February 4 2009
10:15 am

The examination bed was vacant, white sheets still nicely tucked, it's folded away curtains undisturbed.  Instead, Healer Foley's patient had all his own clothes on and was lounging in an easy chair smoking a Bluesmoke Cigar.  It's thick blue-grey smoke spiraled into curls, like playful young Chinese dragons, intertwining and then disappearing quickly. 

What was wrong with Knox Greyfriar had no cure.  But he'd come to be Healed just the same.  The modern treatments for lycanthropy was stilted at best, stopped up not only by prejudices towards the ill, but by prejudices towards unconventional methods of magical Healing. 

It had been four months since the Wizengamot Elder had been attacked and bitten on the road to Hogsmeade, and those who hadn't seen him every day would notice a marked difference.  He'd lost some weight, but more often than that, he'd been told he looked.... hairier.  If it was possible for the legendarily hirsute old bear of a wizard.  He absently scratched at his beard which had always been thick.  Was it really thicker? Had his widow's peaked hairline stopped receding and was now seeking the companionship of his brow? Did he always have such fuzzy toes?

Those those preoccupied him, but none more than the fatigue.  The sensitivity to bright lights.  The more frequent temper flares.  That late evening anxiousness that made him urgently wish to up from his newspaper and out for a long walk in the woods.  A strict vegetarian, his cravings for meat were annoyingly more frequent and much stronger than they'd even been when he was just making the change to herbivore in his twenties.   

Where modern magical medicine failed, perhaps the mysterious Delilah Foley could succeed.  There'd be no cure from his curse, but perhaps relief from his daily plaguings.

Jars lined and stacked against the shelves that lined the walls surrounding a room with a bubbling cauldron where a tall dark-chocolate skinned witch, modestly wrapped in a light lime green robe was concocting a brew. Her long fingers dipped the appropriate ingredients into the mixture, as it exhaled a waft of blue fumes, finishing up the backup and normal batch of wolfsbane potion for St. Mungo’s and the upcoming full moon. The door burst open and Delilah shrugged her shoulders, turning her dread-locked head, the top-layer tightly wrapped in an elaborate bun, towards the door as her hands retreated to her hips.

A young healer-in-training scampered into the room with mousey brown hair bouncing around her own messy bun, and started to ramble about a patient on the second floor in the waiting room wanting to see her. Before Delilah could open her mouth to ask who, the young healer cut her off and started to sourly ramble on about them being a werewolf there for a “checkup.”

She paused apparently expecting the Healer-in-Charge to answer but she only raised her eyebrows in response, and then the younger witch continued to stumble over what the patient had said, which was a rather shoddy regurgitation of a very convincing argument about why a werewolf would need a checkup, despite such responsibilities belonging to the Ministry, to anyone who couldn’t tell the difference between a boy with freckles and Spattergroit symptoms.

Rather than resort to a slew questions or legilimens to figuring out exactly what was going on, Delilah picked up the fumes from a Bluesmoke and made a wild and educated guess, “Greyfriar?” she raised an eyebrow.

The younger witch guiltily nodded at Delilah and the senior witch gestured to the cauldron, “Pour ‘dat into di bottles an’ store ‘em away.”

The girl obediently began to get to work and Delilah made her way into the patient room, glancing at the empty bed before laying her eyes onto Knox. Then she gave a quick diagnosis, “You look awful an’ need ta’ shave—did you get yerself bit again?” her voice was solemn but rich sarcasm. Not that there was much else that could be done when a werewolf got big again, and she doubted that was why the withered and hairy Knox had come for a visit at the hospital.

Rather than reprimand the old friend for smoking in a hospital she gave a jerkish nod, “What’s wrong wit’ chew?”

Healer Foley appeared and Knox smiled after puffing out a light blue smoke ring.  She looked good, and as always exuded an aura of confident power.  She had since the day he met her.  She commanded respect and her skills only proved your instinct to be intimidated was spot on.  But over the years, Knox had become more comfortable with her, understanding that her normal bedside manor was nothing compared to how she'd treat you if she was truely angry.

He stayed relaxed in his chair, but startled a little abashedly at her diagnosis. He laid hand to beard protectively - ask a wizard to shave? What was he - some twenty-something upstart? 

"I shaved this morning...," he joked with mock puzzlement. But the sentiment rang true.  He had to trim much more often than he'd ever had to before.  Perhaps it was an illustion, but it certainly felt that way.

Her frank demand to explain himself yeilded a quick response.

"A werewolf gnawed on my arm last fall and since then I've felt like death walking.  I just can't shake it.  Maybe you know of something the others won't tell me."

