Harry Potter & Hell\'s Assassin

Chapter 6









A week had passed since they had fought. And in this week they had become no closer to finding out where their friend was, let alone how to bring him back.



Ron and Hermione spent most of their days sitting alone together in the room Ron and Harry shared. It was still two weeks before the start of the school year and the two best friends had nothing to do. Their time was spent together, either talking about Harry, what may have happened to him and where he may be, or thinking in silence over those same subjects.



The adults in the household, those who were in the Order, were forced to watch the teens suffer, for there was nothing they could do for them except find their friend. They were all trying. Fifty people, sometimes more, came and went from the house everyday, laden with books and old parchments, maps and journals. All for the possibility that they could save the Boy Who Lived - a goal that was slipping from their grasp a little more every day; every hour they spent researching. Their goal was slowly turning into a dream they would not be able to fulfill.



Finding out where the boy was, was not their only problem either. None in the Wizarding world knew their savior was gone yet. Save for the select few in the Order, everyone else thought he was safe within the protection of his muggle relatives.



How were they going to tell the world that Harry Potter was gone? That he may never come back? Most saw him as a beacon of hope in the war against the Dark Lord. If he was gone, how would that affect their drive? Would they lose hope, and give up? The Order was certain a lot of people would. What then would they do? Lie and cover for the boy’s disappearance? That may work for a while, but eventually the public would find out.



The situation was a dire one and, with the passing of every day came too, the realization that they were getting nowhere, and moving farther and farther away from any chance of finding him.



Remus closed the book in his lap gently. He had been reading the same paragraph over and over for the last fifteen minutes and he still could not remember what it contained. Since yesterday he had been unable to read a book, for every time he did, his mind would begin to wander over the same topics. He could not help them research, but, by this point, he didn’t know if it made a difference.



Sirius was no better. The poor man had been reading the same page, the book upside down, for the better part of an hour.



Remus hated seeing his friend this way, especially when there was nothing he could do to help him. Harry was the only thing he had had left in this world that he cared about, besides Remus, and the boy was the closest thing to a son the man was ever going to have. If they never found Harry, Remus didn’t know if his friend would survive the loss. The child had been gone for a little more than a week and Sirius was not doing well, by any account.



The werewolf exhaled through his nose in a weary sigh and rubbed a hand down his face. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, looking at his friend.



“Sirius…”



He didn’t look up.



“Sirius!”



With a start, the dark haired man raised wide, fatigued eyes.



“That book is upside down, you know.”



Sirius let his eyes fall to the book in his lap. He stared at it for a second, a look of confusion on his face, before slamming it shut violently and throwing it across the room where it crashed into a very old and very expensive looking vase on the mantle of the fireplace.



The sound of shattering glass seemed explosive in the quiet of the library where everyone had studiously been reading and writing notes. A few startled cries followed the crash and everyone raised their heads from their books to stare, wide eyed, at Sirius.



Remus had stood and closed the distance between himself and his friend before the little pieces of the vase had even stopped skidding across the floor. He griped the other man’s arms.



“Sirius, calm down!” he hissed.



His friend glared at him.



“Smashing things around isn’t going to help anything.”



“Well it makes me feel a little better.”



Remus blinked, taken aback by the sound of the animagus’ voice. It was hollow. Sad. He sounded defeated.



Remus felt his head moving side to side of its own accord. “You’ve given up already, Sirius?” he said, his tone more accusing than he had intended.



Dark eyes lowered, shame tingeing pale cheeks.



Remus could find no other words. Not even angry ones. Sirius had always been



so strong. So stubborn. He didn’t give up this quickly. Ever. With a sinking feeling, Remus wondered if this was the event that would break his friend. The straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak. Was losing Harry going to be more than Sirius could handle?



“Sirius…”



The man was shaking his head now. “I can’t do this, Remus…”



Dozens of pairs of eyes watched Sirius Black walk swiftly from the room. His head was bowed and he was wiping furiously at his eyes, trying to hamper the tears before they fell.



Remus stood in the middle of the room, feeling completely lost. Sirius had never cried before. At least, Remus had never seen the man cry. He didn’t know what to do. So he sat back down in his chair and picked up the book he had set aside. He opened it to the same page and started to read the same paragraph over again. The words drifted through his mind in a meaningless haze. Maybe Sirius had it right. Maybe there was nothing they could do. Maybe they should just give it up and try to keep everything else going; try to pick up the pieces as they went…



Remus sighed again and moved his gaze back up to the top of the paragraph to begin once more.







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Harry wasn’t feeling well. His stomach ached with hunger. His throat was dry and his lips were cracked and burning. He wasn’t sure how he had even made it this far. He had been here for three days. In this world. He hadn’t eaten or drank anything. There was scarcely anything to eat, unless one had the stomach for dirt, rocks or tree bark. Every once in a while he would come upon a stream or a bush with some strange looking berries. But the streams all looked like the first he had found: Dirty, with a filmy, black substance clinging to the edges of the water. The water itself was slow to travel and, once, Harry’s curiosity had got the better of him, and he had stuck a few fingers into the stream. It had felt like oil – slimy and thick.



The one or two bushes he had found were as twisted and dead looking as the trees of the forest in which he walked.. The berries they produced were old, dry and shriveled like rose hips and bright purple in color. He dared not eat them. Bright colors often meant poison.



