The Truth Behind the Veil ✔️

Not Fully (Extra Chapter)

A/N: As we're approaching 200k on this story I decided to add some bonus chapters :)

TW:
Trauma, body/ weight description

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June 25th, 1996

The Janus Thickey Ward was colorful and full of cheer, so different from the life Fawn had lived before.

She'd been here a week now. The battery her body had gone through, courtesy of Bellatrix, Voldemort and the other Death-Eaters, needed intensive treatment, and mind-healers were in constantly to help her trauma. Lily Potter was the director of her case, making sure Fawn was every healer's first priority.

    Already Fawn's strained vocal cords, broken bones and internal bleeding had been healed.

The scars that blanketed her once clear skin would never go away or fade. They would act as a constant reminder of everything she fought for so that her friends – her family – could have the life they deserved.

    The mental healing was taking a while longer. Wizarding psychology was a new concept, only a decade old practice. The therapy was simple enough, but the concoctions needed to be made in order to correct neural pathways, to reverse trauma-induced behaviors, was much more difficult.

Fawn was downing upwards of five potions a day along with undergoing intensive charmwork and questioning on the hour. It was exhausting. When she wasn't being bothered by healers or her friends, Fawn was asleep.

This was normal, Healer Pye claimed. He explained that after so much trauma, the body was learning to no longer be in flight or fight mode, that it can relax. Due to this, the body and mind will be fatigued for a while as it makes up on lost rest.

July 23rd, 1996

    "Ready?" asked Lily, a smile on her face.

    Ready was an understatement. Fawn had spent a month in the bloody hospital and was desperate to be free of it.

Within the last month, she had fought hard to relearn how to walk. The coma she'd been under for months along with being stuck in a dungeon didn't allow for much exercise and so her legs and most of her other muscles had atrophied.

It took a lot of work and pain but she was nothing if not a fighter. One step at a time turned into a fully capable walker in only three short weeks.

    Her voice too had been returned to her though using it was another feat. Despite having the ability to speak, Fawn couldn't. She wanted to. She knew it would be easier for everyone if she did. But somehow the words refused to come.

It wasn't that she never spoke, because she did. Fawn answered questions from the healers and spoke quietly to Lily, but when it came to anyone else, she clammed up. Her mouth would open but from it came silence.

Weeks of work went into restoring vocalization but it just didn't work.

Fawn felt stuck inside of herself, thoughts running rampant with nowhere to go. She would give anything to speak freely with her loved ones.

Lily said it was another effect of the trauma and that hopefully with time and more mind-healing, Fawn would feel comfortable talking once again. She was doubtful.