74 A Gift of Change

I wake up with a groan, eyes slowly peeling open, only to immediately shut again at the ridiculous amount of light pouring into wherever I am. Apparently my groan wasn't as quiet as I thought, because I hear the sound of footsteps approaching.

"Are you awake, dearie?" The voice is soft, probably so she doesn't wake me in case I was actually asleep.

"I don't want to be." I groan out, my eyes still firmly closed. "Can you do something about the light? It's too bright in here."

There's a pause, quickly followed by the sound of more movement, and then the swishing of some curtains. Tentatively, I start to open my eyes again. It's still bright, but not nearly as bad as it was before. As far as I can tell, it's morning, though with how much light is flooding the room I'd be more inclined to believe that it's mid-day.

I glance to the side when I notice motion, and what enters my sight is a matronly looking woman dressed in an old fashioned nurse's uniform. "How are you feeling, dearie? From what I hear you took quite the tumble out in the woods."

I blink slowly at her, not sure of what she means. Then the memories slowly start coming back to me. Meeting up with Hagrid for detention, splitting up, Harry being a prat, the thing, and… the unicorn.

Wait, she said I took a tumble? Did the unicorn launch me off of its side after I passed out? Aren't unicorns supposed to be pure creatures!? Is it because I drank its blood!? But it told me to! Well, as much as it could considering that it couldn't, y'know, talk.

Before I can go on a rant about how the unicorns couldn't make up its mind about being mean or being nice, the-probably-a-nurse leans in close to my face, peering into my eyes. After a moment of intense staring, she speaks.

"Well now. That's concerning."

"So is hearing those words." I rebuke, getting a snort of laughter.

"Fair enough. What color do you think your eyes are?" I'm thrown off by the seemingly random question and take a moment to think about it. Because how often does someone really take to look at their eyes and think about what color they are?

`~`

Far away, a pompous and arrogant blonde man continues to stare into his hand mirror. He turns his head, admiring himself from different angles before focusing on his eyes. "My eyes truly are quite an astounding shade of blue."

Satisfied with his appearance, he finally puts the mirror away and returns to his book signing, but is confused as to why everybody seems to have left. A glance at the clock answers his question.

He'd been admiring himself for two hours.

`~`

"They're green, why?" My eyebrows furrow as I wonder why she's suddenly asking, especially since she just stared into them.

Wait a minute, she said what color do I think they are.

The sudden bout of realization is compounded by her next words. "Oddly enough, it appears that your eyes have changed color. Now they're blood red. Do you remember falling into any kind of plants when you fell?"

I shake my head, processing this sudden and unexpected change. I ignore her rambling theories about what kind of plants might have caused my eye color to change, especially since the cause is obvious to me.

It has to be because of the unicorn blood. Of course, now that I'm thinking clearly, (which isn't much, according to most people) OBVIOUSLY drinking the raw blood of a magical beast is going to have some kind of effect! I'd probably be the luckiest person in the world if all that happened was passing out and waking up with different kinds of eyes!

Which, now that I'm paying attention, is much more than just a simple color change.

There's a faint…haze… around everything. Or not everything… but from the room itself. And a quick glance back at… whatever the nurse's name is, I see that she has the same kind of haze around her. But it's not just floating like the rest. Instead it's… going inside her? Then filtering out?

I frown as something niggles at the back of my head, something that says that this is familiar. But I'm prevented from following the feeling by the woman's concerned voice. "Oh dear, does something hurt? Are you uncomfortable? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have started you off with questions. You need rest. Especially since it's the middle of the night."

I blink at her in pure confusion. "Huh?"

Night? What's she talking about? I'm not sure what time it is exactly, what with me being unconscious and all, but the amount of light clearly tells me that it's already breaking dawn!

Obviously my confusion is clear on my face since her own morphs into a worried frown. "Now you can see why I was so worried about your eyes. It's around midnight right now, so saying that it's too bright is…"

I push myself onto my elbows, ignoring the nurse's noise of indignation, and look in the direction of the window. Peering at the edges of the curtains, I can see a bright beam of light pouring through. But it's clearly not sunlight, it's too… white, for that. And what's the only other large, natural source of light?

The moon.

With a groan I let myself fall back onto the bed. "If I can't even handle moonlight, how am I going to handle the sun when I need to go to class! Or when I need to set a prank outside for Quirrell to fall into!"

"I'll ignore that last part," says the still unnamed nurse. "As for your eyes, I can brew up a potion to make things darker for you, though hopefully that won't be needed. It occasionally has the side-effect of making the person blind for a week."

"How is that any better!?"

She continues her explanation, ignoring my completely justified outrage. "Luckily you don't have classes tomorrow, so you'll have a day to try and get used to the change."

"It was Friday night when we did our detention! I've been asleep for more than a day!?"

"That's correct." It seems that she's immune to outrage. While a good trait for someone who has to deal with probably magical ailments and injuries, it does nothing to calm my indignation!

"If you need any help getting back to sleep, let me know and I'll bring you something. I'll be right over there filling out some forms." She points off to the side where I can see a desk illuminated by a candle, and I'm surprised that the artificial light doesn't hurt when I look at it.

Taking my silence as acknowledgement, she heads over there, leaving me to my thoughts. I close my eyes, blocking out everything as I think.

'My eyes are now red. The natural light is bright, but the artificial light is not. From what I know, unicorns are generally night time creatures. Were the unicorn's eyes red?'

…

'I don't remember. But assuming that they were, maybe my eyes turned into unicorn eyes?'

'No, that's stupid. It's not like I lost my eyes and got them replaced!'

…

'Please don't tell me that drinking the unicorn's blood made my eyeballs fall out and someone stuck its own in my head.'

'Nope! Focus!'

'You know what? I'm going to sleep. Day Misha can deal with this.

And so I let my thoughts fall away, and delve into the land of occasional dreams. But even still, one thing nags at me as I fall.

'Why did she never mention the unicorn?'