The evening certainly wasn’t playing out as Hannah had expected. Tired and ready to collapse in her bed in the silence of a now empty flat, Hannah had been greatly perturbed when the hammering on the front door had stopped her from so much as entering her bedroom. With grumbles of displeasure the young healer had opened her front door to be greeted by a friendly auror she had grown to not dislike during her time at the ministry of magic as the magical examiner. Yet now the auror didn’t look so friendly. Neither did he look healthy as he had practically fallen into the hallway onto the very small witch.

It had been difficult to convince the delirious sickly wizard that they couldn’t remain here for her to help him. She needed assistance and she was certainly not treating someone in her own home when her friend had been so insistent on his helpful spare bed and his teaspoon.

So now they were stood outside Knox Greyfriar’s hut, Auror Evans leaning against the stiff uncomfortable witch as she banged on Knox’s door. Evans seemed far worse after the travel but Hannah had had little choice. She looked up to his face with a frown. Why did they all think she would just help them outside of the hospital? She was a healer not a mother.

“We’ll sort you here, Evans.” As even in such a situation Hannah’s voice was calm, if a little forced due to the physical contact. “GREYFRIAR!”

The full moon was approaching.  Only a few more nights to go.  No matter now many months passed, and even though the dread had abated over time, there was still something horrifying for Knox about what would happen to him.  The... intensity didn't seem to wane.  It was always just as true as ever.  Shortly the painful symptoms of his curse would manifest in a violent transformation in a Ministry cell, its gut-wrenching effects mitigated only by the life-saving Wolfsbane Potion. 

He was in bed, sleeping fitfully.  If he slept, his dreams were full of blood.  If he was awake, every sound seemed to irritate him.  And most food made his stomach churn. 

A banging on his door.  He jerked up in bed and reached for his wand on his bedside table.  His immediate thought was Aurors.  Or something about Devlin, who had been recently sent from Azkaban.  Or something horrible had happened to little Lucy Matthews who he had some responsibility for now. 

The unknown visitor banged again and shouted his name.  He stepped out of bed and lit his wand.  As he descended his tiny narrow staircase, he slipped his arms into the sleeves of a voluminous robe.  A tiny window nearby the door gave a limited view of who could be on his stoop.

His jaw dropped in surprise.  It was Hannah Bombay and slumped against her was a wizard he didn't recognize in the dark.  What in the world?

Something was wrong.

Only vaguely aware of his surroundings, Cooper Evans pressed his arm into his abdomen, clenching his teeth together to keep from growling out in pain. His shoulder dragged against a wall, his legs unable to fully keep him standing, and his vision faltered. He didn’t know it, but his skin was slightly pale and his forehead drenched in sweat. Voices fluttered through his mind, a confused haze of the last few hours and the events that had led him here and which he rather forget. He didn’t quite remember where he was going, but some primal instinct told him to continue forwards.

Renwick’s face, the satisfied smirk on the bastard’s face as he’d forced a potion down Cooper’s throat, and the sinister laughter all seemed to want to remain alive in his mind, but instead the werewolf somehow managed to focus on the fact that his insides were burning. His lips parted and he whispered, but each word was a bit more nonsensical than the previous. His chest contracted with each breath, his lungs feeling as if they were crushing against his ribs.

A door. That door. The Auror felt drained, but managed to stop  before it. And who gave a damn if it was his head that knocked against it instead of his knuckles? The man’s frame leaned against it, allowing it to hold him up as his mind slipped back and forth between consciousness and imagination. It opened, and he stumbled, and he wasn’t quite certain if he was standing or lying on the ground, or if the words the witch spoke were real or a figment of his delusions. He wasn’t even certain who she was, or why they were moving, but that same primal instinct told him she would help.

Yelling. A name. The werewolf tried to focus on his surroundings –but instead he saw that Renwick was standing there, against the hut. Cooper screamed and pulled his body around. He needed his wand. Where was his wand? The Auror fell to his knees –and was sick. Once his heaves had turned dry, the lycanthrop glanced up and Renwick was gone. But he’d still be near by. “Danger,” He managed to say through his teeth as he tried to stand but found he couldn’t, his green eyes rising to focus on the witch. “Death.” He said, before collapsing face down into the ground.

Some movement and a heavy-sounding thump and Knox had to hurry to open the door. It looked like the wizard had collapsed on his faded welcome mat.  As he opened the door, the man's head and arm lolled across the threshold.

