Again changes because Deb and Diane make me explain things. If you have any questions, please ask them in a review. I try to promptly respond to all reviews.
*
It was Saturday afternoon, a week after Cleo had been captured, and one of the healers told Ginny, "We are going to try and wake Albus up."
Ginny, standing at the end of the bed, saw the healers try to arouse Albus, and a groggy Albus opened his eyes. With help he sat up, and immediately reached over to check the wand carrier Cleo was still wearing. Satisfied, he blinked his eyes a few times, and shook his head.
"Albus, drink this," the healer said, handing Albus a potion, but holding it with him. A shaky Albus downed the potion.
Albus looked around again. "How long have I been here?"
Ginny moved forward and sat on his bed, and then replied, "Cleo was captured last Saturday, and you did not get back here until late Sunday night, almost Monday morning. It is Saturday afternoon, and you have been here, unconscious, for the better part of a week."
Albus looked over at his soulmate. "Thank you for keeping us together. Has Cleo been awake?"
"We tried to separate you, but your vital signs plummeted whenever we tried," the healer admitted.
Albus nodded, "That makes sense."
"We are going to try and wake Cleopatra up in a few hours. She was sicker than you, and you were both about as sick as anyone we had ever seen," the healer added.
"I'm still tired, and fuzzy," Albus moaned.
The healer presented Albus with more to drink. Albus recognized the Pepper-up Potion which would have kept him awake, but it was followed by another, unfamiliar, Potion. "Drink this. It will help you recover. Then you should sleep some more, and let your body heal."
Albus drank the liquid he was given, lay back down, reached over and put his hand on the wand carrier. He snuggled up to Cleo, and went back to sleep.
Four hours later Albus was awakened again, and again given more potions and more nourishment to drink. He was told that the next time he was awakened they were going to try and awaken Cleo as well.
Four hours after that Albus was awakened again. It was late Monday night. Albus looked around, and saw his mother again. "How long have you been here?"
Ginny admitted, "Ever since you were admitted. Grandmum is taking care of Minerva. I needed to be here for you and Cleo."
Albus shook his head again and asked for more water to drink. He took some deep breaths, and stretched. He then looked at Cleo, and the healer did something to try and wake her.
When that didn't work, Albus leaned over and touched Cleo's face with his fingers, "Cleopatra, my love, it is time to get up," Albus told Cleo.
Cleo opened her eyes with a snap. She sat up and frantically felt down to her hips. "I'm not a mermaid anymore," she noted. "That's good. I'm alive too, at least I think I am."
"I can assure you that you are alive," the healer agreed with relief, "although we were not sure we could save you. Drink this potion, and then we are going to give you some real food to drink."
Cleo did as she was told.
"That was quite an adventure, young lady," Ginny observed.
"I cannot say I am much in favor of having adventures, Mum Ginny," Cleo sleepily observed. "We can end the story with 'They Lived Happily Ever After' right now, and roll the movie credits."
"I'm not sure you are allowed to do that in real life," Albus countered.
Cleo shivered. "I thought I was going to turn into an ice cube. I've never been so cold, and then ... cold ... cold.
"If we have to have another adventure, let's not make it such a cold, wet, miserable one."
The healer told Cleo, "You should go back to sleep. We will wake you in another four hours for more potions, food and drink, and then tomorrow morning see if you can stay awake for a little longer."
Cleo nodded her head, lay back down, and was almost immediately asleep.
*
Wednesday after lunch Albus and Cleo were awake. They had eaten their first meal sitting down at a table instead of in bed, both getting to the table under their own power, although with help. Ginny was sitting at the table with them, and as the meal was finishing she wondered, "What do you have in your pockets, Cleo? They seem very heavy. We have your skirt, the one you wore Saturday, but we cannot get into the pockets."
Cleo looked rather ashamed. "I think the levitation spells wore out. I know the one for the Swiss Auror Knife has to be redone every other day, ideally every day. I did not think it was that heavy, but levitation spells come easily to me, and I don't really think about it when I use them. It was only twelve something, so, Albus, is twelve heavy?"
