Fractured AIAOY 6

Chapter 17

It took another day for the Rebecca Fred loved so dearly to be more apparent, and that was only slightly.  Three days later, Fred was still waiting for her to return entirely.  He couldn't consider leaving her side until she was entirely recovered, and seeing more of her return to herself gave him the only bit of relief since she had first opened her eyes.

"Where did you go again?"

Fred shot back into the present after having wandered in his thoughts.  "Sorry, love.  I'm right here."

"Fred..."  Rebecca sat up straighter in her bed, turning so that she faced him better.  "I am feeling better.  I think Madam Pomfrey is only keeping me in her pristine prison because she's careful."

"I heard that!"

"That I complimented your infirmary?"  Rebecca called back.  She giggled.  "See?  Everything is as it was."

"But-"  Fred bit his cheek.  He wasn't sure how to explain to her that he was stuck in the moments when everything wasn't as it should have been.  When his Rebecca, the focus of his happiness and thoughts, his love, had been broken somewhere as dangerous as her skull.  

"Madam," Rebecca began as the healer came over to them in case any extraneous pain, though there was none.  "How much longer are you thinking?"

"Are you so eager to get back to class?"  Madam Pomfrey shone her wand's light into Rebecca's eyes and found a usual response.  "What about pain?  Discomfort?"

"Nothing."  Fred frowned and Rebecca was speaking again before she realised.  "A little, I guess.  Nothing more than usual and nothing like it had been."

"I would like none at all."  Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips before raising a hand to the side of Rebecca's head.  

Rebecca jerked her head away when Madam Pomfrey's fingers brushed against the center of the bump that remained from where the bludger had struck her.  Despite all of the magic that had gone into repairing what had been broken, evidence of the accident stayed.  

"Are you dizzy?  Nauseous?"  

Rebecca didn't answer at first.  She wanted to go, to get out from underneath Fred's anxieties that loomed like a storm that refused to let loose, to go and prove to him that she was okay.  But, she also didn't want to lie when he would be able to call her out on it.  "When I was able to walk around earlier, it left me dizzy for a little.  Nothing mental though."

Madam Pomfrey thought a moment.  "One more day, out of an abundance of caution.  I see no reason why you shouldn't be free to return to your schedule for Friday, however."

Fred took Rebecca's hand after Madam Pomfrey returned to her work.  "One more day.  You'll still rest if-"

"I'll take all weekend to catch up and rest."  Rebecca assured.  "Don't look so worried, darling."

"I was.  I am."  Fred was moving up onto Rebecca's bed at the exact moment she began to scoot to the side.  They both knew that they needed to be closer to the other with the break of Fred's voice. 

"I know."  Rebecca held Fred's head against the junction of her shoulder to her neck and combed her fingers through his hair.  "Please, you really think a bludger is going to be what gets me?"

"Nothing is going to get you!"  Fred gasped, sitting straight up.  "Merlin!  Why would you say anything like that?"

Rebecca managed a half smile.  "If you don't calm down, you're going to end up having to leave."

Fred bit back an answer just as frantic as his last.  "You're right."

"I usually am."  Rebecca leaned down to catch his eyes.  "Look, the only way I can play the next match is if I do everything she says, right?"  Fred nodded.  "And I can't not play in the final, now can I?"  Fred nodded again.  "Then we're going to sit here until the end of tomorrow and I will continue to recuperate like the model patient I am."