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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
- 31
- 32
- 33
Chapter 32. Fight and Flight

Harry smelled her before he even saw her. The faint trace of her perfume had been caught by the wind and driven into his sensitive nostrils. It cut straight through all the other odors assaulting his senses; from the damp, rotting litter in bins and the exhaust fumes from muggle cars on the streets beyond the alley, to the somewhat soured smell of the ragged people curled up under the eaves of abandoned storefronts to keep out of the rain that had fallen during the night. Harry could smell her coming in the air, and his mind was wiped suddenly blank, an odd fluttering beginning in his chest.
The horribly familiar aroma of her sickened him. It made all the hairs on his arms stand on end as he went both cold and hot all over, filled in equal measure with adrenaline and fear. Turning his head slowly, trying to detect another indication of that scent, his eyes scanned the alley for a glimpse of her. That cloying fragrance was burned in his memory, mingled with the smell of sex and blood and sweat. They were smells that permeated his nightmares and were infused into his macabre fantasies.
Then Harry was on his feet before his mind had even registered his body’s reaction. A sense of unreality upon him, he walked right past Ron unseen, still under the invisibility cloak. Like a hound seeking her spoor, his feet carried him forwards, propelling him towards his dreaded quarry.
Harry was in a nightmare now. Walking towards it, unable to turn away as if he were in some kind of a trance, his silent footsteps brought him closer to the source of those nightmares. Then she turned a corner, coming into view, and his body began to tingle all over as if he were becoming electrically charged. A ball of swirling hatred was building in him like a storm gathering.
Bellatrix wasn’t alone, but Harry only dimly registered this, his focus on her like a laser. She was cloaked, the hood pulled low over her head against the cold drizzle, her face in shadow, but it was her. Harry would know her anywhere.
Remembering exactly what she looked like, what she felt like, Harry knew precisely how they fit together, and he craved it desperately. She looked familiar, smelled familiar, and his body reacted in carnal anticipation of that remembered pain and pleasure, his shaft thickening at the image. It made him sick, his overwhelming enmity and aching desire for her causing the bile to rise in his throat. But it wasn’t enough to make him raise his wand unseen under the cloak and strike her down, finally putting an end to his torment.
No. That was too easy. That was the coward’s way out.
Harry wanted to look her in the eyes. He wanted to see the fear register in them when she saw him and knew he had come for her. Knowing that the monster she’d created would finally have his chance to turn on her and attack, he wanted her to die with the knowledge that she would be reaping her just reward for the difficult lessons she’d instilled in him. Harry planned to demonstrate for her all he’d learned as her prized pupil. He intended for her to feel the pain of each of them before he took her life.
He visualized it in his mind: her body naked beneath him, her lips pulling back, her face going red when she came. And Harry would be strangling her when she did, buried deep inside her. She would enjoy it just as much as he did, but then he wouldn’t release his hands. He’d keep squeezing until her eyes bulged, until all the muscles she had wrapped around him contracted, squeezing him back, desperately fighting against him like he’d fought against her. Then, when her eyes began to dull and her tongue lolled out of her mouth, he’d finally release his held breath and scream with his own orgasm, pouring his black, poisoned hatred into her. And he wouldn’t stop screaming until her body stopped spasming in death and his finished spasming with the power of his revenge.
Harry came to a halt, letting the fury inside him continue to grow, shuddering all over with revulsion and arousal as he watched her approach. She didn’t know he was there, but her head turned slightly while she spoke to one of her companions as if she could smell him, too, or sense him somehow.
The anger and lust at the sight of her in front of him was like a fog that had filled his head, obscuring all sane reason. He felt weirdly separate from himself, somehow outside of his own body.
Grasping the cloak in his hand when she was feet from him, Harry pulled it off and let it drop. His trainers coming unglued from the ground, he stepped forward again, simultaneously raising his wand.

Ron was starting to get bored. He was still tired and hung over from last night, and he’d been sitting almost perfectly still against the brick wall of one of the shops in the alley for the better part of an hour.
