Searching for Wellness by DesertPlanet

Harry felt as though he were in a fog. He could hear voices around him but try as he might he couldn’t respond. He could feel himself being lifted by someone with a deep and quite soothing voice. He could feel when the tube feeding was turned off. He could feel the burning of the sun on his pale skin. But he couldn’t rouse himself.

Until they started spinning that is. The position he was being held in kept his body near the center of the spin and his head further away. It was just enough force to pull what little blood he had to his brain.

“Poppy! Where are you woman!” the deep voice called out as he was laid on the bed.

Unfortunately, the spinning had another side effect. Nausea.

Harry wasn’t new to nausea. He’d had nausea ever since he’d first noticed he’d started getting ill. This nausea was something new. He hadn’t been moved in such a way in years.

Feeling the bile start to rise in his throat, Harry used what little strength he had left to roll onto his side to avoid choking on his own vomit.

It wasn’t much that came up, but it hurt for his stomach to jolt in such a way. If he had had the strength and wherewithal, he would have just used his tube to drain his stomach, but that required so much effort.

As consciousness began to evade him once more, he briefly opened his eyes and looked around.

Ah, another hospital.

A weak retching and an angry potions master were what greeted Poppy Pomfrey as she walked out of her office. Dumbledore had warned her to expect a severely ill child, but he had not stated when nor had he warned her of Severus Snape’s presence for any of this. Severus was by far the worst patient to have. He was almost worse when he was acting as a head of house and had someone else under his care.

Poppy glanced briefly at the pile of blankets, thinking they were just that, before realizing there was a human wrapped in them.

“Severus, what…” Poppy started as the floo roared to life again and Albus stepped out and quickly dusted himself off.

“Poppy, this is the child I told you about,” Albus said.

Poppy quickly cast a diagnostic charm, gasped, and immediately cast a more advanced version.

“Severus, I need a blood replenisher,” Poppy barked. Severus immediately ran to the potions cabinet and grabbed a vial of the requested potion while the matron cast a warming spell over the bed and the boy on it.

Gently, she pulled off the blanket and cap. She then cast a charm which allowed her to see continuous readings of the child’s vital signs. She sighed in frustration as she looked at the numbers. Blood pressure: extremely low. Pulse: dangerously low. Oxygen saturation was ok, but he still looked almost blue. Respirations were also very low.

Most of these could be countered with one thing. Blood. The child needed blood in his system. Looking briefly at the lab results the previous scan had brought up, she almost started crying as she looked at the emaciated figure in front of her.

Haemoglobin: 35. Barely enough to sustain life. He simply had no blood in him.

Quickly, she spelled a bubble of oxygen around the boy’s mouth and nose. He needed all the extra oxygen he could get.

Severus quickly returned with the potion then paused as Poppy spelled the shirt off the young child. There were bruises all over the boy’s torso, but no active bleeding had been shown on the scans. The feeding tube also stood out like a beacon on the concave stomach.

Poppy and Severus looked at the tube momentarily, looking at the three small ports at the end of the larger tube. Poppy quickly read each label and sighed in relief.

“He was on tube feeding?” she asked quickly.

“Yes, he was receiving a feeding when we picked him up,” Severus said quietly.

“Were there any syringes?” Poppy said, looking between the men.

Albus pulled out the tube feeding machine from the bag he had been given then unceremoniously dumped the rest of the bag’s contents on the bed next to Harry’s.

“Aha!” Poppy exclaimed, pulling out a syringe and drawing up the potion into it. She then quickly attached it to the port labled “J” on the tube and pushed the potion into it. She then conjured some water, drew that up as well and flushed the rest of the potion into the boy’s stomach.

They waited thirty long seconds, then Poppy recast the spell to see the boy in front of her’s labs.

Nothing. No changes. Nothing had happened.

“What in Merlin’s name?!” Poppy exclaimed, frantically drawing up another dose of the blood replenishing potion and giving it in the same manner.

“What is it?” Albus asked worriedly.

Poppy didn’t answer him until the next thirty seconds were up with no changes to his lab results.

“He needs a muggle blood transfusion,” Poppy said, not answering the question she had been given.

“But his magic…” Albus started.

“His core is diminished to the point his magic is nonexistent,” Poppy snapped. “He can’t reject someone’s magic because he doesn’t have enough of his own to reject it with.”

Quickly she cast one spell to check the boy’s blood type quickly followed by another to check the blood types of the adults in the room.

“Severus, I hate to ask this of you, but can you donate? You are a match,” Poppy asked quietly.

Severus stared at the child for a moment then nodded and rolled up his right sleeve.

It took only a few minutes for the blood to be donated, but the blood itself would have to run much slower as it was going into its new recipient so as to not shock his system.

“Why didn’t the blood replenisher work?” Albus pondered as they all sat and watched as the blood slowly dripped into the young boy’s vein.

“The only explanation is his body doesn’t produce red blood cells any more,” Poppy said.

“What would cause that?” Severus pondered out loud.

All of the adults sat in quiet contemplation for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. It was obvious the boy was only alive because he had been using his magic to sustain him. But as he tried to grow, he was expending more magic that he was able to recuperate. If they hadn’t picked him up when they did, he would have surely died.

Had blood magic been performed on the child? Severus hadn’t picked any up when he initially scanned the child. What could possibly have caused his blood to be unresponsive to a blood replenisher?

“Poppy? Why didn’t you spell the blood replenisher into his stomach?” Severus asked suddenly.

“The scans were showing little to no movement of this stomach, or really any of his intestines. But the stomach doesn’t absorb nutrients, the small intestine does. When I spell potions into someone, they go directly into the stomach, not the intestines. But if there is no movement in the stomach the potion wouldn’t make it to his intestines. His tube has one port for putting things in his stomach and one for putting things directly into the intestines.”

Severus sat there pondering this development for a minute before looking at the face of the sleeping child.

“Does he have any facial deformities you can see on your scan?” Severus asked, obviously operating on a hunch.

Poppy did a focused scan on his head and shook her head slightly.

“Only impacted canines.”

Severus went over to the still sleeping boy and gently lifted his upper lip to expose his canine teeth. Gingerly he felt around the gumline of the canines then jumped back slightly to the surprise of the others.

“I know what’s wrong, but it will bring more questions than I care to answer.”

“Well?” Poppy stated, rather perturbed she missed a diagnosis. “What do you think?”

“Vampire. He is a vampire with no sire to train him.”

“Excuse me? A vampire?” Poppy gasped, looking back at the boy.

“Possibly.”

Poppy looked horrified at the child laying in front of her.

“Albus?” She asked when she finally snapped out of it. “Who is this child? Why did you have to bring him here and not St. Mungo’s?”

Albus had quietly walked over to the head of the bed and was gently stroking the boy’s hair. It was long enough it had covered the scar well. And with his current state, he looked nothing like either of his parents.

Albus quickly warded the hospital wing and looked his trusted healer in the eye.

“Poppy, what I am about to tell you does not leave this room,” Albus said with an intimidating timbre to his voice. Poppy nodded.

“This is Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived.”