Chapter 1: An Unusual Patient

"Dr House," the chairman of the board said. "Your last cases have proven that a man of your talent is wasted dealing with STDs and common colds. I have no idea why this hospital ties down such a valuable resource with mundane tasks that any doctor could accomplish. Dr Cuddy?"

Cuddy was visibly flustered. "It's hospital policy that all doctors do clinic duty, and Dr House's contract specifically states that … ."

"Then I suggest we change the policy," the chairman interrupted Cuddy with a genial smile. "Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest we waive Dr House's clinic duty hours. All in favour of the motion please raise your hands."

All around the table hands rose – all except for one. Cuddy, looking as though she'd bitten into a lemon, kept her hands tightly clasped in front of her.

"Dr Cuddy?" the chairman asked with deceptive gentleness.

Gritting her teeth, Cuddy …

… pulled the magazine off his face.

"House, wake up!"

Rubbing a hand across his face, he struggled to sit up on the examination table, one hand automatically feeling around for his cane. Before he could locate it, Cuddy pushed it into his chest, hard.

"Need you in my office." She stalked out, leaving the door wide ajar.

"What about my clinic hours?"

"You can sleep some other time," she called over her shoulder.

By the time he reached her office, she was seated behind her desk with something that looked suspiciously like a patient file in front of her.

"Close the door," she ordered.

"And the blinds?" he asked with a suggestive leer.

"You wish! Got a patient for you."

He sat down opposite her and held out his hand. She tossed him the file and watched him while he opened it randomly. The first thing that caught his eye was a large photograph of a hand. Or more accurately, of something that had once been a hand. Now it was a black, shrivelled mess.

"Ewww!" he exclaimed. "Someone didn't heed the warning about not putting gasoline on the barbecue. And … someone else did a really bad job of getting a patient history. This guy is heavy competition for Methuselah, if the patient history is to be believed. Or am I supposed to save corpses now?"

"He's certainly old, but he's still very much alive. The patient history is admittedly sketchy and, uh, inaccurate in places, but there's enough to work with," Cuddy said.

"Send him to surgery," House advised. "They'll have to amputate the hand, but … ."

"You're taking him."

"Hand gangrenous, hand gone. Very sad." He pulled a piteous face.

"The patient is refusing amputation."

"Sad and stupid. You could, I don't know, put him out for a while, get his medical proxy's permission, and amputate the hand. But dang, you'd never do that, would you, it's so unethical!"

Cuddy's lips narrowed. "He's refusing amputation for reasons connected to his beliefs," she said in a pressed voice. "He is convinced that the hand is cursed."

That caught House's interest for a moment, but then he tipped his head and said, "Still stupid, and still not a case for Diagnostics. Psych wing's on the fifth floor."

Cuddy gave him her I'm the boss of you smile. "It is, if I say it is."

"The earth isn't an apple pie just because you say it is," House pointed out.

"No," Cuddy said in measured tones, "because it doesn't get paid to be one. You, however, get paid to take the cases I assign to you."

"Within reason. Cases within reason. This one isn't." He brandished the patient file at her. "Someone called 'Albus Dumbledore'? Seriously? Has the guy in Admissions been drinking again?"

"Professor Dumbledore wants you, and he's paying very seriously, so he's getting you."

"Look, I don't care whether he's paying his weight in gold. I'm not taking a case of barbeque-itis."

"It isn't a burn, he doesn't have vascular disease. Give me credit for checking for the obvious before assigning him to you. And he's paying more than his weight in gold." Cuddy nodded to a chest standing by her desk, a big antique-looking affair that he'd noticed when entering the room, but had brushed aside as another example of her inexplicable tendency to drift into kitschy when decorating her office. "I'll open it."

She got up and pulled the heavy lid up.

"Wow!" he said. The chest was filled to the brim with big golden coins.

"Understatement of the year," Cuddy remarked, moving aside to give him access to the chest.

