Harry was engulfed in a bright light, his feet left the floor of Grimmauld Place but it was more like the floor left him.
He felt the touch of at least two people, but couldn't see a thing, only a blinding white as if he was stuck between some kind of dream state and the waking world. Sobs reached his ears; Hermione.
"Wake up", whispered a voice in his ear. "Wake up. Please."
Harry's eyes flew open, he pulled in sharp gasps of air, shaking violently and was immediately choked by Hermione's arms crushing his throat.
"Mione, can'—breathe."
"Yeah yeah, sorry", she mumbled and moved to give him space enough to sit up. "How are you feeling? Okay?"
She looked worryingly at him, her eyes scanning his face for a sign telling her otherwise.
Harry nodded, feeling a bit sluggish and strangely out of breath.
"Yeah, I'm okay."
"You gave us a fright", said Ron with a nervous chuckle, giving him a pat on the back along with mrs Weasley giving him a great big hug, squeezing the air out of him once again.
When she finally released him, Harry looked upon the tear-stained faces of Ron and mrs Weasley who sat as close to him as Hermione.
In the background hung the two Peters, smiling and nodding at him.
"Sure did", said Strange, he too sitting by him.
If Harry wasn't mistaken, the Sorcerer Supreme gave him a barely visible, heartfelt smile.
"Good to have you back, Potter", Strange patted his shoulder before getting up, his red cape fluttering about.
"Those are the good news?" asked the much younger Spider-Man standing next to Spider-Hermione, his eyes moved and lay on the two other Spider-Men. "Wait… you look familiar, have we met?"
Harry groaned as he tried to move his pounding leg along with his body.
Hermione's head spun around from what was going in front of her, to him and she picked up her wand with swiftness. "Hang on, Harry let me fix that."
Peter and Pete exchanged quick wary looks. "No." They shook their heads in unison, Peter smiled but it became more of an insecure grimace. "Not at all."
Peter-three opened his mouth, pointed from Pete to Peter, but suddenly gave up trying to make sense of it and shut his mouth, his arm limp by his side.
Harry felt a sharp stabbing inside of his leg, like a blunt icepick digging deep around, pinching his bones in order to realign and heal them. His face twitched on its own as his nerves blew up like a firework, a burning feeling spreading along his bones. "Ow! What the hell Hermione?"
"Oh stop squirming", said Hermione, very much annoyed that he wasn't sitting still. "You've had worse. Unless, of course, you prefer to have your bones removed and regrown?"
Harry grimaced, remembering the agony of growing back bones all too well. "I'm good, thanks Hermione."
"Then I don't know what you're making such a fuss about. You're good as new", said Hermione and patted his now-healed leg.
Ron scoffed and leaned in towards Harry. "Married quite the witch, huh?" But Harry smiled. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
Finally being able to stand on his own legs for the most part, Harry stumbled up, about to fall over again when Ron caught him.
"Strange", said Harry.
Leaning slightly against Hermione and Ron, he stuck down his hand into his pocket and dug for the wand he had taken and handed it to Strange.
Strange stared blankly at the wand, then at him. A faint red glow emitted from the wand, shimmering.
"Thanks but I don't need—"
Harry exhaled, his body still aching from the previous fight.
"No, I believe it has something you'll want. Just break it."
Strange narrowed his eyes. "Alright." He grabbed each end of the wand, holding it in front of him and bent it. It broke in half with a surprisingly loud crack. "Huh."
The broken pieces of the wand lightly hovered into the air, just a few inches from Strange's out-stretched palm, the wood was eaten away by a horde of invisible termites and in its stead hung a red, glowing Stone in the air. "Well, good work Potter. That should be the last of them."
Strange pocketed it, appearing to be satisfied.
Tony came rushing up the stairs. "Any good news? Because people are getting antsy, we need to do something."
Strange gave him a comforting smile. "Good news indeed. Potter retrieved the last Stone for us. Now, I'd advise all of you to back up, there's no telling how they will react in this environment."
"Come on", Harry beaconed Ron and Hermione to him, and together they backed away from the steps leading up to the destroyed throne.
Mrs Weasley and the rest followed, leaving Strange alone on the crystal staircase.
Harry, Ron and Hermione gathered in a corner nearby the four Spider-People that now where with them.
Glancing over at the Weasley's, Ginny still had not awoken up which was worrying and perhaps whatever curse hit her had a lasting effect.
