Lix had sent an owl from St Mungo's soon after reading the paper.

Zelda Sellaphix was a fellow apothecary, and the two of them had first met when Lix had briefly come to Britain to try and convince apothecaries up and down the country to stock lines from Drammes Apotheke, her past employer. When the Swede had given up her role as a branch manager for one of the apothecary shops to come to Britain and work at St Mungo’s, she had again run into Zelda Sellaphix. The grave circumstances of the poisonings at the turn of the year had increasingly brought them together as they tried to identify how on earth it could have happened. The horror that her former employer had unfolded on London had left a very bitter taste in Britain’s mouth to say the least.

As for Zelda and Lix however, they had a professional respect as fellow trained apothecaries, even if Lix was now back to her training as a healer on the Plant and Potions Poisoning floor at the hospital. Even Miranda Storm’s endeavours to bring all production in-house had not stopped Elixa coming by Sellaphix Apothecary in Knockturn to replenish the stock she and Arcturus held at home in their Diagon flat, or to discuss interesting diversions that were only really interesting to likeminded sorts (especially on days where Hollingbury was feeling antisocial).

Stood amongst the wreckage of the Knockturn Alley shop, hands on hips, Lix surveyed the damage with a dismayed expression.
“Oh Zelda,” she exclaimed, “who could want to do this to you?”

At first glance, the damage looked random. Drawers were pulled out, barrels tipped over, glass jars smashed on the floor. Whole cabinet doors were ripped from their hinges. Expensive reagents were ground into the floorboards, dried plants shredded and in some cases burned. A large quartz mortar was shattered. Her private stash behind the front counter had also been invaded, and it all reeked of anise.

But see, to Elixa and Zelda's eyes, it wasn't random at all.

Not every cabinet was broken. In fact, under the mess, a great deal was untouched. The office upstairs? Undisturbed. The till? Secure. She'd dropped Frank at a friend's early this morning and then owled Elixa straight away.  Elixa knew a thing or few, and she was training up in Healing. Zelda was counting on the younger witch to tell her she wasn't crazy.

Zelda stood arms crossed next to Elixa.  She shook her head.

"I don't know."

Then she said, "Elixa, do you see what I see? Look at what they've done."

The MLE had asked for an inventory of what was damaged or missing, and she was not exactly eager to provide it. So for the moment, the only ones who could see what was really done were the pair of witches in the room right now: and whoever had done it.

Elixa tapped at the point of her chin, hand on hip as her eyes scoured the labels of the displays. She was familiar with Zelda’s shop, a regular visitor and customer, it made her think of the years she spent managing an apothecary branch back in Sweden. Simpler times, before the itch to return to healing had proved too much. There was a certain comfort in inventory records and knowing in an instant which of the many drawers obscure reagents were kept.

“Your till is intact, your most expensive and frivolous items undamaged,” apothecary Mordent thought aloud, turning on the spot to look around them. “If they wanted to rob you, they’d be gone. This is just damage?” She glanced to Zelda for confirmation that nothing was particularly absent.

If it was a desperate soul, like the one who had broken into the St Mungo’s apothecary and held her at wandpoint, they would want certain materials, or a person to brew something. Why would they come here and destroy materials?

“So, your intruder was here to acquire ingredients for something specific, only they didn’t acquire - they destroyed.” Her fingertips left her chin and she stooped to examine bruised aconite roots, squashed to a pulp in broken glass.

“They wanted to prevent something being brewed?” Lix asked, getting back to her feet. “Have you had any requests for unusual potions that might match these?”

Zelda began to tread through the debris, her arms crossed.

"I think that's it. My first thought was something to do with the Aurors. I think they're put out I had nothing to do with all those people getting poisoned. Then I thought werewolves; I have a few customers who brew Wolfsbane Potion, but," she waved her hand to bundles of herbs drying from the ceiling, "the aconite's fine."

She went on. "Cinead Tawse's active again, but I doubt he'd have left the building standing. Bollocks!"

Zelda winced suddenly, her oath nothing to do with her lethal ex-con neighbor.  It was her left hand. It had spasmed again, her fingers twisting then rolling into a tight fist. Then, as it had kept happening, it went dead cold.

She shook it out, trying to restore feeling.

"It's the Healing reagents," she tentatively concluded. "Bezoars, witch hazel, my good dittany, myrrh. I had tincture of adder here. I had Skelegrow, infused plasters... look at the scarabs..."

She turned back to Elixa, and shrugged. Her voice was beginning to ring with exasperation.  "I think someone's trying to poison me. I used a bezoar and a bloody mighty expulsion brew a week ago[1]. It didn't help. I mean, who could honestly poison me? I'm sorry, but I'm not bad at this."

That was an understatement. Zelda wasn't one to brag, but she was a very good apothecary. It was difficult to imagine how anyone could have snuck something past her. Or that her healing efforts hadn't been sufficient. This was getting worse, not better. This was getting scary.

