with other icelandic and germanic nations, and saw an influx of English and Welsh aristocracy starting in 1801, as the city of Yharnam was just becoming an economic powerhouse, due in large part to its advantageous position in the middle of the North Sea. Which led to a rather dramatic shift in the country's socio-political climate. The local King and Queen were essentially ousted, forced out of Yharnam by the incoming aristocracy as they took control of Yharnam itself.
What a quintessentially British thing to do.
The rivalry between the Yharnam aristocracy in the south, and the King and Queen of Cainhurst in the north, was at some sort of boiling point, bordering on civil war, when the nation disappeared without a trace in 1817.
She set that book aside to read more in-depth at a later date. Just why it was in the forbidden section was a mystery she may never have answers to. It was a perfectly ordinary book. They all had been, so far. What merit did they have being locked away?
The lock might be nearly useless at keeping anyone with a wand and two brain cells to rub together out, but the point still stands.
The rest of the books only contained references to Yharnam and little else of value aside from more theory on the nature of Dark Magic than she had time to dissect at the moment. Interesting, for another time. She set them aside but noted their names down.
She unrolled the ancient Greek scroll as carefully as she could. Enchanted or not, there's no need to risk damaging something so old and precious as this.
Well, old at the very least. Whether or not it's precious is yet to be determined. It could be a very old recipe book for all she knows. Which would be precious to some, she supposes. Knowing how the ancient people prepared their food is a wonderful insight into how they lived that is all too often overlooked in historical texts.
Okay, so maybe a cookbook would still be precious.
Once she had it unfurled a few feet, with much more left to come, she cast a translation spell on it. The translation spell is thankfully simple and multilingual. One size fits all, so to speak. She learned it in her first month at Hogwarts despite it being considered a third year charm.
She wasn't about to let a simple thing like language get in the way of her curiosity, after all.
The words on the page didn't change, but they did fade into the background as a haze rose up from the text, words forming like ink spilling across a page of mist.
"A Treatise on the Pthumerian Ruins, by Anaximander of Miletus. How very curious."
Albus had never been unfortunate enough to suffer the effects of the Cruciatus. For as far as Gellert had fallen, as terrible of a monster he had become, he always inflicted pain as a by-product, a mere side effect of the experiments he forced upon the populace of Europe. Pain was never something he wielded as a weapon.
Tom had lacked the ability to land such a spell in their few duels, although Albus knew that the moment Tom thought he could, he would.
But, this? This shearing agony tearing through his body in shuddering waves, that set his blood afire and his insides writhing? The terrible, unknowable force that had seeped into him in that infinitesimally enormous moment as he traveled through the lantern, and now was slowly tearing him apart?
He could not imagine a pain more terrible.
He does not remember how he got to the Hospital Wing. But, now he looks around, bleary eyed, the world around him a vague blur that only hints at an occupied bed here, Poppy frantically rushing between patients there, and two bright red splotches. The splotches were wailing, agony clawing its way up from their guts and out through their throats in a terrible sound that Albus wished wasn't so familiar to him.
Was this how it felt to those 'patients' of Gellerts? Did they suffer as he and the others did, now? Or, was it worse for them? To have had to endure this torture for weeks, maybe even months-
For years, Albus had grappled with himself and his decisions that day, in Grindelwalds Fortress. The hundreds that he had killed. He had needed to convince himself, remind himself again and again and again that it was a mercy to end their suffering rather than let it continue without hope of relief. He had never fully succeeded.
Now- now he knew.
It had been less than an hour, of that he was sure, and already he was prepared for death to take him. To grant him reprieve from this agony he could scarcely comprehend. In time, he knew, he would beg for it.
He'd seen it. Delivered it.
He no longer doubted his actions that day.
Poppy was leaning over him now, checking his eyes. Even as close as she was, he could hardly make out the utterly terrified expression she wore.
"Poppy," he gasped out. "What's happening to us?" Here he lay in his deathbed, and still he could not contain his wild curiosity. The very thing that had led him to follow Gellert so far down his path to ruin, and even now, so many years later, he hasn't changed.
"I don't know, Albus! Your bodies are all falling apart at the cellular level. Almost like you're splinching yourselves a hundred thousand times a second, one piece at a time, without actually splinching yourselves, but all my attempts to stop it have failed! Your organs are failing, seemingly at random. I- I don't know what to do!" Her voice sounded as if from the end of a long hallway, and if Albus didn't know better he'd think she was about to burst into tears.
"Mortal men are not meant to do what we did, Poppy. Perhaps this is the price we pay for our arrogance." His voice was weak, a barely there murmur, accepting of his inevitable death even as another wave of agony the likes of which he could not describe cascaded through him. Poppy shook her head frantically.
"You're not dying on my watch, Albus." She made to leap into some sort of diagnostic/healing spell chain, when Harry called out from behind her, a blob of color that might have been Tonks on his heels.
