The smell of food wafted into the Hufflepuff common room. Today, the scent of cinnamon seemed particularly strong. There was a celebration going on, but for what, Cedric could not recall.
‘Maybe we won a Quidditch match?’ he thought as he stared around the room. Some of the Ravenclaws had come down, even though that wasn’t technically allowed, but the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs mingled in each other’s common rooms quite a bit. However, Cedric thought it was odd that some of the Gryffindors had made their way down into the Hufflepuff common room.
‘Gryffindors never come down here . . .’
“Does that hurt?”
Cho sat across from him on the couch. He fingered his face, realizing he had the orange paste on the right side. Suddenly, he knew what had happened. They were celebrating the completion of the first Triwizard Task.
“No, not really. I hope it doesn’t scar permanently.”
Judith Fogel, who Cedric knew had left a year before him and shouldn’t be there, laughed as she wrapped an arm around Marcus Flint. How did he get in? Cedric wondered briefly, but there was no question he came with Judith. The two of them were sitting on the couch beside Cho. “I told you this tournament was a bad idea, Ced. Now your angelic good looks will be marred forever.”
‘I’ve never seen Judith and Flint together in public. I knew they had gone together last year, though, but this is a bit much,’ Cedric thought, but he laughed all the same.
Marcus and Judith began to snog, and Alexis Weir, who also left a year ago with Judith, came over, arm in arm with Oliver Wood, who had heinous burns all over his face. “See, Ced? Now we’re both burned.”
Wood sat down, and Alexis sat on his lap. ‘Huh . . . I never knew about Alexis and Wood.’ As they, too, began to snog, Cedric stared across at Cho, who looked bored and a bit upset. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing, Cedric, really,” but he could tell it was a lie. “I mean, it’s just that now that you’re dead, I don’t think we can snog any more.”
“I don’t suppose that’s true,” Cedric replied. Cho only shrugged. “Come on, if Flint and Fogel can snog in public, so can we.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea. Don’t you think it’ll be a bit complicated?” Cho asked as she chewed on her lower lip.
“Complicated? I suppose it could be,” Cedric mused out loud, but then he blinked as a beam of light from the skylight hit him directly in the eye. ‘When did we get a skylight in the common room?’ Cedric thought as he shielded his eyes from the sunlight that still managed to fall into his eyes.
Squinting and blinking, Cedric turned his head into his pillow. Then, as he felt the heat of the light on the back of his head, Cedric knew where he was. He sat up and saw the beam of light coming through the barred window fell exactly where his head had been.
‘That’s the first time I’ve dreamt something about being alive since I’ve . . . been alive again? Am I dreaming about my old life? I feel like I’m living the same life . . . damn it, this is confusing.’
The curtains flung back, and Cedric internally groaned as Venturini waltzed into the room. ‘Whenever that man is perky and excited, I should be afraid. What does he want with me? I told them . . . well, I told them what I could tell them. The Veritaserum was definitely working, but I didn’t feel compelled to tell anything more than what was absolutely necessary. Veritaserum is supposed to make you tell your deepest secrets . . . that didn’t bloody happen.’
“Ready for some new fun today?”
Cedric pulled his gaze off the random spot on the wall and refocused it on Venturini. He simply stared at the Healer who was rocking back on his heels. “You’re not even a bit curious?” Venturini asked.
“After yesterday, not really,” Cedric replied in a dull voice. “I’m a bit done with the ‘fun’ for now.”
A grin split Venturini’s face. “Then I suppose a tour of the ward won’t interest you?”
‘What is he playing at?’ Cedric thought as he stared blankly at Venturini. The Healer chuckled. “Consider it repayment for the Aurors yesterday. I won that little battle.”
‘What happened to his little threat of sending me straight to Azkaban? Is he really that temperamental or is he just stringing me along? I suppose he might want me to chat with him. He said he wanted a separate interrogation.’ Cedric looked down at his hands. He fiddled his thumbs together as he thought, ‘Damn it . . . do I trust him? Maybe just a tiny bit, but after the way he treated Nissel . . . I’m only valuable to him as an experiment. He seems to have made that clear.’
Cedric looked up at Venturini again, who remained standing patiently at the end of the bed. Cedric shrugged. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Venturini grinned and left the room for a moment. He came back with a chipper and excited man in lavender hospital robes. Cedric kept his shock in check when he saw the man. However, when the man flashed Cedric a white, beaming smile, he almost dropped his composure. “Lockheart is going to wait here so people don’t go blabbing there is no one in your room,” Venturini explained as he escorted the grinning man to Cedric’s bed.
“Is this . . .”
“Why, hello there! This man says you would like an autograph,” Lockheart said as he looked at Cedric and twisted around to point at Venturini. “I am excited to visit somewhere new!”
