Welcome back, all. I hope you all had lovely holidays with friends and family, good food, and good cheer (and warmth)! I hope you will forgive my break in posting, but I was out of state for the holiday with grandparents.

Anyway, a lovely long chapter ahead for you.

Potions Master Pygmalion

Chapter 11

The ward was dark and silent – there were no windows for rain to beat against, and no vent to allow a breeze, unless one counted the gap under the door.

Afanen woke, the old curse that spread up her back from hips to shoulders set all the nerves on fire with pain. She attempted to roll to her side, but the flames burned hotter with every try, until she was left gasping in agony, tears rolling down her cheeks. Oh, how she wished she could give that…that man a dose of his own pain. But then she had, in her way. She had bested him at 35, with only six years' Unspeakable experience to his 15 (after his Healing career), and had become Healing Charms Team Lead, in the research and development sector of the Department of Mysteries.

Not that Afanen had been able to take the post. He had cursed her the day her promotion was announced, and within two weeks, the pain had become so strong she had been left almost paralyzed, unable to walk or lift her arms higher than a forty-five degree downward angle. Even now, it took her almost ten minutes to roll over in bed – on a good day. Certainly she couldn't lift the heavy texts she used in her research.

It had been humiliating to be checked in permanently to the hospital so young. The Ministry, in return for all her good work (so they said), happily footed the hospital bills for the rest of her life, as well continuing to pay her a retirement stipend at the Team Lead rate. Afanen privately thought the Ministry's generosity had more to do with keeping her happy enough not to take legal action against her successor.

After twenty years, the Ministry must surely be praying of her death every day. Afanen's care was quite costly, what with all the experimental cures that had been tried on her. And the food and nurses' and healers' pay.

And all this because a chauvinist couldn't bear to be bested by a woman.

It was all such a waste! Afanen's whole life – all the promise of her intelligence and hard work gone in a moment. Sean, poor man, had been forced to become both father and mother to their children, Howard and Ruby. He visited his wife, children in tow, once a week, desperately trying to hold the family he'd dreamt of together. He'd tried to lift her spirits and hope at least once a week for five years, believing from the bottom of his heart (or wanting to) that this would be the experiment that would bring her home.

But the cure had never materialized. And Sean stopped bringing the children. It was no place for children to grow up, he'd said, and Afanen agreed. It broke her heart, though, knowing that Howard and Ruby would cease to remember her as their mother. She had feared that her children, the light of her life, would come to resent her as a chore – just something that must be done and gotten over with once a week. Afanen had rested more easily after visits from her little boy and her baby girl, feeling a mother's calm and love at knowing her children were safe and happy.

Her relationship with Sean had deteriorated once the children stopped visiting. Their relationship had been strained before she was cursed. Sean didn't have, and had no interest in acquiring, Afanen's love of learning. He'd never been able to understand the satisfaction she got from solving a difficult puzzle (or creating or improving a new charm, but really it was all the same thing). Given his love of beer and nothing more sophisticated than Quidditch and football, they had run out of topics of conversation three years into their marriage. Afanen was still shocked they lasted that long. Luckily, or so it had seemed at the time, Afanen discovered her first pregnancy only a few months after an uneasy silence was imposed on the house, and the happy expectation of their child brought Sean and Afanen closer than they'd been since their wedding day.

Three miscarriages and the births of their two children hadn't given Sean and Afanen any more to discuss. Instead, they had fallen into the routine of raising children, Sean indulging in his fantasy of the perfect family, Afanen stranded by the side, weeping for the reality of their situation. She had tried to indulge in Sean's hobbies more, letting him home brew and figuring out charms to help the process along, attending a match or two with him, but once they had arrived home, they had nothing to discuss but the children. Not that he had ever returned the favor. She took him to see Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake once, and he slept and snored (loudly) through the whole ballet; she hadn't made that mistake a second time. In her despair at her failing marriage, Afanen had thrown herself into work, leading to other arguments about being an unfit mother and forgetting her children, placing the importance her own life above her children's. At least an argument was something more than silence.

After she was cursed, she saw more of the Sean she'd married – the strong, affectionate, mostly open-minded, humorous sweetheart she'd loved so much – but with the children gone, the awkward silence of no comfortable topics of conversation and too many open endings in their relationship descended once again. Afanen hadn't been surprised when Sean divorced her for a more able-bodied woman; rather she'd been relieved of the white elephant standing between them.

And yet, even though she was happy to free herself and Sean of the burden of their marriage, she felt abandoned, tormented by the silence, with no company but her own thoughts. The scenery was stagnant, the same day in and day out, with only Christmas decorations to mark the passing years.

She'd given up hope of a cure long ago, even before the healers ran out of ideas. If there had been a counter to the curse, her successor had never given up knowledge of it. If he was still –

"Hermione." The soft sigh rent the stillness and banished Afanen's memories to the realm of other night-terrors.

