A Hospitalic Romance

Gabrielle quickly became attached to her patient. He was already dear to her heart for his efforts on her behalf; he was even dearer for being just plain a nice person; now, he was hers to care for. She became very proprietary. She wouldn't let anybody work on him except for herself, and the maids who cleaned. She guarded his records like a dragon, and moved her desk into his room so that she could stay with him while working.

Then she moved the whole thing again into a room with a window, so that he could have sunlight.

She sent numerous letters to his friends, teachers, and even his family, asking them to send things they thought he might like to wake up to. His friends responded with great alacrity, and his teachers were regretful, but they couldn't think of anything (except Dumbledore, who sent Harry his wand and a very, very young phoenix with instructions on care, and his head of House, who sent his broom). His relatives mostly sent hate-mail, except for the cousin who sent Harry a small dragon figurine that he said had been on his bookshelf for years before he noticed that it changed positions, and he knew it must be Harry's, so even if it wasn't something he wanted to wake up to, could she take care of it please?

She spent hours working at that desk in his room, only to surface for a bit, a wink, and a glance at Harry. Then she would work again. It became an obsession; she stopped asking to be given new challenges, and instead asked to have the rest of her caseload removed, to allow her to better work on this one. (She still wound up paid more than she had been before she started working on him, all from a fund for his medical bills.)

Basically, what it came down to was this: she was working her dream, and she wasn't going to give up until she had succeeded.

And succeed she did.

Harry Potter woke up to the sound of birdsong.

His brain felt fuzzy, as if he hadn't used it for a while, and when he tried to get up, he found his legs were so weak they wouldn't hold him. He was alive, though, and since the last thing he remembered was a whole bunch of voices shouting "Avada Kedavra!" he supposed he was still the Boy Who Lived. Which was not a good thing by his standards. Harry hated being famous.

He couldn't walk... he couldn't even stand... he tried crawling to the chair across the room, at the desk, and made it. He sat in the chair, having had to pull himself up for five minutes to get in it, and looked over the papers on it.

They at first seemed largely to be gibberish. He had no idea, for example, what a Visio-spectrograph was, nor what the results printed on the paper under that title signified. After a while, though, he figured them for test results, and glanced through them for a name. Finally, he found a large folder-a very large folder-with his own printed on it in a large but feminine hand. He longed to look through it-was curious to the point of aching-but found he couldn't. Try as he might, he could not pull the heavy thing over to him. Concerned, he flopped back in his chair-looking, he supposed, much like a dead fish-to figure out what had happened.

He came to the reluctant conclusion that he would have to ask whoever the next person was to come it.

One thing was sure: from what he could see of the bookshelves around him, whoever was in charge of him was doing a very good job of trying to make him feel comfortable. The walls were covered with his things... even-he smiled-his Firebolt.

He supposed he wouldn't be able to ride it until he got his muscle control back.

I have to talk to the nurse, he thought.

*******

Unfortunately, the nurse did not come in just then. In fact, considering that he woke up at eleven in the morning and the nurse came in at about midnight, he probably would have been in a fair amount of trouble had the nurse for some reason come in thirteen hours early.

Someone did come in, though, within about an hour: Gabrielle. She had just been out napping, seeing as she had stayed late and come in early to try her solution, and as a result had gotten about four hours of sleep. She had woken up, grabbed something from the cantine that it would probably be better not to identify before eating, and come in to see how her spells were coming along.

It was too bad that she had grabbed food before coming to Harry; she dropped it as soon as she came in.

Not that she could possibly be blamed for that. After all, a man who had been unconscious for over ten years could hardly be expected to move out of his bed-she thought for a while moment that he had been kidnapped, until a voice, one she had gone over and over in her memory but never heard this rusty with disuse, had said, "Fleur Delacour? What am I doing here?"

She remembered whirling, tearing her gaze away from the stunningly empty bed to here desk-and there he was, still pale, still thin, still weak, but suddenly projecting the same confidence and competence that had so remained in her mind. Not vulnerable and no longer innocent, he was, undeniably, better.

He was also, she noted irrelevantly, getting a bit of a sunburn across his nose from sitting in the sun for too long.

She opened her mouth, ready to tell him "thank god, you're better, you aren't in a coma anymore!" when suddenly, she realized that he was sitting at her desk. The stubbornness of the man dimly amazed her, as she blurted out in shock an almost exact echo of his question to her: "What are you DOING there?"

He smiled, sweetly but ironically, and said, "It looks like we're both clueless, then." He frowned. "What's a Visio-spectrograph?"

She stared at him, this strange being who seemed to have taken over her chair. "It measures what you can see... the capabilities of the Rods and Cones. We had a time getting yours, no one knew how accurate your glasses were..." She shook herself, and got a firm hold. She also tried to improve her accent; she was pretty sure that her first question had come out almost entirely in French. "Why are you at my desk? You should be in bed, your muscles will tear if you force them to work so hard, so soon."

He grimaced. "I noticed," he said. She looked at him a bit more, then picked up her... euhhh... it looked to be some sort of sandwich this time... and walked over to place it on the desk.

"Do not eat that," she ordered, "It has been on the sol." She couldn't remember what the proper word for sol was at this point, and didn't really care; she was certain he got the drift-whether he would follow her instructions or not was a different issue.

She fetched a male nurse, bound him to secrecy, and had him bodily lift Harry back into bed. Harry protested vigorously to this maneuver, but she insisted anyway. The look the male nurse gave her as he turned away from Harry was worth it.

As soon as he was gone, Harry tried to roll out of bed. Gabrielle stopped that one in its tracks; he could very well break a bone if he tried that too many times.

"You will not move from that bed, Harry Potter. I will call Steven back in here, and I will have him tie you down if you try."

He glared. Oh, how he glared. She wasn't worried. When he was truly angry, he would look blank.

"Well," said Gabrielle, "It seems that we will be working together for a time to try to get you into tip-shape." His mouth twitched. Oh, dear, she had gotten it wrong. She'd wondered if that was right... "And I am not Fleur. I am her little sister, Gabrielle."

Harry smiled, and truthfully looked rather relieved. And stunned. "Really? You were acting so forceful, I thought it was her... No offense, but I seem to remember liking you much better."

He wasn't saying something. What? "Thank you. And now, I have questions for you. You must answer these, so that I will know how you are making."

She asked him her questions, all right. She asked him so many questions about what he could and could not do, how he did and did not feel, and how he did and did not think that both their heads were spinning by the time they were done, and she could see him trying not to collapse. Finally, she said, "That is all for today, I think. I will take these to my superiors, report all changes in your condition-there are many!-and I will advise you that when you are tired, you should admit it. We have many tests tomorrow, and if you do not say that you do not feel well, we will never know it."

He smiled, quirkily. "Thanks for the advice, but I'm going to be horrible at following it."

"See that you are not! Your health will depend upon this."

He was grinning. What was he grinning about? She was tempted for a moment to ask him, but didn't. It was no doubt a private thought, after all.