- CHAPTER ONE -

The Boy Who Survived

Healer Wilde, of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, was having what could be described as a difficult night. It was the sort of night that would have had him praying for a quiet moment to himself, if he'd had the time to pray. Unfortunately, such luxuries were not always a possibility, especially on nights like this.

Wilde had been dashing around like a mad-man. From floor to floor, from ward to ward, dealing with, what seemed to be, every conceivable magical problem under the sun. First, he had been on the Fourth Floor, dealing with a man who had somehow managed to transfigure his head into a kettle. When asked what spell he had tried to perform, he had been able only to let out a high-pitched whistle and a cloud of pinkish steam. He had left Healer Rushe dealing with that after he had been called down to the Second Floor, to the Herbert Wells Ward, to deal with a nasty case of vanishing sickness that had been making a woman's legs disappear and reappear every time she had tried to take a step.

Something close to what could be called a rest had come a couple of hours after that when he had been called to the Ground Floor to help with the recovery of a man who had crashed his broomstick, but that had not lasted long.

Before the man had been back on his feet, he'd been summoned back up to the Fourth Floor where a young wizard named Mundungus Fletcher had been waiting with his nose on the wrong side of his head, stubbornly refusing to say who had cursed him or why.

Yes, Wilde thought as he performed the spells needed to correct Fletcher's problem, it had been a difficult night.

And the worrying thing was that nights like this were becoming more and more frequent. Things had been happening lately, in the wizarding world as well as the muggle world, and not just things like noses in the wrong place or transfigurations gone wrong. There had been nasty things. Those two muggle girls who'd been found dead in the middle of Birmingham, looking as if they'd been savaged by a wild animal. The sudden disappearances of the leaders of the squib rights groups. Farms in the west country had been ravaged by freak storms, bridges and buildings that had seemed perfectly sound had suddenly crumbled or fallen down. And now there was this loony in the Daily Prophet, this Volde-something-or-other, calling for the wizards to rise up and take their rightful place above the muggles.

Wilde made an impatient noise. There were enough problems in the world at the moment without encouraging that kind of nonsense.

He'd just finished sorting out Fletcher's nose, telling him in no uncertain terms that he was to stay there and wait for the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol or else Wilde would put the nose right back where it had been, 'And you just see if I won't,' when he felt a heat coming from the pocket of his robes.

Closing his eyes, he reached in and pulled out his Caller.

The Caller had been a recent invention in the hospital, a way of calling Healers from ward to ward without the need to use owls. They had come after the administrators had decided that changes had to be made due to the bird droppings that were covering the hospital corridors. They were, in truth, nothing more than small metal bars enchanted with a Protean Charm. All a healer had to do was arrange the letters on their Caller into the name of the ward where help was needed, speak the names of the healers they wanted and the Callers in the pockets of those healers would warm up and show the same ward name. They had proved very useful.

At that moment, however, Healer Wilde was privately wishing that the administrators had never thought up the bloody things.

He opened his eyes and looked down. He felt his stomach sink.

No. Not again. Not this.

But the writing on the bar was clear as day. Second Floor, Dai Llewellyn Ward.

It had been two months since the last attack. He had half hoped that that had been the last of them.

It had been two last time. Two in the same night. Seren Jones and Elanor Abbott. Two little girls. It had been Seren's fourth birthday. Elanor had been five. Two girls from the same town, their houses not far apart. They had been having a sleepover, if he recalled correctly, a special birthday sleepover. That had been what Seren's mother had said, tears coursing down her face as she said. Seren's father and Elanor's mother had just stood there, faces like painted stone. They had had nothing to say, but what could be said?

He remembered looking down on their faces. Seren's pale blonde hair stained almost completely red by the blood while Elanor had just looked up at him. There had been an emptiness in those eyes. They had been eyes that had seen too much far too young.

Wilde looked at his watch as he headed down the stairs to the second floor. The sun would be up by now. Both girls had made it, by some miracle, as had the one who had come before them. They now lived in the hospital until their parents could sort things out at home, a way to deal with what they were now.

He was turning into the corridor that led to the ward when he saw Healers Henn, Bakshi and Rushe pushing the three beds back into the Dai Llewellyn Ward. He could see the beds' occupants. All of them looked exhausted but still breathing.

Satisfied with that, Wilde ran into the ward, his attention immediately going to the new bed in the room. One healer was already there and the three who had just arrived were going to join her. He caught Healer Rushe's eye.

