Okay, I'm back, finally! Let's see how long THIS chapter will take! I don't own Harry Potter (you guys rule!).

-A/R-

Ch. 26: Blind Prejudice

-A/R-

"Sweet, life-giving wind, softly breathe upon my child. Sleep, sleep now in peace, that's what it says unto you, my baby. Moon, bright and full, watch its serene, peaceful gaze. Because my love, my little one...watch how she sleeps upon soft blankets, a cloud."

Aya smiled and clutched at the soft, warm blanket, her chattering teeth finally stopping. The song was soothing, lulling her into sleep.

The final piece, the key to her sleep, would be for her mother, as she always would do every night since she was born, to bend down and kiss her cheek, then the top of her head, and then give her a butterfly-kiss before closing the door.

Aya waited patiently, the smile still on her face.

But it didn't come.

Startled, she opened her eyes, but her vision was too blurred to really see anything.

Why do I feel like I'm moving? Where is momma?

Suddenly feeling afraid and alone, she tried to focus her eyes onto something...a window perhaps.

And someone was speaking.

"It was a good thing we found them, too!"

A woman's...voice...?

"I was scared out of my mind when they didn't come back this morning...usually Remus is back by six or seven, but nine? They could have died!"

Remus!

She almost screamed aloud, but felt too tired to even do that. Slowly, gradually, she remembered, and shivered.

Lost in a world of blurred images, she finally drifted off into sleep again.

-A/R-

"Hurry, Isaac, hurry!"

"Well, these confounded new wheelchair devices move slower than molasses!" Isaac retorted angrily. "And Remus isn't a feather."

"Well, Aya certainly feels as one, so if you're going to be a baby, you can carry her and I'll push Remus," Liz answered, putting her hands on her hips.

"Alright, alright, fine," Isaac hissed as he poked his head back into the car, carefully bundling the unconscious girl up before gathering her into his arms.

"Mind you don't hit her head, Isaac!" Liz called over her shoulder as she sped off through the doors of the wizarding world's hospital.

"Could you even wait a moment?!" he hissed as he managed to lock the car and keep Aya balanced in his arms.

That woman's going to be the death of me one day, I swear it...heaven help me that I love her so much!

-A/R-

"I'm telling you, it's urgent!" Liz was yelling to a nurse behind the register as Isaac came running in, carefully avoiding a young man with smoke coming out of his ears.

"That's what you said the first three thousand times!" the nurse replied irritably. "I'm telling you, the Healer's on his way!"

"Well, get him here faster, damn you! This is my son and daugh...I mean, friend we're talking about here!" Liz yelled back.

"And I'm telling you the Healer's almost here!" cried the nurse.

"Bloody liar!"

"Knave!"

"Ass!"

"Cow!"

"Um, ladies?" Isaac said hesitantly.

"WHAT?!" they both hissed as if daring him to exist as another human being, let alone a thing.

"The Healer's here," he said quietly.

"It's about bloody time!" Liz hissed.

-A/R-

"Okay, so I think we're looking at pneumonia at most," the Healer said as he leaned against the bed.

"What about Aya?" Liz hissed, narrowing her eyes. "And my son? What about the cuts and stuff?"

"Oh, that we can take care of easily here," the Healer replied with a shrug. "The pneumonia, too. Now, what did you say your last name was?"

"Lupin," Isaac replied. "And the girl's is Centaria."

"Right. Okay, I'm going to attend quickly to another patient; my nurse will tend to them after we get their paperwork, if you would be so kind as to wait, Mr. and Mrs...Lupin, was it?" the Healer replied with a reassuring smile. "Don't worry...we'll take care of them."

With that, he turned on his heel and exited.

Liz sighed and leaned against Aya's bed, rubbing her temples. "Honestly," she said with a sigh, "I lose two years a day...that boy will be the absolute death of me one day, you mark my words..."

Isaac chuckled, placing his hands behind his head.

"Well, they seem to handle themselves quite well anyway," he said with a laugh.

