17-B

It was hard to breathe. So many stunners, right to the chest, and at her age! It's a phrase she'd heard repeatedly, whispered in hallways outside her room. She watched as the lights dimmed. It was cold and gray outside, typical weather for London, it seemed, at least anytime she was there.

But Minerva didn't bother with the weather. It was just rain and clouds to her worried soul. So much was happening, it galled her to be stuck here in St. Mungo's. For what seemed the hundredth time, she resolved to leave on her own, doctors be damned. But just the barest movement tired her and, cursing her frailty, she lay back to reluctantly follow their orders to rest.

It had been so long. Perhaps she'd been forgotten. Arthur Weasley was still in hospital. Once in a while, one of his clan would pop a carrot-topped head through the door and ask about her progress. But mostly, she was alone in this place.

Minerva thought about the events that led her here, the choices she'd made, the sacrifices they'd all made in this seemingly never-ending war. She'd never really believed she'd be injured. She'd never really believed she'd not come through this as she always did, cat-like, on all four paws.

Now, though, she felt tired and defeated. Angry. Resentful that no news came of the progress, no word of what was happening within and without the Order. More than anything else, she felt old.

A nurse peeked in, starch-white and haggard. There were too many patients on this ward, Minerva knew from the overhead gossip in the halls, and not enough nurses. Nurse Generic smiled briefly, moved in to check her patient's pulse and temperature, reviewed the chart, administered a pill, and left Minerva with nothing more than the vaguest of chit-chat to feed her true hunger.

A crumb to someone starved for news, Minerva thought bitterly.

Don't they know what's going on? Don't they know why I'm here? I was stunned, right there on school grounds, she raged as the white figure disappeared to give equally-meager attention to the other patients.

Frustration burned in her chest more than the stunners. Blind. They were all blind, and soon it would be too late. Evil was here, now, not in some far-distant future they hoped from their comfy beds to never see. But words fell on deaf ears, and evil flourished, unchecked, unnoticed save for the members of the Order.

Minerva sighed. She felt the pill taking effect. They were very good at giving pills here. It didn't stop the pain, but it made the boredom and tubes and fear easier to bear. Can't be afraid when you're in a stupor, she thought vaguely as she fell asleep.

***

The doctor was waiting as Nurse Sheila Hedstrom finished her rounds. There was his usual subdued flirtation, which she endured tiredly, then on to the patient review. As stretched as the nurses were, the doctors were more than happy to spend a full three minutes per day with each and every patient, she thought bitterly. She hated the surgery ward, and she hated this doctor in particular.

"17-B?" he asked in a bored tone.

"Minerva McGonagall," she answered quickly. "Congestive heart failure. They brought her down from permanent psych a few days back. She's stable, but her recovery's been slow."

The doctor scanned the charts. Four days, 17-B had been in that bed. He still didn't know her name or chart, and didn't seem to care that he was still as oblivious to her as he was to all his patients.

"Anti-psychotics?" he mumbled.

"Advanced dementia."

"Scottish?"

"Thinks she is. She's from Connecticut; her parents were first-generation Scots." Hedstrom sighed. Her medical history was well known. Everybody here knew the Professor. Hedstrom herself had worked several nights down on Psych. The Professor was a surly yet loveable old coot, constantly calling the female doctors "Madame Pomfrey" and going on about the Dark Wizard who was causing so much trouble in her fantasy world.

Hers was the saddest of the state cases. Born in the 1920s, Minerva McGonagall had developed a mild neurological disorder around her 11th birthday. At the height of the Depression, her well-meaning parents thought it better to put her in an asylum--at least she would have three meals a day, something you couldn't take for granted in those days.

She was in an out of mental institutions for years, and the contact with more severely disturbed patients only intensified her delusions that she lived in a world of magic, that she was able to change herself into cat form, that she could "transfigure" items from one shape to another. She was bright, and managed to earn a degree through state-funded tutors, but eventually her illness made it impossible for her to work and live on her own.

"'Stunners?'" the doctor asked, with a condescending smirk. "What kind of whack case is she?"

The nurse swallowed her anger. Dr. Michaels was at best a mediocre physician, but his attitude left a lot to be desired. "She's a dear old lady with a severe medical problem, Doctor," she added with more than a hint of venom.

"Don't get touchy, Sheila." There was a superior defensiveness to his tone that cut straight to her spine. Sheila was a fifteen-year veteran of the nursing profession, and while she never wanted to be a doctor, she felt that even without a medical degree she was more of a caregiver to these poor souls than this Beemer-driving, shiitake-mushroom-eating yuppie wannabe. "Keep her dosage steady, and let me know if she takes a turn for the worse."

"Yes, doctor." It was the story of her life. Yes, doctor. Yes, doctor. Anything you say, doctor. Then on to more bedpans. She sighed, and moved on to the next patient, leaving the poor Professor to fight dark wizards alone for the night.

