Chapter Text
It’s the first day after winter break with snow quietly falling outside the large, gothic windows, though you can hardly get anyone to go out into the cold, especially this early in the morning. For the past week, Harry had been trying to scrape together all his supposed bravery that let him get into Gryffindor, and the current peaceful atmosphere of the mid-breakfast Great Hall really isn’t helping his nerves right now.
“Hey, Hermione?” he casually asks over the buttered toast on his plate he hadn’t touched since Ron put it there. His hands are cold and wet and shaking and he hates it. “Do you think I have any living relatives outside the Dursleys?”
There. It’s out in the wild. Now he just has to wait for an answer.
Hermione looks up from the book kept next to her plate of eggs and toast. Her gaze penetrates him, as if she knows he wasn’t just idly wondering.
She is right, of course. She always is.
“Statistically, you should. Why?” she asks, not looking back to the book.
Ron too turns to him and even puts his sandwich down, which, wow. They must have found his sudden question really suspicious.
“I just...” Damn it, their combined scrutiny is burning a hole through his nonchalance. He really should have planned this out better. “Could we speak somewhere else? After breakfast, I mean.”
Really, it isn’t like they have to have this conversation now. It can wait, Harry can wait until they find a suitably abandoned classroom. Or for a few days, even. Or if they only have time next week, then—
...Shit, he really shouldn’t have brought this up.
“Sure, mate,” Ron answers after exchanging a concerned glance with Hermione, which is, quite frankly, rude. Harry is fine. Really. “But eat a bit more, ‘kay?” he adds, shooting a look at Harry’s plate. That is untouched.
And Harry tries to, he really does, but the lump in his throat makes the task quite hard.
After finishing their breakfasts, they search the castle for a place to speak. It wouldn’t do for anyone to overhear their upcoming conversation, after all. Though eventually they have to take their search up to the seventh floor because somehow every nook and cranny in the damn castle is occupied by couples in various states of undress.
Harry really wants to wipe those pictures from his memory.
Finally, just when he’s about to give up, they stumble upon an unused storage room on the seventh floor filled with junk. It’s drab and dusty and full of cobwebs, though he can’t see spides anywhere, so Ron should be good.
A fitting setting for revealing my traumatic backstory, Harry thinks. And isn’t that a jarring thought.
They file in and clear up some space on the floor to sit. Really, maybe he should find some pillows for the cold floor, it wouldn’t do for them to catch a cold just because—
“So, what brought this on?” Hermione interrupts his thoughts, gaze steadily trained on him. She had already plopped down, sitting cross-legged with her robe draped around her instead of neatly tucked under her legs like he expected.
“Yeah, out with it, mate,” Ron says, also sprawled out on the floor while Harry had been lost in his head.
And now that they are all here, safe and unable to be overheard, Harry...
Harry freezes.
This was a terrible idea. He shouldn’t have opened his mouth. Ever. This is going to be a disaster and his friends will leave him because he was just too much and they will be right to do so and then—
His breaths start to come shorter and shorter and his head is spinning. He can’t draw in enough air to make his lungs properly work and there are dark spots in his vision, and Ron and Hermione already looked spooked enough before this and—
...Shit, this is a mess. (He is a mess.)
He only notices his friend’s panicked shouts on a subconscious level, but when Ron yanks him down he goes without any resistance. It’s not like he could have done anything in the face of their worry anyways, so he lets his trembling form be sandwiched between two small but warm bodies. Hermione takes his hands in hers while Ron puts an arm around his shoulders, and Harry is really going to cry now if they keep doing things like this.
They stay there in silence until he calms down.
...Crap. Crapcrapcrapcrap. He will have to start talking now.
No, no. He can do this. Or... he can at least try. Probably.
“I— Sorry, guys. I didn’t...” he trails off, not knowing where to begin.
It’s just... How do you tell your friends you’d rather get offed by the supposedly already dead Dark Lord than go back to your loving relatives?
Hermione doesn’t let him stay quiet for long. “You scared us there, Harry. What made you so upset?”
He can tell that she is nervous from the way she is tugging at her hair; she only does that when something had upset her. And Harry doesn’t like to be the cause of it.
“I...” Hermione squeezes his hands in comfort. It feels nice. It helps. “I’ve said that I live with my aunt, uncle and cousin, yes? And they...” Well, here goes nothing. “Well, they don’t really like magic. So I was wondering if— Maybe if there were others I could stay with, then...”
