14Hiding in the Wrong Cabinet:
Harry peered through the crack he left himself between the cabinet doors as he hid from sight. He willed his heart to beat slower and more quietly with every ounce of conviction he could muster, but the vital, blood-pumping organ refused to obey him. He was certain the trio outside of the cabinet could heard it. And yet, they did not pause to give him any consideration whatsoever.
"I am in something of a hurry, Borgin, I have important business elsewhere today —" Malfoy Senior explained to the dark pawn-shop owner as his son continued to meander around the shop of curiosities.
Harry watched as his oh-so envious rival examined many a strange artifact. From a cursed hangman's noose that had apparently killed its fair share of unsuspecting Muggles, to a necklace encased in a glass prism stickered with warnings about what would happen to a person if they touched it.
After rifling through a box of secondhand wands - undoubtedly stolen or taken from murder victims - Draco picked out a scaled black one and pocketed it.
Harry once again found himself comparing the scrawny blonde ponce with the fat blonde ponce he lived with at number four Privet Drive. Dudley was a thief too, which was ironic considering Petunia convinced every neighbor within five square blocks that Harry was a thief, and also confusing due to the fact Dudley was fairly well off. The Dursleys weren't rich by any means, but they never refused Dudley a single request in all of his life. And yet here was Draco Malfoy, who nobody could argue wasn't rich, taking a five-finger discount on a wand he didn't need.
Why? Harry couldn't understand the mentality. Why is it that so few thieves are have-nots? Why did the stereotypical poor man stealing to survive never seem to materialize, but instead these well-to-do jerks? It was almost as if the idea that people steal out of need was a myth, to provide an excuse for the majority of thieves who steal out of want. But that's just crazy talk.
Wait, was Draco coming towards his hiding spot? Why yes. Yes he was.
His stomach did a summersault as Draco stepped up to the ugly black cabinet. His stomach followed that up with a series of backflips ending in a screwed landing as his "rival" gripped the handles, and body slammed his heart when Malfoy Senior yelled across the room.
"Draco!" Malfoy called.
The petty thief leapt even higher than Harry did. Though to be fair, Harry couldn't jump much higher than the ceiling of the cupboard, which was hard and sturdy enough to not make much of a sound when his head hit it.
"What did I say?!" Harry heard the older blonde demand as tears filled his eyes from the stinging atop his head.
"Touch nothing, sir." Draco answered deferentially.
"Precisely. Now close that cabinet at once!" Senior ordered.
Oh, now his heartbeat decided to quiet to a standstill huh?
Harry didn't know what would happen if Draco closed the cabinet door. Odds where he'd be blind for a few minutes until he was confident the shop was clear and then he could make his escape. More likely, he'd be locked in and eventually have to call out for help and hope it didn't end in his Holly and phoenix feather wand joining the box of murder victim paraphernalia.
He came to a split-second decision. He would barge through the cabinet doors, bodily throw Draco aside and flee through the shop door. Yes. Brilliant plan. It came with the added benefit of creating a hilarious story to tell in hindsight, as seeing Harry Potter barge out of a cabinet and flee the shop would no doubt shock and confuse everyone who -
Click.
Welp, that option's out. Obviously, his old tendency to act without thinking would have served him better in this one instance. Why did he decide to take Madam Pomfrey's lecture on thinking things through to heart anyways?
"I believe that concludes our dealings for today, Mister Borgin." Malfoy Senior concluded. "I will send my -"
But whatever Malfoy intended to send to Borgin was left a mystery to Harry, as world suddenly shrank around him. It felt as if he'd been swallowed whole by a giant boa constrictor, one made of rubber. Rubber lined with razor blades that ripped him apart as he descended down the impossibly tight esophagus.
He tried to scream, in a combination of shock, terror and agony, but no sound came out of him to fill the cramped, twisted space he was being forced through. Then all at once the pressure vanished. The pain did not.
"Ahhhh!" Harry screamed as he was flung from the cabinet and onto unforgiving stone.
His body exited in pieces. An arm here, a foot there, a couple fingers over yoder and his entire lower body here. He had entered some kind of magicians box that really did slice the person put inside to pieces, instead of just tricking people into thinking they had been.
Harry turned, still screaming, to where the Malfoys and the shop owner should have been. To plead for help as he bled out on the shop floor. But they weren't there, and this wasn't the shop floor.
Towers of broken furniture, school trunks, ruined clothes, schoolbooks, potions vials, cauldrons, mannequins, pieces of jewelry, weapons, and a broken statue or two stretched as far as the eye could see. Above him was a familiar vaulted ceiling, like that of a gigantic cathedral. One reminiscent of Hogwarts and it's architecture.