He looked down at the man, pale and dank, his hair plastered to his forehead.  Then he looked up at who'd brought him.

"Hannah, what is this? Who is this? What's happened?"

Even as he asked, he he had slipped his large hands beneath the man's shoulders and quite deftly drug him into the little house.  There wasn't any blood that he could see, on either him or Hannah, but clearly the man was on the edge of well - death. 

He'd asked what this was about, but a twitching little imp in his brain seemed to guess.  This was a man who had no where else to go.  With Hannah's help, he arranged the man in his armchair and with his wand sent some water to boil.  They'd be needing tea, clearly, and if not that something far stronger.

Why was Knox not coming to his door? Last time Hannah had checked the timepiece in her pocket it hadn’t been that late. Surely he wouldn’t be sleeping right now. Not with her outside needing to get in. Not when Cooper Evans was falling onto the floor beside her and emptying his stomach. Hannah bent down to the wizard, a hand on his back as her tired eyes took in what he’d vomited onto the floor. The colour was brown, almost black. Definitely not a regular wizards bug yet she couldn’t find anything more from him.

The front door opened just as Evans muttered about danger and collapsed onto the floor. Hannah looked up to Knox with pursed lips yet she didn’t respond to his questions immediately. Instead she stood up as Greyfriar pulled the auror into his home.  Hannah helped seat him in the arm chair and her slim cold fingers grabbed his mouth, she squeezed his jaw and pulled his mouth open, leaning down to smell.

Next the witch’s hand rose to the wizard’s clammy forehead, feeling the cold sweat while the fingers of her wand hand pressed around his wrist, feeling a fast beat.

“We couldn’t stay at mine. It’s a muggle building. Too many eyes.” Bombay spared a glance at Knox. “He’s an auror.”

An Auror?  Knox gave Hannah a look of visible confusion.  An Auror?  Surely an Auror ought to be cared for at St. Mungo's.  The mystery was certainly building and the poor man was covered in his own blackened sick. 

As Hannah worked over him, Knox yanked a chain on a lamp nearby the chair and warm light illuminated the poor man - giving his Healer friend some light.  Knox looked at him again within the context of Level Two, but he still couldn't peg him.

"You need to explain, Hannah.  Are we in danger?"  Even as he said it, he went back to his front door and locked the three locks again.  If this was an Auror, who knows how he came to be so ill.  And without more information, there was little more to do than stay out of Hannah's warpath and keep the kettle boiling.

“I hope not.” The healer calmly responded as she removed her wand from her coat pocket. “He’s been poisoned.” Would Knox be mad that she’d brought the auror here? Would he be willing to help now that he knew why Even was so ill or would he demand they leave having forgotten everything he’d said last time they were together? Evans was a werewolf. She’d discussed it with him before. They’d been amicable when she’d been working in the ministry and after reading the papers about her he must have felt she was the safest person to come to now. Or this was by chance. But why couldn’t he go to St Mungo’s?

Bombay muttered a charm and the wand tip began to glow blue. She placed it on Cooper’s tongue and closed his mouth. “This doesn’t smell like any poisons I know. It smells familiar. Distinct.” Since being bitten Hannah’s sense of smell had become fine tuned, accurate. But she couldn’t pinpoint this one even with the full moon approaching.  With the wand beginning to vibrate Hannah withdrew it and gazed at the tip. Bright red.

“You smell?”

Voices. Confusion. A man and a woman. Cooper moaned as he lay on the ground, trying to move his arms and warn them of the danger they were in –they needed to run, to get out of here. But his muscles were too heavy, and his lips were glued together, and his brain was too fuzzy and suddenly he was remembering: remembering how he’d wanted to kill Renwick, remembering how instead he’d been beaten to an inch of his life, remembering the familiar taste of the potion that had burned down his throat. And it hadn’t been enough: now Renwick was here, surely to finish the job. And he needed to warn the people there with him.

Suddenly there were hands beneath his shoulders, and he was being moved; the worlds shifted and his stomach churned, and Cooper wasn’t even certain if he was vomiting again or not. “Renwi-” He managed to whisper, but he wasn’t even entirely certain he hadn’t imagined saying it. He was vaguely aware of being pulled into a chair, of his body being manipulated and touched but it was hardly his biggest worry. Renwick would kill them both just to get at him, he was sure. But he couldn’t quite manage to pull his eyes open and tell them.

