Chapter Text
May 1998
Harry sat on the edge of a narrow cot while Madam Pomfrey cleaned the cut on his shoulder with brisk, economical swipes of her wand and a pad soaked in something that stung like nettles. The cot had been made from one of the long house tables, narrowed and softened by spellwork, but the legs still looked too familiar beneath the white sheet. All around the Great Hall, meals and banners had given way to bandages, bloodied robes, chipped flagstones, and rows of transfigured beds pressed against the walls. The enchanted ceiling showed a pale morning sky streaked with smoke-coloured cloud, though the real air below it smelled of soot, singed cloth, potion steam, and too many people packed into one place because no one had known where else to put the living.
“Stop turning your head, Mr Potter,” Madam Pomfrey said, not looking up from his shoulder. “I am trying to clean grit out of a wound, not make it worse”
Harry forced his eyes back to the folds of his ruined shirt. The material had been cut away on one side, leaving his shoulder bare and goose-pimpled in the chill that drifted through the broken doors. A moment later he looked past her again, over the bright white of the bandages in her lap, because someone had coughed near the Gryffindor table and for half a second he thought it sounded like Ron. It wasn't. Ron was sitting on the floor three beds down with Hermione beside him, her hand wrapped round his wrist while a healer checked the swelling along his jaw. Harry had seen the way she clutched his hand like he would float away if she didn't touch some part of him.
Sirius stood at Harry’s right side. His robes were torn from shoulder to hem, and there was dried blood in the ends of his hair, but he had a solemn look on his face. Worn down and looking about twenty years older. “Poppy,” he said, watching Harry flinch as the pad dragged over the cut, “isn't there anything you can give him to ease any stinging? I thought you'd find some.”
“I said no such thing, Mr. Black,” Madam Pomfrey replied. “For right now, my priority is to make sure everything is cleaned correctly. I'm sure Mr. Potter is plenty capable enough of dealing with a bit of pain right now. Besides, supplies are waning and we're only using them on the most serious injuries.”
Marlene’s hand rested on the back of Harry’s chair, steady and warm through the old wood. She had placed it there once she sauntered over. She informed Sirius that Stella was having a grand old time with her godmother, one of Marlene and his mother's old school friends, Mary McDonald. Sirius smiled weakly. Marlene looked battered and war torn, but Uncle Sirius had begged her to please stay out of the worst of it. She had, reluctantly.
“Dennis is by the windows,” she said before Harry could ask. Her voice was low and rough sounding. “Professor Sprout is with him, they're waiting on he and Colin's parents to arrive, to... be with their son before the mediwitch examiner takes his body. Ginny's with Molly and Arthur. Fred is awake, finally. George is with his, Lilah's being checked out.”
Harry swallowed. “They're all okay?”
“Those Weasleys are much stronger than we give them credit for,” Sirius said. His mouth pulled briefly to one side, not quite a smile. “But there is a long journey of recovery for all of us.”
Marlene nodded.
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Across the Hall, Fred Weasley lay propped on pillows, pale beneath a streak of brick dust, one side of his face bruised and bandaged. George sat on the bed beside him, shoulders hunched, listening with an expression so raw that Harry looked away before Fred’s grin could break it open. Mrs Weasley hovered behind them, touching one son’s hair, then the other’s sleeve, then Arthur’s arm when he came near, as if her hands had to keep finding them. Ginny stood half behind her father, hair caught back in a messy knot, looking over every few seconds toward Harry. Their eyes met once. She did not smile, but her chin lifted a fraction, and that steadied him more than a smile would have.
Madam Pomfrey tapped his shoulder with her wand, murmured a cleaning charm, and the cut burned white-hot for one sharp breath. Harry’s fingers dug into the blanket. Sirius’s hand moved, then stopped short of grabbing him, and Marlene’s thumb pressed once against the chair back.
“There,” Madam Pomfrey said, softer now that the worst of it was done. “That was stone dust and glass. Another hour and it would have been infected, if infection dared try its luck in this disaster of a building.”
“It’s not that bad,” Harry said, though the words came out thin.
Madam Pomfrey gave him a look over the rims of her spectacles. “I have been treating children who fall off broomsticks for longer than you have been alive, and every single one of them has said some version of that while bleeding on my floor. Drink this.”
The vial she handed him was blue and smoking faintly. Harry looked at it, then past her shoulder, where Professor McGonagall sat at the staff table with a roll of parchment unspooled before her. Flitwick stood on a chair to reach the surface, his tiny hand moving carefully as survivors came forward and gave names. Hagrid was beside them, enormous shoulders shaking whenever someone pointed toward a covered body and whispered. Professor Sinistra had a second parchment. Living on one, dead on the other. Harry could not read the words from where he sat, but he could see the dark marks growing line by line.
