A/N's: Here's the second chapter. If you want the disclaimer, it's in the
first chapter. You go to that page EVERYTIME you open up the story, so for
the comfort of your minds and ours, please read it. But you don't have to.
Just pretend to. smile and nod Anyways...
CHAPTER TWO: A Long Way From Home
Two years later:
"G'day, mate! Sun's a bit hot today, isn't it?" A short Muggle in a crunched tan hat, brown shorts, a fly fishing vest, beaten up leather hiking boots, and socks infested with some particularly vile looking seeds, stepped out from under an umbrella like eucalyptus tree. "Nasty, record breaking heat we've been having around these parts. Hell, not even the sheep will move to their greens. Ah, well." He looked up at the slightly taller person he had just greeted. A heavy looking, long, black cloak concealed the face. The Muggle peered up in earnest, trying to see whom he was talking to. Unable to, but seemingly unperturbed, he continued. "Now, what'd you be doing in the bay area for? Looking for something or the other, right?"
"Actually," remarked the person inside the cloak dryly, "I live here."
"Oh."
"It seems to me," the cloaked figure continued, "that you're the one that seems a tad lost." A hand fumbled for something inside of the cloak. Somewhat apprehensively, the Muggle watched.
"No. No, I live here too," the Muggle assured the hidden person. "Actually, I run a mean dinghy business down near the jetty." He motioned out behind him, towards the south, and turned to walk under the eucalyptus tree. "Do you like boating?" The cloaked person was gone. With slight confusion, the Muggle rotated in a circle, looking for the missing person. "Strange," said he to himself when he found that there was no one in sight. "A bizarre chap, none the less. He must have been near madness to be wearing that old cloak on a day of this heat. Ah, well. Best to get inside before the heat gets any worse." The Muggle tarried a little longer under the shade of the trees before tipping his hat the direction of the sun and stepping out into the blazing light.
"It's impossible I tell you! I can't get a bloody six kilometers from this bloody house! Just now I landed in some dump of a desert and this chatty Muggle starts talking crazy stuff about junk I could care less about and then I have to listen to the man before I get my bearings and come back here! Do you know how invigorating it is to listen to a half-crazed Muggle rant about the heat? Well, I'll tell you. It's just about as bad as not being able to disapperate because of some fluke thing that happens with the bloody stars that makes my wand screw up and," the woman took a huge breath paused for a brief moment before she continued, "that makes no bloody sense at all!"
"That would be most annoying," a man, lounging in a high-backed chair in front of a roaring fireplace, drawled. He had a bemused hint in his voice.
"Damn right it's annoying! Can you believe it! I'm going to have to wait a bloody month now until the stars straighten themselves out again before I can get anywhere! It makes no sense and it's as bloody inconvenient as I'll get out."
"Must be almost as annoying as listening to a sister who can't even explain a problem without blowing up and pretending like the world is out to get her," said the man in the chair, leaning over the side and grinning at the furious woman. She fumed and dug her wand out of her cloak and the man laughed. "Go ahead, Erin. I'd like to see you hex me when you can't even disapperate."
"The world is out to get me!" Erin whined, stuffing her wand back in her robes and shooting a very cross look the man's way. "You'd be doing the exact same things if your wand does bloody hell wrong things and can't even be fixed because the stupid wandmakers are afraid they'll make the wand even more unreliable than it already is!" Can you believe it? The people who made the wand won't even take on the responsibility for its bloody problems! What a fantastic mess!"
"Can't you be the least bit quiet?" asked the man in the chair and stood to face the ranting person. "Listen, Erin, it's not my fault the stars effect Mum's wand, so leave it in peace will you? It probably only happens because the wand doesn't like you and you've been too busy to go out and get a new one for something like fourteen years. I really don't want to listen to you tell me every other minute about how you hate this that and the other. Leave it at rest, won't you?" He ran a hand through his close cropped, sandy hair as he watched her response.
"Come on, Liam, you know I don't mean it!" Erin laughed and puffed a piece of sun bleached hair away from her face. She smiled a few seconds longer and then rolled her eyes and began to mutter to herself. "Damn, I don't know why it's got to be my stupid wand that's got the spiritual or emotional or what else wrong with it! Why it can't be some bloody South African's or some Yank's, I don't know. It's like the half the damn world is out to get me and the other half is trying to sabotage the other half but instead of sabotaging them, they end up screwing with my brain and the likes of that. Why can't they all lay off and go screw with someone else's mind?" Erin shook her head in disgust and slumped into a rotating chair near a large bay window. She peered out the lace curtains and across the great Sydney Bay. Boats with sails turned slightly yellow from the constant sea air blowing through them scudded to and fro about the bay, as if it were all one big parade. "What I wouldn't give for a normal life," Erin muttered and then jumped as Liam lay a hand on her shoulder. "What?" she asked, disgruntled. Liam snorted and swiveled Erin around to face him.
