Disclaimer: This story is based on characters created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoat Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Any original plots and characters are mine.

AN:

Nothing to say or clarify this time ^.^

So on we go with the boys' adventure! Or sort of adventure, anyway.

Hope you enjoy and review!

Part I: Chapter 42

The long, wooden cistern was filled, almost to the brim, with yellow liquids and brown things floating, meshing together to form a dense, thick mass. The stench and miasma wafting off the accumulation of urine and excrement was unbearable, the swarm of flies frenziedly flying above it, hungrily. It didn't look as if the cistern had been emptied in ages.

And there was a cadaveric body submerged inside, the face upturned, surrounded by the mass of urine and excrement up to the chin. The sight was both revolting and horrific.

Harry, white faced and feeling faint, was staring, for a second that felt like an excruciating eternity, at the face of a barely recognizable Robert Hutchins.

The man's face was gaunt, the skin greyish, his cheeks sunken, his jawline and cheek bones sticking out, the eyes closed, and the lips smudged with brown things.

He heard Tom making a disgusted sound from the back of his throat, and it jolted Harry out of his horror.

He was crouching on his knees in front of the cistern in the next second, plunging both arms, without another thought, into the brown thick mass.

"What are you doing?" he heard Tom demand in both abhorrence and disbelief.

Harry paid him no mind, as flies buzzed all around him, as his nose instinctively scrunched to bear the awful stench, as his eyes began to water and burn with tears, while he dug his arms around, searchingly, until he felt it.

He wrapped his arms around the frail, thin body, and began to pull with every bit of frantic strength he could muster.

Tilly Toke approached him, placing a hand on Harry's shoulder, as he said quietly, "Let me-"

"Geroff!" snarled Harry like a wild beast, shooting him a ferocious, furious glare as he clutched Hutchins closer to himself over the cistern.

"Let me use magic to help you," insisted the Charms professor, his tone now soft and gentle. "I can levitate him out, and clean him. Then you can get back to him…" He hesitated, before adding, "To check."

Harry glanced at him at that, before he nodded jerkily. Carefully, he placed Hutchins back into the cistern, propping him against a side, before he jumped to his feet, grabbed hold of Tom's wrist, and then pulled them the necessary fifteen feet away from Tilly Toke.

The wizard hadn't sounded as if he believed there was much to verify. Indeed, the man was probably thinking it was a lost cause already. But nevertheless, Harry saw Tilly Toke casting several spells.

The moment Robert Hutchins was lying on the grimy and soiled floor, his uniform and body looking thoroughly clean from urine, excrement, and any other thing, Harry rushed ahead and crouched beside the man.

Tom was staring at Hutchin's body with a thoroughly cool expression on his face, there wasn't any inkling of emotion there, no sadness, sorrow or anything else, except irritation as he shot Harry a glance, and said sharply, "We came here for nothing. We wasted our time. I told you he would be already dead."

Harry turned a deaf ear to his brother's recriminations, not caring about what Tom and Toke were thinking, his gaze pinned on Hutchins as he desperately began to check for a pulse. His fingers roamed over the man's neck, until he found the spot, some inches below where jawbone ended, that was the easiest place in which to detect a still pumping heart, he knew.

With his own heart thudding frenetically, Harry pressed down two fingertips, not too hard, and concentrated in the feeling of detecting anything underneath. He seemed to be suspended in a stillness of his own frenzied worry and single-minded focus, and then, there, suddenly, very faintly, he felt a feeble flutter under the tips of his fingers.

"He's alive," he breathed out, his green eyes growing wide with blazing joy and hope and stunned relief. He glanced at them over his shoulder, and repeated in a croak, "He's alive. Barely, I think, but still alive."

"What?" said Tom, frowning.

Tilly Toke's handsome face split in a smile. "He's quite a survivor, then."

Yes, he was, and Harry had an inkling of exactly how Robert Hutchins had managed to keep himself alive.

The man must have dragged himself into the cistern, to use it as a hiding place, surely, when the battle was lost, so that the Germans that went looking for prisoners to take or survivors to kill wouldn't find him, but also to have a place in which to feed himself. Even if he had had the strength for it, Hutchins wouldn't have been able to go looking for food with the enemy being out and about.

