Chapter Fourty-Nine
Confronting the Faceless 💀 CompleteMay 2-3, 1998
"You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it"
When he got the Messengers, Lucas knew that most of the Underground would go to the Ministry. He knew he probably should as well.
The thing is, he has no real connection to the Ministry of Magic, and no real love for it either. So he Apparates to the meeting room above the Hog's Head and heads through the passageway to Hogwarts alongside dozens of other people ready to fight.
He wonders, as he steps into the Great Hall, how many will die. Wonders how many of them actually know what they're risking here tonight.
Sees how young they all are.
He fights, logically he knows that, but it's a blur of movement and spells and pain that blend together into a nonsensical jumble that seems separate from time and space. He knows he has a shield up more often than not, and he knows that he isn't always fast enough to avoid all the attacks directed at him (Acromantula legs are sharp and he thinks that the trauma certification ought to cover things like that because finding out first hand isn't much fun). But it isn't until Voldemort's voice calls for the respite, calm and cold and cruel, that reality comes crashing back down, and time returns to its normal pace.
"Everyone is gathering in the Great Hall." Someone says, and Lucas immediately heads that way. His left thigh is throbbing, but he numbs it with a quick spell, one that he's used often enough these past few months that he can now do it wordlessly.
He's surprised to find Isabella Brown near the doors, directing people with injuries towards the back of the room, where Madame Pomfrey seems to have set up a makeshift medical area.
"Good to see you." He says with a tired smile, and she gives a strained one in return.
"You too, we can use as many healers as we can get right now." She says, voice worn down with exhaustion as well as overuse - she's obviously been talking nonstop since the respite began. "I think I saw Jun head back a few minutes ago." She adds.
Lucas nods, unsurprised. He'd been at work when Goat's emergency Messenger had arrived, and so Jun had seen and heard the message as well and insisted on coming to Hogwarts with Lucas.
Lucas hadn't really fought him on that - he'd known that more Healers would be useful, and besides, Jun has never been the type to stand by if he thinks he can help, so even if he hadn't come with Lucas he would have made his way over on his own soon enough.
They'd split up during the fight though, and it's a relief to hear that his friend is well enough to be helping the injured rather than needing help himself.
Lucas makes his way to the back of the Great Hall and spots Jemma Tremlett among those helping the wounded as well. She gives him a small nod of acknowledgement when their eyes meet but quickly goes back to helping the centaur she's kneeling beside. Lucas doesn't stop, scanning for either Jun or someone who isn't being helped yet who needs assistance - whichever comes first.
In the end Jun finds him. "Lucas! Hey, over here, help me set this." His friend waves him down and Lucas weaves between the mass of bodies to reach the other.
Jun is sitting with a girl in Hogwarts robes who looks rather stunned. Lucas thinks her state of shock is the only reason she hasn't passed out - her leg is twisted at an angle that definitely isn't natural and is going to be extremely painful once her mind starts accepting neural signals again.
Jun gestures to the leg, and Lucas easily figures out what he needs, holding the thigh steady as Jun manually realigns the bone via the ankle.
The girl finally releases a gurgled groan and passes out, and Lucas catches her, laying her gently onto the ground.
"Will she be alright?" A voice asks, and only then does Lucas realize that a familiar Scot has been hovering nearby. Presumably he'd been the one to carry the girl to the Great Hall.
"She'll be fine. I'll give her a pain potion when she comes to." Jun assures him. "You're good Oliver, thanks for getting her here."
Oliver Wood nods tightly before glancing over at Lucas, who offers him a half-smile.
"I'm mostly helping collect bodies but if I find anyone else like her can I bring them to you?" Oliver asks, and Lucas nods immediately.
"We'd appreciate it." He says honestly. "We only have an hour after all. We should focus our efforts on healing, not finding patients."
Oliver nods. "Will do. Good luck."
"You too." Lucas offers, but Oliver has already headed back out.
