That doesn't taste good, was Harry's first thought. His eyes were closed. His sense of smell was revolting at whatever it was picking up. He heard nothing but the ocean.

Was that the ocean?

And he was lying on his side on some rock. For all he knew, he could have been at the seaside again, like with Ginny last summer, lying on the rocky cliff, falling asleep to the sound of the crashing waves.

Except that there was no warm arm around his stomach, and this weird taste in his mouth. When he was nine, he had licked a flagpole because Dudley had told him to. Dudley had left him stuck to the flagpole in the middle of winter, and later on that week he had pushed Harry into the dirt when Harry called him a rude name. This right here was a combination of the two…dirt and iron.

And his head hurt now.

Harry opened his eyes.

Most of what he saw was blurry. Someone had laid him down so he was facing the interior of Diagon Alley. What he did see were a bunch of shapes in the middle of the street, and a bunch of people huddled around the area. The storefront across the way – he thought it was a Gladrags – was gone, and he could see the inside of the store. People were in there too.

His head really hurt.

Finally he felt someone grab his shoulder from behind. He could feel warm breath at his ear, but still heard nothing.

Finally, something faint. Someone calling him? His father? Was that his father?

"HARRY!"

There was a sharp pain in his side, and he exhaled suddenly. A random bystander had stepped on him.

All of a sudden, the world came back into focus. Harry jerked like a jolt of electricity had gone through his body. He suddenly knew where he was, who he should be with, and what day it was. Dudley was gone, Ginny was at work, his father was dead.

He still didn't know what had happened, though.

It took him a few seconds to realize that he seemed to be physically okay – couple of bruises on his arm that he could see, and a splitting headache, and he had probably bitten his tongue and been thrown somewhere by whatever that was, which would explain the bloody dirty taste in his mouth – but his mind was still scrambling to gather itself together, like a child grabbing for a bunch of balloons that are floating away.

Finally, a face dropped right in front of his. Ron looked him straight in the eyes.

"YOU ALRIGHT MATE?"

Harry tried to get to his feet, but his head threatened to boil over. Ron immediately jumped to his feet and grabbed Harry under the armpits.

"I…don't…"

"SURE YOU DO MATE." Had Ron gone deaf?

With Ron's support, Harry got back to his feet. He blinked a couple times and put a steadying hand on his forehead, only to discover that he still couldn't see well.

"Ron mate. Where…where are my glasses mate?"

"WHAT?"

"Where are my glasses?"

Ron placed them in his hand. Harry almost dropped them. He gripped them with both hands carefully – he was still wobbly on his feet – and rubbed the lenses gently with his thumbs to wipe off the dust and to make sure they were intact. As he lifted them, Ron put a restraining hand on his bicep.

"BE READY, MATE. WON'T LIKE WHAT YOU SEE."

Harry swallowed, blinked, put on the glasses.

Yeah, Gladrags was gone. Most of the storefront was simply…removed. One board dangled from what had been a window frame precariously. Part of the second floor, its support gone, had collapsed in a shower of old wood and nails onto the first. There was a small hand sticking out from under the collapsed floor. It wasn't moving.

Harry was right beside where their table was overturned. There was a haze of dust covering most everything, but much of the initial smoke had cleared. People in robes stood in a huge mass around the site, and at least ten bodies lay in the middle of the street. At least ten. Some were incomplete. Harry thought he was numb to death…well. It had been a while. But what got him most was that these people…there was a little woman. A pretty woman. Most of her – she was missing part of her upper torso. An arm and a breast. Missing. Ragged hole where they had been. She was still smiling, but not even peacefully. Like she had been in the middle of a joking conversation. She had a purse. Little faux diamonds were arranged on the purse. Harry was less than two meters from the purse and he could see them, pretty little faux diamonds. In a little circle. Eight. Eight faux diamonds. Harry started counting them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The four at the top were slightly larger than

"HARRY!"

Harry looked over at Ron's panicked face, and then suddenly past him.

Hermione was hunched over Luna and pressing a large bundle of her robes – torn up to the thigh – into Luna's stomach. Luna was paler than usual, and lay still. A small trickle of blood traced down her cheek from her mouth, and the cloth in Hermione's hands was rapidly growing darker. Hermione's arms were covered in blood up to the elbows. Looking just behind them, Harry saw why. The house-elf that had been serving lay in the corner. A large piece of ceramic pottery stuck into its side.

"HARRY! WE NEED TO GET LUNA OUT OF HERE!"

"We can't move her, Ron," said Hermione in a strangled voice, not even raising her head. "I can't Apparate her when we're like this. The Mediwizards will be here soon."

Harry stared forward again. Then, far calmer than he felt, he asked, "What was it?"

"An explosion," said Ron simply. The deafness seemed to be finally wearing off. "What kind? Bloody Hell if I know."

Harry stumbled forward. Ron looked at him a minute, and then followed, without a word. Hermione ignored them, concentrating on Luna.

