The Very Long Night Of Harry Potter

Chapter 2- 8:30 P.M.

"Hermione, what are you doing here? I thought that the castle was empty," Harry said, feeling rather shocked and confused as he helped the cloak-clad witch to her feet in the Hogwarts entrance hall, where they had just collided as he had just chased her down as she ran towards the Great Hall.

Hermione looked at him, and shook her head in a rather bemused way, setting her hair and hood swaying. "Harry, of course we're here. But I don't think you quite realize where here is, do you?" she said.

"Wha... what do you mean?" Harry said, feeling very confused and somewhat frustrated.

She smiled, a very mysterious smile, and lifted the hood of her cloak back up over her head. "Come," she said from behind the heavy fabric, "I am not allowed to say any more for now. Come with me and all will be made clear."

She turned and strode towards the doors to the Great Hall. Harry followed her, muttering to himself something along the lines of everything being made clear being a first so far in his life, but slightly more explicitly.

Opening the doors, she walked in. Harry followed her as she walked the length of the Great Hall into the small room past the staff table where Harry had gone in his fourth year at the start of the Triwizard Tournament.

Harry gasped as he crossed the threshold into the room. Waiting inside were nine more cloaked and hooded figures, standing in a line in front of the fire, a line that Harry thought was eerily reminiscent of the Death Eater ring from Voldemort's rebirthing ceremony, particularly as Hermione, still in her cloak, took her place in the line.

Looking around the room, Harry noted that the paintings in the room were also empty of their occupants, but aside from that, the only difference between the room now and the last time he had been in here were the robed figures. Harry looked them over. Hermione was mid-way down the line, having filled in a gap that had been apparently waiting for her; the figures were of different heights and builds beneath their cloaks, all of whom seemed rather familiar to Harry for some reason that he couldn't place. Hoping he could finally get some answers, Harry took a deep breath to steady himself and turned to face the line.

"What's going on?" he asked. "You promised me answers, Hermione. So?" The figures, Hermione included, remained impassive. "Why are you standing there? What's happening to me, to us!? Why is the school empty!? Why are we here!?" Nothing. The line of cloaked figures remained impassive. Harry's temper began to give way. He roared at them, "WHAT THE HELL..."

~*~*~*~*~

"...is going on?" Ron Weasley asked the Healer rather irritably, as he suddenly returned to Harry's ward, with another Healer in tow, almost literally. To his great surprise, the second Healer, a rather petite strawberry-blond in her early to mid-thirties, turned to him and said, rather sweetly, "We're testing a rather worrisome theory of Andrews', dear (Hermione bristled). May I examine that cup, please?"

Ron turned to face Hermione, a questioning look on his face. Hermione nodded yes slowly, obviously reluctant to bring someone else in on what was happening to Harry. Ron stood up from his chair and removed from his pocket what had once been the personal cup of Helga Hufflepuff herself and was now little more than a blasted piece of metal and handed it to the female Healer, whose name tag read L. Alexander.

She took it and paced around the room several times, examining it closely, using several spells on it that shone and sparkled different colors. Ron turned and looked quizzically at Hermione, but even she seemed mystified.

After about ten or fifteen minutes, Healer Alexander seemed to have finished her examination of the defunct Horcrux. Turning to the other Healer, she said softly, "Yes, Andrews, it seems that your theory was essentially correct," and at this statement, he seemed to be rather appalled, "this cup was booby-trapped."

At this, Ron and Hermione shot up from their chairs, both shouting, "WHAT!?" After a few moments making assorted incredulous sounds, they had both calmed down enough to feel embarrassment at not having considered that possibility themselves, as Ron dimly considered the fact that this was probably the first time that Hermione had been as surprised as he was, and at the same time. "Booby-trapped? In what way?" Hermione asked, sounding very worried.

"I'm not quite sure," said the older witch with a slightly distracted air as she continued to examine the cup closely. "All I could tell from those simple spells was that there was an entrapment spell of some sort placed upon this object, but as for the particulars, I can't really say just yet. I'll need to run more tests on this artifact, that is, if you two don't mind?"

"No, please, take it, find out what you can," Ron said, a definite note of panic in his voice.

Hermione knew what he was thinking without turning to look at him; that any sort of hex or trap that Voldemort would place on one of his possessions did not bode well for the victim. She cut in, "How long do you think it will take...?" her voice and face falling at the expression on the Healer's face.

"Hours, at the least," she said, now examining the base of the cup with her wand. "However, any information you could give me would be invaluable. It would be highly useful, for instance, to know whose object this was, its history, and what it was being used for," she added. "With that information, I could begin to narrow down possibilities and thus, tests that I would have to perform on it."

Ron and Hermione exchanged worried glances, and began to fill in, for what felt like the umpteenth time, Healer Alexander on the history of Tom Marvolo Riddle's quest for immortality.

