What If

"Calm down, Hermione." said Ron, sitting down to their dining table. "They'll be here in a minute."

"But-" Hermione seemed as though she could start crying in any second. "But they haven't arrived back at the Ministry. I'm worried, Ron! Neither of them arrived. What if-"

"No. There's no 'what if'. You know Harry, just as well as I do. He can survive anything. He's strong. They'll be here in a minute."

But this time Ron didn't sound as confident as before. He chewed his lower lip and nervously glanced at the clock ticking with an annoying sound on the wall. It sounded like it just wanted to annoy Ron. Ticking as if saying 'I know what happened, but I won' t tell you'.

He shook his head to boundle off these thoughts. It was half past six in the afternoon. Harry and his team should have arrived back at the Ministry until four pm. But they didn't come. Ron and Hermione agreed to come home. 'Must happened something... may be they got into a fight or there were more Death Eaters than they'd expected. But nothing they couldn't deal with.'

So Ron brought the slightly nervous Hermione home. They cooked dinner together. Made the table for four, and talked about what would it be like when there will be no Death Eaters left.

Harry would come home. They would have a dinner together. Harry would tell them about his experiences so long that they wouldn't be able to follow anymore. And then they would have a bottle of Butterbear or Firewhisky. And late at night, when they would all get tired, both Ginny and Harry would Apparate home. Everybody would be delighted. Maybe the next day they would go to the Weasley's to celebrate.

Yeah, maybe they would. But what if-

Suddenly the fire in the fireplace became green, and a few seconds later Ginny fell out of it, coughing and spitting ash on the carpet under her.

"Ginny! Are you okay? Where's Harry? I thought you come together."

Ginny looked terrible. Her eyes puffy and bloodshot because of crying, her red hair messy and dirty with ash. She couldn't say a word so just handed a crumpled piece of parchment to her brother.

Ron took the letter and started to read with Hermione behind his shoulders.

"Lucy arrived back. She's in a terrible state. Something went wrong. Come to St. Mungo's.
Oliver Southwood, Head Auror"

"Bloody hell. Let's go!"

Hermione and Ginny didn't resist. They all got into the fireplace throw a handful of Floo Powder in it and shouted 'St. Mungo's'.

There was a bored witch sitting at the reception. She didn't even care to look up when Ron rushed to her table and started to shout.
"Where's Oliver Southwood? Is he here? And Harry Potter? Did anyone brought him here? Or just Lucy? Say something! Where is Lucy? What happened to her? And where is Harry-"

"Mr and Mrs Granger-Weasley? Ms Weasley" came a deep voice from the back.

Ron spun around to see a careworn Head Auror standing in the middle of a corridor behind them.

"Mr Southwood!" Hermione squealed. "What happened? Ginny showed us your letter. Has anybody else come back?"

Mr Southwood's gaze darkend. He glanced at the floor before he spoke.
"No one."

"What happened? Where is Harry? Do you know about him?" Ginny asked trembling.

Mr Southwood sighed. "Only Lucy came back. She got some nasty curses. Her limbs were broken, she'd might been tortured. She could hardly spoke. But-" the Auror inhaled deeply. "The Death Eaters won."

"No way!" Ron shouted turning every one's attention in the hospital corridor on him. "Harry never gives up. He never leads a losing team. He always wins! He's not dead."

The last words came out as only mere whisper, but every one trembled, wondering why the last word seemed to echo in their ears neverendingly.

"He's not dead." said Mr Southwood. "Yet."

"How do you know?"

"Where is he?"

"Come with me. Lucy's in this room. When she arrived at the Ministry she wasn't in a good condition. As I said, she could hardly spoke. She only told me 'not to expect the others to come back. The Death Eaters won, but Potter is alive.' Maybe she's better now. I'm sure she can say something more."

Hermione, Ron and Ginny followed the Head Auror into a blinding white hospital room, where only a single bed stood in the middle. On the bed, stuffed under a plain white sheet, lay a skinny short brown haired witch. Her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling as if she could see something terrifying yet somehow reassuring there.

"Lucy" Mr Southwood whispered. "How are you feeling?"

The fragile witch ceased staring at the ceiling and glued her wide eyed gaze to her boss.

"Can you speak?"

Lucy nodded then shook her head immediately. She paused a little, and nodded again.

"Lucy, we need to know what happened-"

"No, Mr Southwood" Hermione whispered. "She's not able to do it. Maybe we can come back later. She needs a rest. Just... just one question now." She turned to Lucy with a sad smile. "Is he really alive?"