He crouched awkwardly in front of it and picked up one of the coins. It was heavy in his hand, stamped with insignia that he'd never seen before. He bit into it experimentally.

"Can you really test gold like that?" Cuddy asked.

"No idea," he admitted, "but that's how they do it in movies. This could be one big scam. You realise that, don't you?"

"I picked out a random sample and had it tested," Cuddy said. "That gold is very real. Do you have any idea what currency it is? They call them 'galleons'."

He wondered who 'they' were. "Never heard of galleons. No country has gold currency like that. Can't the patient pay with a credit card like everyone else?"

"I'm not about to complain. That is our new paediatric oncology wing."

"Oh, goody, then you won't have to sleep with all the donors at the next fund raiser, which means you'll have more time for me."

"More time to make sure you're doing your job. Let me introduce you to your patient."

He pulled a face. "My minions can run a few tests – and get a decent patient history, starting with his name. I'll stay here and protect your gold for you."

Cuddy smiled. "And if someone comes to steal it, you'll scare them away with your cane. Forget it and come with me."

It wasn't his problem, but if the gold disappeared, Cuddy would be pissed, which would make his life difficult, and she'd be royally screwed, which would cost him his job in the long run. If she got fired for costing the hospital a fortune, he'd be the first person her successor fired.

"Cuddy, I don't think this is the time to indulge in your belief that humanity is essentially good and incapable of heinous crimes. The security at this hospital sucks. Call in a private security company and have them guard the chest until you manage to transfer the contents to a bank. And don't leave it unattended until then."

"The guy who delivered it assured me that the lid of the chest was charmed and that I was the only one who could open it." She slammed the lid shut and motioned to him to try to open it, giving him an infuriatingly superior smile.

Cuddy wasn't your street con artist; she was as transparent as a shop window. As far as he could make out, she hadn't manipulated the chest, so wiping that smile off her face shouldn't pose a major problem. He bent down to lift the lid again, but it wouldn't budge. He moved back a step, eyeing the chest. Cuddy hadn't touched the lower part of the chest, so she must have released a mechanism by pressing something or other on the lid. He felt all around the edges, tugged, rapped, shook and rattled with all his might, but the chest remained closed.

After watching him for about ten minutes, Cuddy waved him aside, bent down and opened the lid in one fluid motion.

He couldn't help feeling frustrated as he walked around the chest, thinking aloud. "Some sort of fingerprint lock, I figure. That won't stop anyone from walking in here, taking it out, and dynamiting it once they're outta here."

"For that, they'd have to know that the contents are worth the bother. It's not like I usually keep treasure chests in my office. Besides, the owners don't seem worried about theft or organised crime. They seem to have some sort of security system of their own," Cuddy continued, "so I'm not unduly worried." Nevertheless, she took a throw from the couch and covered the chest with it.

"Or maybe they aren't worried about organised crime because they are organised crime," House surmised, falling into step beside her as she left the office and made her way to the elevators. "Where are we going? I need to page my team and inform them."

"No team," Cuddy said. "Your patient insists on absolute secrecy." She pressed the button to the fifth floor. The isolation wing was up there, where they kept patients with highly contagious and dangerous diseases, and the psych ward.

"No team, no tests," House sing-songed.

"Discuss it with him," Cuddy advised, "but keep in mind that if your patient decides to go to another hospital taking that chest with him, then I will be very unhappy. And I mean 'ball-busting' unhappy." With that she nodded to the security guard, swiped her ID card through the scanner at the entrance of the isolation ward and led him in.

As far as House could make out, the ward wasn't staffed. The nurses' station was empty, the computer screens blank. Nor were any of the rooms hermetically sealed off, as was the custom when a contagious patient had been admitted. Only the first room was lit, but the doors to the room were wide open and the bed was empty. Two people were in the room; one was sitting in a chair while the other lounged uneasily against a wall.

"Where's the patient?" House asked Cuddy in a half whisper.

"The one who's sitting in the chair," she said, not bothering to whisper.

