Rejuvenation
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I make any profits from posting this fanfiction.
Summary: Epilogue compliant. Set 2019. Harry and Ron fall into the hands of a mad 'scientist' hell bent on eternal youth. Naturally, something goes wrong in the experimental stage. His test subjects weren't too pleased about their new roles as guinea pigs. Unfortunately for all involved, there were many casualties along the way; the most important of which being the death of their former lives.
Warnings: Gender change. OC character deaths. Kidnapping. Experimentation on human; adults and children. Swearing.
Pairings: HP/OC, RW/?
Rejuvenation - Chapter 7
"…well the good news is your fever has cleared and with it so has the infection. You might feel week for a while and sore but that will just be the lingering effects of the infection. I'd like you to take your potion for the infection throughout the day just to make sure it doesn't try to sneak its way back in but then I think you are done with it." The cheery healer with bouncing yellow curls chirped, smiling happily as if the world was all sunshine and daisies. With the glorious sunshine beaming through the windows creating streaks of bright golden light Harry supposed the world was sunshine and daisies. He just didn't feel like it yet and the weather certainly wasn't matching his mood.
"Thanks." He mumbled to the nurse who nodded once, sending those curls into uncontrollable bounces. The woman's earrings, large daffodils, swung around and twisted into her bubbly curls.
"You are very welcome sweetie. Now, can I have a look at your tummy please?" She asked nicely and then helped Harry roll up the night dress he had been put in at the hospital. Apparently it was customary for all the people in the hospital to be provided with St Mungo's own night clothes. Men got pyjamas, women got night dresses, boys got shorts and t-shirt and girls got a nightdress. Cameron had griped about it for ages, and about how uncomfortable hospital clothes were. Harry wondered if Ron would ever be happy again, or if Cameron had ever felt anything but anger. It seemed never ending with Cameron. There had only been a few scant times when Cameron hadn't been up in arms, and that was usually because the teenager was too exhausted or too overwhelmed by something else to allow the anger to rule.
Once the nightdress was rolled up Harry strained his head off the pillow to see what was happening and what his stomach looked like. He was still thin, as was bound to happen, but all the bruising was mending now and even the black bruises from the beating he had endured had been reduced to only a light greeny yellow bruise that, if you didn't know where to look, you probably wouldn't notice.
"Well your bruising is clearing up really well lovely!" That was another thing with this healer, Healer Franklin, she was always using terms of endearment. 'Sweetie', 'lovely', 'darling', 'sweetheart', 'doll'…Harry had heard so many of them and he'd only been there a few days. Healer Franklin shot him a smile, made wider and happier with the pink sparkly lipstick. "Just a few more days of using the cream and everything will be as right as rain! Your ribs are fine now, thankfully, just be careful not to fall on them until they've had a while to toughen up. And I think that's us all done! Unless there's something you wanted to ask me treasure?"
"Umm…no not really."
Healer Franklin clasped her hands together and beamed at him. "Alright then sweet pea, I'll leave you to it. If you need anything, same as every other day, just call over one of the medi-witches. I am sure they will be more than happy to help, okay?"
"Okay."
"Alright then gorgeous! And don't forget to smile! It's the key ingredient to healing!"
Harry gave her a half-hearted attempt at a smile which seemed to satisfy Healer Franklin because she beamed even more, if possible, then walked off with an almost noticeable spring in her step. Harry sighed and let his head fall down onto his pillow. Children's healers were weird. Harry hadn't met one yet that hadn't been happy. It was like it was a pre-requisite to being a child's healer that you had a smile permanently etched onto your face and exuded an air of inexplicable happiness and joy no matter what the job obligated you to do.
"Bleh! She's so sweet it makes my teeth hurt." Cameron grossed and Harry rolled his eyes and sat up.
"Yeah well you and your griping is making my head hurt so stop it." Harry griped back.
"Ooooh look at you all-"
"Did somebody say they had a headache?" A medi-witch asked from the end of Winnifred's bed where she was serving the little girl some sausage, mash and peas with gravy.
Harry shrunk down a little and shook his head. Heat blossomed in his cheeks and he looked away guiltily. Ron, unhelpfully, started chortling.
"No." Harry said. "I was joking."
"Ah yes well, you must be very careful with telling porky pies you know Miss Vaisey." The medi-witch said with an arched eyebrow.
"Sorry." Harry muttered and the witch nodded once again contorting her face into a happy smile.
