It's been noted, by several reviewers, that everyone really wants the story resolved between Al and Nat. To do that, I'm ending the story. So I can do that and since this is my last fanfiction, end my writing in the next few chapters OR I can actually finish the story out to the end like I intended. I want to write what I intended. I want to grow this story in a natural way and sometimes things aren't neatly resolved in a few chapters. Life isn't like that. How many years of this story did we deal with James being an utter prat? Who actually *LIKED* James from early in this story? He grew at the rate he was supposed to, what would be normal an natural for him. It takes time.
So I can rush through the story and end it shortly after Rose's wedding, which is about 5 chapters from now, or we can keep the story going at the pace I intended. I want to hear what you think. I'm not promising to listen as it's my story and I think I'd rather finish it at the rate I intended, but I do what to hear what you have to say. So either review and tell me or PM me.
Al and Nat are going to get together! I promise!! And there will be a lot of fun fluff between them before the end. I PROMISE. If I end it fast, you'll get one chapter of fluff for them and that'll be it. Sooooo yeah.
As always, thank you Arnel for beta'ing for me!
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The Space Between | ||||||
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Category: Post-Hogwarts, Post-DH/AB, Post-DH/PM Characters:All Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama, Fluff, General, Humor, Tragedy Warnings: Dark Fiction, Death, Disturbing Imagery, Extreme Language, Intimate Sexual Situations, Mental Abuse, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations, Negative Alcohol Use, Rape, Sexual Situations, Spouse/Adult/Child Abuse, Violence, Violence/Physical Abuse Rating: R Reviews: 584 Summary: Harry and Ginny's lives have finally evened out. They've faced trauma, and loss, more than most have, but they've fought hard to find a normal. If only things could stay that way... Old enemies find new ways to seek revenge. This story is the sequel to Bound. It would be extremely helpful if you read that first. Warnings are to be safe. It's probably overkill. Please message me if you have any questions or concerns. Hitcount: Story Total: 353448; Chapter Total: 1393 Awards: View Trophy Room Author's Notes: |
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Chapter 69 “How are you feeling?” Victoire asked Louis as he had his head bent over to toilet in their guest bath. “Like total shit,” he said as he spit something into the toilet. “God, this is wretched.” “Mmm,” she agreed. “No one said getting sober was going to be easy. I told you taking the potion was going to be hard, but it’ll definitely help with the cravings after a few weeks.” His only reply was to start vomiting again. Blessedly, Nat had taken off of her work to help with the children since Victoire was required to babysit her brother while he went through this. Normally the process was done at St. Mungo’s so it could be supervised by a Healer, but Victoire was still a Healer and understandably, everyone wanted to keep Louis’ name out of the papers. It was all supposed to be confidential, but things had a way of getting out if one wasn’t careful. They’d decided Louis would stay with them for the month-long sobering process. For this first week he was going to be too ill to go to work, but by the next week he could go in and work a normal day. The only problem was keeping him from going to the pubs, but that’s where her father came in. He would take Louis to work, watch him while he was at work, and then deliver him back to Victoire and Teddy at the end of the day. It would take a full month of the potions to totally rid him of the alcohol and then once that was done, any time he tried to drink his system would see it as a toxin and he’d immediately start vomiting. It was forced sobriety and one of the better potions invented by Slughorn back in his hay-day. Not, of course, that the old man would have ever used it. From what Victoire had learned about him, he only knew how to do things to excess. But first she had to keep Louis on the potion for a whole month. Often times the person would get sober enough and then they’d quit before the treatment was done. She needed him to stick, which meant getting him in with a therapist, but currently he was refusing to do that part. “Come on,” she said after he’d stopped puking up his guts. “Let’s get you into bed.” She didn’t say anything until she had him settled into the covers and then she ran a hand over his brow, smoothing his