He pulled her away from the room towards the nurses' station. "He should be half dead, with a hand in that condition. Given his birth date, he should be entirely dead."

"Tell him, not me. Believe it or not, he walked into the hospital on his own two feet. It was all we could do to make him take a wheelchair to come up here, and even then I think he was humouring us."

House straightened his shoulders, tucked the file under his arm and entered the patient room.

"Good morning!" he said with false cheer. "I'm Dr Gregory House. I believe you are my new patient."

The seated man rose, and in the light of the neon ward lamps, House could see that he was indeed old. He had long white hair and a beard worthy of a patriarch; he wore a robe of biblical cut whose gravity was marred somewhat by a garish moon and star pattern. He kept his right hand tucked into his sleeve, but he politely extended his left one, his eyes above his half-moon glasses smiling at House.

House ignored the hand, focusing instead on the clothes. "Oh, I didn't know it was Halloween already."

The old man withdrew his hand, smiling without any sign of having taken umbrage. He said, with an unmistakeable British accent, "Good morning, Dr House. It's very kind of you to take the time to see an old man like me. Excuse my get-up; I didn't have the energy to organise more suitable garments." He waved a deprecating hand at his clothes.

Now that House was close enough to get a good look, he could see that the cloth of the old man's robe was of thick, soft wool, well-worn, but undoubtedly of the highest quality. No Halloween costume, that. The other man in the room, a tall stooped man of about House's age, was dressed in normal clothes: an ill-fitting black suit, a dark green shirt, and a green-and-silver striped tie. His black hair was unfashionably long, falling about his sallow face in greasy tendrils, and his posture was stooped. Unlike his aged companion, he looked anything but at his ease, and he appeared as miserable as House felt.

House perched on the empty bed, took out his reading glasses, and made a show of perusing the patient history. "You are … Albus Dumbledore, born in Surrey, England?"

"I am indeed," the old man said cheerfully. "And this is my companion, Professor Severus Snape." The man introduced as Snape gave the slightest of nods.

House looked down at the patient file again. "Born in 1881?"

"Is this necessary?" Professor Snape asked.

"I'm sure it is, Severus," Dumbledore said quietly. Then, in reply to House's question, "Yes, that's correct."

"Do you have papers to prove it?"

"None that you'd accept," Dumbledore said with a hint of regret in his voice. "I believe you require a passport or a birth certificate issued by government officials."

"I'll take a driver's licence at a pinch," House said without much hope.

Dumbledore and Snape looked at each other, shaking their heads.

"Well, at your age it's probably better that you don't drive anymore," House said. "But one hundred and something seems … ," he scrunched up his face, "… just a little unlikely."

"You can put down eighty if you prefer," Dumbledore offered.

"Eighty it is," House said, scratching out the original date of birth in the patient file and putting down the new one with a dramatic flourish.

Snape prowled around the room like a caged panther. "Headmaster, this is ridiculous. If these people don't believe minor matters such as your age, how will they believe the rest?"

"Headmaster?" House asked. "What of?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Dumbledore said without blinking.

House tapped his pen on the patient file and looked at Dumbledore over the top of his glasses. So this Dumbledore fellow was the head of some obscure sect that surfed the occult wave that was sweeping over the western world. "You teach what exactly at your school?" he asked, just to be sure.

"Magic," Dumbledore said calmly. "Magic in all its manifestations, though we draw the line at Black Magic."

"I see. Would you care to demonstrate?" He gave Dumbledore his 'eager young boy scout' look.

"I would love to, but unfortunately there are strict laws against performing magic in front of non-magical witnesses unless life and limb are at stake."

"How terribly convenient!" House said. "Oops, sorry, I meant 'inconvenient', of course." A charlatan, no doubt, and that image of his hand was probably photoshopped. Later, he'd crucify the Admissions Office for allowing an unverified picture to be placed in the patient file.

"House!" Cuddy, who had been completely silent till now, admonished.