"Madame Pomfrey! We know how to help them."
"Spit it out then!" She nearly shouted, eyes wide and frantic. Tonks had never seen the mediwitch anything other than perfectly poised and in control, and the sight of her panicking wrenched at her heart.
"Our blood!" Tonks blurted, desperation clawing its way up and out of her. "Give them our blood!"
"I'm not about to give dying patients cursed blood." The matron refused heatedly.
"It's the only way to save them." Harry insisted with a calm that was almost frightening.
"I will not be responsible for spreading an unknown contagion!" Pomfrey crossed her arms resolutely. For a moment, Tonks floundered, unsure of what to do. Unsure how she could convince the mediwitch that this was the only way. Behind them, Dawson and Cerric both screamed; terrible, guttural things born from the very depths of an agony she could not imagine. It hardened her resolve in an instant.
"If you don't," Tonks stepped forward, getting right in Pomfrey's face. "I will arrest you for eight counts of negligent homicide for refusing to administer treatment. You'll lose your license, and spend up to forty years in Azkaban, if I'm feeling generous and don't kill you where you stand for resisting arrest."
It doesn't matter that that would be a gross abuse of her authority. It doesn't matter that it'd likely backfire and land Tonks in Azkaban instead. All that matters is that she cannot let her teammates die.
Not now.
Not like this.
"You can't threaten me like this!" All the blood had drained from her face. She took a step back in a moment of blind, instinctual fear, only to be stopped from retreating by Dumbledore's hospital bed.
"Pomfrey, just do it. If you don't help us, we'll truss you up and do it ourselves. You may as well keep your license and avoid Azkaban if you can." Harry argued back.
"Start with me, Poppy." Albus croaked weakly from his hospital bed.
"What?" Pomfrey whirled on him.
"Start with me. If I survive, administer their blood to the others." She looked torn for a long moment, and then she shook her head and waved them forward.
"Fine, fine! This had better work!"
"Your blood or mine?" Tonks demanded, the unnatural sheen to Dumbledore's skin, and the agonized wailing of Dawson and Cerric a few feet away setting her nerves alight. Their blood was starting to pool beneath their beds.
"Doesn't rightly matter." Harry was already jamming the same huge, metal needle he'd used for her transfusion into his chest, filling it with his blood. In a flash of movement he slammed the needle down into Dumbledore's thigh, before immediately refilling it from himself. Dumbledore gasped, eyes going wide, and the unnatural sheen to him lessened, somewhat.
"One might not be enough."
It took three vials of Harry's blood before Dumbledore sat up, looking perfectly healthy, if a bit pale and exhausted beyond reason, and waved him off.
"I'm okay now, my boy. The pain is gone. The others! Help the others!" They both nodded sharply, and Harry handed her a wicked looking needle of her own. Pomfrey jumped into a lengthy diagnostic of Dumbledore, and Tonks had to grit her teeth to keep from ripping into her. He's fine, why isn't she helping the others?
"Time is short, start with the wounded." Harry advised. She nodded her head and rushed to Dawson's side while Harry went to Cerric. His wounds had reopened like she expected, but it was so much worse than that. He was writhing, every movement making a sickeningly sticky sound from how absolutely soaked with blood his hospital bed was. In a flash, he seized his shirt in his hands and tore it open, bending unnaturally to look at his own stomach even as his screams continued unabated.
As she watched, a line appeared, apropos of nothing, running out from his navel and up towards the left side of his ribs, then split open with an audible squelching noise. As if he was an overripe tomato, bursting at the seams and spraying her face with feverishly hot blood.
It was growing steadily longer and deeper. She could see his ribs starting to peek through.
"Fuck fuck fuck!" She jammed the syringe through her breastbone like she'd seen Harry do, not even flinching at the jolt of pain, and pulled back on the plunger as quick as she could. Only when the syringe was absolutely full did she yank it from herself and slam it home in Dawson's thigh. He sucked in a gasping breath, head and shoulders jerking up off the pillow, mouth open in a now silent scream.
His wounds didn't close, but they stopped getting worse, which was a victory in and of itself. She refilled the syringe with her blood, and slammed it into his other thigh.
His eyes rolled back in his head and he fell limp. She watched as his wounds noticeably shrank but didn't close completely. She did it again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again, until finally his wounds were sealed, and the unnatural grey cast to his skin was well and truly gone.
She raised her wand to cast a chain of diagnostics, but her hand was shaking too badly for her to get the spells out right. After a moment she whipped her head around, looking for Madame Pomfrey. She found her still stood over a now unconscious Dumbledore, fretting over him like some sort of mother hen.
"Hey!" She shouted, and the matron jumped, clearly startled. "He's fine, come and help the others you useless twit!"
Pomfrey said something but Tonks ignored her. She rushed to get blood into the others as quick as she could. Most of them were unconscious, which was worrying in and of itself, but none of them took more than two vials to at least look healthy again.
Until she got to Shack.
