The daft presumption had been made that she hadn’t much stuff in the small unloved flat but how wrong she had been. Almasy’s lackey had set her up in Hiraeth Gardens a few days after the meeting with the witch herself. The contract had been signed and Hannah had willingly made herself a criminal accomplice. She’d tried not to dwell on the reality of why her surroundings were suddenly far more elaborate, larger and boldly decorated. This flat had been loved by its previous tenant. All Hannah saw in the walls were new confines, new restraints, and a new cell.

She’d been anally alphabetising the healing potions section of her book collection when her first summons came. The living room window had been wide open to air the room of dust from the books and this was the perfect access for the owl to swoop in and make a beeline for the new tenant.

Hannah momentarily ignored it, sliding her fourth book neatly onto the shelf. Her lips pursed as she took in the size difference between Healthy Potions for Unhealthy People and Healthy Potions to Save Your Life. It was unpleasant to the eye, so uneven and messy. Perhaps fortunately, she didn’t get long to dwell on the major problem of her evening because the owl began to loudly hoot and peck at her bare feet.

“Alright, alright.” She grumbled, reaching for the letter tied to its leg and freeing it. The handwriting was rushed but still neat. The orders were to the point, no greeting, no signatures. Just a place and a command to be there within a few minutes.

Well they didn’t want much did they! Hannah pushed herself off her knees and smoothed her messy jeans. She snatched up her wand and made her way to the door. The first pair of shoes she saw were slipped on (a pair of rather insensible stilettos), and she pulled her cloak on over a baggy jumper to leave the flat.

It was only a few minutes before she appeared outside the abandoned pub with her healer’s bag in hand. The first thing to strike the healer was the overpowering stench of damp, the second was the sign lazily hanging which read The Gallivanting Bard.

Wand outstretched, the witch pushed her way through the doors and as she stepped inside, promptly wiped her hand on the dark blue cloak hanging over her shoulders. Still nervous and very distrusting of Almasy, Hannah was especially on her guard as she stepped into the bar and allowed her eyes to fall on the only figure in the room.

“Merlin, no.” She stared at her uncle, slumped against the bar, pale and sweaty, the knife protruding from his leg. His trousers were dark red, sodden as they absorbed a mix of dried and fresh blood.
“You can bleed to death.”

---

---

The Gallivanting Bard would forever be the scene of great pain and blood loss, Lawrence rued. His disapparation from the middle of what was once the Leaky Cauldron's kitchen had been hasty, but as he cannoned into the Bard's bar on reappearing he appeared to be there - complete with impressive knife embedded in the right thigh.

His lungs burned as he slid down the bar and onto the floor where even the low light of the pub brought his situation into stark reality. When you saw an injury it always hurt more and right now there were quite a few to consider.

"Shit!" He swore and then creased at the pain that ripped through his side from using his lungs to speak after coughing up smoky phlegm from the smoke-filled building.

Layton's arrival as he panted against the bar was surprising but not completely unlikely. The bugger was always watching.
"Three didn't blow." He told Layton between short, shallow breaths. His ribs were definitely broken, and between the blood loss from his leg and his increased breathlessness he was pretty sure he might lose consciousness again soon. "Couldn't get to it, fucking wardrobe took me out."

Never one to talk, just glare as if Lawrence had just crapped on the floor like a bad dog, Layton wasn't pleased. Lawrence didn't really give a hoot. He considered that task a suicide mission, and if he didn't sort himself out soon it bloody well would be.

Layton vanished swiftly. Lawrence painfully negotiated himself onto his back, extending his right leg up, hooking the heel of his boot onto the bar top edge in the hope to slow the bleeding. He was contemplating the best way to pull the knife out with his wand and seal the wound behind when the doors above his head opened.

A pair of stilettos marched in on the dusty floor and Lawrence's fevered face turned from confusion to surprise as he recognised Hannah upside-down.

"You can bleed to death."