Jun checks in with him during some of the easier fixes, and Lucas didn't realize how much blood had accumulated on his robes during the fight. He assures Jun that's he's fine and his friend doesn't have time to do more than take his word for it when a screaming man is brought it to be looked at, and Lucas turns his attention to the ever increasing number of injured that are pouring into the Great Hall
He's trying to ignore the increasing number of bodies also accumulating at the front of the room, but it's hard to block out the wails of mourning friends and family. He sees a mass of red heads at one point and fights down the urge to rush over and see which Weasley is down, as well as his own stomach acid.
Then Oliver walks back in with a familiar body and Lucas wants to throw up for an entirely new reason.
Colin Creevey is tiny in death, and Lucas feels like all the energy has been drained out of his body all at once as he watches the figure being gently laid out next to the other fallen.
"I was gonna hex you if you weren't. I turned seventeen last week."
Hadn't they just had that conversation? Hadn't it only been recently that Kitten had brought Colin and Dennis into the ratty room in the Hog's Head and Lucas had patched them up? How could it be that someone with so much life is now lying on the cold ground, drained of everything that once animated him?
Lucas is definitely going to throw up.
He manages to get to a potted plant before heaving, and he vanishes the mess quickly, but Jun had noticed and is now looking at him worriedly.
"Are you sure you're alright?" His friend checks. "I know you said earlier that most of the blood on your robes isn't yours but-"
"You can look me over when we finish." Lucas sighs. "But I'm fine. I just... saw someone I know." He offers honestly. Jun winces sympathetically and doesn't push any further.
They work quietly for a while longer, and Lucas sees injuries ranging from simple cuts to severed limbs. A few people die as he tries to save them, and he's quietly thankful for his work with the Underground as it already taught him how to move on from those sorts of failures in the moment and linger on them later, when it won't affect his work.
Despite the endless hours at the two different jobs he's been working this year, one hour in the Great Hall results in far more patients at once than Lucas has ever had to deal with before, and he's quickly growing exhausted.
Healing magic, as is taught on the first day of training, is a far more complex branch of spells that isn't taught to students for a reason - it often draws on the physical energy of the casters and can be dangerous to use consistently over long periods of time. It's why there's an additional level of training for anyone who wants to get into trauma work.
When he glances around, Lucas realizes that he and Jun are some of the only ones left working, with a large majority of the other Healers recovering. Jemma is still going as well (unsurprisingly) and a man maybe slightly older than them with dark hair and red-rimmed eyes is working across the Hall. Lucas doesn't know him by name but has definitely seen him in the trauma ward a few times so it isn't that surprising that he's still standing.
Madame Pomfrey is up and about as well, flitting between patients and summoning potions, presumably from the Hospital Wing.
Which is something they could be using, now that he thinks about it.
"Hey Jun, you wrapping up there?" He calls to his friend, even as he continues sealing an ugly, gaping hole torn into the side of one of the older combatants while the man grits his teeth and tries not to scream.
Jun glances at him, then at his patient, who shrugs. "I'm good." She says. "It'll hold my weight now, right?" She gestures at a bleeding leg, and Jun nods tightly.
"It will, but take it easy. I'll be back in a moment." He turns fully to Lucas, even though Lucas's attention remains on his own patient. "What's up?"
"Pomfrey is summoning potions." He says in lieu of a full answer - Jun will catch his meaning.
Sure enough, his friend makes a noise of excitement and rises. "I'll ask her about location and amount." He confirms and hurries across the room, weaving between the injured as he goes. Lucas loses track of him rather quickly as his friend vanishes from the edges of his periphery, but he's unconcerned. Jun will get the job done quickly and efficiently and be back soon enough.
He's just finishing with the man when Oliver returns with another patient - a young girl who's been brutally mauled but is somehow still clinging to life as attested by the shaky, irregular rise and fall of her chest.
"I know it's a long shot." Oliver says, face twisted, "But you could try?"
Lucas wordlessly gestures for him to lay the girl down, and the look of gratitude on Oliver's face makes whatever resentment Lucas might have still felt towards him fade away instantly.
