The Very Long Night Of Harry Potter

Chapter 8- 11:30 P.M.

Harry, followed closely by Ginny, Ron and Hermione, emerged from behind the tapestry-covered secret passage nearby Gryffindor Tower. Running quietly towards the portrait-covered entrance, Harry couldn't see anybody standing there.

Hoping that this meant that the twins had successfully gotten it open, he reached the (unoccupied) canvas and softly knocked on the frame.

It opened.

"In! Quickly!" Neville hissed at them, as they clambered in through the portrait hole. After they were all inside he shut it again.

Harry looked around the common room. It looked much the same as it had when he had left several hours previously, with the only difference being that someone (Neville?) had lit a fire.

Interrupting his inspection, the twins came down from the boys' staircase carrying backpacks full of bundles in a variety of sizes and shapes.

"George, Fred," Harry acknowledged them. Then his eyes fell on the sacks. "What are those?"

"These, Harry, are why we came here," Fred said, as he and his brother set their burdens down on one of the tables in the room. Pulling out the top bundle from his bag, he tossed it to Harry.

Harry opened the soft pack and pulled out...

"Now, why didn't I think of that?" Harry muttered to himself as he held the shimmering fabric of his invisibility cloak in his hands. "Alright," he said, wrapping himself in the cloak to make certain it worked, his voice issuing from apparently empty space in mid-air. "What's in the rest of those bundles?"

At that, Fred and George began unpacking the other bags, spreading their contents across the table. Harry shucked off the invisibility cloak and began to fold it back up.

"Decoy Detonators..." George said, placing down a box containing half-a-dozen small objects that tried to surreptitiously sneak out of their packaging.

"Marauder's Map..."

"Firebolt..."

"Two Cleansweeps..." as Ron and Ginny's brooms were added to the growing pile.

Harry placed the re-folded invisibility cloak on the table as the twins continued.

"Extendable Ears..."

The twins continued to add a variety of items to the tabletop heap, ranging from various Weasley Wizard Wheezes products to Sirius's pocketknife.

"Medical kit of basic healing potions..." George added a small white box with a red cross on it to the mass.

"Peruvian Instant Darkness Power..." Fred finished, a small vial of the stuff joining the accumulation on the table.

"Was my bottle of Felix Felicis also up there?" Harry asked hopefully.

His face fell when they shook their heads. Oh, well, I guess that was too much to hope for...

Harry looked over the mound of items on the table. The twins had chosen well; Harry could easily picture using them against Voldemort in this coma-dream. Except...

Harry tugged the Marauder's Map out from underneath a box of exploding smoke and concealment bombs. Holding it up, he said in a slightly puzzled tone, "But I thought that wands didn't work in here, so how can you get the map to work...?"

"Easily, Harry," Hermione said. "You're forgetting that while the wands don't work, there are sources of magic in here that can be used."

Harry looked intrigued. "Such as?" he prompted.

Hermione smiled and took the map from his hands and, as she opened it, she reached out and grasped Harry's wrist, maneuvering his fingertips onto the smooth parchment. "You, Harry," she said.

Harry gaped at her, then at his fingertips against the parchment, and then back to Hermione. "But..." he managed to get out, before Ginny walked over and put her finger on his lips, silencing him. "Just try it, Harry," she said softly.

Harry looked down at the piece of worn parchment at his fingertips. I guess it can't hurt, he told himself, and shrugged.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Immediately Harry's jaw dropped as lines of inks spread from his fingertips and began to cover the page. He watched in astonishment as the Marauders' Map, Presented By Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs, Purveyors of Aids To Magical Mischief Makers, sprang back to life under his fingertips.

He looked up at Hermione, bewilderment written all over his face.

"How?" he asked, somewhat stunned. "How did I do that?"

"Well, Harry," she began, "Under the terms of the spell, wands don't work as magical foci. In the real world, what they do is channel magical energy from the witch or wizard, focus and enhance it, and cast it as a spell." Harry nodded that he understood; he remembered Professor Flitwick telling them that in first year Charms.

She continued, "But in here, the magic is pervasive, everywhere, as part of the spell and as part of you, Harry. So while the terms of this curse prevent either side from casting any kind of spell, there's nothing to prevent you from utilizing that magic in other ways, like the map," as she indicated the parchment.

Harry, curious as to the particulars of what she had just said, opened his mouth.

Just in time to scream.

