IWSC round 8

Beauxbatons 3rd year

Theme – Medical Muggles

Prompts – car park (main), a loaded gun, standing under an umbrella

WC 2552

On the Brink of Life and Death

Hermione Granger shifted her feet uncomfortably as rain dripped off her umbrella and splashed on the bitumen of Somerville College's car park. The drizzle she had woken up to had turned into a steady downpour as she left home, and it didn't show any sign of stopping soon. Would her parents never come?

It wasn't unusual for some kind of dental emergency among their patients to delay them, and normally she didn't mind waiting – there was always exam revision she could do in her mind – but today was a little different. Firstly, there was the miserable weather. Secondly – and most unusually for Hermione – she wasn't actually preparing for an exam right now. Her mind wandered back to the interview she had just completed, and she heard again the professor's pleasant Scottish burr.

"You see, Miss Granger, medicine is not just about a wish to heal the sick. When applicants come to us with that as their principal motivation, we steer them into nursing instead. In the words of Hippocrates, 'the physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future'. You must be able to ascertain and recognise what the patient currently suffers, deduce its origin, and predict its outcome. The practice of medicine requires not only a high degree of logic and relentless attention to detail, but also an intuitive perception which sees what the patient fails to tell you."

Professor McGonagall had paused at that point, and then added with a twinkle in her eyes, "In fact, patients themselves are usually our greatest obstacle to healing. They conceal crucial details out of embarrassment, or fear, or simply lack of awareness of their importance."

Hermione had responded with a twinkle in her own eyes. She liked this professor, whose stern demeanour concealed a refreshing sense of humour. She hoped Professor McGonagall would be one of her lecturers.

The professor had continued, "Additional skills are particularly suited to certain specialist fields. Surgery, for example, requires its practitioners to be extremely calm under pressure, while forensics requires being able to deduce everything from a corpse. Every specialty, however – and even general practice – requires an intensely curious mind and an ability to find patterns in seemingly unrelated details. Those are the tools which will enable you to apply the correct method of healing to each patient."

Hermione had been surprised to hear this, but also rather pleased. Whenever she told people her intention of going into medicine, there were always some who laughed and told her that she'd better work on her bedside manner if she wanted to be a good doctor. Professor McGonagall's emphasis on other qualities which Hermione was fairly certain she possessed had been reassuring. But then her doubts had returned as the professor had concluded her description.

"None of this, however, is of much use without good interpersonal skills. A doctor must be able to put patients at ease, liaise with other professionals while under intense pressure, and know how to communicate without alienating people. Your A-level results are excellent, and show a fine brain allied to diligent study. Both are essential, but here at Oxford we shall endeavour to find out if you have the other qualities which are required."

Did she have the necessary qualities, Hermione wondered as she gazed unseeingly through the curtain of rain pouring off her umbrella, and how would she find out?

She flinched as a sudden gust of wind drove the rain onto her face, and then looked sadly down at her sodden shoes and stockings. She had worn her best clothes today, and her good leather shoes were now so saturated they squelched slightly as she eased her weight from one foot to the other.

She looked toward the car park entrance, hoping to see her parents' car, and a movement in the vehicle parked nearest to her caught her eye. It was difficult to see clearly through the rain, but it looked as if a man in the driver's seat was holding a gun to his head.

If Hermione thought at all about what to do, she was unaware of it. She ran the few steps to the car, wrenched open the passenger door and plumped herself down in the seat. She let go of her umbrella, slammed the door shut and turned to face the astonished young man beside her.

"What the – ?" he exploded. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my car?"

Hermione ignored the first question. Introductions could come later.

"I saw that." She nodded at the gun he still held, although he had dropped his hand onto his lap when she had burst into the car.

"So?" he said truculently.

"Is it loaded?"

He nodded.

"Were you going to shoot yourself?" she asked bluntly.

The young man, whom Hermione could now see was much the same age as herself, was still too surprised to dissimulate.

"Yes," he replied curtly.

"Why?"

"Is it any of your business?" The young man was beginning to recover his composure, and with it his defensiveness.

