Follows Sink Your Teeth In

The last time Johann had apparated into St Mungo's like this, he'd been the patient. It was the early hours of  July 27th, the full moon still hanging in the summer sky outside the hospital. They had quickly been taken to the first floor - creature-induced injuries - for rapid assessment. Werewolf attack - that was all that needed to be said.

The bite had been to the leg, but the wolf had pinned his father down and thrown him. He had been in too much of a hurry to get them both out of the situation to check for further injuries, and had been moved aside by the hospital staff while they examined Wolfgang. His father was barely conscious, delirious. He had lost a lot of blood, and the curse was through him.

Johann was covered in blood, but not from his own injuries. He was dazed, he struggled to give coherent responses to the healers, internally battling with the fact being here meant he would be questioned, and he did not want to give up Hannah's identify as the wolf - especially as she was one of their colleagues. He would do anything to turn back and be drinking his pint in the pub again, hours earlier, and for none of this to have happened. Merlin only knew hat had become of Lawrence and Hannah back in Birmingham.

A few feet from the bed where the healers were treating his father, Johann stared numbly, his bloodied hands hand together before his stomach, at sea with his thoughts and worry.

The pain. It had woken him yet another night, and with the realisation that the rash from months before was back had forced him to take his mother’s advice and get to St. Mungo’s. Groggy-eyed and relying heavily on his emergency cane, he had turned up to the hospital and been taken to the fourth floor. He hated hospitals. No - he loathed them. It was an uneasy feeling of death and despair, combined with memories of a love long lost.

He had already been there for two hours, the pain slowly subduing thanks to a yellow-ish potion he had been handed (and a sip of firewhiskey from the bottle in his robes which he had helped himself to when the healers weren’t looking.) The ward was quiet, most patients sleeping in their beds and the few Healers there walking around on their tip-toes. Omari himself was just about to doze off to sleep when quick steps and some shouting in the hallways made him alert.

Something had happened. Something bad.

He dragged himself up into a sitting position and grabbed his cane. The Healers had taken his prosthetic leg off. It was standing against one of the bed posts and the moonlight was dancing over it’s silvery surface. Omari scowled. He wouldn’t have time to put it on. He heaved himself out of bed, and started making his way one-footed, one leg of his pants awkwardly pinned up.

Following the noise and running Healers he found himself on the first floor. The commotion was louder here, and Omari quickly found its source. Healers were gathered around a bed. Judging by the blood, it had to be serious. But what really caught Omari’s attention was the wizard standing a few feet away, him also covered in blood.

“Johann?”

Less than an hour ago Head Healer Elliot had been tucked up happily in bed, a heavy arm draped over her body under the covers. Her sleep had been rudely interrupted by her healers badge on the bedside table starting to burn a hole in a wood, thus producing a burning smell which primarily didn't reach the owner's nostrils. Instead, like the few preceding times, her bed fellow had smelt it first and given her quite an unsatisfied nudge to wake up and sort out of the interruption. He mumbled his protests with very little conviction and rolled back over to sleep when Mira threw back the covers and climbed out of bed (the first time his reaction hadn't been quite so calm). As if by magic, the badge understood that the healer was awake and called to attention and immediately stopped burning, returning to a cool to the touch metal that she slipped in her pocket once dressed.

It hadn't taken long to prepare herself to head back into work. Hair had been roughly clipped back and her clothing had been thrown on accompanied by a compulsory pair of heels. She'd not bothered to take a cursory glance into the mirror but if she had she's have realised how much older she appeared when woken in the middle of the night. Her greying hairs appeared highlighted and brighter in the moonlight of the bedroom and her newly forming wrinkles creased loosely around her eyes and cheeks.

It was the night of the full moon, Elliot had half expected to be called in. In fact she'd demanded as much from her healers should anyone come in with a bite. Now unless a huge disaster had hit her hospital, this was the cause of the burning badge. So when she took the floo from Ignan's living room into her office and she heard little commotion, the Head donned her healers robes and made a quick trip up the stairs to the first floor.

It took a further couple of minutes to find where she needed to be and Miranda weaved through the various patients running around to the cubicle in question. Yet when near the entrance she stopped.

"Johann?" The Devonshire accent was strong with her tiredness. She momentarily ignored the one legged wizard also close and instead wondered how to ask why the cousin of the wizard she'd left in bed was currently at the edge of the cubicle in the creature injuries wing on a full moon. "You need to clean yourself up. You look as if you've been battling a werewolf." Not that his delicate self would ever survive such an ordeal.

