Summary:
"Brought her in on my shift, they did. Thought she were dead! Pale as a corpse - like there weren't no blood left in her - but twitching, like. The way I used to see 'em back when...You-Know-Who's followers were torturing people left and right. You'd see 'em twitch like that when they'd had the Cruciatus Curse used on 'em too long."
It takes twelve and half minutes to walk the road leading from the Hogwarts grounds into Hogsmeade, then a matter of seconds to apparate outside the Leaky Cauldron in London. Add four more minutes to enter the crowded pub, climb the stairs, and wind down the hall to the room at the very end, and Felix has had just enough time to work himself into a respectable frenzy.
He has never been able to pinpoint the exact date he fell in love with Juniper Windsong, so Felix can't say definitively just how long he's been planning their reunion. But it's been the highlight of his thoughts for almost a year. The perfect evening, carefully orchestrated to show Juniper how he's come to feel about her and persuade her to feel the same. Gone to pieces.
Felix slams the door, the parade of ruined moments and wasted opportunities building enough furious momentum behind his arm to rattle the frame. Throwing his cloak over the room's moldy winged armchair, he runs his fingers irritably through his hair. He should have been more direct, he berates himself, kicking petulantly at one of the chair's wobbly legs. It gives an indignant "Oi!" and scoots away from him, nearer the fire. He had hoped to let his actions explain his feelings for him, even thought he'd done a halfway decent job in spite of the evening's rocky start. But replaying their conversations in his head, Felix fears he wasn't obvious enough.
Regret beats a heartless rhythm against the inside of his skull as he perches on the edge of the rickety bed. She did want to see him over the summer, he consoles himself, that's something. And she had seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of visiting him. And there was that moment in the common room, their fingers intertwined, faces so close Felix could almost feel the nervous excitement radiating from her. He's positive Juniper had been waiting for him to lean in just a bit more, even imagines her eyes had flicked for a moment to his lips.
Felix falls back against the lumpy mattress with a groan. All that means nothing if she gets herself killed next year. Felix had so hoped finding Jacob Windsong alive would finally put a stop to her amateur investigations. But he knows with a sinking certainty, in spite of her assurances that she wants to leave the Cursed Vaults behind, Juniper will never be able to escape their web while her brother is still caught in it.
And even if she survives her last year of school unscathed, he thinks miserably, there's always her excessive number of male friends. Juniper may have little interest in them now, but Felix knows better than anyone how much a relationship can change in one term.
His brain bruised by the weight of all the things he cannot control, Felix pulls his wand out from underneath him and points it in the direction of his valise.
"Accio." he mumbles.
The bag sails halfheartedly across the room and stalls at the foot of the bed. Felix uses the tip of his shoe to edge it closer to him, his hand fumbling for the catch. He reaches in without looking and, as he does whenever he feels anxious, pulls out a sheaf of parchments wrapped in a leather tie, heavily frayed and dangerously thin in places.
He tugs at the crude binding carefully; toying, as he often does, with the romantic notion of finding a ribbon, preferably Juniper's, to replace the leather. But he's never known her to wear any kind of ribbon in her hair. And anyway, thinks Felix, as he pulls out a particularly worn piece of parchment, he doubts a hair ribbon would wrap all the way around their collected years of correspondence. He settles back against the pillow and lets the words he knows by heart soothe its anxiously racing beat.
-
Since his graduation, Felix has received more letters from Juniper than he can count. This by itself isn't exceptional. He's received many letters, far more than he expected. Former classmates write occasionally with updates on their lives, Barnaby writes regularly for advice, and even his mother sends the sporadic note pleading with him to return home. But it's Juniper who writes with questions about him. Juniper, to whom Felix recounts his days, even the most boring and difficult bits. She has the uncanny ability to read past his affected formality, and Felix soon discovers there's no one else with whom he can truly be himself.
