When Madam Pomfrey finally called a halt to the magical tests, she became my new best friend. Dumbledore had asked me to give her as complete a background as I could on my injuries, and I'd done so with only a few glaring lapses between Muggle and Magical medicine. Frankly, I was surprised it went as well as it had, since my own grasp of my condition wasn't the best. Fortunately the two worlds don't share a medical vocabulary, so my inability to properly name medical terms was less a handicap than it might have been. I just described things as best as I could and Madam Pompfrey supplied her own definitions. Worked for me.

After that, she supervised while Dumbledore conducted a fairly short series of tests to determine what spells would or would not affect me, as well as to note when a spell might have an unexpected result. There were delightfully few of those—the most notable of these being "locomotor mortis" which, instead of locking my legs and preventing them from moving, simply put them to sleep, with the usual pins and needles feeling. I had attributed my need to relearn walking to the muscle atrophy that occurred while I'd been in traction, but there must have been some slight brain damage that affected them as well. I was, however, the only one who found it amusing. Hey, if you can't laugh at your own brain damage, what's left?

Besides it was only thing funny about the entire couple days' worth of tests. Most of the spells that worked gave me vertigo, which made me motion sick, which is why I was so grateful when Madam Pomfrey declared the testing over. When we had dinner that night (I stuck with a clear broth while my stomach settled), Dumbledore lowered yet another boom on me.

"Obviously, you won't be able to return to the village."

"Obviously? Why obviously? You said they hadn't targeted anyone specifically; it was just a malicious act against Muggles generally. I should be fine there."

"It has nothing to do with your safety there. It has to do with your safety anywhere. If we could use memory spells on you, you'd be back there now, believing you'd never left your cottage that day and grateful for it. Still quite unaware of the magical world."

"But you said there are Muggles who do know about it. What does it matter if I do? It's not like I'm going to run around telling people. Who would believe me? Aside from the very people who would harm me, that is? It's a very powerful incentive to keep it to myself. And I'm not exactly Miss Popularity in the village, anyway. The people there have been kind to me and friendly enough, but I've kept to myself—they wouldn't think anything of it at this point."

"The very nature of your injuries makes you vulnerable to the Death Eaters in a way that other Muggles are not. You can't be killed efficiently, but you are vulnerable to other spells, which could be used to torture you and kill you slowly."

I pushed the broth away, no longer able to even fake hunger.

"Why would they?"

"For the same reason they attacked the market. Because they could. You would be a diversion. They might elect not to kill you at all, but keep you to amuse themselves."

Charming.

"Okay, I can't go back. Where will I go?"

"I want you to stay here. We're just outside a small Muggle village and it's not very far to Arthur and Molly's home. I will leave you a means of contacting them in an emergency. I have someone that I wish to stay with you."

My face must have betrayed my dislike of that idea, because he hastened to add, "Only in the capacity of a boarder, to outsiders. We will let it be known that you are a distant relative come to care for the cottage in the owner's absence. We will use your recuperation to our advantage, which will explain your regular visitors. They are simply overseeing your recovery, much as your Muggle therapist was doing."

"That's an awful lot of trouble for an awful lot of your people."

"I, too, have an ulterior motive. The gentleman who will be staying with you himself needs a place to stay regularly in this area. Boarding with you serves a dual purpose; one from which we might both benefit."

I wanted my privacy invaded nearly as much as I wanted them to make me spin in mid-air again, my least favorite of the spells tested. "Yeah, I don't think that's such a good idea, I'm really not in the mood to have people in and out of the cottage all the time. I told you how bad the mood swings get."

"You needn't worry about that, Ann. Severus is rarely fit for company himself."

"But…!"

"Albus, enough!" Madam Pomfrey interrupted us. "She's is exhausted, poor lamb; she must rest now. You can argue in the morning."

I tried, unsuccessfully, to protest this imposition of a bedtime on me too, but Madam Pomfrey was not to be denied. She nodded and agreed and acted quite sympathetic to my protests, while she hustled me from the table to the room where I'd been sleeping the past few nights, bundled me into a nightgown and tucked me in. Except for the decent jammies, it was very like being back in the hospital. And months of conditioning by nurses with an iron will had left me completely defenseless. Besides, as my leaden eyelids drooped, it occurred to me she might have had a point.