Harry's face paled, but he knew about the desperate measures soldiers took in order to keep themselves alive. Old John Bryce had told them about how he and his comrades, when they had been in the frontline during the Great War, had to resort to drinking their own urine during the days when they had ran out of water in the trenches.

It seemed Hutchins had resorted to the same, yet not drinking from his own urine but of the accumulation of the urine of others inside the cistern, and feeding from the excrements too.

Harry's stomach churned and he was filled with apprehension, as he began to take off Hutchins' clothes. He could just imagine what illnesses Hutchins must already be ridden with, due to that.

It was imperative that he at least healed him of any wounds he might have, but the task of getting the man's uniform off was progressing too slowly.

Harry snapped his gaze up at Tilly Toke. "Can you remove his clothes?"

"You want him naked?" hissed out Tom, his eyes narrowed to slits. "What for? Let's just-"

"Can you?" persisted Harry, ignoring whatever his brother wanted to say, his gaze pinning the Charms professor.

"Certainly," said Tilly Toke, gesturing for Harry to move away the required distance so that their Traces wouldn't be activated.

And Harry did so, shoving Tom along.

The second Robert Hutchins was bared naked before them, Harry rushed back to him again, his gaze and fingers urgently trailing up and down the man's cadaveric body. He could feel his brother's annoyance like prickles in his scar, but it didn't derail him from his task.

The first thing Harry noticed was the protuberance of what felt like two broken ribs, but they were crushed outwards, so he hoped it meant that they hadn't pierced a lung or any other organs. Hutchins' left side of his torso was also very badly burned, but what worried him the most was a wound in his leg.

It was a bullet wound, the hole small but deep, surrounded by ravaged flaps of skin, but worse of all, the flesh around the wound was of a sickly hue of dark green and blue, the veins underneath visible, looking black, a stench of rot coming from it.

"Gangrene," muttered Harry tensely, though he shouldn't have been that surprised. With a bullet wound untreated for over a week, compounded to the fact of what Hutchins had been immersed in, the infection was bound to be very grave, and Harry had no doubt that a muggle doctor would be chopping the leg off post haste.

Harry shot Tilly Toke a hopeful look. "I don't suppose-"

"No," said the wizard, letting out a deep sigh. "I never studied much about Healing. I know just a few basic spells." He gestured at Hutchins' body, his expression turning somber. "Nothing that could help him."

At that, without saying a word, Harry, still undaunted, was quick to open his satchel. He took out flask after flask and laid them neatly on the dirty floor. He then frowned, pensively, as he stared at the leg wound, everything he had ever read about Healing during that school year, but most importantly, everything Old John had ever said about war wounds, jumping to the forefront of his mind.

"Right. First, bullet out," he said as he stood up, glancing around.

In the next second, he had shut the wooden lid of the loos' cistern, brought up a foot, and smashed it hard against the corners. He kept kicking until the wood chipped off and splinters fell to the floor. He eyed them until he found one that would serve, with the sharpest point, and big enough on the other end so that he could hold it.

Harry went back to crouch besides Hutchins' leg, with little Ulysses now by his side, letting out soft purrs of encouragement.

Biting down on his lower lip, Harry took a deep breath and then carefully sunk the sharp end of the splinter into the wound.

Hutchins' body jolted and jerked, and a small, very feeble moan sounded.

Harry snapped his head up, his eyes wide when he saw that Robert Hutchins was staring down at him, with glassy eyes barely open, the eyelids trembling with effort.

"What?" the man croaked in a very faint, barely audible, raspy voice. "Where… Harry?"

Harry was instantly by his side, gently grabbing the man's face so that Hutchins couldn't look around. It was then when he unsurprisingly felt that the man's face was burning, with fever and who knew what else.

"Harry?" repeated Hutchins, sounding thoroughly confused and incredulous, staring up at him with unfocused, half-lidded eyes.

"I'm an army doctor, soldier," said Harry in the deepest voice he could manage given his young voice. "You're in good hands now. We are going to give you medicine and take a bullet out. You understand?"

"But…" Robert Hutchins' fevered eyes roamed over his face, his voice painfully hoarse as he said, "You look like-"

"Someone you know, I bet," interrupted Harry in a low voice, forcing out a chuckle. "Yes, I'm sure. You have a fever, soldier, it will make you see things. Now close your eyes."

