Everlasting Night

"Oh, Harry!" She was at his bedside, her breath hot on his face. She smelled faintly of dish soap. "Oh, my Harry!" Her hands fluttered over him, tucking him in, taking his hand, running through his hair. She was everywhere.

It was horrid.

"Mrs. Weasley."

"Yes, Harry, my love?" Her hands continued to move as she needlessly smoothed the bedspread. Harry could feel it. He didn't want to be touched. He didn't want movement. He wanted it to be still. Smooth and quiet.

"Could you stop moving around so much?" He said this as politely as possible, but he was so confused, and there was just so much confusion! He couldn't see it, but he knew it was there.

"Of course, Harry." Molly Weasley patted his hand. This qualified as movement, but he chose not to comment.

Her hand suddenly left his, and there was a sound of movement. Harry cocked his head to the direction of the noise. "Mrs. Weasley?"

"Harry, dear, what are you doing? I'm right here!" The sound of her voice was still by his bed, but who had been moving around? Harry's sightless eyes darted around uselessly. "Is there something wrong? I just took my hand off for a minute. I needed to get a tissue." Molly Weasley's voice was getting increasingly strained and high pitched. "Harry, why can't you look at me?"

Harry took a deep breath as he prepared to tell her something he wasn't even willing to admit to himself. "I'm blind."

It was as though all the air were sucked from the room. Now the stillness was pressing down on Harry, confusing him. It was smooth and quiet, but it was too smooth and quiet. Far too eerie. Like a glassy lake before a storm. There was something amiss, and Harry felt the hair on every part of his body begin to rise, like a dog's. It stayed like this for a while, no sound, no movement, only the silence of thought pressing down on all the occupants of Harry's room. Finally, after an eternity in five minutes, papers shuffled and a doctor spoke.

"Mrs. Weasley, I am Doctor Charles Aherne."

Molly Weasley said nothing. The tension between the two of them was so apparent that Harry could almost see it. If he could see anything, of course.

When Molly finally spoke, it was in level tones, each calmer than the next, but lying beneath them was a hint of something sharp and deadly, like the flash of a knife in a dark alley. "What. Have. You. Done." It was not a question, it was an accusation.

"Mrs. Weasley, please, sit down, this may come as a bit of a shock to you..."

"Nothing. Is. Shocking. To. Me. Anymore." Still the deadliness, the knives. Harry was quite glad he wasn't the elderly doctor. Had he been, he would
have waved a white flag long ago.

"Mrs. Weasley, I beg you, please, sit down." Doctor Aherne's voice was frantic and in a high range. Harry hadn't known the man's name until just now, but it made me feel a surge of sympathy for him when Molly Weasley began to cut him down.

"Are you trying to tell me what to do, Doctor?" The tone was almost light, but it was still encased in sharp steel.

The doctor sighed, knowing full well that he was not going to be able to get her to cooperate. "Harry Potter has lost his complete ability to see. It was taken from him when the Dark Lord fell. They shared a bond; it was not severed, even in death."

"Could we ever get him to see again? You're a doctor! A wizard!" Molly was frantic now, pacing about, Harry could hear her footsteps and the sound of her skirt sweeping the ground.

The doctor took a deep breath. "I do not believe so. Not unless the Dark Lord were to rise once again."

A pause, then muffled sobbing. "How...how could you? You robbed me of the life of sons!"
Sons? Harry was instantly alert. "Sons? What happened? Is there something wrong with Ron? Fred? George?" He tried to sit up, grasping the table beside him for leverage. He knocked something to the ground, but he paid it no mind, he was too busy clawing at the table, grasping for truth in its smooth wooden surface.

"You didn't tell him." Molly Weasley's voice was hardly above a whisper, and it danced in a macabre way throughout the octaves, seeming to be filled with twisted delight, and sadness. Horrid sadness. And terror a deep pulsating terror. "Why on earth didn't you tell him?"

"Really, Mrs. Weasley, he just woke up and I felt it was more in his interest to explain to him....."

"You didn't tell him." Still, the same shocking voice. Harry felt shivers go down his spine. She was like Moaning Mrytle, reveling in her misfortune.

"Mrs. Weasley, I feel that perhaps it would be best if you explained it to him yourself. I'll leave you two alone while I finalize some plans with the tutor. Good day."

Harry heard his footsteps walking away. Leaving Harry alone with this monster that was Mrs. Weasley and wasn't. She wasn't the loving mother Harry had usually known, she was twisted with desperation and pain, and it frightened Harry to his core. He had to know what was going on.

"Well, Harry, this isn't going to be a happy story." Molly Weasley's voice had returned almost to normal, but it was still whispery, sheer, as though saying it at full voice made it even more unhappy. "I don't know how much you will remember, dear, so I'll start from the beginning.

It was the end of your seventh year, and you were about to go on break when you were kidnapped by Death Eaters during your last visit to Hogsmede before you ended your schooling. You were kept hidden away in a secret tunnel under Hogsmede, kept sedated and barely alive. They hardly fed you, but they did keep you alive, demanding Albus Dumbledore and Hogswarts school as ransom, until He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named saw that Dumbledore wasn't giving in, and he decided he would kill you, to see if he could get Albus to change his mind.

Albus was far ahead of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Harry, you see. He sent a team of highly trained Wizards, guarded by giants and riding dragons to come and rescue you days before your execution. My dear son Percy had infiltrated the secret of your location long before, and had kept it within his department so as not to arouse suspicion. The wizards met with the Death Eaters outside of Hogsmede, and though the Death Eaters had been expecting something, they were not ready for the huge attack that had been planned. Most were arrested and taken to Azkaban, though a few, including Lucius Malfoy were killed.

With the Death Eaters out of the way, Percy and a smaller team went to rescue you. You were being guarded by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named himself, and he was torturing you, actually, when the team found him. Percy instructed his team to get you out of the vault, and said to leave him to deal with the Dark Lord himself. I am unsure as to what happened then and I have recontructed this story from member's of Percy's team, and Percy himself, as well as the evidence that was found in the vault. Percy destroyed the physical being of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, which caused you to collapse a ways outside the vault. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, in search of a body, entered Percy, who, though he tried his hardest to flush him out, was unable to, and, trying to overcome the new evil in him, was driven insane. He was found in a hysterical state inside the vault, crying out both 'kill the boy!' and 'save Harry before it's too late!'.

He's in the hospital, same as you, except he's with the Longbottoms..."

Molly Weasley began to cry, only it was silent, and Harry didn't even notice until a large hot tear fell on his face. "He doesn't recognize me any more. I walked in and he started screaming at me, calling me Lucius, asking me where the boy was and to kill him, and then to save him, and then to kill him again. I've lost my son, Harry. And I was so afraid I would lose you. You are like a son to me. You are my son."

Harry had never seen Molly Weasley like this. She put her arm around him and held him close to her, like a mother would comfort her son. Only she was the one who was crying.