March 17th, 1890 -Artifacts Incidents Lobby, St. Mungo's

Apparition was fast, but all Zelda could think in the half-second it took them to get away from the Voyager was that it didn't exactly make it easier to breathe.

They arrived in a pile on the floor of the artifact's incidents floor in St. Mungo's, and frankly it was a miracle that she had not . Zelda scrambled off of Alfred - wand in hand - but kept one hand on his chest, gentle, trying to make sure his chest was still rising and falling with the breaths he had to be taking. "Somebody help me!" she shouted, hoping that the Ministry badge hanging around her neck would confer her with some sense of authority. Because she looked - and sounded - hysterical. She had started crying somewhere in that liminal apparition space between here and the Voyager, her breaths were coming in heaving gasps. She was nothing like the Zelda she wanted to be in a crisis.

She was scared and she was young and Alfred could not die on her. He had just kissed her. She was supposed to save his boat and save his life and then he could go travel the world; he could not die here on a hospital floor because she had been too distracted by his kiss to notice the pattern spreading in swirling Pictish riddles on his hands.

"He's dying and I need you to help me!"

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Rosamund Bones J. Alfred Darrow

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

The sudden, unexpected tugging all your insides feeling of side-along apparition was replaced, upon arrival, with blind panic. Alfred wouldn't have said he was content with his situation before they'd apparated away, but at least he'd known what was going on. He was dying, but he was dying on the Voyager and Zelda was there, holding on to his shirt. Now, he was somewhere else, and he didn't even know where right away. He was going to die here and he didn't even know where here was.

His breathing changed to rapid and shallow as he scanned his surroundings. It didn't hurt to inhale any more, but whether that was a result of the bubblehead charm she'd cast, their increased distance from the cursed Voyager, or just the fact that he hadn't yet tried to take a deep breath, he couldn't have said.

A hospital. They were in a hospital. That was probably a logical place to be, under the circumstances, but it didn't alleviate his panic — it just replaced the thought that he was going to die without knowing where he was with the new conviction that Zelda was going to leave, and he was going to die in some unfamiliar room surrounded by strangers. It didn't even matter if she wanted to leave, did it? They would make her leave — she had no particular claim to him, as far as the hospital was concerned, and they were going to whisk him away somewhere and he was going to die and he was never going to see her again.

He couldn't speak — he was still feeling dizzy and he didn't know whether this charm was helping or hurting — but he raised one hand to where hers was at his shirt and clutched it as tightly as he could manage. Don't leave.

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   Cassius Lestrange

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

It was one way to end a break, but what were two lost minutes when they’d had such a busy few weeks? Rosamund would make them up on some quiet day in five years, perhaps. Instead, she rushed to where she’d heard the shout, finding that she had reached the pair first. The girl was sobbing; the man looked conscious but unsteady, his breath coming shallowly beneath a bubblehead charm. They were clutching at each other, but if the girl said he was dying, there wasn’t exactly time to waste - a little breathless herself from their tangled panic, Rosamund summoned the nearest stretcher and levitated the man on, catching sight of his other hand in the moment with symbols inked upon it. Strange symbols.

Pictish.

“Tell me what happened, if you can,” Rommy instructed urgently, wordlessly beckoning the woman along with her as she headed for the nearest place that was not the middle of the waiting room with all the gawping onlookers so that she would have room to think. “What has he been in contact with?”

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A territorial feeling in her chest rose as the healer levitated Alfred onto a stretcher. It was a stupid impulse - she wanted to be with him - and still she kept one his chest. She couldn't pull away, not when he had grabbed her hand like that - she could not leave him here. With the other hand, she wiped at her eyes, although it frankly did not do much to help at all.

"He touched a Pictish chest the other month," Zelda explained. This, at least, was almost in the realm of her job - she could almost compartmentalize the explanation.

Not really, though.

"No immediate effects - but it bound itself to him and a boat. And the curse set off today and it's my fault, we were back on the boat," she said. She should have thought of this. But he had been on the Voyager so many times - she just hadn't thought of it.

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AMAZING set by MJ

There was no part of Alfred that wanted to cooperate with being levitated onto a stretcher. He'd spent all weekend more or less resigning himself to his upcoming death, and the lack of air he was experiencing at the moment did nothing to inspire any confidence in him that this could be fixed. He was going to die, and this healer didn't even have the decency to let him die standing up.

It wasn't as though he had either the strength or the presence of mind to fight her charm when it was cast, though, and so onto the stretcher he went. At least Zelda was still holding his shirt, for now — at least she hadn't left. Yet.

Zelda seemed to think this had something to do with the boat, and that it was her fault — one piece of which had a lot more potential merit, he thought, than the other. If this was anyone's fault, wouldn't it have been his? For touching the chest in the first place, for ignoring the sting in his chest when he'd first felt it, for actively trying to avoid checking his palm because he wanted to look brave for her? Brave and stupid — brave and stupid and doomed.

