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Author: Rosina Ferguson Story: Harry Potter and the Book of Ages Rating: Teens Setting: Pre-HBP Status: WIP Reviews: 3 Words: 64,426
Harry’s recovery from his injuries was slow but steady. He quickly fell into the hospital’s routine and in all the time he was awake not one word did he utter. Three days later, some five days after his accident, the young WPC was back at his bedside. She had taken to bringing a book with her which she would sit and read in companionable silence. Harry was now allowed to sit, propped up in bed. He had to have pain relief still, but the catheters had been removed and he was able to feed himself. The silence and the air of tranquillity were like the calm before a storm. Harry took this time to try to plan his next move. Mentally he made a list of things he had to do. 1: Recover Omnioculars 2: Get to Grimmauld Place 3: Recover his wand Number 3 really was a double-barrelled question. He was very attached to his old wand, it had served him well and he missed it greatly. On the other hand, if he could obtain another wand, a different wand, one that was not a brother wand to Voldemort’s, would that make it easier or harder to defeat Voldemort? This question was unanswerable and Harry spent many hours staring up at the cracked ceiling of his room pondering it. 4: Prove his innocence This last task was another that demanded much thought and consideration. Harry chafed at being so dependent and vulnerable. Each new face sent him into a blind panic. He suspected everyone of being a Death Eater and only when the WPC, his WPC, was on duty did Harry feel safe enough to sleep unaided by drugs. The WPC – Harry had heard her referred to as WPC Jenny Hazelwood – reminded him of his Ginny. His Ginny! Harry silently berated himself for his subconscious possessiveness. Ginny belonged to no one but herself. She had become much stronger, self-possessed and assertive in the last couple of years and Harry found these qualities to be very attractive. He liked – no, loved – her feisty and determined nature. She didn’t take any nonsense from him and certainly didn’t hold him in awe, as did the Creevey brothers. No. His Ginny knew him too well. She knew him, warts and all, and still she seemed to like him. But, he questioned, was liking him enough any longer? His feelings for her had changed, deepened, but what of her feelings for him? Yet another unanswerable question. Harry’s thoughts were interrupted when the door of his room opened. “Jenny, you’re wanted on the phone.” The voice belonged to one of Harry’s regular nurses. “I’ll keep an eye on him for you,” she added as she stepped into the room. Harry turned his gaze to the window. The view was so boring – all he could see were windows of more wards – that he quickly turned away. The door opened again and Jenny returned. “Thanks!” said Jenny as she resumed her seat. The nurse did not try to make small talk; she left quickly to resume her duties amid more interesting and chatty patients. Harry turned to look at Jenny and found that she was staring right back at him. He felt as though she were looking into his soul. He maintained eye contact with her. “Who are you really? You look as though you’ve been through so much and I don’t just mean the accident. Before that. What happened?” Harry was dumbfounded. He heard the questions clearly, but … not once had Jenny’s mouth opened! He broke eye contact by immediately closing his own eyes. His thoughts were in a whir. What was going on? Jenny bent to pick up her book. Harry caught a glimpse of its title: The Art and Science of Body Reading. It sounded, mused Harry, as though it should be a part of his Divination lessons’ approved textbooks. He could just imagine Trelawney encouraging the class to read each other’s bodies. Ron’s voice came to mind, “Lavender, can I see Uranus?” Oh yes, he can just imagine what those lessons would be like. A small secretive smile crossed Harry’s face. The first he’d worn in days. His mind went back to the fun he and Ron had when making up dire predictions for their homework. “Penny for them.” “Just thanking about Divination. Remember when old Trelawney…?” Harry suddenly shut up. “I knew it! You’re no more an illegal immigrant than I am!” Harry slammed his fists down hard on his mattress in temper as he turned his gaze away from Ginny – correction, Jenny! The WPC moved round the bed back into Harry’s field of vision. “Who are you?” she