Hermione had clearly given them this desperately dull assignment as punishment for last night. There wasn’t anything to keep his mind occupied as he sat. Not a single patron had entered the bank, and the guards did nothing more interesting than shift in their stance or turn up the collar on their cloaks against the wind. Only the dampness of the wet street seeping into the seat of his jeans, his grumbling stomach, and the chilled morning air gusting through the alley kept him from nodding off.
He’d devoted probably the first thirty minutes after they’d settled themselves thinking about Hermione. Worrying if she was all right on her own and wondering if she was here yet, he spent more time watching the other end of the alley for her appearance than watching the bank, even though he knew it was too early for her to have arrived. Once it had started to drizzle, though, his mind had emptied and he’d fallen into a kind of stupor as his face and hands grew numb from cold.
At least he had Harry for company in his misery. He was only a few feet away. But as Ron couldn’t see him or even chat with him to pass the time, he may as well have been alone.
Longing for Harry’s cloak, Ron wished that he had it instead to protect him from the elements as another blast of air hit him in the face. But Harry had been blackmailed into being his accomplice last night so he supposed that it was only right for Harry to suffer less of the consequences.
“Christ, this sucks,” he growled in a harsh whisper, shoving his hands up his sleeves.
Expecting an admonishing, “Shhh” from Harry that didn’t come, Ron turned his head to look at the place where he knew Harry was sitting, even though he couldn’t see him.
Perhaps he’d fallen asleep. Harry had to be exhausted, too, after last night. Plus, he had the added luxury of the cloak to keep him warm and dry as well as a full stomach. The prick was probably curled up over there having a nice kip, Ron thought irritably, leaving him to keep watch on the bank.
Just when he was thinking of scooting over closer to Harry to nudge him awake, or to at least try and use Harry’s incredible body heat for warmth, he heard something. Thinking of Hermione again, he whipped his head around just in time to see a group of people round the corner into view, their voices carrying to him on the wind from the far end of the alley. Then someone else, someone standing right in front of them suddenly revealed himself, pulling off an invisibility cloak. Someone with jet black hair.
His mouth dropping open in stunned dismay the instant he realized who it was, Ron jumped to his feet in terror just as the people surrounding Harry were all thrown backwards by his magic. All except the one whom Harry now had gripped by the throat.
Fuck! What the hell had happened? What was Harry doing? He was hundreds of feet away from Ron and outnumbered four to one.
The others were hurriedly getting back to their feet when Harry pointed his wand at the huge one still lying on the ground beside him, and Ron started running.
Pulling his own wand, he fired a stunning curse at the figure nearest to Harry, but missed. The other turned towards Ron and volleyed back at their new, invisible attacker while the smallest, the one whom Harry had been previously strangling, was now engaged in a physical struggle with him.
Ron veered left to avoid another curse and answered with one of his own, but he didn’t even see if it hit its target as someone else rushed into the alley ahead of him; a woman, stumbling stupidly out into the middle of the fray as if to get a better look at what was causing the commotion. Then she screamed Harry’s name as curses flew towards her, and Ron knew with a sudden heart clenching panic who she was: Hermione.
Goddamn fucking hell! Could this get any worse?
Hermione had quickly deflected one curse and narrowly missed being hit by the other when Ron caught up to her. Ramming into her hard, he knocked her sideways and out of the line of fire. But he didn’t even slow down. He kept running, firing spells indiscriminately. He had to get to Harry, who was still entwined with the third Death Eater.
When he was only a few feet away, they began to turn, starting to Apparate, and Ron saw, in abject horror, the identity of the Death Eater with Harry. Diving, Ron just managed to grab onto Bellatrix’s boot as they all disappeared together.
Thrown clear when they landed, his face and stomach smacked hard into the smooth polished wood floor and knocked the breath out of him. Ron bounced once as he rolled away. He heard the splintering of wood like the snapping of a twig, and he knew it was his wand as he landed on it again, his arm twisting underneath him and wrenching it from his grip while he spun across the floor.
With a dull thud and a throbbing pain in his head, his momentum abruptly stopped as he collided against something with tremendous force. Instantly, his vision went black.

Harry’s knees buckled when they landed, and he lost his hold on Bellatrix’s arm as he staggered backwards, his lungs re-inflating from the sudden, unexpected Apparition. It was enough time for her to press the mark on her left forearm to summon her Master, which he’d been trying to prevent her doing in the alley.
