Chapter Twenty-Three.

'She's left,' Luna said, with bright, unassuming eyes.

Harry's heart missed a beat. 'What?'

After realising where he had heard his attacker's cackle before, Harry had travelled to Hogwarts in record speed, desperate to find Hermione. When he'd burst into the Great Hall, where hundreds of students had collected for dinner, their heads had turned and their mouths had fallen quiet one by one as Harry sprinted to the Gryffindor table, wet and pale from the snow, with a look of pure panic on his face.

'To where?!'

He was leaning heavily on the table, clutching a stitch in his side and trying to recover control of his shallow and abnormally quick breathing.

Luna looked at him curiously. 'To Godric's Hollow, silly. You invited her.'

Harry's world came to a screeching halt. Sound faded. Suddenly, Harry felt as if he were under water. Under cold, dark water, and he was unable to decide what way was up. Luna's face looked blurry to Harry. For a moment, he thought he'd pass out.

Luna wondered at Harry's confusion, thinking that perhaps he needed reminding. Thus she added in a whisper: 'She left a little over an hour ago.'

Neville, who had been sitting next to Luna, understood that something was amiss and slowly rose from his seat at the table, stretching his hand carefully towards Harry. 'Why are you-' Neville began, but Harry's mind had come to a conclusion that terrified him to his core, and he was already sprinting from the Hall, even faster than he had done upon his entrance. The stitch in his side was nothing to him, now.

At Godric's Hollow, which was hulled in winter's darkness and a thick, white blanket of snow, Harry landed hard on his feet, almost falling at the stab of pain in his ankle. He ignored it and instead sprinted towards his house, drawing his wand, readying himself for whatever he would find. The cold gnawed at Harry's exposed hands and the snow came down heavily upon him, but he was so full of adrenaline that he felt nothing.

Harry sprinted through the main street, past the graveyard and the church and on, all the while trying to force Hermione's screams from his mind. He couldn't allow the fear or anger, or even the pain at the thought of what would happen if he were late, to penetrate any deeper into his mind than at surface level. Harry forced it out, screaming at it: No, no, NO!

As he came nearer to his house, Harry was expecting lots of things. He expected his home in ruin, or Hermione's body just around the corner, or a vengeful Death Eater waiting at his door, and he even considered the possibility of Voldemort having returned, but what he did not expect was what he found. All of Godric's Hollow seemed to have collected itself before his home. Men, women, and even children, wrapped in their shawls and coats, murmuring nervously and exchanging curious glances, stood shivering with their backs towards him. One particularly brave man was walking towards the front door slowly; his wand was drawn and pointed forwards. Harry noticed immediately what had drawn the man's attention.

The front door was wide open.

Harry drew nearer.

'What on earth happened?', he heard someone whisper.

'A blast, and a light…'

'Most peculiar!'

'And at the Potter home, no less.'

Nausea washed over Harry like a tidal wave, and for the second time that day he fought to stay on his feet. If only the front door had not been open and the crowd hadn't gathered, he would have been able to pretend that it was all a bad dream. The house was otherwise quiet and dark, but the crowd was undeniably there, and Harry couldn't pretend.

He forced himself, using every fibre of his being, to move forwards. He raised his wand.

Someone spotted him as he approached, and his name echoed back at him from dozens of mouths. Harry didn't care to look at any of them. Slowly, with his eyes focused only on the front door, he parted the crowd and walked through the wooden gate into the garden.

He saw it immediately. Blood. Dark red spots, unmistakeable in the white snow. Harry's heart sank, but again… knowing that he could not afford to break, he pushed all of it aside. The terror, the nausea, the anger, he forced it to the depths of his being, and stepped inside his home.

It was completely dark within, but the night's moonlight was enough to expose that the house was in ruin. Paintings and mirrors hang crooked on the hallway's walls. In the kitchen, some of the cabinets looked burnt while others hung from their hinges. The dining chairs had tumbled to the ground, and the big windows through which Harry always looked into the garden at breakfast had shattered, so that the winter wind was sucking furiously at their curtains.

SNAP.

Harry spun around to face the living room, his wand pointed forwards.

There was nothing. Nothing but ruin, anyway. Books had flown from their shelves and lay tore up and shattered across the room. The couch had fallen onto its back, and two of its pillows were torn, their fluffy insides spread everywhere. Merel's cage lay sideways on the floor with its door opened at a curious angle. Merel, however, was nowhere to be seen. In the living room, too, the windows had shattered, as well as the large mirror on the wall. Harry noticed suddenly, by the glow of a thin beam of moonlight, that it had an object thrust in its midst. Harry stepped closer and saw, with a shock of revulsion, what it was. Hermione's wand.

