Author's Note: A bazillion thanks to Emmeebee for betaing, and Liza for looking this over. :)
Written for…
Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. Team/Position: Montrose Magpies, Chaser1. Task: Write about the Wolfsbane Potion. Prompts: revenge, Ministry of Magic (setting), and 2,000 words
Word Count: Exactly 2,000 words (minus A/N, title, and scene breaks)
Hope and Ruin
"Dom, I think your parents sent something."
Damocles looked up from his breakfast to appraise the haughty-looking bird on the windowsill and nodded. "Yep, it's one of theirs."
Lori smiled at him from across the table. "Are you going to get it?" He shrugged and she hurried to relieve the annoyed owl of its letter before dropping it in her fiancé's lap.
He read it in between bites of French toast, skimming over the tidy script until he reached his mother's signature at the end.
"They want to host our engagement party," he summarized.
"That's nice of them."
"If you're into that sort of thing. It'll probably be boring and fancy and there'll be a bunch of people we've never even met. Next thing you know, they'll be offering to pay for the wedding."
"And that would be so horrible, would it?" she asked with an amused smile.
"Not if you're into lace and frills – and that's not even mentioning my grandmother's dress, which they'll force you to wear." Lori wrinkled her nose. "Eloping is starting to sound a lot better, isn't it?"
"I'm not getting married in a t-shirt and jeans with total strangers for witnesses. Now go on and reply to your parents before they send a second owl," she told him, clearing their dishes. "You should invite them over for dinner too."
"That's a little extreme, isn't it?" He glanced around at their kitchen, hardly big enough for a table and chairs, and grimaced. "They're used to banquets and fine china. I'm not sure we can afford that level of sophistication."
Lori smirked. "Tell them dinner's at seven. That'll give me an hour to make this place look classy. And try to be on your best behavior. I know you don't always agree with your parents' opinions on … well, anything. But I would like for us to have a decent relationship with your family."
Damocles conceded, scrawling a hasty note to his mother and sending it off with her owl before making his way over to Lori and wrapping his arms around her waist.
"I love you, you know," he murmured, leaning down to kiss her. He felt a hand running through the untameable mess of brown curls on his head as he pulled away.
"I love you too, but do me a favor and get a haircut before you come home? I don't want your parents thinking I've turned you into a layabout."
"I'm fairly certain they knew about my laziness before we moved in together, but whatever you say, dear."
:-:
"You should just grow it out like you did at school," Murray was saying. "For a Ravenclaw, you had a rather majestic lion's mane back then."
"Good idea, except Lori doesn't think I look good with long hair. I'm pretty sure she'd have a fit if my hair rivaled hers during the wedding," Dom said before returning to the stack of inquiries on fwooper laws and sighed. As much as he loved animals, spending all day going over regulations for controlling them hadn't been what he'd expected when he joined the Ministry.
There was a knock at the office door before either of them had a chance to decrease the stack, and the department head walked in without invitation, wearing an uncharacteristic frown.
"Belby, you need to head down to St. Mungo's immediately. There's been an attack."
Damocles shared a puzzled look with his partner.
"Sir, we don't handle creature attacks," Murray put in.
"Just Belby," Mr. York repeated, looking Dom in the eye. "It's Ms. Robinson."
"Lori?" he asked dumbly.
"I sent her team out to track unicorn migration patterns this morning. From what we can tell, she's the only survivor."
:-:
It took Dom all of five minutes to locate Lori's room once he got to the hospital. He was just the right mix of charming and dangerous to have gotten the key to someone's Gringotts vault if he asked nicely enough; a room number from a teenage Welcome Witch was easy.
He had to wait outside the room while the healers finished with her. He paced the corridor for a half hour, glaring at whoever got in his way, until the room finally cleared out and a calm-looking healer approached him.
"You're Ms. Robinson's family?"
"Yes." His mouth went dry suddenly as he tried to read her. "I'm her only family. Is she alright?"
The healer pursed her lips. "Ms. Robinson went through a very traumatic experience. We've deduced that she was able to fight off her attacker after it killed the rest of her team. Even still, she's sustained numerous gashes to her arms and torso-"
"Is she going to make it?" he interrupted.
"Yes, she will survive. In what condition, we have yet to determine."
"I don't understand." Damocles was suddenly aware of Lori's other healers watching him from the other end of the hallway with weary expressions. "What aren't you telling me?"
The healer placed a hand on his arm, guiding him down the hall and into an empty room.
"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, sir, but Ms. Robinson's attacker was a werewolf. It's still unclear whether or not the toxin was passed on during the fight."
"You think Lori's a werewolf?" he summed up.
"She may well be, yes. There were several wounds that could very well have been bite marks, and she was in far too much agony to tell us. We'll know more tomorrow morning, but either way it's too late to help her."
The way the woman said it had Dom's blood boiling, as if she was telling him that his fiancée was dead rather than in recovery. He barely managed to keep calm as he asked to see Lori.
