For a few moments after Dante and Leo had left for their trip around Diagon Alley, Genevieve García-Gamp simply stared at the front door to the apartment that she shared with her son. She felt like she’d been run over with a muggle bus, watched it reverse, and been run over again. Her throat was sharp and scratchy, and her nose a dripping faucet. All symptoms one could handle without much panic. But her wand hadn’t worked. Dante’s wand hadn’t worked. Nothing, not even a flicker. She’d been poisoned.

With an urgency that she barely managed, Gen dragged herself back upstairs to her bedroom. She was able to wash and dress in a pair of old jeans and a baggy hooded jumper. The hood was brought up over her head, and a pair of sunglasses added as she slipped on a pair of trainers.

Back downstairs, a handful of floo powder was grabbed and she threw it into the fireplace, stated her chosen destination of St Mungo’s, and stepped in.

*SMACK*

With a loud clatter and a scream, Gen was spat straight out of the fireplace, the back of her legs hitting the coffee table, sending her tumbling back over it.

No magic. Absolutely not magic.

It had therefore taken a very long time to get herself to St Mungo’s the muggle way, and by the time she was sat in the waiting room, she was feeling even more like she wanted to die.

When she was lying on the bed in the cubicle, sunglasses and hood still in place and the healer walked in? Well, she needed to die now.

“Is there no one else avail-” words were interrupted by a fit of violent coughs. Hadn’t she suggested that this healer moonlighted as a lady of the night?[1]

1.	Editor’s letter

Christmas might be right round the corner, but life at St Mungo’s was just as busy as ever. The tinsel and holly adorned the ceilings of the wards on the third floor, a little cheer for the patients unlucky enough to spend some time inside.

Healer Mordent was up to her eyeballs in working her shifts and studying every waking moment to ensure she passed her final healer’s exams the following week. She was sure it was a sadist who put exams between Christmas and new year, but getting them over and done with was better than leaving them to stew until the new year. At least her housemate Arcturus was fantastic as both a mentor and a study companion.

“Will you take the new arrival?” Healer Gawmdrey asked as she tucked another patient into bed after administering a restorative. He thumbed towards one of the beds which had all the curtains drawn around it.
“‘course,” she replied, collecting some fresh paperwork.

When she drew back the curtain, the patient within was withdrawn, in rather muggle attire. A hood drawn up and sunglasses. The nose and chin were instantly identifiable as female however. This patient clearly did not want anyone to see her. Not overly unusual, but the reaction to Elixa’s arrival was.

“Is there no one else avail-”

Mordent had met patients who hated to be treated by women, some by healers with foreign accents too, but this was the fastest rejection yet. Pausing, curtain still in hand, she frowned a little and looked the figure up and down.

“Do we know each other?” She asked, giving the patient the benefit of the doubt. It was only when the sunglasses slid forward with the coughing that a familiarity clicked. She’d seen that face in a magazine. She pulled the curtain closed, the need for secrecy somewhat clear now.

“Oh, right.” Elixa swallowed and readied the fresh patient history form, her self-inking quill to hand. “Well I’m afraid there isn’t anyone else available right now.” she informed Queen G in a serious tone. “I’m Healer Mordent, but it seems you already knew that.” She wet her lips and took up position at the end of the bed.

“Could I take your name and date of birth, so I can summon your record, and then if you begin by explaining what’s brought you here, we’ll see what we can do to help.”

It took the healer a few moments to realise who she was planning to treat. Gen couldn’t blame her. The hoody and sunglasses had done their job. Anonymity didn’t exist in a job like Gen’s. She’d made a career out of her loud and vivacious Queen G alter ego that was extremely similar to her actual ego. Even if you didn’t subscribe to or regularly read Witch Weekly, you knew Queen G. She was a household name and a well-known face. A well-known face who didn’t want to be swarmed upon at one of her lowest points.

With the curtain drawn, the editor lowered the hood and pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head. Her usually brown and healthy looking skin had lost its glow, leaving her looking pale and exhausted. Tired eyes scanned over Healer Mordent and she offered a sort of guilty smile.

