Please, Mums, if I go around again, I'm going to be sick.
"Wake up. Open your eyes."
Hermione batted at the hand that roughly shook her shoulder. She rolled away and muttered, "G'way, Mums. Lemmesleep. Don' feel good."
Someone snickered. It wasn't the person shaking her, because she heard a sharp snort of exasperation directly overhead at the same time.
Mums would never snort. Would she?
"Either you wake up this very instant, Ms. Granger, or I will assign a month of detention for disobeying a teacher."
Detention. Mums would threaten with cut allowances or dental appointments but never detention. So who . . .
Her eyelids weighed a ton. The best she could do was raise one of them. A strange world swam into bleary focus. She saw a tiny bit of stone wall gilded by flickering firelight. A swirl of dusty obsidian cloth filled the rest of her vision.
She reached out to move the cloth, thinking it might be a curtain or a drapery. Her hand wrapped around something. Curious, she felt around the shape, trying to guess what it might be.
"Would you mind not playing with my knee? It is most unbecoming and, quite frankly, irritating."
So. It was a knee . . . but whose? She should know that voice. She'd once been wary of hearing it. What she could not remember was why?
"Hermione?" another voice called. Younger, higher in pitch. "You're going to be okay. The dart was poisoned but the Professor has the antidote. You're okay."
Dart. Yes. The rain of thorns. They'd walked under a pretty shield made from air by Professor Snape.
Professor . . . Snape?
She'd been feeling up Professor Snape's knee. She'd called Professor Snape MUMS!
"OH MY GOD!" Hermione Granger sat up quickly, throwing Neville Longbottom back onto his tail. The Potions Master scrambled to avoid doing the same.
"You're awake, I see. And, I assume, aware?"
Hermione blinked away a wave of dizziness and stared at her hand. Shiny, swollen skin stretched from mid-forearm to fingertips. The cut itself no longer bled but thin streaks surrounded the wound like scarlet lightning bolts.
"My hand is the size of a bludger."
"Yes, it is."
Hermione struggled to make a fist. She got no further than halfway before a jolt of pain stopped the movement. She hissed and relaxed as best she could.
"And it hurts," she said.
"I would imagine it does."
"And . . . Neville, why do you look like you're about to be sick?"
Snape sniffed. "Probably because he is." He moved a fold of his puddled robes to expose a single-dose bottle half-filled with a lumpy, greenish liquid. "We were only able to get half the antidote down you. Drink the last of it."
Hermione eyed the bottle with strong misgiving. "What is it?"
"Drink." Hermione took the bottle in her uninjured hand. After a final hesitation, she tipped it between her lips. "Another swallow. Empty it. Go on."
"Ugh, ick!" She tried in vain to wipe the vile flavor from her lips. "That tastes worse than polyjuice potion."
Snape raised a sardonic eyebrow. "I don't suppose I should care to ask where you learned the taste of that particular concoction."
Her face heated. "No, not really."
"My thoughts precisely. How do you feel now?"
The inflammation had noticeably decreased. Even as she watched, the final swelling eased and the red streaks faded from sight. An experimental movement proved the pain banished, as well.
"Much better, Professor. It doesn't hurt anymore. Thank you." Recalling the reason for their expedition, she looked to Neville and asked, "How long was I unconscious?"
"No more than five minutes."
Severus Snape climbed to his feet and adjusted his robes. From her place on the floor, the Potions Master loomed over her like a gothic tower.
"Very well. If you feel up to it, I suggest we continue our journey. We still have a ways to go and time grows short."
###
Molly and Arthur Weasley paused inside the hospital wing doors and waited, willing to give the Dursleys first visit at Harry's bedside.
The three Muggles huddled in a dark corner, clumped together like frightened rabbits. The boy in particular pressed himself tight into the joint of the two walls as though his back portion required maximum protection. Vernon made a grand show of placing himself between his family and the wizards grouped around the room, but even he used every scrap of shadow and furniture to protect himself from view. The trio had no intensions of approaching the bed without being forced to do so at wandpoint.
Molly scowled, huffed, straightened her knitted robe, and strode forward. Her husband moved with her, a consoling arm around her shoulders. They paused at the bedside and gazed at the two boys.
Ron lay in uncomfortable sleep, stretched over the arm of a reclining chair to rest his head on his friend's bed. Dark circles marred the space above the freckled cheeks. A worry line ran the length of his forehead and creased the gap between his brows. Molly smoothed her son's hair from his forehead. He slept on, too exhausted to even note her presence. Her mother's heart ached.
Molly Weasley traced the connection between her son and his friend. From the joined hands, she studied Harry and was surprised to see that, while he looked decidedly unwell, he did not appear as bad as she'd feared.
"Molly, Arthur."
"Hello, Poppy." Arthur greeted Madame Pomfrey. He tactfully said nothing about her obvious exhaustion, a state in which he had rarely, if ever, seen her. "He's doing better, then."
Poppy seemed to shrink, her hands locked in an unconscious wringing motion. After a long look to make certain both boys still slept, she answered in a low whisper, "I'm afraid not. The best I can do is manage the pain. Soon, I won't even be able to do that."
Molly frowned. She waved her hand over Harry and said, "I admit that he looks ill--feverish and weak--but--"
Albus Dumbledore stepped up and whispered, "Illusion. For Ronald's sake as much as for Harry's."
