A/N: Hello everyone! I know this update is technically a day late, but it's the Victoria Day long weekend here in Canada, so it's still technically the weekend here.
Important: Fan-Fiction has been having problems with their e-mail updates in the past few weeks (I noticed because I was not getting e-mail updates myself nor was I getting updates about some reviews I got). I'm not sure exactly what was wrong with the system, and I'm not fully sure that whatever was wrong is completely fixed, so let me know if you did get an email update about chapter 37's update.
Because of this problem, you may not have seen that I updated two weeks ago. If you haven't read the chapter that involves Vic and Teddy actually attending the Ministry Ball, you will want to go back and read that before you read this one.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
In Previous Chapters: Victoire and Teddy were at the Ministry ball on Hallowe'en night when Harry came by and informed them that an incident involving dark magic happened to a bunch of people in a bog and Teddy needed to go and investigate. Victoire took it upon herself to go straight to St. Mungo's, knowing that there would be casualties that the Dark Arts Reversal ward would be filled. Several chapters ago we met the Milligans, a blended family the father (Clyde) and sister (Lygia) are muggles, and the mother and two boys are magical.
Pieces of the Puzzle
Monday October 31st 2017
11:38 PM
During Victoire's years at healing school she had taken several elective courses, the oddest of all of them being a course in which she learned to do simple to moderate healing magic with the help of everyday items (a skill she ended using repeatedly when she was working at the dig site in Peru and trying to heal people without the proper supplies and tools). However, despite how handy the skills she learned from that particular elective ended up being, she was starting to think that it would have been more beneficial for her if her healing school had offered a course on how to heal patients while wearing non-optimal clothing like a tight black dress and orange satin high heels.
To make the situation even more awkward, she had almost forgotten what she was wearing when she hustled to St. Mungo's and up to the Dark Arts Reversal ward. She found her ward extremely busy with interns and assistant healers running around, but almost everyone stopped to stare at her when they realized that she had arrived. She had sort of expected her fellow residents Fabius and Wesley Hall to be surprised when they saw her, but she didn't anticipate that Cassidy and Healer Seward would pause mid-spell to stare at her as well.
The only person who didn't seem to bat even one eyelash at her appearance was Healer Rhee.
Obviously the seventy-something healer had seen a lot during his many years, and one of his resident healers showing up to work in a slinky black dress and high-heels must not have been irrational enough to register with him. The head healer of the D. A. R. ward only reacted to her odd arrival long enough to calmly ask one of the healing interns to find an extra pair of healing robes for Victoire, and to inform Victoire that he could use her help with the patient he was presently examining.
Victoire swiftly made her way to Healer Rhee's side, and as she went her fellow resident healers felt the need to ask her questions that they just couldn't seem to hold back.
"What in the world are you wearing?" Fabius asked her with a suspicious narrowing of his eyes.
"A dress and shoes."
"Why?" Wesley asked in a tone of voice that was more curious than anything else.
Victoire self-consciously brushed a piece of hair behind her ear, "Because I just came from the Ministry's ball."
Cassidy was the only one whose facial expression changed to comprehension, "So that's where you heard about this incident from then. Healer Rhee was just about to dictate that someone send you an owl to ask you to come in and work."
"I heard about it and figured that I'd be called in at some point," Victoire explained once she finally made it to Healer Rhee's side.
Healer Rhee took a short break so he could smile at her, "I see that you were a couple steps ahead of me."
"Only insomuch that I got here before you were able to contact me. All I know is that there was an incident involving several people and dark magic, and that there were many injuries," Victoire told Healer Rhee.
The head of the ward nodded his head, "We only have five patients right now, the emergency magical medical responders told us to expect many more before the night is over."
"That was the impression I got as well."
The healing intern was back at that point, and handed Victoire an extra pair of bright green healing robes. The fourth-year healing student intern blushed a little when he apologized to Victoire and told her that he couldn't find any extra shoes for her to wear, but that there was another female intern who was still looking for her.
Victoire slipped the robes on and decided to keep wearing the shoes until something better could be found. She then asked Healer Rhee for the specifics of the patient who was in front of him, and with that question the rest of the healers and resident healers snapped back to work.
The next several hours both flew by quickly and dragged on forever for Victoire and the other people working in the D. A. R. ward. Victoire thought that it had started out comparatively slow as she got caught up by Healer Rhee, but once a new patient was brought in she was immediately assigned to examine him on her own since all of the other healers, resident healers, and interns were busy with the other five patients.
Up until that night, Victoire had never seen the ward so busy. Usually the leading healers would work beside the resident healers to help teach them how to do their jobs. However, since the ward was rather hectic that night, Victoire found herself being assigned to the care of several patients without being under the direct supervision of Healer Rhee or Healer Seward. In most of the instances she did have one of her fellow resident healers and a few interns to help her, but during the point of the evening in which the ward became its busiest, Victoire did at one point find herself healing a patient under no one else's supervision, and with only one healing intern to help.
It was that point of the night at which the ward was the most overloaded, that Victoire realized that her feet were screaming at her. She was still wearing the high-heels, and if they hadn't had stabilizing charms on them she probably would have kicked them off much earlier in her shift.
As it was, the floor of the ward wasn't the cleanest as there was blood, bodily fluids, and lots of mud and water all over it –most likely having been transferred from the patients were coming from the bog– and Victoire was pretty sure that she would rather her feet develop blisters than let them touch the dirty and presently un-sanitized tile floor.
