Hermione lay on her hospital bed staring straight up at the bright lights. She had woken up about an hour before in the ambulance. The beds on either side of her had patients in them, but, not being able to turn her head, she couldn't see the occupants. Her hand stung where they had inserted a totally unnecessary IV and there were tubes up her nose feeding her oxygen. She hoped Ron would bring her new clothes as a male nurse had unceremoniously cut hers off her body and dressed her in a hospital gown.
Footsteps approached and the doctor's head appeared over hers furrowing his brow while examining her. He was older, probably close to retirement, with tufts of white hair on either side of his perfectly shiny head.
"Any luck locating family?" he asked Dr. Fleinhardt, who was outside Hermione's field of vision.
"Yes, I just talked to her fiance. He said he was coming, but I don't know how much good he'll do," she heard Dr. Fleinhardt's voice reply. I think he might be on drugs. He didn't seem like he knew how to use the phone."
The doctor sighed. "Well, we'll just have to wait until he gets here." He turned to a nurse that Hermione could barely see. "How long until she's taken for her MRI?"
"She's on the list. It should be within the hour," the nurse answered. Hermione recognized him as the one who has stripped her to her underwear.
The doctor nodded as he shined a light into Hermione's eyes. "Very odd. I'm sure she's had a stroke but her pupils are equal and reactive. I'm pretty sure she can hear us." He began to shout for no apparent reason. "Hello! Can you hear me?"
You're shouting about three inches from my face, Hermione thought scathingly. How could I possibly not hear you? The whole bloody hospital can hear you!
The doctor pocketed his light. "Don't worry, you're going to be just fine," he said, smiling. His face disappeared and now all she could see were the tufts of his hair as he scribbled on her chart. He muttered some orders to the nurse using a word that sounded alarmingly like "catheter".
Ron better bloody well show up before any of that business begins, she thought. Hermione usually didn't curse, but after being under a Petrificus Totalis curse for almost five hours, she was beginning to think maybe she should start.
"Hermione Granger?" she heard Ron's voice. Her heart quickened causing the monitor next to her bed to begin beeping in earnest. "Oh, there she is." His red-headed face appeared over her wearing a huge grin. He was loving seeing her like this. "Hullo!"
"You're her fiance?" the doctor asked.
"That's right," Ron answered.
Dr. Fleinhardt stood up and shook his hand. "I'm Larry Fleinhardt. I'm one of Hermione's professors. She was found in my office. I've just been staying with her until you arrived."
"Right," Ron said, "well, thanks for that. I can take things from here. You must have things to do."
Dr. Fleinhardt looked a bit lost. "Well, yes, actually. But I can stay if you need me."
"Not at all," Ron said, still grinning and waving Dr. Fleinhardt aside. "Off you go. Thanks for everything. Cheers." Ron watched him gather his things and leave, glancing backwards over his shoulder to see if he should really leave her here with him. Finally, Ron turned his attention back to the doctor. "Sorry I'm late. Stopped off for a coffee on the way here."
You had better be joking, Hermione thought.
The doctor sounded alarmed. "Well, um, your fiance has had a fairly severe stroke that seems to have affected both sides of her body. We're going to run some more tests..."
Ron interrupted. "No need for that. She has these spells once or twice a week." He winked at her on the word "spell" making sure she caught his pun. "She'll be right as rain in no time. No worries."
The doctor began again, speaking much slower this time owing to what he perceived to be Ron's limited intelligence. "This .. is .. very .. serious."
Ron's smile went away, as though he suddenly realized that everyone expected him to be concerned about her. "Oh, yes, of course. Very serious. Bewitchingly serious."
Another wink. Hermione had never wanted to kick Ron more than at that moment. "Doctor," Ron said with the utmost of sincerity, "may I have a moment alone with her?"
"Well, yes, of course. I'll be back to check on her. We'll just close these for privacy," the doctor said, drawing the blinds around her bed.
As soon as they were alone Ron pulled out his wand and pointed it at her. The curse lifted immediately. "Do you know," he said, pocketing his wand again, "that you can actually look furious with me without moving?"
"You haven't bloody well seen furious, mate!" she hissed. "Now, come on, I have to do my wake-up routine." She laid back on the bed, pretending to be rigid again and closing her eyes.
"What do you mean? Can't we just go?"
"Of course not!" she whispered, opening one eye. "They don't know about counter-curses, do they? I have to come to. Now, you open the curtains and make a big fuss about me coming around. Like maybe you saw my eyelids flutter or something."
"But your eyes were open before," he pointed out.
She scowled at him. "It's more dramatic this way!" He looked unconvinced. "Fine. You saw me move my pinky. Is that better?" She settled back again and closed her eyes, laying her hands at her side.
Ron opened the blinds. "Hey! You there! Nurse! She's coming around. She's, you know, moving stuff." Hermione winced.
Two nurses rushed over to Hermione's bed. One of them leaned over her. "Can you hear me?" she called.
Hermione blinked her eyes a few times and then allowed them to focus on the nurse. "Oh!" she said and placed her hand to her forehead. "Oh, my!" In a moment of inspiration she tried to sit up and then slumped dramatically back against the pillow with a sigh. Ron, who was standing behind the nurses backs, rolled his eyes.