"Oh Merlin." Jun's patient breathes, looking over at the form in horror. "Lav." She sounds choked, and looks up at Lucas a moment later. "Can I help?"
"I'll do whatever you need, too." Oliver offers as well, and Lucas blinks in surprise before quickly falling back into professionalism.
"Oliver, you go find Jun and see if he's got potion permissions yet. We're going to need at least three skele-grow and as much dittany as he can get." He hesitates and scans the body again, noting the bite marks. "And wolfsbane, if she has any."
Oliver winces but nods and hurries off in the direction Jun had gone a few minutes before. The girl looks at him grimly.
"What do you need me to do?"
"Not throw up or faint." He says flatly. "And hold her arms down if she starts trying to flail. Until we have confirmation on the skele-grow I'm going to have to try and realign her bones manually."
The girl looks vaguely disturbed, but nods and sets in a determined line, shifting so she's ready to grab the patient's arms if needed. After one last look to make sure she isn't going to be sick, Lucas once again falls into work.
The damage is... extensive, is the medical term he would use in a report. Messy, ugly, and painful is more accurate. He honestly has no idea how the heck the girl is still breathing considering the massive amounts of tearing and bleeding going on around and stomach.
He focuses on the abdominal wound first because preventing her stomach acid from getting into her bloodstream is top priority (and if the bite to hasn't killed her yet then it won't kill her for a while - it's ugly but can't have severed an artery if she's still breathing right now).
Of course, there's a good chance it's already happened, and he runs several diagnostic spells to check before beginning the lengthy process of knitting her tissue back together one muscle at a time.
And people wonder why magical healers still need to study human anatomy.
The diagnostics come back about how he expected, with the one positive being that her stomach is being held shut by a collapsed lung, so no acid has had a chance to get out yet. He can save her, but it's going to be a near thing if he manages it.
It's slow work, and the patient (the girl helping him informs him that her name is Lavender) does twitch a few times, presumably from the pain, though Lucas notes numbly that the movement is getting smaller and smaller with each passing minute.
After what feels like an eternity he looks up at his helper again. "Alright I need you to hold closed."
The girl looks up, startled and obviously scared. "Won't that choke her?" She asks nervously.
Lucas shakes his head. "Just hold the wound shut. I'd prefer a clamp but we don't have any here and they take time to calibrate." He wishes for the first time that he had a nurse on call - normally that would be their job. "Just use your best judgement, I don't want her bleeding out or drowning in her own blood while I'm closing up her internal organs and setting her lung."
The girl swallows hard, and then the serious determined look comes back and she reaches out to press the edges of the wound together. Her hands quickly stain red, and are trembling slightly, but she's holding up surprisingly well.
Lucas leaves her to it and continues to focus on fixing the stomach lining, which is just about sealed when Oliver returns with an armful of potions, looking quite pleased with himself.
"Skele-grow?" Lucas says in lieu of a greeting, and four bottles are placed in arm's reach.
"Just in case." Oliver explains. "Jun took about half the dittany and is helping Madame Pomfrey but he says you can summon as much as you need from him. We brought the entire stash down from the Hospital wing."
Lucas nods and immediately summons several bottles and empties them precisely over what's left to close in the stomach. "Thank you." He remembers to add robotically as he turns to the collapsed lung that's currently being held in place with magic but is going to need a lot more if it intends to function properly ever again.
He contemplates it for a long moment, trying to evaluate the best approach to reset the lung tissue and the displaced diaphram without affecting the still weakly jerking heart, before opting to vanish the lower part of Lavender's ribcage in order to give himself room to work. Most of it was shattered and twisted beyond saving anyway, and now that he has the skele-grow he's feeling a little more confident and grounded.
His helper (he should probably learn her name, but there are definitely more important things to focus on at the moment) is still holding the skin of Lavender's neck together, but her grip is shaking and it's starting to pinch a bit too tightly.
