AN: Obviously, the 'minor incident' last chapter was not so minor, and was titled that as I just couldn't think of a good title that wouldn't totally give away what was going to happen. And holy crud; this story has now gotten well over a hundred reviews. You guys are amazing. Thank you!
I've gotten a beta, but don't think we've quite got every wrinkle worked out, so this is getting posted even though she hasn't looked over it yet. -ducks head guiltily-
Harry woke up in St. Mungo's. He knew this almost immediately. Only a hospital could have such narrow beds and a quick glance, blurry though it was, told him he was not at Hogwarts, as the walls were not stone grey but blinding white. That quick glance also informed him that he had the world's worst headache and should not be attempting to open his eyes again any time soon.
Harry squeezed his eyes shut tightly. The skin on his forehead pulled. He frowned. He wanted to feel his forehead, but his arms felt heavy. His fingers twitched.
Someone entered the room. "Mr. Potter?"
It was a woman. She sounded surprised.
"Mr. Potter. You're awake."
Was he? His head felt odd. Perhaps this was another vision? But no, he'd stopped having those…
Her footsteps came closer, right up to his bedside.
"How are you feeling?" Harry tried to tell her his head hurt. The sounds came out weird; the words all slurred together with the s sounds drawn out. His tongue felt clumsy.
"Are you in any pain?"
"Yeah..." There, that was barely legible. Wait, wrong word. What was the other one? He couldn't remember. Understandable? That worked.
Something glass pressed against his lips. Had the woman explained what it was? The glass tipped insistently. Harry drank.
The headache receded. Harry still felt oddly disjointed. Maybe because the world was all black? He opened his eyes. Better. Everything was fuzzy, but that was okay because his head still hurt a bit. He thought it might be too much to see all that white in stark detail.
He tilted his head to the side. There was a tall, vaguely human shaped lime green blur, topped by a splotch of dark brown. St. Mungo's healers wore green. The floor for animal attacks wasn't nearly this bright, though. Or maybe it was, in this time?
There was something he needed to ask. The skin on his forehead pulled again as his brow wrinkled in thought. He tried touching it. This time his arm made it halfway there before it became too heavy and dropped to the sheets.
"You shouldn't be moving, Mr. Potter. I'm surprised you're awake at all, after the night you had."
"Wha--?"
"You were in the wash of the killing curse," she said gently, as though breaking heart-stopping news to him. Harry couldn't see how this was bad news.He'd beenhit with it before and survived. "It came close enough to partially rip your magical core away from your body. Your readings have been all over the place, and your magic is still resettling. It's acting as though foreign magic is being integrated into your system. It may take a bit of time for you to recover."
What was she talking about? Harry was sure he remembered it hitting his forehead dead on. Or was that before? Besides, killing curses didn't do what she was describing; either they missed or they killed you. Didn't she know anything?
But that wasn't the question he wanted to ask. Why was she answering the wrong question?
His forehead itched. So did his back, and elbow, and legs, and there was a strange sensation coming from his knee, like it should hurt but didn't. But his forehead was the most annoying. Harry's hand fluttered upward again. The healer caught it and pressed in gently back to the bed.
"You received a strange cut, Mr. Potter. That's what you're feeling on your forehead. It was resisting treatment. You may have a permanent scar."
Well, Harry knew that. What kind of an idiot did she think he was? But there was another question, too. Something important he was forgetting. Something to do with his scar but not…
Wait. Scar. "Tom?"
Her head moved. Harry wished he could make out her expression. Why couldn't he- oh. Glasses. He wore glasses. Where were they?
"Your brother will be fine, and is actually in better shape than you are. Some of the nerves in his arm were damaged, and he is being kept unconscious while they are repaired. His bones were damaged badly enough that we had to remove some of them. They will be re-grown as soon as his nerves are repaired. It will all take a bit of time. We'll most likely keep him here for a few days of observation, but he will make a full recovery,You, however." She shook her head. "We expected you to be out for at least a few more days. I can't believe you're lucid enough to be asking all these questions," she added under her breath.
"How long-?"
