The gate charm rang. Lydia, in the kitchen writing notes based on her observations of her plants growing in the garden, paused for a moment as if disbelieving, and then looked up. There was already a clicking on the doorknob, a sound that only a Hollingbury wand would be capable of once the gate charm had gone off.

She headed out into the hallway just as the door opened to reveal Arc's silhouette against the light streaming in from the streetlamps outside. The cold draught swept in behind him, bringing in tendrils of fog, but then was quickly shut out by her son.

"Arc? You don't usually come in on weekdays, what's up?" she asked, approaching him. The warm light in the passageway illuminated his face; Lydia felt concerned about his appearance. "You look tired, have you been getting enough sleep?"

"I don't have much time to spend here, sorry mum," he said. He hadn't taken off his coat or scarf. "I need your help."

"With what?" Lydia didn't necessarily like it, but she'd long accepted that her son was highly independent and preferred to not bother his parents unless the situation was dire, so this made her all the more worried. "Come, take your coat off, let's talk in the family room." She reached up to help him take his scarf off, and realised he was still wearing his healer's robes underneath.

"No, seriously, I have to get back to the hospital as soon as possible." Arcturus brushed his mother's hand off his shoulder. "It's about the contaminated medical supplies, I'm sure you know."

"Yes, I do." The news had been broadcast first thing in the morning on the 5th. "But surely you don't need me to help y-- St Mungo's with clearing out the poisons, right?"

"No, we've done that already. It's the alternative remedies." Lydia was struck by how weary her son sounded. "The medical supplies that were affected were healing potions, the ones administered orally at least, and painkillers, oh and sedatives as well. We've got a lot of patients who still need treatment and we haven't actually figured out what other alternatives we can use while avoiding the contaminated potions, and we don't have a lot of time, and we have to figure out how to neutralise the poisons--"

"All right, all right, calm down." Lydia took a deep breath. "Take your coat and scarf off, and we'll sit down properly and talk. You're shivering, and there's a fire over there." She wrapped her arm firmly around his as a sign that she wasn't going to take no for an answer. There was a moment where Arcturus hesitated, his eyes darting towards the door as if someone was suddenly going to barge in and reprimand him for not returning to the hospital immediately, and then he relented, taking his coat and scarf off.

Once they were seated, the first thing she asked was "Are you sure you should be telling me all of this, Arc? This sounds like confidential information to me."

"I got permission from my superiors," Arcturus said wearily.[1] The fire in the hearth was revealing far more exhaustion on his face than she'd realised - dark, sunken eyes, his face a little thinner than usual. He hadn't been sleeping well, no wonder he hadn't answered her question. "And this is just a little more in-depth than the national broadcast, I'm not giving out patient details."

"Why me?" she asked. Curiosity was always the feature of a Hollingbury.

"Because I felt you might be able to have some of the answers we're looking for." Arcturus passed a hand over his face. "We've already isolated the culprit ingredients, but as they're not usually used in medicine finding a compound antidote to their mixtures is taking much longer than we thought. I've been through calculations of Golpalott's Third Law up and down and sideways for the past few days, it isn't getting any better."

"Tell me what the ingredients are," Lydia said. "I need to have an idea of the scope you're dealing with here. Are they just ingredients that have been substituted or...?"

"Hellebore, poisonous variant, most likely the black hellebore type." Arcturus tried to recall. "Staghorn and Horklump mushrooms. Willow bark."

"Apart from hellebore, Staghorn, Horklump and willow bark are not poisonous," said Lydia, looking puzzled.

"In general no, but there's been traces of Death-Cap Mushroom combined with Staghorn extract. Same with Horklump, only Deadlyius." Arcturus was staring at the floor, seemingly in an attempt to focus as he recalled, so he missed his mother's expression changing from bewilderment to shock, and then horror. "And the willow bark's got stritter? Str...something."

"Streeler?" Lydia suggested in a disbelieving tone. Arcturus made a pointing gesture as if to indicate that her answer was right, except that he did it very limply and it turned into a half-hearted wave instead. "Streeler venom? Where did these supplies come from?!"

"Now's not the time, mum, I don't know, we haven't had the time to check the paper trail. Please focus."

"It's important, please." Lydia sat back in her seat. "Whoever's using those ingredients meant to do a lot of lasting damage, if not meant to kill." She chewed her bottom lip as she pondered. "I...I'm sorry to say that I have nothing, Arc. Poisons are really not my specialty. I've heard of those variants and I know the estimated lethal doses, but I don't know much about countering those. Have you tried the usual remedies? Antidote to Common Poisons? Bezoars, even?"

"Mum," said Arcturus, in an uncharacteristically heavy, cold tone and not looking at her, "if those had worked I wouldn't be here."

"Right. I'm sorry." Lydia frowned. "Hm. In that case...I don't want you to have come all the way here just to find out you'll have to go back and tell them I can't help." She sensed movement behind her and turned to see Mordecai standing at the doorway, a tawny owl perched on his shoulder and alertly staring in the direction of the fire. He gestured towards Arcturus' back with a questioning concerned expression; she shook her head and turned back to their son. "Besides, I'm just an amateur herbologist, Arc. What did you think I could do on such a large-scale emergency such as this one?"

"I don't know." He sounded small, subdued. "I couldn't think of anything else."

"Lydia," Mordecai said, causing their son to jump and look around, "perhaps you could send a letter to Ashenmoore? I think he may be able to help. Metis just came back from hunting, I can get you ink and parchment."

