The Very Long Night Of Harry Potter

Chapter 10- 12:30 A.M.

"...DO YOU REALLY THINK SO LITTLE OF ME, MUM, THAT YOU THINK I WOULD WILLINGLY LET MY ONLY SISTER PUT HERSELF IN HARMS WAY, BECAUSE IT SEEMS WHAT'S YOU'RE SAYING!" Ron shouted at his mother.

Hermione winced in her seat. Ron and Mrs. Weasley had been rowing with each other for the last five minutes.

"...WELL, RONALD, I DON'T KNOW. AFTER ALL, YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THAT YOU AND HERMIONE..."

It had started shortly after they had finished linking Harry and Ginny...

"...so now what?" Ron had asked Healer Alexander, who Pomfrey had asked to stay and monitor the connection, as she was the resident expert on it. She had agreed after Pomfrey had promised to inform her fiancée, Byron, that she wouldn't be home that night.

The mediwitch had answered, "Now? Now we wait."

"But... but..." Ron had blubbered.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weasley, but there's nothing else we can do at this point but wait for Mr. Potter and Ms. Weasley to emerge from the coma..." Alexander said.

Mrs. Weasley cut her off. "But you must have something!? Another spell, a potion, a charm, a talisman, something! I mean, you're healers, for God's sake! You've got to have something!" she said, on the verge of hysteria.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Weasley, but there's nothing more I can do but stay here and monitor Mr. Potter and your daughter for any changes, help keep them stable in case of any emergencies..."

At this, Mrs. Weasley let out a small cry and sank back into her chair. Mr. Weasley put a comforting arm around her shoulders as the Weasley matriarch broke down and cried, the full realization of what her daughter had done flooding through her, all of the terrible scenarios running through her mind in full detail etching away at her sprit and will.

After several minutes of her heaving sobs, Ron managed to tear his horrified gaze away from his sister and best friend, lying prone on the bed, bound together by a silvery rope of thought, and turned to his mother.

"I'm sorry, Mum," he said, "I'm so sorry. If I had figured it out just a bit sooner...if I had seen it sooner, I would have stopped her."

He turned away after she didn't respond.

"Would you have? Stopped her?" a hard and angry voice came from behind him.

Ron wheeled around. His mother was looking at him with fury in her eyes.

"What do you mean by that?" he said, feeling his stomach lurch at the look his mother was giving him.

"What I mean by that is would you have stopped her? I mean, look, Hermione's still awake and walking around..." Mrs. Weasley said, a note of hysteria taking hold in her voice.

Don't rise, Ron told himself, it's the grief talking, it's not mum, it's the grief; she's not sure if she'll ever see Ginny alive again and she's lashing out at the nearest target...

"...and look, your sister took the vial right out of her hands when you two were standing there, all nice and happy," Mrs. Weasley snorted and continued, "but you didn't want Hermione to go under, so you helped your sister ignore my wishes and..."

Ron couldn't hold himself back any longer. "That's absurd! I would never..." and that was as far as he got before his mother exploded.

"NO! WHAT'S ABSURD IS THAT MY ONLY DAUGHTER IS LYING IN A COMA THAT SHE MIGHT NEVER WAKE UP FROM AND THAT HER OLDER BROTHER HELPED PUT HER THERE!"

Ron had gaped like a fish for a moment at his mother's unfounded accusation, along with everyone else in the room. Unfortunately, however, he had recovered first... and retaliated. That had been five minutes ago and things had gotten worse from there.

Hermione sat quietly in her chair as her boyfriend and his mother yelled back and forth, staying as unobtrusive as possible, not wanting to get pulled into the emotional argument. She and Ron had had some spectacular rows over the last seven years, but they were nothing, nothing, compared to this.

For her part, Hermione was stunned, numb. She had been ready to help Harry, ready to be put in a coma to help the man she considered as a brother... and Ginny had snatched that away from her. She felt absolutely useless, absolutely helpless. She glanced over at Ginny, lying on the bed next to Harry, both of them looking so peaceful and serene in the midst of the shouting match that Ron and Mrs. Weasley were engaged in.