"Illusion?" Arthur questioned.
"We've hidden Harry's true appearance under a chimera charm."
"Show me," Molly said.
His expression clearly uncertain, Dumbledore flicked his wand and cancelled the illusion. The chimera charm faded away.
Molly covered her mouth to block a cry of dismay. Her other hand pressed against her chest, as though to hold her heart in place. Arthur caught his wife and held her close, his own eyes bright with tears.
Beneath the illusion lay a totally different boy, one barely recognizable. His skin was gray, blotched with black spots, and covered with early lesions. Black hair covered the pillow where it had fallen out in clumps. A skeletal aura hung over him, as if the essence of Harry Potter's spirit were draining away, leaving behind a desiccated husk.
Without the chimera charm, the nearness of death could not be denied.
"Merciful Merlin," Arthur wheezed.
"I've sent for Remus and Sirius," Dumbledore said, "but I don't know if they'll arrive in time."
Poppy took advantage of the moment to apply a thick, creamy lotion to the oozing tears in his skin, the worst being around the lightning-shaped scar on Harry's forehead. For a brief time, the lesions ceased to bleed and crusted over with fragile scabs.
"How . . . how long--"
"It's difficult to say, but unless Professor Snape, Ms. Granger, and Mr. Longbottom can find Dawn's Glory and get back before full dark, there will not be time enough to prepare the potion. Harry will not see tomorrow's dawn."
Molly Weasley buried her face against her husband's shoulder and sobbed.
A raspy voice, thick with gorge, whispered, "Potter?"
Dumbledore reapplied the chimera charm then turned toward Draco Malfoy. The Slytherin youth stood at the foot of the next empty bed, holding onto the metal bed frame to keep from falling. His complexion, normally milky fair, was shaded a particularly queasy green.
Pale blue eyes vague with shock tipped up.
"Headmaster, is that--what I saw--is that what he--how he--really looks?"
"I fear so."
Draco leaned his hip against the bed and looked away. He swallowed several times to clear his throat of bile. Deep breaths controlled the worst of his nausea. He shuddered and squeezed his arms, suddenly very cold despite his woolen robes.
Dumbledore laid a hand on Draco's shoulder. "It's hard to accept that one so young, someone your own age, is vulnerable to such a thing."
"I've always thought . . . he survived the Killing Curse while still in padded pants. Since coming to Hogwarts, he's faced the Dark Lord over and again and walked away every time. I suppose . . . I suppose I thought him invulnerable."
The Headmaster released a heavy breath. "However much we might wish it, no one is invulnerable to this kind of insidious evil. Neither you, nor I, nor even Harry Potter."
Overwhelmed by emotions with which he had no experience, Draco looked around for any form of distraction. Rubeus Hagrid stood in the doorway, rivers of tears flowing into his beard. Beside him, Professor McGonagall soothed the half-giant even as she, too, prepared herself to grieve.
Draco settled on the three strangers still pressed into the shadowed corner.
"Who are they?"
"The Dursley family. Harry's guardians. The woman is his aunt, his mother's sister."
A shadow of Draco's habitual sneer shone through. "Priceless lot, that."
Dumbledore hummed a sound vaguely like an agreement. He patted Draco's shoulders, heaved a last weary sigh--this one a fortification for the upcoming conversation--and stepped over to the Dursley family.
Left alone, Draco found his gaze drawn back to the bed. Despite the chimera disguise, his mind still saw the hideous, crawling cracks across Potter's forehead. He saw skin gray as a marble gravestone, a body shrunken and empty.
Professor Snape would not make it back in time to brew the antidote. Harry Potter was going to die.
Between one eye blink and the next, Draco's worldview melted. He and Potter would never be friends, but the thought of losing their adversarial relationship disturbed him on the deepest levels. Who would he set himself against? Who would provide him with a worthy challenge?
"You call this a hospital?" the Muggle woman's screechy voice ripped its way around the long chamber. "I've seen more advanced facilities in a corner druggist's shop. You'll be putting on the painted beads and feathers and bringing out the rattles next!"
"I can assure you, Mrs. Dursley," Dumbledore did his best to calm the woman, "Harry would receive no finer care in any other facility."
"I want to speak to someone in authority," the Muggle man said. "I mean someone in the government, not this--this nightmare excuse for a school. Surely you have some kind of legal system. I demand that someone be brought here to hear our grievance!"
Stupid, brainless oafs. Malfoy rolled his eyes and shook his head. If they have an ounce of sense between them, I'll swallow my wand. Father would love this lot--the perfect examples of Muggle inferiority. And they are guardians to a wizard like Harry Potter?
Maybe . . . maybe Saint Potter's life outside of Hogwarts isn't as rosy as I thought it to be. And maybe, just maybe, Father's way--Voldemort's way--is wrong.
He stared at his school adversary and made a solemn vow. No one would ever hear it, or even learn of it, but to Draco Malfoy, it carried a binding more powerful than any Imperious curse.
I am a dark wizard, I am Slytherin, but I will never be soulless.
TBC
A/N: There are so many reviewers for this story, with new ones coming in every day. Thank you ALL! Each review is like a shot of writing energy that goes straight back into the story! With so many, however, I'm sure to miss someone when I send out new-chapter emails. SOOOO, I have created a forum in Yahoo!Groups called Potter_by_Meercat.
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Meercat