Author's Note: As always, many thanks go my betas, Rogue25, RAfan2421, and TheDarkLord, for all of their fantastic help!Also, many thanks to my followers/favouriters and, especially, reviewers! I must apologize for the short, less than lucid, chapter this time, but – soon – we'll get to the super meat of the story. I want to update with two chapters next time, but I seem to have a bad track record with plans. I'm crossing my fingers in desperation. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: Anything that you recognize, I do not own. There are a large number of writers, directors, actors, production companies, and publishing companies that deserve a lot of credit, including – but not limited to – J.K. Rowling, Larry Karaszewski, Scott Alexander, Matt Greenberg, Stephen King, Thomas Harris, Michael Cooney, Mikael Håfström, Peter Webber, James Mangold, John Cusack, Gaspard Ulliel, Dimension Films, Young Hannibal Productions, Carthago Films, Dino De Laurentiis Company, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Scholastic Books, Bloomsbury Books, and Raincoast Books. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. All direct and paraphrased quotes are cited where applicable and general citations of my inspirations will be included at the end of this fic upon completion.
{Fractures}
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II. The Last Visitors
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"Ginny!" Ron cries, jumping up from his seat and rushing toward the door. Turning around, Harry's breath catches at the sight of Hermione, wet and dripping, her grey robes soaked in blood from the waist down, where Ginny's body lies limp in her shaking arms. The redheaded girl's tattered and torn clothes reveal deep gouges and gashes along her too-pale skin.
She looks like she's barely breathing.
His girlfriend.
His… not-girlfriend in this world.
Riddle is a sadistic bastard.
Immediately coming to their aid, Ron scoops Ginny up into his arms and lays her out on one of the tables near the bar. "I need my wand," he calls to the barman before turning back to Hermione. "Have you tried healing her?"
"Yes, but the storm…" The centre of Hermione's forehead creases. "It didn't work and it only made it worse when I tried Apparating – I might have splinched her a little."
Harry quickly takes the bottle of dittany from the Healing Kit, glad that Walden left it on the bar, and half-stumbles to his feet, the alcohol haze hitting him hard for a second. He shouldn't have drunk as much as he did. Steadying himself, he moves toward them as Hermione explains they got caught by a group of Snatchers.
One of them was armed with a garden rake.
He's starting to suspect that Snatchers are a part of the Pureblood Resistance and he uncaps the bottle of dittany. "This should help," he says, barely listening to the words coming out of his mouth and liberally pouring the silvery liquid over the worst of the wounds he could see. Her skin is ragged, littered with clotted blood. Streams of it drip onto the table below like a fatal patter of rain.
The potion did wonders for his own superficial scrape earlier; however, Ginny's wounds are much deeper, some internal, and the dittany barely makes a dent in healing them. Harry's heart sinks lower in his chest as the bottle's emptied and the potion takes effect on the wounds, watching muscles knit over the exposed bone at her hip. But they're still bleeding, deep open gouges turning into skin-deep cuts and muscle-deep gashes. Ron keeps rattling off every healing spell he knows, hardly getting a glow to form from his wand.
"She'll need stitches," Hermione says as Riddle joins them around the table, his fingers calmly digging through the Healing Kit cradled in his arms. "It's no use trying to heal her with magic… the storm's nearing its peak."
"Here are some wound dressings," Riddle says, plucking packaged sheets of sterile dittany-soaked gauze from the Healing Kit. "They should take care of the smaller cuts and nicks and there's a potion for the pain..." He turns back toward the bar, setting the kit on the spare bit of table at Ginny's side, smearing a pool of blood with it. "You don't happen to have a sewing kit back there, do you, Walden?"
"I've one in our room," Parkinson slurs after downing the rest of her glass, stumbling drunkenly from her stool. Riddle crosses over to her and gives her a hand of support, pulling her up the creaky stairway. Harry can't help but gaze at them suspiciously, yearning to follow and watch Riddle like a hawk.
The entire situation makes his insides churn: helpful Riddle, gravely injured Ginny, and the sudden appearance of Hermione, who also doesn't seem to know him either… Actually, she doesn't seem to know Ron as well.
"Are you her brother? She said she had a lot of brothers," Hermione asks, obviously trying to make light conversation. Her bloodstained hands hold the largest of the gashes across Ginny's stomach closed while Ron works on covering the other wounds with gauze. He's barely keeping himself together, his eyes constantly on the verge of tears as he rips her trousers and places squares of damp white cloths over the bleeding cuts marring her thighs.
