A chapter comes! I promise the next one will be up within the next week- it just needs to be edited and some parts need to be rewritten. I finally figured out what to do with Harry though... It will be good...
With that, I must announce the second part of Hush Little Child! You heard Loke's story- now how about Harry's? Where has he been all this time? Has he had flashbacks as well? Is he the man in the black cloak in last chapter? Read and find out! :)
This and the next chapter deal with Harry being alone and dirty. Not naked though; sorry. :)
Disclaimer: I have no money. The owners of anything you recognize have a lot of money.
Hush Little Child
Chapter 12
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Rocks clawed at his skin, constantly trying to drag him away from the moon-light sky. He wanted the light though, he wanted the summer constellations to touch his hands and drag him back upwards. He wanted the light. He wanted to live.
"Master? Mage? Harry?" He heard muffled calls. "Mage?"
He wanted that voice, the voice that washed over him like a wave and swept away all of the pain. He didn't want to hear it steadily drift away into the night. It was warm, encompassing, something that he'd known for so long. Something he'd refined and loved. A base. A soother. A brother.
"Here," Harry whispered. His chest was half crushed by the weight of the rocks and he was shocked that he wasn't dead by now. Of course, said shock didn't hit him until later. Right now he just wanted to get free. "I'm here."
He knew that no one knew he was there though, so he whispered himself to sleep underneath the rocks.
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"Ello? Anyone there?"
I am here, Harry thought. It was to his major inconvenience that the caller could not hear thoughts; no one rushed to help him. He shifted onto his side, facing towards the tiny sliver of light between the rocks that buried him so deep.
Dust floated in the air, turning the dark world of rocks into a foggy landscape of sepia crags. Harry tried to take a deep breath of air, but was graced with a mouthful of dust. He coughed once, twice, before whatever saliva was left in his throat dried up and he was unable to even cough.
"I don't see anyone," another man yelled. "There's no bodies, no hands, no strange creature parts. I think everything's buried under the rubble."
"Give me a hand then! There was supposed to be thirty people here. Only eleven made it back to Hogsmead. There's got to be nineteen bodies someplace," the first man replied, his voice steadily growing farther and farther away.
Footsteps echoed overtop of Harry's prison. Oh, those footsteps. There would be four before the man paused, then another four, then another. Patterns of four, a steady constant. Harry tried to knock something over to make some noise and draw attention, but his body refused to move.
"Stop dilly-dallying'!" Man number one exclaimed and the beats of four got faster and fast, each steady measure father and farther apart. "If there's no one over there, maybe someone's over here."
But I am over here, Harry dully thought once more.
And then he closed his eyes.
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When he awoke, there were no more rocks. A seemingly endless sea of flat dirt greeted him instead, with not a single form of life on it. But there, to the left by four meters or so, was a pool of water. God, water, how that would feel sliding down his parched throat and cleaning some of the dirt off of his arms.
Harry braced himself, closing his eyes until they were mere slits and clenching his aching teeth together. He could feel the grit in his mouth crunch into small particles of dirt.
He kicked his back leg against the ground.
Harry would forever remember Moody's gore-filled stories of battles and the injuries that followed. No description could prepare him for the fire that spread through his entire body and the muscles that tightened on his nerves. It was sheer agony- if not something even worse. Harry imagined death would be better.
He had barely moved a centimeter; two if he was being generous.
Harry cried dry tears and prepared to try and move once more. That water was his only hope of salvation, and he was going to get it.
It took so much time, time that Harry could not count with his limited brain functions, to get over to that small pool of water. It was but a cup by the time he got there and a small bug was swimming in its murky depths. There were no appealing aspects to this pool of water, if it could even be considered that.
Harry looked down before he drank the water and realized that he had no reflection. He lightly moved from side to side, seeing if he could get a glimpse of himself, but he could not.
What would you classify something with no reflection? Harry wondered. A vampire? Alive? Dead?
He winced as he subconsciously took another breath. He needed a drink, and needed one now.
He could worry about the reflection bit later.
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Diagon Alley was a wreck.
Shop windows were broken, street bricks were torn up from the cement, and everything was crumbing. It looked as if a hundred years had passed, even though Harry knew he had only been gone for a month at most.
Dirt still covered his entire self. He had barely been able to find enough water to survive, let alone wash. He wondered how bad his injuries were. They were probably infected beyond healing, if the irregular bumps on his left arm and the yellow-brown strip on his leg were anything to go by.
Healer. Food. The next two items on his list. Nothing else took priority. If it hadn't been worth searching for his invisibility cloak in the desert, then cleanliness didn't rank at all.
Harry trudged on through the rubble of Diagon Alley. What else was there to do?