Chapter Text
Crack!
The air was driven out of Harry’s lungs as he slammed down onto the ground, sprawled on his back with bright sunlight blurring his vision above. He raised a hand to shield his eyes as they adjusted from the gloom of the Ministry atrium, his too-large robes slipping down his arms as the Polyjuice wore off and Runcorn’s limbs shrank back to those of the seventeen-year-old boy.
They were clearly not at Grimmauld Place, though Harry remembered the brief flash of landing on the front step before Hermione whisked them away again. Sitting up he could see they’d landed in a shallow depression surrounded by coarse grassland and rolling hills, a chill breeze fluttering past them as he tugged his robes tighter to his chest.
“Arrghhhh!”
The desperate yell came from somewhere behind him and Harry spun around, scrabbling to his feet.
Twenty feet away, Ron was lying in the grass. His face was pale and he clutched at the arm of his Ministry robes where a patch of glistening crimson was growing at an alarming rate.
Hermione, some thirty feet to Harry’s right was already hurrying over, clutching her bag. They reached him at the same time, each dropping to their knees either side of Ron.
“My arm! My arm!” Ron wailed, his good hand hovering over it but unwilling to touch it.
“It’s okay, Ron! It’s okay!” Hermione sobbed unconvincingly, rooting frantically in her beaded bag. “He got splinched,” she said to Harry, her arm already inside it up to the shoulder.
Harry carefully split the sleeve of Ron’s robes down the seam with his wand and peeled the sodden halves open, Ron biting back a whimper. What he saw made him want to vomit.
The flesh of Ron’s arm was laid bare from shoulder to below the elbow, flayed by the botched passage through space. A fist-sized chunk of muscle was missing from his upper-arm, a flash of white bone visible beneath, and blood poured from the opening.
Ron’s limbs were beginning to tremble and his eyes that had been fixed on the hideous wound were slipping out of focus.
“He’s going into shock,” said Hermione, “Harry, lift his legs!”
Harry did as he was instructed, shuffling around to grab Ron’s ankles and lift them off the ground, leaving smears of his best friend’s blood on the grass.
“Can you fix him Hermione?” Harry asked, trying to keep his voice level despite his rising panic. “He’s losing a lot of blood.” The redhead had already sunk onto his back, his breathing short and sharp.
“Here!” she said, wrenching her arm from the bag, a brown bottle clutched in her hand. She tried to unstopper it but her fingers were shaking too much to get purchase.
Harry reached over and held her hand steady, pulling the cork out himself, then leaning back to let her pour several drops along the length of the wound. Green smoke billowed upwards from where the drips splashed against the pulsing muscle, and when it cleared Harry could see with immense relief that the bleeding had stopped. Raw, blotchy skin now covered the weeping flesh and Ron’s humerus was no longer visible, covered by knotted tissue.
Ron had gone limp, his eyes closed, and Harry scrambled up to his head to place his ear to Ron’s mouth. Feeling shallow breaths against his cheek, Harry let lose the tension seizing his chest with a sigh.
“What happened?” he asked, as Hermione used her wand to bandage Ron’s arm and clean what blood she could off of their clothes. Her own robes were still those of Mafalda Hopkirk, presumably still unconscious where they had left their unwitting doppelgangers.
“Yaxley,” she groaned. “He grabbed on to me as we left and I couldn’t shake him off.”
She looked up at him with tearful eyes.
“Harry, I brought him to Grimmauld place. I brought him inside the protection of the Fidelius. I think he thought we were stopping and started to let go so I pulled free and brought us here, but he’ll be able to get inside. I’m so sorry.” She sank back onto her heels, crumpled and defeated.
Harry tried to parse the implications of what she was saying; Voldemort’s Death Eaters now had access to Grimmauld Place. The trio had left nothing that would lead anyone to the rest of the Order, nor give any clues about their current mission; of that they were very careful, but gone was the safety of the protective charms, gone was the way for the Order to find them, and gone were the comforts provided by Kreacher.