“If it’s any consolation, healer, I thought you wore the boots exceptionally well.” Queen G croaked quietly. Hopefully, that would be the elephant in the room taken care of.

“Ah, Genevieve García-Gamp, 5th November 1971.” A date of birth that she certainly didn’t go sharing with just anyone. “I started feeling rough, yesterday. Fever. Nausea.” She’d put it down to the stress of the trial. Easy to do when one’s husband was just released from Azkaban. “This morning, it’s worse and…” the final part, she whispered, “I can’t work my wand.”

Boots. Hrmph. Elixa did her best to look past that more than awkward issue of Witch Weekly. She and Eva had weathered it, and there was bound to be more uncomfortable moments ahead in their lives. As long as Queen G didn’t write about this encounter, she might survive her stay.

Elixa’s quill inked the details onto a small scrap of parchment attached to the forms. As she lifted her fingers, it creased into to a little bird and shot off over the tops of the curtains to the records room. The healer continued with the rest of the form, listening without interruption.

Symptoms began: 20th Dec
- Fever
- Nausea
- Magical interruption?

“This came on suddenly yesterday?” Healer Mordent asked, “what sort of time did you notice feeling unwell?” She glanced up to her patient, “and have the issues with your magic been throughout, or is it a more recent development?” There were plenty of things that could give one the flu-like symptoms, but the disruption of magic was a little more specialised.

A few beds over, out of sight behind the curtains, a patient vomited, and another sneezed. The healer added notes on the pale tone of her patient’s skin, the croaky tone of her voice.

This little note with her name and age fluttered off to Merlin knew where, and Gen closed her eyes, resting her head back against the pillow on the hospital bed. It wasn’t a particularly long time since she’d last felt nauseous. But this wasn’t inflicted by an overindulgence the night before. She didn’t do that when Dante was home. Mostly. He spent the night with Leo’s parents if she had a big party to attend. No, this was some bug or poisoning or something equally horrific.

“This came on suddenly yesterday?” The healer asked. Gen nodded, and immediately regretted it, her head feeling like she was underwater but held in a constricted vice that was slowly tightening.

“Yesterday morning, I felt rough. But I put it down to anxiety.” It was probably unnecessary to explain why. It had been plastered all over the Prophet, hadn’t it? She’d been asked for a comment as she’d left the court room, and had refused. What could you really say about the release of your possibly murderous husband?

“Then yesterday afternoon I feel really bad. Everything aches. Like the flu. But this morning I wake up and I can’t use my wand.” Was it the tea that Leo’s mum had served? Was this poisoning to get Dante and seek revenge on her? “The floo spat me out trying to get here.”

Genny felt ridiculous, but she chose to ask the question on her mind.
“Have I been poisoned, Healer?”

“That’s what I’ll try and ascertain.” Lix reassured her patient, finishing the notes. Would it make a better story if she was? “Are you able to drop your hood, remove your glasses?” She set the notes down at the foot of the bed and gestured for clarity.

“A few tests to begin with, temperature, colour, and I’ll draw your blood. Don’t worry, just a little.” She assured Queen G, touching each of her sleeves to roll them up, and then drawing her own wand, touching one of her own hands, and swapping to the other to repeat. A gentle yellow light rippled over the skin with the wordless incantation, a barrier between them both at skin level

“Just sit on the edge of the bed, here, please.” Lix waited, hands raised for the magazine editor to agree. Her patient was indeed warm to the touch, and Lix’s fingers gently but efficiently prodded at Gen’s neck in thoughtful silence. She took her pulse at the wrist, a temperature under the tongue.

“Note those down…” Lix explained automatically, though her tone indicated she was elsewhere in thought about the symptoms already. Hadn’t there been another patient or two with similar, earlier in the day? Was she just seeing patterns that weren’t there? “Would you draw your sleeve up past the crook of your elbow?”

