November 1, 1981

Two sets of bright, sharp lime-green robes fluttered against the small hole in the window. Ray Sedgwick was asleep, the fingers of her right-hand curled loosely around her wand. The chatter of churchgoers filtered into the flat, filling it with a soft, almost imperceptible murmur. Her toes curled and uncurled inside the blanket, and then shot up straight and alert as a loud crack interrupted the Sunday afternoon sounds. Ray awoke, as on most days, with her fingers tightened around her wand, feet hitting the ground within seconds.

"Marian?"

"Yes, yes, it's me. Open up", said an impatient, hoarse voice from outside the front door.

The door had barely clicked open before Marian hustled in, breathless, and wand at the ready, her long black hair stuck in several oily strands across her face.

"You're wanted at Spell Damage, there's been a blow-up at Leadenhall, muggles need their insides fixed before the Obliviators can act"

Ray was almost out as Marian reached the end of her sentence, briskly pulling together the front of her robes over the sweater and trousers she'd fallen asleep in, and flicking her wand to rinse her mouth and set her short, curling hair in an unmoving, formal hair-tie.

"Cover up the hole in the window, keep everything locked, sleep with your wand at the ready, there's food in the fridge, and-"

"Sedgwick! Leadenhall, muggles, explosion, go, go, GO!"

Ray slammed the door and shot down the stairs. Marian watched her disapparate from the alley outside and, stopping only to transfigure the window to cover itself up, collapsed on the bed with her wand in her hand. A young, giggling Ray watched from a photograph as the enchantments of the flat clicked everything into safety.

Earlier, when she had just begun her training, Ray would amble on to Purge and Dowse Ltd, after apparating in a nearby alley. There was something about the mannequin, so smooth, so precise, among the many things Ray admired in the perfect synchronicity of the magical world. The hospital itself would be so noisy and haranguing, with the piling paperwork a trainee Healer was expected to go through alongside practical matters, and the war visible everywhere. And then there was Purge and Dowse, quiet yet containing multitudes, a fragment on the fringes of war, or even blood, one could say, for what was this war but blood, a war for blood, a war which took away blood-

But now she apparated at the far end of the fourth floor corridor: Spell Damage. At once the rush closed in upon her, and someone thrust a quill and some parchment into her hands as a voice called out, "Sedgwick, second door on the right, under Healer Bates". She entered the room to a rough, fitful voice screaming, "Where's John, where's John, is he safe, is he bleeding, we have every kind of insurance just…patch him up, fix him, oh I can't-!"

The man continued to thrash around as Healer Bates' soft voice crooned, "Your son is fine, he's right here in the next room. We need you to relax while we fix your arm". The arm in question was bleeding profusely, and Ray pulled out her wand as she sidled up to Bates and whispered, "Why can't we put him to sleep?".

Bates started and looked around sharply, and his impulses seemed to be a little off as he said, after a shake of his head, "Oh it's you, Sedgwick. He's the only one who seems not to be completely thrown off by all the magic, so we need him for the ministry. You know, witnessing…"

Turning back to the man, he said, "Now sir, please keep still, and Sedgwick here will fix your arm. Go on, then, Sedgwick, I'll hold him still". It was impossible to quieten the man, and Bates seemed wary of using a silencing charm, so Ray closed her fist upon the man's knuckles and pulled the arm straight as the man screamed. Her eyes and her wand seemed to act in tandem, in half a minute she'd spotted the shrapnel, and in the other half extracted it. The skin convalesced even as the man continued to thrash, and eventually the arm was brought to rest in an angry red swelling slowly puncturing out.

"Witnessing? At this rate?" Ray demanded, scoping in the rectangular room full of wailing cries and confused shouts, with trainees confunding and silencing and putting into bewitched sleep an array of screaming patients before acting on their wounds.

"It's a long story, I'll explain later. Remember to say 'gas leak' in case a muggle asks what happened, and when you're done with the wounds hand over to a mediwizard for the cleaning", replied Bates, moving on to the next person, leaving Ray to deal with the man whose arm she'd mended. He'd fallen into a dazed silence, perhaps because of the wand action, perhaps because of the sentences littered with unknown words. Ray's fingers ran over his chest and neck, discovering cuts and gashes and trying to locate more shrapnel. After fifteen minutes, she watched a mediwizard wheel him away for a few seconds, before moving on to another patient.

It was slow, arduous work which had to be finished fast. Bodies seemed to be made up entirely of scratches, blood was everywhere, running, congealed, infected, pus-filled. And there seemed to be more and more people waiting, screaming, demanding to know where they were and what had happened. How could we explain an entire world, Ray thought despairingly, as murmured pieces of information put together a story in her head. It was five hours before she could take a break, after being shunted from one ward to the other, from healing to observing an autopsy, from about a hundred living muggles to twelve dead ones.

"Sedgwick, take ten, Rainer is here".

