so i haven't posted anything in about a month, and when i do, it's something as bizarre and long as this. (i thought i would finish it by friday. yeah, i was wrong.) anyhow. so i never thought i would write something like this, but there you go. and, uh. haven't done any of my weekend homework yet, and it's 9:20. so i'm out. :) enjoy!
As the intern Healer, all of the old veterans assigned Allison Shoor to what could have been the crankiest old lady with memory loss on the whole Spell Damage floor. Thin and small, with a sharp face and intelligent eyes, she had been at St. Mungo's for decades. A quick look at her file told the young Healer that it was the effect of a memory charm gone horrible wrong (the poor woman couldn't even remember her own name, so the ward practically forgot it as well and instead referred to her as ma'am – to her face – or 'Janie' – behind her back.)
"How are you today, ma'am?" she asked as she entered the ward.
"How do you think I am?" the woman snapped, gazing out of the window, now sunny, as the intern set down the tray with coffee, toast, and bacon on the end table.
Abruptly, the patient turned to her food and started to poor an ample amount of cream and sugar into her coffee. She sipped it. Allison lingered, unsure as to whether she should leave or not.
"How could I be fine, with this place smelling the way it does."
Every day following the crone would complain about the smell, so finally young Healer Shoor deep-cleaned all of her clothes, and took long showers and spritzed faint perfume before work. It never made a difference; her patient would forever complain of the smell, and awful, reeking, fresh, dead odor.
Allison was agitated for about two weeks until Healer Jonstonne, laughing, said that 'Janie' had always whined of the smell, and that they even had redone the ventilation and set in fresh flowers but nothing ever helped.
It was all in her head.
---
"I believe that I could have been a Healer," said 'Janie' one day, as Allison checked her up and fluffed her pillows.
"It's more work than it looks like," remarked Allison after a moment, tapping her wand so the quill would scribe notes onto the parchment hovering to her right.
"I was smart enough," the lady testified, before turning her head and looking stubbornly the other way.
What had baffled her previous doctors was that the woman never responded to any of the treatment properly, unlike ever other Memory Charm Malfunction patient. Her memory had come back, bit by bit, but not enough and it had no cohesiveness.
"Really. Do you recall what you got on your N.E.W.Ts?"
"My whats, now?" She seemed both baffled and slightly irritated, as if Allison had just started to sprout nonsense.
"Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests? You went to Hogwarts like everyone else," she tried to remind the old lady.
It was to no avail.
"Are you paid to talk rubbish at me?"
---
When Intern Shoor entered one day with breakfast, she wasn't entirely surprised to see 'Janie' already awake and sitting on the edge of her bed; her frizzy gray hair was all over the place, and although she never said anything when Allison walked in she had a... subdued air about her.
"Ma'am?" she asked tentatively, setting down the tray and walking towards her, laying a hand on the bony shoulder.
Her patient turned her head, slowly, and Allison was horrified to see that she was crying; tears were streaming out of those brown eyes, the eyes that had struck her with intelligence and independence on her first day.
She almost took a step back, but caught herself and held ground. "Is – is something the matter?" Her voice squeaked.
"The smell will get you first," came the reply. "The smell. The sight doesn't hit you until afterward. All you think is, 'Merlin, let me still have my life by the end of this.' True horror. You don't understand until you experience it." There was a pause. "It's like if you're afraid of talking in front of a classroom. Your voice seizes up and, even though you know what to say, you can't get it out. Except now it's everything. Your whole body. Even time itself." She paused, taking the time to wipe her face. Allison couldn't get over how much of a girl her patient seemed to be.
"These things just come to me," said 'Janie', mournfully. "It's not anything you'd understand. I don't even understand it. I've been here for years upon years and I don't know what's going on."
"Well, ma'am," she started carefully, getting over herself. "well, uh." She decided instead not to say the generic I'm going to try to make it all better. "Were – were you in the War?" She seemed old enough, after all – and—well, it was just a thought.
