It was the final day of August. The sun was beginning to set casting a faint orange glow across the moors of Southern England. A reasonably sized house stood alone at the top of the hill, a picket fence encasing it and a small greenhouse stood in the back garden. This house was the house of a Mr John Nogard, his wife and two children.
Bertie Nogard had arrived earlier that day with his Mum, as they usually did on the final day of August. The reason for this was because Bertie's Mum was a squib and albeit she could go to platform nine and three quarters they lived too far from London to travel there in one day. As a result each year Bertie and his Mum would make the journey to Uncle John's the day before meaning all they had was two hours of driving the following morning to Kings Cross, cutting their journey time in half.
It was hard to say how Bertie felt about returning to Hogwarts. He was excited, eager and thrilled to get lost in the magic again - plus the Ravenclaw would get to be reunited with Vivianna Varnes. The girl who was more family to him than his aunties, uncles and cousins.
On the other hand there was leaving his Mother behind. The bond that the pair had was exceptional. Maybe it was because Joyce, Bertie's Mum, was a single mum and Bertie an only child meaning it was just the two of them. She was the greatest thing that Bertie missed whilst at Hogwarts. More than anything in the world he wished that he could be closer to her, visit her every weekend. Of course they wrote but when you take a child away from it's Mother it always takes some time getting used to.
Five hours later the sun had completely hidden behind the dark curtains that had been drawn across, eliminating all sunlight leaving the only light from silver stars embroidered within the midnight sky. The brown eyes of Bertie Nogard were still open as he gazed at the clock on the tables besides the camp bed that he slept on. The hands arrived together, united at the twelve o'clock tick.
The grunt of his Mother on a camp bed besides him drowned out the slightly louder tick than the usual noise of the hands. However it wasn't his Mother's snores, the ticking clock, the moonlight through the window or the fact Bertie couldn't switch his imagination off that was keeping the boy awake. No. He felt sick. Physically sick. So sick he wanted to throw up hoping it would rid the nausea away. He had felt it most of the day but now, now it was finally packing it's punch.
Half an hour had passed. The house was sleeping. Joyce was lay on the camp bed still engrossed in her snores, meanwhile Roxanne and Stephen (Bertie's cousins) were also in the land of nod whilst John and Jane were soldered in a sleepy cuddle. Until...
'ARGHHH!' A scream awoke the whole house. The scream of a teenager.
'ARGHHH!' It came again, from somewhere downstairs. Swinging their legs out of bed John and Jane grasped their dressing gowns and hurried to the door.
'ARGHH!' A third wail woke Stephen and Roxanne, the pair instantly reached for their wands and found their parents on the upstairs landing hurrying towards the staircase.
'ARGHHH! He-e-lp!' Joyce was already awake. She hadn't needed two or three screams to get out of her camp bed, she'd already wrenched her eyelids apart and was by the side of her son. Bertie. He was clutching his stomach, screaming in pain, agony, then.... There came the spluttering.
John, Jane, Stephen and Roxanne burst through the living room door and into the room where Bertie and his Mum were sleeping, or should be sleeping. In stead of finding the two in dream land they saw a brown eyed, curly haired boy clutching his stomach. Then. Blood.
Blood was pouring from his mouth in clots. This wasn't normal. It was far from normal, it was physiological pain that Bertie had never experienced in his life before. Why was he all of a sudden in agony, screaming in uncontrollable pain whilst his Mum put her arm around him, dabbing the blood away from his mouth with the quilt. A stray tear trailing down her face.
'It's okay sweetie. Mum's here. You're going to be alright. We're going to call for a Doctor and everything will be fine.' Reassuring words from his mother eased Bertie's fears, but his imagination had began to flutter into overdrive, cooking up reasons for his sudden illness. Was it a peptic ulcer? An infectious disease? A tumour obstructing his pulmonary artery? The boy wasn't big on medicine but having been absorbed by medical drama's all summer he couldn't help but look up the diseases on the show. He was no Doctor but he knew coughing up blood with severe abdominal pain was never a good thing.
'No. We're going to St Mungo's.' John announced, striding over and taking out his wand. He was no healer but he knew some basic spells. 'They can fix him up. Anapneo.' Whatever his uncle had done had helped Bertie a tad, at least he could breath easier. Not that it made much of a difference, his fear had risen again as his Mum and Uncle began to argue about whether St Mungo's was the best protocol.
'What If it's not magical?'
'They can sort it anyway!'
'I want a muggle doctor!'
'Joyce trust me!'
'Aghhh!' Bertie wailed again.
'Shut up both of you!' Roxanne, a potioneer for St Mungo's had walked over. 'Sorry Joyce but you'll thank me later.' With that she grasped hold of Bertie, twirled and was gone in a crack.
It was quiet for St Mungo's. Nobody was in the waiting area apart from the night shift welcome witch sat behind the desk. 'oh. hi Roxa-' However before she could continue her eyes caught Bertie. Bertie and the blood.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! John, Jane and Stephen had apparated into the reception area, along with Joyce who was holding John's arm after side-along apparation, before rushing over to her son. Her son who wasn't aware of her presence... He'd collapsed hard against the floor.
by Guest Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:31 pm
