Author's Note: Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read my first chapter and extra thanks to those who also took the trouble to review it. Here is Chapter Two!

Disclaimer: I still don't own the characters and I'm still making no profit.

Chapter Two

"Edmund." Peter peered round the door. "Are you awake?"

Receiving no answer Peter entered the room and lowered himself gently onto the edge of his brother's bed. "Hey, sleepy head. I've bought you a drink." He placed a gentle hand on his brother's forehead, alarmed to find that it was, if anything, even hotter than before.

"Edmund," Peter tried a little louder. This time he got a half grunt in response. "Ed, I've bought you a glass of water." He got no reaction again. "You should really try and drink it. Remember what we were always told in Narnia – drink plenty of water to flush the illness out!" Peter hoped that mentioning Narnia would illicit some kind of reaction. It didn't. "Ed, come on, please. You're scaring me." Peter tried shaking the younger boy's shoulder and was finally rewarded with Edmund's eyes blinking open, though they did so without any real sign of awareness. "Come on Ed, try and drink this will you," Peter coaxed.

Edmund just stared blankly at Peter, his eyes glazed. "Not hungry," dry lips muttered.

"It's not food, it's just water."

Suddenly Edmund seemed to wake up a bit more, but the response was not quite what Peter was hoping for as Edmund seemed to panic and started pushing himself up and away from Peter as though he had only now realised that there was someone there. His arm shot out and grabbed the nearest thing on his bedside table, a book he had been reading, which he brandished at Peter like a weapon. "Get back," he shouted, although the effect was somewhat lost as the words croaked out, his eyes still unfocused.

Peter narrowly avoided dropping the glass of water he was holding, instead just slopping water over his trousers. "Ed, it's Peter." He hurriedly put the glass down before trying to grasp his brother's arm. As Edmund waved the book again Peter tried once more, a note of panic in his own voice now. "It's Peter!"

The fight left Edmund's eyes as the recognition that it was his brother hit him and he allowed Peter to take the book from him and pull him into a hug. His body radiated heat though his hands on Peter's bare arms were icily cold. "It' okay, it's okay," Peter repeated as Edmund clung to him. He felt Edmund relax, the panic and sense of confusion dying down as he stroked his hair. Feeling his brother calm, he reached once more for the glass of water, stretching so as not to release his hold on his brother. "Come on Ed, you need to drink something." Peter kept one arm round the back of Edmund's shoulders, supporting him, while Edmund lent back enough to make space for the glass. Peter held it to his lips, tipping it slowly to release the fluid.

Satisfied that Edmund had at least drunk a little, Peter placed the glass back on the bedside table and then readjusted his hold on his brother so that he was pulled protectively against him. Edmund was simply too sleepy to do anything but snuggle back up, his eyelids already closing again.

Peter desperately wanted to rush out and call a doctor, but there was no way he wanted to leave Edmund on his own. "Lucy," he called out gently, trying not to startle Edmund and hoping that she would be close by. "Lucy."

Lucy, who as Peter had predicted had been lingering just outside the door, rushed in, her face full of concern. "Is he worse?" The question tumbled from her mouth. One look at her brothers gave her the answer and she rushed over to sit on the bed beside them.

"Could you sit with him for just a moment Lu? I don't think we should wait for Mum. I'll call the doctor now."

"Of course Peter." Lucy desperately wanted to help in any way that she could.

"Ed, I'm just going to leave you with Lu for a moment. I won't be long, I promise," Peter whispered gently to his brother, who gave no sign of having heard a word of it. Lucy shuffled closer and Peter gently transferred Edmund into her willing arms. Together they lowered his head so that it was resting on her lap.

"It's okay Ed, I'll look after you." Lucy stroked his hair which was now damp from fevered sweat, adjusting him slightly so that he looked more comfortable.

