Beyond Hogwarts cont; Chapter Twenty Five

-=Beyond Hogwarts, cont.; Chapter Twenty Five=-

Dressed in a very unflattering pair of robes looking a bit like a pair of white plastic sheets, a frizzle-haired nurse was sitting at the front desk of St. Mungo’s, head propped in her hand and sleepily reading The Romance of the Cavalier for the third time; she was stepping in for the receptionist and had not been informed that at least two books were necessary to pass the night shift.
   A young girl, hardly twenty years old, but with a set look that most had not known at forty, materialized outside the hospital doors. Pulling one open, she stepped resolutely inside, clutching something tightly in her palm.
   The nurse looked up, startled, when the lady approached the desk-unless it was an emergency, people didn’t appear at the hospital at midnight. Quickly stowing the scarlet-covered novel on her lap, she sat up, suddenly wide awake.
   “Good evening,” the nurse said cordially. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
   “I’ve come to see James Potter, please,” she replied. “Could you tell me where his room is?”
   “You’re a relative, then?” Pulling a large, leather-bound book off of a shelf and flipping it open, the nurse’s finger traveled down several pages, squinting-she had misplaced her glasses. “Potter-James. That’s right…Room 24, sixth floor.” Replacing the volume, she nodded to the Muggle-clothed redhead, gesturing to a sheet of parchment riveted to the desk. “Sign on the clipboard there…and go on up. It shouldn’t be locked. Sign out before you leave, please.”
   What neither of them knew was that, next to his room number, the premier doctor attending to James had written a few syllables-Do not admit his wife until notified otherwise. By a piece of unforeseen luck, Lily had arrived on the very night that the regular receptionist, who knew the whole book inside out almost from memory, was home with a sick child.
   Without a scruple, Lily quickly picked up the quill and wrote down her former name--Lily Evans, and headed for the stairwell. Her lips forming meaningless words as she ascended the stairs, she made her way towards the sixth floor, her hand tightly clasped around the diamond-like bottle. Without effort, she found the room indicated by the woman, and, with only a slight pinch of hesitation, turned the knob.
   Silently, Lily slipped inside the room, closing the door noiselessly behind her. Looking around, her eyes fell upon several funny-looking machines the like of which she had never seen in the Muggle world-though the room was painfully white and blinding, just like the few Muggle hospital rooms she had been in. At least a dozen transparent tubes led underneath a pale green curtain in the middle of the room, which was blocking something behind it from a view coming from the doorway.
   Swallowing uncomfortably, Lily stepped forward, pacing around the curtain. Exactly as she had expected, a white-sheeted bed, mounted on poles of metal, was lying in the greenish shadow of the screen. Two folding chairs were standing near the wall-probably those that visitors used, Lily thought dimly.
   One of the two was just next to the pillow placed on the mattress, and, silently, Lily’s eyes wandered upward, towards the dark-haired form covered with one of the smooth, unwrinkled sheets.
   James was lying there, cold and motionless, his closed eyes facing the ceiling. The pallor in his skin had grown to a deathly white, and none of the flushed red remained in his face. Only his lips were a pale pink, and a vein in his neck had swelled to an unnatural dark tone. His hair, wet with something that wasn’t sweat, was for once swept away from his face, leaving a pale forehead bare; his glasses were gone. Dressed in a suit of stiff green and white pajamas, he looked more unlike himself than Lily could have ever imagined him to be.
   Slowly, she eased herself down onto the chair next to the bed, all haste evaporated from her body and her mind. Unconsciously, she let the small bottle drop into her pocket, and with the hand that had clasped the cordial, she took James’ limp, motionless one.
   It was cold; passionately chilled, and as she let her fingers run over his palm and stiff fingers, she felt a thick lump surface in her throat. The last time she had touched that hand, it had been alive, had clasped hers warmly and drawn her into an evening of laughter and fireworks…
   She dropped her head onto the hand that she now held clasped in both palms, and more than a few tears dropped onto both his fingers and her clenched grip. Her shoulders shaking, Lily rocked subtly back and forth on the metal chair, head buried in his hand and hair falling off of her shoulders to the floor.
   At last, she sat up again, eyes dark and swollen, and kissed his hand gracefully. A slight knock of a glass-like form against her leg had reminded her of why she had come, and, with a slow gesture, Lily drew the bottle from her pocket. Removing the cap, she stood up, pulling the sheet and pajama top back from his chest.
   He was still heavily bandaged, though the sheeted area around the wounds was clean and white; the gashes had finally stopped bleeding. A small smile that refused to reach her eyes touched Lily’s lips, raw from biting, and she placed her finger over the opening of the bottle.