Delilah tilted Knox a pitiable look before she was met with an explanation—a blatantly obvious one.

Of course the description was very strong for Delilah, being someone who regarded death with respect and caution. It wasn’t to be toyed with, and any similarities linking to it had best mean they were the kin of Inferi lest she find it childish, which was an acceptable word to describe some of Knox’s past behaviors.

“I ‘ave a hard time believing ‘dat you ‘aven’t been to hell n’ back for it yet,” she said in response, “A cure is one ‘ting, but you t’inkin of somet’in ‘dat’ll take ya back to life again?” she stated moreso than questioned, and then lifted up her palm in a shrug as if waiting for something to fall into it, “I’ll need-a more detail ‘den a general metaphor.”

As Knox put the cigar back between his lips, he smiled his white-toothed grin.  Always blunt, that Healer Foley; he appreciated that about her.  Other Healers might sugar-coat or tiptoe about and offer the textbook, policitally acceptable responses.  Not Delilah. 

The smile remained on his face as he inhaled the thick, sweet smoke and then faded as he prioritized a couple of thoughtful smoke rings.  He needed a second or two to gather his thoughts, to tell her exactly what was bothering him the most.  He shifted in his seat and looked at her, the smile now gone.

It took him a moment after opening his mouth to actually say anything.

"I'm tired." He frowned immediately again - words were failing.  "Always tired.  Not like sleepy.  Drained. Fatigue. Heavy."  He tried new words again and again, but none of them on their own seemed to hit it.

"And I'm angry.  All the time."

Knox had always looked like a person who might normally be angry.  He was a big man, and rough-looking.  His voice was big.  Admittedly, his temper was hot and he spared no feelings professionally or academically.  But overall, he self identified as friendly, amacable. Gentle.  He'd found nothing more fulfilling than teaching students at Hogwarts, and while new students often feared him for his appearance and authority, most of them found their way around to liking the old grizzly. 

But now, all he felt was a fraying of his nerves. 

"Seems like my first reaction to everything's anger - it never used to be that way.  Can't tell if it's the bite itself, or just the fact I got bitten," he admitted.

“Lots of t’ings ‘dat could be.” Delilah stepped near the bed and parked her rear on the edge of the patient bed, “Plenty could tick you off—irritate, or agitate you…” She twitched her chin up disapprovingly, “Like a certain Prophet article.” The Jamaican witch was not a fan of Skeeter, and she wasn’t sure if Knox had read the paper or not, but she could hardly see him without his nose critically parked in an article or two each morning. If he did read it, it might explain his mood, if he didn’t then it may have been because of his mood.

She traded her previous disgust for a more concerned lilt, “Di’ whole issue is probably a pain, in general. But chyou-aren’t easy to knock down, Knox,” she uncrossed her arms and pushed her hands down on the edge of the bed, lazily crossing her ankles simultaneously, “Whedder or not you’ve got a new chile’ in di’ house.” Her voice creeked, “he’s not an infant.”

She tapped a nail against the edge of the bed and skipped into a more didactic tone, “Fatigue n’ exhaustion make eet sound physical, especially considerin’ your bite. Anyt’ing mental—and dere’s sure to be somet’in der—won’t be clear until ‘dat is remedied.”

She leaned back and cautiously looked down at Knox, “I’m not hopeful ‘bout ‘dis first time ‘round, you’ll be a downed or hyped up guinea pig ‘til I get it right. I’ve not grown up or done much wit’ werewolves.”

Knox flashed a dangerous look at Delilah when she mentioned Skeeter's article.  Oh he'd read it.  He and Devlin both had.  How dare she bring that up as being at all related? His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared in a proto-scowl, but he exhaled slowly to tamp down the hostility.  Delilah was barkig up the wrong tree.

"I am not myself," he insisted in a low tone, rejecting the notion that his daily frustrations had something to do with this change in him.  He wiped his face with a large hand, as if to clean away the residues of what life was like home with Devlin.  Who sulked and scowled and snapped like some petulant wolf cub kept in a cage too long.  Certainly, frequently, biting the hand that fed him. 

"You are too modest as always, Delilah.  Your inexperience is still leaps ahead of the dullards you work with."  Again, that hostility, this time towards the absent healers he didn't trust to hear his case. 

"Cook something up, madam.  And make it strong."

Delilah raised a dissatisfied brow at Knox’s tone—that certainly was an interesting reaction for someone unaffected by recent turn of events. But, without actually knowing what was going on, it was meaningless to argue with Knox, especially with a continued over-defensive front.

