Chapter Eighteen
The surgery let out sometime later. She wasn't sure how much time had passed before all three parties had pulled away, and Finnigan had rejoined them. They'd all sat in silence for some time, each lost in his or her own thought. At one point, a nurse came by and gave Daphne a bundle of suede. It had taken her a moment to realise it was Michael's jacket.
"The pretty Asian girl told me to give it to you."
She'd stripped out of her ripped up robes. She still had her school uniform on beneath--white blouse and linen skirt. When she put on the jacket, she was torn between the feeling of taking a first unwanted step into the Muggle world and the fact that it smelled like Michael, and even if there were rips and bloodstains here and there from their journeys, she could try and imagine that he was embracing her from behind. She must have drifted off, thinking this. The next thing she knew, a pretty young nurse with black hair in a tidy bun was addressing them.
"You may go in and see your friends, but one at a time please."
"I'll go see Anthony first," Terry said.
"Want me t'go with you?" Seamus asked quietly.
"I think I'll be all right," the now completely composed once again Boot replied with a shake of his head.
"I'm just going to see Pansy," Clare said hoarsely, taking a drink from her water bottle and attempting to pull the same indifferent look that Terry had donned before she stood. Finnigan shrugged and dropped down into the lone seat Daphne had previously inhabited, looking like he was about to take a nap, which he probably was. Even Finnigan had to be emotionally exhausted after all that.
"Well, then, right this way, if you please," the nurse said, leading them down the hall. She held several charts in her hands. The hallways of the Intensive Care Unit (as Daphne had learned it was called) smelled funny. St. Mungo's had an unpleasant smell of malady, but... it smelled alive. This place seemed stale, overly clean, dead. Her hands crept up the sleeves of that over-sized jacket, and she hugged her arms to her chest, trying to remind herself that a hospital was also a place of life.
"First room--one-oh-five--Corner, Michael," the nurse said, looking at the chart and swinging the door open.
The first thing that caught her eye was the multitude of what she understood must have been television sets... And there were all these wires and tubes stretching all about to metal coat trees and off into boxes with blinking lights. In the background there an acute beeping sound, similar to that sound that had gone off when Max... She hugged herself tighter and stepped inside, at long last her eyes falling on the young man buried beneath all those incomprehensible things.
She was really scared for a lot of reasons. First of all because she couldn't recognize Michael at all, and second because there was so much happening in the room that she couldn't discern one thing from another. She almost backed away, but the door was already closed leaving her in this room of Muggle things that made absolutely no sense to her. At least she knew why some wizards would take Muggle Studies now, though that fact seemed so distant now that it was bordering on unimportant.
A couple steps were taken further toward the bed, and she realized that there were all sorts of tubes and needles sticking into Michael's body! Weren't they trying to help him, she wondered? How could sticking these things into him actually make him better? They looked like they didn't belong!
And she was part of this barbaric world now where you needed to hurt someone to help them. She stopped a few paces from the bed, and though her face felt numb she could tell that she was staring from the dryness in her eyes. How could she approach him? There didn't seem to be any sort of way around the wires and things which she really wanted to rip out and throw away.
Another step, and she could see his hand covered in bandages and more of those wires. Could she touch it and let him know she was there? Would he even be aware of her presense? Would it hurt him if she did? Outside the window, she could see a street with cars going by and a building in the distance with... She looked up. There were lights. Electricity.
Her world now.
Finally, she reached forward, touching his fingers as best she could without disturbing the wires and tubes that were attached to his hand.
It felt sort of clammy to the touch, and for a moment she thought maybe they had killed him after all, except there was this funny suction-like sound that seemed to accompany the rise and fall of his chest. If he was breathing, he must still be alive, right? She wrapped her hand around his middle finger, too afraid to take anything else, but also too alarmed to not grasp him at all. There was faint bruising around the tape in his wrists, and she wondered if they had shoved those tubes right into him. It just seemed... wrong.
At least it seemed that his skin had returned to its normal colour--maybe a little wan, but nothing like it had been when he'd been lying on the ground with those wide, luminous eyes looking into some other world that she didn't even want to contemplate at that moment. She just hoped it was good, because that's where so many of her friends were now.