asked. “You’ve already asked that question!” “No, I haven’t!” “You have, you just haven’t asked it out loud!” Jenny’s mouth dropped open. She looked like a fish out of water. “I know I thought it, but …” She left the question unfinished. Instead she asked, “What are you?” “Ah. The 64-thousand-dollar question!” Harry turned and looked deep into Jenny’s eyes. “What do you think I am?” Her reply surprised Harry. “Scared. Lonely. Confused. Worried. Do you need me to go on? Or will that do for starters?” “Try TIRED or… even better … WANTED!” “Wanted?” Jenny screwed up her face in concentration. She suddenly looked like Ginny. He’d seen that expression on her face when she was trying hard to beat Ron at chess. Her features relaxed as she let out the breath she had sub-consciously been holding. “Of course! Surrey. Little Whinging. I knew it!” “You’ll make Sergeant yet.” Harry paraphrased Dr. McGregor’s comment. “Don’t you start!” she said in a warning tone. “You do know, don’t you, that Dr. McGregor fancies you like mad, but feels he’s blown any chance he had with you?” “And since when do teenage boys understand so much?” questioned Jenny, standing with her hands on her hips. “Since complete strangers talk out loud in front of patients who they believe don’t speak a word of English.” “Touché,” said Jenny with a smile on her face. “English I understand… French I don’t!” countered Harry. “Very funny!” replied Jenny, playfully swatting Harry on the arm. Suddenly the mood changed. Both of them became nervous. “Did you really…? You know!” He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. “Did I what?” “You know! Murder your aunt and uncle.” Once more they were staring deep into each other’s eyes. “What do you think?” “My job is to know. I need to know, to be able to prove …” “Ah! That’s the problem. Proof.” “What are you saying? Are you trying to tell me you did murder them?” “NO! Of course not, but I’ll never be able to prove my innocence.” Suddenly it was important – vitally important – that this young woman believe in him. Believe in his innocence. The emotional drain suddenly left Harry feeling very weak and tired. His scar was prickling badly. Harry automatically reached up to rub the palms of his hands over the puckered skin. “What’s up?” asked Jenny. “Just my scar. It gives me grief sometimes.” Harry closed his eyes. Instantly mad, crazy laughter began. As had happened once before, the laughter was coming from Harry’s own mouth. SLAP! Jenny had stood up and slapped Harry hard across the cheek. It stung! “Ow! What’d you do that for?” The annoyance in his voice was obvious. “You were hysterical!” “No, I wasn’t,” argued Harry. “Oh, yeah? Then what was all the mad laughter for? Is your situation so amusing? Or is it just me?” Jenny was standing confrontationally with her hands on her hips and a glare in her eye – she looked to Harry very much like Ginny at that moment. “Not you. No sorry, it was…” Harry was at a loss to explain. He had just had a burst of elation from Voldemort. Harry’s location and condition had been confirmed and Voldemort gleefully announced this to Harry via their link: “Once again what you have I will take away. This time it will be your freedom.” Harry’s injuries still needed a lot of healing, but they didn’t stop him throwing back his covers to try to rise from his bed. His ribs hurt horribly, two were broken and one had punctured his lung and his right arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow. He had sustained a bad gash, which had required stitching. “And where do you think you’re going?” Harry stayed silent. “God damn it! Talk to me!” “I can’t! At least not about this. You won’t believe me and if I told you I’d be breaking the law.” “Breaking the law to tell the truth? You almost sound as though you’re a spy or in a Witness Protection Programme. Get real! I want the truth and I want it now!” “FINE!” bellowed Harry. “Have it your own way. I’m as good as dead when he finds me, so what if I get in more bother with the Ministry for telling a Muggle!” “Telling a Muggle! Did you say Muggle?” queried Jenny. Harry had given up trying to leave. He realised that he was not going to last long with the amount of pain he still felt. He lay back on his bed; Jenny pulled the covers back over him and sat on the edge of the mattress looking directly in his eyes. “It’s a long story and if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s all true and happened to me, I sure as hell wouldn’t