Chapter 47: St. Mungo’s

Harry and Sirius found themselves in a rather luxurious private room during their stay at the hospital. It was damn expensive for sure, nearly 3 times the cost for a normal ward, but the privacy and the extra-attentiveness of the healers was more than enough to make up for it. This was the sort of room the rich, old families used when one of their own had to go to the hospital; no slumming it with the plebeians for them. Harry wasn’t normally the sort to throw money around like this but he did like to be the one to be pampered like this for once.

There was another reason for them to have a private room. The both of them were high priority targets for the reporters and they had no desire to be swarmed by those pests while on the sick-bed. Both of them were more than rich enough to afford it after all, though Sirius insisted on paying for both of them.

Andromeda had been appointed as their ward healer as per their interest and was doing a splendid job. She was extremely competent at her job and brought in other colleagues to help whenever required. She had been informed about Harry’s home environment to some degree and it took Sirius and Darius’ combined efforts to stop her from rushing off to hex the Dursleys. After that, though, she totally went into mother hen mode and started a full regime of potions for both her cousin and his godson.

Sirius had to take a strict regime of potions till the month and some booster potions even after that. The foremost were the nutrient potions which gave the body some of the necessary components to start building itself back together and the other potions to have their full effect. He also had to eat huge platefuls of food at every meal and even more in between meals to keep up with the energy requirements of the healing. The next were body healing and mending potions. They were the main reason that so much energy and nutrients were required. They would slowly build his body back to what it should have been. He had spent 12 years in an unpleasant environment with less than adequate food and sorely needed this to regain his lost vitality.

Next came the dementor exposure and mind healing potions. These were quite rare and took some solid cash to get a hold of. There wasn’t much of a market for them, especially the former but they really helped Sirius’ mental condition. He was slowly losing the hollow, haunted look he had carried since his escape from Azkaban and was finally starting to regain that mischievous glint and life in his eyes. It was even more striking than the changes the body potions bought and truly made him look alive again.

Harry had an even more extensive list to his name. He needed the same nutrient potions as his godfather. Eating at Hogwarts for most of the last two years had helped a lot but the minimal food in his childhood did have some effects and these would sort them out. He would never grow to his full potential otherwise. Potter men were quite tall and well-built and his mother was no slouch. By comparison he was rather weedy looking. The potions would fix that and add the needed muscles to his frail musculature.

A very important part was the healing of the scar. The horcrux in it prevented healing it completely and every interaction with Voldemort or his mental intrusions would leave them red and inflamed, preventing complete healing. But now that it was out, all that was left was to clear out the residual dark magic and heal the wound. Having it for so long, there was a faint impression of it left but no more of that glaringly obvious scar from before. Even that faint trace might disappear in a few more years.

Harry also had to get his inoculations for the magical set of diseases. There were a lot of them to go around – dragon pox, spattergroit, Black cat flu, scrofungulus and many more. Dumbledore had dne a very poor job as Harry’s guardian by not dealing with all this long ago. Harry was very lucky to not already be afflicted by any of them. They were not exactly pleasant and the body didn’t react very well to them. He had to take one of them about every three days and whined a lot about them. He did shut up when the effects of the respective diseases were explained to him in exquisite detail and quietly took the rest of the inoculations.

He also took the chance to get his eyes fixed. It was a simple enough process. He just had to take three drops f a potion in each eye and then have his eyes blindfolded for the next hour. By the time the blindfold had been taken off after an hour, he had perfect vision. This was the reason not too many people had glasses in the wizarding community. Only really old people or those who had reasons to wear enchanted spectacles would wear them. In fact, Harry didn’t think he had seen anybody in his year who did wear glasses.

Though he was so used to them, he did decide to continue to wear glasses. But of course, it was a new, much more stylish pair he had gotten from a shop in Diagon Alley. He had owl ordered it from a catalogue from the shop Magic Eyes, a small establishment in the Alley. They were rectangular, frameless glasses with a multitude of charms on it. Owing to the size, there weren’t too many of them but he got all the ones he wanted. There was an impervius charm, a self-repairing charm, clear vision charm, an anti-legilimens charm. There were certain limits to them of course, but they were useful nonetheless. The anti-legilimens charm for example, would not be able to prevent master legilimens like Dumbledore, Snape or Riddle from entering his mind, but they could no longer do so with just some wandless or passive legilimency. And even with their wands, he would be able to clearly feel them trying to penetrate his defences, no way would they be able to do it without attracting his notice anymore.

