"Why'd you call?"

Reva had barely stepped into the apartment, not even closed the door, when she heard her brother's voice from the kitchen.

She was panting, gripping the door for support.

"I... I was..."

Why had she called?

Her brother turned around, a saucepan in one hand and a spatula in another. He cocked an eyebrow at her. Though it was nearly two in the morning, he was cooking dinner for the both of them. She often came home late at night, and he was a teenager who refused to establish healthy sleeping habits.

"Did you run here?"

"Err... yes, I thought it would be wise to get into the practice of... cardio sooner rather than later," she responded, clearing her throat as she gently shut the door behind her.

Her eyes scanned the apartment, from the flickering yellow lights hanging from the low ceiling, to the peeling fruit medley wallpaper in the cramped kitchen, to the mismatched futon and armchairs in the living room, and to the small stack of eviction notices gathering in the half open drawer of the coffee table. She shivered slightly despite the warmth emitting from the stove. He couldn't have... been in here, could he have? Surely something in the apartment would be off, or misplaced, something to indicate that that beast had broken into their home.

A chill ran down her spine. How else would he have known all of those things? If he hadn't broken into her home, stalked her at both places of work, perhaps even stalked her brother at school or with his friends? She could feel herself breaking into a sweat once more, heart and mind racing in tandem as she tried to rationalize how or why any of this could be happening — why the very monster who had attacked her so long ago would give her the phantom of peace for nine years only to return with threats and demands, how she could have allowed herself to believe she would be safe simply because she wanted to be.

Reva slowly looked up at Roshan.

He was looking back expectantly, as though he had said something and was waiting on a response.

"We need to move," she blurted. She said it before her mind thought it, but it quickly became the sanest thought she had ever had.

Roshan just laughed, a bit of sauce dripping off the spatula he was still holding.

"What? Yeah, okay," he scoffed, turning around to continue cooking whatever was before him.

"Start packing tonight."

"Sure. And where are we moving?"

"Australia. Or the States." Anywhere that would put an ocean between the two of them and that beast.

"Right. And how are we paying for that?"

Reva clamped her lips together. Shit.

"What happened this time, anyways?" he continued, opening a cabinet above him to pull out a couple spices. "Another patient threw up on you? Or, worse, a drunk witch?"

She stalled, pulling her handbag off her shoulder while she kicked her heels off. The backs of her ankles were sore from running in those contraptions, and she could feel the beginning of a blister on one of them.

"Something like that, yeah."

They couldn't move. Evidently, relocating across the globe required more funds than they had in the coin jar they kept behind all the cleaning supplies under their bathroom sink. Running away was not exactly an option either — Roshan only had about four months of his thirteenth year remaining, and if she knew her obstinate little brother at all, she knew he would find a way to run back. Damn him and his insistence on graduating. Not to mention, they did not exactly have a summer home to escape to.

Could she finally report him?

Her stomach twisted at the thought. It was something she had wished so deeply she could so long ago, but when she woke up that fateful night and remembered the face of her attacker, she knew that retribution was out of the question. To accuse such a wealthy and well-established Pure-Blood of such a thing would be a death sentence, of that she was certain. Even if the Ministry believed her — which it wouldn't, of course, as he must be well connected — he himself certainly would not let her live for it. For nine years, Reva lived with the knowledge that the very beast who nearly killed her was the same bully in the year above her who tormented so many of her peers. For nine years, she kept him protected, for that was the only way to keep herself and her brother protected. A woman with only so many connections and so many funds only has so many options.

"Oi. Are you listening?"

Reva blinked. "Sorry?" She looked at Roshan, who was placing two plates on their small kitchen table.

He rolled his eyes and beckoned for her to come sit as he began serving what looked like chana nu shaak, a chickpea dish, with roti.

"I was talking about my party. Is it cool if I invite a few more people? I'm never gonna see these people again after I graduate, you know, so..." His party was scheduled for next Friday night, the day before his actual birthday. He looked up at her with a puppy-dog face that might have worked on her if he was seven, not seventeen.

Reva groaned softly as she walked over and slung her purse over her chair.

"Hey, about your birthday..."

Roshan's face fell immediately. "Don't tell me I have to cancel." A bit of his dark hair fell in his face. It was a bit longer and slightly spikey, the way that the teens those days liked to style it.

"No. You don't," Reva decided, sitting in her chair. She watched him mix his food around with his spoon, steel scraping against steel. "And you can invite whoever you want. But, um... turns out I'm working Saturday."

His eyebrows contorted. "Next Saturday? On my birthday? You said you would take off."

"I know, and I did take off. I did it a month ago, but —"

"But your boss is a dick, yeah, I know," he interrupted with an eye roll.

"It's a half shift, though, so it's not the whole day."

"Cool."

"We can still go see Mummi and Papa. It'll just be in the evening."

"Yup."

"Food's good."

He looked up at her with a frown. "You didn't take a bite yet."

"Oh. I mean, it smells good."