His eyes were open, pupils blown so wide it couldn't be natural. "Shack? Buddy?" She could barely get the words out, choked by fear as she was. She touched his shoulder to get his attention but he didn't react. "I'm gonna fix you up right quick, just hold on a moment longer-"
In the bed across the aisle, Scrimgeour started thrashing and screaming. Startled, Tonks whipped around and her heart dropped.
Scrimgeour was starting to split open just like Dawson and Cerric. As he thrashed, blood splattered from a dozen foot long rifts in his skin, soaking his clothes, the bed, and splashing across Harry's face and arms as he moved to pin the Auror Captain down.
"Shit!" Harry started, leaping to straddle Scrimgeour. "Tonks, help! I dropped my syringe!" It had rolled under the hospital bed, and without hesitation she dove forward, scrabbling the last few feet to grab it, then rolling sideways and popping back up onto her feet.
She didn't wait, just slammed the syringe into her Captain's thigh and pressed down on the plunger. He didn't stop thrashing, and Harry had to bore down on him even harder to keep him still.
"More! Take it from me." Harry barked, and she complied without thought. She hopped up onto the bed, facing Harry, using her thighs to hold Scrimgeour's head still so he didn't break his neck, and stabbed the syringe straight into Harry's heart. He didn't flinch, and she didn't hesitate. Five syringes later, and Scrimgeour was unconscious and pale, but otherwise healthy looking.
Tonks only realized she was panting when the sound of her own desperate breath was the only thing to break the stillness of the Hospital Wing. Harry reached out, taking his syringe from her shaking hands.
"You did good, Tonks. Now breathe with me." He took one long, slow breath, and let it out just as slowly. Tonks did her best to copy him, trying to will her heart to slow and the panic fuzzing her thoughts to abate, but then she saw a splash of red over Harry's shoulder, and she was leaping from the bed and rushing across the aisle back to Shacklebot.
"Nononono! Shack!" He'd become a horrorshow while her back was turned. One of his eyes had popped, spilling a viscous clear fluid down his face. His arms had peeled apart right down the bone, and even the bones had started to crack and split. Everywhere she looked there was blood, her partner's blood, gushing out of him to soak the bed and feed the steadily growing puddle she was now standing in.
But the worst was his stomach. Somehow, he hadn't just split open. No, his innards had exploded out of him. On the bed by his left hand was what she thinks was his liver; bloated and falling apart before her eyes. Dangling in his lap were his kidneys, and spread all over him and hanging over the edge of the bed were the ropey lengths of his intestines.
Whether by some divine miracle, or the cursed works of the cruelest devil, he was still breathing.
She didn't think.
She couldn't think.
She refilled her syringe, and made to stab it into his thigh.
"Wait!" Then Harry was there, catching her arm in both of his own. She fought against him, trying to break away, but his grip was like iron.
"I got to- I have to save him!" She cried, unable to tear her eyes away from the macabre sight of her friend and partner as he literally unspooled in front of her.
"And you will." Harry intoned, and it was the utter calm with which he said it that got her to listen and stop fighting his hold on her. "But we have to get his innards back inside before we give him the blood. It can't fix disembowelment." He let her go, and her arm fell limp at her side.
She swallowed thickly. "Right." Drew in a shaky breath. "Just gotta- put him back together." Like a meat puzzle, a hysterical part of her mind whispered to her. Harry moved to the opposite side of the bed and got right to work; grabbing a length of intestine and wrangling it back into Shack's near empty gut. She watched, frozen in place, unable to will her hands to copy Harry's movements.
"Don't worry too much about getting them in the right place." Harry told her when he noticed her hesitation. "Just get them inside and the Blood should take care of the rest. Quickly now, he doesn't have much time."
A half a second passed, in which she could do no more than stare in abject horror. But then, with a resolute force of will she wasn't even sure she was capable of, she forced her shaking hands to reach out and take hold of the length of intestine hanging over the edge of the bed.
It was unsettlingly soft, feverishly hot, and slick with blood and other fluids she didn't want to identify. She tried to lift the length of intestine in her grip, but it slipped through her fingers like an eel. She had to grip it tight, far tighter than she wanted to, but she was able to heave it up and into Shack.
She looked at her hands, saw how she was dripping with blood from the elbows down, and even though she'd been covered in blood for the better part of the day, this somehow felt different.
That's Shack's blood, that same hysterical voice supplied. She clenched her hands into fists, trying not to feel how his blood squelched around her fingers. And those are his organs, and they are going back in him!
Together, she and Harry shoveled Shack's disparate organs back into his hollowed out guts, until there was a disorganized pile of innards topped with the flayed remnants of his stomach. She was breathing hard, and there might have been tears trailing down her cheeks, but they'd done it.
"Blood!" Harry got her attention, raising his syringe, already filled with his blood. "From both of us, quickly!" Together they raised their syringes, together they drove them into Shack's legs, together they watched with bated breath.