The last part was a pretty serious matter and was done in total privacy. Only Andi, Sirius, Harry and Darius were present in the room for it. Darius suspected there were a multitude of spells and enchantments on Harry and he wanted them removed. Andi had enough experience to do them. It involved a high-level scanning and diagnostic charm but all the occupants of the room were stunned when Andi announced the results of it, including herself.

There were a number of traces on Harry, on his wand and a few of his personal belongings. Darius immediately sent Dobby to remove any such spells and enchantments from the rest of Harry’s possessions. He came back and reported that there were no fewer than eight more items which had such spells, including his cloak. Darius had always wondered how Dumbledore and fake Moody were able to see through a cloak that was supposed to hide the user from death itself. Turns out Dumbledore had tampered with it and attached a couple of beacons and tracking charms on it. Dobby got rid of all of it with a snap of his fingers and we all heaved a sigh of relief. Darius also instructed Dobby to do the same once every few days for both his and Harry’s stuff while they were in the castle. No telling when the old codger might slip another spell on them.

Andi also noticed something else drawing on his blood and magical powers. It took some time but they finally managed to mark it down to two sources. One was from the direction of Little Whinging, Surrey and the other from the direction of Scotland, so most likely Hogwarts. If Darius’ suspicions were right, they were likely the blood wards on 4, Privet Drive and the blood tracking charm used by Dumbledore from the Headmaster’s office in Hogwarts.

The wards were easy enough to get rid of, Harry simply had to believe that was no longer his home. It was very easy for him and he severed ties with that place in a second. With Sirius living there, he was already more at home at Grimmauld place in the few days he had lived there compared to the decade he spent at Privet Drive. The blood tracker was a bit trickier though. They weren’t sure how to go about it other than to physically enter Dumbledore’s office and destroy the actual contraption, and that wasn’t really a safe option. Andi thought there might be some old rituals that could do it but rituals were a mostly lost knowledge. It was very difficult to get any good information on them. Sirius did promise to look through the Black Library for them. He was sure there were at least a couple of them in there.

The medical regime was to continue till the day before they had to leave for Hogwarts. In fact, harry had to carry some more of the potions to the school, where he would have to have them on a scheduled basis. But no one could deny the effect of the potions. Both of them had clearly filled out more and Harry had grown by at least a couple of inches in less than a month. Though that didn’t stop both of them for eagerly waiting for the end of the hellish potion regime. It seems that every potion in Britain was crafted for solely utility and designed to have the worst taste possible.

Meanwhile, Dobby and Kreacher had already started cleaning up Grimmauld place and making it fit for human habitation. Kreacher was getting along with everyone a lot better now. He was still looking forward to the destruction of the locket and knew it was only a few more days away. He was also happy to have his own Black family shrine. He was given one of the smaller rooms on one of the upper rooms and told to fix it up as a shrine. Sirius could give him all the stuff he wanted to get rid of and Kreacher would be happy as well. The first thing to be put there was the picture frame of Kreacher’s dear mistress, Sirius’ mother, Walburga Black. Turns out she had instructed Kreacher to stick her to the wall with elf-magic. That’s why no one could get the frame down. But, now he happily removed the frame and took it up to the room. And the house was all the more pleasant for it.

Even Neville and Lupin visited during their stay in the hospital. Sirius was happy to hear Lupin get the DADA job and promised to drop by the castle to see him. Neville was a lot more confident now and had a good time talking to them. Of course, with his parents aloud he had a lot more support and a new wand gave a big boost to his magic. Not to mention, the DA classes were shaping him up to be a formidable wizard.

Finally, it came to the end of their summer break and it was time to head back to Hogwarts. Harry would be starting his third year and Darius his fifth, i.e., his OWLs year. He wasn’t really worried about it but he did need to focus a bit more this year. Thankfully, there wouldn’t be Dementors stationed all around the school this year.

Or would there?