She peeled her eyes away from his hand, up his arm where another bandage was wrapped, keeping his arm essentially straight. She could see the faint edge of green skin under the looser sections of that bandage, too. Once again, she couldn't help but feel this was all so twisted. Maybe they should have...
She shook her head. No, if they had, Michael really would be dead right now. She swallowed roughly, not sure why she was feeling so confused and at the brink of emotion, except she was exhausted and terrified and more stressed that she'd even been during the O.W.L.s, which, she thought bitterly, had been for naught after all.
Her eyes trailed up again, over the paper-looking gown covered shoulder to his face, which was scariest of all, because there was this big thing there over his nose and it looked like one of the tubes was actually going into his mouth and she really didn't want to think of where it was going. For a moment, she considered ripping all these horrible Muggle things off him--they looked like parasites: disgusting slithering things that were burrowing into him--but she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Why did she have to be experiencing all these things alone?
"Michael," she whimpered, allowing herself a moment of weakness. "Make it be okay."
She waited for him to move, but he didn't, still silent as ever except for the beeps and hisses of the machines around her. Michael certainly wasn't about to make everything okay again, not how he was. As she looked back down at his hand, her other hand went into the pocket of the coat she was now wearing. Before she'd thrown out her robe, she'd retrieved her wand. It was useless now, but it felt good to be in contact with it. Like a security blanket and a tie to what she considered normal. All this was so alien.
When she looked back up at his face, she could see that he was staring at her. For a moment, her pulse quickened; he still looked nothing like he should, except for those almost lifeless eyes which were just open enough so that she could see the black irises.
He just stared. Didn't move, didn't give any other indication that he was awake - or even alive - except for the fact that he blinked after a very long time.
It was like her dream almost, when he'd been waiting for her in the great hall but hadn't responded to her at all except to look at her, just like he was doing now.
She could feel herself shaking, trembling now and then with fear she hadn't ever really experienced before. Was everything going to be okay? She couldn't tell anymore since there wasn't any black and white. They were trapped in a Muggle Grey Area, and Michael's eyelids were drooping.
"Mikey, don't go."
His eyes were open again, staring. He could hear her! He was responding!
Those dark eyes watched her blankly for a moment, blinking slowly, as though he was struggling to keep them open, before they started to roam over all the contraptions stuck to him. His brows furrowed faintly at that. He kept blinking, as though it was a constant battle to remain conscious for even a minute. His eyes moved a little more quickly as they traced the lines from his wrist and chest and mouth off into the maze of machinery behind and on the other side of the bed. If she didn't know better, this seemed to scare him, but whatever the Muggles had done to him, the drowsiness seemed to overpower the panic.
His eyes returned to her, staring at her with that same sort of shocked silence that had also accompanied her dream, and once again, she felt a trill of horror run through her. If she hadn't been so tired, if she hadn't have seen Mackenzie die before her eyes, then she would have realised he just didn't know why he was in a Muggle hospital strapped to a gazillion gadgets and beeping grids.
His brows furrowed in earnest, and she followed his gaze to where she was clenching his finger so hard it was turning purple. She softened her grip, and she felt his hand twitch just slightly under her own. The pained look was replaced by a sort of quizzical expression. His hand flinched again, and the thoughtful look started to ebb back into panic. Those dusky eyes jumped back to her face, looking confused and demanding.
"Hey, settle down." Though she was feeling a bit better now that he seemed to be at least a bit responsive, Daphne's voice still trembled. She didn't know why he was looking at her like that or what it meant that his hand was flinching. Instead, she finally took his hand in hers, wires and things be damned. If they didn't want her to knock them out, they shouldn't have let her in the room! Oddly enough, they stayed in.
It was easy enough to guess that he wasn't able to talk, and so she started imagining the questions he might be asking. "He did it. Potter did it. There's no more magic. The Dark Lord is dead. The..." What else would he want? He was still looking at her as if she'd done something wrong!
She felt his hand twitch again, and she let go of it, wondering what she'd done that he didn't want her in the room. He didn't think it was her fault, did he? She backed away, but stopped when his eyes widened. It looked like he was afraid.
Her hand reached forward for his again, but the door opened, and a nurse came in carrying something in a bag. Something clear and yellowish, which she started attaching to the metal hat-rack type thing. It was after this was done and she was taking the old one off that she turned to Michael and noticed he was awake.