Nothing happened.
She looked closer, but there was no discernible difference. He was still breathing, if barely. She turned to Harry, searching him desperately for any sign that there might yet be hope.
He met her with a grim cast to his face, and refilled his syringe. "Again." So they did.
Again.
And Again.
And Again.
And Again.
Until Tonks lost track of how many vials of blood they'd given him. Until she was starting to feel lightheaded from blood loss, then further still. She went through the motions robotically: fill syringe, stab into Shack's thigh, depress plunger, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat-
Harry grabbed her hand, more gently this time, and she blinked at him, uncomprehending.
"That's enough, Tonks. We've done all we can for him. I think he's going to make it." What? She looked, and somehow, in the time that she'd been unable to look at him, Shack had knitted back together as if he had never been turned into a meat puzzle by forces beyond her comprehension.
Her syringe slipped from numb fingers to plink along the ground. She staggered back until her knees hit the edge of an unoccupied bed, then promptly gave out, and she sank onto the hospital bed.
She buried her face in her hands, fingers digging in almost painfully. They'd just put a man back together! Like a life size game of fucking Operation. That- that shouldn't have been possible. None of the last few days should have been possible, but the memories were there. Right there, seared into her so thoroughly that she's sure she'll be having nightmares for the rest of her life.
"Hey," Harry's hand is on her shoulder, a comforting touch pulling her out of her own head. "They'll be alright, Tonks. They just need some rest." She blew out a breath, lifting her head to meet Harry's oddly mismatched eyes.
"I know," she murmured. "It was just such a close thing. It's hard to believe that we nearly lost 'em after getting out of that hellscape of a city." Her vision blurred, and she tried to blink him back into focus, without success. She thinks he frowned, and then he was reaching into his coat and pulling out what looked like a bottle of wine of all things.
"Whassat?"
"Saint's blood." He stuck his needle through the cork and filled it. "Hold still."
"Suppose the tanks a bit low," she huffed out a laugh as he slipped the needle into her arm, and then a rush of warmth and strength, alike and yet distinct from when he gave her his own blood, flowed through her. She blinked again, and this time her vision straightened itself out, and tiredness she hadn't even been consciously aware of left her as if had never been.
"Thanks, Harry." She murmured gratefully, and he just bowed his head with a little smile.
The bottle of- wait, what did he mean Saint's blood?- was secreted back in his coat, and then Harry pulled a handkerchief out of his coat and set to work wiping the blood from her face. His touch was gentle, almost affectionate, and the intense look of concentration he adopted while he did so all came together to make the moment more intimate than it had any right to be.
She should probably push his hand away and just do it herself.
She leaned into his touch, instead.
"I've a feeling things'll be difficult for you in the coming days," he muttered as he worked. "I'm only an owl away if you need anyone to talk to, yeah?"
"Hey," she poked him in the chest. "We're still on for your next Hogsmeade visit, don't think I've forgotten." Her voice shook with barely restrained emotion. He chuckled and playfully flicked her nose. She scowled at him, but there was no real heat in it. She knew he was just trying to cheer her up, to take her mind off things, and it meant the world to her.
"Didn't think you had. Still, you know where to find me if you need me." He tilted her face this way and that, making sure he got all the blood he could, and she went with the movement. He hummed thoughtfully.
"You're a lot more cooperative with this than Evelyn." He put his handkerchief away.
"Who?"
"Ah," he hesitated, eyes skittering away for a moment before he continued. "She was my partner, when I was trapped in Yharnam for my night that wasn't just a night." He looked so completely heartbroken, even his smile had turned bittersweet, that Tonks knew what must have happened to her without needing to ask.
"This how you seduce the ladies after a fight, then? You wipe the blood off their faces all gentle like?" She smirked, and he barked out a short, surprised laugh; chasing the sadness out of his eyes, just like she hoped it would.
"You know, it might be. Is it working?" She thinks it might be, despite herself. So, she snorts, and shoves him.
"Not anymore, you prat!" They laughed quietly, and his eyes glittered enticingly, and then, over his shoulder, she saw Shack in his bed, and her heart fell, suddenly weighed down by such terrible guilt that she didn't know it could hold.
"I shouldn't be laughing and flirting with you. Not here. Not now. Not when so many people have died." His smile turned sad, and the understanding she saw in his eyes brought tears to her eyes.
"You're alive, and so are they. Take heart, that's no small thing. There's no sin in celebrating your survival, even as you mourn those that were lost."
She shook her head, knowing in her head that he was right, but the weight in her heart was too heavy. He stepped closer, pulling her into his arms, cradling her against him as gentle as could be, and the tears in her eyes she'd only barely been holding back, fell. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him to her as tightly as she could while she cried into his shirt.
"We-we'll never be able to give them a proper burial!" She choked out around a sob. Harry tugged one of his gloves off with his teeth so he didn't have to let go of her completely, and then his fingers were carding through her hair. It felt nice, grounding, and her hair grew out a little bit so he'd have more to run his fingers through.
