Fading Scars
29th May 1993
St Mungos, London.
Andromeda Tonks arrived in the break room having finally cleaned a stubborn bit of blood from under her fingernails and off her lime green robes. As she sat she took a glance at the clock on the wall and noticed she was only 40 minutes late for lunch, which was significantly less late than normal for a day spent as the consultant healer on the accidents and emergencies ward when the emergency floo alarm went off for the fourth time that day.
She rushed the short distance down the hallway between the break room and the arrivals room, a rapid click clack of shoes following behind her. Pushing through the door she came upon a scene of complete disarray, the room was thick with a haze of green powder hanging in the air beginning to settle out on some of the flat surfaces, the fire roaring in a high green and blue flame, a smell of putrefaction filling the room. She saw shards of the floo powder pot at her feet before picking out Madam Pomfrey the Hogwarts healer through the fog bent over coughing beside a patient floating at waist height whose magic was in a dangerous state of flux. She took a step towards them sneezing as she did so. Poppy straightened up at the noise and accio’d a bed against the far wall towards herself.
As she reached the patient she took him in, at first seeing only a young boy with a pale face hidden behind a mop of unruly dark hair and a large dark stain on his forehead, rolling down his right cheek.
“Harry?” She whispered mostly to herself but Poppy picked up on it.
“Yes, now let's get him in a bed.” Poppy brought her out of what was going to be a moment of contemplation before it had a chance to really begin.
As they settled him into the bed a snap like a tightly wound band finally releasing echoed in the room, adding the smell of more ozone to what was already a room filled with sensory overload.
The victim of the unrestrained magical release fortunately was a pillow, a hole straight through both an indentation into the headboard and scorch mark visible at the base of it. “That boy causes me more problems than the rest of the school combined.” Poppy muttered to herself as she watched the smouldering hole slowly expand. She waved her wand with an incantation and the smouldering stopped.
“What on earth happened to him to get like this?”
“I was told that he was bitten by a basilisk. Although the sorting hat seems to think that's not what's causing this.”
She began with a slightly sarcastic tone as she cast the diagnostics used for creature induced injuries “Well it’s nice to know the seven years it took us to get accredited were well spent…” and had been about to pass comment about how she’d always wanted a shoe for a lawyer but trailed off as she started to look at the results.
The reading she got back somewhat made sense, but only if one of the readings had shown up individually and you ignored 40% of the diagnostic as noise, even if it would have been outlandishly absurd. The tests given to prospective healers during their final year of training designed to get aspirants lost into a tangle of indecipherable esoteric magic you’ll never encounter in your working career seemed almost quaint in their simplicity by comparison.
As it was, the parts that could be discerned were an impenetrable tangle of mostly nonsense punctuated with some of the most extreme contradictory and mutually exclusive magical side effects. Ignoring some records of treated bone breaks, bone density and growth problems from malnutrition Harry showed incredibly strong anti-poison, incredibly strong poison as well as strong indicators of a recent magical parasite attack. His magic seemed to be expanding suddenly at a rapid rate as if he’d done two years of magical maturation in an afternoon and his body was failing at containing it, his core leaking huge amounts of energy in constant waves punctuated with spikes of uncontrolled magic occasionally posing genuine risk to himself, his magic, them and the room.
Andromeda paused for a second to look into the boy's face. For all that he was on the edge of death or squibbing, he looked incredibly peaceful. He looked like a younger James had fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the fire after getting covered in dirt playing in the forest behind great aunt Doeas home.
Poppy looked at the diagnostic reading, looked at Andromeda and then pulled out her wand muttering ‘Sonorus’ “EMERGENCY! ADDITIONAL SUPPORT NEEDED! EMERGENCY!’ ‘Quietus’.
Andromeda fell back into her training and began following procedure for similar cases, pushing a faint pulse of her magic into a rune on the headboard that brought up duelling wards around the edges of the mattress then looked at him worried.