"You've been unconscious for a little over twenty-four hours. It is July 31st, about eight o'clock in the evening."
Birthday. He hadn't missed his birthday.
For some reason Harry found this hysterically funny. He laughed. It made his head start to hurt again but he couldn't stop. "Happy birthday to me," he chortled.
"Maybe lucid was the wrong word," she muttered. "Here, Mr. Potter. You need to rest a bit more. Questions can wait. Take one more potion for me. There you go."
Sleep. That sounded like a good idea. Maybe more sleep would make the funny feeling in his head go away.
Harry yawned and let the potion carry him under.
When he woke the next morning, there was someone sitting beside his bed. If the puffy armchair didn't give away who it was, the brilliantly colored robes did.
"Professor Dumbledore."
"Mr. Potter."
Harry groped around on the bedside table. His glasses were the only thing on it aside from a glass of water and his wand.
His head didn't hurt this morning. Actually, he felt blissfully numb, if still with a bit of that strange sense of mental disconnect.
"Tom?"
"He woke up earlier this morning. They are preparing to administer Skele-gro now, I believe."
"That boy, and the man. Are they-?"
"They have both been treated and are doing fine."
Harry frowned. "Was he there?"
"Who?"
"You know, him. Grindelwald."
"Ah. No, Grindelwald was not actually present. Several of his followers were, however. The man who attempted to kill you has been identified as one of his chief lieutenants, and is currently being held for questioning. His capture was a fairly significant victory for our side, one which you are in large part responsible for."
Harry groaned and flopped an arm across his brow, then winced and moved it a bit higher as it brushed his still-sensitive scar. At least his limbs seemed to be working properly again.
Just what he needed, reason for another Dark Lord to have a personal vendetta against him.
It occurred to Harry that this Dumbledore would not likely be visiting him simply to check up on him. He wondered how offended the professor would be if he asked what he wanted straight out. His Dumbledore likely would not have minded at all. This one, however…
The person in question interrupted his ponderings with a brisk "My, this room is rather gloomy, isn't it?"
Well, he'd already known there would be no one to bring him some silly little thing like cards, but did the man have to rub it in?
"There," the professor sounded satisfied. Harry looked over and stared. A huge potted plant, complete with large orange flowers of a type that Harry did not recognize, now dominated the bedside table.
"Your glass of water will be inaccessible to you for the next several hours, I'm afraid, but I'm sure the healers would be more than willing to get you another one. It does add a bit of color to the place, now doesn't it?"
Harry touched one of the leaves. As he'd expected, it felt real. "Thank you, sir," he said.
"Think nothing of it, my boy."
Harry let his hand drop. "The healer told me I was in the wash of a killing curse."
"Yes, that is what they were told had happened."
Harry stared at him. Dumbledore smiled.
"Fortunately there were not many witnesses, and even fewer who were in any position to see what happened clearly. The public story is that the curse came extraordinarily close to hitting you, without actually doing so, and the wash of it nearly pulled your magic from your body."
And anyone who thought they saw otherwise would either keep their mouth shut or be faced with public ridicule. After all, everyone knew that no one could actually survive the killing curse.
"I, however, was one of those witnesses with a very clear view of what happened, and thus know differently, as does young Tom." He leaned forward. "I am most curious to know how you survived a curse no wizard has ever found the counter to."
Harry cleared his throat nervously. "I'm not sure this is the best place to talk about that."
Dumbledore waved a nonchalant hand. "I have ensured we will not be interrupted, nor overheard. I would be negligent in my duties if I did not require a satisfactory explanation from you as soon as possible, Mr. Potter. Not only are we at war, but you have one of my students under your care. I cannot in good conscience let you leave without understanding what you have done to yourself to so cleanly counter that specific unforgivable."
Well, when he put it that way…
A part of Harry welled up in deep resentment. He didn't want to tell anyone. Who was Dumbledore to put him in such a position? Harry squashed the feeling, struggling to sit up. There was no way he'd tell this story while lying flat on his back.
Dumbledore waved his wand at the bed and the back tilted up, allowing Harry to rest against it in a semi-reclining position. Harry settled back into with a soft sigh, wondering where to start.