hair back from his face as she studied the man he’d become. “Louis, my love… why are you doing this to yourself?” To her utter shock, although she’d realize later she shouldn’t have been shocked, he burst into sobs. Victoire lay down next to him and gathered him close, much like she’d done when he’d been smaller than her. “Shh, I have you,” she whispered as she let him cry it out. “I have you, my love. Talk to me.” It took him a long time to begin to talk. When he finally began to talk, it just about broke her heart. “No one loves me for me.” “I love you,” she promised him gently. “I’ve always loved you, since you were brand new.” She’d been five when he was born and oh, how she’d adored holding him! He’d been her everything for a time, until he’d grown big enough to walk on his own and then he’d demanded to be his own little man. He shook his head. “Not you, I mean I know everyone in the family loves me despite how I’ve been acting. Did you know I ruined a night alone between Al and Nat because Al had to come drag me out of a pub? I ruined it! I’m ruining everything.” “I did hear about that, yeah,” Victoire confirmed. The night had been weeks ago, as it was now March, and she rather suspected that Al’s blowing up at him four nights ago was why Louis had come to her and asked for her help. Even James was fed up with how Louis was acting and it took a lot for anything to annoy James when it came to Louis. But James had other priorities now, and Louis couldn’t fall back on his best mate to see him through the hard times. “I keep wanting for them to get together,” he said and hiccupped once. “He was so mad at me, so mad he was pulling me out of another pub. I don’t want to make it so my family doesn’t love me anymore.” “We love you unconditionally,” she reminded him. “We just might not like you all the time.” He laughed then and rolled over, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I’m not lovable. That’s what Lena said. I think it was Lena. She told me my pretty face wasn’t enough to make anyone stay if I wasn’t lovable and I think that’s the problem. I’ve always just been a pretty face.” “Louis… why have you only ever dated plain girls?” Victoire asked, hoping this time she’d finally get an answer. He sighed and let his hands drop to the bed. “First off… they aren’t plain to me. You have to understand that, alright?” “Alright,” she agreed. But she’d seen photos of some of his ex-girlfriends and some of them were bordering on homely. “How do you see them?” “When I look at a person I see… I see kindness in the eyes and that’s beautiful to me. I find that very appealing. If I see a good sense of humor, that’s beautiful to me. I really like smart girls, too. All those things appeal to me. I have this beautiful face,” he said as he waved dismissively at myself, “but… am I as kind as I could be? Am I funny or charming? Am I as smart as others? Or am I just a pretty face?” Victoire’s heart simply cracked in half as she reached out and took his hand in hers. “You are all of those things.” He shook his head and pressed his lips hard together. “When I was at Hogwarts it was so easy because I was with everyone who was like me and I… I avoided the conventionally pretty girls because if they were as shallow about their looks as I was, I didn’t want anything to do with them. I had Jane for a while and she was great. She was really good for me, but… I wasn’t good enough for her, Vic. I wasn’t, no,” he said as she shook her head. “You don’t know what was going on in my head and I wasn’t good enough for her. She’s married a really nice bloke and he’s so much better for her than I would have ever been.” “What happened then?” Victoire asked him quietly. She wouldn’t ask about those inner demons yet. He had time to work through them. “I went to Egypt and… and I let myself go.” He started to cry again. “I slept with a lot of women, Vic.” She wanted to say she was shocked, but honestly she’d been expecting something like this. When he’d come back he’d had an STD so she knew something had gone on. “Alright.” “You don’t even sound disgusted.” “You don’t disgust me,” she promised him. “I want to know what’s hurting your heart so you never want to turn back to alcohol again, trying to numb it away.” He licked at his cracked lips and let out a long, sorrowful sigh. He didn’t look at her. She was sure he couldn’t look at her. “I started with others from around the world. Then after I burned through all of them I started hiring girls.” She did fight back her gasp of shock, knowing she had to stay neutral or he’d clam up and the bottle would go right back to being his number one coping strategy. “I’m listening,” she said and thankfully