   Upending it and placing it upright again, a drop remained on her finger when she lifted it away. Quickly, she touched the area where she knew the least severe wound had lodged itself, letting the drop of the healing tonic soak into the bandages. Repeating this twice, she moved to the other gash, the one just above his lung.
   Without regret, she poured most of the solution in the bottle into her hand, saturating the bandages with the watery concoction until the top layers were almost dry. True, if she refilled it with even regular water, the liquid would transform itself into a particularly strong healing potion, but it couldn’t have the same effect as the original substance did-the bottle was made out of the crystallized litaleter, and putting the cove’s water into it made the potion doubly strong.
   Her hand was still wet when she replaced the sheets and pulled James’ pajama top back down, and, with a funny, musing expression, she ran her fingers over his forehead, leaving damp streaks on his skin.
   Dropping the bottle back into her pocket, Lily stood up, taking James’ hand lightly Leaning over the bed, she kissed him softly, her eyes closed until they began to rain.
   Pulling back sharply, she turned around, heading for the door. Without looking back, Lily closed it behind her and made for the stairwell, shaking tears out of her eyes.
   Downstairs, the sleepy, frizzle-haired nurse caught a flash of red hair and a white and black smudge stopping to sign the roll of parchment before Lily Disapparated for her house. Shaking her head, the nurse returned to The Romance of the Cavalier.
   “Hasty, these young people are; no respect for time at all,” she muttered. Re-opening her book, she returned to an exciting chase scene, with Lady Margarethe perched precariously on the back of the Cavalier’s saddle, her ‘wide blue orbs trembling with terror…’
   Two evenings later, Lily was sitting on the library sofa with The Maiden of Asfartholest: Volume One on her lap and a glass of lemonade on the table next to her when a small pop announced a whish of dark hair and grey robes over Muggle clothing.
   “Lily!” Breathlessly, Sirius whisked over to the sofa, kneeling down next to it, taking both of her hands. “Lily, he’s going to be all right! Peter was there this afternoon; they told him James’ll make it! He might be awake in a few days-they’re letting you visit him!”
   A bright glow slowly rose into her cheeks. Unconsciously dropping the artifact on her lap onto the floor, she sat up, back straight.
   “They are-he is? Sirius-“
   Still panting for breath, Sirius tried to answer. “He-I don’t know exactly what happened, but he’s doing lots better-they finally managed to get the third bullet out; both parts. He’ll be all right, they said!”
   Swinging herself off of the couch, Lily threw both arms around Sirius and hugged him, tightly, so firmly he almost let out an abnormal little squeak.
   “Thank you!” she whispered, her hair crushed into his cheek. “Thank…you.”
   “You have got to stop doing that,” he muttered. “Squeeze me in half, you will. Come on, let’s go! St. Mungo’s, now!”
   They were in James’ room moments later, Lily still out of breath from climbing the stairs. St. Mungo’s was similar to Hogwarts-one couldn’t Apparate or Disapparate inside the building, mostly because of wizards that used to accidentally materialize just in front of stretchers bearing an emergency patient from one room to another. But Lily hardly noticed her whining ankles; she hadn’t thought he’d be this much better so soon, and she had expected it to be at least a week before the attendants would let her visit the hospital.
   The green curtain had been drawn aside, and both Peter and Remus were there, sitting, though they rose from the folding chairs as soon as Sirius and Lily burst into the room.
   She had been in a tempest to see him, but once inside, something slowed her down, and she stopped, her eyes fastened on the bed.
   His hair was still decently combed, and his eyes were still closed, but there was a reddish tinge to his lips and cheeks that hadn’t been there two days ago. Color was slowly resurfacing in his skin, and, for the first time, she noticed the rise and fall of his chest.
   Slowly, setting one foot in front of the other, as if she had never walked before in her life, Lily paced towards the bed, almost unwilling to believe that he was all right. It wasn’t as if she had any doubts in the healing potion-but so quickly! And, then again, she was born into a Muggle family, and that world knew of no remedies that could be touched to someone’s skin and provoke that person into health.
   Sitting down next to him, with several small, jerking motions, in a chair the staff had brought in, she took his hand in both of hers, just as she had done the last time she had visited. Her lips parted, as if to say something, but then they closed again, and her head sank onto the pillow, her cheek grazing his.
   Sirius was conferring with the doctors in the background, and after about ten minutes, he stepped forward, placing a hand on Lily’s shoulder. Startled, she looked up.
   “Lily, you can come back tomorrow-let me take you home.”
   “Why?”
   He took her arm. “Nasty process involving tubes and vile-looking potions. C’mon.”
