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What it comes down to	By : melinda1293 Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 115219 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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Chapter 10. Killing Time

Hermione continued to sit next to Harry, holding his hand, stroking his hair, speaking soothing nonsense words to him long after Voldemort’s fury had abated. And not until she was completely sure it was over did she wipe the blood from his nose and release him from the binding spell. It was with relief that she saw his body relax back onto the bed, back into that unnatural stillness, leaving her feeling weak with fatigue all over again.
They sat with Harry the whole morning. Neither she nor Ron could rest from the anxiety and fear that Voldemort’s return had inspired in them, fear he would attack Harry again, that the Fidelius charm hadn’t worked, and he and his Death Eaters would come bursting in on them. Both of them felt panicky, unable to do anything but huddle there in Sirius’ room and wait for whatever was coming.
Hunger finally drove Ron out, and he went down to the kitchens and brought up some sandwiches he’d made with the food Mrs. Weasley sent over that morning, which they washed down with pumpkin juice. Then it was time for Harry’s potions again. Propping the pillows up behind him, she elevated him slightly. Then she gave him the fever reducer, the blood replenishment and a nourishment potion, slowly tipping the contents into his mouth while massaging his throat to make him swallow them down. Finally, she touched the tip of her wand to his lower abdomen, emptying his bladder with a muttered spell.
Next, she set to work on his arms. Carefully unwinding the bandages, intent on replacing them because blood was seeping into them again after he’d flailed them around and she and Ron had tried to hold them down. It was slow going from the sheer volume of gauze wrapped around his forearms and because the blood had fused the wrappings together, sticking it to his skin. She was trying to be careful not to tear the wounds back open. Then she got a look at what he’d done to himself, and her eyes welled up with tears again, knowing now why the blood seemed to be coming from everywhere when they’d found him. The left arm was the worst. Harry hadn’t been content, evidently, to just slash across the wrist. He’d taken the knife vertically up his arm as well, forming a crooked T, cutting deeply into the flesh, almost up to the crook of his elbow. Trying to do the job properly, the skin was an angry red, swollen and puffy where it was trying to knit back together again. It was going to leave a terrible scar. The right arm was not nearly as bad, probably because he was trying to use the knife in the wrong hand. He’d managed to slice it across the wrist, but then, apparently, gave it up as a bad job or passed out before he could complete the work.
“Oh, Harry,” she cried; crying for what he’d been through, for all that he’d endured for them, and for what he’d done to himself to end his grief. Knowing these scars would join so many others on his body. It seemed she could map his whole life, every year she’d known him, by the scars he bore.
Sniffing, she wiped her eyes. Setting back to work, she generously applied the healing ointment Madame Pomfrey had left onto the cuts, smearing a thick layer of the purplish cream along the length of the scar. Then she re-wrapped his arms in fresh bandages as carefully as she could. When she’d finished, she turned to Ron. He’d grown silent since Voldemort’s attack that morning so that she thought he must have fallen asleep after lunch, but she found him watching her tend to Harry. Simply staring at her, he looked so tired and worn out, and there was a haunted look in his eyes.
“Ron?” she asked quietly. “Can you help me lift him so I can put this ointment on his back?”
He didn’t respond. He simply got up, walked slowly over to the side of the bed where she stood, and sat down next to Harry. Then he leaned down and slid his hands under Harry’s neck and back. Gathering him into his arms, Ron pressed Harry into his chest as he sat back up. Harry moaned weakly as he was pulled into a sitting position, his swollen face turned to the side, resting against Ron’s chest. As Ron held him there in that embrace, Hermione removed the bandages and dabbed the foul smelling ointment onto the bite marks on his back and shoulder. When she’d finished and had replaced the bandages with fresh ones, he laid Harry gently back onto the pillows and then returned to his chair without a word. Hermione stared after him, beginning to worry, but there was nothing she could do for him. If he needed to talk to her, they had nothing but time, it appeared. He would come to her when he was ready, she reasoned. But as the afternoon wore on, the silence started to become oppressive, so she fished the wizarding wireless from her bag and fiddled with it until she finally got a signal. Not really listening to it, but relieved to feel like the silencing charms weren’t surrounding them all again like they had been in the dungeons, some of the tension left her.
