St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, under normal circumstances, did not permit Apparition within its walls. The powerful wards prevented it to protect vulnerable patients from the disorienting effects of magical arrival and departure.
But today, those ancient rules had been broken out of necessity.
Exceptional circumstances required exceptional measures.
All routine patients—those suffering from common maladies like Dragon Pox, Spattergroit, or unfortunate Splinching accidents had been hastily transferred to overcrowded shared wards for centralized care. The Healers had done their best to make them comfortable, but resources were stretched thin.
The vast number of vacant private rooms that this mass relocation had created had been entirely allocated to handle the seemingly endless stream of casualties being frantically evacuated from the battlefield.
When Mrs. Weasley, along with Fred and George who had both passed their Apparition tests the last year and were now legally licensed—Apparated into St. Mungo's main hall with Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny, they finally, horrifyingly understood exactly why the Ministry had specifically sent urgent word for them to come and help however they could.
Spread out before their shocked eyes, nearly every Healer and nurse wearing St. Mungo's robes was racing frantically about the hall and up and down the staircases. Sheer panic and deep exhaustion were etched across every single face they could see. Many of the medical staff had clearly been working without rest for hours already.
CRACK!
"Quick, quick! Move aside—wounded coming through!"
Harry and the others had barely finished appearing in the crowded hall, still trying to process the horrifying sight of fresh blood covering large sections of the floor, when a completely soaking-wet Auror suddenly appeared beside them with the crack of Apparition.
The Auror was supporting a severely wounded companion who could barely stand.
Hermione and Ginny immediately screamed in shock and horror.
The very moment Harry's eyes fell upon the grievously injured man, it felt exactly as though an invisible icy hand had brutally pierced through his chest and seized his frantically beating heart. An intense chill shot up rapidly from the base of his spine straight to the top of his skull, making every single hair on his body stand on end.
Half of the wounded man's face had been literally burned away exposing charred red muscle tissue. Across his chest was a horrifying 'X'-shaped wound.
And this was clearly no simple slash from a blade—the blood still trickling sluggishly from the shocking wound kept bubbling with tiny air pockets, rising to the surface and popping as if the man's very blood were somehow boiling from the inside out.
Two witches came rushing down the main staircase at a near-run. Harry watched them approach with rapid speed.
"Professor McGonagall? Madam Pomfrey?"
Harry's lips moved, forming the familiar names.
"What are you doing here? I thought—I thought you'd be..."
The two Hogwarts staff members no longer bore even the slightest resemblance to their usual tidy, professional appearance from the school. Both women were covered in blood from head to toe.
Professor McGonagall's hair, which was usually arranged with meticulous care in a tight, severe bun, had completely come loose during whatever she'd been doing. It now hung disheveled and wild across half her face, but she clearly had neither the time nor the presence of mind to brush it aside or fix it.
"Oh, Potter?"
It wasn't until she came within a few feet that Professor McGonagall actually noticed the group of students standing there. Her eyes focused on Harry for just a moment. But she merely glanced at the group once before her attention was already turning away, pulled back to more urgent matters.
She conjured a sturdy stretcher with a flick of her wand. Together with the wet Auror who had brought in the casualty, they carefully positioned the wounded man upon the floating stretcher.
"Will he live? Please, please tell me—will he live?"
The Auror's haggard face was streaked with wet stains—it might have been tears, or it might simply have been rain dripping from his soaked hair. It was completely impossible to tell which. His expression was absolutely anguished, twisted with desperate fear for his companion, as he pleaded with Madam Pomfrey.
Madam Pomfrey had already without any concern for dignity or propriety, positioned herself awkwardly half-on the stretcher itself. She was waving her wand in continuous, complex patterns to keep the terrible wounds from splitting open any further.
"We'll do everything we can," she said tersely, not looking up from her work.
Then Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey, moving with rush, swiftly climbed the stairs two at a time and disappeared around the landing with stretcher floating smoothly between them.
Harry stood frozen watching the stretcher's departure. It left behind a clear river of bright red blood in its trail across the floor.
"Bastards! You bloody bastards!"
The Auror who had brought in the wounded man stood trembling for just a moment longer staring at the blood trail. Then he let out a grief-stricken, rage-filled roar that echoed through the entire hall before Disapparating once more with another sharp crack.
