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Arthur was halfway through shoving spare socks into a hastily conjured traveling bag when Bill's voice cut through the evening air like a particularly sharp Cutting Curse.
"Dad? What's the rush? You look like you're fleeing the country."
Arthur froze, one sock dangling from his fingers like a guilty confession. Through the kitchen window, he could see his eldest son approaching from the garden, dragon-hide boots crunching on the gravel path. Behind Bill, the rest of the family was emerging from various corners of the Burrow like curious meerkats—Ron from the chicken coop where he'd been attempting to collect eggs (unsuccessfully, judging by the feathers in his hair), the twins from whatever corner of the garden they'd been using for their latest explosive experiments, and Ginny from the vegetable patch where she'd been wrestling with particularly aggressive garden gnomes.
"It's nothing serious," Arthur said, which was possibly the least convincing lie he'd told since claiming the Ford Anglia had been "borrowed by Muggles" after the Whomping Willow incident.
Molly bustled through the kitchen door, her traveling cloak billowing behind her like the wings of a particularly determined mother hen. "Arthur, did you pack the emergency potions? And the—oh." She stopped short at the sight of their assembled children, her expression shifting into the sort of forced calm that usually preceded either very good news or very bad news.
"Mum," Ginny said slowly, "why are you wearing your emergency travel cloak? The one you only use for—"
"Hospital visits," Percy finished, appearing in the doorway with his Ministry badge gleaming and his expression sharp with bureaucratic suspicion. "That's your hospital cloak, Mother. I catalogued your wardrobe last summer for efficiency purposes."
"You catalogued Mum's wardrobe?" Ron asked, staring at his brother with the sort of horror usually reserved for discovering Blast-Ended Skrewts in one's bed.
"Organization is the foundation of productivity, Ronald," Percy replied primly. "But that's not the point. The point is that someone's clearly injured, and judging by the urgency—"
"It's Charlie," Arthur said quietly, the words dropping into the garden like stones into still water.
The effect was immediate. Ron's half-eaten apple fell from his hand. Ginny went pale. The twins, for perhaps the first time in their lives, were completely silent. Even Percy's bureaucratic composure cracked slightly.
"What happened to Charlie?" Bill demanded, his curse-breaker instincts kicking in as he strode toward his parents. "Where is he? How bad is it?"
"He's been wounded," Arthur said carefully, shooting a glance toward Harry, who was standing near the garden bench looking like he'd rather be facing down another grafted monstrosity than witnessing this family crisis. "His team was attacked. He's at St. Bartholomew's in Romania."
"Attacked by what?" Fred asked, his usual grin nowhere to be seen.
"A dragon," Arthur replied, which was technically true if you ignored the part about it being an impossible four-winged lightning-wielding creature that defied all known magical understanding.
"Right," Bill said decisively, already moving toward the house. "I'll get my traveling gear. Romania's rough country, and if Charlie's team was overwhelmed—"
"No," Molly said sharply, her voice carrying the sort of absolute authority. "Absolutely not. You're all staying here."
"Mum, he's our brother," Ron protested.
"And you're my children," Molly shot back, her eyes blazing with the particular fire that made even Fred and George think twice about arguing. "I will not have the lot of you gallivanting off to Romania where dangerous dragons are apparently attacking experienced handlers."
"We can handle ourselves," Ginny said, lifting her chin with familiar Weasley stubbornness.
"Can you handle dragons?" Molly asked pointedly. "Because unless you've been secretly training as dragonologists in your spare time, I rather doubt it."
"Bill's a curse-breaker," George pointed out. "He deals with dangerous things all the time."
"In controlled environments," Bill said reluctantly, clearly torn between supporting his mother and wanting to help his brother. "Not wild dragon attacks."
"Exactly," Molly said, seizing on his hesitation. "Bill, I need you to make sure your brothers and sister stay here. No following us, no attempting to create their own transportation, no Floo powder experiments." Her gaze swept over the twins with particular intensity. "Am I making myself clear?"