   Lily looked up shortly, sent a disparaging glare towards the two men in white robes that were preparing a tray of bottles, and stood up. Turning back towards James, she bent over, kissed him on the forehead, and pressed his hand warmly before letting Sirius lead her out of the room.
   For the next few days, she visited St. Mungo’s every spare minute she could summon up, though about half of the time had to be spent in a waiting room with Sirius, Remus, or Peter, whichever one was there that day. Amanda and Vanessa visited twice, and Lora, Frank, and Eva frequented the hospital at least once every two days. True, there wasn’t much point to the visits, for James was still in a state of oblivion, but a stack of get-well presents was quickly growing in the entrance hall of Lily and James’ home.
   On the thirteenth of July, at about eight thirty in the morning, something finally stirred of its own accord in room 24. Uneasily fluttering, James’ eyes slowly opened.
   The first thing that struck him was his surroundings-a room he knew he had never seen before, filled with a morning welcome-and then a fading ache in his chest. James closed his eyes again, remembering something-he summoned up a party…Lily…her bright, piercing smile…and something about a stranger…a blackish figure-
   “Oh, help,” he muttered, as he realised where he had to be, something that was confirmed as a cheery, red-cheeked nurse pushing a trolley made her way into the room.
   At five that evening, Lily arrived at her home; quickly dropping her bag in the library and making her way upstairs, she gave Slenka a quick order for dinner. Every evening since the day she had been allowed into the hospital had passed like this: arrive home, swallow something while changing out of work robes, and Disapparate for St. Mungo’s. She had been arriving earlier every day-the doctors had said that he might be waking up any minute.
   Pulling on a black ballroom skirt and a green blouse in place of the robes she wore to work, Lily Disapparated, appearing moments later outside St. Mungo’s with a folder from the Ministry and a quill in one hand and the door-handle in the other.
   She appeared in the door of the sixth floor waiting room, and her glance fell on almost a congregation of people-Sirius, Remus, Peter, Frank, Eva, Lora…most of their Hogwarts friends and a collection of relatives of those friends, including Eva and Vanessa’s parents.
   Stopping short, Lily glanced around nervously. “What…“
   Quickly, Sirius strode over, taking both of her arms. “Lily, he’s awake!”
   Her head snapped up quickly. “What?”
   “He woke up this morning,” he told her jubilantly, “and we’ve been waiting for you to get here-They’re letting you go in first.”
   The folder and quill dropped to the floor with a soft thud unheard by Lily. Sirius’ words kept resounding inside her head-he woke up this morning…he woke up this morning…and an explosion of sorts burst out behind her eyes.
   Her breath suddenly short, she glanced at the hospital employee waiting nearby. “I-I-“
   With a slight smile, the man nodded, taking her arm and escorting her to James’ room, twisting the doorknob with a quick flick. The door swung open gently, and the man retreated, leaving her standing in the doorway.
   With a faint bang, the door bumped against the wall and stood still. James had been awake, staring in the direction of the door since the doctors had left him, waiting for her. Not in the least drowsy, his eyes had not removed themselves from that spot. He had asked for Lily to be the first to see him, and the doctors had agreed, though they said that she did not arrive before five. She had a job with the Ministry, they said, and James submitted to five o’clock, thinking vaguely that she had re-taken her old position.
   Even though he had been expecting her all day long, hoping somehow that Sirius would owl her, that she could come on a lunch break, something-he hadn’t truly envisioned that she would actually be there, in the hospital room. He had merely daydreamed hazily about a face surrounded with brilliantly auburn hair, and never pictured her in the room itself. So, when the door veered open, he was faintly startled and somewhat apprehensive.
   He had looked wonderful, Lily thought afterwards. His hair was back to the incorrigible mess that it usually let itself fall in; his eyes were sparkling brightly, and he was sitting, propped up, on a mound of pillows. But, just then, she couldn’t see anything else in the room besides him, his face; his eyes.
   “Lily,” he whispered. “Lily-“
   Slowly, she stepped forward, towards the hand he reached to her. Only a foot and a half away from his bed, she reached out, taking his hand in one of hers.
   “You…” he said clumsily, almost stumbling over words. “You’re-“
   Her heart thumping loudly, she reached out with her other hand, touching his cheek gently. The next moment, she had clasped her arms around his neck, and his were gripped around her shoulders and back. Swaying back and forth slightly, both of them crying softly, they stayed there, her head buried in his shoulder and his view of the room blinded by a screen of auburn.
   “I love you,” James finally murmured when they broke apart. “And I’ve missed you.”
   “You, too,” she whispered. “I’ve found out that I hate being alone.”
