Chapter 38: Meeting a Stranger

The Trio huddled together at the Gryffindor table, discussing in low tones new plans for the DA and how to oppose Umbridge. Harry was seated just off of them, listening quietly.

"Hey there, mate. You all right?" Ron's voice suddenly floated over to him. Harry grinned weakly.

"Nothing, Ron. I was just…. I was just thinking about my mother again."

Hermione nodded. "She's in St. Mungo's, yes?"

Harry nodded glumly. "In the Ward for Psychologically Disturbed Individuals. That's really all I know."

"Have you tried writing to her?" Neville asked.

"I did once, when I was in a particularly bad place with the Dursleys. But then I got an official reply back from the hospital staff telling me not to write any more. They must screen patients' mail, cause they told me my mum wouldn't be able to comprehend what I wrote to her since she doesn't remember me."

Ron scowled in outrage on their little friend's behalf. "Well, that's bloody unhelpful! What kind of hospital is that, that they don't even allow Get Well Soon cards and flowers?"

"I think they're trying to protect Harry's mum, in their own way, Ron," Hermione explained. Though she too was biting her lip. "People in that Ward have very fragile minds. Even something innocuous like a letter could act as a trigger, the results of which could be calamitous!"

Ron peered at her, a little bemused. "I never took you to be the Healer type, Hermione!"

She shrugged. "Oh, I'm not. I want to go work for the Ministry as a lawyer."

"Not surprised," Ron muttered dryly. Though he smiled at her, and Hermione softly smiled back.

The odd little moment in which Ron and Hermione seemed trapped in each other's gaze was broken when Minerva McGonagall suddenly swept up to their table.

"Mr. Potter, the Headmaster would like to speak with you."

Glancing to his friends, Harry nodded and swung off the bench, following their Deputy Headmistress out. It was nearly the end of the morning meal when he returned, Albus Dumbledore accompanying him.

"What is it, lad?" Ron asked. Harry looked a little white, though his smile was a potent mixture of fear, hope and elation.

Dumbledore smiled kindly. "I have just informed Mr. Potter that we believe he is old enough to have contact with his mother. I am just on my way to St. Mungo's now, and thought I would bring him along."

Neville looked baffled. "But if the hospital doesn't even allow letters from loved ones, for fear of triggering patients, how is an in-person visit any better?"

"Let us just say, Neville, that I am not always in agreement with St. Mungo's hospital policy. I have only acceded to their wishes as far as Harry contacting his mother is concerned because I too feared he was not ready. Nonetheless, this visit will be secret, kept quiet."

Dumbledore then turned away to speak quietly with a Prefect who came up to him. Harry took the opportunity to fork over the Invisibility Cloak to his friends.

"It wouldn't be a discreet visit if I asked Dumbledore to let you tag along, but…. well, I'd still… like for you guys to come. We're going by flying coach; you can hide on the back rack."

Ron's blue eyes gleamed with the promise of adventure. At Hermione's hesitant expression, he merely scoffed. "Oh, come off it, Hermione! When are we going to get another chance to play hooky from Hogwarts?"

Finally, Hermione slowly nodded, even if the prospect of missing even a day of school seemed to scandalize, terrify her.

The ride over to St. Mungo's was a little dangerous, huddled under the Cloak while balanced precariously on the back luggage rack of a flying coach hundreds of feet up in the air. Ron used his rather large body to brace both of his friends against the rear of the carriage; he took particular concern to shield Hermione from the winds, and it seemed like the beautiful witch felt safe in Ron's arms like this.

The Trio, still invisible, followed Dumbledore and Harry up to a gray building when the coach landed on the grassy knoll of the hospital grounds. As they entered, Harry fell back; with a quick rustling, Neville quickly absorbed him under the Cloak as they continued to tail Dumbledore. They would let Harry out again once they were past the doors of the ward.

Ron peered about at all of the patients, many of them in various states of physical and mental health. "Cheery place," he commented dryly. "It's like Azkaban for the mental and infirm."