"Good. Well, okay then. It's lunch time." She announced and with a flick of her wand she had Harry back in bed, the covers tucked around his waist and the dinning tray over his lap. The medi-witch bustled over with the trolley with several meals on it and parked it at the end of Harry's bed. She pulled one plate off the trolley and placed it carefully on Harry's lap tray. "Here you are my dear. Sausage and mash. A good hearty meal to help you on your road to recovery."
"Thank you." The whisper was barely there but the woman nodded and smiled then bustled over to Cameron's bed. Another flick of her wand had the protesting Cameron back in bed, pinned in tightly with the blankets and a lap tray positioned perfectly. Harry tuned out Cameron's protests and insults as well as the medi-witch's retorts and subsequent silencing charm.
The sausages and mash weren't bad at all. In fact, compared to the horrible vegetarian spaghetti yesterday that looked more like red goo on soggy pasta strings, it was very nice. It was certainly filling. No more than a sausage into the meal Harry was feeling rather full up. He did manage to eat a little bit more but then that was it. Full to bursting. He didn't even want the pudding but Medi-witch Cavill announced that ice cream only filled up the cracks between the other food you had already eaten so even if you were full up you could eat ice cream. So Harry did. The Medi-witch was right, it seemed, though Harry thought her logic was a little odd.
"LET ME IN! You can't keep me out of there! It's my daughter in there and I want to see her! There's no law in all of England that entitles you to stop me seeing my daughter! Now let me in! LET ME IN I SAY!"
The voice at the door was yelling loudly, so loudly it reverberated around the little room Harry shared with Winnifred and Cameron. They had been hidden away to rest and recover, while also being questioned about their ordeal and being interviewed over and over again so the aurors, the healers and the Unspeakables knew what happened. Not to mention the mind healers, the goblins and this woman from the department of magical registration who, it seemed, was in charge of providing accurate identification papers for each person and because they were now essentially 2 people in one body the woman had a lot of paper work to do.
Only yesterday they finished the papers that clearly stated that Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley had suffered irreparable damage in the line of duty and would therefore not recover. Their death certificates weren't signed because, in the bed across from Harry, Cameron and Winnifred lay Harry, Ron and Honora. All were lying as still as statues. There were spells on them to help them breath. Three times a day a medi-witch would spell food into them. A few other times in the day another medi-witch would spell away any faeces and urine. Twice a week they got a sponge bath and their bedding changed. However they were essentially vegetables, lying still and able to do nothing. They were non-reactive and they would forever be non-reactive, just like the victims of a dementor's kiss only…only it was worse somehow.
A healer had tried to explain what happened during a dementor's kiss in more detail and most of it had gone over Harry's head but he thought he had picked up the main bits. Dementors kissed away the soul by force and torn from the body whereupon the soul was essentially annihilated because of it. Therefore the victims of the kiss would still function and have some brain function to at least be aware of their surroundings, they just weren't able to move far, talk, do anything or think much. Whereas Harry, Ron and Honora's bodies had been subject to their souls being coaxed out of them, not torn like in the dementor's kiss, and therefore the souls were intact, whole and undamaged. Meaning that all that was fundamentally Harry, Ron and Honora got transferred into their new bodies.
That led to the question how did they know things about Mafalda, Cameron and Winnifred. That answer wasn't so nice. The children's souls weren't coaxed out gently or wholly. They were torn out of the children's bodies and therefore left some fragments behind, echoes of memories and of their lives.
Harry had wanted to scream and shout and break things at that announcement. But…but being a little girl, an abused little child who was scare, he had burst into tears instead.
Ron had done the screaming instead. Horcrux's were mentioned which lead to a larger investigation, Minister Shacklebolt being called in, the portrait of Albus Dumbledore being brought to the hospital and the Unspeakables running more and much harder tests.
"No! No I won't leave until I have seen my daughter! WINNIFRED! WINNIFRED!"
Winnifred cringed a little and started frantically wiping her eyes. Harry smiled sadly at her. It was a hard thing to deal with feeling so conflicted about wanting to see mummy and daddy but at the same time knowing they weren't theirs. Harry knew his mum and dad were Lily and James Potter, mentally he knew that. But when he'd heard his daddy outside those doors, Mafalda's daddy, all he had wanted was a cuddle.
