And then, quite to my surprise, I woke up.
The first thing of which I became aware was a dreadful throbbing pain in my abdomen, followed shortly by a heavy fog in my head. My senses were at once razor-sharp with agony and muted with haze. I groaned and began wishing that I'd just died – at least then, I wouldn't have to deal with this fresh hell.
"Welcome back to the land of the living."
I recognized the voice, but just to be sure, I opened my eyes. Indeed, Mr. Snape was standing over me, dark eyes glinting, hands clasped behind his back.
"Mr. Snape?" My throat felt rough, though I could not tell if it was because of disuse or thirst.
"The very same," he answered. "You should count yourself lucky that I am a chemist and anatomist of some skill. If we had been forced to wait for the doctor, you surely would have bled to death on the floor of the foyer. As it stands, barring unforeseen infections, you should be fine."
I blinked my eyes a few times, willing the world around me to come into focus. Though my vision remained blurry, I could tell that I was not in my bedroom in the servants' quarters – in fact, I could feel silk kissing my skin, and a soft, luxurious warmth surrounding me.
"Where am I?"
"You are in the first guest room of Avebury Manor," Mr. Snape answered.
"The guest room?" I repeated. Servants weren't allowed into the guest rooms unless they were cleaning them – I couldn't imagine that one would be allowed to recover from an attack there, either.
"I know that you must be in quite some pain," Mr. Snape said, "but there are things you need to know – they may not be easy to digest."
I looked over at him. His sallow face had the ghost of concern upon it – not an expression I was used to seeing in his usually detached, businesslike countenance.
I knew what he must have been referring to, of course – my mind was not so addled that I had forgotten the attempted murder. I could not imagine that there could be any palatable reason that someone should want me dead.
I took in a breath and nodded. There was no point in delaying the inevitable.
"Stay here," he said. "I'll fetch the inspector. He wanted to be informed when you woke."
I was at first surprised, and then quickly not the least bit surprised, that they had called in a detective. As much as I disliked the idea, there were clearly larger pieces at play, a dense tangle of treachery and deceit that needed an inspector's clinical eye.
Mr. Snape left the room with a rustle of fabric. I was left alone in the expansive queen-sized bed, surrounded by down-filled pillows and covered in a plush silvery-blue comforter. With some difficulty and several jabs of pain, I sat upright.
My stomach was bound with white silk bandages, recently changed, and apart from a pair of simple sleeping trousers I was naked. I did not bother with embarrassment; it would have served no purpose.
A moment later there was a knock at the door.
"Come in," I said, and in stepped a tall, swarthy, handsome man in a pressed blue police uniform.
"Inspector Kingsley Shacklebolt," he said by way of introduction, and to my astonishment, he bowed low before me.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Inspector," I said. "Do you make a habit of bowing to servants?"
"I don't," he answered, and there was a strange reservation in his voice. "I trust… you remember what happened?"
Images flashed through my mind's eyes – Draco and our planned escape, Mr. Pettigrew and the hunting knife, the wound, my love's frantic tears, the swallowing darkness.
"Yes," I replied. All too well, I remembered.
Inspector Shacklebolt pursed his lips and nodded shortly. He crossed the room and took a seat in the chair by my bedside, which I had no doubt Mr. Snape and whatever physician had been here used to tend to me as I recovered.
"Did your attacker say why?"
I had vague, inconsistent memories of the conversation, but nothing substantial. I shook my head.
"You have been unconscious and in recovery for nearly two days now," Inspector Shacklebolt told me. "In that time, I've had ample opportunity to conduct my investigation, and I must admit – if someone else had explained to me this case, I would accuse them of creating sensational and fantastic lies. Believe me when I say, Mr. Potter, that I have never seen anything like this."
I frowned. Carefully, I turned around and threw my legs over the side of the bed so that we could speak face-to-face.
"The attempt on your life was carried out by Mr. Pettigrew, but so far as I have been able to tell, it was orchestrated by His Grace the Duke of Cambridge."
"The duke…" Found out about our plan, did you? Nipped into His Grace's bedroom and saw the research?
"He has left Avebury, of course," Inspector Shacklebolt continued, the lines of his face twisting into an unflattering frown. "Privilege of peerage makes him immune to arrest."
"I don't understand," I said. "Why would the duke want me dead?"
"A fair question, and one that presented the most difficult problem for me in putting the pieces of this case together," Inspector Shacklebolt said. "Your lives could not have been more disparate. There was no reason to suspect that you were even aware of each others' existences – why, then, would he spend, by some of the dates I discovered in his papers, years trying to hunt you down?"