A shriek of outrage tore the air in the middle of one of Mrs. Weasley's grief-driven rants and she sagged into the waiting arms of her husband, who helped her into a chair, still shouting but softer and softer, until she was only mumbling, her agitation too great to quell even with the spell that had apparently been used on her. Hermione and Ron, startled at this, looked and saw Healer Alexander standing behind where Mrs. Weasley had been ranting at Ron. Floating next to her was an apparently miniature version of her monitoring spell; instead of graphs, it had numbers. She waved her wand and the six-inch tall translucent outline of a neutral human figure disappeared, along with the backwards Arabic digits.

She looked at the shocked teens and said grimly, "I regret having to do that, but her blood pressure was 220/180, had been for five minutes, and I was worried that she was going to have a coronary. Don't worry, it was a simple sedative spell, we use it to calm and immobilize hysterical patients; it's sort of a softer Stunning spell. I'll give her a more-strongly brewed Draught of Peace when the spell wears off in a few minutes."

~*~*~*~*~

With the twins in the lead, Harry, Ginny and company walked down the corridor leading the age-darkened double doors of the library. With Neville keeping a close watch on the map for Voldemort's reappearance, they reached the doors and entered the familiar domain of Madam Pince, and stopped dead.

The place was a shambles; the contents of several entire bookcases within sight of the doors were on the floor, and, judging by the enormous pile of books on one of the study tables, Harry was certain that they were not alone in being ransacked.

Ginny swallowed at the sight of the devastation. He did all of this in less than three hours!? What was he looking for?

Harry was looking over the raided library with not a small amount of irritated anger, barely noticing Ginny's expression as she struggled with mild trepidation. Great, he thought, how much ground do we have to cover?

"Alright," he said, "This is what we're going to do. We'll pair off, so nobody's wandering around alone. Neville, Remus, stay here, Neville keep an eye on the map. Remus, you go through that table of books, see what he decided was important enough for him to carry them all the way out here."

He turned to the twins and said, "Fred, George, you two take that part of the library," motioning to the left of Madam Pince's desk, which was the general area where, in the real library, the Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Transfiguration stacks were.

Harry continued, "Ron and I will take over there," indicating to the right of the massive circulation desk, towards what would have been History of Magic, Astronomy, Arithmancy, and Divination sections.

"And, Ginny, you and Hermione can take the middle," which included Herbology, Muggle Studies, some various stacks categorized as Other, and the Restricted Section.

Ginny opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it again. She guessed that Harry was still upset with her and, based off of what she was feeling from the link, that if she went with him to search this library, they would be getting very little actual searching done as they would either end up shouting at each other or snogging each other silly.

She was starting to get the feeling that, since she was joined with the avatar of Harry's ability to love, she was increasing the intensity of that emotion for him due to the presence of her own love for him. Increasing the potential, so to speak, she thought with a small wicked grin, a grin that she immediately stifled when Ron looked at her, a mixture of alarm and warning in his expression.

Ginny turned to the Hermione-avatar, said, "Shall we?" and walked off towards the bookcase that in the real world was labeled Electricity.

~*~*~*~*~

Harry watched them go into the stacks and turned towards Ron. With a forced cheer that he knew was fooling nobody, he said, "All right then, let's go. History of Magic section first; I've got a hunch."

They walked through several of the other sections on their way to the History stacks against the far wall. Overall, they were untouched, if a little bare, with only the occasional volume on the floor to show that Voldemort had even looked through here. Bending over to pick one up in the Divination section, Harry flipped through it.

Not surprisingly, considering the metaphorical nature of this damn coma so far, the book didn't deal with Divination, per se. Instead it was a memory of a daydream he had once had, back at the end of his third year, a daydream that had involved Sirius being declared innocent and Harry going to live with him instead of the Dursleys. Harry felt a sharp pain at the thought of Sirius, but managed to keep it contained. Sirius, both the real one and the metaphorical one that had sacrificed himself two hours previously, wouldn't want him to cripple himself with grief. Harry set the book down on a half empty shelf and looked around.

But where are all the other daydreams I've had? he wondered. These few shelves can't be all of them, so where did they go?

Dismissing the thought as unimportant, he continued walking down the aisle and turned into what should have been the History of Magic section.

And stopped.

The area had been completely and utterly demolished. It looked like Voldemort had simply tipped over the bookcases, dumping their contents on the floor, and then stood them back up. There was only one set of shelves in the entire section untouched. All of the others were scattered on the floor in a pile the length of the aisle and a foot or two deep.