A wave of nausea washed over his unprepared mind, doubling him over. A chill hit him, but not just any chill, not a chill as in, "Oh, its a little cold in here, I'll throw on another blanket," but more a chill described as the sensation of someone walking over your grave. Harry shivered from it, to use the generic term. In truth, they more resembled convulsions. On the floor, spasming, joints popping, Harry dimly realized what was happening though the nausea, cold and pain.

Voldemort had just killed another of his fragments and Harry, unprepared, defenses down, was feeling the pain through the link binding his shattered mind together.

After a few moments, the sensations passed, and Harry was able to get back to his feet shakily. He looked around the common room. He hadn't been the only one affected, although, by the looks of it he had gotten it the worst. Harry swallowed to clear his raw throat and asked in a wavering tone, "Who?"

Neville spoke up, voice quavering, and said one word.

"Cedric."

Harry had thought that he had been furious before, when he had heard about Luna. He hadn't even been close.

He ran over to the Marauder's Map, picking up the piece of parchment from where it had fluttered after he had dropped it, and began intensely scanning the map. As his eyes tracked up and down the lines of passages drawn on the map, he said fiercely, "Where is he, where is he, where the hell is he...?"

Hermione, looking rather green, got back to her feet and said quietly to Harry, "Cedric is... was on the third floor, Harry."

Harry immediately shifted his intent gaze over to that area on the expanse of parchment. Within moments, he hit paydirt.

"There!" he shouted. "He's on the second floor! Quick, grab the brooms and we can catch him!"

Harry dropped the map and ran towards the table. Yanking his broomstick out from the pile, upsetting a bottle of Chameleon Shampoo Additive (temporary, but irremovable, liquid Disillusionment Charm; "Make Your Enemies Disappear!") in the process, he ran towards the door, as Ron picked up the abandoned map from the floor and startled Harry with a sharp intake of breath and a muttered curse.

"What is it, Ron?" Harry asked, mounting his broom. Ron gestured mutely at the map. Harry looked at the worn parchment, not quite registering what Ron was showing him. Then he saw it, and the shock hit him so hard that he fell off of his broom.

Picking himself up off the floor, he snatched the map out of Ron's hands and stared at it desperately.

The dot darting around on the second floor labeled Tom Riddle was fading in and out. As Harry watched, thunderstruck, it oscillated back and forth between there and not-there twice more, and then finally disappeared.

Feeling utterly stunned, Harry sank to his knees, the map held loosely at his side, the fury draining out of him, leaving behind a dull ache of anger and frustration.

"What just happened...?" he asked softly.

"Well, the curse is still in effect, Harry, so he's not dead. That much I do know," Hermione said. "But as for where Voldemort went, I don't know. It could be..." She trailed off.

"Could be what?" Harry prompted, feeling a mixture of desperation and irritation.

"Well, it could be that the map is your perception of your conscious mind, so since he's disappeared from the map that might mean that he's hidden himself in your unconscious mind."

Harry, sinking the rest of the way to the floor, began to massage his temples, fighting another headache. "What do you mean?" he asked, suddenly feeling very tired.

"It means," Hermione said, "that he's hiding in whatever part of this castle represents the part of your mind that operates below the threshold of conscious thought. Hum..." She stopped, finger tapping against her chin.

"What?" Harry asked, getting up from the floor.

"Well, that explains what Lupin and Cedric found in the potions dungeons," she said.

Harry, having moved to the table, paused in the process of loading down his robes with various items from the pile, to give her a curious and worried look.

"What did they find?" he asked, sticking Sirius's knife in his back pocket.

George jumped in. "Nothing."

"As in nothing there."

"No Voldemort..."

Fred continued, "No potions being made..."

"No dirty cauldrons..."

"No smells or smoke..."

"Just a bunch of empty, ransacked ingredient cupboards," George finished.

Hermione continued, "So that probably means that wherever he's hiding, that's where he's set himself up to make his potions, and that he's gone back to resupply."

His anger and frustration having increased with each word, Harry reflected on the medium-sized library of profanity that he had picked up over the last decade or so - mostly from Dudley - that would have described how he felt at the moment quite well; somehow, though, he refrained from venting his anger, and instead asked, through gritted teeth, "Is there any good news?"

"Well, as long as he's not on the map it means he's in his hiding place, so he won't be attacking us out here," Hermione said somewhat half-heartedly.

At this, Harry, pockets full, sagged into a chair as the others began to equip themselves, filling their cloak pockets with assorted and sundry items.

Lupin entered the common room at this point, looking winded but determined, his own face set. Harry acknowledged him with a slight nod, feeling too burned out from his emotional rollercoaster ride of a few minutes previously; just wanting to rest for a few minutes in his favorite armchair and recharge...

