De Novo

De Novo

Chapter One

A healer wearing Ministry robes came in and all but forced a vial of Dreamless Sleep down Ron's throat. The potion was weakly-brewed and obviously by neither Snape nor Hermione. He would have protested against being fed it if his head hadn't been spinning. Ron needed the release, as much as he hated having no say in what was done to him. The healer was kind-looking, soothing, and Ron fell asleep staring up at laugh lines fanning out from plain brown eyes.

The next morning--or he assumed it was morning, he wasn't sure--sunlight streamed through the formerly boarded-up windows of the Hogwarts infirmary. He was awake for some time, in a fog compliments of the second-rate Dreamless Sleep potion. It took a long while for reality to set in; he had already known, uselessly, that he was at Hogwarts, but a second examination with a rather clearer head made his stomach jump.

So many unanswered questions.

More healers visited throughout the day, not saying much. Ron's questions proved futile. He resolved to wait for Dumbledore. Hermione. Anyone. Not a soul he knew had come to see him since Harry's visit when he first woke. Others shared the wing with him, but they were drugged, comatose... Nameless faces, all of them, and they wouldn't have answers anyway.

Ron was coming to suspect that he'd been out for several days, at least, after being given the potion. The idea made him agitated, restless, and his questions started up again. "Where's Dumbledore?" he asked a healer, who shook her head and offered him an unidentified potion. Their silence hacked him off, their quiet insistence he behave and not ask questions. He tried to keep his head, but they would force more damned vials on him when he complained, so eventually he started shouting.

Which was when Snape came.

The curtain enclosing Ron's bed wasn't spelled to be soundproof. He was privy to Snape ridiculing, for at least five minutes; the state of the hospital wing, the lack of organization, the Ministry putting its "buffoon head where it is neither wanted nor needed," and last but definitely not least, the rubbish potions. Ron wasn't aware what shade of purple a particular type of pain elixir need be for effectiveness, but he was fairly certain the Ministry brewers had not achieved it.

When Snape had insulted and scattered the various healers to his satisfaction, he pushed back the curtains with one hand and sneered down at Ron as one would a nasty bug sitting on top of one's favorite cake. "Weasley."

Wearing colorful pajamas a shade too small, with too-long hair in his eyes, Ron tried to appear calm and unshakeable. "Snape. I'm surprised they sent you."

"Yes, well, evidently my time is best spent playing nursemaid to disturbed young men." He took a seat by the window far away from Ron's bed.

"Disturbed?" Ron bellowed, turning as red as his hair. "I'm not disturbed! This goddamned school is disturbed; the healers are completely useless, you said so yourself, and if I had my wand, you can bet I'd blow a hole through this fucking place." He'd tried getting up to leave several times and was none too gently ambushed by a barrage of healers and restraining spells.

"What an excellent testimony to your mental and emotional stability, Weasley. I congratulate you."

Ron wished very much to crawl underneath his bed after realizing how thoroughly he'd proved Snape's point. "Why are you here?" he mumbled. "Just to torture me?"

"Hardly. I'm here because the healers are attempting to move you to St. Mungos. As a delegate of the Order Potions Master, I must evaluate the situation to see if a move is warranted."

"It's not. I'm not insane."

"Why is it necessary to keep you on Calming Draughts virtually every hour of the day?"

"Ask them," Ron snarled, flinging a hand in the direction of the door. "I'm fine. I just want someone to answer my fucking questions. You'd be upset too, Snape, if you were surrounded by... mimes carrying trays of... God knows what."

A beat. Snape was either lost in thought or studying Ron very intently; his eyes seemed absorbed to distraction, in any event. "What is it you want to know?"

Ron opened his mouth to speak and couldn't start. Put on the spot, he couldn't figure out what it was that had been plaguing him. Frustration burned his throat and he struggled to formulate words other than 'what the fuck is going on?'

"Well?"

"... I need to speak to Dumbledore," he redirected, subdued. "Hermione. Or... Harry."

Snape shifted. It was not a movement Ron associated with the man. His back was so stiff, his robes heavy and dark, off-putting. The shift of weight looked clumsy. "They are not available. I am."

Ron snorted. "Not available. They're not dead, so they should be able to come here and answer a few questions."

Rumors of Harry Potter's death were everywhere. Theories and eye-witness accounts held an overwhelming monopoly over press. Ron did not know this; the comment was oblivious irony. He was also incidentally one of the only people who knew that Harry was well and alive; he knew about Harry's memory loss, too. He knew Harry remembered everything. Ron did not know much of anything else anymore.

He needed to find out, or they would need reserve that room in St. Mungos for him after all. It was driving him mad. Harry hadn't visited, hadn't left a note, hadn't sent word through a healer. Harry remembered everything, every fucking thing, and he couldn't do Ron the favor of stomping into the hospital and demanding to know why Ron was so sick, such a wanker, a rapist, no better than a bloody Death Eater. Every inch of him burned to know if he was hated or forgiven, absolved. He doubted Harry would come back, and doubted even more if he could say anything to explain himself if Harry somehow did. How could he say, "it was your idea in the first place?" How could he say anything that wouldn't make Harry hate him even more? And in the meantime, Ron had nothing but time to assess exactly what he'd done, remember it for wont of something else to do. Maybe he was already mad. Maybe he was dead. He undoubtedly deserved to be.

"I cannot answer your questions if you present me with none. As it stands, you will be evaluated for transfer. Perhaps I can arrange Ms. Granger's visitation, but the Headmaster is too busy cleaning up what is left of us from the war."

"He wasn't too busy before, when we were in hiding."

"Potter is out of danger now. It is not Albus' priority to look after the two of you any longer. Potter himself... Who can say why the idiot does anything? It is a mystery unto us all." He smiled, white lips chapped and stretched across a ragged landscape of teeth, but somehow it didn't look as sinister as it used to. Ron studied him a moment. Irritation ticked in the back of his skull. "If that is everything, Weasley," Snape began, standing with a decided flourish of robes, "I will leave."

"Fuck you," Ron said politely. Snape's lips constricted further over his teeth, and Ron could have left things stand as they were, but he couldn't seem to shut up. "Don't let the door hit your skinny arse on the way out."

Snape left without deigning to respond.