The Unadvertised Job of a Hogwarts Matron

Notes:Thank you to codenamelily and Amy for beta reading! It is much appreciated. Dates were checked at the Lexicon, but some are still approximate

7 June 1992

"Er, Madam Pomfrey?" asked a tentative voice from her right. Poppy sighed, recognizing the red hair of a Weasley in her peripheral vision. The Weasleys always gave her the most trouble. Bill Weasley had suffered from a new cold every other week, due to a poorly treated case of dragon pox he had as a child. Charlie had been constantly in and out of her ward with Quidditch injuries. Percy had ruined his eyesight with late-night studying. The twins, Fred and George, were always around with suspicious injuries they couldn't—or wouldn't—explain. Ron Weasley had been in earlier that year with something she could have sworn was a dragon bite. Reminding herself how much she loved her job, she turned around.

"Yes, Mr. Weasley?"

"Is Harry all right?" He paused. "Just, I thought that he would be awake by now." Poppy sighed again. She, too, had thought that Harry Potter would have awoken by now. Nevertheless, a strong case of magical exhaustion and likely psychological trauma from his encounter with Quirrell had kept him down for the count..

"He should be awake by the end of the week, Mr. Weasley," said Poppy, patting Ron on the shoulder. His concern really was sweet. He, Hermione Granger, and numerous other students had been in and out, inquiring after Harry Potter. Noticing that Ron's frown hadn't gone away, she gave him a Chocolate Frog out of the sizeable pile Harry had received and sent him on his way.

That settled, she turned around and ran some more tests on Harry. Why wasn't he waking up? As she ran her wand over Harry's unconscious form yet another time, she remembered that really, those Weasleys weren't all that bad. They were always polite (though how they could not be with a mother like Molly was beyond her), and often full of tales about themselves or their siblings that had Poppy in stitches.

6 November 1993

"Poppy?" asked a familiar voice from her left. The Hogwarts matron sighed, knowing what Remus wanted. Though she saw him often enough during his time at school and over the past year, right now he was most certainly checking up on another of her accident-prone students, Harry Potter.

"Hello, Remus," said Poppy. She was expecting a rush of Gryffindors any moment now, and knew that Lupin had likely left the game early to see Harry. She could hardly blame him, as she had been witness to how close he and his school friends had been both during and after their time at Hogwarts. As a member of the Order herself, she knew that Dumbledore had forbidden contact with Harry during most of his childhood, and how that action must have hurt Remus over the years. To be barred from seeing a boy that was as good as his own… Poppy could hardly imagine it. Nor could she imagine how hard it would be for Harry to understand, once someone finally offered a full explanation to him.

But that was not her place, she knew. Her job was to cure his ills and send him back to class, hopefully in better shape than when he came in. So she let Remus in, said nothing when the worn man ran his hand through the boy's unruly locks, and quietly reminded the former student that any time he wanted to, he could come clean to Harry.

She watched as Remus walked away, and suppressed the small part of her that wanted to tell Harry herself.

19 June 1996

As he woke up, coughing for breath, Poppy handed Ron Weasley a glass of water.

"Harry," was the first thing he croaked out after drinking it.

"Is fine," said Poppy, frowning. "He was able to walk out of the Ministry with minimal injuries, unlike you."

"But he saw—" and here, Ron stopped.

"I am aware of most of what he saw last night," Poppy confirmed, guessing that he meant the death of Sirius Black. Yes, she had known, and she had cried for the boy she remembered. She had also wondered if Sirius would find peace in the afterlife. She had visited Sirius at headquarters enough to know that the man that escaped from Azkaban was a shell of what he used to be. She remembered Sirius Black—vibrant, loud, larger-than-life—and the man that had resided with his old friend at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was not him.

"Harry can't deal with this—it'll kill him," said Ron quietly. "Sirius was all Harry had," he added.

"He has you, does he not?" said Poppy mildly, running her wand over the youngest Weasley brother and frowning at her scan results. "He has Miss Granger, and Mr. Longbottom, and your sister and the Lovegood girl, yes? Along with your parents, Remus Lupin, and his head of house? There are a great many people Mr. Potter 'has,' Mr. Weasley—you just need to make sure that he knows it."

