There and Back Again Lane

Ch. 7 – Hospital of the Transfiguration

You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

–Francis Urquhart, in Michael Dobbs's House of Cards

---(Hermione's POV)---

You've no right to judge me. You were probably safely abed while we risked our lives.

You weren't there the night of the last battle, the stench of death covering the world in its stifling blanket, the bodies of those you loved tossed about the broken earth, cast away mercilessly, seeming to have been purchased so cheaply, eyes vacant, expressions pleading, shocked. None of it was right.

You weren't there at St Mungo's as Harry strained against magical restraints, screamed through blistered lips names, imprecations, curses, orders, in spite of all the potions and salves. They only dulled his suffering instead of drowning it. Over time, he might have recovered to some measure of normalcy, but how many years would that have taken? No, it's not a justification; but it's the truth.

I had been misled. That is also the truth.

After the battle, none of us was in any condition to decide anything rationally. We had all lost too much. The physical injuries took long enough to heal. I had, somehow, managed to avoid more blows than most. Succeeded in getting to his side in the final moments as he closed the distance between him and Voldemort, wands linked by a burning silver ribbon, mustering his will and that of Riddle's remnant through holly and phoenix feather. A haunting, preternatural laugh burst from his lips as he plunged Gryffindor's sword, still bearing hints of the basilisk's blood, into the heir of Slytherin's chest, forcing it in deeper even as his arms were consumed.

I crawled beside him in his final moments of consciousness, as death finally leeched the bitter shards of Voldemort's soul back to the Inferno that creature deserved. Amidst the horror, the reek of decay and betrayal, the loss of so many, I felt nothing, thought of nothing, but joy. It was wrong. But Harry had freed us, freed himself from the cruel fate that threatened to crush us all. Yet his laughter hadn't been triumphal; it had been brittle with sorrow.

Ginny came later, limping, bleeding profusely from a head wound, hair caked to her face. My lips were moving, but I've no idea what I was saying. Odd, that. I hadn't even realised she was nearby until I heard her voice through the din as the Order subdued the last pockets of resistance. It was barely a whisper that she croaked, but I caught it plainly before she collapsed. I couldn't believe what she said. He'd, we had, come too far for that. But she had announced it with such conviction. Half-remembered first aid lessons proved her wrong. Harry hadn't died, though his injuries were severe enough. He needed immediate removal to St Mungo's, as did Ron, Ginny, and Remus. Shock would likely kill him before assistance came. With great effort, I dragged Ginny over to Harry and collected Ron and Remus. Ron was thankfully dazed as the sight of his sister in that state might have killed him. Pettigrew's silver hand made a dreadful mess of Remus's chest before our former professor finally exacted the Marauders' revenge upon the traitor. Wrenching the sword from the cinders that had been Voldemort, I made a portkey with my last reserves of strength to take us to St Mungo's.

I woke in a comfortable bed. How many hours or days had I slept? Shabby curtains shielded me from my wardmates. Potions dulled the pain and my senses, ranging from an egregious headache to the reopened scar across my chest Dolohov had given me in our fifth year. Even in my condition, I was the one to whom they came about Harry. Professor Flitwick ensured that the Healers wouldn't bother me at least until I was ambulatory after that first late night visit.

Ron had regained consciousness as well, but was learning about the hideous toll taken upon his family. A quick word with a sympathetic Amelia Bones assured the two of us a private room. Remus was much worse, but improving. Ginny should have been getting better, but the Healers were barely able to stabilise her. And Harry. Oh, Harry.

When Ron and I were finally allowed out of our beds, we sought Harry out. His arms were covered in bandages steeped in a peculiar smelling solution, spells alone having failed to fully complete their recovery. A Ferrula charm bound his shattered legs that could only be repaired gradually with small doses of Skele-Grow lest he go back into shock. A foul scented salve on his face had reduced the blisters markedly so that Harry was recognisable again. Except. Except that his face was the graven image of despair, of pain. And the shouting.

Though the Healers had warned us about Harry's occasional outbursts, we recoiled when first heard Harry's scarred voice rasping out orders. After a while he would stop, blood trickling down the corners of his lips. On seeing the blood, I had Ron fetch a Healer. When Harry started speaking again, I wished that I'd followed Ron. The names of our friends and the means of their deaths in gruesome detail. He had felt them, seen them all through Voldemort's eyes. The Healer, scurrying along in Ron's wake, force-fed Harry a pair of potions. Yet, however horrible it was to hear Harry recount the battle, the silence that replaced his words was eerier, more chilling. As if memory itself was being killed.

Don't judge me. Not yet.

He pleaded for release. For death. After all he had done... No, that would have been too cruel. He deserved to survive, to have a life finally.