Albus looked like he was remembering something. "A tool kit in a compact form, the largest of the Swiss Auror Knives will give you almost every magical and No-Maj tool you need. Cleo, that knife, tool kit, whatever it is, is twelve kilograms, over twenty-five pounds!"
"Is that heavy?" Cleo wondered. "The Swiss say the knife has some sort of Orders of Magicaltude with some full stop things that move over, well, I wasn't really paying much attention to the description. You just move the full stop over with one big motion and then catch it and move it another full stop over again."
Albus put his hands up to his face. Cleo really was not paying any attention to what was going on with the Swiss Aurors knife except how to work it.
"It is Orders of Magnitude, like ten times," Albus explained. "When they sell the knife they show it at about one hundred millimeters, but you can expand it to a meter to see everything. You shrink it down to ten millimeters, about a third of an inch, wide. That is two orders of magnitude!
"You do the same with the weight. Two orders of magnitude is about 120 grams or a little over four ounces. And the full stop, what Americans call a period, in math is a decimal point."
"WELL, it is the same little round thing on a keyboard, or when you write it!" Cleo huffed. "Why do they call it different things?"
"Albus admitted, "I do not know. I guess because they do different things."
"The knife has most of what you need for sewing, but no sewing machine," Cleo reflected.
Ginny coughed in disbelief.
"It doesn't have any power tools either. All the scissors, well, it is mostly two scissors that you can transform into whatever you need, but they are all right handed. You have to transform them into the left handed form. It is not like hard transformations; all the material is there, and you just have to change the form.
"I asked if there was a left handed version, but the sales people started joking about left handed screwdrivers and hammers, and didn't take me seriously. The Swiss are really good at shrinking things. They have these aluminum suitcases with rooms full of tools in them. I saw one that was an entire automobile repair shop in a suitcase. It is still pretty heavy. You can only move that orders of whatever it is ten times thing over a couple of times, before it doesn't work and you have to levitate it. I told your mother about it, Mum Ginny, to get your father for Christmas, but she thought that was a really bad idea. I don't know why."
Ginny laughed, remembering her father's adventures, or were they misadventures, with automobiles. "Dad Harry gets old DMLE Range Rovers for grandfather, after he makes sure they are safe, Cleo. Grandmother doesn't trust your grandfather and automobiles."
"I wonder why?" Cleo puzzled. "It is not like someone would fly in one, especially where Muggles could see you.
"Rose can open the pockets. She is the one who insists that the pockets need to be shrunk and slimmed down and good looking. I would, but the healers told me not to use magic for a few more days."
*
Wednesday night Rose and Scorpius visited, and Rose opened the pockets. They reminded Ginny of the infamous beaded bag of Hermione during their extended camping trip.
"I am going home tomorrow," Ginny announced. "I need to get back to my Quidditch column, and it is just time."
Albus and Cleopatra spent another week and a half in the infirmary, catching up on written homework and cautiously getting back into doing magic.
*
It was the first full week of October, and Lavender (Brown) Blackburn was sitting in Harry's office. She had a big frown on her face, and was looking over several pages of notes. "The stories Rosa tells of what goes on at the Island of the Pirate Witch Queen are just horrifying, Harry! I can understand why Rosa does not want to go back. She is worried that they may kill her if she goes back. She is sure her children are in danger, more so if they find out she is alive.
"Is Teddy on this Island?"
"You know Teddy is undercover, Lavender," Harry replied. "I cannot reveal anything else."
Lavender gave Harry a wary look. "I think you know more about what goes on at the Island of the Pirate Witch Queen than you are going to tell me. I'm giving you a full report of what we have found out. Harry, it makes me feel very much the subordinate here. I know I am, but that is not like you."
"I'm sorry, Lavender. All I can tell you is that it is critically important that we hide the existence of this witch, something I think you already know."
"I understand that, Harry. What Rosa, that's her name, has told me about what goes on at the island is so wicked and perverted that I can see why good people feel it has to stop. Where can we hide her?"
"Any international travel leaves a trace," Harry sighed. "We have to hide her here. Does she have any skills?"
"She is a generally competent witch. She does have some skill as a healer, but she cannot work at St. Mungo's without risking being exposed.
"Oh, Harry, there is one more thing you should know. She is pregnant."