Kreacher. Harry thought of the old elf with a pang of guilt. He’d only just begun to form a relationship with the elf; there’d probably been a hot dinner waiting for their return, only for him to be confronted by Yaxley. Harry hoped that Kreacher had been able to get away, or would be otherwise overlooked, but it would be far too risky to call him now, or ever.
“It’s okay,” Harry swallowed. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s thanks to you we made it out at all. Thank you, Hermione.” He reached forward and placed a hand gently on her arm, pushing his disappointment down behind a reassuring smile as she looked at him.
The chill stabbed at him again and raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Where are we, exactly?” he asked.
“The Quidditch World Cup grounds; somewhere in Dartmoor I think.”
Now that he thought about it, it did look sort of familiar, if one could picture every square foot of grass covered in tents, flags, and red and green supporters.
“Should we leave, in case we’re followed?”
“I don’t want to move him in this condition,” Hermione replied, looking down at Ron. “I think we should set up the tent here and wait for his strength to return.”
“Tent?”
“In the bag.”
No matter how much she pulled from it, the beaded bag never ceased to amaze Harry. He dragged it over and opened the flap. Inside he could see nothing but cavernous darkness and perhaps the vague outlines of numerous objects catching the light from the small opening.
“Accio, tent!” he said, pointing his wand into the void. There was a muffled whooshing sound and Harry jerked back, narrowly avoiding being clobbered by a heavy bundle of canvas with wooden poles sticking out of each end and trailing a tangle of ropes. It leapt from the bag and thumped onto the ground next to them.
“If you could put that up, I’ll set some protective charms,” said Hermione, setting off in a wide circle and muttering incantations under her breath.
Harry levitated the tent to a clear patch of ground away from Ron and flicked his wand towards it.
“Erecto.”
It sprang to attention, canvas stretching taught between the poles and pegs loping through ropes to diligently burry themselves in the ground. It looked like it was made for two people lying side-by-side with little room to spare, but the patchwork material was familiar.
“Is this the tent we stayed in for the Quidditch World Cup?” Harry asked, Hermione finishing her circuit and rejoining him.
“Yes, I borrowed it off of Mr. Weasley, just in case. Help me carry Ron inside.”
Harry looped his arms under Ron’s shoulders while Hermione grabbed his ankles and together they heaved him through the entrance of the tent. Inside it was the same small bedsit Harry remembered; a tiny kitchen complete with table and two benches, a pair of battered arm chairs, a bathroom tucked into a corner, and two bunk beds.
They laid Ron gently onto one of the lower bunks, tucking him tightly under one of the musty blankets. His skin was grey, the familiar freckles standing out harshly on his cheeks.
Harry rubbed his hands together to try and regain some feeling in his fingertips.
“Will he be okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Hermione replied, looking down at Ron and worrying at her lip with her teeth. “The dittany will heal most of the splinching, but he’s lost so much blood. I don’t have anything else that can help him.”
For the second time since they’d arrived on the moors Harry cursed his lack of medical knowledge, or seemingly any knowledge of anything useful for their survival.
“We should change,” he said, as much to distract himself from their precarious situation as to rid himself of the bloodied robes that dragged on the floor around his feet.
Hermione stooped to push Ron’s hair off his forehead, then followed Harry to the kitchenette where she retrieved a set of clothes for each of them from her bag and busied herself with the kettle while Harry went to change.
Harry was glad to be back in his own clothes, and Hermione looked more comfortable too, coming out of the bathroom in a loose sweater and faded jeans and grabbing her mug with both hands to savour in its warmth.
“This was in the pocket of my robes. I can’t believe I almost forgot!” she said, reaching into the pocket of her sweater and drawing out a thin, golden chain, at the end of which swung a fat locket.
“Oh shit,” Harry blurted. “The locket!”
Stopping Ron from bleeding out on the grass had driven the whole purpose of their mission into the Ministry clean from his head.