While Victoire was treating a patient on her own –but with the help of an intern– she discovered that her intern had never seen the damage that an entrails-expelling curse could do. Her intern's face went green and for a few moments Victoire was convinced that he was going to retch. He didn't end up doing so, but he did turn his back on the patient and take a few minutes to compose himself.
Upon seeing his reaction, Victoire idly wondered how he hadn't seen a picture of the after-effects of the curse during healing classes or in a textbook, but then she realized that she might have only seen photos of those types of curses' effects because Kingsley had shown her them when he was trying to teach her how to defend herself from said curses. Either way, she needed to heal the patient, and if her intern couldn't help her she'd need to call someone else in to aid her.
The hardest part about healing entrails-expelling curses was to keep everything in and try to keep the injured area as clean as possible. Thankfully, the emergency magical medical responders who dealt with her patient in the field had their wits about them and did exactly what they needed to do to keep the patient stable until a certified healer could get to the patient.
Victoire had started repairing the intestines by the time her intern had decided that he could handle the carnage, and she started barking orders at him right away –partially because she didn't want to give him time to really stare at the amount of blood and fluids their patient was expelling– so she asked him to cast new extra-strength stasis charms on the injured area, and to go get a pain-killing potion and a blood replenishing potion once he was finished with his spell work.
To her intern's credit, his stasis charms were flawless and he travelled as quickly as he could to get the potion and then come back to assist her. It wasn't until he came back with both potions bottles in hand that he realized the issue with her request.
"Uh . . . Healer Weasley . . . how is this potion going to be effective if half of the patient's stomach is missing?"
Victoire didn't miss a beat as she continued to repair the injuries to the visible portions of the intestines, "You'll have to switch it over so that it can be given intravenously to the patient."
The intern gave her such a blank look that for a minute she thought that she might have accidentally spoken in French instead of English, but when he asked her how exactly he was to go about giving the potions intravenously she realized that she did speak to him in English. She then gave him simple explanations on how to modify the potions to be dispensed intravenously while healing the injury to the entrails at the same time.
Luckily he was a quick study, and it didn't take long for him to complete what she had asked him to do, and during that time she had mostly healed the patient's missing half of stomach, and she gave him a new task to complete. He was in charge of slowly removing the stasis charms he had placed on the intestines, one small section of bowel at a time.
"Why do you want me to remove the stasis charms? Aren't they the only thing keeping his blood inside him?" The intern asked her uncomprehendingly.
Victoire then explained, in a very teacher-like tone of voice, that they needed blood to flow freely through certain parts of the intestines so that she could make sure that she had healed all of the perforations. She told him that if there were still smaller nicks in the intestines that she had missed, then they would be able to see it via which sections were bleeding. It was important to go about reversing the stasis charms methodically and slowly so that the patient wouldn't lose any more blood than necessary.
It wasn't until Victoire had looked up, to gage how the intern had taken her explanation and instruction, that she realized that the intern hadn't actually addressed her with the question in the first place.
Standing just beside the intern and looking directly at the patient's injury was Healer Rhee, who had come over to see Victoire's progress once he had sent his latest patient to a private room.
The influx of the patients had happened so quickly that many of the patients were being healed before they could be moved to a room that was properly equipped for those matters. Hence, Victoire had been healing the patient while standing on the dirty floor of the D. A. R. ward's main patient receiving area.
Before Victoire had the opportunity to feel embarrassed at having answered a question meant for the head healer, Healer Rhee smiled proudly at her and congratulated her on her excellent explanation of the medical process she had described to the intern.
He then offered to help Victoire do her final cleansing spells to help ward off infection and to close up the still-open portions of the patient's stomach and pelvic area.
Once the patient was put back together like a macabre puzzle, the intern was put in charge of finding a room for the patient to stay in, and Victoire went on to work on the next patient who slid off the lift and into the D. A. R. ward.
12:56
"I thought there were only supposed to be a dozen injuries," Hayden commented darkly as he and Teddy stood in the middle of the bog and tried to account for the identities of everyone involved in the incident.
It was easy to collect information from those involved who were still hanging around the bog and under custody of various aurors, it was more difficult to account for the injured parties who had already been taken to St. Mungo's. Many of the suspects (as that's what everyone involved in the incident were considered until they were able to collect more information) had been taken to the hospital before Teddy –and the rest of the Auror Department back-up– had arrived. A few aurors had been dispatched to go to St. Mungo's and stay with the suspects and the injured, and as the aurors at the bog cleared away more of the injured, more of the aurors left the site to go to the hospital and try to interview the suspects.
"And I thought the injuries were only supposed to be moderate," Teddy remarked as he watched a few emergency magical medical responders working on the suspect who was lying on the ground closest to them.
The pair of aurors felt relatively helpless at the moment, and neither were happy that all they could do was essentially watch the emergency magical medical responders try to save the life of a young man who had been hit with an array of unknown curses that they did not know the particulars of.
The same scene was occurring all over the bog in concerns to other suspects who were injured to varyingly different degrees, but Teddy and Hayden were two of the few aurors who were leaving the suspects alone so that the emergency magical medical responders could do their jobs. They both knew that there was absolutely no sense in trying to badger questions out of a barely conscious suspect.
"Lupin! Summers! We've got some information on that suspect of yours!"