Harry tries to look down at his lap, but Ron catches his gaze. His eyes aren’t smiling like Harry is used to seeing.
“Does this have anything to do with the scars on your back?” he asks seriously.
...Bloody hell. How did he—
...
...Oh. He must have seen them when they were showering. And here Harry thought he had been so careful...
“It’s... it’s alright, Ron. I just—” He tries for a smile. He isn’t sure it has the intended effect by the way both of his friends tense. “I’d rather not go back if there was another option.”
They fall into a heavy silence, Harry looking anywhere but at his friends. He doesn’t want to know what they think of him now. It’s not his fault that he has those scars, or at least it isn’t supposed to be his fault, he knows that, but... Sometimes knowing something isn’t enough.
Hermione, of course, can’t have that. She grabs his face and makes him look her in the eye. “There’s the Restricted Section of the library; we could sneak in. There must be some spell or something that will tell us if you have any other living relatives aside from them.”
Ron snorts, the first happy-ish sound Harry hears from him since he noticed the large chunk of ham on the table at breakfast. “Really? This coming from you?”
“Kindly shut up, Ronald.” Harry wonders how her glare doesn’t make Ron burst into flames on the spot, but he must have started to develop some kind of immunity a while ago. Maybe with a bit of magic though... “And Harry? If this doesn’t work out, I can always kidnap you. Or we could just run away to Ron’s if my parents remember I exist.”
Ron grimaces. “I’d rather you not. Ask the twins how Mum gets when angry.”
...Huh. So he wasn’t the only one with a tragic backstory unlocked today. Good to know.
“You really mean it?” He asks. No one has... So far, he can’t remember anyone telling him that he can go if he wants to, and they won’t take him back to the Dursleys. Not the teachers, not the police officers, not Mrs Figg when he was only able to limp around when she asked him to get the cat food from the bottom drawer.
His friends grin at him and squeeze him tightly in a hug. It’s long and warm and happy, and Harry loves it. He doesn’t let go.
It sure feels nice to have friends.
Harry can’t believe they are sneaking into the restricted section. And it’s Hermione’s idea too!
Ron and him are such a bad influence.
“Watch out!” she whisper-shouts and yanks them back from where they almost collided with a suit of armour.
Harry squinted at it. He doesn’t remember it being there a moment ago.
“Thanks, ‘Mione,” he says. It never hurts to be polite. It usually makes her glare go away.
She lets them go with a huff, frowning at Harry’s face. “We need to get you new glasses. Merlin knows you could as well not wear them if you just keep stumbling into every wall, statue and suit of armour while wearing them. When did you last have your eyes checked?”
Harry blinks at her under the invisibility cloak. “I... don’t think I ever had? Aunt Petunia fished these out of a charity bin.”
Great. Now Ron is looking at him strangely too.
“You make me want to bundle you up in a blanket and hide you away in a pillow fort,” he admits. Hermione, the traitor, nods approvingly.
Clearly, Harry has no respect here.
“Could we get a move on, guys? We don’t have all night,” Harry pleads. His friends jokingly poke him in the side (which he sadly can’t avoid within the confines of the cloak while they squish him between them) but at least they go on their way again.
They reach the library in a few more minutes, miraculously avoiding the patrolling prefects. Harry wonders why they are even in front of the library’s entrance so often.
Maybe to keep the protesting ravens out, he thinks and chuckles. They sure put up quite a fight before curfew.
Fortunately, they come in perfect time for patrol change, thus they can walk through the door freely. And not even the librarian is there! It’s empty and dark and just perfect for sneaking in undiscovered.
They take off the cloak and hurry to the gate of the restricted section, that is...
...Closed. Even after Hermione’s muttered Alohomora.
Damn it.
They stand there for a long minute in silence.
“...Ron, do you know a spell to open it?” she asks, but he just shakes his head.
And its... not ideal, per say, but... Magicals usually only brace themselves for magical attacks, right?
So Harry grins. “My time has come,” he says and steps forward, stealing a hairpin from Hermione’s head that makes one side of her hair jump up into the air. She kind of looks like a lion with half its mane shaved.
“Wha— Harry! You can’t just—” she starts to argue, but then they all heard a click and the lock falls to the floor with a clang. “...Dare I ask why you know how to pick locks?”