"Ronald, be nice!" Hermione swatted him. "Matters of policy aside, I'm sure the Healers treat their patient with perfectly humane discretion! If they didn't, it would be a violation of the Hippocratic oath!"

"Hippopotamus?" Harry frowned.

"Isn't that an animal in the Muggle world?" Neville blinked.

"Sounds like an illness in the Muggle world," Ron quipped.

"No!" Hermione laughed. "Hippocratic. It's the name of an oath promising to do no harm to one's patients. All Muggle doctors take it – my parents did when they became dentists. Healers in the magical world do too."

Ron's bemused expression still hadn't changed. "What's a…. a…. dentist?"

Hermione grinned softly, amused. "It's a doctor for Muggle teeth. When I was little, I'd spend hours in my parents' practice watching them work!"

Ron grinned, never ceasing to be amazed when learning of Hermione's Muggle childhood. "Someday I'd like to meet your parents."

Hermione beamed at him almost tenderly. "Oh, trust me: I'd love that too!"

Ron and Hermione smiled into each other's eyes, distracted enough that their aimless feet nearly carried them out from under the Cloak; the spell was broken only by Neville deliberately clearing his throat. As it was, the four invisible students had to come to an abrupt halt to keep from walking into Dumbledore, who had suddenly paused in front of one curtained sickroom.

"Harry," the Headmaster cast back over his shoulder absently. Harry emerged from the Cloak and his friends cast it off of themselves as well. If Dumbledore was surprised to see the three stowaways, he never let on; in fact, his eyes twinkled almost omnisciently. "Your mother's partition is right over here. We're the next visitors."

Dumbledore stood aside and turned to enter the partition at his immediate left. His lifting of the curtain revealed none other than Severus Snape, who was just coming out of the same partition. The Potions Master blinked upon seeing the four teenagers, and he looked almost fearful before his face collapsed back into a scowl and he swept from the ward with a flick of his robes.

Ron frowned, suspicious. "Why the bloody hell is Snape visiting Harry's mum?"

Neville shrugged, just as perplexed. "Dunno."

Harry, meanwhile, appeared not to have noticed Snape curiously leaving his mother's room. The boy seemed more preoccupied with the fact that he would soon be entering it, and the prospect had obviously terrified him, to the point that he looked like he was frozen stiff. Hermione drifted into him, laying a supportive hand on his shoulder. "We're here for you, Harry, if you want us to be."

Harry finally nodded and took a deep breath. The Trio flanking him, all four students then ducked into the sickroom partition.

They entered to find a beautiful woman sitting up in bed, holding a small square of paper in her hands that might have been a photograph. Dumbledore was speaking to her softly, kindly, as though this lady weren't ill. The four teenagers watched as the Headmaster gestured in Harry's direction and the beautiful lady with auburn hair followed his gaze.

Ron was clearly taken aback by the woman's beauty. "She could pass for a Weasley, she could, your mum, Harry!"

Not amused, Hermione elbowed him.

Harry floated over towards his mother's sickbed as if in a kind of trance. The lovely lady sitting up against the pillows was regarding him as though she had never seen him before. In her tortured mind, she hadn't. Taking her hand, Harry glanced down to discover with shock, that the little photograph she clutched was a picture of him. And not one of him as a baby either. This photo was more recent, a candid shot from a little over a year ago, of him sitting with Ron and Hermione and Luna Lovegood as they watched Neville compete in the Triwizard Tournament.

Harry was startled. Who could have taken that photo? And how had it ended up in his mother's hands? He also wondered if she was able to make the connection that he was the same boy as the one in the photo.

He peered into her eyes. They were hazel green, just like his own. And for a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of something behind her irises. Or maybe he was just hoping for too much.

Swallowing through a lump in his throat, Harry struggled to get his voice to work around the tears now streaming down his cheeks.

"Hi, Mum."

There was no indication that Lily Potter reacted with any kind of recognition to this statement, though she did bestow the boy with a beaming, if also somewhat vacant, smile.

Glancing at his friends, Neville slung his arms around both of them and the Trio held each other as they watched a mother and son meet for the first time.