June 6, 1895 — St. Mungo's Hospital

Three days.

It had been three days since Mr. Highbottom passed after a dreadful encounter with an obscure poison. Rosalie and her colleagues had worked tiredlessly to try and counteract its fatal abilities, going even as far as suspending his body in a temporary statis for two weeks to try and slow its effects, and still they were unsuccessful. Theirs was a department of slow and steady healing, of endless monotonous days whilst waiting for the potions to wear off or plants to work their way out of a patient's system. And, with all this time, they weren't often unsuccessful.

She didn't often feel the heavy burden of grief that came with losing someone.

Typically, after wallowing in her feelings for a day, Rosalie returned to work with a renewed sense of purpose. For yes, they had failed, but there was much to be learned from the failure and hope to be had for future patients. She usually reviewed her notes until her vision blurred and she could no longer manage another coherent thought. Then, they met and discussed what could be done differently, what other strategies they might have employed, what the protocol would be for the next case.

It didn't happen often, but when it did they were able to cope well enough.

However, Mr. Highbottom's death was far from typical, for they hadn't even moved his body to the morgue yet.

In three days.

Charms had been placed on the body to stop the decomposition process, a necessity once the smell of decay had begun to fill the hallways. Several healers had been in to reason with Mr. Highbottom, to explain that no amount of lying atop the corpse would reunite body and soul. The head of the hospital had even threatened to contact the man's long estranged father (something about the elder Mr. Highbottom marrying the younger's fiancee), and still no progress had been made.

The body was still there.

The ghost was still wailing.

And Rosalie had reached the end of her patience.

"He's a bit erratic," she explained to Noble's older brother as she led him towards the room at the end of the hall. "Any attempt to move the body has resulted in ear splitting screams. We've tried to be gentle with him ... but it's beginning to wear on our other patients."

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Fortitude Greengrass

  

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stunning set by Lady <3

They didn't deal with new spirits very often; the majority of people who died did not opt to linger, so there were typically only two or three in a year that needed attention from the Spirit Division. They were rare enough and high visibility enough that Ford's boss, Mr. Morgan, was usually the one who dealt with them — but given the impending arrival of the baby, Ford was eagerly snapping up any assignment he could, this one included. He suspected Morgan was going to insist on his taking time off after the birth, and whether that was going to be with pay or without was anyone's guess (probably dependent only on Morgan's mood at the time the decision was made); on the chance that he'd end up forced to forego a week of pay, he was trying to bank extra hours when he could. So when the request came in, late in the day but apparently urgent, he'd volunteered to stay past normal working hours to see to it.

The notes in Highbottom's file said that he had already been visited (briefly) by one of the longer-tenured members of the Spirit Division the day after his death, but that he had been 'disinclined to discuss details of his afterlife'; there was a note recommending follow-up in a month, when presumably he would have been more disposed to chat. Things were seldom much of a rush where spirits were concerned. Given that the man still hadn't left the hospital room in which he'd died, though, Ford could understand the urgency from the living people who stayed or worked here.

"Right," Ford agreed with a sympathetic nod. He was generally more inclined to side with the spirits than the living people in most disputes, but even he had to agree that this was an unreasonable set of conditions. "Do you know the precise circumstances of his death? Was he conscious when he passed?"

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎

"I was with him," she offered as they neared the end of the hall. Without appropriate space it was impossible to go through her standard coping mechanisms. She had wallowed already, yes, but the guilt and disappointment weren't as easy to shake when there was the patient was moaning his displeasure for hours on end.

"I am very sorry to say he suffered terribly and was awake as he went." The poison had caused agonizing boils to appear and rupture both internally and externally. For every one they healed three more appeared until Rosalie would have believed him to suffer from some kind of pox as opposed to a poison. The statis had slowed them for a time, but keeping him like that indefinitely had far greater consequences than they were willing to risk at the time.

What a mistake that had been.