Harry didn't need anyone to tell him exactly where the desperate man was going.
Wails of pain, sobs of overwhelming grief, curses of rage, desperate pleas for help or mercy, urgent shouted commands from overwhelmed Healers—the terrible spectrum of human suffering in all its forms was being displayed without any disguise or filter before these sheltered children, leaving all of them trembling where they stood.
Harry looked around blankly toward Hermione and Ginny. Both girls' faces were already streaming with tears that they made no attempt to hide or wipe away. Their eyes were wide with shock.
He suddenly felt unexpected dampness on his own face. Harry slowly raised his hand and touched his cheek with a single fingertip. A tear clung to it, trembling slightly with the movement before sliding down.
"Save me... please, someone... save me..."
After another sharp crack of Apparition beside them, a severely injured wizard appeared absolutely abruptly at Ron's feet, materializing so close that Ron had to jump back to avoid being landed on. The sudden appearance startled Ron so badly that he stumbled backward awkwardly and fell hard on the ground.
The newly-arrived wizard wore the tattered, shredded remains of what had once been a fine black traveling cloak. He looked exactly as though he'd been caught and dragged through a net lined with razor-sharp blades—his entire body was covered in deep cuts several inches long.
He had quite literally become a man made of blood. It was impossible to tell where one wound ended and another began.
Yet somehow, he was still alive.
A powerful, desperate will to survive drove him to begin crawling painfully across the hard floor. He extended one blood-drenched, shaking hand forward as if trying to physically grasp at even the slimmest chance to live.
"Rosier..."
Mrs. Weasley's voice, strange and hollow, suddenly reached Harry's ear through the chaos.
"Evan Rosier...."
Harry stared at Mrs. Weasley's blank expression and heard her murmuring voice.
'Evan Rosier? What did that mean? Who was this man—some old friend of Mrs. Weasley's?'
Suddenly, like lightning flashing through the clouds of Harry's confused mind, he whipped his head around sharply to look at the wizard still crawling desperately on the floor.
Sure enough, through the ragged gaps in the man's torn sleeve, Harry caught clear glimpses of the skull pattern of the Dark Mark.
A Death Eater. This was a Death Eater.
A Healer who had been hurrying past while retrieving emergency potions from a supply closet spotted Evan Rosier on the floor. Without saying a single word, she waved her wand to levitate the injured man off the filthy floor and prepared to take him upstairs for urgent treatment.
"Wait!"
Harry's unexpected shout rang out through the noise as he rushed forward toward the Healer.
"What is it, child? Are you looking for an injured relative? I'm afraid I don't have time to help you search right now—"
The middle-aged female Healer turned to look at Harry and said urgently. Her eyes were bloodshot with fatigue.
Half of the name badge pinned to the witch's chest was obscured by dark bloodstains. The other half bore the name "Flev".
"He's a Death Eater!"
Harry pointed at Evan Rosier's exposed arm, where the Dark Mark was clearly visible despite the blood, and said through tightly gritted teeth, as if this single fact alone should explain everything.
"Oh!"
Healer Flev was indeed genuinely surprised by this information. Her eyebrows rose. She bent slightly, then nodded at Harry with a small, tired smile.
"Thank you very much for letting me know, child."
With that simple acknowledgment, she made to continue taking Evan Rosier away for immediate treatment, the body already beginning to float toward the stairs.
"But he's a Death Eater!"
Harry grew agitated, his voice rose to a shout as he called out again in bewilderment.
"I know, dear—"
Healer Flev paused and gave Harry a wan, exhausted smile.
"But isn't the difference between us and the Death Eaters the simple fact that we value life? All life? Here, in this hospital, he's just an injured patient who needs help to survive. As for judging his crimes and deciding his punishment—well, that's the Ministry's job, not mine. I'm just a Healer."
Harry stood motionless at the bottom of the stairs, watching the Healer disappear around the corner, his expression was completely blank.
"Sob, sob... oh god, oh god..."
The desperate, grief-stricken sobbing that suddenly reached his ears made Harry slowly turn his head, pulled from his confused thoughts.
