Here at the End

By

Ahn Na Blue

Rated PG-13

Chapter Thirteen: The Chosen One

Disclaimer: Thirteen chapters. I can scarce believe it. Anyway, the world of Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, blah blah blah, except that it’s really sucked as of late, yada yada yada.

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“Mum, why isn’t he waking up?” Ginny asked tremulously, and Mrs. Weasley put an arm around her.

“He’s not responding well to the treatment,” Madam Pomfrey answered for her. “The wound…it refuses to heal properly…”

Harry and Hermione were standing at the foot of the bed with Luna, looking on in silence. Harry watched Ron’s chest rise and fall with each breath, as if to will that movement to continue. He tried not to let his eyes drift up towards his neck, where blood still seeped at the bandage, and where angry red lines were starting to streak out beneath the skin.

“Well,” said one of the Healers from St. Mungo’s, “We might have better luck with treatment if we knew what the bite was really from.” He looked accusingly at Harry.

“It was a werewolf,” Harry said simply. “We already told you.”

“You know that’s impossible; it’s not even the full moon!”

“Nevertheless,” interjected Lupin, “It was a werewolf.” He looked down at Ron sadly. “And worse than a werewolf.”

As they watched, Ron moaned softly and grimaced as though in pain.

“Ron?” Mrs. Weasley said hopefully. “Ron?”

Madam Pomfrey shook her head. “I don’t think he can hear you…”

And then from behind them came a louder moan, and some mumbling, and everyone turned.

“Hagrid?” said Hermione, stepping tentatively over to where he lay, half on the ground after the hospital bed had collapsed from his weight.

Harry and Professor McGonagall walked with her, as did Madam Pomfrey. The half-giant appeared to be trying to open his eyes.

“Ermione?” he asked, softly.

“I’m here, Hagrid,” she answered, leaning over him. The Healers had fared much better with Hagrid; most of his cuts were little more than scabs, and his bruises were faded to a pale yellow.

“Buckbeak,” he breathed heavily. “Where-”

“It’s all right,” Hermione said softly.

“They were attackin’ im….”

“Buckbeak is fine. Don’t worry. We sent for a MagiVet as soon as we got you to the hospital wing. He’s down in your hut as we speak.”

Hagrid’s eyes opened slightly, and he peered at Hermione, and then over at Harry.

“The last I heard, he was quite cozy on your bed, eating a steady diet of dead ferrets soaked in blood-replenishing potion,” Harry said bracingly, trying to smile. “Just rest Hagrid.”

The half-giant’s eyes fluttered closed again.

“He wasn’t bitten,” Madam Pomfrey said with relief. “He was just very bruised, and had more claw marks than I’ve ever seen…He should be fully recovered after a day or two.”

Professor McGonagall looked down at him with stern fondness. “Inquiring after a hippogriff when he’s been nearly killed! Sometimes I think he wouldn’t bother waking up at all if he didn’t have some beast to care for.”

In response to this, Fang, who had been sitting near Hagrid’s head, pushed his wet nose into her arm. The MagiVet had found Fang when he went to treat Buckbeak. The enormous dog had been shivering and whimpering behind a large pumpkin.

“You don’t count as a beast,” McGonagall said to him. “You’re barely a kitten!” But she patted his head anyway.

Harry stood between the beds of his fallen friends. Hagrid was asleep again, and Ron was still unconscious; Mrs. Weasley was kneeling by his bed and crying as she stroked his hand. One of the Healers was examining the wound as he changed the dressing. As he was about to re-wrap the wound, he drew back with a gasp.

“What? What is it?” Mr. Weasley demanded, and Harry and Hermione rushed back to the foot of Ron’s bed.

Harry’s face crumpled at the sight of the uncovered wound. It had barely healed at all. It was ragged and red, and still seeping blood.

“What is it?” Mr. Weasley said again, more loudly this time.

“Look…look at his teeth….” The Healer pointed at Ron’s face, and as they watched, the boy grimaced in his sleep, revealing a mouth that appeared to have far too many long, sharp incisors.

