Author's Note: I'm thrilled to send thanks to BreathingInWords for adding this story to your list of followed stories, and to rhmac12 for posting two reviews, one for each of the previous chapters! Whoo hoo! Seeing this was my motivation to post another update within only a week. I kid you not. Also, just wondering: Did anyone else see the Pottermore news article with Rita Skeeter? If so, I hope you all will recognize some of the elements from that update as I incorporate them into the story. If not, sign up for Pottermore ASAP (Btw, I'm in Slytherin House).

Continue to review, follow, and enjoy this story!

Chapter Three: An Incurable Malady

As weightless as he felt, Harry felt he was drifting in a river current with his eyes closed tightly. He couldn't see anything—not even the inside of his eyelids—as he was carried along but Harry thought he heard a chorus of voices softly chanting his name: "Harry, Harry, Harry." When he tried to listen more closely and distinguish one voice from another, they blended together all the more. Harry felt very comfortable and increasingly uncomfortable. He wanted to stop drifting. He wanted to open his eyes.

He tried to open his eyes. Harry did not expect to wake up, but he did. It was very rapid, and when his eyes were open, Harry stared into a glaring white light. He had to blink several times to adjust to it. Everything was very fuzzy. He did not have his glasses.

"Oh! He's awake, he's awake!" Harry hadn't moved his head or blinked his eyes in response to the voice. He knew it all too well. Since he was an eleven year old boy on his way to Hogwarts for his first day, Harry had heard that voice almost constantly. The very first time he had heard it, it was grumbling about tardiness and Muggles being everywhere at King's Cross. Because of that voice, he had arrived at Hogwarts. Now it sounded distinctly different, as though the owner of the voice had been suffering a long head cold.

Harry blinked. Something red came into his view, obstructing the light in his eyes. "Where are my glasses?" Harry croaked with a raspy voice.

"Arthur, get him his glasses so he can see! He's probably half-blind right now and scared to death! And George, fetch him a cup of water. No need for the boy to die of thirst. And hurry!"

Someone slipped glasses onto his face. Three red-headed faces came into view: Arthur and Molly Weasley—Ron and Ginny's parents and Bill Weasley—Ron and Ginny's eldest brother. Arthur and Molly looked much the same as they had when Harry met them. Arthur was a tall man whose formerly lanky frame had acquired the paunchiness of old age and whose flame-red hair had receded to a U shape on his head with gray sprinkling what remained. Molly had wrinkles etched around her mouth and eyes from countless smiles and gray abundant in her crown of red hair. For most of Harry's knowledge of her, she had been what a cruel person would call dumpy and what an honest person would call heavyset.

Bill Weasley was a younger image of his father. Verging on midlife, his tall, lean frame showed some thickening around the waist of his jeans, but he still had a full head of red hair. His usually grinning face was abundant with freckles against the pale skin acquired from his mother. At the moment, his resigned look disquieted Harry.

Harry smiled up at them. It hurt his jaw to smile. "Hullo, everyone," he struggled to say. His voice sounded muffled, like Harry had filled his mouth with cotton balls. It hurt to open his mouth too wide.

"Don't try to talk now, Harry! The mediwizard who was just here said you have a broken jaw. He gave you a bit of Skele-Gro to ease the healing, but you still have a way to go. So you just…rest up," Molly warned.

Molly patted Harry's head as tenderly as the surrogate mother she been to Harry, since he had known her. He suddenly noticed how red her eyes and face were. Arthur sniffled. "We're thankful you're alive, Harry. You need as much strength as you can muster."

"I'm alright," Harry garbled.

"We-we know, dear. It's just that…" Molly dissolved into sobs that wracked her body with laborious spasms.

Arthur wrapped his wife in his arms. "There, there, Molly. Maybe we should just…"

"No. I can stay. No sense in going home just yet. We have to stay."

"What happened?" Harry croaked. To his ears, it sounded like "Wuff haven?"

Molly sniffled and wiped her nose. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. It was as though someone had cast a Silencing Charm upon her. She audibly cleared her throat. Finally, she succumbed to sobs that wracked her whole body again and she leaned against Arthur. He rested his thin, graying red hair atop Molly's thin, graying red hair. Harry turned to Bill for answers. The eldest Weasley brother turned his back and stared out the door at Harry's feet.

"What happened?"

"There was an attack on the Hogwarts train. It was a Dark wizard. He was powerful. He had followers." Harry couldn't see Hermione, but her voice was as thick as slow-pouring molasses. She sniffled and blew her nose loudly.

"Was it V-"

Harry heard the swishing motion of Hermione's unruly brown hair when she shook it. "No, it wasn't him, Harry."

"Was it…?" Harry had to swallow to form the next words. His throat had gone dry as the words formed in his throat and moved up to his tongue. "Was it Malfoy?"

