Chapter 2
Tommy found himself in a dimly lit room, accompanied only by a curtain and a lonely nightstand with a bottle placed directly in the centre of its polished surface. He could vaguely make out a tube leading from the side of his bed down past where he could see, but he was too tired to care. As he turned his head to read the bottle, something around his neck halted his movement. The pain that accompanied the movement was not something he wanted to go through again. He did, however, peek over for enough time to make out a label reading, 'Skele-Gro'. There was a small cup sitting next to the Skele-Gro. Even with his headache, he quite liked the muffled buzz around him. It was far better than silence. Tommy sat up as carefully as he could, touching careful fingers to his head.
He remembered, vaguely, Dream bashing his skull in. He remembered being pulled backwards, the ripping feeling inversing. He remembered he was thrown to the side at the last second. Somehow he felt safe here, and oddly calm. Wherever he was.
Fingers pulled his curtain open and a gentle face popped through, lighting up as her eyes met his. "Oh, lovely! You're awake."
She reminded Tommy an awful lot of Puffy- and it made his heart hurt. She tilted her head slightly to the side. "I'm Miriam Strout, your healer, but you can call me Miriam. Would you like me to open the curtains more, dear?"
Tommy nodded as well as he could, soaking in all of her words. It had been far too long since someone had used such a motherly tone towards him, not overbearingly sweet or dripping with fake pity, but just purely gentle. She moved to the nightstand and he followed her movements with his eyes, tensing up slowly as she grew closer. "You've been asleep for a day. I gave you a Calming Draught when you arrived here and a Sleeping Draught soon afterwards, so you may feel a bit odd." Tommy just looked up at her, confused.
Miriam smiled kindly, shuffling back to the foot of his bed. "Your neck was fractured, so you have a neck brace. It stops you from moving your head and accidentally reinjuring it. I can't allow you to eat while your head is still healing, and that's the IV that's feeding you." She pointed to the tube and Tommy stared at her blankly.
"Do you know where you are, dear?" He tried to shake his head and winced. "Can you talk? If you don't want to, you can just tap your nightstand once for yes and twice for no."
Tommy bit his lip, clearing his throat lightly. "I ca- an speak, miss. Sorry. I dunno where I'm...at, or what a Sleeping Draught is. I'm- Tommy."
Miriam smiled again. "That's alright. He said you may be confused. What can you remember from before you came here?" Tommy scratched at the back of his hand absentmindedly and stared at his bedpost, trying his best to recall the events of the night prior. "It was real dark and quiet and something...hurt. It hurt so much, like I was being torn apart and pieced back together. I was talking to someone, but I dunno who. It wasn't for a whole lot of time that we talked, I think it was only a couple minutes." He scratched faster at the back of his hand. "I felt this...pulling feeling at my feet, and then it felt like something grabbed me and squeezed. Then I was- in that hall. It was so loud, maybe 'cause it was so quiet in that other place, and all I remember was trying to ask for help. I think. I can't- I can't remember, my head's all heavy. I’m sorry."
He glanced back up at the healer, raising his eyebrows slightly as he noticed an old man standing at her side. He had white hair and a long beard, pressed down with a blue hat. He wore matching blue robes and looked very interested in Tommy.
Tommy did not appreciate that. He would have cussed the man out then and there, being the big man that he was - holy shit was his head clearing fast - but something about the old bag made him feel as if, perhaps, he shouldn't. The old man blinked, intertwining his fingers. "I'm Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, but Dumbledore is far easier to say, don't you think?"
Tommy's eye twitched. He was truly resisting every urge in his body to cuss this man out. Even his name was weird and old.
The healer clapped her hands lightly. "Right. I thought what you had was something similar to the Twitchy Ears Hex, so I performed a larger-scaled counterhex and it seemed to work. After what you said, it sounds like someone hit you with the Cruciatus Curse, but I don't believe it was for long enough to have any effects on you mentally. You had a fractured neck and skull, so I need you to take one last dose of Skele-Gro - it repairs damaged and broken bones, also regrows them in some cases. It tastes pretty vile, so plug your nose when you swallow. I'll pour it out for you. Tell me if I need to repeat anything."
Tommy blinked slowly, taking in all the information as Miriam bustled past Dumbledore to the nightstand. She filled the cup about halfway full, but Tommy just stared upwards, transfixed by the lighting. Glowing bubbles adorned the ceiling, delicately holding up small candles. Huge, floating bubbles. The light from a tall, narrow window spilt across them in glorious sheens, shifting as the bubbles bumped softly into one another.
"Mesmerizing, aren't they?" Dumbledore was suddenly at Tommy's side and he screeched, reeling away from the old man. Miriam gasped, catching the blonde as he fell and turning on Dumbledore, hands placed firmly on her hips. "Don't you scare him like that! He needs rest and peace to heal, and you certainly aren't helping that by making him fall out of his bed." Dumbledore put his hands up gently in surrender, laughing quietly. "I won't do it again, Miss Strout."
"Please, Miriam is just fine." Tommy flinched as she handed him the cup, taking it warily from her hands. He stared at the swirling white drink, slowly lifting a hand to his face. He plugged his nose, sucked in a breath, and chugged the entire thing. It tasted dreadful and he gagged as he set the cup back down, coughing loudly. It was probably comparable to an invisibility potion, minus the aftertaste of rot.
He gave her a crooked smile. "I've had worse." She snorted before belting out a string of high-pitched laughter that put Tommy even more at ease than he was before. Dumbledore just smiled. Wiping tears from her eyes, the healer pressed a hand to his shoulder, retracting it as he flinched away from her so hard he nearly hit the wall.
His breathing steadied and he glared at his feet, refusing to make eye contact with his worried healer. "Sorry. 'M fine." A small, high-pitched bell came from somewhere near Miriam and she glanced over her shoulder, sending an apologetic look Tommy's way. "I have to go see another patient now, but Dumbledore will catch you up on everything you need to know, dear. Get some rest while you're at it, if you would."
Tommy leaned back onto his bed, still partially propped up. Dumbledore sat quietly beside his bed, Tommy did not question where the hell he had pulled a chair from, and the two sat in silence. The corner of Tommy's mouth twitched, and he gave in. "Where the hell am I? I haven't heard of any of this- Skele-Gro, Sleeping Draughts, Calming Draughts…none of it."
"Well, I wouldn't expect you to."
Tommy's eyebrows furrowed. "What?"
"I wouldn't expect you to know what any of that is," Dumbledore restated calmly. "You apparated inside the Ministry with severe injuries and have a very strange recollection of the events beforehand, you aren't in the Ministry's database, nor are you linked to any magical families in that database. I would say, from my knowledge, you are a late bloomer and were simply responding to a life-threatening event in the only way your body knew possible - apparation. In simpler terms, I believe you are a wizard."
Tommy blinked. "I am going crazy."