***

It was something she'd seen in a pensieve. Albus's pensieve, many years ago. The Ministry had rounded up so many of His dark followers, and Albus had attended some of the trials. The look on their faces, the utter lack of compassion and humanity, burned out of eyes blacker than oil, colder than ice. She saw them snarl, mock, guiltless in their inhumanity.

She saw an image of The Night. The wreckage of the Potter home, through the filter of Dumbledore's perception, the bodies of James and Lily Potter, the crying babe, forehead bloody and soon to be scarred by the most heinous of magic.

Minerva felt the cold form in the bottom of her spine. He was everywhere, biting and snapping from dark corners, waiting to take more, destroy more, sap the very humanity from countless more victims.

Nobody believed them.

She lay in her bed, shivering though the room was pleasant. She could hear the sirens out the window, hideous klaxon wails. It was coming. And she was stuck here, too weak to help, too sick to fight.

If only someone would come....

***

Her shift was finally over. It was just after eleven, and Sheila dreaded the forty-minute drive back to her apartment. Her kids were with their father this weekend, and Sheila was contemplating calling her friend in Oncology for a late-night Waffle House run when she heard a soft moan from 17-B.

She looked down the hallway. Nobody at the nursing station. Probably out with the orderlies...orderly, she corrected mentally, having a smoke break.

She cracked the door open to see the Professor, her frail form silhouetted in the lamplight shining through the blinds, trying to sit up in bed. In two long steps, she was at her bed, gently coaxing the elderly lady back into the bed.

"Now, Professor, you know you're supposed to rest," she murmured over the lady's protests.

"But I must return to my students. That woman--she's a horror. And with Dumbledore gone, it is my duty to protect them." Her accent was a bit affected, but practiced. She'd been carrying on this delusion for decades.

"It's okay, Professor McGonagall." Sheila checked her pulse. High. She needed rest. "You need to calm down," she added in her best nurse voice.

"But no one has come," was the plaintive argument. "I've heard from no-one in days. Dumbledore is gone. There's no one there to take care of them." The old woman's eyes glistened in the half-light, her face pinched and worried. "I must return to school."

"You are a very sick woman, Professor." Where in the hell was the charge nurse? Sheila had rung for her immediately upon entering the room. It was too early for another pill, but something had to be done to calm this woman down. "I'm sure they're fine."

"No one has called," McGonagall repeated faintly as she began to weary from the struggle. "No one has called."

Sheila pulled the woman's chart. No relatives. She was a Medicare patient, a ward of the state. She was all alone. For a moment, there was a hard knot in the nurse's stomach. She breathed deeply, wishing there was something she could do. Too many of these people, the psych cases and the dementia and the Alzheimer's cases, wound up alone, taken care of by overworked, underpaid, exhausted strangers.

It was a humbling moment, a heavy moment when she realized just how tenuous the mind's grip could be. She felt a shame through her. Feeble, demented, sick, this woman was ready to risk her life for a cause that existed only in her fragmented comments. She spoke often of Dumbledore, of his bravery and goodness. She spoke of her students, Harry and Neville and Hermione and all the others who lived so vividly in her delusion, and there was love in each word.

What would I do, Sheila thought. What would I fight for, risk my life for, endure agony for? She sat there in the shadows with McGonagall, mindlessly stroking her shoulder as the woman gradually calmed down.

My children. I'd fight tooth and nail for my kids. She looked down at the old lady, her face tight with worry. Her kids, she thought. She's fighting for her kids.

It didn't matter. McGonagall would never leave the psych ward. She'd never actually return to this magical place in her mind. What could it hurt?

Sheila leaned over, her voice low as she whispered in her patient's ear. "I'm not supposed to tell you this," she said. It was a risk. But she had to do something. "He sent you a message today."

"Dumbledore?" McGonagall perked up, her eyes suddenly sharp despite the pain.

"Shhhhh...." She made a point of looking around, partly for effect and partly because she could get in trouble for lying to a patient. "He told me to tell only you, to keep it confidential."

"Of course," the Professor whispered.

"He told me to tell you he's fine, that he's continuing underground, and that he wants you to get better so you can return to join the fight."

"The Order?" she asked. "Any news of them?"

"The Order is strong," Sheila said. "Good will triumph," she whispered fervently. "Trust in Dumbledore."

McGonagall nodded, finally relaxing. A crack of light appeared across the bed sheets and the charge nurse finally ambled in.

"Tell no one what I said," she whispered quickly to McGonagall before joining the charge nurse out in the hallway.

"She was having a bad dream, that's all," she told the charge nurse. "I'm off shift. Just wanted to make sure she's okay."

"Gawd, I hate this ward," the charge nurse complained as she ambled her large frame toward the nurses' station.

Nurse Hedstrom gave a final look towards 17-B and nodded. "Me, too, Betty." Behind those doors, good fought evil, magic was real, and noble souls risked all for what they believed in. Out here, it was just another job. "Me, too."

The End