M for language

Poor Ignan.
He’d tried to calm the agitated witch and only been greeted with vicious snaps.
He’d grumbled one too many times about the nameless cat, which had caused Miranda to go off at him like a exploding cauldron.

It had been at the point that she’d been about to yell about his incompetence that she decided she would be far better getting out of the house. Ignan didn’t need that. Their marriage didn’t need it.

So, Miranda had donned a pair of trainers and left through the front door, heading down the lane for some headspace.

The reason for her lack of emotional control?
Tomorrow she would be starting to work with Lawrence Musgrave and she’d not expected to be so affected by the reality of it.

After an hour of walking, thoughts and possibilities spinning through her head, the witch stopped and pulled out her wand. She needed to face her issues before Yavin sodding Morgenthau decided that he was too concerned about the Healer’s mental state.

You really never should meet your heroes.

At 3:26 exactly, Miranda Storm, casually dressed in her jeans and a jumper, her hair messily scraped back into a bushy ponytail, approached the room currently holding the Ministry’s most interesting prisoner.

Outside the door, the hitwizard had evidently moved away from Crafting with Cat Hair, but Miranda didn’t take note of the book choice. Instead, she simply waved at the door for him to open it.

Once inside, the door closed behind her and Miranda stood in front of it with her arms crossed. She didn’t say anything, only stared down at the wizard sat up on the bed.

There was both a pit of dread and a squeeze of anticipation in Lawrence’s stomach about Monday. He had read the research and the books cover to cover more than once now since he had met Morgenthau and Storm together on his arrival. Everything was just a waiting game before he was sent to Azkaban, and now he was waiting on the short term for things to begin.

In the few days, he had tried to understand more about the new routine at St Mungo’s. On Level 2 he had become accustomed to the regular shift patterns and the change of guard. Fendrel was not always with him, but he was the constant amongst the group assigned. At St Mungo’s they were both guests of sorts. The other healers came and went as did encouragements to eat the nutritious food. They had measured him, peered into his eyes, taken blood, hair, nail clippings, and he didn’t want to think of what else.

Sometimes when the door opened, he’d hear noise from beyond. Faint screaming.

Even when the door was shut he heard things that weren’t there with him.

When the door opened without a knock, it took Lawrence by surprise. He was sat cross-legged on the bed, which was more about habit than comfort. It had been the only suitable place to sit in the Level 2 cell, and it was further from the door than the group of armchairs. Morgenthau’s book nearly slipped from his grasp in surprise.

“Head Healer.” He found his voice, gaze taking in Andy’s advanced arrival, and the fact she was most definitely not in her uniform. She was more dressed than one of the times he’d visited her, at least, but certainly more casual than last. This was unusual. He did not expect a social call ever, so what was she up to?

“I.. I was not expecting you back so soon.”

Head Healer

Miranda couldn’t recall him referring to her as such. When he’d been brought in, he’d called her Andy. Why the change now with them alone? Perhaps the realisation that he was now on Miranda’s territory, in her control, had dawned upon him after a few days to read through her research in effective solitude.

“No.” The voice that came from her mouth sounded alien, unsure of itself. Miranda had spent a lifetime convincing the world that she was confident and certain and in the last year she’d felt that façade unravelling. Thanks to the wizard who’d just called her ‘Head Healer’, people had seen her vulnerable, and she’d nearly lost the one thing that truly made her happy. Stood before him, she should be wanting to hex him into the beyond. But all Miranda could do was stand and stare.

“Neither was I.” Miranda admitted quietly. She shouldn’t have come, she should leave. This sort of move, should Edwin and Solomon find out, could put an end to her research before it had begun. It could be taken as a power play. Unable to school her expression, Miranda turned on her heel, stepping back towards the door. This was a bad idea. she knew it.

But she stopped and turned back, dark eyes carefully watching him.
“Why, Lawrence? What did I do to you?”

This was odd to say the least. As soon as Andy had arrived, she was leaving. She’d come to ask him something? Say something? Do something... without Morgenthau?

