Chapter 52
Neither knowing or caring whether or not he was welcome, Harry James Potter burst into the Hospital Wing. He had just found out Ariana had been moved there from her brothers office and he felt he had to be with her. There was no way he could not be there if she was hurt. She would need him to be there with her.
His mind had been racing as he had run to the Hospital Wing. What had happened to her? That was all he wanted to know. She had been so happy when they had left one another that morning. He had been so happy because when he had thought about it, he had figured out what the two of them were to one another now. They weren't one another's lovers. They were one another's family. Who cared if they weren't married of had blood ties? No wife had meant this much to her husband. No wife had ever understood her husband as she did him. They were family.
And she was all the family he needed in that moment.
As he walked in to the Hospital Wing he felt his chest rise up and down with every breathe he took. It was as if everything was so intense, but not in the way it had been the night before. Not in the good way.
All he could think was that she was and always was going to be his sweetheart and that this wasn't happening. Not really. They were going to be together that evening, they were! Sirius had to be exaggerating the situation didn't he? She couldn't have been taken from him when they were so close to everything they had ever wanted.
They were meant to be together forever. They were going to go to France or Ireland... Italy. He replayed all the moments they had had together. Every precious breathe had taken when they had been with one another.
"Baby..." he said as he went into the hospital wing. In the bed furthest away he could see her. Her brothers were with her as was Snape and Pompfrey. He should have expected her to be surrounded he knew but because he had been thinking of them as a whole so much he forgotten the rest of the world. Behind him Hermione, Ron and Sirius followed him into the room.
"Sweetheart," he cried as he walked towards the bed but before he could get to her, before he could even see her he found that his path to her had been blocked by Aberforth.
"I trusted you with her! You little barsted!" he yelled his face.
"Aberforth, that is enough," Albus said as he came over and tried to restrain his distraught brother.
"No you are wrong Albus, your wrong that is not nearly enough for what he did. If our father was here today he would do to him exactly what he did to those boys!" he said to him.
Harry realised they knew quickly. There was nothing else that would make Aberforth react to him like that and the professor had never looked at him so coldly. He had done much over the years to break the school rules but Albus Dumbledore had never been cold with him. But the old man was now.
"What the hell is he supposed to have done," said Sirius as he jumped to his god son's defence. "All he has ever done is love your sister!" he said to both the angry men.
"A little bit too much," Albus replied. The insinuation was obvious and as Sirius turned to Harry, there was no way Harry could deny what he had done.
"Me and Ariana – last night." He said to Sirius who put his head in his hands.
"You have got to be kidding me Harry."
Had it been under any other circumstances Harry was sure that his god father would be congratulating him on what he had done. But so much had changed the moment that she had been struck down. The world was not what it had been when he had woken up.
Turning back to the Dumbledore brothers, he knew he was ready to plead if he had too.
"You have to let me be with her," he said to them. He wasn't sure if he knew how to be without her now. Not after the night before. He didn't expect any of them to understand the bond that was forged between the two of them now. No, the only one who understood what he felt for her was the girl who lay in the bed.
"We have to do nothing," said Aberforth to him. As long as he was there he vowed then that boy was not going to get near his baby again, he just wasn't going to. It wasn't going to happen. There was no way he was going to let him near her.
Ever the more rational brother Albus could see where both of them were coming from. He knew full well that his sister had consented to whatever had happened the night before because if she had not then Severus would have told them. Besides she was madly in love with Harry and all any one had ever had to do was look at her to know that was the truth.
He knew that she had wanted last night to happen just as much as Harry did. But it did not make the fact that it had happened any easier for the two brothers to digest. The sister who they had tried so hard to protect against everything and anything that could hurt her, the sister they had tried so desperately hard to give a childhood at long last...
She, it seemed, had in the end been in a hurry to grow up.
And now she was gone. And he understood that Aberforth had to blame someone for that. When she had gone before he had got on with his life. He had studied, he had indeed become brilliant and he was now Headmaster of Hogwarts. But all Aberforth had ever had without her was the pub and the hope that some way, somehow he was going to get her back in the end. And he had. And again that was all he had been left with when he had got so used to having her about him again brightening up the darkest of his days.
But when he looked at Harry he also saw a boy who had had so little for so long. Then he had this love that had opened up a new world to him...and it was over now.
It was over for all of them he realised as a tear fell from his eyes. The same eyes she also had.
"Stop fighting!" he demanded of them all. She would not want them all to be at one another's throats over her. Miss Granger was looking particularly devastated by what had happened. He knew that she was her closet girl friend.
Making her way past Harry and Aberforth, Hermione moved closer to Dumbledore knowing from the way that he looked at her that he was sympathetic with her. But he could not evaporate her guilt; he could only serve to heighten it. She had been the one who had helped her sneak into the school. She had been the one who had led her here.
"What happened?" Hermione asked. Her dry throat meant that her voice was cracked with emotion. Sitting down, Hermione reached out and took her hand.
"She learnt something about the past she was never meant to find out." Aberforth said as he turned to her. He didn't want them all here but he knew he could not send them away with Albus backing him up. Why was he accepting them here? It felt as if they had come to see her dead body even if she was still breathing. Why could they not show them a bit of respect and just go? All he wanted was for them to be gone!
"What?" asked Harry. He had to know. He had to understand what had shocked her into such a huge attack that she still had not come round... That she could not come about from.
Albus turned to Aberforth. He knew what he was asking, of course he did. Whether he could tell the others? A short, curt painful nod was given by the barman. He hated Potter, but even he could not deny the fact he was obviously just as devastated as the rest of them were that this had happened.