Parents were not allowed in. They weren't allowed into the ward, they weren't allowed to peek, they weren't allowed to contact their children yet. Winnifred, Cameron and Mafalda were to be given peace for a while; Medi-witch's orders, Mind healer's orders, Unspeakable's orders and Minister's orders. It wasn't to be mean, or so that they could take advantage of not having a parent present so they needed to ask for parental consent, it was purely because they were all in an unknown situation.
Only a few people, about a dozen people under the strictest confidentiality oaths, knew about what had happened to Harry, Ron and Honora, and the Unspeakables wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. The news that somebody had found a way to remove a soul from one body and put it into another was too horrific to contemplate reaching the general populous. The parents of Mafalda, Cameron and Winnifred couldn't know. Therefore they couldn't see their children until something had been decided.
Until a decision was made Harry had to put up with hearing parents screaming from outside the ward doors, and put up with Ginny and the Weasleys yelling to be allowed in to see Harry and Ron. Nobody came for Honora, but she had always said she was an orphan and alone in the world.
It felt weird to be in a dress. Weird but comfortable. Strange. Familiar. Stupid! Humiliating! Normal.
"Well? How does it feel?" The mind-healer asked them all. From his corner of the room Harry glanced over at where Cameron and Winnifred were getting dressed. Cameron was already dressed, in black trousers and a Quidditch top declaring support for Puddlemore United. Winnifred was just finishing adjusting the straps on her shoes.
"Fine." Cameron said then pointed over to a pile of clothes in the corner squashed up against the wall. "But I'm not putting those on."
"Okay then Cameron…"
"Ron." Ron corrected and the healer adopted a look of patience but immovability. She would not budge on her decision no matter how much petulance they all had.
"Now Cameron," she said putting extra stress on the name 'Cameron', "if you are truly uncomfortable with your full name then search through your memories for a nickname associated with your body. Unless there is a viable alternative then you are, unfortunately, stuck with me using your full name."
"But I hate the nickname even more than my full name!" Ron muttered angrily.
"Well what is it? Surely it's not that bad."
"Oh it is. And I'm not telling!"
The mind healer, Leesa Lowe, turned her attention and her warm chocolate eyes to Harry. "And you Mafalda? How are your clothes?"
"They're fine…I guess." Harry muttered and picked at the smocked decoration on the chest of the dress. It was a purple dress with white flowers scattered randomly all over it. The chest area had been smocked with small diamond shapes all linked to each other and a line of five large purple roses going through the centre of the smocked area. The smocked design only went down to Harry's waist then the dress just fell to her knees. There was a slight brown stain above his left knee on the dress and Harry knew that it was because he had been playing in the woods after it had rained. He had been good and worn wellie boots but that couldn't stop his dress getting mud on it when he'd fallen over.
"Just fine? Tell me, how do you feel wearing it?"
"Um…" He hedged and shyly glanced up at the mind healer hoping he wouldn't have to answer the question. She, however, looked patiently back. Waiting. Drat! "It feels weird."
"Weird?"
"Yes. Weird."
"How exactly?" She really wasn't giving an inch.
"It feels odd to be wearing a dress! Really odd! Like it should feel wrong but it doesn't. Like I should feel uncomfortable but I don't. I know I shouldn't wear dresses but it feels comfortable. It feels like…it feels familiar. I don't think I like it." The dress had been handed over to the hospital by Mafalda's father on the mind healer's request a couple of days before. There were lots of different outfits in Mafalda's pile but one thing was certain; Mafalda didn't own trousers. Everything was dresses or skirts. Even in Mafalda's memories Harry couldn't find a single instance where Mafalda wore trousers or even shorts that went down beyond the knee. Everything was dresses. And usually, all the dresses were handmade by Mafalda's mother.
"Why shouldn't you me wearing a dress?"
"Because I'm a man!" Was Harry's obvious and instinctive response.
"Are you?"
No. And therein lay the crux of the matter.
The meetings about their health and what was going to happen next had been concluded with the decision that they had to get used to being in their new bodies. It had been decided that, for all intents and purposes, they were Mafalda, Cameron and Winnifred. Harry, Ron and Honora were no more. They weren't Harry, Ron and Honora, and there was absolutely no way they could be those people again. The Unspeakables had voted that dabbling with soul magic was too unthinkable and dangerous and that, even after looking at Wollaston's unscrupulous attention to details in his records the Unspeakables would not attempt to recreate the ritual for fear that it would cause more loss of life. Enough was enough, basically. They had filed Wollaston's research away in the darkest depths of their filing system, never to be touched again, and they had put Wollaston into a cell in Azkaban, just like Harry had predicted they would.