Stump was outside. He’d stuck his head in earlier to exchange some news about the upcoming trial on behalf of Harper. Despite Lawrence’s contempt for being confined, he had enough respect for the experienced hitwizard to understand that as much as he was protection for Lawrence escaping, he was also protection for Lawrence against ill-tempered visitors.

Andy Carter couldn’t hurt a fly still, not unless she’d really progressed since March when he’d last had his wand in her presence.

There.

He left her sharp gaze, and stared at the feet of the armchairs across the room while he contemplated how to react. It was always going to be a question, an elephant in the room. He inhaled tensely and looked back.

“Are you sure you should be asking without him here?” He replied softly, just enough to be heard. “And are you really sure you want to discuss it?”

Lawrence was always bound to look away. His acts were shameful and disgusting. Miranda questioned how it was that he managed to live with his actions, especially with the dementors now dragging him down. He’d tricked his way into her home, killed his own niece and then almost killed her husband and now the bastard couldn’t even meet her gaze, choosing instead to make excuses, to put her off the question that she wanted answering.

Choosing to ignore the first question on the basis that Lawrence should clearly remember her lack of caring for what others had asked her, Miranda once more folded her arms, hands making fists. She didn’t want to be in the room with him, yet she did; she’d found herself here. At home with Ignan should have been where she sat this afternoon so why was she even here?

“Positive.” Despite her better judgement screaming at her to retreat and leave, Miranda lowered herself, carefully, into one of the three armchairs. She wasn’t going to ask again. He owed her an answer. Her gaze dropped quickly to one of the vacant chairs, raising an eyebrow, before looking back at the pathetic excuse of a wizard.

She took a seat, having made up her mind. Lawrence set aside Morgenthau’s book and pushed himself off the bed. In silence, he joined Andy, and sank down into the most opposite of the two remaining chairs.

“It wasn’t what you’d done to me.” He opened with, drawing his feet up onto the front of the armchair, knees brought up before his body, and shook his head. He sighed quietly, gathering his thoughts. It would probably be most logical to start at the beginning, and deal with her agitated interruptions. If she couldn’t handle the truth then this would all be over, and either Morgenthau would steal him for Level Nine or he’d be off to the North Sea.

He met the sharp gaze aimed at him from the other armchair. If she read him, she’d only see the same.

“The first time[1] I came to you, I genuinely needed your help, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to ask you, or trust you.” He drew breath, and closed his eyes a second, remembering. “You weren’t home when I got there, and I broke in because I thought I might be safer, and that you might have books, and other remedies.”


“When you got back, the paranoia had set in,” Lawrence frowned. He wasn’t proud of how the dementor exposure had twisted his mind and brought on violent thoughts. Even if he’d turned up sobbing on Andy’s doorstep, he doubted she would have shown him any sympathy.


“That was just a month of dementors,” he clarified, for the sake of her studies.

1.	24th Jan, 2011 Give me your Guiding Hand

Sitting so close to Lawrence was peculiar, difficult to believe. Months ago, Miranda had tried to drug him. She’d asked Ignan to kill him. She’d wanted to kill him herself. Now she was about to help him. She was, clearly, not in the right mind. Yet the ministry had agreed, her deputy had agreed. It had been done.

If she weren’t currently so uncomfortable with the situation, Miranda might have laughed at the irony of Lawrence’s words. He’d broken into her home for her help but hadn’t been sure if he could trust her. The comparison to the time he’d come to her flat years ago dawned on her, he’d broken in then too, looking for help. Only that night had ended very differently[1].

“What did you think I was going to do, Lawrence?” The stress showed in the age lines drawn across Miranda’s pale features as she frowned deeply, her dark hair greying in speckled stands. Her arms were no longer folded, hands instead held together as she ringed them together. “We hadn’t seen each other since…well for nearly 2 decades! Someone that wants help doesn’t threaten the fucking healer.”

1.	Careless Whisper

“Someone in their right mind doesn’t, no.” Lawrence retaliated, “and there weren’t that many people left that would recognise me after a decade away.”

The Head Healer would never want to believe him, which was part of the problem of being asked. Kuester hadn’t believed him either. But she’d come to ask, to see eye to eye and criticise his past decisions. As if Lawrence hadn’t spent every waking hour doing the same since he’d managed to reach for the red telephone box in the spring.

