Thick, smoky air assaulted Adam’s senses as he opened the door to the pub. Around the room sat groups of witches and wizards dressed in their work robes. Above him, the second floor remained open, but like an old time salon, a rap around balcony allowed people from the above floor to see down into the main tavern area. All the wood seemed stained with age, and it gave the room a slightly claustrophobic feel even with the open second floor.
Adam scanned the room. At the bar, he saw the back of a young man with thick, curly dark hair talking to a thin witch perched upon the stool. Unlike many of the wizards here, she did not wear robes but instead dressed in what could be considered a tasteful green dress with a black sash cutting under her busts.
Adam approached the bar and took a seat next to the girl. “Evening,” Adam said leaning around the girl to stare at the man.
“W-what . . .”
“Nice to see you, too, Emery,” Adam replied as he waited for the floundering Healer to shut his gaping mouth. “Just stopped by for a drink.”
“Like hell you did,” Emery muttered. ‘He’s had a fair amount to drink. He doesn’t have enough spine to snap at me in a sober mindset.’ Adam waved to the bar tender.
“Three beers please,” Adam ordered before turning his attention back to Emery and his female friend.
“Oh, you’re the bastard-arse of a boss,” the young woman said without a hint of shame in her voice. Adam chuckled and extended his hand to her.
“You must be the rather unfortunate lady Emery is hitting on tonight. I’m Healer Adam Venturini.”
The woman tossed her curtain of black hair over her shoulder before giving Adam her hand. “I’m Pansy, and I think I have things under control.”
“May I speak to my Healer alone for a moment?” Adam asked Pansy. The petit girl looked between the two of them and shrugged.
“I suppose so. I’ll be upstairs if you want to see me later. Room 215.” With that, she hopped off the bar stool and walked away towards the stairs. Adam watched Emery’s eyes following her.
“I won’t keep you long. I can tell when a man’s about to have a good night,” Adam said as he leaned over towards Emery. The younger Healer couldn’t conceal a huge grin from splitting across his face. “Anyway, Emery, I want you back, but not on the Ward right now.”
“Huh? What do you want me to do, then?” Emery asked. “I’m a Healer. I’m supposed to work on the Ward.”
“Several of the patients should be ready for a move in at least a week, and when they’re gone, it’s going to get quiet, so I want you to watch the Ministry for me,” Adam told Emery, who simply cocked an eyebrow at the request.
‘Do I have to explain everything in infinitesimal detail for him?’ Adam sighed before saying, in a slower, steadier voice, “Go around and keep your ears open. I specifically want you to go to the Ministry and look around for me. God knows they’re keeping more than one eye on me. It wouldn’t hurt to have an eye on them.”
“O-okay. I don’t see what good it’ll do . . . but whatever,” Emery said as he jumped down off his bar stool. ‘Clearly I am losing to his need to get laid,’ Adam thought dryly as he, too, finished his drink and stood to leave.
“I’ll send you an owl in the morning. I’m not convinced you’ll remember this clearly.”
“You know,” Emery’s voice began to rise, “I’m a Healer because I actually want to work with patients!”
“Yes, I know, and I suppose I’ll have to put you back on the Ward soon,” Adam turned on his heels to leave, but then turned and said, “Room 215.”
A goofy grin spread over Emery’s face as he headed for the stairs. Adam shook his head as he pushed the door open and exited into the chilly October evening. The wind whipped into him, and his green robes didn’t help to protect him from the nipping breeze. Adam turned down the street to find a place where he could Apparate under a bit of cover. Once out of the glare of the street lights, Adam disappeared with a pop and reappeared in the alley outside of St. Mungo’s.
‘What else do I have to do tonight but work? A bit sad, really, but who am I supposed to visit? The company I kept when in London before the war are either dead, in prison, or people I should stay away from if I want to keep my job; if there’s one thing I want, it is my job.’
Adam strode through the door, and the witch at the desk shot him a quick look but went back to reading her magazine when she realized it was only Adam again. Climbing up the back stairwell, Adam arrived at the fourth floor fairly quickly and headed down to his Ward. As he passed the Sanguine-Levette Ward, he thought, ‘Barnes is probably not here right now. It’s a Friday night, too, so I probably won’t see her until Monday. She’s probably seen enough of me these past several weeks, I dare say.’
Adam flung open the doors to his own Ward, and they clanged back together after he passed through them. Adam looked at the door to his office, but paused and looked at the four grey curtains. As he stared at them, something seemed amiss; then, he noticed the one curtain had been drawn back several inches and not completely closed.
‘I didn’t leave it that way,’ Adam thought as he drew his wand and inched slowly closer to the curtain. As he went to peek inside, the bottom of the curtain swirled, as if disturbed by a breeze, and Adam shouted, “’Stupefy!”