Oliver is still standing behind him, so Lucas flicks a hand his way to get his attention. "Take over holding the neck closed." He says briskly, "She could choke on it if we don't watch that area."
He can see the shuffle of bodies exchanging but his gaze doesn't waver from his task. He carefully rebinds the severed arteries that are attempting to flood Lavender's lungs with blood, connecting them magically and then reinforcing the connection with a full bottle of dittany. He'll need to go over them again before he closes her chest completely, but for the time being that will have to do.
He pauses, considering the rest of the damage and decides that resetting the lung is more important than puzzling together the destroyed diaphragm. He'll have to do both, of course, but order matters quite a bit more than some people would think, even on massive trauma like this.
"Is there anything else I can do?" His helper asks, shaky but still sitting beside them (impressive, really, most people would have fled as soon as they were released, particularly considering this girl knows the patient).
"Be ready to hand me any potions I request, as quickly as you can." He instructs instead of complimenting her fortitude - they don't have time for pleasantries. He's pretty sure she nods but he hasn't moved his focus from his job so it's just a vague motion in his periphery.
He falls into a rhythm after that, doing his best to close up the damage and heal what's safe to heal (a little known fact outside of Healer circles is that not all injuries can be magically fixed - there are parts of the body that simply don't react well to magic for some reason, the heart among them). What can't be closed he tries to position back where it should go so that the body can heal it naturally in its own time.
It's tedious, and his hands and sleeves are stained red with the effort, but he gets her lungs repositioned and standing on their own. Above them, he can see Lavender's heart continuing to fight to keep pumping, and he releases a breath and turns to the diaphragm.
Looking at it now, he wonders if he deemed it of secondary importance simply because of how incredibly difficult it's going to be to put back together without the usual team of Healers and nurses at his disposal in the trauma unit. Normally they have equipment, specially charmed for exactly this sort of job, but here he just has two wands, two hands, and several bottles of dittany that are barely going to scratch the surface even if he dumps all of them into the dripping muscle.
He isn't even sure all that will be enough - if it wouldn't be kinder to release the opening in and let her go.
But he's a Healer, and that means he has to try. He took the Hippocratic Oath, same as everyone else, and that means he tries. No matter how bleak or unsalvageable a situation seems. So as long as he can see her fighting to live, he's going to try and help her win.
The world around him fuzzes out, as it often does in the trauma room, though it's taken much longer than normal here in the unfamiliar surroundings. People are talking and shouting and crying and while there's plenty of noise during operations, those aren't the usual sounds.
Lucas doesn't know how long he struggles to save the diaphragm before finally looking up into her chest cavity again and realizing that the faint trembling that had indicated her heart was still working has stopped.
He hisses out a low breath and leans back, sitting on his heels and shaking his head as the world comes back into focus around him. There's blood up to his elbows and smeared across his robes, but he barely notices it.
"I'm calling it." He says, and he can hear the exhaustion in his own voice. Huh, if that's what he's been sounding like lately no wonder everyone is fretting over his health. He sounds like death warmed over.
His helper chokes on a sob and drops the bottles she'd been holding, inching away from the body with wide eyes and shaking hands.
"Thanks for trying." Oliver sounds rough but less traumatized than the girl, which makes sense considering he's been working with the Underground as well. He's seen a lot of the same things that Lucas has.
"What else was I going to do?" Lucas asks, mostly hypothetically but tacking on a question mark anyway. "I'm a Healer. We try to heal."
Oliver releases a breath that sounds like it was trying to be a laugh but gave up part way through. He sits heavily next to Lucas, apparently not minding that he's now sitting in a small pool of blood.
Lucas glances over at him and automatically tries to offer a smile. Oliver takes one look and snorts.
"We both know things are ed, drop the mask." He scoffs, not cruelly, just tired. Lucas acquiesces to the request and lets his face relax out of the plaster grin.
"You knew her." He asks, though this time he does forego the question mark. The answer is rather obvious.