He watched Lupin walk up to the table and start to load up his cloak, taking the medical kit, a few smoke and noise bombs, along with some of the Weasley's Wildfire Whiz-Bangs from a medium-sized, mostly empty crate labeled Deflagration Deluxe sitting open on the table and the remainder of the bottle of Chameleon Shampoo Additive that Harry had upset, its former contents now rendering a portion of the tabletop, and some of the supplies, transparent.

As they were detangling and dividing up the Extendable Ears from their box, Harry picked up the Marauders' Map and began to stare intensely at the spot where the dot marking Tom Riddle had disappeared. After a moment or two, his eyes began to wander aimlessly over the parchment...

And landed squarely on the library.

Harry started in his chair. "Hermione," he said in a low, intent and intense voice, "didn't you say that the library represents my memory?"

"Yes, Harry. What about it?"

"So all of my memories are in books like the one that Cedric showed me, the one with my discussion with Dumbledore?"

"Yes, but..."

Harry cut her off. "So, for Tom to have looked through my memories, like he obviously did to know my name and such, he would have needed to go through a lot of books, right?"

"Yes, Harry, but could you please explain what you mean?"

Harry got up out of his chair and strode over to the portrait hole, suddenly feeling a lift in his mood. "C'mon. We're going to the library. Let's see if we can get an idea of what Tom knows about me so far, and how far he's gotten in catching up on what I know about him."

"But how are we going to do that?" Neville asked, puzzled.

"Easily," Harry said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "I have a really hard time picturing Voldemort re-shelving books at all, much less when he's so pressed for time."

~*~*~*~*~

"...now remember, Ms. Granger, that when you first join with Mr. Potter, it will take several minutes for the spell to reach its full potency. So when you first find yourself in Mr. Potter's mind, you will not be able to move for the early portion of that time. You will be able to hear what is going on almost immediately after the connection is made, however, and sight will follow shortly. When you find that you can speak, the connection will be at approximately half-strength. Movement will be possible shortly thereafter..."

Hermione listened intensely as Healers Pomfrey and Alexander prepared her to undergo the potion/spell procedure that would allow her to enter Harry's coma. They had been advising and informing her for the last ten minutes about the spell, the effects and what she could expect.

"...if what we know about this curse is correct, Mr. Potter's personality has probably shattered into about a dozen semi-autonomous fragments, each with a different aspect and avatar..."

Ron was listening with half an ear. To say that he was unhappy was a bit of an understatement at the moment. Not only was he worrying about the life of his best friend, but couldn't do a thing to help him, he had to stand by helplessly and watch his girlfriend prepare herself to be put in the same situation.

"...so you might find yourself sharing an avatar with a fragment of his personality, or potentially, forming your own independent image in his mind..."

Ron thought back to the row of several minutes previous. He and Ginny had fought tooth and nail to be the one to go under, against their mother's wishes. While she hadn't been pleased at the choice, Mrs. Weasley had backed Hermione as the one to take the potion; as the most experienced and powerful of the three, she had argued, who could be a better choice? Ron hadn't bought that; he knew that his mother didn't want to risk her youngest children, especially when there was, to her mind, a much more suitable candidate available.

"...the primary fragment will have the avatar and personality of Mr. Potter and will act as a sort of central hub for the connection holding his mind together. While the other fragments will have different avatars, please remember, even if they are images of people you know, or even yourself, they are not those individuals; they are representations of portions of Mr. Potter's personality..."

Ron had been convinced several minutes into the shouting match. Between Hermione's pleading with him to see reason and his mother's temper, he had backed down; he hadn't been very happy about it, but he had backed down. Actually, it had been more his girlfriend on the edge of begging him that had made him back down. Ginny, on the other hand, had taken a few minutes more to convince. Quite a few minutes more.

"...if you find yourself sharing an avatar of yourself with a fragment of Mr. Potter's mind, you will, in all likelihood, be incorporated, to some greater-or-lesser degree, with that portion of his personality, including the specific memories of that avatar since the spell began, as well as..."

There was something about Ginny that was nagging Ron. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something. She had put up quite a fight for her to be the one to help Harry, and had only conceded defeat after Mr. Weasley had pleaded with her to see reason. At the moment, she was sitting in her chair, glowering at her parents, Ron, and, most especially, Hermione. She was also apparently listening intently to the Healers' words as they instructed Hermione; Ron had expected that.

