Chapter 602 - Reconciliations Ⅱ (2/2)
”Potter?” James hears a frantic voice at his side when everything mercifully goes black.
It was the sound of coughing that woke James up. Fluttering his heavy-laden eyes open, he blurrily begins to peer about but is unable to see very well except for white curtains. ”Your glasses are on the pillow next to you, Potter,” a familiar Slytherin voice instructed.
Blindly sitting up, he moves his hand about on his pillow until James finds his glasses and puts them back on. Everything brilliantly comes into view as he registers the fact that he is on a bed in the infirmary. Feeling highly embarrassed at having fainted, a bright pink flush begins to spread across his face.
”Er, sorry,” James stammered in apology and utter mortification. Even to gain Lily's attention, he had never done anything so utterly humiliating! And he had done plenty of stupid and foolish things which he was far from proud of.
Rowan's face is carefully blank as she coolly says, ”I should not have given you an option, Potter. I won't repeat the same mistake a second time.”
Feeling terribly embarrassed by having revealed his weakness, James glances away from the Slytherin Prefect to stare at the white curtains. The two are silent as each chew on their own private thoughts until Rowan interjects, ”What happened, Potter?”
”I just wasn't feeling very well, that's all,” James defensively said as he folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the bed.
Rowan gives James an irritated look. ”You have never been ill in all the years that I have known you, Potter,” she flatly stated. ”And I am not a psychologist but taking your reaction it would seem that you were, in fact, having a panic attack.”
”A panic attack?” James said in disbelief before in bewilderment adding, ”And what's a psy-ko-logizt?”
”A muggle mental healer of sorts. And if that not a panic attack it may have been something similar related to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, commonly known as PTSD,” Rowan explained. Noticing his confused expression, she further explains, ”It means that unwanted memories or reliving of said memories or anything associated with said traumatic event is causing your body to trigger a defense mechanism to cope with a highly stressful situation.”
James is not able to completely hide the dismay on his face at the answer, but he is from answering as Rowan continues by saying, ”Of course, the most logical conclusion is that your body and mind are at war. Your body recalls instinctively recalls Hogwarts and other places, times, and even people. However, the mind itself rejects the body input as it does not believe that which is relayed back to it because the mind does not have any recollections of said event.”
”That is probably just it,” James mumbled with meeting the gaze of the Slytherin. Though he was rather reluctant to admit that the previously uttered statement was more in line with the true cause of his unexpected blackout. And that caused a trickle of worry to scissor its way across his chest. Because he could not afford for such an event to occur again.