Ron swallowed.

"Yeah," he replied, leaning back onto the pillows. "I guess I do."

21 May 1999

Poppy walked out of the main wing and into the private room where Harry lay, unconscious again. She used to have a count of how many times he had been in her wing, unawake and recovering from another near-death experience. After the past two years she had lost count, had not even had the time to attempt to keep track. Harry, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger had not returned to Hogwarts for their seventh year. For that year and the one after they had been off on a mission. It was something related to the Order, since Harry claimed it was assignment handed down from Dumbledore himself, but it was also a mission apparently so secret he couldn't share it with actual Order members. The security of his mission was also top priority, since Harry, Ron, and Hermione refused to be treated by any non-Order member, and they would seek treatment nowhere but Hogwarts.

Then, a month ago, he had entered the wing for what Poppy had known was the last time. He was bleeding profusely, and even though she wondered at his ability to stay conscious through the pain he was asking about the survivors. She had tried to delay him, to get him to rest and then find out, but it was useless. He denied treatment unless she told him as she worked, so finally she had to relent.

"The Order?" he asked, his face pained.

"Of the group that went with you," said Poppy slowly as she coaxed him into drinking a pain reliever, "Kingsley and Arthur are recovering right now. Everyone else…" she trailed off, for they were her friends too, and the heavy losses were almost too much to bear.

"Molly? Bill? Fleur?" asked Harry, his eyes filling with tears. She was examining his protruding arm bone, but Poppy knew that wasn't it.

"No," she replied softly. Percy Weasley had taken off work indefinitely to take care of little Genevieve. The final battle had been fought at two different locations, one attack led by the Order on Voldemort's hideout and the other led by Death Eaters on the Ministry building. On that day, Percy had heard about Bill and Fleur and left work to find his niece right before the Ministry was attacked. The only remaining Weasley of his generation had felt guilty about it ever since. He wanted to fight with his co-workers, even though if he had he would probably be gone now as well.

"Remus?" Harry asked, lost.

"No," she whispered. She had to struggle to hold in her tears, for Poppy had taken care of Remus throughout his school days and beyond. His death had been one of the hardest on her, though the sheer amount of loss in the final battle staggered her whenever she had a moment to think of it.

"What about—" Harry took a deep breath, and let out a sob. Poppy knew what was next. Technically speaking, the other two thirds of Harry's trio weren't part of the Order, and neither were the youngest Weasley, Lovegood, or Longbottom. They had never been inducted, as Fawkes had not been around for them to go through the ceremony.

"Miss Lovegood is in a private room over there," said Poppy, gesturing to the room. "She was the only one to come back with Arthur and Kingsley."

After that, Harry had been inconsolable. He yelled about how he hadn't even cared, at the end—how he had only done this for them, for his friends. She had tried to calm him, to no avail. Eventually she had to force herself to spell him unconscious. If she hadn't he would have made his injuries all the worse. He had not woken since.

Luna had recovered quickly after and had not left his side. Even now she sat with Harry's hand in hers, talking quietly. She was not alone in her vigil. Every morning at eleven, Percy came and apologized to Harry. Poppy did not know what for, and had only heard quiet murmurs of regret that the bespectacled Weasley hadn't listened to his family. Around two in the afternoon, Arthur would come by and calmly respond to Harry's post before sobbing at his surrogate son's bedside. At five Kingsley and his wife would bring flowers, and his eight-year-old daughter would read out of a book of fairy tales. They had a routine, the survivors, and for some of them it seemed like the only thing that kept them sane.

Poppy wondered what they would do when Harry woke. If he woke.

Medically, Harry should have been awake long before now. The world knew this, and it caused more and more reporters and Ministry officials to inundate her with letters, crowd her fireplace with questions, and pound on her door. His friends—his remaining friends, rather—had no such trouble. Anyone who knew Harry knew that near the end he had been ready to give up. It had been his friends—and mainly Weasley and Granger, at that—who had kept him going.

Now that they were gone, he simply had no reason to wake.