WHO: Fred Weasley & Angelina Johnson WHAT: A hospital visit. WHEN: October 1, after the zombie quidditch match WHERE: St Mungo's
Time had passed and Angelina still wasn’t looking at her leg. The Healers had repaired what had ended up being the superficial damage. Bone was reset and muscle mostly mended, but the undead human bite on her calf was teeming with dark magic and painful in a way that Angelina couldn’t out-stubborn. It made her skin crawl, too, to think about dead human flesh and dead human teeth and both of those things touching her. She would be fine, but she definitely wasn’t yet.
A nurse poked her head through the curtain pulled tightly shut around Angelina’s bed to let her know she was allowed visitors and that she had one already. Angelina gave the nurse a sharp nod and the nurse disappeared, replaced by Fred. “Hi,” she breathed, automatically holding her arms open for him.
“Hi,” he replied, taking a moment to take her in, as though despite their conversations he hadn’t really believed she was definitely still alive until right this moment. He let out a sigh of relief, burrowing himself into the hug and placing a long kiss on her forehead. “What did the healers say?”
“They’re stuck with me for a few days,” she answered, trying to sound nonchalant about it, but actually sounding anything but. Now that he was there and she was holding him, she couldn’t bring herself to let him go. So she squeezed him tighter and buried her face in his shoulder. She sounded muffled and upset when she continued. “One of them bit me.” She paused. “Not the healers. The…you know.”
“I’d heard hospital food was bad but I didn't think it was that bad,” he teased, though he couldn't manage to keep his tone as light as it usually was, a hand moving to stroke her hair in attempted comfort. “Does it hurt a lot?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. As if on cue, a wave of pain radiated out from her leg and she tensed with it, sucking a breath through her teeth. Now that Fred was there, it felt harder and harder not to cry. So her voice was thick when she added, “I’m not turning into a zombie, though.”
“I meant it when I said I'd love you anyway,” Fred replied, squeezing her tighter as he felt her tense with pain. Part of him wanted to look at her leg to see the damage, but a bigger part of him didn't want to let her go yet. “Why are you going to be stuck in here so long?”
“Um,” she said, her voice sounding thicker still. She finally relaxed into him again and breathed out a deep breath. “I guess inferius bites are tricky to heal because of the dark magic or whatever.”
She was quiet for a moment, but her panic finally caught up with her and her next words came out quickly. “What if they have to chop my leg off or something? I won’t be able to play quidditch. And they’ll probably figure out a way to reanimate my leg and use it against me like they did with Wadcock. And one of them had your hair and I knew it wasn’t you, but I thought — I don’t know.” She took a deep breath and repeated, mumbling, “I don’t know.” She felt stupid.
Fred held her tightly while she spoke, but unwrapped himself from around her when she was done so he could look at her properly instead. He took her hands in his, bringing them up to his mouth to place a light kiss on them. “Me and George will invent you something and you’ll become the most badass one-legged quidditch player there ever was,” he suggested, focusing on her concern with the most practical solution while he thought of what he could say about reanimated body parts or versions of hin.
“And it’ll never be me,” he added gently, squeezing her hands tightly. “Death eaters can’t take down Weasleys that easily. They just wish they had our hair.”
Angelina twisted her mouth, very clearly trying not to cry. When Fred finished, when he made a joke about his hair, she breathed out a reluctant laugh and then, immediately started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said with a loud sniff, ducking her head and feeling infinitely more stupid. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You have a zombie leg,” Fred deadpanned, forcing a small smile onto his face to try hide his worry from his already upset girlfriend. He moved to hug her again, allowing her to use his shirt to soak up her tears. “Anything I can do?”
It felt like all the adrenaline that’d been keeping her running had run its course and all she was left with was the reality of the situation, an inferius bite on her leg, the lingering smell of rot in her nose, and terrible half-gone faces lurking behind her eyelids. She wrapped her arms around Fred again, maneuvering one of her arms under his shoulders to swipe at her eyes.
“I don’t know. I’ve just — I’ve never seen anything like that,” Angelina said, her words shaky and slow. She hated that she kept saying she didn’t know. She usually knew. “And I let one of them bite me!”
“You didn’t let one of them bite you,” Fred corrected, rubbing her back and keeping his voice low and calm despite the worries he had for her, and for all his friends who had been there. “They attacked you, and you were amazing and fought back and didn’t panic even though crazy death eaters sent inferi at you when you were meant to be enjoying being my favourite first string chaser. Because you’re strong and badass and super hot, and no inferius bite is going to stop you from getting better and continuing to be all those things. Okay?”
Angelina pressed her mouth to Fred’s shoulder, mumbling a muffled, “Okay.” She shifted soon after so her forehead rested against his shoulder instead, what was left of her tears seeping into his shirt. She was a lot vainer than she would’ve like to let on so she sounded a little sheepish when she asked, “Am I still super hot even if I have a gross scar on my leg? Or if they reanimate my disembodied leg to, I don’t know, follow you around kicking you?”