By nightfall the anxiety had returned. She was really starting to become worried for both Harry and Ron. The fever reducing potion was only supposed to be administered every four hours, but Harry’s temperature wasn’t coming down enough after she gave him his scheduled doses, and it was rising back up again much too soon. His pallor had gone from extremely pale to flushed, and she could feel the heat radiating off him as she sat next to him on the bed. Ron, on the other hand, was falling into a depression. She’d tried to engage him in conversation, but he only responded with yes or no answers, and so she gave up after a while and went downstairs to get something together for dinner. When she’d gone to the loo, she found both of their discarded clothes still on the bathroom floor. Having forgotten about them, she collected them and busied herself with cleaning them for a while, then found other menial tasks to pass the time, finally returning to Sirius’ room well after dark, toting more sandwiches and a few books from the Black family’s library.
She found Ron asleep on the bed next to Harry when she’d returned, so she took the chair he’d vacated. He looked troubled even in his sleep, she thought. Guessing it was her turn on watch, she grabbed a sandwich and a book and settled into the chair, reading by wand light. When she started to feel sleepy, she left the comfort of the chair, and went to check on Harry. His fever was too high again, and he wasn’t due for another fever reducer for over an hour. He was no longer lying deathly still anymore either. His breathing seemed labored. A wheezing had started in his chest. His forehead was creased in pain or with the effort to breathe, and his hands lay fisted by his sides. He was restless, mumbling, though it was nothing but the hiss of air across his damaged vocal chords.
Conjuring a rag, she dampened it and cast a cooling charm on it before placing it on his neck. Then she used another to cool his fevered flesh, running it over his head as she tried to smooth the creases from his forehead and around his eyes. She ran it across his shoulders and down his arms as she tried to relax his fisted hands, leaving a trail of goose bumps on his skin everywhere the cool rag touched him. He was much too warm.
“Come on, Harry,” she whispered to him. “Come on, now. Don’t do this.”
She continued to stroke him with the cool rag as Ron slept, snoring on the bed next to Harry while the wireless droned in the background. But her efforts to bring his fever down didn’t seem to be having any effect at all. Finally in desperation, she threw the blankets off his legs, exposing him to the cool night air. Conjuring more cold rags, she laid them on his bare thighs, on his shins, and his stomach. His lips started to tremble with the cold, shaking all over, yet still, his fever climbed. Then she didn’t care anymore if it was too early for the potion, giving him another dose as she continued to recast the cooling charms, frantically trying to bring his temperature down. He was boiling with fever now, heat pouring off him so it felt like she was standing in front of a furnace, and he was shaking more violently on the bed now, too.
No, more than just shaking, she suddenly realized. He’d started to convulse!
“No, no, no!” she cried. “Ron!”
She was panicking now.
“Oh, God, Ron, help me!” she yelled.
He jerked upright on the bed at the terror in her voice.
“Whasamatter?” he mumbled as he fought to untangle himself from the blanket she’d thrown off Harry, which had wrapped around his legs.
“It’s Harry. He’s burning up with fever, and I can’t bring it down,” she sobbed hysterically. “He’s having a seizure, or something.”
Harry was thrashing and jerking on the bed, choking on his own tongue.
“Oh, God!” she wailed, shaking all over with fear.
Ron finally freed himself and stumbled out of the bed, bumping into the chair in the dim light, still not fully awake. Then he was next to her, rubbing his eyes, trying to comprehend what she was saying, what he was seeing as he stared bleary-eyed down at Harry. Finally it seemed to dawn on him what was happening, and he sprang into action. Scooping Harry into his arms, Ron grunted under his full weight, struggling to keep control of Harry’s jerking body.
“Gotta… get him… into the bath,” he panted.
Turning, he staggered towards the bathroom where they’d found Harry two nights before.
“Fill it,” he instructed breathlessly, fighting to hold Harry, who was convulsing violently as she ran into the bath ahead of him. “Fill it… with freezing cold…water.”
She did as he commanded, as quickly as she could. Then she shrank back against the sink, getting out of Ron’s way in the small room as he tried to lower Harry into the tub without dropping him. As soon as Harry hit the water, his whole body seized up, going stiff all over. Sucking in a shuddering breath, he let it out on a silent scream. Harry’s eyes flew open, wild and panicked, but not really seeing either of them as he fought Ron; trying to claw his way out of the tub, over Ron, who was desperately attempting to hold him down. Icy water was sloshing over the side of the tub, soaking Ron’s shirt and trousers and splashing onto the floor in their struggle. Hermione just stood there, horrified by what was happening, frozen in shock while Harry thrashed and kicked, drawing blood on Ron’s arms and face. But he was too weak to get away, to push Ron off him. He was hysterical with fear, trembling with cold, his teeth chattering while his lips turned blue.
