Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them.
Fixing Harry
Chapter 9
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Subject: Harry James Potter
Interview Date: Tuesday, July 15, 1998
Interview #: N/A
Observations: Something's rotten in Denmark. And it's not smelling so great here in the
Ministry, either right now
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After my unexpected home visit to Harry last night, I took it upon myself to spend my morning doing a little research. It was partly inspired by his faith in calling me when he couldn't rouse Hermione - that fact that he thought of me first and actually trusted me as much as any of the many healers he must have been exposed to since Voldemort's defeat was pretty chuffing. Unless of course he'd truly panicked, and I was just the last person he'd spoken to that morning and thus on his mind… Even so there was still my daughter, who couldn't stop talking about Harry and Hermione and now couldn't wait to meet the infamous Ron Weasley as well. In retrospect letting her come along was not one of my more intelligent moves; if anything happens to Harry now I'll be held accountable in Emily's eyes, and trust me, those are eyes are not to be trifled with.
So I sat down and sifted through his file to pick out what we had of his medical records and treatment. I had glanced them over quickly before meeting with him and not seen anything that screamed 'obvious answer.' I read through them now more carefully, and with a very different set of eyes.
Harry was admitted to St. Mungo's at 6am the morning after the confrontation apparently rook place at Hogwarts. Hogsmeade had been attacked that night as a diversion to make the Ministry and the Aurors think that Voldemort was proceeding toward Hogwarts, when in fact he was already there. The fighting in the town had been said to be fierce, and there had apparently been quite a few losses and injuries and magical maladventures on both sides, as well as amongst the general population who'd fought back to protect their livelihoods. All of these patients had reached St. Mungo's well in advance of Harry that morning, as the invasion of Hogwarts was not discovered until the outcome of the battle for Hogsmeade was fairly settled, so it must have been to a chaotic and disordered facility that he first arrived. He was checked in under the auspices of a flustered Minerva McGonagall (if her signature was any indication, it had been far firmer signing my detention slips at Hogwarts) and a Ministry Auror first class named Hightower.
My instincts told me that Professor McGonagall had then returned immediately to her school and Hightower to the sweep up, because Harry's first noted observation by a licensed healer was not until 8:50 am. Almost three hours later. Interestingly enough, the handwriting on this report gets more than a little shaky when it gets to his name. That sort of 'oh shite I've just let Harry Potter sit on a gurney in the hall for hours' sweaty palm shaky.
The observation was a triage statement, meant to identify his problems and rank him in the queue to be looked after. The top priority box was thusly checked, although he appeared to be holding his own fairly well then from what I could read between the lines. His pupils were listed as uneven but responsive; he knew and could provide his name and age. He apparently asked for a drink of water. The healer-in-training that looked him over noted that he displayed all the symptoms of being in shock, and included superficial bleeding head and chest wounds, probable fractures of both knee caps, spell burns on both hands and evidence of multiple applications of the cruciatus curse as the likely cause.
Yeah, because battling Voldemort and letting a dementor suck the horcrux out of your curse scar was no cause for worry, really.
His head clearly wasn't spinning on his neck; he wasn't spitting flames or speaking in tongues. If I knew Harry at all he'd just sat there wrapped in his itchy standard issue St. Mungo's blanket and stared at the floor tiles wondering what the hell had just happened to him. He would quite probably have been devastated by the evidence of the destruction at Hogsmeade that surrounded him and resigned to patiently wait his turn.
I wondered where Ron and Hermione had been. Most likely still at Hogwarts Infirmary, since neither had been reported to be injured, an idea I found unlikely to be true given the circumstances. Their needs were probably well within the scope of Madam Pomfrey's abilities and resources at the school, although it was my guess it was Auror Hightower who had insisted on Harry being taken to St. Mungo's. I couldn't see them as being particularly happy to be separated at that point, particularly Hermione.
I wrote that down as my first question; my second was to follow up on the absence of any indication that Harry had been leaking magic in unmanageable quantities then.
The next reports I came across in the stack were out of order and not standard St. Mungo's forms at all. They were interviews of Harry's healers by Ministry workers instead and the difference was both telling and frustrating as hell. They asked all the wrong questions, for one. It was clear no one from Spell Damage - or anyone else with a clue - was involved until much later. In fact, to add insult to injury, more than half were completed and filed by none other than Percy Weasley.