"War?" There was a pause. "Against who?"
"You-Know-Who."
"No, I don't," she sounded annoyed, and wiped her face; her hand took the tears with it and left a mask in its stead. "How do you expect me to know who? I thought you were a doctor -"
"No, You-Know-Who. A – a person, the Dark Lord. I mean, I wasn't even alive at the time, it was around forty years ago - "
"Riddles. I remember riddles, a lot of riddles. As a girl."
Allison blinked.
"No, I don't know what I'm talking about, either."
---
One day, Allison Shoor needed to have Healer Tanker take over her shift for 'Janie' because she was brought by an emergency call to the bare outskirts of London. A wizarding couple had been murdered and their thirteen year-old son had been locked in his home for two weeks, living aside his parents' rotting corpses until finally someone noticed something was wrong and had a Magical Law Enforcement squad break down the charmed doors.
He was found in the kitchen, sitting on the floor and sobbing, rocking back and forth. His wand was in pieces next to him. He refused to let anyone near him. They called the Spell Damage department because they were unsure as to what was wrong with him, besides agitation. Healer Jonstonne took Shoor along with him.
When she Apparated in, the first thing that hit her was the smell. A foul odor, the horrible stench of dead and rotting bodies; she started to cough, and dug into her pocket for a handkerchief to hold over her nose. It did very little to stop the smell from getting through.
The intern forced herself to creep forward, setting herself in plain sight of the poor boy, who glanced up at her through frightened and clouded eyes. He gaze darted over to Jonstonne by her side.
Allison took a step back, letting the older Healer approach, talking to the boy as he would talk to a cornered animal.
She saw him make a rapid signal with his fingers, and even though he was unable to see her, Allison nodded and withdrew her wand.
Seconds later, the boy was lying across the floor, Stunned.
As her mentor explained to the Law Enforcement wizards that the boy needed medical attention first and foremost and they were unable to do anything with him in this environment, Shoor hung back.
"You don't understand until you experience it," 'Janie' had said.
---
"How's old Janie going?" asked another intern, as Allison bustled by him with her arms full of parchment.
"Fine, why?" she asked, agitated, twisting her head so she can check his watch (she was unable to read her own without dropping everything).
Damn! She was late.
"You shoulda seen her yesterday with Tanker. Threw a fit. Don't even know what it was about," he rambled happily on as Allison tried to catch a few dropping papers. "Got him in a Full Body-Bind, stiff as a board. Didn't even have a wand."
"What?" Allison yelped, and subsequently cursed as the middle of her stack fell out. "Ah, God," she hastily picked up her papers and ran down the hall, leaving her confused colleague behind without even a goodbye.
When she reached her patient's room, the door was locked and it took her a good time to negotiate her papers into one arm so she was unable to unlock it. Once in, the intern Healer threw the parchment in the corner next to the door.
"It's you again." The voice was cranky. "You're late."
"I know. What's this I hear about Petrifying Healer Tanker?" she asked, crossing the room and opening the blinds. Light streamed in. Allison turned accusingly to 'Janie', who seemed nonplussed.
"The man treated me as a child. He thought he knew everything about me; he was convinced that it was my own stubbornness that was making my treatment slow down." She sniffed, annoyance creeping into her voice. "I'm not stubborn and I sure as hell would like to get out of here. It smells like a rubbish bin," she complained.
Allison had an image of a boy sitting between two dead bodies. She quickly erased it from her mind.
"I've been doing research, ma'am."
"Very good, I'm glad to hear that. Especially in light of all the progress we've been making." Her voice was laced heavily with sarcasm. Healer Shoor sighed, but otherwise ignored it.
"I don't think," she started, hesitantly. She was so unsure about her new hypothesis that she hadn't even brought it up to a fully certified Healer, for fear that she would be laughed at. "That you had a memory charm backfire."
Gray eyebrows shot up. It wasn't anything she'd heard before.