"Headmaster, I think we're wasting our time. We should leave," Snape said.

"Oh, I think not," Dumbledore said with unremitting good humour. "In his place I'd be suspicious too. In fact, I'd be more inclined to leave if he weren't suspicious."

"It would be a pity to leave before I've had a look at that hand of yours," House said. If this guy was a fraud, he'd be happy to expose him to Cuddy. It wouldn't prevent the chest of gold from leaving her clutches, but she'd have to live with it if he proved that Mr Oz was a fraud.

Dumbledore pulled up the right sleeve of his robe with his left hand. The right hand was wrapped in a bandage. Snape stepped forward and started to unwind it.

"We didn't want to upset people while travelling here," Dumbledore explained as Snape peeled off layer after layer, "but the hand is neither contagious nor sensitive to touch, so I normally don't cover it. Thank you, Severus."

Snape, having completing his task, stepped back and House barely stopped himself from gasping. If anything, the hand was in a worse state than what he'd seen in the patient file. It was completely blackened, as though it had spent too much time on a barbecue (maybe his BBQ Accident theory wasn't too far off) and in some places, muscle and skin were so far damaged that white bone shone through. The hand was curled inward, which was hardly surprising given the extent of the damage. House rose and stretched out his hand. Snape stepped forward protectively, but Dumbledore waved him away, extending his injured extremity for House's inspection. House grasped it well above the wrist, where the flesh seemed healthy, and carefully turned it one way and another, inspecting the damage and also making sure that he wasn't being presented with a skillfully prepared prosthesis. But there was no doubt: this was the real thing. The hand, though mutilated almost beyond recognition, was real and still alive.

Dumbledore showed no outer signs of discomfort other than taking a hissing breath when House tried to uncurl the digits with the help of a pencil.

"The muscles have been foreshortened by the damage," Snape said. "He can't straighten the fingers."

"I can see that," House said testily. "When did you have first symptoms?"

"Two months ago. In August. And this," Dumbledore waved his healthy hand over the afflicted one, "was the first symptom. The hand was like this from the start, possibly even slightly worse before Severus's initial measures took hold."

Dry gangrene with instant onset – who'd ever heard of that? "And what caused this?" he asked next.

Dumbledore hesitated for the first time. "A … curse. A stronger, darker version of the spell that is on the chest in Dr Cuddy's office."

"Oh-kay," House said. "It would help if you were slightly more informative about this. What kind of a 'curse'?"

"It's nothing you'd know about or understand," Snape said condescendingly.

"Oh-kay. But if I forced the lid of the chest downstairs, I'd … ?"

"You'd end with your arm in the same state as your leg," Snape snapped.

"Severus!" Dumbledore reprimanded his sidekick. "Dr House is trying to get the general picture."

He turned to House. "Yes, you'd injure your arms and hands gravely, but not irreparably. Our spell, while powerful, is benign. Unfortunately, the spell that hit me is killing me."

"You look pretty alive to me, despite your hand. It's dry gangrene: if we amputate it, you'll probably be fine." Whether that was true was anyone's guess, but unless he provoked these people, they'd keep hedging.

"The curse is being contained in my hand by a strong spell that Severus has put on it. During amputation the curse would be released from its containment, spreading through my body within seconds and resulting in my death. If that weren't the case, we'd have amputated immediately."

House pursed his lips in thought. If these people were to be believed, he wasn't dealing with ischemia, but with an infection or a poison that had entered the body via a wound. Definitely batty, these people. But interesting, nonetheless. There had to be a reason why someone as astute as this old man chose to believe in a whole load of mumbo jumbo that had somehow or other led to such a grave condition. Even more interesting to know would be how that guy Snape was keeping his boss on his legs despite the immeasurable pain that the old man had to be in. Maybe these New Age madcaps had access to Good Stuff, the sort of Good Stuff that was so good that access wasn't merely restricted, it wasn't even available via your normal pharmaceutical channels. That definitely called for a triple background check.