"Years?" I could scarcely believe it. What could the Duke of Cambridge and heir presumptive to the throne of England want with me so badly that he would spend years looking for me?
The inspector nodded. There was a strange and tragic look that fell over his features, one that made me think he did not quite know how to broach the answer to his own question.
"What do you know about your parents?"
It was not the first time that week I had been asked the question. Did all of this mess have to do with two dead people I never knew?
"Almost nothing," I admitted. "I was raised by my aunt and uncle – my aunt was my mother's sister, and they didn't get on. I was never told anything about them more significant than their names."
The answer seemed to grieve him. It wasn't as though it wasn't a tragic story on its own right, but mine was most certainly not the saddest story in England.
"Your mother's full name was Lillian Evangeline Evans," Inspector Shacklebolt said with a peculiar gentleness in his voice. "A beta woman, middle-lower class, not in any particular way remarkable. She was born and raised in Essex, in a little village near an estate not very different from this one.
"From what I have been able to put together from the duke's notes, she was a seamstress of some talent, having been raised as an apprentice to the local tailor. It was in that shop, training in her skill that she met, quite by accident, your father – His Grace James Alexander of House Gryffindor, Duke of Oxford."
My mouth felt very dry.
My first thought was that there was no way that could be true. It was patently impossible.
Wasn't it?
"Apparently, your grandfather – that is to say, your father's father, John Westerly Gryffindor – died when your father was quite young, and he was forced to take up his title and the duties of his estate without being adequately prepared. As such it made him a very restless, free-spirited person, unconcerned with propriety and noble duties.
"So when he met your mother in town, he was unreserved in his affections for her and unafraid of pursuing them. I cannot say that I know the details of their relationship, but it must have been quite a love they shared, because there are records of their elopement several months later at a little chapel in Dover. Though their marriage was a happy one, it came at the cost of your father running away from his inheritance.
"And then, of course, there was the fire…"
I swallowed, though it was a useless gesture, because my mouth was absolutely arid. "Fire?"
"It caused quite a stir when it happened. The Royal Houses of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, the dukes and duchesses of Kent and Cornwall, had already died out, leaving only House Slytherin and House Gryffindor. What with our Omega Queen never having issue, inheritance…"
"The Queen," I said, blindsided by an abrupt and devastating understanding. "No. Inspector, you must be wrong. You have to be wrong."
"I'm afraid not," he replied, patiently, carefully. "Why would a duke come after a presumed common-born orphan if not for something monumental? They thought that the infant child of the Duke of Oxford died in the fire—"
"No," I said, "no. No, no."
"—but he did not. Unconventional though the marriage was, it was legitimate. Your full name is Henry James Gryffindor; you are the heir to your father's title—"
"No, this isn't possible."
"—and the only other person alive besides the Duke of Cambridge with legitimate claim to the throne of England."
My breath came out in wheezes, uneven fits and starts that made my still-healing wound burn with agony.
This could not be true. I was no one. I was a common-born orphan, I was not a duke and I was not a king.
It felt as though my carefully-constructed reality, all the little threads that held together the world around me, were unravelling, shattering like glass, and I could do nothing but fall through the ever-widening gaps in my understanding and into chaos.
"Your Grace," Inspector Shacklebolt said, suddenly rising from his chair, "you must calm down."
"I'm not – don't call me 'your grace', I'm not a duke, I'm just Harry, I'm just Harry—"
"God in heaven, your wound – sit down! You have to sit!"
This wasn't possible. This wasn't possible.
"Mr. Snape!" Inspector Shacklebolt cried. "Send him in! Quickly!"
The room was spinning around me and I felt lightheaded. Inspector Shacklebolt grabbed me by both arms and lowered me back down onto the bed. I could feel heat blooming against my skin, a wetness, and all I could think, all that was running through my mind, was no, no, no, no.
Mr. Snape came in along with several servants. There was a clamor, shouting, but it was drowned out by the sound of my heartbeat in my ear.
"Draco," I rasped. The need to see him was sudden and brutal and all-encompassing. "Where is – where—?"
"You can see him when you stop bleeding to death," Mr. Snape said tersely.
I had to see Draco. Surely if I could just see him, talk to him, hold him, breathe the scent of him, this would all make sense.
A small rag over my mouth, the smell of chloroform, and thoughts of my angel, Draco, Draco, where were you?