"Good, you're back with us," she said cheerily, turning to Daphne. "You are--"
"I'm..." She looked back at him. 'his girlfriend' didn't seem important enough, and she wanted to stay in the room with him if she could. Finally, she answered, "I'm Daphne. We're engaged."
...The look in Michael's eyes when she said that mildly cathartic. He went from surprise to a lazy-eyed stare in seconds. There was nothing really indicating how he felt about Daphne's admission, but hopefully he wouldn't be too offended if...
"Can I ask you to wait outside for a little while, Daphne? We're just going to take some vitals before he goes back to sleep." A few other nurses were arriving, followed by another woman who looked to have once been a mediwitch, followed by Cho. As Daphne hesitantly backed toward the door, Cho hugged her, which was surprising, to say the least.
"We'll take care of him, alright? Don't worry."
And then she was practically shoved into the hall by the nurses, and the door was closed.
"He's okay?" Hermione Granger asked. She'd been leaning against the wall outside his room apparently. Daphne hadn't even seen her.
"I think he will be. I hope. I just..." She smiled a little, because it a way, it was funny. "...Just told the nurse we were engaged."
Hermione's surprised expression was also tension-relieving. "...I didn't know."
"Neither did I," Daphne admitted, and then she wasn't quite sure why, but she started crying and couldn't really force the tears to stop.
Well, it seemed that Gryffindors were Gryffindors for a reason, because without any prompt or hesitation, Hermione hugged her. Not just hugged her, but stroked her hair and started talking in all this nice nonsense that, as she tried to focus in on it, helped her to get ahold of her self once again. She sniffled, pulling away and wiping her eyes on the baggy sleeves.
"I think I know what you were feeling," Hermione said softly. "I just saw Ron and Harry... Ron," she paused and sighed. Then she shook her head, putting her chin out and standing up straight again. "Well, they tortured him badly. He probably won't walk correctly again, but he can walk. Harry's been waking up on and off. He had to have a blood transfusion, but they say that it was a good match, so he'll be all right, too. I... also told the nurse..." Granger was turning bright red at the moment, looking away. "...that I was Ron's fiancee so she wouldn't throw me out."
"But she did anyways," Daphne supplied, chuckling softly through her hiccups.
Hermione nodded, her face "Weasley red." She cleared her throat, returning to her normal demeanor of calm and collected analytical prowess. "Why don't we go down to the cafeteria. I'll tell you what happened to us, if you tell me what happened to you. We'll get the others from the lobby. They must be famished, too."
Daphne nodded and allowed herself to be led away by Granger.
They were just about to the lobby when Hermione put her hand out and gently tugged back on Daphne's shoulder. "About what I said in the library. You're not."
Daphne wiped her eyes again. "Yes I am. Come on. They'll wonder where we are."
It felt good to hear that from Granger, even if Daphne herself couldn't see herself as being very brave. She did what she had to do. She protected herself when it was necessary. It was all for her. All of it. Not really, but she couldn't afford now to get sentimental over the fact that she'd refused to leave Pansy until she was okay. She couldn't admit that she went to the Ministry in the first place because Michael and Clare were in danger of losing their minds - literally. No, it had all been for herself. All of it.
Clare and Terry were back in the lobby along with Seamus, who was still dozing a bit. Zacharias Smith had joined them, and was sitting with his head down between his knees, hands clasped behind his head. Sitting next to him and not exactly being any sort of comfort - but not wearing any sort of disdainful expression - was Draco. Energy too spent to do anything but smile at him, Daphne did. She was surprised when he forced one back.
"What's going on?" she asked, noting that the others seemed to be crowding around the former Hufflepuff.
"Macmillan got himself killed," Draco said.
Ow. Somehow that hurt almost as much as Mackenzie. It was like if Seamus had died... Actually, she probably would have been more upset than she'd like to admit if the Irish Gryffindor had not survived. She was tempted to touch the Hufflepuff's shoulder, but he had never been overly fond of that sort of thing, so she kept her hands to herself.