Good lord but he was a piece of work.
11am
The subject, Harry James Potter, appears to me after close observation to be unconscious. I did prod him once with my wand to ascertain whether or not the condition was feigned. Healer Eskabold Allweather informs me this is magically induced to help reduce the impact of the cruciatus curse on the nervous system and promote healing and is not in fact an attempt to avoid talking to Ministry representatives.
Potter is in visibly poor condition (not that he ever looked all that good, grooming and comportment never being an obvious priority during my personal acquaintance with the subject while at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where I was both prefect and Head Boy.) It is hard to believe in my professional opinion that he could have played any truly significant role in the demise of Lord You Know Who as he was clearly extensively physically battered and still reeks of what can only be YKW's residual magic.
It is my opinion that his record as a willful abuser of underage magic regulations (see Wizengamot Disciplinary Hearing Records August 1995) and pathological liar and volatile attention seeker ( in the highly qualified estimation of Dolores Umbridge, past Ministry Secretary for Magical Education and currently head of the department for Bestiary Inspection and Tracking of Centaur Habitats or BITCH) should render his account of the encounter suspect and due diligence be exercised to double check his claims. It is far more likely that fear of the advancing Ministry Aurors approaching Hogwarts drove YKW to take his own life.
Percy Ignatius Weasley, Office of the Minister
Can you believe that odiferous pile of hippogriff leavings? It would be funny if it wasn't an actual Ministry report and someone who didn't know Percy was an officious little prig with a huge inferiority complex towards wizards like Harry might actually read it and believe a word of it. There are quite a few of his in there; he apparently spent a good bit of time at St. Mungo's that week. The only interesting thing is he is the first to document Harry's early magical power issues. Since Percy Weasley is hardly in the sensitive range as a magical barometer, it must mean that it was already evident and being otherwise kept quiet by the healers for some reason.
Apparently at some point around observation number three he made his daily attempt to see if Harry was pretending to be unconscious by poking with a finger rather than his wand. His whinging about the result was a wonder to behold. Magical menace and hazardous vessel of malevolent spell residue were two of the nicer things he called Harry. Oh, and 'this attention seeking nuisance has placed himself at peril at the cost of the honest wizards who now pay for his magical rehabilitation, when Ministry Aurors could have neutralized YKW for significantly less' has a receipt for reimbursement for new robes from Madam Malkins' stapled to it. Apparently his sleeve was singed in the incident.
Day four brought about another interesting point of which I was unaware.
…The subject is conscious again today, although still pathetically incoherent and very difficult to interview to any degree of satisfaction. Healer Allweather assures me that the pain potions are necessary and unfortunately gave every indication that he would protest a Ministerial decree against their daytime use to facilitate the debriefing process, so I shall not be pursuing that avenue for the time being. I must however note that the subject was perfectly capable of recognizing and even managing excessive physical displays of affection for visitors. Ethical standards dictate I must disclose that those visitors included Ronald Bilius Weasley, Ginevra Molly Weasley, Molly Prewett Weasley, Arthur Weasley, Head, Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects, Bill Weasley, Fleur Delacour Weasley, Fred Weasley and George Weasley, all persons who claim relationship to myself. Any rumors to the account of a relationship beyond the order of House affiliation with Ginevra Weasley can thankfully easily be laid to rest by simple observation although unfortunately Ron still gets on with the unbalanced brat….
For anyone as self involved and uncaring as Percy to have had any knowledge of a relationship between Harry and his sister there had to have been some pretty blatant and persistent rumors. They could have snogged each other's tonsils out in front of him and it would have taken someone else to call his attention away from his perpetual dissertation on his own importance to the Minister and his professional prospects. Was that why Harry seemed so oblivious of Hermione's feelings? That could account for the hopelessness of some of those gazes she sent his way.
I suppose I should hope I hadn't put my foot in it… but nah. I really think I'm right on this one.