   He grinned up at her, and she smiled back through a veil of tears. Leaning down, Lily kissed him, just as she had done more than a week ago; the only and most important factor this time was that he was alive, well, and that he was kissing her back.
   A quarter of an hour later, the visitors outside piled into the room, congregating around the bed, all of them beaming happily. The doctors and attendants were downstairs, and Sirius, Peter, and Remus took advantage of that opportunity to pile contraband on James’ sheets: Chocolate Frogs, Fizzing Whizbees, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Hiccup Sweets, Whizzing Worms, Peppermint Toads, and much, much more, and everything brightly wrapped with at least three spools of ribbon.
   “You didn’t,” James grinned, unwrapping one of the Peppermint Toads. “How’m I going to hide all of these?”
   “Well, there’s your bedside table,” Sirius pointed out. “Or you could just pretend you’ve grown awfully fat, what with all the…er…air…you’ve been having to…ah…swallow.”
   “You mean under the covers?”
   “I shouldn’t be encouraging this,” Mr. Weasley grinned, “but the blanket Molly knitted would be just thick enough to hide the lumps.”
   “Arthur!” Molly Weasley scolded, half annoyed, half amused. “I didn’t make that for James just to have him hide smuggled candy underneath it! What Bill and Charlie and Percy are going to turn out to be, I don’t know, what with you working at the Ministry and encouraging all sorts of dangerous-“
   “Molly,” James interrupted, a wide grin on his face, “the blanket is wonderful, and I promise faithfully that it will not conceal more than forty-five packets of sweets.”
   “And I promise, in return,” Remus said gallantly, “that we will help him with half of his stash.”
   “You will not!” James yelped. “With you, half the stash is more than half of what would fit into this room!”
   Remus looked insulted. “I do not eat that much.”
   “True,” Sirius supplied. “I help him.”
   “Sirius Black, you will not-“
   “By the WAY!” Lora interrupted loudly, “you mentioned several months ago that you had tickets for the Quidditch World Cup.”
   James just turned and looked at her. “Hum?”
   “It’s being held on the twenty-second. Are you going to be out by then?”
   “Very nice question, Lora, and no credit to me that I didn’t think of that first,” Sirius grinned, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “James, my friend, my brother, my sponsor, when are you leaving this wretched…ah…arena?”
   James sank back into his pillows. “I have no idea. That’s one thing they haven’t told me.”
   “If all goes well, July twentieth,” a white-robed lady said succinctly, trying to barrel her way through the crowd.
   And, contrary to the promise James had given Mrs. Weasley, he promptly stowed every bit of the candy stash underneath the large, heavy, hand-knitted blue and green blanket, smiling brightly up at the nurse, once she managed to poke her way through the crowd.
   “I had better ask you all to leave,” she said grumpily, clutching a clipboard. “Mr. Potter has a checkup coming up in a few minutes.”
   Faintly grumbling and cheerfully chattering about Quidditch, James’ so-far recovery, and the new, enthusiastically blinking candied cherries that had just been developed, the crowd dispersed, leaving Lily, Sirius, Remus, and Peter in the room.
   After the routine pulse-check, etc., Peter and Remus stayed until eight o’clock, and Sirius, on the doctor’s order, took Lily home at nine. Visitors weren’t allowed overnight, the doctor had said shortly; no staff member had been really pleased about the amount of candy wrappers that were found scattered all over the room or the heap of gifts that had temporarily buried a machine that seemed to be made out of nothing but metal coils but was really inordinately expensive.
   Sirius stayed with Lily for a small dinner made up of leftover lemon meringue pie and pear slices, and then he, too left for his flat, with a covered dish of apple cake, chocolate sauce and several oranges, something Peter and Remus gladly pounced on while he was changing out of his robes.
   For the next few days, Lily visited James religiously every day after work at five-fifteen, and, on weekends, arrived at eleven and left whenever the staff insisted that she do so. The reason for her arriving a quarter of an hour later after work was Slenka’s get-well gift to James; she pulled Lily’s second-most extravagant and flattering clothes out of her closet and usually had some sort of flowery wreath, belt, or bouquet sitting next to the chosen dress when Lily came home.
   So, although Lily muttered somewhat about feeling like a masquerade model, she didn’t mind that much-it was worth it to see her husband’s eyes light up in appreciation after a day that, for him, consisted of nothing but shots and people fluttering around in white, plastic robes. And then, again, her closet contained no gowns that she radically hated, so it was admittedly fun to walk down corridors in the hospital, aware of heads turning at a brilliantly white dress with a dark green silk shawl hanging from her arms, or a dark blue sleeveless affair with an arrangement of roses pinning the skirt up to show a white underskirt.