A smile turned up at the corner of her lips as a chuckle hummed in her throat at her friend’s sweet yet bitter comment, and she promptly unsheathed her wand from her hair and Accio-ed for her bag. In a swift movement she opened the door, and reached out her arm at her basket shooting down the hallway that finally swung into her grasp.

She pulled herself and the basket back into the room with a shut of the door and strode over to a counter. Delilah flicked open the lid to her basket and plucked out dried hellebore flowers, sophorous beans, and asphodel, and crushed them into a fine seasoning. “Di boy goin’ to take t’ings up an’ finish his NEWTs?” she asked after being satisfied she had a direction to take with the potion, and took out more materials: willow chopsticks, a handful of vines, and a small bag that dropped on the counter in a fluff of moonstone powder.

She tapped her wand on the vines and they darted themselves into a small woven pouch while she removed out a jar of cephalopod heads floating in water. “Or,” she paused to fight back her habitual disgust for Ministries, and continued with only a light touch of nausea, “He not permitted for ‘dat sort of t’ing,” the jar made a hollow pop as Delilah spun off the lid, “from ‘di Ministry?”

She pulled out a bulb head and wrung out its innards into the dry mixture, and then ceremoniously powdered her hands with the moonstone powder. She tied off the vine pouch and then rolled it in her hands casting a curious smile at Knox, “Ever eaten’ live octopus?”

Knox was relieved when Madam Foley set to work on some remedy instead of pressing him for more information.  He hated being interrogated by Healers and since he'd become a werewolf there were more and more demands on his privacy. 

He just sat back in the chair and watched with mild interest as she began her work.  What very few people knew about Knox is that right out of school he'd trained as a Healer and nearly completed his apprentice ship, all before the Dark Lord was toppled by the infant Harry Potter.  He didn't keep current on the new Healing, but he knew much more than the average witch or wizard.  At least enough to know what modern Healing had to offer his condition and that what Delilah was cooking up wasn't in any of the 'books'.

Her question about Devlin made his hackles rise.  Mention of Devlin always did.  "He's charged with enough crimes for him to spend the next ten years in Azkaban - N.E.W.T.s are the least of our worries at the moment," he said, trying to keep a level tone.

"He's in my custody instead of a Ministry dungeon for the time being, and I doubt he's been spending his time studying."  Although he couldn't say for sure. 

He was about to go on when he was questioned about his past consumption of octupi. 

He balked, suprised.  He looked positively distressed.  "I'm a vegetarian."

While it wasn’t really her intent, Knox seemed to get unnaturally defensive, just making it seem as though Devlin was entangled in the root of his issues. The mask he bottled over his building aggression, frustration, was a thin one and Delilah was able to sense with a glance of eye contact after he responded to her.

So she let herself sink into his thoughts, tagging onto the thought of Devlin before a jarring horror of consuming animal flesh nearly ran her off course.

“Di’ method is my focus, not th’ creature.” Delilah’s gaze dropped to the end of his cigar which she tapped with her wad of a concotion. With a shaking sizzle it sparked into a mass of writhing and wiggling vines and began to strangle the healer’s hand. “’Dese cords are made from Devil’s Snare,” she picked up the two chopsticks and calmy but forcefully pried it between her palm and the unwilling thing, “Reanimation of di’ plant iz a natural side effect,” then she wiggled the chopsticks around while keeping her strangled hand calm, and the cords naturally diverted their strangulation to the two sticks, and with a bit more manipulation of movement the Jamaican witch was able to wrap the viney ropes around the two sticks, “but it keeps it in control as it goes trough you. It’s a drastic drug, an’ must be swallowed like a live octopus.”

The dark thin hand passed the potion on a stick to Knox, “Jus’ put it in your mouth and gulp it down, swallow it whole. No chewin’ or anyt’ing or you’ll be here a bit longer ‘den you prepared for.” She refrained from mentioning anything about the parts of an octopus she had to use, but she doubted this would be the potion that Knox would need, now realizing Devlin was a source of frustration. Now she just needed to separate the werewolf induced symptoms from the teenager induced aggravation.

She paused as she sank deeper into her friend’s mind, and waited for him to take the potion, “As for Devlin, as much as you dislike talking about him, I t’ink he needs guidance, an outlet, before he’s too far gone, and you end up burdening yourself wit’ everyt’ing ‘dat could and couldn’t ‘ave been.” She raised a single forefinger with a pointed and chiding look of concern. “Your distaste for each’other needn’t be the t’ing putting you both in misery.”

