The undercurrent of kindness in her tone hadn't changed, but there was something in her words now which had struck him in a different way. The way that she had phrased her first sentence — 'the ones most in need of care' — seemed strangely clinical to his ears, although there was nothing about it which wasn't perfectly correct English, or which was necessarily out of place in everyday conversation. It just had a certain ring to it, as though... well, it sounded like something his father would have said, back when he had been on speaking terms with his father (Merlin, seven years ago?), which made Lou suddenly wary. He didn't know who this woman was, or what she was doing alone in this part of town at night, and it suddenly struck him as suspicious that any woman would be striding around Bartonburg without a chaperone in the twilight.

"Are you a healer, then?" he asked uncertainly. He didn't recognize her robes as those of St. Mungo's, but since it had been years since he'd been living with his father and seeing the man on a daily basis, that meant very little. Anything could have changed in the last seven years, and he couldn't recall what he'd seen on the very brief occasion when he'd been there the previous summer, to drop Miss Zelda Fisk off with her head injury following their escape from the Wizarding World Market. The robes she was wearing did seem like a uniform, though, which only fed in to his suspicions.

"I don't need checking in on," he said abruptly, without waiting for her answer to his question. "Tell him that, then leave me be," he continued, breaking eye contact with a scowl and starting towards his feet.