'Was it…is it…?' He did not feel able to finish the question. But Rushe knew what he meant. Sadly, she nodded her head. Wilde swore loudly.

It had been him again. That same, blood thirsty, evil scumbag.

Wilde looked down at the bed. It was a boy this time, no older than six. It was exactly what he'd expected, and what he'd hoped he wouldn't find. The healers around the bed were abuzz with activity. Time was not on their side, they knew, and they needed to act fast. Wands were out and were moving carefully over the boy as all of them intoned spells that sounded half incantation, half song. Wilde stood outside the group. He felt frozen. He knew he should join the rest of them, but he had to know something first, he just did not know how to ask.

'How?' was all he could bring himself to say. Rushe opened her mouth but seemed unable to answer. He could see tears welling in her eyes. He could hardly blame her.

He'd see a lot of bad things in his years at St. Mungo's. Irreversible curses, splinchings, not to mention the things he'd seen in this very ward. Victims of dragon and manticore attacks among the other wild and dangerous animals that still roamed free in the countryside. But this was something else. This wasn't the random attacks of a wild animal. These attacks were deliberate, they had been planned. And to inflict this on children.

Healer Henn gave the explanation. To the casual observer, the senior healer appeared to be unfazed by all of this but Wilde had been in the hospital, and had known Healer Henn long enough, to be able to see the subtle clues in his face that gave away his true feelings. The truth was, this bothered and upset Henn as much as the rest of them, he'd just had more practice hiding his emotions.

'Window of the bedroom was forced open,' Henn said, his voice sharp and clinical as usual, 'the parents were downstairs and heard the noise. But by the time they got up there, they were too late.'

'Was it…Him again?' Wilde did not want to give name to the attacker. Names, in his opinion, were things that people had. And the thing that had done this, he looked around at the other beds in the ward, had done these things, was not a person. It was a monster.

Henn's mouth curled into something close to a snarl.

'Yeah,' he seemed to be forcing the words out, 'it was him. It was Greyback.'

Greyback. The name hit the air like a disgusting swearword. It was a name that had been in the Daily Prophet more often than the Pure Blood supremacist of late. A name connected to one of the biggest man-hunts of recent memory.

Wilde still remembered the first time he had seen the name in the paper. "MINISTRY INCOMPETANCE LETS WOLF RUN FREE" had been the headline.

Greyback had been brought into the Ministry in connection with the deaths of two muggle girls. But, having no wand nor wizarding record, he had passed himself off as a muggle tramp brought in by mistake. Only one from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures had recognised him for what he was and called for his arrest. The rest of questioning committee had not believed him, however, and had released him.

It had been just as they were about to wipe the "muggle's" memory that Greyback had broken free and escaped the Ministry and had since been on the run. He'd been racking up quite the body count since then. Almost every full moon, a new victim had been brought in. All of them children.

Henn fixed Wilde with a piercing stare.

'If you're finished daydreaming,' he snapped, 'we need your help with this!'

Wilde snapped to attention. What was wrong with him? There was a boy here in desperate need and he was dwelling on the past. He whipped his wand out and joined the others.

They worked. And they worked. Weaving enchantments over enchantments, charm over charm. Everything they could do, everything they had done with the others, everything that should have worked.

But sometimes healing was as much luck as it was an art. Sometimes you could do everything right but still fail. Sometimes, the powers that be were just not on your side.

Healer Henn took a step back, running his fingers through his hair, his wand lying by the boy's limp hand.

Every healer had their own way of dealing with things like this, he knew. The hospital did not allow for lengthy mourning. There was always something else that needed doing. Sometimes all a healer could do was close their eyes, take a deep breath and carry on.

After he'd opened his eyes, Wilde looked at Rushe. Tears were running thickly down her face now, and she was making no effort to hide or cover them.

'Call it,' he told her, flatly. Rushe looked at him before nodding.

'Time of death, six twenty-five a.m.,' she said. She then turned on her heel and moved to the next bed. Elanor was starting to stir.

Healer Wilde pulled the covers over the boy's face. He could see the white cotton sheets were staining red. The bite had been to the boy's right leg, just above the knee. He must have been dragged out of the bed. There were more bites and also claw marks on the arms and torso. He'd clearly tried to fight back, maybe he'd tried to push his attacker away. The name was on a chart at the bottom of the bed.