Hutchins still stared, evidently going to considerable efforts to keep his eyes open, but Harry gently smoothed a hand over the man's eyes, as he repeated, "Close your eyes, and rest, while we patch you up."

Robert Hutchins trembled and then let out a frail breath as he went limp and still.

Harry was quick to grab several potion vials, as he said, "Drink this, its medicine."

Hutchins obeyed, still with eyes closed with weakness and exhaustion, as Harry dipped some Healing potions into the man's mouth. First, the Restorative Draft, which would help with the man's starvation and dehydration, then the Blood-replenishing Potion and Pepperup, which caused the greyish tint to fade from Hutchins' face.

Finally, he made Hutchins drink the Pain Dimming Solution, after which Harry took off his Slytherin scarf and twisted it hard until it was like a thick cord.

"Bite down on this, soldier," he said, as he brought it to Hutchins' mouth.

Robert obeyed, sinking his teeth, his jaw clenching down shakily, and Harry wasted no time in going back to the leg wound.

With a deep inhalation of breath, Harry sunk in the sharp point of the splinter, and carefully and slowly began to dig around. Hutchins' weak screams of pain were thankfully muffled by the scarf, and Harry kept at it, his own face pale yet determined. After several unsuccessful attempts, he finally managed to slowly dig up the bullet.

He had made the wound worse, and copious, ill-looking dark blood was now leaking from it, but at least the bullet was out.

Harry threw it far away, and then glanced, first at Tom, whom he discarded immediately, and then at Tilly Toke.

"Could you help me, sir?" he said, as he pointedly brought up his hands, which, like his arms, were still filthy from when he had plunged them in the cistern when attempting to pull out Hutchins. "I can't touch his wound like this, but it needs to be cleaned and healed as much as possible."

Tilly Toke instantly agreed, and was very effective as Harry told him what to do. The wizard gently applied the Wound-cleaning Potion around and on the leg wound first, and then the Murtlap Unction.

The unction served to close wounds and prevent and heal infections, though Harry didn't know if it could battle gangrene.

He intently watched as the hole in Hutchins' leg knitted itself back, leaving a bumpy scar behind. The pungent smell of rot vanished, most of the dark greenish and black color of the flesh around the scar faded, but there were still some veins visible under the skin that were darker than normal.

Harry sighed. It was the best that could be done.

He then instructed Tilly Toke to smear the the Burn-healing Paste on the scorched flesh of Hutchins' torso, and finally, he came up to Hutchins' head once more.

"You're doing very well," he said in his deepest voice as Robert weakly peered up at him, looking as if he would be fainting in any second. "There's just one more thing left. It will hurt."

He made Hutchins drink what was left of the Blood-replenishing and Pain Dimming Potions, before he dipped Skele-Mend down the man's throat.

Robert's scream of agony was instantaneous, and Harry was quick to thrust his Slytherin scarf back into the man's mouth, as he urged, "Bite down!"

The man did so, and Harry observed with morbid fascination how Hutchins' two broken ribs seemed to shift, rearrange, and snap into place under the bruised skin.

Harry beamed an encouraging smile at Hutchins, and realized that the man had lost his last thread of consciousness. Well, it was for the best.

He packed the flasks that still had some potions in them and threw the empty ones down one of the holes of the loos.

Thoroughly satisfied, he flung his satchel's strap back across his chest and picked up Ulysses who was now purring loudly and licking him in congratulation.

"Right," said Harry, for a moment musing matters over as he gazed at the unconscious Hutchins. Then he glanced at Tilly Toke and Tom. "We have to take him to the British Army."

"What?" bit out Tom, taking a very threatening step towards him, his face livid. "We are not-"

"We cannot take him back with the portkey!" snapped Harry impatiently, shaking his head in refusal as he remembered how they had been brutally tossed to all sides during the portkey-journey. "He's still weak. It could kill him. And he needs to be healed further. There's nothing more I can do, but the army doctors can surely do much to help him."

Not to mention that if they went back to Hogsmeade with Hutchins, Harry didn't know what they would do with the man then. Obviously, Tom hadn't even thought about that, clearly believing the whole rescue mission would be pointless and that either they wouldn't find Hutchins or find him dead. Now, Harry thought his brother probably wanted to leave Hutchins there to fend for himself, feeling that having healed him was more than enough.