Sensing the return to gloom, Hermione cleared her throat. "Right. Off to the cafeteria with everyone. Including you, Malfoy," she added as Draco gave her a disdainful look. However, he must have been hungry, because he did get up and start heading in that direction. The others shuffled after them, even Smith, who Hermione gently began to lead along. By this point, Daphne couldn't be surprised at Hermione's innate sense of leadership.
They all filed into the cafeteria that had food that... Well, Daphne had never seen anything so unappealing. Neither had Draco, apparently, because he went to sit at a table with nothing but a bottle of water. She stared at it all before choosing some wobbly green cubes in a bowl and going to sit beside him. The others soon joined with varying states of food. Hermione had placed a bowl of what seemed like some sort of chicken stew in front of Zacharias who simply began stirring it over and over blankly. She sighed and turned to the others.
"So Daphne and I," she said, gesturing to the Slytherin girl. "Thought it would be good to hear all the sides of this story. Daphne, do you want to start? Since you were the first group, of course..."
Daphne felt on the spot. Everyone - even Zacharias - was looking at her. She nodded though, taking a deep breath and poking at the green things with a plastic fork. She'd never really considered plastic as fork material before, mostly because she'd never considered plastic to exist. She chanced a taste... They really weren't that bad. Either that, or she was really hungry.
"We... Well, it wasn't..." She shook her head. "Sorry, I don't know where to start. We got to the lifts and that's when the Death Eaters apparated in.
Draco tensed. Daphne looked at him, but he shook his head. "Since you've all not shut up about it, my father wasn't even there."
Daphne took the silence that followed to mean she should continue. "We were trapped in that hall... Pansy and Anthony were injured... We saw Him." She looked at Hermione, who was actually giving her an exasperated look. "...V-- Vold-- We saw him. He apparated down, and the Death Eaters followed. So did we.
"I don't know what I did, but... I just... I couldn't even see right. If it was wearing a hood, I attacked. It was just chaos. Then this wall came up, and I was backed against it. Somewhere along the line, Michael must have apparated in. There was this woman there that kept casting the Cruciatus Curse on everyone..."
"Bellatrix Lestrange," Draco supplied through clenched teeth.
"Her," Daphne continued. "She... Michael... He was screaming, and I didn't know it was him at first." She looked down at the bowl, silent for a while until Draco - who seemed to want to know the story, too - elbowed her. "Er... Michael. He fell into the wall, and there was this bright flash of light--"
She was cut off by the astonished syllables from both Hermione and Draco.
"That's what shorted out that shield Voldemort had around the weapon!" Hermione exclaimed.
"What are you talking about?" Daphne demanded.
"Do you mind if I go next, Zacharias? Clare?" Hermione asked kindly. Both shook their heads, staring silently into their bowls of soup. Clare had apparently chosen cereal. Must have been comfort food for her. At any rate, taking this as her cue, Hermione continued, uninterrupted.
"Harry, Ron, and," she paused, eyeing the blonde Slytherin for a moment before clearing her throat and very quickly uttering his name, "Draco got there first, of course. Professor Lupin and," she paused, looking somewhat choked up for a moment, "Tonks and Ginny and I weren't far behind, though. Harry had already found the room with the weapon, but he didn't know how to make it work. No one did, not even Dumbledore. So they were all gathered around it and..." She actually chuckled, "...and he and Draco and Ron were bickering about how it worked. So then we tried all various spells to get it to do anything, but of course they didn't work.
"We didn't know, but the reason was because Voldemort," she said his name strongly, "had managed to have a Death Eater slip in and put a shield that he had prepared around it. I don't really understand how that part worked, even now," she admitted, looking annoyed with herself. "What happened was that Harry started to try and pick it up, but then this grid of light appeared all around it and... it hit him really hard." She paused, taking a drink of her juice. So that probably explained why Potter had needed blood.
"Things got really hectic after that. Voldemort suddenly appeared. He didn't have any Death Eaters with him, but... Well, Tonks, she tried to save Harry," she sniffled, dabbing her eye with her napkin. "He killed her instantly. He was going to kill all of us. Harry was badly injured, but he still got up and tried to fight alongside Professor Lupin and Draco. Ron and Ginny and I... we were trying to find a way to break the shield so we could get close enough to the orb to get it to Harry. Voldemort kept forcing Harry against the barrier, and..." She shook her head, as if it were too much to consider just then what the now passed evil had done to the Boy Who Lived. "Well, that's when it happened."
