The Internal Devices

Chapter 27

Hermione stood frozen above Theo's unconscious body; she couldn't tear her eyes from the image hovering a few feet away from his dozing form. It was so much worse than she ever imagined.

Listening to Theo's story had her kicking herself mentally. How had she not noticed the signs, clear as day, that her sweet Slytherin boy was becoming addicted to the very medication meant to help him? She had been blinded by the fact that he looked healthier, and failed to ask any other questions. How could Theo have known that he was chronically overdosing on his potions? He didn't have any of the medical training or knowledge she had obtained over the years.

After arriving in the infirmary, the clinical side of Hermione had locked into place. Her nerves calmed as she tied back her hair and pulled on a set of nitrile gloves. She needed answers, and she was going to find them. Draco hovered a few feet behind her, waiting for directions. Madam Pomfrey issued Theo a simple sleeping draught and launched into a discussion with Hermione and Draco.

"He must be weaned off the potions. His immune system is failing," Madam had insisted.

Hermione had gritted her teeth, "No offense, Madam, but how do you propose we do this? Do you honestly want us to take away his potions, force him to go through withdrawal, and allow his illness to ravage his lungs in the meantime?"

"Quiet, both of you. I'm going to cast an electromagnetic diagnostic," Draco had interjected. "We're wasting time arguing, and we need to see what is actually going on inside him." He raised his wand and began a series of complicated movements; layer by layer, an image had begun to appear over Theo.

Like Hermione, Draco and Madam Pomfrey were motionless. A rotating view of a set of lungs sat before them, and Madam Pomfrey gasped. Draco looked from the image to Madam, then back to the image and to Hermione, completely confused but alarmed. Hermione counted her heartbeats. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. She felt herself dissociate, and her mind drew up the memory of a passage from Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby.

"There is a dread disease which so prepares its victim, as it were, for death ...a dread disease, in which the struggle between soul and body is so gradual, quiet, and solemn, and the result so sure, that day by day, and grain by grain, the mortal part wastes and withers away...a disease...which sometimes moves in giant strides, and sometimes at a tardy sluggish pace, but, slow or quick, is ever sure and certain."

Hermione had never understood the quote more fully than as she analyzed the rotating image. Draco's spell painted the muggle equivalent of a chest x-ray; in a healthy individual, the lungs shouldn't even be visible behind the illuminated ribcage and spinal cord. Instead, bright blotches covered almost the entirety of the scan. Only a few centimeters along the edges of the lungs were transparent, and Hermione realized that this 'dread disease' Theo had been fighting was finally moving in giant strides. Perhaps it was a recent development, or perhaps it had been gradual, but it didn't really matter. All that mattered were those pulsing patches.

Draco shook her shoulder and she realized she hadn't heard anything discussed for the past few minutes. His eyes were wild. "What is it? We don't know how to read this, you have to tell us what it means."

Hermione's mouth went dry. How do you tell someone it's too late? She wrung her fingers as that scientific and detached side of her began to slip. She could not break down. Not now. So she took a deep breath and met those icy eyes, fighting desperately against the blue cracking through.

"Draco. I need you to go to the lab while I talk to Madam Pomfrey for a second. Please." She said it so intensely that Draco didn't even bother arguing. He sent a concerned glance in Theo's direction but slipped into their small laboratory in the back. Hermione didn't speak until she heard the soft click of the door closing, then flicked a quick muffliato around herself and Madam Pomfrey.