His forehead burst immediately with a pain like fire, and his vision swam as she shrieked in triumph. The agony of it caused him to clutch his head as he was immediately plunged into Voldemort’s mind. But her victory was short lived once she realized he’d come away with her wand.
Harry started laughing through the searing pain in his scar. It sounded maniacal in his own ears as he stepped close to Bellatrix again and grasped her around the throat with his other hand. Pushing her against the wall with his body, he ground his hips against her.
His mind was now partly his own and partly Voldemort’s, the two bleeding together, his vision doubling, alternating between the two realities. One moment, he was in a dark cell, hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away, staring at a sleeping, skeletal old man curled up under a thin blanket. The next, he was staring into the black, heavy lidded eyes of the woman Harry hated more than anyone in this world.
Sneering viciously at her, the hot ball of rage still swirling and churning inside him, Harry leaned close to her, forcing her head to the side with the grip he had on her neck.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. But it looks like your master’s awfully busy at the moment. Seems he won’t be arriving in time to save you,” he whispered menacingly in her ear. “And he did like you best. Better than your sister, anyway.”
Harry pressed his hips into her again, rubbing his erection against her.
“I was forced to witness a little sampling of it last night, and Cissy fucks like a dead fish, doesn’t she? But not you, no. You’re his favorite whore, aren’t you, Bellatrix? He doesn’t have to curse you to get what he wants, does he? Pity, he’ll be so disappointed when he arrives to find you dead.”
He’d lied to Ron last night. He hadn’t just had a bad dream. Harry had made that part up, which wasn’t difficult because the nightmare he’d shared with Ron was a constantly recurring one. Instead, he’d involuntarily visited Voldemort’s mind again in his sleep. And what he’d seen, what he’d been forced to experience, made him flee to the bathroom either to be sick or to cut himself open to let the disgust and desire bleed out of him. But it was back now in full force, and he was back in Voldemort’s mind again, too, sharing his vile thoughts once more. Only it was his body crushed up against hers this time, and it was his own desire that was flooding through him.
Voldemort’s feelings of hatred and his own were blending together, amplifying them inside Harry head, building inside him like a nuclear reaction.
“Did you like it when he spoke in Parsletongue to you last night while you were sucking his dick? Tell me, is it covered in scales like a snake?” he asked venomously. “I couldn’t tell with it all the way down your throat like that, but I bet it is.”
Her eyes went wide in surprise at his words. Harry bared his teeth at her, trying to yank open her robes with the hand still clutching both their wands while tightening his hold on her throat at the same time as she kicked frantically, struggling to free herself.
“And when he uses that forked tongue of his on you, does it make you come? Do you scream for him, Bellatrix, like you’re going to scream for me? Because I’m going to fuck you until you bleed. Until you’re begging me to stop just like I begged you. But don’t worry, I promise I’ll show you just as much mercy.”
One of her arms he held pinned down beside her with his body, but she reached up with the other and clawed at his face, trying to take out his eye with her taloned nails. Snarling, Harry yanked her forward by the throat and then slammed her back against the wall again, momentarily stunning her.
“What’s the matter? You don’t want to play with me anymore?” he asked, panting into her face, his magic crackling threateningly in the air around them. “But I thought you wanted more time with me, Bellatrix. Didn’t you have more things you wanted to teach me? Well, I’m here to learn.”
Growling savagely, Harry let her struggle against him for just a moment, clawing at his hand now as she fought to breathe before he forced her head to the side again and bit down, sinking his teeth into the flesh of her ear as she had once done his, and she let out a howl of rage.

Hermione appeared in the dungeon corridor with a loud crack. Clutching Dobby’s hand under Harry’s cloak, she immediately froze in complete terror, her mind and body paralyzed at finding herself back in this terrible place again.
She let out a tiny whimper of fear which Dobby echoed, his small hand trembling in hers. And it was possibly that which finally brought her to her senses, the realization and relief that she wasn’t alone strengthening her resolve and steadying her shaking limbs.
Ron and Harry were here somewhere. She knew it, and she had to pull herself together if she was going to get them out.