believe it.” Jenny tenderly placed a hand on Harry’s good arm and said, “Before you tell me anything, I think it would be better if I went off-duty. Otherwise I might have to report anything you tell me to my Duty Sergeant.” Harry looked puzzled. “Also, I promised my grandmother that I’d bring her to visit a friend who’s sick in hospital tonight. She is not a lady who accepts excuses for breaking promises – one very formidable old gal she is. You never know, I might just introduce you. You and I can talk then, OK?” “OK,” Harry acknowledged wearily. Sleep was beckoning him. He burrowed beneath his covers as Jenny’s replacement, a young male PC, arrived to take her place. It was another Ginny-less sleep that Harry had that afternoon. He awoke to the sound of the food trolley being bumped and banged through the doors onto the ward. Each day a card with the following day’s menus was left in Harry’s room; each day patients were supposed to mark their preferred choices, but as Harry had to keep up his pretence of not being able to speak or to understand English, he had ignored it. Consequently the card was filled in by either the nursing staff or the duty PC in his room. Jenny had observed which meals Harry ate and which he did not and used that as a guide of what to choose for him – that was before he was ‘caught out’! Now of course, he could tell her and would get what he liked. The food wasn’t a patch on Hogwarts fare or Mrs. Weasley’s, but it was an improvement on the short-rations frequently supplied by the Dursleys. Long ago Harry had learned to just ‘eat up and be thankful’ as Uncle Vernon would say. It did seem odd to Harry though that the day’s main meal was at midday with just a sandwich at night. Oh! What he wouldn’t give for some of Mrs. Weasley’s steak and kidney pie with all the trimmings, followed by his favourite treacle tart. All washed down by a warming mug of hotbButterbeer. Harry’s reflective mood continued as he unwillingly conjured images of meals in prison. Muggle food in Muggle jails would be much like this, he guessed, but in Azkaban? Harry recalled how thin and starved Sirius had looked when he first clapped eyes on him in the Shrieking Shack. Being already on the thin side, Harry wouldn’t last, he reckoned, on the kind of diet Azkaban would provide. It was in this dark frame of mind that Harry sat staring out of his window when the door to his room opened and a very different-looking Jenny entered. She spoke to the Duty PC. “Evening, Simon, how’s the silent watch going? Is our guy as chatty as usual?” “Not a word still. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s mute or something. Not even a sign of his speaking in his native lingo, let alone English,” said Simon without a backwards glance at Harry. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes he has such a blank look about him. I swear the lift doesn’t go to the top floor – if you know what I mean!” “You could be right there. Anyway, what’re you doing here? I thought your shift ended at 2?” “It did, but I’m back here with my gran. Her next-door-neighbour is on this ward so I brought her to visit. Tell you what, while I’m here I can give you a break to grab a bite to eat if you like. The restaurant’s open still for a decent – well, sort-of decent – hot meal. It’s better than the sandwiches you end up with on the late shift anyhow.” “I don’t know! You know there’d be hell to pay if something happened and it was found I wasn’t at my post.” “Give over!” exclaimed Jenny. “It’s not like I’m a nurse or a civvie! Please? You’ll do me a favour. I can turn over the TV and catch EastEnders. I was going to miss it otherwise. He (she indicated Harry with a nod of her head) won’t care as he can’t understand a word of it.” “OK,” said Simon. “I’ll be back at 8 o’clock.” “Thanks,” said Jenny sitting and picking up the TV remote control. The EastEnders theme played as the door closed behind Simon. Jenny made sure Simon had left the ward then shot out of the door. A moment later she returned with an elderly, but very sprightly lady with her. “Harry, meet my gran.” The lady had a commanding presence and, as she stepped to Harry’s bedside she held out her hand palm down. Harry didn’t know whether to shake it or kiss it. He felt like he was meeting royalty. When she spoke it was in a clear, precise and accentless voice. “Eleanor Cantwell, Mr. Potter. I am so pleased to meet you at last!”
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