Dearest Harry - Eileen's Story

Kim climbed out of her sick bed to beta this. I love you honey!


Fourteen

When Harry took Eileen’s hands, her gasp of surprise caused everyone to turn and look at them; what they saw caused them to stop, to pause, in disbelief. The pair were surrounded by a golden pulsating light, a light which crackled with energy, vibrated, hummed. It excluded everyone else, formed a barrier. Severus rushed forward, shouting his mother’s name, but he was propelled back from a translucent wall which surrounded his mother and his nephew, excluding everyone else.

Whatever was happening, the occupants of the room were helpless to prevent it, barred by a field of magic so strong that they could not even get close. Inside the shield, they saw Harry say something to his grandmother, and they watched her smile and nod and, all at once, the light glowed even brighter, dancing with little sparkles of gold radiating warmth and love.

Severus felt pulled to it, that magical essence. It called to them all like a siren, drew them like moths to a flame, but at the same time keeping them all away. There was an impenetrable barrier, around which, none of them could pass. All they could do was watch and wait.

“What’s going on?” It was Ron’s voice, scared, anxious.

“Harry?” Hermione, trembly, concerned.

“What on Earth is happening?” Arthur, astonished, stunned.

Severus was worried; he was frightened that his mother was fading fast. He had seen her fall in love with her grandson and, worse, he had seen Harry fall for her and the boy had fallen hard. Denied affection for so much of his life, just the smallest taste of the love that most children took for granted, had obviously overwhelmed him. He should have known that the boy would do something foolish, something impulsive. It was, after all, the way that he had always reacted in unexpected situations. If only Harry had discussed Eileen’s illness with him, with anyone, they could have done something, talked about it. But that was never Harry’s way, was it? He rushed in with his heart on his sleeve, like the foolish Gryffindor that he was, and now Severus could not reach them; he could not stop what was happening, they were beyond his help.

“POTTER, LET HER GO, YOU FOOL!” he shouted, throwing himself forward again, only to find himself once more repelled by the magical barrier that surrounded Harry and Eileen. He fell to his knees in frustration and stifled a sob, but then he found himself wrapped in strong arms and held tight against an ample bosom.

“It’s alright Severus, don’t panic. He is healing her.” It was Poppy Pomfrey that held him, Poppy that spoke. “I have never seen anything like that in all my born days!” All eyes had turned to the Mediwitch now, hungry for information.

“It’s a healing spell, a very rare, very powerful one,” she continued, “When someone has been badly injured, their magic destroyed, sometimes several healers will join together and bathe the patient in their own magic, healing magic. It is a way of stimulating the patient’s own magical resources, encouraging the start of the process of getting well, the part that the patient has to play in overcoming illness. Your mother was too ill for that, Severus, although I was about to suggest that some of us could have joined together, given her a bit of support, strengthened her for just a little while. But, from my investigations, her magic was so damaged that nothing could have repaired it.

“I have seen some healing shields in my time, but never anything like this. The power, the strength of it! And he is doing it all instinctively! Don’t worry, Severus, she is safe, he will be too. He’ll be drained for certain, but he will be okay. His own magic will protect him first; the spell will shut down before he is seriously damaged. Oh, but he’ll be exhausted, probably sleep for days. But it is so powerful, never before….. I think that Harry may well be the strongest healer that I have ever seen.

“I should have known, of course! The times that the child has been brought to the Hospital Wing desperately injured, I’d be so worried and yet, he was always well again in no time. The speed that he recovered from magical fever too! I suspect that Harry has been healing himself for years. It is the only thing that explains the scars that I have seen, and how they went un-noticed for so long.

“After I examined him the other day I called up his Muggle medical records. According to them, he broke his arm once, when he was three, and even that was only seen a couple of times; it mended rapidly, according to the record. And yet, Harry has had numerous injuries; that’s what the scan showed. But the Muggles never noticed? They have strict child protection laws and yet nobody ever saw the bruises, the broken bones? He has suffered lots of breaks over the years, I have seen the scars and yet they all went away. He mended them; somehow, he learned to make himself well. That’s how the Dursleys escaped detection for so long. Harry had no one to make him better, so he diverted his magic and learned to do it himself. The only way he kept growing kept developing. I saw signs of malnutrition when I did the deep scan, scars that would have killed a Muggle child, and yet he is healthy and very strong. A bit small perhaps, a little undernourished, but otherwise all right.