"You aren't responding to the treatment when everyone else does -"
"Yes, that much I've inferred."
"Please let me finish, ma'am. From what I understand through various... well, memories you've come up with, you've been through some sort of trauma. And – look, I found this..." She crossed the room, and managed to sift out two sheets. Shoor returned and sat on the bed next to 'Janie'. The woman shifted away. "Katelyn Bell, 1996. Hospitalized for touching a cursed object in the village Hogsmeade. The object later destroyed. Bell suffered minor memory loss and physical pain, but she was treated accordingly and was sent back to school within a few months."
She pulled out the second sheet of paper, and showed it to the woman, who scanned it with faint interest. "You had the same symptoms when you came here, although to a much greater degree, and, unlike Katelyn Bell, you had been injured for hours before you were hospitalized." Allison hesitated, but plunged on. "We've been treating you for having your memory charmed when that may not be it at all."
There was a minute of silence.
"I'm glad that I don't have an old Healer treating me, set in his convictions," 'Janie' finally said. "Are you sure?" Her head snapped so suddenly towards Shoor's face that her ample amounts of gray hair flew.
"It's better than what we've been doing this whole time," Allison replied honestly. "I mean, you get some things back, but -" She stopped, as the woman grabbed her forearm with tough but wrinkled hands and brought the Healer's hand to her nose. The intern felt warm breath on her fingers. "Uh, what are you doing?"
"You smell like parchment," she explained, setting the hand back down. "It's a nice smell."
---
It was nearly half a year later before Allison thought that any progress had been made. When she first presented her idea to the hospital board, they scoffed at her. She had trouble gaining the respect of her colleagues for going against what they all believed (she found her only ally in Healer Jonstonne), and then her treatment program didn't go as well as planned... but 'Janie' seemed slightly happier; especially the arguments and struggles with the board had made her, strangely, grimly satisfied. She was cooperative.
It was a bit odd, but good.
The condition was worse than Shoor thought. The woman couldn't either recall or retain incantations, history, or names (or any sort of proper noun, really). She remembered images, and feelings, but it only stretched that far. They had been working together for the better part of the year and damned if 'Janie' was able to recall Allison's first name.
But she was able to recall more and more – very little, not yet cohesive, but enough to make Allison hopeful.
Healer Shoor walked into the familiar room one day, and started to take her patient's vitals once more like she always did.
"What's that?" the woman suddenly demanded, pointing at her left hand.
Allison blushed.
"An engagement ring," she admitted. "Just last night." She couldn't help but let happiness show through her voice as a smile crept on her face. She fiddled with the ring.
"Is it that other Healer you're always with?" The woman scrutinized her diamond. "Why did he give you a ring?"
"That's how men propose marriage," she explained.
"What's his name again?"
"Ryan. Ryan Jonstonne."
There was a moment where 'Janie' was very silent, feeling Shoor's ring. Allison took it off and gave it to her to look at. The older woman turned it, pensively, over in her small fingers.
"I believe I was in love once," she said finally in a small voice.
Allison nearly started to cry.
---
"You mentioned once something about school."
"Yes, ma'am," Allison said, pleased as she sat down. Her hands were empty this time; she hardly bothered to take notes on the woman's words anymore. "You remembered!"
'Janie' nodded. It didn't appear to be important to her.
"You and I went to the same school, you said."
"Yes, Hogwarts."
"How old were you when you left?
"Seventeen."
"How old was I when I got here?"
"I – what?"
The woman waited patiently.
"Uh, from your file..." Shoor searched her head. "Nineteen, I believe."
"And now?"
"And now what?"
"How old am I now?"
The intern paused, biting her lip, unsure as to what the woman's reaction was going to be.
"Fifty-four."
There was a moment of silence, in which 'Janie' visibly gathered herself.