"Shihab Mahmood, age: six." He was apparently a half blood, witch mother and a muggle father. Wilde wondered when they would arrive and who would have to break the news to them.

'You alright?'

Wilde turned around. Healer Henn was looking at him, his stern eyes full of concern. Wilde heaved another deep breath, trying to steady himself.

'Yeah,' he said, almost meaning it. Henn gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder.

'Well,' he seemed to be trying, and failing, to think of something consoling to say. It seemed there was nothing for he finally turned away, 'let's just go check on the ones we could save, eh?'

Wilde nodded and followed on behind him. Elanor and Seren were both stirring now.

Despite being awake, they had not moved at all while he and the other healers had been trying to save Shihab. Wilde could hardly blame them. The transformation was a painful one and the body used so much energy, not only to transform but keep it up all night, that it left the victim completely drained the morning after.

Poor Seren looked as though she'd been forced to run a marathon while Elanor was trying, and failing, to raise her head.

'Where's mum?' Seren asked Healer Rushe as she was given her breakfast, a bowl of porridge sprinkled with sugar and a bar of chocolate, 'Is she here? Where's mum?'

Healer Rushe looked sadly at the girl. Seren's mother was having difficulty coming to terms with what her daughter was now. Perhaps she thought that if she pretended it hadn't happened, then by some magic it would suddenly be so. Wilde sighed with sorrow and irritation. Magic could do a lot of things but sometimes people just had to face reality and deal with what was.

He moved on to the third bed. The boy in this bed was sat up already and staring morosely at the tray that had been played over his lap. Wilde was a little surprised. The boy had been here longer than Seren and Elanor, of course. He still had the drained, rather ill look of someone who had been through the transformation, it was true, but the past two months he had been in the same state as Elanor and Seren the morning after the full moon.

It just goes to show, Wilde thought, how little we know of lycanthropy.

There was no cure. There was no way to treat the condition or ease the transformation. Many werewolves didn't survive their first transformation. These children were incredibly lucky, relatively speaking. The best St. Mungo's had been able to do for them is lock them in a secure area during the night of the full moon, crossing their fingers until morning, and then keep the children as comfortable as possible for the rest of the month.

Wilde sat down in the chair beside the bed. The boy didn't even seem to notice he was there.

'Good morning, Remus,' he said, in as kind a voice as he could manage.

Remus Lupin, first living victim of Fenrir Greyback, at least first known living victim, barely gave him a glance before turning a morose gaze back on the tray. It was the same as the other children. Though, while Seren and Elanor were eating the porridge as quickly as it could be spooned to their mouths, Remus had not even moved to pick up his spoon.

Wilde wondered what was going through the boy's head. He was barely five years old. It was too much, he thought, far too much for a boy this age to have to deal with.

He wanted to help. He knew there was not much he could do. Even here, in the hospital, there was nothing he could do to make the boy feel better and when he finally left. Wilde shuddered. He could only begin to imagine the kind of life this poor boy and the other two would have to live.

He slowly reached out and gently slid the small plate towards Remus.

'You should eat the chocolate, at least,' he told the boy, 'it will do you good.'

'I'm not hungry,' Remus said. His voice was flat, completely lacking in energy and emotion.

'It's not about hunger,' Wilde told him, pointedly, 'it will help.'

Remus finally looked at the Healer. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but then closed it again and picked up the bar of chocolate. He looked back at Wilde, who smiled encouragingly.

'Eat it,' he said again, 'it'll help. I'll be back to check on you in a little bit, excuse me.'

He stood up and went to leave but was stopped by the boy's voice.

'What happened to that boy?'

It was such a simple question but one that Wilde was not sure he knew how to answer. But, part of the job was making your patients think you knew exactly what you were doing. He turned back to look at Remus with a look that he hoped seemed professional yet sad at the same time.

'He was attacked,' he told Remus. He was not sure why. Remus was a child. He didn't need to know the details. Yet it seemed to Wilde that, with everything the boy had seen, everything he had been through, there was no point shielding him from things anymore. He had already seen the worst. What more harm could be done?

Remus was looking over at the bed. The bed on which Shihab's covered body still lay. So still, so small.

'Like me?' Remus asked.

Wilde could only nod. 'We couldn't save him,' he said. He wanted Remus to know that they had tried. 'His injuries were too bad.'