"I told you my parents died."
Dumbledore nodded.
"They weren't killed out on a battlefield or anything like that. A wizard came to their home. He had intended to kill all of us." Harry paused, swallowing harshly. He almost wished Dumbledore had left thatglass of water as it was..."He'd... done things to himself, in preparation for a ritual. Killing us was supposed to be the last thing he did before completing it.
"You know how the killing curse works, right?"
A red eyebrow raised. "Yes. Feelings of intense hatred are gathered. Like in most Dark Arts, the magic summoned by such destructive feelings takes a small portion of the caster's soul and channels it into the victim-"
"Where the soul shard latches onto the victim's soul and effectively blasts it from the body," Harry finished, nodding.
"Mum tried to protect me." Harry paused again. He'd never had to tell this story. Doing so was harder than he'd thought it would be. "Specifically said she was willing to die for me, right before he killed her. Messed his spell all up. Only thing that can counter death is the willing sacrifice of life, you know? It jump started the magic he'd put on himself. Then he tried to kill me. Boy, did he get a surprise," Harry laughed without humor.
Dumbledore was watching him intently. Harry went on, before he lost his nerve.
"The ritual he was preparing for had loosened a good chunk of his soul. When he tried to kill me, that little piece that should have torn lose from him didn't. It kept pulling at the lose part of his soul, transferring it to me, until the power built up so much that it backlashed and broke the connection.
"We didn't have any way to know for sure, but Hermione- that's the muggle-born friend I told you about?- reckoned his soul latched onto mine without actually merging with it. They were touching just enough to keep it there and give me some of his power." Not to mention a mental link and abilities like Parseltongue.
Dumbledore nodded, the very picture of infinite patience.
"We figured out a way for me to deflect certain dark spells to that soul only. If it worked right, the killing curse was supposed to pull that soul out of my body instead of taking mine." Actually, they'd created it to work the other way, with Harry not on the defensive but the offensive, pulling the magicfor the unforgivable not from his own soul, but from Voldemort's Horcrux.
"'Course, we weren't able to really test it. We got into another- situation-earlier this summer. I had to leave right after that happened. It- it was supposed to go away completely the first time I had to… use it like that. I'm not sure what happened, but there was still enough of it for it to protect me again the other day."
"And the foreign magic the healers noticed?"
Harry closed his eyes against a wave of panic. There was only one thing that could be, wasn't there? "Leftovers, most likely," he whispered, "whatever parts of it that were anchoring it to me in the first place."
Dumbledore was frowning, tapping the tips of his fingers together.
"Mr. Potter. I can only think of a handful of magical circumstances that would create the effect you are describing, and they all involve the darkest of magic."
"Well, yeah, it was Dark Arts. But I wasn't the one practicing it."
"I did not say you were. I am concerned, however, as it appears that you have been in very intimate contact with it, and quite possibly now havethesoulof a person willing to practice the blackest aspects of magic being imbedded in the very core of your being. Not only that, you are fully capable of manipulating it."
Harry swallowed. Put like that, it didn't sound so good. But then, he'd known it wouldn't.
"Sir, I can't… it's not that simp- this isn't the place to-"
"I agree." Dumbledore stood. "Very well. I will look into this more closely. Do expect to hear from me again in the near future."
That sounded ominous. "Yes, sir."
"I am extending a good deal of trust here, you understand."
"Yeah. I—thank you, sir."
He nodded. "Expect me to be in contact soon, Mr. Potter."
And with that, Dumbledore transfigured his chair back to the plain, hospital issued one and left the room.
Harry glared.
The chair didn't care. Neither did the healer.
"There is no way I'm riding in that- that- that!"
"Yes you are, Mr. Potter."
"I can walk!" Harry insisted. "I need some exercise, right? I can get it by walking to Tom's room!"
"It's too far."
"It's right up the hall!"
"That's too far. Your knee took some very heavy damage. What with the previous injury we found, you are going to have a long recovery time as it is without aggravating it unnecessarily. You cannot afford to walk any farther than it takes to get across this room for at least a few more days. If you want to see your brother, you are riding in this." The last portion of the sentence was punctuated by a quick jab of the man's wand towards the portable chair sitting quietly in front of him.