Before Tom could open his mouth again, Harry hastily turned to Tilly Toke, his tone entreating, "The camp was only fifteen minutes away by broom. And you could carry him with magic." He gestured frantically with his hands, as he rushed out, "Conjure some sort of stretcher and put him there and levitate it and make it follow your broom or something. Right?"

Tilly Toke stared at him, before he flashed him with a pearly-white, proud smile. "Indeed. It would be easily done. Good thinking, Harry."

Tom shot them both a look of deepest irritation, as he hissed out snidely, "And how are we supposed to leave him there without the muggles noticing-"

"I have a plan," interjected Harry instantly, to then shrug his shoulders. "It's simple, really."

In the end, it was done swiftly. Tilly Toke brandished his wand as Tom and Harry waited further away, and Hutchins was back in his clothes and on a stretcher.

Tom seethed and fumed as he stalked along by Harry's side, as they both trailed some distance behind Tilly Toke and a suspended Hutchins in midair stretcher, making their way out of the church.

In a few seconds they were flying on their brooms, Tilly Toke and the stretcher that followed him under Disillusionment Charms, Harry and Tom under the Invisibility Cloak.

They landed some distance away from the camp of the British Army, and Harry saw that now they were almost done with their evacuation. Many tents had been brought down, the few left were being dismantled right then, and the trucks had their motors already ignited, making loud noise as the last crates of provisions were being loaded.

The moment Tilly Toke dispelled the Disillusionment Charms and floated Hutchins and stretcher on the ground, Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak from he and Tom, and said urgently, "Shoot sparks into the air, please, sir. They must be red ones!"

Toke gave him a bemused look before he complied.

The moment the sky was briefly lit with the sparks, Harry cupped his mouth with his hands to lent his voice more potency, and bellowed, "Over here! Over he-"

"What are you doing?" snarled Tom, yanking one of Harry's hands.

Harry jerked his hand away from his brother's clutch, and brought it back up to his mouth, as he continued hollering, "OVER HERE! I found one alive – HE NEEDS HELP!"

There was a rush of feet and Harry instantly threw the Cloak over he and Tom. He saw Tilly Toke disillusioning himself and his broom in the bat of an eyelash too.

"Who shot the flare? Who spoke?"

Two British soldiers had appeared, squinting into the darkness, just as a doctor and two nurses appeared behind them. Those instantly caught sight of the unconscious Robert Hutchins, one of the nurses letting out a cry of surprise, as the doctor began to bark orders at the two women and they quickly took him away in the stretcher.

"Who's there?" yelled the same soldier, with rifle aimed in all directions. "Show yourself!"

Harry pulled Tom backwards as the soldier advanced forward.

The other one, though, looked frantic, as he yanked on the sleeve of his comrade. "Let's go, we ain't got time left, John!"

"You heard too," said John angrily. "It was a mate who yelled. An Englishman. He's got to be here – whoever brought–"

"Who cares!" shouted the other soldier, shooting his surroundings a frown, yet going back to look frenzied the next second. "If they ran away and don't wanna come it's their business. Let's go!"

Looking irritated but resigned, John followed his comrade as they rushed back to the camp.

The moment they were alone, Tilly Toke reappeared in sight and Harry yanked off the Invisibility Cloak, exchanging a grin with his teacher.

"Well done," said the Charms professor, beaming a charming smile at him. "Your friend will be safe and well now."

Tom, for his part, was looking nothing but thoroughly fed up, as he bit out sharply, "Let's take the portkey once and for all."

Tilly Toke began to raise a hand towards the boot dangling from his neck, before he hesitated and looked pensive.

Harry understood, because he was certain the same thoughts were swirling in Toke's mind as in his own.

He took a step towards the wizard, as he said tentatively and cajolingly, "There were other bodies left behind in Namsos."

Tilly Toke began to smile. "There were."

"And we should probably check them too," continued Harry, smiling himself.

"We should," said Tilly Toke, his smile now large.

Harry beamed at him. "If we take one more hour to see if there's anyone else we can help, it would be worth it. One hour more, one hour less, in going back to Hogwarts, wouldn't be that much of a difference."

"Quite right," said the Charms professor, his handsome face glowing with pleasure and excitement.

