A/N:This ficlet was written for tania_sings in The Hogwarts Life Fanswap on livejournal, and it's a corrected version of the original posted there (you wouldn't believe how many typos I'd missed *facepalm*). The claim was Harry - the day after.
. The Day After .
I
The day after the whole thing with Quirrel and the Philosopher's Stone was... well, it depended on who you asked.
If you asked us, it was awful.
During that day (and the next two), Harry had slept. Or at least that's how they'd called him being unconscious. Magical exhaustion, Madam Pomfrey had said. We were worried sick, and probably so was Dumbledore; he spent most of the time in the Hospital Wing (or discussing thingswith Madam Pomfrey, in whispers they thought we wouldn't notice).
I did some research on the Library on magical exhaustion, and the thing was, Harry was only eleven, so they probably didn't know how well his body was going to cope with whateverit was that had happened with Quirrel. His vital signs were fine, it was all we could do to wait for him to wake up.
Outside the Hospital Wing, rumours ran the usual way at Hogwarts: inexplicably fast, and complete nonsense (like Quirrel being a renegade vampire) mixed with incredibly accurate guesswork (like You-Know-Who's involvement). People were saying Harry was injured, or in a coma. Even a few said he was dead – and they'd received nasty proof that Fred and George didn't like that rumour. I've always thought they were trying to amend for their attitude towards Harry after the Norbert debacle.
The day after that for Harry, that was a different thing altogether.
Apparently, for him it had been just falling unconscious one moment and waking up in the Hospital Wing the next. Harry'd seemed happy to tell the story, even the worst parts, and he didn't even mind Dumbledore let him put himself in danger. (I should have noticed something there, but I didn't.)
Harry had no idea how bad it'd looked to everybody else, and we didn't do anything to let him know. We were already forgetting it ourselves. Most of the school were now Harry's biggest fans, and that was a good thing; he didn't really care for their approval, but the constant harassment or cold shoulder by then had been getting a bit old. And we'd gotten House points, and Neville (poor Neville, Petrified all night...) had won the House Cup for Gryffindor...
It was easy to leave behind the horrible bits now that everything was fine. Who could blame us? We were eleven, and all of that was still a great adventure.
II
The day after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had just slept. Well, it wasn't as much sleeping as it was unconsciousness, Ginny' told us, a mixture of regular exhaustion and magical exhaustion according to Madam Pomfrey (and Ron had given Harry an exasperated look, and I'd almost laughed). That was as much as the Matron could tell anyway, since Ginny had had to drive her away at wand point (Harry's head still on her lap), when she'd tried to take him to the Hospital Wing.
"Injuries! Bruises! Possible spell damage! He needs a proper hospital bed!" the Matron had screeched.
"He wanted to sleep, so he will. He'll go there later." And wand point was spitting sparks dangerously, so Madam Pomfrey contented herself with checking his pulse and breathing, and giving him a few drops of a harmless looking potion, before leaving, muttering complaints and dire predictions under her breath.
Through al the ruckus, Harry'd kept sleeping.
I knew everything would be fine.
Son of A/N: I didn't want to just do the After the Battle of Hogwarts, so I added a parallel with Harry's first Day After. Please tell me if you find any mistakes!
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Thanks for reading!