her voice sounded neutral. “I… I once ended up in bed with a man, too,” he said after a minute and then he looked at her. “Not like that, but the two of us and a girl… well, I thought she was a woman, but when I sobered up and Merlin…” he started sobbing again and this time it took him another ten minutes to pull it together. “Vic… she.. s-she was a kid!” “Oh, Louis!” she felt sick inside. Sick for him, sick for that poor girl, just sick. “I have n-never hated myself more than I did at that moment,” he whispered. “She was fifteen. I was eighteen at the time and the other guy, who had paid for her, was in his late twenties.” It was enough to make anyone hate themselves. No, the age difference between her brother and the girl wasn’t a lot, but it was still illegal. Actually… she wasn’t entirely sure it was illegal in Egypt. “What did you do?” “I turned myself into the police, but they weren’t willing to do anything because she and I were close in age. They did arrest the other man, though.” “How did we not hear about any of this?” Victoire wondered. “I’d think that would have made the papers.” He shrugged. “I’d have deserved it getting out. I didn’t care, but it didn’t because they didn’t want to expose her and I wasn’t charged. After everything I told her I was really sorry and then I paid for her to go to a boarding school in Alexandria so she could get out of the life she’s been living. She was an orphan and had no other choice but to prostitute herself. She said… she said she didn’t mind and wasn’t upset with me, but I felt like an utter shit for what I’d done to her. I’d been making sure everyone I’d been with was older than me, but the man… he wanted me and I let him get me drunk.” “How is the girl?” Victoire asked after she tried to wrap her head around everything she’d just learned and decided it was going to take another week to get all the way around it. “She had another year there and she’s doing really well,” he told her and for the first time he smiled. “She’s written to tell me about it, about how she likes living in the all-girl school because there’s no temptation for boys there. She says she’s going to be a teacher and I promised to help her until she has a job.” “Good for you,” she told him simply. “You made a horrible, horrible mistake. You committed a crime. You turned yourself in and then when you were let off, you took care of the victim in this.” She didn’t add that he’d been young and clearly used by the older man. It didn’t matter at this juncture. It mattered more that her brother had taken responsibility. “I put in for a transfer then,” he told her. “My supervisor knew I needed to get back here, get away from the temptation, so he approved it but it took months to actually go through. That’s when the drinking really started. I used it to numb the cravings for other things and so I could stay in my flat and not feel anything, like loathing myself for what I’d done. I came home and tried to… oh, I had that STD. No wonder you weren’t surprised at what I’d been up to.” “Mhmm,” she agreed evenly. “You came home where you could hire a prostitute, but with all of us watching it’s harder to do.” “I’m never doing that again,” he said with such vehemence she believed him. She just wished he sounded that sure about never drinking again. “I came home and tried to lean on James but he has Caroline and Alex and really doesn’t have time for me, so I tried to find girls like I did before, but they weren’t… Annie was good, but she wasn’t taking me seriously.” “You know why she wasn’t taking you seriously.” He nodded and squinted his eyes shut. “My head is pounding.” “I can’t give you anything for it for another hour, but have some water and some salt. Let’s get you hydrated.” After he’d drunk some, he sat back against the headboard while she sat next to him and he said, “I do know why she didn’t take me seriously. I wasn’t actually serious about her and I think she could tell. I was just looking for a distraction from my pain.” “Is that what it’s always been about? Have they all been a distraction?” Victoire asked him gently, taking his hand again. “Do you dislike yourself that much?” “What am I but a pretty face?” he asked her earnestly, finally turning his blue eyes to meet hers. The reflection she saw was not the mirrored twin orbs that matched her own, but ones with a deep well of pain and doubt. “You are very smart, Louis,” she reminded him. “You weren’t top of your class, but you were in the top five. Did you forget that somehow?” “No, but it doesn’t feel like it’s that big of a deal,” he said and then frowned. “It is a big deal, but not really.” “You had nine N.E.W.T.’s!” Victoire huffed out. “You beat Aunt