Hermione gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. Harry placed an arm around her and pulled her closer.

“He’s turning,” Professor Lupin said with defeat, lowering his eyes.

“What do you mean he’s turning?” Bill asked. “It’s not the full moon yet, he’s got twelve days-”

“The werewolf he was bitten by was more than just a werewolf,” Lupin explained. “It was a werewolf that was fully transformed. It wasn’t just a curse, like it is for me. It wasn’t just a symptom of a disease. What Ron was bitten by…” he looked down at the boy sadly. “It was what werewolves were before they ever became just a human infection. It was the beast itself.”

“But you said it was Greyback-”

“Not the Greyback that you knew.”

“You mean,” Mrs. Weasley said in a fearful voice, “Ron could be a werewolf all the time?”

“I don’t know Molly,” Lupin said gravely.

Behind them, Harry heard a small sniffle. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Luna, still twisting her bottle cap necklace in her hands. Tonks had an arm around her.

Harry looked back at his friend. Ron, a werewolf forever? And not just any werewolf, but a red, disjointed abomination? He couldn’t imagine it. His eyes began to fill with tears.

Ron can’t be a werewolf, he thought madly. How would he go to class? How would he do any of the things that they’d used to do? Suddenly he pictured himself playing wizard chess in the corner of the Common Room, but on the other side of the table wasn’t Ron, but a great werewolf with Ron’s voice, telling him to watch his Queen. This was followed by the image of a werewolf in Quidditch robes, trying to navigate a broom.

Harry blinked. Everyone was staring at him, and it took him a moment to realize that he had laughed. His mouth dropped open in horror. “I- I’m sorry,” he said quickly, and wiped the tears from his face. “I don’t know- I-”

But he couldn’t explain it. He hadn’t meant to laugh. It had just happened. Nothing was funny. Nothing felt funny, he just-

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, and then fled from the hospital wing.

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“Harry! Harry stop!”

He heard Hermione calling to him, but he didn’t stop until he was out of the castle. Until he had reached the cover of the trees by the lake. And even then he couldn’t stop moving. There was so much welling up inside of him; he paced like he was caged, he wanted to dive into the lake and wrestle the giant squid. Anything. He just wanted to fight.

“Harry-”

“He did this on purpose!” Harry shouted, and then lowered his voice as Hermione winced. “He knew what would happen! He sent them for Ron…and for you…he’s trying to lure me out….he’s trying to make me-”

“He’s trying to make you mess up,” Hermione said desperately.

Harry wouldn’t look at her. He couldn’t stop thinking of Voldemort. He had to find him, and kill him…His scar was burning with fury, and he knew that Voldemort might be able to feel it, and he was glad.

“If he wants a fight, I’ll take it to him,” Harry growled. “Does he think I’m afraid?”

“But you don’t know what he’s planning! If he did do this on purpose- it’s some kind of trap, he’s trying to-”

“It doesn’t matter Hermione! I can’t just sit here and do nothing! Ron’s going to be a….thing for the rest of his life! He might never be the same.” Harry clenched his jaw. He wanted something to hex, or to hit. He really, really wished that Malfoy was around. Or Snape. Definitely Snape.

“Harry, don’t do anything foolish, please.”

He stopped pacing and looked at her. She was crying again, and exhausted, her hair hanging down over her face. She was hugging herself tightly, as though she’d just been kicked in the ribs.

How many times had she cried, since she’d met him? How many things had she lost, or given up…how many moments of terror had she endured, and now she was crying because she was afraid he’d do something stupid. Harry felt the fury drain out of him like there was a sieve in the bottom of his feet. He went to her, and she wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Don’t worry, Hermione. I’m not going to rush into anything,” he said, hugging her and kissing her forehead gently. “But I just-”

“I know,” she said sadly. “This stupid war…so many killed….Cedric, and Sirius, and Dumbledore….Ron….”

“Ron will be fine,” he said, resting his cheek against the top of her head. But he wasn’t so sure, not really. And he knew that he couldn’t convince her, because as was often the case, they were thinking the same thing.

