Harry Potter and the War of Souls

Chapter 23

Recovery and Injury

Harry felt his eyes fluttering, but he didn't want to open them. Not yet. He heard someone say, "He's coming around," but he closed his eyes again. He was too tired.

"He is. I saw it."

Harry wondered if that was Ginny's voice. Where was he that she was here? Out of curiosity more than anything else, Harry opened his eyes only as much as he had to. He saw several blurry faces staring at him and became aware that someone was holding his hand.

"Where'm I?" he mumbled.

"Harry?" That was Hermione's voice. "Harry, you're in the hospital wing."

"We really thought we'd lost you that time," someone said. Ron.

He closed his eyes again and fell back asleep.

The next time he woke up, it was a little easier. He felt stronger inside. Maybe Madam Pomfrey was giving him strengthening solutions. It didn't hurt so much to breathe, and he decided she must have healed his bruises and whatever bones Draco had kicked apart.

"Harry, you're awake! Tonks, come here!"

Harry turned his head and saw Lupin sitting beside him. It seemed to be very late at night and everything was quiet. There was a curtain around his bed. Tonks poked her head in and said a relatively soft, "Wotcher, Harry! It's about time you woke up."

"How long have I-"

"You came back to us three days ago. It was almost two days before we had any sign you might survive." Lupin leaned toward him. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. How long was I gone, before that?"

Lupin looked back at Tonks before he answered. "You were missing for two days. We were searching everywhere. Where were you, Harry?"

He wasn't sure where to begin. He started by saying, "There was a portkey to this sort of dungeon in the LeStrange home..."

"Bellatrix LeStrange?"

"Yeah. She's dead now."

"Okay. Are you thirsty, Harry?"

He nodded. Lupin nodded at Tonks who disappeared behind the curtain. Lupin turned back to Harry. "Can you talk about it?"

"I didn't kill her, Remus. But I didn't stop her either when I knew what was going to happen."

"You're no murderer, Harry. If you had stopped her, you'd be dead right now." Lupin's eyes fell to the bandages wrapped around Harry's chest. "She wasn't there alone, I assume. Those injuries you received to your ribs aren't her style."

"That was Draco Malfoy. I guess he thought he owed it to me." With an almost sudden panic, Harry began looking around his bed. "My robes?"

"They're waiting for when you recover." Lupin reached into his own shabby robes and pulled out a cup. "Is this what you wanted?"

"It's a portkey."

"It was. We did away with that. But there's another enchantment on it, one I suspect you already know about."

Harry nodded.

"I nearly had to threaten Veritaserum on Ron, Hermione, and Ginny before they told me why this was so important to you. Why didn't you talk to me about this, Harry?"

Harry shrugged. "Dumbledore wanted it kept secret. I didn't know who to talk to."

"This is my fault," Lupin said. "I've barely been there for you when I should have. There's no reason you should have trusted me."

"There's no fault for anyone," Harry said. "Have you told anyone else?"

"No. Although I'm not happy you kept this from me, I understand the need for secrecy. After we destroy this one, how many are left?"

Harry closed his eyes briefly then said, "Just one. Death Eaters stole Gryffindor's sword from Dumble - from McGonagall's office. Dumbledore didn't think it could have been a horcrux, but it must be."

"Any idea where to begin looking for it?"

Harry shook his head. "None. And I can't ask too many questions, because I don't want to make Voldemort suspicious."

"Right." Lupin handed the cup over to Harry. "This must belong to you, then. I understand destroying it is no small feat. I'd like to be there when you do. I might not be capable of doing it myself, but I can at least buffer your fall.

Harry grinned and nodded. "As soon as I'm out of here, we'll do it."

"Here's your water," Tonks said, peeking in around the curtain again. "And if you don't mind, there's a few friends who've been waiting out here for you to wake up."

Before Harry could say, "okay," he saw Ginny, Hermione, and Ron walking around the curtain to his room. Hermione approached him as if she were going to hug him, but must have decided he still looked too weak and contented herself with patting his shoulder.

Ginny, however, leaned in to him and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. "Try anything like that again, and I'll give you worse than this," she said.

"You think you're in pain?" Ron said. "Hermione's been so worried about you this week she hasn't done a lick of homework. Just think of how much suffering she's endured."

Harry laughed and was glad it didn't hurt as much as he would have expected.

Hermione shot a look at Ron, then said. "Nobody took it worse than Ron when you didn't come back up, Harry. He-"

"was really worried," Ron said quickly. "When are you getting out of here?"

"He has another few days at least, I'd imagine," Lupin said. "Harry, what happened to you before, take your time dealing with that."

Harry avoided looking at his friends. He didn't like the idea of them picturing him being helplessly beat and tortured. "It's okay," he said. "I'll be fine."

Madam Pomfrey shooed everyone from the room very soon after and asked Harry if she could give him a sleeping draught to help him rest. "Let me just sleep normal," he said. "I'll call if that doesn't work."

It took him several minutes to get to sleep again, but when he did, his dreams almost immediately went back to the dungeon. Only he wasn't there anymore. It was Voldemort, discovering Bella's body. He was angry, and cast a killing curse at a death eater whose only crime seemed to have been giving Voldemort the news.

Harry sat straight up in bed, feeling the pain in his scar. It was almost as if he could still hear Voldemort cursing his name and burning His anger deeper into Harry's forehead.

"Harry, what's the matter?" Ginny must have been right outside the curtain to have gotten to him so quickly.

He tried to slow his breathing and squinted as he looked at her. "What are you doing here?"

"Dobby just came and woke me up. He said he had checked on you but you didn't seem to be sleeping well. He told me to come down."

