Chapters 231-240

Nightmares Come True

Hermione opened her eyes. For a moment she couldn’t focus. Her head was pounding. Nausea twisted her insides, filling her mouth with the sour taste of an empty stomach. She lay still, trying to clear her mind, calm her stomach, and make sense of her surroundings.

Where am I?

She lay on a hard bed. Above her rose a vaulted ceiling of white-grey stone. Next to the foot of the bed was a small table and a stool. High in the centre of the arc of that wall, a small round window showed a bit of dark grey sky. Hermione propped herself up on her elbows and nearly vomited. When she could distinguish the floor from the ceiling again, she took in the rest of the cell. A solid wooden door to her right. Opposite of the bed was a narrow archway leading off and next to it, a small chest of drawers. Above it hung a simple crucifix made of dark wood.

Memories flooded her.

A moment later she was on her knees on the floor and vomiting bitter fluids, while tears streamed down her cheeks. She wanted to bury her face in her hands, but she couldn’t—she sat and stared at her shaking hands, gasping and gagging. Bad dream. Nightmare, she thought. Just a bad, bad dream.

But it was not a dream.

Then she remembered another dream, a vaguely familiar voice—

A threat—

Alina! She had to get back! She needed to warn them! They—whoever they were—they wanted Alina! Somehow she managed to pull herself upright. Her knees were shaking and she was still dizzy from the drugs and she had no idea where she was. Still—she needed to get away from here now! She needed to Apparate home, to Hogwarts, she needed to warn them!

Hermione closed her eyes and concentrated as hard as she could on the Apparition point just outside Hogwarts. Destination, determination, and deliberation, she murmured, her voice searing her raw throat. Hogwarts. Need to warn them. She concentrated.

The pain of the CRACK! nearly exploded her head. She was thrown backwards against the wall from the power of her spell. But she hadn’t Apparated.

And when she tried to get up, she found that she was too weak to even lift her head.

Anti-Apparition wards, the impassive, cold voice of logic in her mind told her. And something else. Something that sucks away magic and renders it ineffective. Similar to that leeching spell. For a long moment Hermione stared at the cross on the other wall. Then she closed her eyes. Of course. Severus was right all the time. Church wizards. Necromancers in the robes of monks. She exhaled softly. No one will ever find me here.

oooOooo

‘Are you sure that you feel good enough to attend the funeral?’ Ginny asked anxiously, after she’d carefully dripped the prescribed number of eye-drops into Harry’s eyes. Madame Dubois would be buried at Hogwarts this afternoon.

‘Of course I’m sure, Gin,’ Harry grumbled. ‘I’m blind, not decrepit.’

Four days after Harry’s second excursion into the Realm of Death, Healer Mugwort had corrected her expectations regarding his eyesight to ‘careful pessimism’ (though of course the Healers at St. Mungo’s would continue to do their best to find a cure.)

His condition had nothing to do with his experience of Death as such—and everything with his failed attempt to turn himself into stone. He had partly succeeded. Even Woodstock’s tears hadn’t healed all the damage he’d done to himself. On his left foot he’d lost two toes. That is, they had been there when the Healers examined him. But they had been turned into shiny black stone and broken off at the first touch. Now he kept them in a box in the upper drawer of his bedside table. His eyes had seemed okay at first, though they had changed colour. They were blacker even than Severus’ eyes, and harder. Like stone. On the second day, a certain dryness in the eyes had irritated him. On the third morning, he couldn’t read the ‘get well’ cards from his colleagues. In the evening, he didn’t recognise faces of visitors anymore. When he had woken this morning, his vision had faded to black.

‘I’m just worried,’ Ginny said calmly. ‘It’s only been four days.’

Harry sighed. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He rubbed the new snitch-shaped scar on his forehead and tried not to think of the fact that the Weasley family match was the last game of Quidditch in his life. ‘How’s Alina?’ he asked abruptly.

A sigh, a shifting of blankets and a movement of the mattress told him that Ginny was sitting down next to him. ‘Keeping up a cheerful appearance. Littering her room with bits of parchment.’

‘What do the Healers say?’

Another sigh. ‘That she will never hear or speak again.’

‘Damn.—And Ron?’

‘Allowed to get up for the funeral. Still weak, of course, but he’ll be okay.’

Harry knew how Severus was, as his room was just next door. Still weak, but physically unscathed. His frame of mind was an altogether different matter. Although Aurors, Unspeakables and the SSS were out in droves, there was still no trace of Hermione. Harry also suspected that Severus was blaming himself for Alina’s and his own condition.

A knock on the door.

‘Are you ready?’ Healer Mugwort would accompany them to the funeral and back. Harry, Severus and Alina were scheduled to remain at St. Mungo’s for no less than another week.

oooOooo

Ginny stared at the smoke. Harry’s grip around her arm was painful.

She blinked away tears. What if I’d been there? She balled her hands to fists. Could I have prevented this? She knew that she could drive herself insane with such questions. And I can’t afford weakness. I must be strong now. For Harry. For Ron and Lois and Alina. She glanced at the white-faced Potions Master, who stood with his head bowed. And Snape.

Oh, Hermione…