"...I have had to use the Communicus Morpheus potion seven times in the past fifteen years, but always for a deep or irreversible coma caused by other means, and always as a last resort," Alexander was saying in her most professional tone. "However, this is the first time that we know of that it will have been used to join with a person in Mr. Potter's precise situation, as the spell You-Know-Who (Hermione successfully resisted the urge to roll her eyes) used on his receptacle has not been used in well over half-a-millennia..."

His sister had obviously dearly wished to be the one to go under and help Harry. Hell, he was surprised his sister hadn't just hexed Hermione to get her out of the way. Well, maybe not that surprised, as their mother was in the room, and there was no way she could have the bollocks to do anything to Hermione with their mum being right there... Then again, she had hexed Dawlish and taunted and threatened the Minister... However, on the other hand, he had also done that, so he could hardly blame her. But there was definitely something about Ginny's behavior that didn't add up to him...

"...also, please remember, be prepared for possible settings for the coma-dream. This spell uses a location from the memory to represent the mind. It will be, in all likelihood, highly complex, and very realistic. Considering Mr. Potter's personal history, we consider the most likely location to be Hogwarts. However, there is a small chance that the spell will have selected another location. We believe possibilities include Diagon Alley..."

He thought it over, taking apart aspect by aspect, strategizing and analyzing as if in a chess match. It was definitely Ginevra Molly Weasley sitting like a half-tamed tiger in the small ward, two seats over from where he sat; she hadn't been replaced or controlled, so it couldn't be that...

"...the potion will take effect almost immediately. Remember, it's important to take the dose as quickly as possible, preferably in a single swallow."

It wasn't the row several minutes earlier; if anything, Ron would have said that she had given up too easily. It wasn't her current temper with the other occupants of the ward; Ron was also rather angry with his parents, although, admittedly, he was more worried about Hermione than upset with her.

"Now, Ms. Granger, we'll be needing your wand for the procedure, as well as Mr. Potter's, so if you would please..."

Besides, although Ron didn't like the reason for it, he had to admit that 'Mione looked good in the hospital gown that her robe had been transfigured into. As a matter of fact, she looked very good in it. Maybe later the two of them could... Whoa there, Weasley, he told himself, you can fantasize about your girlfriend later. Ron descended back into his reverie, eliminating possibilities, one after another, as Hermione handed over hers and Harry's wands to the senior Healer.

The sound of Healer Smethwyck entering the small ward, carrying the vial of potion for Hermione to take, barely registered on Ron's consciousness. Having, by that point, exhausted all of the individual possibilities, he had begun to look at possible combinations of what might be bugging him. He was so intent upon this that he barely heard Healer Pomfrey ask Hermione if she was certain and ready to undergo the procedure.

Her affirmative reply to both questions, however, ejected him from his contemplative trance with all of the grace of a patron from a bar being forcefully assisted by the bouncer.

He looked up at Hermione, the reality of the situation suddenly sinking in. She was going to be in a coma, with Harry, putting her life on the line, fighting a fragment of the soul of the Darkest Wizard in over a century, and he could do nothing to help. Pushing his nagging feeling about Ginny to the back of his mind, he rose from his chair, and went over to Hermione, unaware of how close he had been to figuring out Ginny's secret plan, something which would have dire consequences in the near future.

"Yes, Ron, what is it?" Hermione asked, the small vial of silver-colored potion in her hand, hair bound back into a ponytail to keep it out of the way for the procedure. She had never looked so beautiful to Ron, but then again, he had told her once that she could be dressed in a burlap sack and he would still think that.

In a voice rough from anxiety, Ron said, "Good Luck, 'Mione," and pulled her into a tight embrace, not caring that his parents were in the room, not knowing, or particularly caring, if they knew about the two of them.

Somewhat startled at this public display of affection, Hermione just sank into the embrace at first. Within moments, however, she had wrapped her arms around him as well, and, as their lips found each other, they began kissing passionately. Ron feeling determined to give her something to remember, determined not to be saying goodbye, but to give her something to come back to after facing that monster, determined to show her how much he loved her. He didn't care that all eyes in the room (excluding Harry's, of course) were on them; Ron's entire universe was the petite, brown-haired, brown-eyed witch in his arms.

He pulled her in tighter, feeling her ribs and backbone underneath his hands through the thin hospital gown, feeling just right, not prominent like Pansy Parkinson, who looked like her skin had been stretched taut over her bones by some spell, or buried under flesh like Millicent Bulstrode, who was currently giving Dudley competition, as Harry had commented during one of his rare lighter moments.