Harry looked around the area, but it was only he and Ginny in the room. "You came to check on me?"

"Lay down," she said soothingly, and as he obeyed she pulled the covers up around him. She let her fingers brush across his face and whispered a soft, "quiet now. You need to go back to sleep."

He took her hand and pulled it to his chest, gripping it firmly. "Will you stay?"

She smiled, and with her free hand she ran her fingers into his hair, smoothing it over. "I'll stay." She lay down beside him on the bed. They were quiet for several minutes until she said, "Whatever happened to you these past few days, was it - was it as bad as I think it was?"

He took a deep breath. "Yeah."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Someday, but not now." He closed his eyes again and fell back asleep to the rhythm of her breath against his neck.

Ginny was gone when he awoke, and for the remainder of his hospital stay, she didn't spend another night with him. But she visited often and there was a changed expression in her eyes as she looked at him.

On the morning he was preparing to leave, Hermione sat beside his bed and warned, "You ought to know that there are dozens of rumors about what happened to you."

"Yeah?" he said, buttoning up his shirt. "Like what?"

"Some people think you've gone loony and went for a swim," Ron said. "Others think it was a death wish, that you missed Dumbledore so much you tried to end it all."

"But anybody who really knows you suspects there's something more going on," Hermione cautioned. "They've been asking us lots of questions."

"What have you told them?"

"To mind their own business," Ron said. "That put 'em off for a while, but you might get a fair number of questions yourself when you go back. Bill even pulled me aside after DADA class yesterday. He said he knew you must've been after something to do what you did. I told him he'd have to ask you himself. He said okay, then gave me an essay comparing Inferi to Vampires."

Harry laughed. "Thanks for the warning."

Hermione moved from her chair to sit beside Harry on the bed. "You know, you've never really talked about what happened in that dungeon? Do you want to?"

"No. Listen, it wasn't anything you haven't seen before, and I'm gonna be fine."

"The night Ginny slept beside you, she said you kept tossing and mumbling something about the crucio."

Harry looked down and adjusted his glasses. "If I could've chosen to die in there, I think I might've done it. I didn't expect to escape and I figured it was only a matter of time before they turned me over to Voldemort. But I did escape and like I said, I'm gonna be fine."

Hermione gave him a tight hug. "You know, Ron-"

"We'd better leave," Ron said, grabbing Hermione's hand and pulling her up. "Harry's got to finish getting dressed or else he'll be late for class."

"Is there something you wanted to tell me, Hermione?" Harry asked.

She glanced at Ron, then said, "No, I guess not. See you in class."

Harry's suspicions that something was the matter with Ron were confirmed that night as they were getting ready for bed. Ron had closed the curtains around his bed, but Harry remembered something he had forgotten to tell him. He parted the curtain, then saw Ron sitting on his bed, applying some sort of potion to his right foot. The entire foot up to his calf was a horrible whitish-green and looked as though bits of the flesh had been peeling away.

"Ron!" Harry gasped. "Your foot!"

Ron quickly threw his covers over his leg. "Nothing. Just an infection."

"That's no ordinary infection. What happened?"

"It's nothing, Harry. Go to bed."

"Should I go ask Hermione? Because it sounds like she's been dying to tell me about this ever since I woke up."

"Don't go talking to her," Ron said. "She'll make it sound so much worse than it really is."
"Then what is it?"

"Let's talk about it later, okay? I'm tired and if you keep asking, I'll only lie just to get you to go away."

Harry nodded. "Okay. Sure."

He left the dorms and went back to the Common Room. He knew Hermione would still be awake. She was pulling near all-nighters in a desperate attempt to get caught up on her homework.

He sat across from her at the table. "The day I went into the lake, did Ron follow me in?"

Hermione looked up, then froze as if she wasn't sure what to say. Finally she exhaled. "He doesn't want you to know."

"Why not?"

"He's embarrassed." She set her quill down, then said. "Harry, we waited fifteen, then twenty minutes for you to come back, then a half hour passed. Finally, we spotted the squid at the far end of the lake and realized you weren't there. Without a word, Ron grabbed some of the gillyweed you'd given him before and stuffed it into his mouth. He took Hagrid's jar of Dragon Blood and practically dumped it all over himself then dove into the water. I had a modified Incendio spell that I thought would at least keep the Inferi back and made it follow him down into the water. He got all the way down on his own before they started to get close to him. He could've come up sooner but he wanted to make sure you weren't trapped down there. He fought them on his own, Harry. I don't know how he did it but he was so determined to find out what happened to you he didn't care. He found the opened box and saw the cup was missing. Then there were too many of them. The fire was getting dim and the dragon's blood was wearing off. He headed for the surface, but one grabbed hold of his leg. Ginny and I were able to help him out, but not before it bit him."

"That's a bite?" Harry asked.

"The infection is working its way up his leg. Madam Pomfrey gave him the strongest healing potion she could concoct, but we don't know if it'll do the trick."

"Could he die?"

Hermione's eyes filled with tears but she shook her head. "No, no, of course not. We're working on a way to heal it. We'll find something."

"Why didn't he want me to know?" Harry asked.

"He's embarrassed about it. He said if he'd let Viktor come and help, maybe things would've gone differently. But he felt the worst because he was too late to help you. He kept telling me that if he'd only gone in sooner, it might've made a difference." She looked up at him as the tears rolled down her cheeks. "We had to believe you were okay, but we didn't know. We thought we lost you and it was so scary."

"How was Ginny?"

Hermione sighed and brushed the tears away. "How do you think? She just sat and stared at the wall, wouldn't talk to anyone. I swear, Harry, if you don't survive this war, none of us will ever forgive you!"