The sound of his name brought Johann gently out of his daze, and he slowly looked round, eyes unfocused. It took him a few seconds to realise who it was. Omari was not only leaning on a stick, but in the hospital in the middle of the night, in plain clothes. He was not on duty - the lack of his leg made Johann open his mouth to speak, and then swallow back his words, dizzy, as the leg brought thoughts rushing back.

Eventually words formed and he acknowledged his colleague from level two with a shaky tone unlike his usual enthusiastic greeting.
"Omari…" He looked down at his hands a moment, and back to his friend, shaking his head slightly, "Fancy meeting you here in the middle of the night."

He couldn't resist putting a hand to his face this time, the impulse to vomit at the thought of what he'd seen getting to him. He kept things down though he bent over a moment and turned away. There was a smear of blood on his pale cheek.

Before he could say further, another familiar face appeared, and told him to clean himself up.
"… you look as if you've been battling a werewolf."

He let out one hollow laugh and shook his head.
"Me, no," well, his throwing of a few stunning curses hadn't really been much in comparison to Lawrence's intervention to help them get away. Omari had experienced at first hand how much of a coward Johann was.
"Can't say the same for my father." He looked to Omari hastily, having not thought through his plan, "Don't be calling the others here. Please, don't. We just need the healers. I'm sorry, I know you're not on duty and you'll want to."

Omari had seen wounded people before. Both during his years as a Duelling Champion, but even more so in his line of work. But to see Johann - a friend - covered in all that blood made him more uneasy than he had been in a long time. He could for the life of him not think of a single scenario Johann would put himself in that could end with this outcome. Whatever had happened, Omari wished he had been there.

“Fancy meeting you here in the middle of the night.”

The comment would’ve made Omari chuckle if it wasn’t for the circumstances.

“What yer doin’ here? What happened to-”

Omari was cut short by the arrival of a witch in Healer robes. He didn’t know who she was, but she apparently knew Johann too. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing. The way she spoke to his friend seemed way too harsh given the state he was in. The last thing Omari ever thought he would witness was a trembling, gagging Johann covered in blood.

Johann spoke again, and with the mention of his father, Omari’s eyes widened and flickered to the bed. Was that really Wolfgang Storm surrounded by Healers? How on earth had they managed to end up in a werewolf attack? Questions filled Omari’s head as Johann spoke once more, directing it towards him.

“Johann,” Omari answered in a slow, deep voice. “Yer know I have to report this.”

He turned towards the witch. “Is he infected?”

So Johannn had been involved with a werewolf. Miranda’s lips pursed as she glanced him over. The mention of his dad made her think to Ignan still lying peacefully in bed. Johann’s father was his cousin if she remembered correctly. The cousin that had very presently been short of somewhere to stay and had taken over Ignan’s home.

Johann started to tell the other wizard not to bring others here and the Head Healer eyed him carefully, dark eyes studying him for a moment. The need for him to report the incident made Miranda frown and glance into the room with her staff surrounding the bed.

“Auror?” She asked a question in response to his question and without awaiting an answer; she stepped into the cubicle and addressed one of the mediwizards as he was selecting potions to administer.

It was a few moments before Miranda stepped back out of the cubicle, her emotionless expression having taken over her features as she placed a hand on Johann’s arm.
“We really should clean you up, sweet.” He looked vulnerable, beaten and scared. Miranda had decades of experience dealing with such people. With her hand on his arm she made to steer him towards  chair. Relatives rarely wished to be parted from their loved ones to another cubicle.

Her eyes quickly fell on the apparent Auror or minister personnel. Miranda had never liked aurors. They were pig headed and frequented St Mungo’s beds.
“You don’t need to report this immediately. Your wand won’t blow up.” She told him directly before turning back to Johann. “Sit, Johann. You need to try and relax.”

"Yer know I have to report this." Omari replied, in that steady, strong voice that instilled courage in Johann when he heard it at work. Omari's voice alone could take charge of a situation and right it, and in lighter circumstances, Johann took pleasure in hearing it.

But right now, Johann just shook his head ever so slightly, locking eyes with his friend - he was pleading silently for him to do the right thing by Johann, and delay raising the alarm. Hannah was almost certainly stuck wherever they had been.

