Disclaimer -- I own nothing... not even my home... it's all JK Rowling's, who is one of the most creative people I have ever had the privilege to read...

Bringing the Lambs Back into the Fold -- July 30th, 2015

April turned to May. June arrived and left without Madison and Draco's return or correspondence. Mason found himself snapping at Katie one day. "I need to leave you for a few days…I feel like I've waited too long as it is and I can't take not knowing if she's okay or not. It's making me a crazy man." He said as he paced their bedroom. "Something's wrong and I have to find Draco and my sister. Damn it -- I shouldn't have waited this long."

Rather than start a fight she would not win, she agreed to his leaving for a few days. "There's plenty of help here if I need it." she explained. With a kiss, he left to find Harry, Ron and his dad.

After a short discussion, they decided that Sirius would stay and help with the babies, and the other men would go. Each feeling just a bit ashamed that they waited so long. It had seemed as though time just slipped away. The men left the estate, their wives and children to find the lost two of their group. When they apparated to the New York apartment where they had been sending owls; they found no one home. The asked a few neighbors who assured them that the couple still lived there, but were probably doing a shift at the hospital. They waited a few hours before finally seeing the couple walk up the stairs.

Mason stared wide eyed as the woman beside Draco raised her head to look at him. Was that his sister? She was never fat, but always healthy, looked at him with deep set, grey eyes. She was very skinny. 'How much weight had she lost, since he saw last saw?' he thought to himself as he looked at her again. Her long hair was pulled into a tight bun which gave her an appearance of someone much older. Her jaw line, always strong, now looked strange with her high cheekbones and sallow colored skin. She wore no makeup and did not seem to really care.

Draco didn't look any better than his wife. His usual sneer was replaced by a look of exhaustion and a decent amount of weight loss of his own. The couple did not speak to one another. There was a distance between them as she made her way to the door. She did not speak to her brother or friends as she unlocked the door. She entered, walked to a room at the end of the hall, shut the door, and did not come out the rest of the evening.

Draco did, however, make eye contact with his friends. "Please come in," he offered graciously pointing toward the living room, "I need to take a quick shower; there is food and beer in the fridge. If you can just help yourself; I'll be right back."

Mason watched as he walked to a different room, heard him rummage around, and walk across the hall with clean clothes in hand. Mason walked to the door of his sister's room and knocked. He got no reply and returned to the kitchen; turning to them he asked "What the hell is going on?"

No one had an answer at the moment however, and waited for Draco to come out of his shower. Ron was handing out beers when Draco came back into the small kitchen. "So, what brings you lot here?"

"Uhm, dude, we haven't heard from either one of you in over a year."

"Longer than that, try since you left after the babies were proven to be Sirius'. I mean I knew she was pissed off that day, but this is ridiculous."

"Oh, sorry, bit busy with school and such. I graduated top of my class." He added as an afterthought.

"Draco? What's going on?"

Draco looked to Harry and wasn't sure he could find the answers to the question. "With what?"

"Have you looked in the mirror lately? You're skinny. Your hair is almost yellow, and man, have you slept in the past year? And that was Madison right? I mean she could wear your pants and have them fall off of her."

He looked to his friends. "Oh, that… it, uhm… really started at the end of Summer Term. One morning, Mads woke up and screamed. I don't think she's slept since that night. She was crying and holding her arms around her body." He paused and took a long drink from the bottle. Sighing, he continued, "She kept screaming words out over and over, but she wouldn't let me touch her. It just got worse after that. She stopped going to school. She didn't go for two, maybe three weeks. I went, brought her work home, she did it, and sent it back with me to the professors. But she didn't leave the apartment. I tried to contact you. The owls returned without a letter. I assumed you were getting them."

The three men looked at one another but did not interupt. The looks were lost on Draco, who seemed almost relieved to be saying this to someone. "I didn't understand. I mean, it was like she had a total meltdown. Being Rowan's daughter, it would be easy to see, I suppose; no offense Mason." Mason smiled. "I went to school, and came home one day, and she had moved my things from our room into the spare room. After that move, she started going to school with me again. We were in every class together, and finished, but she was beating me through the summer term. She graduated in the middle of the school in January. And we have been doing our training at the same hospital; she still does not talk to me."

"Wait, go back, when did this start? Do you remember?"

"Oh yes, I remember. It was the last time she spoke to me. It was September 5th of last year." The men exchanged looks of surprise. It was the day all of the children were born.

"Since then, she has just steadily left me. We live in the same apartment, have the same shift at the hospital, walk to work together, EVERY DAY, but she is no longer a part of me. When I try to touch her, she pulls away. She won't look at me. She won't talk to me. She locks her door with magic, so I can't go in. Hell, we work together, and the only time I hear her voice is when she is telling a nurse what to do at the Emergency Room. It's driving me mad.

"The only other time I hear her voice is at night when she sleeps, or at least I assume she's asleep. She seems to have horrible nightmares. I bang on the doors to wake her, I beg her to let me in. Then the screaming stops but she doesn't answer me.

"She's lost so much weight, her clothes don't fit anymore. She had been gaining pretty steady through the spring and summer. God she was beautiful. Not too thin, not fat, just perfect; my perfect Mads. But then, like overnight, the nightmares started and she lost maybe twenty or thirty pounds. I have no idea how much total she has lost by now. I'm pretty sure she throws up everything she eats."

"Why didn't you let us know? I mean I guess you tried, but you know we would have helped."

Draco looked bewildered for a moment, "I was sending you owls. Like I said, but I thought that you were busy with the Riddle House. I mean, part of me thought you would blame me, but I didn't care. I should have pushed her harder to go home or just gone and gotten you myself. I'm sorry."

"What do you want to do now?"

"Tonight was our last night at the hospital. Tomorrow we get our completion certificates for our Pediatric Emergency Room Residency. It's quite the accomplishment actually. I had hoped to move back to England tomorrow and start working in the Children's hospital. But I won't leave her. Since she won't talk to me, I don't know what the plans are."

Mason told them all to leave. He would deal with his sister alone. He was terrified that the blackness that had plagued their mother all those years had finally overtaken his little sister.