She paused outside the closed door and offered Noble's brother her file on the man's illness and what little information they had on his family. "I must ask you to prepare yourself — the corpse isn't in the best condition."

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ford took the file and had opened it up to start skimming, but her comment about the state of the corpse brought him up short. "Oh." He talked about death a lot, and dealt with it a lot, conceptually. His experience with actual bodies was decidedly limited. When was the last time he had been in the same room as a dead body? During a funeral, doubtless; he didn't come across them much in his work and certainly not in his daily life outside of work. He had known that there was a body here, because it had been in the request the hospital had sent in for urgent assistance, but it wasn't until she had taken this moment to draw specific attention to the state of it that he really realized.

"Like, mentally prepare myself," he clarified, tone half a question. Was she going to give him something to mask the smell? Were there safety precautions to be taken? He didn't know exactly what Mr. Highbottom had died of, but if it was anything contagious, he certainly didn't want to put himself in a position to catch it — or worse, to take it home and risk having Jemima catch it.

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎

"Yes," Rosalie affirmed. She would have imagined employees involved in the ghost division often dealt with corpses, but the look on the elder Greengrass' face wasn't instilling her with much confidence. If he were Noble she might have gone into details of how the man died, as the potioneer would surely understand their methods and logic. Then again, if he were Noble they would still have the overwhelming issue of the ghost and all their baggage to deal with. No, she'd have to trust Mr. Greengrass' abilities, questionable as they were.

"The corpse isn't contagious," she explained even as she offered him a mask pulled from a cart near the door. "And our mortician has done all he can to ensure the smell isn't as ... pungent as it might ordinarily be." The scent of decay still permeated the room enough to be unsettling for those unaccustomed to it, but it was hardly the rotting smell that had seeped through the halls yesterday. "It is however still a corpse of a man who endured a grotesque illness, and Mr. Highbottom has taken great offense to anyone who appears ... taken aback by his former body." One nurse had been chased from the room by the spirit as he hurled horrid insults at her.

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ford was used to seeing people in a state of death, so he thought he could handle the body's bloat or tumors or whatever the case may be, but he wasn't sure about the smell. He took the mask gratefully. Spirits came with all manor of death wounds and visibly sicknesses, but those were static and noncorporeal — nothing oozed, nothing discolored, nothing stank.

"I'll keep that in mind. Has he asked for anything specifically? Made any demands, except the ones about his body?"

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎

"None beyond his desire to resume living." Mr. Highbottom's death was untimely and she wasn't unsympathetic to his pain, but there was nothing to be done now. Short of pursuing a career in necromancy, the man simply had to make his peace with his death.

"Have you dealt with cases like this often?" She asked, donning her own mask to follow him inside. While the corpse wasn't contagious, she didn't think it prudent to leave Noble's brother alone with it.

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stunning set by Lady <3

"Not often," Ford answered. The majority of the spirits that he dealt with were considerably older than this gentleman was. The recent-deceased were higher profile cases and tended to be assigned to those in the division with more seniority, though it was obvious why none of them were particularly keen to tackle this case. That was only the real spirits, too... the majority of his cases were false alarms, whispers of things or rumors that could have been something but turned out to have entirely mundane or innocuously magical explanations. Reports that came from Muggle areas were particularly likely to be nothing at all, but they were still a high priority for investigation given the risk, however slim, that failure to do so would constitute a violation of the International Statute of Secrecy. The division was trained annually on the Nepalese magical government's failure to keep their spirits separate from their Muggle community after a small band of mischievous ghosts had gotten the ear of a Muggle-born wizard and convinced him he was a Great Prophet and they were minor gods.

"This might take a while," he cautioned her. "I don't know that you have to go in and watch, unless the hospital wants that."

