Can A Phoenix Love A Lion? (Hermione Granger x Male Reader)

46. The Beginning

Y/N felt himself slam flat into the ground. His face was pressed into grass, and the smell of it filled his nostrils. He did not move, gasping for air. His head swam so badly he felt as though the ground beneath him were swaying, like the deck of a ship. Shock and exhaustion kept him on the ground, breathing in the smell of the grass, waiting . . . waiting for someone to do something . . . something to happen . . . and all the while his neck burned; his whole body burned dully.

A torrent of sound deafened him. Voices everywhere, footsteps, screams. . . . He remained where he was, his face twisted with pain. The nightmare would pass. . . .

Then hands seized him roughly and turned him over.

"Y/N! Harry!"

Y/N opened his eyes.

He was looking up at the starry sky, and dark shadows pressed around him; he could feel the ground rumbling with their footsteps. Albus Dumbledore was there, too, crouched next to him over Harry; he tried to stare at the headmaster, but his vision became a spasmodic blur and prevented him.

Coming from far away, Harry's voice whispered, "He's back. He's back. Voldemort."

"What's going on? What's happened?" Cornelius Fudge's voice broke. "My God—Diggory! Dumbledore—he's dead!"

All around the shadows repeated the words. They gasped, shouted, screeched. "He's dead!" rang into the night, followed by "He's dead!" and "Cedric Diggory! Dead!"

Y/N wanted to speak, to say that they could not do anything back in the cemetery. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out of his throat. It was hard to breathe. His mouth felt watery, but it tasted of blood. He was not sure; he could not feel his lips and the taste already faded. His feet seemed so far away from his head. This burning in his neck. . . .

"He needs to go to the hospital wing!" came Fudge's voice to his ears—the minister must have spoken loudly, but it seemed a whisper to him. "He's ill, he's injured—Dumbledore, he's bleeding to death. . . ."

Some corner of Y/N's mind wondered if the voice was talking about him.

He was alone now, surrounded by dark shapes, lying helplessly on the ground. Shouts and yells rang around. They don't think I'm dead, do they? He tried to scream—they had to notice him—but he only felt something hot spilling over his chin.

Suddenly he felt hands lifting him up and laying him down onto a stretcher; only his fingertips touched the ground as it moved—he did not know if he still had fingers. The starry sky disappeared, giving way to a greyish colour—how could the sky disappear? The dark shapes were fewer now, and the ground no longer vibrated. Whispers so quiet they must have come out of his imagination spoke indistinctly beside him.

Clack, clack, clack. The sound of footsteps on paving. Where am I? Y/N could not make out his surroundings; all was blurred, as though his eyes were filled with tears. Lights came and went, and a part of his mind figured it must be torches set along walls. He felt the stretcher leaning and bumping under him—climbing up stairs.

Suddenly he remembered. There's a Death Eater at Hogwarts! He tried to get up, shout and run—he had to warn Dumbledore—but nothing happened. His body did not comply with his orders, and he remained listless.

He felt lifted again, and then laid on something soft against his back—a cloud, maybe. Shadowy shapes were around the cloud; one moved frantically from left to right, in and out his field of vision, and in and out again. It held something up to his face. At that moment he realised he could not hear anymore, and he could not see, too, except through what seemed a keyhole.