"I'm..." She paused, seeming to take stock of herself, of her body, of the room. Her gaze moved slowly around the hospital room, taking in the white walls and the summer light and the flowers and their mother's figure frozen in the doorway. "I'm in the hospital?"
"Morrison General," Adrian confirmed. "You've been here for... a while."
"A while," she repeated, as if testing the weight of the phrase. A deep complex look appeared across her face that showed she had some awareness of the time that had passed, even if not its precise extent. "Mom?"
Leah crossed the room in three quick steps and took her daughter's hand, and that was the end of anything resembling composure for anyone in the room.
Adrian stood up from the chair, carefully, because his legs were uncertain and moved aside to give his mother space. He stood against the wall and let them have their moment: mother and daughter, Leah's head was bowed over Ariana's hand, Ariana's fingers were curling weakly around her mother's, both of them were making small sounds that weren't quite words.
He felt absolutely exhausted, completely empty of magical strength, and more at peace than he had in years.
After a while, Ariana's gaze found him again across the room. She was still weak, her color was poor, her voice was barely functional. But her eyes were clear and present and fully conscious in a way they hadn't been in a very long time.
"You look terrible," she said, in almost exactly the same tone their mother had used when Adrian had arrived at the hospital.
Adrian laughed. He hadn't expected to, but the laugh came out surprised though he was and slightly broken.
"So, I've been told," he said.
"What happened to you?"
"Long story," Adrian said. "I'll explain everything. Just not right now. Right now you need to rest and eat and let the healers check you properly." He paused. "And I need to sit down before I fall down."
Ariana observed him for a moment with the look she'd always had. A look that reminded him sharply, even after all this time, of who she was when she was awake.
"The tree," she said softly.
Adrian went very still. "What?"
"I could feel it sometimes," Ariana said slowly, as if reconstructing a half-remembered dream. "While I was... wherever I was. Not always. But sometimes. Like warmth, very far away." She paused, her eyes were distant with the effort of remembering. "I think it was looking for me."
Adrian stared at her. Eldra had searched out the damage in Ariana's soul with such precision. Had she felt it? From within her unconscious state?
"Something like that," he said to conclude.
The door opened, and a healer in blue robes appeared who was one of the medical staff who must have been monitoring the unusual magical readings from the room. She stopped in the doorway when she saw Ariana's open eyes, the clear consciousness in her expression.
"She's awake?" the healer said, sounding amazed.
"She's awake," Leah confirmed, looking up with red-rimmed eyes and an expression of absolute radiance.
The healer came forward with her diagnostic instruments, and Adrian stepped further back to give the professional space. The medical procedures that followed with the assessment spells, the vital checks, the nutritional potions, the careful monitoring were things he could safely leave to people far more qualified than him.
He found himself a chair in the corner of the room, sat in it with the relief of someone who'd been standing far longer than their body was designed for, and watched.
His father arrived at noon, earlier than expected as apparently someone had sent word about the unusual magical readings in room eighteen.
Desmond Westeros appeared in the doorway of his daughter's room and stopped dead, his medical bag was half-raised in one hand, his face was something complicated and profound when he saw Ariana's open eyes tracking toward him.
Adrian watched his father cross the room and take Ariana's other hand, and he thought about how sometimes the things that seemed most impossible were simply things that hadn't happened yet.
He had the clear, unsettling sense that he should be doing something—planning, organizing, preparing for whatever came next.
There would be things to handle. The Ministry of Magic would have questions about Voldemort's defeat. Hogwarts would need information. The Order of the Phoenix would need debriefing. There were implications and consequences spreading out in every direction from the past few days' events, and all of them would eventually require his attention.
But right now, in this hospital room with its yellow flowers and its warm summer light and his family around him for the first time in years, he let all of that wait.
His eyes were very heavy.
He would rest for just a moment, he decided. Just a moment, while his family was talking and the healers were working and everything was, for this particular hour, as close to alright as it had been in a very long time.
He was asleep within minutes.
When his mother came to check on him sometime later, she found him unconscious in the corner chair, his head tilted back and his breathing deep and even in the sleep of someone whose body had finally decided that willpower alone was no longer an adequate substitute for actual rest.