"Crystal," Fred muttered, though his expression suggested he was already calculating the logistics of international Portkey creation.
"But why can't we at least—" Ron began.
"Because I said so," Molly snapped, then immediately looked guilty for her harsh tone. "Ron, dear, I know you're worried about Charlie. We all are. But this is what's best."
Arthur found himself looking at Harry again, remembering the mysterious wounds that had resisted all magical healing until that butterfly woman—Melina—had performed her golden tree magic. The same magic Harry had just demonstrated in their living room. If Charlie's wounds weren't healing...
"Harry," Arthur said suddenly, the realization hitting him like a Bludger to the chest. "You should come with us."
The effect was like dropping a Dungbomb in a library. Everyone turned toward Harry with expressions ranging from confusion to alarm.
"Why?" Ron asked, his voice sharp with sudden worry. "Why does Harry need to come? What aren't you telling us?"
Arthur opened his mouth, then closed it again. How could he explain that Charlie might have been attacked by something from another dimension? That Harry's strange healing magic might be their only hope?
"Dad," Bill said slowly, his curse-breaker instincts clearly picking up on the undercurrents, "what exactly attacked Charlie's team?"
"I don't have time to explain," Arthur said, which was true but hardly reassuring. "Harry, we need to leave. Now."
Harry glanced toward the house, where he knew Mad-Eye Moody would be arriving any minute to escort him to his supposedly secure hiding place. "Tonks," he called to the pink-haired Auror, who was lounging against the garden gate with studied casualness. "When Moody gets here, tell him to wait. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Wait, hold on," Tonks said, straightening up with alarm. "You can't just—I'm supposed to be protecting you, remember? If you're going somewhere dangerous—"
"It's a hospital, not a battlefield," Arthur said.
"Yeah, well, given Harry's track record, hospitals have a tendency to become battlefields," Tonks muttered, but she was already moving toward them. "If he's going, I'm going too."
"There's no time for debates," Dmitri said urgently, producing a battered leather boot from his robes. "The Portkey is timed. We leave now, or we wait another hour for authorization."
"Harry—" Hermione started toward him, her face etched with worry.
"I'll be fine," Harry assured her, though he wasn't entirely certain that was true. "It's just a hospital visit."
"Since when are your hospital visits ever just hospital visits?" Ron demanded.
"Ron's got a point," Fred said grimly. "Remember what happened at St. Mungo's?"
"That's exactly why I'm going with him," Tonks declared, lunging forward to grab Harry's arm just as he reached for the Portkey.
Unfortunately, her dramatic leap coincided with Ginny's garden gnome finally breaking free from its imprisonment in the vegetable patch. The creature shot across the path like a furious, bearded cannonball, colliding directly with Tonks's ankles.
"Oh, bollocks—" Tonks managed, before gravity and momentum combined to send her sprawling face-first into Mrs. Weasley's prize-winning petunias.
Harry's fingers closed around the leather boot. Dmitri's hand was already there, as were Arthur's and Molly's. The familiar tug behind his navel activated, and the last thing Harry saw before the world dissolved into spinning colors was Tonks's mortified face emerging from a cloud of purple petals, her hair now a brilliant shade of embarrassed red.
"HARRY JAMES POTTER!" her voice echoed after them, growing fainter as the Portkey carried them away. "WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU—"
The rest of her threat was lost to the interdimensional wind, but Harry had a feeling he'd be hearing about it later. Assuming, of course, that whatever had attacked Charlie didn't decide to attack them too.
The silence that followed the Portkey's departure was the sort that usually preceded either profound revelations or spectacular explosions. In the Weasley garden, it was broken by Ron's voice, pitched somewhere between confusion and mounting panic.
"What the bloody hell just happened?"
Tonks extracted herself from the petunias with as much dignity as she could muster, which wasn't much considering she now had purple flower petals stuck in her rapidly shifting hair and what appeared to be garden gnome teeth marks on her boot.
