Harry appeared in the front hall of St. Mungo's with a crack and the usual sense of disorientation apparition gave him, but this time he forced it down and accepted the inevitable headache later. Before the receptionist could get out more than a surprised gasp, Harry had already re-bound Narcissa.
"I need help," Harry said as he levitated the woman. "Mrs. Malfoy and I were attacked by Death Eaters at my manor."
The receptionist gasped again, and Harry idly wondered if the man was going to do something useful at some point. "That's terrible!" he said. "I'll get help." He touched his wand to a three-inch steel sphere floating an inch above his desk and tendrils of smoky light flew out of it back into the hospital.
"Thank you," Harry said. "She's in medical stasis now."
"Excellent," the receptionist said. "That was going to be my next question."
A middle-aged witch in worn-out, though clean, doctor's robes Apparated into the reception area with a crack. "My name is Healer Winifred Morrison," she said. "May I examine the patient?"
Harry stepped aside and floated Narcissa over to her. Morrison ran a quick diagnostic on her and pursed her lips. "Ugly injuries," she said. "What happened?"
"Death Eater dead-enders attacked us when she came to visit my manor," Harry said. "I fought them off, but she got winged with an Expulso or something and hit the wall hard."
"We should be able to help her," Morrison said. "Good job putting her into medical stasis so quickly. I'm not sure she'd have survived otherwise." She raised her eyebrows. "I think you're the first person I've ever met besides healers or Aurors who knew that spell."
"Hermione taught me in case we-"
A pair of sharp cracks sounded behind Harry in the front hall, and he spun around to find himself nearly face-to-face with Senior Auror Dawlish and another man in Auror robes.
"Potter," the rugged, burly man said with a nod. "We've had Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy on a monitoring list, but Mr. Malfoy hasn't left his manor in days and it's warded against our entry. Healer, we need to borrow Mrs. Malfoy for use in circumventing wards. We'll bring her back-"
"Not a chance!" Morrison said. "She was seriously injured in a Death Eater attack and shouldn't be moved."
"And she wouldn't consent to this if she were awake," Harry added.
"This is a criminal investigation about the whereabouts of a dark artifact," Dawlish said. "Her consent is not strictly necessary."
"Narcissa Malfoy is a relative of mine," Harry said. "As a Wizengamot member, I will not allow-"
Dawlish whipped up his wand, stopping it about an inch from Harry's nose. "Healer, I suspect Mr. Potter is under the influence of a dark artifact. Please take his wand and confine him for his own safety."
"I have seen no evidence-" Morrison began.
"That's an order, Healer," Dawlish said.
"This is kidnapping!" Harry said.
"You and your friends made me look like an idiot during the war," Dawlish responded. "I will not let you mess up this mission for me. Now give the Healer your wand or I will take it from you."
Harry did as he'd been instructed, glowering at Dawlish the whole time.
"I'm only doing this under protest," Morrison said. "And I will not let you move Mrs. Malfoy until we've dealt with her internal injuries. That will likely take at least two hours."
"You have one," Dawlish said.
Morrison chose not to respond to that and instead floated Narcissa toward a healing chamber only a few doors in from the receptionist's desk. A burly orderly came a moment later to take Harry to a room in the secure basement section. A heavy iron door secured the only way into the section, and a stern note on the door reminded employees that anti-apparition wards were in permanent effect there. The orderly held his badge up to a flat piece of jade on the door to open it, and Harry confirmed with a glance that a similar piece of jade adorned the other side of the door.
The orderly pushed Harry into an empty, open cell and slammed the door behind him. "Colloportus," the man said, and a squelching noise from the doorframe indicated the success of his spell. His heavy footsteps tromped back up the passageway, leaving Harry alone with his failure.
A single, milky stone set into the ceiling emitted a dim yellow light that cast a sickly pall over the tiny cell. A bed with no pillow and just one tattered blanket took up most of one wall, and an elderly chamberpot stood in the opposite corner. It didn't reek, so Harry assumed it had Vanishing Charms built into it to deal with waste.
Forty-eight hours before, Harry probably would have laid on the bed and waited for someone to come for him...or not. Even now, a little voice inside his head was suggesting just that course of action.
He ignored it and focused on his surroundings. He thought about trying to retrieve the lightstone, but it was probably firmly bound to the ceiling and he didn't want to try mucking about on the bed trying to reach it. Instead, he took the blanket and wadded it up at his feet. It might come in handy if he succeeded, and he didn't intend to fail.
The next hour was excruciating. He'd performed wandless magic before, but never something as complex as the Unlocking Charm. He had no intention of letting that stop him, though. Time and again, he made the wand gesture with his own hand and said "Alohomora," and time and again nothing happened. He could feel his magic almost bunching up in his hand as he spoke, and he tried everything he could think of to loose it on the Locking Spell binding the door.
The knowledge Dawlish would take Narcissa soon was enough to drive Harry to more desperate measures. Instead of merely unleashing his magic, like he would with a wand, and allowing the wand's motion to channel and direct the spell, he'd have to do that with his hand. The magical core of the wand allowed it to withstand the magical forces involved, though. His hand was merely flesh and blood, with just a fraction of his own magical core sprinkled into it.