"I wasn't going to tell you," he began with a sheepish grin, "but I guess you'd like something to get your mind off your wand." Erin looked as though she were about to embark on yet another tirade. "Knock off, will you? That's better," said he when she slouched back into her chair. "Oh, and lay off the South Africans, got it? We've got some family down there; wouldn't want to hurt any feelings, you know," he whispered when Erin slumped in her chair again. "You got a letter from...some place in England, I'm not exactly sure where. Anyway, Father's got it downstairs, but I really don't think it'd be a best time to bug him right now; seeing how he's in a tight spot with the government. Might not appreciate you storming down there right now..."
"Go on," Erin whispered with anxiety and stood up, "what's it say?" Liam smiled.
"Your application has been accepted," said Liam, smiling with a sneer drawn perfectly up to his nose. "The healers at that Muddos in London were very interested in you clinical trials with wolfsbane and the other...werewolf charms."
"They're potions," Erin corrected. "And it's St. Mungo's, not Muddos."
"Potions, charms, curses...what difference is there anyway? You know me, I hate anything that has to do with something other than...history." Erin looked uncomfortable and turned back to the window. "Anyway," Liam continued quickly, "they want you to go up there and spend some time as the new healer in residence. Sounds fun, doesn't it? You'll get out of this heat, at least." As if to make a point, he wiped his perspiring brow on his sleeve. Erin turned around slowly and gazed up a Liam in disbelief.
"They want me," she pointed a finger at herself, "to go up to London? I'm a retired Quidditch Beater for Merlin's sake! They want me to be the healer in residence?" Liam nodded, growing more bored by the second. "You can't be serious," Erin whispered. "That's impossible!"
"Believe me," Liam growled, striding over to the chair by the fireplace, "it most definitely is possible, and probable. They want you to arrive in two days; apparently they have an emergency case on the line and they need your talent straight away. Believe it, little sister, you've got the brains to get just about any medical job in either the magical or Muggle world." With a reasonably jovial smile, he sat in the chair and pulled a thick book of the lamp table next to him. Erin crossed to his chair and stood behind it.
"Is Father alright about it?" Liam nodded into his book. "Are you positive?" she chided. "The last time you told me that Father was okay with me doing something I got the pleasure of skipping three meals because, it seems, that Father was utterly not alright with me collecting wolfsbane a midnight."
"It was your bloody idea," Liam snorted and shifted in his chair so he could glance up at Erin. "He had his reasons about not wanting you to go." Erin gritted her teeth and shot him a dark look. "He was fine with the idea, Erin. Perfectly fine. He was the one who initially read the letter; was a bit surprised in the beginning that you got the job...Anyway, he seems glad to be rid of you."
"He'd be glad, alright," Erin grimaced and rolled her eyes. "So, they want me in two days?" Liam nodded, obviously not listening to a word she was saying. His nose was inches away from the book's binding. Every time he flipped a page it brushed up against the tip of his nose. "Great," Erin smiled, looking up and scanning the room. The noise of a crinkled page against her brother's nose made her jump. She looked sharply down at his curled up form and sighed. "What are you reading?" she asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
"The History of the Australian Law by Johannes Tinker."
"Sounds about as entertaining as trying to dance with a Queensland grindylow."
"I can't believe I have to take the Muggle plane," Erin exclaimed, exasperated, under her breath and clutched her ticket tightly. Her father looked on in stony silence. Liam wore his customary sheepish grin hugged her tightly as a Muggle came over the intercom and announced that boarding onto Erin's flight was beginning.
"Go take out some werewolves, will you?" Liam laughed and thumped her on the back. "Try not to have too much fun, though." Erin nodded, turned briefly to her dad, saw he had made no move to wish her on her ways, turned to the ticket taker, and handed the crisp piece of tag board to the plump Muggle. With a wave back a Liam and the grim statue that appeared to be her father, she was on her way to England.