Reluctant though he was to leave the room, Peter knew Lucy would look after Edmund while he was gone so he dashed out as quietly as he could, while trying not to look like he was panicking, knowing that Lucy was worried enough as it was. He ran down the stair and rushing into the dining room, rummaged through the drawer in the side cupboard where he knew his mother kept her address book. He was none too careful in his haste, knocking over his mother's neat piles of recipe cards and stacks of information from their schools, but he finally found the address book right at the back and flicked through to the number for the doctor's surgery.

Having dialled the number, Peter found himself through to a particularly fierce receptionist who took Edmund's details incredible slowly. "And how can we help?" she demanded.

"I need a doctor to come and see my brother," Peter explained, telling the woman Edmund's symptoms.

"Hmmm. And you are?"

"Sorry?" Peter was confused.

"Who are you in relation to Edmund?"

Peter could have sworn he'd already told the woman that he was Edmund's brother. However, he gave her his full details again, with much more patience than he was feeling, his insides bubbling with worry at how long this seemed to be taking.

"I see," the woman said when he had finished. He heard noises down the phone that indicated that she had now opened his own record. He felt sure she must be peering over her glasses right about now and was almost certainly raising her eyebrows. "Well, I suggest that you wait for your mother to come home and ask her to call and make an appointment."

"But, he needs a doctor now!"

"I'm sorry but I am not sending a doctor out based on the judgement of a child. You have told me nothing that suggests your brother has anything more than a bad cold or a touch of flu. Wait for your mother or another suitable adult to return and ask her to call and make an appointment. Good day to you."

"I am not a child!" Peter shouted at the phone. He found himself listening to a dead line and incredulously stared at the phone. A child indeed! I think I can tell when my brother's ill, thank you very much. If we were in Narnia now, he thought, she wouldn't dare to treat me that way.

But we're not in Narnia, he though rather morosely.

Peter was quite inclined to ring the surgery again and give the receptionist a piece of his mind. He would not be treated in that manner! The receptionist was saved however by Peter hearing a key turning in the lock on the front door and his mother calling out for someone to come and help her with the bags of shopping.

Peter hurried to tell his mother that Edmund was ill, a mixture of panic and relief making his words flood out in jumbled confusion as he helped his mother carry the bags into the kitchen.

Raising four children had taught Mrs Pevensie that children caught any number of coughs and sniffles that generally disappeared as fast as they came. Mrs Pevensie also knew of her son's overprotective tendencies towards his younger siblings and so was uninclined to panic just yet. Many a time had she witnessed Peter attempting to make Edmund stay in bed when he really had only a mild cough or a slight temperature, particularly over the last year or so, Peter's over protectiveness towards his brother really having manifested itself since they had returned to Finchley after their stay at Professor Kirke's house. Mrs Pevensie had asked once if Edmund had fallen ill whilst there, thinking it might explain Peter's behaviour, but had received denials that anything extraordinary had happened.

"I'm sure it's just a summer cold dear," she said calmly, stroking Peter's head in a unknown imitation of Peter's soothing of Edmund, "but well done for looking after him. I'll come and see Edmund now and then I'll phone the doctor again if necessary."

The response really did nothing to calm Peter who proceeded to relate, more coherently this time, what had happened from Edmund nearly collapsing in the garden. The full story did concern Mrs Pevensie rather more, but she endeavoured not to show it, sensing that Peter didn't need any further confirmation of a need to worry.

She hastened her steps upstairs and entered the boys' room to find a very pale but very flushed Edmund asleep in Lucy's arms. She bent down to eye level, feeling his forehead. "Edmund darling, it's mummy." She was alarmed at both how hot he was and how little response she had received, Edmund doing no more that turning his head slightly and uttering a small moan. "Okay, I'll go and call the doctor again now. Peter, why don't you stay here with him?"

She really needn't have asked as Peter had already crossed the room and sat back down on the bed, clearly intent on not going anywhere. Mrs Pevensie left the room, calm whilst in her children's view but with more urgency once she was back out on the landing, rushing downstairs to call the doctor.

Back in the boys' room, Peter carefully took moved Edmund back out of Lucy's lap and into his arms. "It's okay Ed, it's okay."

Looking at her brothers, Lucy wondered who's benefit the words were for.