22nd March 1995 - Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Glencoe Highlands, Scotland.
Harry spent a little while longer shut away in the headmasters office, which was likely the contributing factor into how Madam Pomfrey managed to track him down.
She had taken him to task for disappearing before he could be looked over properly while she had examined both his wounds before begrudgingly admitting he had done a good job with his treatments, quizzed him about his follow up treatment plans and then made an idle comment about his medi-wix licence being honestly earned after all and how it was just as well he had it with the number of times he had managed to find trouble and thus, required medical attention.
She had left in a ruffle of apron skirts leaving Albus twinkling at him merrily but wisely, keeping his amusement to himself.
But he had managed to get all his base sketches and plans finished in time for dinner in the Great Hall, which turned out to be an interesting affair since Dumbledore decided Harry should sit in his chair in the Great Hall too. Something that garnered quite a lot of goggling looks from both students and staff, and seemed to tickle the old man even more.
He had been introduced to Professor Horace Slughorn who had graciously accepted the request to fill in the gap left by Snape's departure for the remainder of the year, and it was largely thanks to the experience he had been getting talking to other heads of state and the media that he hadn't ended up feeling like an awkward mess.
Particularly when the cheerfully rotund man had started delving into stories about years gone past, since apparently he had been employed as Potion's Professor back when Harry's parents were students.
Something Remus had confirmed with a few anecdotes of his own when Harry had checked in with him after dinner via his crown.
He had also been informed by Remus that Sirius was less than pleased that his connection was currently muted and that it was probably a good idea that he had done so. Since according to Remus, Sirius had been pacing himself into a hell of a state since Harry had been hurt and it would probably be better if he could see, feel and smell for himself that Harry was indeed okay.
Though on the subject of Horace, whom Harry quickly decided was a bit of a braggart and a dandy. He did seem to know his stuff when it came to the subject of potions, enough so that Harry did wonder if he was the rumoured 'Slug' in the Slug & Jiggers apothecary shop he had been to a time or two in the past for his school supplies.
If his not quite subtle enough comments were any indication, he did seem to have enough connections to help make a quiet shop like an apothecary successful in a long lasting sort of way and Slug & Jiggers had been around for decades by now.
But it had definitely been an odd occurrence, albeit one that was slowly and steadily becoming something far less alien and infinitely more familiar. Sitting on throne-like chairs and being gawked at while the people around him told him stories about his parents or this or that person they used to know. Like somehow being in his presence invoked irrepressible feelings of nostalgia.
It wasn't all bad though, getting to find out that his mother was apparently such a phenomenal prodigy with potions that she made Snape look like a mediocre child in comparison had been lovely.
Not for the first time, Harry did wonder if he had actually managed to inherit any small amount of his parents' talents.
It wasn't until after dinner and dessert that Professor Slughorn - looking quite reluctant - had finally let him slip away from the table and this very one sided conversation. Not that Harry had gone particularly far, just back to his little comfortable nook in the side of the Great Hall.
Having sunk back into his appropriated winged armchair, Harry had been set up with a tray of little cakes and a neat tea set by a happily beaming Hildegara who had paused just long enough to share with him that the kitchen elves were all apparently very jealous and awed by her tales of her bonding ceremony with her mate. Something that had her bobbing and spinning about in glee.
She had only just popped away again when Neville appeared at the edge of the little side room, fingers nervously playing with an envelope that he held close to his belly. "Uh...Harry?"
"Hey, Nev, want to have a seat?" Harry asked, gesturing to one of the overstuffed old armchairs opposite his own.
"Please." The other teen bobbed a nod and shuffled forward to sink - figuratively and literally - into the slightly tatty red chair. "Sorry I...I've got a letter for you. My nan wrote it a little while ago but I wasn't sure if I should just send it with the goblins or just wait until you came back, but then I was thinking about it and then it was today and you were here…"
"It's fine, Nev." Harry cut him off so he wouldn't keep worrying. "I don't mind you holding on to it."
Neville bobbed his head again, licking his lips as he stared down at the letter for a moment before holding it out.
Gently Harry took it from him, glowing eyes absently noting the worn edges that gave away just how frequently the other boy had worried over it since it had been entrusted to him. "Can I read it now, or would you rather I wait?" He asked, noting as well how anxious he seemed.
"You-" Neville paused, flushing deeply when his voice crackled before pushing on. "You can read it now if you want to."