"Are you...Erin Langhart?" a tall man in a spotless black suit asked. He looked skeptical, but friendly, none the less. Erin nodded and the man smiled, offering to take her bags. "My name is Mark DeEvlin; I'm from St. Mungo's. They told me you would be arriving by a Muggle plane. It's my first time in an airport," he told her as they pushed past Muggles eager to greet loved ones or get luggage or what not. "Rather an interesting place."
"Yes, sorry about all this," apologized Erin, jerking the bag she was carrying out of the way from colliding with a surly looking Muggle's kneecap. "It's a real bother."
"Not a problem at all," laughed the man. "I rather enjoy coming into the Muggle world; it's not something we do very often, you see. Makes up for a particularly boring day in the office, although we don't get many of those," he admitted with a frown. Laughing at the horrified look on Erin's face, he opened the airport's door and followed her as she stepped through it. "Shall we disapperate from here?" Erin felt the color rise in her cheeks as she answered him.
"Actually, I'm really sorry about this, but that's the reason that I took the Muggle transportation in the first place. My wand has some...problems...with it and for some reason won't allow me to apperate very successfully; actually no predictability at all. More's the pity."
"Don't worry," Mark chuckled, "there's no harm done. We'll just take the Underground and be on our way then. It goes quite near Mungo's, or so I'm told. I don't have a great amount of experience using Muggle transportation." With a wink, he flagged down a taxi and helped her get in. "No need to worry," he whispered to her as the taxi driver gave them suspicious looks from the front seat, "the taxi system in England is superior to many other systems of transportation. Makes it all the easier to get exactly where I need to go."
The taxi driver dropped them off in front of a exceptionally ratty looking building with "closed to renovation" signs posted all over the windows. Mark paid the driver and led Erin right up to the window of the closed store front. Leaning forward, he spoke directly to a teetering female dummy. "Mark DeEvlin here with," he paused for a second, looking embarrassed as he tried to remember Erin's name. She whispered it to him. "Erin Langhart, to see Head Healer Gregory Avatt." Erin watched apprehensively as the dummy nodded curtly. "Right this way, then," said Mark and made an elegant sweeping motion towards the solid glass window. Now giving him the apprehensive look, Erin stepped into the glass, half expecting to stub her toe. Quite gratefully, she didn't, and found herself in a massive lobby. Mark took her arm as he appeared next to her. "His office is just down the hall to your left. First door on the right. Give me your bags, and I'll put them where you can get to them when you need them." He smiled curtly when she gave him her bag and left with a nod.
Feeling much smaller than her five feet nine and a half inches, Erin wound her way around wizards fighting to speak properly, one who couldn't even make an explicit sound without gurgling, towards the hall that Mark had pointed out to her. She escaped a conversation with a bothered looking gargoyle hopping on its tail and managed to slip into the shadowy hall before anyone else noticed her. Taking a deep breath, she continued silently down the hall and stopped at the door with a plaque that read "Head Healer Gregory F. Avatt›expert in counter curse charms, illegal potions remedies, and experimental Muggle treatment." Gritting her teeth, Erin knocked on the heavy looking door. The sound echoed dully around the hall. There was a pause, a scraping of a chair as someone rose, padding across the floor to the door, and then a creak as the handle turned to reveal a middle sized older man wearing thick glasses.
"Yes?" asked the man quizzically. "Can I help you?"
"Um...yeah," Erin responded, clearing her throat. "I'm Erin Langhart from Australia here about the new residency." The older man's eyes lit up immediately and he stepped away from the door, opening it wide.
"Excellent. I've been expecting you." Erin stepped through the door into a richly decorated room covered with pictures of wizards wearing clothes she could have sworn had not been seen in over four hundred years. The room was furnished with a complete set of dark, mahogany furniture and comfortable looking, overstuffed chairs. "Please, sit down." The Head Healer motioned to a chair sitting opposite his desk. He took his own seat in an elegant spinning chair behind the desk. "I was hoping you would arrive soon."
"I was not informed I was that urgently in need of," Erin apologized. "The plane was delayed in Sydney due to a huge rain storm, which we haven't had in months, but..." The Head Healer held up a hand for silence.
"I was blaming you for nothing," said he, simply. "I was, however, merely stating my great sense of relief now that you are here." Erin looked at the rug between her feet. The wizard certainly had a way about making one feel uncomfortable. "You see," said he, reclining in his chair and staring intently at the embarrassed woman in front of him, "we have an emergency that none of us have been able to solve, that deals exactly with the subject that we hired you to fulfill." Erin looked up swiftly. Liam had been right. "He was brought to us four days ago under suspicious circumstances and was near death. Luckily, we've been able to keep him alive by using an interesting form of Muggle medications, intravenous fluids, actually." Erin wrinkled her noes at the thought of using Muggle remedies to cure an unsuccessful transformation.
