Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 97: White Hart

It seemed as though there wasn't enough air in the room. Harry's knees felt like noodles and he could swear that needles were piercing every fold in his body. There was an acrid odor, too. He realized it was him. His pits stung.

"Harry, remember the breathing exercises. In through your nose, out through your mouth. That's right. Careful, the pensieve is on your left. Here, the camp bed is two feet to your right. That's right. Steady now. I'm going to take off your shoes and put some blankets under your legs to raise them up. Next, I'm going to levitate a blanket over you and cover you up," Besel informed Harry. "Accio pepper-up potion."

"I thought pepper-up was for colds," Harry managed to utter.

"Yes, it is brilliant for colds—but it is also useful for shock, which I think you're experiencing right now," she said.

"What?" Harry panted. "I thought people got shock from getting hurt—like a wound."

"That's right, but not all wounds bleed. Emotional trauma can cause shock. Please take the potion and if and when you're feeling up to it, we can talk about what just happened," Besel said, pressing the cool, glass vial into his hand.

Harry propped himself up on his elbow and sniffed at the vial, feeling the mint vapors opening up his nasal passages, tendrils tickling his brain. He pressed the thin glass to his lips and felt the cool liquid coat his tongue. He imagined it was a vibrant green as it coursed down his throat, snaking through his sinuses, and blowing out his ears and nose. He tried, but couldn't hold back a cough.

Besel encouraged him to do the meditative breathing exercises that he'd been practicing with her as well as Ms. Midgeon after his coughing fit was over and the steam didn't seem to be exiting his ears as forcibly.

"I'll guide you through the body scan, okay?" Besel said.

"All right," Harry said.

She started by asking him to squeeze and release his toes one by one first on his left foot, then his right foot, and gradually worked up his body. By the time she'd verbally reached his knees, his heart didn't feel like a gerbil trying to escape his ribs. He had never felt as safe before with an adult as he did with Besel. Just that thought alone made his breathing steady.

Her soothing voice was asking him to tense and release the backs of his knees when he lost track of it. He slipped in and out of awareness as he was trying to figure out how to activate the muscles behind his knees that had somehow become peppermint flavored marshmallows melting in hot cocoa.

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Someone snoring woke him up. Then he realized that he was the one snoring and that his chin was resting in a puddle of drool. He wiped his face with a corner of the pillowcase and shifted carefully to his back, trying to remember why he was in a camp bed in the hospital room in the Center again.

The memory of the scenery rushing by as he, the Dursleys, and Piers drove to the zoo came back into focus suddenly—but it wasn't that. It wasn't all the houses, people, and cars with so much color, shadow, and texture and being able to see for such long distances in between all the buildings, even for milliseconds or the expanse of the sky up above, cut as it was by bisecting wires of telephone lines. It was the blow of having sight for the brief forty or so minutes that he had spent in his memory and then returning to instant sightlessness that was jarring. It was the journey back through the Pensieve that garroted his windpipe.

He remembered Besel's breathing exercises and tried to use them, aware that he was getting light headed again. As he acclimated to being in the Center, he realized that he was starting to associate the pain of the loss of his sight with the presence of pepper-up potions, the texture of overwashed linens, and the sound of sterile metal instruments striking glass vials. He doubted he'd ever associate it with anything else.