Exhaustion
Friday 3:d December 1971
His eyes felt heavy and his mind foggy. The only sharp thing was the ache in his body. His head still felt blurry. As though he was emerging from some dark deep sea.
Like he’d been shoved under the surface. As if though the water had flooded his lungs. Clogging up his airway. As though it had scratched at his throat like the wave crashes against the rock, slowly sanding it down to pebbles and sand.The water fighting its way up, out of him. Vomit in the back of his mouth. He knew it had been a mistake to eat that pudding as he threw up.
The vomit mixed with blood. Probably from something broken inside him. His breaths hurt. They were ragged and wet. Something seemed to pierce him in the guts every time he sucked in a breath.
His vision was blurry. His hands shook like an aspen leaf. He couldn’t make out an apparent source except for the scratches and bite marks but they couldn’t be the cause of his ragged breathing. No- he knew enough about injuries by now to understand his ribs were broken, or at least a few.
He sighed heavily then silently cursed himself as something stabbed him. Every bone in his body felt heavy. He tried to stand but failed miserably. His knees shook too much.
He could barely think. He was so so tired.
The tiredness was so heavy he couldn’t even be embarrassed when Madam Pomfrey found him naked in a puddle of his own vomit and blood.
When she finally did she barely managed to hide a gasp of horror when she saw him. But with his too sensitive senses he could hear it. Smell the pity, the empathy, outrage, sorrow and the fear. She didn’t feel angry at him, rather for him. Angry at why this happened to him.
She didn’t fear him either. She was scared of the pain he was in. What pain he would get in since it was still getting worse.
For a moment she just stared, trying to slip into that calm but gentle and firm mindset. The one she always used with him.
If he had enough blood in his system to blush, he would’ve. Laying nude with broken bones in a pile of bodily fluids wasn’t number one on his bucket list exactly.
She tried to fix it all there but said she needed a sterile environment to work in so she would move him to the hospital wing.
She conjured a magic stretcher. He tried to insist he walk. It really was embarrassing to go in that stretcher. His voice, the traitor, was too weak to be convincing.
The next hour wasn’t pleasant. It consisted of her breaking back his bones, the ones twisted wrongly. Or mending the broken bones. That felt like someone putting in nails between them to make them stick together. The hits of the hammer sending vibrations through his body.
He was grateful to sink into blissful oblivion.