Teddy and Hayden turned to see Jilly and Kurt running towards them –or running as quickly as they could in the sticky sinking ground of the bog.
"This guy?" Hayden asked curiously as he glanced down at the young man next to him who couldn't have been more than twenty-years old.
"According to a man Burton has in custody, that bloke is one of the organizers of this event," Kurt explained.
Teddy pursed his lips, "And this event was what exactly? We haven't heard that anyone had finally spilled the beans about why they're all here, or why they started to fling dark curses at each other."
Jilly shook her head, "As far as we know, no one has fessed up to the group's purpose here. What we do know however, is that this young man was hit by at least two Cruciatus curses, a stunner, and a hex that looked very much like Speculas crustaeum."
"No wonder this bloke doesn't look so good," Hayden commented with a low whistle.
"Auror Summers, Auror Lupin," One of the emergency magical medical responders called suddenly to get their attention.
They had it immediately.
"I think we need to move this man to the hospital right away," The woman who was holding her wand out over the unconscious man told them.
Teddy glanced at the blood still pouring out of suspect's wounds, "Is he stable enough to transfer?"
"No," The woman admitted, "But I don't think we can get him to that point. There's something that's stopping our stasis spells from working and we can't reverse it. He's going to bleed out before we'll be able to heal him. St. Mungo's is the best chance he has."
Teddy and Hayden both nodded and they gave the request to the emergency magical medical responders to move the man immediately. The female emergency magical medical responder kept casting spells on the suspect, while her male partner pulled out a portkey. In a bright flash of light all three were gone.
"It's starting to clear up around here," Kurt observed as he noted that Teddy and Hayden's suspect was the last of the severely injured in the bog, "You and Hayden can probably move on to the hospital and try to get some info out of your suspect once he gets conscious again."
"Is your suspect who told you the information about our suspect still here?" Teddy asked Jilly.
She nodded, "He made it out with just a broken arm. It's already been healed and we're keeping him here until we get a little more information out of him."
"Then we should probably split up," Teddy suggested, "We need to know if your suspect knows anything else about ours. Hayden, you can stay with Kurt and Jilly and handle that while I go to the hospital."
"I'll go to St. Mungo's with you," Jilly volunteered, "There's a few suspects on mine and Kurt's list who were sent there a few hours ago. They should be ready to talk by now."
Teddy and Jilly left for St. Mungo's exactly eight minutes after Teddy's suspect and the emergency magical medical responders had, so by the time they made it to the D. A. R. ward the suspect was in the process of being moved to a room where the healers could work on him.
The female emergency magical medical responder had just finished saying something to an intern when Teddy and Jilly walked up to her.
"Did the suspect make it here okay?" Teddy asked her hurriedly.
"He lost a lot of blood on the way but the healers went right to him and are working on him as we speak. I was just explaining to the intern the magic we had already used on the patient."
While Teddy had a quick conversation with the emergency magical medical responder, Jilly grabbed a hold of the first person she saw in lime-green healers robes, flashed him her auror's badge, and then tried to tell him what she knew about the spells that had been used on the suspect.
The healer rudely stopped her mid-sentence and walked away from her and into the room that Teddy's suspect was presently occupying.
Jilly put her hands on her hips and glanced at Teddy, who had noticed Jilly's confrontation a little too late, "Can you believe that man? He just told me that he's the healer and I'm the auror, so I'm not allowed to give him advice on how he should handle his patients."
If it had been any other healer, or resident healer, Teddy would have said that he didn't believe it. However, as it was, the person Jilly had regrettably stopped was resident healer Malachi Fabius, and Teddy couldn't honestly say that he was surprised to hear the man say something so pompous and condescending.
"It's important for healers to know what spells were cast on their patient if they want to effectively reverse or treat the damage from those spells," Jilly continued to gripe.
From within the patient's room it sounded like someone else agreed with Jilly's assessment. The door of the room was still open as there were a few interns coming and going from it, and from that open door a very familiar voice carried out to the hallway that the two aurors were still standing in.
". . . Tête de noeud! Fabius! I can't believe that you're so stupid! We need to know what happened to this man if we're going to heal him properly!"
The –rather loud– voice definitely belonged to Victoire Weasley, and she was decidedly not happy with her fellow resident healer at the moment.
"If you're not going to go back out there and get that information from an auror, I will send an intern out there to get it . . ."
It became harder to hear Teddy's fiancée's voice as the conversation in the room continued, but both Teddy and Jilly knew that she was probably still ripping Fabius a new one.
A few minutes later a shy male healing intern slipped out of the room and looked around the hallway. When he spotted Teddy and Jilly he eyed their auror badges for a moment before coming up to them and asking one of them to come with him because the resident healers in the room wanted to speak to them.
Teddy insisted that Jilly go in because she had heard the information firsthand, which was true, but his main reason for not wanting to be the auror to go into the room was because he wanted to give Victoire space to do her thing without him being in the same room as her.
Jilly followed the intern into the room and she found Victoire, the healer from before who was rude to her, and a few other interns hastily working overtop of the suspect's body.
Both Victoire and the other resident healer looked up when Jilly entered. Victoire's eyes did widen a little in surprise and recognition, but she mastered the emotions on the rest of her face and spoke without any inflection in her voice.
"Auror Donaldson, we've been led to believe that you have information about this patient that could help us heal him?"
Her tone was very professional, and the only break in her demeanour was when she finished her question with a particular glance at her fellow resident healer.