She placed it on the table with a thunk and they sat across from one another, keeping it between them as though it might make a break for it. It was as large as a chicken’s egg, inlaid with glittering emeralds in the shape of an ornate letter S. There were hinges on one side, but no visible clasp.
“So, that’s a horcrux,” Harry said, eyeing the thing in the flickering light of the lamps around the tent. He was repulsed and intrigued by the thing in equal parts. There sat a piece of Voldemort’s soul, right there, within touching distance. The key to Voldemort’s immortality, and hopefully, his downfall.
Harry gingerly reached out a hand, causing Hermione to suck in a sharp breath.
“It should be okay to touch,” he said. “Umbridge has been wearing it all day, and Ginny and I carted that diary around without anything happening.”
“Aside from the possession, you mean?”
“Aside from that,” he ceded. “This is different though. She was pouring her heart into that thing, we know to be wary of this.”
He picked it up and turned it over between his fingers. It was cold to the touch and besides the ornamentation had no discernible marks or blemishes. Harry tried to prize the locket open but to no avail, though if he held it very still, he could almost imagine he could feel the thing ticking in his palm, as though a tiny metal heart beat behind the door.
“And we don’t have any way to destroy it?” he asked.
“No,” Hermione shook her head. “We’d need to destroy it beyond all means of magical repair. Basilisk venom, or Fiendfyre, something like that.”
“I wonder how Dumbledore destroyed the ring,” Harry mused. “Another thing he forgot to mention.” He surprised himself with the bitterness of his tone, and quickly slipped the chain over his head, tucking the locket away beneath his shirt.
“Better keep it safe until we can figure that out then.”
The light outside the tent was fading and the dull ache in Harry’s stomach was a persistent reminder of their missed meal. He sipped his tea; black owing to the lack of any milk or sugar. Indeed, their search through the cupboards had uncovered crockery, musty linens, and a few shabby books but nothing of any real use, and no food, save for a few teabags.
“I didn’t think to pack any,” Hermione apologised. “I thought we’d be back at Number Twelve by now.”
“We all did,” said Harry, waving away her apology. “We’ll have to risk going into a town for supplies.”
Hermione bit the corner of her lip.
“We can’t take Ron” she said, “And I don’t want to split up if we can help it. We still don’t know how they found us, remember? After the wedding, and those Death Eaters outside Grimmauld Place? Maybe I can find something out there?” She gestured towards the flap of the tent.
“I’ll go,” Harry said, half way out of his seat. He desperately wanted to feel useful.
“Harry,” she said in a kind voice, “do you know any edible plants or fungi?”
“I…” He faltered. Of course he didn’t, and it would be just his luck to poison them on the same day they’d made their first breakthrough in their hunt. He sank back down. “No.”
“It’s okay, I won’t go far,” said Hermione. “Keep an eye on Ron?”
Harry looked over to their sleeping friend, his shock of red hair sticking out of the blanket that was still rising and falling in short, shallow breaths, and nodded.
With a gentle hand on his shoulder, Hermione palmed her wand and left the tent.
As the flap swung closed behind her, Harry dragged one of the chairs to the entryway and positioned it such that he could look out across the shallow gully they were camped in, but where he also had a view of Ron’s bunk.
Hermione’s bushy hair was just disappearing over the crest of the ridge, and he stuffed his hands under his arms to ward off the nighttime chill that was creeping in.
He fingered the hard lump under his shirt; the locket laying serenely against his chest, belying the evil that lived inside it. It was still cold, though it should have warmed by now. He could scarcely believe they’d made it out of the Ministry, and with everything they’d gone in there for. Hopefully Hermione’s duplicate locket would prevent anyone from finding out what they’d taken. He doubted that Umbridge would admit to being robbed even if she did realise, but if Voldemort found out that the locket had been switched decades ago and was no longer safe in that cavern then he’d surely make the others impossible to find.
The daunting reality of their task washed over him anew. It had always seemed near insurmountable, but the time and effort it had taken to find one, and they didn’t even have a means to destroy it!? He counted them off on his fingers. The diary and the ring had been destroyed, and they had the locket, but the snake was still out there somewhere, and Hufflepuff’s cup, not to mention the sixth item that they didn’t even have a name for.
