"When I was a Healer-In-Training at the Hospital de Daciana, a story went around that a werewolf invented the Cruciatus Curse back in the Middle Ages in order to make healthy wizards understand what his transformations felt like," Healer Razvan said as he examined Hermione calves. "I don't believe it, but I understand why some people do. I've talked to and read about werewolves who suffered under Cruciatus, and many said it felt like a full moon transformation, only worse. A few could even break out of it, like some people can break out of the Imperius Curse, because they were used to feeling severe pain. Can you imagine what it must have been like for Fenrir to feel that several times a day, every day?"
Hermione shuddered. She had felt the Cruciatus Curse only once, but that was more than enough. Extended torture under it had driven Neville Longbottom's parents insane. Even now, more than 20 years later, his father was still catatonic and his mother only slightly more alert, living in some fantasy world her mind constructed to escape the agony. Why did the Ministry of Magic still use Dementors at Azkaban, after all the pain and destruction they had caused under Lord Voldemort? Why didn't they learn?
That was the question a lot of her friends asked about the Ministry, wasn't it? All the errors, and the carelessness, and the holes that had allowed the Death Eaters to pull the Ministry's strings like some giant puppet, why hadn't those been fixed? Despite Kingsley's best efforts, nothing had really changed. The Ministry was still as ineffectual, as dangerously incompetent, as it had been in those dark days.
"The only wounds I see are your skinned knees from the concrete, which is what we expected. Let me heal those for you, and we'll try the scar finder." Razvan waved his wand, and her knees healed and brightened into healthy tissue. "Werewolf wounds aren't cursed to other werewolves, but the infecting bite always scars. This potion will make any scars you have glow, and we'll make sure everything's accounted for." Razvan conjured a goblet and poured the scar-finding potion into it. "I must warn you, this will make the scar on your neck burn terribly. But it'll only last a few minutes. Ready?"
Hermione took the goblet and a deep breath, then downed the potion. Warmth spread through her, soaking through her limbs like a hot bath. That feeling concentrated in two areas: one on her right knee and more intensely on the scars on her neck. Hermione bit back a groan but couldn't stop herself from putting her hand over the neck wounds as it strengthened. They felt like they were on fire!
Razvan extinguished the lights. Those two points cast a greenish tint over the room. "What's this from?" he asked, pointing to the line on the side of her right knee.
"I was in a car accident when I was a little girl," Hermione said through clenched teeth, pressing the side of her neck as hard as she dared. "I'd taken my seatbelt off to get a toy I'd dropped, so I was tossed around pretty hard. Everyone was surprised I only got that one cut." Her latent magical potential must have protected her. Even at that age, being a witch had its advantages.
Razvan circled around her, searching for any other wounds, until the burning sensation seeped away, and the glow faded from existence.
"Looks like you're all accounted for," Razvan said, raising the room lights again. "The Ministry might require another check at the end of the month, but I see no possible way you could have been infected."
"If they do require another one, what will it be? While they were getting me out of the Isolation Center, they said something about going to St. Mungo's for your first transformation, especially if you're not sure you were bitten?"
Razvan chuckled. "If the Werewolf Capture Unit knew what they were doing, they'd be dangerous. We don't need a transformation to tell if someone has lycanthropy; we ask patients to come here the first time so we can watch for complications. In your case, we would do a swab with Lesser Wolf's Bane. We just dab a bit of arnica extract on your arm. That amount applied topically is harmless to healthy humans but would quickly raise a bruise on someone with lycanthropy. Well, I'll let you get dressed while I write this up. Just come out when you're ready."
The Healer closed the door behind him, and Hermione changed back into her normal clothes and went to the ward's waiting room.
"I've updated your file," Razvan said, "and I'll send an owl to the Werewolf Capture Unit stating that you arrived as ordered and were examined. If you'll sign a release, I can send the results as well, and hopefully they won't hassle you further."
"I wouldn't complain about that," Hermione said.
