Who: Remus Lupin and Emmeline Vance What: Remus doesn't sound so good. Fortunately he knows a mediwitch. When: 17 July 1981, following Remus' journal entry Where: Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade Warnings: Discussion of criminal assault
As evening descended upon Hogsmeade, it was marked only by a postponed sunset and cooler breeze drifting through the little village. The Three Broomsticks only saw a slight uptick in customers -- it was still too fresh off Bagnold’s murder.
As he sat in one of the tables towards the very back of the pub, the nearly empty establishment made Remus feel both better and worse. He didn’t like crowds of people, large or small. They smelled all kinds of awful. Those crowds didn’t really like him either for that matter. But, with a mind that felt….emptied somehow...the desolate quality of his immediate surroundings made him feel increasingly paranoid.
The feeling of shock and nauseating disorientation was slowly fading away as the minutes ticked by. One moment, it had been as if he were asleep; the next, he had snapped awake only to find himself standing in the middle of Hogsmeade, utterly bewildered and confused as to how and why he was there. There had been no one around. There had been no one to help him. His memories of the day had simply been...not there.
The last time he had lost all sense of himself had been during the full moon, before Wolfsbane, and that thought terrified him more than anything else. He had frantically checked his clothing to see if there had been any blood. Was that iron on his tongue? Had he maimed? Had he killed? It took several minutes for him to calm down and for reason to reassert itself once more.
He barely remembered penning the message. Life had taken on a dream-like quality. The world smelled of fading terror and stale sweat. Somehow, he had stumbled into the 3B, must have presented some semblance of normality to his server, for she had left him alone with only a glass of water and the cold, sick remnants of his fear.
Emmeline had closed her journal and finished everything she'd needed to do as quickly as she could before packing up her things into her Falcons gear bag and apparating to Hogsmeade. She'd brought her emergency potions kit and a few other things with her, just as she would have in the old days. It was unlikely that Remus would need anything she had, but she brought things in case. His confused and disjointed answers had worried Emmeline more than she wanted to let on.
On arriving at the Three Broomsticks, she found Remus in a corner, alone with a glass of water. She glanced at it to gauge how much he'd drunk--she hadn't wanted to deprive him if he was thirsty, but also hadn't wanted to nauseate him if he was ill--and then turned her attention to Remus. "Hello, Remus," she said, her voice soft and non-threatening. While Remus was a gentle man as well as a gentleman in his own person, Emmeline knew the curse he bore occasionally took matters and his temperament out of his control. And her professional training at dealing with the injured and ill was kicking in. Until she knew what was the matter with Remus, best to treat him with particular care.
When he closed and re-opened his eyes, Emmeline was there, concern shadowing her features. Ten years had given her an air of grace and self-possession. She smelled like freshly cut grass from the pitch and damp earth and herself, cool and slightly medicinal, and he sat and breathed it all in.
“Emmeline,” he whispered. “I feel like I’m going mad.”
Remus' statement worried Emmeline more than she wanted to let on. "I'm here to help you with whatever has happened," she reminded him, kneeling so that she was at eye level to his seated position and setting down her bag as she did so. Under other circumstances, she would have ruffled his hair affectionately, just to reassure him, but she knew better. "I want to perform some diagnostic spells on you, to see if you've been injured somehow. Is it alright if I do that?" The potted speeches she'd learnt in training tripped off her tongue reflexively. Her concentration was mostly on looking for obvious signs of injury. But there were none, other than disorientation and fear. If he'd been attacked, it wasn't physical.
After Fenrir had nearly ripped out his throat as a child, Remus had never been subjected to the attentions of a medical professional, magical or muggle, until Hogwarts. His parents had feared the exposure, of course. Childhood illnesses, which were fortunately very few in occurrence and usually minor in severity due to his general isolation, were dealt with at home by the cool, comforting hand of his mother. Hogwarts had been disconcerting by comparison, and after he had left, he had resumed the long ingrained habit of avoiding healers if he could help it.
Emmeline, with her non-threatening posture and words, with her sincere concern, reminded him very much of a more tentative Madam Pomfrey (who had been fierce, nearly possessive of her patients). The thought made him smile faintly, even as the age old anxieties rose up within him again. “Okay,” he said.
"I'm going to start in a moment. Because I'm going to be checking for head injuries, you may see or hear some odd things, but that's probably part of the spell. I'd like you to tell me about them if you do see or hear anything sudden or strange, since that could help me diagnose an injury." Emmeline raised her wand, careful to show Remus what she was doing, and began. She was still looking for physical damage, even knowing that she was unlikely to find any for a variety of reasons. First she checked his vital signs, doing her best to account for his illness in her estimation of the results. Then, basic injury checks, though she knew she was likely to find nothing there. Last, but not least, the basic routine for possible brain injuries: a spell schema she knew very well from all the bludger hits she'd attended at Falcons matches, though in her current professional context she paid more attention to physical brain rattling than to magical brain rattling.