Harry sheepishly scratches his head. “Sometimes Aunt Petunia would forget to feed me so I kinda needed a way to get out of my cupboard and raid the fridge.”
Both Ron and Hermione stared at him. Harry wonders if he said something strange.
“...Never mind, you are not going back there. Ever.”
Hermione opens the gate and steps into the restricted section properly, Harry and Ron quickly following after her.
Honestly, it doesn’t look any different from the public part of the library, aside from the gate with the heavily lock that was supposed to lock it away. Shelves packed with books just the same, only he can’t see anywhere to sit. But really, that’s all. Nothing special.
Harry wonders why they had it closed off. It’s not like they would store anything dangerous in a school, right?
Then he thinks back to the Cerberus and the troll and... Yeah.
He follows Hermione’s example and starts looking at the books. Hmm... Not history, he doesn’t think he would find what he needs from that section. Potions, maybe... He would be happier with a spell, though. Transfiguration, no...
His search is interrupted by a thud and Ron’s swearing. Hermione glares at them both when Harry laughs.
“You will get us caught, idiots!” She gestures towards the closed gate with a leather-bound book in her hands. “Oh, if we get points docked because you couldn’t—”
“It’s not my fault a bloody book decided to bludgeon me, ‘Mione,” Ron interrupts her with a grumble.
She huffs. “Well, get to work, then. We have no time to lose if we want to finish with at least a part of it until sunrise.”
Ron groans and chucks the offending piece of literature into Harry’s hands. It lets out a large cloud of dust that makes them both cough.
“Oh, bloody— Here. Maybe the ruddy library will like you better.” And with that, he wonders off to peruse another aisle.
Harry lets him get to it with a solemn nod and looks down at the book in his arms. He can’t really read the faded title in its entirety but the word ‘Rituals’ is still recognizable on the cover.
He opens it up and subsequently proceeded to cough his lungs out at the dust that action creates. Again.
Great. The antient tome is already trying to kill him.
He searched for the table of contents but naturally, there isn’t anything like that. It’s just someone’s spidery crawl he’s unable to read properly, and then the book dives straight into some boring theory.
Harry sighs. He will just have to go page by page, then.
He plops down onto the floor and leans his back against a bookshelf. He will be here for a while, after all, even if the bloody book proves useless in the end.
...Ugh, it’s just different bonds. Fealty bonds, no... Not the marriage bonds, ew. No, wait, what is this—
“Guys!” he shouts. Well, whisper shouts. They shouldn’t get the prefects attention if they can help it.
Hermione is just around the corner, so she immediately runs to him, but Ron has a harder time getting there, being buried as he is under a mountain of... Are those cookbooks? Anyway, he is just fine once they free him.
“So, what did you find?” he asks Harry, wiping at his robes to get the dust off them. Suffice to say, he doesn’t succeed, as most of the bits of dust that remain on his robe start to coalesce into the form of a bunny.
Harry... isn’t going to question that last bit.
“The book that tried to brain you, it’s about all kinds of rituals. Look at this! I’m no genius at Latin, but even I can guess that ‘Familia’ means family.” He points to the relevant section. “I can’t understand the rest, though.”
Hermione grabs the book from his hands. “Give it here, I took a crash course in it. Let’s see... Familia Cognatus Ritual... Cognatus means related. Maybe... Yes. This could be...”
“Nice, we’ve lost her,” Ron groans. Hermione cuffs him on the head for it.
“Oh, shut up, Ronald. We could have been done with the search ages ago if you didn’t just throw this at Harry. Next time you would do well to listen to what the castle wants you to do!” From her satchel she plucks out a roll of parchment and a quill, and starts to transcribe the instructions of the ritual. Because taking it with them would be a very bad idea. It wouldn’t just be suspicious, but straight up incriminating if anyone found it on their person.
And then they both process what Hermione just said.
Ron looks towards the ceiling, alarmed. “You aren’t saying that—”
“The castle is sentient? That’s exactly what I’m implying. Now—” She put the book back on a shelf and pockets her tools. “—let’s get out of here.”
A few days later they congregate on Harry’s bed with the curtains drawn to discuss what they will do now. They lay out Hermione’s research on the blanket.