1.	Aug 5 - Before the Storm

“… something to do with the Aurors…” Lix’s brow furrowed, not quite following why aurors would want to wreck the place. “… Cinead Tawse’s active again…”

The healer in training gave her friend a worrisome look. Zelda had mentioned that name in the past to do with explosions. The apothecary owner shook out the thought, or so it seemed, until Lix saw Zelda look down at her hand as if it had misbehaved. Had she hurt herself? Was this the stress and anxiety just causing her to stiffen up? She’d never quite seen Zelda like this - worked up about being slighted or someone trying to steal from the shop, but not quite the same. There was an edge of fear here, and Lix quite understood it.

“It’s the healing reagents, bezoars, witch hazel, my good dittany, myrrh…” Sellaphix reeled off a list of things, looking around them at the items damaged. “I think someone’s trying to poison me… who could honestly poison me… I’m not bad at this.”

“I don’t know,” Mordent replied, “But maybe you ought to keep some essentials somewhere else, upstairs.” If someone was trying to poison her friend, then she should keep remedies close to hand. If this damage was only to items that could have healed her, then it was to keep remedies from immediate use.

“Look, let me give you a hand to sort the mess out, and we’ll see if we find anything interesting that can point us in the right direction.” She gave a hopeful shrug, and delivered what she hoped to be a reassuring smile to Zelda. “You alright? Did you want me to put a brew on first, take the stress down a notch?”

Elixa, she always had a level head. It was easier to accept her help than most because it never felt pushed on patronizing. It was good advice, to keep a secret inventory. Whoever had done this, they might think they'd won. Succeeded in... scaring her? Discouraging her? Bah.

"I'm fine. There's a kettle in the office," Zelda said in agreement. Up the iron stairs to the second level and through a brick portal were two small rooms. One for storage, the other a cramped office.  There Elixa was bound to find that it looked well lived in, and a copper kettle on a stand.

She wasn't fine, though, and she hoped the younger witch to know better than to believe her. While Elixa fetched what she needed to brew up whatever she suggested, Zelda summoned an empty basket to herself and knelt down to see if any bezoars survived. But her left hand wouldn't cooperate, wouldn't move. Stiff. Cold. Numb.

Zelda swore again, tucked her left hand under her right armpit, and felt around below a shelf. A small bull bezoar had survived. Small but potent. She placed it in her basket.

"Elixa, can I ask you something?" trying to sound casual, raising her voice so Elixa could hear her wherever she might be.

Something was definitely amiss - not just the strange break in. Something wasn’t quite right, and the hairs on the back of Elixa’s neck prickled as if they knew. Her gut was trying to tell her something.

As she sorted through the remnants of the different displays, she stole the odd covert glance in Zelda’s direction, trying to work out what her subconscious wanted her to notice. Had Zelda hurt herself? Had someone hurt Zelda but she wasn’t saying? There was an awkwardness to the way she held herself that Elixa did not remember, and there was that manner of holding back as some of her patients did when they’d imbibed something illegal.

“Yes…?” She asked, from the foot of the stairs, about to ascend. “What’s up?”

Zelda set the basket down on a table and rolled the bezoar in her fingers. She felt Elixa watching her. It felt to Zelda that she was being watched all the time, even when she was alone. The little whispers. Things misplaced - moved.

"Have you ever seen anything - a poison, a curse - that takes control of a limb? It's my left hand." -  Manus sinster. - "It's gone cold. I can barely use it anymore. I think. I know it sounds daft, but I think it's moving on its own. Could be spasms, could be the numbness," she quickly added, guessing what Elixa might suggest as alternate explanations, "but I don't think so."

Even speaking about it now, she hugged her arm tighter to her body convinced she'd just felt it twitch.

"It doesn't feel like mine anymore."

She had, in her life, had the experience of holding some painful shame or secret and that speaking it aloud revealed it not to be a grim but a labrador. But not now. Hearing her voice speak the words was no comfort. It all sounded exactly as crazy as she thought it was.

Frowning at this description, Lix placed down what she was carrying, and returned to her friend’s side. Zelda looked worried and anxious, which was hardly surprising given the state of the apothecary. Now she hugged her left arm to her body with her right, protective, uncomfortable. She wasn’t gripping a joint or any particular area to indicate pain or injury to a part of it, just protectively hugging the whole arm almost as if she were cold.

“May I see?” Healer Mordent asked kindly, offering her upturned hands without threat. At consent, she reached out gently to examine, and tried to hide her reaction to the fact Zelda’s arm really was cold. She reached out briefly to compare to Zelda’s right for a moment before continuing. It was as if the whole arm had been bathed in ice, the hairs on the back of Zelda’s arm were on end too.

The healer in training examined Zelda’s arm from fingertips to shoulder, pressing nails, fingertips, subtly taking a pulse, an eye on the patient’s reaction at each touch and gesture. When she reached Zelda’s shoulder, she paused, applying a little pressure to the joint with her fingers, and asked: “You’ve not taken a knock or a fall since you noticed this, have you?” She compared shoulders from behind, “Or had a bad back…? What about feeling faint?” She stepped around and took a pulse on Zelda’s right.