“I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was the healer I’d known in our twenties was now in charge of the hospital, and from what I’d read, still top of the class. My dementor paranoia didn’t want to trust you, but I knew that if the worst came to it, I’d overpower you like old times.” His remaining fingers clenched at his patient robes. “And yes it sounds absurd when you look back with a rational eye. But I wasn’t well, or in my right mind. By all measures I should have been on one of your wards.” He nodded in the direction of the screaming patients he had passed the day he had come in.

“Someone in their right mind doesn’t, no.”

Everyone had willingly validated this excuse. The ministry, St Mungo’s and Miranda herself had all validated Lawrence Musgrave not being of sound mind. He used it now, it seemed, as a blanket justification for every one of his offenses and delinquencies. It was as though he could explain everything he’d done in the past two years with ‘I was under the influence of the dementors’. It vindicated him. This proved to be an internal battle that Miranda had to fight when she knew part of the truth behind it.

“…I’d overpower you like old times.”

Miranda’s hands stopped their nervous habit and she stared at Lawrence, defiant. To him, her weakness for defensive magic was too well known. Even now, it made her uneasy, for while she was armed, it would only take the element of surprise and some quick moves for that to change rapidly. But he wouldn’t. Or at least, Miranda hoped that he wouldn’t.

“You would have been, had you let me help you.” But Lawrence hadn’t trusted Miranda and she’d pulled away from his mind, intending to curse him. It had all happened so fast, all so unpredictable and intimidating. “I would have helped you. That’s my damned job and I’m good at it.” Her hands shook, she’d not intended to become emotional. “But you terrorised me and almost killed my husband.”

“I watched him dying, Lawrence. At your hand.”

Was she scared of him? Lawrence couldn’t quite judge. She’d come here alone, in two minds of what she wanted, and had insisted on hearing answers he was quite sure she didn’t want to believe. Did she want to hear him say something in particular? Was that what it was? When she skipped to the last time they had seen each other before he had handed himself in, and brought up her husband, the suspicion of revenge for having him here returned to the forefront of his own concerns.

“He stepped in front of the curse[1] for Hannah,” Lawrence replied, regretful. “That curse was never for him. We never wanted to hurt either of you.”

Alright, that was a lie. Ignan’s attack on Lawrence in Hogsmeade[2] had resulted in fatal wounds from dark magic. Had Sandy Misslethorpe not found him in time[3] he would not have been alive to help Hannah. He’d gone into that house polyjuiced as that lanky linguist twitching to also curse her husband and even the score. But just even the score, not to add his murder to his list of crimes.

“Hannah was cursed with blood magic by Ira Almasy. Did they tell you that?” It wasn’t the moment to when he was being thrown against the furniture. “He tried to save her, by intervening, like any auror would. Only it was imperative he didn’t so you could save her life and release the curse.”

1.	26th March, 2011 When I Wake Up
2.	6th March, 2011 Overplay Your Hand
3.	6th March, 2011 Helping Hands

Regret was something that Miranda undoubtedly hadn’t expected to hear in Lawrence’s voice, and yet it was there, she was quite certain. She wanted to believe his words, his insistence that the curse hadn’t been meant for Ignan. Back in their younger days, Lawrence, she’d believed, had been a good wizard. He’d gone into a career that protected and served and then he’d made some terrible decisions later down the line. The man she’d known in her teenaged years and twenties hadn’t been a monster.

The man curled up in the armchair opposite didn’t look like a monster.

“You put a lot of faith in my skills being able to save your niece.” The healer’s tone was softer, less angry and emotional. The words were truth, she felt it, heard it. What Miranda also felt was his concern. He didn’t trust her, and perhaps rightly so. She shouldn’t have shown up alone today, she shouldn’t have addressed it with him. It was counterproductive to their research. But her move was selfish. Miranda knew she wouldn’t have been able to work with him without this talk.

“I don’t want revenge, Lawrence.”

“You put a lot of faith in my skills being able to save your niece.”
“She put a lot of faith in both of us.” Lawrence uttered in response, hoping that once the Ministry service Hannah was counting down was done, she would get away and live her life. If it had all gone wrong, he’d have murdered his own niece, one of the last remaining things in life he gave a shit about.

