A Hospitalic Romance

Gabrielle Delacour was not a patient person. She never lost her temper-there was, in fact, a fair amount of speculation as to whether she even had a temper-but she was not patient. When something forced her to wait, she forced it to stop forcing her. When a delay happened, she went around it. And if she couldn't-an extremely rare occurrence, but it did occasionally happen-she moped. All day. Or possibly all week.

Which for some reason most men found far more of a punishment than her loosing her temper.

What most people didn't know was that she had learned at a very early age that when one kept one's temper, one was far better liked than when one didn't. How did she learn? Simple: she had a big sister.

She could be perfectly nice to Cécile, and still, she would fly off at the drop of a hat. It wasn't reasonable, and it wasn't fair. But what really wasn't fair was that Fleur, the babysitter of the family, always-always-took Cécile's side. Unless it was blatantly obvious that Gabrielle wasn't at fault. So, Gabrielle learned to keep her temper until it was always obvious that it was Cécile's fault, and then she was fine-and the pet of the family.

Cécile had moved out less than three days after she came of age. She had moved to Tahiti, and used her beauty and her Paris accent to gather rich men like flies. She had not written home once, but had consented to speak with Fleur when she was there on assignment. Fleur said she doubted that Cécile had paid for anything other than hair-care supplies and fingernail polish since she moved out.

Fleur was a fashion designer for a premier French magazine, and also was quietly a spy for the French Parlement du Magique. She probably could be described the same way, but as many of her meals were business lunches, Gabrielle had simply said, "No doubt she's happy," and left it at that.

Gabrielle herself was the oddball of the family. Not only the calmest, but also the most logical of the lot of them, she had thrown the family tradition of marrying high and never working a day in her life to the wind. She had instead entered medical school immediately after graduation from Beauxbatons, and had graduated the top of her class. She was immediately recruited by the Board of Medics, an experimental committee of the finest doctors in Europe. She was told she would be based in a tall apartment building in the Région Côte d'Azure, with a superb view, high pay, and the opportunity to develop the newest in medical care.

She took the job. She got to work with some great names, including, at one point, the seventh generation grandson of Nicholas Flamel, was following in his forefather's footsteps by developing the newest in potions treatments. However, when she turned out to be one of those names herself, developing cures to brain trauma, confundment, shock, and extended exposure to illusion, she was praised by her sister's magazine as "the most successful woman in France."

That was when she made the infamous mistake of saying anything in an interview. "If I could have anything I wanted from my career? Oh, I must say I would like to work with more people, in other countries."

Three hours after the first issue was out, she was called into her boss' office, and asked to transfer to their British department. "Asked" as in "ordered, or else."

"I do not speak the English!" she protested.

"Learn!" they thundered.

And so Gabrielle Delacour went to Britain.

*******

It was, she thought, rather a small place. There wasn't much to do, either; they were very boring, she thought.

Lacking any ability to get into the nightlife, she asked to be thrown even harder into her work. Develop cures for three different mental traumas. Get those two recurring patients to stop doing whatever it is that keeps sending them here-we know they're lying to us. Find out how to get those damn-near suicidal Aurors to spot internal bleeding and stop it-we've been trying for years to no effect! These were her cases, and she worked them as hard as she could. She succeeded where no one had, frequently using her veela heritage far more than she had in France; these hard headed anglais seemed to need it more.

However, she soon found herself bored again. She was, quite simply, too smart for the medical challenges that the sleepy little anglais presented to her.

She begged, pleaded, and eventually nearly seduced her boss in an effort to gain more challenge. Finally, perhaps fearing for his marital fidelity (she wouldn't really have done it, she thought... it might have been less boring though), the man convinced his superiors to allow her access to some tougher cases-the ones that only they worked on.

Which was how Gabrielle Delacour gained access to the Harry Potter case.

