Harry Potter and the Stitch in Time

Chapter 45

It was the next day around midday that Harry woke up in a room at St Mungo's. He had Hermione on one side of him, Grandfather Charlus on the other., and Sirius in a chair in the corner of the room. As soon as she saw that Harry was awake, Hermione jumped up from her seat and practically lay on top of him in the closest she could get to a Hermione hug.

"Harry! Thank god you're awake, I was so worried about you, you were gone and we couldn't find you and then they did and Uncle Charlus wouldn't let me go and he came back and you had another lightning bolt scar on your chest this time I was so scared I had lost you!" Hermione finally stopped to breathe from her run on sentence.

Harry just wrapped his arms around her and held her against him as the memories of the night before played in his mind. They stayed like that for a few minutes. Grandfather Charlus put his hand on Harry's shoulder and stayed quiet as the two teens silently cried away their frustrations and fears. The silence was only broken when a mediwitch came to check on Harry to see how he was doing. Being awake meant that he now had to undergo a number of tests, everything from having a light shone in his eyes to having about fifty detection spells cast on him. And no one could be touching him during this in case they corrupted the results of the scans.

Apparently Harry was, for the most part, fine. He was exhausted from pushing himself again, and he had a new dark magic-infected scar on his chest to match the one on his head. Apart from that, everything had healed while he was asleep. It had all been scrapes, bumps, and bruises, so for the most part Harry's injuries could have been treated by a first year healer apprentice. It was ridiculous. Harry had gone up against the most feared man in Britain as a teenager, and if you discount the killing curse that hit him, then Voldemort hadn't done much damage at all.

"Hermione, did you find the papers in my robes?" asked Harry when he remembered the bet he had done with Voldemort.

"Yes I have them, but I haven't looked at them. What are they?" Hermione asked. She had been afraid they were goodbye letters from Harry, so she had absolutely refused to open them or let anyone else do so.

"I made a bet with Voldemort on the duel." There were a few shocked gasps at that. "Honestly I was mostly doing it to play for time. I thought that the longer Voldemort and I were talking about the bet, the better chances there were of being found. Voldemort had a spell to replace an arm, and I immediately thought of Krum. So I pushed Voldemort into betting the instructions to the spell on the outcome of the duel."

"What did you bet against it?" Grandfather Charlus asked, a note of concern in his voice.

"10000 galleons," Harry admitted. "I thought if I... well I wouldn't need it any more, and one of Voldemort's Death Eaters would need to reveal their identity to collect the gold. If I won, then I could give Krum back his Quidditch career, bring some joy to the world, fix Bagman's mistake, and maybe earn a little good will from all the Quidditch fans," Harry explained.

"We will have to go over the wording of your agreement before looking into it. We don't want Voldemort to be able to claim the ten thousand," said Charlus.

Harry smirked at that. "Not likely. I have the bankers' draft as well. Voldemort's win condition was taking the draft from my corpse, mine was getting out of there alive. I'm alive and still have both, so by the rules I won. I killed Voldemort after all." There was silence and everyone looked like there was something they weren't saying. "What?" Harry demanded.

"Well you definitely hit Voldemort with a killing blow, an overcharged Fulmenactus right to the chest, and he died. Unfortunately, he didn't stay dead. While the Aurors were mopping up the Death Eaters, the body started moving again. It killed two Aurors with magic, took a goblet of potion from that massive cauldron, and escaped with the Death Eaters that were still fighting." Charlus told him. "I was told only a few hours ago."