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎

Little of what Noble's brother was saying was giving her much confidence in his abilities. She would have guessed the spirit division dealt with cases such as these often, or at least often enough to have experienced ghosts in absolute denial before. That there wasn't some bottle they could absorb the ghost into or a way to shoo the spirit away was maddening too. This was a hospital, surely other ghosts had originated here before!

"I was asked to supervise the corpse." She explained a bit uneasily. "How long do you imagine it will take?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

If they'd told her to supervise the corpse probably what they'd meant was keep the spirit in the room from bothering any of the other patients or the staff, if he had to guess, but he merely shrugged. If she was determined to come inside then he wasn't going to stop her, though if she started making things harder when he got started he might have to change course and ask her to leave. It sounded like he was going to have an uphill climb with this one already; he didn't need living reactions to spark new tensions when he started making progress. "That's up to him," he answered. "I'm just going to talk to him."

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎

It was at that moment that Rosalie realized she despised everything the ministry stood for.

And maybe it was her exhaustion in having dealt with the wailing, miserable ghost for days now. Maybe it was her grief in having failed the man. Maybe she had finally crossed the line into delirum. Maybe it was because nothing good ever seemed to be reported about the bloody organization. But whatever the case was, she loathed the spirit division in particular.

Talk. And what would Noble's brother do if the ghost didn't quite feel like talking? Offer him a cup of tea? And more than that, how would they prevent the ghost from coming back?!

"Sure." Rosalie managed through her surprise and wandlessly summoned her open files from the desk down the hall. "I'll just be in the corner updating my notes."

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stunning set by Lady <3

There were certainly better uses of her time, but again, Ford didn't argue. He put his hand on the knob and took a deep breath, mentally preparing for it to be the last gulp of reasonably fresh air he had for a while. Then he went inside. "Good afternoon, Mr. Highbottom," he said on entering, brisk but pleasant, the same tone he had heard any number of healers using as they bustled into rooms in this building. "My name is Fortitude Greengrass. Do you mind if I sit?"

Mr. Highbottom launched in to a long and screechy diatribe about idiot medical staff and their insistence on getting rid of him rather than treating him. Ford took the chair, since the spirit hadn't given an indication one way or another, and listened without interjection until the man had finished. This probably looked like he was doing nothing to the healer — he had not failed to clock her impatience when she had determined to fetch her notes — but it was in fact a very active practice: listening for any small loose ends he could pick up again later, and surveying the man (his spirit; Ford was carefully avoiding looking at the body on the hospital bed at all) for any noteworthy details. "My apologies, sir, I should have specified that I'm not with the hospital," he explained once Highbottom had talked himself out. "I work with the Ministry. This sounds like a dreadful ordeal," he said, with genuine sympathy — Highbottom's frustrations about the hospital staff giving up may have been misplaced, but the ordeal of his death had indeed been dreadful.

Highbottom launched into another tirade. The facts were much the same, but with an altered tone; no longer accusatory but rather putting himself at the center of a tale of woe. Ford nodded sympathetically at all the appropriate intervals, but when Highbottom stopped again he changed the subject and got him talking about his pocket watch, the chain of which Ford had spied some minutes earlier and whose ghostly form made the pocket it was in bulge from the memory of weight. Highbottom was all too glad to pull it out and show it off; he was proud of it, as Ford had guessed he might be, and explained that he had ordered it custom-made from a chalice he'd acquired while traveling to Egypt. It replaced the pocket watch his father had gifted him after the falling out with his father. "You've been to Egypt?" Ford asked with earnest curiosity, sidestepping the obviously fraught family dynamic. "What's it like?"

Mr. Highbottom regaled him with stories of Egypt. Ford was an attentive listener and asked questions any time there was a pause to do so. He still had yet to look at the body, and was doing his best not to look at Miss Hunniford either. From stories of Egypt Ford inquired about the man's career — in presence tense, what do you do? — then his hobbies. It was revealed that Highbottom enjoyed hunting, and Ford interjected with the story of the Spirit Ball where the ghostly huntsmen had released a pack of dogs and a bear into the Hogsmeade streets at midnight, then chased it through the walls of the houses. Although at the time he had been quite annoyed by the ordeal, Ford told the story the way Barnaby Wye might, with enough animation that he had Highbottom laughing by the midway mark.