Giving the other a small sympathetic smile in hopes of allaying his embarrassment, Harry conjured a thin blade and carefully levered up the red wax seal bearing the crest of House Longbottom. Vanishing the blade he carefully pulled the sheets of neatly folded parchment, setting the envelope in his lap.
Gently unfolding the pages he spared a moment to peer at neat handwriting and hummed quietly. "Your nan has nice handwriting. I've been working on making my own tidier since I've got to write a lot of letters now, but it still looks a bit wonky compared to your nan's."
The other boy offered him a shaky smile. "Nan writes a lot of letters. She used to give me lessons in penmanship when I was younger, she says that you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of care they put into their letters. The quality of the parchment, the colour of the ink, thinks like that."
Harry thought about that for a moment before nodding. "That kind of makes sense. Like if it's just a quick note then any bit of paper would do and your handwriting doesn't really need to be all that neat. But if it's something special, you want to use good parchment and take your time with it."
"Yeah." Neville agreed, letting himself sink into the chair more while his fingers lightly traced over the armchairs seams.
Considering the others behaviour for a moment, the inward turn of his shoulders, the nervous motion of his hands and his inability to meet his eyes, Harry opted to push on and read the letter rather than make further attempts to ease the others anxiety.
He assumed that at least part of the problem stemmed from the contents of the letter itself since he had managed to chat with Neville just fine the last time he had visited Hogwarts.
When he was done he carefully folded it again and slipped it back into the envelope before he leant back in his chair.
"To be honest I knew about what happened to your parents before today." He started quietly, saddening despite himself at the minute flinch the other boy failed to suppress. "Remus and Sirius are their friends and they wanted me to know about your mum and dad, who they were, what they were like. Since our mums were friends."
Slowly Neville nodded. "It's the same for me. At least a bit, my mum...my mum kept diaries. There's not much to them, not really, but your mum was mentioned quite a lot and my nan said I should know as much as I could about who my parents wer- are."
Idly noting the shift in tenses, Harry pondered his next words carefully.
It made sense to him though, that Neville might have conflicting views on the state of his parents' existence, to all appearances locked inside their own minds. Having to hear all the grown ups around him say over and over that there was no hope, that they would never recover.
That they were as good as dead.
It was worse in some ways, Harry thought than the lies he himself had grown up with about his parents. He at least had the luxury of illusion, the lack of clear evidence either one way or another to confirm or deny those lies had made it much easier to issue his own denials and form his own ideas as to the character of his parents.
On the other hand, Neville had the cold hard reality of his parents technically alive but given glaringly grim prognosis by every Healer, specialist or otherwise that had visited them in their indefinite stay at Britain's St. Mungo's. And all without seemingly any hope to the contrary besides his own grandmother's quiet, desperate hope.
Thinking on the contents of the letter again Harry sighed then barely held back a wince when the other boy flinched. "I hate to say this, since it already seems like you and your gran have already been through this with a lot of Healers. And I know she wrote the letter the way she did for certain reasons, but in order to give a proper evaluation of your parents current condition and to gauge whether the Healing Serenity would be an effective treatment...I'd need to see them personally."
Neville stared down at his lap for a long moment before seeming to shrink further into himself. "You really can't do it?"
"It's less about can or can't and much more to do with shouldn't. No physician, magical or mundane should ever give any diagnosis without examining the patient in the flesh if it can be avoided. The body is an infinitely complex system that has a near innumerable number of parts that interact with each other and are both reliant on each other to function correctly or can damage each other if they're working incorrectly. The symptoms we readily see can also mask other symptoms or problems that we also need to see if we want any sort of accurate diagnosis and frankly speaking the body and its processes are so fragile that it's basically a miracle that they somehow work at all." Harry explained.
Then immediately backtracked at the helpless, lost look that had settled on the others face.
"What I'm getting at, is that an attempt to diagnose problems in a patient should only happen over distance without seeing and examining the patient in the flesh if there's absolutely no way to avoid it. Even with a list of symptoms that another Healer has collected, there's still the possibility that something might have been missed or overlooked or that a new symptom might have presented between the original examination and now." He added gently. "Trying to do that would be a disservice to your parents and I really don't want to do that."
"Oh."
"If you think it would be okay, we can try to work out a time for me and your nan to visit them next week?" Harry asked with a small smile, hoping to help cheer the other up a bit. "I can't make any promises, except that I'll try my best to help if I can."
