Irresistible Fate

Poisoned Potions

(Six years, two weeks, and four days later, according to Harry James Potter's medical records.)

It was the early hours of the morning when Head Auror Gawain Robards crashed through the doors of St Mungo's, staggering as he failed to keep his hold on his feverish second-in-command and stay upright after apparating onto the front steps of the hospital. The Welcome Witch looked up in surprise at the burst of noise into her normally quiet domain. There was a flicker of fear in her eyes as she recognised who Gawain was carrying. She leant forward to a microphone system.

'Healer Falstaff to reception, please. Healer Falstaff to reception. Code Shakespeare.' Her clear voice swept through the hallways.

Harry groaned, fumbling towards the seats. The pain in his abdomen made him want to vomit, he felt severely dizzy. A wild sort of anxiety and fear overwhelmed him; he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep the pressure on the bleeding gashes on his left side. He cursed himself for not doing up his long black leather coat properly, it would have saved him at least from the flesh wounds. Really, he knew he had been reckless, but it seemed he no longer cared what state the latest hunt left him in. Recently, he seemed to be courting more and more danger with more and more serious outcomes. Fuck! He even had his own code when he entered St Mungo's.

The Welcome Witch advanced on him with something that looked rather like a white tea-towel starched into a large crispbread.

'I'll take over.'

'Don't touch me!' he snarled. His flayed nerves heightened by the venom filtering through his blood. 'Just give me that!' Harry snatched the cloth and pressed it to his side. Sweet Merlin, the venom, merged with hunger and tiredness, fear and pain, made him feel exposed and vulnerable. It had been a long four days of crawling round the Black Forest in Germany to come home like this.

'Now, now, Hal! I'll remind you not to speak to my staff like that. Zero tolerance and all. So, what's this, the third time in four weeks?'

'He won't let anyone touch him,' said Gawain, apologetically.

'Sorry Jacob.' Harry smiled weakly. 'Sorry, Sarah.' He pushed a strand of long hair out of his eyes. The rest of his jaw-length dark hair was tied into a loose man-bun. The flash of those desolate emerald eyes behind his glasses and the straight radiant-white teeth against the darkness of Harry's beard appeared to induce instant forgiveness.

'It's Healer Falstaff to you when you're in on business. I'd best take you up. Sarah, could you fetch a chair, please?'

'I'll bloody walk.'

'No, you won't, I don't want either blood or vomit on these clean floors, otherwise we'll both have Sarah to answer to. Who was it this time, anyway?'

Gawain leaned forward and the older man's face fell as Gawain quietly muttered a name into Healer Jacob Falstaff's ear.

'I hope you caught him then. Stay there, Hal! I'll get the chair from Sarah.'

'He's dead, but not before he killed one of the German Aurors and did this to Harry. I've got to go back and clear things up with the Deutsches Ministerium für Magie. Harry will have to be registered too.'

Harry watched Jacob walk towards the receptionist and as he took the wheelchair from her, he talked to her quietly. Sarah shot Harry a mixed look of dismay and incomprehension. She nodded quickly. Harry tried to decipher the exchange but his head was too fuzzy. A sense of uneasiness was rising inexorably within him as she went back to her microphone system. Her next call was private so her voice didn't echo through the corridors of the hospital.

Jacob and Gawain stood each side of Harry and together they hoisted him into the chair. He groaned in pain.

'Keep the pressure on, Hal. We'll have you sorted in a jiffy.'