Standard disclaimers apply. I solemnly swear I am up to no good.
Tapestry
Falkesbane
*
The new Trainee Healer came running into the cramped office where Nora Fenwick usually took her lunch, wringing his hands and looking very harried indeed. Nora sighed, pushed aside her soup, and regarded the young man through her small spectacles. She liked the boy, really, but he had a terrible tendency to overreact whenever anything greater than a misplaced hex happened to come strolling in through the front door. "What is it this time, Jason?" she asked with resignation.
"Healer Fenwick – I know you've asked me to do more things on my own – but – you've just got to see this poor man – I don't know—"
"Show me, then," she said brusquely, getting out of her chair. She was accustomed to Jason being flustered. The green-robed boy – oh, but she had to stop thinking of him as a boy, he would be a full-blown Healer in less than a year, it was only that they all looked so young these days – led her down the corridor to one of the private rooms in her ward.
"They just brought him in," Jason whispered.
The man tucked into the hospital bed was asleep. He was also in one of the worst states Nora had ever seen in her thirty-seven years working as a Healer, and she had spent the entire war against Voldemort treating the injured – sometimes even out on the fields. Finally, he was someone she recognized, even past the matted hair and missing eye, and she swallowed a lump in her throat. "Oh my – Jason, what's wrong with him?"
"Dunno," the young apprentice said miserably. "Some Ministry folk brought him in – wouldn't tell me a thing. Wouldn't talk to the receptionist, either.
"You do know who he is, though – that's Alastor Moody."
"The ex-Auror?" Jason asked with amazement. "I heard he was as batty as Lockhart upstairs!"
"Maybe so," Nora said grimly. "I'll look at him, Jason. You can go and check if that little Gerda Harcourt is taking her Pepper-Up Potion every hour – she hates the taste of it, poor thing."
"Right," Jason said, clearly grateful to be dismissed. He was gone in a swish of green. Nora looked after him for a moment. Young people – they were all so afraid of sickness and age, and surely Jason had been made uncomfortable by the painfully thin old man now sleeping.
Nora pulled up a chair next to Moody and pulled down the blanket. Someone had not bothered to dress him in hospital garb; he was wearing a thin long shirt of grey cotton and nothing else, and two stick-like, scrawny legs, flushed an unhealthy grey, were striking against the white sheets. She noticed, too, that his scalp was plucked bald in places. She drew out her wand, said the proper incantation – "Colecrinis!" – and watched as it grew back to a normal, if not messy, head of hair.
It took a few minutes for the hair to reform itself, and Nora was glad of it. She didn't quite want to wake him up. From what she remembered of him – and she couldn't remember much, for she tried to push most of those old thoughts away – he had been rather gruff and altogether insensitive.
But she couldn't forget other parts – the Auror who had appeared to St. Mungo's right away – that hadn't been Moody, it'd been another man. He hadn't known her name, that Auror, just her green robes and the Healer's emblem, and he'd grabbed her by the wrist, telling her they needed help, and soon.
Nora shook her head, as though casting the memory away. There was no time for foolish dallying. Carefully tucking the blanket up to Moody's waist – men tended to be so particular about modesty, and all the scars on his legs were obviously old wounds – she pointed her wand at him again.
"Vigilio!"
Moody sat up with a jolt, then pressed a hand to his side, wincing at what Nora was sure had been a blinding flash of pain. "You're in St. Mungo's," she said softly, putting on her best solicitous-Healer voice. "Can you tell me what happened?"
His head swung round to look at her, and she started a bit at the sight of the empty hole where his famous magical eye should have been. His normal eye scanned her, taking in the wand-and-bone, and then it looked up to meet her gaze. His teeth were gritted. "I was locked in my own trunk," he managed.
"What?"
But he had stopped looking at her; his hand had gone to where his eye should have been, and he was surveyed the room as though it were an enemy base to be staked out. "Where's my eye?" he growled.
"I don't know. The Trainee Healer brought you in here, and they told him nothing. Lie still, you've got to be quiet while I look at you," she said, gently pushing him back down. She unbuttoned the shirt, trying not to stare at that one eye – and let out a small gasp when she saw how marked his body was.
It was a wretched tapestry of scars and fresh wounds, some of them so large that she was amazed he was alive, some of them magical, some of them animal-bites. "Locked in a trunk," she muttered. "Where did you get some of these?" She did a quick bit of wandwork, patching up the wounds where necessary. None of the newer ones were large enough for bandages – but it was though someone had needed his blood – and other bits of him – in tiny increments. She knew of his history; she wondered, briefly, if he had been tortured.
But he was looking at her again, and seemed not to have heard her question. "I know who you are," he said, far more lucid and almost accusatory. "You're the Healer who went after Evan Rosier."
Nora felt the blood draining from her face, and abruptly the memories assaulted her. "I was a little emotional at the time," she said, rising out of her chair, unable to look at him. "You need something to eat – I'll go – I'll come back." And she darted out into the hall without another word.