Remus's eyes were still fixed on the little body, obscured by the bed sheet. 'Do they know who did it?' he asked, 'Are they going to catch him?'

Wilde felt his stomach clench. Of course, the Ministry knew who'd done it. The same werewolf who had attacked Remus, and they had been trying to capture Greyback since his escape but even now, after months of searching, they had still not been able to find him.

He wanted to tell the boy all of this. He should know, he surely had a right to know. But he had made a promise. He had to respect that.

'They'll…they'll certainly try,' was all he could say. It was not a satisfying answer. Both he and the boy knew it. Remus visibly slumped back against his pillow and took a bite of the chocolate. Wilde thought he saw a little colour return to his cheeks, though perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

Wilde turned and left Remus to his breakfast. He was out of danger, at least not for another month, and he had other patients he needed to check on before he went home.

Healer Aisha Bakshi came with him. She was a relatively recent addition to the hospital staff, having arrived in the country about a month previously with her family. She had brought a lot of new things with her to the hospital, cures and remedies from her homeland based in the field of herbalism. She'd faced quite a lot of pushback from the hospital administrators on the use of these remedies, that was until they started working, and working well.

Now, thanks to her remedies, skin diseases like Spattergroit and Dragonpox were more easily treatable than they had ever been. She and Wilde had formed a good friendship in recent weeks. Maybe more than that, he thought as she fell into step beside him. Their friendly banter had seemed a little more flirtatious of late.

'Are you heading home?' Aisha asked.

Wilde shook his head. 'Soon,' he said, 'got to check on my patients first.'

'Ah yes,' Aisha nodded, sagely, 'like your man with the kettle-head?'

Wilde grunted in the affirmative. 'It was easy to figure out once he stopped spitting steam long enough to write things down. Apparently, his own kettle was taking too long to boil so he whipped out his wand to try and make it boil faster. This is why you should never try and transfigure with a hot head.'

Aisha giggled at his little joke and Wilde felt his stomach flutter.

'So…did you see the Prophet today?'

The question was asked with a forced casualness that told Wilde this was something that had been playing on her mind since she had seen it.

'No,' Wilde answered, 'I've been too busy to look at a paper.'

Aisha was somehow managing to fidget as she walked. Clearly this was something that bothered her.

'That man was in there again. The one who calls himself "Voldemort",' she tried to put as much contempt as she could onto the last word. Tried and didn't quite succeed.

Wilde scoffed, as he did every time he heard the name. Voldemort. The man who had come out of nowhere, preaching the superiority of the wizarding race, of the purity of magical blood and how this purity must be protected at all cost. Load of rot, in his opinion. If wizards hadn't married muggles, the magical blood would have died out years ago, and anyone who knew anything about biology would know that "maintaining pure blood lines" inevitably led to problems.

'You're not worried about that nutcase, are you?' Wilde asked, his voice full of real contempt. He had little patience for wizards who thought their blood made them better than others. And as for this man who called himself Voldemort, he must have thought himself something very special to give himself a name like that, Wilde did not believe for a moment that that was his actual name. He'd laugh if it turned out to be something like "John" or "Chris". 'A man like that isn't worth thinking about,' he went on, 'he's just another one making trouble.'

Aisha looked as if she wanted to believe him. 'I don't know,' she said, 'my family already gets trouble from the…muggles,' she phrased the word strangely, apparently they called non-magical people something different where she was from, 'I don't know what we'll do if we start getting harassed by these people too. Only my father is a wizard.'

Wilde opened the door for them both, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

'They're not going to bother you,' he said, 'if this nutter causes too much trouble, the Ministry will take care of him. You won't have anything to worry about.'

Aisha turned eyes up to him that were hopeful but not convinced. Their eyes met and Wilde felt that fluttering in his stomach again. He wondered if she had felt the same thing. After a stretch of time that he could not begin to guess at, Aisha turned her gaze aside.

'I should go,' she said, 'and I think you have someone who needs to talk to you.'

Aisha turned away and Wilde turned to look back down the corridor.

He shouldn't be surprised. She had been here every morning after the full moon. But even so, the sight of her still made him feel like a stone had been dropped into his gut. Besides seeing the children when they were brought in, this was probably the worst part of it; seeing the mixture of hope and despair on the faces of the parents and knowing there was nothing he could do to help.