They should have stayed on the Voyager, he thought as he tried and failed to take a deeper breath. At least then this might have been over already.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

She was not the eldest healer in the place - not even on the Artifacts floor - but Rosamund had long since learnt not to judge people for their choices. It still shocked her, from time to time, how little self-preservation some people possessed. Even sensible people sometimes chose to do the strangest things... like setting foot on a boat one apparently knew was cursed. If they had been trying to break it, well - they obviously hadn’t managed it.

There was little enough time to judge, though, nor much to mull over who either of them might be; because what could it matter when a man was dying? Even the minute of movement felt like wasted time; once they came to a stop Rommy could only offer the girl a nod to express that she’d heard what she’d said, and then began checking the patient’s vitals. His airways seemed constricted, his breaths shallow; but half of that could be panic alone, the mental pressure of the curse speeding up the physical. She turned over his hand to double-check his hand again: the symbols on his palm made sense, if that was where the curse had first touched him. Where it was most potent.

But understanding the curse was not the first step here: things had progressed beyond that already. Rosamund redoubled the bubblehead charm to ease his breathing, and then dragged his palms together, face up, to point her wand at the centre of the symbols.

“First I’m going to slow the curse,” Rommy said rapidly, with a confidence she didn’t necessarily consciously have. It was a murmur of explanation to the patient so he wouldn’t flinch away - and a warning to his companion, to prevent her from interrupting the incantation. “I need to stop it spreading so quickly -” and it was spreading fast, pressing on his insides, making his skin hot and clammy; soon she expected he’d be shaking, convulsing - “- give him more time.” She took a deep breath, and focused, and began reciting the counter under her breath, visualising a way to slow the magical venom in his veins, draw it back towards his hands where it had first entered, undo what she could.

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She wanted to hold Alfred's hand, to squeeze it, but the healer seemed busy with them. Instead, she moved her hand to his shoulder and kept it there. If Alfred was going to die - and she was not convinced that he wasn't - then she couldn't let go of him. She wasn't even convinced that he wanted her here but she didn't feel able to leave - she at least had to see the healer make progress first.

She was silent, though - she could not interrupt another woman's incantation. Not when she was trying to save Alfred's life.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred didn't want to let go of Zelda's hand, because in his current state of mind he was convinced that everything was happening now for the last time. If he let go of Zelda, that was the last time he would ever touch her — it was over. Since he was still struggling to breathe, though, he didn't have much strength to resist when the healer moved his hands. He couldn't even really feel his hands, or at least not properly — everything had started to get sort of numb. It seemed like every breath he took was being consumed just by keeping his anxious thoughts active, and even then he was having trouble organizing them into anything that resembled rational thought. He was not at all confident in his ability to stay conscious.

The spell seemed to be working — even he could tell, without knowing exactly what it was supposed to do besides give him more time (something that he wasn't sure he wanted or needed; if he was going to die, wouldn't it be better to get it over with?) Her chanting was comforting, though, in a strange and distant way — it reminded him of the sort of magic the tribe had employed in Central America, and subsequently of the old healer woman he'd learned from while he was there. Had he ever showed Zelda any of the tribal magic he'd picked up? Now, of course, he likely never would.

A cool sensation spread through him as the spell did its work, and Alfred let out a short breath, relieved at the sensation despite his continued conviction that he was imminently about to die.

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   Cassius Lestrange, Melody Crouch

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

She could tell this was an old curse, and a powerful one, just from the effort it was taking to fight. A lot of the injuries they saw were only accidental: objects that had been cursed, and people that had been hurt by them. This - this curse might have latched onto an object first, but it had also latched onto him, and she could almost sense it alive in him, clinging like a weed, wanting to expand, hoping to grow and mutate and consume.

But she was sure she was neutralising the worst of it, though not flushing it out completely: it might rein it in well enough that he could recover enough to fight it himself. Because the longer she chanted, the more energy she felt sapping from her, and she could see it draining from the patient too. Which would have its own set of difficulties, if he passed out like this -

Rosamund’s gaze flickered up to him and then she broke the connection, feeling a wave of cool relief from stopping, and hoping he would too. She summoned a vial from the storecupboard, one that would hopefully start to work to undo some of the damage the curse had affected on his body too, ill effects that would linger even if or when she was able to cleanse the curse completely. “Make sure he gets this down while he’s still conscious, please,” she ordered his companion, the Ministry girl - who was closer than the nearest interns, who might save precious moments - pressing the tiny mouthful of a bottle into her hands so that she could hopefully return to another round of siphoning out the curse before he passed out from the exertion of breathing alone.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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He looked less like he was dying. The healer looked a little worse, but Alfred looked less like he was dying. Zelda felt like she could breathe again, if only a little bit.