"Is he infected?" Omari asked, pointing the question towards the healers. Johann closed his eyes a moment, swallowing down another wave of nausea as his mind's eye replayed the way the werewolf had bitten and tossed his father as if he was a rag doll.

"Auror?" Johann heard Miranda reply, without actually answering the question. He opened his eyes to see them all gathered round the bed, potions being passed between hands, bandages and linen flying through the air.

"If he's not, it's a miracle." Johann uttered for Omari's benefit. His eyes watched the healers without really seeing them. He mumbled, half thinking aloud, "I … I need to raise my mother … She won't know where … Merlin." He remembered Omari was right there again, "Just some time, that's all we need."

Miranda was back, she took his arm and he let himself be led, eyes barely drifting from the bed. He missed her use the word sweet, which on any other day would have had him double take and ask if that's what she called Ignan.
"Sit, Johann. You need to try and relax." 
"Forget you saw this, please, Omari. It's not how it looks, we just need some time."

Sitting down suddenly made him see his hands and the state they were in, which brought a whole new threat of hurling in the direction of Miranda's heels. His head was a lot noisier than the room, but his mind was preoccupied with how his mother would react, whether his father would live and what on earth he could risk saying to the aurors if he was to protect Hannah.

An egg had risen beneath his curls from where he'd been thrown aside by Lawrence's curse, and he'd develop a set of bruises over the coming days from scrambling about, but at least he'd stayed out of reach of the jaws and claws. But he was in no fit state to say anything sensible to Omari or any other auror.
"Will he live?" Johann asked, getting to his feet again without realising what he was doing, anxious.

Omari disliked the Healer immediately. The curtness of her answers, the searching looks and her general attitude towards him was something he took offence to. He wasn’t used to people treating him like that, and without his red robes and left leg he couldn’t help to think that it was all because them. That the Healer saw him as a failure.

Omari stayed silent as the witch joined the other Healers. He stayed quiet when Johann answered the question. He even stayed quiet when the witch returned and gave him the remark about the report. For once, he was at a loss for words. It was probably the cause of too little sleep; the sight of Johann covered in blood; and the mixture of the potion and firewhiskey currently residing in his stomach. He stayed quiet up until Johann spoke again.

"Forget you saw this, please, Omari. It's not how it looks, we just need some time."

“Johann…” His voice wasn’t as certain as it usually was. “This is serious”

Omari was fighting an inner battle. He was forever sworn into the Corps. He had his duty to fulfill, and would never waiver from the sworn allegiance he had taken upon completing his Auror training. It was more than his job - it was his life.

On the other hand - there was Johann. A friend, begging him not to turn him in. Loyalty was something Omari praised highly, and seeing his friend in this state made him want to turn his back on his duties. His responsibilities. He shook his head. It was too late to make any decisions.

“I won’t do anything fer now,” Omari said with a sigh. “Not until mornin’, at least.”

"Thank you," Johann expressed with great relief, clasping Omari's arm that held the walking stick without thinking. "I won't speak a word of the delay." He pressed his forehead momentarily to Omari's shoulder, "Merlin, I'm going to pull you off your fee- foot. Sorry, sorry." He released his grasp almost as suddenly as he'd applied it, realising his hands had been cleaner.

He allowed himself to be directed to sit again, having sprung up a moment before, though his eyes were back to studying what was going on with the treatment. Ignan would have smacked him across the face to bring him to his senses.

"They were," he looked to Omari, "fighting. Fighting Muggles." He shook his head and put his hands to his mouth to stifle yet another wish to vomit. "I should have, I should have said something before. I thought they'd stopped." There were tears pricking in his eyes, blaming himself for not being more honest with auror Tyren in May[1]. He'd given her some patterns to investigate, but the auror office was submerged in investigations, they simply didn't have the man power to trawl through and cross reference so much data.

"He, he wanted me to see. To see what was going on. Muggles fighting." He wasn't making much sense, the old voices in his head confusing and disagreeing with his plan to keep his mouth shut.

1.	I Fear the Full Moon Too

The younger wizard failed to remain seated. Instead she bobbed up and down, unable to rest and calm himself. Miranda was finding herself regretting getting involved with him and not the actual work being undertaken in the cubicle where Johann’s father lay. There she could have been far more useful that attempting to calm a wizard who had seen his father nearly killed.