"Their bodies are not them, Tonks. They- their spirits, their consciousness, have moved on. They're free, now." She only cried harder at that, caught somewhere between relief at the thought of them being free and grief at their loss, as he murmured soothing things into her hair. For a long time they stayed that way, his touch the only thing keeping her from breaking completely, until her sobs came to a gentle end and her tears dried up. Then, they were just holding each other comfortingly, him swaying gently from side to side and humming a tune she swore she recognized from somewhere. It sounded like a lullaby, but try as she might she couldn't place words to the tune.
She took a deep breath, enjoying that subtle Moon-scent so unique to Harry.
"You smell like the Moon," she muttered absently. He pressed his nose into her hair, taking a deep breath of his own.
"So do you." She found that oddly comforting, for reasons she couldn't articulate if she tried.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," Pomfrey started, sounding genuinely sorry and entirely exhausted. "I took the liberty of contacting Madame Bones. She's on her way."
"Thank you for letting us know." Harry made no move to let go of her, and for that she was grateful. "How is everyone?"
"Stable, as far as I can tell." Relief swept through Tonks so powerfully that had Harry not been holding her up she may well have slumped right to the ground. "Albus was awake for a time, but he's resting now, and the rest…" The Matron trailed off, and Tonks felt dread settle like lead in her gut once again.
"What is it?" She asked, voice muffled by Harry's shirt.
She heard the Matron sigh as if the weight of the world had fallen on her shoulders. "Coma." Her arms tightened around Harry, crushing him against her, and he resumed running his fingers through her hair. "The rest have all fallen into a coma. I'm not sure why, but other than that they're perfectly healthy. I suspect they'll wake up in their own time."
"Thank you, Madame Pomfrey. Leave us." Though his voice was soft, there was no denying the deliberate command it held.
The matron eyed them for a moment before shaking her head and moving to check on her patients again.
"Probably shouldn't let Bonesy catch us like this. Unprofessional, and all that." She said into his chest. She didn't pull away.
"You're probably right." His fingers scratched pleasantly at her scalp, and she shivered at the feeling. Her hands fisted in his shirt, holding him almost desperately, and she wished, for a wild moment, that she had time to throw him down on the bed and have some real stress-relief. To remind herself that she was alive, that this was real and not some terrible, unspeakable nightmare.
"She's coming down the hall." Harry gently pried them apart, and Tonks blinked, wondering how he could possibly know-
His new eye was turned around in the socket, staring through the back of his head like Mad-Eye would do sometimes to freak out people he didn't like. It swiveled back 'round in his head, and once again she was caught off guard by the terrible beauty of it. Like he had the stars themselves in his eye.
The doors banged open, as Madame Bones damn near sprinted into the Hospital Wing. She skidded to a stop almost immediately as she looked around, doing a quick head count.
"Madame Bones," Tonks got on her feet, standing at attention while Harry moved to a nearby window to watch the setting sun, hat in his hands.
"Junior Auror Tonks," Bonesy marched up to her, looking almost lost and irritated by that fact. "I was told the lost expedition had appeared in Hogwarts. Where is the rest?"
Tonks had to swallow back tears before she could get words out.
"We're all that's left, ma'am. The rest are recovering from their injuries, but I'm ready to report." The Head of the DMLE looked her up and down, taking in her tattered clothes, soiled bandages, and bloodstains both fresh and old, and Tonks felt suddenly rather small before her boss. She breathed out a sigh and started cleaning her monocle.
"Very well. Give me the short version."
"Our brooms failed on arrival, torn apart by the field that surrounds the island. We managed to land safely, but our portkeys failed and apparation was similarly impossible." She flinched as the image of Davis being crushed like a soda can flashed before her eyes, and continued before Bones could notice.
"We were attacked by what the townsfolk had… turned into. Terrible beasts. One was simply enormous, and the others were so numerous we were forced to retreat. By the time we found shelter in an abandoned clinic, we eight, and two Unspeakables were all that was left."
Bonesy nodded along. "The Unspeakables found a way to return, but it's all been classified so heavily that I couldn't even get a list of known survivors out of them." She slapped her monocle back into place, clearly infuriated by the DOM's typical hoarding of intel.
"They survived?" Tonks couldn't believe it. She was so sure that thing was going to kill them.
"You're surprised." Bones' eyes narrowed suspiciously, and Tonks had to resist the urge to swallow nervously. "Did you get separated?"
"Scrimgeour made the call to abandon the mission and find a way home, but the Unspeakables disobeyed his orders and went off on their own. We were unable to stop them." Not that they made much of an effort to, admittedly. Bonesy nodded again, motioning for her to continue with hard eyes. Tonks couldn't tell if she was angry at her or the situation. She hoped it was the latter.