'Healer Wilde.' Hope Lupin had a soft, almost melodic, voice which had the touch of a Welsh accent. She was a tall woman and very beautiful, with chestnut coloured hair and deep, dark eyes. Wilde could imagine many men getting lost in those eyes, once upon a time. Those eyes were filled with grief now, a pain for what had happened to her son, the secret hope that even now a cure could be found, and the bitterness at the knowledge that such a thing did not exist. 'How is he?' Hope asked. Her voice had a strange note to it, a mixture of expectancy and dread over the possibilities.

Wilde hurried to put her mind at ease. 'He's awake,' he assured her, 'he's just having some breakfast. He seems to be handling the…the condition better now.'

A sad smile crossed Mrs Lupin's face. 'I suppose that is a good thing,' she said, 'though I hope he doesn't get too used to it.'

Wilde took her meaning. Greyback was the sort of werewolf had gotten too used to the condition.

Wanting to change the subject, Wilde looked around.

'Where is your husband, Mrs Lupin?' he asked. Though she knew about the magical world, Hope Lupin was still a muggle and would have needed her husband, or at least someone magical, to let her in.

Mrs. Lupin shifted uncomfortably.

'He's still in the reception,' she said, hesitantly, 'he heard about the attack last night through his connections at the Ministry…'

Wilde thought he understood. Lyall Lupin had been the wizard who had recognised Greyback for what he had been and called for his arrest. In his anger, he had shouted that werewolves were "soulless", "evil" and "deserving nothing but death". Greyback's attack on his son had been revenge for those comments, a stroke of cruellest irony.

'It always makes him feel guilty, whenever Greyback is involved,' Mrs Lupin went on, pausing a little over the name of the werewolf, as if just speaking the name took effort, 'I think he thinks if he had just tried a little harder that day, he would have gone away to Azkaban and then Remus…' Something caught in her throat. She couldn't say anymore.

Wilde felt hopeless. What could he say? That Lyall was not to blame? That Greyback was a monster and these attacks and murders lay at his feet, no one else's? All things he had said before. All things Mrs Lupin and her husband had been told, things they knew. But knowing a thing and believing it are two different things and he knew there was nothing he could say that would make the Lupins believe it.

Instead he stepped aside and gestured towards the door.

'I'm sure he would like to see you,' he said. Mrs Lupin nodded and forced a smile.

'Yes,' she said, 'I can give him the good news. We've managed to sort things out and we'll be able to take him home as soon as we can get him discharged.'

'Oh,' Wilde said, taken aback, 'well, that is good news. I'm sure he'll be happy to get out of here and get back home.'

Mrs Lupin smiled a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. They both knew what Remus leaving the hospital meant, even if they did not say it. A return to the real world and a life of having to conceal what he was from everyone around them.

Without another word, Mrs Lupin walked past him. She was almost at the door when Wilde felt he couldn't hold back the question any longer. 'Are you ever going to tell him? About Greyback, I mean.' He had tried to keep his voice calm, he did not want her to think he was berating her or anything yet still, Mrs Lupin froze. For a moment, Wilde worried he'd overstepped the mark but then she sighed and turned to look at him. And there really were tears in her eyes now.

'No,' she said, curtly.

Try as he might not to, Wilde had to ask. 'May I ask why not?'

Mrs Lupin took a deep breath.

'I don't want my son to grow up consumed with tracking down the thing that did this to him,' she said, 'you and I both know what his life is likely to be like. I doubt there will be people queuing to give him a job. So, for as long as it is possible, as long as it is within my power, he is going to have a normal life. I can do that, at least, for my son.'

Wilde opened his mouth, closed it again and simply nodded in understanding. Without another word, Hope turned and opened the door to the ward while he turned on his heel and walked away. Remus's discharge would be a job for the healers on day duty. If they could get it sorted out today, there was a chance he would not see the boy again. He certainly hoped that would be the case.

'Good luck, Remus,' he murmured as he turned the corner and headed in the direction of the admin office, his green robes swishing around his ankles.

The work went on in St. Mungo's as the morning sun climbed into the sky. In every ward on every floor, treatments were performed and cures were given, whether they were enchantments, counter-curses or something as simple as a herbal remedy and bed rest. And on the first floor, in the Dai Llewellyn Ward, Hope sat with her son, holding him in her arms, trying not to look at the little body being carried out of the ward, and thanked any power that was listening that Remus Lupin had survived.