Lucy gazed at Hermione still with the same look on her face. Then again she nodded and shook her hed. And nodded again.

Ginny burst into tears. Ron tried to comfort her with a hug, but he himself wasn't so sure why not to cry. Hermione too looked devastated as she tried to say something to the Head Auror. But she couldn't. She burst out in tears, and - if it wasn't such a depressed situation - every one would have been astonished when the always standoffish, seemingly rigid Mr Southwood gave the soon-will-be Minister for Magic a quick hug.

That evening she, Ron and Ginny Apparated back to Ron and Hermione's house and stayed awake the whole night.

There were not much conversation. All three of them were buried deeply in their own thoughts.

***

Next morning find the three in an even worse state of mind. While Ginny and Ron were subdued by the fact that they might lost Harry forever, Hermione couldn't accept the thought she couldn't do anything. She was sure she could find a way to bring Harry back - from wherever he'd been. But she couldn't stand that she didn't know anything. She knew Lucy was the only one who could help them. Yet she hadn't let Southwood question her the day before. "Why?" she asked herself, however she already knew the answer. Yes, she was totally aware that Lucy's the one who can tell them exactley what had happened. But still, she couldn't let her speak in such a state. There must have happened something terrible. Lucy - one of the Ministry's best Aurors - looked horrified and shocked. She couldn't let Southwood force her to talk about something she was so terrified of.

Hermione sighed. She went to the kitchen to make coffe, only to find Ron doing the same thing.

"Ron. You're pouring Butterbear instead of milk."

Ron looked down at the bottle in his hand. The label on it indeed read 'Butterbear' and not 'Milk'.

"Oh. How silly I am."

"Ron! Calm down. It's okay-"

"No, Hermione, it is not okay. My best friend is missing. We only know that something terrible happened to him. Hermione, what if-"

"He's alive." Hermione stated, and got the bottle out of her husband's hand. "Today we will go back to St Mungo's after work. We just had to give some time to Lucy."

"Fine." Ron said grumpily. "But don't expect me to be able to work today."

"I don't."

Ron accepted the mug of hot coffe Hermione was handing him, and stalked back to the room where Ginny was still sitting on the couch. He opened his mouth to say something, but before the words could come out, he seemed to changed his mind. He closed the small gap between his lips, and instead gave his sister the mug of coffee Hermione had made him.

"Thanks." Ginny said.

Ron shrugged and sat down beside her, pulling her into a halfhearted hug.

"Will you go to work today?" he asked.

"I don't think so. Currently I can't even tell the difference between a Quaffle and a Bludger. I would be damned on the pitch today... You?"

"Well... I'm living with the next Minister for Magic. I don't think I have any choice." Ginny gave him a wry smile. "But she said we should go to St Mungo's after work. Come with us. Until that you can stay, if you want."

"No, I think I go home. You know, just to sort things out."

"If you mean 'just to stare at the walls and thinking about "what ifs"' by this, I forbid you to go home."

Ginny shoved on her brother, but then smiled sadly. "You know me too well. But yeah, you're right. I think I'll stay here."

"Good." Ron got up and left the room.

The usually cheerful morning routin seemed to disappear with Harry. Instead of the Wizard Wireless's happy chattering, the only sound heard was Ron's grumbling or Hermione's incomprehensible muttering. There were no warm conversations, passionate morning kisses, neither were little arguments.

Ginny seemed to lost completely in possible situations with Death Eaters that only existed in her mind. She didn't even noticed when Hermione and Ron said her goodbye. But the two of them weren't in a better mood either. Maybe for the first time since they'd worked for the Ministry, they used the Floo Network to get to work instead of Apparating, because neither of them trusted their current state. They were afraid that they wouldn't have been able to concentrate properly.

In the Ministry the rumours about Harry Potter and a bunch of Aurors went missing already started to spread. And seeing Ron and Hermione arriving alone, through the Floo Network, stirred up everybody's curiosity. Reporters and journalists started bombarding them with questions. Their only luck was that Mr Southwood turned up in the exact moment when a photographer took a picture of them, and told them that there had been an emergency.

Ron and Hermione glanced thankfully at the Head Auror when they got out of the curious journalists' ring.

"Actually, there is something I wanted to tell you." he told them. "Lucy got some Dreamless Sleep Potion, so as my informations are correct, she's currently sleeping. The Healers said they will wake her up in the early afternoon to make some observations, but after that we can go and see her. Maybe we should try again."

"Yes, we should. After work, then?"

