9 April 2012
Monday at 2pm
St. Mungo's Hospital
Misslethorpe's office

Athena and Sandy were taking a bit of time for tea in Sandy's office, tall Sawbones (as some called her) sat long-legged in one of Sandy's comfortable chairs, a hot cuppa in her hands. They were shooting the breeze, colleagues who'd become fair friends.

"How's the sprog? Hogwarts home for the holiday?"

Athena wasn't well acquainted with Sandy's Meredith, but from what Sandy said knew her to be bright enough. Athena had already updated him on her gossip - she was seeing Vincent Fournier (still) and happy about it, and taking occasional work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement doing a bit of field healing (nothing exciting so far).

In addition, last Friday night had been the full moon, and people on Athena's floor (Creatures Injuries) had been doubling up on shifts to cover the predictable boom in emergency cases, werewolf related. There were always a few mundane dog bites, innocent folk confusing wolfhounds with be-deviled neighbors. They were all just a touch weary, but nothing unusual.

"A teenager." Said Sandy. "Staying with her mother. Studying for her NEWTs." Meredith had not been a sprog since she turned eleven. She grew up fast. Sandy's ex-wife was another healer. They kept distance. No drama. People did not ask him much about it. He had married before he was ready. Divorced. Athena was much more successful with her love life. "Trying to encourage her to do a little work at the magazine. She wants to be head girl. Last year in September." Where had time gone? It made him feel old.

"You two not considering settling down?" Asked Sandy. She had seen Fournier for a while now. "Catch the bouquet at the Spectre wedding this weekend?" He was not invited for obvious reasons. But it looked like all the hospital was. The number of holiday requests. Or off-shift bargains.

"Merlin, I hope not," Athena sniffed at the thought of going domestic with Vincent.  "Me poor da, though, I expect he's near to asking the local hedgewitch for a spell."

Helio Marrowbone had been a single father, and wonderful at it. He wanted that for his five children. And Vincent was a really lovely wizard and a massive improvement to her past lovers - boyfriend, to be more fair. He did dishes. There was something about marrying though that put off Athena. Maybe she'd didn't trust herself to choose, maybe she thought she'd have to give up too much.

"But good for Balfour. I'd say he's marrying into a strange family," - the Storms -, "but good lord, I think they're a match."

"Oh, speaking of strange. Oddest thing. Was gabbing with Morgan Prewett." Sandy would know her; she worked in Spell Damage with him. "She told me someone came in complaining that they couldn't cast a Patronus Charm. She'd been able to easily before, no problems casting other spells. Patient said - bizarre - that she'd lost the happy memory she'd been using. Like it flew out the window. No evidence of Obliviation spells, but you know how that is."

It was very difficult to actually detect Obliviation magically; it was usually deduced from circumstance.

"Prewett offered her a Legilimens, but she declined."

Athena shrugged. It was a mystery.

"Any suggestion they had used dark magic?" Asked Sandy. "Wix can lose a patronus if they cast too many dark spells." Patronus was pure magic. Happy bright magic. It was formed from happy memories. Joy. Brilliance. It was also very hard to cast for very many. "It is not something patients want to tell us you see." Now the war was over it was not as common.

"But losing the happy memory sounds very unusual. Pity they declined the legilimens. Consider this one intrigued." He had got a lot better since working with Yavin Morgenthau. An expert in this.

Athena shrugged. She hadn't herself met the patient and Prewett hadn't mentioned anything that might have indicated the witch was a Dark Arts dabbler. Honestly the way she'd described her was that quiz night at the Daily Prophet with her retired parents was the peak of excitement. It was a good theory on Sandy's part, though.

"Real shame she didn't stick round," Athena said. This happened from time to time, that a patient was satisfied more quickly then their morbid curious Healers who'd poke and prod and prophecy to find the right answer. But even magic didn't always reveal every truth.

"And just the one memory -," Athena added, stuck on that. "But then, how would you know? How do ye know something's missing, until you go reaching for it? What's more likely, that she's lost just that one particular memory or several? Hmm."

She stared off into space for a long moment, experiencing a brief cosmic glimpse of the nature of being that made one shudder at the spine. She took a deep breath and smiled again.

"If I lost my Patronus memory, I'd sit for a Legelimens, anyway."

"Me too." Agreed Sandy. That was a bit of a mystery. "You ever heard of something like that before?" He asked. "You are right. That you do not know they are gone until you try to reach them." Memory magic had become one of Sandy's specialties.

"If they were obliviated it is just suppressed. So they cannot access it. It could have been recovered." He had done it before. Smells. Sensations. It took a long time.

"Makes me want to cast a patronus out of worry now you said that."

Athena snickered a little and nodded at this, Sandy's paradox of casting a Patronus in the mindset of dreading you could not. It was so common a spell and not something that was mastered in the afternoon. It was the rare witch or wizard who could cast it in times to stress, rare to use it often enough for it not to take great effort. Again, so many questions for the patient who'd left without answers - had she cast the spell often, when was the last time, has another memory worked? And all that.

"Well, if you can't make heads or tails of it," Athena said of her colleague and his specialty, "and the patient isn't crying, then we're all shit out of luck."

Athena rose, her time drawing near. It was irritating to a Healer not to have the answer. "I'll keep to my bites and blood, I think, and keep the mysteries out of it. Did you hear about Amelia's thing? There's cake in Plants and Poisonings."

"Better that way round." Said Sandy. Though poison in the cake had probably sent people to the Plants and Poisoning floor on hundreds of occasions in the hospital's history. "I will go by and give her my regards. Thank you for the reminder." Her story was still sitting with him. "Would you find out the name of that witch? You have me intrigued. The more the thought sits with me the more I feel a familiarity. I just cannot put my finger on it." Was it a patient of his? Or a patient he head heard about? Or the very same patient through someone else. He gave a not so reassuring smile. "Good luck with the bites and blood."

Athena rose with Sandy, both of them having somewhere else to be shortly.

"I'll run it down," she said, regarding getting the patient record. "Maybe there are more."

She said it in a classic Agatha Pendragon WWN melodrama tone. "We love a mystery, don't we."

Fin