Beyond messing about in his love life or lack there of, I found out very little else of value to assessing Harry's medical condition, particularly in regard to his hands. Records I was quite sure should have been there appeared to have never existed and others were uncharacteristically vague for the usually meticulous Healers who signed them. On the plus side, however, I knew Eskabold Allweather fairly well through my training days at St. Mungo's. Well, that, and his wife is my Aunt Heather. Who knew Uncle Eskabold was one of Harry's healer's?
I sent an owl asking him to lunch, feeling optimistic that I might be on the trail of some useful information at last, and his return owl came back with an enthusiastically scrawled 'Merlin himself whispered in your ear, my dear! I've been positively craving lamb for ages and you know how Heather feels about that. Will The Augurey at one suit? I have the afternoon off and The Proprietor assured me a table will be available. Best 'til then, Uncle Boldie.'
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I thought it best to meet Uncle Boldie with the few ducks I had in a row, so I took myself off down to St. Mungo's. I considered asking the welcoming witch of the day for the Department of Magically Mislaid Medical Records, but she seemed to lack the requisite sense of humor. Instead, I got a Ministry Consultant badge and took myself off to consider my options.
Witches and Wizards think differently than muggles, and as such, their organizational systems require some mental adjustment. If you lead the sort of life that straddles both worlds, the adjustment can be huge and painful. For example, in theory it is impossible to "lose" a file in the Wizarding world. You simply cast an accio-name-of-the-file and it zips its way to you from whatever pile it was under or wrong drawer it was in. Of course, that can be a disadvantage as there are surely times that wizards - much like their muggle cousins - really, really wish that certain things would disappear. The difference is in how they go about it. Not having the accidentally-circular-filed option or the shove-it-under-the-pot-plant option, wizards hex their files. "Lost" wizarding files can bite, spontaneously combust, go blank, appear and disappear until your superiors believe you have lost your mind, shred themselves before your eyes or suddenly attack your coffee mug with disastrous result. Tracking lost wizard files requires the skills of a big game hunter. Tracking them in a large, busy institution like St. Mungo's requires a certain element of insanity.
Harry had most likely gone through intake on the ground floor (Artifact Accidents-
Cauldron explosion, wand-backfiring, broom crashes, etc.) Most clearly physically injured patients start there, whether
their injuries were artifact induced or not. I know he was transferred to the open ward on the fourth floor next (Spell
Damage: Unliftable jinxes, hexes, and incorrectly applied charms, etc.) Obviously still not a perfect fit; Voldemort
hadn't incorrectly applied a cruciatus in many years by the time he got to Harry. Unlawfully, cruelly and
without remorse, yes, but he was still highly proficient at it. The only thing he'd incorrectly applied to Harry
had been the killing curse those many years ago.
This sounds like splitting hairs, but it can be a big deal in terms of getting the right healer to cope with things. Harry's hands are the direct result of an Artifact Incident, but who was really to say if he had misused the wand by turning it on its owner (typically wands work better for their owners, but will still produce a spell of varying potency while in the hands of another, even against their own wizard.) The fact that his own wand was the brother to the one that burned him could not be ignored, and a wand emerging from the ashes of itself, even a phoenix feather wand, was unheard of as far as I knew. Those facts pushed him well into the Spell Damage side of the spectrum. Treating that type of injury requires excellent collaboration by specialists in both fields. Persistence and a whole lot of luck didn't hurt either.
It also meant that the files I was looking for could have been "lost" in a variety of ways and places. I decided to start on the first floor in Creature-Induced Injuries (Bites, stings, burns, embedded spiders, etc.) since I knew for sure he hadn't been there.
Until today, anyway.
For there he was, sitting patiently on the edge of an examination table behind the windowed door of the very first room I passed, one knee swinging and the other propped along the table. He'd actually taken my advice on the Doxy bite! As I watched, however, his eyes lifted from their examination of the floor tiles and shifted across the room in response to something I couldn't see, and he smiled. A real smile, the kind that curls your lips and reaches your eyes and everything. The subject of this rarity was out of my line of sight but I doubted very much it was his healer. In fact, I was fairly sure it wasn't, because there were three healers clustered around a smoking beaker on a wheeled potions cart just up the hall, and this just wasn't that busy a ward most times.
Much as I wanted to see who was making Harry so smiley, I was even more intrigued by the interest in that test beaker. I edged closer, pretending to be reviewing the top document in the file I carried.