"Okay, I'll take you on. I need full information on prior medical conditions, probable cause of injury, and treatment so far." He fixed Snape with a basilisk stare. "I need a list of everything you gave him, no matter how small the quantity or how insignificant the ingredients. And my team needs to run some tests."

"Can't you run the tests?" Snape asked in a demanding tone. House didn't doubt that in a moment he'd refer to the chest of gold and point out to Cuddy that they were paying enough to justify having House clean the toilets if they so desired.

"I can't run anything or anywhere," House said with a pointed look at his leg. "This will be a lot faster if my little elves are allowed to do their jobs."

"Dr House's team is the soul of discretion. You can be sure that nothing of what passes here will leave this room," Cuddy said smoothly.

Snape's eyes glittered. "Dr Cuddy, so far nothing has happened that is inclined to increase my confidence in this institution. I find that the doctor who is meant to cure my superior from a dangerous and extremely strong curse can't even cure his own leg."

"Some things, Professor Snape, can't be cured. I'm sure that in your … religious community you also have people with untreatable ailments. Dr House is missing a chunk of leg muscle; you can't just replace that, you know," Cuddy said.

Dumbledore glanced at Snape, who was staring at House and Cuddy with unmasked contempt.

"Oh, I'm not so sure," Dumbledore said with a little chuckle. "We could give it a try, couldn't we, Severus?" Snape looked as though he had no intention of trying.

"Let's fix your hand first," House suggested. The last thing he needed was hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo and chicken blood mixed with tadpoles smeared all over his leg.

"It's a deal," Dumbledore said with almost childish enthusiasm. "You fix my hand and I'll fix your leg, young man."

"Great!" House said. "I'll call my team."

He turned away to message them, but caught with half an ear what Snape said to Dumbledore. "The more people who are in the know, the more of them we'll have to subject to memory charms afterwards. If he needs someone's help, we should restrict it to one doctor at the most."

"Oh, I don't think we should use Obliviate on any of the doctors," Dumbledore answered quietly. "It would be very awkward for them to have to explain how they used their time and hospital equipment if they can't remember the patient."

"What's 'Obliviate'?" House asked, tapping the screen of his phone. It sounded suspiciously like the Daleks' 'Exterminate!'.

"It's a memory charm," Dumbledore said easily, looking up. "It wipes out memories; applied correctly it doesn't do any damage."

"And of course you and Professor Snape can apply it absolutely correctly."

Dumbledore was seemingly immune to sarcasm. "I'm sure we can, although I believe that other than the unfortunate Gilderoy Lockhart, Arthur Weasley is the best practitioner of the spell at present. Should it prove necessary, we'll call him in. The times being what they are, it is well possible that cases like this," he looked ruefully at his hand, "may appear more frequently, not only in our world, but also in yours. In that case it would be useful if you had some memories of handling this case. But if we practice discretion, I see no reason why we should resort to any memory-altering processes."

"I appreciate your spirit of compromise," House said, torn between amusement and annoyance.

Snape's eyes flashed angrily at his boss. "You're risking the discovery of the magical world by Muggles. You would risk that for the sake of getting adequate treatment for a few Muggles who get hit by random spells gone astray?" he asked incredulously.

Dumbledore's air of mildness and inanity left him for a moment. "We are not talking of 'random' spells, Severus. We have reached a point where Voldemort is deliberately targeting the Muggle world. It's only a matter of time before curses and jinxes become a common endangerment for non-magical people. We'd be selfish to leave them at the mercy of Voldemort and his henchmen, solely from a desire to retain an anonymity that has, I fear, lost its value."

He turned back to House. "That's an interesting device, Dr House. Is it similar to the one you call a 'telephone'? The last one I saw had little plastic protuberances called 'keys', if I remember correctly, but this one seems – sleeker, more pristine."