Standing stock still a moment longer, she waited to see if their appearance had been detected by anyone in the house, listening for any sort of alarms or defensive enchantments which might have been set off when they materialized. When she felt sure their arrival had gone unnoticed, she let out her breath and quickly knelt down beside Dobby.
“Listen to me, Dobby, I don’t know where they might be. I’ll need you to help me search for them. All right?”
With his eyes wide and round, the little elf nodded vigorously, his bat-like ears flapping as he squeaked in agreement. Nodding herself, she stood again, praying for courage.
Doors lined both walls of the low-ceilinged corridor, and Hermione stared around at them uncertainly. She didn’t know what they might contain, or who, but the quiet stillness was beginning to feel ominous. Her fear of that tortuous, impenetrable curtain of silence was starting to suffocate her, making her heart pound and her hands shake. Taking in quick breath, Hermione held it and clenched her fists until the panic eased.
“We’re going to have to try all the doors,” she told Dobby in a whisper, trying to sound more confident than she felt as she crept towards the nearest one.
Pressing her ear against it, she listened and hearing nothing, tried the handle. It was locked, of course.
Tapping her wand against the knob, Hermione performed the charm wordlessly, and the handle clicked. The hinges creaked as the weight of the door caused it to open inward a few inches, and she cringed at the sound. She hesitated a moment, wand raised. But when no one immediately rushed out to attack her, she slowly pushed the heavy door wide with her foot.
The room was empty, and the relief combined with the renewed rush of anxiety and adrenaline that filled her made her suddenly light-headed and weak in the knees. The second room they came to was also empty but for an old wooden table and a single chair. On the third try, they had success.
When the door swung open, Hermione saw a severely beaten goblin and an emaciated old man lying on the dirt floor, chained by the ankles to the wall. Letting out a little gasp of horror in sudden recognition, Hermione rushed into the room.

Ron swam back into consciousness to find himself staring up at the underside of a large dining room table. There was a stabbing pain in his head, and his vision was obscured in one eye. He blinked several times to clear it. When that didn’t help, he reached up to wipe off whatever it was that was preventing it working properly. His hand came away with something warm and sticky coating his fingers. Bewildered, he stared at them. They were red, and it finally dawned on him that the substance was blood, his blood.
He looked back up at the table again in confusion, his head throbbing. None of this made any sense. Nothing here was familiar to him. He had no idea where he was, why he was lying bleeding on the floor, or how he’d come to find himself there.
Rolling onto his side, he tried to prop himself up on his elbow to clear the cobwebs from his sluggish brain, and his vision tunneled again suddenly. All sound had been muffled, and tiny stars twinkled before him for a moment as he was hit with a powerful wave of vertigo.
He must have been knocked stupid and had a concussion, or something, he thought dimly.
When his ears had stopped ringing and his vision had finally cleared again, Ron looked up. What he saw then brought everything back to him with the sudden clarity of a torch being lit in the darkness.

Once she’d cleared the door, Hermione realized that there were others in the room, too. Dean and Luna, standing chained to the opposite wall like she and Ron had been. One of Dean’s eyes was swollen shut and Luna’s lip was split, but otherwise they seemed all right, in better shape than Griphook or Mr. Ollivander, at any rate. Pulling off the cloak, she rushed up to them, Dobby at her heels.
“Dean, Luna! Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly. “Where are Harry and Ron? Where has she taken them?”
“Hermione?” Luna asked, her protuberant eyes squinting to peer at Hermione. “Is that you?”
“Yes, yes, Luna. Harry and Ron, do you know where they are? Have you seen them?”
“Oh, no,” she replied, looking crestfallen. “I’m sorry. Have they been caught, too? By Snatchers, like Dean and Griphook?”
“Yes… I mean no, Luna, not by Snatchers, no. Bellatrix Lestrange brought them here. Please, I have to find them,” Hermione pleaded in increasing desperation.
“Darn it. I didn’t want you three to be caught,” Luna said sadly, gazing at Hermione sympathetically.
“She brought me here, too, from Azkaban and tried to make me tell her where you all were. And I told her I didn’t know, but she didn’t believe me. Then they brought Dean, but he didn’t know either,” she explained in that slightly mad way, as if they had all the time in the world, as if Hermione had just popped in for a spot of afternoon tea and a serving of the latest gossip.