"Please, sir," she started uncertainly, "might I see him? This sounds quite bad, as you've described it." Gregory stood up at once and nodded curtly.
"I hadn't thought that you would wish to see him today, seeing how you've just arrived from a very trying flight. If you would like, I will call for someone to show you to him." Erin nodded and the stout man flipped a switch behind his desk, then sat back down. There was a brief moment of uneasy silence, then a knock on the door. "Come in," the Head Healer called imperiously. A thin man with graying hair and a thin face opened the door and poked his head through. "Ahh, good. Jensen, will you show her," he indicated Erin, "to the SOUP ward?" The man looked terrified, but complied. "Excellent. Now," he continued, turning to Erin, "I'd like you to begin your work tomorrow at eight o'clock. Precisely then, and no later. I've arranged for DeEvlin to take your bags to a flat that I've had previous residents stay in. I'm sure you'll like it; it's in the center of London. Nice view over the Tames River, you know. Does that sound good?" Erin didn't dare say "no" to this man who seemed to demand respect. She nodded courteously and made her way to the open door. Jensen turned on his heal the moment he'd shut the door and practically ran through the dark passageway in the opposite direction that Erin had originally arrived from.
The passage opened up into a bustling hallway filled with patients coming and going. "This way," the healer motioned and hurried along the brightly-lit hallway towards a huge set of stairs. They climbed up to the third floor and sped down a series of other dark hallways toward a ward with a huge sign above, it notifying passing people that it was the SERIOUS, or OTHERWISE UNPROPITIOUS, PATIENTS. Erin shuddered as she crept in past the steel door, expecting to see half-mutilated patients or worse. Instead, she saw nothing of the sort.
The room that Erin found herself immersed in was smaller than other rooms she had worked in when she was in Sydney, but reasonably comfortable. The one bed in the room had been shoved away from the sole window and lay completely in the shadows. A nightstand stood on its right hand side, piled with undisturbed magazines. A large, wrapped slab of chocolate lay over the neatly stacked magazines, but it too was untouched. The flighty healer led her over to the side of the bed and slipped a clipboard out from a pocket at the foot of the bed. Erin examined the man lying in the bed.
Erin grimaced, as she looked him over. He might have been extremely good looking only a handful of years ago, or maybe even before this atrocity. The recent years, and the hard life in a world prejudice against the werewolf, had worn away some of his looks, but certainly not all. His hair was lightly washed with gray, but most was still a sandy blond color that was only slightly darker than Liam's hair. His face was charming, but thin and worn from his recent ordeal. His skin was strained across his wan, hallowed face. His breath was labored and sporadic. Erin snorted in sympathy, pushing the hair out of her face that insisted on staying wherever she wanted it least. "What happened?" asked she, quietly.
"Umm..." said Jensen quite intelligently, "he had a bout with some..." The healer looked nervous. With a cough, he continued. "With some...a certain dark wizard. Let's say he didn't come out of it so well. Sadly enough, the full moon waxed the day after he was brought in and he transformed, sapping his body of all the strength it had left. We're unsure as to if he'll live at all." Erin remembered that Gregory had mentioned I.V. fluids kept this specific man alive. She scanned the general area for them and spotted the nasty looking bladder hanging from a thin metal wrack. The needle at the end of the clear tube punctured the skin above his elbow joint. Erin gritted her teeth as pessimistic thoughts flooded her mind. "Can you tell how bad off he is, right now?" asked Jensen anxiously. Erin looked up from staring at the sleeping wizard and up into the eyes of the healer with a pained expression. Frowning, she knelt by the reclined wizard's side and checked his thin arm for a pulse. It was slow, but otherwise normal. His temperature was possibly a tad low. All symptoms that she'd seen in other werewolves that were too weak to undergo the transformation. Erin shrugged as she stood up again.
"I'll need to speak with him before I can make any hard hypothesizes regarding his health," said she. "Right now I can't see anything drastically not normal about him." The healer nodded and slipped the clipboard back into the pouch at the foot of the bed then watched as Erin checked the sleeping man's pulse again. "What did you say his name is?"