Now all the things she had tried to repress were screaming at her. The unnamed Auror had brought her to a house she hadn't known, where two Muggle-born witches lay unconscious and bleeding on the ground. She had tended to both of them – both of them would live, but the psychological after-effects of Crucio would surely alter those lives forever – and the Auror had thanked her, shaking, and then Alastor Moody had burst through the front door with terrible news—
Fenwick's been blasted to bits – Rosier did it – I'm going after the bastard.
Jason passed her in the corridor. "Healer Fenwick? Are you all right?"
"What? Jason!" She jumped, and then realised how foolish she looked. "Yes – yes, quite well, thank you. Is Gerda Harcourt all right?"
"You were right about her not taking the Pepper-Up," Jason said with a slight smile. "How's the old man?"
Nora flinched. "Fine. I've just got up to get him something to eat."
She went to the kitchen area on the first floor and managed to con a sandwich and a glass of pumpkin juice out of the house-elves working there; she attempted to clear her mind as she went back up the lift to Moody's room.
He was waiting for her. She put down the tray of food; Moody made no move to touch it. "Yes, I'm right – you're Fenwick's wife. Almost got yourself killed."
"Nora Fenwick," she elaborated.
"Right."
"Idiot, that Benjamin," she said quietly, not really meaning it. The old hurt tore open, when she thought it had disappeared, and suddenly it was as though Benjy's face was swimming before her, floating and laughing, smiling as he had when they had married. She felt very much like vomiting. "I didn't know he'd joined – joined your group. He was just a Floo Regulator, after all. I would have told him not to."
"Well, I imagine that's why he didn't." Moody's voice was oddly gentle. "People risk their lives, Healer, and sometimes the risk doesn't pay off. Your husband was a good man and he did good things for us – he helped stop the war, he saved several lives."
Nora let out a shaky laugh. "Do you know, I thought he was cheating on me – I accused him of it so many times. He never would tell me where he was going, all those nights – and my mind just leapt to the worst explanation—" She cut herself off. "I'm sorry I followed you that night. I couldn't think – he was my husband – and I knew you were tracking Rosier."
"Sorry I spoke without thinking," he returned. "Can't have been nice to hear about your husband's death in passing like that."
"It wasn't," she said, feeling entirely unreal. She remembered tailing Moody, seeing him watching Rosier and darting out in front of him, threatening to murder the Death Eater herself and almost getting to join Benjy right then and there. "Thanks for saving my life," she added, almost inaudibly.
"Thanks for patching up my nose afterwards," he said, matter-of-factly.
"I wish it had been me who killed Rosier." The image of Moody and Rosier squaring off entered her mind; she had been immobilised on the ground, unable to move her eyes away as Moody finally finished the other man with the Killing Curse. Then, realising where they were and what her responsibilities entailed, she shifted her voice back into Healer mode. "How do you feel, then?" she asked, painfully aware of how hollow her voice sounded. "I imagine – you being who you are – that you won't tell me much about what happened."
"I don't remember it much myself," Moody said succinctly, an ugly look crossing his features. "I've been cursed and Obliviated far too much in the past year, I imagine." He gave a short, barking laugh that was the exact opposite of amused. "So much for constant vigilance."
"In the past year? But who would do that?"
"I don't think I can say," he said crossly, picking up the sandwich, sniffing it carefully, then, apparently deciding it was without poisons or curses, taking one long bite out of it. "Benjy Fenwick was a good man, Healer," he said through a mouthful of food. "I hope you don't regret anything he did – there ought to be more men like him."
"I know," Nora said. Oh, how Moody had lectured her afterwards! She'd knelt in front of him, numbly tending to where Rosier had taken a chunk out of his nose, letting the Healer rituals take over, and he had gone on and on about never attacking in anger, but she had hardly taken in a word of it. "I – I suppose I'm glad he worked for our side – I'm glad he helped – because it's good that it's all over."
She was not prepared for Moody's reaction. His one eye narrowed and he dropped the sandwich back onto the plate, glaring at her as best he could. "All over, is it?" he muttered. "There might be another day, Healer, when you find yourself out performing medicine on the field again."
"What – what do you mean?"
"There are still Dark Wizards out there. Rosier might be gone, but there are ones who would take his place, and when we run out of men like Fenwick – then they win. You just can't stop watching your back because times seem to have calmed down – that's how they get worse."
She regarded him, stricken, for a moment. Her first thought was that he had grown to be as paranoid as the rumours had claimed. "Are you saying – are you saying that the Death Eaters are coming back?" Fleetingly, she recalled reading about the incident at the Quidditch World Cup nearly a year ago – but that had been an isolated thing – surely—
Moody opened his mouth to say something else, but Jason poked his head in the door just then. "Healer Fenwick? We've got a man coming in with a bad Jelly-Legs case – won't reverse no matter what he tries."
"All right, Jason." Nora cast one long look at Moody, then lowered her voice so that only he could hear; without thinking, she snaked out her own hand to touch his, briefly. "For both our sakes," she whispered, "I hope you're wrong." Then, adjusting her robes, she straightened herself up. "Get some rest," she ordered, switching again to the Healer voice. "I'll see you in the morning."