"Here's some water," the nurse offered, holding it up to Hermione's lips. Hermione took a sip and then began to sputter and cough. Ron appeared to be reading a poster on avoiding teenage pregnancy.
"Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?" asked the nurse.
"In hospital?" Hermione managed in a small voice. "I, I don't remember anything."
The doctor came rushing over and ran through a battery of tests involving his pen light and stethoscope. "Well, Miss Granger, it looks like you've made a complete recovery. Very peculiar indeed."
"Right, then," Ron perked up. "So, we'll just collect her things and be off. Thanks so much for all your help." He grasped the doctors hand and began pumping it energetically.
"No, no," the doctor said, trying to extricate himself from Ron's grip, "Miss Granger will need to be admitted overnight, at the very least. We have tests to run."
"Oh," said Ron dismissively, "she doesn't need all that rubbish. She looks well enough to me. We'll just be off, then."
The doctor placed his hands to Ron's shoulders, which was quite a feet considering Ron was taller by a good six inches, and looked at him with a mixture of pity and condescension. "She's not out of the woods yet. She has to stay here so we can make her better."
"But I've already..." Ron stopped himself. "I mean, you've already made her better." Ron smiled brightly again and clapped him on the shoulder. "Well done! Really excellent work! We'll be off."
The doctor turned to the nurse, apparently deciding Ron was damaged beyond all comprehension. "Can we see if we can have Miss Granger admitted?"
"No, no," Hermione said. "No, I've got classes and exams. I can't lay around hospital when I'm actually fine. You can't keep me here. I'll need some clothes and my things, thank you."
"So," said the doctor, "you're leaving against medical advice? You're sure you want to do that?"
Hermione nodded. "Absolutely."
The doctor paused, eyeing both Hermione and Ron as if they were a pair of raving lunatics. "Fine. Well, that's that, then. Nurse, can you please discharge Miss Grander, here?"
"Yes, doctor," the nurse said and sped off, eyeing Ron suspiciously. Ron just smiled and waved.
--
Larry juggled the piles of papers in his arms until he could extend one arm with the key to unlock his office door. At least he didn't have to grade his exams himself, but he still had to record the grades and hand them back to his students. He wasn't looking forward to seeing what those grades were, since he had had an inordinate number of students visiting during his office hours on the day before the exam, and he got the feeling many of them left just as confused as when they had entered.
At least his British transfer student was doing okay. He had called the hospital late last night to see how she was doing, and had been surprised to find that she had already been released. Before he could draw breath to berate the doctors for letting her go so soon, they informed him that she had regained consciousness, had refused further tests or treatment, and had left with her fiancé.
Larry shook his head as he opened the office door, the memory of the unconscious Hermione on his office floor flashing into his mind. That had been a frightening thing to see yesterday. He didn't understand how she could suddenly be all right, when she had obviously been completely incapacitated in such a strange manner the day before. Something very strange was going on here, and if it weren't the middle of the term with midterms and his other consulting projects to worry about, not to mention having fallen behind two chapters in the textbook, he would devote more thought to it.
The pile of papers in his hand threatened to suddenly follow the lure of gravity, and he just made it to his desk before they spilled out of his arms. He set his burden down gratefully, and crossed back across the office to shut the door. As he sat down behind his desk and started arranging the piles of papers in order to hand them back in this afternoon's class, he reached down to his left in the usual reassuring motion to make sure that the crucial drawer in his desk was locked. His hand closed around the handle, giving it a slight tug, and the door opened.
He blinked, pausing in his alphabetical sorting, and looked down. The drawer had opened. The drawer wasn't supposed to open. The drawer was always supposed to be locked. He had checked at last night before he left; he knew that. Even with his concern over his ailing student, after he'd come back to the office last night, he had checked the drawer. He always did.
So why was the drawer open?
Holding his breath, Larry slid the drawer the rest of the way open, already knowing what he was going to find. The file folder that held the precious blueprints that he was reviewing for the Nuclear Regulatory Council was gone.
He began removing items from the drawer, one at a time, and placing them onto the floor: a textbook he had been asked to review, a three-dimensional model of a black hole made out of string and popsicle sticks, three granola bars for those days when he forgot to bring his lunch, a copy of Charlie's thesis that he hadn't yet bound and put on his bookshelf, and a few assorted odds and ends. That was all.
He looked through the items again and again, as if suddenly the file folder would appear where it hadn't been moments earlier. But it simply wasn't there. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "This is not good," he said, shaking his head. "This is not good."
He reached for the phone and dialed what was becoming a familiar number: Don Eppes' cell phone. When the voicemail at the other end answered, he sighed and left a message anyway, urging Don to get there as quickly as possible once he received this communication.
He had the urge to look through all of his other desk drawers, in case he had put the folder back in the wrong location. But he knew that last night he had seen the folder in the place it was supposed to be. He also knew that if he started touching too many things, as if his fingerprints weren't already over the place, it would make it that much harder for the FBI to do their job when they came in to investigate. If there were fingerprints in the room that were not his but were on top of his, he could be contaminating the evidence. He turned back to his pile of papers, suddenly feeling that the preponderance of students who had flunked the exam were now a minor concern.