Still more talk about his boy.  Still!  All the problems in his life and all anyone could see what the teenage thug living in his den?  Even his lycanthropy was more Devlin than werewolf, eh?  He scowled at Delilah because he knew she wouldn't take it personally. 

He reached out for the chopsticks that held the writhing, dark green little plant.  Re-animated little plant.  It wriggled and squirmed with great energy, as if it were performing for a lover. 

"I'm meant to eat this...?" He asked, his scowl giving way to the hopeful expression of a little boy who didn't want to swallow down a giant pill.  "Whole?"

But she'd said he was to do exactly that and her icy eyes was the punctuation on the reassuarance.   His mouth went dry involuntarily, just when he needed the moisture most.  He sat up in his chair to lean forward on his needs, and started down the wriggling Devil's Snare in his hand.  He opened his mouth, experimentally; licked his teeth.   

Like he was taking a shot, Knox exhaled all the air from his lungs, opened wide and all but thrust the tangle down his gullet.  For what seemed like hours, Knox thought the lump would stay at his glottis and suffocate him.  As his uvula did battle with the Devil's Snare, his face contorted in pain, but he finally forced it down. 

It wiggled and squiggled all the way down.  He went for his cigar right afterward, taking a long draw and collapsing back into the chair.

"Gaaaaah!  You're a horrible person."

Delilah watched Knox down the lively herb, ready to handle anything should he choke, but he seemed fine besides some momentary struggling. Once he took up his cigar again and began inhaling it again she promptly picked it out of his fingers, "I only get werst," she said with a smile threatening to peer from her lips. She did not want him smoking lest the effects of the concoction went completely awry, and he shouldn't have been smoking anyway so she held custody of his bad habit until the medecine had done it's work.

"Need t'let it sit," she said with a deadening drop in her tone, twirling his cigar into her fingers, "So now tell me sometin' 'bout Snark," she said opening up another avenue of discussion that would certainly itch at his nerves, but would prove to illuminate just how the medecine was affecting him, she breathed out her own huff of smoke[1], something from the emotions weighing on the back of her stomach to keep her calm, and just to further annoy Knox and his want for a smoke.

1.	Voodoo: smoking used as a calming method

Knox fingers remained open in resignation as his blue-smoke, nightshade-laced cigar was taken from him.  He sat back in his chair, lips pursed to prevent himself from protesting.  But of all the Healers out there, he trusted Madam Foley the most and if she wanted his cigar, she could have it.  For now.  At least she seemed to indicate she didn't intend for him to kick the habit - just to let the writhing little gremlin in his stomach stew.  She herself was drawing from the Penumbra Bluesmoke, as practiced as he had been.

"Snark?" he said, unprepared for the turn in conversation. What interest did Delilah Foley have in Analiza Snark? "Is your Naomi having some trouble?  Snark's less compromising that I was, certainly, but I hardly think a bright girl like Naomi'd have much occasion to be up in that tower.  Or is this about S.A.W.S.?"  That had to be it.

"She could at least attempt to hide her clear bias against werewolves," he said grumpily and rubbed his fingers together, his mind absently seeking repose in the Penumbra Bluesmoke.   He reached out for it, a small gesture with his fingers, asking Delilah to hand it back over.

"Let's have it. Your Devil's Snare's stopped its vexation."

Delilah's lips twitched into a knowing smile, "If she has, I 'aven't caught word of eet," she knew first hand what a brat her daughter could be, so she honestly wouldn't mind if Snark decided to put her foot down, "Chile's capable of it," she admitted with grating acceptance a harsh smirk. Then she remained silent as he moved the discussion on his own.

• "She could at least attempt to hide her clear bias against werewolves,"

"Europeans have a habit of puttin' up guards 'dat way--if there's somethin'..." her lilt stippling off in search, rolling back with it's prize, "awkward, t'tackle." Delilah knew the bias came in all shades, skintone, werewolves, Veela--things she could be equally uncomfortable with, if she chose to be. She pushed out a huff of fume from her own gut again, keeping the cigar by her side burning of it's own narcotics.

• "Let's have it. Your Devil's Snare's stopped its vexation."

She was pleased with his sudden calmness and level-headed reasoning, so she placed the cigar back into his hand, celarly the Snare's effects subsiding, but still poking at those buttons, "You gwoin' to take 'dis stuff, once a week, fer a month," she turned her back to check her little bag and make sure she had the ingredients, hoping it would also invite Knox to drop any last signs of agitation or harsh side-effects of the potion, "preferably by yer boy, someone livin' with you," she twisted her view back down to him, sitting in the chair, "and, possibly yer best critic," she said with highbrows and a satisfied smile.