Hermione on that one!” “That’s not really fair to compare since she was sitting them just after the war,” Louis reminded her, but a slow smile spread over his lips. “But yeah, I did get nine and most were O’s.” “You are a very kind person, too,” she said. “Nope,” she told him when he shook his head. “You made a mistake and you made up for it, making sure that girl has a chance at a real life, Louis! That’s more than almost anyone would do! Don’t dismiss that. You are kind. You were feeling terrible last night, but you still held Emma and read her a story. You’re a great uncle and a good friend. You’ve lost your way, but you’ll get back there, especially if you stay sober.” “I want to,” he said quietly. “Lena… Lena told me her father was a recovered alcoholic. He’d done this potion detox. She said I should ask you. She told me she’d sit with me any time I was struggling not to drink.” Victoire felt an alarm bell go off in her head. “But no dating her, alright? You need to learn to love yourself first and stop using eighty-year-old women as a distraction.” “She wasn’t eighty, and no dating Lena. She’d just a friend and not my type.” “Do you even know what your type really is?” Louis fell silent and then shook his head. “No, I don’t think I do. I can figure that out in therapy, though, right?” Relieved, Victoire leaned over and pulled him in for a hard hug. “Yeah, you can do that.” ~*~ Al was determined to stand perfectly still and look as serious and professional as possible and not like he was a scared eighteen-year-old trainee-Auror. Which he was. Louis, who had been causing nothing but problems, was currently in the throes of detoxing and he’d hit a rough stage that required him to be restrained. Normally this was all done in the hospital so that the person couldn’t hurt themselves or someone else, but Teddy was running late today because Louis had had a bad night. Frankly, Al was so tired of his cousin’s crap, he didn’t really care what happened to him. Okay, that wasn’t true. Al loved him and did care but damn it, Louis was ruining his own life and that wasn’t on Al’s shoulders. Even as he thought it, guilt began to eat at him. Lena has, very bluntly, pointed out to him that if Louis were happy with his life, he wouldn’t be drinking to excess. He hadn’t known that her father was an alcoholic and her stories about what it was like when he was drinking had been heartbreaking. Her father had lost his job and nearly lost his whole family because of his addiction. Lena hadn’t explained why her father was drinking and Al hadn’t asked, but he understood now how she could be empathetic towards his cousin when he was struggling. “Albus,” Nat hissed from next to him in the empty exam room they’d set up in the Auror office of the Ministry. Al jumped and realized he’d completely spaced out for at least five minutes there. “What did I miss?” Nat sighed. “I said I need to go to the loo.” “Right,” Al said and cleared his throat. Normally it was Teddy here with Nat to inspect the pregnant women, but Teddy was at home. With Louis. Hopefully, he would get here soon because Al was woefully unqualified to be guarding Nat if something were to go wrong. Nothing had gone wrong, thus far, Al knew. It was why his father had sent him in to work with Nat, since he knew all her secrets and that she was hiding under the cloak. Al walked over to the door to the loo, which was in the office. It was supposed to be the office of the Head Auror, complete with its own loo, but his dad had hated that it was so far away from everyone else and thus had never used it. Al opened the door and waited until Nat had gone in, then he closed it. No one could see into the room so there was no need to worry about the door appearing to open by itself, except that Nat couldn’t turn the door knobs with the cloak on. She’d tried and she’d failed, so it was up to him. Plus, if someone did just walk in, it wouldn’t look weird if the door was swinging shut when no one was standing there. It was all a complicated mess, but today they were bringing in a lot of women and some babies from overseas who needed to be healed. The Minister had finally cleared them to start taking foreign patients after the outcry had grown so fierce of their not releasing the formula to try to cure the women themselves. This was a terrible day for Teddy to be at home, but he was supposed to be here shortly after the exams started and his dad had promised to be close by, just in case. Also, Nat had on a bracelet that was a Portkey. She just had to touch it and say ‘home’ and she would be transported instantly back to Ivy Run. They’d worked everything out so that it was perfectly safe and not a