He saw the outline of a person beside a nearby cupboard that someone had splashed with acid and felt his heart soar, only to feel his rising hope crash and burn when he realized it was merely a bust of some elderly warlock.
Screams of confusion soon mixed with those of the pain and terror he'd been filling the junkroom with since he'd arrive. And for the first time in memory, Harry began to cry. Not at the pain, but at the fear of his coming demise, and the realization that there was nobody there to help him, nor comfort him as he passed.
Harry was bleeding. Harry was bleeding quite a bit.
Only one arm had been left whole by his accident in the cupboard, save for a missing pinky. His left forearm and hand were in pieces around him, along with his entire body from the waist down. He counted thirteen pieces of himself in the immediate area.
So, was it really any surprise he was losing so much blood from the breakoff point on his arm and hips? Probably not, but Harry never knew there to be so much life-giving liquid in the human body to spill.
He called for help again. And again, while attempting to crawl with the use of his one good arm, and his elbow. He didn't get very far, a meter at most, until he was resting on a dusty, singed piece of fabric that must have been a window curtain before finding itself in this junk heap. It was lodged in the nearest pile of broken furniture.
Reacting more on instinct than natural thought - the latter made difficult by the wooziness brought on by blood loss - Harry grasped the fabric with his good had and tried to lift himself up onto his feet. In his daze he'd forgotten that he no longer had any feet to stand on. His efforts were rewarded by an avalanche of broken junk falling all about his similarly broken body. By some miracle nothing overly heavy fell directly on top of him.
"Help!" Harry called out again.
The sound of crashing wood and cloth soon ended, only to be replaced by the tinkling of glass on glass. Harry turned to the sound and saw that a school trunk filled with a multitude of fluorescent bottles and scrap parchment with notes on them. The trunk had the Hogwarts insignia emblazed on its lid.
Was he at Hogwarts? How had that happened?
It didn't matter where he was. What mattered was getting to that trunk. In a moment of clarity between agonizing steps as he crawled towards the school trunk Harry considered his options.
Was it really all that good of an idea to down a random potion he found in what appeared to be an indoor dump? Well, no, absolutely not. It was most likely either a failed potion, a deadly poison or was expired. Did potions expire? Surely, they did, but what other choice did he have?
Worst case scenario, he drinks one of the potions and it kills him in a very interesting way. His alternative was dying anyways by not-so-slowly bleeding out. He'd take the option that held a small chance of survival amidst the greater chance of a more painful demise.
He plunged his hand into the pile of vials and roughly organized them by color, hoping to find one he recognized from the times he spent in madam Pomfrey's care. They were all labeled with all the information he could ever hope for.
Polyjuice potion modification 18c - read one
Anti-immulation potion modification 7w - read another.
Each was also signed by one of two signatures. L.E and H.B.P.
Harry had no idea who either of those persons could be, but when he grasped a bottle of familiar yellow potion labeled "Blood-Replenisher modification 3b - Vampire's Bounty" he praised their names to the heavens. He had slight misgivings about trying an experimental modification of any potion, but it was one of the few remedies he knew of that could help in this situation. If he was lucky, whatever modification L.E had made to it would have added benefits beyond what he was hoping for.
If he was unlucky ... Well, he'd find out soon enough. Bottoms up!
The potion tasted exactly like the regular blood replenisher Poppy had given him near the end of last year. Or at least he thought it did. He didn't exactly have the regular version there for a taste comparison. The flavor was best described as "bad" and left at that. He could actively see the potion taking effect when the trickle of blood pouring from his limbs erupted into a torrent. It was utterly gruesome, but it was helping. His head became clearer and the dizziness vanished. The more he bled the better he felt, until soon he was feeling mostly fine despite the slick, disgusting floor around him.
Then the pain returned.
Apparently being low on blood and at death's door helped to temporarily inure one to pain. Is that what people meant by the term "going into shock"? If so, he wasn't in shock anymore and he could feel everything. Which lead him back to screaming.
"Pitiful." A deep, disembodied voice pronounced of his predicament.
The voice was powerful, and sounded handsome in a way that it could only come from an extraordinarily beautiful person. Harry turned in the direction of the voice towards the table with the hideous statue on it. Was it a talking bust?
"To die by way of a malfunctioning vanishing cabinet? What a truly sorry end to meet."
The mouth of the statue hadn't moved with the words, or at all. Only then did Harry realize the voice wasn't ringing in his ears, but was in his head. Was it death himself coming for him? An angel? A demon? God?