Oliver hums. "Not well. She was in Potter's year. Huge Quidditch fan though, always went hard at the parties, got half of everyone else dancing whether they wanted to or not." He smirks. "Heck, I'm pretty sure she even got Percy to loosen up for two seconds when we were celebrating our win seventh year."
Lucas snorts at the image. "I'd buy it, he was absolutely ecstatic about that win. Wouldn't stop talking about it on patrol for a solid week afterwards." He doesn't mention that a lot of that talking involved gushing about Oliver's form and then insisting everything was fine with Penny even though they both knew that relationship was quickly fizzling into something platonic.
Oliver hums. "You guys were friends, right? He didn't talk much about the other prefects but he spent a lot more time with you guys than with me starting in fifth year."
Lucas shrugs. "I mean, yeah, I'd consider him a friend. You were always his best friend though, he was just extra awkward starting at fifteen."
Oliver snorts, and it strikes Lucas that they're having a casual conversation about school while sitting in the congealing blood of a dead teenage girl, and really, they should be a lot less calm about this.
"Is Percy here?" He asks instead of freaking out, because he just doesn't have the energy for it right now. At least the rush of patients has either tapered off or Jun and Jemma are handling all of them and giving Lucas a breather. Both are perfectly viable possibilities.
Oliver nods. "I... saw him with his family earlier. He's alive. Uninjured for the most part." He doesn't say 'okay' because really, none of them are okay right now and Lucas saw the Weasley family huddled among the bodies - he knows that someone died, even if there's a guilty curl of relief in his stomach that it apparently wasn't his friend. Their last interaction is still that stupid fight from a couple years back - Lucas doesn't think he could handle that being the last time they'd really seen each other.
"He recruited us." He says suddenly, because it's obvious and also the only thing his overworked mind can think to say. "To the Underground. Percy chose us for it. Unless you know the other two leaders?" He hadn't really put much thought into it back when Python had first made the offer, but he's come to realize that simple truth slowly over the last few months.
Oliver looks startled, and that's when Lucas's sluggish mind belatedly recalls that he hadn't known about Percy being with the Underground.
"That's a secret, by the way. No one else knows except Python and his girlfriend." He adds, and he thinks maybe he says it oddly because Oliver looks concerned now. "I'm not supposed to know either but I'm friends with his girlfriend so. Don't tell."
Oliver hums. "I won't, don't worry. But I'm thinking you should probably lie down Lucas, you look like death. I'll get Jun over here, he should probably-"
"I'm fine, I'm good." Lucas quickly interrupts. "Healing magic is just really draining is all and I only just got my trauma certification, so I'm not as practiced yet, that's all. Just need to relax a little, regain strength is all."
Oliver doesn't look totally convinced, but Lucas is still feeling a bit floaty so he can't bring himself to care all that much. Oliver also doesn't move though, so it's a win.
"How come we weren't friends in school?" Oliver asks suddenly. "I mean, we both got on with Percy."
Lucas shrugs. His eyes are drifting closed now and he leans back on his hands, which thankfully land on cool, dry stone rather than a warmer, wetter surface. They should move Lavender and clean up the area, it's not hygienic to be sitting in blood.
He doesn't move though. "I dunno, he sort of kept his different friend groups separate from each other. His family too. Like, he has different spheres of living or something, and different people go in each one."
Oliver laughs at that. "Forever organizing every part of his life. That makes sense." He's quiet for a bit, and Lucas finally opens his eyes again, still feeling bleary, but less disconnected from his body than before. He doesn't move though, focusing his gaze on the ceiling, which is stormy but also blazing with firelight and the contrast is oddly soothing on his strained retinas. "So Perce was Rat then? That actually makes a lot of sense, retrospectively."
Lucas hums. "Don't tell, I'm not supposed to know." He mumbles, and okay, maybe he should get looked at because even he heard himself slurring that time. "Maybe I should see Jun."
Oliver snorts. "Maybe. I'll wave him over when he finishes up with that girl who was helping you before."
Oh right, she was still injured. It's extra impressive how well she held together then.
