Cold
By
Sannikex
Chapter One
A/N: Hi! Don't have much to say for once. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't sue
"Healer Weasley!" Ginny looked up from her current patient, irritated with the interruption. A nurse was standing in the doorway. Probably doesn't want to get bloody, Ginny thought with a smirk as she saw the girl's blue robes. Everyone who had been taken early out of Healer School or picked among those who didn't battle wore blue robes as a sign of their lower status. Ginny herself wore the official lime green healer uniform. At the age of twenty-four she had already managed to become one of the most capable healers in England. One good thing that came out of this war, she thought as she wiped her hands on a towel before washing them scrupulously. Then she looked up at the young recruit who looked sick herself.
"Yes?" Ginny asked impatiently. She had more work waiting, a man who had a nasty blood loss spell lay in the next room and the potions makers couldn't keep on giving him blood filling potion every fifth minute. Then there was the Auror she had promised a colleague to check on and the witch who had eaten something poisoned and now had three tongues that tangled in each other if she tried to talk.
"Uhh...the Head Healer wants to see you," the perturbing teenage witch said still looking a bit green in the face. Ginny sighed, now she would have to ask someone else to do all those things she should and she hated to ask for things. She nodded at the blue clad girl and left for the top floor where the Head of St: Mungo's, Hannah Abbot, resided.
"Ginny, have a seat," the pretty woman said, gesturing towards one of the comfortable chairs in front of her mahogany desk. Worriedly Hannah noted how thin and worn Ginny looked. The war hadn't been kind on anyone but in Ginny Weasley's eyes you could see eight years of war looking back on you.
In their Hogwarts days Hannah remembered Ginny as a happy, friendly girl with a heated temper. When she had become a healer she had been the most compassionate, kindest and warmest of all and the patients had loved her. But now there was nothing left of this disposition. In front of her stood a thin-lipped woman with her fiery red hair in a tight bun at the base of her neck, her eyes that once had burned for those in pain were now cold, distant and professional. Ginny sunk down in the chair and looked expectantly at Hannah. No wasting time here.
It was a pity really that war had to hit those who least deserved it the hardest. It was finally over now but just because You-Know-Who was gone didn't mean that his followers would give up. For two years they had just fought his loyal supporters.
"Well, Ginny..." It felt wrong to call this woman by a name she had always connected to a happy girl with a constant smile. "You see... We have this new patient," as she began to talk about things on well-known ground her voice grew stronger. "He's been hit by a spell we've never seen before. He's in comatose and doesn't respond to our Diviners." Sometimes people in coma were reachable through Diviners who could find their minds. Someone who the Diviners couldn't get connection with was most often people so deep within themselves so you couldn't wake up with multiplied Enervate charms. "Since we don't know anything about the spell I want someone qualified to preserve him. You're the only one I can trust with this, Ginny. You will be excused from all your other patients and duties until you can heal him." Ginny only nodded. It didn't matter to her who she took care of; she just had to do something. Something to help. She had to become better, stronger and faster so she could save people. So she could save Ron. Ronald, the youngest of the Weasley brothers who had been captured by Death Eaters in Lord Voldemort's last battle. They had tortured him for information on his best friend and the Order. Panicked as they were with the light side winning they had pushed him so hard that he had gone back to childhood. The thought of her brother made her clench her fists and grind her teeth. He was currently some floor beneath her in the same room as the Longbottoms and Gyllenroy Lockheart. She remembered the first time she had visited him, together with Hermione and Harry...
Quietly Ginny opened the door and peeked in. Her heart wrenched as she watched her twenty-three year old brother sit by a table and draw together with a babbling Gyllenroy Lockheart, his tongue sticking out in concentration. She stepped in, Harry and Hermione behind her. The red-haired man looked up and his face lit up.
"Ginny!" he rose and scurried over to his sister giving her a hug. He looked over her shoulder and saw his two best friends.
"Who are you?" He asked curiously and Hermione had to turn away to hide her face. With a strained smile Harry answered, "I'm Harry Potter...Do you remember me?"
"Of course I do! Everyone knows who you are. You killed You-Know-Who," Ron said
matter -of-factly, waving his hand nonchalantly. "But you're so old! Harry Potter is born the same year as I am," he told them proudly, "and I am this old." He held five fingers up. He turned towards Hermione.
"Who are you?"
"H..Hermione Granger," Hermione stuttered as her fiancée eyed her interestedly. Suddenly Ron's eyes glazed over and he said, "I loved a girl named Hermione once. She wasn't very pretty but she had eyes the same colour as Chocolate Frogs. She loved Chocolate Frogs; she used to give me the cards. I gave something else to her in a Frog box once and she was really happy..." Hermione gasped and fingered on the engagement ring that he had given to her in a candy box. "But the bad men took her long ago." His eyes turned from glazed to terrified, "No, no, no stop, stop!" He screamed and former Professor Lockheart looked up, "He does that all the time," he informed them cheerily before returning to his third self-portrait.
As fast as it had started it stopped and Ron looked at Harry who stood in front of him with panicked expression and Ginny who stood behind, wand in her hand to cast anything, something to help her brother.
"I don't have Morgana or Merlin yet but I'll buy a frog tomorrow. Mum promised me we would go to Diagon Alley after we waved Bill and Charlie off at the train," Ron told Harry earnestly before going back to the table where they had found him.
"I've made a drawing for you, Ginny," he said and she swallowed hard before she walked over. This was hard to bear, his innocent face, the well-known voice that talked like a five-year-old.
"It's the Burrow. There's Mum and Dad and there's Bill…" He pointed at the rather overlarge Bill who stood beside his even bigger parents, smiling with a tiny house behind them.
"Is that Percy?" Hermione had come forward and was gesturing towards a chubby figure lurking in a bush. Ron frowned at her and stated, "No, that's a garden gnome, that's Percy." He showed a round face with abnormally large glasses in a window in the minimal house.
"Oh," was all Hermione could manage.
"I like you, you can have this one. It's my best," Ron handed his fiancée a drawing of a quidditchpitch. All the players wore bright orange robes and had flaming red hair.
"Oh, Ron!" Hermione had to run out of the room to hide her tears.
"I told you that no one would like that picture. The colours clashed terribly!" Lockheart told Ron, smiling with his whole face.
"I'm sure she liked she just had to go to the bathroom." Harry said with a reassuring smile but his eyes stayed dull…
"Ginny? Ginny!" She snapped out of her reverie. "Are you coming?" Hannah was standing in the doorway waiting patiently. Ginny rose and followed the blonde out of the tastefully decorated room.
They had visited Ron many times since then but the pain was never ceasing, every time she went into his room she knew that she wouldn't be able to do anything until they knew what had made him go back in time. But Hermione had the heaviest burden. The man she loved could barely read the word "dog" any longer. He looked, smiled and smelled like her fiancée and still it was not he.
Again the head healer awaked her. They were standing in a corridor like any in St: Mungo's, brightly lit with white walls, and an occasional painting. Ginny noted surprised that she had never been in this particular before.
Hannah opened the door and Ginny went in. She had expected either a terribly marred or a sleeping stranger. But she had not expected this. She hadn't expected the hospital bed to be occupied by Draco Malfoy.
A/N2: So how was chapter 2? Don't hesitate to tell!