Awakening || Harry & Hermione

Chapter 10.1

The portkey transported Harry to the edge of the maze. He was back where he had started, with the hordes of people screaming in the stands and the great looming hedge of the maze casting a shadow over him. He was back and he was alive, he had survived the graveyard, done the unthinkable and escaped Voldemort, but then why—

Why did it feel like he was still there? Still writhing on the ground from the pain and wanting to die.

His face was pressed against the grass and there was so much noise hammering against his ears. He wanted it all to just go away. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't feel—he just wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere but here where hands were roughly shaking his body and shouts of "Harry! Harry!" surrounded him.

Someone lifted him off the ground and asked him questions that he couldn't make out. He felt like he was underwater and everyone around him was blurry, moving in slow motion, and speaking a language he couldn't understand.

"Harry... are you ... all ... right?" It was Dumbledore holding him straight up, preventing him from collapsing.

"What's... wrong... with ... the boy?" Cornelius Fudge looked at him with a curious expression.

"I'll take ... him," a gruff voice spoke up and Harry strained his ears, but all he caught were snippets of "needs... healing" and "he's... delirious."

Then somebody else was grabbing him, dragging him along and Harry felt a shiver run through him. The cold hands felt repulsive on his skin and laughter rang through his ears: "I can touch him now."

Harry struggled against the tight hold. Where was he being taken? Where was he going? Harry wanted to not care. He wanted to shut his eyes and sleep, to stop fighting the drowsiness. But he couldn't do that yet. There was still something... something he needed to remember, something he had to let the others know.

He needed to be in the clear, he needed comfort and warmth to drive away the icy touch of Voldemort's hand on his scar. He needed to be safe. He needed—

"Hermione," he croaked.

"Don't worry, lad." It was that same gruff voice. Harry blinked blearily to find himself looking up at Mad Eye Moody's mechanical eye. "I'll take you to her."

But...Harry struggled to turn his head and look behind him at the stands which they were getting further and further away from. Was Hermione not there? Where was she, then—

"Harry!" Amongst the shouting and music and chatter, a certain voice rang out. Harry felt like he was emerging from the water, the world relenting its unceasing spinning and settling around him. He knew that voice.

It came again. "Harry!"

"You're going the wrong way," he spoke, clearer now.

Moody grunted and said nothing, gripping Harry's arm with even more force.

"Let go of me." He was speaking normally now. Hermione's shouts were growing softer and panic started growing inside of him.

No response.

"I said," Harry tightened his hold on his wand. Even delirious, he had never released his hold. "Let go."

He saw a glint in Moody's eye and his mouth rising into a sneer and that was all he needed to kick the man in his bad leg, escape his hold, and knock him out with a loud, "Stupefy!"

There was a hush as the crowd in the stands turned eerily silent before exploding into chatter once again.

"What on earth is that boy doing?" Fudge said, aghast, as he struggled to keep up with Dumbledore's long stride. "I told you there was something wrong with him, Dumbledore! Look, he's attacked a professor!"

"Harry, I need you to explain to me what is going on." The headmaster's expression was grave.

Moody hadn't managed to take Harry far. They were still on the Quidditch field and as soon as Harry had stunned Moody, Dumbledore, members of the ministry, various professors, and even a few people from the stands had rushed over.

One of them was Hermione.

The relief he felt upon seeing her was insurmountable. Harry trembingly lowered the wand that he had still been pointing anxiously at the crowd and let out a sigh. The energy he had procured upon sensing danger fled his body and he swayed on his feet before crumpling to the ground, just in time for Hermione to catch him.

"Is that really what matters right now?" Hermione said shrilly, glaring at the adults. "Look at him—he's in no state to be interrogated! He needs a healer!"

She held Harry tighter in her arms and he rested his head against her shoulder, shutting his eyes and taking a shaky breath. The cries in his head screaming at him that there was still a death eater out there, the instinct to get up and fight, the images of gouged eyes and severed heads that were cycling through his vision... finally receded.

He focused on the strand of bushy brown hair tickling his cheek, the tight hold of her arms around him, the familiar, comforting scent of his best friend. For the first time since escaping the graveyard, he allowed himself to accept that the ordeal was truly over. He was safe.

Hermione wasn't done yet. "If you want an explanation, ask Professor Moody what he was doing dragging Harry away from public sight when he was half unconscious. And certainly not in the direction of the healer's tent!"

Dumbledore appeared pensive. "You make a valid point, Miss Granger. That is not something that the Alastor Moody I know of would do."

"You can't be serious, Dumbledore! Not letting the boy get away with this, are you?"

"Regardless,"—Dumbledore ignored Fudge—"I still need to hear what happened from you."

The puzzle pieces came together then. Everything Voldemort had said about the faithful servant at Hogwarts, the uneasy feeling he had this year as if someone was always watching him from the shadows... he had been there the whole time, hadn't he? And no one, not the minister, not the headmaster, not all the professors had noticed.

"What happened?" Harry didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "What happened is that the Triwizard Cup was a portkey that transported me to the graveyard Voldemort chose as his site of resurrection."