“They’ll hold… as much unrestrained magic as there is; he's still far too young for it to pose a containment risk. Use one of the private wards. Three doors down on the left.”
Poppy only nodded in answer and the two witches began to push as two other healers entered the room barging through the door only for one of them to stop dead in the doorway blocking them leaving the room then he pointed “Thats Harry Potter”.
“Observational skills haven’t dulled since you left Hogwarts Mr Spellwell, now hurry up and push.” Poppy snapped.
When they pushed him into the hallway they were met with the noise of startled whispers from the portraits that lined the hallway, caught in low conversations as news travelled in advance of the overhead snippet of Spellwell’s outburst, following them between frames craning their necks for a better view of events. As they made there way Andromeda noticed where some partially dried blood on the outside of Harry’s skin was rubbing against the bed sheets, causing it to effervesce and giving off a thin utterly unique tangy smelling green smoke where it made contact. She was fairly certain it had been doing that since he arrived and she just hadn’t seen it through all the floo powder filling the arrival room. She pushed harder, feeling the strain in her arms as she manoeuvred the bed around a sharp corner and into the room a fifth person filing in behind them at a jog.
“Has he been given anything?” a medi-witch started to take notes only for Poppy to hand her a file of parchment.
“He’s had one blood replenishing potion, beyond that I’m stumped.” Madam Pomrey explained what she knew to the others as Andromeda stayed at his bedside, long pauses of deliberation punctuated by moments of rapid wand movements and incantation.
"We’re lucky he even made it this far." The witch reading the file broke in, no mistaking the worry in her tone.
Andromeda gave a shake of her head, “I don’t think it’s as bad as we’re thinking, if the Basilisk venom was going to kill him it already would have. It’s too corrosive to slowly kill him and his kidney and liver function look better than fine, if it had damaged those we might have had some long term problems. I’ve never read anything about tests of phoenix tears and basilisk venom reacting, both are so rare that there's a chance it’s never happened before.”
She pointed at one of the medi-witches, “Violett, go to the reference room find anything you can about phoenix tears experiments and any information at all about basilisk's then bring it back here. I can’t imagine you'll find much anyway. We might need to put a call out anyway and we'll probably have to make that decision soon.”
“I was more worried about whatever effect it’s having on his core. I've seen dozens of cases of Core Integrity Collapse, but the diagnostic tests used for any of the usual and even unusual causes of it aren’t picking up anything amiss.” Poppy said slightly exacerbated, “I’ve already tried a temporary blanket wrap, precision patch and the Leszczynski technique. When all three didn’t take, I came here.” She trailed off, looking around the room for any ideas .
The remaining medi witch put a hand on her chin before saying “Should we give him a temporary damping potion? Nullshade would probably work best, let him keep some magic so other potions still work.”
“Not yet, until we find out the cause we can’t know if this isn’t his magic fighting back against it. Until we know we have to assume it might cause more damage than it prevents.” Andromeda gave with an air of authority that left little doubt she had seniority in the room and was ultimately responsible for the final say in any course of action.
Spellwell tried to speak in a carefree demeanour but couldn't hide that what he was saying had some modicum of truth behind it, “We need to think of something, if Harry Potter squibs while we're in the room the country will tear us apart. Is there a reason nobody has cleaned that gunk off his face?”
“Well, that sludge is a complete mystery but what I do know is that there's still some of it coming out of his head and Sterilito doesn’t work on it…”
Andromeda gasped sharply with sudden revelation “Vitae Revelio!” The sludge glowed a menacing luminescent purplish black. “Sterilito doesn’t work on living, or I suppose in this case looking at the response, dead animals.”
Spellwell looked at her with a glimmer of inquisitiveness in his eyes before turning his head to the room “Has anyone ever seen it before? I spent months on the magical parasites ward and I’ve never seen anything like this.” only to be met with a chorus of no’s.
He continued on “If the basilisk venom isn’t killing him do you think the hat was right and this is what's doing the damage?”