"We were told that the suspect had been hit by a Cruciatus curse, a Speculas crustaeum curse, a stunner, and another Cruciatus curse," Jilly listed off.
"In that order?" Victoire asked.
"In that order."
The intern that had brought her in to the room looked at Victoire questioningly, "Why does the order matter so much?"
"Knowing the order of the spells that hit the patient can help us treat said patient. For example, it's important to know if a patient's paralysis is because of a stunning spell, or another jinx that severed a part of the spinal cord," Victoire explained patiently.
Fabius rolled his eyes at Victoire's explanation, and then pretentiously expounded for the intern, "In this instance it is actually useful to know that a Speculas crustaeum curse was used because now we can just use the specific counter-curse to take out all of the pieces of glass instead of doing it by hand one piece at a time."
"Pieces of glass?" The same intern questioned.
Fabius scoffed at the intern, "Healer Weasley will explain to you while I actually work on healing this man."
Victoire ground her teeth together, but then she took a deep breath and explained to the intern what the Speculas crustaeum curse was while Fabius performed the counter-curse. It was a simple enough counter-curse that only one of them needed to cast.
"The Speculas crustaeum curse causes tiny pieces of magically conjured glass to slice through the body of the person the curse is cast on. The glass is sent towards the body with enough pressure to slice through layers of skin, muscle, and bone, and the intensity of the spell determines the damage the spell does."
"But there is a counter-curse for it?"
Victoire nodded as she gestured towards where Fabius was currently casting said curse, "A partial-counter-curse of sorts. The spell Healer Fabius is using magically forces the pieces of glass from the Speculas crustaeum curse out of the body. It doesn't heal the damage done by the glass shards, but it takes care of the difficult task of picking out every piece of shrapnel."
Fabius finished the counter-curse quickly and Victoire then suggested that they do a scan of all of the injured areas to make sure that they got all of the pieces of shrapnel before cleaning the wounds and closing them back up.
At her suggestion, her fellow resident healer gave her a look like she had grown two more heads.
"That kind of scan will take at least ten minutes to complete and this patient doesn't have that time because he is still bleeding out," Fabius needlessly reminded her.
Victoire pointed her wand towards the IV bags that were hanging beside the patient and attached to a spot on his arm that wasn't bleeding profusely.
"He's on blood replenishing potions right now, he'll be able to make it until we finish the scan," She argued.
Fabius rolled his eyes at her, "Well that may be your opinion Weasley, but the fact is that this auror over here hasn't given us any information to help us figure out why the stasis spells aren't working on him, so I don't think it's wise to risk the patient bleeding out so that you can do an unnecessary scan."
"A scanning spell isn't unnecessary, if there's still a glass shard left in his body that hasn't come out yet it could cause further damage to the blood vessels or organs-"
"The counter-curse has a seventy percent success rate across the board in removing all shrapnel pieces," Fabius interrupted Victoire, "And right now we don't know the extent of the damage to the blood vessels that is making it impossible for stasis spells to work-"
It was Victoire's turn to interrupt, "Auror Donaldson just told us that the patient was hit by a Cruciatus curse and then a stunning spell. It's possible that the stunning spell caused blood vessels to freeze in a dilated state-"
"For what you're suggesting to be even remotely plausible," Fabius countered, "It would have to assume that Castilla's theory about the Cruciatus curse is real, and most modern healers are still leaning towards the already established Avraham theory-"
"This isn't an argument about theory. I'm just asking you to trust my medical judgement, I think running this scan should be our next step," Victoire contended.
Fabius looked down at the patient and then back at Victoire, "And I think the statistics speak pretty clearly for themselves. A scan for residual shrapnel would be frivolous and could cost this patient his life."
Victoire glanced back down at the patient as well and was hit with a bitter wave of uncertainty. The statistics did support Fabius's claim that the counter-spell had handled all of the pieces of glass shrapnel, and even though he was a pompous prat, she knew that he was good with magic. He was her partner in healing the patient at that moment and she needed to trust him. If he said that he removed all of the glass, then he removed all of the glass.
"Let's heal the injuries to the blood vessels then. That should stop him from bleeding out," Victoire said with a nod as she tightened her grip on her wand.
Fabius nodded at her in return and, and just as they started to heal the patient Victoire asked the intern to show Auror Donaldson to the waiting room.
1:32 AM
Even though Fabius had scoffed at her and muttered something under his breath about her not trusting him, Victoire still cast the scanning spell on the patient that she had wanted to cast earlier. She just waited until they had finished healing his wounds and stabilizing him, to do so. There was a nagging part of her that wouldn't let her leave the patient's room without double checking to make sure that there wasn't any glass left inside of him.
Thankfully, the scanning spell came back negative. All of the glass was gone.
If there had still been even one shard of glass left in the patient, she would have had to purposely open him up, pick it out, and then heal the area around which it had been embedded.
She had volunteered to give the aurors waiting to hear about the patient an update on their patient's status, which Fabius replied to with a non-caring shrug of his shoulders.
Victoire walked out of her latest patient's room in her blood-stained healers robes and still wearing her orange satin pumps (which had definitely seen better days), and towards the waiting room. She spotted both Cassidy Hopewell and Wesley Hall speaking to a different pair of aurors –Victoire guessed it was about their own patients– and standing on the opposite end of the room from her was Healer Rhee, speaking to two familiar aurors.