She leaned against the door of the ward as Marian, who'd just arrived, pressed a tinfoil packet into her gloved hands. "There's a bunch of trainees in the tea room," she said, "go get something to eat, yeah?"

"Uh huh", Ray sighed, "God, what I wouldn't give to be back in Potions and Plant Poisoning"

"Hey, you know you will be. This is temporary, only until the war…"

Ray knew what Marian had been about to say, until the war lasts. But the war had ended, she thought. The war had ended, and there'd been revelry, all sorts of it, and all night, the ministry had been worried the Statute of Secrecy would definitely be broken, and Ray had slept – in mourning, but feeling slightly safe, her fingers around her wand, but not expecting to be called in until the evening when her shift began. And yet, a gas-leak…

Ray arrived in the tea-room sopping with sweat, having inexplicably run up the flight of stairs. Casting a surreptitious "Scourgify" on herself, she walked up to the table of trainees and conjured a sparse and straight-back chair for herself.

"'Afternoon, Sedgwick", said a rather tall man, levitating a cup of tea from the counter and setting it in front of Ray. "And how have you been doing this fine, warm day?"

"Shut up, Paul", she replied, hurriedly unwrapping the now soggy sandwich from the tinfoil, as Paul, and the other two trainees, Anita and Rob, looked on. Swallowing a huge bite, she said,

"So who's going to tell me what the ruddy hell is happening?"

"Ah, there she is", grinned Anita, "well, hold your breath, because you're going to need it to swear your arse off after you hear this"

"Well, go on then"

"Sirius Black blew up Leadenhall, killed off Peter Pettigrew of whom only a finger remains, and along with him a dozen muggles, while injuring what seems to be half of London"

Ray had already ascertained this much – even in a high-impulse quick-action ward teeming with patients news was certain to be whispered amongst healers, to help with the case, or to construct some sort of reality to the screaming, bleeding mess that a ward could be. On her way upstairs, the portraits had been talking at rapid-speed and she'd heard names ricocheting off the walls – "Sirius Black!", "…and James and Lily Potter dead only a day", "only a finger! The Dark Lord himself, perhaps, couldn't…"

"And?" asked Ray, not wanting to explain how much she knew.

"And he's going to rot in Azkaban probably"

"No, I mean, why? Why did Sirius…" and here Ray lingered, before resolving to use the last name as well, "…Black do that?"

"Why do you think?!" interrupted Rob "It's obvious, he betrayed the Potters, was angered because his master's dead, and went all unhinged when Pettigrew confronted him. Honestly, Ray!"

With that, he pushed his empty cup away, and walked out.

"It's okay, he's had a long day," said Paul calmly, "been here for 15 hours without a break".

Ray nodded quietly, and got up after a minute or two, "Well, I'd better get going too. Bates only gave me ten minutes". As she made her way down to the fourth floor, she heard portraits and healers and trainees whispering, catching drifts of phrases, all reverberating around the same name – Sirius Black. And that, she thought grimly, is the second time his name has taken over an entire building.

In the dead of the night by Leadenhall stood a man. A crack, a rustle of cloth on metal, and the footsteps of another man filled the silence.

"I was expecting you," said Dumbledore's measured, curious voice.

"I have utterly useless information from up North", spat Lupin, in an uncharacteristically grisly tone that made Dumbledore start, "Perhaps you'd like to hear it?"

"Remus…"

"Where is he?"

Lupin seemed to be waiting for a reply, waiting to pounce on a reply, any reply, and receiving none, said, again "Where is he? You can tell me, I'll only make it easier – finish him off, and then myself. There, that's a story you'll never have to tell again."

"There will be no need", replied Dumbledore, and to Lupin his words seemed cruel and calm, almost too calm, and again anger seared up in him against this man who spoke like the palm of his hand contained the entirety of this universe, the entirety of his pain.

"There will be no need", repeated Dumbledore, quickly this time, roughly and with more feeling, as if he (along with everything else he knew) knew this too, that his companion was seething with fury, "He's in Azkaban".

"In Azkaban?", and now the cadences of his tone were changing, "The trial is already done with?"

"There was no trial"

"In Azkaban, without trial?!"

Love and disbelief sound so similar, thought Dumbledore, it could take years to tell one from the other.

"In Azkaban, without trial. Bartemius Crouch…well, you know…"

"So you are sure?" and Lupin could have been 11 again, at his house when Dumbledore first came to visit, with promises of Hogwarts. But then, everyone in this war was so young…

"There is no evidence to the contrary", Dumbledore sighed. Through his silhouette he could see Lupin nodding, a lump in his throat.

Unbeknownst to them, a small rat slipped into a drain, its blood dripping into the sewerage, and as the sun rose over Ottery St. Catchpole, young Percy Weasley awoke suddenly as from a dream to see, nestled between his sheets a shivering, hurt little rat, his first pet, which Molly begrudgingly allowed him to keep.