"Fucking lovely to see you too." Lawrence sneered, and panted. "Pity I didn't do the same to you at full moon then." Nausea swept over him and he blinked heavily, pupils uneven. He let out an almost silent gasp of pain, the heel of his boot slipping on the bar until he snapped his wand towards it, adhering it to it. The boot laces tying his foot in would have to keep his leg up, he had lost feeling in his foot a while back.

"What the hell are you here for? Did I get you out of that cage and to Greyfriar for nothing?" He asked, panting with ever faster, shallower breaths, his voice lacking great volume, but retaining the edge to his tone as he glared at his niece's figure from the floor.

Uncle Lawrence was in a state. He lay on the floor, pale and sweaty, bloody leg propped up against the bar in an attempt to stem the blood flow. Hannah hazarded a guess that his foot was growing numb now from lack of blood reaching his toes. If left long enough he could have been without a leg as well as a right hand. Worse yet, he might have been dead.

This consideration didn’t drive the witch to his side to perform what she’d been summoned to do. She simply remained rooted to the spot in the decrepit former pub.

"What the hell are you here for? Did I get you out of that cage and to Greyfriar for nothing?" Lawrence panted, angry, pained. Hannah started to feel a dull pain behind her eyes as she stared down at Lawrence. Tiredness, she guessed, and stress. It wasn’t every day you were expected to heal the uncle who’d been there as a willing witness to you ripping apart an innocent muggle.

The previously surprised expression changed to disgust, hatred for the wizard bleeding to death on the floor. Everything about her healer’s oath and the contract she’d signed could go to the dogs for this wizard. Helping him would be like assisting another kidnap.

Her brain steadily processed the words and the hatred became something deeper than that.
“You helped me so you could give me to Almasy.” It all made sense. The pain behind her eyes began to get sharper but she focused on her hatred. “And here I was thinking that had been the only decent thing you’d done in your life.” Rarely had Hannah Bombay’s voice been filled with so much vehemence. Her Uncle had orchestrated the whole thing and now expected her help.

“You don’t need a healer. You need a mortician.” Upon turning on her heels to leave, an intense agony hit her behind the eyes and she stumbled, grabbing onto the nearest thing, a dusty chair which fell to the ground. She tripped over her heels, blinded by the pain and tears in her eyes, falling into a table.  Her mind throbbed, her eyes seared and it felt like her head was going to explode.

Ira Almasy, perfectly resplendent in a sleek and backless white gown, had felt a ringing in her ears whilst at the Bonfire Night Ballet in the Royal Opera House. It was a curious noise - not one for the ears but for the echoing chambers of her ordered mind. The din had forced her up in the middle of the performance, in full knowledge rather than suspicion of its irksome provocation.

Hannah Bombay.

Kazimir hardly looked away from the stage when she rose from the gilded seats of their private box and turned to leave, every motion of her willowy frame restrained like a wild dog on a short leash. As she reached for the door handle the opulent realm of velvet and gold and shimmering curtains melted away--

-- in their place materialised, instead, foul and shit brown brick of the alleyway outside The Gallivanting Bard. A bitter cold pervaded the air here but Ira had neither time nor temperament to relish either. The door handle that she pushed down now was that of the abandoned pub, and it swung inwards with frightened haste.

She was barely a fluid step in before she acted. Infligo, a twitch of the wand sent the she wolf crashing messily from table to floor, as every light in the space suddenly flared into life, blindingly bright. The door slammed shut with force. A pleasant evening interrupted by this.

Ira spared the injured party a look, brief, only long enough to disarm him of his wand - it shot out of his good hand - before she advanced on Bombay. Her heels stabbed the floor pointedly, rhythmically. A tinge of Almasy red replaced platinum blonde.

"You impudent little bitch," she hissed and jerked her wand in the Healer's direction. Manicarcerous incited a pair of silver twin chains to manifest, snaking clamorously towards Hannah. Ankles, wrists, and a particularly vicious tether forming a noose around her quarry's pale neck. Ira made a gesture to drag the other woman up into the air by the throat, stilleto'd feet dangling a head over table height.

She twisted the chaining spell to tighten its grip and her burning, quiet eyes did not once leave Hannah as she spoke. "Musgrave. Explain your niece. I am afraid she is indisposed to do so herself."