The look Liz gave him was borderline between an "I'm-going-to-kill-you" look and an "I'm-going-to-kill-you-with-an-axe-very-soon" look, either of which Isaac didn't care to determine. He smiled and made to kiss her when the door opened, startling both of them.

A rather plump, middle-aged nurse stepped in, her brown hair falling softly on her shoulders, brown eyes staring first at the Liz and Isaac, and then, with a rather peculiar stare, at the two unconscious children.

"So those are them," she said.

Something about the tone troubled Isaac, especially in the way the woman remained standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips, her eyes riveted on the children.

"Um...miss?" he asked. "Are you the nurse for us?"

The woman looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. "That's what they tell me."

"Is there a problem?" Liz hissed, standing up and crossing her arms.

"Well," the woman began, then produced a clipboard and began ruffling through the papers. "Let me see here...Centaria...Centaria...here we go...and here's Lupin...ah, just as I thought...tch, tch..."

Liz narrowed her eyes and tapped her foot. "Well? Are you going to tend to them or not?"

"Tch, I'm afraid not," the nurse said with a relieved air as she replaced the papers on her clipboard and placed her quill pen behind her ear.

"WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Liz's face turned such a deep shade of red Isaac wondered if all the blood in her body had suddenly boiled to her face. Sensing the usual, murderous nature in her, he grasped her wrist to keep her from tearing the nurse to pieces. Forcing calm, he turned to the nurse.

"You'll have to excuse my wife, but I'm afraid we misheard you," he said with a small laugh. "Is there another nurse coming to tend to these two, or are we going to have to wait for the Healer to come back?"

The nurse looked at Isaac as if he were insane, or something so ludicrous as to be worth that sudden shocked gaze from her, eyes wide, mouth agape.

Very slowly, as if she were speaking to an incredibly dense child, she said, "Like...I...said...no...one...will...be....tending...to them."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" Liz yelled, trying to pull away from Isaac. "These kids need medical attention! Your own damnable Healer said that!"

"I know he did," the nurse replied with a shrug. She pointed at Aya and Remus with a disgusted look on her face. "But we don't serve their kind here. This isn't a veterinary, you know."

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?"

It was Isaac's turn to scream. Liz could only sit down in shock.

The nurse shrugged again. "Our Healer isn't a veterinarian. We don't even serve those kinds of monsters anyway...honestly, serving werewolves...it's preposterous!"

"You...you...BLIND PREJUDICE!" Isaac yelled, waving his arms about. Liz, for the moment, had to suffer the indignity of having her wrist flailed about as well, since her oh-so-wise husband forgot he still held on to her wrist in his rage. "These kids have pneumonia, and they've got a lot of cuts, and they've bloody well been through the bloody mill, so you better bloody get your bloody Healer over here on the bloody double before I bloody rip your bloody bleeding head off, you bloody bitch!"

-A/R-

"You just had to lose your temper like that," Liz said for at least the twentieth time.

Isaac gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and leaned forward, his eyes narrowed as if daring the car in front of him to slow down.

"Well, at least I can tell all of my friends how my husband got us kicked out of the bloody hospital," Liz continued with a sigh.

"Will you just shut it for a moment?! I'm trying to get us home so we can figure this damn thing out, thank you!" Isaac yelled.

"And what do you propose we do when we get home, hm? Sit around? Oh, there's a novel idea! Oh, why, oh why didn't we even think of that before we went to the damn hospital? Ah, wait, that's right! BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO FOR THEM! Now, I remember!"

Isaac nearly spat. "You know what?! At least I've got a plan, Miss 'I know everything so shut it' Poopy Pants!"

"Plan? Plan, Mr. 'Let's go home and sit on our asses while they get sicker' Dorkus Brains?" Liz retorted.

"You know what?" Isaac hissed, screeching the car tires as he pulled up next to their home. "I've got a lot on my plate right now, what with a son who's a social outcast, okay? So just...shut up!"

There was a dull silence.

"Let's bring them inside," Isaac said gruffly, opening the car door.

