In all honesty, Harry Potter was really tired of almost-dying.

Like sure, it sounds all cool and exciting or whatever, and you're going right up against the bad guy, and you keep waiting for something totally badass to happen, to be proven a hero, but then that never actually happens and you're left with .

You're scared.

Plain and simple.

You're absolutely horrified, and your brain will do either one of two things: fritz out and completely shut down, or go absolutely haywire and scramble for a solution. Harry Potter was normally one of the lucky ones, whose mind would whir and buzz and search for solutions until his very last breath.

But not now.

Not today.

Not when his enemy (No, that's Luna, or possibly Hermione, shit, they're not enemies, DON'T CALL THEM THAT) was wearing the face of a trusted ally and wielding the mind of his sister. He couldn't hurt them, no matter what they were planning to do to him. They were his friends.

They were his family.

Harry's brain had frozen. Luna (or Hermione?) was still inspecting the mystical three-pronged blade with a very un-Luna-like glint in her pale eyes. Harry swallowed. He had never seen such a deep look of concentration on Luna's face before. It just looked...wrong. Luna was excited. Luna was happy. Luna was fidgety and serene and distant and more than just a little bit odd.

Luna was a whirlwind.

The being standing in front of Harry, trailing her fingers along the wicked blade meant for him, was no whirlwind. She was calculated, cool, precise in her movements and deliberate in her gestures.

This was lightning.

Hermione was lightning. Quick and smooth, jagged and striking.

Nope, Potter, you are not gonna cry. That is not happening.

His sister...his best friend...the girl he loved, the only person that had ever stood by him for everything in his life, the scared and lonely girl longing for acceptance, desperate to be more than her peers' opinions for her. She was determined to do great things, she was heralded as the brightest witch of her age. That fierce intelligence made her spark, made her a force of nature, a fire that warmed and saved and rampaged and destroyed.

And Harry was about to burn under her grasp.

Ok, Harry. Think.

The door. The weird door, the one with the markings. That had to lead to something, right? Maybe like a workroom or an exit of sorts? He'd take either one of them, right now.

Dennis was still busily cleaning his instruments, hunched over and inspecting them for any unclean marks or suspicious stains with a surgeon's precision. He carefully ran his fingers over each and every crevice in the tools, squinting at any offending marks with narrow eyes. Harry couldn't but notice that the boy's hands were shaking, trembling ever-so-slightly as they swiped and inspected and cleaned the blades. Harry, still held under the firm grasp of the Petrificus, strained to see Dennis as the blond teen cried out and dropped what Harry assumed was a scalpel onto the stone floors. The small instrument clattered to the ground, making far too much noise for such a small tool, as Dennis whimpered and stared at his hands. Seamus twitched, lifting his foot off the door and hesitating slightly as he watched Dennis with weary eyes. Luna/Hermione sent a glare his way, and Seamus melted back into the stonework, a frown creasing his mouth.

"Dennis," Luna said, placing her weird and painful-looking blade onto the side table and rushing to Dennis's side. "Are you okay? Do you need a break?" Worried eyes searched Dennis's face, hunting for any other sign of the boy's discomfort.

"It's okay, Miss Lovegood. I'm okay, I'm, um, it's...I'm alright." He sucked in a deep breath, trying and failing for a light tone of voice. "My nerves just aren't what they used to be after the Carrows." He gave an utterly unconvincing breathy laugh at the end.

Harry grit his teeth.

These people may be working on how to dissect him in the most painful way possible, but they were still just people. They were damaged people, people who were left broken and with missing parts after the war. Dennis had lost some of his muscle control after the Carrows' cruel "detentions" and still experienced the occasional spasm. Cho was missing a few fingers. Seamus still sported a slight limp. Ernie had a new scar on his right temple where he had been clipped with a cutting curse. Hermione had become more driven, more focused, more single-minded than ever. Luna was more reckless.

Harry was just a little bit more broken. In all ways.

But that little exchange, seeing Luna/Hermione caring for Dennis mere minutes ago, just those few little moments, was enough to remind Harry that Hermione was still Hermione. She was still the girl that had danced with him on the lonely days of their horcrux hunt, the girl that had kept him alive and whole and sane for the past eight years.

She was Hermione.

He was Harry.

They went together. They were a different level of friends. They had trust. They were simple.

Or, at least, they had been.

Harry forced himself out of his brief reverie, and re-considered Dennis's slumped form. It would be easy to take him out in a physical fight. Harry was still relatively short and scrawny, but had used some of his time after the war trying to push his body out of its malnourished and stick-like form. He had a certain physical power in his arsenal now, although it would be nothing against the competent wand-wielders circling the room. Harry's eyes traversed the room before landing on Cho. Okay, she was the second-highest threat in the room. She had been an excellent dueller in her DA days, and she had to be even better now. Hermione would be terrible to face and pretty much impossible to beat while Harry was still wandless. Ernie...Harry honestly didn't know enough about the wizard to assign him a threat level. Seamus...Harry squinted as much as he could, trying to find Seamus. He wasn't by the door anymore. Instead, he stood behind Luna, who had returned to Harry's bedside after comforting Dennis. Luna, sharp object in hand once more, must have finally deemed the tool suitable for her task. She stepped forward, leaning over Harry with a shark-toothed smile.

"Are you ready to start, Harry? Hopefully, we'll have some answers after this." Her eyes hardened at the prospect of newfound knowledge.

Harry shuddered as he felt a wave of magic pass through him, releasing him from the effects of the Petrificus.

Thank God. That's gotta be some sort of progress, right there.

Now, I've just gotta escape these straps, escape these dudes, escape this room, escape this building, AND escape Hermione's eventual wrath and confront her about this whole Hell-thing.