"… doxy bite, of all things. He said his Ministry Spell Damage Specialist happened to be there when it occurred and gave him the anti-venom," the first healer said.
"Bit of luck, that. Who'd have thought to test for yew poisoning?" The second agreed.
Yew poisoning? From a wand? That was crazy. For one, the wood of the yew wasn't even the poisonous part; it was the seeds and fruit. Voldemort's wand had to have been at least 70 years old and handled constantly… but it had burned, and been reduced to ash. Burned in a magical reaction, a result of magical force gone haywire. Interesting. Yew ash had all sorts of possibilities. But why had they found traces of yew poisoning now when they were looking at a doxy bite? They should have taken a blood sample and tested… ewwww. Was that Harry's blood smoking in that beaker? That really wasn't right.
I ducked back before they noticed me and into the room where Harry waited. He seemed relatively unsurprised to see me and took the invasion calmly enough; no spooking or running into things today. In fact he was grinning at me kind of goofily, with a really pleased expression. And look! The person out of my range of sight was none other than Hermione!
My grin must have gotten kind of goofy too. Hermione's eyes narrowed slightly, then widened. She sighed. "Don't get used to it; they've given him a solution of bugleweed, exstacia, goldenseal root, Norwegian scapwort and yucca. If he dies now, it will still take twenty years to get the smile off his face."
"Hermermione," he said with an attempt at mock sternness that failed completely. "Don' be Mrs. Grouchy Knickers. I'm aslobutely fine."
"You're aslobutely out of your mind," she told him, but she couldn't help a little grin when she said it.
In contrast with his usual faintly cynical seriousness, this Harry was an aslobute hoot.
"They said the vantienom didn't work so well, but I cn still go home later if Merhione watches me."
"Good thing for you you've good such a good friend in Merhione," I reminded him. "I suspect Ron would have alerted the twins by now and they'd be charging five galleons a peek in a pensieve for this in no time flat."
He took this in and wrestled with it a moment. "Ron's a goof friend," he said seriously. His face took on a kind of wonder so innocent it could only be drug induced, but what he actually said next made it exquisitely obvious that it was real to him and he was speaking from the bottom of his heart - albeit through severely damaged inhibitions. "Don't tell Ron," he whispered, his eyes enormous and locked on my face, "but Merhione loves me."
Merhione squeaked and moved quickly to his side, grabbing his good leg just above the knee in a death grip. He gazed down at her adoringly. My sense was she could have sawed it off and his expression wouldn't have changed. Obviously last night had been productive indeed.
"That's fantastic, Harry," I told him. "You're a very lucky young man. And I promise not to remind you tomorrow that you told me a word of this."
Harry nodded agreeably; entirely clueless in his happy-potion land. The door to the examining room swung open and one of the three healers of the smoking beaker joined us, bearing a small odiferous cauldron. He eyed me suspiciously, so I introduced myself. Happily enough, I'd never met him before. Even happier, he'd never met me.
"Elspeth Hawktalon. I'm Harry's Spell Damage Specialist from the Ministry." I informed him.
"Arshmore Spingallon. I'm from AI, just up on CII for the consult. Most unusual case, fascinating," he said.
"Were you one of Harry's healers after the battle with Vold…."
"!" said Arshmore Spingallon, almost dropping his cauldron.
"You know who," I finished smoothly as I could. One of those.
"Yes. We admitted him first, before he went up to Damage. Seems to have been some delayed reaction to the ahh, one of the erm, artifacts of the battle." He looked at me closely, as if trying to decide which side I was on. As I wasn't even truly sure what the sides were at this point, and thus my options, I kept mum on that. That was a question for Eskabold. I nodded encouragingly, as if I knew all about it, but committed myself to nothing.
"Could be accidental poisoning, could be an allergy. All we know is he tests positive for yew."
Was it just me, or did that sound like a really great name for a song?
"And this was uncovered while treating the doxy bite?"
"We administered a second dose of doxy specific anti-venom, and he began to show signs of anaphylactic shock."