After months of rough tenting with bad food and very few actual dragons, it's Juniper Felix complains to, and Juniper who both sympathises and challenges him to stay his course. When he's forced to kill a dragon for the first time in defence of himself and his team, it's to Juniper Felix relays the entire gut-wrenching affair, complete with the horrid guilt he feels and the nightmares he cannot shake. And it's Juniper who comforts him with words like a balm, that he reads through each night to lull himself to sleep. Her letters become the best part of every month, and he begins counting the days until they arrive.
It's after the end of his first and only relationship, nearly a year ago, that Felix begins picking Juniper's letters apart, studying them as intently as if he'll be tested on their contents. He re-reads everything she's ever written, parsing each word for hidden meaning, anything that might indicate she cares for him as more than a friend or confidante. Some days, Felix is convinced he can read love plainly in her words, then the next day he's sure he imagined it. The uncertainty drives him to distraction, until admitting the depth of his feelings to her actually becomes the less painful option. But it has to be done face to face, Felix decides, that's the proper way. And after the Quidditch match on which so much of her school reputation is staked seems like the best time; when she'll either be full of high spirits or in need of comfort.
-
Felix sets the worn letter aside in agitation. It's no good. He's reached a level of anxiety he's only ever been able to soothe by writing to Juniper about it, which he can hardly do in this case.
He sits up abruptly, an idea appearing in his head fully formed. Why not just tell her in a letter? Felix had convinced himself love was something that must be discussed in person, that the month spent waiting for a response to such an admission would be unbearable. But he's no longer at the mercy of inter-continental post. Her return letter might even reach him before he left England. And he's always been better able to express himself in writing.
Perhaps his prose can do what his actions couldn't and convince her to keep herself safe. For him.
Reinvigorated by this new plan, Felix scrambles off the bed. He pulls parchment, quill, and ink from his bag, and seats himself at the spindly-legged stool in front of the room's token writing desk. A small window looms behind it, the darkness outside transforming the glass into a black mirror reflecting his face, every line quivering with purpose.
Felix dips his quill in ink and pauses briefly at the top of the parchment. The ink drips slowly from the quill tip after one minute, and then another, and then several pass without him pressing the point to the page, as it dawns on him that he has not the first idea how to begin such a letter. Which seems impossible; he's composed snatches of letters like this in his head for a year, waiting for the perfect moment to pen them. But now it's time, words seem to have deserted Felix, just as they did in the common room and out on the grounds.
Because it has to be perfect. That's key. Whatever he writes has to convince Juniper to put aside a quest that's become an obsession, persuade her his love is worth such a sacrifice. And Felix is positive it is. There isn't a person alive, including her brother, who cares for Juniper more than he does. Felix is certain of that.
A small, confident smile flickers to life on his lips, and Felix begins to write. Haltingly at first. But he finds as he focuses on her smiling face, the memory of her cheek pressed against his fingers, the words come easier, and it isn't long before he's pouring his heart onto the page. He confesses to the parchment everything he's felt for Juniper since he was seventeen, allowing emotion to choose his words instead of adherence to any literary form. Felix writes until his parchment is exhausted, then leans back from the desk.
He holds the letter close to the yellow candle illuminating the desktop in uneven patches and reads what he's written with a critical eye; and then again, trying to see the words from her perspective. With a slight shake of his head, Felix sets the parchment back down and picks up the quill again, crossing out lines and adding words in, until any ordinary candle would have melted into its iron holder and sputtered out.
By the time the sky outside the window lightens to a steely grey, Felix has finished a draft he likes. Perhaps it would be hubris to call it perfect, he thinks immodestly, but it's certainly close. He folds the parchment with extreme care, as though excess creases may cause her to simply throw the thing away without reading, then tucks it delicately into an envelope and seals it before he can reconsider.
Flushed with excitement, Felix stands, stretching his cramped fingers. The thought of waiting to deliver the letter is intolerable, but, as he glances out the window at the predawn light, he knows the Post Office in Diagon Alley won't yet be open. The rational voice in his head suggests timidly that he ought to get some sleep, but there's too much adrenaline coursing through him and he's itchy for action. He'll wait in the pub, he decides, have a quick bite to eat and then set off as soon as the hour strikes
Felix tucks the letter carefully into the pocket of his rumpled robes, and walks with a bounce, out of the room and down the cramped and winding stairs.