stupid arsed farce to have a trainee Auror in for security. Granted, he wasn’t the only security, but he was the only security who could be in the room and he had seen the looks of downright disbelief his father had been on the receiving end of when he’d told the whole team that Al was going to be taking Teddy’s place. It was all a damn mess. “Done,” Nat called from the door and Al opened it and they both walked back to their places. “This is taking forever. It’s a good thing it isn’t hot in here or I’d be passed out from the heat under this cloak. Teddy normally cools it off for me.” “How does he do that?” Al wondered. “No clue,” Nat sighed. “Anyway, hopefully they get started soon. The queue can’t be that long, can it?” The door opened then and Aunt Audrey came in with the Minister looking decidedly harassed. They shut the door and cast a charm before Audrey asked, “Are we in the clear?” “Yeah,” Nat confirmed, letting her know there was no one listening by any means. “We just found a spy in my office,” the Minister said as she took one of the seats and sat down, crossing her legs at the ankles. “Thankfully we discovered him before we said something important, but we had to come here to talk. The door is locked, Nat, so you can come out. The guards know not to let anyone in except Auror Potter.” Nat pulled off the cloak and Al had to fight back the temptation to smooth her fly away hairs down. Likely he’d just shock himself with the static electricity. “As I was saying,” the Minister sighed as she turned back to Audrey. “I don’t like the diplomatic fall out that’s going to come raining down on me if I keep their security forces out of the room! Isn’t there something we can do?” “How are we going to do that when it’s Nat actually healing them and not me?” Audrey pointed out. “You have to tell them that if they insist, then everyone goes home untreated.” She went on quickly before the Ministry could protest further. “I truly get what a difficult position all of this puts you in. I understand that you have enormous political pressuring coming down on you, but we could be doing nothing for anyone else and that would be worse. We have to do what we can, but it has to be done safely and we’re asking Nat to risk her life every time she does this.” “We could just tell everyone how we’re doing it,” Minister Macmillan began, but Al and his aunt both said, “No!” at the exact same moment. “It isn’t a good idea,” Nat piped in. “I already have no life as it is and I’d have even less of a life if it was found out. Everyone, all over the world, would be trying to kidnap me to exploit me.” The Minister rubbed at her brow and shook her head. “Alright, alright,” she sighed. “I give up. I’ll take the heat for this, and we’ll get started on the patients. You have this?” she asked Al. “I have it,” Al lied smoothly. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes and then Teddy would be there. “I’ll get the first patient, then,” Audrey told them. “Cover back up. We’ll turn away anyone who won’t be seen alone.” It turned out that no one was willing to walk away from help, even if they had to go in alone. They took infants first since they were already sick and needing help. Al watched his aunt come in with the first baby, closing and sealing the door. “Did you see how I did that, Al?” she asked him. “Can you do that?” “Yeah,” Al confirmed. “You want me to do that after you bring in the patient?” “Yes, that’s your job from here on out,” she said as she put the infant down. Al stood by the door and watched Nat as she went to work on the baby, who was so pale and thin she almost looked like a doll. She wasn’t crying so much as pathetically whimpering between huge hiccups. “She’s very far gone,” Nat told Audrey. “She’s going straight over to St. Mungo’s after this to be hooked up to a feeding tube.” “Understood,” Audrey agreed as Nat began to extract the poison from her. Just watching the toxic sludge being sucked out of the baby was enough to turn Al’s stomach, but he didn’t look away. This had happened to his nephew. He wanted to see what she’d done to help Alex. “Where’s the baby’s mother?” he asked his aunt after she’d begun the cleanup. “She died shortly after the birth,” Audrey told him grimly. “We have a lot of babies here without mothers. It’s going to be a difficult few hours.” Next in was another infant but this time with his mother. Al locked the door after Audrey, and then watched as his aunt put the woman to sleep. Nat worked first on the baby and then healed the mother. On and on it went as piles and piles of the brown sludge was pulled from the babies. It was revolting, but also heartwarming because when the women were awakened, it