"We were attempting to reach higher ground to orient ourselves when I was injured. I was unconscious for eighteen hours, I'm told, and when I came to," She gestured blithely at Harry, who had turned expectantly. "Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore arrived. They pulled us out, and though the method of extraction has rendered everyone apart from myself and Harry-" Broken, bleeding, screaming in agony as their bodies fell apart without reason, "-unconscious, they got us home."
Madame Bones arched a single, disbelieving brow, and crossed her arms.
"So, what you're telling me is that the twenty best Aurors in the country suffered roughly sixty percent casualties, lost all of their protectees, and had to be rescued by civilians?" She swallowed, straightening further in an attempt to control her nerves. It didn't quite work, as her hair turned a dull, nervous yellow.
"Yes ma'am."
"I'm going to need to see a memory vial before I believe that." Fuck! If she shows her the memory then she'll know they let Umbridge die. She can't- she'll lose her job at least! Knowing Fudge she'll be given the Dementor's Kiss before the week is out for depriving him of his toady.
But she can't refuse an order, either.
"Yes ma'am." She said at the same time Harry stalked forward, something dangerous in his eyes.
"You've no right judging her or any of the rest of them. You have no idea what they've been through, what they've had to do to survive, and until you do I suggest you give them the benefit of the doubt." Madame Bones almost, almost flinched when she met Harry's glare, but then her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed, and Tonks knew that she was pissed.
"That may be the case, but there are few things in this world that can present a threat to twenty Aurors working in tandem." She ground out, managing to be polite by the slightest margin. Harry smiled, and there wasn't an ounce of kindness or joy in it, and more than a few pounds of madness glittering, dagger like in his eyes.
"They faced things from beyond this world, for Yharnam is a portend now. A great chasm in the sky, through which the Cosmos itself enters our world. That any of them survived is a miracle in the truest sense." Tonks shivered, remembering the swirling, chaotic dance that was the sky above Yharnam, presided over by the Blood Moon, and she knew that Harry was right.
"And how, exactly, do you know so much about it?" Bones bit out. Harry chuckled in response, low and dark.
"There is a pensieve in the Headmaster's office. I dare say he wouldn't mind us making use of it for the evening." Bones narrowed her eyes, but nodded her head sharply. Tonks could've never gotten away with dodging a direct question from her like that.
It was a little bit thrilling seeing him do it.
Madam Bones leaned down, pulled into the liquid of memory by the messengers she couldn't see. Tonks had supplied her own memory of the mission right up until she was injured, and then everything after he'd arrived. Harry had pointedly refused to share a memory, and since he was a civilian Madame Bones had no way to compel him. Now, all there was to do was wait and see how her attitude changed once she knew.
"How long you reckon she'll be in there?" Tonks asked him. The messengers were watching her, gesturing vaguely as if they wanted her to come closer.
He shrugged. "No idea." She nodded her head, then reached out hesitantly to pat one of the messengers on the head. It cooed, and the others jostled each other around for a chance to be next.
"What are these things?"
"Messengers. They find Hunters like us, worship and serve them. And these ones seem to have taken a liking to you." He smirked, and she laughed.
"Finally! I get the recognition I deserve." She shot him a smug look, and he was about to say something snarky in return when he noticed the messengers reaching into the liquid of memory, struggling to heft something out of it. A wooden handle, wrapped in the unmistakable, dingy, holy cloth commonly used in Yharnam to bless Hunter's weapons, was lifted laboriously by the little ones several inches out of the pensieve.
"Looks like the little ones have a gift for you." He pointed out. Tonks turned with a noise of surprise and curiosity, a little hum in the back of her throat.
"Oh! Well, whatcha got for me?" She took the handle from them, and jerked the thing out of the pensieve all at once. "Whoa! Was expecting some resistance- what the hell is this thing?" The handle was long, perhaps three and a half feet in total, and slightly curved at both ends to better facilitate a Hunter's grip upon it. At the end of the handle, attached via a mechanism that managed to be at once crude and elegant, was a scythe's blade, sharpened on both sides, just as long as the handle itself. A series of runes ran down the sides of the blade, inlaid with siderite if Harry's eyes didn't deceive him, along with eight semicircular holes punched at regular intervals. Wrapped around the outer edge of the scythe and through those holes were several lengths of holy cloth. They might have once been white, but had long since been stained with blood and ichor, turning them a disgusting yellow. The weapon glistened with a strange, pale liquid much like what was in the pensieve that was slowly seeping into Tonks' hand. She didn't seem to notice.
"It's a Beasthunter's Saif." Harry said, examining the weapon's edge with a keen eye, and finding it satisfyingly sharp.
"A what now?" Tonks asked, holding the blade up to examine the runes etched in the blade.
"A Beasthunter's Saif. An old trick weapon of the earliest Hunters. Curious that the messengers would deem it a good choice for you."
"Why do you say that?"