At the end, she was frowning, and she bit her lower lip. "There's definitely an injury of some sort," she said, "but I'm not sure how you might have received it." If Remus were anyone else, she would have taken him to Mungo's. But she was not at all certain that was the right answer for Remus without consulting him--and she suspected he'd be opposed as well. "Can you tell me a little about the last thing you remember before you were in Hogsmeade? Can you remember what you were carrying? Do you have everything on your person? Your answers might help me determine how you were injured."
There was a tickle in the back of his mind, as if someone were gently rifling through it. Remus felt the strong urge to swat at it like a fly, so he grit his teeth and stared at a knot in the wood of the table, body rigid as a board. And when it was over, he couldn’t help the relieved sigh that escaped him, consciously unclenching his fingers from the tight fists they had formed in his lap.
“I…” with more effort than he would have liked, he struggled to recall his last memory. Hearing about the grotesque Bagnold murder. Then reading about Ted. James requesting them to take up their old posts again and his conflicted feelings over having to reconnect with his fellow werewolves. Reluctantly meeting Imogen again by pure happenstance -- a werewolf from the old days. Knowing, with a sinking feeling, she had cast her lot with Greyback already, damn him. “I woke up this morning. Put the kettle on.” Gazing out at the quiet morning fields of his little Yorkshire shack, enjoying the fresh morning dew before the sun would burn it all away and fill the air with manure from the nearby farms. “And then -- nothing. The next thing I know, I’m in Hogsmeade. I’ve lost hours, Emmeline. My memories of the day -- they’re just gone.“
That fit alarmingly well with what Emmeline thought might have happened to Remus. She nodded at him, to indicate she was following his explanation. "Okay, based on my preliminary examination, you've been assaulted and suffered a kind of injury that we'd call a TNE: a Traumatic Neurological Event. Normally someone who had an injury like yours would be taken to St Mungo's, and the DMLE would be called in to investigate the attack on you." She paused for a moment to let him take that information in. "You are not obliged to go to hospital if you don't want to. Nor are you obliged to request that the DMLE investigate the attack on you.
"Instead," she continued, "I can handle preliminary treatment myself, and if there's someone you can stay with for a day or two while you rest and recover, you should be fine without further intervention. Do you understand?"
Traumatic Neurological Event sounded far more alarming than it should. Combined with assault, and it made Remus want to rend something apart.
"They took my memories?" he nearly snarled. The thought of it, someone stealing something from him and he couldn’t even begin to guess what or how or why -- nevermind who. Worst of all, it was a helpless kind of rage, rage that did not have a target and could go nowhere.
“Can you recover them? No Ministry, Emmeline. And definitely not the DMLE. They are -- just no.”
"I'm not entirely certain that's what happened yet, Remus." Emmeline knew she should be responding as a professional, not as a friend, but under the snapping anger there was something that she recognised from her experience with the injured as not unrelated to fear. She reached to put one hand on his upper arm, slowly enough that he could withdraw if he wanted: human contact and as much comfort as she could give him, if he were inclined to accept it. "I'm only telling you your options, which the law requires me to do. A patient who declines treatment can't be compelled to go to St Mungo's except under specific circumstances that don't apply to you.
"It would be better for you if we went somewhere quiet, where you could rest, before I did anything further. Is that okay?" What she wanted to say, if she could figure out a way to do it in public without either upsetting Remus further or being overheard, was that she didn't want to do any digging in the Three Broomsticks, which was both a public place and too close to where Remus' assailants had left him.
The fury thrumming within him settled into a low-lying hum upon that light touch, bringing him back to himself again in a breath. He met her gaze squarely -- laden with intent as they were, and yes, of course, she was right. Not here. Suddenly the distance between here and the castle looming on the hill was far too short. “Y-yes. Rest would be good. I’ll be in need of side-along.” The joys of Level 1 clearance. “Potter estate may be best.”
The flash in Emmeline's eyes was something Remus could easily recognise as relief. "All right. I can get you there." She gave his arm a light squeeze and then stood, offering Remus a hand to help him to his feet.
Staring at her outstretched hand, he briefly debated himself before taking it and standing -- a good thing, for he was unprepared for the light-headedness. Blinking back the black dots in his vision, his gaze hardened and he found his centre once more. “Thank you, Emmeline. For this.” He couldn’t look at her when he said it. It wasn’t often he felt this vulnerable. “Let’s go.”