was clear immediately that they felt better and even when they didn’t speak the same language, gratitude at seeing their baby feeling better was universal. Then they had a mother in who had survived when her baby had not and the look on her face was one Al didn’t think he’d ever be able to unsee. She was gaunt and it was clear she didn’t care about herself one way or the other. Teddy arrived after that one, but told Al he was going to stay and continue to help since they might need him to fill in again since they had literally thousands of requests for this type of healing from all over the globe. It was a blessing Nat was so far ahead in making wands because this had become her full time, and completely unpaid job. “You can continue to get the door,” Teddy told him as they led out the next patient. “I’ll keep watch.” When the next woman came in, Al saw she was still pregnant and looked like she might just give birth just then. “Hang on,” Teddy said pleasantly, and Al paused in sealing the door. “No, Al, go ahead. I need to examine her first.” Ah. That meant this one was under the Imperius Curse or something else like it. Nat would have tapped the palm of his hand, which he always kept near her. She would tap once for Imperius Curse and twice if it was something else. He watched Teddy pretend to exam her and then lift the Imperius Curse from her. It wasn’t something Al could do, so if that had been spotted before Teddy arrived, Al was simply to stop everything and they’d wait until his dad could be fetched and hoped whoever it wasn’t didn’t get violent. On and on it went, for hours and hours. They broke for lunch and ate in the office with food Polly had sent for Nat and Al, and then were back at it again. “We still have twelve women to see for today,” Audrey told them wearily as she escorted in another patient. The girl, for she couldn’t be older than fifteen or sixteen, looked sickly and scared out of her mind. Al wanted to say something to comfort her, but she was speaking rapidly in a tongue he didn’t understand. “You’re okay,” Audrey said soothingly to the girl. “You’re alright, I’m going to take care of you.” She put the girl to sleep and Nat went to work on her. Al glanced up at the ceiling, trying to stretch out his neck. His feet were aching from standing for so long on the hard floor and he couldn’t imagine Nat was doing much better. Even worse, Nat would be doing this all over again tomorrow and probably the next few weeks. “Done?” Audrey asked and Nat tapped the table once to indicate she was. It was unlikely someone was going to wake her up and extract a memory from the girl, but they took no chances. BOOM! Al dropped to a knee as the whole building shook! His head was ringing from the loud explosion as equipment rattled around them. He caught sight of Nat’s foot as she must have sprawled onto the floor. He was up and moving even as Teddy shouted, “Go!” Al grabbed her, found her wrist through the cloak where the band was located, and shouted, “HOME!” A split second later the Portkey activated and the tug behind his navel send them spinning towards Ivy Run. They landed with him half on top of Nat in the living room where his mother let out a surprised shriek. Al pulled the cloak off of Nat and ran his hands over her before cupping her face. “Are you okay?” “What happened?” Ginny demanded as she ran towards them. “Are you okay?” Al asked again, ignoring his mother for the moment. “Fine,” Nat nodded. “I’m fine! It just scared me, that’s all, and my ears are ringing.” Al’s were, as well. It had been deafeningly loud. “I need to go back to the Ministry,” Al told her. “Wait!” Ginny said in her very sternest mother’s voice. “What happened, Al?” “Some kind of explosion at the Ministry,” Al told his mum. “I need to go help.” Ginny shook her head, obvious fear all over her face. “You won’t be able to get back in. They’ll have sealed the Floo automatically to lock down the security.” Al winced as he realized that of course his mother was right. He knew that. It had been one of the first things he’d learned in training. “I need to go help!” “You’ll have to go back to London and get there from the regular entrance or check in at the hospital to see if they can get you in,” Ginny explained. “I know you need to go, but you can’t get back in any other way. It’s why Nat has a Portkey as that can’t be tampered with.” His mother knelt next to Nat and touched her cheek. “You’re already bruising up, darling. Come on, let’s get some ice on that cheek until I can dig up the gunk my brothers use for bruises.” “I hit the exam table when I fell,” Nat explained as Al gently lifted her to her feet. She glanced over to Al and he