“I don’t want revenge, Lawrence.”

He let out a spontaneous titter of sarcastic laughter, brought on by the tension, and looked up and away. Was that what she wanted to tell him? That she wanted answers on why he’d come to her, but now she wanted to assure him that she didn’t want to kill him this time? After she’d suggested his brain would be turned to soup, and she’d probably tried to poison him with the hot chocolate in her kitchen?

“Oh right, so you’re ‘in love’ with me then?” He referenced the media’s suggested motives[1] for why Andy had let him into her house in Hogsmeade. He glanced back and nodded tot he door. “Because that’s what everyone’s thinking. That’s why you’ve got a minder, just like me.”

The tension was becoming agitation. He was already on edge about the thought of someone in his head the next day and now his chief stressor was here unannounced. The patterns on the bewitched painting on the wall behind Miranda was reshaping rapidly, like ink in water, darkening in colour. He swallowed and looked her in the eye.

“Would you be here right now if we’d never met before I came here?”

1.	8th March, 2011 Head Healer Battles Blast from the Past

“Oh right, so you’re ‘in love’ with me then?”

The corner of lips pressed tightly together curled marginally in disgust. She didn’t reply.

“Would you be here right now if we’d never met before I came here?”

“No.” Miranda stated calmly.

There was a pause as Miranda considered her next words. What she was doing right now was unprofessional, it could risk him being here as her patient. It risked her reputation.
“I would, however, be here right now if we’d not met in the past year. I want to remember the Lawrence who broke into my flat to bring me flowers, not threaten me at wand point. You’re ill, I know that. It’s why you’re here. What I do for you will help my patients.”

With deliberately slow movements, Miranda rose from the chair.
“If you don’t believe my motives with you, just question how I became the Head Healer, Lawrence. I’m unrivalled at my job, you came to me for a reason in January.” She’d not, after all, made it to where she was by killing people. “As well as your own, you will save a lot of lives now and in the future if you do this properly.”

“No.”

The admittance hung in the air between them. A simple enough question with a one-word answer that undermined her whole purpose for being in the room right then. She was here just for her. Because this was something she couldn’t ask in front of Morgenthau. This was personal and it was weakness.

“… I want to remember the Lawrence who broke into my flat to bring me flowers…” Her patient glanced away as if pained by the memory. Times when life had been good, when he’d been an auror, a lover, a favourite uncle. When the worst in life had been recalling the list of those who hadn’t made it through hauling in the demons of the first war, or a two-day hangover. The dementors tainted them all. They didn’t lighten his heart, they made it ache.

His shoulders rose and fell with quicker, shallower breaths as she lectured him.
“... you will save a lot of lives now and in the future if you do this properly.”

“I wouldn’t have come if I wasn’t going to do this properly,” Lawrence snapped, hazel eyes rounding on her. “Don’t patronise me Andy - and don’t fucking assume anything about me. You don’t know me anymore.”

His right foot landed back on the floor as if he might launch himself up, but he retracted it, hunched further into the armchair. Holding himself back, arms gripped tight. Through gritted teeth, he added, “What did you even come here for?”

He was angry. He had no right to be angry. Miranda deserved to be angry. Ignan deserved to be angry. Lawrence should have been begging for forgiveness for what he’d done. But no, he was swearing and accusing her of patronising him. Miranda would have put it down to the dementors but they weren’t wholly responsible. He’d done terrible things to be sent to Azkaban the first time.

“I know.” He was as far removed from the young wizard she’d known as was possible. Even his eyes were different, cold, weary, strange.

Having barely given the wizard any thought since her twenties, Miranda was lost as to why this hurt. Of course, he’d nearly killed Ignan, but there was something more. Something that no one outside this room would understand, especially not the husband she’d shouted at that morning.

“I wanted to see if there was any repentance.” The healer gave a shrug and let out an awkward laugh. “Senseless, really. As you said, I don’t know you.” After a last glance over his face, Miranda turned and moved to the door. She gave it a quick knock and heard the catch unlatch. The door swung open and Miranda left.