Maude did not show up the next day either. Snape did, accompanied by Mulciber; apparently Avery was in detention for levitating some chewed pieces of Drooble's gum right through Professor Binns. Mulciber didn't stay long, and soon Barty and Snape were alone in the room, once again debating various theoretical potions.
The day after that, Madame Pomfrey told Barty he could leave the hospital wing and resume his regular schedule, although she told him to make sure he got an acceptable amount of sleep. He ran to the Ravenclaw dormitories and got his bag of school supplies, and then headed to Transfiguration, the first class of the day.
Upon arriving in Professor McGonagall's classroom he took a seat at a desk near the back of the room. The rest of the class filed in over the next few minutes, and Professor McGonagall took her place at the front of the room. As she began explaining the assignment for the class, Barty noticed that something was missing. It took him a minute to work out what it was; Maude was not present.
She was not present in any of Barty's other classes throughout the day either. After the last class was over, he went to the Charms classroom to speak to Professor Flitwick.
"Hello," the Charms professor squeaked, as Barty knocked on the classroom's half-open door. "Can I help you with something?"
"Yes. Professor, I'm looking for Maude Peterson; she wasn't in her regular classes today, and I wondered if you knew where she was."
"Ms. Peterson? No, I'm afraid not. Perhaps Professor Sprout would know; she is the head of Hufflepuff house."
"Right – thank you, Professor."
"Don't mention it!" Flitwick chirped happily as he departed. Barty, on the other hand, was far from happy – he was beginning to feel extremely worried. The possibility that Maude had not been avoiding him, but was instead in some sort of trouble, probably relating to her illness, was beginning to seem more likely as the day went on. He went down to the greenhouses, and searched both Greenhouse One and Greenhouse Two before finally locating Professor Sprout in Greenhouse Three. The Herbology professor was pruning a number of Venomous Tentacula plants.
"Hello, Professor, may I ask you a question?" asked Barty without preamble.
"Of course. What do you want to know?"
"A Hufflepuff friend of mine, Maude Peterson, hasn't been in class all day. Do you happen to know where she is?"
Sprout's normally friendly face suddenly took on a somewhat closed expression. "I do, but I'm afraid I can't tell you. Sorry."
"Does this have something to do with her illness?" Barty asked directly. He could tell by the way Sprout's bushy eyebrows shot up into her flyaway hair that his guess had been correct.
"She told you about that?" the squat witch inquired.
"Yes – it was during Christmas break, there was a misunderstanding and she said she had Tredwick's syndrome. Look, please, I'm not going to tell anyone about it, I just want to know if she's alright."
Sprout's expression had changed from surprised to rather sad. "Ah. Well. I'm sorry, but no, she isn't. She's been in St. Mungo's since the day before yesterday. It doesn't look good; in fact, it looks as though she won't recover this time," the Herbology professor finished quietly.
"Thank you," said Barty, numbly. He turned and walked back to the castle, and then to the Ravenclaw dormitory, where he left his bag. Departing the common room and heading in the direction of the Headmaster's office, he passed Snape and Avery going in the opposite direction. Snape started to say something to him, but he ignored the sixth year and continued on his way.
As he approached the stone gargoyle that marked the entrance to the Headmaster's office, Barty stopped abruptly and leaned against a wall. The fact that Maude was going to die had finally hit him. Yes, he'd known it would happen ever since they agreed to be friends, but it had been a distant, vague event, never seeming quite real. Yet now, with Sprout's matter-of-fact statement repeating in his mind, he couldn't ignore the fact that this was really happening, that his friend was actually about to leave him, and everyone else, permanently.
Barty clenched his hands into fists and stood away from the wall, swaying slightly. He remained like this for quite a while, until the gargoyle further down the corridor leapt aside and Professor Dumbledore emerged from the resultant doorway.
"Bartemius. What are you doing here?" asked Dumbledore, smiling at him.
Barty was silent for a second, trying to pull himself together, before he replied, "I need to take some time off from school." He sincerely hoped that the Headmaster would not ask why he needed the time off; it had been difficult enough for him to tell Sprout about his friendship with Maude. His rather introverted personality was quite strongly repelled by the idea of telling anyone else about such a sensitive matter.
Dumbledore looked at him with an expression that was slightly more knowing than Barty would have liked, blue eyes twinkling behind half-moon glasses. "Of course. I shall explain to my colleagues that you will be absent for a short while."
"Thank you, sir," Barty said rather mechanically, before walking quite quickly away down the corridor. He glanced back once to see Dumbledore watching him.
Floo powder enabled him to travel to the Ministry of Magic in London, and from there he walked to St. Mungo's. The welcome witch in the front room of the hospital told him where to find Maude. As he arrived in the hallway outside his friend's room, he saw a grim-looking Healer speaking to a pair of solemn adults who somewhat resembled Maude. After hesitating for a second, worried that he wouldn't be allowed to enter his friend's room, or worse yet, that he was too late and she'd already died, he approached the three people.