"Thirty-five years, then," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. It didn't work. "It doesn't feel like that. I don't remember a thing from that whole stay – only frustration and boredom. It's all just a blur of nothingness. I suppose Hogwarts was the same way, only it was six years, and happier." She frowned thoughtfully. "You could see the sunlight in the morning when you went down for breakfast."
"Yes, you could," said Allison weakly. "And rain, if it was raining, but it would never fall on you," she recalled.
It wasn't until later that she figured out she never had told the old woman how many years she had stayed at Hogwarts.
---
Allison Shoor walked into her patient's room for the thousandth time, exhausted but happy. 'Janie' seemed to be getting much better, and the board had commended her on it. The wedding was coming up in a week. Once she got past the moody indifference, 'Janie' was quite the person to talk to.
"So they call me Janie?" was the first thing out of the woman's mouth; she was still in her night things.
Allison blinked. "Where did you hear that?"
"From the Healers, as they pass. I've heard it before, but it hasn't registered until now." 'Janie' focused her sharp gaze onto Shoor, who was confused and wondering whether this would turn out to be bad. "Do you call me 'Janie'?"
"... Yes. Yes I do."
"Why?"
"Well – it's just something I picked up, everyone else -"
"No, why do they call me that? Why not my real name?"
"Well, ma'am, because you don't know your real name," she said hesitantly.
"What does it matter? You know my name. They know my name."
"I... well, I suppose it's because... um, I think... you're just so normal around here -"
"It's because I'm plain, then? Had I not been crazy and have memory problems, I'll just be that batty old lady down the street who owned too many cats?"
"Well – I don't know about that -"
"You're lying."
Allison blinked, caught totally off guard. She hadn't been expecting this at all.
"Excuse me?"
"You can't lie. I don't see why you try, none of my friends were ever able to do anything without the truth written all over their faces."
"Friends?"
Healer Shoor didn't know whether to be happy or shocked, and if she decided on one of them she didn't know which implication of the sentence she would apply it to: the fact that the woman had counted her as a friend, or the fact that the woman remembered that she had friends.
"Horrible liars, the two of them," she went on to explain, rambling, as Allison stood in the same place by the door, unable to move. "Don't worry, dear, I'm not mad. For all I know I would have been that lady. And I know that not touching a mirror in thirty years doesn't do wonders to my appearance."
She grinned at Allison's unmoving form.
---
"I left school early, didn't I."
It was the first time that the two friends had seen each other in over a week; Allison Shoor – Jonstonne – had been on her honeymoon. But her progress had been phenomenal – she had been recalling memories, and feelings (she was able to remember some proper nouns, now, like Allison's name).
'Janie' was always a very aware person, but that trait had been suppressed and buried during her stay at St. Mungo's.
"No. You didn't come back for your N.E.W.T. year," the Healer replied, fiddling with her wedding band.
"Do you know why I – why I dropped out of school?"
"No. No idea what you did during those two years, but you showed up here on the last day of the Great War. It's not like you kept a diary, or anything."
"Diaries are childish."
"I kept a diary!" she said, pretending to be affronted.
"And evil," added the woman.
"Diaries are?"
"What else were we talking about?"
"How are they evil?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and sitting on the same spot of the bed that she'd always sat on.
The patient appeared to think. She frowned at her hands, her old and wiry hands, brown eyes demanding an answer from slim fingers.
"People pour their souls into them," she said, slowly, as if she was making up what she said as she went. "And if someone is evil enough, that diary becomes a part of their soul..." Allison knew that her eyebrows must be near her hairline by now. "And then if a little girl comes along, and picks up the diary and reads it, she'll be corrupted."
There was a long, long pause.
"What are you talking about?" Allison forced the words out; they were spoken soft and slow.
"I'm not exactly sure."
"What are you remembering?"
"I..." The woman looked up through her window; the sun was setting and orange light was seeping in. "I think that during those two years after school, I think I was looking for things... like the diary. To get rid of them. There were... five or six total. Possibly more."
"Was a necklace one of them? One of these... things?"
