When Hermione Fights

Rescue

Chapter beta: Dani

Chapter translator: Aivy

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Harry's painful whimpering and kicking woke me and I jumped up. I glanced quickly at the sleeping boy, who appeared to have been trapped in a not so lovely dream vision and was kicking around more and more wildly, moaning and begging pitifully.

I noticed that it was nearly two o'clock in the morning and realised that Harry's restlessness and the ever-loudening noise started to rouse the other boys from their sleep, hence I made a decision. I had to act quickly so I reached for my wand, swung myself on top of Harry and settled astride his stomach, looking down at him with uncertainty. Then I resolutely spoke "Dispicio" and Harry's eyes were forced to open and they stared blankly back at me. Caught in a state of sleep they were a gruesome sight.

Now I pointed my wand at him and said a quick prayer for encouragement so that I would be able to go through with it and chanted "Legilimens." This time, I could feel what it was like to be the one to speak the spell and be sucked into the mind of another person, seeing and experiencing what was going in there. It was overwhelming to have that power, but also painful; a dull throb started right away and made my teeth clench.

I could determine that we were in a large room, or rather a small hall built in a style not unlike Hogwarts. It seemed to be an old house built of large, grey stones, or rather a castle, as large as the hall looked. The torches on the walls flickered unsteadily. I tried to soothe Harry so that he would lose his fear and calm down. He seemed to notice my presence in his mind, and when he recognised me, Harry actually seemed to calm down, as his panicked breaths relaxed somewhat.

I realised that Harry perceived everything he saw seemingly through someone else's eyes according to the field of vision I was presented with, and since he had been a serpent steered by the Dark Lord during his last fit, my power of deduction allowed only one disturbing and terrible conclusion! Harry had unintentionally landed in the mind of the Dark Lord and was experiencing what he saw, did and said. It was a frightening idea, but he did not seem to have caught onto our presence yet. I stayed calm with that realisation and curiously watched the scene, now that Harry, with my support, had also become calmer.

We heard Voldemort's unfathomable, no longer human-sounding voice echoing off the high walls of the hall as he addressed an elderly, ugly man whose face was stained with heavy pockmarks, named Augustus Rookwood, with clinking coldness. I recognised him as one of the Death Eaters who had escaped during the mass Azkaban outbreak and decided to look up his vita.

It was disgusting to watch the man throw himself at the Lord's feet without any pride and report faithfully to him. My mouth opened, I did not have to look it up anymore, now I learned firsthand who Rookwood was. He had once been an Unspeakable and was just answering the Dark Lord. He informed him that he had been misinformed so far; that his previous attempts to extract something from the Department of Mysteries, specifically a prophecy, could not work out, and that the murdered Bode had known the grave consequences of the wards and that was why he had fought so bitterly against the Imperius Malfoy had placed on him.

So that had been Lucius' work. What a surprise. Did he kill him too?

I could feel Harry getting more and more restless, and his moaning was getting louder again as well, so much that I could not calm him down any longer. Then I felt both of us being rudely shaken and reluctantly left his mind, closing my eyes and releasing the curse. I collapsed immediately on Harry's chest because of the unfamiliar strain of invading someone else's mind. Being on this side of the spell too was painful and exhausting as hell, as I had just learned the hard way.