Next to Ginny, holding her hand was Luna, the last person Harry expected to look as heartbroken as she did.
Harry turned his head back to the throne, something around Strange wasn't right, possibly the Stones, and his spidersense was not fond of it in the least.
He took Hermione's hand, squeezing it, holding onto it, fearing a strange sensation of an impending doom, like that feeling of rain hanging in the air before it fell.
"Wait, what do you mean Stones?" the youngest Spider-Man questioned, frowning. "You mean… like the Infinity Stones?"
He didn't need to shout, he voice bounced easily over to Strange, who just looked his way without responding.
Peter chuckled. "Yeah! That'd be them, buddy – by the way, I'm Peter Parker – it's all very… alien to me, but y'know – if it works, it works, I'm not going to question it. There's got to be some kind of scientific explanation behind it."
The smallest of the Spiders lit up. "I've fought an alien."
Peter leaned against a colorful wall, splitting a wave of colors in half with the weight of his body.
A grin spread in the older Parker's face, he too resting against a wall. "You have?"
"Yeah!" said Peter-three enthusiastically, nodding in a sort of awkward way. "He was purple, used the Stones to wipe out half of the universe."
"What? No way, I fought a blue guy made out of… electricity", Peter laughed, gesticulating with his hands as if electricity were to be crackling between his hands, but his smile almost at once turned grim. "Wait, he did what now?"
"Surely you noticed?" the young spider looked at the two other Peters in confusion.
Pete, the oldest of the spiders, seemed to take the matter more seriously. "Noticed what?"
Harry's mind tuned out from their conversation, he was much more focused on Strange who now let the Stones hover in the air, several arm lengths between each.
Very slowly the Stones begun hovering towards one other, one by one joining together, each time another was added the colors making up every surface around them flashed and crackled with energy.
A spark hit the ceiling with an immense force, causing the very fiber of the pocket dimension to rip itself apart, slowly but surely.
Harry felt panic grab his heart and mechanically pushed Ron and Hermione back into a corner, for what reason he didn't know because if the entire pocket dimension collapsed, hiding in a corner would do them no good.
"Brace yourselves!" yelled Strange. "It's going to be a bit bumpy!"
And in the next second, a ring of multicolored light pushed him backwards, almost knocking him over, his cape pulled him in the other direction, fixing him upright. Harry something blowing through his clothes and hair, like air but no cold or warmth came with it.
Still with his hands in front of him, Strange kept the Stones suspended as more waves rippled out and then they folded in on themselves and sent out a giant ring of pure light and in the colors of the rainbow, shattering and blowing out the very walls as if they were made of glass.
Reasonably enough people begun panicking, yelling and pushing with no way to run, small shards of glass raining over their heads.
Hermione's eyes passed Harry's as he turned his head to check on her, the sheer panic in her eyes evident.
"What now?" said Ron.
"Don't panic!" growled Strange, straining. He was being pushed backwards, his feet struggling to keep steady from the continuous explosions of light. "It will be over soon!"
A bolt of lightning hit him, from this distance Harry couldn't tell if he was injured or not but he kept going, whatever it was he was doing.
Harry pulled Hermione down on the ground, holding her tight against his chest. Hermione's arms cradled around him, her face burying itself into his embrace.
He felt own body shake violently or perhaps that was the floor itself, whatever it was, it caused his spidersense to go absolutely bonkers like a ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth inside of his head.
What had gone wrong?
That was the question repeating in his head while he kept his eyes locked on Strange, putting his trust and hope into the sorcerer. The throne and area around Strange had become something of a bizarre lightshow, colors shining all around the Sorcerer Supreme, and occasionally twisted bolts of iridescent lightning shot out of the Stones.
Hermione whispered something about dying, the rest was unintelligible. Harry dared not look at Ron who squeezed his shoulder, afraid to have his fear confirmed.
That this might be it… that all of it had been for nothing.
The floor cracked underneath them, disintegrating and then a tube of blinding, luminescent colors pierced Harry's eyes, a hook twirling and turning his stomach along with his body and that was when he realized this felt very familiar.
Not much was clear to him, he fell into water and the current dragged him under.
Water filled his lungs, ears and nose. Struck by panic, he wailed helplessly, holding his breath for dear life.
Another tug in his stomach and he could breathe properly again. Something pierced his side, it stung quite a bit he thought but not too terrible so he thought nothing of it.
It was quite peaceful really.