“Hmmm,” Fred teasingly exaggerated the noise as if this required serious thought. “I might have to break your reanimated disembodied leg if it doesn't leave me alone, but, yeah, otherwise you're still wicked hot.”
Picking her head up, she breathed out another laugh, but this time didn’t start crying. Instead, she pressed a kiss to his cheek and gave him a close-lipped smile. “Thanks,” she said. “But I won’t be claiming my reanimated disembodied leg at that point so it’s not my fault.”
“Then I won’t hold anything your reanimated disembodied leg does against you,” he replied, offering a small smile back. It dropped a moment later, quiet as he contemplated if he should say something further or not, not wanting to upset Angelina any more than she already was. “You worried me,” he added, serious, never really good at holding back what he was thinking, heart already beating faster just at the thought of what could have happened. “I hate seeing you hurt. I hate them for doing this to you.”
She unlooped one of her arms from around him to cover his cheek with her hand. “I hate them, too,” she said quietly, her expression somber. Her mouth started to twist again and she looked up at the ceiling for a beat before meeting his eyes again. “I’m sorry you had to come back to Mungo’s for me. I hate making you worry.” She unlooped her other arm to cover his other cheek. “It hurts right now, but I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll always come to Mungo’s for you,” Fred replied, bringing one of his hands to rest on her wrist, the other reaching up to brush his thumb under one of her eyes despite her having already wiped away her tears. “And I’ll be here until they let you out again. We’ll prank the healers that aren’t as nice whenever either of us gets bored.”
“Good,” she said, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards briefly. “Especially the healers who don’t tremble when they hear Katie’s name.”
“You’d overtake her as the most fearsome patient they’ve ever had but you’re not going to be in here that long.” He glanced over at her leg, trying to hide his wince at its appearance. “Looks like it’s almost healed already.”
Angelina wrinkled her nose and only just managed to resist the urge to try hiding her leg. It hurt enough without moving it. But she glanced at the bite out of the corner of her eye, her hands sliding down to Fred’s shoulders. “You’re nice, but.” It was gross and horrifying and she couldn’t help but shudder. Which made her tense with a fresh wave of pain and a new urge to cry. But she clamped her mouth shut against it and shook her head.
“Inferi are gross,” she said, once both the pain and the urge to cry passed. “Would not recommend.”
Fred didn’t think he’d ever seen Angelina struggling not to cry this much; even in their Umbridge-filled 7th year she’d been much more likely to yell (at him, when he purposely provoked her) than cry, so he was at a loss at how to handle it.
“I’ll take duel an inferi off my bucket list then,” he joked, flashing her a small smile again. “Now, where are the healers? I don’t think you’re high enough to be dealing with this yet.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” she said, managing to muster a small smile of her own. And then, because she was in hospital and she’d thought she’d seen him in the crowd of inferi earlier and everything else but him felt unsteady lately, she quickly added, “I’m really glad we made up. It was weird not being made up. And I super love you so.”
“I super love you too,” Fred replied, teasing slightly by repeating her exact words but smiling easily for the first time since he’d arrived at Mungo’s. “Glad you realised that I’m too amazing to stay mad at.”
She wrinkled her nose at his teasing, but his smile was infectious. “Oh my god, this is what I’m not high enough for,” she said, trying to roll her eyes and suppress her smile at the same time.
“Don’t worry, if anyone asks I’ll tell them you were super high when you got all gross and sappy and you can pretend you don’t remember any of it,” he said, giving her a quick kiss. “And if you say anything I’ll just say you imagined it all because you were so high.”
“Sorry, did you say something?” she asked, her smile a little wider. She squinted at him a little, pretending to be high. “I thought you did, but I’m sooooo high I can’t remember.”
Fred’s own smile grew, happy to see Angelina smiling again. “Throw in some random thoughts that make no sense and everyone will believe you in no time.”
For a moment, Angelina fell silent, looking thoughtful, but then she shook her head. “I can’t think of any nonsense right now. All of my thoughts make sense. Can you check and make sure the zombies didn’t get my brains?” She turned one of her ears toward him.
Fred leaned forward, squinting and putting his eye right to her ear. “Bad news. I don’t think there’s anything left in there.”
Angelina heaved an exaggeratedly mournful sigh. “Do you still love me even though zombies got my brains?”
“I don’t know,” Fred replied, kissing her ear. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“I can’t believe you’d flaunt your brain having privilege when I —” she said, leaning away to look at him, but the steady background pain of her leg had been asserting itself more and more as they spoke and now it suddenly felt as awful as the other sharper waves of it. She cut herself off with a wince and reached for the thigh of her injured leg with both hands. “Actually, can you see if there’s a nurse or a healer out there?”
“Yeah, of course,” Fred jumped straight off the bed, smile instantly fading and forehead creasing in worry. “I’ll be back with a healer in one sec.”
“Thanks,” Angelina murmured, glancing at her leg out of the corner of her eye again. She gave it a (pained) dirty look and hoped whoever was responsible would come forward so she could at least add their name to her list of nemeses.