Ron’s prostrate form was testament to the danger of their mission. He could have bled out in the grass and Harry wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. As always, Hermione had saved the day.
Since their very first year at Hogwarts he’d needed her; the jinxed broom, the devil’s snare, solving the Chamber of Secrets mystery, the time turner that saved Sirius and Buckbeak, facing down the Horntail with nothing but a summoning charm that she’d helped drill into his head. He was only up to fourth year and already losing count, and yet he struggled to think of a time when she had really needed him.
What would he have done if it had been her that had been splinched? Nothing. He and Ron would have watched her perish and their hopes of defeating Voldemort would have died with her. At this very moment he was sat in the tent that she had had the forethought to pack, in case they ended up in just this situation.
Genuine shame sat heavy in his gut. It was high time he took this venture seriously and faced up to the danger they were all in. No more shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later, no more running off half-cocked, no more taking for granted that Hermione would have though ahead for the lot of them. He would be better, for all of them. He would be better for her.
A movement atop the rise caught his eye and he sprang to his feet, wand aimed at the approaching figure, but he relaxed when Hermione’s face came into view through the rising gloom. She was holding a small bundle; a cloth wrapped around something lumpy.
“There wasn’t much,” she sighed as drew closer, leading him inside and depositing the bundle on the table. Inside were a few brown mushrooms, and a handful of nettle leaves. “I’ll, erm… see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” Harry said, trying to convey the sincerity of his new resolution towards her, and receiving a small smile in return.
The mushroom and nettle stew was… not good, if Harry was honest, but it did alleviate the worst of his hunger pains. Try as they might though, they could not wake Ron to eat anything and had to settle instead for dripping water between his dried lips.
Cold and exhausted, both physically and mentally, and with nothing more they could do for him, Harry and Hermione packed away their meagre possessions and prepared for the long night. They would take turns on watch; Harry the first to take up a post by the mouth of the tent while Hermione slipped under the covers of the bunk opposite Ron, still fully clothed in case they needed to make a quick getaway.
Through it all, Ron slumbered on; the lack of telltale snores deafening by their absence.
Harry woke with a start, jerked from a fitful sleep full of running down corridors away from pursuers that grasped at his heels. The pale light bleeding through the canvas above him was that of early morning, and he leant over the bunk to look down at Ron.
He looked, to Harry’s eyes, to have regained a little colour, but he hadn’t moved from the position they’d lain him in.
Harry swung his legs off the bed and dropped to the floor, slipping his feet into unlaced boots and trying half-heartedly to smooth some of the wrinkles out of the clothes he’d slept in. His head buzzed with the threat of a headache and his heart felt heavy for a reason he could not identify.
Shuffling away from the bunks, he found Hermione in the mouth of the tent, curled in the chair they’d dragged there, dozing. Her wand hung precariously from her slack fingers, and she wore a frown even in her sleep.
Unbidden, a stab of annoyance flashed through him. She was meant to be keeping watch and yet anyone could have approached while she slept! Harry surprised himself. Where had that come from? He knew the burden she carried and besides, nothing had befallen them in the night.
He shook her shoulder gently. “Hermione.”
She flinched, grasping her wand and whipping it up to Harry’s throat before her sleep-fogged mind could register who it was.
“Harry! I’m sorry!” She lowered the wand and leapt from the chair. “I fell asleep! Oh, how stupid of me! Are you angry? I’m so sorry, I-”
“It’s okay, calm down,” Harry said, hands out to try and placate her. “We’re fine.”
“That was really irresponsible of me,” she frowned. “How’s Ron?”
“A little better I think, but still out. Come on, I’ll make some tea and we can figure out what we’re going to do.”