“I guess somebody else must have told her, but I don’t know who would have done. So are you here to rescue them?” Luna asked curiously. “Is that your disguise, then?”
Unable to formulate answers to her absurd questions, Hermione stared at her momentarily dumbfounded.
“Do us a favor, Luna, and shut up,” Dean interjected wearily. “Hermione, how ’bout getting us down, eh?”
Hermione turned to him in relief, latching onto the only person with any semblance of sanity.
“Yes…right!”

Ron stared stupidly at the scene in front of him. He was in shock, too stunned by what he was seeing to do anything else. Harry and Bellatrix were either fighting or fucking. Ron really couldn’t tell which. It looked like both, actually. What it didn’t look like, was that his fear of Harry falling to pieces at the sight of her was something he needed to have concerned himself with, at least not in the way he thought. Harry had lost his shit all right, but in a completely different and much more frightening way than Ron could have imagined.
Harry had her back pressed up against the wall, and he was strangling the life out of her. Bellatrix had her legs wrapped around his waist and Harry was grinding against her in a wild frenzy, growling like an animal as he humped her into the wall. Then Ron realized that Narcissa and Wormtail were there too, attempting to break through the shield Harry has apparently cast around himself to hold them off.
The world finally resolving itself again completely in Ron’s bruised brain, he sat up fully then, searching for his wand. His eyes fell upon the broken pieces, and before he could even formulate a new plan of attack, Wormtail, realizing apparently that Ron wasn’t dead, seized him by the throat and pulled him to his feet.
“Release my sister!” Narcissa commanded.
Harry laughed. It was a hoarse, humorless, terrifying laugh that Ron had never heard come out of his mouth before as he slowly turned his head to look at Narcissa. There was nothing but pure hatred on his face.
“No. I made your sister a promise, you see,” he answered breathlessly, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “I swore to her that I would kill her, and I’m here to deliver on that promise.”
Yup, Ron thought stupidly. It looked like he could file ‘Harry going all wobbly when he saw Bellatrix’ under ‘not so much.’
“Drop your wand and release her or your friend dies!” Draco’s mother demanded sharply and turned her wand on Ron.

“If they questioned both of you for Harry’s whereabouts and got nothing, then why did they injure Griphook so badly? What were they trying to torture out of him?” Hermione asked, bewildered, kneeling next to the goblin after releasing all of them from the chains binding them. “Forgive me, but neither of you is in anywhere near the shape he’s in.”
“Well partly ‘cause he’s a goblin, I guess,” answered Dean, rubbing his raw wrists. “And partly ‘cause ole Griphook here can’t keep his mouth shut.”
“What do you mean?”
“He kept taunting her. Laughing and telling her that Potter was probably right here amongst them. Said that the Death Eaters were so bad at recognizing things for what they truly were, they wouldn’t be able to tell one boy wizard from another.”
“What in the world would he do that for?”
“I don’t know really. Who can understand goblins? I’ve been on the run, living with him for months and I still don’t. Maybe he was trying to keep them off the rest of us,” he suggested.
Looking back at the goblin, Hermione shook her head in sympathy, but she couldn’t do anything for him here.
“Help me get him up. We’ve got to get you all out of here. Dobby,” she called.
The tiny elf trotted up to her.
“Can you take them all?”
Dobby nodded.
Staring into his enormous green eyes, Hermione wracked her brains trying to decide where to have him take them. Not to Madame Pomfrey at Hogwarts, though they certainly needed the infirmary. That wasn’t safe. Not to Muriel’s. That was too crowded. Plus, she’d never been there before and didn’t know the location. Number Twelve had plenty of space, and she was the secret keeper, but she didn’t want to bring them there, either. She still had no idea where Harry and Ron were or what condition they might be in when she found them. Then the answer came to her.
“All right. Take them to Bill and Fleur’s on the outskirts of Tinworth, Dobby, and then come straight back.”
“Hermione, we can’t leave you,” Dean protested.
“Yes, we want to help,” Luna agreed.
“Neither of you have wands, and we can’t all fit under the cloak, and these two need medical attention,” Hermione said, nodding towards Mr. Ollivander and the goblin. “It will be much safer if I continue searching alone.”
