Author's Note: Enjoy! Also: I know that Healers tend not to operate like Muggle surgeons (thank you, Ron) but home girl had a dialogue prompt to use, so please let me be.
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.
Hogwarts: Voodoo Magic, Task #4 : Write about someone who loves more than one person. (Restriction: Cannot be familial or platonic love)
Warnings: Hospital setting; character recovering from a dark magic induced injury
Stacked with: Summer Bingo; Shipping War; MC4A; Flouting Regulations; Sky's the Limit; Eternal Rhapsody; Remains of War; Hogwarts
Individual Challenge(s): Gryffindor MC (x3); Seeds; Old Shoes; Trop It Up C (Bed Sharing); Themes and Things A (Love); Themes and Things C (Flowers); The 3rd Rule; Ethinc and Present; Rian-Russo Inversion (Y); Real Family; Flags and Ribbons (Y); Short Jog; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux (Y)
Representation(s): Chasers Delight; severe injury
Bonus challenge(s): Clio's Conclusion; Three's Company; Second Verse (Bechdel Test); Chorus (Pear-Shaped)
Tertiary bonus challenge(s): Satisfaction
Word count: 1836
Summer Bingo entry information:
Space Address: 3D
Prompt: Bundle
Shipping War
Ship (Team): Angelina Johnson/Alicia Spinnet/Katie Bell (Chaser's Delight)
List (Prompt): Summer Big List (Laughing)
The Time It Takes
When Angelina woke, she was in more pain than she had been in a long time.
She drew in a sharp intake of breath, and shot up in pain before falling back on her sheets. That brief second of sitting up made her hyper aware of just how sticky with sweat she was.
She collapsed back on her pillow and moaned. The lights were out in her hospital room, so the few pieces of furniture and the bouquets of flowers that her girls kept up only existed as bulky outlines. Her leg was heavily bandaged in a plaster emblazoned with magical runes whose glowing pulsed as they worked their effect. Spells kept it raised in the air and perfectly still.
Alicia, who slept the lightest, was the first to wake up.
"Hey," she said, leaning from the chair where she'd been sleeping towards Angelina. "Hey… lumos."
The tip of her wand lit up, and Alicia stuck it in a vase of red roses on her bedside table. The light it threw around the room was soft, but even seeing a sliver of Alicia's sharply angled face soothed her.
"Katie, she's up," Alicia said quietly, nudging the girl on the other side of the bed awake.
Katie was always slow to wake up. On lazy mornings, it was rather cute to watch the process unfold. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and, as if suddenly remembering and realising where she was, took Angelina's hand and kissed it.
"Welcome back," she said. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I just fell off a broom during a particularly wicked stunt," Angelina grumbled. The pain shooting up her body was red hot and intensifying quickly. "Can someone call a Healer?"
"I'll go," Katie said, squeezing Angelina's hand one more time before creeping out of the hospital room.
Angelina sunk into her pillows a little more, and turned her head to face Alicia, who leaned in and kissed her.
"Do you remember what happened?" she asked quietly.
"I remember Healer Amjad putting me under," Angelina said.
Alicia nodded. Secretly, Angelina was glad that she was the one who had stayed. Alicia was blunter than Katie, who instead would be trying to soothe Angelina and make her comfortable at the moment. She would need all of that later, God knew neither of them would get far without Katie smoothing down their edges, but Angelina just needed the blunt bare minimum at the moment.
"She did," Alicia said. "Amjad's still around, she didn't want to go home tonight until she'd seen you again. Essentially, when they made the cut to try and fix the fracture, they realised that the bone in your leg was growing on its own accord again."
Angelina sighed.
"I thought that was dealt with," she said.
"Amjad thought so too. Believe me, Ange, she was shocked," Alicia said. "But injuries that have to do with dark magic… Well, they're hard to predict, we've always known that. Amjad had to deal with that and contain whatever curse was causing that to happen to your leg. She didn't get to fixing the fracture."
Angelina bit back a lot of things in that moment, which was good because Katie came back with a Healer and a Mediwitch.
"Hello, Angelina. May I turn on the light?" Healer Amjad asked, coming in.
"Yes," Angelina said. When she spoke out loud her voice was croaky, and Katie immediately poured a glass of water from the room's pitcher and brought it over. Angelina was thankful, and they helped her sit up.
The Mediwitch gave Angelina a quick potion for the pain. Amjad examined her quickly and then explained what Alicia had briefed Angelina on in more detail and with more accurate, scarier words.
"It's a lot to take in all at once," Healer Amjad said. "For now you should rest. Did you want more water, tea, anything to eat?"
"I want to sleep," Angelina said.
"Okay," Healer Amjad said. "We have a sleeping drought and some ditany you can take for the pain. I'll be back in the morning, and I can answer any questions. That will also be a better time for us to discuss what our next steps going forwards are."
"Okay," Angelina said. She had heard those words before and associated them to nothing good.
"Sleep well," Healer Amjad said, rising. "Miss Bell, Miss Spinnet, are you sure you don't want cots to be brought in for you?"
"We're sure," Alicia said.
"Thank you," Katie added.
The Healers nodded and excused themselves, shutting the door softly behind them.