"Language, Ronald," Percy said automatically, though his heart wasn't really in the scolding. "Why did they need Harry? What's wrong with Charlie that only Harry can fix?"
"I don't know," Bill said slowly, running a hand through his long hair as he stared at the spot where his parents had vanished. "But I think... I think it might have something to do with that healing magic Harry showed us earlier."
"The golden tree thing?" Fred asked, his usual mischievous demeanor replaced by genuine concern.
"It makes sense," Bill continued, his curse-breaker training evident in the methodical way he was working through the problem. "Dad was clearly worried about more than just ordinary dragon injuries. And if Charlie's wounds aren't responding to normal healing magic..."
"But why wouldn't normal healing magic work?" Hermione asked. "Dragon injuries are dangerous, yes, but they're not unknown. St. Mungo's has entire wards dedicated to—"
"Maybe they're not normal dragon injuries," Bill said grimly.
Tonks, who had been picking petunias out of her hair while trying to ignore everyone's stares, felt her stomach drop. But why Harry though? she thought. If those are minor wounds, why not just use normal magic? Why was Harry needed? The questions burned on her tongue, but she swallowed them. Making the family worry more wouldn't help anyone, especially not Harry.
"Right," she said instead, straightening her Auror robes and trying to project confidence she didn't feel. "I'm sure it's nothing serious. Probably just wants Harry to demonstrate that healing spell to the Romanian healers. Could be revolutionary for dragon handler safety."
It was a plausible explanation. It was also complete rubbish, and judging by Bill's expression, he knew it too.
"That's probably it," he agreed, though his tone suggested he found it about as convincing as a Chocolate Frog's promise to diet.
The sound of approaching footsteps on gravel interrupted their speculation. Heavy, deliberate footsteps that somehow managed to sound both paranoid and irritated at the same time.
"Weasley," came a gravelly voice from the garden gate, "your wards are about as effective as a chocolate teapot. I counted seventeen different ways I could have breached your perimeter, and that's just the ones I noticed while walking up your bloody driveway."
Mad-Eye Moody emerged from the evening shadows like a particularly menacing gargoyle coming to life. His magical eye swiveled independently of his normal one, scanning the assembled family with the sort of professional paranoia that had kept him alive through two wizarding wars.
"Seventeen ways?" George asked with genuine interest. "Could you show us? We might want to use some of them for—"
"NO," Bill, Percy, and Tonks said simultaneously.
"Your security is appalling," Moody continued, his normal eye fixing on Bill with disapproval. "Basic detection charms, a few repelling hexes, and what appears to be a garden gnome with delusions of grandeur guarding your vegetables. I've seen Hogwarts students set better protections on their dormitory rooms."
"Oi," Fred protested, "that gnome is a highly trained security professional. We call him Reginald."
"He bit me," Tonks muttered, examining her boot.
"See? Effective," George said proudly.
Moody's magical eye spun toward him with the sort of look that had made Death Eaters reconsider their career choices. "Why are you all standing around outside like targets at a Ministry firing range? Where's Potter?"
"About that," Tonks began, her voice pitched slightly higher than usual.
Moody's normal eye joined his magical one in staring at her with unblinking intensity. "About what, Nymphadora?"
"Don't call me Nymphadora," she said automatically, then caught herself. "I mean, Harry's not... exactly... here at the moment."
The silence that followed was pregnant with the sort of ominous implications that usually preceded someone getting hexed into next Tuesday.
"Not here," Moody repeated slowly, his voice dropping to the sort of quiet that made sensible people start looking for exits. "Not here where?"
"Romania," Bill said quickly, apparently deciding that directness was the better part of valor. "Dmitri Petrov—he's the captain of Charlie's dragon-handling team—showed up about ten minutes ago. Said Charlie and his team were attacked and that Charlie's been injured. Mum and Dad took a Portkey to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in Romania."
