To be notified of new posts, join us at: potter_by_meercat-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
A/N: This chapter contains graphic images of Harry's condition that some might find disturbing. In a way, it's a catharsis for me. During my physical therapy session this week for my arm (for those of you who don't know, I broke it last month), I sat next to a gentleman recovering from severe burns on his right forearm and hand. I won't describe his injuries except to say they were horrific, yet he still had the most positive, I'm-going-to-get-through-this attitude. The man was most certainly a Gryffindor at heart. Still, the sight of his injuries left me shaken. This chapter is my way of dealing with that.
You also must remember who cast the Devourers Curse and why. Would Lucius Malfoy let anyone simply slip away in silent slumber?
Chapter 21
Draco Malfoy lounged in the only chair left behind the cloth partitions. He held a battered copy of Quiddich World, the base of its spine propped on a bent knee, open to an article on the (then) most recently developed moves to evade a bludger. Not one word of it had he bothered to read. All of his attention, if not his vision, was locked on the argument that raged between wizards and muggles.
"You all fight it out amongst yourselves," Madame Pomfrey said at last. Draco watched Madame Pomfrey's silhouette against the dividing screen throw up its hand in defeat. "I have a patient to tend to."
Having set the stage as best he could, Draco relaxed even as he braced himself for the oncoming confrontation.
The mediwitch appeared around the partition. She took one look at the empty space and shouted, "Gracious!"
Footsteps rushed forward. Someone shoved the screens against the wall. The adults stared at the blank space where a bed, chair, and side tables once rested. Only slight indentations in the floor, worn into the stone over the ages since Hogwarts' creation, remained to show the furniture had ever been there.
Dumbledore blinked twice before a hint of admiration lightened his expression and his stance shifted a fraction with released tension. Minerva McGonagall stared at the empty space. Madame Pomfrey gasped and stared around the room, as though expecting to find her patient moved to another part of the chamber. Arthur and Molly Weasley clung to one another and turned to Dumbledore for answers. Cornelius Fudge gaped like a land-stranded fish.
Vernon Dursley turned an interesting shade of puce. He glowered at Malfoy and demanded, "Potter--where is he?"
"Not here," Draco drawled, speaking as one might to a slow child. "Obviously."
Angered by his failure to intimidate the adults, Dursley rounded on the slender, pale, seemingly harmless teenager. Fists clenched, he stomped forward and roared, "Where is he, boy? Speak up! You'll tell me where he's gone or I'll-"
Draco lowered the magazine to reveal the shaft of his wand, it's point aimed directly at the muggle's flabby stomach. The teen didn't even bother to shift in his chair. The wand, and a promise of mayhem bright in his pale eyes, spoke for him. Behind Dursley, the Hogwarts wizards lowered their own wands and halted their automatic rush to defend a student. Petunia wrung her hands and cringed away, even as Fudge shilly-shallied.
Vernon stumbled to a stop and leaned back, terrified as always by any threat of magic.
His voice, silky sweet, Draco said, "You were saying?"
"Be calm, everyone." Dumbledore sought one final time to reconcile the parties involved. "Arguing amongst ourselves serves no purpose. We all want what is best for Harry." The Headmaster of Hogwarts stared at Vernon and Petunia over the top of his half-moon glasses. "I assume no one argues with that?"
The lie was obvious even as Petunia answered, "No. No, of course not."
"Cornelius?"
"Of course not, Albus. The boy is, after all, a hero. A symbol for light magic."
"That he is."
Molly Weasley asked the question on every adult mind. "But where is he?"
"Ask him." Vernon jabbed the air in Draco's direction. "He'll know. And if he won't answer you, give him to me. I'll get it out of him, every word."
Draco rose from his chair with a languid grace made all the more threatening by its slow, precise economy of motion. The magazine slid to the floor, face-up to an advertisement for a mess-removing, self-sweeping broom.
"Don't threaten me, Dursley. You won't like the consequences."
"I know something of your laws. Had to, if only to protect my family. What could your lot possibly do to me?"
"Trust me on this, Muggle," Draco crooned. "You don't want the attention of someone like my father. He really is not a nice wizard. Not a nice wizard a'tall."
"True. Oh yes," Fudge said. "Very true."
A shudder shook the Minister of Magic's frame and made his robes ripple all the way to the hem. Fear flashed across his face. Fudge's reaction did more to intimidate the Dursleys than any verbal statement of fact.
