In the days following the fog's dissipation from Hogsmeade and Irvingly, Alfred and his crew had found themselves in the sort of grey area where there was no longer any reason that they couldn't begin trying to fundraise for their next excursion (the trip to excavate and explore the island they'd found at the tail end of their last journey), but none of the people who had money were really in the right mood to part with it. The Ministry had other things on their minds in the aftermath of the fog, and the idle rich of Hogsmeade and elsewhere had already filled their social calendars with two months of pent-up activities, which left Alfred rather shiftless. Volunteering his ship to be the one to transport the mysterious cursed gemstone back down to Egypt had been exactly the thing to keep his crew from defecting off to other little projects — which they inevitably would, if he didn't come up with some new source of income for them.

The voyage there had been largely uneventful, as had been the lengthy port call at Port Said near the mouth of the Suez Canal while they waited for word that the gemstone had been safely stashed away wherever it was it was supposed to go. It wasn't until halfway through the journey back that things had gotten problematic — and even then, it was rather a minor drama, in Alfred's opinion. One of the crew members had started vomiting some interesting colors, probably due to one of the exotic (and possibly illegal) souvenirs he'd been smuggling back among his effects.

Unfortunately, the British government was understandably rather touchy about mysterious magical maladies hailing from Egypt, and rather than just allow the man to be treated and go on his way, he was now undergoing a quarantine of sorts at the hospital. It was kind, at least, that they had allowed him to be transferred in to the Hogsmeade Hospital, closer to his family, instead of having him boarded up at St. Mungo's, but Alfred was still (privately) of the opinion that everyone was massively overreacting.

He had no reason to suspect the man's condition was any worse than it had been when he'd initially gotten back to England, but thought it would be the kind thing to do to check in on him all the same, since he was a member of Alfred's crew. He'd gotten the man's room number from the clerk at St. Mungo's before flooing over, but when he arrived at the room in question, he found it deserted.

"Excuse me," he called to the nearest healer he could see — a man who looked vaguely familiar but whose name Alfred was certain he wouldn't be able to come up with. Prior to his 'walkabout' in South America he had known so many people in passing, either from Hogwarts or from professional acquaintance, that he had never reconnected with after his return, and unless they'd had any particular importance he was unlikely to make any connections with people he'd once known. "I'm looking for Mr. Parker. I don't suppose you know whether he's been moved somewhere?"