“So. I’m finished with most of the translation, and I think we’ve found the perfect ritual. Mostly. I’m not sure about this part, though...” She points to a particularly angrily drawn part of the ritual circle. “We only take runes from Third Year onwards and they can have different meanings depending on the combinations. I have cross referenced it with what I could find in the public section and in theory this should work, but if—”
“Hermione, do you really have a problem with this or are you just angsting unnecessarily?” Ron interrupts her, which earns him a pillow to the face from the irate girl.
She also burst into tears, the sight making the boys panic.
“Don’t make light of this, Ronald! What if we botch it up and suddenly I am short of my two best friends?! What will I do then?!”
That’s... well. It’s a possible, if not preferable outcome, but Harry feels like Hermione’s overreacting a tiny bit.
They wrestle the crying girl into a hug.
After some time, when Hermione has calmed down a bit, Harry knocks their foreheads together. “We trust you, ‘Mione. If you think this will work, then it will. You hear us?” He turns so he’s mushing his face into her neck. “We aren’t leaving you.”
It feels good to have someone so worried about him, and someone who he can in turn be worried for too. Even if she is crying into his hair.
Hermione just scowls down at the both of them holding her arms hostage. Her eyes are still a bit red and teary, but her voice is steady as usual. “As I was saying, I am mostly sure about the point of the ritual. It’s only about that bit that... Well, it feels a bit strange, I suppose.”
“Not dangerous though?” Harry asks. It doesn’t matter if it’s strange; he can bear the side effects. He will never do it though if Hermione has just the slightest inkling that they will get hurt as a result.
“...No, I don’t think so,” she admits cautiously. “There’s something else, though...” she trails off, not looking them in the eyes, as if she’s afraid to upset them.
“Just rip the bandage off,” Ron advises, tugging at an unruly lock of hers. Which there are many of. Harry is quite certain that Ron is just making it worse.
“...We need a sacrifice.”
Harry doesn’t really get why that makes the boy look so alarmed. “A what?! Hermione, rituals like that—”
“I know! I... I know. But we don’t need a human for it, anything bigger than a worm will do if I read it right,” she tries to argue.
Harry sees Ron gearing up for a fight and decides to interrupt him before he could start. “I’m in.”
“What?! Harry, you can’t just—”
“Sure I can. If Hermione says it’s not dangerous, then I trust her. And I can’t just... I need to get out of there, Ron. I can’t go back.” He looks his friend in the eye, hoping to make a point. That he’ll see in his eyes that he’s serious enough to try this, even with a... sacrifice. For whatever reason that alarms Ron. “I can’t.”
Ron must see something in his gaze from how his eyes soften. He brushes a hand through Harry’s unruly hair. “...If you are sure,” he hesitantly says, making Harry smile.
Hermione too has a triumphant look on her face that fits her much better than uncertainty. “So good of you to agree. Now, what we need to do is find something to sacrifice and a place to do it. I was thinking of that room Harry had a panic attack in—”
“I didn’t have a—”
“—and then we can juts draw the circle and say the lines,” she finishes, completely ignoring Harry’s spluttering.
Ron grimaces. “Take Scabbers. I don’t care how fond Percy was of the ruddy rat, it’s a bloody menace.”
“Bit you again, did it?” Hermione snickers. Ron’s only answer is a glare.
“When will we do it?” Harry askes, snuggling deeper into the crook of Hermione’s neck. Her hair tickles his nose, but it also has a calming effect that makes his eyelids droop a bit.
“...I was thinking Imbolc,” she says and yawns. Harry doesn’t know what that is and he must have made a confused noise because she raises an eyebrow. “Have you never heard of the Wheel of the Year? The pagan festivals of witches and wizards?”
“Oh, I did—” Ron exclaims, a yawn cutting him off as he too mushes his face into Hermione’s neck. “Mum hates it, though. Says only dark wizards celebrate it.”
“Well, if it strengthens the ritual, I don’t really care. And we are already planning on killing your rat, no? Can’t really get darker than that,” Hermione shoots back with a huff.
“...If you keep the twins from finding out, you won’t hear a word against it.”
Harry closes his eyes. It doesn’t look like they will move for the rest of the night, which means that they will have to sneak Hermione out the morning. Again. Maybe they should just stop sneaking her in...
...Nah. She feels too warm for that.
They arrive early before the unused storage room in the evening of January 31, intending to clean it up a bit, but it looks like the door has disappeared.
“Are you sure this is the right corridor?” Ron asks sceptically as they pace up and down before the empty wall, which is kind of offending. Harry has perfect orientation skills!