   For James’ part, he looked forward to Lily’s visits every minute of the day, and, as Sirius described it once, acted like a spoiled brat. But he was cooped up in a bed; the hospital employees refused to let him walk, although he would be allowed to leave the hospital soon. And he wasn’t the sort of person that could live anywhere, provided that he was surrounded by books, so the different volumes Lily brought with her at every visit bored him after an hour or so, and he found himself wishing he could sleep. The ache in his chest was rapidly fading, and he could toss and turn without a painful twinge just above his lung, but he had several headaches that kept setting in, something that he insisted was because he was forbidden to get on a broomstick.
   The nineteenth was full of bustling excitement in Lily and James’ mansion-it was a Saturday, and Lily and Eva had arranged a party for the next day, when James would be coming home. It had been blazingly hot for the past few days, and the idea of a garden festival fell to Lora, who had been taking care of Frank’s cousins with Sirius by taking them to a park, and both of them had promptly managed to teach the three boys how to defoliate and deflower a collection of rosebushes. Lily had liked the idea; she had spent hardly any time anywhere outside of the Ministry and St. Mungo’s, and it had been stiflingly hot in both of those buildings.
   Eva and Vanessa’s parents were willing to temporarily donate a collection of tables, chairs, and glassware, so it was relatively easy to set up the lawn outside with a mass of the borrowed items, many brightly coloured umbrellas, masses of vases for vibrantly diverse flowers, and to clear a space for the pile of presents people had thought fit to buy.
   James had made it very, very clear that he was sick to death of white, so Peter, Frank, and Remus had taken it upon themselves to buy the most extravagantly coloured things that they could find. Their results were somewhat amusing: a set of candies to be placed at each table that would make the eater’s saliva violently tinted for about twenty minutes, a statue of a serpent that was made of ice and had been attacked with food coloring, so that people could take forks and stab the snake to pieces and then (ideally) be able to eat the ice that hadn’t fallen on the ground.
   Another purchase was a large rock, out of which flowed iridescent multicoloured water, which had been placed next to a depression on the lawn, so that, by eleven in the morning that Sunday, a waist-high pond was forming, about twenty feet across. Lily was, to everyone else’s relief, amazingly amused, and the lake stayed.
   At twelve the next day, Sirius was helping James into a wheelchair. His things had already been packed and sent back to his house, so that all that was left to do was the trip by Floo powder.
   “I hate this hospital,” James said cheerily, slipping his arms into a pair of scarlet robes. “Merlin, am I happy to be out of here.”
   “What’s the first thing you’re going to do once you get home?” Sirius asked, grinning. “Stuff yourself or grab a broomstick?”
   “Broomstick, I think,” James beamed. “I have not been on my feet for three weeks.”
   Holding out a hand, Sirius steadied James’ descent into the chair. Wheeling him out of the door of room 24, he narrowly avoided a cart packed with medical supplies, all of which James waved cheekily good-bye to.
   “You have gone off your rocker, old chum,” Sirius said optimistically. “I’d bet you’d even hug Snape in the mood you’re in.”
   The grin was partly wiped off of James’ face. “I would not!”
   Sirius clapped him on the shoulder. “Good to see you’re still partly sane, then. Dunno what Lily sees in him.”
   “She sees greasy hair,” James said thoughtfully, counting on his fingers, “beetly eyes, a broken nose, too-long hair, a nasty scowl-“ He stopped, frowning, “Why do women find that so attractive?”
   “I’m sure it’s just his sunny personality,” Sirius assured him as he rolled the chair down the circular ramp. “You know him; he appeals to just about everything in knickers.”
   “That is disgusting,” James said flatly, his good humour resurfacing. “More than disgusting. He is repulsive. You didn’t let him anywhere near Lily, did you?”
   “I tried,” Sirius whistled dismissively, “but he dropped in on us in the Leaky Cauldron the day you got dragged to the hospital.”
   “Oh.” James sounded sickened. “What happened?”
   “He told me that he wanted to boil and pickle my head, but I accused him of having an illicit affair with Lily and he left,” Sirius said brightly. “It worked very well.”
   “What did his face look like?” James asked eagerly. “Was it the usual I’m-sucking-on-a-spoiled-lime look or something new?”
   Wheeling the chair in front of the fireplace, Sirius took a handful of Floo powder from the little bronze box. “A bit of I.S.O.A.S.L., but I could swear there was a bit of Skele-Gro stuffed in there somewhere…and maybe a bit of his own hair grease. You never know.”
   “Nope,” James agreed blissfully. “I wonder if he does indeed suck on spoiled limes.”
   “Hedera Castellum,” Sirius said quickly, interrupting the reverie before it went any further.