The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

CXI: But He Wasn't

Oliver looked up. So did Dexter, who had been talking to Macy in sign language across from Oliver, and Wally, who had fallen asleep using his arm as a pillow on the table top.

The Ravenclaw table exploded almost immediately into a panicked, hushed conversation, everyone hurrying to gather 'round a witch holding a copy of the Daily Prophet.

"What's on?" Dexter asked.

"Must be an attack," breathed Wally, staring across the table where the Ravenclaw girl was sobbing.

"Poor thing," Oliver said.

But he had no longer said it than the Hufflepuffs were bursting into cries and conversation, too, and then someone at the far end of Gryffindor had gasped loudly as they unrolled their newspaper.

It took over the Great Hall like a wildfire. From normal conversation into a roar of hushed voices. Glances were being shot Oliver's direction, the word Potter echoing all around him, like ripples from a series of water droplets, shivering through the Hall toward him.

"That's it. What'a happened?" Wally grabbed the rolled up copy of the Daily Prophet from the table top in front of Dexter and debanded it, rolling it out and the sound he made upon seeing the headline was akin to a strangled animal. "No," he choked, "Oh no. No." He looker at Oliver, the blood draining from his cheeks even as the anguish flooded his eyes.

"What is it?" Oliver asked, grabbing for the paper.

The headline said it all.

DARK LORD DEAD? HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED DEFEATED -- HARRY POTTER: THE BOY WHO LIVED!

Where were you when you found out about Lily and James Potter?

Oliver was sitting in the Great Hall, on the bench at the Gryffindor table and the air smelled like breakfast. He was wearing his Quidditch uniform, the maroon and gold stripes, the captain badge on his chest... For years after that he was convinced that if someone were to go look around and get real close about checking between the flagstones in the floor that they might still find shards - left over broken pieces of himself that were never found. But one thing was certain... when he broke that morning, no matter how carefully he had tried at rebuilding himself, Oliver Kent was never whole again.

Most people were celebrating.

Voldemort is dead! Voldemort is dead!

Oliver felt like it was him who was dying.

He didn't remember getting up and leaving the Great Hall, only screaming when the step disappeared beneath his foot and he tumbled down. He missed a trick stair, running too fast on the moving staircase, breaking his ankle in the thing.

He didn't remember much over the next few weeks, honestly, and when he went home for Holiday, the ankle still hurt, though nobody really believed him. Pomfrey insisted that the skelegro potion she gave him had healed it. But Oliver said his ankle still hurt. He skipped two quidditch matches and countless practices between Halloween and Christmas, limping about the castle, dawdling and wincing everywhere... And when he went home and continued to complain of the pain, even Meg's magic healing couldn't make it go away.

Nothing made the pain go away.

Maybe it was a manifestation of the things he ought to gave been feeling emotionally coming out in the form of a sharp, shooting pain going up his leg from his ankle. Maybe it was a phantom, haunting him, torturing him, not letting him forget... but he spent all of Christmas holiday refusing to get out of bed until the very last day before going back to school, Jasper finally broke down and took Oliver to a muggle doctor. The muggle doctor was confused by the x-rays, saying the done in Oliver's ankle appeared to have once been broken but - "odd, impossible, even!" - had regrown, the bone matter in his ankle newer than the bone matter directly beside it. The doctor had been so perplexed by this odd x-ray that he assumed whatever made the bone look so new was indication enough that pain could be present and he prescribed Oliver little bottles of muggle medicine to fix the pain. And they did, but only when Oliver took two instead of one.