Chapter 30: The Hospital Wing
When we got back to Hogwarts, Skye led me straight to the hospital wing.
"No," I whined. "Too many stairs. My room is on the third floor."
"I know," Skye rolled her eyes. "But tonight you need to sleep where someone can keep an eye on you."
There were no students in the hospital wing when we entered, and Skye deposited me on a bed before walking over to the door that led to Madam Eldridge's quarters and banging on it insistently.
"Martha!" she cried. "I've got a situation!"
In moments, the door opened, and Martha appeared. She was dressed for bed in a nightgown that reached all the way down to the floor, but her eyes were wide awake and she looked as alert as if it were the middle of the day.
"What's happened?" she asked, her eyes passing over the wing and landing on me. "Is something wrong with Professor Harris?"
Skye grimaced. "She might have drunk something tonight that maybe she shouldn't have," she admitted.
Martha hurried over to me, where I lay on the bed with my legs still hanging off the side, having been unable to pull them up on my own. She lit up her wand tip and flashed it in my eyes, and then did a quick spell on me that made me feel less fuzzy for about three seconds before it ended and I was back to how I'd been before.
My brain had stopped throbbing at this point, but it was becoming harder and harder to maintain consciousness. All I wanted was to go to sleep, but I fought it because Skye had told me to stay awake until Martha gave me something to drink.
"A lobe-blaster?" Martha asked, turning to Skye. "Really?"
"I'm sorry," Skye insisted. "I didn't know she'd done the shots until it was too late."
"She did more than one?" Martha's eyes widened.
"Just two," Skye assured her quickly. "Please, just fix this before the brain damage becomes permanent."
Martha hurried away and I looked up at Skye pleadingly. My eyelids were so heavy and the bed I was lying on was so comfortable.
"Can I go to sleep now?" I begged.
"In a minute," Skye promised me, reaching out to take my hand. "Just as soon as you drink the potion."
I shook my head vehemently. "No potions for me," I said. "Potions are for witches and I'm not a witch."
Skye sighed. "Fine, it's not a potion. It's just pumpkin juice."
"Blech," I said, scrunching up my face and sticking my tongue out in disgust. I knew pumpkin juice was popular amongst the wizarding community, but I hadn't acquired a taste for the stuff. Then again, pumpkin had never been my favorite thing before coming to Hogwarts anyway.
"Okay," Skye said, shaking her head. "What do you want to drink?"
I considered the question for a moment, tapping my chin with my index finger. "Chocolate milk," I finally declared.
"Great," Skye muttered. "Then just stay awake and Martha will bring you some chocolate milk to drink, and then you can go to sleep."
"Okay," I agreed readily enough, excited at the prospect of chocolate milk. I hadn't had a glass of chocolate milk in ages.
Martha hurried back with a glass full of an electric blue concoction. She tried to hand it to me, but I pushed the hand away.
"That's not chocolate milk," I informed her.
"No," Martha frowned. "It's – "
"It's chocolate milk," Skye interjected. "It just looks different because it's magical chocolate milk."
"Am I allowed to drink magical chocolate milk?" I asked suspiciously.
"Of course!" Skye assured me. "You've eaten magical chocolate before. Remember the chocolate frogs?"
Skye's logic made sense. I figured if I could eat chocolate frogs, then I could drink this magical electric blue chocolate milk as well. I took the glass from Martha and downed it in one gulp.
It was different than regular chocolate milk. In fact, it didn't taste like milk or like chocolate at all. It tasted kind of like a liquid gumdrop mixed with orange juice. But it wasn't terrible, and so I drank it anyway, handing Martha back the empty glass when I was done.
"Can I go to sleep now?" I requested, looking from Skye to Martha and back to Skye again.
"Sure," Skye nodded, grabbing my legs and moving them up onto the bed with me. It was much more comfortable that way and I was glad she'd thought to do it.
I closed my eyes and immediately everything faded to blackness.
When I awoke, I had a splitting headache and the light was so bright that I had to shield my eyes from the beams that were streaming in through all the high windows. There were screens all around my bed and as I slowly started to sit up, Martha appeared from the other side of them.
"Good, you're awake," she said as she bustled about. "You've missed breakfast and some of first period, but it seems you'll be able to make it in time to teach your sixth-year class and there will be no need to cancel it."
"I missed breakfast?" I asked in dismay. "But I was supposed to supervise."
"Madam Volant took care of that for you," Martha assured me. "Now before you go, I'd like to have a word with you."
I nodded, and sat up, pushing the blankets off of myself and swinging my legs over the bed so that I was sitting up and not lying in a hospital bed like an invalid.
"Alright," I agreed, trying to look as dignified as I could manage despite my rumpled clothes, mussed hair, and of course the shame of having woken up in the hospital wing because I'd partied too hard.
Martha pulled up a chair and sat down in front of me.
"Professor Harris – do you remember what happened last night?" she asked. My memories of the previous night were hazy, but I remembered enough to realize that I must have had too much to drink. I looked down at the floor in humiliation.
"I'm sorry," I said. "It was unprofessional. Especially on a school night." I felt like a teenager being scolded by her parents.
"Katie I'm not upset with you," Martha assured me. "Neither is the Headmaster, though he'll be having a word or two with Madam Volant later I'm sure."
"It wasn't her fault," I insisted. "I'm the one that drank too much."
"When Skye took you away from this castle, you became her responsibility," Martha disagreed. "She should have kept an eye on what you were drinking and should never have let you take those lobe-blaster shots."
I didn't like how this conversation was going one bit. Martha was treating me like a child, like one of her students. But I was an adult, a teacher. I could take responsibility for my actions.