"I can introduce you to them," Ford offered with a grin — and here, at last, he glanced towards the hospital bed. Just once, and for just long enough that Highbottom couldn't miss the look before Ford looked back up to meet his eyes. "But it does mean we'll have to leave the room."

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎

Rosalie struggled to focus on her notes as the ghost wailed and moaned about her inefficiencies, as though they hadn't done everything within their power to keep the bastard breathing. It wasn't her fault he'd come across the poison, nor was it her fault he waited hours to come in once exposed. Hours they might've spent saving him instead of the three days of misery he'd inflicted upon them.

By the time Noble's brother and the ghost were prattling on about Egypt, Rosalie was ready to injest the poison herself just for this to end. For while she was pleased that the ghost was doing something other than wailing, she was simply too exasperated by his previous efforts to desire anything other than his departure. She nearly begged them both to take this conversation to Egypt and give the hospital back its room, though she smartly managed to keep her mouth shut on that front.

"I've heard of Mr. Wye," she interjected in what she prayed was a genuine tone. "He's a jovial man, you'd like him."

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stunning set by Lady <3

Most people who had heard of Barnaby Wye had nothing very complimentary to say about him, but Miss Hunniford managed a remark that was both truthful and not unhelpful. Ford beamed at the remark as genuinely as though she had been leveling a compliment at him. "He's an excellent fellow. He comes to my garden every Tuesday to discuss poetry."

Mr. Highbottom was looking at his body while Ford spoke. He had been doing that when Ford opened the door, too, but now his expression had changed. It was difficult to read without knowing him better, but it was clear that he was thinking hard behind the furrowed brow. Ford waited. There were moments that it was important not to rush, and he had the intuition that this was one of them. Eventually Highbottom turned back to him. His expression was terrible — forlorn and resigned and sorrowful, but it was also more earnest than it had been when Ford had come in to the room. Something inside of him had broken and all of the feelings that had been welled up behind his denial were pouring out now, but there was acceptance beneath the swell of them.

'I ought to see to things at home,' Highbottom said, not obviously in response to anything that had come before. His ghostly form shivered. 'I've been here too long.' His eyes shifted from Ford to somewhere over Ford's shoulder, the wall of the hospital room, and then he drifted forward with a sense of purpose. Ford watched him disappear through the wall and let out a deep breath.

"You can call someone to take the body away now," he told Miss Hunniford. "He won't be back."

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎

Finally, finally!, Mr. Highbottom was gone, and Rosalie felt her shoulders sag with immense relief. The corpse would no longer be decomposing on their recently purchased hospital bed, the screeching would no longer bother the other patients or staff, and maybe — just maybe — she would be able to rest comfortably again.

"You were very kind to him," she admitted, a shred of guilt settling in her stomach for all her negative and impulsive thoughts. Then, a beat later she added, "How can you be sure he won't be back?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

It seemed so obvious to Ford that the question surprised him. He had to remind himself that the healer had been behind Mr. Highbottom when he'd decided to leave. From her position in the corner she wouldn't have had as clear a view of his expression as Ford had. "Because he understands now," Ford said. This was an inadequate explanation, but he wasn't sure it was possible to put into words everything that had been conveyed in that parting look Highbottom had given him. This was his best tentatively attempt, and it was falling flat. He chewed the inside of his lower lip and tried to think of another way to say it.

"This isn't the end," he ventured. "It's a transition. His body can leave and he can stay, but he didn't... it's like he needed someone else to acknowledge his humanity before he could acknowledge it," Ford said. "He won't come back to the body. He doesn't need it anymore. And now he understands that."

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♥︎ Thank you Lady ♥︎