"You helped me so you could give me to Almasy,"
"What?" His return was hardly audible, and his face was creased in pain and confusion on her claims.
"And here I was thinking that had been the only decent thing you'd done in your life."
"In vain - argh - clearly!" He hissed. "Just -"

Hannah wasn't going to let him protest as she turned away, overbalanced somehow and ended up falling onto a table, hands to her head. Watching this upside-down, Lawrence couldn't make out what was going on. His lungs were burning.

"Hannah!" He cried out, but it only brought on a coughing fit. "Hannah!"

The doors flew open from the alleyway again and this time he didn't need to look twice to recognise who it was. Ira had come directly, they were well and truly done. Her part was to stay well and truly out of this, but his part had not been to get out alive as far as he could tell.

His wand extended by instinct as Ira threw a hex at Hannah, but between his spinning head, lack of breath and his position, he was regrettably disarmed.

The bright light made him see stars, his eyes squeezing shut into slits against being blinded while Ira took the opportunity to bind Hannah. Shit, shit, shiiiiiit Lawrence thought in his head, the last of his adrenaline kicking in to try and prepare himself for the end.

"Musgrave. Explain your niece. I am afraid she is indisposed to do so herself."

His eyes came open enough to see Hannah's predicament, hanging in the air above them. Struggling against chains. He mouth opened but there was no sound, she too was choking, though at a far greater rate than he was from the fire and his punctured lung.
"She was," Lawrence panted, "assessing .. my condition.  That there's not… much… time…" His voice was not as loud and he winced and blinked between words, trying not to take his eyes off Hannah, but knowing he could do nothing. He'd stuck his own foot to the bar, and the only weapon he had to fling was embedded in his leg.

Everything was getting very cold, and he could feel his vision closing in at the edges.
"She can't… treat… me in … chains, Almasy."

She could hear the silver against Hannah's skin, a low and darling hiss. It was an undercurrent of music to the utter lack of specificity offered by the ex-Auror. The probability of death tended to do that to a person. Assessing. There was no assessment. Only decision and a stubborn, stubborn pup.

Ira lifted her chin to stare in Hannah's eyes as the chain around the throat tightened marginally - and then disappeared all at once. The woman dropped like a marionette to the floor. If the wand hadn't been necessary for the task to follow she might have taken it from her but uncle and niece were neither in a suitable position for retaliation.

Everything in this room was a calculated risk, as far as she was concerned.

"And what an injustice it would be if she cannot." Ira remarked, the anger in her voice suddenly cooled. It would be inconvenient to lose Musgrave, even if her displeasure at this instant was directed at the breach of a contract. "Or will not?" she stared intently at the recovering heap of sorry flesh that was Hannah Bombay.

Layton might have been right to want to get rid of them both. A family of nuisances.

There’d been no reprieve from the pain in her head before the doors burst open and Hannah was thrown from the table and her body crashed hard into the filthy floor. She’d looked up in enough time to see Ira’s seething expression before the chains had taken a hold of her wrists and ankles, sealing her hands to her side, the silver burning into her flesh. There’d barely been time to register as a cold silver chain wrapped its way around her neck and her entire body was physically dragged up into the air.

Vision was blurred by tears, the chain restricting any breathing and burning her skin, searing her flesh much like a scorching hot branding iron. Hannah’s mouth was open, struggling desperately for breath, her senses overpowered in pain and panic. Legs kicked out in a desperate futility but she was fading.

The words spoken by Almasy and her uncle were distant, they didn’t make sense. It felt like she was hanging in silence, feeling the life pass out of her as the chain around her neck further tightened and the skin beneath reddened, scorching from the heat of the silver.

As if Ira had been timing her airflow and time left to stay conscious, Hannah was released and she dropped into a heap on the floor, panting desperately for air. She was slumped over the disgusting pub carpet, hands on the ground as she frantically tried to fill her lungs, coughing and struggling not to pass out. Her entire body was shaking. The pain in her wrists and neck was unbearable.