“Damn it, Venturini,” a familiar voice hissed. “Shut up before someone hears you. You’re lucky I wasn’t standing in the way.”
Adam kept his wand raised but flung back the curtain. Immediately, the woman with the long, dark curls tugged it shut again. Adam scowled and stepped into the room. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you get in?” Adam snapped as he stared around at the woman and the dark-haired girl, which seemed to be a younger carbon copy of her mother, lying in the bed.
“That lobby witch was fairly easy to confound,” the woman said as she gestured, her wand still clasped in her white knuckles, towards the bed where the girl with the same black curls lay. Adam stared down at the young girl’s face, which had started to blossom with sores.
“Damn it, Sloane, what do you think you’re doing?” Adam snapped as he went over to examine the girl.
“I don’t know what spell did this,” the woman said as she crossed the room to stand by the bed. “Once you fix her, there’s a boy in the other room. These two empty beds were beside each other.”
Adam snapped his neck up to look at Sloane for a moment. “Did you disturb any of my patients?”
“No! We took these two beds and didn’t draw another curtain. I knew they were sound proof, so I kept it open to listen for you. Good thing I know you tend to curse first and ask question later.” Sloane crossed her arms as Adam turned his attention back to the girl. He prodded her several times with his wand and performed some quick spells under his breath.
“I need to get some potions. I’ll be right back. Shut that curtain and stay in here.” Adam heard the drape swish shut behind him as he strode down the hallway to his office. ‘That damned woman is going to get me in more trouble than I can manage. What was she thinking? If her being here wasn’t a disaster in itself, she chose the two beds right beside my priority patient’s room. I just need to keep them out of there . . . I wonder who else she brought with her?’
Adam tapped the door of his office and flung open his cabinets to pull out some potion vials before slamming his office door behind him. The liquids sloshed inside their glass containers because Adam didn’t slow his pace from a job while going back to the rooms. When he entered, he made sure to shut the curtain completely before leaning over the girl.
“Envererate!” The girl opened her eyes immediately and began to gasp. Adam put his hand behind her and sat her up in time for her to vomit blood onto the sheets. “Swallow this,” Adam told the girl after he cleared her mouth. “Come now; just get it down.”
Adam raised the vial to the girl’s mouth and ensured she drank the entire thing. Immediately, the sores began to look less severe, and as Adam put her back to sleep, the sores were nothing more than red marks on her skin. “She has internal injuries, but I can’t tell what those are yet. That was a nasty jinx,” Adam commented as he pulled up the girl’s shirt to check for additional injuries.
The right side of the girl’s body, between her hip and her breasts, seemed puffy and swollen, and Adam could see bruising already. A livid, purple colour already covered the right part of the girl’s back beside where her stomach showed injury. Adam ran his fingers and his wand along her right side, and a quick look at her swollen and bruised right arm told him she’d broken it in several places.
“I want to see the other person,” Adam said as he laid the girl back down and covered her with a blanket. Sloane drew back the curtain and they proceeded into the next room. However, beside the boy with blood sticking to the right side of his face, three other people stood around the room.
‘I don’t need this mess. That damned Ministry is already breathing down my neck, and I get six fugitives in my ward,’ Adam mentally raged as he stormed over to the bed and immediately began to work on the boy’s head wound.
“He got that when he Apparated him here,” a burly, thickset boy said. Adam snorted.
“You Apparated with two injured people? They both may have under gone splicing. Does anyone ever think?” Adam spat as he finished closing up the bleeding on the boy’s scalp underneath his curly, thick chestnut hair that stuck to his damp, ashen forehead.
“We had no choice!” Sloane snapped. “The Aurors found our hiding place.”
Adam sucked in a deep breath to keep himself from turning and shouting at the woman. Instead, he removed the boy’s shirt and began to check for more injuries. Indeed, he found a large gash on the boy’s left shoulder that extended down his back. Adam jabbed his wand into it and began to seal the skin back together like one would mend a ripped seam.
Adam looked up at the four spectators when he finished mending the serious wound. “You’re damned lucky that cut wasn’t deeper.” Adam’s eyes scanned the crowd. His eyes fell upon the burly boy first. “You -- are you Goyle’s son? I think I saw your picture on a wanted sign in the Ministry. You know, they got your father in prison.”
“He knows that,” a woman, who had been leaning casually against the wall, snarled. Adam turned his gaze onto her and only shook his head.
“Famke Iversen. I’ve never had the pleasure.” Adam’s sarcasm was met with a narrow, disdainful gaze. The woman filled her dark, auburn hair over her shoulder. The mane of hair extended down to her waist and looked unkempt, but if it had been combed, it wasn’t hard to imagine it would have been a beautiful and silky sheet of crimson.