Harry knelt at the entrance to the center aisle, picked up one of one of the books and looked at the bronze cover titles.
Voldemort...
Tom Marvolo Riddle...
Horcrux...
Diary...
Prof. Slughorn...

Harry felt a small thrill of satisfaction at having his hunch proven correct; the History of Magic section was his mental record of his encounters with and knowledge of Voldemort. The thrill was quickly swamped by horror, however. How could they tell what Voldemort did and did not know from this mess of books scattered over the floor? Where would they even begin?

Gritting his teeth, Harry turned to Ron, who had started picking up books from the floor and placing them haphazardly back onto the shelves.

"Don't bother, mate. Let's just go through them and pile them up, get an idea of what he could know."

Ron nodded grimly, sat down on the floor and started pulling books towards himself.

Harry, stepping gingerly through the carpet of books, made his way to the middle where the untouched shelves was. Checking them over, he saw, without surprise, that they dealt with the cup-Horcrux that had landed him in this predicament to begin with.

He turned to Ron. "I'll go the other end and start looking there; we'll meet in the middle." Ron absently nodded that he understood, his shaggy red hair getting into his eyes as his head bobbed. He pushed it back out of the way absently as he concentrated on his current book, which seemed to be about the size of a small hippopotamus, and shrugging absently, tossed the book aside; there was an appreciable vibration in the floor when it landed.

Harry carefully stepped through the books on the floor, not knowing what the permanent consequences would be if he damaged any of the books. Musing that he should have asked Hermione before she went off with Ginny... with Ginny...

Harry lost concentration as the image of red hair, freckles, and a wide grin invaded his senses, and made a misstep onto a purple and black bound cover, which slipped out from under him. Startled, Harry swung his arms out and managed to grab a hold of the empty shelves on either side of him, preventing a forceful introduction of his bum with the floor.

Pulling himself back upright, Harry turned around towards Ron, who was still squatting on the floor, undoubtedly knowing that Harry was all right; Harry could have sworn that he saw a slight smirk amid the freckles on the image of his best mate's face for a moment.

Turning back around, Harry continued over to the far end of the aisle, determinedly keeping himself from thinking about her.

Reaching his destination, he carefully bent down, cleared himself a spot on the floor and sat.

It took him seventeen books to realize that he hadn't registered a single thing listed on any of the covers, his mind having been stubbornly stuck on the memory of their kiss back in the common room a half-hour previously.

Ears burning in a shade that the real Ron would have been proud of, Harry looked at the books he had gathered together, determinedly not glancing at Ron as he did so. His heart sank. One of the slimmer volumes read:
Voldemort
Job interview
Defense Against The Dark Arts job
Defense Against The Dark Arts job jinx

Another had the Gaunts listed, along with the ring that Dumbledore had destroyed, and their speculations about the locket. Another entire book was filled with the various discussions that he had had with the real Ron and Hermione over the past six months about its possible whereabouts.

Harry began to clear himself a path back to Ron, roughly stacking the books up against the shelves after giving them a cursory glance.

The rebirth ceremony, the Sorcerer's Stone, information about his scar, the battle at the Ministry, it was all there. Merlin, Harry thought, What doesn't he know now?

Harry picked up another book, this one green and blue, from the floor in front of him, glanced at it, made to put it on the stack next to him, and stopped.
Horcrux...
Diary...
Basilisk...
Parseltongue...
Ginny...

Ginny... Ginny... The name reverberated in his mind and he finally allowed himself to listen to his own thoughts.

He loved her. He loved her to a degree that he had never known to be possible. And she loved him. And she was here. With him. With Tom. She could die in here. But she loved him and... and... And what? he asked himself.

Harry sighed, and set the book down on top of the stack and got back to work going through the scattered books, not knowing, unable to know, that the book was one of a set of two and that he would be seeing that missing volume later. In Voldemort's hands.

~*~*~*~*~

As Harry unknowingly buried an important clue underneath more tomes, a clue that would allow him to figure out, with Ginny's help, where Voldemort was hiding, the aforementioned female Weasley, along with the avatar of her best friend, were wandering through the Restricted Section, having already investigated the Muggle Studies section.

They had found little of interest there; the memories that the books detailed were, not surprisingly, of Harry's life at 4 Privet Drive. A few of the books, the few that Voldemort had taken interest in from the way that they were scattered and thrown, were on the now-defunct protection that Dumbledore had placed on that residence for Harry.

