Chapter 78

Thankfully, he managed to stop himself from plunging down the steep tunnel by latching his right hand onto the closest sink to one side of the entrance while his left was thrown out to the side as a counter weight. The new position left him precariously perched over the opening with one foot on the rim of the entrance, one foot poised in the air to maintain his balance, and his arms spread out to either side – the feat accomplished mostly due to his master Acrobatics Skill. Once he was no longer in immediate danger of falling, Harry slowly brought his left hand up to gently prod his bleeding mouth while his tongue gently tested his teeth to see if any of them had been knocked loose.

He then lifted his head up so that he could keep an eye on the two NPCs that were in the bathroom with him; in case either of them attempted to attack him again. He found Hermione standing in the same place with both of her hands pressed over her mouth as tears continued to pour down her face while she stared at him.

"I'm sorry that you are unhappy and angry with whoever it was you think stole you away from your home," Neville stated coldly the moment Harry's gaze had flicked over to the taller boy. "But Hermione and I had nothing to do with that and you have no right to take your anger out on Hermione and make her cry. If you're going to be a bigger prat than Malfoy, then we don't need you to hang around us anyway."

"Neville," Hermione tearfully pleaded.

"No, Hermione. He was being a right berk and I won't let anyone get away with making you cry any more."

Harry sighed as a small thread of guilt pierced through his earlier anger; Neville was right, neither teen had been responsible for him being trapped in MaM (they weren't even real people in his mind). They'd also been two of the more tolerable underage NPCs he'd interacted with over the past two years and he should have taken their feelings (computer generated though he believed they were) into account. Agil would have been disappointed with him if he knew that Harry had taken his frustration out on an innocent and that knowledge sent a sharp spike of grief through Harry's heart.

Hedwig crooned softly in response to his anguish as she swooped down to land on his chest in order to offer him comfort like she always did when he was feeling down. Harry realized what she was going to do a split second before she did it and he cried out a frantic, "Hedwig, no!" in an attempt to stop her. Unfortunately, the occamy heard the order too late to change her course and her weight settled on his chest just long enough to compromise his precarious perch.

His right hand was pulled free of the sink as his body pivoted around in response to Hedwig's added weight and he plunged sideways into the open entrance below him. Pain exploded across the right side of his head as it struck the lip of the pipe on the way down and he let out a sharp cry before his breath was cut off when his back slammed into the curve of the pipe as the tunnel went from vertical to diagonal. He heard Hermione and Neville both yell out his name in shock and fear before he was swept away by the pull of gravity.

The next thing he knew his body was flying out of the lower entrance of the pipe where it hovered in the air for several precious seconds before he crashed down onto the pile of old bones that he hadn't bothered to clear away and rolled a short ways before he came to a stop on his side. He grunted with renewed pain as the impact jarred his injuries and felt his vision go dark for a moment as he hovered on the edge of unconsciousness. An echoing cry, like that of a siren, cut through the darkness at that point and he tried to clear the pain induced fog from his mind in an effort to identify the source out of fear that he was about to be attacked by some previously undiscovered monster.

Before he could fight through the pain enough to think clearly so he could identify the sound, the sound evolved into a pair of screams that pierced the air as Neville and Hermione flew out of the pipe one right after the other.

Neville landed just a few feet away from where Harry was laying (spraying him with a shower of displaced bones) while Hermione landed right on top of him; her elbow digging painfully into his kidneys. She scrambled off of him a heartbeat later before letting out a second scream as she caught sight of the huge pile of bones they'd landed on. Harry groaned and closed his eyes as the sharp echoes of her voice right beside his ear sent a shard of sharp pain through the pounding ache caused by the head injury he'd incurred when he'd fallen. Off to his right, there was a clattering of bones as Neville climbed up onto his feet.

"Please don't let me have killed him," Neville begged in a voice that shook with fear. "I just wanted him to stop being so mean to you… I never meant to kill him."

"He's not dead, Neville."

"Are you sure? He's not moving and I saw him hit his head. I never should have punched him but he'd just made me so angry and I didn't think…"

"Shuddup," Harry groused without any heat as Neville's frightened babbling only made his head hurt worse. "I can't sleep with you whining and moaning my ear off. You can yell at me all you want when my head stops ringing."

A light flared in the darkness at that point and Harry cracked one eye open to find a pale faced Neville holding his glowing wand above Hermione's head as the slightly older witch knelt back down beside him and gently pulled him over onto his back. Hermione's tear stained face only made him feel even more ashamed of his earlier outburst and Harry reclosed his eye and gingerly turned away from her.

"You have to stay awake, James," Hermione ordered briskly as the sound of ripping fabric filled the cavern. A second later, Harry felt a sharp stab of pain as she pressed a folded square of cloth against the side of his head where he'd hit the pipe on his way down. "We saw you hit your head pretty hard when you fell and you might have a concussion on top of the nasty gash. Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"Only in places that can't be healed so long as I am held prisoner here," Harry replied in a dead voice as he ignored the numerous bruises he knew he'd picked up from his tumble down the pipe. Before either of the other teens could respond to that, Hedwig dropped down from above their heads and landed in a clatter of bones beside Harry. The occamy twittered worriedly as she shifted back and forth on her legs and Harry imagined that she was peering nervously at him with her beady black eyes. Harry felt his lips curl into a strained smile as he softly reassured his familiar, "I'm alright, beautiful; I know you didn't knock me over on purpose."

"I'm sorry I punched you, James…"

"I probably deserved it," Harry replied around a sigh as Neville trailed off before he let the seductive pull of sleep wrap around him.

"It's my fault for pushing you when you were already stressed," Hermione contritely insisted around a sniffle. "Neville, can you tear me off another stripe of cloth from the bottom of my robes and help me tie the makeshift bandage in place?"

The sound of tearing fabric sounded again and then Harry felt a pair of hands gently lift his head off of the ground accompanied by the feeling of something soft sliding around his head as Hermione addressed him again, "James, keep talking; you can't fall asleep yet."

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