"I didn't," the healer sighed. "His name is Remus Lupin, and I'd be careful if you plan on interrogating him when he wakes up. You'll find he can very easily side step any question that he has mind to."
A/N's: We love reviews.....
CHAPTER TWO: A Long Way From Home
Two years later:
"G'day, mate! Sun's a bit hot today, isn't it?" A short Muggle in a crunched tan hat, brown shorts, a fly fishing vest, beaten up leather hiking boots, and socks infested with some particularly vile looking seeds, stepped out from under an umbrella like eucalyptus tree. "Nasty, record breaking heat we've been having around these parts. Hell, not even the sheep will move to their greens. Ah, well." He looked up at the slightly taller person he had just greeted. A heavy looking, long, black cloak concealed the face. The Muggle peered up in earnest, trying to see whom he was talking to. Unable to, but seemingly unperturbed, he continued. "Now, what'd you be doing in the bay area for? Looking for something or the other, right?"
"Actually," remarked the person inside the cloak dryly, "I live here."
"Oh."
"It seems to me," the cloaked figure continued, "that you're the one that seems a tad lost." A hand fumbled for something inside of the cloak. Somewhat apprehensively, the Muggle watched.
"No. No, I live here too," the Muggle assured the hidden person. "Actually, I run a mean dinghy business down near the jetty." He motioned out behind him, towards the south, and turned to walk under the eucalyptus tree. "Do you like boating?" The cloaked person was gone. With slight confusion, the Muggle rotated in a circle, looking for the missing person. "Strange," said he to himself when he found that there was no one in sight. "A bizarre chap, none the less. He must have been near madness to be wearing that old cloak on a day of this heat. Ah, well. Best to get inside before the heat gets any worse." The Muggle tarried a little longer under the shade of the trees before tipping his hat the direction of the sun and stepping out into the blazing light.
"It's impossible I tell you! I can't get a bloody six kilometers from this bloody house! Just now I landed in some dump of a desert and this chatty Muggle starts talking crazy stuff about junk I could care less about and then I have to listen to the man before I get my bearings and come back here! Do you know how invigorating it is to listen to a half-crazed Muggle rant about the heat? Well, I'll tell you. It's just about as bad as not being able to disapperate because of some fluke thing that happens with the bloody stars that makes my wand screw up and," the woman took a huge breath paused for a brief moment before she continued, "that makes no bloody sense at all!"
"That would be most annoying," a man, lounging in a high-backed chair in front of a roaring fireplace, drawled. He had a bemused hint in his voice.
"Damn right it's annoying! Can you believe it! I'm going to have to wait a bloody month now until the stars straighten themselves out again before I can get anywhere! It makes no sense and it's as bloody inconvenient as I'll get out."
"Must be almost as annoying as listening to a sister who can't even explain a problem without blowing up and pretending like the world is out to get her," said the man in the chair, leaning over the side and grinning at the furious woman. She fumed and dug her wand out of her cloak and the man laughed. "Go ahead, Erin. I'd like to see you hex me when you can't even disapperate."
"The world is out to get me!" Erin whined, stuffing her wand back in her robes and shooting a very cross look the man's way. "You'd be doing the exact same things if your wand does bloody hell wrong things and can't even be fixed because the stupid wandmakers are afraid they'll make the wand even more unreliable than it already is!" Can you believe it? The people who made the wand won't even take on the responsibility for its bloody problems! What a fantastic mess!"
"Can't you be the least bit quiet?" asked the man in the chair and stood to face the ranting person. "Listen, Erin, it's not my fault the stars effect Mum's wand, so leave it in peace will you? It probably only happens because the wand doesn't like you and you've been too busy to go out and get a new one for something like fourteen years. I really don't want to listen to you tell me every other minute about how you hate this that and the other. Leave it at rest, won't you?" He ran a hand through his close cropped, sandy hair as he watched her response.
"Come on, Liam, you know I don't mean it!" Erin laughed and puffed a piece of sun bleached hair away from her face. She smiled a few seconds longer and then rolled her eyes and began to mutter to herself. "Damn, I don't know why it's got to be my stupid wand that's got the spiritual or emotional or what else wrong with it! Why it can't be some bloody South African's or some Yank's, I don't know. It's like the half the damn world is out to get me and the other half is trying to sabotage the other half but instead of sabotaging them, they end up screwing with my brain and the likes of that. Why can't they all lay off and go screw with someone else's mind?" Erin shook her head in disgust and slumped into a rotating chair near a large bay window. She peered out the lace curtains and across the great Sydney Bay. Boats with sails turned slightly yellow from the constant sea air blowing through them scudded to and fro about the bay, as if it were all one big parade. "What I wouldn't give for a normal life," Erin muttered and then jumped as Liam lay a hand on her shoulder. "What?" she asked, disgruntled. Liam snorted and swiveled Erin around to face him.
