A/N: This is my entry into the QLFC Season 6, Round 11. Beater 1 for Pride of Portree. The theme this round was Who's Afraid of the Dark? My prompt was Cujo - Stephen King. My optional prompts were: (word) fatal and (location) St Mungo's.
W/C: 2,997
Beta love: sekdaniels, brownlark42, Sehanine
This is AU set sometime post-trio Hogwarts. I took the inspiration from Stephen King's Cujo but wanted to examine what it would be like to see the story from a first responder/medical point of view.
Summary: Something is attacking witches and wizards in Wiltshire. Healer Granger doesn't have enough information to formulate a hypothesis and when Aurors Potter and Malfoy are brought in, she's faced with a past she wants to forget.
Mange
"Healer Granger! We've another one!" a mediwizard shouted at Hermione as he levitated a gurney through the corridor to a triage bay. Hermione signed the last bit of paperwork and shoved the chart into the hands of a waiting mediwitch with a quickly muttered thanks. She ran into the triage room to assess the damage.
It was bad. Another kid, maybe Hogwarts age, perhaps a year or so younger. Hermione ran her wand over the child. There was blood pouring from their side, more matted in their hair and Hermione couldn't tell whether the child was a witch or wizard.
"Where from?" Hermione asked.
"Wiltshire, ma'am," the emergency technician informed her. He was holding a bandage to the wound on the side and Hermione gestured for him to take it away.
"Holy mother of Merlin, what did that to him?" the mediwizard swore under his breath as Hermione began siphoning the blood from the wound. She winced when she realized that whatever got the child had taken part of the colon, spleen, and small intestine. She hoped they'd got to the patient in time.
"Organ Regeneration Potion, stat," Hermione ordered as she began closing the tangle of wounds. "Followed by Blood Replenishing and General Antibiotic Solution."
Several hours later, Hermione was finishing her paperwork for the day when the head of St Mungo's patient care barrelled through the door of her office.
"Any idea what's going on out there, Healer Granger?" Hippocrates Smethwyck asked as he perched in her visitor's chair.
Hermione sighed. "No. Some sort of animal, but the bites have been too messy to identify. By the time the patient dies, we've done so much magic to save them that we can't get the body back to the condition where we can see what the bite should look like. If I had to guess, I would say canine."
"Werewolf?" Smethwyck asked.
Hermione shook her head. "I don't think so. I saw no signs of werewolf poisoning and silver does nothing to the wounds. On the few patients who have lived, we've been able to heal the wounds completely, leaving no scar. A werewolf attack would most definitely leave a scar. Also, werewolves don't have any sort of numbing agent in their saliva. I'm convinced that whatever is doing this has anticoagulant properties and possibly something that makes the patients forget their attack entirely. It's been fatal for most of the patients, and those who live have no memory what happened to them."
"Are they all coming in from the same area?" Smethwyck asked rubbing his cheek absentmindedly. He looked tired.
"Wiltshire primarily, a handful from Dorset."
"How many victims?"
"Fourteen."
"Salazar's Rod! So many? Why wasn't I informed before today?"
"Healer Smethwyck, I don't make the rules. I just treat the patients," Hermione snapped. "I'm surprised the Auror Department hasn't been all over this already."
"And you haven't brought it up to your friend? Potter? "
"I've been working sixteen-hour days for the last week. We've had multiple victims each day. I haven't exactly had a chance to catch up with old school mates." Hermione bit her lip to keep from saying more. Ever since her divorce from Ron, she and Harry hadn't seen each other much.
"Right, sorry." Smethwyck rubbed his face again. "I'll call the Ministry now then. We have to figure this out."
Hermione nodded and didn't say anything more.
"Go home and get some sleep."
"Aye-aye, boss," Hermione muttered as he turned and left the room. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side to ease the tension in her neck.