-
Felix wasn't overly familiar with the Leaky Cauldron before two days ago. Necessity has forced him to rent a room there while in England. His father, astonishingly tolerant up till now of what he considers Felix's "rebellious dragon phase", has made it clear in his last correspondence that a transfer to the Romanian Reserve is the final straw, and until Felix is willing to return to his family obligations, he will no longer enjoy any Rosier family benefits. Namely money and a place to live. Since Felix has expected this since he first introduced his chosen profession to his parents, he's only moderately hurt.
This is the second morning Felix has spent in the inn & pub, but he's learned he enjoys its sleepy silence as the regulars engross themselves in their papers before ingesting enough food and news to begin chatting with their neighbors. It makes for a pleasant start to the day, and Felix pushes open the door looking forward to a quiet breakfast before he completes his life-changing post.
Instead, a low thrum of excited muttering fills the room, emanating from the fireplace where nearly all the pub's early-morning patrons, and even its proprietor, have congregated. Tom has not yet bothered to set down all the chairs from their night-time perches on the tables. He's standing just behind a witch in lime-green robes who seems to be the center of the whispering crowd.
Felix seats himself on a stool at the bar, casting surreptitious glances over at the furtive group, trying to catch snippets of their conversation. But they insist on speaking in hushed tones, as if their subject is too dangerous to be discussed at a normal volume. Felix finally catches the eye of the barman, who breaks reluctantly away and trots over.
"You'll be wanting breakfast, then, sir?"Tom asks, his voice friendly, though he continues to shoot longing behind him. "It was coffee you took, in't that right?"
"Yes, thank you." replies Felix distractedly. "Is everything alright?" He looks pointedly at the fireplace and Tom's eyes light up with the thrill of the gossip.
"Oh, I'm afraid not." says the barman with enthusiasm. "There was another attack up at Hogwarts school last night!"
All Felix's animated energy freezes over in an instant, leaving his limbs stiff and his hand quite unable to lift the cup Tom sets in front of him.
"You mean... someone else was petrified? I thought that was all over."
Tom shakes his head happily. "Not petrified no. Apparently, the student was brought to St Mungo's. The school professors weren't sure what happened, but they're trying to keep it awful quiet. Winn," he jerks his chin over at the witch in green robes. "Was on duty and just happened to see them bring her in."
"'Her'?" Felix asks, his throat so dry it comes out a croak. There's hundreds of students at Hogwarts, he reassures his racing heart, there's no reason for it to be -
"The Windsong girl. You know - the Cursebreaker? Her brother's that one expelled some years back, you might remember him - Master Rosier?"
Felix vacates his stool and stumbles over to the fireplace where the witch in lime-green robes continues to murmur under her breath to her captive audience.
"Excuse me." he somehow manages to say.
The witches and wizards around the fire all look up at him.
"Did you...did you say you saw a Hogwarts student brought into St Mungos last night?"
The witch called Winn nods vigorously. "Not just any Hogwarts student! Jacob Windsong's sister! The one what's been opening all them cursed vaults up at the school the last few years!" Her voice is subdued but shaking with excitement. She shuffles her chair around to face Felix, clearly pleased for an excuse to retell her story.
"Brought her in on my shift, they did. Thought she were dead! Pale as a corpse - like there weren't no blood left in her - but twitching, like. The way I used to see 'em back when..." She clears her throat and her eyes dart about as if searching for hidden spies, before she continues, even lower than before, "Back when You-Know-Who's followers were torturing people left and right. You'd see 'em twitch like that when they'd had the Cruciatus Curse used on 'em too long."