Andromeda conjured a glass jar before carefully beginning to use a switching spell, replacing the air inside the jar for the rancid substance. When Harry's head was finally clean and filling the jar mostly full she handed it off to Poppy. “Keep cleaning his head until it stops, I wouldn’t touch it or let any of it get around the room until we know what it is.”
As she moved to the door a Junior Healer interrupted her, “Where will you be? He’s still critical.”
“We’re out of our depth, I’m going to floo call the Unspeakables.”
3rd June 1993
St Mungos, London.
Harry blinked awake, disorientated and groggy; he took in a sterile smell in the air and the taste of something slightly metallic in his mouth. As he tried to comprehend his surroundings - bright, lit by crystal bubbles full of candles that floated up on the ceiling looking like giant soapbuds, light bouncing off white walls, a number of whirring metal instruments he’d never seen before gave the impression somewhat of Dumbledore's office. He thought he heard the noise of a tinkling bell go off and rolled his body towards it hoping to find its source. Instead he found himself facing a sleeping woman who looked like she was in her 30’s with long black hair sat upright in a plush chair beside his bed, a mound of envelopes and wrapping paper behind her. He noticed the lime green robes she was wearing had a badge with a crossed wand and bone just as she started to stir.
Just as he was about to open his mouth to ask where he was, the door opened and a red cloaked figure with pink hair poked their head around the door frame, “Is he up?” Then they paused, seeing him and breaking into a wide smile only to be joined by another floating red robed head poking around the doorframe from the other side. “Sorry, we heard the notification alarm go off. I couldn’t stop her in time.”
“Yes, he’s up.” came the response from beside him “Nymphadora” An exacerbated gasp came from near the door, “go make yourself useful somewhere that isn’t in this room while I check him over.”
“Fine, but I’ll be back once I’ve told Bones though.” she said before the door closed, cutting off the sound of a heavy tut half way through.
Harry opened his mouth to talk as the woman turned to him, raising a hand to quiet him, “Well you’ve been introduced to my daughter Nymphadora already but I’m healer Andromeda Tonks, I actually knew your parents quite well Harry” she added rapidly skirting the issue for now “and you’re in the emergency ward of St Mungos Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries in London.”
Harry could see she intended to keep talking but couldn’t contain himself any longer “Are Ginny and Ron okay?!” he blurted out.
“Madam Pomfrey mentioned a girl that was there when you were in the Chamber and that she's well but I’m afraid I don’t know who Ron is. The Daily Prophet hasn’t reported any deaths so I would assume he’s alive.”Andromeda said with a wry smile.
“Oh…Well that's good!” he said with a deep sigh and fell back onto his pillows. Harry's mood improved at the news, the furrows of worry on his face falling away and adopting a more lively tone. “How long have I been here?”
“Five days.”
Harry whistled, “New record.”
She gave a weak smile “More than a few people will be glad to hear you’re up Harry” said softly, her eyes slightly glazed and voice dripping in emotion. “I’m glad to see you up.” she finished before wiping her eyes with her sleeve then composing herself again.
It was a rather odd sensation for Harry to be having a stilted and slightly awkward conversation with an adult he didn’t know, or adult full stop if he was being honest with himself, especially one who was obviously worried about him. He wanted to ask about Hermione and the others, about Riddle, about the diary, about how he got here but he had no idea how much the healer knew about all what was happening in Hogwarts.
“You're the most popular patient I’ve ever had," she said gesturing behind her at the stack of boxes wrapped in gift paper. “Dozens of people popping their heads in, Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey have been coming by three times a day. Albus told me that one Mrs Granger has petitioned him no less than 11 times to be moved to an adjoining room.” Andromeda looked at him, raising an eyebrow.
“She's up! Can I see her?!” he rose off his pillows again in excitement.
“I’ll see what we can do but you're in here for a relatively long haul , probably be a few weeks until your magic has properly settled and we want to keep you in until then, you probably won’t be back at Hogwarts for any of the last few weeks of term.”
“Weeks?” he said with an increasing look of panic as he thought about how bored he’d get trapped in the hospital room.