Harry gazed around, trying for the life of him not to get fixated on one of the bodies around him, instead looking for whatever could have done this. No potioneer would have allowed this to happen; explosions of cauldrons only happened in student-level potions, where proper care was not taken like a professional would. Experimental magic wasn't done on Diagon Alley. And there was no spell that could do…this. Spells like the one that had killed Fred at Hogwarts had just been powerful Reductors, not explosions in and of themselves.

Something Muggle? But why here?

"…is that Harry Potter…"

God damn it. Couldn't they stop for anything?

"Liverpool too…"

Harry paused, then turned towards the man that had said that. "What did you just say?"

The man was panting. "I just Apparated here from Liverpool. Claudia Street. They had something happen there too. Couldn't…"

"Something happen?" Harry snapped. "What happened?"

"I don't know. About five people dead there."

Harry nodded, feeling a growing rush of sickness in his stomach. He looked at the crowd as a whole. "Help get these people out of here."

As some moved towards the bodies, Harry turned to Ron.

"This wasn't an accident." He took a shuffling step forward, almost fell over, and gripped someone's shoulder to steady himself. He didn't look to see who. "This was done with intent. Somebody did it."

"Why?"

"I don't know, Ron. But…I think this was something…Muggle…"

Ron's eyes widened. He looked around at the mass of people, crying, gazing, helping pick up bodies, and a couple of screams of agony. He shuddered. "Lot of people here."

"Yeah."

"Harry?"

"What?"

"What if there's another one?"

Harry stopped kneading his forehead. He turned a bit, looking at the crowd again. There were, if possible, more people here than there had been.

"Oh, shit."

Ron immediately moved to the side of the street. "They'd have hidden it…"

Harry forced himself to snap back to attention. He kept wanting to wander out of focus and be somewhere, anywhere, else besides this plaza of blood and pain.

He pulled out his wand, pleased to see that it at least was still intact, and muttered "Sonorous" at his throat.

"Would everybody not helping please move away. There may still be a danger."

That busted it. The crowd immediately began churning in the other direction. Harry gasped a bit at the stench and moved to the opposite side of the collapsed storefront from Ron, flipping over boxes of goods and random potion ingredients, making sure nothing was hidden inside them.

He had only been at it a couple of minutes before he heard Ron shout, "Harry! Don't think wizards use wires!"

Harry walked back over to where Ron was. The redhead was sitting on top of a wooden box, wiping his forehead.

"Under there?"

Ron nodded weakly. "It's definitely Muggle, Harry. I know wires. Dad collects them."

Harry gestured for Ron to get off the box. Ron did so. When he had, Harry could clearly see the wires looped around several of the boards.

"I sat on the box cause people were running around, and I was afraid…one of them would hit the box, the wires would be pulled, and…I don't know. For all I know that could cause it to go off."

"That's probably what these assholes wanted." Harry examined the bomb carefully.

"Cause a mass panic, then have a box kicked around, kill more people."

Harry bit his lip. "What do we do now?"

"I've watched crime shows on Hermione's telly sometimes. Muggles have bomb squads. We don't. Don't think a single wizard knows what to do in this situation."

"It's a dilemma," Harry muttered. "I have seen enough to know that if you pull the wrong wire…"

"Absolutely. We'll go pulling no wires then."

Harry looked behind him. There were still wounded people around, and if this bomb was as big as the last, it would easy kill them all. Not to mention Hermione and Luna; this one was closer to the café.

"Apparently just touching it doesn't cause it to go off…"

"Or moving it. It had already been kicked around a bit when I got to it."

"Do you think it would object to being levitated?"

"There any wards on it?" Ron looked expectantly at Harry. Aurors were trained to detect, and evade wards.

Harry cast some simple revelation spells. "None. I think it would be pretty hard to hook up a magical trigger to a Muggle device anyway."

"They made it able to work near a lot of magic. Most Muggle technology can't do that. They already did something to it."

"Well. Here goes." Harry braced himself. "Wingardium Leviosa."

The bomb rose gently into the air. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing had been jostled enough to set it off.

Ron shrugged. "That's all well and good. Now how do we get rid of it?"

"Drop it in the ocean?"

"Because we're next to an ocean."

"We can get there."

"We're not Flooing that thing. Nowhere to Floo it over the ocean, and do it in somebody's house near the seaside? You lose grip on it during the Floo…especially with your history with the Floo…"

"We could Portkey it. Push it into the Portkey so it pops up over the North Atlantic."

"Or you could always Apparate to the seaside."

"I'll do that."

"The Muggles will wonder."

"Let them wonder. We're not breaking the Statute of Secrecy."

"No, let me do it," Ron said. He stepped forward and placed both hands on either side of the bomb. Harry kept his wand trained on it until Ron had safely tucked it under his arm. Ron pulled out his wand.

"You be careful, mate," Harry said. His stomach was still churning unhappily. He wanted to scream, cry, do anything. He was afraid to feel anything right now, worry for Ron, grief for Luna, concern for what might be going on across Britain, if this wasn't just limited to Wizarding London and Wizarding Liverpool…he was afraid if he started to feel anything right now, he would go insane.

With a crack, Ron was gone. Harry turned on unsteady feet and went to tell Hermione what had just happened, and that he had to get back to the Ministry, he had a job to do.