"Ashenmoore?" Arcturus asked. "Who's--"

"Phineus Ashenmoore, he's a professional herbologist who runs his own supply company to provide for local apothecaries. He doesn't supply to St Mungo's, as far as I know," she added, in response to Arcturus opening his mouth, "but he helps support apothecaries in Scotland as well as consolidate herbology research. He's the president of the British Association of Herbologists, and I can probably contact him to rally the other herbologists."

"Are you sure he'll do that?" Arcturus said. "That sounds like a lot of work for someone not involved in this."

"If it's to do with herbology, then the BAH can help," said Lydia. "Perhaps many of the local apothecaries will have their own supplies of alternate remedies, or other herbologists can recommend based on their own findings. We have a wide network of contacts." She caught movement from the corner of her eye; Mordecai had disappeared.

"And he's your friend?"

"I wouldn't consider him a close friend, no, he's a little too spacey and self-centred at times for my liking, but he still is a rather good friend." Lydia smiled comfortingly at Arcturus in an attempt to cheer their son up. Her husband reappeared just then, paper, quill and ink in both hands and with Metis still perched on his shoulder. She gave him a quick smile as thanks and turned back to Arcturus. "Will that help? I can send the owl tonight. Phineus is a bit of an owl himself, and for this kind of situation he will want to attend to it immediately."

Their son seemed hesitant for a moment, and then sighed. "I guess that's better than going back and...and telling them that I didn't get much help."

"It is," Lydia agreed. "How have things been going? Have you managed to prevent anymore afflictions? How many casualties have there been? Or is that last question a little too private?"

Arcturus shook his head. "I...it's...I don't really know the exact count right now, we've stabilised, I think...Spell Damage's taken at least five deaths, we took maybe six...I don't know, I didn't want to look into the morgue." He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. His parents watched him worriedly, but not daring to ask.

After a moment, he slowly exhaled. "Most of them were elderly...or children, who were admitted to the hospital earlier for treatment. We gave them those remedies. They...they were getting better." His voice quietened almost to a whisper. "And then they started showing signs and symptoms. We couldn't do anything. Some of them went too fast."

Lydia's head snapped to her husband. She signalled to him to move away. Mordecai gestured to himself and then to Arcturus in indignation, but his wife then raised her eyebrows and motioned for him to either comfort their son or stop watching. It took a moment's consideration for her husband to awkwardly slip away, leaving the two alone.

"Arc," she began quietly, meaning to comfort him as she reached out, but his shoulders had already dropped in clear despair. Lydia rose from her seat and knelt in front of him, reaching out to grasp his wrists, but he pulled away. Warning signals. She knew them too well. She was too late.

"There was a girl, she was just two, she was so sweet and happy, and then it was like...watching a candle burn out." In the firelight tears glimmered in his dark eyes. "There were others just like her, both Spell Damage and Potions Poisoning, we didn't manage to save them. We didn't realise how much they'd taken, it built up in them and then started slowly killing them."

Lydia watched as her son covered his mouth with both hands, drawing a shuddering breath as he clearly tried to calm himself down. She couldn't think of what to say. What was there to say that didn't make things feel cheap? "Arc, you didn't know. None of you did."

"We should have!" The outburst made her jump a little. "I didn't...take this job to hurt people. We didn't check the potions when we should have, and we gave them to the patients!"

"You didn't intend to kill them, Arc. None of you did."

"It's still by our hands! You can't deny that we didn't--" and here Arc buried his face into his hands and started sobbing. Lydia grimaced in sympathy and irritation at being unable to comfort him; she was familiar with the signs of stress her son showed, and nothing she could do about it. Nothing. A decade later, and the wounds were still too deeply gouged to properly heal over.

She pulled him into her arms and gently but firmly rubbed his back as she felt him physically crumble, trembling as wave after wave of everything he'd been holding back surged through him. It was reminiscent of her time returning to Britain after she'd heard the war was over, to be met by two family members fresh from watching people die. How fragile the present was, and still is. And sometimes that her family tended to keep up appearances just to hide that fragility.

It took maybe ten minutes for Arcturus to pull himself together, but Lydia was aware of how much emotion he tended to express when there was too much to bear. Odd to see him express himself like this in front of only his family, rather than friends. Odd, and sad.

"You should stay here," she said, as he wiped his face of the remaining tears. "Rest. I think you've been pushing yourself too hard these past few days."

"N-No, I...I have to go back, housemate will get worried." Arcturus got to his feet, but she could still feel him trembling. She kept him stable, gripping his upper arm firmly. "Sleep, take a shower, go back to the hospital. I'll tell them you've sent for help. Thank you, mum."

She smiled. "Anything for you."

---

After her son had left, she found Mordecai in the kitchen looking through a leather-bound book, with Metis perched on the back of his chair. She didn't need to look at the book to know what it was.

"I'm glad you didn't start spouting legal terms off during all that," she said, pulling up a chair to sit next to her husband. "Thanks for the ink and parchment."

"No, I figured he wouldn't want to hear it. It's not his responsibility to answer for the legalities as well, though we'll see how that goes." Mordecai shut the book. "I would have comforted him as well, but..."

"But?" Lydia raised her eyebrows in the midst of dipping her quill tip into the ink bottle. Mordecai stared at the table for a while.

"But I would have probably done a poorer job of comforting." He sighed and placed the book on the table. Metis made a small ke-wick sound as she fluttered onto the table and settled onto the book.

"Make up for it on Christmas Day," Lydia said, as her hand carefully pressed the quill tip down and began transferring ink on the parchment. "As far as I'm concerned, you two need each other more than you think you do. Leave Linus to me."

1.	Possibly to be threaded later.