A/N: Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Term 3 – Herbology Assignment 1. Compulsory prompt: theme: healing, setting – hospital; optional prompt: imagery – window of sky
And by therapeutic window, I mean a window that's supposed to be therapeutic, not the pharmacological term in case there's any other pharmacology majors floating around. :)
Therapeutic Window
Charmed hospitals were a godsend for most who hadn't already exhausted the novelty but hers showed the open sky: bright sun, barely any clouds – it was perfect flying weather, perfect Quidditch weather, but she could barely make it out of bed, let along on to a broom. So it hurt. Not the sort of hurt that saw her to the hospital bed to begin with, that saw her to months in a coma until the curse had mostly dissolved from her body. There were faint traces left, traces that took their sweet time in leaving but they clung mostly to her muscles now, making her arms and legs heavy like a troll's lumbering limbs. And that would be slow to fade, the Healers said. Just like the rest of the curse had taken its sweet time in leaving her.
At least her head had settled now. But, really, all it accomplished was allowing her to stare at the charmed window with heightened melancholy.
She wondered how many matches she'd missed. How many practices. She barely knew how Harry's captainship had gone, was going. She'd been there for the tryouts. She'd stood behind him then. Moral support, she called it. A help, he said. Either way, she'd been there. And for the first few practice sessions, when the new team – with more than half their members new – had struggled to form the same closeness they'd had back when she'd been bumped up from the reserves.
No, that wasn't true, Katie mused. They'd shunned Harry when he and his friends had lost a hundred and fifty points between the three of them. That was back in first year, the same year she'd been bumped up. If she'd lost a tonne of points like that, they'd probably have ostracized her the same way. Maybe a little less, because she'd had the benefit of being on the reserve and not being the boy who lived – not being so famous that the poor kid couldn't even sneeze without everyone around him turning to stare.
Still, in retrospect, she felt awful about that spell. Like in second year, when there'd been the whole Parseltongue tissue. Like in third year, when the Dementors had cost Harry the snitch and them the match. Not even Oliver had blamed him. Oliver who'd essentially been betting his career on winning the Quidditch Cup. They'd all felt awful about the rift they'd created. They hadn't asked for an explanation. They hadn't tried to find out the truth. They hadn't even let Harry try to make it up – but he made it up anyway, by almost getting himself killed.
That train of thought came quite far from Quidditch and the bright clear sky, but that was what happened when one had too much time in which to think. They were punctured by Healers and trainees visiting, and her parents, and three regular meals and the potions that came with them, but otherwise there was little else to do. She couldn't have her textbooks yet. The Healers wanted her to recover a little more before strenuous activity – and studying was somewhere on the scale. Staring out the window was significantly lower. Katie wondered if the Healers had gotten it wrong somewhere, or someone had simply neglected to mention what memories the sky would dreg up. They couldn't have gone with a nice ocean scene instead? There was far less baggage with that. And far less dreams.
Far less self-pity as well but she wouldn't admit that. She couldn't. Because that meant admitting she mightn't ever fully recover and she would. She simply had to after waking up after some had almost lost hope, after making it this far…
She'd graduate this year. Like Oliver, she was on her last chance. She had little hope for becoming a professional straight away. She hadn't made the captaincy. She'd started on the reserve. She'd have to take the long route, playing in the little leagues and working her way up but that was alright with her. She didn't have natural talent. Not like Harry. Not like Oliver. She didn't need it. She had the drive: the motivation, the want. And she'd wanted to fly. She'd wanted to be a Chaser. So she'd practiced. And she'd done it. One year on the reserve. Four years on the team – two cups and two interrupted championships. She'd flown whenever she could: whenever the pitch was available and even when it wasn't. A team couldn't practice over smaller ground. A single person could.
But she couldn't fly in a hospital. She couldn't even try and not because the window was charmed and it wasn't a sky beyond it, but because she was in the hospital, still suffering from the after-effects of the curse and her body wouldn't cooperate with the idea. Maybe if she could walk across the room she might've considered begging for her broom, begging for a little exercise outdoors – arguing physical therapy or positive stimulation or some happy medical phrase that'll twist the Healers' arms. Maybe that's what they'd planned with the window too. Maybe it worked for people who didn't have dreams so closely tied to the view they saw. Or maybe the nostalgia brought peace instead of restlessness. If the scene instead showed the little snapdragons her mother planted on their front porch it would have been just like that, but they didn't. And for her it wasn't positive stimulation as much as it made her want to hurry up and get better, made her want to fly.
And it went beyond flying as well, because her thoughts strayed from flying alone to flying with her team: flying at Hogwarts. Flying in Quidditch training, flying in matches. Flying in trials and this time she'd been the shoo-in, the one setting the pace, placing the bar.
She wondered who'd taken her spot on the team. They'd had so many spots to fill they'd foregone finding immediate reserves. In some cases, it was blatantly obvious. Ron Weasley was no Oliver but he was good. He'd still only made the team by one goal and the runner up was the obvious choice to stand in if something happened to him. But the chasers had no such luck. Ginny Weasley and Demelza Robins had been good, but beyond that, there'd been no-one else obviously close. She wondered what Harry had done. Had he held trials for the reserve position – a reserve that would be called in immediately to cover her position? Or had he simply ran through the trails in his head and picked someone who'd do a halfway decent job and who could work with the team. The first was better, the second was easier and in all honestly she didn't want Harry to have held a trial.
Maybe she was a little afraid she wouldn't be able to return at all. Or to Quidditch if she did.
And then the sky was a scene she couldn't bear to stare at any further, and she'd turn away and glare at her blankets instead. But her gaze would drift soon enough, and her thoughts.
The sky was peaceful, but it wasn't healing. Not at all.
Or maybe it was, a little. It served as a constant reminder of both reality and her dream. And except when she doubted she really could see: see herself flying – flying in the past, and in the future as well.