Zelda clutched the bottle passed to her tightly. "Alfred," she said. Her voice was shaky. She cupped his face in her free hand and used the other one to hold the tiny bottle to his lips. "You need to drink this, alright? You need to drink this for the healer."

Having a task meant she could do something.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred was still vaguely opposed to all of these interventions — still convinced that his death was inevitable and these things were just postponing it and prolonging this feeling he was suffering through at the moment. That being said, he wasn't going to argue with Zelda if she asked him to do something. Not that he would have really been capable of arguing with anyone about anything, anyway.

He tilted his head up just far enough to get the little vial down, and swallowed. Those two small actions — raising his head and swallowing — seemed to be about the limit of his strength at the moment, because his vision started swimming, and the dizziness came to the forefront of his mind with a rush, and he blacked out.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Out of the corner of her vision, she saw the girl following her instructions as she had asked, but she continued with her whispered stream of incantations until his body suddenly sagged. Breaking off where she was - it would do little good now - Rosamund checked for his vital signs, lungs, heart, airways. She tapped his chest with her wand now, once and twice, until she was satisfied he would keep breathing where he was.

She tugged on a bell-pull at his bedside so that a colleague could come and help her in a round of further examinations, and in setting him up so that his body could rest, his lungs magically assisted while he slept. She had hope, however, that the immediate danger had passed.

“We’ll have to assist him breathing for a while, but it should give him some necessary time to start healing. The curse in him ought to be dormant again for now. I’ve a colleague coming to do some more tests, but - he oughtn’t be any worse off when he wakes up, at least.” She gave a weary smile of encouragement to the woman, feeling more drained than usual. “Sorry, Miss - I’m afraid I didn’t get your name. Or his.” She’d barely glanced at their faces before now, though she thought the girl had been a Hufflepuff at school, and he - had been in the papers before, perhaps?

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Alfred's body relaxed as he slid into unconsciousness, and for a moment Zelda thought that was it - he was dead. But no, he was just asleep, and still, tenaciously, alive.

"John Darrow," she said, although Alfred's actual first name felt odd in her mouth. If he was in the hospital, it seemed better to use his legal name. "And I'm Zelda Fisk. And I'm sorry but - I don't know your name either." She returned the smile, although it was certainly wobbly. Alfred wasn't dying anymore. That was a victory, if a Pyrrhic one.

"Is there -" she sighed. "The curse. Could you tell if there was an intuitive way to remove it?" She didn't have much hope, but the healer had certainly had more luck than she had so far.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Darrow, she did recognise that. When she was not quite so tired, she supposed she would remember why. And Miss Fisk rang a bell, too. “Rosamund Bones,” she added kindly, watching Zelda Fisk’s face. The turmoil of emotions on it were not especially hard to read.

And of course she asked about the curse. Rommy only wished she could give her better news; but the truth was, these Pictish relics were like nothing they had seen before, and not all of their patients had been straightforward to treat. “It’s - difficult, with an unknown curse like this one.” And unstable, she imagined. “I was able to shrink it well enough, the reaction it had in his body today, which will reduce the effect of it. But if there’s still a grain of it - a root - fixed somewhere in him, I’m not sure we’ll be able to remove it in the same way, not entirely. Curses like these are hard to... kill off completely. Which means - that there would always be the chance of it reactivating.” She took a breath, trying to come up with some solution to a problem she hadn’t looked at nearly long enough. “Someone might know, though. I’ll keep looking.”

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   Ophelia Devine

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"Thanks," Zelda said, "Thank you, Miss Bones." Miss Bones had been a year below her, she thought, and a Gryffindor - they had taken some of the same NEWT classes.

"I thought - I thought there was a way to break it," she elaborated, "Now I'm not so sure." Was Alfred just going to have to live like this forever? Was there any way to get him back on the Voyager, any way he would ever be able to adventure again?

Zelda didn't think so.

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AMAZING set by MJ

It was times like these where Rosamund had to remind herself that this was real, that she was living in the real world with real consequences, and they weren’t all just pretending. People actually expected her to have answers - and she had never felt so woefully unequipped for her work, had no easy answers to give. Miss Fisk was feeling the same way, possibly. Maybe the cursebreakers who really specialised in this sort of thing could see something they did not; or perhaps they felt exactly how Rommy did, and were out of their depths in this too, stuck pretending they knew what to do.

But this line of thought would help nothing and no one, and once she sat down for a moment she would attack it from a different angle, she hoped. All she managed was another sympathetic smile in the meantime. She didn’t want to overstep, promise too much.

“I’ll be back in a short while, if you have any more questions,” she added, because that much she could promise. She took a step and then paused before she left, just in case Miss Fisk had to be somewhere urgently and was not as... personally invested as she appeared. “Will you be staying with him?”

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