"Before you challenge him," Arthur Weasley added the final convincing points, "you should know that Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, is the dark wizard who cast the curse at Professor Snape, the same curse that Harry so courageously intercepted. The man loathes muggles such as yourself with a passion--considers them to be less than human--and would leap at any excuse to hurt or kill one for sport. He is not above using darkest magic to get what he wants. And he never, ever, forgets a slight to his pureblood family honor. An attack on his only son might well qualify, don't you agree?"
Draco bit back a scathing comment, something along the line that his father didn't care enough to stop a Death Eater from threatening "his only son" with the Killing Curse. His face remained a blank canvas, revealing nothing. Even so, judging by Dumbledore's sympathetic glance, the Headmaster understood.
"What's to say, then," Dursley grasped for any straw to support his argument, "this boy isn't responsible for the br--for Potter's disappearance? Maybe--maybe he found some way to sneak his father in, and he took him, along with the only witness."
Draco fought the urge to squirm under the combined, intense gazes of every adult in the room. Some of them were witches and wizards with a five-year history of authority over him. Habit alone would have made him wiggle.
"Draco?" Dumbledore asked. "Where is Harry Potter?"
"And my son," Molly Weasley added.
"How would I know? I've been here sitting listening to you lot fight amongst yourselves like two packs of dogs over a single bone. Turned around and he was gone." A mischievous light brightened Malfoy's pale eyes. Any opportunity to get a Gryffindor into trouble could not be overlooked. "Maybe Weasley did something."
###
Ronald Weasley looked around and nodded, satisfied.
Dobby had chosen a pentagonal chamber with a single door, arched ceiling, and no windows. Age-faded tapestries, each depicting a House of Hogwarts, covered four of the walls; the fireplace and door occupied the fifth. Overall, the room was smaller than the Gryffindor fifth-year dorm but large enough to hold the required furniture and persons. A fire crackled in the hearth, providing adequate heat and light. Wall sconces mounted between each tapestry stood ready to add further illumination if necessary.
A wave of the house elf's hand had cleared away every trace of dust, lint, or cobwebs.
"Perfect. Thank you, Dobby."
"Dobby is glad to help, sir."
The house elf snapped his fingers. An oval mahogany table appeared between the bed and the fireplace. Its surface groaned under the weight of a dozen covered dishes and lidded containers. The heady scents of warm bread fresh from the oven and hot, red meat wafted across the room. Ron was certain he caught a whiff of butterbeer from one of the covered tankards.
"In case you should get hungry while we wait, sir."
"Not 'we,' Dobby. Me. You can go now. We'll be fine here until Draco calls us back."
Dobby stared at him, his expression one of disbelief. Liquid pools of disappointment filled his overlarge eyes.
"Go? You want Dobby to go? But Dobby wants to stay, sir, and help tend Harry Potter."
Ron steeled himself against the house elf's kicked-puppy look.
"Thanks. I do appreciate it, but you need to get back. If the head elf reports you missing to Dumbledore, the Headmaster might suss out how we moved Harry. We can't risk it." Seeing the unmasked disappointment on the house elf's face, down to ears that drooped flat on his bony shoulders, Ron said, "If I need help, I'll call. Promise."
Wide eyes, cautiously hopeful, tipped up. "Promise? You'll call Dobby?"
"I promise, Dobby. I'll call."
Dobby sighed, saddened but reassured. He vanished in a cloud of silver mist.
Ron sighed, rubbed his face from hairline to jaw, and instantly regretted sending the elf away. At least with Dobby, he'd have someone to talk to, as well as someone to run off and get something if he needed it. He sighed again, harder, and reminded himself that he could always call Dobby back if need be.
He took a moment to inspect the dishes and decided that, however appetizing they might be, he wasn't really hungry at the moment. He cast a keep-warm charm on each covered dish before returning the chair at his friend's bedside. He gathered Harry's hand into his and settled in for an hour's wait.
Within moments, he knew. Something was not right. He separated their hands and looked down.
The liquid, viscous and warm, clung to his fingers. Ron raised his hand to his nose and breathed deep. A sharp, metallic odor stuck in the back of his throat. He choked and turned away.
"Blood? But how-"
Turning his mind back, he recalled some things Hermione had said at the start of their library search for a cure to Harry's condition. He'd listened with only half an ear, more from habit than anything else, as she described what Harry would face over the course of his illness.
"The curse devours the organ with the dark magic then attacks all the organs that contain magic," she'd said. "In Harry's case, the scar on his forehead is the first foothold."
Ron carried the idea forward in his own mind. Harry's skin. The first target of the curse will be his skin. If that's so then . . . shouldn't there be some sign of it by now?
