Chapter 2: A Healer's Nightmare
The ache in his side was a dull, insistent throb by evening, a physical reminder of her voice.Grounded for a week. Harry stared at the ceiling of his private suite in the Magpies’ lodgings, the parchment prescription from Granger crumpled on the bedside table. The silence was worse than the pain. He was used to noise—crowds, cheers, the low buzz of a nightclub, the soft laughter of a companion.This quiet felt like a judgement.
It was ridiculous.He’d played through worse.A cracked rib was a Tuesday. Granger was just another bureaucrat in healer’s robes, flexing new authority. He pushed himself upright, a sharp gasp escaping him.Fine.Maybe he wouldn’t fly a full practice. But he could sit on his broom. A gentle hover over the pitch, just to prove to himself that he could.To prove she wasn’t in charge of the air he breathed.
The training pitch under moonlight was a different beast. The sun-bleached grass was silvered, the shadows long and deep.The goal posts stood like skeletal sentinels. It was empty, still, and wonderfully disobedient to her orders. He mounted his Thunderbolt, the familiar grip a comfort.He kicked off, the lift a slight jolt to his torso. He bit down on a groan.For a moment, it was okay. The cool night air washed over him, the world dropping away.He floated ten feet up, then twenty, circling the pitch at a walking pace.See? Perfectly fine.He experimented with a slow, banking turn.
A wave of dizziness hit him, sudden and nauseating.The concussion protocol he’d blown off.The world blurred at the edges. His vision swam, the dark sky melting into the darker grass. His injured side spasmed, a white-hot cramp seizing the muscles around the fracture.His grip on the broom handle faltered.
The second crash was less dramatic and more pathetic than the first. There was no audience, no shocked gasp.Just a clumsy, graceless drop from fifteen feet. He tried to twist, to land on his shoulder, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. He hit the turf with a wet thud, the impact driving the last ounce of breath from his lungs. A fresh, sickening pain exploded in his right wrist as he tried to break his fall. He lay there, wheezing, staring at the stars swimming in his vision, humiliation burning hotter than any injury.
He didn’t hear her approach.One moment he was alone in the vast, mocking silence. The next, a lantern’s light washed over him, and a pair of practical boots stopped inches from his face.
“You are,” Hermione Granger’s voice cut through the night, “an idiot.”
He couldn’t even summon a retort.He just breathed, each inhale a knife-turn in his ribs.
She didn’t ask if he was okay. She knelt, her robes pooling around her, and set the lantern down.Her hands were swift, her wand lit. The diagnostic charm glowed a furious red over his ribcage and a new, pulsing orange around his wrist. “Aggravated fracture.Sprained wrist. And I’d wanda the concussion you clearly never let me assess is now a grade two.” Her voice was low, tight, and blisteringly angry. “Get up. Unless you want to sleep on the pitch.”
He managed to sit up, cradling his wrist against his chest.She didn’t offer to help. She just stood, waiting, her silhouette blocking the moonlight.He stumbled to his feet, a ragged sound of pain escaping him. He followed her back to the medical tent, a defeated dog trailing its master.
Inside, she wordlessly lit the lamps with a flick of her wand.The space felt colder at night, the shadows deeper. “Sit.” It was the same cot, the same command.He sat.
Her movements were brusque, efficient.She vanished his shirt with an impatient twitch. Her fingers probed the new damage, and she was not gentle. He flinched hard as she found the swollen, angry heat of his wrist.“Tough,” she muttered, not looking at him. She uncorked a potion with her teeth.“Drink this.It’s a stronger anti-inflammatory. And a mild muscle relaxant.You’re going to need it.”
He drank. It tasted bitter, like punishment.
She worked in silence for a minute, preparing a salve and a bandage.The only sounds were his ragged breathing and the soft clink of glass. Finally, she spoke, her voice conversational in a way that was more terrifying than a shout. “What was the goal, Potter?To prove your masculinity is tied to your tolerance for pain? To show the big, mean healer she can’t tell you what to do?”
“I just…” he started, but his voice was thin.
“You just wanted to fly.” She finished his sentence, dripping with disdain.“I know.Because flying is who you are. It’s all you are, apparently.” She scooped a dollop of greenish salve onto her fingers. “Hold out your wrist.”
He did. Her touch as she applied the salve was clinical, but the warmth of her hands was at odds with her tone. She began to wrap a bandage around the joint, pulling it taut with a precise, firm pressure. She had to lean in close, her head bent over her work.Her braid slipped over her shoulder, a loose curl escaping near her temple.
He watched her.In the lamplight, her focus was absolute. Her brows were drawn slightly together, her lips pressed into a thin line. He could see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose, the dark sweep of her lashes. She smelled of the same rosemary and parchment, of sharp dittany and something indefinably, frustratingly her.
“You’re not like other healers,” he said, the words leaving him before he could think.
“I’m competent,” she said flatly, not looking up, her fingers deftly securing the bandage.“No. McDougal would’ve given me a pepper-up and a slap on the back.You’re… angry.”
This made her pause. She finally lifted her eyes to his.They were only inches apart. The warm brown was dark, intense, and for a split second, he saw it—a flash of something raw beneath the professional ice.Not concern, exactly. Something fiercer. A deep, visceral frustration that this talented, brilliant person was stuck dealing with what she clearly saw as a reckless child.
“I’m angry,” she said slowly, her voice dropping, “because my job is to keep athletes in top condition, not to witness acts of spectacular self-sabotage.You have a gift, Potter.A truly phenomenal gift. And you treat your body like it’s disposable, because you’ve never had to face the consequences of it being truly broken.That is a luxury. And it’s infuriating to watch someone squander it.”
The bandage was secure.But she didn’t move back. They were frozen in that close space, her words hanging between them.He saw it then, clearly. The indifference was a shield.A very, very good one. Underneath was a person who cared too much—about her work, about her principles, about the proper functioning of things. His chaos offended her on a fundamental level.He broke the silence, his own voice quieter. “You think I’m just a spoiled celebrity.”
She did pull back then, putting a professional distance between them. She stood, busying herself with the potion bottles. “I think,” she said, her back to him, “that you are a patient who has just earned himself a full week of monitored bed rest. I’ll be checking in on you tomorrow.Physically. Don’t leave your rooms.”
He pulled on a fresh shirt she summoned, moving stiffly. The pain potion was dulling the edges, but a new, sharper awareness was cutting through. He’d spent a lifetime learning how to read people’s desires—for his fame, his smile, his money. Reading Hermione Granger was like deciphering a complex, encrypted text. And the first line of code he’d cracked suggested she wasn’t indifferent at all.She was invested. And that realization sent a different kind of shock through him, warmer and more disconcerting than any pain.
“Goodnight, Granger,” he said, pausing at the tent flap.She didn’t wish him goodnight. She simply said, “Try not to walk into any walls on your way back. I’d hate to add a head injury to the list.”
He stepped out into the cool night, the bandage on his wrist feeling less like a restraint and more like a message he had only just begun to understand.