“Harry, you almost died.” She didn’t want to mention that they were actually fairly uncertain that he hadn’t been technically dead at one point. “We had to call in the department of mysteries to stop you becoming a squib. It was 16 hours before it was safe for anyone else to be in the same room as you.”
“I got better though!” he whined, not quite sure who the Department of Mysteries were or why that was serious “I’ll go crazy sitting here for that long” huffing and hitting his arms on the quilt cover.
“Healers orders.” he was told in a stern authoritative voice that brokered no argument “Plus, I suspect you’ll be having a stream of never ending visitors over the next few days to keep you entertained… and I'll bring some books.”
“So what was wrong with me?” he asked tentatively, raising an eyebrow.
“Would you believe that being the first person to survive a basilisk bite had some medical repercussions?”
“I suppose that makes sense.” he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “But I felt okay after that…”
“Unfortunately some of what happened to you leaked out of the hospital.” She grabbed a newspaper out from a nearby table that had been hiding behind a small stack of chocolate frog boxes and handed it to him.
He stared at the headline ‘Boy-Who-Lived-Again! Harry Potter duels Basilisk, saves school!’
‘More running and luck than a duel.’ he thought to himself and put the paper down on a side table not wanting to read any more, or at least to save it for later when the inevitable boredom of a hospital stay set in.
Andromeda took it as an opportunity to explain what had happened once he arrived both narratively and medically. Doing her best to explain the complicated medical jargon to a teenager while omitting some details she knew the unspeakables had questioned her about and swore her to secrecy on while getting Harry to answer some questions she had only been able to guess at the answers too while he was unconscious.
Harry perked up as she came to one part of the story “My scars gone?”
“It’s not gone, most dark curse scars are difficult to fully heal.” For a moment she had wanted to comment that nobody else had ever survived that particular curse either and that he was a complete medical anomaly but thought it better to carry on, “However, it is better than it was. You can still see it but it’s just a bit of normal scar tissue now, Poppy said it used to be red and inflamed.” She used a summoning charm on a mirror from across the room and let harry peer into it in wonder running his finger along the outline of what was left of the scar.
In the future Harry would never be able to explain why he did it but he opened up a bit to the woman, telling her something he’d only told Hermione before. “When I was young, I used to love my scar, it made me different when I thought I was just ordinary. But I didn’t know how I’d got it back then. I didn’t find out until I got my hogwarts letter,” Andromeda took an audible deep breath but he just continued “when I found out how I’d got it, and then people kept looking at it instead of me so I grew to hate it. I just want to be normal…” There were a few seconds of silence before Andromeda started talking again.
Eventually she finished and they both sat through another stretch of awkward silence for a minute or so, each letting the new information settle in. Harry looked up and eyed her inquisitively “Why was your daughter guarding the door?”
“She’s an auror, sort of a magical version of a cross between a detective and policeman. They had to start guard duty on rotation after some reporters found out you were here and tried to storm the atrium.” She didn’t mention the hospitalised receptionist after some parcels had been delivered with shrinking solution, bulgeye potion, bloodroot poison and amortentia.
Not knowing how to respond he nodded and shrugged before sitting in the longest awkward silence to pass between them so far, Andromeda spent the latter half it wondering when he would notice he didn’t have his glasses on when he broke the silence again. “Will you get in trouble for falling asleep at work?”
“I should be fine.” She raised her eyebrow, Harry thought she’d have winked if she wasn’t too formal to do so “I’ve been hiding in here for the last three days and the Chief Healer knows better than to try and make me leave.”
Harry was shocked, a “Why?” came out quiet and breathy.
“Because you have nobody else, and Jamie would never have left if it was my Nymphadora.”
“How well did you know my parents?” He couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice, he’d never heard anyone use a nickname for either of his parents.
Andromeda gave a conspiratorial smile “I knew James since he was a few months old. Your grandmother Dorea was my favourite great aunt.”
Harry launched into a flurry of questions.