“Luna can go with them. I’ll stay with you. I may not have a wand, but I can still help,” Dean argued.
The offer was certainly tempting. Hermione didn’t want to be on her own here, especially without Dobby, but she shook her head.
“Dean, Luna can’t manage these two on her own. She’ll need help. Go with her. We’ll follow, don’t worry. Harry, Ron, and I will meet you at Shell Cottage. Now go, quickly,” she beseeched them.
Dean stared at her, frowning, but then finally nodded. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t just leave without rescuing them, but she was wasting time here while who knew what was happening with Ron and Harry.
After sending a quick Patronus message to Bill to warn him of their arrival, she donned the invisibility cloak once more as the others vanished with a loud crack.

Something had snapped within Harry with the heat like fire from the pain in his head at Voldemort’s fury. The toothless old man had not shown the slightest fear of Voldemort. Grindelwald had asked for death, welcomed it even. He’d lied to Voldemort about ever owning the wand, taunted him for seeking it. And Voldemort had finally been goaded into killing him without learning of its location. The rage he’d felt then at his failure only added to Harry’s.
Other people had rushed into the room as Bellatrix had started growing weak in his grip, losing the battle against him. But so near to his goal was he, that Harry could not let them distract him from it. Voldemort was coming now, too, but there was no way in hell Harry was going to allow anyone to rob him of her death. Not when he was so close to having his revenge.
“Stupefy!” someone shouted.
Harry instantly reacted. The coiled, burning rage that had been building in his chest finally exploded out around him, shielding him from the curse.
Spells rained down on him, but so strong was his protective shield, his own will, that none penetrated it. And then, just as suddenly as the attack on him began, it ended again.
“Release my sister!” Narcissa commanded.
Harry laughed, turning his head to glare at her.
“No. I made your sister a promise, you see,” he replied. “I swore to her that I would kill her, and I’m here to deliver on that promise.”
“Drop your wand and release her, or your friend dies!” she demanded again and pointed her wand at something behind him.
Harry turned fully then, pulling a limp and almost unconscious Bellatrix around with him to face Narcissa. His eyes followed the arm she held straight out from her body, and he found Ron at the other end of her wand.
Ron looked dazed, and he was bleeding like a stuck pig from a gash in his forehead. Gripping the silver hand, which was tightening around his neck with both of his own, Ron was struggling, trying to prize the metal fingers off his throat to breathe.
Jolting him out of the molten rage into which he’d been swallowed, Harry stared at him in shock. He didn’t even know Ron was here. He didn’t know where they were, or even how they’d come to be here. It was as if he were coming out of a dream or falling into a nightmare. He looked around, surprised to find himself in the middle of bizarre hostage negations with Draco’s mother in the dining room of her home.
“Don’t you dare, Harry. If you do it, I’ll kill you myself!” Ron gasped and then choked as Wormtail’s grip tightened around his throat, silencing him.
As if he was seeing for the first time, Harry suddenly realized what he was doing. He felt a rush of horror at himself. Then Ron’s eyes bulged as his windpipe was being crushed, and Harry’s vision went red with fury.
“Are you really going to kill my best friend, Peter?” Harry snarled, his nostrils flaring. “Like you killed yours? You’re truly willing to just take Ron’s life, like he means nothing to you? After he cared of you for all those years? You piece of shit!”
His whole body vibrating with outrage, Harry took a threatening step closer. Dragging Bellatrix with him by the hand he now had wound tightly in her hair, he pointed both his and Bellatrix’s wands at Peter.
“You killed my parents, but I saved your life, you bastard! Has your master ever once shown you any mercy? Has he?” he shouted. “Let him go, Wormtail. You owe me!”
Pettigrew’s hand relaxed for a fraction of a second on Ron’s throat as he stared in fearful shock at Harry with those beady, watery eyes. Then they opened wide in terror as the silver hand slowly released Ron, apparently of its own accord, and slowly wrapped itself around his own throat.
Once freed, Ron staggered away from him, gasping and clutching his throat. Then they all watched in horrified fascination as Peter’s face began to turn purple, and he crumpled to the floor. All of them were frozen at the bizarre scene with Narcissa’s wand pointed at Ron and the two Harry was holding pointing at Pettigrew.