One of the wizards by the fire shakes his head and says something about the mad goings-on of teenagers these days, but Felix isn't listening. He's already moving away, lurching between tables and knocking into chairs as if drunk. Ignoring the pub patrons' affronted looks and Tom still calling to him from the bar, he trips out the front door and apparates as soon as his feet hit the pavement.
-
Felix hasn't been to St Mungo's since he was a child, and his current visit does nothing to improve his ill-feeling about the place. The lobby is packed, which seems strange to him for so early in the morning. The seats are full of witches and wizards tapping their feet and sighing heavily with poorly-hidden impatience. Healers in lime-green robes walk swiftly to and fro, all headed in different directions, and the queue for the help desk is a dozen people long. There's a sign above it informing those who can read which types of maladies belong to each floor of the hospital. But, Felix realises, since he doesn't know exactly what's happened to Juniper, he has no idea where she might be.
Blood pumps thickly in his head, making the sounds in the lobby seem oddly muffled as though he's underwater. Felix walks briskly to the information desk and brings his hand down harder than intended on top of the counter. The smacking sound has no visible effect on the bored-looking help witch beyond a quick flick of her eyes away from the hiccoughing wizard in the queue and toward Felix.
"I'm looking for Juniper Windsong." he says, his voice shaking with some emotion he doesn't have time to identify.
"Excuse me, sir," the help-witch drawls tonelessly. "But if you have a question you'll need to queue up like everyone else."
She gives a barely perceptible jerk of her chin at the line of people now glaring at Felix. One woman's entire face is a vivid shade of pink, and a small child standing with his mother seems to have steam emitting from his nostrils. But none of them appear in any immediate danger to Felix, and he turns back to the help-witch belligerently.
"This cannot wait. Juniper Windsong. She was brought in last night."
The help-witch blinks dubiously at him, but something in Felix's voice or face seems to convince the girl her life will be easier the sooner she gets rid of him. She drags a clipboard across the desk toward her with two fingers and glances down at it.
"I don't have anyone by that name here." she announces, her tone still bored but a slight curl at the edge of her mouth.
"Yes, you do! You must!" he insists, now almost shouting. Because if she's not here, then that means....
"Mr. Rosier." A cold, quiet, and all too familiar voice stops Felix's rising panic in its tracks. He whips around to find Professor Snape standing by the entrance to a stairwell. "What are you-"
"Professor!" Felix interrupts, abandoning the help desk and hurrying over to Snape.
"Is it true?" he asks, suddenly breathless. "Juniper. Is she-"
Before Felix can finish, Snape grips his elbow tightly and drags him into the stairwell, slamming the door shut behind them. The Potions Master casts his dark eyes around as if making sure they're alone before answering in a crisp whisper:
"Kindly do not bandy Miss Windsong's name about in front of so many witnesses. It is important that her presence at this hospital be kept entirely secret. Which is why," his eyes narrow at Felix, "I must ask how you came to know she was here."
"I - She - " Felix tries to breathe normally, but air seems to catch against his ribs, his chest constricting painfully. "A healer. In the Leaky Cauldron. She...she said she saw her - Juniper - last night. She said, she was attacked. But-"
"How do you know the person speaking was a healer?"
Thrown by the question, Felix casts his mind back for the details of the conversation that he realizes with a lurch was not fifteen minutes ago. It feels more like hours.
"Tom! He said she was a healer. And she had the robes, the same color green that the healers wear."
Snape closes his eyes briefly, nostrils flaring in forceful exhalation. Felix has seen this look on the Potion Master's face before when dealing with exceptionally dim-witted students. Felix doesn't know whether it's himself or the healer in question with whom Snape is exasperated, and he doesn't care.
"Professor, what's happened to Juniper? Is she alright? The healer said she was attacked, but she didn't say...I mean...she wasn't sure..." Every ending Felix can think of to this sentence causes his throat to convulse.
Snape considers carefully before answering, his words tinged with frost. "Miss Windsong is alive for the moment."
A flood of warm relief washes over Felix almost tangibly.
