4 December 2011
2300 hours
St. Mungo's Hospital
Immediately following It's the Freakiest Show

"Follow me," Athena Marrowbone walked halfway backwards with her wand out to guide the floating gurney she'd insisted on for the boy. A young girl with shaggy blond hair and a petrified look on her face followed behind. And of course, the perplexing Yavin Morgenthau in his pajamas.

The Head of the Department of Mysteries need only to flash his badge to get the expedited treatment and the Head of the Creatures Floor. The reception mediwizard didn't even object to bypassing the intake forms. They were all used to Mysteries' mysteries by now. Morgenthau in his eccentric get-up with a waifish brother and sister in tow barely raised an eyebrow anymore.

The vampire bite was easy enough to see, the puncture wounds looked deep and bruised.

"Must have been a big one," she said with a smile and giving Virgil a pat on the shoulder.

She took them past the Vampire ward to a private room.  There were a few chairs, but Virgil was lifted easily onto the high bed. Whether he could have done it himself or not, Marrowbone just did it herself.

"Hold please." She put a wet pad of gauze in his hand and stuck his hand to his neck. It smelled of alcohol. "What's your name, lad? How much that bugger take out of ye?"

She asked this even as she began preparing a variety of vials and pulled on gloves. She spared a glance to the girl in the corner chair who looked as drained as the boy.

"And who might you be. Little sister? Being brave for your brother. Good girl."

Nemo followed like a ghost. Shaken as she was from the horrible vampires, she was wary of the hospital. The clean floors, the strange smells and the paperwork which hadn't come but she was sure was on her way. Without knowing it, she held her hand over her arm - she didn't want anyone to know, she didn't want to be poked at.

In the examination room, she got into a chair and watched the goings on with a weary curiosity. The healer was a goddess of a woman, towering - nearly as tall as Yavin - and bright and alive. She was smiling. She wasn't at all worried. Nemo jumped when Athena turned her attention to her.

"No." Virgil wasn't her brother. She didn't give her name. She pretended like she hadn't heard that part. Instead, she asked, "is he going to be okay?"

He was all cried out by the time the giantess of a witch was bent over him on the hospital bed, pushing his hand against his neck to hold down a cotton swab. Their arrival at St.Mungo's and the subsequent steps had gone by in a blur - Virgil's initial outburst of tears slacking off as he felt something in his stomach sink lower, a lead weight pulling him down with it. Eyes puffy and face blotched red, he didn't want to exist.

But the Healer kept on talking and Yavin simply stood by the bed, just out of her way.

            "What's your name, lad? How much that bugger take out of ye?"

"Wa-- one cup," Virgil croaked, clearing his throat, embarrassed. "One cup, I think. It wasn't long. I'm Virgil, Virgil Carstairs." He wanted to add that he was fine and this was so unnecessary and they should just let him go home now so that he could wither away in privacy. Something else occurred to him before he could. "Um. I had, I had a shot of Somniac's Soju. After. He told me to, I didn't think to say no."

This last part was directed at Yav, who glanced at the Healer and then back at Virgil. "Feeling drowsy yet?" he asked softly.

"Yes," the young wizard blinked, "I think so. A little." He hadn't expected to be bitten when he ordered the soju at the start of the night, and it was making his eyelids feel heavy.

"Hm," Yavin intoned with a concerned expression, "and you're coming down from the high, too. Wouldn't, aha, wouldn't trust anything running through your head right now sleepy boy."

Being fed upon by a vampire was similar to taking any drug, or to deriving sexual pleasure from pain. There was the limitless high and the limitless low - you fell from grace quick and if you weren't ready to catch yourself, it was a bad place to be. At least in the case of pleasure, you would have someone there to help you recover.

Sending a kid off with a shot of hard liquor wasn't exactly helpful. As Virgil's gaze flickered, Yavin gestured discreetly at Marrowbone and sent a thought into her mind.

Stress disorder - he was a kidnapping victim in February, suffers from childhood trauma. Be gentle, please.

He went to sit next to Nemo, leaving Virgil in the Healer's capable hands for now. No bite marks on this one but she was holding her arm in a telling way. "You okay?" Yav asked in a low voice. "They took something from you too, didn't they?"

It was as close as he was going to get to saying he had looked into her memories of the situation.

"Mmhmm," Athena replied in the affirmative to Nemo, not-her-brother would be just fine. There were no further details from the young witch. Yavin was sitting beside her so Athena was confident she was in good hands until Virgil here was put to sorts.