She hadn't been entirely truthful with Smethwyck; she'd been working far more than sixteen hours most days. Once the attacks increased, she was spending time after her shift sifting through patient records in an attempt to figure out what was causing this. A sudden thought made her sit straight up. The attacks had consistency, even if the bites were chaotic. Perhaps it was a pack of animals? And that's what made the wounds so messy?
Hermione shook her head as she realized she wasn't getting anything else done for the day and decided to pack up. A hot bath and a deep sleep sounded perfect at the moment—as long as she could keep her thoughts away from the gruesome aftermath of the unknown monster.
"Another one?" Hermione asked as she approached the mediwitch's station first thing the following morning.
"Three overnight, actually," Susan Bones, one of the mediwitches murmured. "All dead by the time the sun came up."
Hermione sighed heavily and held back the curse word that was poised on her lips. There wasn't anything she could do about the patients who were dead. "Any chance of identifying what's doing this to them?"
Susan shook her head. "Too much magic used to save their lives."
Hermione nodded and wished for a fleeting moment that they'd find a dead victim they could then study. She shook the thought from her head; she truly didn't want anyone else to die, but if they couldn't figure out what sort of beast was roaming the Wiltshire countryside, then more people would die.
Halfway through her day, Smethwyck caught up with her as she was scarfing down a sandwich and marking charts.
"Healer Granger," he knocked on her door. She looked at him briefly and swallowed before waving him in. "We've got a meeting with the Aurors in an hour. Conference Room C."
"Right, I'll be there," Hermione nodded and offered a small smile to Smethwyck who frowned at her. She sneered at him when he turned his back. He was a pompous blowhard and Hermione wished she didn't have to work so closely with him, but Smethwyck was in charge of patient care the hospital over, which made him Hermione's boss. She rubbed the permanent crease between her eyes in an attempt to soothe a gathering tension headache. She needed a cool head before her meeting with the Aurors, and she didn't fancy seeing either Harry or Ron again. Maybe the Ministry would send someone else…
She could only hope.
"Come here, you wee beastie… that's it, in the cage," the white-haired magizoologist said as he herded his newest creation into the cage he'd created for it. He'd thought the cross-breeding would give the new species a mild enough temperament to sell to the public. Sort of like how Muggles had designer dogs.
Unfortunately, that hadn't been the case. This latest version was the most aggressive by far and he was starting to think that this program may be a lost cause. At least the Aurors hadn't tracked him down yet. He sighed as he patted one of the beast's heads, giving it a bit of a scratch behind the ear. He'd hate to have to put them all down when the Aurors did show up. He hoped his wards would alert him before they realized who he was.
Hermione found Conference Room C empty when she arrived. She glanced at her watch to see she was right on time. Either everyone was late, or Smethwyck had moved the location of the meeting and not told her. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, hoping someone would be down soon.
She hated going to the conference rooms. They were all located underground and had short ceilings which made them oppressive and dreary.
"Ah, good to see you are on time, Healer Granger," Smethwyck said from behind her. He entered the room and Hermione opened her eyes in time to see him frown. "Aurors are always late," he muttered under his breath. "Come in then, let's go over the case files."
Hermione entered the room and sat next to Smethwyck, going through all of the files he'd brought with them. In the end, it wasn't much. They surmised it was a magical creature, but they had no hard evidence. They knew it was in Wiltshire, perhaps the southwest side of the county as evidenced by the few cases from Dorset.
Most of the injured had been children and young adults, with a few cases of elderly attacks. Hermione wondered if any Muggles had been attacked. If the Auror department wasn't aware of the case prior to now, would anyone know if any Muggles had been attacked?
"Ah, here we are gentlemen," a soft voice said from right outside the door. Hermione consciously didn't look up, pretending to study the file before her.
Please not Harry or Ron, she prayed silently. She couldn't stand to see them again. They were both so antagonistic after the divorce.
Smethwyck next to her stood. "Thanks for coming."