"Dragon attack," Moody said dismissively, his tension visibly easing. "Occupational hazard for dragon handlers. Nasty business, but not usually fatal if you know what you're doing. Most dragon injuries are just a matter of proper treatment and—" His magical eye suddenly fixed on Tonks with laser-like intensity. "Why isn't Potter here if you are here?"
"Well," Tonks said, her hair shifting to a nervous shade of purple, "Mr. Weasley asked Harry to come with them at the last minute, and—"
"And where were you when this happened?" Moody's voice could have frozen fire.
"I was... well... I tried to follow them, obviously, but—"
"But?"
Tonks glanced at the garden gnome, who was now sitting in the vegetable patch looking smugly satisfied with himself. "I tripped."
Moody stared at her for a long moment. His magical eye swiveled toward the gnome, then toward the scattered petunias, then back to Tonks's purple-stained robes. The silence stretched until even the chickens stopped clucking.
"You tripped," he said finally.
"Reginald the security gnome launched a preemptive strike," Fred offered helpfully.
"It was a tactical maneuver," George added. "Very professional."
Moody's scarred face went through several interesting color changes before settling on a particular shade of purple that suggested internal violence was being barely contained.
"Let me understand this correctly," he said with the sort of deadly calm that made Aurors start updating their wills. "Potter—the Boy Who Lived, the target of more assassination attempts than the Minister of Magic, the one person we absolutely cannot afford to lose—has disappeared to Romania with two civilians, and you, his assigned protector, are here because you were defeated by garden fauna."
"When you put it like that," Tonks began weakly.
"How else would I put it?" Moody snarled. "Potter is unprotected in a foreign country, possibly walking into danger, and we have no way to contact him or provide backup!"
"It's just a hospital visit," Ron said uncertainly. "I mean, how dangerous could it be?"
Every adult in the garden turned to stare at him with expressions of profound disbelief.
"Ron," Hermione said gently, "this is Harry we're talking about. His hospital visits have historically involved basilisks, Dementors, and dimension travel."
"Right," Ron said, his face going pale. "Good point."
Moody's magical eye fixed on Tonks again. "You better hope that boy comes back in one piece, Nymphadora," he growled. "Because if something happens to him on your watch, explaining it to Dumbledore will be the least of your problems."
"Don't call me—" Tonks began, then thought better of it. "Yes, sir."
"What's that?"
Hermione's voice cut through Moody's tirade like a blade, sharp with the kind of alarm that made everyone's blood freeze. She was pointing toward the ground near the garden gate, her face pale in the gathering dusk.
At first, it looked like nothing more than a puddle of spilled wine or perhaps muddy water. But as they watched, the dark liquid began to spread, seeping across the packed earth in an expanding circle that was too uniform, too intentional to be natural.
"That's blood," Bill said quietly. "Fresh blood."
The pool continued to expand, inch by methodical inch, forming a perfect crimson circle roughly six feet in diameter. The metallic scent hit them a moment later—iron and copper.
"Everyone inside," Moody barked, his wand already in his hand and his magical eye spinning wildly as it attempted to scan for threats. "Now. Move."
"But what is it?" Ron asked, even as he stumbled backward toward the Burrow's crooked doorway.
"Nothing we want to meet socially," Moody growled. "Bill, get your family inside and keep them there. Ward the doors, ward the windows, ward everything that can be warded."
"I'm not leaving you out here alone," Bill protested, his own wand materializing in his grip. "Whatever this is—"
"Is exactly the sort of thing that kills brave fools who think they can help," Moody snapped. "You've got four younger siblings in there who need protecting more than I need backup."
"I'm seventeen," Percy said stiffly, appearing in the doorway with his wand drawn and his Ministry badge somehow still perfectly polished despite the circumstances. "I'm of age. I can use magic outside of school."
"Percy, get inside," Bill ordered, but his younger brother shook his head.
"I may be bureaucratic, but I'm not a coward," Percy replied with quiet dignity. "If something dangerous is manifesting in our garden, then our family needs all the magical protection it can get."