Ron drew his wand and, with a deliberate swish-and-flick, said, "Finite incantatum."
The air around Harry shimmered but the image remained unchanged. Still, the spark proved to Ron that something was indeed there. He tightened his grip and recast the spell, putting every ounce of determination into his voice.
"Finite incantatum."
Again he saw the shimmer, definitely stronger, but no end to the illusion. Harry still looked feverish and weak but not dying, with no hint of a bleeding injury.
"Dammit, I can't tend him if I can't see him. FINITE INCANTATUM!"
The chimera charm vanished. Ron Weasley yelled and fell back against the wall, repulsed by the wreck in the bed. His wand fell to the floor to clatter against the ancient wood.
Only by the vaguest of resemblance--the overall shape of the face, the form, the angle of shoulder--did the body look like Harry Potter. The Devourers Curse had stolen every feature that might have identified him. No vestige of unruly black hair remained, not one single strand. Once healthy, pink skin sprouted horrible sores and jagged fissures. Nude patches on his forearms were rubbed down to the innermost dermal layer. The minority of skin not yet ruptured was an unnatural gray shade, like wet ash. On Harry's right cheek, a patch of bare muscle the size of a galleon lay exposed. Every trace of body tone built over years as Seeker on the Gryffindor quiddich team had vanished.
Bandages wrapped his forehead and right ear--Madame Pomfrey's work, no doubt. Others covered various portions of Harry's upper body. Every once-white surface was now tinged red, and new lesions had spread to cover most of the emaciated frame. The blanket, covering him from waist down, hid the horrors below.
Ron stumbled to the nearest corner and lost what little he had in his stomach. He heaved and chucked until nothing but gags remained. He trembled from head to foot. His body quaked so hard, he would have been hard pressed to hold onto a wand.
The smell of Dobby's banquet threatened to overturn his stomach.
Get hold of yourself, Ron Weasley. You can't stand here tossin' your guts up all day. Harry needs you.
Turning back to the shell that was his friend required every iota of Gryffindor courage. Every breath caught in his throat, and the bitter taste of bile threatened to restart the cycle of gag and heave.
It's Harry. Remember that. It's Harry. Iz'arry, iz'arry, iz'arry.
Ron swallowed, steeled himself, recovered his wand, and stepped to the side of the bed.
First things first, he thought. Clean him up, treat the wounds, and rebandage. If we were aurors in the field, injured while fighting Death Eaters, it wouldn't be any different. Think about it that way if it'll make it any easier. Bloody hell, don't think about it at all, just do it.
Swish-and-flick. "Wingardium leviosa."
Ron stopped the levitation when his friend hovered a foot above the bed. With access now possible to every area of Harry's body, Ron spent the next few minutes dabbing cream from Pomfrey's medicine jars onto every visible wound then wrapping fresh bandages around the worst of the lesions. He exchanged the soiled sheets for fresh ones found in the bottom drawer of the side cabinet then lowered Harry back down.
He'd done what he could. Now he could only wait. And pray.
After a time, the silence began to press in. Ron found himself cradling his friend's bandaged hand and talking about anything that came to mind.
" . . . and then Ginny threw the pitcher of mud over Percy's head and-"
Ron fell silent. Was that a change? A hitch in Harry's breathing?
The minutes dragged on. Ron noticed an increasing change in his friend's pattern of respiration. Each breath grew shallower, more labored. The gap between breaths lengthened. Ron shifted to the head of the bed and lifted Harry into a seated position. The change seemed to help.
"Easy, mate. I've got you. I won't let you go."
He made himself as comfortable as possible. With Harry tucked against his chest, he found himself slowly rocking them both side to side. He recalled with a fond smile the times when, as a child, his mother had cuddled him close and swayed. The gentle rocking motion soothed even as it comforted.
"I wish I could sing to you the way Mum did to me," Ron said. "Problem is, I can't carry a tune in one of Hagrid's buckets. Might wake you up, though. Dunno if that would be a good thing or bad."
Ron studied his unconscious friend's condition. Even with the recent care, Harry remained a skeletal, declining form barely clinging to the last threads of life.
"Bad, I think. Sleep, Harry. Hermione and Neville will be back soon with the flowers we need to heal you. You'll be back on your feet in no time." Even Ron heard his own lack of conviction. His voice a fell whisper, little more than a breath with sounds, he rocked his friend and said, "Sleep on, mate. I'm here for you, long as-" you live, "-long as it takes."
TBC