“No . . . no it’s fine, I’ve already got an autograph,” Cedric replied as he got out of his bed. Then, turning to Venturini, he said, “You kidnap patients now? A little unethical, don’t you think?”
“It’s no problem. He considers it a vacation, don’t you?” Venturini smiled down at Lockheart as he asked him a question. The blonde man nodded vigorously as he began to sign one of the pictures while Venturini grasped Cedric by the arm to lead him out of the room. “Healer Strout can’t watch her patients properly anyway. She was thrilled when I had someone tell her they were taking this one out for the day,” Venturini explained once they were beyond the curtain.
“You lied to the other Healer? Who did you send? Why not ask her yourself?”
Immediately after talking, Cedric regretted it. ‘That’s more than a bit low. I would have thought even Venturini might have higher standards.’
Venturini chuckled. “No harm done. Here,” Venturini said as he produced a grey, knit scarf from inside his robe pocket. “Put this on so people don’t recognize you. Cover those scars at least.”
Cedric wrapped the soft scarf around his face as Venturini walked him to another grey curtain down the ward. “I want show you the ward’s name sake,” Adam said as he lead Cedric through one empty bed chamber and one occupied bedroom before they reached the third bed. Like Cedric’s room, this was the chamber with the barred window. Venturini ushered him in before he shut the grey curtain behind them.
Cedric stared at a young woman who looked about fifteen lying in bed. “This is Morticia Gregel,” Venturini announced.
“Shhh, she’s sleeping,” Cedric muttered, but Venturini only burst into laughter. The girl slumbered, unmoved by the ruckus.
“She’s not waking up any time soon.” Venturini walked over to the bed and shook the girl’s shoulders. “She has what is dubbed ‘Sleeping Beauty Sickness.’ She’s been here over a hundred years. The Gregel’s donated a lot of money to name this ward after her.”
“They just left her?” Cedric asked. As soon as he saw the grin slide over Venturini’s face, he once again regretted his question. ‘He wants me to trust him. I’m just like Morticia Gregel to him. He’ll shout and shake me if he thinks he can get away with it.’
Venturini motioned for Cedric to come over to the bed. “No interest in her?” Venturini asked. Cedric crossed his arms and stared down at the young woman. Pretty and beautiful didn’t seem to even describe her, and the power of her endless, undying loveliness seemed to overwhelm the room.
“Everyone gets that impression of her at first.” Venturini’s unemotional words brought Cedric back to his senses. “I’ve begun to believe that’s part of the curse. When you see her . . . you just want to love her and protect her, but she’ll never even blink at you. Let’s go.”
Venturini ushered Cedric out of the room, but as the curtain was closing, he strained his neck to get one last glimpse of the girl. ‘Poor girl. A hundred years . . .’
In the next room, Venturini gestured to the bed, where someone dozed under the covers. “This man,” Adam whispered, “had the lower part of his body bitten off. We have no idea what did it, but even after he was patched up, he showed weird symptoms. His blood turned green, and he doesn’t seem to be able to speak or understand any discernable language. He’s growing scales, and I’m actually dying to see what his insides look like.”
“Charming,” Cedric muttered, and he felt infinitely relieved when Venturini escorted him out of the room. ‘I certainly don’t want to know what his insides look like.’
Cedric followed Venturini out into the hallway again. “All three rooms in this section are occupied, although I only have two patients in here. Come on, you’ll see. It’s terribly interesting, and they’re some of my most time consuming patients.”
Cedric found himself slightly curious, and even though that emotion seemed to win out, he wished Venturini hadn’t jerked him forward. ‘His idea of interesting seems to be a little bit different from what the normal definition is. I suppose he’s completely enraptured with these patient’s for some reason.’
In the first room, Cedric found himself staring at a woman, who was sleeping, but seemed to have a tent of bed sheets erected over her body from her neck down. “What’s wrong with her lower body?” Cedric whispered.
“She’s heavily sedated. We don’t have to whisper,” Venturini said in his normal, casual tone as he gestured towards the tent. “She had a Chizpurfle lay eggs in her. It’s extremely rare for this to happen because they prefer fur and feathers, but this one seemed to like her insides. I’m trying to remove them all, and I’ve had some help with that from the Healers down on the first floor, but she’s going to need her entire chest cavity rebuilt if she expects to survive. They’re eating their way through her at a pretty good pace. That’s why she’s up here. I’m trying to figure out a way to give her working insides with a bit of clever Transfiguration.”
“Please do not show me that,” Cedric muttered, already feeling queasy. He’d seem pictures in his Care of Magical Creatures text book about what Chizpurfle eggs did to creatures. The basic idea was that they were parasites, and they ate whatever animal in which they laid their eggs.
Venturini shrugged. He pulled back the curtain to the next room. This room appeared double the size of the first room, and an especially large bed took up half of the room. Cedric could not distinguish any features of the person sleeping in the bed because they seemed swollen up into a large, bruised ball.