*******

Gabrielle Delacour sat quietly for a while when she saw her charge. She couldn't help but remember him as he was the last time she saw him, and there was no comparison. When they had all been celebrating with her Bill Weasley's family, that summer, he had been smiling, but quiet. You could tell there was a serious side to him, but he looked so handsome in those muggle clothes, to big for him though they were, and so nice, smiling sweetly at her, telling her he remembered her from when they had met before, that he was glad to meet her in better circumstances...

And now, he was pale, from not enough sunlight; thin, from not eating anything except the IV drip; weak, from not moving-all his muscles were flacid from extended bed rest. Most of all, however, he looked vulnerable, which he had never been before, and innocent, which that wicked grin and satirical sense of humor from the party belied, and heart-stoppingly dead. All of a sudden, Gabrielle knew why there had been no pictures of him taken after he defeated the Dark Lord: they would have sent the wizarding world into a panic. Nothing, nothing would have have been able to convince people that the Boy Who Lived hadn't died, and the resulting chaos could well have revealed them to Muggles.

*******

There are some things that need, at this point, to be stated.

First and foremost, there must be mentioned Mademoiselle Delacour's remembrance of Harry. She had, after all, met him once before: during the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, she had been the hostage for her eldest sister, who, she was peeved to remember, had not in fact rescued her. Instead, it had been Harry Potter-the famous, the kind, the honorable, the handsome, and, let it not be forgotten, the myopic Harry Potter-who had rescued her.

In her third year of medical practice, Gabrielle had developed a procedure that would finally, finally give people with myopia clear vision, with a failure rate that was less than .005%, and was guarantied not to cause blindness. Whenever she thought of this, she thought of Harry Potter, sitting on the grass after the second task, slime and gunk and no-one-wants-to-know what else on him, taking of his glasses and giving them a disgusted shake, muck flying off of them as the tape around the bridge broke.

It must also be stated that the case of Harry Potter was one of the things that had most prompted her to go into the medical profession. The bizarre case had fascinated her as a Beauxbatons student, and it still did; the puzzle no one could crack, the riddle no one knew the answer to.

Gabrielle had been trying to solve this particular puzzle for far longer than anyone knew. She got the story of what happened that night from Fleur, who got it from Bill, who got it from Ron, who got it from Dumbledore... she intended, someday, to get the real story straight from the old man, and in fact, that is exactly the thing she did first.

She had always been a step by step sort of person. When given a puzzle, she would work it until it was solved, never giving up, never letting those who depended upon her down.

She had never, ever failed in a project.

She didn't intend to start now.

*******

The first thing she did was find out what happened. This took a fair amount of work, including interviews with Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Albus Dumbledore, and countless Ministry officials to get the official records, all transcripts of the confessions of captured Death Eaters, and also Priori Incantatem records for the wands of all Death Eaters.

The next thing she did was find out what the diagnosies were on him, what had been done to him already, and what exactly were in the other three bags that weren't IVs.

What she discovered was a maze of mishandling, starting as soon as the Dark Lord went down.

Harry had used exactly the right curse, except that Voldemort was also partly him, because of how he was revived. Harry had therefore partially freed himself from his shell-not much, but enough that he would have been dizzy-and cost himself far more power than that spell should have, bacause he had to overcome that.

The Death Eaters had done exactly the wrong thing to kill him: in the shock of power withdrawel that Voldemort had left them with, they had probably to a man miscast the Curse.

The Ministry had done exactly the wrong thing to take care of him: they had let him sit for three hours while they attempted to clean everything up, and then sent him to the intensive care unit. The intensive care unit was where you sent people who needed speedy corrections; Harry needed thorough research and then effective spells, not throw everything you have at him and hope he wakes up.

The ICU had done the wrong thing by accepting him. This was exactly the sort of thing they should have refused to touch.

And finally, the people in the Private Ward had done the wrong thing with their drips. Harry in no way needed stimulants; all they were doing was messing him up.

In short, Harry was a mess. And now it was Gabrielle's job to clean him up.