“Drink,” Sirius said, quieter than before.
Harry brought the vial halfway to his mouth and stopped. “Will it make me sleep?”
“No,” Madam Pomfrey said. Her impatience had lost its edge. “It will make you hurt less. Those are not the same thing.”
“I need to see.”
Marlene’s hand left the chair and came to rest lightly on his good shoulder. She did not try to turn him toward her. “Then see. We’ll tell you if anyone moves.”
That nearly undid him. Harry stared at the vial until the smoke blurred, then drank before his throat could close completely. The potion tasted of mint and metal. Warmth moved out from his chest a few seconds later, not strong enough to dull the room, only enough to take the teeth out of the pain in his shoulder and the deep ache along his ribs. Madam Pomfrey gave a satisfied sniff and began wrapping clean gauze around him with practised hands.
A Ministry wizard Harry did not recognise stepped into the narrow space between two cots, clutching a clipboard and looking as though he had drawn the worst job in Britain. “Mr Potter? Kingsley asked whether, when you’re able, you might give a preliminary account of—”
“No,” Marlene said.
The wizard stopped so quickly his shoes squeaked on the flagstones. “I’m sorry?”
“You heard her,” Sirius said. He had not raised his voice, which somehow made him sound more dangerous. “Kingsley can ask me, Remus, Marlene, McGonagall, a portrait, a brick wall, or the giant squid before he asks Harry for anything today.”
Harry felt heat crawl up his neck. “Sirius—”
“Not today,” Sirius said, and this time there was no joke in him. His eyes stayed on the Ministry wizard. “Tell Kingsley I’ll find him when Poppy stops threatening to Stun me.”
Madam Pomfrey fastened the bandage with a flick of her wand. “I have not threatened. I have considered.”
The Ministry wizard glanced at Marlene again, reconsidered whatever argument he had brought with him, and backed away with a muttered promise to return later. Marlene watched until he was gone, then lowered her hand from Harry’s shoulder. Her fingers trembled once before she curled them into her palm. Harry saw it because he was looking for damage everywhere now, even in the people who were standing.
“Are you hurt?” he asked her.
“Nothing Poppy hasn’t already shouted at me about,” Marlene said. She smoothed the back of his chair as if the gesture had always been the point. “Split lip, bruised ribs, a burn on my arm. I’m on the list after you.”
“She is on the list because I put her there,” Madam Pomfrey said. “Left to herself, she would stitch herself with garden twine and call it efficient.”
Marlene’s mouth twitched. “Only if the twine was clean.”
Sirius huffed a laugh, brief and rough. It vanished almost at once when another group passed carrying a covered body toward the far end of the Hall. Harry’s gaze followed despite himself. The sheet was small. Not a child, he told himself, then hated that there was room in his mind for such bargaining. Behind the group walked Professor Vector, writing something on a parchment with one hand and wiping her face with the other. No one spoke as they passed. Even the wounded seemed to lower their voices, giving the dead that small corridor of silence.
Harry looked for Remus next. He found him near the Ravenclaw table, seated on a cot with one sleeve rolled up while a healer painted dittany over a long bite-shaped tear along his forearm. Tonks was beside him, hair a tired, stubborn pink, her head resting against his shoulder though she was awake. Remus looked older than he had yesterday, and yesterday already felt impossible to place. As Harry watched, Tonks said something, and Remus turned his head just enough to kiss her temple. Alive. Both of them. Harry held that fact hard, then added it to the others. Ron. Hermione. Ginny. Sirius. Marlene. Remus. Tonks. Fred. George. Molly. Arthur. Neville by the doors, wrapped in a blanket, refusing to put down Gryffindor’s sword until Professor McGonagall personally took it from him.
“There’s a lad who needs a seat,” Sirius murmured, following Harry’s line of sight. “Merlin help anyone who tells him so.”
“Neville earned the right to be stubborn for at least a week,” Marlene said. “Longer if his grandmother has anything to do with it.”
A sharp sound came from Harry before he meant it to, half laugh, half something else. Madam Pomfrey paused, eyes flicking to his face, then continued with the bandage as if she had not noticed. That was kind of her. Too kind, maybe, because it made Harry’s throat hurt.