“Or will not?” That was what this was about. Her mind struggled to process what exactly this meant, why she’d been ambushed and nearly killed. The tears were falling from her eyes, her face red as she looked up at Ira from the floor.

“I’ll…” her throat hurt so much but she daren’t touch it. The flesh was still burning painfully. The hatred Hannah felt for Lawrence at this moment was enough for the pain she knew would follow. It was thanks to him she was here. Without him she’d probably be dead or still at St Mungo’s rather than a panting wreck on the floor of a derelict public house.

“I’ll…dispose of….the…body.”

Ira anticipated the refusal but the offer to get rid of her own uncle's corpse forced a laugh, solitary and harsh.

"Our contract did not stipulate the disposal of bodies, Miss Bombay-" she ignored the injured wizard in favour of the werewolf, "- unless you have already forgotten that to which you have promised blood. Come now. Be reasonable." And indeed there was nothing but kind, coaxing exhortation in the older witch's voice as she advanced on Hannah once more.

Level-headed pragmatism in itself, really. Satin heels clicked in a slow tempo. Her wand plucked at something in the air, and she raised it to Hannah without really seeing the other woman - a surge of white light erupted into the air. It was almost as bright as the lamps that swayed overhead.

She drew the dreaded mark as you would sign the cross over yourself, prompt but graceful, and sent a spindrift of shimmering blackness in Hannah's direction. Diffrus Perfigum[1], the fragmentation curse took hold of the legs initially.

And like dried twigs in a fire, the first of the bones splintered to her audible relief. Ira bared her teeth in what was either a smile or a threat. "Tell me when to stop. I could leave the both of you here to die. A fitting end for miscreants."

1.	As it has been cast non-verbally, the bones will crack but not explode at intervals of ten seconds.

An unholy howl exploded from Hannah’s throat and her head snapped back as the agony tore through her left leg, tibula splintered to pieces. Her wrists and neck were long forgotten as she cried in pain. Her fingers curled into fists, nails scratching the floor as her tormenter informed her she could stop it. Her stomach lurched, threatening to empty its contents on the floor as her brain exploded.

And she could stop it if she agreed to save the wizard she hated. But he could die. He needed to die like Wolfgang had. It was worth it. Just a few more minutes of agony and he’d be dead. Almasy would have been distracted for long enough. She wasn’t going to kill her newest pet. It would be pointless. She was just tormenting; teaching a lesson.

“I could leave the both of you here to die. A fitting end for miscreants.”

Even in her agonised and delirious state Hannah realised that the words were a game changer. In the few seconds before the second break she made to move her arm to her pocket but her entire body cried out in pain as her tibia snapped and she released another unearthly wail, the tears streaming down her cheeks. Breathing haggard, the witch struggled to calm herself enough to speak.

“Pl….please.” She found herself begging for release. “Please!” She finally yelled, breaking, relenting. “I will…I’ll do it.”

The explanation seemed to be enough for Almasy to release Hannah, which was with his great relief. It wasn't particularly over the fact that Hannah was his niece and he worried for her life, but that without her, he was certainly going to die very soon.

"And what an injustice it would be if she cannot. Or will not?" Ira spoke as Hannah coughed and wheezed on the floor. Lawrence gasped for a breath, relieved at her release, and at the unexpected, charitable response from Ira. Their relationship was purely down to convenience for the both of them. He and Edwin were both willing participants, Lawrence to prolong what was worth living from his life, and achieve his desire to tear at the Ministry and Edwin just to cause the chaos he was so in love with.

"I’ll…dispose of… the…body." Hannah wheezed on all fours. Lawrence's grip on consciousness faded a moment, and his eyelids fluttered as he fought back to stay conscious. A stray thought of a little girl in a garden in St Alban's on a Summer's day, wrapping bandages round his head over his curly brown hair, while he told her a story about being brave which led him to become injured. She'd been more than willing to patch up imaginary injuries to her auror uncle all those years back, and now they had come to this.