They wiled away the morning discussing how best to continue the hunt now that they could no longer return to Grimmauld place; using the tent and moving frequently between remote locations seemed the best bet. Despite their success in retrieving the locket it didn’t really change their plans; they’d happened upon it through Mundungus but the others remained hidden and the list of likely places was short.
A sense of foreboding grew within Harry all day that he couldn’t pin on anything in particular. He was sure there were noises outside the tent but each time he checked it was as deserted as when they’d arrived.
He wanted to move, but Ron’s condition still prevented it, and every hour that passed made it more likely that they’d be tracked down, more likely that Voldemort would discover what they were doing, at least to Harry’s mind.
Eventually, he voiced his concerns to Hermione.
“We can’t just wait around for Ron to get better. We need to find supplies; food and medicine, and leave here. There’s got to be a muggle town nearby that we can slip into.”
“Harry, we can’t move him,” she implored.
“I’ll go alone,” Harry replied, holding up a hand to pre-empt her contradiction. “I’ll take the invisibility cloak, under the cover of darkness, and I’ll only get the essentials.”
Hermione worried her bottom lip with her teeth again, torn between needing to care for their injured friend and not wanting to risk getting separated. She too had been growing restless, and her concern for Ron mounted as he refused to wake.
“You’re right, Ron is in no condition to move,” Harry continued, “but we can’t both go and leave him defenceless. I hate splitting up too, but we have no other choice.”
“You promise you won’t go off by yourself like you were planning before the wedding?” There was genuine anxiety in her voice.
“I promise,” Harry said, then dug a little deeper, past his comfort zone for the reassurance she deserved. “If the last month has taught me anything it’s that I need you, Hermione. And Ron.”
As the sun sank below the horizon and the orange-stained sky slowly bled to purple, Harry and Hermione gathered around the kitchen table. Laid upon it were the cloak, a small rucksack, and the last of their instant darkness powder and decoys from the Ministry heist.
“I’ve enchanted the rucksack similar to my bag,” Hermione was saying, “only not nearly as large since there wasn’t much time. It’s about four times bigger on the inside so you can put whatever you find in there. It might be a good idea to grab any muggle medicines you see; painkillers and antibiotics and the like, and take this money to slip into the till.”
She patted each item, counting them for the umpteenth time.
“Be careful, Harry,” Hermione pleaded. “Just what we need – nothing else.”
“Just what we need,” he repeated. “We don’t know exactly where we are, do we?”
“No, and I don’t have a map.”
“Okay, well I’ll just keep heading in one direction until I see lights or something. If you need to leave in a hurry we’ll meet at the point where we caught the portkey that brought us here for the cup.”
“Right.”
Harry pulled the cloak over his shoulders, his body vanishing from sight. “I’ll be back soon,” he said, then stepped from the tent and pulled the hood over his head.
Harry climbed up the short slope out of the depression where they’d pitched the tent. All around him were the dark shapes of rolling hills, black against the dark blue sky. There were no obvious blooms of light on the horizon, so he picked a crest in the distance and spun on his heel, disapparating with a loud crack.
He materialised on an identical patch of grassy scrub. Looking behind him there was no way to tell which of the ridges he’d come from, but he could picture it clearly enough in his mind to get back, and instead scanned the valleys before him.
A few miles away, peeking between the cleft of two hills, was a smattering of yellow streetlights and handful of white pinpricks moving between them; a large village or small town, somewhere bound to have a store.
Harry hopped as close as he dared, then proceeded the final half a mile on foot, moving slowly to avoid tripping on the hem of the cloak or his feet flashing from beneath it. Gone were the days when all three of them could huddle under the silvery material and creep around the castle at night.
The air grew colder still as he descended into the valley and even through his jumper and coat it was beginning to bite despite the autumn having only just begun. Whisps of cloud, dark against the sky, drifted low over the buildings.
He picked his way through the trees that surrounded the town and emerged on the edge of a large sports field, deserted for the night. Across the expanse of grass and wide slab of tarmac stood a supermarket; the familiar signage dark and the shutters closed, but never a more welcome sight for Harry.