"Yes." Hermione was surprised at her own certainty, but her next words came from that same inner conviction. "Preventing suicide is everybody's business."

The young man sneered. "Oh god, another do-gooder! I know your sort."

"I'm not a do-gooder," Hermione retorted indignantly. "It's not about doing good – it's about life. Lives matter. People matter. And if someone is desperate enough that they think their life doesn't matter, it's because other people have failed."

The man's attention was caught by her last words.

"'Other people'?" he queried.

"Yes," said Hermione firmly. "People don't exist on their own. We're all interlinked, and what we do affects others. Somebody in your life has failed to make you feel worthwhile."

She saw a flicker of acknowledgement and knew she was on the right track.

"A girl, perhaps?" she said tentatively, but his pale face showed no reaction. Then something about his aristocratic appearance – and perhaps the luxurious feel of the leather seat beneath her – made her leap to the right conclusion.

"Your parents, then. Your father?"

The young man tensed visibly.

"Tell me about him," she said in a gentler voice. "What's he done – or not done?"

The young man was silent as his filial loyalty warred with his desperate longing to talk to someone. This girl had burst so unexpectedly into his life just as he believed he was about to end it, and the abruptness of the interruption had disconcerted him.

She saw his uncertainty and decided to give him a minute to recover while she introduced herself.

"I'm Hermione, by the way. Hermione Granger."

"Draco Malfoy," came the reluctant response.

He wasn't too preoccupied to notice her look of startled recognition as she heard the surname, and he answered her unspoken question. "Yes, that's Father."

The Honourable Lucius Malfoy was a name well known in medical circles, and indeed to most people. Third son of Lord Malfoy and a distant connection of the Royal Family, he had rejected the traditional expectation of a career in the Church, preferring instead to pursue medicine. After qualifying as a doctor, he had risen quickly through the hospital ranks to become Chief Medical Officer. Some said that it was his aristocratic lineage that had aided his swift rise, while others attributed it to his ruthless ability to get his own way. All agreed, however, that he was an extremely skilled physician, and he was frequently spoken of as likely to be appointed the next Physician to the Queen.

Hermione felt a little out of her depth in the face of this blue-blooded contrast to her own suburban background, and focused on the other point that had struck her.

"Draco?" she queried. "That's Latin for dragon."

"Yes, I know," said Draco gloomily. "There's a dragon on our coat of arms, and Father's really proud of it. He says it's a symbol of power and strength, and that's why he wanted it to be my name. He even only buys Alfa Romeos because he says the crowned serpent on their badge looks like a dragon."

He gestured to the centre of the steering wheel in front of him, and Hermione followed his gaze.

"I suppose it does," she conceded, "but it seems an odd reason for buying a car."

This direct verbalisation of Draco's own thought softened his defences, and he answered more readily when Hermione steered the conversation back to its original topic.

"So what does he do that makes you feel like killing yourself?" she enquired in a conversational tone.

"He – thinks I should be like him," Draco faltered, and then muttered, "That sounds stupid."

Hermione shook her head vigorously. "It's not stupid at all!" she exclaimed. "You're you, not him. How can you feel as if you – you yourself – matter to him if he's always wanting you to be something else?"

Tears pricked at Draco's eyes at this instant comprehension of his feelings, and he looked down at the loaded pistol he still held in his lap. It symbolised all the hopelessness of his life growing up in the shadow of his father's expectations – the annual sense of failure at not topping his year at school, the distaste at the idea of following his father's footsteps into medicine as his father so obviously expected, the difficulty of disregarding his father's insistence that he be ruthless and calculating in his friendships, and the pain of ridicule on the few occasions when his father did detect his more kindly nature.

As he stared fixedly at the shining black weapon, it seemed to him that he stood at a crossroads. One way led to merciful oblivion – total freedom from his father's pressure. The other led to – he didn't really know what, other than more pain, and he wasn't sure he had the courage to take it.

Hermione was watching him closely, wondering if her words were having any effect at all.

"What about your mother?" she asked suddenly.

A spasm crossed Draco's face. "Mother? I don't know what she thinks," he said slowly. "She doesn't usually interfere with Father. Nobody does."