"It is a versatile weapon. Aggressive, and yet also defensive. At once elegant and brutal; equally capable of carving a beast up like a roast as it is of crushing them underfoot with its heft."
"Doesn't feel that heavy to me." She muttered, and Harry just smiled.
"Maybe it says something about the kind of Hunter you'll become." After all, he'd received the Saw Cleaver, an openly brutal weapon that tears as much as it cuts, and a thing of pragmatic utilitarianism, whereas Evelyn had been gifted the Threaded Cane, a thing of malevolence hiding behind a mask of civility, reeking of superiority. Fitting, in their own ways, and Tonks' first trick weapon will be no different.
"I'm no Hunter." Tonks snorted, and Harry leveled her with a flat look. "What?" She asked, when he'd just been staring at her for several long moments. He reached out, pressing his finger to her forehead, envisioning the dangling, upside down rune in his mind's eye. She took in a sharp breath after a moment, no doubt because the rune had just flashed before her eyes as if written there, like the afterimage left behind by the sun when you stare at it too long. If he really concentrated, he could almost see her rune, hazy and indistinct, himself.
It was somehow different than the one in his own mind, but he couldn't articulate how.
"You see that rune?" He asked, and she nodded. "That is the mark of the Hunter. With that, and Yharnam blood of your own, you are a Hunter. Have no doubt about that. What exactly that means is up to you to decide." He let his hand drop. She has no contract. She is not bound to any duty other than the ones she chooses. "Now, give that weapon a few swings, get a feel for it."
Some time later, Tonks was practicing switching her Saif from extended to shortened and back again. She nearly had the motion entirely fluid when Madame Bones came tumbling up and out of the pensieve. She was pale as a sheet, eyes wide with disbelief. The messengers turned to her, grunting inquisitively and she jerked away from them, wand out and ready to cast, staggering back and right into Harry, who caught her by the arm to steady her.
That he also managed to jerk her wand away from the pensieve was mere happenstance.
"They're just messengers. Harmless little ones."
"Where did they come from?" She jerked her arm in his grip, and after a split second hesitation he let her go. She stowed her wand, but eyed the messengers warily.
"They were always there. You just couldn't see them."
"Like thestrals," Tonks added, parroting the explanation Harry had given her while Bones was in the pensieve.
"Right," Madam Bones breathed shakily before collapsing into a nearby chair. Trembling hands reached up to her monocle, cleaning it in what Harry realized was a nervous habit. "I owe you an apology, Auror Tonks." She said after a moment. "I hadn't believed- it didn't seem possible…"
"Nevermind the apology," Tonks gave her boss a searching look. "What happens next?"
Madame Bones shook her head, looking utterly lost. "I have no idea."
The portrait hole opened, and Hermione would have been content to ignore it and whoever had entered the common room as she had for the rest of the day, focused utterly on the scroll in her lap, if it were not for one thing: the sudden and utter silence that descended upon the common room.
She finished the sentence she was reading, then tore her eyes away from the utterly fascinating writings of Anaximander of Miletus. Standing in the portrait hole, hat in hand, surveying the silent common room with a sardonic expression on his face, was Harry.
"Harry," Dean started hesitantly. "Why are you covered in blood?"
"Was it one of the twins' pranks?" Ginny piped up, already sending the twins in question a glower even as they shook their heads in fervent denial.
Harry blinked, looked down at himself, then made a noise of surprise. "Forgot about that. I'm a right sight, aren't I?" He chuckled, abashed, then his eyes found hers and he made a beeline straight for her.
She frowned, worried, and it took a supreme effort of will not to jump up and run to him; to throw her arms around him and reassure herself that he was fine. She wouldn't let relief settle in her until she could touch him and know that he was-
Her thoughts stopped dead when Harry collapsed into the seat next to her. He was on her right, and when he turned to give her a reassuring grin, she saw right away that his eye was different.
"Well, today was-"
"Harry, what happened to your eye?" She leaned closer, hand over her mouth. It looked- she swore that there was something in his eye. Something pale and unnatural wriggling like a worm.
"Lost it." He said simply, casually, as if he'd misplaced his keys or his wand, not at all how one should speak about losing their eye! "Luckily I had a spare on hand." He smirked, amused for reasons beyond Hermione's reasoning.
"That's not funny, Harry!" She scolded him, even as she reached out to cup his bloodstained face in her hands. The blood was thick and sticky, nearly dried, and the feeling of it made her stomach roil, but she ignored it so she could get a closer look at his new eye. There was something more to it. Beyond the writhing thing within it, within the unnerving darkness of it, dozens of little lights cascaded. It was awful and beautiful all at once.
Harry's smile faltered. "No, I suppose not." He muttered.
"Why did you-" She cut herself off, biting her lip. Her hands fell away from him, fingers tangling nervously in her lap. "What, and it's okay if the answer is nothing, okay? Even though I won't like it, I will accept it, so no pressure. What can you tell me about what happened today?"