could see for himself the bruise was already swelling under her right cheek. “Go on, Al. I’m okay. Go help.” Al nodded, and headed for the front door. He’d have to Apparate to London and try to get in some other way. ~*~ “What happened?” Harry demanded as he ran down the darkened staircase, using his wand for light. They shouldn’t have lost the lights in the building, as the lights were magical, but something had happened to all the inbuilt magical systems in the Ministry and Harry had a very good idea who was behind it. Now all he needed to do was to figure out the how. “We don’t know yet,” Thomas Greggory called out as he jogged with Harry, trying to find the source of the blast. It had to be on one of the upper levels, as it would have been difficult for anyone to get past the main security, but how far up was another matter. Still, he hadn’t seen anything from the Minister’s office and they had no way of getting out of the building now except the Atrium. “Auror Potter!” a woman called out as she entered the stairs. “Was the explosion on your floor?” Harry asked her, pausing only long enough to see her shake her head. “Keep everyone on the floor and keep the stairs clear. We aren’t likely to need to evacuate, but if so the tunnels in the basement are an option. Spread that word.” “Yes, sir,” she called back to him and ducked back into the doorway she’d exited from. “This is going to be a damn mess,” Harry griped, but was thankful it wasn’t worse. The building was still whole, at least on the upper few floors, and the Minister hadn’t been up in her office because it had been infiltrated so she’d been working from the Auror office for the afternoon. They had a bunch of pregnant women on his floor, however, who were in desperate need of healing and no way of helping them since Nat had been evacuated. Well, they would be alright for a few days until they could sort things out. Right now, he had bigger problems. The Aurors on duty were dealing with the international nightmare downstairs while Harry and Thomas ran for the Atrium to find the cause of all of their current chaos. Then, hopefully, he’d have reinforcements running down the stairs after him. He was really glad he’d gone back to the fitness standards of old or they’d all be in terrible shape. “Off the stairs!” Harry called out as he spotted people trying to evacuate. “The Aurors and MLE will be coming down and we need the stairs cleared. Stay in your offices until we tell you to evacuate!” He felt like he might be ready to pass out and die and would probably be okay with that when he hit the Atrium and pushed out to see that except for a little bit of dust everywhere, nothing was wrong. He spotted the security guard, who had, likewise spotted him. “What happened?” “Muggle street level,” the guard explained. “It destroyed the visitor’s entrance, so I can’t get out to check, but I used the telephone Mrs. Weasley had installed and called up our Muggle contact who told me there was a bomb that blew the whole street apart above us.” “Damn it,” Harry closed his eyes, knowing there was going to be mass-casualties above them. “Thank you, Silas. I’m going to start the evacuations through the tunnels. You stay here until someone comes for you.” “Yes, sir,” Silas answered. Harry turned to shake his head at Thomas. “It’s always something. We need to get topside and start helping. But first we evacuate the Ministry and lock it down until maintenance and the building inspectors have gone through to make sure we’re in the clear.” They should be in the clear as the building was underground and designed to withstand almost any attack that could be thrown at them from the Muggle side, but they still had to check. It wouldn’t have been hard for Crabbe to have a bomb planted and it was an excellent way for her to express her opinion on them healing women. Would anyone want to send someone for healing now after the Muggle street was bombed? He honestly didn’t know and wouldn’t blame anyone for staying away. “Potter!” he turned to find the Minister, along with Hermione, exiting the stairwell. “Muggle bomb street side,” Harry explained. “Oh, Merlin, no,” Hermione’s eyes widened. “So many people work and live above us!” “We’ll need to go help, but first we have to get the employees evacuated through the basement tunnel. I can’t override the Floo lockdown without the building being cleared, as the fireplaces might have been damaged, and we can’t use the visitor’s entrance.” “I’ve done a couple of Portkeys and already sent some people out to get help,” the Minister explained. “We’ll start moving everyone down to the tunnels. How did the lights get knocked out?” “I don’t know,” Harry admitted