She was going through the motions, trying not to look the pest of a magazine writer in the eye so she wouldn’t feel that irritation rising. At the time she’d decided they’d come off lightly. Queen G could have sent someone to take photographs of that incident with Harper Graves, after all. Not that they’d have been forewarned, just that they might have got lucky with the night.

“And I’ll take two samples of blood. Run some tests. See what we get. At the moment, I can’t say conclusively, so I need to rule out some possibilities.” She made a neat incision with magic at Gen’s elbow, catching the blood. “Can you think back to what you’ve eaten and drunk in the past twenty-four hours, including any potions?”

Gen was silent as she followed instruction from the healer. Glasses off and placed on the small table beside the hospital bed. Hood down. Sleeves up. She noted to lack of eye contact, and wondered if it was the healer’s usual demeanour, or because of the article. Most likely the article; a witch who wore boots like that in public wasn’t too shy to look someone in the eye. Gen might have considered if she’d crossed a line. If she wasn’t, you know, Queen G. It was her job, and if she didn’t do it, someone else would quickly jump into her spot and take the helm.

“Possibilities?” Gen croaked uncomfortably. She didn’t get ill; her immune system was spot on. What other possibilities could there possible be?

“I don’t know, I barely ate yesterday.” Anxiety was a powerful appetite dampener. “I had some ginger cake and tea in the afternoon, but I was already feeling rough by then.” And now she felt like she’d been the target for every bludger in the country. “I really can’t afford to be ill now, Healer.” Her husband was currently in Diagon Alley with her son. With Leo out now, she needed to be on top form, not a coughing mess unable to perform even the simplest spell. “I really need my magic.”

Her patient was fussing, only to be expected. Lix continued to note down the answers to her questions.

“Nobody can really afford to be ill, Madam,” the Healer reminded politely but firmly, “unfortunately rich or poor, we all get ill once in a while. It doesn’t discriminate.” She glanced up to Gen, and in the glance, conveyed a semblance of sympathy.

“I take it you are under a lot of undue stress at this time, too?” Elixa didn’t get to read the finest detail of the Daily Prophet on a busy week, but she’d got the broad brushstrokes of the Editor of Witch Weekly appearing in the rival publication due to a legal case. She’d only been surprised it wasn’t against the gossip rag.

“I need to go do these tests,” she explained, finishing the notes, “would you mind not eating or drinking anything but water for the time being.” She lifted her wand to the empty jug on the bedside cabinet, and it began to fill with water. “I may be ten, fifteen minutes or so. Is there anything you want to ask before I go?”

“I take it you are under a lot of undue stress at this time, too?” The healer asked an obvious question after pointing out the obvious that all people got sick at some point. That was fine, but not now. She needed to be on form, now.

“You don’t read the prophet?” Gen asked. She wasn’t being sarcastic; she felt too ill to be sarcastic. No, this was a serious question. There weren’t many people that didn’t read the prophet daily. The Daily Prophet was the main source of information for most Witches and wizards. You did, of course, need to take it with a pinch of salt. Cuffe was in with the Ministry. The Daily Snitch tried to insist that they were the publication with no bias, but what they wrote was a load of rubbish.

“My husband has just been released from Azkaban.” She said calmly, quietly. It was a strange thing to say. “He’d been given a life sentence.”

The healer had her tests to run, and Gen was quite relieved that she was going to be left alone for a bit. She offered the healer a small smile, weak considering how she felt like she’d been run over by the knight bus.
“Don’t worry, healer, no chance of eating a thing.”

As Mordent left the room, Gen recovered her head with the hood and rested her head back and closed her eyes. She most definitely fell asleep within a few minutes.

He collided with Elixa on his way back to the wards from the apothecary, where he'd gone to personally hand over some of his prescription notes he'd left behind in his office. It was not her fault; he'd been absent-mindedly making his way back, his feet taking him the way he was used to as his mind was preoccupied with his patients' diagnoses and treatments, and hadn't noticed until he'd refocused too late.

"I'm sorry," he said automatically, reaching out to steady her. "Are you alright, miss? ...Elixa."

