B.Q. Book One: Princess of the Blacks

Chapter 31: Tentative Trust

Disclaimer: Did Beauxbatons and Durmstrang traipse throughout Hogwarts without a care in the world and not invite the British students onto their own "grounds"? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whoever else she sold the rights to.
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Jen slipped her head into the lioness's domain. "Madam Pomfrey? Are you in?"

"Office!" the nurse's voice rang from behind the wooden door to said room. "Go ahead and take a seat!" She made her way to the bed nearest the exit, balancing herself on the edge of the mattress and trying her hardest to ignore the room's sharp bleach smell for the half-minute the older woman needed to finish whatever she was doing and enter the hospital wing proper. "Ah, Miss Black. Is it the first of the month already?"

"It is. Any chance we can skip straight to the eye exam?" she pled.

Pomfrey shook her head and huffed. "I still don't understand why you are so averse to a simple checkup."

"Maybe because I'm perfectly fine and it's a waste of my time?"

"You may think you're invincible, but it's my responsibility to make sure hard-headed teenagers like yourself aren't ignoring any potential problems," the nurse snapped back, though resignation tinged her voice. They had been having this same argument since the end of the Slytherin Task, and neither of them was willing to yield her position.

And unless I want her to hex me in the back and scan my body while I'm unconscious... again... I have to let the shrew do what she wants. Pomfrey, four; me, bloody zero. "Fine, fine. Just get the damn thing over with already."

"You are so lucky you aren't my child, or you'd have soap suds pouring from your mouth for a full year." The woman whipped her wand out of a pocket and locked the door. While Jen's – for the moment, at least – most hated enemy was otherwise occupied, she gripped the magic racing up her spine and cut it off from the nerves in her arms. Her back immediately started to grow uncomfortably warm, and a steady tattoo beat on the inside of her skull.

Without a magical core, her body was meant to channel magic, not contain it.

"Let's examine you physically first," the nurse said unhurriedly, waving her stick in an elaborate dance. The diagnostic spell slithered over the Ravenclaw like a thousand centipedes, and she took no pains to mask her shudder. After a moment, the magic leapt back to Pomfrey's wand. "Your heart rate is a tad elevated—"

"Whyever could that be, I wonder."

"—but other wise you are no more unhealthy now than last month."

Random spots along her body began sending strange sensations of heat and cold, touch and numbness, and Jen immediately let a trickle of power slide back down her arms and out her hands. The last thing she needed was for a section of her spinal cord to burn out while in Pomfrey's presence. "'No more unhealthy', I like that. Such an oblique way of saying, 'Well, I guess you were right, after all,' without giving me the chance for an 'I told you so' moment. You wouldn't happen to have been in Slytherin house once upon a time, would you?"

"Oh, good heavens, no. I'm actually a Beauxbatons alumna." Pomfrey's mouth crinkled in what Jen presumed was supposed to be a winning smile. "My parents felt I desperately needed to improve my manners."

"I sure hope they got their gold back. It didn't do a thing for your bedside manner."

"You'd be surprised. Used to be smart-mouthed brats would leave my infirmary in worse shape than when they'd entered." The nurse aimed the willow shaft at her again. "Any charmed objects or spells on your clothing?"