"Let me find one. I know we've got some written up already."
"Healer, if you don't mind me asking more about Greyback, how did he do in Azkaban?"
"Much better than I expected. Fenrir lived nearly nine months after his arrest. I've rarely seen someone with lycanthropy survive more than three or four in Azkaban, and after watching what happened to him, I understand why."
A scream ripped through the halls of the Maximum Security section, and Razvan's blood ran cold. As a lycanthropologist, he knew that sound. A werewolf's muscles normally clenched as they transformed, but if that didn't happen—if the werewolf was drunk, or sedated, or simply an atypical transformer—that was the scream of agony they would make as their body reshaped itself.
It wasn't a sound they should make under a waxing quarter moon.
Razvan counted the seconds until he and Marolt made it to Fenrir's separate hall. No Dementors stood outside the iron door this time, but when they opened it, three were inside. One was giving that horrible, rattling inhale, oblivious to—or enjoying—the pain they were causing Fenrir.
"Expecto Patronum!" Razvan shouted, extending his wand. A glowing-silver mist poured out of it, taking the form of an antelope that charged the Dementors. They seemed startled, then straightened angrily, but the Patronus chased the three from the hallway.
"You shouldn't have done that," Marolt said. "They don't like it when someone casts a Patronus in the prison."
"And I don't particularly care." Something told Razvan that he wouldn't be back to suffer the consequences of that action, anyway. "Fenrir, can you hear me?" he asked, moving towards the cell.
Marolt grabbed his arm, pulling him back from the red line he had so carelessly ignored. "Careful! He's still dangerous!"
Razvan didn't doubt that, at least not academically, but it was hard to believe looking into the cell. Fenrir was curled up on the cot inside, his eyes clenched shut, and his face twisted in pain. He clasped a drab gray blanket around himself as though it could shield him from the Dementors. Starvation had shrunk his body, but the blanket was still too small to cover his long limbs. His bare feet hung out the end, dark with dirt and with yellow toenails that stretched beyond the toes like talons, twisted and cracked. His fingernails were in no better state, and the fingers that clasped the blanket so desperately were barely more than bones.
"Fenrir, can you hear me?" Razvan repeated. Fenrir slowly opened his eyes, peering out from amongst his straggly whiskers and the matted gray hair of his head. His forehead did not unwrinkle, however, and his face remain tight and clenched; he looked like nothing so much as an injured animal silently begging to be put out of its misery.
"It's all right. They're gone now. I've chased them away." Not that it would help five minutes after he left.
Fenrir pulled the blanket more tightly about himself, and Razvan dug into the satchel he had brought as Marolt stepped outside the iron door again. "I've brought something that might help." He pulled out a Honeydukes bag, took a small chocolate ball from it, and tossed it onto Fenrir's bed. "Chocolate-covered aniseeds."
The lupine aspect of lycanthropy made anise a mild euphoric, producing a harmless moment of ecstasy when tasted. Whenever Honeydukes filled the special order for the Ulrica Farkas ward, the chocolate-covered aniseeds would vanish as quickly as they appeared. Even the Muggle aniseed balls that Razvan kept on hand disappeared quickly. So it was all the more concerning to watch how slowly Fenrir's skeletal hand reached for the chocolate ball and pulled it towards his mouth.
The candy relaxed him, and his grip on the blanket loosened, his limbs uncurling a bit, but it was nothing like the drastic response Razvan was used to seeing from a stressed lycanthropy patient when they bit into anise. The Werewolf Capture Unit had been using anise extract to make Fenrir alert enough to talk; that was the only reason they had allowed Razvan to bring the candies now. Maybe it had been over-used. Maybe Fenrir was developing a tolerance.
Maybe Razvan was trying to ignore what was clearly happening. Fenrir was dying, and there wasn't enough anise in the world to stop that.
"I'll leave them where you can reach them." Razvan levitated them onto the desk, as close to the edge by Fenrir as he could without spilling them.
