The Hearts Eclipse

Chapter 13: Come Clean

"HARRY!" Draco felt his heart seize up in his chest, and the air around him suddenly seemed much colder. The earth had simply collapsed under Harry, and he had disappeared without a trace. There had been a yelp of surprise, then silence. Silence which pressed on Draco's eardrums painfully – silence which squeezed in on his already tight chest, threatening to suffocate him. "HARRY!" The strange landscape seemed to muffle his voice, and swallow the words as surely as it had swallowed Harry. Draco took a tentative step towards the gaping hole ahead of him, but the surface sank several inches underneath his weight, and he quickly stepped back again. "Can you hear me? Say something! Are you okay?" Draco stood perfectly still, listening for a response. Anything. He heard something! Faint, muffled, but it was a sound – a moan. The instantaneous flash of relief that Harry was indeed alive was just as quickly overshadowed as the moan became a whimper.

"Draco?" The pain in Harry's voice was so thick that it made Draco gasp. "Harry! Are you all right?" Of course he's not. Stupid. Again Draco tried to step closer to the edge of the hole, and again, the unstable earth forced him back. "How far down are you? Can you climb out?" There was a weak grunt of effort, and even from where he was standing Draco could hear strained, rapid breathing. "Stuck... there's a... a branch... log... on top. It's heavy." Draco felt his eyes widen. A branch on top of him? How did a branch get down there? That doesn't matter. What mattered was the size of the branch, and how it was situated on top of Harry, and whether or not Harry could get out from underneath it. What if Harry couldn't do it himself? Draco would need to get in himself to get Harry out of there, but he couldn't even approach the edge of the hole safely until he knew something more about the situation. "Ha- Harry... is there any sort of stable ground down there? Anything to stand on? Can I –"

"No," came the faint reply. "Like a... a crevasse. I'm kind of... wedged in. I..."

Harry's voice trailed off, and Draco's heart clenched. "Harry! Keep talking! You need to tell me how to get you out!" He waited a moment for a response. Nothing. "HARRY!"

"'M fine. Just... hurts."

"Harry, you don't sound good... you're scaring me."

"'s'okay." He sounded so distant. "Fine. Help..."

Draco eyed his path to the edge of the hole. Small pits and holes fractured the moist, dark earth. He could see rotting wood poking out of the ground here and there. Draco reached over and grabbed one of the branches and pulled. Bark crumbled against his hand, but the bough was buried solidly. He wondered how far down it extended. Perhaps it was anchored by a larger branch, or even the rest of the tree. With that thought in the back of his mind, Draco reached out tentatively and tested the ground again. Completely unstable. He glanced around at the surrounding landscape. Half-tipped trees were everywhere, as though the ground itself was too weak to hold them. It looked like they were falling through the earth as Harry had, only more slowly. Draco couldn't be sure about the structure of the ground, or why it was so unstable, and he was well aware that what he didn't know could kill him. But if he had to take a guess, it looked as though old trees had died there, long ago, and the soil had later covered them. As though the valley had been flooded temporarily, burying the old forest in loose earth. He got the sinking feeling that the resultant ground was a honeycomb of decaying wood, soft soil, and empty spaces.

Empty spaces, just like the one in which Harry was trapped. And if Harry could crash through so easily, the same thing could happen to Draco at any moment. Then they'd both be stuck, and Harry would never get out. He couldn't let that happen. More carefully this time, Draco sized up the ground between himself and the edge of the hole. A little less than ten feet of pitted earth, with a couple of branches sticking out of the dirt. Harry's sunken footsteps were still evident along the surface. Maybe if he spread out his weight, it would hold him. Even if it wouldn't, there were no other options. "Harry, hang in there. I'm going to try to reach you." There was no reply, and even though Draco hadn't really been expecting one, it didn't make the silence any easier to take. "I'm coming." Draco unfastened his cloak from around his neck and threw it aside. Slowly, he knelt on the ground. Moisture seeped from the soil through the knees of his trousers, and he felt his knees sink in far deeper than he would have liked. Swallowing the fear that was creeping up in his throat, he reached forward and slowly, cautiously, laid himself flat on the ground.