“You deserve this, Peter. You know that, don’t you? You deserve to die by your own hand for what you’ve done,” Harry told the man now thrashing on the floor.
A single tear leaked out of Peter’s swollen face at Harry’s words. He didn’t know if it was actual remorse, or if it had just been squeezed out of his dying body, but Harry felt no pity for him.
Turning slowly to Draco’s mother then, Harry leveled her with his gaze. Her eyes were wide with fear as if she believed that he had used some kind of mind controlling dark magic she’d never seen before to cause Wormtail to strangle himself, fearing what he might do to her after seeing him with her sister. Before they could do more than size each other up, however, a door banged open and Hermione came bursting up the stairs, wild hatred in her eyes.
“You’ll never touch him again!” Hermione screamed, pointing her wand first at Bellatrix before spinning quickly to aim at Draco’s mother.
“Expelliarmus!” she shouted.
Narcissa’s wand flew out of her hands just as Bellatrix sprang unexpectedly to life. Turning in Harry’s grip, she pulled something from her boot. He saw a flash of silver, and he leapt backwards as her hand arced toward him. He missed the worst of it as the short blade cut across his thigh, slicing through the denim fabric and into his skin. But it wasn’t deep. She hadn’t managed to cut through muscle and lay his leg open, or disembowel him, which had no doubt been her intent.
The wound was very high on his thigh, however, as if she’d attempted to sever his balls. But before he could react, Hermione had yanked him by the arm just as Dobby appeared in front of them and grasped Harry’s other hand.
Harry saw another flash of silver, heard Bellatrix scream in fury as they were all pulled away into the compressing darkness.

Hermione’s face was pressed into wet sand, her limbs thrown out like a doll tossed away by a thoughtless child. Disoriented and winded from the hard landing of Dobby’s wild Apparition, she fought to untangle herself from her damp robes as rain pelted against her face.
She was on hands and knees when she heard someone scream.
“HELP ME!”
Gripping the wands still clutched in her fist, she staggered up, twirling on the spot. She wiped furiously at the wet strands of hair sticking to her face, searching around for the source, fearful of whatever new threat was upon them.
It was Harry, on his knees thirty feet from her. Bundled in his jacket, he cradled something in his arms, yet she only barely registered it because his shirt was covered in blood. Hermione felt her own leave her face at the sight of it. She tried to take a step forward, but terror made her knees threaten to buckle underneath her.
“NOOOOO!” Harry wailed. “Oh, God, no! Dobby, please don’t die.”
It was the tiny elf’s body that Harry was clutching to his chest, she realized then. She stood frozen in horrified shock, unable to comprehend the truth of what she was seeing, to make sense of the dreadful scene.
No. This couldn’t be happening. Not to Dobby. Not to Harry.
Oh, God! What had she done?
Ron was stumbling towards Harry, who had laid the bundle gently down, folding the jacket over Dobby’s body to protect it from the rain. Shaking his head slowly, Harry stared at it in numb disbelief, his body trembling with grief. Hermione’s legs finally felt as if they would support her, and she took a wobbly step, slowly propelling herself forward.
“Harry,” Ron called hoarsely.
Harry looked up at him helplessly, his face a mask of misery. Holding out his hand to Ron, Harry opened his palm as if seeking confirmation of what was in it, and something silver fell onto the wet sand. Hermione saw that it was a knife, Bellatrix’s knife, the blade covered in blood.
Ron took another staggering step towards Harry, his arms outstretched, but then someone shouted his name. It was Bill. Hermione glanced up to see him running down the hill towards them, a terrified look on his face. Fleur was right behind him, her silvery blond hair flying like a banner behind her as they raced for the shore.
Ron turned towards the sound, and Harry’s eyes found hers. The look Hermione saw in them made her legs suddenly move faster. His eyes were full of tears, and they had that same look in them she’d seen in Ron’s bedroom the last time they’d fled Malfoy Manor.
“Harry! No!” she cried as he staggered to his feet.
But the sight of Bill and Fleur streaking towards them, wands raised had caused him to panic. He turned quickly on the spot before Ron or she could reach him and vanished.

~ . ~
- 31
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What it comes down to

Chapter 32. Fight and Flight