Thinking about the war. And the fact that they were losing.

He was losing.

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At dinnertime, Ron was still unconscious. Harry walked into the Great Hall with heavy steps. He really didn’t have much of an appetite, but the Common Room was feeling increasingly small as he and Hermione paced away the hours inside its walls, waiting for any news of Ron’s condition. So when Hermione suggested that they get some air, and maybe try to eat something, it had seemed a good idea. But as soon as Harry walked through the enormous double doors, he wanted to turn right back around.

After all the years of whispering, all the years of staring, he’d thought that he was used to it. But the sudden silence that followed his entrance made him wish for the millionth time in his life that he was anybody else but Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. The Chosen One.

It seemed to take an eternity to reach a table, with the weight of all those eyes upon him. He sat down heavily and started pulling rolls off of the floating tray, trying to make as much noise as possible, and growing more and more irritated by the fact that nobody was eating anymore. They were all still staring at him.

“There are fewer eyes here than usual,” Hermione observed, ladling stew into a bowl.

Harry glanced around tensely. The tables did appear to be more scattered than they were a few days before. “I suppose more students have been pulled out, because of…” He looked down, and idly toyed with his roll.

“There’s steak and kidney pie tonight,” Hermione said, trying to tempt him, but when he said nothing, she took his plate and placed a pie onto it herself.

For several quiet moments they sat there, Harry taking small bites of bread, and Hermione scooping up spoonfuls of stew and blowing on them before sighing and dropping them back into her bowl. Suddenly she slammed her fist down onto the table, and all around them Harry heard the sharp intake of a roomful of breath.

“This is ridiculous!” Hermione hissed. “Can’t we even eat in peace?”

“Of course not, this is Hogwarts,” Harry observed, chewing on his roll.

“Well someone should do something about it!”

“Why not you then? You could get up and do your Head Girl rounds…”

Hermione shook her head. “I’m not Head Girl, Harry.”

“But everyone knows that you would have been, if we’d have had one.”

“We don’t know that,” Hermione blushed, and then looked at him brightly. “But there’s still a Prefect badge on these robes…” She took a large bite of her stew, and then stood up and walked down the aisle. Harry could hear her saying things like, “Eyes front please,” and “Do keep eating; it’s never good to miss a meal-”, and after a few minutes, the Great Hall was full of chatter again, and ‘The Chosen One’ had been forgotten. It was as though the students just needed something like that to happen, some kind of normal discipline. Some kind of normal anything.

Harry beamed at Hermione, and she gave a very amused smile back. He looked down at his pie and picked up his knife and fork. Maybe he was hungry, after all.

Just as he was about to take his first bite, he heard a voice behind him.

“We need to see you in the Headmistress’ office at once, Harry.”

Harry looked up into the purposeful face of Professor Lupin. The Great Hall had gone dead quiet again. Lupin gave an annoyed sigh, and then said loudly, “This is not about Ronald Weasley; PLEASE RETURN TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING.”

All around them, students dove back onto their plates, shoveling food into their mouths and talking.

Well, that’s another way to handle it, Harry thought and smirked at Hermione as she walked over to them.

“It’s really not about Ron?” she asked worriedly.

Lupin shook his head. “No. Ron is still…..” He looked down uncomfortably. “Nothing’s changed. He’s still fighting it.”

“He’ll win,” Harry said defiantly, and Lupin nodded.

“I have no doubt,” he said. “I’m sorry to interrupt your meal, but the order is already assembled…”

“It’s all right; I wasn’t really that hungry anyway,” Harry said, but as he stood up, he was looking at his steak and kidney pie rather regretfully.

“I’ll bring it up to the Common Room for you to eat later,” said Hermione, and Harry kissed her on the cheek and whispered “Thanks,” before he and Lupin walked out together.

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They walked in silence towards the stairs to the Headmistress’ office. Harry kept glancing at Professor Lupin, but since they left the Great Hall, it seemed that he was determined not to meet Harry’s eyes.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” asked Harry, which seemed an almost stupid question, with so much wrong already, but Lupin only glanced at him and then away very quickly.