Moody's scarred face twisted into something that might have been approval. "Fine. But you follow my orders without question, and if I tell you to run, you run. Clear?"
"Crystal," Percy said, raising his wand with hands that were steady despite the fear in his eyes.
Tonks stood frozen beside them, staring at the blood pool with an expression of growing horror. The sight brought back memories she'd been trying to suppress—the creature at Privet Drive, yellow and wrong and completely immune to magic, rising from the floor like a nightmare given form.
"Tonks," Moody said sharply, noticing her paralysis. "Tonks!"
She jerked, her eyes snapping toward her mentor. "I... the creature at Harry's house, it came up through the floor just like this. My spells didn't work. Nothing worked."
"You're an Auror," Moody said firmly, his voice cutting through her panic like a lifeline. "Fear is a luxury you can't afford when there are civilians to protect." He jerked his head toward the house, where Fred, George, Ron, Ginny, and Hermione were pressed against the windows, watching with terrified fascination. "Those children are depending on you to do your job. Can you do your job?"
Tonks looked at the young faces in the window—Ron's freckled features tight with worry, Hermione looking terrified, Ginny trying to look brave while her hands shook slightly. The sight steadied her more than Moody's words ever could.
"Yes," she said, raising her wand and feeling her resolve crystallize. "Yes, I can do my job."
"Good," Moody grunted. "Because whatever's coming, it's not going to wait for us to feel ready."
The blood pool had stopped expanding, its edges now forming a perfect circle that seemed to pulse with its own malevolent life. For a moment, nothing happened. The garden held its breath, even the chickens falling silent as if sensing the wrongness seeping into their familiar world.
Then the blood began to move.
It didn't drain away or evaporate. Instead, it started flowing inward, toward the center of the circle, as if something beneath the surface was drawing it down. The crimson liquid swirled in slow, hypnotic spirals, gathering into an increasingly dense pool at the circle's heart.
"Defensive positions," Moody ordered quietly. "Bill, cover the left flank. Tonks, take the right. Percy, stay behind me and watch for anything we miss."
"What exactly are we watching for?" Percy asked, his bureaucratic need for specificity overriding his fear.
"Death," Moody replied with brutal honesty. "In my experience, when blood starts pooling in perfect circles, death usually follows."
The blood was rising now, forming a column that climbed slowly from the earth like some obscene fountain. But instead of spraying outward, it held its shape, solidifying into something that was disturbingly close to human form.
"Is it... is it becoming a person?" Bill whispered, his voice barely audible over the wet, squelching sounds emanating from the manifestation.
The figure was indeed taking human shape—head, torso, arms, legs—but it remained a uniform crimson red, as if someone had carved a statue from congealed blood. For several heartbeats, it stood motionless, a grotesque scarlet mannequin in the middle of their garden.
Then color began to bleed into it.
It started at the edges—pale flesh tone seeping through the red like watercolors on wet paper. Dark hair materialized on the figure's head, and clothing began to take shape around its form. Within moments, what had been a blood sculpture was transforming into something that looked disturbingly, convincingly human.
The figure solidified completely, revealing a tall man dressed in dark robes. But it was his face that made them all take an involuntary step backward—or rather, what should have been his face. Instead, he wore a mask of pure white, smooth and featureless except for two dark holes where eyes should be.
The masked figure stood perfectly still for a moment, its head turning slowly as if surveying its surroundings. When its attention fixed on the four wizards pointing wands at it, it tilted its head in what might have been curiosity or amusement.
"Good evening," it said, and its voice was cultured, polite, and absolutely terrifying in its complete normalcy. "Such a lovely garden you have here. I do hope you won't mind the... intrusion."
Harry Potter
The Portkey deposited them with jarring finality onto weathered cobblestones, the familiar tug behind Harry's navel giving way to the solid reality of Romanian soil beneath his feet. Before them loomed a imposing stone structure that seemed to blend medieval fortress with modern hospital—St. Bartholomew's Hospital for Magical Injuries.