“He really is remarkable, what a thirst for survival! And now, he is healing your mother. Just look at the strength of that magic, look at the gold shining through it; it is truly beautiful, isn’t it?”

Severus looked again. It was beautiful, it was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. They had all heard about magic connecting like this, between mother and child, between close family members, but Severus thought that he was not the only one who had never seen it before.

Harry and Eileen seemed wrapped up in each other, eyes locked on each other, similar smiles playing on their lips. Whatever was happening between them, it was pleasant, it did not hurt. They were connected at the deepest level, surrounded now by shimmering ribbons of the brightest gold, which were dancing around them, intertwining and breaking free, creating kaleidoscopic patterns in the air. And, all the while, the shield, which was awesome in its loveliness, stunning in its vibrancy, protected them both from intrusion.

“He will be drained when has finished, the foolish boy, worn out, but since when has his own safety ever stopped him doing something that he thought was right? I am sure he will have given your mother a lot longer to live though, halted the disease, if only for a while. You won’t lose her just yet, Severus.”

As she finished speaking, the golden glow intensified and the gorgeous golden ribbons were joined by darker bronze ones, which also glowed with light. Poppy gasped.

“Oh, oh!” she exclaimed, “Oh Circe, I cannot believe it! It cannot be true?”

“What is it Poppy?” Arthur this time, Severus was too afraid to ask.

“He has done it!” she breathed, “I cannot believe it! It is not possible! He should not have the skill, the power. I didn’t think it could be done. Never has been, not on someone so ill!”

“For goodness sake, Poppy!” Severus almost bellowed, “What? What has he done?”

The Mediwitch turned to him, her eyes wide with amazement, shining with tears. Never in all the years that he had known her, had Severus seen that look upon her face and not once, in all the time that he had worked with her, or been a patient himself, never had he seen Poppy Pomfrey cry.

“He has done the impossible, Severus,” she said, “He has repaired her magic and restored it to full strength.”

Severus tore his eyes from the awed face of the Mediwitch to look again at the spectacle in front of him.

“How can you tell?” he whispered. “How do you know?”

“The ribbons of light. The ribbons are the physical manifestation of their magic, we healers are trained to see them, see the colour of magic. It is very unusual for a healing ritual to be carried out in front of anyone other than healers, so it likely that most of you won’t have seen magic manifest before. And for the ribbons to be so clear, so easy to see, that is remarkable too. Most people never even learn the colour of their magic. Mine is blue - that is the usual colour for healers, that or white, it is often how we spot new healers - bronze is fairly common; yours is bronze I seem to remember. But Harry? Harry’s magic is gold. Only once have I seen that colour of magic and that was Albus. Albus’ magic was gold, but never as bright as Harry’s, not since I’ve known him anyway. The gold ribbons are Harry’s and the bronze ribbons, why they belong to your mother.”

They all watched, enraptured. It was as if the ribbons of light that danced in the air surrounding Harry and Eileen were performing a ballet, the movements that they made were poetic, charmed. The spirals that were dancing moved faster now, more frenetically, the ribbons seemed to be almost repelling each other, whirling away until, all at once, the glowing shield that surrounded Harry and Eileen vanished as suddenly as it had appeared bathing everyone in its backlash, imbuing them with feelings of peace and well being. Then Harry’s eyes closed, he let go of his grandmother’s hands and slumped unconscious to the floor. His face was pale and drawn, he looked exhausted, but on his lips was a satisfied smile.

For a moment, nobody moved. It was as if they had been stunned by the enormity of what they had seen. Then every one rushed forward at once.

Eileen sat on the sofa; she seemed almost stupefied so still did she sit. But, as Severus moved nearer, her eyes caught his. She was awake. As she looked at him, turned her face to his, it was Severus’ turn to gasp, for Eileen looked younger, healthier than he had ever seen her. Every thing about her seemed to glow with well-being. Her skin was no longer pale, almost grey in tone. Now she had pink cheeks and appeared to be glowing with health, her eyes and her hair shone and the lines of pain and worry that were so much a part of her rather stern features had melted away.

