Prophecy Repeated, chapter thirteen.
Disclaimer:-
Harry Potter belongs to J.K.Rowling, her various publishers and Warner Brothers. This story and any new characters belong to me.
RECAP.
Gail is still seriously ill and a cure seems no nearer.
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Gail's condition didn't change, but Florence encouraged what rapidly became daily flying trips when she realised that they took Gail's mind off of her pain, if only for a while.
Lucius may have changed a lot, but, as Michelle had pointed out to him, he was still a natural show-off, and there was nobody he enjoyed showing off to more than Gail.
He had begun showing her some of the manoeuvres he used in quidditch, and she was rapidly becoming impatient and demanding that he take her along with him, instead of leaving her on the ground while he did his demonstrations.
Despite his worries about her safety, she finally nagged him enough to persuade him.
"Show me the one that's named after Uncle Ron that makes everyone faint with shock," she cried.
"The what?"
"The Ronsy faint."
Lucius laughed. "It's not named after Ron Weasley. It's Wronski, with a W. And it's feint with an E, for pretending that you're going after the snitch."
"I don't care, let's do it anyway."
"Hold on tight, then."
Normally Lucius had no real problems with that manoeuvre, but the extra weight made him misjudge it and they ploughed into the ground.
Amazingly, he was unhurt apart from a few bruises. He got up stiffly and hobbled over to where Gail had been thrown.
"My ankle hurts," she said through her tears as she rubbed her right ankle.
Once he had her back in the hospital wing, Florence confirmed it was broken. "You say it hurt?"
"A lot," agreed Gail. "But it's better now."
"That's because I've repaired the break. But you've never been able to feel anything in your legs."
"I felt that," Gail insisted with a grimace.
Florence held her wand over Gail's right leg and closed her eyes. "That'll be okay now," she said, in a strangely absent-minded voice.
She allowed a very guilty-feeling Lucius to come in and sit with Gail, while she walked up to the Headmaster's office.
"Gail broke her ankle and it hurt her," she began without preamble.
"Will she be alright?"
"Of course," huffed Florence a the slight to her abilities. "She already is. You don't understand, do you?"
"What is there to understand?"
"It HURT her."
"Of course it did." Harry looked at Florence and saw the exasperation in her face. "Am I being thick about something?"
"She hasn't felt anything in her legs since she came here. This hurt her. She felt it. I did a wandscan of her nervous system. Previously the nerves to her legs and feet were dead. Now they are almost totally grown back. I think this explains the pains and her lack of magic."
"How?"
"You know how painful it is to regrow bones?"
Harry grimaced at the memory.
"Well nerves are much more difficult, and obviously much more painful. Usually we can't even grow those back. It's supposed to be impossible. It seems that since she got her magic back, all of Gail's magic had been syphoned into repairing her nerves."
Over the next week or two, Gail could feel more and more from her legs. She began to get frustrated at Florence's constant poking as she tested to see where Gail could feel.
"Who cares about feeling them anyway?" she snapped. "I want to be able to USE them, so I can kicked this damned chair away."
"Gail. Do that again!"
"What? Do what again?"
"When you wanted to kick the chair, your leg moved. Just a little, but it moved."
No matter how much Gail tried, and how much Florence encouraged her, she couldn't make her leg move again.
"Don't worry, my dear. It'll come. I promise you."
Florence was right. Within a few days Gail could wiggle her toes. Florence began a tough regime of physiotherapy, muggle-style, working Gail hard each day until Gail almost wished she couldn't feel her legs any more.
Her only respite was her daily flying with Lucius, who point-blank refused to risk her again by doing stunts with her on his broom.
Gail had begged Florence not to tell Harry or Ginny too much about her progress, and soon it was time for the end of school year feast.
"I thought you were bringing Gail," asked Ginny.
"She didn't want me to," explained Florence.
"Feeling down again?"
Fortunately Florence was spared the need to reply by green flames from the floo nearest the head table. Gail appeared, standing precariously between two sticks. She struggled forward, her steps agonisingly slow as she crossed the short distance to the table. As she had almost made it, she tried to rush and fell. Harry was quick to catch her and stop her from falling.
Whatever he said to her was lost in the huge cheer which erupted. "Honesty," cried Gail. "You'd think I'd just won the quidditch cup all by myself," Her smile told a different story. She was so pleased and proud of herself. "Can someone take me to the Slytherin table, please? I didn't think I could walk that far."
Harry scooped her up in his arms and deposited her next to Lucius. "Thank you," he quietly said to the boy. Without his encouragement, he knew Gail would not have had the will to struggle this far.
The boy's eyes glistened as he nodded his acknowledgement. Michelle and the others crowded around Gail, hugging her.
"Sir," Lucius asked Harry, "Do you know what I'm going to be doing now?"
"What do you mean?"
"For the summer holidays. I can't go home."
"Merlin, I'm stupid. I'm sorry, Lucius, I'm supposed to be here for you and I didn't even think. Quite a few students whose parents are away at the International Wizarding Conference are staying anyway until their parents can pick them up. But you are welcome to stay with us for the whole holidays. If you want to that is."
"I'd like that very much. Sir, what did you mean by you're supposed to be here for me?"
Harry looked stunned for a moment. "Nothing," he muttered. "Nothing at all. Just that I'm here to look after you all."