“I thought—” He stopped. The Hall seemed to tilt under the weight of all the sentences he could begin and not finish. He had thought so many people were dead. He had thought he was dead. In the forest, with the Snitch open in his hand and the Resurrection Stone cold against his palm, he had walked away from all of them on purpose. Now Sirius stood beside him, breathing. Marlene kept guard. Ron and Hermione were within calling distance. The Weasleys were gathered around Fred rather than grieving over him. How could a room hold so much loss and still have this many miracles in it?
Sirius crouched beside the cot. It made him look suddenly less like the man blocking the world and more like Uncle Padfoot, exhausted and bloodshot and trying to keep his voice level for Harry’s sake. “I know,” he said, and because he did not pretend to know everything, Harry believed what he could. “You don’t have to sort it out right now.”
Harry’s fingers tightened around the empty vial. “I left you.”
Marlene went very still behind him. Madam Pomfrey’s hands slowed, then resumed with exaggerated care. Sirius did not answer at once. His jaw worked, and for a moment Harry thought he had made him angry. Then Sirius reached up and took the vial before Harry crushed it in his hand.
“You went where you thought you had to go,” Sirius said. “I hate that sentence. I hate every part of it. But I know the difference between abandoning people and walking into something because you think it gives them a chance.”
Harry stared down at his bandaged shoulder. “That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” Sirius said. His voice roughened. “It doesn’t.”
Marlene came around the chair and stood where Harry could see her properly. There was ash on one cheek, and the cut in her lip had opened again. She looked like someone who had spent the night holding doors shut with her body. “We can be angry later,” she said. “All of us. You included. Right now, you are going to sit here, let Poppy finish, and keep breathing while the rest of us do the same.”
“That’s your plan?” Harry asked, because if he did not say something ordinary he was going to cry in front of half the school.
“For the next ten minutes, yes,” Marlene said. “After that I may become ambitious and make you eat toast.”
Sirius glanced up at her. “Toast. Bold strategy.”
“It has worked on you more than once.”
“Under protest.”
“Under marmalade.”
Harry laughed again, and this time it did not break in the middle. It hurt his ribs, but the pain felt clean compared with everything else. Madam Pomfrey clicked her tongue and adjusted the sling she had conjured, muttering about reckless households and inherited idiocy. Sirius looked offended on principle. Marlene did not bother hiding her amusement.
A small commotion rose near the doors. A pair of healers came in from the entrance hall levitating crates of potions, followed by Professor Slughorn with his sleeves rolled up and his waistcoat misbuttoned. Students shifted to make room. Someone began crying near the Hufflepuff table, not loudly, just with the stunned persistence of a person who had been quiet too long. Further away, McGonagall bent over the parchment again. Her shoulders were straight, but when she dipped the quill, her hand hovered before she wrote the next name.
Harry watched her for a while. Then his eyes moved again, less frantically this time. Ron had fallen asleep against Hermione’s side, his mouth open, while Hermione sat rigidly upright as if guarding him from dreams. Ginny had taken a cup from her father and was arguing with her mother about something in a low voice. Fred was awake. George was awake. Percy stood at the end of their bed, spectacles crooked, laughing silently with tears running down his face. Hagrid had lowered himself onto the floor near the staff table and was allowing three first-years to lean against his coat. Luna walked between beds with a pitcher of water and the calm, careful steps of someone carrying something sacred.
Madam Pomfrey finished tying the sling and stepped back to inspect him. “You will not lift that arm. You will not duel, carry, climb, crawl under rubble, or chase after anyone who looks upset. If you feel dizzy, sick, feverish, or heroic, you will inform me immediately.”
“Heroic is a symptom?” Harry asked.
“In this castle, it is an epidemic,” she said. “Mr Black, Mrs Black, see that he behaves.”
“Marlene isn’t Mrs Black when she’s terrifying people,” Sirius said. “She uses the full name for official intimidation.”
“Marlene is standing right here,” Marlene said, but her hand returned to the back of Harry’s chair, lighter now. “And Marlene agrees with Poppy.”
Harry leaned back carefully. The cot creaked beneath him, and for the first time since he had sat down he let his weight settle instead of holding himself ready to jump up. Nothing in the Hall became easier to look at. The covered bodies were still there. Names still moved from mouths to parchment. Smoke still crawled along the ceiling, and every so often someone called for a healer in a voice that made people turn. Grief had not waited politely outside because Voldemort was gone.
But Sirius remained at his side, one hand braced on the cot as if he could keep it anchored by will alone. Marlene stayed close enough that no one could reach Harry without passing through her first. Across the Hall, the people he loved breathed, argued, wept, slept, and reached for one another beneath the ruined banners. Harry checked them again, because he had to, and then again a little later. Each time, someone was still there.