On their way out of the area, Ginny had glanced through several of the volumes that had been left on the shelves. Glances that left her blood boiling and a determination to inform the twins that they had a new tester available for their shop: one Marjorie Dursley. 'Do they use the cane at St. Brutus's,' she thought scathingly. I don't know, but I bet Gred and Forge can raise some by you.

They continued up the main aisle, walking past untouched after untouched side aisle. Ginny was being uncharacteristically quiet. She and the Hermione-avatar had exchanged words back in the Muggle Studies section and she was still musing about what had been said.

'Why didn't you let Hermione do it, Ginny?'

If Ginny hadn't been anticipating the question, she would have admittedly been taken off guard by the apparent non sequiter.

'Because I love him,' she had curtly replied.

'Hermione is like a sister to me, but you, you are...,' Hermione's image replied, as Ginny reminded herself that, as much as it looked like Hermione, it was really Harry in there; a piece of him, anyway.

'I'm what?' Ginny prompted.

'My reason for existence, my reason to keep on going. And now you're here, right in the line of fire. Gin, do you know what I... we... Harry has nightmares about each night?'

'Judging by the way this conversation is going, I'm going to guess it's me,' Ginny said, bending over to pick up a book lying open on the floor.

'Every night it's the same; nightmares of you, in danger, and him helpless; of you dead, dying, gone... He has one of Colin's pictures of you next to his bed, where he can see it first thing in the morning and remind himself that it was just a dream. And now you're here, in this dream, and it's like one of those nightmares come true.'

Ginny turned, trying to block out the feelings coming through the link: Thoughts of her from Harry, concern from Hermione, Ron's understanding of her loyalty, Lupin's determination to protect her...

'Do you know what I feel for Harry? Please, look into my mind and see how much I miss him, how much I love him everyday, how each night I have nightmares that always end with his limp body lying under a Dark Mark, how every morning I check the Daily Prophet for news about him, how...' Ginny paused in her emotional rant, a memory from the previous summer bubbling to the surface. She remembered the words to a song, a song from a book that Hermione had given her to ease the pain of her breakup with Harry.

'Bring me the love that ascends as far into the heavens as the gods can reach. Bring me the love that is the ultimate joining of two essentials, with nothing withheld, nothing rejected. Bring me the love that is returned stronger than it was given, that grows more powerful and irresistible with each exchange. Bring me the love that enriches all it touches, transmuting misfortune into promise, weakness into strength, selfishness into generosity, limitation into possibility. Bring me the love that knows no borders.'

Ginny smiled as she finished reciting the verse.

'That's what I feel for Harry,' she said, feeling as if she had gotten her point across.

Hermione's image gazed at her for a few moments and then looked away and sighed.

'I understand,' the intelligence-avatar said, 'because he feels the same for you.'

Ginny was brought out of her musings on her conversation in a rather abrupt way; she tripped.

On a rather large book lying on the floor.

Ginny preformed a classic four-point landing: both forearms, left knee and stomach, punctuated with an "Umph!" as the wind was knocked out of her by another large book, this one standing upright with its spine in the air. It flattened as her stomach hit it straight on, forcing all of the air out of her lungs.

She lay there on the worn library carpet, and atop of a good number of books, for several moments, stunned and panting. When her vision refocused itself, she found herself looking into the eyes of a concerned Hermione.

"You all right?"

Ginny said, "I'm fine." Or, more precisely, she tried to say, "I'm fine." What actually came out of her mouth was more along the lines of, "..enm... phign..."

Hermione helped her to a sitting position, leaning her up against the side of a bookcase.

"Stay here. Try to take deep breaths and you'll feel better in no time."

Ginny nodded and wheezed painfully as she tried to breathe, feeling like she had stitches in her sides that were made of rope. As she sat there gasping for air, Hermione got up and went to investigate the aisle whose scattered books Ginny had tripped over.

Picking up the books that Ginny had quite literally stumbled onto, she looked them over.

"These books are about the Order!"

Ginny looked up and managed to wheeze out a fairly coherent, "What?"

"These books are about the Order!" Hermione repeated. "Look, this one is about the Christmas when your dad was in St. Mungo's with that snake bite, when we were all staying at Grimmauld Place..." Lucky me...Ginny thought to herself somewhat miserably, her ribs aching. "...this one is about is about the cleaning we did at Headquarters the summer before that..." she bent down and picked up another book up off the floor, "this one is about the discussion we had with Harry when he got to Grimmauld Place after Tonks and Moody went to go get him, this one is about Kreacher..."