Adam’s eyes fell upon the tall, blonde man with the pock-marked face and hard, brutal features that seemed carved out of granite. “Rowle,” Adam’s voice remained casual and almost cheery. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. I believe you’ve been to Azkaban since then?”
However, the man kept his head bent down and didn’t respond to Adam’s comments. Adam’s eyes fell upon his shaking hands, which were clutching fistfuls of his tattered and dirty robe instead of a wand. A frown darkened Adam’s features as he turned his gaze back upon the pale face of Sloane Davis, who looked like a spectre with her matted, dark hair and thick, brown cloak. “Is he well?” Adam asked Sloane as he motioned to Rowle.
The woman gave the blonde man a quick look and shrugged. “I suppose he’s confounded. He seems fine.”
A frown continued to tug down the corner’s of Adam’s mouth. He rose from the boy’s bedside without taking his eyes off Rowle. “He looks shaken up. Rowle, did you get hit with a curse?”
“Don’t answer him,” Sloane snapped. Adam’s eyes darted back to the woman. His eyebrows arched upwards as he gazed back at Rowle, who began to nod vigorously when Sloane spoke while Rowle continued to clutch his robes and keep his gaze lowered on the ground.
“You have him under the Imperius,” Adam stated as he raised his wand and pointed it at Sloane. “You will tell me why. I thought he was a loyal follower of your Dark Lord? He was quite chummy with your brother. What? Did he change his mind?”
“Azkaban rattled him,” Sloane muttered in a voice that sounded like it could boil oil. “Dolhov told me he put him under the Imperius after they broke out of Azkaban. He starts babbling and shouting sometimes, so we have to keep him under the Imperius.”
Adam shook his head, but he kept his gaze upon Sloane. “Well, chances are his mind might be completely fried,” Adam muttered. “I suppose that’s how you treat your brother’s best mate? Did you know if he was under the Imperius before he went to Azakban?”
“I don’t know.” Sloane threw her hands up in the air. “Evan seemed a bit cool towards him after the War really started. I think he was getting cold feet.”
Adam looked back over at Rowle, who seemed to have heard nothing of the conversation. He noticed Famke’s predatory gaze remained trained upon the shaking man, whose knuckles had grown white clutching his robe.
“Come on, Adam,” Sloane begged, “come back and take care of Tracey.”
Adam shook his head and shut the grey curtain behind him as only he and Sloane entered the room with the injured girl. “I don’t know what the hell the lot of you were thinking,” Adam muttered as he began to prod Tracey’s injuries with his wand. “All six of you are wanted for fleeing the battle of Hogwarts, you flee from Aurors, and then you waltz into my Ward? Do you know how tight of a watch the Ministry is keeping on me?”
“You never refused favours for us before. You certainly never turned down the Malfoys when they brought bloody people to your very doorstep.” Sloane’s voice remained low, but Adam did not miss the bitterness in her remarks.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you things aren’t like the first war. I fled the country because I thought I might end up in prison, and my association with your lot didn’t help.”
“We help our own,” Sloane stated in a soft, matter of fact way. ‘That’s true. That’s very true. They are my own, as much grief as they’ve caused me,’ Adam thought as he rubbed a thick, viscous potion on the girl’s bruises.
“Tell me, how did you get out of Hogwarts? I heard a bunch of you escaped in the chaos,” Adam asked.
“I followed the Malfoys,” Sloane stated as she hovered by Tracey’s bed. “I knew that, if we won, Tracey and I would walk back into the room and celebrate.”
“And since everything went to shit, you ran like hell,” Adam supplied the answer to the alternative scenario. “You don’t have to tell me how it feels to cut your losses and run. Although, I see you haven’t been able to get out of the country. You can’t Apparate out, and the Aurors have been more vigilant than ever since they’ve swelled their ranks again.”
“Don’t remind me,” Sloane snapped. “I’ve lost more in these wars than you can even imagine.”
Adam grinned, and a scowl crossed Sloane’s face. “I have to concede this to you. I didn’t lose my husband, my brother, and have my father die in Azkaban.”
“My brother and my husband went down like heroes,” Sloane whispered in a voice that was as strained as her white knuckles still clutching her wand. “My father didn’t betray the cause. I was every bit as god-damned loyal as they were. Did you know that the Dark Lord only gave three women the Dark Mark? Only three! I was a Rosier! I was just as loyal as my brother and my father!”
Adam didn’t speak for a moment as he began to reduce the swelling in Tracey’s arm. Finally, he laid the girl back down and said, “If you were so god-damned proud of your brother and husband, don’t you think you should have done something less foolish than drag your daughter into this? Is she even of age? Of course, you married Edmund Davis when you were sixteen, and he was over twice your age.”
