Harry Potter and the Ties that Bind

Chapter 37

Harry awoke with a sharp intake of breath and a jerk of his body. His eyes opened wide, but all he saw was a mishmash of blurring colors. How did he get here? Where was here?

He blinked rapidly. His eyes came into focus. A white ceiling greeted him, the cracks and crevices familiar and reassuring. The hospital wing. He was in the Hogwarts hospital wing. But how had he ended up here?

The last thing I remember was being trapped by the runic array and the ceiling of the Shrieking Shack coming down on me.

Harry frowned. Someone had set a trap for him, and like an idiot, he'd fallen right into it.

It never occurred to me that someone might lay a trap for me...

Perhaps it was because he was at Hogwarts, or maybe it was simply because he'd grown arrogant, but he had never imagined that anyone would try to kill him--certainly not while he was at Hogwarts.

Of course, the fact that someone did try to kill him left him with a slew of questions. The one first and foremost in his mind was: who had tried to kill him? There were a number of people who might want him dead. Lucius Malfoy, Theodore Nott Sr., any and every Death Eater that hadn't been thrown into prison. However, they weren't at Hogwarts.

Could one of them have hired someone to kill me?

Possible. Likely even. If there were killers for hire, then it stood to reason that one of the Death Eaters had hired someone to kill him. In which case, the questions he needed to ask himself were: which Death Eater had hired a killer, and who was the killer? The second question was more important than the first, at least for the moment. Once he found out one who'd tried to do him in, he could interrogate them and discover who had hired them.

"Harry?" a tired voice mumbled.

Harry blinked. Then he looked down.

Daphne was sitting in a chair, staring at him with disbelieving eyes. Her normally perfect blonde hair was a dishevelled mess, and her eyes were rimmed with red, a sign that she'd been crying. She must have fallen asleep and woken up seconds after he'd jerked awake.

"Daphne," Harry said. "I hadn't realized anyone was here with me. Does Madam Pomfrey know you're here?"

Shaking her head, Daphne said, "No one knows I'm here... at least, I don't think they do. I snuck in here last night."

"Last night... how long was I out for?"

"Two days," Daphne replied. A sudden tightening of his hand made Harry look down. Daphne's delicate fingers were squeezing his hand. They were slick with sweat. She must have been holding his hand for most of the night. "It was... really terrible. Harry, you were in such bad shape when they brought you in. What happened?"

"I was... caught in... a trap..."

It was embarrassing to admit this, so embarrassing that Harry felt like he could die. He was supposed to be intelligent. People like him shouldn't get caught in traps.

"A trap?" Daphne's brow furrowed.

Harry nodded. "You remember the letter that Professor McGonagall had given to me at lunch?"

"Yes."

"It asked me to go to the Shrieking Shack. I didn't know who'd sent it because only the headmaster should be able to have Professor McGonagall act as a courier. I wanted to know who it was from, so I went to the shack and was nearly killed with a runic array that activated underneath my feet and caused the ceiling to collapse."

Harry hadn't been able to get a good look at the runic array. There hadn't been enough time. All he'd seen was a small part of the array, but it wasn't enough to determine much beyond the fact that it wasn't an array using Futhark runes.