Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Boy and the Ring
The Boy and the Healer
4 reviewsRituals are delicate things. So are Dark Lords. Harry finds this out the hard way, along with the true meaning of fellowship.
1Original
-=-=-=-
With a touch of the bailiff’s wand, the shackles they had forced him to put on before the trail clattered to the marble floor. Even though they hadn’t been tight enough to really hurt, Sirius still rubbed his wrists gratefully as Pettigrew was led away by Aurors. The hubbub in the courtroom rose to a near roar, and cameras flashed endlessly to tell the wizarding world all about it in tomorrow’s paper.
“Congratulations, Sirius,” Dumbledore said quietly, arriving at his side. There was genuine warmth in his voice, but his eyes were still sad; a sentiment the ex-convict wholeheartedly agreed with, with the absence so achingly apparent of the person who most should have been there to see him freed.
“Has there been-?” Sirius started to ask, only to have to look away in disappointment when the other wizard shook his head.
“Nothing yet. When Harry interrupted the ritual, the unformed magic only responded to Mr. Pettigrew’s wish that he be sent away. There was no clear image in his mind that we could find of the destination.” Dumbledore shook his head again. “We’re doing the best we can, as is Magical Law Enforcement, but the renewed interest in catching any other Death Eaters left free has kept many of the Aurors and specialists needed assigned away from Harry’s case.”
The wizard stiffened. “I thought they were making finding Harry their top priority?” he said, a little coil of nausea roiling in his stomach.
Dumbledore’s lips thinned. “Minister Fudge believes the Boy-Who-Lived was destroyed along with his nemesis. He finds the concept very… poetic. Not least because it would mean there was no further need of either effort on his part, or expenditures of valuable Ministry resources.” The last part had the air of a direct quote, and indeed Sirius could recognize their beloved Minister’s particular turn of phrase in it.
A growl rumbled deep in his chest. Not if he had any say in it… Sirius looked around, scanning the courtroom. The crowd of observers was being kept back by security wizards- he could see Remus trying to argue his way past one to come see his closest friend- and he was left with a clear view of his prey…
Who was coming straight for him, a gaggle of reporters trailing behind like so many ducklings. A smile grew on the ex-convict’s face that made Dumbledore frown and start to lay a calming hand on his shoulder.
“Minister,” Sirius greeted, still smiling his predator’s smile. He shrugged off Dumbledore’s hand. He respected the older wizard greatly, but there were times when caution just wasn’t the path to take. “I think we need to talk.”
“Indeed we do!” the Minister replied magnanimously, beaming at him from beneath his ubiquitous bowler hat. Surreptitiously, he glanced at the reporters, as though making sure they were in position. “Mr. Black, may I take this opportunity to offer you my sincerest apologies on behalf of the Ministry?”
“If you have to,” Sirius stated grudgingly.
For a brief moment Fudge’s momentum faltered, but then the little wizard rallied. “Ah, um, yes. We at the Ministry are appalled by the circumstances that led to your unjustified imprisonment, and are conducting an investigation into the arresting procedures of the previous administration. And while we recognize that money could never make up for your lost time, we would like to repatriate you to the sum… of…”
Sirius’ eyes were cold as they gazed at the Minister, until Fudge’s words stumbled and died under their gray intensity. “You want to make up for twelve years in Azkaban, Fudge? Stop making excuses, get off your fat arse, and /find my godson/.” He turned and stalked away, his robes billowing and his fists clenched at his sides as he did his level best not to punch the politician in his smarmy, sycophantic, vote-mongering nose.
The reporters, still close enough to have clearly heard every word, murmured among themselves as cameras flashed.
-=-=-=-
On the rare occasions when he actually focused, Harry was an astonishingly quick learner, but Faramir found getting him to that focused stage daunting indeed. Most often the boy could be found to be staring out the window during their lessons, though Faramir was never quite sure whether he was watching something in particular, or simply lost in his unfathomable thoughts.
“Harry,” the Captain called out, rapping his knuckles sharply on the table. His wayward pupil jerked and twisted back around to stare at him, wide-eyed and repentant, and he sighed.
“Apology,” Harry told him quietly, with a heavy accent that made him difficult for any but his tutor to understand. He lifted a bandaged wrist and absently brushed away the locks of dark hair that hung in front of his eyes, flashing for a moment the thin, oddly-shaped scar on his forehead.
Faramir sighed again. Harry’s vocabulary was much larger than it had been before their intensive lessons during the three days since their arrival in Minas Tirith, but it was still fairly small. And it was likely well past time to begin teaching him the difference between the noun and verb forms.