Ginny's chest shutters, her shallow breath rattling through her throat.
'This is a distraction,' Harry thinks.
Riddle wants to keep him away from Zabini's locket – Slytherin's locket – and set this up as a distraction, perhaps to make Harry overlook that Zabini ever mentioned the thing. It's the only explanation as to why Riddle's so willing to help; it draws his attention onto different matters that don't involve his escape. Perhaps the Riddle in this delusion could control the delusion…
But… no…
If Riddle could control the delusion, he could probably control what everyone says as well, which would mean that Zabini wouldn't have let it slip that he had the locket.
'Back to square one.'
Harry sighs, placing the useless empty bottle of dittany next to the Healing Kit. If he asks Zabini about the locket now – offering to buy it off him – it'd be ridiculously insensitive, not that the Slytherin boy's jumping to help Ginny. He's still seated at the bar near Greengrass, watching with a vaguely aloof expression on his face. The flickering of the dim magical lights and the glow from the candles makes the wine in his glass shine like blood as he tips it back into his mouth and pours more from the bottle.
Walden had disappeared into the back room, ostensibly to look for more potions and an extra Healing Kit and Harry can hear him digging around – glasses shifting and clinking – as Riddle returns. Parkinson tromps down the stairs behind him, clutching the railing.
Brushing past Harry, Riddle's movements are swift and precise. He unfurls a small skein of thread and pokes the end through the eye of a small needle. When he tears Ginny's shirt clean open and starts stitching the wound without any word of warning, Ron incredulously asks, "Are you a Healer?"
'Quite the opposite,' Harry can't help but think, his lip curling at the irony of it all. Once upon a time, Riddle had tried to kill her. Now he's stitching her up.
Everything here feels like it's upside down and completely askew.
"No," Riddle answers, his brow furrowed in concentration, his fingers tying off stitch after stitch.
Hermione helps him by keeping pressure where it's needed, staving off most of the bleeding from the largest of Ginny's wounds. "That's… pretty good. Where'd you learn how to do this?"
Jerking his head toward Harry in a gesture, Riddle casually intones, "About where he's standing."₁
He ties a jagged stitch over Ginny's naval, blood bubbling up from under the thread, and steadily continues threading the needle through her skin, joining it together. "We'll need to disinfect these. Go ask Walden for his strongest vodka. It won't be as effective as a Cleansing Charm, but beggars can't be choosers."
Ron shifts on his feet, noticeably reluctant to let go of his sister's wilted hand. "I'll do it," Harry says softly to Ron, passing him and stepping up to the bar.
"Oi, Walden," Harry calls, sounding far less panicked than he should have been, or would've been, if this wasn't a delusion. "Riddle needs your strongest vodka."
The barman emerges a minute later from the back room, his shoulders covered in dust and a small square bottle in his hands. "I zhink zhis is ze strongest, zhough I may haff eighty percent of somezhing beck zhere."
Harry grasps at the neck of the bottle with a quick, "Thanks," as Zabini starts badgering Walden for a room, shoving a tiny stack of Galleons across the bar. He watches the key being passed between them and hurriedly sets the bottle next to Riddle, sensing his only chance to get the Slytherin boy alone.
"Wait," Harry says, catching up to Zabini, who's clutching his wineglass and bottle one-handed and already nearly half-way up the stairs. "I was wondering if you'd be interested in selling some of your jewelry to me, if you don't mind… I mean, I'd like to have a look at it."
Zabini's dark honey-coloured gaze searches him, dragging across him like a scrutinizing blade from his head to his toes. "What's your name again?" he asks, arching a brow.
"Harry Potter."
"Forgive me then, Harry, if I may seem insensitive, but I doubt that I'd have anything that you could afford," Zabini dismissively replies, eyeing Harry's dirty trainers and Dudley's old ill-fitted trousers under his cloak and wrinkling his nose.
"Hold on," Harry retorts before Zabini can turn to leave, tamping down his impatience and irritation. "Just because I don't flaunt my money doesn't mean I don't have any. If I went down the wrong street in London looking like you, I'd probably get mugged in a second. I only want to see if you have anything worth my time."
Zabini hesitates, his arrogant expression wavering. "Give me your wand then," he says with a sigh, holding out his hand and moving his room key between his thumb and forefinger.
Harry's brows furrow. "…Why?"