Ron remembered Hermione joking a few weeks previously about the 'Saving the World' exercise plan, after he had first made that particular observation about her figure after an extended snogging session. This single recollection was but the first pebble in an avalanche of memories that cascaded through him, and he went with the flow of remembrances, paying no attention to the increasingly urgent messages from his ribs and lungs as his reminiscences of Hermione hit him, full force, and he welcomed them.

He remembered their first real kiss, five months previously. He remembered when he had told her that he loved her, moments before that. He remembered waking up one morning in Grimmauld Place a month previously on the couch, still in his rumpled clothes from the previous day, a heavy book on his lap from a overlong research session the previous night, and Hermione asleep in his arms, her book fallen on the floor, her face at peace, clear of the persistent nightmares that plagued all three of the trio. He remembered when he had realized that he was in love with her, really, truly, in love with her. He remembered one night, after a six-hour-long strategy session with Tonks, Kingsley, and Lupin, her saying sleepily to him that, while his time with Lavender had upgraded him from teaspoon to tablespoon, he was currently at serving spoon status and was headed rapidly in the direction of ladle. He remembered dancing with her at his brother's wedding. He remembered a night back in September when she had woken him at three in the morning, screaming and moaning in her sleep in the room next door, and that all it taken to calm her down in the midst of her nightmare was his voice and his touch. He remembered Charlie saying, when he came to Grimmauld Place on Order business, that they had the worst case of head-over-heels-in-love he had ever seen, then Hermione having pulled him into another kiss in pointed response, whereupon he had dimly registered his older brother saying something about being scarred for life and being worse than Bill and Fleur and then leaving the kitchen to the snogging couple. He remembered the ring... the ring...

The ring which was now waiting in a Muggle jewelry shop, waiting with a deposit under his name. He and Harry had gone for a walk through Muggle London two weeks previously to clear their heads, while Hermione had declined to come along, staying behind at Grimmauld Place, and he had spotted it, sitting there in a glass display case in the window, as if waiting for him. He and Harry had ran straight to Gringotts to get money out of Ron's vault and changed it into the appropriate Muggle money for the deposit.

It had taken every single Knut (and Sickle and Galleon) he had, but now, now there was a silver ring, an engagement ring, set with a sapphire and two small diamonds, with his name next to it on the deposit slip, waiting for him. Waiting for him to come and finish buying it, even if it took the next two or three years, so he could give it to Hermione.

More memories, memories of rows in the common room and battles with Death Eaters, of Christmases and summer breaks, of trolls in bathrooms and Slytherins in classes (much the same thing, really), of Yule Balls and giant snakes, of her and her alone, spun through his brain, no thought in his mind except for her; a situation that was about to be changed.

Rudely.

"ACCIO POTION!"

The moment Ron heard the shouted spell he realized what had been nagging him about Ginny in a fraction of a second, boiling back to the forefront of his mind, the pieces falling together in an instant.

It had been the look on her face when she had first come into the ward. The other emotion that had been written on her face, the one that he hadn't identified before Healer Alexander had come in, hitting him with the door. It had been Determination, written all over her face, not hidden below her emotional shields as it must have been ever since. Determination to help Harry, the man she loved, no matter the cost or obstacles.

Before, she had protected Harry from the Minister, not caring that, in all likelihood, she had just ruined her future by standing up to him. Then, just before, during the row, she had given up too easily, enough to put Ron off of her trail. She had listened intently to the Healers lecturing Hermione, drinking in the information. All the while planning to take Hermione's place, to be the one to go under and help Harry, putting on a good show, trying to fool anyone who might have guessed her plan and succeeding.

What had happened then, he realized, was that Ginny had waited for the opportune moment, waited for Hermione's grasp on the vial to loosen as she was wrapped in Ron's embrace, waited till the angle was just right, so that there would be no obstacles between herself and Hermione, no chance that someone else could catch the vial in mid-air, not allowing the slightest chance of interference, and summoned the vial from a mere six or seven feet in front of her.

The vial of the silvery potion flew out of Hermione's weak grip and into Ginny's waiting hands.

Ron and Hermione simultaneously broke the kiss instantly, whirling towards Ron's only sister.

"Ginny, NO!" they both cried, but it was too late.

In a single, smooth motion, Ginny had opened the vial and drained the contents in a single swallow. Suddenly feeling very cold and weak as the potion began to go into effect, she said softly to the shocked room, "There, now you have no choice but to use me..."

Ginny felt the empty vial slip from her fingers along with her wand, and dimly heard the sound of shattering crystal as she felt herself falling down a long, dark and cold tunnel...