Turning to the window that looked out on to the grounds he tried not to listen, but he could help it.
"When Ariana was fourteen, she had a particularly bad attack. She just couldn't control herself, she didn't know how too. Aberforth was away and I was no good with her back then. My mother went to her and tried to calm her but Ariana's attack was too serve for her to get through to her and –" Albus tried to fight the tears that seemed to be ever flowing but he could not. "She didn't mean too, it was a complete accident – but mother died."
Understandably the others looked horrified at what they had just heard.
"She killed her?" said Harry in disbelief. She hadn't meant to but somehow that didn't change what he had just heard. The girl who had told him god knows how many times that she loved and missed her mother was the reason she was not there. And she had had no idea. He shook her head. "She isn't a murderer. Ariana is not a killer." He insisted.
"No, she is not. But that does not change the fact that during one of her attacks our mother tried to calm her and did not survive her efforts." said Albus to him. The headmaster knew the difference of his sister being a murderer as Harry had put it and being the cause of her mother's death. There was a difference.
"She really never knew she had done it until today?" he checked.
"My sister could not have lived with the knowledge that she had done it. This is why we are here Potter." Aberforth said to him. "Had she not known, then we would not be here now." He couldn't even blame Albus who had obviously had no idea she was at the castle.
Harry looked at the body on the bed. This changed everything and nothing all at once. The fact she had no idea was obvious. She had a troubled conscience at the best of times. To know she had killed her most beloved mama would have been the end of her. And now it was.
But... she had taken another's life.
"I don't know what to think." Harry admitted to them as they all stood about her bed. He just didn't know how to react to this news. He didn't blame her though... she was innocent!
He felt a pair of arms wrap about him and he was suddenly glad for the presence of his godfather. He knew he had his best friends were there for him but it was the physical contact that he had needed in that moment. To know that there was someone else alive in the world. Because it did not feel like it. All he could see was the girl in the bed, laying motionless.
Wake up Ari ...
He so needed her to be there. He needed her.
"She can't be gone. She has to wake up, Sirius, she has too," he said to his god father who continued to embrace him. Tears streamed down all of their faces. Even Ron was crying at the sight of his friend so absent from her body.
"Poppy," Albus said desperately to the nurse as she came over. They all looked at her longingly hoping that there might just be some chance, some glimmer of hope she might know something new. But it was obvious from the look on her face that for now there was very little she could tell them.
"She is a very ill girl right now Albus. She is going to need about the clock care. I don't know how long it is going to be till she wakes up. I don't know." She paused knowing this was going to be the most devastating thing for all of them ..."if she is going to wake up."
"But she is alive!" Ron asked.
"Of course she is alive, Mr Weasley."
"Then there has to be hope she is going to recover from this doesn't there? There's more chance she is going to wake up than she isn't." He said.
The others nodded. They had to cling to those words. Reaching out, he took Hermione's hand. She looked as if she needed him.
"Poppy, she still has her magic doesn't she?" Albus asked.
"Yes, she does. There is hope. I promise you that."
-
Harry lay numbly on Sirius' sofa. He didn't ever remember feeling like this. Even when he had seen Cedric die he hadn't felt this sense of loss. It was as if part of him had been ripped from his whole body. It was as if his heart had been destroyed. He could not think or at least he did not want too. It hurt too much because he found that if he thought then he was bound to remember all the times they had been together and he didn't want to remember at that moment. Rather, he wanted to forget.
Sirius sat by him on the floor and he run a gentle hand through Harry's hair, wishing desperately that James and Lily were there with them. He did not know what they would be able to do right then that he could not but he felt as if they were who he needed.
"She is going to get better."
"Don't say that to me," Harry whispered. "No one knows if it is true," he said as he run hand through his messy hair, a lot like the way his father used too, interrupting Sirius' soothing hand. "You know we didn't spend a night apart in three months." He said to him. Feeling the need to tell someone about just how close they had got since they were in their fifth year, he told his god father everything - about how they had wanted one another more and more. How intense their love had become and how he had so wanted her physically as well as emotionally for months before they had had their one single night together.
"I never knew you could love like that until I met her. Ariana changed my life forever. Sirius, I don't want to be without her."
Sirius nodded. That was so clear from the way that Harry spoke about her. Harry was so full of love for her. They were meant to be together the two of them. And they would be one day again, he was sure.
"I'm going to wait a life time to get her back if I have too."
"I know you will." Sirius said to him as he kissed his forehead and got up. "You need to eat. You need food. I'm going to do you some toast ok?"
Harry knew he was not going to eat it but thought if it kept his godfather happy to feel he was doing something, then the teenager wasn't going to stop him.
"Sirius?" there was something that had been playing on his mind ever since they had got back to his quarters.
"Yes Harry?"
"Why did Dumbledore ask if Ariana still had her magic?" that had confused him even when they had been up there.
If possible, Sirius looked even graver than he had before. "Harry you have to understand something. When a witch or wizard loses control of their magic, or something too traumatic happens, then they can at times lose their magic. If they reject it for long enough, then it can abandon them in the end."
"So if that happened what would happen to them?" he asked with his red rimmed green eyes.
"Magic is like oxygen to us Harry. If you lose your magic, you can't survive. It won't be an instantaneously death, but you'd fade away slowly." He said with all the sadness in his voice that was only befitting for such a subject. "But Harry that did not happen. She is still a witch, and very much alive, with magic in her veins. It's like Ron said – where there's life, there's hope."
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