"Of course," Harry replied and Hermione felt nausea claw its way from her stomach and up her throat. She swallowed it back quickly before it could overwhelm her. "Hermione."
"Granger," another voice from her past sneered and Hermione's head whipped up to see not only Harry Potter standing in the entrance of the conference room but also Draco Malfoy. She struggled to keep her face blank at their arrival despite her inner turmoil. If it was possible to be worse than Ron...
Harry looked at her coolly, his green eyes registering her presence, and turned his attention to Smethwyck. Malfoy quirked an eyebrow at her before he too turned his attention to the head of hospital.
"Hello," she said simply as Smethwyck guided them into the room and took their seats. Hermione looked back down at the case files, attempting to control her breathing. Now would not be a good time for a panic attack. She hadn't spoken to Harry since she and Ron had divorced two years prior; and she hadn't seen Malfoy in at least five years. Hermione lived a fairly solitary life these days, mostly going to work and the grocery when she had a moment.
"What do you think, Granger?" Malfoy said breaking Hermione from her reverie. She glanced up sharply to see his intense gaze upon her. The sneer that had traced his mouth earlier was gone now, and his face only held interest and perhaps something more, an emotion she couldn't identify.
"Canine, but unless we find a victim already deceased…" she shook her head. "The issue is when attempting to save the patients life, we end up using too much magic to close the wound. By the time the patient dies, the magic has obscured the wound to the point where we can't examine it properly. But definitely canine and definitely magical." She kept her thoughts of the pack animals to herself, as she really didn't have evidence to support the idea.
"You should probably contact the Muggle authorities and see if there have been any Muggle victims. At this point, we don't know if it is that discerning."
"Right, we'll get on that," Harry said with a nod but avoided Hermione's eyes. Malfoy was drumming his left index finger up and down—tap—tap—tap. His fingernails were perfectly manicured—of course—and Hermione yanked her hands off the table, hiding her own chewed nails from sight.
"Why are you convinced it's magical?" Malfoy asked, eyeing Hermione once more. She dropped her gaze again, suddenly uncomfortable.
"There are properties of the saliva of the creature that have to be magical. Anticoagulants are common in Muggle animals, but I suspect that this creature's saliva also has something in it to cause irrecoverable memory loss and perhaps a numbing agent as well."
The meeting dragged on. She flinched when Harry and Malfoy hissed at hearing the number of fatalities. Smethwyck dismissed her as Harry and Malfoy began castigating him for waiting so long to call in the Aurors. Hermione was happy to flee the room and she escaped to her office for a few moments respite before heading back out to the triage center.
Later that evening, Hermione was working on case notes, hiding in her office because Harry and Malfoy were in the emergency department interviewing the staff when there was a knock on the door. She looked up and frowned, nobody around the hospital knocked.
"Come in," she called, looking up expectantly.
Malfoy appeared in the doorway, and Hermione immediately looked down at her desk, hoping that Harry wasn't with him.
"Don't worry, Potter's still upstairs," Malfoy drawled, echoing Hermione's thoughts.
"What do you want?" Hermione asked softly, still refusing to look at him. She made another mark on the chart, pretending to read over her notes, but her heart was beating too fast for her to concentrate. She didn't know when Malfoy had become attractive to her, but it was very inconvenient.
"What happened to the 'Golden Trio'?" Malfoy asked.
"Is this part of your case, Auror?" Hermione asked, finally looking up. He'd settled into her visitor's chair as if he owned it, balancing his left ankle over his right knee as he leaned back to assess her.
Hermione felt flush and began arranging her case files on her desk to keep her hands busy.
"Well?" Malfoy asked.
"Why are you here?" Hermione said, looking up at him once more. "Shouldn't you be upstairs helping Harry interview the staff?"
"I want to know why you seem more comfortable in my presence than Potter's," Malfoy responded, his eyes narrowing. "What happened, Granger?"