"But," Snape continues. "she has been very gravely..." He pauses, tongue between his teeth, as if choosing his next word carefully. "...wounded."
"Why? What happened? Is it something to do with the Vaults? Is she going to be alright?" Felix asks every question that comes to his mind all in a rush.
Snape says nothing for a moment. He scrutinizes Felix closely, and Felix gets that uncomfortable prickle he sometimes feels around his former head of house, as though the professor can see right through him. He averts his gaze, and stares instead at his ink-stained hands.
Snape's voice, still frigid but not quite as icy as before, breaks the silence.
"Follow me, Mr. Rosier."
Snape turns on his heel and ascends the staircase without a backward glance. Felix hastens to follow.
At the fourth floor landing, Snape throws open the door and proceeds into a corridor crowded with harried healers. Felix, who cuts a much less intimidating figure than the Potions Master, has to push through the lime-green crowd forcefully in order to keep up. Snape turns down a side hall, and then another, longer one, until they reach a nearly deserted corridor with a dirty window marking a dead-end. Snape forgoes the doors on either side, stopping instead in front of the window, daylight just peeking through the streaky glass. He taps the pane on the lower right with his wand, and Felix can hear a very soft click, like a lock being turned. The window swings inward, and Snape and Felix step quickly inside.
The room is small, only slightly bigger than the Hogwarts Artefact Room, with no windows and no other doors. There's just enough space for a solid looking bed, a rather high bedside table covered in potion bottles on one side if it, and a chair pulled up to the other. Felix can see the outline of legs tucked under a white sheet lying on the bed, but the rest of the occupant is hidden by the bulky figure in the chair, who stands quickly and revolves to face the two intruders.
The man raises his wand directly at Felix, who flinches, though for once it has less to do with the wand itself and more to do with the heavily scarred face of the person holding it.
"Password." The man grunts. Snape does not bother to conceal his eye-roll.
"Dragon Heart-String." he pronounces with very slight disdain, and the strange looking person lowers his wand a fraction.
All Felix's attention is caught up in the man's one electric blue eye that swivels eerily over both newcomers, then rolls right back into his head as if checking on the patient in the bed behind him. He's so distracted by this display, Felix doesn't notice the man's other eye inspecting him suspiciously.
"Who is this?" the man asks in a gruff voice. "I thought you were bringing back one of the trainees."
Beside Felix, Snape replies loftily. "It seems as though the healers cannot all be trusted. One is already blabbing the attack in the pub."
The other man swears under his breath.
"This is...a friend of Windsong's." Snape continues.
Felix isn't sure, but he thinks there's a slight pause before Snape pronounces the word 'friend', and a careful note to his words. But he's too preoccupied to give this further thought. The shock of the room's strange guardian has worn off enough for Felix's attention to return to the bed. And as the man steps toward Snape, the head on the pillow becomes visible.
If Felix hadn't known it was supposed to be Juniper, he might not have recognised her straight away. She looks like an entirely different person from the vibrant young woman laughing and flirting with him only hours ago. It's as though all the blood has been drained from beneath her skin, leaving her as pale and lifeless as the healer in the pub described. The only part of her with any color are the uncountable number of angry red cuts decorating her face and the visible portion of her neck and arms. She's so eerily still Felix would be terrified Snape was mistaken about her condition, if it weren't for the slight twitching visible in her fingers, curled strangely and lying on either side of her.
Bile rises in Felix's throat and he has to swallow hard to keep from being violently ill. He's known Juniper to be injured many times before; she's famous for it. He's seen her battered by Devil's Snare, half-frozen to death by cursed ice, knocked about by a dragon. But his memories of those admittedly deadly injuries all include her face set in grim determination or flushed with success. Felix has never seen her like this. Broken and beaten on a hospital bed.
"What happened to her?" he asks, his voice hoarse.
"Tortured." The man with the strange blue eye replies matter-of-factly. "Cruciatus curse by the tremors. And the cuts are one of R's signature curses."