"For all intents and purposes, you may refer to me as either of those things." The voice responded to his thoughts as if he had said them out loud. "I suppose you should consider me God, your personal god. As it stands, I'm the only one capable of answering your prayers."
Harry gritted his teeth and crawled, with the one and a half arms available to him, towards the bust.
"And all I ask is that you be a faithful follower."
Hand. Elbow. Hand. Elbow. Just keep moving! Don't think about the trail of puddling, coagulating blood you're leaving behind.
"If you put your faith in me."
Harry crawled closer.
"If you devote yourself to me."
Another meter of blood-stained progress and he was nearly upon the table.
"If you trust me with the responsibility of protecting you."
He was there now, staring up at the bust with something akin to adoration, when he pushed his hand into the pile of small objects beneath it. He unwittingly grasped something cold and hard with may pointed edges. He lifted his hand to see a crown. A tiara, made of bright silver and studded with glorious sapphires.
"If you put! Me! ON!"(A/N - 1)
The potion he'd taken was wearing off, his supercharged blood-production was slowing down and with it his mind was becoming fuzzy again. If it weren't such a dire situation, if he could think straight, he might have second-guessed his new "god" and refused his first commandment. As it was, the twelve-year-old child obeyed.
He put the shiny piece of jewelry atop his head and he knew no more, save for blackness.
When Harry next woke up it was to the familiar surroundings of white linen and the smell of over-sanitation belonging to the Hogwarts hospital wing.
He blinked his confusion away, trying to recall how he'd gotten there. Flashes of pain, crimson and the sight of his body in pieces flooded his mind and he felt a rising panic set in. That panic vanished when he gave himself a quick once-over and discovered his body whole again.
There were bandages wrapped around his elbow on one arm, multiple fingers, both legs, and several times around his waist. So, it hadn't been a dream. That had all happened, leaving Madame Pomfrey to stitch him back together like Frankensteins Monster.
Harry was wondering if he would fall back apart if he removed the bandages when the school mediwitch exited her office and spotted him testing his limbs and fingers.
"Oh, thank goodness!" Pomfrey exclaimed as she stride towards him. "Showing up at my hospital wing levitating pieces of yourself and bleeding like a hose! Why can't I have a single relaxing day in the entirety of my vacation?!"
She stopped at his bed and huffed one last time.
"So!? How do you feel?" She pressed.
Harry considered the question as he continued to stretch every limb and digit. He couldn't feel a bit of pain.
"Fine ma'am." He said. "How long do these bandages have to stay on?"
"Depends on if you want scarring or not. You can take them off now and leave if you like, but you'll have some nasty momentos of your splinching accident. Best to let the murtlap juice do it's work and leave your skin baby smooth." She explained.
Harry sniffed at the bandages on his fingers and recoiled. Why did magical medicine have to be so unpleasant to the senses?
"The headmaster has already alerted Molly that you're here. She and her brood should be arriving shortly." Pomfrey informed him. "Tell me, did you really splinch yourself with floo powder?"
Harry shrugged. Not knowing what splinching was.
"I've never even heard of that happening before. Didn't know it was possible. I'm sure the headmaster will want a full recounting so he can submit a request for repairs to the floo network." The mediwitch ranted. "Now get dressed, put your hat and shoes on and get ready for a Dumbledore interrogation."
She put up the curtains before leaving and Harry obeyed.
He tried to organize the series of events in his mind and decide on a method for explaining what had happened. He was relatively comfortable relaying everything that happened from the moment he entered that dark pawn shop up to drinking that modified potion, but decided it would be best not to discuss the talking piece of jewelry he had struck a bargain with.
Speaking of, whatever happened to that tiara anyways?
He scoured his pockets and clothing as he put each article on but couldn't find it. It wasn't in the tussled bedsheets, beneath the pillow or under the bed either. And so, he roughly shoved his shoes on, snatched up his wizards hat and made towards Pomfrey's office to ask if she'd confiscated it.
It was only as the rim of the leathery cap touched his ears that it occurred to Harry.
He hadn't brought a wizards hat with him that day. It was the last cogent thought he had before blackness enveloped his mind once more. Forevermore.
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Notes:
It has been brought to my attention that the vanishing cabinet wasn't put into the room of requirement until sometime later, but this being fanfiction why should I let such a simple plothole get in the way of a good story idea? I think you guys can suspend disbelief and just imagine an AU where the cabinet was in there sooner.
Also, yes, that was a reference to Splatterhouse. The situations were too similar, and I realized I had accidentally ripped it off, so I turned it into a proper homage.