House proffered his phone for examination. "Smartphone," he said succinctly. "All functions are integrated in the touch screen." He had no idea why he was humouring this old man with his air of innocence that undoubtedly masked a shrewd, business-like approach to ripping off the unfortunate followers of his weird cult. The chest of gold in Cuddy's office was clear proof that this man was a crook of the highest order. It would be interesting to know in what areas this cult dabbled on the side: drugs, large-scale prostitution, arms sales, industrial espionage – who knew?

Dumbledore turned the phone around and examined it from all sides. "It has a camera too, doesn't it?" He tapped an icon on the screen and gave a little squeal of joy when an app opened on it. "Look at that, Severus! It even mimics sweets. Arthur would love this."

"Fascinating," Snape drawled, looking anything but charmed. "But I think we have more pressing problems than sweets and cameras."

"Don't you see, Severus," Dumbledore asked, "that this device is like several spells stored within one outer shell? It's truly innovative."

"Exactly!" Severus said mockingly. "Now where might I have seen something like that before? Let me think. What about … a wand?" He drew a long, thin object from his pocket. "A device that allows me to cast any number of spells, all encased within the same device. And it's been around for close on five thousand years. What powers of innovation these Muggles have!"

"May I?" House asked, holding out his hand for Snape's wand. Snape instinctively withdrew it. House smiled knowingly. That stick was nothing more than a polished twig.

Dumbledore, noticing the exchange, handed the phone back to House. When he'd taken it, Dumbledore awkwardly dug in a pocket of his robe with his left hand and drew out a similar stick which he held out to House. House weighed it in his hand and examined it. It was of greyish wood, about fifteen inches long, highly polished and well worn, with a few nice carvings at one end, but other than that completely unimpressive. He gave it a few experimental flourishes, but nothing happened.

"Lame," he muttered in Snape's direction. "What was that spell called, the memory one? Obliviate?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Dumbledore said, holding out his hand, but House ignored him.

He twirled the wand to and fro, threw it in the air like a baton and caught it again behind his head, gave the wand a good swing that terminated with the end pointing towards a sour-faced Snape and proclaimed loudly, "Obliviate!"

"House!" Cuddy's voice reverberated through the room.

The wand jerked in his hand, generating a recoil that was several dimensions larger than what that skimpy piece of wood should have been able to generate, even if it had been filled with gunpowder. As he fought for his balance, the wand, with a final wriggle as though it was alive, sent sparks through the air towards Snape. Snape ducked and crouched, hastily drawing out his own wand again. Dumbledore, moving swifter than House would have expected from someone his age and with his level of injury, knocked House's hand aside and tweaked the wand out of it. Cuddy stomped on a stray spark and looked around the room for damage.

"Well, that was unexpected," Dumbledore said, stepping back and recovering his sang-froid.

"Interesting," Snape drawled, slowly moving out of his crouch and pocketing his wand again, and for once he seemed to mean it.

"Professor Dumbledore, I must ask you not to bring pyrotechnical devices into this hospital," Cuddy said.

"I'll just keep my toys away from Dr House, shall I?" Dumbledore said with a smile that indicated that he had no intention whatsoever of relinquishing his wand. "Are you all right, Severus?"

"I'm fine. Dr House is luckily a bumbling and inept amateur, but keeping wands out of his reach sounds like an excellent idea, Headmaster."

Dumbledore stroked his beard with his left hand. "It's a pity that magical education is still in its infancy in the US. Now if we'd had him at Hogwarts as a student, … ."

"The mind boggles," Snape said, and it wasn't quite clear whether this was meant as a compliment or an insult.

Dumbledore sighed. "You're probably right. The abilities of a Minerva McGonagall, coupled with the temperament of the Weasley twins – a very volatile mix indeed. But interesting, definitely interesting."

House straightened – he'd been leaning on the bed all this time, recovering his balance and his breath, and feeling decidedly off-kilter – and shook his head to clear it.

"Well," he said, "I think I'll leave the preliminaries to my team. Professor Dumbledore, Professor Snape." And with a tip of his head he limped out of the room.