"I wasn't going to tell you," he began with a sheepish grin, "but I guess you'd like something to get your mind off your wand." Erin looked as though she were about to embark on yet another tirade. "Knock off, will you? That's better," said he when she slouched back into her chair. "Oh, and lay off the South Africans, got it? We've got some family down there; wouldn't want to hurt any feelings, you know," he whispered when Erin slumped in her chair again. "You got a letter from...some place in England, I'm not exactly sure where. Anyway, Father's got it downstairs, but I really don't think it'd be a best time to bug him right now; seeing how he's in a tight spot with the government. Might not appreciate you storming down there right now..."
"Go on," Erin whispered with anxiety and stood up, "what's it say?" Liam smiled.
"Your application has been accepted," said Liam, smiling with a sneer drawn perfectly up to his nose. "The healers at that Muddos in London were very interested in you clinical trials with wolfsbane and the other...werewolf charms."
"They're potions," Erin corrected. "And it's St. Mungo's, not Muddos."
"Potions, charms, curses...what difference is there anyway? You know me, I hate anything that has to do with something other than...history." Erin looked uncomfortable and turned back to the window. "Anyway," Liam continued quickly, "they want you to go up there and spend some time as the new healer in residence. Sounds fun, doesn't it? You'll get out of this heat, at least." As if to make a point, he wiped his perspiring brow on his sleeve. Erin turned around slowly and gazed up a Liam in disbelief.
"They want me," she pointed a finger at herself, "to go up to London? I'm a retired Quidditch Beater for Merlin's sake! They want me to be the healer in residence?" Liam nodded, growing more bored by the second. "You can't be serious," Erin whispered. "That's impossible!"
"Believe me," Liam growled, striding over to the chair by the fireplace, "it most definitely is possible, and probable. They want you to arrive in two days; apparently they have an emergency case on the line and they need your talent straight away. Believe it, little sister, you've got the brains to get just about any medical job in either the magical or Muggle world." With a reasonably jovial smile, he sat in the chair and pulled a thick book of the lamp table next to him. Erin crossed to his chair and stood behind it.
"Is Father alright about it?" Liam nodded into his book. "Are you positive?" she chided. "The last time you told me that Father was okay with me doing something I got the pleasure of skipping three meals because, it seems, that Father was utterly not alright with me collecting wolfsbane a midnight."
"It was your bloody idea," Liam snorted and shifted in his chair so he could glance up at Erin. "He had his reasons about not wanting you to go." Erin gritted her teeth and shot him a dark look. "He was fine with the idea, Erin. Perfectly fine. He was the one who initially read the letter; was a bit surprised in the beginning that you got the job...Anyway, he seems glad to be rid of you."
"He'd be glad, alright," Erin grimaced and rolled her eyes. "So, they want me in two days?" Liam nodded, obviously not listening to a word she was saying. His nose was inches away from the book's binding. Every time he flipped a page it brushed up against the tip of his nose. "Great," Erin smiled, looking up and scanning the room. The noise of a crinkled page against her brother's nose made her jump. She looked sharply down at his curled up form and sighed. "What are you reading?" she asked, not really wanting to know the answer.
"The History of the Australian Law by Johannes Tinker."
"Sounds about as entertaining as trying to dance with a Queensland grindylow."
"I can't believe I have to take the Muggle plane," Erin exclaimed, exasperated, under her breath and clutched her ticket tightly. Her father looked on in stony silence. Liam wore his customary sheepish grin hugged her tightly as a Muggle came over the intercom and announced that boarding onto Erin's flight was beginning.
"Go take out some werewolves, will you?" Liam laughed and thumped her on the back. "Try not to have too much fun, though." Erin nodded, turned briefly to her dad, saw he had made no move to wish her on her ways, turned to the ticket taker, and handed the crisp piece of tag board to the plump Muggle. With a wave back a Liam and the grim statue that appeared to be her father, she was on her way to England.
"Are you...Erin Langhart?" a tall man in a spotless black suit asked. He looked skeptical, but friendly, none the less. Erin nodded and the man smiled, offering to take her bags. "My name is Mark DeEvlin; I'm from St. Mungo's. They told me you would be arriving by a Muggle plane. It's my first time in an airport," he told her as they pushed past Muggles eager to greet loved ones or get luggage or what not. "Rather an interesting place."