***

The corridors of St Mungo's seemed abandoned. The Head Auror led Ginny, Ron and Hermione to the same white room with the single bed in it.

Lucy indeed looked better. Now she was sitting on her bed, her back leaning against a vast pillow at the headboard. She smiled at the four figure carefully peeking in her room and indicated them to get in. She still looked fragile but at least she wasn't that pale and her eyes weren't full of fear.

"How are you, Lucy?" Mr Southwood asked gently.

"Not that bad. My limbs are aching. But anyway, I know why you came. And I want to help you. I was wounded and my mind wasn't in the best state but I'll try to recall everything."

"Thank you, Lucy. You know we wouldn't force you to do this. But we need to find Harry. And the others."

"I know. But don't worry about 'the others'. They are safe now."

"Really? Where are they?"

"They are dead."

Neither of them spoke.

"Well, I should start at the beginning. We Apparated there. To that forest you wrote on that paper. We started to head towards the middle of the woods, where we expected the headquarters to be. Potter led the way. But then a Death Eater appeared in front of us and we started to chase him. It was a trap. They expected us. I don't know how, but they knew we're coming. So this Death Eater led us into a huge clearing where other Death Eaters had already been waiting for us. Potter seemed to lose his mind. At least there was something funny with him, as if he wasn't there with us but somewhere else. But then the Death Eater told him that Voldemort will return, that he's not dead. And they started to argue. I don't know how far they would've gone, but one of the Death Eaters seemed to got bored of the arguement and shot a curse at Potter, only missed him by inches. We knew we got to fight. So everybody started to throw hexes and curses. I caught a very nasty one. I fell to the ground. I think I went unconcious, because I don't remember anything. I don't know how much time passed. But when I came round I saw the others still fighting. Potter said something to Rogers, who then put on an invisibility cloak and disappeared. We almost won the fight. There were hardly Death Eaters left when suddenly huge flames burst out on the middle of the field. Everybody watched it in shock. It was so far away, I'm not sure what have I seen... But I think it was Rogers-"

Lucy's voice trailed off. For a moment her eyes looked just the same the day before. But then she inhaled deeply and continued. "Yes, it was Rogers, burning in wild flames in the middle of nothing. Every one was so shocked. They didn't notice when the Death Eaters surrounded them. They bounded them first. And then one of them caught Potter who seemed to lose his mind again, and dragged him away. They disappeared in the middle of the clearing. It was strange. I don't think they Disapparated... After that the Death Eaters taunted the others a bit and then-"

"Killed them." Southwood finished the story.

"Yes."

"How come they didn't catch you?" Ron asked still in shock.

"As I told you, I got a nasty curse straight into my chest. I was lying on the ground the whole time, couldn't even move. They thought I was dead."

"Then how did you manage to come home?"

"I don't know. I thought I will die anyway, so why not to try to Apparate back. I waited when no one paid attention and tried to get into the woods. It hurt a lot. I thought I was already dead. But by the time the Sun started to sink behind the mountains, I reached the edge of the forest. I hid behind a tree and tried to Apparate."

"But... you could die!" Hermione protested in shock.

"Yeah. But I didn't. And as I told you I was going to die anyway. So I tried my best to die in helping to save Harry Potter."

"You did that for just Harry?"

Lucy shrugged. She seemed exhausted. Mr Southwood indicated Ginny, Ron and Hermione to leave Lucy, then thanked her for telling the story, and left the room after the couple. "What do you think?" he asked once he closed the door behind them. "Where is Potter?"

"I think in the headquarters" Hermione said.

"What? You heard what did she just say? They were in a clearing. There was no headquarters."

"Oh yeah, Ron. I think there was."

"Then explain!"

"Well... We know that there's something in the middle of the field that caused Rogers to burn alive. And at the exact same spot Harry and a Death Eater disappeared. Lucy said she doesn't think they Disapparated. Neither do I. There's a ward guarding the headquarters."

"Oh. You're saying something."

"That's brilliant, Mrs Granger-Weasley! You'll definitely make a perfect Minister!" Mr Southwood flattered. "But what do we do now? I should send a group to rescue Potter, but-"

"Don't! No one can get through those wards. At least none of us."

"I realised that. Then what do you advise?"

"Actually, I have an idea, but I have to look up for it. I'll do a little research and then contact you." Hermione said and looked questioningly at Ron and Ginny. "Shall we go?"

The two of them nodded, and they all Apparated back to Ron and Hermione's house, leaving an even more careworn and thoughtful Head Auror.