𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 | 𝐡. 𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫

𝟏𝟒𝟓 - 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠

𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙮 𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙚𝙮𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙙𝙖𝙯𝙯𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙜𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙜𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙣; he had no idea what had happened, he only knew that he was lying on what seemed to be leaves and twigs. Struggling to draw breath into lungs that felt flattened, he blinked and realized that the gaudy glare was sunlight streaming through a canopy of leaves far above him. Then an object twitched close to his face. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, ready to face some small, fierce creature, but saw that the object was Ron's foot. Looking around, Harry saw that they and the girls were lying on a forest floor, apparently alone.

Harry's first thought was of the Forbidden Forest, and for a moment, even though he knew how foolish and dangerous it would be for them to appear in the grounds of Hogwarts, his heart leapt at the thought of sneaking through the trees to Hagrid's hut. However, in the few moments it took for Ron to give a low groan and Harry to start crawling toward him, he realized that this was not the Forbidden Forest: The trees looked younger, they were more widely spaced, the ground clearer.

Ron began to whimper loudly, as Ophelia's reassuring voice said.

"I know it hurts right now, let me in -- I'll make it go away, there we go... that's better, I need a better look at this -- " she said as Harry heard the tearing of cloth as he saw Ophelia kneeling beside Ron, the only one out of the four of them who managed to muster themselves to sit up.

He watched quite horrified as she tore into Ron's shirt with her bare hands, he was about to protest when he saw her hands were a blazing red. Ophelia looked down at Ron's splinched arm, a huge clean chunk of his flesh was missing as though someone had butchered it straight from him, she swallowed her horror and smiled reassuringly down at Ron who was staring at her in a mixture of perplexed and terror.

"Alright, it's not so bad Ron -- you'll be fine, just breathe, can you do that for me? I'll sort you out alright, just try not to move."

Ron nodded frantically, staring up at Ophelia's face as she flicked her hand towards her bag which came zooming into her own body hand, she quickly pulled out a tiny blue bottle and dropped a couple of drops into the spot where it was darkest and wettest, greenish smoke billowed upward into Ophelia's nose but once it cleared she was relieved to see the blood had stopped.

"Phee what's--" Harry began, his face draining of colour as he saw her hands.

Soaked in blood.

It wasn't much of a leap for his imagination to imagine Bellatrix's dagger in her hand, or to see her in the same outfit she died in, suddenly he couldn't hear or see anything but the blood and Ophelia yet his trance was broken as Hermione let out a choked sob at the sight of Ron's arm, Harry got close enough to take a look at him, his blood-drenched the whole of Ron's left side and his face stood out, greyish-white, against the leaf-strewn earth. The Polyjuice Potion was wearing off now: Ron was halfway between Cattermole and himself in appearance, his hair turning redder and redder as his face drained of the little color it had left.

He met Hermione, also on her hands and knees, at Ron's head.

"What's happened to him?"

"Splinched," gasped Hermione, who crawled towards Ron's head to pull it into her knees with trembling hands as Ophelia was muttering vulnera sanentur under her breath with her steady hands hovering over the injury, Harry watched as Ron's skin neatly began to stitch itself together under Ophelia's palms as she repeated the spell over and over and over again until his skin was clean and smooth beneath it.

"Oh my god Ophelia, your face!" Hermione cried.

Ophelia ignored her, she could cope.

Leaned forward to gently test the tender flesh by gripping around it, it felt mushy under her touch meaning that while the spell had worked to repair the torsion in his skin it was still working on replacing the flesh beneath it, her hands left bloody prints on him as she sat back on her heels which is when Harry caught sight of what Hermione had been so frightened at the sight of and his face drained so quickly that he looked close in shade to Ron who had since passed out -- Ophelia suspected from being lightheaded from the bloodloss.