Title: Toys
Author: D'autrefois
Summary: Catering to a kid's love of play is a tough job but someone has been hard at work. With children falling ill at a nauseating pace, Head Healer Hermione Granger takes matters into her own hands. Is she just another toy, or will the player start owning the game?
Rating: T for minor coarse language, some violence, and minor suggestive themes
Even at night the Children's ward of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was alive with wonder. Hermione Granger lightly closed the door behind her and sidestepped a teetering tower of alphabet blocks. At this hour most children were snoring under their blankets or clasping onto the spines of a faerie tales with weakening grips. She saved a copy of the Horned Serpent in Socks from its tumble to the carpet and left it on the nightstand beside crayons and a half-empty glass of milk. A mental note to collect it on the way out was interrupted by a squeak from the fuzzy pigmy puff cushions dotting the nearest corner, the very same that hugged every set of wriggling toes in fuzzy pigmy puff slippers.
"Miss?" a voice croaked. Tiny hands reached out. Hermione smiled and picked up a Norwegian short-snout plushie whose pudgy belly matched the bright blue walls.
"One day he might learn to fly, hmm?" she whispered. A hushed conversation and a nod later, she moved onto the next bed. Up to that point her rounds were uneventful, except for stragglers like that one just clinging to the last bits of wakefulness. Having been working for the past eleven hours, she couldn't blame them. It had been a hard day for all of them, but hers had only just begun.
The more she ventured into the room, the more the children whimpered and shook and twisted and turned. Cases of portkey sickness and allergic reactions gave way to fits of ague and minor side-along splinching. The fevered sighs of a child recovering from an erkling bite joined with groans of those regrowing shattered wrists from broomstick incidents. She stopped to spoon Skele-grow and pull up the mertail blanket a little one managed to kick off to the side.
Hermione gave her clipboard a quick glance, though she knew very well who was next on her list.
"How are we tonight, Alfie?" she asked as she approached a boy in hippogriff pyjamas who looked not a day over seven. He was sitting up staring at nothing in particular, and had been doing so for the better part of that afternoon with drool running down his chin and a face as grey as ash. "Nightmares again?"
He shook his head and opened his mouth before she could ask him to, having already gotten so used to the routine. Hermione's frown deepened as she performed all manners of diagnostics, magical and otherwise, each coming up with the same results as last time: negative, clear, stable, none. By medical standards there was nothing wrong with him, yet each day little Alfie moved further and further back into the ward. He sat there as placid and self-contained as always whilst she fished a quill from her coat pocket.
"Alfie," she began, sitting at the end of his bed. His dull eyes stared ahead unwaveringly even whilst she wiped a handkerchief along his mouth. "Can you tell me anything about what happened to you?"
He spared her the headshake this time but his jaw slackened even further, revealing the absence of his two front teeth. The sides of Hermione's lips twitched but her smile stayed firm. She looked down at the doll Alfie clutched and wiped its rosy cheeks as well, since Alfie's drool had gotten onto them too. Despite his regime of rest and fluids, the little boy had gotten worse since yesterday. Now it was near impossible to get a word out of him. The shadows seem to grow around his lids.
"That's a nice toy you've got there," she said, trying to make conversation. The doll's blond curls shook as Alfie clutched it tighter to his chest. "Maybe we can play together tomorrow?"
He neither confirmed nor denied her request, but laid back anyway with only a bit of coaxing. The ceiling was his new primary focus.
It went without saying that Hermione was thoroughly disturbed. All her reading over the past few days yielded nothing but a sore neck and a tired complaint from Ron that she really ought to turn off the lamp soon if either of them planned on being awake the next day. She would have him moved and isolated, she decided. Not Ron (though that could be arranged), but Alfie and the others. This was the fourth case this week alone, with Alfie returning for his second stay after going home the week before last with a pep in his step.
Hermione wrote a few last notes on his chart and left the way she came carrying out a half-empty glass and an itch that needed to be scratched. St. Mungo's Children's ward was indeed full of wonder, but on this night it was not welcomed.
"I'd like to file a report."
The auror, who was currently half-asleep at his desk flipping through a stack of paperwork, hadn't bothered to answer the door when she knocked. He was coming to the end of his shift, and would've gotten to it in due time if she hadn't let herself in. His office was too cluttered at the moment for guests, let alone a guest of her stature. Hell it may have been too cluttered even for him and he hardly minded the mess most times.
Without even looking up he said "Head Healer Granger, to what —"
"Come off it Harry. This is serious," she said.
"Of course."
He was relieved to put away the details of Mrs. Warbeck and the neighbor who kept enchanting her shears into making vulgar hedge sculptures. After thwarting a dark artifact smuggling ring a few hours prior, it had been a slow day. He wanted to ask if everything was alright but she wouldn't be standing in front of him if they were. He grabbed the necessary forms.
"Have you had any reports involving children in the past 72 hours?" Hermione queried. She sat down at the chair in front his desk and seemed to sink lower than the seat would allow.
"You're going to have to be more specific." he said as he started rifling through the papers at his desk. By 'more specific' he meant she might have to ask him about it outright. He had just sat down and made it a point to go through most of the queue tomorrow. A lot had piled up.
"I have a few kids under my care with similar symptoms and I'm starting to think this goes beyond a health crisis and into the realm of… of, well, of something more…" she said. Harry looked up, startled by her tone. Hermione wasn't one to ask for help if she wasn't at the end of her rope. She was tired, but the type of tired that only made a person want to work that much harder. He knew that tone quite well. "...reticent, despondent —"
"Withdrawn, and distracted? Sound familiar?" he finished for her. She nodded, relieved beyond words. Harry, decidedly, was not. The more he read the case files the more his brow furrowed. "Seems like they all hit their thirties pretty early, eh?"
"Not quite." she replied. Being in his thirties hadn't taken away his humour quite yet it seemed. Harry peered at her over the glasses slipping down his nose.
"Looks like we're due to visit you lot tomorrow to sort this out."
"Well that's no good. I'm here aren't I?" she said. "In all my years I've never seen anything like this. I was hoping you'd have some ideas."
"Haven't the slightest," he admitted. If this wasn't her department he wasn't sure whose it was. She seemed to deflate even more at his confession. Harry reached over his desk.
"Are they asleep?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"For the most part," she said, recalling Alfie's vacant stare.
"Good. We ought to be too. Tomorrow we'll look at this with a fresh pair of eyes."
"But -"
"The more rested you are, the sharper you'll be." he said. He gave Hermione's shoulder one more reassuring squeeze.
"Is Rosie…"
"She's fine. Ron's watching her." she said. He guessed her follow up question and insisted his children were no worse for wear.
Harry tucked the case files into his briefcase, having every intention of ignoring his own advice so that he can get caught up on the details. He hadn't mentioned that there was more than one incident tucked alongside the busy work. Harry Potter found himself, similarly, thoroughly disturbed.
A/N: More to come! Thoughts?