"I thought it was nearly over," Angelina said.
"I know," Katie said, taking her hand. Her thumb drew circles on Angelina's sensitive palm. "I'm sorry, Ange. But like Amjad said, they took a sample and they'll examine it—maybe they'll find something. We won't know until morning."
"But we do, don't we? Whenever there's a question they can't answer, it adds months to my recovery," Angelina said. "They said it'd only take one operation… but I'm still here and that was three years ago."
"We know," Alicia said.
"No you don't," Angelina spat out. "Because you're still flying."
Her voice shook as she spoke the words. She closed her eyes, but knew she couldn't take them back. Alicia was flying with the Wigtown Wanderers and Katie had taken on Madam Hooch's position as Hogwarts' flying instructor when she'd retired shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts. They were both perfect for their roles and Angelina was always begging to hear more about their work and what they did. She was proud of both of them, happy for both of them. But it hurt, because Angelina would have been so, so good as well.
She had been good, until the Battle of Hogwarts. The Healers had been trying to figure out for years now what kind of curse she'd been hit with that night exactly, but for every step forward there were two steps back. Their potions didn't work, reparative charms backfired, the wrong therapies were prescribed… And Angelina always ended up back in a bed in St. Mungo's, no matter how much progress they'd thought she'd made.
One time, she'd actually been able to walk on the injured leg with crutches. It had made for a happy Christmas—up until a potion prescribed to strengthen her muscles caused the curse to flare up again and chew at her flesh from the inside out. She'd cried for hours that time, waking up after a week of fitful sleep to a teary Katie, a pale Alicia, and the news that she was back at square one. Really, her current setback had nothing on the particular brand of heartbreak she'd faced then. But still, she was losing her patience and running out of time. The Appleby Arrows were holding onto Angelina's contract for her, waiting until her leg got better, but she knew that that couldn't go on forever. This injury couldn't go on forever.
Katie laid down next to her, careful not to touch Angelina where she knew there were sore spots, and kissed the place between her ear and chin before laying down at her side. She put an arm over Angelina's chest with the kind of practise that only came from years of working around old injuries, and her hand wound itself in Angelina's hospital robe.
Alicia shut the lights before slotting herself into this arrangement of theirs on the too-narrow hospital bed. She drew Angelina towards her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and hooked her leg around Angelina's uninjured one. Now, she was properly bundled up.
"Katie and I talk about this, sometimes. We don't know what to do to help," Alicia said quietly. "We honestly don't, Ange."
"We're just so sorry that this is happening," Katie said.
"And we know it's not our bodies on the line. Not our lives in the same way."
"And sometimes we forget how hard this must be for you because for a long time we both thought we were going to lose you," Katie said. Her voice cracked. "I can't speak for Ali, but I'm so happy every time that you wake up that sometimes I forget that that's not the only thing at stake for you. But what I do know, and I never forget this, is that we will be here for you as long as it takes. That doesn't fix anything, but…"
"It's enough," Angelina said quietly. "When I get frustrated, I'm not mad with you two. I promise. You two have stood by me and I… I appreciate it. I love you. You're doing more than enough."
"We know you do," Alicia said, kissing her temple. "But just you wait until morning, when Katie and I tell you about Action Plan 237."
Angelina grinned. They always copied her naming scheme for the drills and maneuvers she had designed while they were still playing for Gryffindor.
"What is Action Plan 237?" she asked.
"It's a surprise for tomorrow morning."
"There's a picture to go with it that you need to see."
"Not a picture, Katie, a diagram."
"You're making fun of me," Angelina protested.
"No, no, we're serious. It's a diagram," Alicia said. "It's… just a little hard to visualize."
"We can tell her some of it," Katie said.
"Katie, you traitor."
"No, we can!"
"You should," Angelina said. "Come on, I slept through dinner and didn't even get my pudding cup today."
"How dare you assume that Action Plan 237 is only equal to one pudding cup?"
Angelina laughed.
"So I really don't get to know?"
"Come on, Ali, she really doesn't?"
"Hmm. Let's just say that Katie and I might have a way to get you up in the air again, between the two of us," Alicia said.
"What? How?"
"A contraption," Alicia said. "It's straight out of hell right now, but we think that with George Weasley's can-do attitude and absolute mad genius, we'd be able to make it structurally sound."
"Don't tell the Healers until we do though, they'd all have a cow."
Angelina felt herself smiling.
"I can't…" Angelina shook her head softly. Every now and then she came to the conclusion that she'd used up a lifetime's worth of luck to end up with the two of them. If so, it had all gone to a worthy cause. "I can't wait."
"It's a plan, not set in stone yet, dear," Katie said. "But we'll do our best for you."
"You already are," Angelina said. "You have no idea how much worse it would be if I weren't quite so bundled up between the two of you."
"Of course," Alicia said. "I mean, who would have swiped pudding at dinner and put a chilling spell on it to save it for a later date?"
"You didn't," Angelina gasped. "I would tell you to go get it, but I don't want you to move."
"Fair point," Alicia said.
"Pudding for breakfast," Katie said. "Perfect."
Angelina smiled. It was perfect, in a way.