"Or... I could get Setter? She looks like she's wrapping up." Oliver offers, and Lucas hums noncommittally. Either is fine at this point, he's honestly getting a little too tired to really keep a grasp on the situation anyway.
Oliver obviously gets Jemma because it's a woman who kneels beside them a moment later. She sighs heavily. "Thanks Hawk, I've got him from here."
Oliver stands and gives him a concerned look, but does walk away.
Jemma fixes Lucas with a long-suffering look. "I'm pretty sure you were already overworking yourself between Mungo's and Birman." She scolds, using his code rather than explicitly naming the Underground, and Lucas belatedly and blearily realizes he probably should have been doing the same. "Not getting looked at when you came in was stupid. Jun and I both did."
"Healers are the most likely group of idiots to let an injury get worse, I know." Lucas mumbles with a small grin. It's something heard around the hospital often enough, but it doesn't make the Healers any better at taking care of themselves.
Jemma sighs. "I know, and I get it. I was with the Order too you know, I think I've gotten a total of fourty hours of sleep since last September when all this really got started."
"So you can't judge." Lucas mumbles, but she absolutely can because she's been with trauma far longer than him so she has better coping techniques. Plus, she actually went to get checked before starting to help, but he's going to be petulant anyway because he's tired and she's nagging.
"Just hold still dummy." She sighs. "I've lost enough people to this war, the last thing anyone needs is you dying because you forgot what self-care is."
Lucas doesn't fuss as she checks him over and closes several injuries that he vaguely recalls getting but didn't think were serious enough to warrant being looked at.
Jemma, because she's Jemma, apparently reads his mind and gives him a lecture on how minor injuries can build up and become a major problem if not watched carefully, and he's feeling a bit less floaty and a lot more guilty by the time she declares him 'good enough' and moves to see if there are any other patients to attend to.
However, she doesn't get more than a few steps when the chilling voice that's twice now echoed through the halls once again makes it's unwelcome presence heard.
"Harry Potter is dead."
Something in Lucas curls up, cold and dull at those words. He remembers Harry Potter, remembers a tiny eleven-year-old boy that Percy would fret about on occasion during prefect rounds.
"He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him."
That's a load of crap as far as Lucas is concerned, and he can tell the majority opinion of the room is with him on that.
"We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone."
People are starting to move again, towards the doorway, presumably to see if what He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is saying is actually true. Lucas stays still beside Lavender's body. He doesn't doubt that Harry is dead - and he has no interest in seeing another corpse. There are already plenty here.
"The battle is won. You have lost half your fighters. My Deatheaters outnumber you and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman, or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of your family."
Lucas goes cold at that, his mother's face flashing before his eyes. Python had made clear they were trying to reclaim the Ministry, and that would certainly help if this really is the end of Hogwarts, but how much can one small group really do in the face of all this?
In the face of the man who returned from death?
"Come out of the castle, now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live, and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we will build together."
The rush for the door is in earnest now, as the fighters still standing jostle to get out and... get the best view? Lucas isn't sure.
He slowly rises from his place on the floor, stumbling on feet that have fallen asleep, and joins the mass moving outwards.
So what if this is the last stand? He decided long ago that he'd fight to the end. Because if they don't, then who will?
Author's Note: ...Lucas maybe you should stay put and rest a little longer dear, you don't seem well :( Anyway, this was a rough chapter for *me* to write and I have very little in the was of violence triggers (in writing, anyway, movies are different), hence the warning last chapter. And as promised:
Chapter Overview: Lucas helps heal people during the Battle's one hour respite, including an attempt to save Lavender Brown after she was mauled by a werewolf. He fails and then finally is convinced to get some medical help himself as he's been ignoring his own injuries. Voldemort announces Harry's death and everyone goes to check it out.
Next Time: The end has come
So I'm thinking I might do a final 'afterwords' chapter to share my thoughts and feelings on writing this story, if that's something people would be interested in? I'm also open to answering any lingering questions people might have there as well!
Comments