A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
~Mark Twain

Dante Ward in a foul mood was nothing unheard of among those who were acquainted with him.  However, the usual air of moodiness was completely amplified by the fact that he had already been to St. Mungo’s once in the last twenty-four hours and it had been so busy due to there Werewolf attacks that he had grown tired of waiting and left.

He had tried to treat the gash on his arm that was currently seeping some sort of foul green-ish goop himself with potions as the creature responsible would certainly fall under the category of ‘top secret.’  But, nothing had worked, and now he had to tread carefully to try to get someone competent to assist him.

As he was still breathing, it didn’t appear to be terribly poisonous, although his arm was starting to go a bit numb.  He also attributed that to the various attempts at an antidote he had taken the evening before.  Still, all he wanted was to be patched up and on his way back to the office.  There was work to be done and a lot that required his attention.

“Please let them send in someone with half a brain instead of some mindless twit whose just completed their training,” he mumbled, running a hand over his face.

Hannah hadn’t slept. She’d worked the day shift yesterday, experiencing the most disorganisation, noise and over crowdedness a magical hospital ward could take. Then during the night she’d been dragged to the ministry, gone home for a change of clothes and returned once more to St Mungo’s. Therefore when the witch looked at the file in her hand, she didn’t register the name. Her sleep deprived eyes took in the important information. The injury, patient’s age, details of any previous treatments, but they didn’t glaze over the name.

As the healer walked to the small curtained off cubicle, she took a sip of strong black coffee and pulled a face. It had an utterly deplorable taste to it. A bitter, revolting, strong taste that overpowered her senses. But it contained caffeine which is why the mug of the dark liquid remained in her hand as Hannah pulled the curtain back, eyes still staring at the chart.

“I trust you haven’t been waiting too long. We have been exceptionally in demand today.” And yesterday. The woman put her coffee mug on the table by the entrance to the cubicle and lifted her spare hand to brush her messy hair back from her eyes, pushing her glasses up onto the top of her head with it.
This was when she saw who her patient was. It wasn’t even his features that seemed the most pronounced. It was the aura surrounding him. The aura of annoying, grumpy and unfriendly.

The woman’s stomach dropped and any colour she had in her cheeks vanished. She really didn’t want to deal with him right now. “What did you anger?”

He nearly groaned when he looked up to see the all too familiar face of one Hannah Bombay, part of him glad that someone compitent would be tending to his injured right arm.  She didn't exactly appear though as carefully put together as she had when she was working strictly for the Ministry.  Dante's guess was that she had been on call the previous day when chaos erupted at St. Mungo's and was running on little to no sleep.  He wasn't sure at this point what could be worse, one of those buffoon children who fancied themselves healers with virtually no real experience or Bombay with a shorter fuse then usual.

The fact that she was clearly not at her best mixed with their long running history of exchanging jabs and insults meant he had to tread carefully or else he would likely find himself needing to be attended to by those who worked up on the forth floor. He respected Bombay, but getting a long was something that rarely truly happened.

“What did you anger?”

“If I knew, I would have been able to figure out a way to take care of this myself,” he told her, trying to keep the harsh edge from his voice.  After all, he needed her help.  While they might not exactly get along, he wasn't stupid enough to think he could get away with truly irritating her and still expect that she would help him.  "There's only so much I can tell you, given this is work related."

Running his left hand over his face, he said, "The truth is I'm not even entirely sure what did this.  It was a creature, and I'm guessing from the green goop that when it bit me there was some sort of venom that is now making my right arm feel like I slept on it all night and the circulation has yet to return."

Hannah Bombay had been in her new job for merely four days. She had only finished working full time at the ministry 6 days ago. Already she had dealt with a catastrophic incident which had thrown this particular St Mungo’s ward into disarray and bewilderment and now she was faced with the permanently petulant and unpalatable head of the Department of Mysteries. If the healer hadn’t have been so matter of fact about everything, accepting the fact that she ran her own life, she would have grumbled quite audibly about how extremely unfair life just happened to be.

As it was she simply decided to get her job done and get out of there. But his first remark already made Bombay want to smirk. “Of course you could.” She responded plainly, rereading the notes before placing them on the table and stepping around the foot of the bed to near him and the delightfully green and infected arm.

The older wizard continued to inform her that he couldn’t tell her everything and what he thought had occurred. Of course, secrets from his department. What a revelation! Hannah swore they must just sit in a large office on comfortable leather sofas dreaming up new mysterious ideas and things to tell people before saying “I can’t tell you, its work related”. They were just a load of overgrown boys who were authorized to play with hazardous, volatile and explosive potions on an oversized budget.

Clean hands took his wrist and she lifted the arm, not exactly favouring being this close to a grumpy old wizard that revelled in exasperating her. Her fingers took his hand and she examined the fingertips. They’d turned purple. “I see that.” With no warning, she dropped the arm again.

Hannah gave the wound a poke with her index finger and swiftly moved it downwards in a sweeping motion against the bare flesh, scooping up some of the bright green puss. That would no doubt hurt but the young healer didn’t much mind. He no doubt deserved a little pain. The finger was lifted up to her eye level to examine. “You didn’t clean the wound sufficiently when it happened.” She wiped the green puss on a tissue from beside the bed and threw that in the dustbin.

“If you had of, the seepage wouldn’t be at this augmented level. The venom left on the flesh reacted with the air.” The healer made eye contact with him. “You’re lucky you still have an arm.” She frowned. “Well...should still have an arm.”