"There was a locket, but it was already gone... and a necklace, too. We got rid of that one."
"We?"
"... I think I had some people with me... no, don't ask me another question, I can't possibly remember anymore..."
---
Allison walked into the room, and was socked to find that her patient was already wide awake, distraught, and rocking back and forth.
"Oh, Merlin – what's wrong -" she rushed up to the woman. She was crying, and Allison put an arm over her shoulders, making soothing sounds, asking her what was the matter, taking out a handkerchief and wiping her eyes for her.
"I – I didn't sleep last night," she sniffed loudly, and her voice was cracked and choked. Allison was able to see the dark circles beneath the tears.
"Why not?" She felt as if her stomach had a gaping whole torn into it. "What – I mean..."
"We got there in time," she sobbed. "We got there, and we were uncovering it, and – and just at the last minute, they arrived, and we had to abandon it to battle. And – God, they're dead, they're all dead, I remember the smell like it was yesterday."
Allison's shoulder was soaking wet, as were her cheeks.
"We had help, and – and I went to finish, and Harry knew how to destroy it, he figured it out but didn't have enough time to tell us so – so I," she stopped, her voice getting extremely high. The woman's breathes were ragged, and deep, as if she was unable to get enough air.
It was a while before Allison was able to calm her down enough so she wasn't on the verge of passing out.
"It wasn't fast enough, Allison, it wasn't fast enough, we were ambushed and – oh, Merlin, they're all dead, every single one of them, Mrs. Weasley, Ginny... the twins, all the brothers." The tears poured out at an alarming rate. "My fiancée. Ron, I watched him die, I watched him," she sobbed. "And Harry didn't notice, he was holding off three or four, and I had that last one, the last one, it was right in front of me – and, oh, the one time I was stupid. I – I grabbed the cup by the handle and flung it at Harry, who saw it quickly enough to destroy it in midair – but the damage was already done.
"Pain, I remember pain, too much pain, a burning, agony, the smell – just now, it comes back, years later, and -" Her nose was running, their tears were mingling, the woman's hair was wet. "- and I wake up here, as if nothing happened. I didn't remember anyone. Myself. I didn't remember nineteen years of being Hermione Granger, I remember being 'Janie' for thirty-five. And – and, and and they all died, every single one of them, and I can't even remember them for that."
She continued to sob, and Allison continued to hold her, and some people heard the racket and came in, but Jonstonne tearfully shooed them off as she held Hermione's head in her lap.
"You remember now," she said. "You remember now," she repeated, stroking the gray hair; spots of wet interrupted the winding flow of curls.
"How... how did he die?"
Allison didn't have to ask who.
"He destroyed Him. And then he was hit in the back with Severus Snape's Killing Curse. Snape was killed by Peter Pettigrew minutes later."
The two of them sat there for the rest of the day, watching the sun pass, not speaking.
It was the last time she would see Hermione Granger, although she didn't know it as she kissed the sleeping woman on the head and fell asleep next to her.
---
Granger left the hospital early that morning, before Allison had woken up; the Healer had made sure to give the woman leave before she fell asleep. The Healer didn't know where she went, although she supposed she stayed at the house of a Theodore Jacques Weasley, the married son of late Bill and Fleur Weasley. Allison didn't bother to follow.
Years after, Allison Jonstonne received a letter from said family, inviting her to the funeral of Miss Hermione Granger; the woman brought her husband and infant daughter, whom she named Jane (and called Janie) to the little Welsh town. It was a tiny ceremony, including Allison and her family; the Weasley family; and a few friends at the wizarding library that Hermione had worked at.
The casket was open. Allison gazed down at the face of her friend, her hero, her cure; the lines were smooth, the gray hair was in a fan around her head. She looked asleep, as if she were dreaming.
Her face was one of such peace that the Healer knew that Hermione was finally going to be home.
done! props to anyone who finished this. :D tell me what you think: good? or a waste of four thousand words?