The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|112| Storytime

Harry and I stayed crying at Dumbledore's body. We did not want to leave his side, we couldn't.

"C'mere, Harry..."

"No," Harry mumbled.

"Yeh can' stay here, Harry. Yeh two need help."

"Maisey, go. I'm not —"

"Harry, come on," another voice said. "You too, Maisey."

Looking up, I saw Ginny. More tears welled in my eyes and I nodded. Together, Ginny and I pulled Harry up off the ground. Ginny accompanied us through the castle. Incomprehensible voices battered us, sobs and shouts and wails stabbed the night, but Harry, Ginny, and I walked on, back up the steps into the entrance hall.

"We're going to the hospital wing," said Ginny.

"I'm not hurt," said Harry.

"It's McGonagall's orders," said Ginny. "Everyone's up there, Ron and Hermione and Lupin and everyone —"

"Ginny's who else is dead?" Harry suddenly asked.

"Don't worry, none of us," she gave me a small smile.

"But the Dark Mark— Malfoy said he stepped over a body —" Harry started.

"He stepped over Bill, but it's all right, he's alive."

"B-Bill? Are you sure?" I said.

"Of course I'm sure.. he's a— a bit of a mess, that's all. Greyback attacked him. Madam Pomfrey says he won't— won't look the same anymore..."

Ginny explained how Bill had gotten bitten by Fenrir. But apparently, Lupin had said he won't turn into a werewolf because he was bitten while Fenrir was in his human form.

"And the others?"

"Neville and Professor Flitwick are both hurt, but Madam Pomfrey says they'll be all right. And a Death Eater's dead, he got hit by a Killing Curse that huge blond one was firing off everywhere— Harry, if we hadn't had your Felix potion, I think we'd all have been killed, but everything seemed to just miss us —"

We had reached the hospital wing. Pushing open the doors, I saw Neville lying, apparently asleep, in a bed near the door. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Tonks, and Lupin were gathered around another bed near the far end of the ward. At the sound of the doors opening, they all looked up. Hermione ran to Harry and hugged him; Lupin ran to me and hugged me.

"Are you two all right?"

"How's Bill?" I asked softly.

No one answered me, but Hermione dragged me over to the cot where Bill laid. His face was slashed and ripped to the point of being unidentifiable. Madam Pomfrey had been dabbing at his wounds with some harsh-smelling green ointment.

"Dumbledore might know something that'd work, though," Ron said. "Where is he? Bill fought those maniacs on Dumbledore's orders, Dumbledore owes him, he can't leave him in this state —"

"Ron— Dumbledore's dead," said Ginny.

"No!" Lupin looked wildly from Ginny to me to Harry, as though hoping we might contradict her, but when we did not, Lupin collapsed into a chair beside Bill's bed, his hands over his face. The sight unnerved me, I'd never seen a grown man cry like that before.

"How did he die?" whispered Tonks. "How did it happen?"

"Snape killed him," said Harry. "I was there, I saw it. We arrived back on the Astronomy Tower because that's where the Mark was... Dumbledore was ill, he was weak, but I think he realized it was a trap when we heard footsteps running up the stairs. He immobilized me, I couldn't do anything, I was under the Invisibility Cloak— and then Malfoy came through the door and disarmed him —"