They turned to look at him, and he noted that both Maude's parents – as he assumed the middle-aged couple were – appeared slightly surprised. The Healer just looked tired.
"Hello," Barty said, his voice slightly higher than normal. "Mr. and Mrs. Peterson?"
"Yes," replied the woman, Mrs. Peterson, guardedly.
"I'm a friend of Maude's from school," he explained, and then went quiet. He quite suddenly found himself unable to speak. The Petersons stared at him with morbid curiosity. It was almost comical, he reflected somewhat hysterically, that he'd spent all this time worrying about Maude, researching ways to help her, and traveling here, only to be delayed or even stopped by a ridiculous lack of social skills.
"Er – er – may I please go into the room?" he finally managed to stammer. He would have been proud of this, as he'd never before succeeded in continuing to speak after being hit by his unreasonable nervous speechlessness complex, but he was too afraid that Maude might be dead or dying at the present time.
Mr. and Mrs. Peterson looked at one another, their expressions almost emotionless. Mr. Peterson shrugged. "You can go in," he answered.
Barty immediately moved into the room, shutting the door behind him. The dim lighting made it difficult to discern his surroundings, but he could tell that no one was in the room except for himself and Maude, who lay on a bed in the center of the room. Some part of Barty's subconscious noted approvingly that the bed was in the exact center, positioned precisely the same distance from either wall. He walked over to the bedside and gazed down at Maude.
"Hey. Barty," she whispered, giving him a small, surprised smile. Her normally round face was sunken and her skin was a sickly pallid yellow.
"Hello," he replied tersely.
"How did you know I was here?"
"You weren't in class or at meals. I guessed."
"Right. Shouldn't be surprised. You're a genius after all."
"I'm not." Barty pulled a chair over to the side of the bed, setting it at a perfect right angle. "I tried to figure out a cure. It didn't work."
"Told you not to do that," she sighed, but she didn't seem particularly bothered. "Glad you showed up. Healer hasn't said anything explicit, but I don't think I've got much more than a couple of hours. Maybe less."
He didn't reply, but looked down at the floor and sniffed. She moved her hand and, with an effort, lifted it up to hold his. Eventually, he asked, "Are they doing anything for you here?"
"Sure. Healer cast a numbing spell on me, so my chest won't hurt so much. Stupid sick lungs. Put a stone on that stand there. See how it's glowing? When it goes out I'm dead. Suppose they put it there in case I fall asleep and don't…" She trailed off.
"Have your parents already said goodbye, or something?"
"Yeah. Don't want to stay in here for when it actually happens, I suppose. Shouldn't say I blame them, but I do. Shallow old bastards." She laughed softly, but it turned into a wheezing cough. Barty didn't find it funny at all.
"Do you mind if I stay?" he asked, his voice sounding choked up.
"Not at all, if you like. Nice to have someone here. I should be terrified, I suppose, but I'm not. Dunno why. Numbing spell probably went to my head."
"That can't be the case. The Healer would have been careful to localize the effect."
Maude rolled her eyes. "Do you think I care? Just making conversation… jeez."
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize. It'd stink if the last thing you got to say to me was 'sorry', no?"
Privately, Barty thought it would be rather appropriate, given his unsuccessful attempts at developing a cure, but he didn't voice this opinion. He did not want the last thing he said to Maude to be a disagreement.
"D'you know anything about mythology?" asked Maude abruptly.
"Which one?"
"Whatever. Norse, Aztec, not Greek, though."
"I suppose so. Binns mentioned Norse mythology frequently in the third year."
"Did he really? I wouldn't know, I slept through most of History of Magic. Anyway – I assume you heard about Ragnarok and all that?"
"Yes."
"Hm. Just been thinking about that, end-of-the-world kind of stuff, lately. Might sound awful, but I was thinking it would be a lot easier to feel calm about dying if everyone else would die at the same time. Is that just me?"
"Possibly. I haven't thought about it before."
"Not saying I actually want the world to end," Maude clarified, "but you know… Actually, right now I find it hard to care. The world can bloody well end as far as I'm concerned, I won't be around to notice. Selfish, I suppose."
"No, I don't think so," Barty replied, sincerely. "You can intellectually not want the world to end, but still emotionally not care at all, or even want it to happen."
"Think so? Probably right. Ah well." Maude's voice had been growing gradually quieter as she spoke, until Barty had trouble hearing it even when he leaned in very close to listen. She had shut her eyes, and looked extremely tired. Barty was suddenly afraid she'd died just then, but he glanced at the stone on the stand beside the bed and saw that it was still dimly glowing. Still, it was clear Maude was not going to last much longer.
