Author's Note: I make no money from writing, and i own no part of Harry Potter

"Thou shalt spell the word 'pheonix' P-H-E-O-N-I-X, not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford-English Dictionary tells you"

-Scroobius Pip

"Thou Shalt Always Kill"

Hogwarts infirmary

May 30th, 1993

After the impromptu celebration in The Great Hall, he had been shanghaied with Hermione, back to the land of the overbearing matron. He had never liked hospitals, the over-sanitation reminding him of his Aunt's kitchen and chemical burns. Hermione was sick with something called 'atrophy', and needed to be levitated back to her bed half-way back. After casting a spell to make her better, Madam Pomfrey closed the curtains around his best friend and picked up a tray of noxious potions oh her way to the bed he was sitting on. Placing the tray on the bedside table, she said;

"You gave us all quite the fright, you know. How do you feel?"

"Er-fine." he said. "My joints ache, but beside that, I feel great." he said unconvincingly.

"Yes, well, that's to be expected. Now, tell me what happened, Mr. Potter." by the time he had gotten to the part about the tunnel collapsing underneath the school, the nurse had removed her wand and conjured a straight-backed chair, and lowered herself into it, grumbling about dropping hapless frauds in her domain without so much as a by-your-leave. It made him nervous. He began the story, so intent on not upsetting the Adult he forgot to omit Ginny's name as he got to the conversation with Tom Riddle...Voldemort...whatever. She interrupted him as he realized his error, the words spluttering from his mouth attempting to rectify the mistake.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pott-calm yourself!" she snapped, silencing Harry, "If what you say is true, Miss Weasley may still be affected by...residue from her ordeal; I need to ask you to pause for a few moments. Dippy!" A moment later, a house elf with pink skin and a smock bearing the Hogwarts crest materialized next to the bed. He looked on curiously, hoping Ginny was okay.

Madam Pomfrey spent the next minutes giving the house elf orders, including tea for the both of them, asking for something extra in hers. He didn't know what that meant, but held his tongue as she went about her business He could hear Hermione giggling every so often across the room.

'What kind of sickness makes you tired, and needs laughter as a cure?' Harry thought A tray carrying two cups appearing at the end of the bed, a ribbon tied around one handle. Madam Pomfrey picked up her cup and taking her seat again.

"Could I have extra in my tea?" Harry blurted. The matron froze with wide eyes, a warm smile and a chuckle escaping her lips a moment later.

"Not till you're older, young man. Now, I need to write to St. Mungo's so they can come collect our absent-minded professor, as well as seek advice from a colleague, just a few moments more."

Uncorking the ink pot, she quilled her letters on the back of a large tome as Harry nursed his tea. It was earl grey; not his favorite, but better than the flowery stuff his Aunt Petunia always made him drink. She finished by tapping both sheets with her wand, rolling them up addressed and sealed, and attaching them to a school owl.

"Thank you for your patience. Now, please continue."

Picking up where he left off, he remembered not to tell her who the diary really was, explaining the best he could how he survived the ordeal. She had frozen again a few moments into his retelling, and Harry unconsciously began speaking faster, until the conclusion poured out of his mouth. Waiting for the inevitable explosion, he flinched when she jumped to her feet.

"Mr. Potter! You should be dead! Hold still while I check you over." she said sternly, removing her wand from her robes.

"What? I feel fine..." Harry protested as she waved it in a blur over his head, muttering a song-like incantation. Three red and green shapes floated from his chest to hover between them. Looking them over, prodding one, and poking another. Frowning heavily, she swiped a hand through them and plopping boneless into the chair she had created.

"Dippy!"

"Yes missus Poppy?"

"I need the bottle." the elf returned with an ornate glass bottle filled with an unknown liquid. Harry held his breath, hoping she wouldn't make him drink some awful concoction. He felt fine! To his surprise, she sloshed the liquid into her own empty teacup, and downed the contents in one go. Flames leaped from her mouth with a dainty burp, sitting in silence for a full five minutes, while Harry continued to sip at his earl grey, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

"Mr. Potter, I don't think you grasp the severity of your situation."

"Yeah, that-that's probably true." he said blankly.

"If what you say is true, the-we...," putting up a hand to forestall his protest, she continued

"Look, I believe you. There isn't much known about basilisks, but we do know that their venom doubles in potency and injection rate every year. Newborns can kill a full-grown man inside of a minute with a single bite; this venom was over four million times more powerful.

"Your arm should have simply disintegrated on contact, but something I can't identify kept it from affecting you for a time. You are, as you say, 'perfectly fine', but if Fawkes had been even a half a second late, or a millilitre short on tears, you would be a puddle."

"What were those things you did to me?" he asked, condensing everything she'd told him into 'you're perfectly fine', then discarding it.

"A diagnostic that represents the condition of your blood. It shows a rune that changes depending on the condition of the target's blood. As you saw, for some reason you have three; my best guess is two represent the poison, and the tears in your system, while the third probably represents your blood.

