They were right to be shocked. It took several hours to complete the examination and everything in my body was shrivelled, decayed or just plain rotten. The first potion I was given was for internal organs. It was horrible. It makes you feel very strange because your heart starts to beat regularly, which with my weak heart hurt a lot, there is air in your lungs (probably for the first time in a long time) and you feel like you are suffocating. Your brain starts working really quickly too so they give you a sleeping draught to go with it. But you have the strangest of dreams. Your stomach feels really full and then really empty and when you wake up in the morning you HAVE to go to the toilet. I mean it.

When I woke up though my uncle was at my side. He had been there the whole night and refused to leave. It’s a difficult business having organs put back together. I was still really weak so I had to take the second potion. This one was a muscle potion. It helps to strengthen bones, tissue and muscle that have been weakened. I assume it also would help my heart as that is a muscle. (yep it always comes back to that.) This one was just as bad I didn’t have to be put to sleep for it but I wish they had. I spent a day watching my arms spasm as my muscles regrew. It was a day of continual tutting from Mme Pomfrey, who went continually to and fro to the kitchens.

My third and final one was not so much a potion but a healing and retraining. Overcoming something like this isn’t an overnight remedy like breaking a bone. It is learning to be you again. I had to remember why I needed to eat and, something my friends were keen to show me was the enjoyment of eating. This wasn’t something I was going to be doing quickly though. Even with the best magic potions, retraining the mind was going to be the hardest thing. For the first week I had a concoction that I had to drink several times a day. Basically, this liquid would repair whatever needed repairing. Think of it like a milkshake. A bit like that.

It was here and now that I made a promise to my uncle and to my closest of friends that I would never hide the truth from them on purpose. I had caused not only harm to myself but to them as well and I was ashamed. These were the people I held the closest in my life and I had treated them the worst. Misled them, lied to them and I never wanted to do that again.

I was eating semi-solid food after a while. Mash, scrambled eggs and the concoction. I was getting better, getting tested every day then every week. I was allowed to sit in on a class performing magic but not allowed to do spells.