A/n: Chapter nine is here! And the plot thickens…
Chapter 9
Harry's medical file was unusually thick but considering the fact that he had a knack for getting into dangerous situations and that he was somewhat clumsy probably had a lot to do with it. Due to the nature of Harry's creature inheritance, they were ensuring that there weren't any medical problems that had slipped past their eye over the years. After all, there were over four hundred people within the school and they were the only personnel within it, with any medical knowledge beyond first aid.
Severus needed such skills due to the often dangerous things that could happen in the potions lab. It could sometimes become very hectic in the infirmary and there was only so much they could find out if someone was being uncooperative with them. You couldn't force someone to tell you the truth, well at least not a child.
Harry was the sort of child that preferred to look after himself and would only seek medical help if he knew something wouldn't get better without it. That boy was incredibly stubborn, but then so were both of his parents. Maybe it was a genetic thing.
The very first checkup, which was in the file, was in his first week at the school in his first year, where his head of house had practically had to drag him down, coughing his head off. The way that he was shaking like a leaf and the fact that the chest infection had been there for some time before school had even started, had worried the two women. In fact, the chest infection hadn't received any muggle treatment at all, almost beginning to develop into Pleurisy.
From there Harry could have developed double pneumonia if that had gone untreated.
At this point, it said in the notes the matron had given Harry a pepper up potion, and a decongestant antibiotic potion before performing a lung soothing spell to reduce the irritation caused by the swelling of the inner lining of the lungs. In the action of breathing this swollen inner layer rubbed against a thicker outer layer and caused even more pain, which had meant that Harry was taking very shallow breaths at points lips bluing, due to lack of oxygen.
She had then gone on to add an urgent note, asking the permission of the headmaster to perform a full body scan on Harry to ensure that there weren't any other illnesses the boy was harbouring. Both for his own sake and the safety of everyone in the castle.
After all, Dumbledore was his magical guardian.
This request had been denied and she had been told that Harry had just forgotten to bring the antibiotics that he had been prescribed by a muggle doctor. It had been pushed under the rug and the healer told in no uncertain terms to leave it alone.
At this Severus raised a dark eyebrow but continued reading, there were many stays in the hospital for Quidditch injuries, encounters with Voldemort and even from a burn caused by one of those cursed blast-ended-skrewts.
After looking through the entirety of the folder Severus had come across a number of very alarming facts. Whenever Harry had been surface scanned by Poppy, a procedure to look at current illnesses and injuries, the results were almost identical. The differences were blaringly obvious, those of course showing a broken bone from tripping on the moving stairs or the damage to skin tissues caused by a burn, but it was the vital background information that was causing him to worry.
Catching the eye of the school matron he pulled out a number of cases from the file spreading them out on the rickety oaken desk that stood in the corner of the small room. It was here that medications were measured out and reports on each child's health completed, whenever needed.
Madame Pomfrey could see that the potions master had found something; she knitted her brows in thought. What could they have missed? Resignedly she hauled herself out of the chair and made her way over to the youngest potions master in a century. Severus was certainly no fool and knowing Harry as she did, Poppy shuddered there was very little that ever went well in that boy's life.
Within her chest the frantic tattoo of her heart was distracting, fear rising further and further in her throat as each beat passed. Nervously, she placed her own pile of papers next to those that were on the desk before looking up. Severus stood awkwardly, one leg crossed in front of the other, shifting his weight slowly left to right, with his hands folded tightly across his chest. That he was uncomfortable was easy to see, she startled, it had been a long time since Severus had been this open with her.
"Poppy would you prefer to read them yourself, or for me to tell you what I have found within them?" His face was tense and unease, maybe even distress coloured his tone.
"I trust that what you say is true Severus." Poppy ran a hand nervously through her greying hair, managing to dislodge some of the hairpins she used to keep it out of her face and also out of people's wounds. Doing such was one of the very first lessons that you learned in healer training.
"If you look very carefully at the results of Mr. Potter's scans, you can see something pretty alarming." As he stated this Severus pulled several charts from their purple box on the dark wooden shelf that ran the length of the room. He opened them to the pages relevant for an eleven-year old boy and then pointed in turn to the results of the five scans. " The first scan is exactly the same as the average line on all the results, his weight, vitamin and mineral levels, blood pressure, bone density etc. That in of its self is suspicious I find. Surely you remember how small he was in first year?"
Poppy nodded she well remembered how small the boy had been. Most of the staff had found it hard to believe that he was in fact eleven. Both Lily and James hadn't been particularly tall but they had been at least average height as adults. Due to this, it had been a shock for them all to see the boy when he arrived.
"On each of the other tests which were performed over the last four years, the levels are exactly the same as that of his first-year exam." Severus turned away from her for a moment, plotting the results of all the tests on a graph. There were no fluctuations in the results, which was something that couldn't happen, especially over such a long period of time.
What was going on?
The general scan that she used on all patients who entered into her domain covered many different markers of health. The levels of nutrients and minerals within the body changed from hour to hour as the body used them; they were not something that could be stored by it, unlike fat.
This was why muggle sailors going on long voyages used to get scurvy from a lack of Vitamin C.
According to the information Harry had neither put on nor lost weight through his entire time at Hogwarts, despite the fact, that he had grown a good four inches in that time. Regardless of this, it didn't look as if the scruffy teenage boy would ever achieve average height.
There had always been something about Harry that had concerned her, but the headmaster had pushed her concerns aside every time she raised them. It made the school matron angry to think of it now. Every year Harry came to school looking decidedly ill and the number of accidents that he had increased towards the end of the school year.
Harry was a boy, who was hard to look directly in the eyes. Whenever you tried to meet the green orbs so reminiscent of his mothers, your eyes would slide from his face and now and again you would swear that it blurred.
She smacked a hot clammy hand to her forehead causing Severus to start, how she could have not seen it before? The boy was wearing a glamour.
"Severus, Harry's wearing a glamour!" Poppy moaned stalking back to her seat and all but throwing herself into it. Sure, the Infirmary was a busy place at the best of times, but how…?
Her mind was spinning on this new thought.
There was barely a month in which Harry wasn't in her domain for some reason or another. How many times had she seen him over the years and not noticed the glamour? How had the people who saw him on a daily basis not noticed it? A rustling noise from behind her caught her attention; the potions master was rubbing his hand across his face, the vast sleeve of his robes to slipping down his arm, revealing a long expanse of porcelain white flesh.
He really needed to get out in the sun more, he was probably suffering from Vitamin D deficiency. Poppy made a note to check for that later. "What we have to find out now is why."
A/n: Don't forget to review :)