It would have to be enough.
The basement door creaked open and Harry realized this might be his best chance. He held out his left hand, banished fears of what this would likely do to him as best he could, and said, "Alohomora."
He wasn't sure exactly what to do with his hand, so he let the magic direct it. As he did so, he finally felt the magic flow out of his hand. This...this made sense. He could feel the magic forming into the spell, guided by the word he'd spoken and his own muscle memory. He could feel it unweaving the sloppily cast Locking Charm on the door. He could feel it tearing at his tendons and ligaments, and bit down on a scream. Just when he thought he couldn't possibly bear any more, the Locking Charm finally dissipated. Without missing a beat, Harry knelt and grabbed the blanket. He would have time for pain later.
The footsteps were just passing the door when Harry threw it open. He didn't even bother cursing when he saw two orderlies there, not just the one he'd expected. Luck had thrown so much worse his way in the past year that this didn't even seem worth complaining about.
The one nearest the door, a middle-aged man about Harry's height, had faster reflexes than the burly orderly next to him. He was nearly fully turned to face the door and in the process of drawing his wand when he ate a tattered blanket straight in the face. Before he could claw it off of his head, Harry kicked him in the groin, ignoring the pain the sudden, violent motion generated in his left hand.
The man screamed and began to double over, but Harry didn't let him complete the motion. Instead, he shoved the man into the burly orderly, temporarily frustrating the larger man's attempt to draw his own wand. With reflexes honed from years of Seeker training, Harry grabbed the first man's wand from his twitching fingers and hit the burly orderly with a Stunner before bringing surcease to the other man's pain with a second Stunner. The wand felt almost petulant in his hands, but allowed him to cast spells through it anyway since he'd disarmed its previous owner.
Harry assumed their screams had been heard, so he didn't waste time. He ran for the basement door and cast "Accio badge" as he went. Just as he reached the door, he ducked and, with a little nudge of magic, the badge flying toward him slammed into the jade panel instead. The door creaked open to reveal an orderly just reaching out with his own badge to activate the panel on the other side. He had his wand out, and both men cast simultaneously. Harry's nonverbal Stunner was far faster than the Body-bind curse, though, and the man dropped before he got out the last syllable of "Petrificus."
Harry leapt the man's body and charged up the stairs, doing his best to ignore the jarring pain in his left wrist with each pounding step. It was still distracting enough that he didn't try anything special when he reached the top, though, and instead simply cast a shield just ahead of the landing before he reached the top. Sure enough, a couple of stunners crashed into it as he climbed into view. He shouted "Stupefy" as he shot a stunner at a large, athletic female orderly, but whipped a second stunner silently at the receptionist. The man took the bait and ate the stunner while he tried to hex Harry, and a fast trio of non-verbal stunners battered down the orderly's shield and dropped her to the ground moments later.
He didn't waste time seeing if anyone was coming to check on the disturbance, but instead charged straight into the room into which he'd seen Morrison take Narcissa. He was expecting to have to fight Aurors there, but instead found only Morrison. The woman was sitting in a chair next to an empty bed, her elbows on the bed and her head in her hands. Her wand was on the bed, but she made no effort to reach for it. Harry's wand lay on a table next to the door.
"They took her about ten minutes ago," she said. "Go ahead and hex me. I knew it was wrong and I let them do it anyway." She looked over at Harry. "You've been so brave your whole life…do cowards like the rest of us disgust you?"
He shook his head and swapped the orderly's wand for his own. "I'm just…tired of being brave, but people need me." He turned to go.
"Wait." Her tone brooked no argument, and when he turned around her wand was in her hand. "Show me your hand."
Harry could have stunned her on the spot or tried to run. He'd spent longer in Madam Pomfrey's care than anyone else's at Hogwarts, though, and Morrison had the same manner of speaking that must have been common to healers everywhere. He instinctively obeyed, held out his arm, and winced as the muscles pulled on torn tendons.
"Morgana, what did you do?" she asked. "Hold still." She started waving her wand over his hand and things began pulling themselves back into a more normal shape.
"Wandless…ouch…Alohomora," he said. "I need to…ouch…go."
"I'm not sure whether to be impressed at your quasi-success or horrified at the results," she said as she rose to her feet. "I think I've prevented it from getting worse."
"Thank you," Harry said. Fighting with that kind of pain was never fun.
She nodded, walked past him, and looked out the door. "There are orderlies out there, but they look confused." She took his free left arm. "Follow me and stumble a bit," she said.
The orderlies barely gave him a second glance as he allowed Morrison to help him from the room and back toward the front hall. Harry realized that they were looking for an escapee, but on Morrison's arm he was just another patient.
"Get Mrs. Malfoy back here," she whispered as they walked. "And yourself, too."
"I will," he said. "Knowing me, I'll probably hurt my hand again in a few minutes, anyway."
"Not just for your hand, Mr. Potter." Morrison's voice faded from "stern" to "sad" as she spoke.
He slumped a little more. "You're right."
"Of course I am." She stopped them roughly where he'd apparated in. "Now go. People need you."
Harry straightened up and nodded. "See you soon," he said, and apparated away.