A clear blue sky filled the view of his eyes, soon to be blocked out by a mass of blurry brown hair.
The face above him was just as fuzzy and unrecognizable. Had he seen this person before? And if so, when? Her lips moved but whatever she said was lost to him.
Confused, he tried to move himself but for one reason or other his body would not respond.
Ron's bloodcurdling scream reached his ears.
His fingers rested against something hard and cold. He gasped, drawing in the fresh air into his lungs, attempting to move.
It finally dawned on him that it was Hermione's pale face above him, her hands fumbling and getting drenched in dark red blood anew.
"Don't", warned Hermione, holding him still. "Ron, we need to bandage this up."
The sound of Ron's rushing feet against stone and gravel was soon joined by Ron himself appearing in Harry's field of view. "With what?"
"Your clothes, anything."
"Am I bleeding?" mumbled Harry, watching the redheaded boy that was his friend take off his dark-green robes.
If he was, he wasn't feeling any pain, just a strange numbness.
Hermione fumbled anxiously with her wand, slicing up pieces of the robes Ron had handed her without answering his question.
"Where are the others?" Harry attempted to turn his head though Hermione did not let him, pushing back his head.
He opened his mouth again just to feel a lacerating, incomprehensible pain wrenching and tugging at his side, his body turned stiff and his eyes rolled up.
All he experienced was a horrible, horrible anguish and an inability to breathe, struggling to fight back, kicking the air. It choked him, the pain.
He heard a cry and wasn't sure who had made that sound.
"Hermione!"
"I know! Harry, hang on – God dammit – hang on!"
Feeling numb and empty, Harry gave up. His fingers went cold first, then it was like sleeping. Except all he experienced was nothing for the longest time.
It was like living in a haze, not really living at all and simply struggling.
Harry saw little spots of light dancing in front of his eyes from time to time, long hair sometimes tickled his face and muffled voices from somewhere far away spoke into a large tube.
He passed out too often, not knowing at times what was real and what wasn't. He felt a warm fire, arms embracing him. His head hurt.
Soon he experienced something hard digging into his back like sharp pebbles, followed by being wet and cold, freezing but at the same time sweating profusely.
A pain constantly reminded him that he was alive, nagging maliciously at his side and stomach, and all around he was feeling uncomfortable, starving.
Jets of water found its way into his mouth occasionally, quenching his thirst temporarily but he was still extremely hungry.
His dreams weren't much better, filled by nonsense he couldn't make out and about a dozen people talking to him at the same time, overlapping each other but none of it made any real sense, he could only pick out a few words that really meant nothing to him.
Sometimes he was a bit more awake, but too weak to really do anything despite struggling, especially when he was being moved, hovering through the air. They appeared to move on the road at a very slow speed and eventually he drifted back off into his feverish dreams.
Wind blew through rustling, drops of rain splattered against his face. Branches creaked somewhere.
Birds chirped.
His body kept on hovering on fluffy white clouds. The pain got worse, one night he swore he was wide awake but the next time he woke up he had no recollection of what had happened.
A fog was drawn over his eyes, he was pulled away from wherever he was.
He heard himself scream, accompanied by a cold whisper in his ears, his scar aflame. Suddenly he was running for his life in a maze, surrounded by gigantic hedges, he saw his goal ahead of him, a faint blue glow taunting him from afar.
He reached the blue glowing cup with a lot of effort and pain, but next to him stood Ron and Hermione, they too had fought for this victory with every fiber in their being.
"Together."
They grasped the cup and were brought to a graveyard, Harry's brain was struggling to understand what was happening, the rest fast-forwarded like a cassette until he set his eyes on the two bodies that were his dead friends.
A door flung open, ripping him from the graveyard. He opened his eyes tiredly.
"You'll be alright now Harry", comforted Hermione, her hand brushing over his face.
Suddenly he felt very warm and cozy, something fuzzy touched his skin. Her wet lips pecked him on his nose, then she wasn't there anymore. He fell back asleep, though it didn't last long.
Daylight stung in his eyes.
"Hermione!" echoed Ron's voice from what seemed like another room. "You've seen my bloody trousers anywhere?"
Hermione responded, sounding annoyed. "I'm not your mum Ron! Find your trousers on your own!"
Harry wondered for a moment where they had brought him, but sleep was there to pull away his attention quickly.
A.N: Another chapter I had to split! Harry gets hurt a lot huh?