The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

The Red Vine

Dr. Beau Hoffman stepped into the office of the chief and had himself a seat opposite the chief's own chair. An unexpected visit, Chief Connor Plimpton took a moment to finish the form he was filling out before looking up. "Dr. Hoffman," the Chief said, "Good morning. To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

Dr. Beau Hoffman was still in his operating scrubs, the cap that covered his white hair tied on, some sort of surgical instrument peeking out of the pocket on his left chest. He looked perplexed. "I'm here to formally submit my retirement." 

Chief Plimpton, who had been quietly trying to get Dr. Hoffman to retire for over a year to no success, looked quite confused. "You want to retire?"

"Yes."

"Alright, we'll draw up the paperwork... When are you thinking? October? December?"

"Immediately."

"Immediately?" Plimpton looked confused. "What do you mean effective immediately?"

"I mean I've performed my last operation and I don't care to do any others moving forward."

"But you're scheduled out at least three months in advance... I have time to rearrange some of those surgeries but others are a bit more ---"

"Look, Chief, frankly, if I'd known what the operation I just walked out of was going to be like, I would've retired yesterday before I ever heard the name Newt Scamander."

Plimpton murmured the name in an echo. "Newt Scamander? What sort of a ridiculous name -?"

"The sort that one of them have," Hoffman answered. 

"Oh." Plimpton shifted. 

They both knew who "them" was. 

Every once in a while - albeit a very great while - there would come a day when the portrait on the wall in the Chief of Surgery's wall would shift, clear it's throat, and announce that the best surgeon and operating table were suddenly rescheduled to accommodate a pressing matter, as ordered by the medicinal relations committee at MACUSA. Usually, the patient had some incredibly strange malady, something that could not be explained by rational medical science, but whose remedy could only be solved by what the witch in the painting called "muggle medicine". As the head of the cardiology department, Dr. Hoffman often got called upon independently. It seemed Cardiology and Neurology were the two most frequently required surgeons needed by the wizarding world.

"What was it this time?" Plimpton asked.

Hoffman leaned back in his eat and stared at Plimpton. "You'll never believe it."

"I've seen a man's face turned into a bird's beak and his spinal cord impacted by a fall when his wings didn't transform all the way as he became his animal form," said Plimpton, "Try and top that." 

"I had Newt Scamander, who is what they called a magic zoologist," Hoffman said. "Mr. Scamander presented with what sounded like a common heart attack when they described his symptoms to me. However, upon inspecting closer they found that his heart valve was being blocked not by plaque or a clot or any normal thing, but by --" Hoffman paused. 

"...by...?" Plimpton pressed.

"A dragon."

"A dragon?"

"A dragon," Hoffman nodded.

Plimpton sat back. "That's new."

"Apparently it was new for them as well. They weren't sure if it was an actual dragon or if it was some virus that they called Dragon Pox which apparently makes a man breathe fire and grow scales - neither symptom of which was presenting in Mr. Scamander, making them fairly certain that it was an actual dragon, which was why they could not magically remove, and the magic zoo man had decided to take an elective open heart procedure in order to get the dragon out."