Little late on the uptake there. He hadn't spoken to her much at home, and at work he'd let her be. She knew he trusted her skill at this point. He'd been slowly giving her more and more space to operate independently as a Healer, and despite his preoccupation was impressed with her progress. That said, it hadn't been hard to leave her alone, since he'd spent weeks working on at least ninety-nine problems. Elixa was not one of them.

"What's up?" he couldn't help asking despite himself, seeing her face.

Her patient seemed surprised at the suggestion she didn’t know what was already going on. Much as Lix did read the paper, she knew too well never to believe everything they printed. It was wider context to this healing conversation, but nothing would replace the first-hand account of the patient when collecting a history.

Lix gave a polite half bow as she left, in acknowledgement that for the moment their conversation had ended. She stepped outside and drew the curtain back in place.

In thought, she made her way down the ward, samples and notes in hand, and headed for the desk, hoping her patient’s record had returned from the archives. It was to her surprise that her flatmate and fellow third floor healer smacked straight into her from just behind, the two of them heading in the same general direction.

“I’m sorry, are you alright, miss? … Elixa.”

“Oj! Arc!” She exclaimed in surprise, lifting her patient’s blood samples a little higher out of the way of their arms. “Careful.” If Arc had been the playful sort of ex-bedmate she might have supposed he’d done that on purpose, but she knew it was far more likely he was deeply distracted behind the eyes and therefore not using them.

“What’s up?”

“New admission,” she informed him, glancing back to the relevant bed, hidden behind curtains. She waggled her finger in a beckoning motion and both healers approached the ward’s main paperwork desk situated at one end of the long room. “Mrs Gamp,” she informed Arcturus in hushed tones, knowing the surname alone would get his attention. “As in Mrs Genevieve García-Gamp. Only the ruddy Editor of Witch Weekly.” She knew the patient’s status wouldn’t completely intrigue Arcturus, who had probably never opened an edition of Witch Weekly voluntarily in his life. “She’s come in with flu symptoms and no magic. She’s like the third or fourth this morning I’ve heard of alone.”

With a gentle and efficient swish, the records in question landed neatly on the desk before her. “Flu symptoms come on first, and then the loss of magic.” Lix flipped open the cover and examined the contents for any additional context. But as her patient had suggested, she was not a frequent flyer to St Mungo’s.

“I’ve taken some bloods, going to run the usual to check she’s not poisoned - that being why they sent her up here.” Lix wasn’t worried so to speak, more curious of a pattern. “Any of yours showing symptoms like it?” She asked, passing her initial patient history notes to her colleague. “Don’t want to read into things too early, but I think we might have a pattern here.”

To his credit, the only thing that gave away his internal reaction to the utterance of the surname was his eyes flickering for a moment. The voice stirred but said nothing, however - a lot of what it had said on the subject was mostly exhausted for the time being.
 
“Mrs Gamp. As in Mrs Genevieve García-Gamp. Only the ruddy Editor of Witch Weekly.”

"Editor of Witch W-- Oh that one. Well, no one's immune to falling ill." He glanced over the file she'd flipped open, skimming her notes; he hadn't meant it as a joke, but it had been a memorable enough evening since his flatmate's wrath was one you couldn't ignore.

"Any of yours showing symptoms like it? Don’t want to read into things too early, but I think we might have a pattern here.”

A soft hum escaped his lips. "Similar symptoms shown in two other patients who came in today, other than the ones you heard. Varying levels of severity. I suspected it was more a magical bug at first but wasn't certain since there's precedent for poisons faking the symptoms of other possible diseases."

The healer peered at the samples thoughtfully. "I found no traces of poison in my tests, but don't take my word for it. I'd rather have a second opinion than assume on my own. Current sample size is too small to rule out the possibility of poisoning, but not serious enough to address it on a hospital-wide basis." He was being as diplomatic about it as possible, but Elixa would know that he was alluding to the contaminations a year ago[1]. "Carry out your tests and let me know, will you?"