"Yes, sorry about all this," apologized Erin, jerking the bag she was carrying out of the way from colliding with a surly looking Muggle's kneecap. "It's a real bother."
"Not a problem at all," laughed the man. "I rather enjoy coming into the Muggle world; it's not something we do very often, you see. Makes up for a particularly boring day in the office, although we don't get many of those," he admitted with a frown. Laughing at the horrified look on Erin's face, he opened the airport's door and followed her as she stepped through it. "Shall we disapperate from here?" Erin felt the color rise in her cheeks as she answered him.
"Actually, I'm really sorry about this, but that's the reason that I took the Muggle transportation in the first place. My wand has some...problems...with it and for some reason won't allow me to apperate very successfully; actually no predictability at all. More's the pity."
"Don't worry," Mark chuckled, "there's no harm done. We'll just take the Underground and be on our way then. It goes quite near Mungo's, or so I'm told. I don't have a great amount of experience using Muggle transportation." With a wink, he flagged down a taxi and helped her get in. "No need to worry," he whispered to her as the taxi driver gave them suspicious looks from the front seat, "the taxi system in England is superior to many other systems of transportation. Makes it all the easier to get exactly where I need to go."
The taxi driver dropped them off in front of a exceptionally ratty looking building with "closed to renovation" signs posted all over the windows. Mark paid the driver and led Erin right up to the window of the closed store front. Leaning forward, he spoke directly to a teetering female dummy. "Mark DeEvlin here with," he paused for a second, looking embarrassed as he tried to remember Erin's name. She whispered it to him. "Erin Langhart, to see Head Healer Gregory Avatt." Erin watched apprehensively as the dummy nodded curtly. "Right this way, then," said Mark and made an elegant sweeping motion towards the solid glass window. Now giving him the apprehensive look, Erin stepped into the glass, half expecting to stub her toe. Quite gratefully, she didn't, and found herself in a massive lobby. Mark took her arm as he appeared next to her. "His office is just down the hall to your left. First door on the right. Give me your bags, and I'll put them where you can get to them when you need them." He smiled curtly when she gave him her bag and left with a nod.
Feeling much smaller than her five feet nine and a half inches, Erin wound her way around wizards fighting to speak properly, one who couldn't even make an explicit sound without gurgling, towards the hall that Mark had pointed out to her. She escaped a conversation with a bothered looking gargoyle hopping on its tail and managed to slip into the shadowy hall before anyone else noticed her. Taking a deep breath, she continued silently down the hall and stopped at the door with a plaque that read "Head Healer Gregory F. Avatt›expert in counter curse charms, illegal potions remedies, and experimental Muggle treatment." Gritting her teeth, Erin knocked on the heavy looking door. The sound echoed dully around the hall. There was a pause, a scraping of a chair as someone rose, padding across the floor to the door, and then a creak as the handle turned to reveal a middle sized older man wearing thick glasses.
"Yes?" asked the man quizzically. "Can I help you?"
"Um...yeah," Erin responded, clearing her throat. "I'm Erin Langhart from Australia here about the new residency." The older man's eyes lit up immediately and he stepped away from the door, opening it wide.
"Excellent. I've been expecting you." Erin stepped through the door into a richly decorated room covered with pictures of wizards wearing clothes she could have sworn had not been seen in over four hundred years. The room was furnished with a complete set of dark, mahogany furniture and comfortable looking, overstuffed chairs. "Please, sit down." The Head Healer motioned to a chair sitting opposite his desk. He took his own seat in an elegant spinning chair behind the desk. "I was hoping you would arrive soon."
"I was not informed I was that urgently in need of," Erin apologized. "The plane was delayed in Sydney due to a huge rain storm, which we haven't had in months, but..." The Head Healer held up a hand for silence.
"I was blaming you for nothing," said he, simply. "I was, however, merely stating my great sense of relief now that you are here." Erin looked at the rug between her feet. The wizard certainly had a way about making one feel uncomfortable. "You see," said he, reclining in his chair and staring intently at the embarrassed woman in front of him, "we have an emergency that none of us have been able to solve, that deals exactly with the subject that we hired you to fulfill." Erin looked up swiftly. Liam had been right. "He was brought to us four days ago under suspicious circumstances and was near death. Luckily, we've been able to keep him alive by using an interesting form of Muggle medications, intravenous fluids, actually." Erin wrinkled her noes at the thought of using Muggle remedies to cure an unsuccessful transformation.
