Harry's head pounds. His ears ring. There's blackness at the edges of his vision, and one lens of his glasses is smashed so badly he can barely see out of it.

We met the Grangers for lunch. I sat with Hermione. I ordered- What did I order?

His hands hurt, stinging pain running over his palms, and he awkwardly pulls himself to his knees, looking down at them: his hands are bloody and raw, covered in sharp little grazes.

We decided to go to Diagon Alley and browse a little. Remus and Sirius were looking at telescopes, Sirius made a joke about folding telescopes. We laughed. I laughed. Then- Then?

Harry looks blearily around, trying to focus his eyes to focus; the side of his head feels wet, his hair stuck down to the side of his face, but he knows it isn't raining. His head doesn't hurt, not exactly, but he knows that it's bleeding. Rubble, shrapnel and pieces of junk are strewn all around the alley: the explosion had come from a carpenter's shop a few storefronts away, and it had blown directly through the potions store and the astronomy one.

A cauldron. It had been a cauldron that had hit him in the head, skimmed him with its edge: the edge of it glints silver and red in the December sun.

He sees the sleeve of Sirius' green robes sticking out from under a beam; Remus is nowhere to be seen; Hermione lies on her belly beside him, unmoving. Wood shavings and chips of brick dust her hair, and there's a jagged tear up one side of her arm. Harry can't really breathe, and he feels awkward, disoriented.

There's a man stood in the middle of Diagon Alley, and he's laughing. Harry can't hear him - all he can hear is the pounding, loud ring of his own ears - but he can see his open mouth, see the wand in his hand, see that he's unscathed.

He went through the wall before us, Harry remembers. I recognize the ribbons in his robes.

Harry stumbles as he tries to stand: it hurts to pull in the big exhalation he does, and he raises his wand, doing his level best to focus on the figure before him. "Stupefy!" he yells, and he feels the shift in his throat, but the word he says sounds far away: the beam hits, and the man tumbles to the ground.

Harry stands in the middle of it all, staring at the chaos around him: a woman comes forwards, puts her hand on Harry's shoulder and pushes him gently to sit down on the floor. Her robes are important. They're a bright colour, they're a healer's robes. A mediwitch. She's talking, but Harry can't hear her, and the blackness is beginning to overtake more of his vision. He can see odd colours in front of his eyes, and he feels himself retch.

What did I order for lunch? I can't remember.

---

"Is Sirius okay?" Harry asks hoarsely as Remus enters the room. Harry sits cross-legged on Hermione's bed, his own neglected. They both look a mess, he's aware - the cut on Harry's head has been healed, but his hair is still stuck down to his head by caked blood, and Hermione looks positively grey where she's covered with concrete dust. Blood is soaked into her sleeves and the chest of her robes, and Harry knows that the both of them look like they're extras in a horror movie.

"He'll be fine," Remus says. There's a short, jagged cut across Remus' jaw that he obviously hasn't had healed: it's beginning to close itself up, slowly, but it makes Remus look somehow more haggard than he usually does. "He has a few broken ribs, and the blast dislocated his hip, but they're healing him up."

"What happened?" Hermione asks, before giving a sharp, sudden squeak of noise.

"That's the Skele-Gro," Harry supplies, looking sympathetically at Hermione's left hand, which she's currently holding flat on a board. "It feels weird, I know, but it shouldn't take long to fix the bones." Hermione grits her teeth, nodding her head, and she looks back to Remus. He sits on the edge of Harry's bed, letting out a low sigh and rubbing his hands up the sides of his cheeks.

"The man Harry stunned - his name is Chad Arnett. He's American, used to run a haberdashery on Slip's Crescent, off Diagon Alley. He set explosives up along the street, blew them all apart." Remus breathes in. "We don't know why he did it. He's in the Ministry right now, the Aurors took him in."

"Is anyone dead?" Harry asks. Hermione gasps, glancing at him, but then she looks desperately to Remus for the answer: she hadn't thought about that until now, Harry can see, and she's as relieved as Harry is when Remus shakes his head.