Anaphylactic shock or even mild allergic reactions are actually unheard of in purebloods, and so poorly understood in traditional wizard healing circles. You can't just give your average half blood or muggle born witch or wizard Benedryl or epinephrine either, unfortunately. For one, healers don't do intramuscular injection, or any kind of shot, really. Wizards are utter babies when it comes to needles. Wizard physiology responds differently, anyway, and most anti-allergy medicines actually induce spastic hiccoughing that can last up to 48 hours. It took some time to come up with a good potion equivalent that was specific and fast acting enough, but didn't cause even less desirable reactions to the wizard in question. Harry was lucky he was in St Mungo's at the time, and I felt very relieved that nothing had happened after the first dose I had given him.
"It was when the reaction occurred you discovered the pre-existing yew issue? He certainly showed no outward sign of oh! That's why they weren't healing?"
His hands, stupid. I was so fixated on the smoking blood and the typical body-wide signs of poisoning it never occurred to me to think of the actual wounds where the wand had burned.
"We never thought about an allergic reaction," Hermione agreed. "Although it seems as if it's Harry's magic that's reacting and causing the physical effect, rather than the other way around."
"Harry's magic doesn't like yew?"
"Does too! Likes her very much," Harry asserted.
Giving in to the kind of laughter he was inspiring was NOT going to get Spingallon to take me seriously. I couldn't look at Hermione though, because I was fairly certain she was in pretty much the same boat I was.
"Apparently not," said Spingallon, who was thoroughly ignoring his patient now. "We've treated him with a cocktail of detoxifying ingredients, and we're going to apply a neutralizing poultice for thirty minute or so and send him home. If that doesn't clear things up, we might have to bring in the sneetches."
Whoa. He wasn't talking about the Dr. Seuss variety, either. Sneetches are actually magical leaches that slither in through open wounds and rid the wizard of stubborn poisons. They're said to be most unpleasant. Try telling a wizard that muggle children have a story book about star-bellied sneetches and they'll get that look that says Voldemort might just have known what he was talking about every time.
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Hermione said, and she appeared so thoroughly repulsed I knew that she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Fervently," I agreed. I sure wasn't going to be around for that treatment. Spell damage could do some unpleasant things, but just the idea of those things gave me the willies.
"Okay," said Harry agreeably.
"Well then," said Spingallon, setting his cauldron down by Harry on the examining table. "Let's get this on then. The sooner we do, the sooner you can head home. We've already set you up and appointment for Thursday morning to see how it's worked. Left or right first young man?"
"Left, I guess," Harry told him, obediently extending his right.
Spingallon began unbuckling his bandage-holder, eying Hermione and I. "I assume one of you two is the licensed apparator who's going to side-along him home? He's in no shape to apparate, you know."
"I really, really need to usethelittlewitchesroombackinamomentHarry," Hermione managed, and fled.
"She'll be right back," I assured Spingallon. "She's going to take him home. I have a lunch meeting with Eskabold Allweather."
I never drop names unless it's a real emergency. It seemed to work this time.
"Excellent. Top, top healer, Allweather," Spingallon said. "Nice to meet you, then."
I smiled and followed Hermione's lead. There was no real point in saying good bye to Harry; he wasn't going to remember any of this.
She was in the hall, doing something so hard there were tears streaming down her cheeks. She was either laugh-crying or cry-laughing. I'm sure an awful lot of it was stress-related. UST is hard on everyone.
"I take it the mate-sitting is going okay?" I asked her.
She just nodded, wordless. I think it was mostly laughter and she was just unused to being goofy around professional healers. Or maybe at all.
"If you need anything, anything at all, please call me," I told her. "Harry's not the only one who went through a lot these last few years, and it doesn't make you any less smart to ask for help. It makes you brilliant, actually. Too few people do."
She ducked her head shyly, but when she raised it a moment later it was as if she'd cast some wandless charm upon herself. Her eyes shone, her skin glowed, her hair, well, it was still pretty bushy and had a tendency to run to ringlets but it suited her, anything else would have just seemed wrong. She was transformed none-the-less, and the reason was completely clear a moment later.
"It was a really interesting night," she said softly, almost a whisper, and gave me one of those I just had to tell somebody grins. "There is something I'd like to tell you about though, that could be important. Could I come with Harry tomorrow afternoon if your meeting is still on?"
I assured her she could and that I'd look forward to seeing them both. Interesting indeed.