His head tilted back, and everything began to go dark, each breath an effort.
"My wand," he tried to say but no sound came out, just a murmuring movement of his lips drowned out by the horrible sound of splintering and Hannah's howls.

He was unable to force his eyes open, his body slipping away, but his mind was still there, just enough to understand that the two of them would probably be lost here.

Which had probably been Almasy's plan all along.

Ira was statuesque - after the imminent surrender, even, she waited for another of the wolf's bones to fracture. The brittle and rupturing clamour was exceedingly satisfying. Soothing honey to a mind that had snarled in response to being taken away from the theatre. Oh, yes. Every crack through to the marrow was a puzzle piece sliding rapturously into place.

And then finite.

"Kind of you." Ira commented in a level voice, calmed by the sight of Hannah's delicious agony. The realisation that broke a soul: knowing you are dispensable as so many are. If only one could bottle that expression. "You had better to your uncle. Tie his survival to yours."

There was no other way of looking at it. If Lawrence Musgrave died, she would consider it the doing of his niece. And what use did anyone have for a Healer as such? None at all. They need not exist. She finally risked a glance at the man in question, getting a slightly better understanding of the condition.

Not the worst thing from which a wizard could recover. He would live to die some other day if the she wolf was any good.

A final burst of agony ripped through her right leg and as much as she wished she could, the healer couldn’t bite back a third howl of agony that exploded from her lungs. She didn’t have the mind to consider exactly what being beaten meant; she was too distracted by the agony, by the need to stay alive and not let more of her bones break into pieces in eruptions of pain.

But it stopped finally. She sat slumped on the ground, panting, crying and trying to steady herself. Every month the transformation that took her body was agonising as the curse forced itself on every muscle, every nerve and every bone. She’d thought it wasn’t possible to experience more pain that that. Tonight she was rather convinced she was wrong.

There wasn’t time to calmdown and relax in the reprieve of pain. Instead a shaky, weak hand pulled her wand from her cloak pocket and she pointed it at her left leg first.
“Brack-” Her breathing was too unsteady. She needed to focus. Eyes closed for a moment and she took a deep focused breath before trying again. “Brackium Emendo.” An already tight fingered grip on her wand increased as she felt the bones in her leg knit together. It hurt, but it was nothing compared to the sharp breaks. The same was repeated for the second leg before the shaky witch pushed herself to her feet and rushed to her uncle’s side, kneeling on the floor.

His eyes were closed, his face a ghostly white. Her survival depended on his. If he died, she’d die. Hannah was no match for the bone snapping lunatic that threatened.
“He’s unconscious.” Her shaky voice stated as her eyes shot to his leg. Her wand tip was pointed at the trouser leg and she sliced with a quick motion, the fabric ripping apart to reveal the true extent of the damage. Hands worked fast to reach into her pocket and remove a small bag that she carried everywhere. In it she retrieved a tiny vial of blood replenishing potion and parted Lawrence’s lips to pour it into his throat. The sensation should have woken him if his gagging reflexes were still working.

“Lawrence….stay with me. Stay awake.” The young healer’s voice was desperate, terrified but determined.

Eugh, blood replenishing potion. The strange iron tang of the potion brought him spluttering back to life, eyes flying open, unfocused. He forced himself to swallow on recognising the taste.

"Lawrence" His niece's voice seemed strangely distant considering he felt her touch, "Stay with me, stay awake…"

"Hann…" Lawrence's lips numbly tried to form her name, knowing he had to do as she asked. Keen memories of his younger days before Azkaban when he'd been into St Mungo's to be pieced back together. His breathing was still ragged and his ribs flashed with pain where they had broken.

But the worst pain was still his leg, which as his eyes managed to focus, was still raised above him, kitchen knife protruding. For all he was numb, he could feel it ache like a hundred sharp needles as he stirred.

"Hannah… pull it … get it out." Merlin, why hadn't she pulled it while he had lost consciousness - now he had to stay conscious as she did. Almasy was probably nearby still, observing, probably taking pleasure in seeing him like this again, here.

His hand reached out to her, making contact with his fingertips, just enough to let him believe she was really there. Those words, what she had said. The fact she was here, they all beggared belief.