"Auror Donaldson, Auror Lupin," Victoire greeted both aurors with a bland nod as she walked over to where they were talking with Healer Rhee, "I take it you're still waiting for an update on your suspect?"
Victoire had schooled her expression rather well considering that she hadn't expected Teddy to be one of the aurors waiting to hear from her.
"Will we be able to question him soon?" Jilly asked Victoire while Teddy stood silently and a little awkwardly by his fellow auror's side.
"I don't think that would be the best idea. He's stable but he'll be unconscious for quite a while. Until noon at least I'd say," Victoire explained.
Jilly glanced at Healer Rhee, "Let me get this straight . . . so we can't speak to any of the patients who have to stay her overnight because they're all going to be unconscious for several hours?"
Healer Rhee nodded and then glanced at Victoire as if to say that she would explain. It took her a minute to think back to what she had discussed with Healer Rhee before being assigned her last patient, but once she remembered her explanation started to flow.
"The preliminary toxicology reports on several of the patients who came in show that they had extremely high levels of synthetic adrenalin leaving their systems. The amounts were so high that now their bodies are coming down from that high and basically crashing on them. Even if they hadn't been injured and needed sleep to help them heal they would have been knocked out for at least eight hours after coming down from it," Victoire clarified.
Teddy's eyes narrowed and his curiosity forced him to speak for the first time, "All of the patients had synthetic adrenalin in their systems?"
"Everyone we have seen except for the last patient that Fabius and I healed had extremely high levels of synthetic adrenalin in their systems. Healer Hopewell remarked that she was surprised that they hadn't all gone into cardiac arrest from the amount that they were excreting alone."
Jilly titled her head to the side in contemplation, "Could they all have accidentally consumed something with this amount of synthetic adrenalin in it, or would it have to have been on purpose?"
"Definitely consciously done," Victoire decided, "The amounts were so high that they had to be taken in smaller doses over a moderately paced time line. If it was taken all at once it definitely would have stopped their hearts almost immediately."
Teddy glanced at Victoire, "But your last patient didn't have any synthetic adrenalin in his system?"
"No."
"Do you know why the stasis spells the emergency magical medical responders used weren't working?" Jilly asked.
Victoire eyed Healer Rhee as she replied, "Fabius and I have differing opinions on what could have caused it, and there isn't a way for us to discover who was right."
"What were your differing opinions?" Healer Rhee asked her non-judgementally.
"Fabius suggested that the stasis charms weren't working to stop the blood flow because the shrapnel from the glass destroyed the blood vessels to a point where they couldn't be immobilized. I thought perhaps it had something to do with the interaction between the Cruciatus curse and the stunning spell," Victoire admitted.
Healer Rhee nodded, "In accordance with Castilla's theory instead of the Avraham theory."
"Yes . . ." Victoire answered a little shyly.
"Interesting proposal," Was the only thing Healer Rhee said in response to her.
The elderly healer then looked down at his watch and told the two aurors, "I suggest you tell your colleagues that all of your suspects that have yet to be discharged will have to stay for the next several hours, and that they will not be in any condition to answer your questions."
"I take it that you won't object to us stationing a few aurors and trainee-aurors in the ward to make sure that the suspects don't wake up early and try to leave?" Teddy asked Healer Rhee.
Healer Rhee shrugged, "Feel free to post as many babysitters as you'd like."
The healer then turned to Victoire and not so subtly told her that she should go home once she finished filing the folder from her last patient. He cited that she needed to get as much sleep as she could because he expected her to be back at the Hospital by ten o'clock that morning to do a check up on her patients.
Healer Rhee left shortly after that, and then Jilly conspicuously informed Teddy that she'd go speak to the other aurors who were still in the ward.
"I think that was her poor attempt to slyly leave us alone," Teddy remarked to Victoire.
"Inelegant, but it worked," Victoire mused.
He took a slight step closer to her so that he could speak to her in a voice that wouldn't carry to anyone else in the waiting room, "Are you going to take Healer Rhee's advice and go home soon?"
"I think it was more of an order than anything else, but yes. I am going to go home once I file the last of my initial paperwork. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes," She told him.
Teddy nodded and ran a hand through his hair tiredly, "I'm going to go back to the department and do a quick debriefing with the other aurors. I should be home in about fifteen minutes, a half hour at most."
"Well I'm probably going to pass out before my head hits the pillow, but if it takes me longer than usual to fall asleep, I'll see you at home then," Victoire said softly.
She wanted to kiss him goodbye, and she could tell that he wanted her to kiss him goodbye, but neither wanted to cross the –somewhat awkward– line of shaky professionalism that they had just established. In the end, they just shared a look that said that they'd figure out at a later date what the appropriate levels of professionalism and personal privacy were during similar situations in the future.
They whispered goodbye and then turned their backs on each other at the same time.
It didn't take Victoire long at all to file the still-open portion of her last patient's case, and she even took a quick peek into the room of her patient who had suffered from the entrails-expelling curse to make sure that he was also still stable.
As she left her patient's room, she ran into Cassidy and Wesley. Both resident healers had already been scheduled to work the night shift that evening and had been there when the onslaught of patients had first started. Cassidy thanked Victoire for coming over so quickly to help, and Victoire asked her friend and Wesley to keep her informed about the patient's she had helped treat. She was just saying goodbye to them and about to leave the ward for good when Healer Seward came across them and asked one of them to run a folder down to the Emergency Medical ward.