“We could have taken a wrong left somewhere—” But just as Hermione started to speak, the door reappears. Harry would have thought it cool if it didn’t put them behind schedule. They still have things to prepare and he really doesn’t want to wait until the next important date Hermione deems adequate for doing the ritual.
And then there’s another complication.
They open the door, expecting mounts of junk and quick sneezing fits caused by the accumulated dust, but they instead step into an eerie looking stone room complete with torches on the walls and a large empty space in the middle of the stone floor.
“...And we are sure this is the right room? It’s just, I seem to remember it a bit differently, if you know what I mean,” Ron mutters, inspecting an intricately carved pillar. It has vines and thorns and strange stone roses with eyes in the middle for some reason. Which, fair. But really, is a shape-changing room that strange in a magic castle with moving staircases and sentient armoury?
“Well, you know what they say. Beggars can’t be choosers.” With that, Hermione plops down onto the ground and starts inspecting it. “I think if I make it this big... But no, we won’t all fit then—”
Harry’s head snaps up at that, startled. “What?!”
Hermione just gives him a look that practically screams she thinks him an idiot (momentarily. She doesn’t actually think they are stupid, sometimes their braincells just seem to collectively migrate over to her). The raised eyebrow makes quite the point. “Did you really think we’ll let you do this alone?”
“But— The ritual says—”
“I know perfectly well what it says, I translated it after all,” she cuts him off. “It’s also for adults to perform, not for a lone first year. So I modified it.” She plucks a small bowl and a knife out of her bag and puts them onto the ground before her. “Arm, please.”
She gestured invitingly to Harry while he looks at her suspiciously. “How, exactly, did you modify our very ancient ritual that’s written in ancient latin with the writing half faded?”
“Oh, you know.” She plucks up the knife and waves it around, the light from the sconces ominously reflecting in the gleaming blade. Harry takes a step back. “We’ll just need all three of our blood to lessen the pressure on you. We are very fortunate that Ron has already offered up his rat, because a few bugs really wouldn’t have been enough for this. Oh, and I also changed a few runes, just so you know. Did you know that—”
“Alright, ‘Mione, you know what’s best,” Ron hurries to interrupts her before she could dive into the details and they run out of time. “But if this goes awry, my ghost will stuck to yours like a bowtruckle to its tree. And then you will have to live with my endless ‘told-you-so’-s. So.” He sends a dubious look at the knife. “Let’s not muck this up.”
Which is... a good strategy. Not muck this up. The easiest thing in the world.
Really...
“Look on the bright side, Hermione!” Harry jokes. “They can’t expel us as ghosts.”
She rolls her eyes and blows away a stray lock of hair that keeps falling before her left eye. “Incorrigible, the lot of you. Now come here.”
And without waiting she grabs Ron and strips him of his robe so he only has his shirt in the way.
The boy screams in surprise.
“’Mione, my modesty!” He covers his chest with his arms for emphasis like a blushing virgin, and Harry’s laughing on the floor in seconds, having Hermione’s disapproving glare trained on him. And on Ron too, because he’s the cause of his laughing fit that just won’t stop.
She huffs and goes to stand above the bowl.
“Honestly. Sometimes I don’t know why I even put up with you lot,” she grumbles.
“It must be our charming personality, I’m sure,” Ron says, blinking innocently. Harry’s side is starting to hurt.
They both freeze when Hermione makes a long gash on her arm and lets it bleed into the bowl for a while. When she judges it enough, she wraps a white cloth around it that the room helpfully provides, and then she turns to them and raises an eyebrow as if saying ‘Who’s next?’
...So they are really doing this.
Ron, pale as he is at the sight of the blood, bravely steps forward and rolls up the sleeve of his shirt, takes the knife in his hands and does as Hermione instructs him. He only stops when the bowl is around two-thirds full, passing the knife to Harry who mirrors his actions and fills up the bowl.
“That will be enough, thank you,” Hermione says while she stirs the contents together. “Now stand aside and let me draw.”
They obey and watch as Hermione paints the ritual circle onto the floor with their blood. With her own fingers.
Harry’s nose scrunches up. It’s really messy and finicky work, so he’s glad he doesn’t have to do it. Doodling and drawing is fine, but he really wouldn’t want to doom them all just because he drew a rune upside down or something.