Hermione prattled on for a moment, looking over the pile of books as Ginny wheezed and then suddenly realized the significance of her unwitting find.

"Hermione," Ginny said with some difficulty. "Those books aren't... aren't about the Order, they're... they're about... about Grimmauld Place," she emphasized.

Hermione looked shocked.

"You're right!"

She dropped the half-dozen books in her arms back onto the floor, and dropped down herself, looking at the scattered manuscripts.

"This one is about Harry's room... this one is about all the times we've tried to remove or shut up Mrs. Black's portrait... this one is about the Black family tree tapestry..." she looked up at Ginny, horrified.

"Ginny, do you know what this means?"

Ginny, feeling almost back to normal, said, "I'm going to guess that they're here in the Restricted Section because of the Fidelius Charm on Grimmauld Place..." Ginny's face suddenly flashed with understanding and slowly continued, "...and since Voldemort could read those books without any problem..."

"... it means that he now knows where Headquarters is for the Order," Hermione finished, her face a study in worry.

"But what about the Fidelius Charm? I mean, Moody didn't actually tell Voldemort where headquarters is, and he's the Secret-Keeper..." Ginny's voice trailed off at the expression on Hermione's face.

"It doesn't matter. He knows where Headquarters is, and the Charm didn't stop him in here... probably because, as far as the Charm is concerned, that piece of Voldemort's soul is a part of Harry because of this curse..."

They both fell silent, the possibilities too numerous and too worrisome.

After a moment, Ginny said, "Listen, Hermione, let's split up; we can cover more ground that way. I'll go look around the area and see if I can find anything else that he touched."

"Ginny, Harry said we're supposed to stay in pairs," Hermione responded.

Ginny waved her off. "You know as well as I do that the only reason that he did that is because this connection only works one way with him," and that's a pity, "so he needs someone with him to help him." Ginny focused for a moment. But I'll know if you find something and visa versa, she sent through the link.

Hermione looked at her for a moment, considering, and said, "Fine, then. But don't wander too far."

Ginny smiled and wandered off down the aisle.

As she walked, paying much more attention to her surroundings this time, she noticed that, just like the real Restricted Section, some of the side-aisle ends were labeled, and some weren't.

Examining one, she read Marauder's Map. She smirked. Yeah, that certainly qualifies as something secret.

Continuing her way down the aisle, all of the stacks that she passed were untouched. Maybe he spent too much time ransacking the Grimmauld Place section and never got around to going down this far.

Keeping an eye out for any more ransacked stacks as she made her way down the aisle, she nearly missed the label on the end-case of one of the untouched stacks as she saw it out of the corner of her eye. A few moments later, it registered on her consciousness, provoking a double-take so violent it nearly gave her whiplash.

Rubbing her sore neck, she took a closer look at the faded, handwritten label, a label that read Ginny Weasley.

What the...!? Why is my name on a label in the Restricted Section?

Intensely curious, Ginny ducked down the side-aisle to come face to face with hundreds of plain black leather-bound books sitting neatly on their shelves.

Okaaaayyyyyy...so what's going on here? she thought to herself.

Craning her neck, ignoring the protesting crick in her muscles, she looked over the books. Sure enough, the spines all had her name on them, in fancy gold lettering, along with a date.

I guess these are Harry's memories of me. She grinned at the thought, a grin which was quickly replaced by a curious frown. But what are they doing in the Restricted Section?

Taking a closer look at the dates, she realized that, thankfully, they seemed to be in chronological order. She was currently looking at books dated from the previous September. Quickly scanning back and forth, she found that the black-bound books covered a span of about a year and a half, starting from shortly before her fifteenth birthday, right up to the present.

Alright, so where are the rest of them? I've know Harry since I was eleven; I know he ignored me for four years, but not that completely! So where did those memories go?

Ginny reached out to take down one of the books off of the shelves. Her hand touched one, and she jerked it back as if burned. I shouldn't; these are Harry's memories, and I have no right or reason to go poking through them.

But then again, they are memories of me, so it's not like they're anything new to me; they're just from Harry's perspective, not mine, that's all. I wonder... where's his memory of our first kiss?