"This is it," Dmitri said, his voice heavy with exhaustion. "Hospital of Magical Romania. Best trauma healers in Eastern Europe."
Arthur and Molly flanked Harry as they followed Dmitri through the main entrance, past reception witches.
Dmitri spoke rapidly in Romanian with a harried-looking healer, their conversation punctuated by worried gestures and increasingly grim expressions. Finally, the healer nodded and gestured toward a corridor marked with quarantine runes.
"Room forty-seven," Dmitri translated, leading them down a hallway. "They have placed the survivors in isolation ward. Not because they are contagious, but because..." He struggled for the words. "Because healers do not understand why wounds will not close."
Harry felt ice settle in his stomach. Wounds that wouldn't heal. He'd seen this before, felt it in his own body when nothing at St. Mungo's could touch the injuries he'd sustained in the Lands Between.
They reached the heavy wooden door marked with runes Harry couldn't read but somehow understood—danger, quarantine, unknown. Arthur's hand hesitated on the handle.
"How bad?" he asked quietly.
"Bad enough," Dmitri replied.
Arthur pushed open the door, and Molly's sharp gasp echoed in the sudden silence.
The room contained six beds, four occupied by figures so extensively wrapped in bandages they looked more like ancient mummies than living people. Medical equipment hummed around each bed—diagnostic crystals, healing ward generators, potion drips that glowed with restorative magic. But it was the occupant of the nearest bed that drew their immediate attention.
Charlie Weasley lay motionless beneath layers of white cloth, only his face partially visible between the bandages. His breathing was shallow, labored, and his usually vibrant features were pale as parchment.
"Oh, my boy," Molly whispered, rushing to his bedside. Her hands hovered over him, afraid to touch anything that might cause him pain. "Charlie, what have they done to you?"
"Mrs. Weasley." A witch in healer's robes approached from across the room, her face etched with professional concern. "I am Healer Popescu. I have been overseeing your son's care since he arrived."
"Will he live?" Arthur asked bluntly, his face white with worry.
"He will live," Healer Popescu confirmed, though her expression remained troubled. "But I cannot promise when he will heal. These wounds..." She gestured helplessly at Charlie's bandaged form. "Three days we have tried everything. Advanced healing potions, regenerative charms, even experimental blood magic from the Ministry reserves. Nothing works. The injuries simply... resist."
Harry stepped closer to Charlie's bed, studying the way the bandages seemed to pulse with their own faint, sickly light. The patterns were familiar—desperate medical intervention attempting to treat something that existed outside conventional understanding.
"What exactly attacked them?" he asked.
Dmitri moved to stand beside another bed where a witch lay unconscious, her face barely visible beneath bandages covering what appeared to be extensive burns. "Something impossible. We thought it was dragon at first—white scales, massive size. But dragons have two wings. This thing had four. And it was larger than anything in our textbooks."
"The lightning," whispered one of the other survivors, a wizard whose voice was barely audible through his bandaged throat. "Crimson lightning it shaped into weapons. Cut through our protective shields like parchment."
Harry's blood turned to ice. Lightning weapons. Wounds that resisted all healing magic. A creature that defied classification.
"Harry," Arthur said suddenly, moving to stand beside him. The older wizard's face was etched with desperate hope he was afraid to voice. "At St. Mungo's, when you were injured... nothing could heal you. Nothing except that woman's magic. The golden tree. You showed us the same tree at home,"
"I can try," Harry said quietly, looking around the room at the other survivors lying motionless in their beds. "But you need to understand—what I'm about to do isn't normal magic."
"Nothing about this situation is normal," Healer Popescu replied firmly. "If you can help them when we cannot, then please..."
Harry nodded, moving to the center of the room. "Everyone step back. Give me space."
Arthur and Molly reluctantly moved away from Charlie's bedside. Dmitri and the healers pressed against the walls, watching with a mixture of hope and skepticism.
