Harry Potter Oneshots »»HARMIONE««

Healer

Not mine by: Darthmittens

Hermione Jean Granger, age 18, stared at the ceiling, her eyes and body completely motionless. She was in a hospital, and while none of her bones were broken, she just couldn’t find the power to move any part of her body but her eyelids.

She could blink those.

Oh yes, she could still see. There was always that. She could watch as the doctors ran test after test after test after test on her, always sticking her with needles she couldn’t feel and shoving various tubes and cameras into her body. She could hear every word they said, always telling her they would fix her…always saying they would make her better.

But they couldn’t.

She couldn’t move anything. Her arms, her legs, her head…nothing. She had been paralyzed. There was no way to fix that. There was no way to fix the fact that she would no longer be attending Oxford on a full-ride academic scholarship. There was no way to fix the fact that she would never meet a man and fall in love. There was no way to fix the fact that she would never speak again…never smile again.

There was no way to fix any of it. She couldn’t even kill herself, either.

It was agony to sit there day after day, week after week, month after month staring at the ceiling of the hospital, the low sound of the television bringing her news that didn’t really matter. Nothing mattered. Her life was over.

Why wouldn’t they just let her die?

Her anger tiring her out, she felt her eyelids begin to droop, the soft sound of her heart monitor lulling her to sleep. Right before she reached that short, blessed relief from boredom, though, the sound of the lock clicking made her eyes shoot back open.

She strained her eyes to the door to try to see the person who had snuck in at two in the morning, but the angle was just impossible. What she did know, though, was that the person was definitely not supposed to be in here. There was no way the person was allowed if they were sneaking around so carefully.

Hermione heard the footsteps pause at the foot of each and every bed, and by the sound of his pattern, he would reach her bed last. She knew she probably should’ve been afraid, but she really didn’t care about her life anymore. She wished she could open her mouth to tell this person to kill her.

Yet she could only watch as the person finally, quietly came to the foot of her bed. His eyes widened upon seeing her open eyes, though he calmed down a little when he realized that she had no intent of shouting out and getting him caught.

Not that she could have had she wanted to.

The man began studying her shrewdly, allowing Hermione to do the same to him in return. The first thing she noticed were his eyes. They were the most beautiful green eyes, full of many shades of green and a few tiny flecks of gold, but…but they were full of the greatest sadness and self-loathing she had ever seen. The man couldn’t have been any older than her, yet his eyes told the tale of a weathered, beaten old man.

Hermione had no choice but to avert her own eyes, for the pain in his was too great for her to handle, leaving her to look at his face. He had a few days’ growth of hair on a defined jawline, prominent cheekbones, and messy, black-as-midnight hair.

There were only two problems with the man from what Hermione could tell. The first were the glasses. Such a rugged, handsome man shouldn’t have been wearing such plain glasses. The second problem was the way the man was dressed. He was wearing a purple robe that had silver stars on it, looking more like something that belonged to a crazy old man rather than a seemingly perfectly normal, even if depressed teenager.