He had been walking endlessly, stopping to rest only when his body felt ready to give out from its lack of food and water. Originally, he had planned only to stop at night fall. In this world, however, he discovered there was no night and day. The sun had never risen, nor the moon. The sky stayed the same, empty and grey.



When the need overcame him, he slept in the trees. He did not want to risk sleeping on the ground. He would wake when it was too late, when some creature was already chewing on his arm or leg. He did not light any fires either. Though some extra light, not to mention the sound or the crackling wood, would have been welcome, it would have attracted far too much attention.



So far he had not encountered any other creatures, for which he was grateful. He didn’t know how long that would last but, by this time the next day, not that he would be able to tell when that time arrived, he didn’t think it would much matter. He may not die the way Voldemort had hoped: being painfully devoured by a pack of hungry skeletal cat creatures. But if he didn’t find water or food soon, he was going to starve to death.



It was strange to him that this didn’t really scare him as much as he had always thought it would. Maybe because he had had three days to think about it, or maybe because his dehydrated brain was not processing the information properly. He was probably going to die. After all, that’s why Voldemort had sent him here, right? Because he knew there would be no chance Harry would survive. Mind, Voldemort had had lots of plans to kill Harry in the past and none of them had worked so far…



‘Why should this be any different?’ The voice of his thoughts asked.



Another voice, he assumed it was his common sense, immediately replied,



‘Because you are alone here.’



So maybe this was the end. What then, did that mean? What of the prophecy? Was it just another one of Trelawney’s false predictions? Or was the world truly doomed now?



A part of him, the part that had lived in the cupboard under the stairs for ten years, did not believe for a second that could be a possibility. On some level, he was still just Harry. A stupid boy with messy hair and a cool scar. He was the kid everyone stayed away from in school, who got beat up by his cousin. How could he defeat an evil mastermind?



The other part of him was enraged that he had given Tom Riddle such credit.



Dwelling on these thoughts so intensely, it took Harry a few seconds to realize that he could hear a sound. It was the sound of water, and he stopped walking abruptly to listen harder.



Yes. He could definitely hear it now. And it was water. A brook by the sound of it. But it sounded normal. Not like the other ones he had found. It was rapid and clear.



He sprinted towards the sound, dodging through the thick tree trunks that surrounded him and the sound grew louder, indicating that the brook was larger than the others he had found as well. Elation swelled in his chest. Finally! He was so thirsty.



He spotted the river before he reached it and picked up his speed, not really knowing where the sudden burst of energy had come from. When he reached the edge of the water he didn’t stop. He waded right in up to his waist, relishing the coolness against his heated and parched body. Then, he sat down right where he was and let his mouth sink below the surface.



He drank. Deep, quenching mouthfuls of cold, pristine water.



The rived flowed about his body, fresh and rejuvenating. It seemed to bring life back into his starved body. It cleared the fog from his brain and the heaviness left his limbs.



Finally, when he began to feel ill, he stopped drinking, sitting there for a while to let his body rest, relishing the feel of water on his parched skin. He couldn’t get enough of it.



But, sadly, he needed to keep moving. This water probably attracted any living thing within miles and he didn’t want to be caught here. He made himself stand and moved towards the shore once more.



This must have been the river he had seen from the plateau when he had first woken up three, or was it four, days ago.



As the water dripped from his drenched clothes, Harry looked around himself for the first time. He had been so focused on getting into the water that he hadn’t considered his surroundings. When he did, he felt his blood run cold and bile rise in his throat.



There were dead creatures everywhere.



One lay close to him. About thirty feet down the shore line. It was one of those cat demons that had attacked him. It looked as if it had been dead for weeks. It’s carcass had been picked apart, clean in some places. He could see white bits of bone from it’s ribcage. It’s flesh sagged on the muscle and bone that was left and, from where he was standing, he could tell one side of the animal’s skull was caved in, the eyes nothing but empty sockets. It’s hindquarters, which ended at the waist as if it had been ripped in half, was lying in the water, with blackened, rotted entrails stringing out of the open cavity and into the water.



There were many more things that lay in various stages of decay along this shoreline and the adjacent one. Some were large, some were small, but Harry didn’t hang about around to inspect them. He turned on his heel and headed back for the tree line.



He felt ill. He had just drank his fill of water that was contaminated with rotting corpses. His stomach was full of it. If he didn’t die of disgust than all the diseases he just swallowed would probably do the trick.



He wasn’t even sure if he minded any more. This world was horrible. A ravaged, lifeless wasteland with no water, no food. Only predatory animals that would eat anything that walked. He couldn’t survive here. He had no weapons. Had no means to make any weapons and, if one went without weapons in a place such as this, one had no food or protection.



Harry slowed to a halt when he reached the trees and turned back to look at the river. From this far back he could no longer see the festering bodies on the river bank and he sighed, feeling his stomach roll. He could force himself to throw up. He may still have time to get rid of any sickness that could work itself into his system. But then he would be become dehydrated again.



Deciding it was a lose, lose situation, he turned to continue his journey through the woods. When he turned around, something fell over his head, turning his world black. He cried out in surprise and grasped the thing over his face. He realize in a split second that it was a bag. It felt like burlap.



This was man made!



Pain exploded somewhere in the back of his head and white spots suddenly danced before his eyes. He felt his body fall limply to the ground as he lost control and slipped into unconsciousness.







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Sweet….ok guys, review please!





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