“Again,” he ordered, pointing to the items he’d gathered this morning and spread out on the table. “Belt. Scabbard. Cloak,” he said, pointing to each as he said its name, and Harry echoed him, stumbling a bit over the pronunciation. They’d already covered food, furniture and basic abstract concepts the day before, and tomorrow Faramir thought he’d start on maps. Harry wouldn’t understand their names for places, of course, but he might recognize physical landmarks and point them in the right direction for his homeland. Faramir had no doubt that he would be able to understand a map; when he’d shown the boy a few scrolls his reaction made it obvious he could read, if not Westron in particular.
The Captain would have loved to see what Harry’s language looked like written down, but it would be quite some time before his hands were healed enough to wield a quill. He couldn’t yet manage even a spoon, something that he could tell embarrassed the boy to no end whenever it came time for meals.
As though summoned by the thought, Healer Ioreth swept into the room in her robes of gray, bearing a tray with a bowl of thick stew and fresh strips of bandages. She bowed her head to Faramir, who returned the gesture and rose to relieve her of her burden.
“Thank you, milord,” Ioreth said absently, her attention completely on her patient. She swept the items on the table into a pile and deposited them on the bed, gesturing for Faramir to put the tray down in their place. Next came the clean copper-plated bowl from the cabinet in the corner, which she filled with boiled water and sprinkled herbs into that helped prevent infection.
Harry grumbled unhappily, but held out his hands when the healer gestured imperiously for them. Faramir watched with the occasional twinge of sympathy as Ioreth unwrapped them, revealing swollen palms and fingers covered with skin that was an angry red and pocked with deeper wounds. All in all, though, the boy’s hands looked much better than they had when they’d first found him. For one thing, Ioreth had dosed him deep into unconscious and removed the charred patches of skin with a surgical blade. “He’s healing well,” the woman told him as he opened his mouth to ask. “Better than I’d expected, to be truthful, but we can likely hold his youth responsible for that.”
Faramir nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him to see. “How long before he has the use of them again?”
The healer hummed thoughtfully, placing Harry’s hands with care into the bowl of water. “The bandages are to stay on for another fortnight. After that, he may begin exercises to strengthen his hands again.”
“But he’ll be able to use them again?” It wasn’t an idle question. He’d seen men injure their hands as badly as Harry had and never fully regain the mobility they had had before.
“Use? So long as nothing festers, yes. I shouldn’t be surprised if there were some lingering stiffness in his fingers, however. The new skin will be very tight in the beginning, so he might have some trouble writing legibly, and if he ever played an instrument he surely won’t now.” She judged Harry’s hands had soaked long enough and pulled them out of the basin. The boy held them out in the air to dry, squeamishly averting his gaze from his injuries.
The healer unwrapped the bundle she’d brought with her of freshly-washed bandages, laying each out on the tabletop. When he’d been a boy, Faramir had spent time learning inside the Houses of Healing, and he quickly rinsed his hands in the bowl of water and took up one of Harry’s hands to bandage. “When will he be allowed outside?” he asked, frowning in thought. There were only so many things he could teach Harry about from within a single, sparsely-furnished room. If he could take him out into the city…
Ioreth gave an unladylike snort. “If it weren’t so late now, I’d tell you to take him with you when you leave. There’s nothing wrong with him that would keep him from walking about, and keeping a youngster like that locked in a room all day helps their healing not at all.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Faramir said, pleased. In all honesty, he’d be more than happy to get out of this room himself. Showing Harry the wonders of Minas Tirith would do nicely to get them both some fresh air.
-=-=-=-
Finding the place where his brother had discovered the boy wasn’t difficult. The tall grass along the path Faramir had described, where it seemed Harry had been thrown and rolled, was not only still bent, but dry and brown as well. A second line of dead grass led away from the trail, straight as an arrow-shot into the northwest horizon.
None of it was burnt, though, as where Harry had landed was. And even if the grasses had been charred, fire didn’t travel through pasture in a straight line; it wove back and forth, following the wind. At the near end there was nothing that offered an explanation, only a few traces of blood on the dry blades of grass showing where the boy had been found.
The Warden ordered two men to follow it as far as they could, two experienced guards he knew to be excellent trackers. With that taken care of, he split his company into patrols and assigned to each a swath of the land nearby. A boy injured as Harry had been couldn’t have traveled far from his group, and with a boy his age missing Boromir doubted such a group would have moved any great distance in the intervening days.