"What worries me, however, is the venom and tear runes, if my conclusions are correct, kept switching positions with each other, leading me to believe they are in some sort of unstable equilibrium, constantly fighting for dominance. I believe we have crossed outside the realm of normal, Mr. Potter."

"What else is new..." he mumbled, then out loud, "so, what do I do?"

"We don't really have a lot of options. Anyone who's ever been poisoned by basilisks have died, and I'm not aware of pheonix tears ever having been used that way. They're terribly rare, you know." His eyes had widened comically, thoughts of 'We' and 'I' dancing behind his green orbs. He didn't really understand much of what she was telling him, but he grasped that they would do it together as she stood up again, this time holding out a hand for him.

Once inside her office, Madam Pomfrey used her wand to float a massive book from the shelf. The instant it touched the surface of the desk, it jumped open to a page three-quarters through it. Seeing his astounded look, she shot him a wink saying;

"Like it? Took me forever to get it right, but I enchanted the desk to open any book to the most useful page at the time. Kept giving me the least useful page..." He nodded dumbly as she incanted a charm to magnify the cramped writing, mumbling to herself. Finishing the page, she sighed again and canceled the magnification charm.

"According to this, the best thing for it is a Diagnostic Matrix." Receiving only a blank look, she elucidated, "There exists a diagnostic spell for every possible thing that could be wrong with a person, over 1000 of them, of varying complexity. Normally, it is enough to cast them as needed, following me?" At his nod, she continued

"In...extenuating conditions, however, there is the Diagnostic Matrix. It imbues a runestone with all of these spells and keeps them running, in a sense. The runestone absorbs into your magic, and becomes a part of you. It is permanent, and only I will be able to activate or deactivate it. Limits of the magic, unfortunately. Does that make sense?" he nodded, but there was something he didn't understand.

"How is this going to help?"

"To be honest with you, I'm not sure. The Matrix creates a kind of 'picture' of the body, as a baseline, then applies the diagnostics to that image, highlighting the differences. Maybe, with the unstable equilibrium in your blood, the charms will see that as a change from baseline. From what I can see, it will make life easier for both of us in the future. You rather have a penchant for getting injured in new and exciting ways." she said to him, laughing out loud at the bashful grin he was trying to hide.

He agreed to go through with it, if only because Madam Pomfrey had spent so much time on him. Once he had relaxed around her, and she loosened what she called her 'Professional Manner', he thought she was brilliant. He didn't really see the point of the matrix-thingy, but he was only twelve,

'I don't understand a lot of things.' Almost an hour of lying on his back later, the stone he'd been balancing on his chest disappeared, adding a feeling like an itch, but nowhere to him. He saw the Mediwitch was exhausted from the nonstop casting,

"Erm...Dippy?" he asked to the room, as she sunk herself into a nearby chair.

"What can Dippy be doing?" the house elf POPped.

"I think Madam Pomfrey needs a glass of water" he said timidly. With a snap of long, pink fingers, a glass appeared on the table, and he handed it to the matron, thanking the elf.

"Thank you, Mr. Potter. Now, why don't we see what we can see?" she said after draining the glass.

"What?! Don't you need to recover, or something?" She was usually the one berating him for over-doing it!

"Nonsense, Mr. Potter. I've already cast the magic, activating it costs next to nothing. Now lie down" she said sternly (while a smile creeped up one side of her face), removing her wand from her robes and waving it in complex patterns over his body. After half a minute, a blueish mist expanded from his body, the three runes that represented his blood suspended in it.

"Success! Hang on a second..."

As the nurse prodded the runes she said represented the foreign elements in his body, the blue mist turned red and green, swirling and clashing together like a tempest. She dashed off to her office saying something about 'figuring it out', and returned with a vial and dropper.

"What's that? And what did you figure out?" He asked, still wary of terrible potions.

"Unicorn's blood. Freely given, of course, I wouldn't curse you Mr. Potter" she said at his horrified look. Cracking the vial open and withdrawing a single drop, she held it near his arm, and performed a spell that turned it the liquid inside red before turning black, melting the dropper.

"What does that mean!?" he shouted. 'was this another diagnostic? What's wrong with me?

"I'll have you not shout in my domain, Mr. Potter." she reprimanded calmly "That was a switching spell, you should be learning it next year; very important for your O.W.L.s. Now, observe."

While he had been freaking out, the colors in the Diagnostic Matrix began to calm and return to blue, from the point where the unicorn blood had been put in his blood stream. The waves continued to calm back to a bluish glow, the runes over his head eventually fading last.

"As I suspected." she said smugly

"What?" he said, feeling an uneasy weight he didn't realize was there disappear.

"You essentially had an unstable potion in your bloodstream. I added an ingredient that allowed them to combine with each other and stabilize. Now, I'm not sure what a potion of Pheonix Tears, Basilisk Venom, and Unicorn Blood will do to, or for you, but you look much better, and it should clear your system over the summer."

Jumping out of the bed, he was about to rush out the door before she told him that Hermione's treatment should be over. Once she was cleared, they both headed to Gryffindor tower, leaving their thanks as they left.

The last thing Madam Pomfrey heard was Harry asking curiously:

"Hermione, what's atrophy?"