"She's been given a pain relieving potion and may be unresponsive. Try not to upset her," the healer advised, leading him back to Lori's room.
He went in alone. Apart from a few faded white scars on her arms and neck, Lori looked like she might've had the flu. She was deathly pale and there was a light sheen of sweat on her forehead. She stared at him through half-lidded eyes.
He put on a big smile that, in other circumstances, she'd have probably seen through. He sat in the lone chair in the room, hanging onto her hand like it was a lifeline.
"Dom," she croaked weakly. "Don't worry, I'll be fine."
He chuckled at the absurdity of the situation. She'd almost died but she was more worried about comforting him.
"Yes, you will," he agreed.
:-:
It was a month before she was allowed to come home. The healers were adamant about keeping her until the wounds were fully healed and the mutation was complete, which took about a week. After that, she was moved to a 'special facility' in a sleepy little town on the border of England and Wales, where she was told she could spend every full moon.
Damocles took time off work to stay with her, overseeing her registration with the Werewolf Division and asking her healers all sorts of questions about her condition.
Of course, Dom was a bit of an expert on the subject as well. Ask the man a question about any magical creature and chances were he could quote a whole host of information from the collected works of Newt Scamander. He knew all about lycanthropy and how the toxin took over one's body, but he knew very little about the medical treatment of werewolves.
"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do to help her other than to make her comfortable before and after her transformations and heal any wounds she might acquire during the night," the facility's healer informed him. "There hasn't been any headway made in a lycanthropic cure in nearly a century."
"I'm not asking for a cure exactly," he said, but not even he knew what he was really asking. He wanted Lori to be happy and pain-free, but no potion could grant him that.
:-:
"I think we should break up," Lori said casually over dinner on her third night at home.
"Excuse me?" Dom asked, taken aback. A moment before he'd been suggesting they move the wedding date back so as to not coincide with a transformation.
"I can't expect you to stay with me after all this," she continued, unable to meet his stunned gaze.
"I don't understand. Lori, I love you. I don't care what you are."
"But your family does."
The comment was like a knife to the stomach. He frowned, wondering how she'd known. He'd been sure to get rid of the insulting letters they'd sent to convey their consolations and to inform him that the engagement party was 'understandably cancelled.' Only his brother had the courage to openly show his insensitivity by asking why Damocles was still with her.
"I don't want to come between you and your family," she explained gently.
"You're not," he assured her. "You're the most important thing in my life. To hell with anyone else."
:-:
"I need to help her," Damocles told Murray on his first day back at work. He hadn't wanted to go back, but Lori insisted he stop hovering and be productive. Ironically, he couldn't focus on his designated paperwork for more than a few moments at a time.
"I understand your predicament, Dom. Lori's a great lady and it must be rough to watch her go through all that. Hell, I could even understand if you wanted to take revenge on the thing that got her," Murray said slowly. "But I'm not sure what you expect to accomplish. If a hundred healers can't find a cure-"
"Then I should at least give it a try. I mean, how many of those healers spent a lifetime fascinated by creatures and got top marks in Potions? How many of those healers are in love with a werewolf?"
There was nothing Murray could say to that but to agree to help in any way he could.
:-:
"Lori, you won't believe what we've found!" Damocles shouted the moment he stepped through the fireplace.
It had been three weeks since he'd set up the makeshift lab in Murray's basement and the duo began testing combinations of herbs and potions on small samples of Lori's blood.
"The aconite is slowing down the tainted cells!" he said excitedly, running from room to room in search of her. He couldn't wait to see the look on her face when she realized what the breakthrough could mean.
He wouldn't get the chance.
There was a letter on his pillow that explained the sudden disappearance of a suitcase and nearly all of her clothes. It urged him to forget about her; to move on and find someone new.
As he returned to Murray's house, it occurred to him that they were working on a potion to help a woman who may never receive it.
:-:
"You're sure about this, Dom?" Edwin York asked, going over Damocles' transfer papers for the third time.
In the seat across from him, bleary-eyed and pasty, the young man nodded as he tied back his long hair.
"It's just that the Werewolf Division is rather intense. And you've never been great with offensive magic. Barely passed Defense class, correct?"
"I've come a long way since Hogwarts, sir." He spoke in little more than a whisper, as if he couldn't be bothered to raise his voice. "And I think it's time for a change. The new hours will give me more time to work on my hobbies, and that will make me … happy."
"Look, I need to be sure this isn't about Lori. I can't sign off on anything if I'm going to worry you'll go missing at the first sign of inexplicable werewolf activity."
Damocles seemed to perk up a bit at the change of subject and he blinked a couple of times, suddenly more focused.
"I assure you, sir, Lori is the farthest thing from my mind."
A/N:
I am immensely proud of this piece. It's the longest fic I've written in five years, and I actually had to edit out a bunch of stuff to make it fit the 2k prompt.
Maybe one of these days I'll write the full story of Dom and Lori. :D