The Lost Horcrux

The Seer Shows The Way

Disclaimers: Dark themes, police state ideas, mention of spousal abuse (including rape) on and off-screen, death of minor characters, graphic imagery and violence, frank sex discussion, copious bad language, bashing the fucking Weasley's and Dumbledore, liberties taken with mythical history and the HP real-life timeline.

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The silence in the air of Recuperation Room, on the palace's second floor, was palpably thick. It sat heavy and unmoving, like the stifling, arid dryness of a breezeless day in the middle of a heatwave. Hermione felt it settle on her like a suffocating weight. She watched Arianwen help Enola to sit up in bed as she stirred, fluffing her daughter's pillows and checking her over with a swift series of diagnostic spells. Enola frowned and cast an anxious look around, batting away her mother's attention. She looked first at Hermione, and then at Neville who, for probably the first time in hours, had torn his concerned attention away from her.

Then her eyes fell along Neville's eyeline ... and she gasped in horrified understanding.

For Neville was looking down gravely into the next bed along, at Harry ... whose form was motionless, his blank, staring eye pointed up at the ceiling with a glazed sort of disinterest. Neville's own expression was drawn, pale. Hermione could barely stand to look at it. She was reminded forcibly of that first morning, that wonderful first morning when Harry had come back to her life, when what struck her the most wasn't his hideous scar, or even his throbbing rage, that she would soon become intimately familiar with. It was his eye, turned to chilled steel and lacking all the vibrancy she knew and loved. It had lost all idea of hope or warmth ... in much the same way as Neville's eyes had now.

For the procedure to push Percy Weasley's soul into a plain in Harry's mind had gone horribly wrong.

They had extracted the soul easily enough. Enola had it under her magical spell before Percy's severed head even hit the floor with a dull thump. But that's when things had started to go awry. Enola had struggled to drill deep enough into Harry's subconscious, as she fought with an external energy that rose and resisted her at every step. She was trying to hold onto Harry's essence with only the barest of her psychic fingertips, to pull him clear of Hermione's Marriage Bond and back into his own mind ... but then she lost her grip at the vital moment. Harry's Weasley mind plain was just about opened and Enola, drained from the struggle, used the last of her energy to force Percy's soul into it, but then she passed out with exhaustion.

And Harry Potter's conscious mind was lost ... somewhere.

Arianwen had taken charge of Harry's treatment, but she could do little to help. Enola's speciality was mind magic, and she was uniquely intimate with Harry's mindscape. She was the only one who could really help him. But she had spent twenty-four hours in deep sedation herself, recovering her burnt out energy. Neville had barely spared a glance from her sleeping form the entire time. He looked exhausted now, but was keeping a determined vigil, lest his wife try to dive right back in to Harry's aid.

For Enola was restlessly eager to atone for what had gone wrong. She was sat up in her bed, adjacent to Harry's own, her arms curled around her hitched-up legs, just staring at Harry's expressionless face. He might as well have been a deformed sort of mannequin. There was nothing ... not a twitch, not a change of colour in his skin, nothing to indicate life at all, beyond the steady puff of breath from his smashed nose.

And even this stuttered. Each time it did, Enola and Hermione were almost in a silent race to react first. Hermione won every time, but it was all Neville could do to keep Enola from trying to gain a head-start on the next pause in Harry's breathing. She was as fully focused as her fatigue would allow, and Neville was deeply concerned for her.