Victoire volunteered to do the errand, and even though both Cassidy and Wesley complained that she was officially off the clock, the part-veela argued that she was the one who was leaving the hospital, and therefore the one who was going to be down stairs close to the Emergency Medical ward anyway.
She had every intention of finally leaving the hospital and going back to her flat once she finished the errand, she really did. But just when she turned to leave the Emergency Medical ward she spotted a now-familiar witch speaking to a very familiar healer.
Victoire was exhausted from the combined events of the ball and her unexpected shift in the D. A. R. ward, so she didn't have the energy to think twice about what she was about to do.
"Mrs. Milligan?" Victoire called as she walked up to and addressed the middle-aged woman who was speaking to Spencer Green.
Mrs. Milligan turned at the sound of her name and her eyes lit up in recognition almost right away, "Healer Weasley, what a surprise."
Victoire nodded her head and ignored Spencer's perplexed gaze for the moment, "For me as well, I hope everything is well with your family."
"Clyde and Lygia are fine," Mrs. Milligan explained, referring to her husband and teenaged step-daughter, "I'm here with the boys. They had an awful rash and some trouble breathing this evening and I brought them in because I was afraid that they might have caught something."
Victoire nodded her head, it explained why Spencer –a resident healer in the Bugs and Magical Illness ward– was the one assigned to deal with it. It must have been his turn to be the person from his department working the Emergency Medical ward shift that night.
"I was just explaining to Mrs. Milligan that I think the boys' reaction is something environmental," Spencer explained.
Victoire stayed quiet as Spencer then finished writing a prescription for Mrs. Milligan to get for her sons and then sent her on her way.
"What was that about?" Spencer turned to Victoire once Mrs. Milligan had collected her sons and left.
"I've treated her children before . . . was the boys' reaction really something environmental?" Victoire asked Spencer curiously.
Her friend nodded, "I'm not entirely sure what could have caused the rash because she wouldn't let me run a culture test on the rash itself, but it definitely wasn't due to a virus or a bacterial infection."
"Got pictures of the rash?"
Spencer sent her an incredulous look, but it only lasted about five seconds before he sighed resignedly and opened a case file in his hands.
"I took the pictures because the mother didn't let me run a culture test. I thought that if they end up here again at least their previous medical files would be somewhat up to date," Spencer defended himself as he showed Victoire the photos he'd taken.
Victoire inspected the photos, it seemed that the rash was localized on the backs and stomachs of both Milligan boys, "That looks suspiciously like a chemical burn to me."
"I thought the same thing, but when I started to question the mother about the types of chemicals or potions ingredients that are kept in the home, she couldn't give me any helpful replies. Apparently they use all natural non-toxic cleaning supplies, and they have absolutely no potions ingredients of any sort in the house," Spencer enlightened.
"That makes sense, I met the muggle step-father and he didn't seem like the type who likes magic much."
Spencer nodded, "I healed as much of the boys' rash as I could, gave them a few puffs on the nebulizer for their lungs, and wrote a prescription for a salve to put on the remaining sections of the rash."
Victoire pursed her lips, "Spence . . . do you mind making me a copy of the forms you're going to add to their files?"
"I don't mind," Was her friend's generous reply, "But why do you want one?"
"I'd like to add it to a separate file I already have started about them," More specifically it was a separate file that held the medical information about both Milligan boys as well as their step-sister, but Spencer didn't really need the details.
"I'll send one up to your ward."
"Thanks."
There was nothing left she could do to procrastinate going back to her flat, so she wished Spencer a good morning and then left the Emergency Medical ward and made her way to the hospital's staff exit.
Just before Victoire was about to make her escape out the door Wesley came running up to her, calling her name.
She turned towards him and waited patiently for him to catch his breath and notify her what he had ran down four flights of stairs to tell her.
"Healer Weasley–Victoire . . . your patient just coded. We tried to bring him back but there's nothing we could do . . . he's dead."
2:03 AM
"Auror Lupin!"
Teddy had just made it to the bank of lifts when an auror-in-training came running up behind him, calling his name.
The metamorphmagus closed his eyes and swore internally before slowly turning around to face the trainee auror.
"Yes O'Toole?"
The younger auror, who had a first seemed as though he was in a hurry, stopped suddenly and began to fidget.
"Um . . . we just heard from St. Mungo's. One of the suspects from tonight has died unexpectedly," O'Toole explained, looking down at his feet as he did so.
Teddy sighed tiredly and rubbed a hand down his face, "I take it that you're telling me this because the suspect that died was one of the suspects that Auror Summers and I are in charge of?"
"Yes-"
Teddy didn't even bother to listen to whatever else O'Toole was going to say, instead he paced away from the bank of lifts and further into the department so that he could find Hayden. He stumbled upon Jilly first, and she offered to go back with him to St. Mungo's since Hayden and Kurt were busy dealing with something that had just came up that involved another suspect altogether.
He stepped into the lift with Jilly and belatedly asked, "Which suspect is it that died?"
"Our last one. The one that was hit by the Speculas crustaeum curse," Jilly explained plainly.
Teddy's hand, which had just pressed the button on the lift for the lobby, froze in place with the rest of his body.
"You mean the one who was Victoire's patient?"
"Yes," Jilly responded quietly, "He was one of Victoire's patients."
"Fantastic."