~*~*~*~*~

Harry stood in the small room off the Great Hall, glaring at the line of ten cloaked figures standing in front of him. He had been shouting at them for at least the last five minutes, demanding to know what was going on, asking question after question with no answer or even a response of any sort. He had, at this point, given up and was pacing back and forth, occasionally throwing nasty glances at the line. He didn't know why they weren't answering him, or who they were, or why Hermione had joined them, or even why she, in particular, wasn't answering his questions, which was, as far as he could recall, a first.

A (very) small part of his mind that wasn't angry noted that, although he had just been shouting at the top of his lungs for several minutes, he wasn't the slightest bit hoarse, indeed, his throat felt fine... just like before, he had been running flat out and hadn't even grown tired... something very odd was going on here... and he wasn't getting anywhere in unraveling it by being angry...

Calming himself down by an act of will, Harry decided to continue questioning them. Maybe, just maybe, he'd get an answer from these mysterious cloaked figures... and Percy Weasley might just join the circus and become a clown, too, sniped his temper snidely from one corner of his mind. Still, it wasn't like he had anything to lose.

"What's going on here?"

Nothing. Dang, but he'd tried that one already, so he wasn't expecting that to work. Maybe questioning the particulars...

"Where is everybody else?"

Nothing.

"Why are all of the paintings empty?"

No response.

"Why are you standing there in those robes for?"

The only movement in the room came from the fire in the fireplace and from Harry himself.

"Why am I not tiring or going hoarse?"

Muggle still-life paintings would have been jealous of the reaction that the figures displayed.

"Why did I have to chase Hermione here?"

On and on and on Harry asked questions, his temper rising at each (non-)response. Finally, after minutes more of fruitless questioning, it broke, and he roared again, "WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? WHY AM I HERE? WHO ARE YOU?"

This final question seemed to be the one that they were waiting for. As one, each of the figures lifted its hands up and lowered its hood. Harry, caught completely flat-footed, stood dumbfounded as their faces came into view...

~*~*~*~*~

Utter silence reigned in Harry's private ward in St. Mungo's when Ron and Hermione had finished speaking. Healers Andrews and Alexander both seemed to be exhibiting varying degrees of shock, horror, and in Alexander's case, understanding.

Picking up the mangled remains of the cup from Harry's nightstand, where she had placed it during Ron and Hermione's discourse, she recommenced her examination of it.

As she turned it this way and that, she said, in a slightly distracted tone, "Thank you, that explains a lot of what I am seeing here...," as she cast another spell on it, then frowned as the light from the spell turned from silver to a blood-red, her expression quite clearly stating Uh-Oh.

Ron and Hermione caught it, and then exchanged similar looks with each other, worried about what this might mean for Harry.

The Healer, any and all hints of distraction gone from her voice and posture, strode over to Harry's bedside and, tapping him lightly with her wand, muttered a series of incantations.

Hermione's jaw dropped, followed closely by Ron's. Hanging over the still form of their friend, suspended in mid-air, was a highly detailed, three-dimensional diagram of his body, showing a translucent view of Harry's torso and chest cavity, with lines leading away from his heart, brain, eyes, liver, lungs, and other essential organs to graphs showing their functions, complete with auditory cues.

Turning to the two of them, she saw their expressions and laughed lightly. "My mum's a Muggle A&E surgeon in Dublin. I got the idea for this," indicating the image in the air, "when I went to go and visit her a couple of years ago, from all of the monitoring equipment that they had around the place, and while we don't usually need this kind of thing, when we do, like now, this spell really comes in handy."

Looking back at the charts and graphs in-mid air, she pointed a few of them out to Ron and Hermione. "See that there?" indicating the lines leading away from the image's head "with the eye movements and the brain waves? Muggles call that R.E.M. sleep. He's dreaming. Hum... That's odd... there are two sets of brain waves in there, but one of them looks very faint... it might almost not be there..."

Coming out of her reverie, she turned back to the diagram of Harry and tapped it once with her wand. Looking back at Ron and Hermione, she said, "It's now set to record all of Mr. Potter's vital signs, so, hopefully, I'll have some more information to work with after I'm done going over this object," indicating the blasted piece of metal in her other hand, "and then we can hopefully figure out how to help Mr. Potter."

As she went out the door, she turned and said, "I will probably be back within the hour, two at the most. Come Andrews, I'm going to need your assistance for this."

After the Healers left the ward, Ron and Hermione sat down on the comfy chairs to wait for their return. Resting their heads on each other's shoulders, Ron began stroking her hair as they fought falling asleep to the sound of Harry's heartbeat as it came through the monitoring spell. Lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub...lub-dub... lub-dub... with each beat marking the graph in mid-air with a pattern of hills and valleys, etched in green. Lub-dub...lub-dub... lub-dub... lub-dub...lub-dub... lub-dub...

After several minutes of listening to the rhythmic and soothing sound of their friend's heart, Ron turned his head and softly said into Hermione's ear, as though not to wake their sleeping friend, "Hermione, what's an A&E?"

She smirked and started explaining to Ron about Muggle hospitals, trying not to laugh at the incredulous expression on his face as Harry's heartbeat continued its metronome-like rhythm in the background.