Lucius was puzzled as he'd never known Headmaster Potter to lie before, but decided that now wasn't the time to take it further.
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"Have you thought about what we should do about Gail's lessons?" asked Hermione, two days into the summer holiday.
"No, I assume you have," replied Harry.
"Of course. Well she really needs to start from the beginning. She missed most of year one, and when she was there she couldn't do any practical magic."
"Will she be able to now?"
"I think so," Hermione answered him. "Florence wants to leave it another week or so before she tries any magic. She's got enough to do learning how to walk all over again."
"She won't like being put back a year, in with those a year younger than she is."
"It's worse than that."
"What do you mean?"
"You know, when she was ill, I decided to try to find out anything I could about her history, just in case there were any clues there."
"Yes, I remember. You told me you didn't find anything."
"I didn't find anything relevant, no. I did find her birth certificate. Here." She handed it to him.
"But this can't be right."
"I checked. It is. For some reason her father kept her at home rather than sending her to school until he couldn't get away with it any longer. He moved from area to area, so nobody really knew anything about her. She's actually a year older than she thinks."
"But she's so small. She was small for her age anyway, I mean, the age we thought she was."
"Not being fed properly all your life will do that to you. I seem to remember that you were small for your age until you came to Hogwarts."
"So really she should be going into year three now. So why was her Hogwarts letter a year late?"
"I'm guessing she wasn't ready, until her magic started breaking out to save Lucius. But whatever the reason behind that, we have to decide what to do with her next year."
"Well she can't go into year three, that's for sure," said Harry.
"I agree. But what about, if Florence says it's okay, I start tutoring her through the summer. She's bright. With one on one tutoring she should be able to catch up the theory at least. And I'm sure you and Ginny can help her catch up on the practical, though I'd prefer it if you can get Ginny not to teach her a certain bat-bogie hex."
Harry laughed. "No promises there. Do you really think she can do it?"
"As I said, she's bright. And we know she's powerful. If she really wants to, she can do it, I'm sure."
"You can be the one to tell her she's going to spend all summer studying, though."
"Coward," joked Hermione.
"Hey, I'm the Hero Of The Wizarding World," Harry exclaimed. "You can't call me a coward."
"That was over fifty years ago, oh Chosen One," laughed Hermione. "And I seem to remember there was more than just you in that tent."
"I never could win an argument with you."
"Took you long enough to learn that one. But you're right. I should tell her this. It should come from me as I'm the one responsible for the academic program here."
"Did I just win that argument?" Harry asked, amazed.
"No, you didn't," replied Hermione firmly. "But I'll see Gail this evening. Anyhow, I've got the easy part."
"What do you mean?"
"You've still got to decide what you're going to tell Lucius, and when. The way he looks at you, he knows you're hiding something from him. He just has no idea what and he's too much in awe of you to challenge you."
For once, Hermione was wrong.
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With her magical power available to her instead of healing her body, Gail proved to be a natural with her wand. The theory she had learned the previous year came together and Ginny was amazed at how quickly she mastered basic charms like Wingardium Leviosa ('quicker than you, Ron', she hadn't been able to resist pointing out) and simple transfigurations.
She was reasonably adept at potions, for which Hermione took her for both theory and practical, but seemed uninterested in Defence Against the Dark Arts. She point blank refused to learn Ginny's trademark bat-bogie hex. "Mum. My magic killed my father. I don't ever want to have to use it to hurt anyone ever again."
For once in her life, Ginny had no reply.
Later Harry explained to her that if good people didn't learn defensive and offensive spells, wizards like Voldemort could come and go and there would be nobody to stop the killing. "I didn't want to kill either," he confessed to her. "But if it's a choice between killing someone who is evil and seeing innocent people killed, then the way I see it is that we have a responsibility to stop the evil if we can, no matter what."
"I suppose you're right, but I don't have to like it."
"I hope you never do like it. That's what makes us different from deatheaters and their like."
After that conversation, Gail put more effort into her Defence work, but as she said to Harry one evening after she'd been practising with him and Lucius, "I hope I never have to use these spells."
Harry's startled her by looking guiltily at both her and Lucius and almost running from the room.
"Now I KNOW he's hiding something," said Lucius.
"You don't think it could be something about that prophecy your father wanted to know about, do you?"
Lucius left the room almost as quickly as Harry had done, leaving a furious Gail alone. She still could only walk slowly and carefully.
As Lucius had guessed, Harry had gone straight to Ginny.
"I couldn't bear it. Knowing what he's going to have to face, and there was Gail saying how she hoped she would never have to use the defensive spells."
"You are going to have to tell them sometime," replied Ginny.
"I know. But how do you tell someone something like that? I know how Dumbledore felt now."
"They're both intelligent kids," Ginny pointed out. "If you don't tell them, they'll figure out something by themselves. If they get it wrong, it could be dangerous. If they get it right, they'll never forgive you for not telling them."
"But how?" pleaded Harry.
Lucius burst into the room. "It's me, isn't it?"
"What?"
"I'm the one in the prophecy my father wanted to know about. I'm the one you were looking for."
A shocked-into-silence Harry and Ginny gave him his reply.
"So, when were you going to tell me? And what is going to happen to me?"
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Author's note...
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