“Let’s discuss it with the others,” he said quietly, and said the password, “Toffee Brittle,” which made Harry’s stomach gurgle audibly. He cleared his throat, embarrassed, and wished that he’d at least brought a biscuit along to the meeting.

Inside the office, the order was seated in a wide circle of chairs in the center of the room. Harry and Professor Lupin took the only two empty seats. Nearly everyone was there, Tonks, and Moody, and a few others whom Harry had never formally met. He noticed that the Weasleys were not present, as they were probably still at Ron’s bedside.

Harry sat down and waited. He assumed that Professor McGonagall would be the first to speak, but she seemed reluctant to begin. He began to tap his toe nervously.

If I wanted to be stared at, I could’ve stayed in the Great Hall, he thought with a bit of annoyance.

It was quite strange, actually, the way that the order was behaving. They were never this quiet; Moody always had something to say, or at least something to grumble, and they very rarely stared at him, like they were doing now. The only one of them who wasn’t staring was Professor Lupin, who was looking at his shoes.

“Did I….grow an extra nose or something?” asked Harry uncomfortably, squirming under their gaze.

Everyone immediately looked away; some cleared their throats, others toyed with their robes. Professor McGonagall gave him an apologetic smile.

“We’re here to discuss the events that transpired in the Forbidden Forest, Harry,” she said gently, and Harry wondered why she was calling him ‘Harry’. He looked at her squarely.

“You think it’s my fault too, don’t you,” he said.

“Of course not,” said Professor Lupin quickly. “We all know that you had to go after Hagrid-”

“And you were right clever too, sending your stag to us,” Tonks added, and Harry blushed, glad that no one had seen the embarrassing display of red sparks that preceded the patronus.

“No one thinks that it’s your fault, Harry,” McGonagall said, still using that gentle tone and his first name. “What we’re here to discuss today are-”

“Horcruxes!” exploded Moody, who was unable to restrain himself any longer. When the others looked at him with a mixture of surprise and chagrin, he twisted away in his chair and mumbled something under his breath that Harry couldn’t quite catch.

“The fact that Voldemort has chosen to split his soul more than seven times makes our task much more difficult-”

“But we have Hermione’s talisman,” Harry interjected. “We can find them all; it’ll just take more time.”

“Yes, I suppose we could,” Professor McGonagall said thoughtfully. “But in the meantime, Voldemort could be creating more and more new horcruxes.”

“Lost his bloody mind, he has!” Moody growled. “He could be making them left and right, for all we know! As quickly as he’s killing people, there could be hundreds!”

“Hundreds?” Harry said incredulously. “Isn’t that impossible?”

“We don’t know, Harry,” said Professor Lupin. “He must be wearing himself quite thin, and each new horcrux would be weaker than the last…but it is possible.”

“Well then we need to go faster,” said Harry. “We need to duplicate Hermione’s talisman….we need teams….a dozen or more!”

This seemed to Harry the best solution, but all around him, the members of the order were still wearing the same uncomfortable expressions that they had been when the meeting began.

“There’s something else,” Professor McGonagall said, looking down at the ground. When she met Harry’s eyes, she was peering at him very intently through her spectacles. “You’re The Chosen One, who can destroy horcruxes.”

“It seems that way,” Harry said apprehensively.

“Have you ever wondered why that is?”

Harry just looked at her dumbly. That was probably the most frequently asked question inside his head.

“Harry, when you destroyed the werewolves, do you remember what happened?”

“Of course,” he said, turning to Professor Lupin. “I used that spell we worked on. The one to call the lightning…and I felt that burning inside of me again, inside of my chest, and from my scar.” As he said that last part, the professors exchanged nervous glances.

“That’s just it, Harry,” Professor Lupin said sadly. “The lightning….it didn’t come from your wand. It came from your scar.”

“What?”

“We all saw it,” Moody said excitedly. “Couldn’t believe my eye, thought it was malfunctioning, but it was true, bolts of lightning came from that scar,” he pointed at Harry’s forehead. “Fried every one of those deformed red dogs….and then you collapsed.”

