Early Hours of 15 September, 1893 — Triage Area, Crowdy Memorial

Apparently, Ozymandias Dempsey was the only person in his family capable of following directions. He had been directed to go marshal the Magical Accidents and Catastrophes department, and then to help evacuate the streets, and though he didn't have a proper idea of how either of those tasks should be accomplished, he had done them. He'd not only relayed the message to Umbridge but had helped modify spells to help expedite the response and keep a greater number of people safe. When the time had come he'd dragged himself through the streets, directing traffic and casting minor first aid spells and avoiding dragons, and on one occasion even reuniting a child with the people who had lost it. When the streets had been cleared of people who didn't want to be there — everyone who was left was moving purposefully and quickly, probably looking for dragons rather than running from them — he had reported back to Minister Ross' disaster headquarters that he had accomplished all tasking and was now going home. But he hadn't gone home, he'd gone to the Crowdy triage site to find his wife, and that was where he'd discovered that no one else in his family could follow directions, because he was sure that all of the rest of them (Thomasina excepting) had been instructed to go home, and instead his mother had suffered third-degree burns, Lycoris had been crippled, and everyone else had (Oz presumed) lingered in the path of dragons and destruction far longer than he would have liked.

So rather than going to find Thomasina right away once he'd arrived, Oz had instead wandered through and harassed the people keeping ledgers and paperwork until he'd been able to ascertain where all of his siblings had ended up. It would have been faster to floo home and ask there if anyone was still missing, but he was cognizant that once he left the site he might not be able to return to it easily, with the floo being turned off rather liberally throughout London. At least while he was here he had the ability to go hunt them down it if turned out any of them were still missing — and given that he had been involved in the coordination efforts, at least to some extent, he still had some vestigial authority he could use to get the answers that he needed. When he'd finally completed his patchwork inventory of Dempseys, he located Thomasina — literally elbow-deep in healing work for the moment — and availed himself of a cup of coffee while he waited for her to detach herself from the injured.

He felt a mess, and looked a mess. Rumpled hair, blood (mostly not his own) on his clothes, bags beneath his eyes, missing every accessory he'd worn when leaving the house. When Thomasina finally parted from her latest body, he swooped in on her immediately, still clutching the half-full cup of coffee in a single-use conjured cup. "Come on," he said without preamble. "We're going home."

---

This was uncontestable, but it didn't mean that Sina had to be the one to do it. "There are other healers here," he pointed out. What he did not say, but what he hoped was implicit: he only had one wife, and he needed her more than the stragglers with bruises and cuts did.

---

His relief when she didn't argue with him was palpable. He hovered while she finished up and tried not to deform the conjured coffee mug as he fidgeted his hands. He nodded and made some vague noise of assent when she returned and proposed the floo — after having skipped a night's sleep neither of them were likely fit to apparate to Ireland — but otherwise said nothing as they made their way to the exit. He simply didn't know what to say.

When they stepped out of the floo at the Dempsey house, the words tumbled out of his mouth immediately: "I'm going to drop out of the race."

---

Oz bit his lower lip and looked at his wife without saying anything. He hadn't been expecting the question, because it felt — at least to him, at least in this moment — like one of those unalienable truths that was as undeniable as it was impossible to articulate. He couldn't find the words to explain himself, but he couldn't possibly ask anyone to vote for him as Minister. Because his mother was badly burned; because his sister had a pair of broken legs; because he'd spent twenty minutes holding on to someone else's child; because he'd been left fidgeting with coffee while Thomasina finished up her rounds. Because people had been saying since he announced his campaign that he was unqualified, but now, for possibly the first time in his life, he felt inadequate.

He shrugged helplessly at her.

---

Oz was not sure that he had saved lives today, but he couldn't argue with her; there was a plausible chance it was true. He'd adjusted the warning spell for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, which ought to have helped keep people out of harm's way while the worst of the damage was being done. He'd helped people in the streets, but there was no telling if they mightn't have been just as well off without him. This was one of the terrible things about damage control on catastrophes, he realized: the amount of good done, of injuries or deaths prevented, was unquantifiable. The number of dead would be printed in plain black ink in tomorrow's newspaper. And those people who had died were not his responsibility, they were not his fault — but someone shouldered the responsibility for their lives, and if he were elected that someone would have been him.

So maybe it was less that he felt inadequate and more that he was a coward. He already felt responsible for his parents and siblings — because they had been in London on his behalf, and they had been injured, and he had not prevented it. He could not imagine feeling responsible for everyone.

"I won't get a better excuse than this," he tried lamely. "If I dropped out tomorrow, with half my family recuperating, no one would think worse of me."

---

Oz looked at her and his shoulders slumped as he wrestled with her response. They both knew he could not back out of the race without her support. He hadn't expected her to withhold it; she had never been enthused about the idea of him running in the first place, so he'd expected her to be, if anything, relieved by his declaration.

"If I won," he began, trying to find a way to make her understand. "Then the next time something like this happened, I'd be the one in the center of it."

---

Oz chewed his tongue. Maybe he could have handled it well, but the fact remained that no one should have to handle it. No one should be at the center of that much responsibility, when something went wrong. For the first time tonight he had seen that particular aspect of the Minister's job, and the prospect of it had awed and terrified him. Granted, the election was far from decided and he was not terribly likely to win, but if he did — then he would have to step into that role, and despite Thomasina's confidence in him he dreaded the possibility.

But she wasn't backing down, and the look in her eyes told him she wouldn't. He let out a short sigh. "Alright, then. I'll ask Chris to cancel all the events for the rest of the month." He might not withdraw, but he certainly wasn't going to actively campaign while his mother was still recuperating from burn wounds.

(It bought him two weeks to see whether Thomasina would change her mind, too).

"I don't know what to do with myself tomorrow," he admitted. Not as though the problem was new; he hadn't known what to do with himself for hours.

---

That was certainly a relief; he'd been expecting that she would rush back to the triage site, or to St. Mungo's, after only being home for an hour or two, which would have left him alone all morning wrestling with what he could possibly do to be useful. If she was planning to stay until the afternoon, at least he could ask her to stay with him. Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris; it is a comfort to the unfortunate to have had companions in woe. The quote (Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus) sprang to mind unbidden, but he felt guilty for having thought it. What misfortune could he claim tonight, compared to what so many others had lost?

"Come to bed," he said wearily. Tomorrow he could take an inventory of how everyone in the family had fared, and he could read the paper for the initial estimations of the damages in London, and he could decide what to do with that information — for now, he just wanted to hold her.

---