Harry grumbled, but he wanted to see for himself that Tom was alright, so he slid carefully off the bed. The healer nudged the chair and it walked right up to Harry. He sat down slowly.
The chair had a bumpy, rocking gait, not unlike a tamer version of Buckbeak's ungainly stride. It was not one of the worst ways to travel, but it was fairly embarrassing. Harry was very glad when they stopped outside a door that looked just like all the others and his escort pushed it open, leading the way into the room.
Tom was reclining in his bed, one of the books they'd purchased just before the attack open on his lap. He looked up as they came in, gave the healer a disinterested glance, and sat up straighter when he caught sight of Harry.
Harry absently noted the healer leaving again, closing the door as he left, but was too caught up in making sure that Tom was really okay to truly care. The boy was holding his book with his left hand only, the right one apparently still stiff. As it had only been a day since the bones were regrown, Harry could understand.
Tom shifted. Harry cleared his throat.
"Reading ahead?"
"Yes."
"What subject?"
"Charms."
"Oh."
Silence.
"Why did you do that?" Tom blurted.
Harry fidgeted, uncomfortable. "I would have done it for anyone. I- you're family."
"Oh." Tom looked down, a slight frown on his face.
He didn't get it. Why didn't Tom get it? Harry stood up, suddenly feeling like he could panic at the slightest provocation. Tom's bed was close enough that he didn't have to walk anywhere, just lean forward a bit to rest his weight on the mattress.
"Don't you understand? We're family, now, and that- I couldn't just- Tom, you could have died, dammit!" Desperate to make Tom understand, Harry reached out and snatchedthe boyinto agruff hug.
Tom stiffened.
Harry let go abruptly and fell back into his chair.
They both went silent.
Harry tugged at his short hospital robe. It had ridden up a bit when he sat. Once it was covering his knees again,no longer bunched up under him, Harry risked a look up.
Tom stared, wide eyes focused down, towards Harry's legs. Harry smoothed the fabric down again.
Curse scars were notoriously difficult to get rid of. The nastier the curse, the harder the scars were to heal or hide.
Harry's knee was still marked with the angry red lines that traced over his tendons and ligaments, covering almost the entirety of his knee and radiating outward, up and down his leg before tapering off into unblemished skin.
"That's why you have trouble walking sometimes? The scar is huge!"
"Thank you, I know."
"It must have hurt." Tom rubbed his shoulder.
"Yeah. It did." Harry could think of nothing else to say.
Tom rubbed his shoulder again, shooting a glance at Harry's forehead. Harry knew what he was going to ask before his mouth even opened.
"How did you-"
"Not here. I'll explain later, at home. I promise."
Tom nodded.
Uncomfortable silence proceeded to reign.
Harry scowled at the cane.
"You could end up needing it permanently if you injure that knee again," the medi-wizard warned, as though he were reading Harry's mind. More likely he was reading Harry's expression. "I can't guarantee you will recover fully, not with such a severe injury so soon after the first. You shouldn't need that cane for long, but you will have a limp for some time. It should fade eventually if you don't injure the knee again."
Harry nodded absently. He'd said all that before.
"You really should not even be leaving yet."
He'd said that, too.
Harry adjusted his robe. He was back in the clothes he'd been wearing the day they visited the alley. Fortunately, someone had been kind enough to clean them.
"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I'm not going to suddenly drop into a coma. There is nothing more you can do for my other injuries. I am going home."
Tom chose that moment to come striding down the hall. Hisarmwas fully recovered, according to the staff, and the boy perfectly ready to be discharged. Harry, who was perfectly ready to go home whether or not the healers agreed with him, had taken the opportunity to say he was leaving, too. They couldn't very well expect him to leave his younger brother alone in the house, could they?
Tom smiled disarmingly at the healer. "Don't worry, sir. I'll make sure he doesn't overexert himself."
Harry snorted. "Right. Let's go."
Chapter End
And there's my little theory on what happened "that night." Hope it satisfies. Or at least makes sense.