Now there was no choices left for them but to accept the cards life had handed them. They had to live on. And living on meant embracing their new bodies. That meant learning to not only accept being a child again but learning to feel comfortable referring to oneself as a girl, by their new names and with their new families. It also meant letting go of the old which was immeasurably hard.
"No…I'm a girl." Harry concluded…then sighed and strictly reminded herself she was Mafalda. Mafalda, Mafalda, Mafalda. It was hard to refer to oneself by a new name, even in your head.
"Yes, you are a girl. Now tell me, as a girl, are you comfortable in your clothes?"
Harry…Mafalda rubbed her forehead then pulled at the dress she wore. No not really. "No. It's…well it's comfortable but I don't like it."
"Why?"
"Because it's hard to climb trees in it. And I always got told off when I made it dirty."
"Good. Well done, that's good! See Winnifred? Cameron? Mafalda has explained her feelings using her memories and reasoning. That was a brilliant example of embracing yourself wholly. Now tell me Mafalda, is there another piece of clothing you like more?"
Harry looked over the pile of dresses on the bed. There were a lot there. All handmade, nearly all of them were smocked and covered in flowers. Nearly all of them were purple too. Mafalda liked purple. Or at least she had for ages but lately she had been liking other colours. She hated yellow. It was the colour of that room she had been stuck imprisoned in. The yellow walls, yellow curtains, yellow furniture. Yellow had once been a sunny colour but now it was ruined forever. Mafalda hated it. She only really liked yellow on Healer Franklin who, this last few days, had taken to wearing red flower earrings, red lipstick and red painted nails. She still had the yellow blonde hair but that was okay.
So what dress did Harry…Mafalda like? She had a favourite dress but was it there? Har-Mafalda rummaged through the clothes and smiled ruefully as she discovered her favourite dress wasn't there. Her next favourite was though so she pulled that one out. It was a checked forest green and white dress with dark panels at the sides of the waist and short loose sleeves. The dress fell to the middle of her knee and was rather loose but it was light and easy to crumple. It was the perfect running, climbing, digging, rolling, cartwheeling, playing dress and because of the darkness of the blue, and the tightness of the checked designs, you couldn't notice areas that stained.
Harry picked it up and smoothed it out.
"Mafalda? Is that one you like more?"
"Yes. It's Mafal…um…it's my second favourite…I think." Harry stuttered and hedged.
"Excellent. Let's see it on you then." Healer Lowe instructed and Harry sighed but began undoing the buttons at the back of the smocked dress he…she was wearing. "Cameron, I want you to pick another outfit to put on now please. Now, Winnifred, how do your clothes feel?"
Harry changed, feeling a lot more settled in the new dress. It was quite plain, all things considered, but actually it was one of the few dresses that Nanna had made and not her mummy. Harry huffed and sat down on the bed rubbing his forehead. It was hard regulating how you thought of yourself. It was unbelievably hard to go one minute thinking as yourself as a boy to the next thinking of yourself as a girl. It was nigh on impossible and it certainly didn't happen overnight.
Harry didn't feel like a girl. Well, he did. He had the body of a girl and now had the dresses of one. But Mafalda wasn't exactly a girly girl and Harry's once more defined notion of what a girl was had all but been eradicated. Harry knew he shouldn't stereotype, especially since Hermione and even Ginny didn't fit the stereotype. But Lily did. She liked dresses and skirts and pretty things and dressing up as a princess. Lily didn't mind getting dirty but she liked having a bath and trying to style her hair, or have her hair styled by Ginny and on the odd occasion Harry.
Now Mafalda was the opposite. Mafalda did wear dresses, often very pretty dresses, and she had her hair styled quite often. But Mafalda didn't like it she just put up with it because it was one of her mother's rules. Mafalda wore the dresses, sat as patiently as possible while her mum did her hair. Then she would go outside and run around getting muddy and dirty, getting bumps and scrapes from climbing trees and get her once neatly done hair in a right tangled mess with twigs, leaves and flowers stuck in between the strands. She would then get told off and made to change, have her hair washed then restyled and the process would repeat itself. On the occasion her mother got fed up with her getting so muddy and dirty and made her stay inside Mafalda would usually end up covered in glue or paint, once she had got so covered in flour and other food products that her mother had thrown out her clothes because they were apparently beyond repair.
So, while Harry knew it was bad to stereotype, Mafalda fit most of the criteria for a boy rather than a girl and Harry just couldn't think of himself as a girl!