Now he just needed to find them, so they could answer his father’s questions.
With a touch of the bailiff’s wand, the shackles they had forced him to put on before the trail clattered to the marble floor. Even though they hadn’t been tight enough to really hurt, Sirius still rubbed his wrists gratefully as Pettigrew was led away by Aurors. The hubbub in the courtroom rose to a near roar, and cameras flashed endlessly to tell the wizarding world all about it in tomorrow’s paper.
“Congratulations, Sirius,” Dumbledore said quietly, arriving at his side. There was genuine warmth in his voice, but his eyes were still sad; a sentiment the ex-convict wholeheartedly agreed with, with the absence so achingly apparent of the person who most should have been there to see him freed.
“Has there been-?” Sirius started to ask, only to have to look away in disappointment when the other wizard shook his head.
“Nothing yet. When Harry interrupted the ritual, the unformed magic only responded to Mr. Pettigrew’s wish that he be sent away. There was no clear image in his mind that we could find of the destination.” Dumbledore shook his head again. “We’re doing the best we can, as is Magical Law Enforcement, but the renewed interest in catching any other Death Eaters left free has kept many of the Aurors and specialists needed assigned away from Harry’s case.”
The wizard stiffened. “I thought they were making finding Harry their top priority?” he said, a little coil of nausea roiling in his stomach.
Dumbledore’s lips thinned. “Minister Fudge believes the Boy-Who-Lived was destroyed along with his nemesis. He finds the concept very… poetic. Not least because it would mean there was no further need of either effort on his part, or expenditures of valuable Ministry resources.” The last part had the air of a direct quote, and indeed Sirius could recognize their beloved Minister’s particular turn of phrase in it.
A growl rumbled deep in his chest. Not if he had any say in it… Sirius looked around, scanning the courtroom. The crowd of observers was being kept back by security wizards- he could see Remus trying to argue his way past one to come see his closest friend- and he was left with a clear view of his prey…
Who was coming straight for him, a gaggle of reporters trailing behind like so many ducklings. A smile grew on the ex-convict’s face that made Dumbledore frown and start to lay a calming hand on his shoulder.
“Minister,” Sirius greeted, still smiling his predator’s smile. He shrugged off Dumbledore’s hand. He respected the older wizard greatly, but there were times when caution just wasn’t the path to take. “I think we need to talk.”
“Indeed we do!” the Minister replied magnanimously, beaming at him from beneath his ubiquitous bowler hat. Surreptitiously, he glanced at the reporters, as though making sure they were in position. “Mr. Black, may I take this opportunity to offer you my sincerest apologies on behalf of the Ministry?”
“If you have to,” Sirius stated grudgingly.
For a brief moment Fudge’s momentum faltered, but then the little wizard rallied. “Ah, um, yes. We at the Ministry are appalled by the circumstances that led to your unjustified imprisonment, and are conducting an investigation into the arresting procedures of the previous administration. And while we recognize that money could never make up for your lost time, we would like to repatriate you to the sum… of…”
Sirius’ eyes were cold as they gazed at the Minister, until Fudge’s words stumbled and died under their gray intensity. “You want to make up for twelve years in Azkaban, Fudge? Stop making excuses, get off your fat arse, and /find my godson/.” He turned and stalked away, his robes billowing and his fists clenched at his sides as he did his level best not to punch the politician in his smarmy, sycophantic, vote-mongering nose.
The reporters, still close enough to have clearly heard every word, murmured among themselves as cameras flashed.
-=-=-=-
On the rare occasions when he actually focused, Harry was an astonishingly quick learner, but Faramir found getting him to that focused stage daunting indeed. Most often the boy could be found to be staring out the window during their lessons, though Faramir was never quite sure whether he was watching something in particular, or simply lost in his unfathomable thoughts.
“Harry,” the Captain called out, rapping his knuckles sharply on the table. His wayward pupil jerked and twisted back around to stare at him, wide-eyed and repentant, and he sighed.
“Apology,” Harry told him quietly, with a heavy accent that made him difficult for any but his tutor to understand. He lifted a bandaged wrist and absently brushed away the locks of dark hair that hung in front of his eyes, flashing for a moment the thin, oddly-shaped scar on his forehead.
Faramir sighed again. Harry’s vocabulary was much larger than it had been before their intensive lessons during the three days since their arrival in Minas Tirith, but it was still fairly small. And it was likely well past time to begin teaching him the difference between the noun and verb forms.
