Meant To Be

Chapter 6

By mid-afternoon, Harry finally arrived at the main road of the Burrow. Despite being completely fine when he left Voldemort's manor that morning, his journey back was rough and left him haggard with scratches all over and rips and tears in his clothes. He had originally thought to just go home, but he knew it would be better to just come here. Plus he wasn't exactly thinking straight. He slumped against the door and knocked; the voices inside quieted and footsteps came close to the door.

"Who is it?" sounded Mrs. Weasley's voice.

"It's Harry," he croaked out.

"Harry!" she exclaimed. Harry heard her hand grab the doorknob.

"Wait, Molly. We have to make sure," came her husband's voice, "Harry?"

"Yeah," he answered tiredly, pressing his face into the cool wood.

"What did the twins and Ron do the summer after your first year?"

Harry smiled in remembrance, "They took the flying car and broke me out of my bedroom at the Dursley's house, then brought me here."

There was a pause and the door unlocked and swung open. Mrs. Weasley took one look at him and gasped, "Harry! Oh, my...what happened?" she ushered him inside and hugged him tightly.

Harry immediately felt revulsion at the simple touch and wrenched himself out of her arms, crashing into the counter behind him. He gasped and put his hand to his side where his rib had collided with the edge of the hard surface.

Mrs. Weasley clasped her hands together, "Oh I'm sorry. Are you alright? Of course, you're not, look at you. We should take him to Hogwarts to see Poppy," she said quickly, directing her last statement to her husband.

"Yes. I'll alert Dumbledore," Mr. Weasley said and left the kitchen.

"Here sit down dear and rest for a bit. You must be exhausted!" Mrs. Weasley said to him.

Harry nodded and sat down gingerly at the deserted table, unconsciously wrapping his arms around himself, "Where is everyone?"

"Looking for you of course. Everyone's been in a right state since you didn't come back with everyone else."

Harry nodded again and stayed silent. He didn't ever want to talk about what happened, though he knew he would have to. But he knew one thing for sure; he was not going to say anything about that. Harry couldn't stand to think of what they would think of him if they found out what Voldemort had done to him, no matter that he couldn't control his actions.

Harry used the few minutes it took for Mr. Weasley to come back to make up a believable story with most of the truth, leaving out the majority of what happened last night. He was just fixing up the details when Mr. Weasley came back and said that they were waiting. And Harry was ready.

xxx

Harry sat completely still as Madame Pomfrey ran her wand over him to see if there was any internal damage, even though he had insisted there wasn't. He hoped to whatever God was out there that nothing showed up about...that. It seemed that his prayer had been heard because she found nothing and started rubbing a salve on his cuts. As she worked, Harry answered Dumbledore's questions.

"They didn't do anything to me though after they caught me, just locked me up in a dark room with no windows. Probably just to scare me, but I just waited for them to come back and open the door so I could get out. They didn't come back until morning and took me straight to Voldemort. To make it short, I got my wand back, we fought, I practically brought down the roof on all of them to escape and I made my way out of the house. Most of the cuts are from just running through the woods that surrounded the place or debris from the ceiling."