"Harry!" Arthur barked over his wife's sobs. His face turned redder with each word. "Why would you say such a thing? He is the head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation and an esteemed governor of Hogwarts. And don't you go digging up that nonsense about Lucius Malfoy being a Death Eater! He's been dead for years!"

"He might not be a Dark wizard, but he knows one." Harry hoped his family understood the accusation clearly enough. His broken jaw made his words sounded like a mangled attempt to imitate Bulgarian to his own ears.

"It isn't unfathomable, Dad. Malfoy's father had…"

"Lucius Malfoy is dead. The kinds of accusations you're making are absolutely ludicrous! They sound exactly like something Ron would say!"

Molly cried out. Her legs gave, and she all but collapsed in Arthur's arms. Bill cut his eyes at his parents. "I think you should take Mum out of the room, Dad."

Arthur glared at his eldest son. Then he wrapped an arm around Molly's shoulders and escorted her from Harry's hospital room. Harry watched them leave with a pang of longing in his chest. Something dreadful had happened. "What happened?" he repeated.

"Harry, I'm going to check on Mum. George and Angelina are outside. I'll send them in." Bill took a step then turned to Hermione. She sat in the furthest corner of the room with her knees tucked to her chest and her face buried against her knees. All Harry could see of her was her knees and her untamed brown hair. "Are you alright?"

Hermione nodded. "I'll go check on Ron in a moment," she said in a thick voice.

"I'll see you later, Harry." Then Bill was gone. Harry's question remained.

"Hermione," he had to say slowly, "tell me what happened."

She sniffled again and lifted her head. Tears drew bright red lines down her face, and turned her eyes redder than they were already. "The Daily Prophet says they—the Dark wizard and his followers—blew up the front of the train. I mean the train engine." She sniffled heavily. "When they blew up the train engine, the front carriage blew up too. There were…" Her voice cracked and Hermione's lips moved without a sound. "There were…There were children in the front carriage. There were sixth and seventh years in the front carriage. They're dead. They're all dead."

As Hermione broke down and began sobbing again, Angelina and George strode into the room. They smiled at Harry, and he tried to return the favor. It hurt to smile. After all his talking, Harry needed to rest his mouth anyway.

Angelina Johnson Weasley had the same tall, athletic figure from her years as a Quidditch Chaser at Hogwarts for the Gryffindor House team and later, during her brief tenure with the Hollyhead Harpies. She still had elegant dreadlocks tumbling around her shoulders and the same kind, dark face Harry had known when they were at Hogwarts together. Angelina's only real sign that she had aged since graduating from Hogwarts was that her hips had grown heavier since the birth of her and George's son, Fred Weasley II.

Like his brother Bill, George's hair had grown thinner with each passing year. Like Ron, he was still lean and fit despite the advance of age. He had grown up wearing hand-me-downs from his brothers Bill and Charlie. With his flourishing joke-and-novelty shop, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes (which had expanded from its anchor shop on Diagon Alley in the heart of Wizarding London to fifteen stores throughout the European Wizarding world), George could afford designer clothes.

It was the absence of George's smile—which had been irrepressible until his identical twin Fred died during the Battle of Hogwarts and returned only after marrying Angelina—that set Harry on alert.

"Hey there, Harry," Angelina said.

"How's it going, Harry? Jaw feeling better?" George added. There was a bag from the joke shop in his left hand, but Harry didn't care for jokes or novelties. He slammed his fists on the bed and thrashed his legs.

"Will someone—anyone—tell me what's going on? Where are Ron and Ginny? Where are my children? What happened that no one will tell me about?" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

"Alright, Harry," George said from the door. He dropped his bag to the floor. "You want to know what happened? I'll tell you: Twelve children and two adults are dead; it seems there are more wounded every ten minutes. The Hogwarts train was destroyed. The kids who didn't get killed were sent to Hogwarts by Floo Powder and Portkey.

"Where is Ron?" George's eyes watered and his face began to turn red. "A Dark wizard erased Ron's memory. He can't remember anything after the Battle of Hogwarts. There's a team of mediwizards examining him now, but there's no guarantee they can help him. He might never remember his wedding, his address, or even his children's names.

Hermione ran from the room sobbing. Angelina rested a hand on Fred's shoulder then sprinted after Hermione. Harry watched and turned his face to the window. The late summer sun was setting over London. It would be nighttime soon. "What happened to Ginny?"

"She's…" George's voice thickened. "She's dead. Just like Fred. Just like my uncles. Ginny is dead; one more Weasley in the ground before it was time. And you're still alive. Practically invincible, aren't you, Harry?" He was crying and sniffling but George continued talking. "While everyone around you died and dies, you just go on living, eh? It's like some bloody curse surrounding you."