"R?" asks Felix vaguely, fumbling for anything that will keep his mind from creating a mental picture of Juniper being tortured.
The man explains irritably as though this should be common knowledge. "R is the organisation after the vaults. They're the ones have been threatening Miss Windsong the last few years."
"But...how could they get to her while she's at school?" questions Felix, his voice rising. "Surely, there's spells and wards set up to protect the students?"
"Of course." Snape responds coolly from behind Felix. "But it's been well-established that the defences surrounding school grounds can be penetrated. One has to be inside the school itself for the Headmaster's greater protections to be of any effect. And Miss Windsong was found outside on the grounds. Do you have any idea why she might have been out there, Mr. Rosier?"
Felix's knees buckle abruptly. He grabs the back of the bedside chair to keep himself from falling to the floor. If his display of weakness elicits any reaction from the other men, Felix doesn't notice. His eyes are shut tight against the emotions threatening to overwhelm him. His voice cracks as he rasps:
"It's my fault."
"Excuse me?" The man with the swiveling blue eye whips around to face Felix again, normal eye narrowed. His wand is still pointed aggressively, and Felix half wishes the man would just curse him.
"I - she - was with me." Felix tries to explain, nausea churning his stomach sickly. The chair is now the only thing keeping him upright.
"You were with her on the grounds?" the man demands, his blue eye now fixed on Felix as well. "What happened? What did you see? Who else was there?"
"There wasn't anyone. There was...it was...just us. "
The weight of the guilt causes something in Felix to snap. He cranes his neck around searching for the eyes of his former head of house, desperate for assurance that this isn't his fault; that Juniper isn't half-dead because of him.
"I told her not to, Professor, I swear! She wouldn't listen, I couldn't stop her! But...everything was normal. There wasn't anything strange or-or suspicious on the grounds. I didn't - I mean, I - I thought..."
Snape wrenches his gaze away from Felix, as if his pleading is something painful to watch. But Felix is beyond embarrassment for the moment.
"Mr. Rosier," Snape responds, still looking decidedly anywhere but at Felix. "I am all too familiar with Miss Windsong's particularly obdurate determination to do whatever she pleases. However, I think we both know you exerted little effort to dissuade her. And it cannot be denied that you are the reason Miss Windsong was out on the grounds alone last night."
Each of Snape's words cut deeply into Felix, like a mirror of the wounds decorating Juniper's arms. All his defensiveness bleeds slowly out of him, and he sags further against the chair.
"If," Snape continues, "you would like to make amends for your foolishness, then perhaps you would be willing to help us now."
"I - Yes! Of course, anything, what-"
"At the moment, Miss Windsong appears to be under an enchantment of some kind. Discovering what exactly happened to her and who attacked her may enable us to wake her. We need to investigate, but we also need to keep a guard over her. It is not unlikely that whoever did this may return when they realize their work is unfinished."
"I'll stay." Felix answers, a semblance of strength returning to his voice. The idea that he'll be allowed to help is entirely unexpected, but a set task goes a long way to reasserting his focus.
The strange-eyed man looks from Felix to Snape, his face, a map of scars and craters, alight with skepticism.
"You sure he's up to it?"
Snape stares hard at Felix until that uncomfortable prickling begins to resurface, but Felix is determined to keep his gaze, to prove he can be trusted.
"I believe so." Snape answers. The other man gives Snape a disparaging look before lowering his wand to his side.
"Fine. If anything happens to her, it'll be on your heads then." He crosses the small room in two long strides and looks back at Felix as he reaches the door.
"You. No one is to enter this room without the password. The healers assigned to her know it, and they're the only ones I trust. Anyone else tries to get in, stun them and call for backup. Do you understand?"
Felix nods in affirmation, not trusting himself to speak.
"Do not take this lightly, boy. Miss Windsong's life may depend on your vigilance."
Felix straightens with as much fortitude as he can muster. He directs his words to the man in front of him, but they're really a promise to himself.
"I won't let anything happen to her."