Alright, I've been in worse situations before.

...Can't really think of one right now, though. Eh, whatevs.

And Harry looked up at the knife-wielding witch, smiled, and nodded.

"Cho," Luna called, smiling, "Can you start with the lotions?"

Cho nodded serenely, practically gliding over the cobbled floor to the medicine cabinet. Nimble fingers opened the door and pulled out two familiar bottles of Dreamless Sleep and PotentPadmaPatilPainPotion™. Harry had to hide a smirk as he watched Ernie's eyes hungrily devour Cho's almost ethereal beauty as she uncorked the PainPotion in one smooth gesture. One dainty finger swiped the ointment up. An instant later, Harry felt his shirt being tugged up. He tilted his chin back, squinting through his hair as Cho leaned over him, a smirk tugging at her lips.

"Mmm, now, Harry," she murmured, eyes half-lowered, voice a distinctive purr, "This brings back some memories from fifth year, now, doesn't it?"

Harry felt his mouth dry up, and he turned his head away, a frown tugging at his mouth as Cho gave continued spreading the oil over his scrawny chest. No, he thought. Actually, this is one hell of a lot different from Fifth year. Ok.

Ok.

This is not OK.

This whole...thing, this whole setup, was just so freaking far from his idea of ok that it was not even funny. Here was Cho Chang, literally his only ex, buttering him up for the slaughter and trying out some really twisted flirting while she did so. This was different from the other times. Before, she had stood back, cold and calculating, all hard smiles and shiny hair. Before, she was a pretty face and a wicked mind. Before, she hadn't seemed to care.

There weren't many befores for Harry to reference, though. This would be his fourth "session" with Luna and her assistants since the end of the war. Each visit would be around a month apart, leaving him four weeks of in-between time to catch his breath. Literally, sometimes–the operations always focused on the area around his chest, and the magically-bound stitches would strain against his chest and make breathing difficult. The stitches hurt like hell, too, but Harry had a body built for abuse and a pain tolerance that was off the charts. The scars that they left, though, couldn't be eradicated with magic. Only potions, creams, and some kinds of illusions did that. Scars, he had found, were one thing that everyone left behind. They were markers, timeposts, badges and banners screaming that I was here and I did something. Harry hated his scars. One of them more than the others, obviously. The one that marked him as an equal, the one that labelled him as something different. The one that was currently making him the subject of invasive tests and newspaper articles alike.

Harry still wasn't sure what these tests had proven yet. He knew why he had started them, and he knew why he had continued. He had started for reason. He kept going for love.

He had trusted her. He had trusted her with his life, with his head, with his heart, with his wand, with their future. And now, she was doing...this.

Cho was still running her fingers up and down his chest, twirling the cream onto his skin and smacking her lips before dancing her digits up and down his front. The ointment had started to prickle against his skin. Harry was, again, so not okay with this. It really needed to be said twice. Harry just felt weird. He was cold. The cream was cold. Her fingers were cold. The table was cold.

Her eyes were cold.

Doing his best to ignore Cho, Harry looked around the room again. Luna and Ernie had split off suddenly and were talking quietly in the corner. Ok. Well, that was odd. They had like just been about to cut Harry open. What had changed? Ok. Ok, focus. Dennis. Dennis, Dennis….was still polishing those damn tools. Okay though, really? Like, Harry knew that there were a ton of them, but he didn't realize that there had been that many. Ok. Ok. Anyways, that was Dennis. Ernie had made his way to the original entrance of the the room and was...just standing? Standing guard, maybe? Ok. Well, that was also different. Before, only Seamus had stood by the far door. Now there were both of them. Well. That couldn't be good. There were either two purposes for the extra sentry. They were either trying to keep something really dangerous out, or keep something really dangerous in.

Harry had the sneaking suspicion that it was the latter.

His chest was totally numb now. He couldn't even register Cho's fingers still traversing his naked chest. And God, did that phrasing–traversing his naked flesh–sound bad. Harry had never, and would never, be a writer. That was for sure.

If I make it out of here, I swear to God, I'll do something crazy. I'll...publish a book. Yeah. Books. About...the wizworld? Magi? Puffskeins?

My life? But who'd want to read that?

Anyways, I was doing something. Something big, something important, something required–right, yes, scouting. For an escape route. So I can, like, live and stuff.

He didn't think that Hermione would kill him. Well. Not on purpose, at least. She just like to push things. People, studies, the laws of nature, things. She was just getting dangerously near to shoving them both off a ledge Harry didn't think they'd be able to come back from.

But back to scanning. Seamus. Seamus. Seamus, Seamus, Seamus, Seamus….

Where are you?

And then, someone plucked the sun from its celestial hangings and squeezed it into the room.

An explosion, as bright and big and loud as a firestorm or a firecracker or imploding stars, and the room shook. And the world trembled and Harry rattled and Luna and the others shook, were left swinging and reeling with the force of it, awash in its intensity and still echoing in its brashness. And then all was still.

And all was dark, and all was still.

Ohmigosh like Hiya you guys.

Long time, no see, right? *Attempts to laugh nonchalantly while hiding behind my laptop.*

So yeah, it's been a while. I've just had no chance to write, like at all, and I'd started to lose my passion for this story, in all honesty. In my defense, I'm in the IB Diploma Program at my school and that's just been getting crazy. I am so, so sorry about this. You guys have been truly awesome in regards to this pic and I can't thank you enough :). So, as always, please review or PM me! I just LOVE and ADORE hearing from you guys–it always makes my day. :)

And thanks for reading and taking a chance on this weirdly-named piece of literature (if it can be called that)! Hope y'all are having a fantastic day, and, in accordance with tradition,

*Your Cocoa today was served by Knickity.*

Love to you all, and good night! :D