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Well, that gave me both more and less than I'd hoped for. There was no time to pursue the missing records, but I had collected a bit of information Uncle Eskabold wouldn't know. Hopefully we could put all the pieces together and start to see what it was all about.
So I apparated back to the Ministry, and flooed to The Augurey's Best Guess.
Uncle Eskabold was already there, and he'd taken the liberty of ordering for us both. No real liberty; he always got the same thing when he came, and I liked it too. Lamb chops, two inches thick and still pink, fragrant with rosemary. New potatoes and sprouts for him, asparagus for me. Port for after. Always the same.
Aunt Heather Allweather is a very Glinda sort of witch. She loves puppies and bunnies and little lambies, and since they never had children, their place is overrun with animals. She breeds special puffskeins with long, silky hair, collects the sheddings and spins them into knitting yarn which she dyes herself. It's high priced stuff, because she spins in custom charms and never reveals what they are or who they are sold to, so all the most glamorous witches have scarves or shawls knitted with her yarn. She sells regular wool too, made from the shearing of her sheep, so consequently eating lamb is not done in their household. You can lure him anywhere with a good lamb chop or a decent stew.
He greats me with a pleasure that is on a par with his evident joy at the arrival of the lamb.
"Uncle Boldie," I asked him after we've both enjoyed our first delectable bites, "why didn't you ever mention you were one of Harry Potter's healers after the battle?"
"Never came up," he said. "Didn't like to make light of the boy in passing conversation, either. Bloody brave, doing what he did. And he didn't get much help, did he. Not then, and not now. Why'd'you ask?"
"Because I'm working with him now. Scrimgeour got Clement to put me on the case specially, and I've a suspicion all is not what it seems."
He seemed pleased with that news, and paused in the consumption of his second chop. "Really? But that's excellent, Elspeth, excellent! The boy needs a witch with a clue in his corner. There's a definite feel that Scrimgeour's going to make a precedent out of Potter to set the tone for the post-Voldemort era. He's had his aides poking round St. Mungo's talking to all sorts of people in different specialties. Must think we're complete idiots and that we never talk to each other, because as soon as you do it's clear as day what they're after."
"What?" I asked eagerly, but he'd started in on has lamb again, and it was several minutes more before he could drag himself away to answer.
"He's a wily old fox, Scrimgeour. A notch above Fudge for sure. The problem is he's old, like me. Wizards live too long, we think we're wise because we've seen so much, but wisdom only counts if you keep thinking clearly enough to apply it to the future. He'd like his legacy to be an end to the rising of dark lords based on fear of magical power rather than politics, but he's not the sort who'd try to legislate individual limits the way Fudge would have done. He believes that a show of force is the only thing that keeps the other wolves in the pack in line, and that's what he wants a clear shot to Potter for."
"What to do you mean?" I asked him, puzzled. "How can what happened to Harry serve as anything but a lesson that the Ministry doesn't support those who seek to keep dark wizards with from controlling the rest of us? I'd think the next one in line would see it as an incentive, the way he's been treated. Who else would take on his role now?"
Eskabold nodded. "Too true, my dear. Too true! But what I meant was that I believe Scrimgeour is seeking to gain control of Potter to place severe limits on his magic. Irreversible limits that will leave him weaker still than you or I, to serve as a living reminder that the Ministry will act quickly to debilitate any who might wish to attempt to take Voldemort's place."
I shook my head disbelievingly. "But how would he do that? There's no good method to do it short of locking him up in Azkaban, and even then with him you could never be positive. I don't think Azkaban would have slowed down Voldemort for a minute."
"That's why he's been having his poke round St. Mungo's. He's looking for a potion, spell or charmed object that will effectively neuter Potter magically but keep him around free for all to see as a lesson that power on the magnitude he possesses will be snuffed by this Ministry."
"But is there really anything like that?" I asked him, repulsed by the very idea.
"No. At least not out in the open. No, the only other wizard I've ever known to ask the same questions as Scrimgeour," Uncle Boldie said, choosing a sprout, "was Voldemort himself."
"And did he find anything?" I wondered.
Eskabold smiled. "You are perhaps better situated to answer that question than most, my dear."
I was? However he managed that connection amazed me, to say the least.
"How d'you figure that?"