Virgil Carstairs was being a lad, answering her questions and doing his best. She looked him square and gave a bit of Legilmancy a try. Just a touch. She found nothing, however, and moved on. It was only meant to be a glance. Her empathic evaluation was followed shortly by a message from Yavin, tucked nicely between her ears. Athena nodded without looking to him and immediately softened a few notches. With a flick of her wand, she unrolled the blanket that was folded at the foot of the bed, just enough to cover the kid's feet and let him know it was there. He was cold as a corpse.

"We'll let thee sleep soon, sweetheart, but keep awake for me a bit longer," she said her voice a little more sweet than before. Rather than loom over him, she found her rolling stool. She kept her hands in her lap and didn't move them until she was finished explaining.

"Eyes open now? Good. Here's what we'll do. First, keep holding that to your neck. It's a charmed tincture.[1] It'll absorb into that bite and clear away anything nasty that louse left behind. Going to have you drink something and cast a spell to warm you up. You'll be missing that cup of blood for a bit. Nothing magic about that, just good Yorkshire sense. Then I am going to need to take a bit of blood for a test. Just a drop or two."

She watched him from her seat. "Can we get this done, Virgil? Just all that and ye can conk out till Monday if you like."

1.	Tell-Tale Tincture

While the Healer spoke with Virgil, Nemo found herself tuning out. She was running the events through her head, over and over. Trying to find something, but she didn't know what. Yavin spoke to her. She glanced up and let her feet fall to the floor slouching down. Yavin was perfectly nice and had plucked them out of a swirling red pit, swept them out of the cold and rain and got Virgil to help. But Nemo didn't know Yavin. Not really. Nemo was quick to trust when she had an out, some kind of upper hand or back door, but that wasn't the case at the moment. She felt very ... she searched for the word ... disempowered.

She nodded quickly that she was fine, with a cleansing sigh. It was a moment later that she nodded a second time. Her throat closed up again like it always did when she was anxious. Nemo had to swallow a lump and lick her lips.

"With a needle. No-maj way," she whispered. "Muggle way." They'd even used antiseptic. It smelled the same as she remembered it from when she was little. She shrugged.

"They bit Virgil." The statement was meant to be in contrast to her own peril.

            "With a needle. No-maj way..." Nemo explained quietly. "They bit Virgil."

"That, ahah, that sounds about right." Yavin sat back in the chair, sighing heavily as he watched the Healer talking to her patient. "I wouldn't worry about, um, about it. These things happen to Virgil," he took off his spectacles to clean them with the inside of his dressing robe. "He just, ah, just has the face and manner a certain kind of person likes to, well, likes to hurt."

It sounded carelessly pragmatic, in Yav's deep and droning voice. He held no illusions about the boy's personality - maybe it came from being a legilimens from young but there was something about Virgil that drew in trouble and violence.

"Here," he wore his spectacles and reached into the gown pocket for a wrapped honey toffee. "It'll help." Almost any kind of food would, after giving blood. All he had on him was toffee and cough drops. Nemo probably didn't want cough drops.

Talking sleepily to Marrowbone, Virgil didn't seem aware of much happening around him. "We can get this done," he was repeating her words with a hint of forced determination. "I can get this done."

Yavin smiled to himself slightly. He gave his pupil a lot of leeway because, in spite of himself, he genuinely believed that Virgil might do great things one day. Had all the hallmarks of it - brains, talent, charm, even a bit of aristocratic money. Risk-taking behaviour and a deceptively high threshold for pain. If he wasn't squandering his efforts onstage or on pranks, Virgil could accomplish more than he realised.

Except, watching him now, exhausted by tears and Merlin knew what else, Yav felt guilty for enabling Virgil. He was human, still a kid in many ways.

"Whose idea was it?" Yav looked at Nemo, nothing interrogative about the words.

These things happen to Virgil? Excuse me? Traumatized as she was, Nemo still had a reserve of teenage salt, enough to look up at him with a frown of disdain. Who said that? Nemo was suddenly filled with a fresh wariness of Yavin Morgenthau, a hesitation about who he really was to Virgil. But getting handed a piece of Old Man candy from Yavin's context incongruous bathroom was just so weird; she took the candy and slowly unrapped it.

She didn't want it, but compliance seemed the easiest route. The candy was unwelcome in her dry mouth. She could do with some water, but didn't want to ask. She felt like a dry sponge from crying.

"Whose idea was it?"

Nemo glanced at Yavin again, a little surprised how he'd been able to ask that question without setting her against him. The candy clicked against her teeth as she considered. There wan't much to consider really. She remembered how she'd spilled her guts to Virgil after the first time she'd been banished from Camden Town Hookers.[1]

"Mine," she said with more voice than last time and a cleansing sigh. "I wanted my cigarette case back. I got banned, but I went back and Virgil came with me. Wait. ... His?"