The trip to St. Mungo's was quick, but instead of going to the floor that held the Dark Arts Reversal ward, Jilly directed them to the lowest level that held the mortuary and explained that the note that came to the Auror Department asked them to meet there.
When Teddy and Jilly entered the morgue they spotted Victoire, Fabius, Healer Rhee, and another healer conversing in quiet voices just past the entrance of the room.
The healers did seem to notice the two aurors' entrance, but they continued to talk in their little group for a few more moments before breaking apart.
Healer Rhee and Fabius then came towards Jilly and Teddy, while Victoire stayed behind and spoke a little more with the other healer.
"I take it that you got the message about the patient?" Healer Rhee addressed the two aurors needlessly.
Both Jilly and Teddy nodded their heads.
"What happened? When we left a half-hour ago he was stable," Teddy remarked, perhaps a little too intensely.
"He was stable, however it turns out that there was a small unattended injury to the man's superior vena cava that suddenly became exacerbated and made him bleed out internally," Fabius explained.
Healer Rhee gave Fabius a specific glance and the resident healer flushed a little before clarifying, "Uh, more specifically we missed the cause of the unattended injury-"
"What exactly caused the injury then?" Teddy asked, not caring to hear more of Fabius's deliberation. He also didn't like how Fabius was emphasizing the word 'we' but he told himself that his sudden annoyance with Fabius was because he wanted facts and not excuses.
"A foreign object that somehow ended up in the man's wounds," Fabius explained.
Jilly folded her arms across her chest, "A foreign object? Like the glass shrapnel from the Speculas crustaeum curse that he was hit with?"
"Similar to it," Fabius admitted, "Which is why we didn't notice it at first."
"So was it a piece of glass from the curse or not?" Teddy asked more plainly since Jilly's question hadn't garnered the exact response they needed to hear.
"The foreign object was not a piece of glass from the Speculas crustaeum curse," Victoire announced, answering Teddy's question as she paced over to when the two aurors stood with Fabius and Healer Rhee.
Jilly glanced at Victoire, "What was it then?"
Victoire handed Jilly a closed petri dish with a magnification spell on it, "It was a piece of bone that was the exact same shape as the glass shrapnel, and therefore caused a similar looking injury. When we used the Speculas crustaeum counter-spell to remove all of the pieces of shrapnel we then healed all of the open wounds on his body, causing the muscle and skin to knit back together. Since the fragment in the superior vena cava was bone and not glass, it did not get removed during the counter-spell. Instead it got embedded into the wall of the superior vena cave when we healed his wounds. At that point it wasn't doing any damage, but some sort of movement must have exacerbated it, and caused the bit of bone to slice through the wall of the superior vena cava, causing him to slowly begin to bleed out into his chest cavity."
"A piece of bone?" Jilly repeated, "Was it from someone else who was injured tonight?"
"No, Healer Mallard was just saying that the bone fragment does not contain any human DNA on it," Victoire clarified.
Teddy noted that there was something . . . not completely right in her tone of voice. She hid whatever it was well during her lengthy explanation about what had caused her patient's death, but he could hear traces of something coming through as she continued to answer Jilly's questions.
"Do you know what type of creature the bone came from?"
"No. More comprehensive tests need to be run before we can find out exactly what type of creature it came from. The only test that was run was one that checked to see if it was human or not," Victoire expounded.
Fabius nodded his head importantly and added, "What we do know is that the fragment of bone must have ended up in the patient either just before, during, or just after the glass pieces attacked him."
"And there was only one foreign bone fragment in his body?" Teddy questioned.
"Yes-"
"No."
Fabius turned to Victoire and glared at her for interrupting his answer.
"We only found one bone fragment in his superior vena cava," Fabius reminded her needlessly.
Teddy expected Victoire to put her hands on her hips and sassily explain to Fabius her opinion, which would make her seem intelligent and him an idiot, but instead she impassively explained her negative response to Teddy's question in a monotone voice.
"Only pieces of glass were pulled out of the patient's many wound entry points, but that's because the counter-curse of the Speculas crustaeum spell only pulls out the pieces of glass conjured by the spell. We healed up all of the internal and external wounds under the assumption that we had extracted all of the shrapnel. If we ended up sealing one bone fragment into the patient, it's possible that we sealed up a few more at the same time. Healer Mallard said that he'd continue to look for more fragments when he does a more thorough autopsy."
And that's when Teddy was finally able to put his finger on it, figuratively. It wasn't that there was something specific in her tone of voice, it was that there was something missing from it. Her voice was detached. There was absolutely no expression or inflection in her voice or –when Teddy thought more on it– in her face.
It wasn't professional detachment or objectivity.
It was something else.
He never really knew what to call that something else: the emotionless state she'd slip into. He'd seen her do this before.
Several times.
Every year in fact, on May second when they attended the memorial services at Hogwarts.
She had slipped into the same emotionless detachment that she did on those days, and now that Teddy was able to place what was wrong with Victoire, he was pretty sure that he knew what was causing it.
"In any case," Healer Rhee began, taking over the conversation, "Once the full autopsy is complete you will of course be notified of any new findings."
Jilly and Teddy nodded and then Healer Rhee effectively dismissed everyone involved by once again stating how late it was.
Teddy had no doubt that Victoire would end up going directly home under Healer Rhee's orders, so when he and Jilly got back to the Auror Department Teddy quickly jotted down in the report about the suspects death –that had already been started– what they had learnt on their second trip to the hospital. Once he was finished he practically ran out of the department and towards the lifts.