It was odd on multiple levels. She'd learned the day he collapsed that her new companion tended to murmur in his dreams. (Somehow his muffling charm always fell when he slept. Perhaps she would have to find a solution, if only for the young man's peace of mind.) Still, this was the first time he'd ever uttered something coherently in his sleep. He must feel strongly about the dream, then. And he'd called a woman's name. From his wakeful behavior, Afanen hadn't thought he young man liked women – certainly not well enough to call a woman's name in his sleep! (Maybe something had happened to put him off women? Was this young woman at the center of his trauma? No, it would be rude to ask, once he was aware of himself.)

Hermione. An unusual name. Lovely, though. Afanen smiled, remembering how she'd begged her mother for permission to change her name legally after reading Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Her mother had said no, of course. She pointed out that no other name than "berry" fit a girl with strawberry-blond hair. (Afanen still disagreed, especially as her name actually translated as "raspberry".)

"Hermione," he sighed again. Should she wake him? Afanen didn't want him to suffer long if this was a bête noire or some kind of agonizing memory. She studied him closely. He curled around his pillow – almost spooning with it, really. His eyes were moving rapidly under the lids, but that was normal during any dream. He pulled the pillow closer, burying his aquiline nose in the cover… It was almost as if the pillow were a place holder for a lov-.

Oh, no. Surely not.

Surely this stiff, formal, rude, sarcastic boy wasn't having one of those dreams in front of her? Afanen forgot her pain as she laughed. She hadn't giggled like this in ages, but mirth kept bubbling up from her heart at the sight of the proud young man cuddling his pillow so affectionately. It was wonderful to know Severus felt comfortable enough with somebody to let his guard down. Even if it was with a pillow named Hermione.

Afanen laughed again at the absurd picture. What she wouldn't give to be twenty, even thirty, years younger, suffering from no unhealable curse, and find a nice young man like that – snarkily polite, intelligent and darkly witty in public; affectionate and snuggly in private.

Afanen leaned back into her pillows, still grinning, even through a jaw-cracking yawn. She fell asleep with a smile still playing about her lips.

Her eyes opened as the door creaked ajar. Smethwyck, always conscious of his patients' need for rest, snuck through the crack he'd created. Morning rounds already? Afanen blinked her eyes – her brain was still fuzzy. She must have slept late for once.

"Goo-ah. Excuse me. Good morning, Healer Smethwyck."

The other chuckled. "Good morning, Afanen. You must have slept well."

"For the most part. I had a spasm in the wee hours this morning, but it passed fairly quickly."

"Quicker than normal? The overnight nurse didn't say you'd called her in."

"I didn't. It lasted maybe fifteen minutes, and then passed away slowly, like the tide ebbing."

"Had you done anything different than usual to make it pass faster?"

"Well…this will sound silly, I'm sure. I did a study on a similar phenomenon in the Department of Mysteries, but we couldn't prove it was real…"

"What was different?" There was a feverish, excited light in the healer's eyes.

"Do you promise not to laugh?"

"Do you promise to stop chewing on your lip?"

Afanen dropped her bottom lip as if she had burned.

"Come on, 'fess up." Hippocrates looked at her with exaggerated puppy eyes. Afanen hoped he realized that look was more prone to make her laugh than open up with her deepest darkest secrets. She decided to humor him anyway.

"Well, I – I…laughed."

"You laughed."

"Yes."

"At what?"

"Well, there was a shadow on the wall that struck my fancy."

"Afanen."

"It's true, Healer."

"There isn't enough light in here at night to cast shadows."

"Hm. Well."

"You're not going to tell me what you laughed at, are you?"

"No."

"Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter. We'll go through the potions and charms again – we might be able to tweak things just enough to make you more comfortable, if we can't manage anything else. I'll keep in mind what you said about laughter."

Afanen stamped down her frustration. "So, still no hints, even in Muggle medicine?"

"No, nothing. What you have doesn't fit the classical descriptions of arthritis or fibromyalgia, not even rheumatic disorder. So we end up treating you –"

"—Symptom by symptom, and nothing's going to fit perfectly. I know." She clasped her hands in her lap, refusing to look at the healer apprentice. She certainly wouldn't allow herself to cry.

"Afanen." Hippocrates rested his hand on her shoulder, blue-grey eyes intense. "I promised I would do whatever I could to help you. The older healers may have given up on finding a cure for you, but I'm not done with figuring out this curse yet."

She shrugged off his hand. She didn't want empty promises. After twenty years, she wanted results, one way or another, not this hell of Limbo: not fully living her life, not yet dead.

Hippocrates impatiently swept the blonde fringe out of his eyes. "When I'm done figuring out and healing your curse, I'll figure out King Tut's. What do you think? Wanna help?"