"You don't mind?" The other boy asked, fingers dancing over and around each other in his lap.
Harry smiled, though he knew even without seeing it that it likely had a sad cast to it. "I like to think that if our mums could have, they would have given us plenty of opportunities to play together and grow up as friends. And I know we haven't spent a lot of time together like I have with Ron and Hermione, but I'd like to think we could."
"Be friends?" Neville queried, biting at his bottom lip.
"Yeah."
"With me?"
"Yeah."
Neville blinked then nodded slowly. "Oh, okay."
29th March 1995 - St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London, England.
In some ways, arranging a trip to magical Britain's primary hospital was both easier and conversely harder than Harry had imagined it would be.
On the one hand the hospital's board of administrators were all but falling over themselves to encourage his visit since many of them had either seen or heard about his abilities and that along with his medi-wix certification and the formal request of Dowager Lady Longbottom for his aid in the matter of her son and daughter-in-law.
A fresh pair of eyes, something that could both encourage and rankle some was buoyed with the opportunity for some to pose their own questions to him regarding his thoughts and ideas and very likely, to see what other medically relevant inventions might be on the horizon.
But on the opposite hand was the stern opposition to his guards stepping foot in the hospital.
Every sort of excuse had been thrown up against it, much to Ruknukle's very intense disapproval.
Everything from disturbing the patients to clogging the hallways.
They had settled on a compromise of a skeleton guard, which honestly neither side were particularly happy with, but had accepted as the best they were going to get.
Harry wasn't entirely sure the St. Mungo's admin board really understood that by forcing his guard to whittle down their numbers, they had all but forced the goblins at large to assume that they were up to no good and had replaced Harry's normal guard team - with the exception of Ruknukle, of course - with some of the most vicious warriors they had so they would still seem to be honouring the agreement.
Though in all honesty each one one of Harry's revised guard team was worth five of the old team, so technically Harry had gained a stronger protective detail than he would have had before the fuss had been kicked up.
That also said nothing about the squad of aurors that were assigned both to the area and the hospital itself by the DMLE to try and make sure no one upset the incredibly enthusiastic powder keg that was Harry's goblin protectors.
But Harry had gotten the formal go-ahead both from the hospital administrators and from Dowager Longbottom the day before. It had honestly been cutting it a little fine to the line as far as his attempts at scheduling his many jobs and self-assigned responsibilities were concerned. However walking sandwiched on either side by Neville and his Grandmother, working their way through the fourth floor of the hospital to the room the Longbottoms shared with a few others in the Long Term Care section of the Janus Thickey Ward did a fair bit to allay his lingering annoyance.
His new annoyance at the hospital's poorly thought out design was another matter entirely.
After all, who thought it was a good idea for visitors and emergency arrivals to share the same entry?
Some of the wounds or mishaps that people were capable of sustaining with magic were deeply traumatic to experience, and just as traumatic in some cases to witness. Even after the fact. But he supposed as far as the original planning was concerned it didn't really matter if poor hypothetically Timmy happened to be traumatised by some unfortunate stranger when he was trying to visit his equally hypothetical sick grandmother with the rest of his family.
Also never mind the fact they only had one person working the admissions desk desk. One dead tired and overworked witch who had still tried in very harried fashion to greet them when they had arrived, contact her bosses and deal with the rest of the normal foot traffic that were waiting in varying degrees of injury and impatience to be helped.
In short, even though he had only recently earned his stars as a medi-wizard he had very much wanted to pause and make an itemised list of all the faults he found so he could take it up with the administrators. Even though he realistically knew it most definitely wasn't his place, both because it wasn't his job at all, but mostly because he was a foreign leader now and that sort of thing could be taken very poorly.
He had ended up consoling himself with a mental rundown of Skyfall's own hospital.
That and the realisation that St. Mungo's terrible layout had been why Frederick had been so insistent on some points when they had been designing Glimmerbright Hospital.
Their arrival and check in at the reception desk for Ward 49 helped steer him away from his lingering griping in a way the very awkward and uncomfortable silence that had been their walk from the welcome desk on the ground floor.
Beside him Neville seemed to both shrink in on himself a little more and try to straighten himself out and stand tall. While the dowager Lady Longbottom had merely squared her shoulders and pressed on.
Not that Harry was surprised. She was every bit as imposing in person as Neville had alluded to during their boggart lesson in their Defense class the previous year.
Thank Whoever that he hadn't started snickering when he caught sight of her in that same outfit Neville had pictured onto boggart Snape.