1.	DP article

“Yeah, sure.” Lix agreed, mind busy behind her eyes, adding up the additional information from Hollingbury. It was too small a group of patients, she agreed. But she never enjoyed coincidences when it came to patients from seemingly unrelated backgrounds exhibiting symptoms. “Thanks, speak to you later.”

Collecting all the paperwork and the blood she headed into one of the potions rooms on the floor to take care of the necessary tests. She clocked Gawmdrey passing by her station, but kept her gaze firmly fixed on the flames, potions and indicators before her. The last thing she needed was Yawny getting on his high horse about the few additional tricks she’d picked up from Arc’s interest in blood. Her housemate was far more into it, and far more likely to receive their older colleague’s two knuts on how he didn’t agree. Lix just followed the standard applications for her upcoming exams with the odd tweak when Gawndry wasn’t close.

Hm. Just as Arc had predicted and she had been concerned of before their conversation. There were no signs of poison in the blood, just suggestions that her patient needed proper hydration and some sugars. Both of those were easy to conclude from the symptoms and lack of appetite. Lix cleared her station with care, results recorded, and headed back onto the ward to update her patient.

Her patient had returned to hermit mode, which Lix didn’t blame her for in the circumstances. She not only didn’t want to be recognised and bothered, but she felt rough.
“Hello again,” Lix addressed her from the foot of the bed, moderating her tone. “I’ve had a good look, and indication is that there’s nothing to suggest you’ve been poisoned.”

She explained this with a frown, as part of her wished it might have been as easy as the patient hoped. It looked like she was stuck with the Witch Weekly editor for the time-being.

“It did however tell me you need to drink a lot more water,” she pointed her wand to the jug which began to pour, “and try to get some energy into you. I may speak to the healers on magical bugs and diseases to see if they can come up and take a look.” She approached the side of the bed and handed Gen the glass of water. “Have you been exposed to anybody ill in the past week?”

The curtain was pulled back and the healer returned. Gen’s eyes snapped open to confirm she was alone. Most people would have looked at least a little relieved that they clearly hadn’t been poisoned, but Gen didn’t feel relieved. If she hadn’t been poisoned, why the hell did she feel like death warmed up over an open fire and left out for the vultures to pick pick pick at?

Her arms felt weak and heavy, as if she were lifting arms covered in jewels as she lifted her hand to take the water. All energy had been drained from her. She certainly wouldn’t have complained if left there for the next hour or so just to sleep off the effort of making it into St Mungo’s with no magic.

“I’m exposed-” Gen’s voice croaked and she started to cough once more. It felt as if she was about to cough up her stomach and guts. “I see a lot of people. No idea if they’re ill.” No one had been coughing and spluttering. And surely, she’d notice someone who was lacking magic and felt as if they’d been trampled by a hippogriff herd.

“You don’t know what it is?” She asked, lifting the glass for a small sip of water.

Healer Mordent nodded gravely, understanding the nature of her patient’s work. The referral to a second floor healer would go over such questions in greater detail. To look for a contagious disease or whether a muggle malady had somehow interfered with magic.

“You don’t know what it is?”

“I know what it is isn’.” Lix maintained, with a slight nod to back up the statement. “Potions and plants are my speciality, Madam, which is why I will refer your case to healers who specialise in magical bugs and diseases. They are most likely transmitted by people, who you’ve been in contact with opposed to plants and potions.” She explained it kindly. Her worries of what her patient was suffering from superseded her earlier disgruntles at realising it was the witch who had published.

“To put your symptoms into context,” she added, “you are not the only patient who has arrived at the hospital today presenting these symptoms.” She pressed her lips together. “I’m sure you can appreciate I cannot say more due to patient confidentiality.” Wouldn’t want anything published… the suggestion unspoken but not required to be.

“I’ll get that referral done and bring you something simple to eat, see if we can’t bring a little energy back to you.” With a polite half bow, Healer Mordent excused herself. Even if ‘Queen G’ did not regain her magic quickly, she doubted her infamous quill would be impaired. She better send a second memo off to their Deputy Head Healer. It seemed his Editor was indisposed.



End