"Please, sir," she started uncertainly, "might I see him? This sounds quite bad, as you've described it." Gregory stood up at once and nodded curtly.
"I hadn't thought that you would wish to see him today, seeing how you've just arrived from a very trying flight. If you would like, I will call for someone to show you to him." Erin nodded and the stout man flipped a switch behind his desk, then sat back down. There was a brief moment of uneasy silence, then a knock on the door. "Come in," the Head Healer called imperiously. A thin man with graying hair and a thin face opened the door and poked his head through. "Ahh, good. Jensen, will you show her," he indicated Erin, "to the SOUP ward?" The man looked terrified, but complied. "Excellent. Now," he continued, turning to Erin, "I'd like you to begin your work tomorrow at eight o'clock. Precisely then, and no later. I've arranged for DeEvlin to take your bags to a flat that I've had previous residents stay in. I'm sure you'll like it; it's in the center of London. Nice view over the Tames River, you know. Does that sound good?" Erin didn't dare say "no" to this man who seemed to demand respect. She nodded courteously and made her way to the open door. Jensen turned on his heal the moment he'd shut the door and practically ran through the dark passageway in the opposite direction that Erin had originally arrived from.
The passage opened up into a bustling hallway filled with patients coming and going. "This way," the healer motioned and hurried along the brightly-lit hallway towards a huge set of stairs. They climbed up to the third floor and sped down a series of other dark hallways toward a ward with a huge sign above, it notifying passing people that it was the SERIOUS, or OTHERWISE UNPROPITIOUS, PATIENTS. Erin shuddered as she crept in past the steel door, expecting to see half-mutilated patients or worse. Instead, she saw nothing of the sort.
The room that Erin found herself immersed in was smaller than other rooms she had worked in when she was in Sydney, but reasonably comfortable. The one bed in the room had been shoved away from the sole window and lay completely in the shadows. A nightstand stood on its right hand side, piled with undisturbed magazines. A large, wrapped slab of chocolate lay over the neatly stacked magazines, but it too was untouched. The flighty healer led her over to the side of the bed and slipped a clipboard out from a pocket at the foot of the bed. Erin examined the man lying in the bed.
Erin grimaced, as she looked him over. He might have been extremely good looking only a handful of years ago, or maybe even before this atrocity. The recent years, and the hard life in a world prejudice against the werewolf, had worn away some of his looks, but certainly not all. His hair was lightly washed with gray, but most was still a sandy blond color that was only slightly darker than Liam's hair. His face was charming, but thin and worn from his recent ordeal. His skin was strained across his wan, hallowed face. His breath was labored and sporadic. Erin snorted in sympathy, pushing the hair out of her face that insisted on staying wherever she wanted it least. "What happened?" asked she, quietly.
"Umm..." said Jensen quite intelligently, "he had a bout with some..." The healer looked nervous. With a cough, he continued. "With some...a certain dark wizard. Let's say he didn't come out of it so well. Sadly enough, the full moon waxed the day after he was brought in and he transformed, sapping his body of all the strength it had left. We're unsure as to if he'll live at all." Erin remembered that Gregory had mentioned I.V. fluids kept this specific man alive. She scanned the general area for them and spotted the nasty looking bladder hanging from a thin metal wrack. The needle at the end of the clear tube punctured the skin above his elbow joint. Erin gritted her teeth as pessimistic thoughts flooded her mind. "Can you tell how bad off he is, right now?" asked Jensen anxiously. Erin looked up from staring at the sleeping wizard and up into the eyes of the healer with a pained expression. Frowning, she knelt by the reclined wizard's side and checked his thin arm for a pulse. It was slow, but otherwise normal. His temperature was possibly a tad low. All symptoms that she'd seen in other werewolves that were too weak to undergo the transformation. Erin shrugged as she stood up again.
"I'll need to speak with him before I can make any hard hypothesizes regarding his health," said she. "Right now I can't see anything drastically not normal about him." The healer nodded and slipped the clipboard back into the pouch at the foot of the bed then watched as Erin checked the sleeping man's pulse again. "What did you say his name is?"
"I didn't," the healer sighed. "His name is Remus Lupin, and I'd be careful if you plan on interrogating him when he wakes up. You'll find he can very easily side step any question that he has mind to."
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