Somehow he didn't think she'd see the humour of it all.
Letting her take the lead since she was familiar with the bed assignments, Harry paused long enough to give Neville's shoulder a squeeze and what he hoped was an encouraging smile before he followed her in.
The room was long and particular plain, near to the point of being austere. There was little in the way of decorations about to bring life or colour into the room, and aside from the staff desk and shelving near the entrance and the patients beds themselves, there was little in the way of furniture either.
Moving down the walkway in the middle of the room Harry noted that most of the patients did have the odd photo or calendar stuck to the wall above their assigned bed. Though there was also more than one patient who's wall and side table were sadly bare.
Coming to a stop beside Neville's nan, Harry was glad to see that the side table for both Frank and Alice had a little decorative pot plant and the wall above their beds was liberally filled with an assortment of photos of family and pictures of locations that he assumed bore some sort of significance to them.
Both were in bed but sitting up, staring silently off into space, hands arranged neatly in their laps.
Noting that Neville's nan had veered off to consult the on duty Healer while Harry had been studying the photos, the boy king moved to sit at the very end of Alice's bed where he was closer enough to do his diagnostic spells but still well within everyone's visual range.
"So, I suppose an introduction is long overdue." He started, addressing Neville's parents in the quiet calm tone that was the unspoken rule of hospitals and sick rooms. "I've done a lot of growing since you last saw me, after all. I'm Harry Potter, Lily and James' son, I'll be fifteen in a few months, the very next day after Neville actually. Although you probably know that since mum and you were best friends."
He gave Neville a smile as the other teen moved to sit at the end of his dad's bed, leaving the lone wooden chair between the two beds free for Augusta.
"I've been studying healing, both the physical and the mind. I've even been lucky enough to have some lessons with the highest ranked Healers in Japan, which let me tell you was as impressive as it sounds. They know so much more about the inner workings of the body and mind, it's pretty amazing." Harry explained, even knowing from what he had been told and what he had read from their patient files once he had been signed on as a consultant Healer, that they couldn't hear or at least understand him.
It felt wrong to just stroll in and start waving magic about.
So introductions and explanations and little titbits about his life because his own mother and father had obviously planned and hoped that Frank and Alice would be a part of it.
"That's actually part of why I've come today. Neville and Augusta asked if I wouldn't make use of some of the things I learned to try and help you both get back on your feet so you can finally go home."
On the other bed Neville sighed and bowed his head, opting to focus on his own fidgeting fingers. Not that Harry blamed him. He didn't really want to think on how many times Neville must have heard the same sort of introduction over the years. How many times he had been given hope only for it to come to nothing.
To be disappointed over and over again.
Seeing Neville's grandmother returning with the on duty witch, a rather matronly woman of advancing years with a friendly look about her. Harry turned just a little so he could face them both and offered them a nod.
"Your Majesty." Said the Healer, taking hold of her lime-green robes with their wand and bone symbol on the chest so she could duck into a slightly unsteady curtsey. "Welcome to our little ward. I'm Healer Miriam Strout, I'm the chief Healer in charge of this ward and it's patients' care."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Healer Strout. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for me?" He asked quietly.
"Certainly, Sir. I received the notice that you were part of Alice and Frank's care team just this morning, so I'd be happy to help." She replied with a little nod.
"I don't sense any spells around them other than the wellbeing charm to notify you if their health takes a turn, but I want to double check." He explained, glancing back to Alice for a moment before returning his attention to the Healer. "Since they were admitted into care here, have they ever required spells or runes to encourage or force them to breathe, blink their eyes or moderate their temperature?"
She frowned at that, expression thoughtful and a little distant as she thought back. "Hmm, no. No, I don't believe either Frank or Alice needed the extra help."
"Why?" Augusta asked.
The young king paused a moment, trying to work out the best way to explain something he knew from his study wasn't known or understood by magical Healers the same way it was by mundane physicians. "The attack that injured them works by targeting the body's nerves, the Nervous System which includes the central nervous system consisting of the brain and spinal cord. And the Peripheral Nervous system which consists of the cranial, spinal and peripheral nerves with their motor and sensory endings that allow us to actually feel ourselves and the world around us.