Suddenly keen on finding that magical moment from Harry's perspective, she began to scan the spines, looking for the numbers that stood for that wonderful day.

As she was closing in, she noticed something odd about the books. The early ones, the ones from two summers ago, which she had been looking at a minute before, were fairly slim, some of them so thin that the spines were barely wide enough for her name and the date. But the ones currently in her field of view, dating from the previous March, were enormous! Some of them were easily wide enough to have her name written horizontally with the date underneath.

She spotted the book she had been searching for and froze. It was the last of the fat books; starting right afterward, they slimmed down dramatically; she glanced up at the early books on the top shelves. Those earlier dates were slimmer, but not by much. Her eyes returned to the book in front of her, and then, almost involuntarily, started tracking to her right. Further down the shelf, after what looked like several weeks worth of memories, the books started to thicken again.

She shuffled over to that point and let out a low agonized moan. The date written on it was for Dumbledore's funeral.

Not daring to look at that book she scrutinized the tomes making up the following summer and felt her jaw drop. If the books preceding their dating had been enormous, then these were gargantuan! Not one had a width smaller than the width of her palm, and some were as large as the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary that her father had for some reason, or even larger!

What the hell are in these books!?

Her curiosity burning, she reached out at random and pulled out a book with a good five-or-six-inch spine with a date from about three or four days before Bill's wedding. Holding the nearly five-kilo book awkwardly in her hands, she sat down and, holding the book in her lap, opened it to a random page.

Her eyes opened very, very wide.

~*~*~*~*~

In a Muggle pub in central London, a lone figure sat in a corner booth, sipping his fourth bitter since his arrival a half hour previously, an activity which kept him from compulsively checking his watch.

Where is that little arse? He was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago!

Well, at least this place was a safe location to have an unobserved meeting. The Ministry was too spread around, partly thanks to his own efforts, hunting Death Eaters and jumping at shadows to be monitoring even all of the wizard pubs, let alone the multitudinous Muggle bars in London. So as long as they didn't do any magic in here, they should remain undisturbed, assuming, of course, that that little annoyance ever got here!

Noticing that his current pint of Fuller's Chiswick was nearing the dregs, he was about to order another one when a squat shape in a cloak and gloves swept into the booth, clunking down two pints of Guinness Stout on the table as he sat.

The first figure immediately grabbed one of the glasses and downed half of it in one swallow. The second figure, whose face was hidden under his hood, was probably smiling contemptuously at his companion's nervousness.

Holding up his own glass in a ridicule of a salute, the squat figure said mockingly, "Thirsty?"

The first figure scowled and snarled in a low voice, "You were supposed to be here twenty minutes ago! What kept you?!"

The squat figure looked around the nearly full pub, the noise of the half-drunken crowd nearly drowning out the sounds of the telly hanging over the bar. The telly which was the reason why most of the Muggles were there that late in the evening anyway, as the bartender had it tuned to the Ashes series cricket game being played in Australia.

Thus assured that they wouldn't be noticed, the squat figure leaned closer as the crowd of Muggles roared their disapproval as Australia scored another run.

"I'm sorry," the thickset figure said sarcastically, clearly not sorry at all, and took a swallow of his beer. "Now what was so important that you needed to owl me in the middle of the night?"

The first figure looked at his short contact with intense dislike, sincerely wishing that he had been assigned somebody else, anybody else, as his contact. Hell, he would have even taken Crabbe or Goyle.

The object of his dislike took another long swallow from the glass in his right hand, the gloves he was wearing almost but not quite covering the fact that his right arm seemed to be made of silver as it disappeared up into the sleeve of his cloak.

Leaning conspiratorially across the table, the first figure said, "About two hours ago, the Minister came back from St. Mungo's in a rather bad mood..."

The short Death Eater interrupted, "So what else is new?"

The traitor continued as if he hadn't heard the faithless Marauder, "...and immediately got the Department of International Magical Cooperation to work searching for this rare potion abroad."

His contact yawned and looked at his mostly empty glass, obviously debating about a refill. "And I should care, why?" he said.

"Because, from what I overheard the Minister talking to Weasley, apparently Harry Potter is in a coma in St. Mungo's, and they need the potion for him."

Pettigrew's posture suddenly changed. The traitor obviously had his attention.

"Potter's in a coma? What can you tell me?"

"Well..."