She'd been all vinegar about it, but Virgil had been fascinated. He offered.[2]

"I agreed to the game and the stakes, though. I dunno why I do that."

But Nemo did, a little. She hated being barred from things, from thought down to, or held back. This time she'd miscalculated. And somewhere in there, she wanted to do it again.

1.	22 Oct 2011 - Don't Cry Bone Dry
2.	Earlier in that conversation.

The boy was out of it, but seemed determined nonetheless.

"Grand," she said. "Sit up, please."

The room was properly stocked with everything the healers of the first floor had common need for, all cubbied away in a honeycomb of built-in cabinetry and drawers, everything marked with tiny illegible paper labels. Most of what she needed, she'd already pulled out from when they'd first arrived. It was time do to what she did best and what she'd done many times before on cases far more interesting than this. These two kids might not see it that way, but being a dull boor in Marrowbone's wing was a good thing.

Athena handed a clear glass bottle to Virgil's free hand. It was warm to the touch and had a plastic straw. It was just lightly citrus and sweet, but of orange was all and ginger.[1]

"You get to work on that, all ye can manage. Now, ye're going to feel all warm and snuggly." Good to her promise, Athena cast a spell with an arc of her wand and a simple Greek-based incantation. It would feel like sitting by a warm fire and pink up icy fingers, toes, and noses.

Yavin and the little girl were having a chat, hopefully to get the story out of her. Athena wouldn't be comfortable letting them go without confirming she was firmly in the land of the living.

As for Virgil, she gave him a few minutes to work through the drink and for the tincture to set in. As he did, she prepared what she'd need to take his blood. The kit did look a little dramatic, but that's how magic was whenever it got the chance. There was a white-wood knife with a tiny blade. It was hard to see, but the blade was engraved with a small groove for collecting the small sample. Into a palm-sized alabaster and glass vessel she dropped in a tablespoon of amber-colored liquid, a tell-tale medium.

Done with that, she reached up and took the gauze from him. "I'll take that."

She didn't need to touch him to see the bite was looking better already. The gauze, however, looked like it had been used to blot up ink. She folded it up and set it on the tray. Werewolves and dementors, they didn't have a choice. Vampires? Honestly.

"Are you ready, Virgil?" Athena asked her mood still bright and casual. "This is the hard part, but easier than N.E.W.T.s."

1.	Wren R. Vita's Vitality Tonic

He could discern the warmth returning to his hands and feet, to his face. Colour high in his cheeks and a healthy sheen of sweat forming on his chest, like he had just broken fever. His stomach wanted to outright refuse whatever she had given him to drink but Virgil forced himself to sit up and sip, bit by bit, concentrating hard on the ginger aftertaste. It was making him feel human so there was an incentive.

The room came into focus more clearly. Not a room he'd seen in St.Mungo's before. A private room, with dull pictures on the walls and a few chairs on the other side. Yavin - what was Yavin doing all the way there? - was in one of them, chatting to Nemo.

Virgil blinked rapidly when the healer returned to retrieve the gauze, his gaze shifting to hers. He was sleepy, yes, but he could resist the siren call of slumber now. He glanced at the small knife she'd prepared, pulse picking up.

            "This is the hard part, but easier than N.E.W.T.s."

"It can't be that hard then," he heard himself say in a sulky, tired voice. "N.E.W.T.s were tedious." Virgil held out his arm and tried to pretend it wasn't shaking; this was closer to what Mortimer Gamp had done, than it was to what Hooker did. Just blood, he had told Nemo. It was only going to be a few seconds and then it would be over.

The wizard looked away, just in case he passed out from the sight of blood again. "Ready," he clenched his fist.

            ”I agreed to the game and the stakes...dunno why I do that."

Oh, he could think of a few reasons. Fear, thrill seeking tendencies, death wish, fatal attractions. Saying any of them out loud wouldn't be helpful to Nemo right now. So, meeting the vampires had been her idea and Virgil had either agreed or offered to go with her. It wouldn't surprise Yavin to know that he had said or done something Virgil-esque, not that it would have justified what happened. He just wanted to have a clear idea of events leading up to the present.

"I see," his eyes slid back to the treatment bed, thoughtful. "Sounds like you two, um, like you two deserve a nice rest."

Virgil was sitting up in bed, talking, looking a bit more alert. "N.E.W.T.s were tedious," he groused and it was the most normal thing he'd said all evening. Yavin laughed lightly to himself and looked at Nemo with a grim smile.