"Don't be so dramatic, Granger," Draco said, reaching over to Daphne's bowl to take one of the little green cubes. She didn't argue, mostly because he was probably in a really bad mood.
"Fine, fine. The shield around the orb, well, it exploded. A bright flash. There was a bit of... Well, the light, one bit of it went right through Harry, and the other got Ginny's arm. It's in bad shape, but she'll be fine... Anyway, I guess that's about when Michael might have fallen into the shield. I think he must have broken something."
Daphne looked down at the table. She still didn't know if Michael would even be okay. It was comforting, at least, to know that he'd accidentally done something right.
"Potter grabbed the orb," Draco said. "It was really light, I guess. He must have realized it, because he just smashed it against the floor as hard as he could. That was stupid, of course. It could have had some sort of ward on it. Then The Dark Lord would have just been able to pick it up."
"But it shattered," Hermione interrupted, continuing. "Lord Voldemort died. Right there. He just fell over... He was alive by magic, though, so that's why. All the magic..."
"We know," Draco and Daphne said together as Daphne poked at another green cube. Magic was dead. Daphne herself felt a bit dead.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Clare spoke up. Her voice was a bit rusty. "I'd like to tell you what happened to Mackenzie," she said. No one said anything to stop her, so she went on. "Her and I, we ended up back to back in this room with all these blue candles in it. We were confused... Didn't know where we were going to go. The Death Eaters showed up then, and we fought. We had to, though I don't think she ever cast anything. It was annoying, in a way." Clare smiled a bit and wiped at her eyes. "Felt like I was doing all the work and she was just benefiting from the protection, you know?"
"That sounds like Max," Daphne murmured, her own voice threatening to crack.
Clare seemed to purposefully ignore that as she continued. "It was much too crowded in that room. We had those Order members with us, but two of them were killed almost instantly..."
Zacharias lifted his head, "Ernie was, too. You know his leg was useless, but he came with us anyways. He must have known. He couldn't move fast enough, so he tried to shield us--Finnigan and me and himself--against the Killing Curse, but then he just ended up taking all of it..." The blonde trailed off, turning back to his untouched soup. Hermione gently put a hand on his shoulder.
Daphne glanced over at Seamus who was nodded as solemnly as she'd seen him do since they'd gotten on those box cars.
"We tried to hold them off, like Lupin said," Clare continued. "Because we knew we were the last thing between the others and Vol...de...mort," she mumbled the last bit. "He... came right through us, as though we were nothing at all. He did something--I don't know what--to that Weasley brother... Well, it was awful. He didn't even seem amused by it. He didn't care at all!" Clare said, her voice rising as her hands clenched on the table.
"But we managed to keep the Death Eaters following him back," Terry supplied softly.
Clare nodded, regaining what composure she could muster. "I'm not sure what happened after that. There was all this fighting, and I was trying to protect Spinks, and then she was pushing me out of the way..." Clare took a deep breath.
"She took a shot to her face, and she screamed. It was the most horrible... But a second later, the second spell hit. I don't know where, but she went down without a sound." She shook her head again and looked down at the table. "I just hated her so much then because she shouldn't have done that. And I hated whomever cast it so much more. And maybe it was illegal, but I don't care. He deserved to die."
...Two of her Housemates had used the killing curse. Oddly enough, Daphne felt a surge of pride for Clare. Anyone that would think to hurt Max deserved to - as Clare said - die. There was no other acceptable punishment.
"And it was a war," Clare went on, her voice shaking now. Perhaps the admission that she'd used the killing curse was enough to stir up that little insecurity she'd been hiding. "It was a war, and we were losing, and I had to. I had to."
Terry, who had also comforted Pansy, leaned against her, offering himself as a comfort. He was good at that. Like Max, Terry seemed to be a good friend without asking questions. They were both quiet, though Max was only quiet because she was so shy. Terry just didn't have a whole lot to say.
It was Draco who spoke next, surprisingly, though it seemed forced in a way. Not because he didn't mean what he said, but because it wasn't something he would usually express. "They would have been great wizards," he offered simply, looking down at his folded hands.