"To whom do you think that Voldemort turned when he sought something of this nature? Something not openly thought of throughout magical history, an enormous challenge requiring a keen mind and warped moral fiber?"
Well, when you put it that way…
"Severus Snape," I concluded.
Eskabold nodded enthusiastically, stabbing a potato with his fork. "Exactly. Now I'm not saying he did know anything about it, but who would have a better chance? I'd ask him if I were you. That, and how the boy could have stumbled onto the you-know-what business… you do know about the you-know-what's?"
"The horc…" I started, but he cut me off, eyes flashing.
"I never subscribed to that nonsense of not speaking his name," he told me, "but there is surely some knowledge best left unspoken and hopefully forgotten. It takes a deeply damaged soul to seek to rip itself apart, to accept the cost of murder to ensure immortality. A wizard has reached the point of no return with his magic then. No hope is left."
He set down his fork then, clearly meaning to continue but actually put off his favorite meal by whatever he was about to tell me.
"We healers can't view or assess the damage done to a soul. Even someone as truly gifted as you are in sensing the presence of magic gone wrong in another can not but guess at its effect upon their soul. As much as we know as wizards, that understanding is still beyond us, and it's one reason magic can still surprise us. We know how intent affects magic, but our true intentions, while hopefully governed by reason, spring from our souls."
A valid point.
He continued, "I had the closest look I've ever had at the heart of magic trying to heal Potter. To have born something as malevolent as Voldemort's own horcrux within his scar those many years and to remain unaffected by it is a wonder. Even sealed as they are, powerful wizards have always been able to sense the raw darkness of such things, if not their purpose. To have lived with it as he did, day in and day out as a child, and not be taken over… simply amazing.. And removing it as he did, desperate as I'm sure he was to eliminate Voldemort's every avenue of escape, was a horrible thing. You've seen the results of the kiss, Elspeth. How easily that could have gone wrong. Once finished with the horcrux, he had to fight off the very dementor he'd created before it turned to his own soul. That boy's body is indeed riddled with magic, conflicting magics, and the imprint of it all is certainly physical. There is no wonder he can't contain it, and yet he is healing. I should never have sent him home if he were not. I myself have great faith he will come to be able to control it all every bit as well as Dumbledore, for example. He can be that sort of wizard if just allowed the time to grow into it."
And there was the continued evidence of balance in the Universe. The reason most of us kept slogging on. For every potential evil there was a potential good, for every Voldemort a Harry Potter. And for every Scrimgeour an Uncle Boldie. It was just up to the rest of us to keep trying to play our parts.
I smiled, and he took up his meal with returned gusto.
"Scrimgeour's fears are not unfounded, Elspeth. They're simply unfounded in this case because he hasn't bothered to know Potter. You have your work cut out for you, though, and alas, you may not be wrong if you feel you were set up for a fall. Of course, if you manage to fall without toppling the Ministry itself, I'm sure there's always a job for you at St. Mungo's."
It didn't seem quite the time to broach my intended career change.
"Actually, there was one interesting possible breakthrough this morning. Did you hear from the first floor yet?"
"Creature Induced Injuries? Good lord, what's the boy done now?"
"Just a doxie bite, but it turns out he had a reaction to the anti-venom. While they were looking for causes they think they've found that he's been having a reaction to the yew ash and that's been the problem with his hands, not a curse at all."
I could see his brain ticking away with the information, filling and cross-filing and comparing notes. He's aces at pulling obscure connections out of things, that's what makes him such a good healer. I was hopeful that once it had time to percolate through his brain he'd come up with a solid next step.
If we could resolve the issue of the very visible evidence of Harry's encounter with Voldemort that his hands represented it would be an excellent start. Without the bandages as a reminder there was one less reason for the general magical populace to believe there were any lasting effects from his confrontation. And just perhaps, if the events of last night served to chip away at the trigger that I believed lay in his unresolved feelings for Hermione, we might be left with simply helping him learn how to cope with the level of his own magic.
So why did my spidey-sense still tingle when it came to him? None of this appeared to be deliberate or intentional spell damage, yet I still had the most distinct feeling that there was destructive magic of intent at work within him. It was a mystery. One I was quite determined to solve.
"Port?" asked Uncle Boldie.
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