“What “ ”
“We have no idea,” Venturini said with a note of glee in his voice. “The swelling has actually been reduced. If you can believe it, this one was almost as big as a house when found.”
Cedric rubbed his hands into his eyes lids. ‘Well, if you end up here, you’re certainly not in good shape. I wonder what exactly that says about my condition.’
Venturini tugged his captive guest out of the room and out into the hallway again. He proceeded to the last set of curtains and flung the first one aside. “I’ve got two in this section. The first one is quite normal, except that the fool boy went and mated with a banshee.”
Cedric simply blinked his eyes several times. “Yes, you heard me correctly,” Venturini chuckled. “No one is sure how to cure him because he can’t speak normally anymore and his member is well . . . I won’t elaborate. You would be surprised how large the literature base is on idiot men who went and slept with non-human women.”
“I can imagine,” Cedric muttered trying to ignore the unpleasant tugging sensation around his naval. “Please pass on all of the descriptors.”
Venturini nodded and drew back the curtain. The man appeared fairly young, and Cedric thought he looked familiar, but he couldn’t place the name to the face. ‘I think he might have been an older Ravenclaw, but I can’t tell,’ Cedric thought as the man stared at them with bleary blue eyes.
“Morning Henry,” Venturini said in a chipper voice. “I’m just giving a tour of the Ward. I’ll be back for an examination later.”
The man winced as Venturini drew back the curtain to the last room and yanked Cedric inside. “This one,” Venturini whispered, “was brought to me from Paris. He was a patient I was treating there, and his family couldn’t find anyone else to take care of him. He over dosed on Cornish Pixie dust and has been having severe hallucinations. He has fits sometimes where he manages to conjure up some fairly powerful magic. I haven’t been able to find an antidote for the drug yet, but Glumbumble juice seems to have some type of effect.”
With that, Venturini steered Cedric out of the room and back to the empty bedchamber on the other side of Cedric’s curtain. Before pulling back the curtain, Venturini stopped and held out his hand, and Cedric unwrapped the scarf from around his face.
“You didn’t really need it today, but that’s fine. I was concerned maybe another Healer would wonder through,” Venturini commented.
“I suppose, compared to your other patients, that I’m pretty normal,” Cedric commented.
Venturini burst out laughing. Cedric realized that he had never heard an uninhibited laugh from the Healer. “Well . . . I will be the final judge of that,” Venturini commented as his laugh died into a chuckle.
As Venturini pulled back the curtain, Cedric got the sinking feeling in his gut that he’d said too much again. ‘I think it’s true. I didn’t go screw a banshee or get eggs laid in me, yet this Healer has been obsessing over me since I got here. I wonder if he has noticed my blood is not turning green.’
“Hello! I see you’re back!” Lockheart called from the bed, and Venturini dragged Cedric back into the bubble and coaxed Lockheart back out of it. “This is a lovely room! Would you like a picture?”
“Not today,” Venturini said as he practically shoved Lockheart out into the next bed chamber. Before leaving, he turned to Cedric and said, “Breakfast will be right in.”
Adam Venturini gripped the memory-addled man by his arm and led him back to the Janus Thickey Ward like a post puppy. Venturini ignored the man’s prattling about his pictures as he marched him down the hallway. When they reached the ward, Adam pulled out his wand and put what he knew would come across as an affectionate and charming grin.
‘Being handsome is useful for some damn things.’ Adam let go of the man, who immediately wandered off again, and stood, rocking back and forth on his heels, to wait for Healer Strout. Healer Strout came bustling up to Adam, but before she could say anything, he raised his wand and Confunded her. As the women blinked stupidly at him, Adam said, in a cool, soothing voice, “That man who came earlier returned your patient.”
“Oh . . . oh good,” Strout mumbled. She stared blankly into space for a while before asking, “I . . . I hope he was a good boy?”
“Yes, of course,” Adam said in a soothing voice. ‘That should do. I suppose this is the time to see if I can put the rest of my little plan into motion.’ Leaning in towards Healers Strout’s ear like a lover about to whisper tender secrets, Adam said, “Would you mind if Adam Venturini borrows a patient?”
“I . . . . I heard that man is no good,” Strout mumbled.
“Of course he’s good. The Ministry cleared him, remember? He’s got a lot of empty beds,” Adam whispered.
Strout nodded slowly. “Some of these patients seem to wander quite a bit . . . I suppose he can take one off my hands whenever he wants.”
“Thank you.” With that, Adam pulled away, turned on his heels, and walked away from Healer Strout with a bounce in his step. ‘That worked out quite well. She’s so easily Confunded, it’s almost a joke. Well, I have someone to sit in the bed again tomorrow. Sooner or later, he’s going to say something useful to me. However, I’ll accept his unending sympathy to my patients at this point.’