He’d taken two steps onto the field when something stopped him in his tracks. An unnatural but all too terribly familiar feeling of dread was pulling on his gut and spreading through his limbs. Thin mist rolled across the pitch and his breath clouded in front of him.
The shredded whisps of cloud that had been drifting across the pale moon were looping and wheeling in a way that no wind could produce.
Ragged holes in the midnight sky; a score of Dementors glided down over the clustered houses. The mist thickened as they drew closer, wafting over the town and feeding on the background happiness, hope, and elation of the muggles. Every so often one would detach itself from the swarm and dive out of sight behind the roofline, turning Harry sick at the thought of their unsuspecting victim who could not even see their attacker.
He took a pace backwards, towards the cover of the treeline, pulling the cloak tight around him and clutching his wand. The group appeared to be moving from left to right, and perhaps they would move on when they had… finished, so Harry kept to the shadows and moved to his left, hoping to pass behind them.
The edges of the horde were passing over the supermarket when one halted, then another, and another.
The three forms hung in the air, then slowly turned in Harry’s direction. The first one twitched, almost as though it were sniffing the air, then began to drift closer.
The rest of the group continued on, but the three breakaways swooped low over the grass, getting nearer by the second. Something darted beneath them; a fox startled by their passing, but they gave no sign of acknowledgement and continued inexorably towards him.
Harry steeled himself. He’d fought off more than the whole group before; he could deal with three overly-confident Dementors. They needed those supplies.
He pictured in his mind returning to Hogwarts; the welcoming feast with Voldemort defeated and his friends around him. The spell was on the tip on his tongue when it guttered, the vision swept away and replaced with Voldemort leering over him in the graveyard, Cedric’s lifeless body sprawled on the grass.
The Dementors drew closer, gaining speed.
Harry shook his head, trying to keep his mind clear as the cold intensified. Something fluttered on his chest. Perhaps a real memory would work better, rather than an imagined victory that, if he was honest, he was less and less confident would happen.
Memories flashed before him until he desperately grasped for the aftermath of the Quidditch Cup; the triumph and elation of lifting the golden cup high amid the roars of his housemates, only for the feeling to be ripped away again – the memory darkening and suddenly he was watching Sirius fall through the veil while Bellatrix’s cackling laughter pealed inside his skull.
No! They’d be on him in seconds; why wasn’t it working? The temperature continued to plummet, almost painful now and robbing the feeling from his fingers. The laughter had morphed into the familiar screaming the Dementors clawed from the depths of his mind.
He pushed it away, teeth clenched and began to back away, buying himself a few more precious moments. Ron and Hermione were counting on him. Hermione.
The memory of her arms tight around his waist as they soared through the air upon Buckbeak to save Sirius. He could almost feel the wind on his face – before it robbed him of his breath and her embrace became suffocating as he instead stood atop the Astronomy tower and Dumbledore was being blasted over the edge by Snape.
The rattling, sucking breath of the Dementors filled Harry’s ears, close enough now that their bony hands, outstretched, almost whispered against the fabric of the cloak. He stumbled, falling backwards as the grotesque hand closed around the space he had occupied a fraction of a second before. With a choking gasp, he twisted on the spot and disapparated.
A riot of sound a colour, and for the second time in as many days Harry landed hard on his back, battling to fill his lungs with air once more.
Harry drew a ragged breath, thawing his chest with the only-mildly-frigid air and steadying his trembling limbs. He’d come that close to being kissed just once before, and had only been saved then by himself from the future. What was wrong with him? Why hadn’t his patronus come? It was his thing.
The night air was drying the sweat that covered his brow, making him shiver, but he lay there for several more minutes until he felt like he could trust his legs to hold his weight again. Gingerly, he clambered to his feed and headed down into the depression where he knew the tent must be.
A few paces down the slope he passed the invisible barrier of Hermione’s incantations and it rippled into view. Soft orange light spilled from the crack between the canvas flaps, but it was Harry’s other senses that had him quickening his pace.
There were voices coming from inside.