Harry Potter One Shots (Vol. I)

If I Know You (Terence Higgs)

"Of course, I am," I assured her, working through the knots with gentle glides of the brush. "Tell me the news then?"

"You know Healer Higgs?" she said, munching through her chocolate and searching for something. I handed her a water bottle before she could ask for something to drink and returned to parting her hair in two.

"What about him?"

"He's gotten himself into a coma," she announced not noticing the way my hands had stilled in her hair at the news. Healer Higgs had gotten up to a lot of 'trouble' since Maggie had entered the hospital but a coma of all things – "You should have seen him; it was like he was some hero."

"What happened?" I asked, carefully maintaining my emotions as I spoke and continuing to plait her hair into two braids. "How does a hero get himself into a coma?"

"You know the kid in the next room – the one with the dad who kept hitting him and his mum – that scumbag dad who –"

"Margaret."

"Fine, he wasn't a very nice man and you know it. The dad came in to attack them under the pretence of visiting them and Healer Higgs was tending to the boy when he tried to hurt him and he managed to knock him out."

"But? How did he wind up in a coma then?"

"He got hit by a curse as well," she confessed with a despairing sigh. "The Healers say that they have to let the curse run its course before he'll wake up again. Something about that causing less damage."

"He always did get himself into loads of trouble," I confessed, completing the braids and returning to my chair by the bed. Raising my eyes towards Maggie's waiting ones, I asked, "Is there any more news on him?"

She shook her head sadly. "He's been like that for a week now and apparently people in comas can hear everything. Do you think that's true?"

"I think I've heard that before," I admitted, my mind shifting towards the Healer who had done so much to help my sister when she was first admitted to St. Mungo's. Merlin, he was the reason she had been admitted in the first place.

"He must be so lonely then." Maggie gave me a pointed glance, "Don't you think so?"

"Probably," I said slowly, evading her searching eyes.

"Maybe you should go and read to him then."

Try as I might, I couldn't seem to tear my mind away from the hospital where it was content to linger. Not that this was strange. No, from the moment my sister had been admitted, my entire day revolved around the hospital with thoughts of appointments and medication and treatment constantly whirring around my brain. But since my sister had gotten better, the tension inside of me had eased and I could focus on other things now. Or rather, that was until Maggie had told me about Healer Higgs and just like that, once again, I couldn't remove my thoughts from the hospital where he was lying now.

Whilst we'd been at school together, we had rarely ever interacted. Not only had he been in the year above mine, but we'd also been in different houses. We'd had little to no excuse to interact and yet we did and we'd even grown close in a way that people who were more than acquaintances and not quite friends could.

Regardless, I trusted him so much that when countless Healers refused to look deeper into my complaints about my sister's ill health, he had been my first port of call. When no one else had thought to consider that I wasn't overreacting to my sister's sudden fatigue and fainting spells, he had been the only one to make sense of my insistent rambling. Higgs had been the first Healer to actually examine Maggie, to actually diagnose her with a rare blood condition that I couldn't dream to pronounce correctly. It was only because he had gone out of his way to humour me that they stumbled across the problem before it was too late. He was the reason she was currently receiving treatment, the reason why she was even breathing at this very moment.