He studied her face, his new eye moving somewhat erratically compared to his normal one. "I don't intend to hold anything back anymore, Hermione."
"What- what changed? You were so vehement about not talking about things related to Yharnam and the Nightmare, so I thought…" She trailed off, gesturing helplessly.
"I realized I was wrong," he started softly, a glint of something unsettling in his expression. "I thought to keep you ignorant to keep you safe. That if you didn't know you couldn't go looking and you'd never stumble into the Nightmare." He chuckled even as tears welled in his eyes, and Hermione leaned away from him without meaning to.
He followed, closing the gap between them in an instant, and continuing in a whisper meant for her and her alone. "But the Nightmare has ensnared us all! Ignorance will only get you killed." He tapped the scroll on her lap pointedly. "So read! Study, learn, unravel the secrets of reality and watch as reality unspools before your very eyes. If madness is preferable to you than death."
"Genius and madness are indistinguishable to the ignorant. Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it insane." After all, if she had been told magic was real only a few years ago she would have called them crazy. Discovering magic, learning to wield it, to change the world with nothing but her mind and a piece of wood? It had opened her world up in ways she didn't think possible. It had taken her out of the comfortable world of logic and science and planted her in a place where things often made no sense at first glance, and only when you dug under the surface could any sort of sense be made of anything. She was only beginning to really understand the world of magic, but whatever this Nightmare was she would come to understand it as well.
She's not afraid of knowledge. It is not a thing to be derided or scorned. It is willful ignorance that is the bane of progress and societal growth. She will not let herself be ignorant and useless!
He blinked, then leaned back. The unnerving glint in his eye disappeared, and then he just looked … sad.
"I wish Evelyn had been able to meet you. She would have loved you."
Hermione reached for his hand, and he held onto her with surprising strength. "I wish I could have met her too." Even if only so she could have gotten to know someone that had so clearly wormed their way into Harry's well guarded heart.
She stood, pulling Harry to his feet. "Come on, Harry. Let's get you cleaned up and then we can talk." He smiled, soft and small. Hand in hand they made their way up to the boy's dorm, and the showers beyond, pointedly ignoring the wave of whispers from the student body that erupted once they'd left ear shot.
She shut and warded the door to the showers once they were inside.
"Looking for privacy?" Harry looked surprised, but pleasantly so.
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling all the same. "Not for the reasons you're no doubt imagining, gutter brain." Then she shoved him towards the shower before he could say something that might change her mind. "Get all that blood off of you and maybe you'll get a good snog."
"Fair," he laughed, shucking his coat and deftly unbuttoning his vest. Hermione took a deep breath and turned to the sinks to try and scrub the blood she'd gotten on her hands off, and to give him a spot of privacy.
Just because they were- they'd never discussed it, had they? Regardless, he deserved privacy unless he specifically invited her to look, so she would give it to him.
Once the shower was going and Harry was ensconced in the stall, she plopped herself down on a bench.
"So," she started. "What happened today?"
A long silence grew between them, and Hermione had to stomp on the thought that Harry was ignoring her. Far more likely he was just gathering his thoughts.
"There are more like me, now." He said eventually, just barely loud enough to be heard over the spray.
"Like you, how?"
"Hunters. Survivors of Yharnam. Well, one for sure: Auror named Tonks. I'm-" he sighed. "Not entirely confident the others will survive, and even if they do there's no telling what mental state they'll be in if they ever wake up from their coma."
"The people you went to save are in a coma?"
"All but Tonks and Dumbledore, though why Dumbledore isn't while the rest are is a mystery to me."
"What happened to them?" Something happened to the Headmaster?
"I'm not entirely sure." He said no more on the subject, and Hermione decided to leave it lie.
"What about you? Are you… alright?"
"Aside from losing the eye?" She could hear the smile in his voice and huffed in response, not at all sharing in his amusement. "I'm, heh. Yeah. I'm fine actually. Better than before, honestly. I really shouldn't be. I should be a wreck like Tonks, barely able to hold myself together from the sheer horror of it all, but I just feel like a weight has been taken off my shoulders."
"Because you're not alone anymore? There are others like you out there now, other survivors?" It's the only reasoning that made sense to her.
"I'm not sure I was ever alone." She had to strain to hear him over the spray he'd gotten so quiet. "Evelyn's still out there, somewhere. I lost her once, but I'm going to find her."
"I thought she died?" She asked as gently as she could. She didn't expect Harry to laugh, but he did; low and dark.
"Nothing is ever so simple as that in the Nightmare planes. She's out there. She's out there! You might just get to meet her after all."
Author's Note:Sorry for the wait! This chapter was an outright struggle to write, but I'm fairly happy with how it came out. God, but I'm eight chapters in and I've only covered a few days worth of events when I've planned out the entire school year. I've a feeling some time skips are coming up, but how drastic they are is yet to be determined.
Leave your thoughts behind! The good, the bad, the ugly, let me hear it all!