"You were the one who mentioned 'mugging' and I'm not stupid. Either you give me your wand and I let you take a look, or you're out of luck."
"Alright," Harry agrees, knowing that using his wand is probably futile anyway from the evidence he's seen downstairs. As he passes Zabini his wand and silently follows him to his room, he refrains from mentioning that there are other ways to mug someone and do harm. The Snatchers were armed with rakes to combat the war storm's effect on their magic.
"You should wash your hands first," Zabini suggests, tapping at the flickering sconce on the wall of his not-so-seedy room and removing his cloak, throwing it over an armchair by the window. "Shan't have you mucking up my mum's jewels." Pouring himself another half-glass of wine from the bottle he had sat on the sill, Zabini stares at him expectantly.
Oh, right, Ginny's blood… Harry heads toward the loo and leaves the door ajar while he rinses off his hands. He doesn't want to let Zabini out of his sight any more than he does Riddle. From his vantage point, he watches Zabini tug a large, ornate jewelry roll from the expanded pocket in his robes. Carefully, he spreads it out it across the edge of the large bed at the centre of the room. Even under fluctuating magical lights, the jewelry glitters spectacularly and Harry's heart races in anticipation when he spots what looks like a golden locket next to a row of silver tiaras and hair combs.
His ticket out.
Only… it doesn't seem the same, upon closer inspection.
Harry stands before the jewels, his hands still damp from hastily drying them and the spark of hope inside him fades. Zabini's locket is perfectly round and the one he remembers grabbing from the bottom of the basin was oval.
It's not Slytherin's locket.
Unfortunately, he has to keep up his façade, so he plucks a ring from the roll and holds it up to the light. "Do you have any… magical jewelry? Cursed? Or with powers of their own?" he asks, trying to think of a way out of the conundrum he'd gotten himself into. It's not as if he has enough money in his pocket to buy anything or he would just to keep up the pretense.
Zabini shrugs, sipping at his glass of wine. Harry's wand is in the boy's other hand. "Some of it's Goblin made, but if they have any special powers, I can't say. I know none of it's cursed. My mum wore every single piece."
"Oh… too bad," Harry says, feigning disappointment as he sat the ring back into its slot. "This is nice, but I mostly collect cursed jewelry – cursed objects – but sometimes I make allowances for magical jewelry if it has an interesting history."
"Should have mentioned that before – would've saved me the trouble," Zabini dryly replies, leaning against the bedpost and holding out Harry's wand with a glint of challenge in his eyes. It's like he's daring him to make a move and steal off with the jewelry.
A small smile forms at Harry's lips and he pockets his wand, moving past the tall Slytherin. "I doubt you'd want anyone overhearing if you were carrying around cursed objects. I know I wouldn't…" he says smoothly and then turns back toward Zabini, pausing with his fingers on the doorknob. "Thanks for letting me look though."
He doesn't wait for Zabini to reply and dejectedly makes his way down the stairs, the dimming magical sconces lighting his path causing the air appear a bit hazy.
While he was busy perusing Zabini's jewelry, Riddle must've finished with Ginny's stitches and they're in the middle of moving her to the sofa in front of the fireplace. Checking her pulse once she's settled, Riddle announces that it feels much stronger and Ron pours a dose of pain-relieving potion into Ginny's parted lips, making her splutter in her unconscious state.
"I don't know about you," Riddle says, straightening up and clapping Ron on the back with a bloodied hand, "but I could use another drink. Walden – a round of Firewhiskey for everyone! On me."
The barman passes them damp towels and beverages, the former of which Harry declines – having already washed up – but he takes a drink from his glass, renewing his buzz but careful not to overdo it. It calms him enough to think more clearly – to keep the hope going that he'd get out of there. He wonders if the locket he's looking for is in that massive bag full of treasure Charlie and Malfoy brought in, or possibly hidden around the bar somewhere. He's not entirely certain if the locket is what he's supposed to look for, but it's his best alternative to killing Riddle.
Glancing over at the suave bastard, Harry tries not to let any unpleasantness cloud his features. Riddle appears to have made fast friends with Ron and Hermione and that only serves to further grate at his nerves. He should've expected no less. Riddle's always been good at gaining people's trust and it's no different in the delusion than the real world.
"What did you want with Zabini?" Ron asks, keeping an eye on the prone form of his sister as he turns toward him.