"I'm the one that overdid it," I insisted. "I should have been keeping better track of what I was drinking. Or not had anything to drink, since I had to teach in the morning."
Martha sighed. "Katie, wizarding drinks are different from muggle drinks. Skye tells me that you started out on just firewhisky, which on its own would have certainly affected your system more than that of a witch or wizard, but would have faded eventually. But the lobe-blaster shots you took – those can have permanent damaging consequences for muggles. The part of the brain where magical ability comes from isn't active in muggles and can't counteract the effects of the lobe-blaster like it can for a witch or wizard."
"I didn't know that," I admitted sheepishly.
"Of course not," Martha agreed. "When Skye took you to that club, she should have told you what was and wasn't safe for you to drink. That she failed to do so means that the responsibility for this mess rests with her."
"But aren't I in trouble for going out and partying?" I wondered.
Martha shook her head. "You didn't have any patrols scheduled last night. Teachers are more than welcome to do what they like with their free time. It makes no difference whether you spend an evening off in your quarters, in Hogsmeade, or at The Bouncing Bulb."
"Right," I muttered. I understood where Martha was coming from, and I couldn't argue with anything she was saying, but I still felt awful about the position I'd put Skye in. If only I'd stuck to firewhisky. If only I hadn't listened when Skye told me to let loose and flirt with Jordan.
More memories began to flood my mind and I gasped as I remembered just how far I'd almost let things go with him last night. My face turned bright red and I covered it with my hand as I burned in humiliation. If Skye hadn't intervened, I had been on my way to sleep with Jordan last night. Of course, it had been the effect of the alcohol. The lobe-blaster had done something to my mind. For all intents and purposes, I'd been drugged. But I was still embarrassed.
"I should get ready for my class," I said standing up and pushing past the screens, which I realized had probably been put up to prevent any students from stumbling across my drunk ass sleeping off a night of clubbing. I appreciated the attempt at offering me some privacy.
When I got back to my room, I had half an hour available to me before I had to be presentable. I quickly jumped in the shower to wash off any remnants of last night and then dressed in the most comfortable clothes I could find. I also grabbed a croissant that was on the food table in the living room, knowing that I would need to eat something along the way.
I wasn't at all prepared to teach a proper lesson that morning, so instead I broke the room up into discussion groups and put three open-ended questions on the board for them to discuss. Then I sat at my desk with my eyes partially closed and tried to block last night out of my mind completely.
It was hard. Every time I thought I'd succeeded, I'd have a flash and suddenly Jordan's hand would be on my thigh, or his mouth would be on my mouth, or his hands would be on my ass. I shivered uncomfortably, ignoring the curious stares from my students, and at one point I had to run into my office quickly so that I could throw up in my garbage can.
I didn't have to teach third period, so once my sixth years were gone, I shut myself up in my office and held my head in my hands, rubbing my temples with my fingers. I hadn't been hungover many times, but this felt like the worst time yet. I was just thankful for whatever Martha had given me to drink last night, because I imagined it would be a hundred times worse without it.
Towards the end of the period, just before lunch, there was a knock at my door.
"What do you want?" I called out. If it was a student, there was a very good chance I would kill them for interrupting my solitary time. I had to supervise lunch soon, and after lunch I only had one hour to prepare myself before I had to teach two more classes back to back.
The door creaked open and Skye poked her head inside.
"Can I come in?" she asked.
I groaned, but nodded, dropping my head back down onto my desk. At least I didn't have to keep up appearances.
"Katie, I am so sorry," Skye said. "I should have kept a better watch on you, I – "
"Don't," I held up a hand to stop her. "I'm not mad. And I was making bad decisions way before we got to The Bouncing Bulb."
I recalled how I'd flirted with Jordan at The Leaky Cauldron; how close I'd let him get.
"But you were resisting his advances until I pushed you two together," Skye insisted, dropping into a chair opposite me. "If I hadn't told you to flirt back – "
"I was fully aware of what I was doing right up until those lobe-blasters," I assured her. "I'm the only one to blame for getting to that point."
The truth was, I didn't feel as bad about the clubbing and the getting drunk and almost permanently damaging my brain as I did about leading Jordan on. And I'd been doing that way before I'd lost the ability to reason and think for myself. Alex and I had finally been headed towards something. I should have insisted Skye bring me back to Hogwarts instead of staying out after Jane and Oliver had gone home.
"I should've kept a better eye on you," Skye lamented. "But I got distracted trying to convince Billy that I was only interested in dancing and then it was too late."
"You got me back here in one piece," I reminded Skye. "Once you realized something was wrong, you did the right thing. You couldn't have known I was going to do those shots. You encouraged me to drink firewhisky and I should have stuck to that."
"Headmaster Slinkhard disagrees," Skye said ashamedly. "He said I should have warned you about lobe-blasters if I was going to leave you alone in a club. And he was right. There aren't that many wizarding drinks that are dangerous for muggles. I could've told you what to avoid."
"Look," I said. "A lot happened last night, and we both regret things. Let's just forget about it, and next time I'll be more careful about what I drink." And about who I drink with, I added mentally.
"About that," Skye said with a grimace. "There's not going to be a next time. Headmaster Slinkhard banned me from taking you off the grounds. He said I'm not responsible enough."
"What?" I demanded. "He can't do that! I can leave the grounds whenever I please! I don't need a babysitter."
Skye shrugged. "You can," she agreed. "But you can't get much further than Hogsmeade without someone to apparate you. And I'm not allowed to do that anymore."