“Again,” he ordered, pointing to the items he’d gathered this morning and spread out on the table. “Belt. Scabbard. Cloak,” he said, pointing to each as he said its name, and Harry echoed him, stumbling a bit over the pronunciation. They’d already covered food, furniture and basic abstract concepts the day before, and tomorrow Faramir thought he’d start on maps. Harry wouldn’t understand their names for places, of course, but he might recognize physical landmarks and point them in the right direction for his homeland. Faramir had no doubt that he would be able to understand a map; when he’d shown the boy a few scrolls his reaction made it obvious he could read, if not Westron in particular.
The Captain would have loved to see what Harry’s language looked like written down, but it would be quite some time before his hands were healed enough to wield a quill. He couldn’t yet manage even a spoon, something that he could tell embarrassed the boy to no end whenever it came time for meals.
As though summoned by the thought, Healer Ioreth swept into the room in her robes of gray, bearing a tray with a bowl of thick stew and fresh strips of bandages. She bowed her head to Faramir, who returned the gesture and rose to relieve her of her burden.
“Thank you, milord,” Ioreth said absently, her attention completely on her patient. She swept the items on the table into a pile and deposited them on the bed, gesturing for Faramir to put the tray down in their place. Next came the clean copper-plated bowl from the cabinet in the corner, which she filled with boiled water and sprinkled herbs into that helped prevent infection.
Harry grumbled unhappily, but held out his hands when the healer gestured imperiously for them. Faramir watched with the occasional twinge of sympathy as Ioreth unwrapped them, revealing swollen palms and fingers covered with skin that was an angry red and pocked with deeper wounds. All in all, though, the boy’s hands looked much better than they had when they’d first found him. For one thing, Ioreth had dosed him deep into unconscious and removed the charred patches of skin with a surgical blade. “He’s healing well,” the woman told him as he opened his mouth to ask. “Better than I’d expected, to be truthful, but we can likely hold his youth responsible for that.”
Faramir nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him to see. “How long before he has the use of them again?”
The healer hummed thoughtfully, placing Harry’s hands with care into the bowl of water. “The bandages are to stay on for another fortnight. After that, he may begin exercises to strengthen his hands again.”
“But he’ll be able to use them again?” It wasn’t an idle question. He’d seen men injure their hands as badly as Harry had and never fully regain the mobility they had had before.
“Use? So long as nothing festers, yes. I shouldn’t be surprised if there were some lingering stiffness in his fingers, however. The new skin will be very tight in the beginning, so he might have some trouble writing legibly, and if he ever played an instrument he surely won’t now.” She judged Harry’s hands had soaked long enough and pulled them out of the basin. The boy held them out in the air to dry, squeamishly averting his gaze from his injuries.
The healer unwrapped the bundle she’d brought with her of freshly-washed bandages, laying each out on the tabletop. When he’d been a boy, Faramir had spent time learning inside the Houses of Healing, and he quickly rinsed his hands in the bowl of water and took up one of Harry’s hands to bandage. “When will he be allowed outside?” he asked, frowning in thought. There were only so many things he could teach Harry about from within a single, sparsely-furnished room. If he could take him out into the city…
Ioreth gave an unladylike snort. “If it weren’t so late now, I’d tell you to take him with you when you leave. There’s nothing wrong with him that would keep him from walking about, and keeping a youngster like that locked in a room all day helps their healing not at all.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Faramir said, pleased. In all honesty, he’d be more than happy to get out of this room himself. Showing Harry the wonders of Minas Tirith would do nicely to get them both some fresh air.
-=-=-=-
Finding the place where his brother had discovered the boy wasn’t difficult. The tall grass along the path Faramir had described, where it seemed Harry had been thrown and rolled, was not only still bent, but dry and brown as well. A second line of dead grass led away from the trail, straight as an arrow-shot into the northwest horizon.
None of it was burnt, though, as where Harry had landed was. And even if the grasses had been charred, fire didn’t travel through pasture in a straight line; it wove back and forth, following the wind. At the near end there was nothing that offered an explanation, only a few traces of blood on the dry blades of grass showing where the boy had been found.
The Warden ordered two men to follow it as far as they could, two experienced guards he knew to be excellent trackers. With that taken care of, he split his company into patrols and assigned to each a swath of the land nearby. A boy injured as Harry had been couldn’t have traveled far from his group, and with a boy his age missing Boromir doubted such a group would have moved any great distance in the intervening days.
Now he just needed to find them, so they could answer his father’s questions.
Sign up to rate and review this story