The most important part about healing a wound is understanding it and knowing exactly where the damage you're trying to heal is. In this particular instance part of the diagnosis is understanding what damage occured to the nerves first, which was the primary target of the offending spell." He explained, taking a brief break to glance at each of them to make sure they were following before pressing on. "The very base of the nervous system of the mind is something called the autonomic nervous system and its function is to handle all the things we don't actually think about, but that happen naturally for our bodies."
"Such as?" Dowager Longbottom inquired, head slightly cocked as she listened.
"Such as triggering and regulating our blood pressure, breathing, body temperature, metabolism, digestive system, pupillary responses, the production of bodily fluids like sweat and saliva and even our emotional responses. If the nervous system was damaged too terribly or if it was having trouble sending command signals to the rest of the body we would be able to see signs of that in those automatic bodily functions. If those are working correctly it's safe to say I can move on to the next section which would be the peripheral nervous system I mentioned earlier, which would help me to understand how well their senses are perceiving the world around them. So hearing, scent, taste, and so on." Harry told her, watching her chew over it.
Letting the other three think over what he had told them, the teen went about discretely running through the bits of diagnostics he needed, mentally noting the responses he got back.
When he was done he hummed quietly to himself and called Hildegara and had her prepare tea for all of them before carefully measuring out the correct dose of Healing Serenity into the teapot and serving them each a cup.
Floating each teacup to each recipient, he kept the last two hovering in front of Frank and Alive.
"Ah, they need a little extra help with their meals. Normally it's nutrition potions spelled right to their stomach to reduce the risk of choking." Healer Strout informed him, though her eyes flicked between the Longbottoms and her cup, delicately sniffing at the steam.
"In this instance, both inhaling the steam and allowing the dosed tea to pass through the esophagus before resting in the stomach is important. Scent is one of most important sensory triggers, it can help us recall memories that might otherwise be lost to time and trigger emotional responses. The Healing Serenity's vapour stirs up memories and sensations of comfort and safety and helps instill a sense of calm. Then in the swallowing it allowed the potion to pass along the throat where its proximity to the spinal cord will allow its effects to begin seeping through the tissue and into the column itself before it comes to rest in the stomach where it'll be absorbed into the bloodstream and dispersed further throughout the rest of the body, obviously including the brain." Harry explained, lifting his own cup to breath in the steam.
Leather, spice, warm fur, parchment, ink and sweet meats and desserts.
Scents of comfort and safety, that as usual put him in mind of Sirius and Remus, Ron and Hermione.
Steering his mind back into the here and now he gave the others an encouraging nod and took a sip of his own tea, enjoying the warmth that spread through him. He watched out of the corner of his eye as slowly unwound with each careful sip until he was sitting relaxed in his place at the end of his dad's bed, smiling just a little down into his cup.
Augusta similarly seemed to have relaxed a little, long wrinkled fingers wrapped around her cup, holding it beneath her nose between sips.
Healer Strout smiled into her cup. "Oh this is rather lovely, is it all the effect or the potion or does the tea serve a purpose as well?"
Harry gave her a smile. "The tea plays its own part. It helps to invigorate the mind and depending on what kind of tea it can layer in different aromas underneath the Serenity's steam. In this instance we're drinking an earl grey laced with mint, chamomile and lavender, it's a heavy duty blend of soothing scents that will help boost the Serenity's first effects."
"Does it work with other substances or…?"
"It does, it can blend decently well with coffee and other warmed beverages. Less so with cooler ones like juice, so in the case of administering it to children, mixing it with warmed milk would be the better option. But also in the case of children there's also the matter of diminished dose amounts opposed to adolescent and adult recipients." Harry explained, tamping down on the impulse to shrug. He had the feeling Augusta was the sort that thought shrugging was bad manners.
"So it's going to help them?" Neville asked quietly, speaking for the first time since they had all arrived.
"It's part of it. The potion works on a number of fronts, but the ones we're most interested here, is the healing and removal of scar tissue and the promotion of new cell growth. It will help rebuild the parts of their brains that were damaged from the prolonged attack and help their bodies grow new connective pathways where needed. Then it will be a case of gently drawing their psyche back toward the present so they can properly excise the trauma of the event." The young king replied, though his attention went to both Neville and his grandmother since he was sure the dowager was also curious.
Augusta regarded him shrewdly, teacup still clutched close. "But you think it will work?"
Harry paused, thinking over the responses he had gotten back from the gentle pulses of magic he had sent into both Alice and Frank, and contemplating the results of the traditional diagnostic spells before he slowly nodded.
"Yeah. Yeah, I think it will."