It took Harry a minute to realise he hadn't answered her. He felt more like fainting than ever. In fact, now that the worst of the danger had passed, he wanted to go to sleep for about a month straight. It was all he could do to stay on his feet. But somebody might notice Nott lying unconscious in the next alley over, so Harry drew in a deep breath, bracing himself against the constant pain in his hand, and told himself it wasn't over yet.
"Just my hand," he said, shocked at how much like a croak his voice sounded. "Um, I don't suppose you know a good painkilling spell? Severus knows this really good one..."
Hermione did cast something to take the edge off, but it was nowhere near as good as his father's spell.
"So who did this?"
Harry winced just thinking about it. "Nott. And don't say you told me so. I told you I didn't trust him, remember?"
Ron was too good a friend to retort that for all Harry had said that, neither had Harry really expected something like this. "Where is he, then?" said Ron, menace in every word.
"Alley next to the Quidditch shop," gasped Harry, stepping away from Hermione. He felt awful when he realised what they were going to see. "Um... he's in pretty bad shape."
"Deserves to be," said Ron with a pointed look at Harry's hand as they began to make their way over to the other alley.
Harry still all but flinched at the thought of what his dark powers could do, but he should have known his friends would stick by him regardless. "Don't blame yourself, Harry," Hermione said when she saw the state Nott was in. "He attacked first. You've a right to defend yourself."
"Yeah." Harry didn't much like what he'd done, but he didn't blame himself. Not like Hermione worried about, anyway. "I don't think we can get him to Severus without somebody seeing, so let's just get him inside. Oh, and don't touch that double-thick Galleon. It's a Portkey..."
Hermione carefully put an upside-down cauldron over it so nobody would accidentally touch it.
Ron walked further between the buildings and found a back door to a shop that hadn't been open since they'd started coming to Hogsmeade. Alohamora didn't work on it, he reported. "Must be warded."
"Not against me," said Harry. One wanded charm later and the door popped open. Harry thought his father would understand.
Ron dragged Nott inside, refusing to let Harry help. Just as well, considering the state his right hand was in. All the same, Harry thought better than to leave suggestive evidence lying about, so he started to scoop up Nott's gooey shoes and socks so he could toss them inside. Hermione made a tsking noise and said to let her do it, but when she saw quite how messy it all was, she used a levitation spell instead of her hands.
Harry weakly smiled his thanks, and glanced back to where Nott had been the moment before. The space between the buildings was still strewn with broken eggs; Harry felt sick just looking at them. Or maybe it was the burn making him queasy. He just knew he wasn't in the best shape. By now he felt like he could use a year's worth of sleep.
He thought about casting a Scourgify, or asking Hermione to, but then he realised he might need all that egg in order to restore Nott. If he could restore him, that was. Harry couldn't think about it any longer, not then, so he turned away from the mess. Didn't matter if it continued to litter the alley for a little while. Nobody was going to see the broken eggs and realise what they meant.
Hermione was setting his Honeydukes bag down on a crate when Harry stumbled in; he absently realised she must have scooped it up for him. Had it really only been an hour ago that he'd been buying Draco's sweets? It seemed like weeks had passed since then. He felt shaky. Like he needed to sit down. But he couldn't, not yet. He had to make sure they'd be safe in here.
Not that Harry knew what to do, exactly. They needed Severus.
"Hermione, you go get my dad, all right? Tell him everything on the way. Ron and I will make sure Nott stays Stupefied." Harry paused to think. "Tell Severus to bring Veritaserum. Nott was trying to turn Draco over to Lucius. I bet he knows how he was framed, and probably who killed Pansy..."
The minute she was gone, Harry locked the door, then cast some of his best protective spells, using wanded magic for every bit of it. He didn't really think that any of Nott's other associates would show up, but he was taking no chances.
Even if, by the time he was finished, he felt like a stretch of carpet that had been trod on too many times. Practicing wanded spells out in Devon hadn't left him feeling quite as worn out as this. Maybe it was just the burn draining him.
Or maybe it was all the emotion. The screaming in Parseltongue. Just like in his seer dream, the one he'd never been able to properly remember, the one his father had told him about...
Now that he had more of a chance to look around, he saw that they were inside a dusty, disused room. It looked like somebody had moved out too fast; they'd left behind dozens of empty boxes and such. The connecting rooms were the same, and there seemed to be no display window on the street side; just a door. Harry warded it as well, using wanded magic again. That last spell made him stagger as he wound back through the rooms to join Ron.
Nott, thank goodness, hadn't moved. Harry wasn't sure he had another spell in him. Not even a wandless one. He collapsed onto a crate next to a wall, and leaned back, carefully keeping his injured hand from touching anything. He tried not to look at it, even. Something about the burn damage was pulling his fingers in tighter and tighter, until now he was practically making a fist. He didn't seem able to uncurl his fingers, though. And it hurt like hell to try, so he didn't.
Not after the first time, when he heard the noise he made during the attempt.
"Sweet Merlin, I wish I had something to help you," said Ron, who had yet to sit down. He was standing guard, wand at the ready, his attention focussed on Nott's prone body. "My healing spells are crap, though. I can't even do that painkilling one Hermione used. Sorry."
"Severus will set it right." Shrugging, Harry tried to get his mind off things. He kept thinking how awful it was that his mother's ring had been destroyed. It shouldn't be hitting him this hard, it really shouldn't. He hadn't had the ring until this year, so it wasn't like he should be attached to it, was it? And he had a father now. A real person, to be there for him, to love him. What was an inanimate object compared to that?
For all that though, his heart still ached as much as his blackened hand. Tears actually started welling in his eyes. Definitely, he had to distract himself. "So, is everything all right now, with you and Hermione?"
"Yeah, I think so." Ron tried to smile, but the effort was strained. "Your father's going to set me another ten thousand lines for this, I just know it. Not that I don't deserve them. We shouldn't have left you alone."
"You didn't. I left you."
"Yeah, well we shouldn't have started kissing like that and made you feel like you had to leave us alone."
"I was the one who told you to kiss and make up, Ronald."
Ron laughed. "It'll be good not to hear her call me that. I was right sick of it."
"Useful it's so easy to figure out when she's miffed, though."
"That's a thought..."
They lapsed into silence then, Harry gritting his teeth against the pain he felt inside and out.
"Be good to find out the truth about the Owlery, though," Ron said after a while. "And... oh, hell. I guess you'll like it if Malfoy... Draco... gets completely exonerated, right?"
"He really was unfairly expelled. The Aurors' report said he didn't do it... I'm hoping if we can get the whole truth, and confessions or whatever, the governors will feel bad enough to let Draco back into classes where he belongs. I mean, I do know he did attack Pansy early in the year, but he's more than paid for that by now."