"Some serious injuries here and there. The assistant in the apothecary was in the supply cupboard when the blast hit, and she was hit by thirty or forty potions at once, let alone the glass holding them in their bottles." Harry had vomited earlier, emptied what felt like his entire body, but the thought of that makes him gag slightly. "No one's died, though, and no one is expected to."

"Hermione!" comes a call from the edge of the room, and Mr and Mrs Granger run forwards: Mr Granger throws his arms around Hermione, and Mrs Granger does the same to Harry before they swap places. Hermione coughs hard, doing her best to keep her hand still as Mr and Mrs Granger sit themselves down. "Are you alright, Remus? Is Sirius? Arthur Weasley had to accompany us here - we were in the ice cream parlour, still..."

"Where is Arthur?" Remus asks.

"He's gone to see Sirius," Mrs Granger explains. "Look, why don't you and Jon go find them? I'll stay with these two." Remus and Mr Granger nod, leaving the room, and Mrs Granger looks down at Harry and Hermione, her hand over her mouth.

"Are you and Dad okay?" Hermione asks, and Mrs Granger nods her head.

"Yes, darling: we were talking to Mr Fortescue. We heard the explosion, of course, but no one would let us through."

"That's good," Harry says quietly. "No offence, Mrs Granger, obviously, but a wizard's body can take more than a Muggle's. If there'd been a secondary blast you could really have been hurt."

"Like you two, you mean?" Mrs Granger says, and Harry gives a rueful little laugh that makes his chest hurt.

"Maybe," Harry says. "Maybe."

---

"Sirius needs to stay here overnight," Remus says quietly, meeting Harry's eyes in the mirror. Harry sighs, carefully washing a little more of the blood on his face into the sink. Remus comes forwards to help, but Harry shakes his head, pushing the other man back and holding his wand up to wash off the last of the red slick sticking to him. "I thought if I took you home tonight-"

"No," Harry says. "I'll stay here, thanks." Remus sighs.

"Harry, you can't. You-"

"Look, Remus," Harry says, and he turns, looking at the man for a few moments. Harry feels tired, and he can see from the mirror that his face is pale, but he feels a little anger nonetheless. Yesterday had been awkward enough - Remus, Sirius and Harry had opened presents together, had a little dinner, and Harry had felt like Remus shouldn't have been there. He and Sirius were friends, sure, but Remus keeps acting like he's Harry's godfather, like he has any right to fuss over Harry's well-being. "I don't mind that you and Sirius are bosom buddies, but I don't care that you knew my dad before the war. I don't care if you were best friends - Hell, I don't care if you, Dad and Sirius had some illicit, secret affair, or if you were all swingers with my mum!

"You didn't come for me. You didn't help me. I didn't even know you bloody existed until this year, so stop acting like you're my guardian, or a weird uncle, or anything like that. Sirius is my godfather, Remus - his excuse for not being there was twelve years in Azkaban. What was yours?" Remus pales slightly, staring at Harry with his mouth slightly agape and his eyes tortured, but Harry doesn't care. Harry's too tired to care, too angry to care. "You don't get to do this! You don't get to just come into my life because Sirius has. Just stop it, alright?"

Harry shoves his wand into his pocket, pushing his wet hair back, and he leaves the bathroom as quickly as he can, heading down to Sirius' room. They'd settled him in a private room, out of the way of the wards - he's covered in the most terrible bruising, and a little of his hair had been ripped from his scalp as they'd pulled him out of the rubble: he looks an utter mess, but Harry doesn't care.

"Oh, you look better," Sirius says casually. "I like this slicked back look."

"Thanks," Harry says sarcastically. "I try and look good for you." Sirius laughs, but he regrets it immediately, and does his best to stop himself. Breathing shallowly with his eyes closed, Sirius concentrates for a few seconds, and then he glances back to Harry.

