A Marauder's Guide to Falling Together

Chapter Thirteen

When Marlene managed to open her eyes again all she could see was white. It was quite the contrast from the red she had been so focused on during her last round of consciousness that she had to blink a few times to allow her eyes to adjust. Her memory was still hazy; apparently blinking could adjust your vision but it did no good for lost memories.

Am I dead?

She looked around at the white walls and noticed that she was lying in a bed and a white curtain was drawn down the side. It looked similar to the infirmary at Hogwarts but she knew that it was not the same. She shifted her weight in the bed and the intense throbbing from somewhere in her abdomen shot through her body and she unwillingly omitted a cry of pain. She was most certainly not dead.

"Try not to move too much," a voice from behind the curtain broke the silence. A hand moved around the curtain, clenched the white fabric and drew it back so that an attractive young man in his early twenties came into view.

"Where am I?' Marlene mumbled quietly. Her hand reached instinctively around for her wand but it wasn't anywhere within reach.

"St. Mungo's," he said simply but he wasn't looking at her. He was scribbling away on a chart in his hands as he moved around the bed towards her. "My name is Patrick. I'm one of the healer's here that has been looking after you."

"St. Mungo's," Marlene repeated absently. Her eyes scanned the room again with her new found information and decided that he must be telling the truth. She had never been to St. Mungo's before but it did look a lot like she imagined it would.

"Do you mind if I take a look?" he was asking but had already drawn the blankets down from Marlene's side.

"Do I have a choice?"

"You always have a choice," he smiled. "But I need to check the damage so if you say no then I have the choice to administer some pretty powerful sleeping potions so that I can do my job properly."

Marlene laughed a bit but stopped when it became painful and grimaced instead.

"Does that hurt?" he asked her. She looked at him dubiously; she had thought it was obvious enough.

He lifted her shirt enough so that she could see bandaged wrapped around her stomach. The familiar sight of red met her gaze and Patrick's eyebrows creased as he scribbled away again on his notepad. The blood looked fresh and was slowly saturating the white bandages as Marlene continued to stare down at it.

"I'm going to have to take the dressing off," he said after he had set the clipboard down. "You can turn away if you don't want to see."

"I'm sure I've seen worse," she said quietly. She wasn't lying, she truly believed the memories of the numerous dead bodies scattered around Hogsmeade would impede her thoughts much more than the sight of a little blood.

"We've had an extremely difficult time with this wound," he said while unraveling the bandage and Marlene couldn't pry her eyes away as his hands moved methodically. "We still haven't been able to figure out what hex you were hit with but it's not an ordinary one we've ever seen before. It can't be cured by magic."

"What do you mean it can't be cured by magic?" Marlene asked with surprise. She wasn't aware it was possible. "Apart from Avada Kedavra, I thought magic could be used to fix anything?"

"Ah ever the optimist," Patrick looked into her eyes for the first time. His brown eyes were energetic; it was evident to Marlene that he was enjoying his job. "Most things can be repaired with magic, but there are just some hexes and curses that cannot be reversed. Whatever you got hit with is a clever little creation and I'm sure there is a cure for it, we just have to find it."