They were talking, and he heard them mentioning a scent. A wand was in his mouth. The familiar taste of the potion was still aching at the back of his throat. And, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he had to tell them. He knew what was happening –though vaguely, like a long forgotten memory that was trying to press through. “Wolvesba-“, he managed to moan, but he couldn’t manage the whole word before his head was spilling towards the side and darkness –comforting, lovely darkness- overtook him.

Hannah worked deftly, performing a technique he only barely remembered.  He couldn't know for sure what a red-glowing wand-tip meant, but it certainly didn't signal a thriving young wizard ready to swim the channel.  The man - the Auror stirred.  And spoke.

And then the smell.  The tart, medicinal smell that was obscured the sickly rancid odor of the vomit.  A muttering from the now unconscious soul in his favorite chair. 

"Wolfsbane?"  Knox's brow furrowed.  "Why-?" 

A million thoughts began to run through his mind.  No one took the strong potion without reason except for werewolves or those who'd been just bitten.  This fellow had not a mark on him, so he was likely the former.  But Wolfsbane didn't do this.    Not normal Wolfsbane, at least. 

"Could it have been tainted?"  And without thinking he stepped away from the patient, a sudden grip of dread gripping him.  He remembered the last time the Wizarding people of Britain had to deal with tainted wolfsbane. Werewolves had taken their doses dutifully, but the error in brewing (or deliberate sabotage) had rendered the potion useless and there were unmitigated attacks all over the country.  Knox himself was victim to the faulty potions.

But no one had fallen ill like this. 

And then it dawned on him and he slowly turned to stare at Hannah Bombay.  The tongue-lashing he'd received less than a month ago over something exactly like this?  Where he had drug Hannah to this very cottage to tend to an underserved dying werewolf and she'd protested the entire way, calling him soft and foolish?  This was the witch who'd come to himwith this sorry package?

His look of surprise and horror slowly broke into a grin and he clapped his great arm around her in a hug.  "Wonderful witch you are!"

The hug came as a surprise. An unwelcome, personal space invading surprise. Yes, Hannah had hugged this wizard before. But she had instigated it. She has been in an emotional turmoil that had somehow forced her into connecting with this wizard in such a physical manner. Yet now was not an emotional time. Now she was not in a turmoil that manipulated her mind into making her perform outrageous actions. Now Greyfriar’s huge arm was enveloping her and he was ejaculating his glee at something that she was missing.

Hannah looked decidedly uncomfortable.

As Knox drew back the healer took a deep breath and a step back herself, putting a sensible distance between herself and the perpetrator. She glanced up at him with pursed lips and eyes that betrayed her confusion. Should she say something? Demand an explanation for his outburst and flouncing of her personal space?

As the medicinal smell mixed in with the vomit once more reached her nostrils, Hannah was reminded that there were far more pressing matters than Knox Greyfriar’s temporary psychosis. The unconscious sickly man couldn’t wait for the old wizard to rectify himself.

“Not tainted like the last episode.” The witch decided to deal with the more pressing matter at hand. “And why would he have taken it now? The full moon isn’t for another four days.” Her eyes scanned the auror slumped in the chair. “He’s delirious. It’s poison.”

Knox knew Hannah hated touching, and so he didn't try to do it again.  Just grinning at her as she recovered from the affront and tried to figure out what he was gloating about. He'd explain it in detail later, once this wayward werewolf was back from the brink.  He'd do it over tea.  Perhaps with a card. 

But he could only be a smug arsehole for so long.  Cooper was dying in his favorite chair and Hannah seemed confident saying it wasn't like Last Time.  Thank Merlin? At least they knew what it wasn't.

"Some of us take it in the days leading up.  I have before.  Helps keep things a bit tamer for some.  Might try it, if you haven't," he said with a raised eyebrow of an old patriarch who couldn't stop giving advice.  But as soon as she said poison, he remembered something he always kept on hand in case of emergencies.

He went to a large apothecary chest by the heart with a score of small drawers and doors and from one he pulled out a small paper-wrapped bundle.  He unwrapped it and handed it to Hannah.  It was a small lumpy pebble about the side of an almond.

"Bezoar. I'll open his mouth.  Sir!"  he turned to the man slumped in the chair.  "Sir, you need to take this.  We think you've been poisoned."  With strong arms, Knox brought the man forward to sitting, and held his head.   He was ready to hold his mouth open if he needed to, vomit-threat and all.  Knox was anything but squeamish it turned out.