Hermione nodded. That fitted with what she'd heard from some of her older friends who worked in Lucius Malfoy's hospital. He was known to strike terror into the young interns and the nurses nearly all loathed him, except for a few who were so struck by his aristocratic mien that they'd forgive him virtually anything.

"Has she ever defended you against him?" she persisted.

"Actually, yes," he said wonderingly. "I'd forgotten about it. One day he was going for me because I'd been kind to another boy at school – an Indian boy. Father was furious because he said the boy wasn't our sort. Mother stopped him shouting at me and told me to go upstairs. I don't know what she said to him afterwards, but he didn't say anything more to me about it."

"How do you think she'd feel if you shot yourself?" Hermione probed.
"She'd be upset," he admitted.

"Of course she would," retorted Hermione. "What mother wouldn't?"

"The thing is," confessed Draco honestly, "thinking about that – her feelings, I mean – just makes it harder not to…well…pull the trigger. I feel bad enough about myself without feeling bad about other people too."

His words made Hermione pause. She had enough imagination to visualise his inner burden for a brief moment, and recognised the truth of his statement. She kicked herself mentally for not realising it sooner.

"If," she began hesitantly, "you were to describe your strongest feeling in one word, what would it be?"

Draco paused as he thought about the question, and then answered, "Overwhelmed."

"And when you think of standing up to your father, what feeling do you get?"

"Fear," came the quick answer. "No, wait – I feel tiny. Like an ant, squeaking on the floor while Father stands over me ready to stamp on me."

"And what would make you feel bigger?" she quizzed gently.

"Knowing someone strong believed in me," he said hopelessly, "but nobody does."

"I do," said Hermione quietly.

The rain drumming on the roof sounded suddenly loud in the silence. She didn't know why she believed in him. She didn't know how she could see so well the pain and agony of his powerlessness, or why she was so sure that there was enough strength in him to get through this. All she knew was that his despair wasn't simply weakness, but rather the last resort of someone oppressed beyond their capacity to cope.

Draco sat for a long time without speaking, and then he took a deep breath.

"You really do, don't you?" he asked wonderingly.

"Absolutely," she said firmly.

He clutched at the lifeline and asked, "Then might I please take your telephone number so that I can contact you?"

Hermione scribbled her name and number on a page of her notebook and gave it to him.

"And now I'm going to ask you for something," she said.

He looked at her questioningly.

"I want you to give me the gun," she said forthrightly. "That way, if you ever want to use it you'll have to talk to me first."

A wry smile crossed Draco's face as he thought of the armoury of weapons at his father's manor, but he saw that she had no idea of the absurdity of her request. And besides, he liked her no-nonsense approach; it made him feel secure without being babied.

He held it out to her, but she implored him, "For god's sake, unload it first, please! I don't know the first thing about them."

He unloaded it with the deftness of long practice and gave it to her. She pushed it into her bag and then looked out the window at the still-falling rain.

"Oh dear. I let go of my umbrella, and goodness only knows where it is now. Oh well, I suppose I can't really get much wetter."

"Hermione?" Draco put a hand on her arm.

"What?" she asked a little absently, still thinking about her lost umbrella.

"How come you were here, just when I needed you?"

She laughed. "I'm not sure I should tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because you mightn't like it. Oh, well – here goes. I'm a new med student. I've just been accepted."

Draco's eyes widened. "Good lord! I'm glad you didn't say so earlier. I'd have ignored everything you said, and I'd probably be dead by now."

Hermione shuddered. "Don't even think about it. I was wishing for something that would prove to me that I'd make a good doctor, but I'd have hated it to be someone shooting themselves in front of me."

Draco was surprised by her self-doubt. Viewing her from the depths of his own lack of confidence, she had seemed to be everything that was positive and self-assured. "Really? From what I've seen, I think you'll make an excellent doctor."

Hermione flushed with pleasure. She suddenly realised that in responding to Draco's need she had done exactly what Professor McGonagall had said a doctor must be able to do. She had connected with the patient, intuitively perceived what he had been reluctant to disclose, and been forthright without alienating him.

"Thank you," she said simply. "It seems you were here just when I needed you, too."