She draped a blanket over him without waking him
In room eighteen of Tia Morrison General Hospital, with Ariana's voice which sounded rusty from disuse and was soft but real and present, asking her father what year it was and how long she'd been asleep, and with the sound of her parents carefully, gently, beginning to answer, Adrian slept.
He slept for fourteen hours.
When he woke, it was to yellow flowers in a vase, summer light through hospital windows, and his sister sitting up in bed eating soup and arguing cheerfully with Leah about whether she was strong enough to stand yet.
"No," Leah said firmly.
"I feel fine," Ariana insisted, in a voice that had improved considerably over fourteen hours. It was still hoarse and rough still learning to function again after long disuse, but carrying the familiar stubborn tone that Adrian had forgotten she used to have.
"You have been unconscious for years," Leah said, with the patient firmness of a very experienced healer and mother combined. "You are not standing up today."
"That seems like—"
"No."
Adrian watched this conversation from his chair, still wrapped in the blanket his mother had left him, and felt content as someone who has finished those heavy things and can now, briefly, simply exist.
"Good morning," Ariana said, noticing him. Her eyes were brighter than yesterday, her color was already improving.
The healers had apparently been pleased with her overnight progress.
"Morning," Adrian said.
She studied him across the room with that careful, measuring look.
"You still look terrible," she said lightly. "But better."
"High praise," Adrian said simply.
"Are you going to explain what happened?"
"Eventually."
"The tree," she said again, as she had yesterday. Not a question this time, just the word, placed carefully between them.
"Eventually," Adrian said again. "There's a lot to explain, and most of it is complicated."
"I have time," Ariana said simply. "Apparently I have quite a lot of time."
Something in the straightforward way she said it made Adrian's chest ache.
"You do," he agreed. "We both do."
He stayed for two more days.
He spent both days at the hospital and at his parents' place nearby, sleeping properly for the first time since before the battle, eating actual meals at actual tables, and in the evenings, sitting with Ariana and beginning slowly, carefully, with many gaps and simplifications and "I'll tell you the rest later's, the long story of what had happened.
He told her about the Tree of Wisdom first. The plantation, the silver leaves that had appeared after the battle. He told her about the soul energy, what it was and where it had come from, though he simplified the explanation of Voldemort's defeat significantly.
Ariana listened carefully to everything, asking sharp questions at precise moments, never interrupted when he was finding his words.
On the second evening, sitting in the home's garden in the warm summer night while his parents moved around inside the lit windows, she asked. "What did it cost you?"
Adrian was quiet for a moment. "What do you mean?"
"You said your soul merged with the tree's," Ariana said. "Completely. You said you're different now because of it. What does that mean? What did you lose?"
Adrian considered the question seriously.
"I don't think I lost anything," he said finally. "I'm changed—I can feel that clearly. There are parts of me now that weren't there before, and parts of the Tree that are more me than Tree. But I don't think that's loss." He paused. "I think it's something else. Eldra has disappeared. Previously she could contact me but now its like both our souls are completely merged and I don't feel her."
Ariana nodded slowly.
"The warmth I could feel," she said. "While I was asleep. Whatever it was that was looking for me." She looked at him. "That was both of you, wasn't it? You and the tree, Eldra I mean. Together."
"Yes," Adrian said. "I think so."
She was quiet for a while. Then said. "Thank you. For not giving up."
"Never," Adrian said simply.
It wasn't a long conversation but it was the right one.
On the morning of his third day at the hospital, Adrian told his parents he had to return to Britain.
There were things that couldn't wait any longer conversations with Dumbledore, with the Ministry of Magic, with the Order of the Phoenix. The consequences of Voldemort's defeat were rippling out through the wizarding world in ways that would need careful management.
And Hogwarts would be needing him, the school year wasn't over, and his students were still there.
His mother hugged him for a long time at the fireplace.
His father shook his hand, then abandoned the handshake in favor of a hug as well.
Ariana, from her hospital bed where she was still arguing with the healers about the timeline for standing and walking, raised one hand in a wave.
"Come back soon," she said. "With that long story you still owe me."
"I will," Adrian promised.
He stepped into the fireplace, took the Floo powder, and said the words.
The green flames took him.
Britain, and everything waiting there, rushed to meet him.
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