“Oh Severus,” she said, “It’s gone. The pain, it has all gone away.” Then she slumped back against the cushions of the sofa in a dead faint.

This time, Severus carried his mother upstairs, instead of his nephew; there were plenty of hands to help Harry, after all. He placed her gently on the bed that her grandson had vacated for her and sat down in the newly covered armchair. Poppy did some investigations and confirmed that:

“Not only does the cancer seem to have disappeared completely, but, since Eileen’s magic seems to have strengthened perhaps as much as one hundred fold, I don’t think it will ever be coming back. For all intents and purposes, from what I can say, with out more in-depth tests, that is: Eileen is cured.

“She is, therefore, a very healthy seventy-six year-old-woman, which as every one in the wizarding world knows, means that she just a little over middle-aged and she should have a great many healthy years ahead of her. Oh, and by the way, don’t worry, Severus, I won’t be telling anyone about this incident yet. Because, not only do I think that it would not be a good idea to let the world know anything about the true strength of Harry’s magic, but I don’t anyone would believe me if I did tell them.” Then Poppy had swept from the room to check on Harry and left him to spend some quiet time alone with his mother.

Severus was stunned. He sat beside Eileen’s bed feeling numb. In just a few short days his world had been turned upside down and inside out. In that time he had found out that: his mother was about to die; the girl he had cared for, and for whose death he shared the responsibility, was not just a friend but the sister that he had longed for all his life. He learned that the son of his hated rival was, in fact, his nephew and that this boy was far from the spoiled brat that Severus had assumed him to be; instead he was a child who had been hated and despised, mistreated and abused.

This child had been told the truth about the prophecy. He knew his own part in it and furthermore, he knew who had communicated the details to the Dark Lord. Whilst he had every reason to hate both Severus and Eileen for abandoning him to the dreadful treatment he had received, he seemed to hold little resentment against Severus, despite how he had always behaved towards the boy, and had displayed instant affection for his grandmother; A woman that he had only met once, and yet for whom he had subsequently risked at the very least severe exhaustion in order to save her life.

Added to these facts, if one considered that the boy in question was the so-called “Chosen One,” and that he displayed more raw power than Severus had ever seen, somehow they were going to have to build a relationship, a new one, created from different foundations from those of hate and mistrust. He had always felt some responsibility for the Potter boy; mixed up with the guilt he had carried for the death of his parents. Severus had of course long known that Harry was the one, the only one to stand a chance of defeating the Dark Lord. But he had never believed Albus when he had told him, time after time, that there was more to the boy than Severus had suspected, far more.

Well, now Severus knew for himself. He owed Harry a greater debt than he could ever repay; he owed him for Eileen’s life. He also found that he admired the boy. Harry had grown up completely unwanted and ignored and yet somehow, for some reason, he still always tried to do the right thing and help others and he did it without fuss and without seeking approval; just because it was the right thing to do. The fact that Malfoy was, right this moment, talking to Lupin, wearing new clothes, and looking less anxious than he had in a long time, showed this. Severus now had a room of his own; a laboratory was being set up in the cellar for him and stocked with whatever potions ingredients he might wish for. Harry had told him to order whatever he needed and given him a large sum of money to do just that.

Molly was bustling around, busy and occupied. The Order had purpose again and even the boy’s odious relatives had been whisked away to somewhere that was both safer than where they had been before, but less magical as well, so they would feel more comfortable.

The boy was an enigma to Severus. His reactions were completely unexplainable, as far as he could see, and yet, Severus needed to get to know the boy, because he was the only one who stood a chance of defeating Voldemort. And Severus knew that he was the only adult who could help Harry find and destroy the Horcruxes and move on to meet his destiny. It was no wonder that Severus felt overwhelmed!

But, right now, Eileen was sleeping. She looked more relaxed, more comfortable than she had for a very long time, and Severus realised, belatedly, that she had been ill, and probably frightened, long before she had told him, her son, what was wrong.

He reached over to gently stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. “Sleep well, Mum,” he said with his voice full of tenderness. Then he stood, rather stiffly, and went in search of his nephew.