“What does that mean,” Harry asked, even though he was sure he already knew.

“We think,” Lupin said hesitantly, “That the easiest way to destroy a horcrux is with another horcrux.”

“And since I can destroy them,” said Harry quietly, “You think that I am one.”

“Not you, Harry,” Professor McGonagall said, with hope in her voice. “But your scar.”

Harry sat silently for several long moments. That was it then. It was not him, but his scar.

“It’s only your scar,” she said again, and Harry glared up at her.

“What’s the difference? My scar is part of me. It’s not as if I can just tear it off of my forehead and let one of you destroy it-”

“Nor would you want to,” Moody said, appalled. “That scar’s our best weapon.”

“I’m not a weapon!” Harry shouted. How could this have happened, he wondered. “Why would he do this,” Harry asked. “Why would he make a horcrux out of me? He wanted to kill me!”

“Maybe he wanted to turn you into a horcruxed Inferius,” Moody suggested, and everyone, including Harry, winced at the thought.

“He was just an infant,” McGonagall said. “Really Alastor!” And for the second time during the meeting, Moody twisted away in his chair and grumbled something under his breath.

“What’s more likely, Harry,” Professor Lupin said softly, “Is that you were a mistake. Voldemort must have accidentally put some of himself into you…”

Harry stopped listening. He was remembering something from very long ago…something that Dumbledore had said. “He transferred some of his own powers to you, the night that he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I’m sure…”

Harry looked down, heartbroken. “Did you know?” he said in a low voice.

“Did I know what, Harry?” Professor Lupin asked, confused.

“Did you know?!” Harry shouted, whirling away from the group, and staring at Dumbledore’s portrait. The old wizard was sitting comfortably in his chair, watching the meeting with interest.

“An interesting theory, this,” he said with a tone of quirky amusement.

“Did you know the whole time? All these years, did you know that in the end I’d have to die to beat him? All those things that you were teaching me, what was the point of it?!”

But the portrait didn’t have an answer. And of course it wouldn’t, Harry thought angrily. It’s only a portrait. Only a trick. Dumbledore is gone.

“I’m sure that he didn’t know, Harry, not for sure,” Professor Lupin said. “Even now, we don’t know for sure-”

“I have to get out of here,” Harry interrupted, and walked from the room, knocking over his chair as he left.

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When Harry ran out of the meeting, he had no idea where he was going. He just started to wander, not really letting himself think, just walking. But before long, he found himself standing before the portrait of the Fat Lady, outside the Gryffindor Common Room. He spoke the password in a flat voice and ignored her inquiries after Ron; at the moment he had no patience for portraits of any kind.

The warmth of the room hit him in a dizzying waft, and he suddenly wanted to curl up, right there on the rug, and sleep for days. His mind was spinning so quickly that he couldn’t manage a single clear thought.

“Harry? What was the meeting about? Are you still hungry?”

Hermione was sitting on the sofa, an open book in her lap. Harry stared at her. She looked so warm…and soft…He walked over to her, and stood until she pulled him down.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her eyes wide and studying his face. “Harry, what was that meeting about? What did they say?”

“Hermione,” he began, but didn’t know how to continue. How could he tell her? How could he tell her that he had to leave her? He couldn’t, not with her looking at him like that…

“Harry! Hermione!”

Hermione turned her head towards the portrait hole. Neville was standing there, panting and fluttering his hands.

“It’s Ron! He’s- He’s awake!”

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A/N: Oh how annoyed I am with myself….I failed to notice one of JKR’s style points…she always uses ‘said Harry’ or ‘said Hermione’, and all this time I’ve been using ‘Harry said’, or ‘Hermione said’. Maybe it’s a minor issue, but it does affect the overall canon-er…ness, yes, canon-ness, of the story. Dang it.

Okay, so I didn’t get any good snogglies in there for you this week. But I can feel them on deck….just waiting….and next week, we get to see what’s up with Ron, and more of what’s up with Harry. Is that vague enough for you?

And my apologies for missing the Saturday deadline. I suck, I know.