He steeled himself, looking to the ceiling.

"Hannah… pull it … get it out." The begging was undertaken in a weak voice, a pathetic voice dripping in pain and a struggle to remain conscious. Hannah’s eyes snapped from the site of the wound to Lawrence’s face. Beneath all of her emotions that were visible on the surface, the fear, the pain, the determination, the hatred was still there lingering, seething for the wizard that had inadvertently tied her fate to his.

Hannah did want to take the knife out.

She wanted to take it out of his leg and drive it through his heart.

Fingertips touched her arm and she pushed his hand away.
“I’m not doing this for you.”

This wasn’t going to be easy, the last bit of field healing she’d done had been under the collapsed house with Knox Greyfriar[1] as she’d manually had to manipulate his leg back together. She needed a second pair of hands but was loathed (and terrified) to ask Almasy. So instead she decided to struggle through, her mind swimming with pain, adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Hands fell down to her cloak and with a second slash of her wand, a piece of material tore from the end into her right hand. She lifted herself higher onto her knees and bundled the fabric. Her wand was dropped to the floor and the fingers of her left hand circled the handle of the knife. It could have been removed with a wand but it was better to manually pull, to get a sense of the damage within. There was no offer of anything to bite down on for Lawrence when she pulled it out, no warning to make sure he didn’t bite his tongue. Instead Hannah gaze a swift tug and the knife freed itself from his flesh, sending fresh blood trickling down his trouser leg. The cloth was immediately pressed over the wound and she placed perhaps a little too much pressure on it as bright warm blood soaked into it.

Even in her new state of intense concentration and determination, it was impossible to forget the breaking of her bones or the intense burning still around her wrists and neck. As her hands pressed into the cloth, sore, still teary eyes took in the sight of her wrists, burned and marked by her werewolf aversion to silver. She could only guess the mess around her neck, marked like a beast by its master. That’s what she was now. The disobedient wolf had been thoroughly punished and taught a lesson, branded by silver chains and nearly killed.

Removing the cloth after a few moments, the knife dropped by her side, Hannah was quick with her wand. The tip was at the site of the wound without delay and she steadily inserted the tip into his leg.
“Consuo.” She began to steadily twist the wand in his flesh as it sewed itself together. The tip slowly revealed itself, twisting and further pulling out of the wound until the skin was sealed shut, leaving only a tiny red mark that would scar.

Hannah sat back and looked at her uncle panting on the floor in wretched pain from the ordeal.
“He’ll live.”

1.	Isolated Together With You

He could feel her put pressure around the wound and his mouth opened to pant, remaining hand clasping his broken ribs. Pain seemed to be setting light to every nerve in his body. When the knife was pulled it was like a blinding bright light before his eyes and he howled with anguish, not able to stop himself as he bit down hard.

"Fuck you - fuuuck youuu!!" His eyes watered as he swore. Hannah's pressure on the wound was almost unbearable but he had no breath to carry on with the noise and gaped, yellowed teeth clashing at air as he tried to gasp it in. His left arm, minus it's hand, went from his ribs towards his raised leg as he screwed his eyes shut - stump not quite reaching, too exhausted to raise his shoulders from the floor, his right shoulder screaming in pain with his leg.

The matting of his flesh from her spell was no less painful, but once she was done the pain changed to a dull throb rather than the sharp tearing sensation it had been before. His arm fell back to his heaving stomach and his eyes came open, staring unevenly at the ceiling above them, trying to clear his mind from the bright pain. He wanted nothing more than to slip away from it all and sleep, but he feared he might not come back from that goodnight.

"He'll live." He heard Hannah say, and remembered with a pit in his stomach that Almasy was nearby. Undoubtedly she was enjoying the show. He tilted his head back gingerly to look to her, tenderly clasping the ribs of his right side with his right hand. He continued to wheeze, colour not returning to his face despite the blood replenishing potion.

"Not… just my leg." He whispered breathlessly, and grimaced, turning back to look to Hannah, appealing to her, despite her cold words.