Harry shrugs a shoulder. "Nothing really. He mentioned he had some jewelry to sell and it didn't look like he was coming back so I thought I'd catch him. He didn't have anything I was interested in. I should've stayed and helped."
"Eh, it's fine," Ron says, waving away the apology. "S'not like you know her or anything. It's good of you and Tom – and Hermione – to help at all. If it was only me, she'd probably be dead."
'S'not like you know her or anything…'
The sentence rips at the centre of his chest, but he pushes the feeling away, leaving a faint taste of heaviness behind.
"Have you ever considered going into Healing, Tom?" Greengrass asks, draping herself in front of Riddle and grabbing at one of his now-clean hands, though his sleeves are still soaked in blood. She teases her fingers along his, suggestive to the core. "You'd make a fine Healer with hands like these."
Riddle grants her a half-smile. "Perhaps. But then I wouldn't get much time to spend with you lovely ladies and that would be a tragedy."
He could understand Greengrass' sickening act – she's paid to stroke the ego of her client, but Riddle… It makes Harry want to retch over their laps and his eyes rove over the main room of the pub, desperately searching for any sign of a golden locket.
"Hey – uh, Walden? – I think one of your cauldrons is burning," Ron says, trying to get the attention of the barman, who's polishing wineglasses and chatting quietly with Hermione about how he came to Britain to look for an old friend. The redhead gestures exaggeratedly toward the line of pots, still steaming behind the bar.
Cutting off his conversation, Walden's eyebrow quirks and he goes to inspect the pots, shifting lids. "No zhere not. It's perfectly fine. Vould you like some stew?"
Ignoring the barman's question, Ron's face screws up in confusion and his nostrils flare. "Well something's burning – can't you smell that?"
Harry sniffs, inhaling a faint hint of air that turns acrid in the back of his throat as he breathes deep. "Yeah… what is that?"
"S'only the fireplace. Always smells like tha' when you come in with a heap of Floo powder," Parkinson slurs into her drink.
Getting up from his stool, Ron follows his nose, his feet carrying him toward the stairs. "No, it's stronger over here."
Parkinson huffs as Harry stands and joins Ron, the pungent smell of what seems like… burnt hair getting thicker. "The fireplace's over there," she points out and he has to admit that Floo powder smells rather nasty when used in excess, so that could've been it.
"What are you lot burning? Smells like flaming manure," Harry hears the coughing voice of Zabini yell, his footfalls heavy on his way down the steps, waving his cloak and wafting a stream of smoke with him.
Harry's eyes widen as he looks upwards, where wispy black smoke plumes and curls against the dim light fixtures in the stairwell, so dense the cream colour of the ceiling is nearly lost. How did he not notice that before when he came down?
Behind him, he hears glass breaking and turns is head to see Walden jumping across the bar. He rushes past them, muttering what sounds like German curses under his breath, and Harry trails after him on the stairs, his wand out and his cloak held up against his nose to block out the smoke.
When Walden kicks in one of the doors up ahead, Harry fights to keep from gagging as thick clouds of black smoke pour out of the room. The scent of burnt hair and fetid meat that comes with it feels as if it's seeping into his skin and his eyes water as he struggles for clean air to breathe. But smoke rises, he remembers. Moving to his knees, he senses Ron behind him and halts when he sees smoke-screened flames beyond the cracked, broken door, lighting up the room. Walden had opened the windows, bringing in a wash of rain and clearing out just enough of the smoke to see.
The heat in the room claws at Harry's skin and the flames crackle and roar in his ears as he crawls to the loo, rolling out of the way of the panicked barman, who scurries by him with a large vase full of water. Lending a helping hand, Harry grabs at the mop bucket on the floor next to the toilet and tips out the cleaning supplies, filling it with the running water from the shower tap. In the next room, he can hear Ron trying out Aguamenti a few times before giving up and he nearly gets stuck with Walden in the door frame of the bathroom in his urgency.
Trading Walden the bucket for the vase, Harry keeps filling – sloshing water down his front – and shouts to Ron over the sound of the fire in the next room, "See if you can find more buckets or whatever we can use!"
As he refills the bucket Walden had traded back for the full vase, he sees Hermione and a few of the others carting large vases of water from the corridor and he feels relief flood through him.
They might get this fire out with everyone helping, but something inside him knows that Riddle's behind this.
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₁ Identity. Directed by James Mangold. By Michael Cooney. Performed by John Cusack. USA: Sony Pictures, 2003. DVD.
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Author's Note: Thank you for reading and please review!