InsaneJournal

Who: Seamus Finnigan, Katie Bundy
When: 3 July (backdated)
Where: St. Mungo's
What: Aftermath of the battle...



St. Mungo’s was a madhouse. Between the patients the hospital already had and all of the wounded from the battle, there was no room for anyone. After Seamus had been transported here, a healer looked him over, gave him a pain potion, and deemed him a non-emergency case. So he waited in a corridor on a stretcher. Luckily, he was so exhausted (and under the influence of the pain potion) that he was able to sleep despite the chaos surrounding him.

Katie had tried going to Mungo’s right after the battle only to be turned away flat because there was simply too much to be done for them to deal with frantic visitors. So she went home where thankfully Aunt Ceciley was the only one home. She’d given Katie a calming draught and sent her to sleep. It wasn’t until late afternoon that Katie woke up and by then she was actually alone in the house. She put together a bouquet of flowers from the garden for Seamus before taking the floo over to the hospital.

This time when she asked for Seamus Finnigan she was at least acknowledged. She was sent to a ward full of those who had less than life threatening injuries. Just the mere fact that she was in that ward instead of something more serious brought tears of gratitude to her eyes. She picked her way through the beds looking for Seamus and disturbed by the number of familiar faces she saw in the ward.

The tears in her eyes overflowed when she finally glimpsed her boyfriend. She went to his bed and placed a careful kiss on his forehead minding not to land anywhere near the angry looking scrapes and bruises.

“Thank Helga,” she managed to breath over him.

Seamus slowly opened his eyes and gave Katie a sleepy grin. “I thought you weren’t going to sneak into the blokes’ dorm.” And then he squinted. Why did she look so serious? And why was the dorm so noisy? It was just him after all. And Katie. Except...

The events of the previous night came rushing back. He was in St. Mungo’s. In a ward full of people. And his leg ached something fierce. But...

He grinned again. “We did it, Katie. The bastards are gone.”

Katie gripped his hand, “You did it, Seamus. This was your battle, I had nothing to do with it unfortunately.”

Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore and she bent down to carefully kiss his lips. It wasn’t passionate it was simply a girl reassuring herself that the boy she loved was alive and mostly in one piece, “I came earlier but they made me leave. Then Aunt Cecily made me take a calming draught because I was having so much trouble breathing. She knows about us. I had to tell her. But she’s going to help me see you so it’s okay.”

There was something Seamus didn’t quite like in what Katie was saying. Why wouldn’t she have told her aunts about them? And why did the one aunt have to help them? However, his head was still fuzzy from the pain potion and his leg was throbbing and it was too hard to follow wherever these thoughts wanted to take him.

Reaching up, he brushed away her tears. “‘m alright.” He glanced over at his upper arm, glad to see that the boils were gone. “They’ll fix up my leg and then I’ll get out of here. And we’ll...” His voice trailed off as he remembered the last battle. “Parvati!” he exclaimed. She had lay there bleeding and he’d done nothing. “Is she alright? I need to know.” He tried to get out of bed, forgetting completely about his leg.

Katie blinked several times after Seamus’ brief outburst, “I don’t know. They sent me home before I could learn anything. Do you want me to ask around?”

She couldn’t help but wonder why he was so concerned about the other girl. Unless he knew that she’d been badly hurt and was worried that she hadn’t survived.

“She wasn’t herself at all. Not after Cal. That bastard -- Lestrange -- cut her. And she was bleeding. So much.” His voice cracked and he blinked back tears. One fist scrubbed roughly over his eyes. “And I couldn’t do anything, Katie.” He’d never felt more useless than he had at that moment, watching as Parvati bled.

Katie squeezed his hand. She would have loved to have hugged him but it probably wasn’t the best idea considering the shape he was in, “It was a battle Seamus. You can’t save...” her face paled, “What do you mean after Cal?”

Suddenly the reality of the battle hit Katie hard. She’d known that she could have lost Seamus and it was a loss that she’d been preparing herself for but even the idea of losing Cal took the breath from her. Cal who had been the only person who stuck by her even after she joined the IS. Cal the only person she had told about Seamus. Cal who had been her near constant companion in the common room after Seamus and Parvati disappeared.

“Did something happen to Cal?” she finally asked tears evident in her voice even if they hadn’t yet spilled over.

“He -- “ He couldn’t force the rest of the sentence past the lump in his throat. Not when she was looking at him like that. He shook his head and tugged her down to sit beside him on the edge of his bed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Her face crumpled and she couldn’t stop the tears. They weren’t gentle tears they were the tears of a girl who lost one of two people in her life who truly accepted her without trying to make her into someone else.

She gripped Seamus’ hand like a lifeline because she didn’t know what she could say. She wished with all her heart that it would have been someone else standing where Cal had been standing at that moment. Losing someone else from her class would be hard but the selfish part of her told her that she’d already lost enough people she cared about it wasn’t fair for the universe to take another one. But it had and after a few minutes she managed to bring herself around to the concern that had led to Seamus telling her about Cal.

“Do you know if Parvati made it out?” Katie asked her voice still thick with tears even though she’d managed to calm herself down considerably.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Seamus felt completely helpless. There was nothing he could say to make things better. And, with him in this hospital bed, he couldn’t even hug her. All he could do was hold her hand and watch as she sobbed.

“An Auror took her away,” he said quietly, looking away. “I--I don’t know what happened after that. If something happened...” He cleared his throat and looked at Katie again. “Can you go find out? Please.”

She wiped her cheek and nodded, “Yeah, give me a few minutes,” she bent over to kiss him carefully before standing to go find someone who wasn’t insanely busy.

It took her close to fifteen minutes to find someone who looked to be acting in an administrative role. After a few minutes of arguing and Katie pulling out her best haughty near Pureblood voice before she finally was told that Parvati was alive and in serious condition. They were fairly confident that she would make it through though. On her way back she kept hearing the names of the dead. Some she didn’t know some she did. With each name she felt a little more responsible for all of their deaths and by the time she reached Seamus she felt like the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

She schooled her features so he wouldn’t think she was coming to tell him that Parvati hadn’t made it and instead forced herself to give him a slight smile.

Once she was again at his bedside she took his hand, “She’s going to be okay.”

Katie was gone for a long time. Or at least it seemed like a long time to Seamus. He anxiously waited, preparing himself for the worse, warning himself not to break down completely when (if, a small voice piped up) she told him Parvati hadn’t survived. A Healer came by to give him another dose of pain potion. He tried to refuse to take it, wanting his wits about him, but the Healer wouldn’t take no for an answer. When the throbbing in his leg subsided, he grudgingly admitted he was glad to take it.

Merlin, what was taking so long? Finally he spotted Katie entering the ward. She was smiling a bit, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Seamus’s own eyes widened at her news. “She is?” Then he completely broke down.

At that point Katie didn’t care about injuries or jarring anything she shouldn’t she wrapped her arms around Seamus and held him while he cried. The last two days had been hell on earth for everyone and his reaction was completely understandable. She buried her head in his shoulder and stroked his hair like she remembered her mother doing to her when she had a nightmare. She didn’t say a word. There were no words for this moment.