“Shit!” Ron growled. “It’s okay, Harry, it’s okay.”
Gritting his teeth in pain, he turned to her.
“GET OUT OF HERE,” he shouted, still struggling to hold onto Harry, to hold him in the water, pressing down on his shoulders to keep him submerged.
“W...What?” she stammered, shocked by his sudden anger.
“He’s dangerous!” he spat, his face still screwed up in pain. “You remember what he did at the Malfoy’s? Get out!”
Hermione did run out of the bathroom then, but only to grab her wand, intent on protecting Ron from Harry, or Harry from himself, or both. She didn’t know what Harry was doing, but she knew it was causing Ron pain. She certainly wasn’t going to leave him in there alone.
“Damn it, Harry, stop it!” She heard Ron roar as she staggered around the room whimpering, frantically trying to locate her wand in the dim light.
She cried out in relief when she finally found it on the floor, almost under the bed from where it had rolled off when Ron had grabbed him.
In the moments it took her to return to the bath, though, the fight seemed to have gone out of Harry. Too weak to continue to struggle any longer, he’d finally exhausted himself with the effort. Ron was leaning over him now. Nearly in the bath himself, he held onto either side of Harry’s head, his forehead pressed to Harry’s while Harry gripped him tightly by the wrists. Poor Harry was shaking all over, gasping for breath. Tears rolled down his cheeks as Ron spoke quietly to him, trying to calm him.
“Everything’s okay now, Harry. I’ve got you. Everything’s gonna be all right,” he crooned in a low voice. “You’re okay now,” he repeated over and over again. “You’re okay.”
It broke her heart to see Harry like this. Delirious with fever, scared out of his mind. She cried as she watched him clinging to Ron, not understanding why they were doing this to him, begging them to make it stop, to let him up, his mouth forming words he couldn’t voice. And then finally, it was over.
“I think he’s gonna be okay now,” Ron sighed, looking up at her after a few minutes. “His fever’s down. The fit’s over.”
Hermione just nodded her head stupidly as Ron pried his hands out of Harry’s grip and pulled the plug on the drain. Sitting back on his haunches, Ron blew out a breath. Then he ran a wet hand over his face and though his hair so that it stuck up in every direction, looking exhausted. Harry continued to shiver, whimpering as his teeth clacked together while the water drained off him.
“Can you cast one of those drying charms on both of us?” Ron asked wearily, spreading his arms out so she could see that he was soaked to the skin, his shirt plastered to his chest.
“Yes…yes, of course,” she said as she cast the spell, her wand shaking with the violent trembling of her hands.
When they were both dry, Ron thanked her and pulled Harry from the tub. Carrying him back to the bed, he laid Harry down in the middle. Then he fell down beside him, his breath whooshing out of him. Ron had collapsed face down on the bed, his long legs dangling off the side, one arm thrown over Harry’s chest. Hermione just stood there in the bathroom staring after him, still shaking all over. Then slowly, she followed after them.
Her mouth open in shock, she stood watching them both, completely bewildered by Ron’s abrupt behavior. He was asleep again, just like that, with his face smashed into the mattress. Hermione felt distinctly wrong-footed, as if she herself were dreaming. Harry lay flat on his back, still trembling all over with cold and covered in goose bumps. She stared a moment longer, then slowly dragged the blanket back over them both. Then she lay down on Harry’s other side, curling up close to him on the small bed.
Placing her hand on Ron’s arm and her head on Harry’s shoulder, she fell into an exhausted sleep herself. And that’s how Madame Pomfrey found them the next morning.

~ . ~

I'm sorry this chapter is so short, and that there isn't a lot happening here. I intended to get a lot more accomplished in this chapter, but was struggling with it. This seemed like a good stopping point, so I cut it off. The good news is that the next chapter is already half written, so hopefully, it won't take nearly as long to get it out as it did this one.
G.
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What it comes down to

Chapter 10. Killing Time