Zelda allowed Elixa to take her hand and she was shocked at how hot each of Elixa's finger tips were when they touched her. Basic questions came, and Zelda answered:

Knock or a fall?

"No."

Bad back?

"No."

Feeling faint?

"No. Well. I've been having headaches. Not normal headaches, like ..."

Zelda trailed off. She'd shut her eyes tight and grit her teeth. Another was coming on. A high-pitched whine in her ears was in frantic, mad crescendo, drowning everything out. She got her right hand up to her head, but her left didn't obey; instead it flung out and knocked a collection of glass jars from the table to shatter on the floor. She felt herself collide with Elixa, but the screaming in her head had her in its grips.

"It's - it's so angry," she hissed, her own voice barely audible to herself. Her left arm lurched out again, finding nothing but taking Zelda off balance. Inside, she pushed and pushed for silence and control, and after a few seconds more, the episode faded into whispers.

"Like that," she gasped, horrified it seemed to have come on cue.

Lix was making mental notes in the same way she might make written ones during her ward rounds. No falls, no issues with her back, which was ruling out anything being trapped or compressed in the body.
“… I’ve been having headaches. not normal headaches, like…”
“How do you - woah!”

Zelda’s left arm flung out and wiped out a collection of jars on the nearby table, catching Lix as it swung back. She instinctively reached out to grasp at Zelda’s shoulders, to stop her pivoting on the spot and going for the trainee healer behind her. Zelda threw herself left, as if some force had yanked her by the cold arm, and Lix let her go, reaching for her wand, which she outstretched in defence.

“Like that,” Zelda gasped, coming to a halt. Elixa’s wide-eyed stare and raised pear wood wand enough of an indication that this wasn’t an ordinary healing situation.

“Not physical damage then,” Mordent replied slowly, her wand still raised, and eyeing Zelda’s left arm like a threatening stranger. “And you’ve taken bezoars, and not poison, conventional at least.” Somehow the tea she was offering to prepare to settle Zelda’s nerves did not seem to cut it any longer.

If it lurched again, she’d have to try petrifying it. It might cause harm to Zelda, let alone the enquiring healer. Her friend’s safety was more important.

“These headaches,” Lix ventured, lowering her wand just a little, “not normal headaches?”

Zelda was startled to see Elixa's wand out, upset that what was happening was of some threat to her friend.  Zelda walked away back to the counter where she had a stool.  She sat down, and rested her head in her hand.

"It's like ... ", she didn't want to say it. It was all so bizarre and fantastical. "It's like a voice. It sounds like a person. Screaming. I can sometimes feel it coming, a sort of hissing in my ears. Every time, I have this fear that it won't ever stop. I'm sorry, I know it sounds absurd. I've tried everything short of, " she waved her hand around dismissively, "the hag or, or, some drafty diviner."

A hag had long been rumored to inhabit some hideaway on Knockturn, breaking ancient curses for grim payment.

Zelda sighed and her face was sort of blank and resigned and a little sad. "You don't have any idea, do you? I have lost my mind."

Dismayed at Lix’s choice to draw her wand, Zelda retreated to the counter, apologising as she explained her symptoms.

“You don’t have any idea, do you? I have lost my mind.”

“I …” Lix lowered her wand, unwilling to be defeated, but at the same time, realising when she was out of her depth. “I honestly.. Zelda, I’ve no experience in treating this sort of thing. But if it’s any consolation, I don’t think it’s your mind. You really need to go to St Mungo’s and see someone in Spell Damage.” The fourth floor healers were some of the busiest, dealing with such a wide variety of curse or charm. This didn’t look like something that could be finite-d away.

“I don’t want to be the omen of doom, but this isn’t something you can wish away. You said yourself, you’d tried. Whether foul fortune or in spite from someone, you’re going to need help with this… proper help.” She fixed her friend with a look, wondering if Zelda would, or if in the matter of a few days, Lix would need to use her wand on more than Zelda’s arm.

Well, there it was. The suggestion to submit herself to the wandpricks and spellprods at St. Mungo's who'd hem and haw and give soft guesses where their egos wouldn't let them say they knew nothing. She trusted those close to her far more: the crux was when those she trusted both advised the hospital. She rolled her head and gave Elixa a look.

"You're right."

She wouldn't remember but she'd said the exact thing to Kurby Bagnold a week ago:

"You're right. I'll go," she said. "I'll go to St. Mungo's, just not yet. With the bezoar and that dittany - I've probably blitzed it. I'll have some orange juice at breakfast. Bit overkill really."

"It's just not a good time, with the shop and Frank."

    "You have to take a break sometime," Figaro had urged her over dinner one night. But it really wasn't possible. She couldn't support them if she didn't have the shop open.

"Need to clean this up. But I will. I will, I promise. Once this is done."  She might have actually meant it.