"They'll just take them away again," Fenrir said. There was no strength behind his voice. "Give them to Athena. She doesn't like aniseed balls because of her father. Maybe she'll like…" He trailed off, his forehead wrinkling. "No, that isn't right. That was a long time ago. She's a grown woman now."
"Have another one," Razvan said, floating another of the chocolate-covered aniseeds out of the bag and into Fenrir's hand. Fenrir obediently brought it to his mouth. As he looked at Razvan and bit into it, his eyes brightened slightly, but only slightly.
"You want something," he said simply.
"I'm sorry if it sounds heartless to you, but's the way it is. I don't know what changed, but he's given up, and no one lives long in Azkaban without hope. If you want to be studying anything about him a month from now, you better work out how to get custody of his body, or else he'll be buried at Azkaban and no one will ever hear about him again." Elmira Hembree's words echoed in Razvan's ears as Fenrir looked at him in exhausted expectation.
"I'm, um, got a release for you to sign," Razvan said, reaching into his satchel again. "For the Hospital de Daciana."
"The Ministry won't let me go. They know they've got time on their side."
"No, you'll be there in just a few weeks, I'm sure of it." It's not exactly a lie. Yes, the Ministry was stalling. They knew if they took long enough to 'consider the matter', their problem would solve itself, and that would happen any day now. But the Hospital de Daciana was the most logical place for a vargulf's body to be studied. It had the world's greatest experts on lycanthropy, among the best budgets for research. It's not a lie. "I just need you to sign this release, and it won't be long at all, I'm sure."
"Read it to me," Fenrir said.
Razvan looked at the form in his hands and swallowed. He had read enough releases over the years; he could make one up on the fly. "I, Fenrir Greyback, the undersigned, hereby consent to extended treatment at the Hospital de Daciana. I understand that by signing this document, I forfeit the right to terminate treatment at will, and I hereby authorize the staff of the Hospital de Daciana to administer appropriate medical care according to their professional judgement."
Fenrir looked at him and blinked very, very slowly. "Now read what it really says."
Avoiding his eyes, Razvan looked down at the paper. "'I, Fenrir Greyback, the undersigned, hereby donate my body to scientific study at the Hospital de Daciana upon the event of my death.' It's just a precaution, Fenrir. They just want it on legal record. It's not referring to anything."
"Then why did you lie about it?" Razvan opened his mouth, but no words would come out. "I'm not a child, Healer. I know what's going on. Most of the time, at least." He stretched his hand out and made a weak grasping gesture. "I'll sign it."
"Fenrir…"
"I won't be using it much longer. It might as well be good to someone. Maybe it'll help my Treasures someday." He grasped his empty fingers again. "It'll help someone's Treasure. I'll sign it."
Razvan floated the paper into Fenrir's cell, magically pulled a book off the shelf—one of the 'normal' books he borrowed—and rested it on Fenrir's lap for a writing board, then slid the inkwell and quill across the desk into Fenrir's reach. Fenrir signed, but his hand shook so badly as he dipped the quill that ink splattered across the desk in a constellation of black drops, and he didn't have the strength to return the quill to the desk as Razvan summoned the signed form back to himself.
"Is there anything else I can get you, Fenrir?"
"A good, stiff sleeping potion. Something the Dementors can't get through," Fenrir answered with chilling immediacy. He looked over at Razvan, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly. "For now, though, maybe you could just stay there for a while so I can get some rest."
"Of course." Razvan drew a chair with his wand, and took a seat as Fenrir's eyes closed, and his breath fell into a slow, steady rhythm. The Healer expected that rhythm to stop at any moment. Part of him hoped it would. Another part even wondered if there was something he could 'carelessly' prescribe that would have an 'unexpected' side effect. Fatality, coma, anything to end this travesty of justice.
Fenrir was still sleeping when Marolt called Razvan out of the hallway, saying it was time to go. As Razvan left, two Dementors passed back the way he had come.