Tom's gaze was snapping from one to the other, his eyes becoming slits of sheer fury, as he hissed out enraged, "Absolutely not! We're not going back to Nam-"

"But, brother," said Harry, shooting him an aghast look. "It's our duty as wizards to help muggles that need our aid."

Tom gritted his teeth, casting Tilly Toke a quick glance, to then covertly glower at Harry murderously.

And Harry gave him a very toothy, smug grin, because he knew that Tom wouldn't dare say anything about what he really thought of saving more muggles. Not in front of a Hogwarts professor he wouldn't.

Tom had taken painstaking efforts to portray himself in a certain way before the adults of Hogwarts. All the teachers thought that Tom was a poor little orphan boy, brilliant and a prodigy, yes, but also so very humble, noble, polite, well-mannered, kind, and compassionate.

"Glad we're all in agreement," said Tilly Toke cheerfully, flashing a beaming, gorgeous smile at them. "On our brooms, boys!"

"I'll make you pay for this," Tom had spat at him once, when they had been well out of Tilly Toke's hearing range, as they went looking for any other survivors through the ruins of Namsos.

Unperturbed, Harry had merely rolled his eyes at his brother. Tom hadn't appreciated that either.

But now, the hour they had allotted for themselves was about to run out, and they still hadn't found anyone with a pulse.

"Oh!" cried out Tilly Toke, which instantly made them look up at him. The Head of Hufflepuff House widely smiled at them from across the distance. "I remembered just the spell we could use!"

Harry stared and blinked, when the wizard flourished his wand and muttered something under his breath, a small figure made of green light then suddenly appearing in the man's outstretched palm.

It was some sort of frog made of magic, which flung out a very long tongue, as if catching a fly, and then rolled it back into its mouth.

It croaked loudly before it suddenly leaped into the air. And it kept soaring for much longer than a normal frog, looking as if it flew, before it landed on the ground, hopped, and made another huge leap.

"It found someone!" yelled Tilly Toke excitedly over his shoulder as he ran after the frog. "Someone alive!"

They had been searching through the outskirts of the ruined town by then, and Harry had to quicken his steps and then break into a full sprint as Tilly Toke followed the frog into the woods surrounding the town.

"Wait!" Harry shouted after him, as he skidded through a patch of ice that nearly made him fall.

He heard Tom coming behind him, hissing under his breath something about 'imbeciles' and 'fools' and 'Hufflepuffs'.

"Wait, sir!" yelled Harry again as their professor vanished into the darkness of the forest.

"Be quick, boys!" called back Tilly Toke's voice, close by in the lead. "Hurry up-"

Suddenly, everything went white, blinding white, with a deafening boom, and Harry heard no more as he was flung through the air.

He landed on his back, some snow having cushioned his fall, with little Ulysses poking his head out of Harry's collar, looking disheveled and rattled. His satchel was still strung across his chest, but the Comet 180 wasn't in his hand anymore.

Harry didn't see it. He didn't see anything in fact. Something was wrong with his sight. He felt thoroughly disoriented, dizzy, and confused. Even as he touched his face, and found that his eyeglasses must have dropped somewhere. But that wasn't the problem.

He was seeing in flashes, like a still, slow motion picture, light and dark intermittently blinking in and out, letting him see for one second, and then encompassing him in blackness in the other.

His heart was thundering in his chest and there was something unbearable stabbing through his skull. A high-pitch noise seemed to be drilling his head, constantly, unmercifully, agonizingly. So much so that he wanted to stab something into his throbbing ears to get rid of the acute, piercing noise that felt maddening.

Harry grasped at his ears, his vision tunneling in and out of focus, and felt something wet.

Blinking, still so dazed that he couldn't even think properly, he stared when he brought his hands up to his face. In a second of clarity of vision, he saw that his fingertips were drenched in blood.

He went paper white, and jerkily staggered to his feet, squinting and glancing around, his surroundings appearing and disappearing in flashes.

"Tom? Professor? TOM?" he called out hoarsely and frantically, or tried to, because he wasn't sure, because when he had shouted he hadn't heard his own voice.

He had heard nothing but the drilling, high-pitched noise skewering both sides of his head, which suddenly vanished the next second with one last flare of pain.

And Harry heard no more. There was nothing but absolute silence.