"Would you like me to get your parents?" he asked.
"Nah. No real reason to. I don't give a damn. Stick around, Barty, okay?"
"Okay."
She didn't say anything else. The stone's glow slowly faded until only a tiny spark was left in its very center. After a while, Barty realized even that had gone out, and Maude's hand was growing cold in his own. He shakily released it and placed it on her chest.
Getting up, he pulled the chair back to its original position in the room and then returned to the side of the bed. Oddly, he felt no particular urge to cry. He moved a strand of Maude's hair from one side of her face to the other, so that she had the same amount of hair on both sides, and then bent down and hugged her around the shoulders. After a few seconds he let go and walked out of the room.
The Healer, waiting at the door, looked questioningly at Barty, who shook his head. The Healer nodded grimly and entered the room. Barty headed off down the hall, towards the exit. As he passed Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, he stopped and turned to face them.
"I suppose I should say something consoling to you at this point," he told them, feeling for some reason slightly detached from reality. "I will not do so. Go to hell."
He departed St. Mungo's and made his way to the Ministry. Everything around him still seemed surreal, and a few times he wondered if all of what had recently happened was just a dream. Arriving back at Hogwarts, he proceeded to the Ravenclaw dormitory.
As he entered the room, he was accosted by a fellow fourth-year, who started to ask him for some help with Arithmancy homework. Unexpectedly, Barty felt suddenly furious. He actually pulled his wand out, for what purpose he wasn't entirely sure, and the student backed away rather quickly.
"Oi! It was just a question..."
"Leave me alone," said Barty. He raised his wand, noting with detached interest that his hand was shaking rather badly. Judging from the expression on the student's face, he gathered that he looked relatively alarming. The student gave an indistinct exclamation and threw a newspaper at him, presumably to distract him from casting a spell, and then darted off down the stairs.
Barty caught the newspaper and walked quickly into the dormitory, where he threw the paper on the floor and threw himself onto his bed. The realization that Maude was dead finally got through to him, and he sobbed into the sheets for a considerable time. He wished the world would end so she'd have someone to die with.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed before he managed to calm down. Sitting up in the bed, he thought morbidly that perhaps it was good he'd never gotten close to his parents; they were both getting on in years, and this way he wouldn't miss them as much when they died. Possibly, he reflected, it was best not to become attached to anyone at all – but then he remembered how much he'd enjoyed spending time with Maude, talking to her, playing chess and doing homework, and he didn't think he could deal with not having anyone to be close to. Remembering Maude made him break down again, and by the time he recovered it was dark out.
What he needed, Barty considered, was a friend who wouldn't die before he did – assuming he could get over Maude's death, which seemed unlikely at the moment. If he did, though… it should be someone younger than he was, perhaps. On second thought he decided age made almost no difference; too many people died of unnatural causes, particularly during the present war against Voldemort. He reflected on the famous saying 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all', but found he couldn't agree with it; he would have wished he'd never met Maude if it was only himself who was involved. As it was, he was glad he'd known her so that she'd had someone to stay with her when she died.
Wiping his eyes, he looked down at the neat, symmetrical piles of books next to his bed, deciding to try and distract himself with some reading; he doubted the strategy would work, but it was worth a try. His gaze fell on the newspaper he'd thrown to the floor earlier. It had a large, flashing headline. He picked it up.
The Death Eaters Strike Again, it read. In smaller print slightly below the headline, it added, Will You-Know-Who's Reign of Terror Never End? The Followers of the Seemingly Undefeatable Dark Wizard Cause Twelve More Deaths. Barty stared at the page, and then began reading the article, which was apparently written by someone called Rita Skeeter. It was mainly devoted to lamenting the fact that as of yet, no attempts to defeat Voldemort had been successful, and then berating the Aurors and political figures who had managed the attacks for their lack of progress. Barty noted with mild interest that his father was mentioned as one of the ineffective politicians. He was more interested, however, in Skeeter's apparent conviction that Voldemort was effectively impossible to defeat.
He finished the article, and lay back on his bed, thinking. Of course Voldemort was hardly a possibility for a new friend – the very thought was ridiculous. The article had given him some ideas, however. Someone who was skilled in various forms of magic was less likely to be killed, and less likely to die in an accident. At first he couldn't think of anyone close to his age who was as talented in that respect as he himself was; but on further reflection, he remembered Severus Snape's considerable skill at potions.
Yes, Barty reflected, perhaps he would talk to Snape in a few days. No one would ever be as good a friend as Maude, he assumed, but maybe, just maybe, it was possible to move on. What he needed was someone who would never die.
Well, there it is. I hope I handled the whole 'terminal illness' subject with appropriate gravity. Anyway, please do review, I'm really unsure about how this story came out and I'd very much appreciate your input, whether positive or negative. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it.