Mrs. Weasley had already determinedly pushed her way through the dense crowd clustered around the inquiry desk, trying to find out which room Mr. Weasley had been assigned to.
Beside the crowd at the desk, a witch dressed in simple robes sat with her back pressed against the wall. As Harry watched, she slowly slid down to the floor in a collapse, weeping in sorrow. One trembling hand covered her face while her other arm held tightly a little girl who looked only two or three years old.
The mother's overwhelming grief had infected the young child. Though the young girl clearly didn't yet understand what had actually happened, she too began to cry with a sharp wail.
Harry didn't want to imagine what terrible news this woman had just received. He simply stood and stared blankly at the mother and daughter, unable to look away.
"Found him! I found Arthur!"
Mrs. Weasley's voice cut through his paralysis as she pushed her way back out of the dense crowd.
"He's on the third floor! Come on, all of you!"
Mrs. Weasley and her children, including Ron, had no time to concern themselves with whatever internal crisis Harry was currently experiencing. They immediately swarmed toward the main staircase, racing up the steps as fast as they could manage.
"Come on, Harry. We need to go. You can't help her—"
Hermione took Harry's unresisting arm gently, her own expression was deeply mournful and sympathetic. Her voice was nasally with unshed tears.
Harry allowed Hermione to pull him up the stairs without resistance, but his head remained turned back over his shoulder toward the mother and daughter below until they finally vanished completely from his line of sight as he climbed.
The main staircase was crowded with people frantically going up and down in both directions. Healers rushing down for more supplies, family members searching desperately for loved ones.
Hermione struggled to guide the unresponsive Harry up to the third floor, dodging and weaving through the traffic, pulling him along by the arm.
As they finally emerged from the cramped stairwell onto the third-floor landing, a sight that greeted them there dealt both Harry and Hermione yet another devastating emotional blow.
A long row of stretchers lined against the corridor wall, each one bearing a sheet-covered form. The sheets were pulled up completely, covering the faces.
'Could Sirius be among them?'
Unconsciously, this terrible thought suddenly surfaced in Harry's mind.
But immediately, he shook his head hard, as if the very idea had scalded him.
'No. Impossible. Absolutely impossible!'
Sirius would never... he couldn't be... otherwise the Ministry would surely have specifically notified him, wouldn't they?
The noise around him seemed to gradually fade away into a distant murmur, as if he were underwater. In the entire world, there seemed to be only the frantic voice in his own head trying desperately to convince himself of something he wasn't sure he believed.
"Sorry, but you'll have to use crutches."
As they passed an open emergency room door, Harry heard Professor McGonagall's crisp Scottish accent again, now sounding utterly exhausted. Both he and Hermione paused instinctively and looked into the room.
"Well, not too bad, all things considered..."
The deep voice of the dark-skinned wizard lying in the hospital bed said with remarkable calm.
It was Kingsley Shacklebolt!
Fresh tears immediately welled up in Hermione's brown eyes.
But Harry's attention was focused more intensely on Madam Pomfrey, who was bandaging Kingsley's severed leg.
What about that man they'd just brought in downstairs—the one with half his face burned away and the X-shaped wound across his chest?
Is he... all right?
Harry wanted to ask Madam Pomfrey about that man's fate, but after his lips moved several times silently, he still couldn't quite muster the courage to actually ask the question aloud.
He was too afraid of the answer.
The two walked slowly past several more rooms, catching glimpses of other injured people being treated, before finally catching sight of the cluster of red-haired Weasleys.
Mrs. Weasley sat in a wooden chair pulled close beside the hospital bed, her head was bowed low as she wept. Her children stood in a semicircle behind her, all facing Mr. Weasley in the bed.
From where Harry and Hermione stood hesitantly in the doorway, they couldn't make out the expressions on the children's faces.
"Don't cry, Molly... don't... it's... all right—"
Mr. Weasley's voice was weak and feeble. He struggled to lift his hand from where it lay on the white sheets, managing to raise it just enough to gently touch Mrs. Weasley's tear-stained cheek with his fingertips.
His entire body was wrapped in white bandages, making it impossible to see his face clearly or properly assess the full extent of his injuries.
"I've finally... well, I have... Gideon and Fabian would be pleased..."
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