A kernel of Voldemort must have remained within him, twisted his soul in some way as he plotted revenge in mumbled schemes against the remaining Death Eaters. Cursed the Healers who failed to relieve his pain. Argued with Sirius. And Ginny. We learned to flinch whenever he said her name. The words that streamed forth after her name were disjointed, flurried, and terrifying, the incoherent babblings of a madman. A maelstrom of violent images made worse by his contorted visage and gritted teeth. He spat the words, his arms over-powering the magical restraints before new doses could be administered. We couldn't believe such words could come out of Harry, especially against Ginny. True, they couldn't look at one another without scowling and muttering after their argument that May. We could never have imagined the rupturing of their friendship had bred hatred that ran so deeply.

If only we had listened more carefully.

They needed time to recover. To know the other had survived.

We didn't have much time, though. Voldemort's demise didn't stop the Death Eaters, who sought vengeance upon the Order and Harry in particular. While their numbers had been reduced drastically, they used guerrilla tactics to draw Aurors from St Mungo's. Attacks on Muggles, on wizarding families. Our side caught some of the swine, but we lost more friends. We were there when the Order brought in Luna's father. It wasn't enough he'd lost his daughter in the battle, they had to torture the man further. Neville captured the scum, more pity them. The attacks were becoming more severe and widespread. The Ministry scrambled to find a solution to its problems.

Harry confronted the Healers at St Mungo's with other problems. According to their tests, he had become a Squib. A certain latent magical character – whatever that means – resided within him, but not so much that he could be a functioning member of wizarding society. They suspected that, along with his mother's protection, saved him from Voldemort's killing curse, that his magical ability resulted from that unintentional transference of power. I ought to have known this was all phrenology. I demanded that I at least observe their tests, that some form of independent inspection be applied, but my comments were wasted upon their and the Ministry's ears. Without the weight of Dumbledore knowledge to bolster my arguments, I faltered. I failed. I ought to have presumed some form of collusion at the time, but circumstances overwhelmed me. After all the losses we had suffered and continued to witness, there was no one who could refute their arguments.

I resisted as long as I could against their browbeating, Harry's suffering, and Ginny's mumbled pleas. Ron, terrified of what might happen to his sister but disgusted by what the Healers and the Ministry proposed, couldn't decide. I can't blame him for his indecision or even his lack of courage at that moment. He had lost so much in two short years. Remus was too drugged most of the time, and dismissed as a dangerous beast the rest. He was the only one of the three of us who had sufficient learning to have ridiculed their fabrications. Professor Flitwick meant well, but replacing Dumbledore was an impossible task for one person to manage. Ensuring Hogwarts's defences was difficult in those times, and the coordination between the Order and the Ministry was becoming increasingly strained as ambitious young replacements sought to chart their own courses. Without Dumbledore's presence, everything was going pear-shaped.

Harry would have no respite in the wizarding world as a Squib. With all the Death Eater attacks, he'd be fortunate to survive a week on his own. It wouldn't be fair to the young man who defeated Voldemort to deliver him so readily, so defenceless into the clutches of the enemy. Even if he was able to escape the Death Eaters, he would likely fall prey to economic circumstances. Harry had only so much of his parents' legacy left. A good portion of his young life had been spent becoming a wizard, now that he didn't have that as a career option, he had nothing. The Ministry, in connection with several Muggle ministries, would provide him both a past and a future. The Fidelius charm and the commonness of his name would protect Harry from wizarding miscreants. He wouldn't have any more nightmares, no more memories haunting his present. It seemed an enviable course of treatment even though we would lose him. The thought of his loss kept me fighting against the Ministry and the Healers, but I was wavering.

After demanding a new set of tests to follow the who-knows-how-many that preceded it, and an especially horrible night for Harry, I succumbed and acceded to their schemes. I ought to have held out, insisted that they find a safehouse where we could take care of him. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement repudiated any and all such plans, stating such things were difficult enough before the war, that they couldn't guarantee our protection. It didn't help that one of Fudge's cronies was Head of Department. Lucretia Perkins. I swear, he dredged his supporters from particularly polluted parts of the Thames. I should have known.

Their idea was simple. The Healers would continue to heal Harry's physical injuries at St Mungo's until it was safe – when it was certain no surgeons would be required – to transfer him to a Muggle hospital. The Obliviators, however, would only wait until he was well enough to accept the memory charms without relapse. Harry, regrettably, was at that stage. Perkins also wanted a Ministry official to perform the Fidelius charm on Harry, but there I finally won. I had to appeal to Minister Bones, yet she acquiesced to allowing me to perform the spell and to name the secret-keeper. Good to see Madam Bones didn't trust her junior minister, either. When the Healers finally permitted the over-eager Obliviators to proceed, Ginny's doses had fallen to two a day. She was starting to regain weight. If only we had waited a week. Harry, however, hadn't improved psychologically. If anything, he had become more combative as he regained his health. He had also stopped grunting about Ginny.

When the 'treatment' was over, Harry was placid. Docile. On a recent visit to my parents, we watched an old American film on the telly, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Substituting Obliviation for electro-shock, Harry had become McMurphy. I remember vomiting and heaving for a good ten minutes after the final scenes. Ron explained it was morning sickness. He'd noticed the similarity, too.