He arrived back at their flat not fifteen minutes after he'd left St. Mungo's for the last time and, as he'd expected, there were no lights on in the apartment. He slipped into their bedroom and noted that Victoire was already dressed in her pyjamas and lying in bed. As he started to strip off his auror robes and the clothes underneath it so that he could change into his pyjama pants, he noticed that his fiancée wasn't yet asleep.
Instead she was lying on her back and staring blankly up at the ceiling.
It didn't take him long to get ready for bed, but he was surprised that Victoire's eyes were still open when he slid into the bed.
Teddy slid right up next to her and propped himself up on his elbow so he could look at her face.
"Sleep first and then talk?" He suggested.
Victoire's face was expressionless as she listened to his question. She didn't even blink.
"Why do we need to talk?"
"Victoire-"
She sighed heavily and rolled over onto her side, specifically away from Teddy, "My patient died. It happens."
Teddy frowned at hearing her words but decided that they were both way too tired to get into an argument with each other that early in the morning. He snuggled closer to her and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind her, and even though she didn't want to talk to him, she slowly relaxed into his arms, a sign that she was accepting the physical comfort he was offering.
He figured he'd take what he could get and that they'd discuss what he wanted to discuss with her after they both got a full night's sleep.
Even so, her words rang in his head as he tried to fall asleep.
My patient died. It happens.
Following them were the words he regretfully wished he had taken the time to say to her in reply.
But this is the first time it's happened to you.
A/N: I hope that you liked this chapter, and the last one if you hadn't read it yet :) I'd like to know if you enjoyed the action and healing and auror-ing in this chap, so please leave me some reviews to let me know what you thought of this!
Help Please: So, while I was writing this chap I realized that there aren't actually that many cannon dark magic spells which cause injuries that I can have Victoire and her healing colleagues heal. I made up the one used on the patient that ended up dying, which you could probably tell because it's a little lame.
Therefore, I'd like to ask all of you if you could give me suggestions of dark magic spells that you made up that I can have Victoire heal in the hospital. You don't have to come up with the magical words for it if you find that difficult, but I need some ideas for dark magic spells that cause injuries that Vic can heal, so just a description of what a spell does would be helpful. If you do send me a suggestion over the next few weeks, you can give it to me through a review or PM. Of course, if I end up using some of these suggestions I will give you due credit in the chapter for your help, so please make sure that you have a name attached to your review if you're reviewing anonymously.
Next Update: I will try my best to update in two weeks, but I don't have the next chapter fully written. One of my cousins ended up in the hospital two weeks ago, and was there for two weeks, so we went in every night after work to visit him and I didn't get any writing done.
Next Chapter: We're going to learn more info about the events that happened in the bog, as well as see how Victoire's dealing with the death of her patient. Also, I'm contemplating a bit of Eliza and co. but I have to see how the chapter turns out first.
Teaser for Next Chap:
"How's Victoire taking the death of her patient?"
"She's taking it like I expected her to," was Teddy's response. The tone of his voice made it clear to Jilly and Hayden that that particular vein of conversation was closed.
Thanks as always to everyone who has followed, favourited, read, and reviewed!
BIG thank yous as always to:
zvc56, danny, HPsea, Guest (1), kawaiiotaku0405, jeonyerim04, cjaben1, Seher Syed, Jily71102, B. arendes, lumiere100, jeremiah123, paddfoot12, Guest (2), Mike, silverlover02, Jennifer Jules, Guest (3), and AngelTwins527.
zvc56: Oh, well if you like character development then you're going to LOVE the next few chapters.
danny: I'd say that Spencer, Donnie, and Vic's friends from healing school are all around the same age as her. Spencer is definitely the same age as her, but the other could be older by a year or a few more because who knows when they all got accepted into healing school or how long it took some of them to finish. I imagine all of them within a few years of Vic, so they'd be in their early to mid twenties.
HPsea: Not directly in the next chapter, but there will be lots of them soon.
Guest (1): We will probably have to wait a few chaps to see some Dom and Clark interaction again, but the chapters will be filled until we get up to there so I don't think you'll be bored until we get there.
cjaben1: I'm glad that you thought I wrote Slughorn well, whenever I go to write one of JK's characters I worry about my characterization of them. I'd love to write a one-shot on that, but I've got a long list of stuff I'd like to write before that, so it probably won't happen anytime soon. We will see Oliver and Cecilia coming to a boiling point relatively soon in terms of time passing in this story. I'm thinking it'll be in three or four chapters' time.
lumiere100: My best laid plans always go awry (mostly because my writing ends up going too long), but my plan after this story is complete is to write one about Ted and Vic's wedding. The story in my mind about Ted and Vic's wedding will be shorter than this one or the previous two (or that's what my plans for it are) but it won't be very short, just shorter relative to my other stories because there should be less plot lines than in this one. After Vic and Teddy's wedding story, I'm planning another story concerning all of these characters that should be longer than the wedding story, and more similar in size to the stories I've already written.
paddfoot12: To be honest, ever since I started writing next gen pieces, I haven't much looked at next gen things that are released because I don't want that to colour my idea of where the story is going. Because of this, the later stories in this series may not exactly follow things that have come out recently.
I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter, and the last one!
Please leave me your suggestions for dark arts spells and injuries if you have some,
As always, I love to hear your thoughts so please leave a review!
Until next time, DFTBA!