"Mafalda?"
It was annoying and Harry didn't like the idea anyway. He didn't want to pretend to be Mafalda. He was Harry.
"Mafalda?"
"What?" Harry snapped, lifting his head to look at Healer Lowe. The healer frowned consideringly, then settled into her chair and linked her fingers in her lap.
"What's going through your head?"
"I…" Harry started then stopped and chewed on his lip. It was fine to be angry in his head but it was harder now to be angry out loud. "I don't…I don't want to stop being Harry!"
"Hm? I don't understand what you mean."
"I don't want to have to pretend to be Mafalda because it's lying and even if I did pretend then what would happen to Harry?! I am Harry I can't just forget the person I've been for the last thirty-nine years of my life just because I'm stuck in this body now! I was Harry for ages! A life time!"
"Yes but you are Mafalda now and you have to accept that."
"Accept it?!" Harry gasped, staring at her in horror. "And what? Pretend the last thirty-nine years never happened to me? Pretend that my wife isn't my wife and my kids are not my kids? My friends, my family…have I got to pretend that none of it is real and none of it happened even though I've got the evidence of them right in front of me?! You can stand there and smugly lecture us about accepting who we are now and fitting the roles pre-scripted by our new identities but you aren't living this! This isn't something you have any chance of understanding or empathising with! I had a life! I had a wonderful life with my job, my wife and my kids! I didn't do this to myself! This was done to me! I am a victim here and just because some psychotic arsehole took away my body doesn't mean I should have to lose everything, everything, I hold dear to me!"
"Yes, and I understand that Mafalda but…"
"But what?! You're just an observer on the side lines!" The words were whimpered out because, despite his anger, Harry couldn't hold onto his tears. "You aren't the one who is losing everything!"
"You haven't lost everything. You are still alive aren't you?"
"Oh and I'm supposed to be grateful am I?!"
"Well yes actually." Healer Lowe said with a perfectly frank expression on her face. Harry gaped at her, she couldn't be serious!
"What?!" Cameron snarled, narrow eyed and stubborn chinned.
"I said yes you should be grateful you are still alive." The healer stated boldly meeting each one of their stares. "So many people died because of that evil man's experiments. You were the very lucky few and don't interrupt please Cameron." She shot Cameron that patient but uncompromising look and Cameron's ire was shot down momentarily. Lowe relaxed a little in her chair. "You were lucky, very lucky. Now yes, there is absolutely no return to your old lives. There is no way for you to become who you used to be and therefore you cannot return to your old lives. Yes, you have lost your families. Yes you have to accept your places in different families, doing different things and being rather different people. You have lost a lot, and so too have your families because you are not with them. But think how much worse it would actually be if you had died. Did you consider that?"
"We basically did die! Our bodies are as lifeless as husks out there! We basically are dead to our families! They let Hermione and my kids in yesterday. You should have seen their faces! They were grieving because I was dead!"
"Yes I am aware of that."
"And my Rose couldn't stop crying! Do you know how rare it is for her to cry?! Do you?!"
"No, Cameron, I don't know. Because I do not have your memories. However, dead to them or not, you aren't dead. You may never be a part of their lives in the way that you were before, but you haven't absolutely lost them. You are still here. You can, in a way, still see them. You can still look after them, in a way. Yes they will grieve the loss of their husband, their dad, their friend, and you too will grieve your loss of them when you properly allow yourselves to grieve." Here she looked at Cameron and Harry for the longest and with the most serious of stares. "But you have to remember that you are still here and you can still play a part in their lives. They aren't lost to you completely. Let that bring you hope."
"Hope…" Harry mumbled. "Hope for what? Hope that I might be friends with my family again?"
"Hope that, given time, you can be a part of their lives again."
Healer Lowe obviously thought her words were wise and helpful. Harry supposed, logically, they were but emotionally they were stunted, unfeeling, uncaring and sour. Harry turned away and curled up to hug his knees. The dress he was in bunched up at the movements and dug into his tummy slightly but he didn't care. He lowered his forehead to his knees and sobbed.
He'd lost Ginny, James, Albus, Lily, Hermione, Rose, Hugo, Andromeda, Teddy, all the other Weasleys…all his friends…his job…
He had lost everything. Everything.
"Mafalda, why don't you change back into your night dress? I think we have done enough for the day."
Harry shook his head. No. He didn't want to do anything. There was no point.