We were able to visit Harry a couple of times after the obliviation. I couldn't stop crying both times, wondering in what I had participated. Fortunately, he'd been sleeping. The Ministry should have given us the time to decide, I should have fought them harder. I had little energy left, though. After the battle, the continued Death Eater attacks, a month of endless badgering by staff from St Mungo's and the Ministry, how could I?

I finally had my opportunity to inspect St Mungo's tests on Harry in my second year of Healer training. St Mungo's administrators had granted us access to archived patient records so I and my fellow apprentice Healers could scrutinise methods of treatment. I had to use Ministry connections, knowledge of obscure regulations, and a date with the file clerk (ugh) to secure his files from the archives. What I uncovered froze my soul. Phrenology wasn't far off the level of charlatanry practised by Harry's Healers. They examined whether stressors would induce him to perform accidental magic while he was in a potion-sodden haze. More obscure studies according to dubious methodology found their way into the regular course of his treatment. Healers falsified results when the data didn't conform to expectations – mainly because the experiments themselves were flawed – demonstrating their collusion, negligence, incompetence, and a repugnant disregard for medical ethics. There were rare negative diagnoses that followed proper procedure, but most of those were taken soon after his arrival from the battle.

Frightened and appalled by what I'd found, I told Ron. I don't know why I'd expected him to behave differently. He exploded, screaming at me until he was purple in the face before crumpling into a chair moaning why he'd agreed to the procedure. I tried to console him, but he wouldn't let me near him. Eventually, he rose and exited the flat, but not before breaking his hand on the door jamb. I doubt he would have noticed if it weren't for the difficulty he had opening the door. He refused all contact with me for almost two months except to call off the wedding. After two weeks of our separation, I'd miscarried. Ron hadn't even known I was pregnant. Ginny stayed with me for the next six weeks though I drove her mad. She managed to exact her revenge on Ron, though. I'm amazed it took two months for him to return after the campaign she waged against him. He broke completely when she told him – after ferreting it out of me – about the miscarriage. We drowned in our collective guilt for another month before emerging together again. But our problem persisted. Though we knew what had happened to Harry, we'd no idea where he was and there was no one we could really tell beyond Remus and an already harried Professor Flitwick. Neither proved to be much help, unfortunately.

Then came that fateful day. It ought not to have been possible, but it did happen. Only four days after we had returned from our honeymoon in Provence – Ron had a painful case of sunburn despite my admonishments to wear some sunscreen – Ginny flooed us to say Harry was alive and well in London. The day before we'd rowed bitterly in the Leaky Cauldron about her inability to get her life in order, being constantly in a foul mood, sauntering off with casual boyfriends, or inundating herself with work. She looked a shambles, hair clean but otherwise unkempt, same with her clothes. I doubt she had slept more than a couple of hours a night for about six months. But the next morning… Her eyes may have been bloodshot, but she bore an almost irrepressible grin. Needless to say, Ron and I were very pleased to finally see her happy, until the shock of the reason why hit us. We ought to have been happy. Instead, we were both astonished and terrified. Neither of us had prepared for Harry's possible rediscovery. We glanced at each other with strained smiles as we sought a way out. Ginny was, unfortunately, never slow. Virtue of growing up with Fred and George, I don't doubt. She exhausted an entire encyclopaedia of vulgar expressions on us before starting on arcane insults and curses. The only reason she stopped was that her voice faltered. The Howlers proved that. We tried to contact her at Fred and Angelina's, but Ginny refused to answer and they didn't pressurise her. I was furious with them at the time, but now I realise theirs was the right course.

It was only with Ginny's expletive-laden floo that everything fit into place. As she was preparing the full barrage of insults against us, she told us about her argument with Harry three years before, about what both she and Trelawney had Seen. At first, we disbelieved that she could See anything, but Harry accepted what she said without question. He had countered her prediction with Trelawney's vision, verbatim, not dissembling about the element of chance. She was near tears as she related that he hadn't been overly concerned about dying if it meant killing Voldemort. She took a moment to compose herself – we were still too ashamed of ourselves to respond – before berating us for concealing his existence, for lying to her. It was as if we had murdered him, and I might as well have. Ron stood by me, accepted the blame with me. He shouldn't have; guiltily, I must admit I'm glad he did. After that conversation, Ginny didn't contact us or respond to anything we sent her for six months. Fred and Angelina avoided us as well. That was one of the worst years of my life.

I still don't know how Ginny found Harry. As I said, it shouldn't have been possible. Maybe it was when he introduced himself… No, Ginny said she introduced herself first. The collision itself? No, at most they ought to have believed each other to have been vague passers-by. Perhaps…? Impossible. A pair of ghosts colliding on the pavement, each dead to the other, the shock breaking the spell.

What had I done? At the time I thought – did I think, or just react? – I was acting for everyone's best interest. Harry writhing in torment, the Ministry plagued by Death Eater attacks, St Mungo's constantly under siege. I tried to hold out, to stand by him. I'm so sorry Harry…

Don't judge me. Please.