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fletchxr:

It was simple recon — or it was supposed to be, checking the lay of the land before he tried his luck in the records room. He’d never liked hospitals, the abrasive sterile smells and the harshly scrubbed whites and St. Mungo’s had only grown steadily worse as the months passed by, transformed from house of healing to something closer to a military operation — Mundungus had made it his business to steer clear of state-owned property of late and the low humming that echoed down an empty corridor was a fair indication of why. 

Hospitals were where the sick people were.

“Temporarily displaced.” His head turned to assess the threat, the trail of brown that followed her fingertips and that unsettling expression on her face. Alecto Carrow was a familiar sight within Knockturn but that didn’t make her a welcome one, particularly in places he’d rather not be noticed. “Miss Carrow. Are you lost?”

There was an glint of hostility in her gaze as it slid through the man. She thought of the woman coughing up blood in a healer’s robes only a floor below them, spitting out the words Alecto had forced her to repeat until her throat was sore. And the thought of having a tie to Knockturn wandering through that very building left her vaguely - irritated.

“No.” A small step forward, only enough to properly examine Mr.Borgin’s features. People were only truly worth noticing when they didn’t want to be, and no one that dealt in Knockturn truly did. “In fact, I’m rather familiar with the building. It would be my pleasure to help you find your way.” The politeness of the words seemed distant, as if echoing from somewhere other than the vacant lips it had left. She wasn’t expecting a refusal.

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“I suppose they lack discipline.” Her gaze met the woman’s, unflinching. Alecto remembered the scent of blood crawling up the walls the night of the battle. Bodies piling up on the stairs, faces frozen in agony, reminiscent of her brother’s victims... She could have carved order out of the carnage, if given the chance. People like Slughorn and Prewett couldn’t. “Yes, professor Slughorn. He’s a rather... Revolting man, isn’t he?”

She didn’t wait for the woman’s acquiescence, turning away to lick the last spot of chocolate from her fingers. Had Slughorn’s famed opportunism not earned him the right to live in the new order, and she would have gladly watched the slimy thing drown in his own vomit.

“Yes, you should have.”

The Carrow woman was, in a word, creepy on a good day. But Molly had seen what both she and her brother could do. She’d seen them at Hogwarts, had been in the castle when their wands had been snapped in two. Molly tried to keep her tone neutral, but she wasn’t sure exactly if the woman was be facetious or not - it was a hospital, after all. Shouldn’t there be healers? 

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Disease must run in the family, she decided. The Carrows had always looked quite sickly, Alecto even more so in her opinion. She bit her lip, looking for a way out. But then Alecto spoke again, asking questions that were meant to taunt. Her lips pursed in spite of herself, knowing that it was in the opinion of many a Death Eater that she was not truly one of them. Fine, so be it. 

“There’s been a rash of students cursing one another. I came to get some healing potions - Professor Slughorn hasn’t been particularly forthcoming with potions as of late.”

She paused, a little hopeless feeling. “You’re quite sure you haven’t seen any healers lurking about? Perhaps I should have made an appointment.”

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“It did.”  Her dark eyes narrowed into slits, eyeing the woman with thinly veiled hostility. Alecto held a certain distaste for people who didn’t know when to be quiet. They reminded her of mother, she supposed.  And yet, there was a small thrill in watching the girl take a step back. Alecto tilted her head, the barest hint of a grin on her lips. “You won’t tell on me, will you?”

There was something about her that made Amelia take a small step back without thinking, jaw clenching as the woman looked her over. She was unnerving, admittedly, but Amelia would drop dead before admitting that. Her eyes glanced to the side as the last of the chocolate was wiped off on the wall, and she cleared her throat. “Obviously not anymore,” she started slowly, glancing back to the woman. “The wall took care of it for you.”

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“No.” There was a glint in her eye when she stepped closer. Just near enough to smear the remaining chocolate right next to the woman, to imagine how her mouth would look contorted in pain. The arrogant ones were always screamers. “I don’t.” 

“Lost?”

Amelia hardly considered herself lost. She’d been to St. Mungo’s several times over the course of the last few months, though her visits as of late had started to decrease. Her father was sickly and had been coming to St. Mungo’s for appointments when he hadn’t been working himself to death–of course, he wasn’t overworking now. Quite the opposite, if his and her mother’s forced retirements were anything to go by. She’d meant to come by and say hello to one of the nurses who’d treated him since he hadn’t been back in a while, but now a woman was coming her direction and smearing chocolate over the walls–enough to make Amelia start to think twice.

“No, I’m not lost. Are you sure you aren’t? And, um… You might want to wash your hands.”

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“There’s not a great many of those around.”

The tone was dry. Alecto gave no sign of recognizing the woman before her, though the shade of red hair alone would have been enough to. There was nothing tying her to the other Death Eaters other than their fealty to the same Man. Not when so many were dull, cowardly and self-serving, content with feasting on the spoils of a war they had spilled no blood for.

“No.” She stepped closer, eyeing the Prewett woman with thinly veiled amusement. “I’m waiting for mother’s appointment. She’s very ill.” Her tone had turned mechanic, entirely devoid of emotion until the bitter little sting returned to her voice. “Shouldn’t you be moulding young minds, Professor Prewett?”

Molly remembered a time where Hogwarts castle had been a closed system - when it could operate freely, with little need for anything outside its walls. If Madam Pomfrey had needed healing potions, she could turn to Professor Slughorn. If Slughorn needed ingredients for those potions, he could turn to Sprout, who would cheerfully hand them over. But now, the system was interrupted - key players gone, and things were hoarded like rations during war.

That was, after all, what it seemed like. That they were at war, still. 

So when Slughorn had denied Madam Pomfrey some healing potions after a particularly nasty couple of hexes that were exchanged between students, the frail older woman hadn’t had much hope. Until Molly had stepped in. 

Admittedly, she had just wanted to get out of the castle for a short while - since Dumbledore’s death, the school had a cold emptiness that hung around it, chilling Molly to her core at times. An escape into the real world, at times, felt like her only respite. 

But it seemed St. Mungo’s wasn’t much better. The halls as she arrived seemed barren, empty, as though it had been emptied out. She frowned, which only deepened at the sound of a lilting wizarding lullaby - which sounded quite creepy coming out of a woman that Molly recognized all too well. She considered simply walking the other way, but then Alecto finished singing, and looked up at her. 

Molly blanched, biting her bottom lip before retorting, “Just looking for a healer, Alecto.” She paused, then asked, “Are you?”

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January 21st, 1979

St Mungo's Hospital

Her fingers left a brown trail upon the wall, the chocolate long since discarded in the nearest rubbish bin. No one reprimanded her. Those were the quietest hours in St.Mungo’s, the spaces in between shifts when it was more hers than theirs.

She began to hum a song of her childhood. Something Binky used to sing on their feverish nights, in the squeaky little voice Alecto had so often wanted to rip from her throat. And she didn’t look up when the steps drew closer, nor when she felt the wanderer near. It was only once the song was finished that she tilted her head towards the intruder. They did not belong there - in her halls.

“Are you lost?”

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a girl is told she is nothing. she hums into the soft dark - just wait,till i come back & eat you bare.till your heart cries blue. till your bones are fear

Scherezade Siobhan, log #1 (Published in The Undertow Review)

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