A mediwitch came out of the cubicle, moving to get past the three stood in the hallway but Elliot turned and stopped her.
“Camille Storm, you need a welcome witch to contact her. And a hot chocolate.”  The mediwitch ran quickly to do her boss’ bidding and Elliot turned back to Johann and the one legged auror. She took a slow breath. Handling such drama wasn’t a strength that Miranda possessed. Yet she felt somewhat responsible due to her ties to Johann’s cousin. She couldn’t tell Ignan his relatives had been in the hospital and she’d abandoned them.

“Your father was bitten by a werewolf, Johann.” Miranda took her wand from behind her ear and lowered herself into the seat beside the wizard. “But muggles fighting?” She reached forwards to take his hands in her own to clean, eyes moving up to the auror for confirmation of the links.

Omari nearly lost his balance from Johann’s sudden grasp on his arm. He wasn’t as used to his walking stick as he wanted, and neither to that kind of physical contact. Not from Johann at least. He didn’t say anything, though. His friend was in such a state, that the small outburst seemed too insignificant to mention. It was, after all, in the middle of the night, and Johann was covered in his father’s blood.

“Muggles fighting.”

Omari watched, a small glint of horror registering in his eyes, as the healer sat down next to Johann. Fighting Muggles? Werewolves fighting Muggles? From the tone in Johann’s voice, this wasn’t just a pack of rogue lycans attacking muggles. This sounded like something far more sinister. Omari started to wish he could go back on the promise he had just given his friend. He made eye contact with the Auror, before turning to Johann.

“Johann, if I understand what yer implying correctly,” he began, careful to not sound too forceful. “This is a whole other type of serious. Azkaban serious.”

As Miranda ordered someone to fetch his mother, Johann felt, perhaps for the first time, glad that she was tentatively attached to the family.

"Your father was bitten by a werewolf, Johann." Miranda told him firmly and had him sit down again. She took his hands, which felt cold and clammy, and he felt the familiar tingle of a scourgify cross his palms. His mind's eye was replaying Hannah in her wolf form, striking and picking up his father by the leg to toss him.

"Johann," Omari spoke, and the linguist looked up, dazed, his eyes unfocused, though finding his good friend's voice an anchor to the current situation, "… other type of serious. Azkaban serious."

The mention of the place brought yet another wash of nausea over the cowardly wizard and he clutched at his stomach as it attempted again to bring up anything.

"Merlin, what a mess, this is too much." Johann uttered aloud, Miranda's work to clean him off was helping him look slightly less shocking, as the blood disappeared from his cheeks where his fingers had smeared it. What was his own was down to smaller cuts and scrapes on his knuckles that were nothing.

"I don't want to go to Azkaban, Omari," he implored to his friend, "I didn't get him bitten, I was trying to get him away, but I can't fight a wolf!" He reached a hand out to Omari's sleeve, "I can't - throw a bloody dart straight." He let go and buried his face in his hands, his words muffled, but back to not making much sense either way. The two, ultimately far more sensible people either side of him brought him out of it, despite the howling in his head and his churning stomach. They needed answers.

"There was a muggle," Johann explained, hands splayed, "fighting a werewolf. My father got between them. Merlin, is he going to live?" The way he phrased it painted a different picture, of Wolfgang being some sort of martyr, defending a Muggle. He'd inadvertently saved the Muggle by being thrown into the pool, in a roundabout way, but from when Johann had brought them to St Mungo's, the Muggles had still been there. Hannah in her wolf form might still eat them. He had only Lawrence to trust that things would be handled. He'd been in Azkaban.

"I don't know where I was," Johann turned to Omari again, shaking his head, "He got us there, I just got us out. Don't make me try and go back there."

As the story came out in drips and drabs, Miranda slowed her work with the wand until it finally rested on her lap and she watched Johann carefully. This was certainly not a regular werewolf attack and Mira couldn’t believe that she and a one legged auror were adequate to calm Johann down and get to the real details. But she knew now wasn’t the time to call in the ministry. Johann’s father was going nowhere soon.

So Miranda momentarily left Johann and the wizard he’d addressed as Omari in the corridor, pushing her way through a door into a small office. It only took a few moments to hastily scribble a note to Ignan to come into the hospital and she attached it to a waiting owl near the window.
“Peck him until he wakes. He cannot miss this letter.” She instructed the owl, opened the window and returned to the couple in the corridor.