Harry took a deep breath, and rolled his eyes. "That is not going to make our life any easier. Do you have a pseudonym for her to use? Even if she is reasonably well hidden we cannot have her using her name. It is too risky."
"She is going to be called Pippa Lewis. It is rather British, not a common name in North or South America."
Harry and Lavender met for another hour, going over everything they could about this witch. There were not sure where they could place her long term, however.
*
That evening Harry and Ginny met at the New Burrow to share a dinner, and pick up little Minerva. Harry and Ginny were socially distanced from Arthur and Molly, and no one else was eating dinner with them. Harry was not sure how much good it was doing, with Minerva going back and forth.
Harry was not sure how necessary all this care was, either. So far they had not had a case of Covid-19 being spread at the Ministry, but there had been too many cases of Muggle family members getting sick and even dying to be comfortable. There had been a few cases of Magi testing positive, but as long as they wore the special masks they had not seemed to pass it on.
"We still do not know what we are going to do with the witch we are calling Pippa Lewis," Harry remarked. "We cannot exactly make her disappear. She does have some skills as a healer, but having her work at St. Mungo's is way too public."
"Charlie is taking more care, and I think Caroline needs help," Molly reflected. "Caroline doesn't complain, but she is looking more drawn out, and I can see the strain when we are together. If this Pippa woman could take night shifts she would be almost invisible."
"We can do spells on her and the house so people who visit the house do not remember her when they leave," Arthur suggested. "It might be the ideal situation."
Within the week Pippa was ensconced on the third floor of the New Burrow as Charlie's night nurse.
*
The day after 'Pippa' formally moved into the New Burrow Harry poked his head in his father-in-law's office and wondered, "Just how sick is Charlie?"
"He is slowly slipping," Arthur told his son-in-law. "His vital organs are probably in the process of gradually failing. It is taking more work, and more constant care, to keep him alive and comfortable. He is not at the point where we want to stop trying to keep him alive, but we can see that we will get there, eventually. We just don't want Ivana Romanoff to lose her last connection to her uncle and parents."
"I can understand that," Harry reflected.
"We have had the 'End of Life' discussion, more than once," Arthur added. "Muggles can keep a body alive for months, years, using needles and tubes and the like, but none of us want that.
"Molly was helping take care of Charlie too, and taking care of someone like that wears on you. We think we have a few more years left, but Charlie will almost certainly die before Molly and me, unless something happens to us.
"How are Albus and Cleopatra?"
Harry shook his head and spread his arms, like he was trying to pull an answer out of the air. "Healing, but it is taking a very long time. They are caught up in their schoolwork, but they go to the hospital wing on weekends, and go to sleep early in the evening. Ginny talks to the healers every weekend. I don't think we were aware how close we came to losing both of them."
*
Ron Weasley came into Harry's office late October. "Argus Filch and Igor Karloff have recovered from this Covid-19 thing. Minerva tried to give them a room at Hogwarts, but they kept roaming the halls bothering students, so she is paying for a couple of rooms at a house in Hogsmeade. The old couple who owns the house needs the money, and it is working out, well, it is more or less working out. Once in a while all four of them get drunk, and the local DMLE officers and a couple of volunteers have to confine them to the house. At other times just Argus Filch and Igor get drunk, and then the couple complains.
"I know Argus and Igor also meet with Bowman Flint, and Bowman has tried to sneak them into Hogwarts. So far it has not worked, but I'm suspicious."
Harry went to a file and pulled out a map of Hogwarts, the map that showed the boundaries. It was a rather large map, and Harry had to unfold it several times to fully open it. He put it up on a wall, where with a spell he had it magically suspended, although he could move it up and down to see particular spots on the map. "This is the entry that Bowman uses. There are spells that should notify us if anyone except Bowman and a few other trusted people use this entrance. I would have Albus go over the entrance and spells, but he is still weak. I will go over there with a small group and double check the spells tomorrow."
Ron looked at Harry with concern. "Just how close did you come to losing Albus and Cleopatra?"
"Too close," Harry admitted rubbing his face. "Way too close. The healers do not understand how they were still alive when they appeared at Hogwarts. It is taking them a long time to fully recover."
2021