"It's really not relevant to the case, Malf—"
"Oh come off it, I'll leave you alone if you tell me," Malfoy enticed her.
Hermione frowned at him and leaned back in her own chair, crossing her arms over her chest. "I divorced Ron. Harry is married to Ron's sister and had to pick sides. It's not that juicy or exciting."
"Why'd you divorce the weasel?"
"That's enough," Hermione snapped. "Get out."
Malfoy stood slowly, not taking his eyes off Hermione. He lifted his eyebrow as he finally turned and left her office, closing the door quietly behind him. Hermione stared after him for a moment before the panic attack she'd been keeping at bay all day overwhelmed her.
She followed her therapist's instructions, paying close attention to her heart rate as her breathing increased rapidly. She closed her eyes and placed a hand on either side of her head, bending at the waist to put her face between her knees. An image of a pack of animals attacking her, clawing and biting flew before her eyes. They tore at her limbs, pulling her in different directions and she gasped, screwing her eyes shut in an effort to keep the creatures at bay.
She should leave work, but she knew that there was nothing for her back at her small flat. Nothing, but an empty bed where Crookshanks used to sleep. So she sat, behind her piles of paper, in her solitary office, counting her breaths and waiting for the fear to pass.
The Aurors were finally sniffing around as the magizoologist constructed yet another cage for his creation. His beautiful, lovely creation that had a taste for human flesh. He shook his head as he guided the beast back inside. He couldn't figure out where he'd gone wrong. Six emerald eyes blinked at him as he locked the cage and turned from his beloved creation once more. He would need to think carefully about his next steps before the Aurors showed up. This was not a time for desperation.
"Who?" Hermione asked as she was hustled back into Conference Room C with Smethwyck.
"Edwardus Lima. Wrote a book some time ago…" Smethwyck trailed off as Hermione recalled where she'd seen that name before.
"The Monster Book of Monsters," Hermione said. "Edwardus Lima was… is a famous magizoologist. What in the world was he doing with… what did you say it was?"
"A cross between a crup and a Cerebus," Malfoy said from the doorway. Harry was standing behind him, looking stern.
"Did it have three heads?" Hermione asked before she could stop herself.
"It's why the wounds were so muddied," Malfoy said stepping further into the room and sitting down. "Each head had its own saliva, each with their own properties." He slid a thick file folder across the table to Hermione and she flipped it open, reading through it rapidly.
No wonder they couldn't figure out what sort of creature it was. Not only was it a creature never before created, but each head would take a bite of the victim. Hermione shuddered and closed the file folder with a snap.
"So it's over then?" she asked, looking up. Malfoy's gaze caught her again and she felt like she couldn't breathe. She forced herself to look away from him and caught Harry's eyes instead. She winced when she recognized that Harry's expression held regret and turned back to Malfoy. She didn't want Harry's regret.
"Yes, Granger, it's over. Lima knew he was cornered. When we got there, he'd… locked himself in with one of the creatures."
Hermione started. "What? Intentionally?"
"It seemed a deliberate choice he'd made. We'll be doing a full psychoanalysis case study. But for now, we thought you'd want to update your files based on our findings." Malfoy said.
Hermione nodded, trying to maintain composure. "If that's all?"
Smethwyck stood, shaking both Harry and Malfoy's hands and congratulating them on a job well done. Hermione edged out of the room and was almost to her office when a hand shot out to grab her elbow, stopping her in her tracks. She whirled around to find Malfoy gazing down at her.
"Can I help you?" Hermione asked.
"You intrigue me," Malfoy replied. Hermione glared at him. "Have a drink with me?"
"No," Hermione said quietly. "No, Malfoy," she repeated with force and yanked her elbow away. She hustled back to her office, shaking and fuming.
She would not be exploring whatever was between her and Malfoy. Not now, maybe not ever. He was just another threat, another monster in her mind. Yet another head of the Cerebus of men she'd been fighting her entire life.