Carefully Mira sat back down next to Johann, ignoring the presence of the auror.
“You did the right thing bringing him here, Johann.” She placed a hand on his arm as reassurance and frowned. “He fought the wolf?” That didn’t sound like the Wolfgang Storm Ignan had mentioned. He’d not been overly complimentary of his cousin.

"What?" Johann looked up and round at Miranda. His stomach was still churning and the way Omari was looking at him, even without parchment and quill noting his every word, showed this was not going to be over soon. "You can't fight a werewolf."

The hot chocolate that Elliot had asked for appeared, and the mediwitch consulted again for a more exact address for where Camille would be found. His hands shook so much he almost spilled the hot liquid as he uttered an address in Knockturn Alley that his parents had moved into. It was a hole, and they hated it.

He hardly heard the next question to him, lifting the drink to his mouth. His mind was imagining his mother coming to the hospital. What was he meant to tell her? Where did she think her husband was all night on the full moon? What was she going to think, finding out it was a werewolf attack after all the stupid arguments over six months ago?

"I need the loo." Johann spoke suddenly, getting to his feet and looking round. He knew perfectly well how the hospital was laid out, but it took him a moment to see exactly where he was. The unfinished hot chocolate was hastily handed back to Miranda, and he disappeared round the corner.

Although, out of sight, he gave the door a shove, he carried on, heading for the stairs. Sobering his expression as much as possible as he did so as not to draw attention to his cowardly escape.

Exit Johann

A grey haired wizard turned over in bed, a hand vaguely batting out in front of his head as he dreamt of an owl at the window. It was tapping at the glass, but he couldn't seem to open it.

Gerda trailed into the room, rubbing her enormous round eyes with her little fists. Her oversized ears caused her to sleep lightly. Mistress Miranda had left the house less an hour ago, and Gerda had been lurking should her 'mistress' need her. Although Gerda considered herself loyal to the Storms, ignan had instructed her to assist Mira in his absence, at the very least in proximity to the house.

Her master was fast asleep, but Gerda cast a momentarily concerned look in his direction as his hand waggled in midair towards the window. It would be her luck that he'd have some sort of stroke when the Head Healer was out of the house. Oh, no he was just sleeping.

Gerda clicked her fingers, and the latch came open on the window. A great owl hooting on the windowsill fell in, hopped across the floor, disregarding the elf as the summer night air fell through the open window and across her bare feet. Instead, it flapped its wings and went up onto the bed, where it began to peck.

A minute later, Gerda was holding the owl with both arms wrapped round it, as if it was a teddybear. Feathers were everywhere, and her master was sucking his knuckles and squinting at a letter in the other.

"Two months or more of trying to read these letters." He grumbled, holding it closer to the newly lit lamp at the side of the bed. Either way, it was definitely Miranda's letter, on hospital parchment, and written with some urgency by the slant and incoherent writing.

"Master?" Gerada asked tentatively, still wrestling the owl.
"Merlin, the owl. Gerda, hold it still."
"Yes Sir, trying Sir." The parchment dropped to the floor as he went to find a coin to put in the bag on the leg. Gerda near toppled over as he slipped it in and pushed open the window to help her get it outside again. The owl sat in the tree outside and hooted irritably for a minute, rearranging its feathers before returning to the hospital. Gerda scowled at it through the glass, before realising her master was throwing on clothes. He was leaving. At this rate there'd be no-one to make breakfast for.



"I got your note." Ignan told MIra on spotting her. His white hair still had specs of soot in from the floo. He was without a jacket, dressed perhaps a little more informally than he might ordinarily - not a time for top hat, long robes and the sort. A shirt, trousers and he'd tossed a navy sweater over them at Gerda's insistence. (She didn't just use the disapproving mother act on Miranda).

"No idea what it said." He admitted. "But the pecking and the lack of any readability suggested it was urgent." His hand very lightly touched her arm.

Over her shoulder he spied a younger man with a crutch, which at first he thought to be just another patient, but he had a feeling he'd once encountered him earlier in the year when he'd visited the Leaky Cauldron to celebrate a young cousin's birthday[1]

"You're going to tell me you forgot your sandwiches, or aren't going to be back for a few days aren't you?" He asked Mira, feeling a little silly if that was the case.

1.	I think this was pre-Omari existing as a character, but as he and Joh are good friends, I figure it was highly likely he was at the birthday drinks in January? Or failing that, another social event?