He turns away to survey the chamber. He already noticed the carved pillars, but at a closer look it looks like there are runes inscribed on them along the climbing stone vines. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light from the torches, but they seem to... glow, somehow.
And then he notices that they are missing a critical part of the whole ritual.
“...Hey, Ron? Where’s Scabbers?”
He looks left and right, but can’t see the rat anywhere.
Ron’s head snaps up from the ever-growing complicated drawings on the floor. “Hm? Oh, I had Hermione petrify him a while ago. She has him in a cage in her bag.”
...Well, that explains it. Still. “And are you sure we can—”
“Mate, it’s fine,” Ron interrupts him. “I’m not that attached to the rat, and it’s been acting really weird lately too. Maybe this will give it a kinder end than slowly wasting away after all the years Percy had it.”
He shrugs and looks back at Hermione, who is just finishing up her task. She stands up from where she was kneeling on the floor and surveys her work, then nods approvingly and turns towards them with a wide grin and a glint in her eye.
“Let’s see if this works,” she says and points towards three circles just wide enough to fit them while sitting. Barely. “Choose a circle and stand there.”
“...Err, ‘Mione?” Ron hesitantly asks as they took their places. “How will the ritual know whose family we are interested in?”
She answers while levitating the still petrified Scabbers into the middle of the circle. “It’s all about intent, Ron. Think strongly about helping Harry and you’ll be good. Now, ready?” She waits for their nods and continues. “Good. Harry, you’ll have to slit the rat’s throat. Or stab it, I guess. It doesn’t really matter, from what I’ve read.”
Harry grimaces when she undoes the Petrificus Totalus and Scabbers starts to squeak loudly. “Where have you read about animal sacrifices, anyway? Seems a bit gory for the general audience.”
She has an amused smile on her face as she recast the Levitating Charm. “The Slytherins are quite informative when you aren’t sneering at them every minute of the day, I’ll have you know. And I guess Parkinson must have found it funny to corrupt a lion.”
“Wha— Hermione! You have been fraternising with the enemy?!” Ron shouts, Harry looking at her equally incredulously. And she just huffs.
“Oh, come on. It’s not like she could snitch on us, else she also incriminates herself. She doesn’t even know what I needed the information for.” She cuts off any further arguments with a glare. “Now sit down inside your circle, clasp each other’s hands and begin saying your parts. It’s time.”
They obey her sullenly. They will have time later to give her a piece of their minds.
Harry is the first to speak, carefully enunciating the Latin words Hermione beat into his mind, something about family and wanting to belong somewhere. He forgot the exact translation, but the meaning must come across, judging by the strange power that surges around them, his friends joining in after a while.
With a meaningful look from Hermione, he lets their hands go and lifts the knife.
Really, it should be harder for him to sacrifice his friend’s pet rat, but in contrast to the threat of returning to the Dursleys at the end of the year, it’s an easy decision to make. And Ron was right. He’d rather give the poor animal a quick death than have it slowly waste away if it had already started to act strangely. And it’s not like Ron will be heartbroken about it. They will just have to come up with a believable lie for Percy.
He strikes quickly, wishing to spare the animal from most of the pain.
The power he felt at the beginning intensifies tenfold, the animal’s death truly activating the circle. He lets the knife drop onto the floor and takes a hold of the other’s hands again, as their chanting gets faster and stronger, their voice filling the chamber and echoing off from the stone walls. They hold onto each other tightly, not letting the sudden wind produced by the ritual tear them apart.
And then Harry’s sight starts going black at the edges, which he knows isn’t a good sign.
Shit, maybe they shouldn’t have done this... There’s only a few sentences left from their chant though, and then they will be done. He must endure until then, or he might just doom them all.
Harry closes his eyes and wishes from the bottom of his broken heart for this to work as they finish their last words.
The ritual doesn’t end as it should have.
It feels like something’s changing inside him, like someone’s playing puzzle and the pieces don’t quite fit so they decide to melt the whole thing and start anew. His skin is itchy and his insides sting and his mind is going fuzzy, which is just straight up badbadbad and he’s going to bloody faint at this rate.
Harry just hopes his friends will be alright when he wakes up.
If he wakes up.
He sees his wand shoot a sharp beam of light towards the middle of the circle along with Ron’s and Hermione’s. He looks at them for the last time and sees the panic in their eyes, probably mirroring his own.
Their wands explode.
Everything goes black.
Harry doesn’t know anything after that.