“Don’t you dare judge me, Adam Ventruini!” Sloane said in a white hot voice. “Don’t you dare blame what happened to Tracey on me! She chose to help me. She did her family proud!”
Adam simply shook his head as he turned to look up at Sloane. She pressed her lips together when she saw the scorn in Adam’s gaze. “No, Sloane, I don’t just blame you. The lot of you that went and joined some Dark Lord’s army or Dumbledore’s little militia and had children should have damned well known that this would be the cost. People die in war. Did you think your children would be an exception?”
Sloane knelt down, a deep, simmering anger in her dark eyes. She opened her mouth, but then she glanced down at Tracey, and instead she clasped it shut. As she stared at her daughter, the ferocity in her eyes still burned, but a deep frown drug the corners of her mouth down into her face. After a moment, Sloane muttered, “I lost a lot. I just want my only child to live. Is that wrong, Adam?”
Adam rose onto his feet and stared down at mother and daughter, which seemed to be two figures made from the same mould. “Did you know,” Adam began to speak in a soft, subdued voice, “that eighty percent of those who get magical wasting are women? Men seem to live longer or die from other causes, but women . . .”
“I can tell you why,” Sloane replied in a voice that could not mask the depth of her bitterness and sorrow. “You men don’t have the children. You have no idea what it means to hold another life inside of you. That child is part of your very flesh, and when you have that baby . . . Let’s just say that if Tracey died, I would want to lie down and die as well.”
‘I can’t argue with that,’ Adam thought as he crossed his arms. ‘I can’t say there is anyone in my life that would make me want to give up living. I love my mother and my step-brother, but even when I thought they were dead, I wasn’t even close to feeling this kind of sorrow. That girl really is the only thing she has left in the world.’
“In the end, magical wasting may actually kill us all,” Adam whispered, and Sloane looked up at him. It didn’t escape Adam’s attention that her eyes had begun to mist up, but he ignored the woman’s emotions and continued to talk in a soft, but matter of fact, tone. “No one really understands magical wasting. All we know is that traumatic events seem to trigger it prematurely. You see, age can’t kill wizards, but what does kill us seems to be the magic we have used all our lives turning back on us. Some wizards seem to lose the ability to use magic very quickly, and they die shortly thereafter. With magical wasting, the person lingers on for years as they lose their ability to do magic. Of course, magical wasting‘s prime feature is the lack of will to live anymore.”
Sloane snorted and stood up from the bed, seemingly unimpressed by Adam’s factual tirade. “When will she be well?” Sloan asked.
“I’ll meet you “ and you alone “ outside in several days. You should leave soon. Feel fortunate you did not come at any other time because I’ve had the Head Auror and the Head of Magical Law Enforcement snooping around my Ward.”
“You’re not serious,” Sloane balked at Adam’s words. She physically backed away, and her eyes darted to the closed curtain. “Will they be safe?”
“It should take several days, but yes, I think I can get them out of here before any more Aurors come through,” Adam said. His shoes clicked across the floor as he walked over and pulled back the curtain to the other room. “Who is the boy, by the way?”
“Merrick Montague,” Sloane supplied. Adam nodded and waved his hand to usher the other three figures out of the room. Famke and Goyle were both leaning against the wall, and they moved to leave.
“Come on, Rowle,” Sloane snapped at the man who hadn’t stopped staring at the floor. However, at Sloane’s command, he perked his head up. ‘Oh, he’s a mess. That one should be having a permanent stay in this hospital,’ Adam thought as he looked into Rowle’s glazed and unfocused topaz coloured eyes. After Sloane repeated her order, Rowle shuffled across the room and exited ahead of Sloane.
“You should just turn him in,” Adam whispered. “That one is in bad shape.”
“Nonsense,” Sloane murmured and waved her hand as if that would dispel all of Adam’s worries. Adam sighed and rolled his eyes to stare up at the ceiling. “I’ll see you in three days “ very late “ at one, maybe?”
“I’ve got nothing better to do than hang around this Ward,” Adam replied as he pulled the curtain shut on the sleeping boy and ushered Sloane out into the hallway with the other three fugitives. Famke and Goyle seemed squeamish in the open space of the Ward, but Rowle simply seemed not to notice the change in scenery at all.
“Take the back stairway. The lobby witch probably has dozed off, so don’t confound her unless you have to,” Adam instructed mostly Sloane, but he hoped as least one of the other three paid attention. With a quick nod, Sloane grabbed Rowle’s arm, and the four of them left the Ward. When the double doors clanged shut, Adam groaned, ran his hands over his face, and slumped down against a wall.
‘Just like the old days. I believe this is how I almost got thrown into prison the first time.’