She appeared weary of him but, then again, most people did.

"Resilient, isn't he?" His tone was an unusual mix - the pride of a father and gratification of a scientist. "I, hm, I think he'd better stay with his parents tonight. They, ah, they'll know what to do."

Yav was not a naturally warm person but luckily for Virgil, Edgar was; warm and unquestioning and sentimental. "What about you, kid?" he nodded at Nemo, an earnest crinkle in his brow. "Got a place to, ah, to go? Staying with Virgil?"

Nemo sighed again, closed up on Yavin and watched the doctor work. They were out of danger, but things were going to get complicated. Fallout and consequences, they were somehow worse than the thing itself. It was hard to pin down her anxiety now, exactly what was worrying for her or what she wanted. She didn't like being in the hospital or being around doctors and Yavin, he was starting to creep her out. Chatting about Virgil's resilience and their earned rest. He was a Legilmancer, too. Made her feel observed thrice over. She wanted to be with Virgil, not here.

Did she have a place to go? She shrugged. Yes and no. She had a room in an apartment in Brixton - girl went back home to Taiwan for a few months. She wanted to be with Virgil, but she didn't want a fuss.

"I'm good," she said and faked a smile, sucking on the candy.

At the bed, Healer Marrowbone picked up Virgil's offered hand in hers and uncurled his fist. His hand in hers, she rested it on his knee.

"Just need your finger, sweetheart," she said, happy to deliver good news. She isolated his middle finger and picked up the enchanted blade. It was magicked for just this sort of thing, the collection and containment of potentially cursed blood. It was a precaution that she never skipped. Athena handled the knife easily and made a small nick in Virgil's finger. A shining drop of blood bloomed and swelled; Athena caught it. She touched the blade to it, and the whole of it was zoop sucked into the groove. She deposited the blood into the vessel and turned back to Virgil with a cotton ball.[1]

"Hold please. Ta."

And that was that. She slid her stool back and peeled off her gloves. The tell-tale medium would take its time, but there was nothing about Virgil that gave her any worry.

"That's it, Virgil. Job done. Head, meet pillow. There's a blanket."

Athena, then, turned round to Yavin and the girl.

"He's going to be fine," she said to Yavin with a shrug. "He's lucky, really. The bite's not cursed and I'm right certain his blood will come back clear. How old is he? Do we need to be contacting parents?"

Athena glanced over at Nemo and tested the waters. She felt nothing but blocked up suspicion and the lingering agitation from what must have been a scary experience. She looked young to Athena. Fifteen? Could be she was just spooked from what happened to Virgil - certainly she'd gathered they were both there. But if the kid had come into any contact with the vampires or had anything to eat or drink there, she'd have to have a look.

1.	Rackharrow's Bloodletting

The little lady could, apparently, look after herself, thankyouverymuch. That was the impression Yavin got from Nemo and he respected it. She didn't know or trust him - just because Virgil did, that didn't mean his friends had to. Sasha didn't, for one, nor did some of his peers-in-training.

            "That's it, Virgil. Job done. Head, meet pillow. There's a blanket."

He looked away from the little witch and got up on cue, approaching the foot of the bed with a friendly smile for the patient of the hour. His dark eyes met lucid blue ones, and a revived mindscape. Lucky. Yes, why not. Virgil Carstairs, the luckiest unlucky boy. Probably wouldn't be cursed, not if the vampire who did it was registered.

"Nineteen," Yavin answered Athena before his protégé could, "and I'll owl his, that is, his dad to come get him," he turned the smile on to the healer before jerking his head to the door. "Word with, ah, with you outside? Few questions about the, the paperwork."

Not anticipating resistance, he patted Virgil's leg reassuringly and left the room - pausing only to hold the door open for Athena.

That was anticlimactic.

Virgil stuck out his lip as he looked down at the little cotton ball pinched between his fingers. Perhaps he should stop expecting everyone around him to bleed him dry, it was very stressful. He looked up while Yavin dealt with the healer - their minds grazed one another's, his way of reassuring the older man that he wasn't about to shut down again.

At least not anytime soon. The two adults exited the room, leaving him alone with Nemo. Virgil stared at her and smiled weakly.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to break down like that," he knew he was speaking in a whisper but the room was quiet enough for the sound to travel well; he was too tired to be any louder. His fingers clutched at the hospital blanket. "Are you coming with me? You can come with me."

They had a spare bed, Adelaide's old room, if Nemo didn't want to crash in his. Virgil didn't want to say goodbye to her yet. He wanted to keep looking at her because she was alive and well and she'd been through the awful thing with him.