In that moment, it was as if someone had sounded an airhorn. Harry's ears rung and his limbs weakened, but his mind snapped awake from its petrified daze. Harry felt as if electrified.

'Hermione,' Harry whispered, and then, much louder: 'HERMIONE!'

He ran from one room to the next, checking under tables and behind chairs, but Hermione was nowhere. Then, without thinking about what might be waiting for him, without even considering or caring that he might get hurt, Harry took the stairs two steps at a time. As he did so, his heart sank further and further. There was blood on every few steps. Some of it was even smeared on the walls. And then, on the topmost step: a crimson handprint. Harry grabbed hold of the railing, exhaling painfully. His hand touched something sticky, and though he didn't have to look to know what it was, he did so anyway. There was more blood. On the railing, on the wall, on a cabinet and the fallen lamp on top of it.

Harry called for Hermione again, feeling uncontrollably dizzy, and rushed from his bedroom to the study. There was no answer, and still no Hermione.

When at last he came to the bathroom and saw the blood pooling from under its burnt and broken door, Harry felt utterly terrified. His heart beat in his chest harder than he thought it'd ever done, and he begged — to whatever would listen, to whoever was watching over him — to not let him find her dead body. He knew, without a doubt, that he wouldn't be able to bear it.

'Lumos,' Harry croaked, and the hallway lit up with a cold silver glow.

Slowly, he reached out for the bathroom door, his hand trembling as it closed around the knob. Harry took a breath, readied himself, and pushed forward.

There was a thud, followed by a sharp breath. Harry thought he heard nails scrape against wood.

She's alive.

Harry pulled the damaged door from its hinges and let it fall carelessly aside.

There she was at last, laying right behind the door's opening. Hermione.

Harry felt sick to be confronted with the sight of even more blood, spread over the bathroom floor. There was so much that Hermione's clothes were drenched in it. Harry noticed, when he finally dared to look at her face, that her eyes were closed and her lips an eery shade of grey, as if all the blood had been drawn from them.

'Hermione,' Harry gasped, and he dropped himself beside her, forgetting his wand for a moment, and reaching out instead for her face. Her head, devoid of all strength, rolled from side to side in his hands, and though Harry saw her eyelids tremble, he felt intuitively that she would die if he didn't get help, fast. Shaking, Harry cradled her to his chest and lifted her from the reddened bathroom tiles. Her blood stuck to his stomach; the smell of it was so strong that Harry nearly buckled over to be sick. His legs felt as if they would never be able to carry her, he was so full of terror, but his mind was stronger, and he willed himself to move forward. Carefully, as if she were made of porcelain, Harry carried her out of the bathroom and down the stairs. He felt shock's numbing effect lying dormant in his body, waiting for his mind to weaken. Harry wouldn't let it: I'll carry her forever if I need to, I'm not stopping.

The rocking of Hermione's body as Harry stumbled down the stairs stirred her, and from her throat came a soft cry. Harry refused to look at her face, feeling desperately afraid to see the life draining from it, and kept moving.

When he made it out the door the crowd of people was still there, only this time there were more. From the blurry corners of his eyes, Harry thought for a moment he saw people with cameras. He was too distracted by the collective gasp of his audience, however, to pay close attention.

'What happened?!', someone cried.

'Is she dead?'

'That's Hermione Granger!'

Harry realized with a sudden shock that he didn't know where to go. He couldn't disapparate with Hermione… not like this, and his neighbours, perhaps his only help in this moment, were gawking at him as if he were putting on a freakish show. A bright flash blinded him for a moment, and then dozens others followed. At every side he turned, people were yelling at him, demanding answers, taking pictures, blinding and surrounding him. Harry felt smaller than he had in a long, long time. Who to go to? How?!

Finally, after what felt like ages, Harry saw someone step forward through his burning tears.

'Come, dear, quickly!'

He followed the old lady blindly, dazed, ignoring the pain in his arms and shoulders as he carried Hermione down the street, through a gate, and into a house. He knew that some people were following him and that some of them were still taking pictures, but Harry saw, heard, and felt nothing but Hermione, and the lady that had stepped forward to help them.

Once inside, the strange woman threw the door shut behind Harry and called for someone with a loud, authoritative voice. A younger woman came rushing from upstairs, a string of red peppers in her hand. Within seconds, the two of them had taken Hermione from Harry's arms and into another room. Harry found himself left standing in a dark, small room, in which only a sofa and wooden table stood, on top of which a cup of tea was pouring itself and candles were burning. Most of the room's remaining space had been taken up by stacks of books, some of which reached all the way to the ceiling, and all Harry could think when his knees finally buckled and he fell to the floor, was how fascinated Hermione would have been.