Harry closed his eyes, reaching for the familiar warmth within him. The grace responded immediately, flowing through him, eager to heal, to mend, to make things right.
"Minor Erdtree," he whispered, and the ancient words carried power that made the hospital walls themselves seem to tremble.
Golden light bloomed from the stone floor beneath his feet, warm and alive with fundamental energy that predated hospitals and medicine and the very concept of healing. The ethereal tree took shape with deliberate grace—trunk rising from the floor, branches spreading until they filled the room with gentle radiance that touched everything and everyone within.
"Impossible," Healer Popescu breathed, stumbling backward as the tree's light washed over her. "What kind of spell..."
But Harry was no longer listening. He could feel the tree's power flowing outward, touching each injured dragon handler, seeking out the wrongness of their wounds and beginning the work of making them whole again.
The bandages around Charlie's chest began to loosen as the flesh beneath knitted itself back together. Across the room, the other survivors stirred as burns faded and broken bones reset themselves with audible clicks. The air shimmered with healing energy, thick enough to taste—sweet like honey, warm like summer sunshine.
"The wounds," one of the healers gasped from the doorway. "They're closing. All of them. Simultaneously."
Harry felt the drain on his magical energy like a physical weight, but he held the tree steady, pouring everything he had into the healing. These people had been hurt by something from the Lands Between—his responsibility to bear.
Within a minute, the miraculous healing was complete. The tree pulsed once more, blindingly bright, then faded into dancing motes of golden light that dissolved into the air.
Harry swayed, the room spinning around him as exhaustion hit him. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily as the full cost of the healing crashed over him.
"Harry!" Arthur rushed to his side, helping him sit against the wall. "Easy, son. Easy."
Around the room, the dragon handlers were sitting up, unwrapping bandages to reveal skin beneath with red scars in places where entire patches of skin were missing. Charlie flexed his fingers experimentally, wonder filling his face as he discovered the burns covering his arms were almost completely gone.
"Did it work?" Harry asked weakly.
"It worked," Molly whispered, tears streaming down her face as she embraced her son. "Oh Charlie, you're all right."
Charlie sat up slowly, looking around the room with dawning comprehension. "The others? My team?"
"All healed," Healer Popescu confirmed, her voice filled with awe. "Completely healed. In thirty years of practice, I have never witnessed anything like this."
"Where am I?" Charlie asked, still looking dazed. Then, more urgently: "Did my team survive? Please tell me—"
Dmitri approached his bed, his expression heavy with grief. "Charlie, my friend... we lost Tomas and Marta. The creature killed them instantly. The rest of you barely escaped."
Charlie's face crumpled, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Tomas... Marta..." He looked up at the ceiling, his voice breaking. "That thing... massive white dragon... four wings... it was like something out of a nightmare..."
His voice trailed off as exhaustion overcame him, and his eyes closed as he fell into natural, healing sleep.
"He needs rest," Healer Popescu said gently, checking his pulse. "They all do. The healing process is complete, but their bodies need time to recover from the trauma."
She turned to Harry, who was still sitting on the floor, looking pale and drawn. "Young man, what kind of spell was that? I've never seen anything like it in any medical text."
Harry met her eyes. "It's an original healing incantation I've been developing. Still experimental, obviously."
It was a terrible lie, but it was better than the truth. Better than explaining about interdimensional warfare and the slow collapse of barriers between worlds.
"Remarkable," Healer Popescu breathed. "You must document your research. The applications could revolutionize healing."
Harry nodded weakly, knowing he would never write down a single word about grace magic or the Erdtree's power. Some knowledge was too dangerous to share.
As the healers bustled around checking on their miraculously recovered patients, Harry closed his eyes and tried not to think about what it meant that creatures from the Lands Between were now hunting in his world.
As his eyes closed, he could almost see Melina in front of him, looking worried sick, and Harry wondered why was she worried, he helped them after all.
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