and it worried him. “It could be a two-fold attack, but as far as I can tell the only damage in here is the lights and the lifts aren’t working. We need to wait for the inspections.” Harry didn’t wait around to help with the evacuations. The Minister could handle it. He took every Auror and MLE in the building who wasn’t needed for security and used a Portkey to get them outside into an alley a few blocks from the Ministry. There they jogged over to the site of the explosion only to find it was more devastating than anything he could have imagined. He didn’t see anyone he knew, but also knew exactly how to make sure they were allowed to help. They simply had to act like they belonged there. “Let’s go,” he told his crew. “Stay in groups of three, like I said, and search out the wounded who are still alive. We’ve done this in drills and in real life. If you find someone and can magically get them out, then do it. If you’ll be spotted, signal to the crews that you have someone.” He’d been working for not even ten minutes when he spotted Al, who had joined Teddy’s crew to search. It made his heart ache to see his boy out here, doing something to help in a devastating situation. They needed more people like Al to make this world a better place and he was thankful to have had a hand in raising him. “Hey! Potter!” a man called out to him and Harry turned, spotted a man he recognized from the Muggle police force. They’d worked together on the terrorist attacks in years gone by, but it had been a few years since he’d seen the man. Harry paused and held out his hand to shake. “Melbourne.” The man nodded as he shook. “Glad to see you here. Let me know if you have any trouble, but after I spotted you I spread the word to let your men work.” “We’ll do what we can,” Harry promised him. “I know you will,” Melbourne said grimly as he surveyed the damage. “Haven’t had anything like this in a few years and now this… God. We’ll have lost dozens, maybe hundreds. But,” he turned back to Harry. “I saw your men perform miracles finding people and we need all the help we can get. Let me know if you need my assistance.” “I will,” Harry assured him as he let his wand slide down his sleeve a bit more as he whispered the Homenum Revelio charm as he began to walk among the rubble. “I have one!” Harry turned at the sound of his son’s voice and knew he’d seen the small flash of a marker that meant someone was alive under there. Harry wanted to run to him, to help him, but he and Teddy were already shifting aside the rubble to get to the person. They would soon have to bring in heavy excavation equipment, but for right now they needed to do what they could to get to the people who could be saved and that meant digging by hand for now. “Potter,” Thomas called to him quietly. “I have one, but it’s down quite a bit. We’ll have to shift the rubble with magic to get to them.” “Understood,” Harry said as he fully pulled out his wand and cast a net around that would deflect all of the Muggle attention. “It’s up,” he told his team as he kept his eyes fixed on the scene around him, making sure no one could spot what they were doing. He heard another group move in to help shift the rubble, lifting the heavy blocks and moving them over to spots they’d already cleared. It took them a good five minutes to get down to the person, but it would have taken the Muggles at least a day. “It’s a woman,” Thomas called out. “She’s quite hurt and unconscious.” “Send her straight to St. Mungo’s,” Harry called to him. They wouldn’t be able to risk revealing to the Muggles how much they’d cleared. St. Mungo’s would patch her up enough and then deposit her in a hospital later that night. “We need to keep moving.” “Yes, sir,” Thomas called back. “She’s cleared. We’re shifting the rubble back now.” They worked on for hours that night and pulled out forty people alive from the broken buildings. But they found countless dead. Harry didn’t have an exact number when he finally left in the early hours of the morning when they were certain there was no one left to save, but if he had to guess he’d have said at least four hundred. He needed to go home, shower, and then show up at the Ministry to go over the security reports compiled for him. Somehow he had to do that on no sleep. Crabbe really needed to just die already. The only bright side was that she was now targeting almost every country in the world with her potion, trying to rid babies of their magic. It meant that no country was willing to harbor her. Some day she was going to slip up and he would be ready. Until then, he had to wait and keep fighting her where he could. |
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