-A/R-

"Mommy!" Thomas cried happily, jumping up from the couch. His happy, sparkling eyes quickly turned to shocked concern as he saw both Liz and Isaac, clearly unhappy, trudge through the door, each carrying Aya and Remus. "What...what happened? I thought you were taking them to the Hospital!"

"We tried, dear," Liz said absent-mindedly. "Be a good boy and go get some hand towels and run them under warm water, quickly now. Four should do nicely, okay?"

Nodding, Thomas ran off as she had asked.

"What do you want to do?" Isaac asked tiredly as he gently set his son down on the couch, wrapping him in a blanket before he went to help Liz with the unconscious Aya.

"I don't know...I don't know," Liz whispered, biting her lip. "You know...blowing up that Hospital sounds lovely right now...I thought Healers were supposed to Heal people...not discriminate!"

Isaac suddenly slapped his forehead, then laughed hysterically. "Of course! Of course! Why the hell didn't I think of this before?! Bless you, Elizabeth! You're an absolute genius! Genius, I tell you!"

"What...what are you...?" Liz began, but her question fell on deaf, rather preoccupied ears as Isaac suddenly ran outside, got into the car, and drove rather quickly away.

-A/R-

Liz was just about to reapply a freshly warmed hand towel to Remus' forehead when she heard the usual crunch of gravel. Isaac had returned.

He burst through the door, a triumphant smile on his face as he moved and embraced his wife, kissing her a bit too passionately for her to understand at the moment.

Pulling away for air, she hissed, "God damn it, man! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

"You, Madame, have solved all our problems!" Isaac replied triumphantly. "Oh, what a brilliant wife I married!"

Liz gave him a look that could shatter ice. "What...are...you....saying...?" she hissed venomously.

Isaac chuckled. "I drove down to the local Owlery and sent out a distress signal, so to speak, using the fastest owl they had!"

Liz's eyes widened. "And...where did you send it to?"

"Why, to Hogwarts, my dear girl!" Isaac chuckled. "Well, to Dumbledore, more specifically...and, of course, to Madame Pomfrey."

It was Liz's turn to laugh. "Now who's the brilliant one?! Oh, but when are they coming?"

Isaac looked down at his watch. "They should be coming in aaaboout...three...two...one...."

Pluff!

Liz screamed, nearly toppling backwards as Dumbledore himself, accompanied by the Hogwarts Healer, appeared in the middle of her living room.

"Ah, and here's the Deus Ex Machina, right on schedule!" Isaac said with a laugh as he helped his rather tousled wife to her feet.

Before Dumbledore could even say a word, Madame Pomfrey shoved the poor man rather ungraciously to the side and moved towards the couch. "Honestly, if you people are just going to stand around and do nothing, get your butts to the kitchen. A Healer has major emergencies here, not to mention I have to pee like a race horse! So move it, all of you!"

Shrugging his shoulders, Dumbledore helped escort Isaac and a rather vexed, yet confused Liz into the kitchen.

"Now, who's up for a cup of tea?" the Headmaster of Hogwarts said cheerily.

-A/R-

I'M SO SORRY THIS TOOK FOREVER, AND NOW I GIVE YOU A RATHER SHORT CHAPTER! To tell you the truth, I got wrapped up in my Child of Link story...I wasn't even going to go back to this until someone's idiotic Microsoft Word lost my goddamn chapter 37 of Child of Link, which, mind you, I had TEN PAGES GOING! TEN PAGES! WHY?! WHY AM I TORMENTED?!?!

Oo, sorry...I kind of got a little vexed there, and...MOBY DICK! Do you guys know how many reviews you've sent me for this story alone?! 109, PEOPLE! THAT'S SO AWESOME! I LOVE YOU ALL! BLESSED USIRES AEDON, YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST THING EVER! Plus, I'VE GOT A BOYFRIEND! You've got it...me, who would've thought?!

Sirius: Not I...

hits Sirius over the head

Until next chappie! OO, I'M SO EXCITED!