The image of Smethwyck as the swashbuckling explorer-archaeologist-healer and her as the maternal guide fearlessly traipsing through jungles at his side, slaying lions by bashing them on the head with her walking stick was so absurd that Afanen laughed. "Go on, Hippocrates. You have other patients to check on."

The young man stood, bowed comically, then walked around the bed next to hers.

"Goo – ning, Severus."

Hm. The muffling spell was back up. And not muffling very well. Closing her eyes and focusing (though it was hard when she was hearing intriguing snippets about some sort of project), Afanen allowed her magic to flow through her body. It was an inborn talent with which even her Master had been impressed. Just by focusing as she was now, she could see and hear the magic around her. She smiled as she remembered Master Winchester's expression when he'd realized just how she was able to learn and calibrate new spells so quickly.

She pushed the stray thought aside and focused again, opening her ears to the magic around her. An almost silent thrumming, like a double bass string being plucked, so carefully pizzicato, then plucked again only as the reverberations died, so the sound continued ever on, an eternal pedal tone, was the rosewood panel at the door, ready to send sound to the nurses' station. A regular beeping sound, but not quite a beep, more like a clarinet articulating regularly, an open G on the instrument, the slight woody tee of a tongue against the reed at the beginning of the sound was the monitoring charm on her bed constantly updating the nurses on her current pain level (honestly, the walk through Hippocrates did was just a formality and a twice-daily chance at some society). A high tinkling above, like wind chimes – no specific melody, constantly changing, like someone randomly hitting celesta keys – the privacy spell the hospital put on the curtains.

Ah. There. The buzz she noticed without the magic enhancing her sense was still there. As was:

"—sure this will work?" The sound rippled in her mind and magic, like water during an earthquake, though it rang with absolute clarity.

"If it doesn't, we'll have to find another way to make bones without the crystal." Severus' answer was confident, but Afanen fancied she could hear the worry underneath.

"Do you have time for that? Is there another organ system you'd like to concentrate on for a while?"

"Just try the crystal for me, Smethwyck. While you're doing that, I'll brainstorm ideas and see what emerges."

"All right, Severus, if you're sure. It is your project, after all."

Afanen forced herself to stop eavesdropping. It was educational, though. Crystals to create body systems…Severus was trying to make a body out of crystal? That was risky…

And why was the sound the spell was supposed to block ringing through it instead?

Right, back to task.

Afanen opened her eyes to see all the layers of the spell, and couldn't detect anything other than she had the day before. Hm. Maybe she should listen to the spell? She had never tried that with a spell she was creating or calibrating before, only to recognize what spells were around her…

A layer of peace and serenity, like the moment before a classical concert begins, just before the conductor drops his baton in the first downbeat – silencing spell. Woven into the silence and peace was the buzzing she had heard earlier, like a swarm of drones in a field of daisies – a BuzzBee Spell? That was ingenious. It would (if it worked properly and didn't overshadow everything else) blur all the sound that the silencing spells couldn't block out, making it seem that the conversation was just far away, something ear couldn't pick up entirely. All right, so that was where the buzz was coming from. But why was it overshadowing the silencing spell?

Ah. Unbalanced. Too much force in the BuzzBee Spell as compared with the Silencing Spell. Hm. You'd think someone as good at alchemy as Master Snape claimed to be would notice something like that. The boy was human after all.

So why was the spell enhancing the conversation? It hadn't done that yesterday… Well, maybe the answer was in the next layer of the spell.

Hmm… Bubblehead Charms – two in a row. Second charm had a rune – so he had taken her advice. That was sweet of him. Hm. Algiz reversed. Algiz as written normally was the rune of Protection and Concealment, so reversed it would be…

Unprotected. Conversation was unprotected – when it was unprotected, unconcealed, it was…enhanced, and negated all the silencing spells before the rune.

Oh, good Lord above. If she could raise her arms that far, she'd be covering her face in her hands. Why? She was going to be killed at fifty-five by a moody twenty-something because he hated women and she had (inadvertently, in her own defense) destroyed his spell.

Well, maybe it was just that layer… She listened to the spell layer-by-layer, starting from the beginning again. Of course. Every time the young man had meant to draw Algiz, he'd drawn it reversed.

Hm. That gave her an idea. She withdrew from the spell, and allowed her magic to recede back into the pool of her heart, where she usually kept it. Maybe she could listen to the curse on her back. She'd only ever looked at it in a mirror before (and looking at it had made her incredibly dizzy). If that bastard had runed the curse and she could hear the runes and their positions, maybe she could help Hippocrates find a counter by reversing the runes.

She yawned.

Well, maybe later then. Checking her internal well of magic, she realized it was time for a nap. As the thought passed through her brain, her head sank into the pillow and she drifted off.

Please review and give me more inspiration and motivation! Let me know what you really think of Ms. Afanen.