"Remus is going to take you home."

"No," Harry says. "He's not." Sirius frowns at him, furrowing his brow in obvious perplexity. "I don't want to leave you, Sirius," Harry explains, and it's the truth. "I'll stay here." Sirius expression softens, and he gives a nod of his head, patting the edge of his bed.

Harry sits down, and he and Sirius begin to talk about anything and everything - except, obviously, everything that had happened that day. Harry sees Remus hover in the doorway, but he leaves soon enough, and Harry is grateful for that.

---

"Forty people injured," Harry reads from the Prophet. "Four businesses experiencing structural damage, twelve more heavily affected." Hermione shakes her head, leaning back against the seat. Crookshanks sits next to her, sprawled out in a patch of sun coming in through the window, is belly on display. "Chad Arnett, haberdasher and ex-President of the Official Gilderoy Lockhart fanclub is being shipped out to Azkaban today."

"Do they actually say that?" Hermione asks, furrowing her brow. "That he was president of...?"

"Yeah," Harry says, nodding his head as he looks at the photograph of Arnett in the paper, his arms thrown around a slightly uncomfortable looking Lockhart. "He said at his trial he wanted Lockhart free."

"Talk about devotion to his cause," Hermione says quietly, looking horrified, and Harry nods his head, dropping the paper aside and shaking his head. Hermione sighs, gently petting Crookshanks' chin and letting him let out his jet-engine purr. "I can't believe someone would do something like that."

"Especially in the name of a pillock like Lockhart." Harry says, and Hermione snorts, looking out of the window. The Hogwarts Express chugs along at its usual quick pace: the last few days had mostly involved staying inside and doing jigsaws with Sirius - Harry hadn't felt like going out anywhere after what had happened on Boxing Day. "Then again, Gladys keeps trying to do me in to."

"We don't know that it's just for Lockhart, though," Hermione argues with a mild element of reproach.

"She's got a framed photo of him on her desk," Harry points out, and Hermione makes a face as she remembers the fact.

"Yeah," she admits. "It's just for Lockhart." They'd discussed the matter last night, when Mr and Mrs Granger had let her stay at Sirius'. They'd narrowed down those responsible, and while Sirius had offered (four times) his theory that Snape was trying to kill Harry, they'd decided Gudgeon was probably the culprit. Harry isn't yet sure how exactly they're going to deal with it, but for the time being it's just to be accepted. "At least she's not very good at it."

A knock on the compartment door makes them look up, and Harry fights the irritation in his chest as he sees Remus in the doorway.

"Hello, Professor Lupin," Harry says pointedly. Remus' jaw tenses for a moment, but he steps inside and closes the compartment door behind him: he'd avoided Harry for the last few days, even when he was in Sirius' flat, but today it seems like he's determined. "Do you need something?"

"I was thinking last night," Remus says quietly, "And I believe Gladys Gudgeon is your would-be assassin."

"No!" Harry says, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "You don't say?" Remus blinks, staring at him.

"We were just talking about it," Hermione mildly replies, giving a sympathetic shrug of her shoulders.

"Well," Remus says. "I just wanted to let you know I'll keep an eye on her."

"Yeah, I'll tell Professor Snape, thanks," Harry says, and he ignores the hurt on Remus' face as he gives a small nod of his head and leaves. Harry presses his lips together, looking out of the window, and he can feel Hermione's stare. "What?"

"Why are you being so nasty to him all of a sudden? There could have been loads of reasons he couldn't take you in, Harry," she says. "I mean, he's obviously ill. Maybe he wasn't fit to." Harry huffs out an irritated noise - even if he couldn't have actually taken care of Harry for whatever reason, he could have spoken to him once, twice. He could have visited, told Harry about his parents, about magic, about literally anything.

"That's not enough, Hermione," Harry states, brooking no argument, and he lets Crookshanks clamber into his lap, stroking over the cat's bitten, scarred ears. "Too little, too late."