Bombay couldn’t resist a look in Greyfriar’s direction when he once again tried bestowing her with wise old wizard soap box advice. Yet this time she didn’t comment. Knox was rushing off to a cupboard and her hands were now clasped around the man’s head, resting it back to stop it slumping and him possibly choking himself if anything more came up from his stomach.

Surprisingly her companion seemed to be handling the situation very well. He wasn’t refusing to get his hands dirty on the grounds of her surprising him or a possible dislike of blood and gore. Hannah had encountered many with a weak stomach in her time, especially when she’d been working with aurors over dead bodies. For such an apparently brave group of individuals, they were extremely pathetic when smelling a rotting corpse.

Yet here Knox was holding the auror’s mouth open, being an eager assistant and limiting his annoying higher than thou comments. Hannah was impressed. She took the bezoar and went about her business. They were busy for another ten minutes before finally settling the wizard upstairs to recuperate.

“I’m not trying it.” The witch finally said as she made her way carefully down to the ground floor, heels clicking on the wooden steps. “I am not taking any more of that potion unless I’ve brewed it myself.” This was one of the things Hannah hated most about her new affliction. She couldn’t control things. She couldn’t even control the potion that went into her mouth with a ministry that didn’t trust her to correctly brew her own wolfsbane.

Knox was cleaning up as Bombay was coming down.  There was a great deal tracked in and his chair was soiled.  His wand did most of the work, and he had a pot of leftover stew on the fire to help the smell and maybe get them both something to eat.

Again, his little nook of a spare room was occupied with a wizard in need.  He couldn't help but wonder if this would become a habit. 

But her pick-up of their previous conversation caught his notice, and he straightened up and put his hands on his lower back to work out a kink.  He stretched and grunted before saying, "You make your own? Does the Registry know? How do you manage that?"

By Knox's understanding, everyone took Ministry approved Wolfsbane Potion upon arrival at the safe houses, and those who took it at home got it from the Ministry as well.  He knew there were approved and trusted vendors, but he knew of very few capable home brewers.  It was a very difficult potion.

Not that he expected that Hannah was much bothered by protocol or permission.  And he honestly couldn't blame her.  The Ministry had a very poor track record where his young friend was concerned.

“You think they’d trust me to make my own? I’m a dangerous beast now, Greyfriar. I can’t brew my own potions. I might crush the vials with my brute aggressive strength.” She stepped into the small living area and glanced across at Knox. “Or I might just lose control all together and eat the cauldron.” The witch’s lips twitched into a small smirk just as a smell registered in her nostrils. This scent carried her over to the stove where she peered in.

There’s been a time when Hannah would have rushed out of Greyfriar’s small home as soon as she’d done what was necessary. She certainly wouldn’t have remained to examine the contents of the pot heating. Yet she did. Her hand momentarily lingered over the lid before her fingers clasped it and she lifted it up to let steam billow out.

“There’s enough to share there.” She stated bluntly before glancing in the direction of the cook. “With bread.” Eating alone could be so lonely and Hannah didn’t fancy the prospect of rushing back to her own cold flat when she could volunteer herself to help him eat this meal. In recent weeks the healer was really beginning to appreciate the living and the company they provided. The respite from the loneliness and fear.

Without even realising that what she was doing may be rude, Bombay bent down to the cupboards and started opening them in search of bowls.
“Clear the table. You can’t eat a civilised meal off a cluttered surface.”

Knox smiled at Hannah's hyperbole.  This time it was dark humor that Knox could certainly relate to.  It was a comedy for the thinker the kinds of absurd prejudices some held about werewolves and what they could do, or couldn't.  But it was a tragedy for anyone with a soul.

He kept smiling as Hannah made herself at home in his little stone cottage.  He found himself happy that she'd decided to stay, and amused that she was doing so without invitation.  He wouldn't have it any other way.  There was certainly plenty of stew for two and there was bread tucked into a little warming nook in Knox's gigantic hearth.

"Help yourself," he said even as she was in the midst of doing so.  He creaked up from the chair and began clearing things from the high wooden workbench that multi-tasked as work surface, storage beneath, cooking countertop, and dinner table.  A couple of padded stools nearby would serve as adequate perches.  Devlin often took his meals here, Knox often ate his sitting in his chair or standing.

Stacks of Prophets levitated to another stock, books slipped into empty spaces on shelves, soiled dishes found their way to the basin.  The table cleared, he pulled a bottle of wine from a cubby beneath the table and set about to opening it.

"How did you come upon him," he asked waiting for Hannah to take her share. "Cooper."  He nodded upwards where their dire friend lay recovering.