"Right." He stood up abruptly, plate in hand. "I'm gonna finish this in my room. Got homework to do. Night."

"Yeah, no, sure, good —" He was already slamming the door shut and disappearing into his room. "Night. Goodnight."

Reva sighed softly, staring at the food her brother had made for her. Despite having last eaten about seven hours ago, her appetite had vanished. Not when her brother was mad at her. Certainly not when a vampire was quite literally out for her blood.

She managed to get it all down, though, feeling guilty about wasting his food after breaking that news. After cleaning up in the kitchen, she found herself in her bedroom about to get ready for a night of short, restless sleep. As she began pulling her coat off, she heard that bit of paper rustling. Reva froze. Her heart skipped a beat as though that beast himself was somehow in her pocket. Slowly, she reached her fingers in and pulled out the slip.

It was a light blue paper. All it contained was an address. She recognized the street. It wasn't so far from here.

Feeling something thick form in her throat, Reva ripped the tiny bit of paper up into even smaller pieces and let them fall into her dustbin. Running away was not an option, clearly, but neither was giving herself over to a blood-sucking blood-supremacist beast. If he did not take her silence as a sign, if he continued to persist, she would have to find another solution.

But Reva would do anything to keep Roshan safe. Whatever it took, she would figure it out.

—

That very next Friday, when Reva saw the little note sitting in her locker at 5:03AM when she just arrived at St. Mungo's, she very nearly had a heart attack.

Healer Vora,
Please see me in my office immediately.
- Chief Healer Gene Leveret

This was it, wasn't it? She was about to get fired, wasn't she?

She knew the hospital had its regular layoffs whenever the board decided to tighten budgets (despite the amount of coins flowing into their silk-lined pockets). So far, she had remained unscathed. The victims were generally the old and senile who should have been long retired as well as fresh hires who were always in surplus. Still, it was plausible. Perhaps a patient filed an unfavorable complaint, or perhaps her direct boss — Healer Merton Crow, head of the Magical Bugs ward — recommended her leave. He did not seem quite fond of her despite the lack of any reason.

She had half a mind to leave the hospital entirely. The thought of going up to Leveret's office and confronting whatever verdict was waiting for her made her nauseous, but then she remembered that she lived paycheck to paycheck, so she ultimately found herself trudging up the stairs with a solemn disposition.

Reva adjusted her robes as she approached the door to his office, ensuring everything about her appearance was straightened. She was starting to wish she had worn some light makeup this morning to hide the minimal sleep she had. She hardly ever had an opportunity to interact with the Chief Healer. He had retired from the more practical and tangible aspects of his job years before she was hired and chosen instead to focus on the business and managerial aspect. He only worked on a case occasionally, and Reva had not had the chance to do so with him thus far. The only employees who saw him regularly were department heads, truth be told, which was why Reva knew that for her to be singled out so urgently by him was no small matter.

She knocked on the door, her heart in her throat.

"Come inside."

Reva twisted the door knob and slowly pushed the door, hearing the wood creak. The office was dim, as the sun would not be rising for nearly two hours. It was lit only by a light with a stained glass lampshade sitting on the corner of a hand carved desk.

Leveret stood behind the desk with his back turned towards her. He was peering out his window, though she was uncertain what he could possibly see outside in the miserable hours before dawn.

"Close the door behind you, Vora."

She did exactly that, brows furrowed.

"I understand that you have been working on the Spattergroit cases recently."

Reva nodded. A moment later, she realized he couldn't see her, and she affirmed, "Yes, sir, I have."

"And how would you say that has been... progressing?"

She lifted her chin. "Well..." Reva cleared her throat. "The first case arrived approximately four weeks ago. Within seven days, three more appeared. The next week, six, the following, seven, and in this past week alone, twelve new cases have emerged for a total of twenty-nine cases. None of which have been resolved. All patients have exhibited classic symptoms, namely fatigue, purple pustules, tender tongues, and high fever."

"I know the facts, Vora. I seek your opinion on the cases."

Reva inhaled deeply. Working in a hospital was always stressful, but the past month was especially so. Because the spattergroit patients were occupying the Magical Bugs Ward, all other patients had to be relocated to other rooms to minimize the risk that the fungus passed to them, so she spent all hours running back and forth between rooms and up and down floors to tend to them all.

Her shifts had increased in frequency and length, demanding more overnight shifts than before. Not to mention, because of the highly contagious nature of spattergroit, she had to spend thirty minutes before and after every shift receiving the proper spells and charms to ensure she did not catch the contagion. Even with the charms and spells, she and the other Healers had to wear heavy protectionary gear any time they were even on the same floor as the patients. It was a highly preventable illness, but only when one knew and had the time to perform all the preventative measures. And when the illness was caught, getting rid of it was no easy matter. It was not often fatal, but it was debilitating for months.

If that was not enough, it felt at times as though Reva was running the ward nearly by herself.

Merton Crow was often fast asleep in his office, perhaps dreaming about running his ward. When he was awake, he was rude and belittling, often ruining the moods of her patients. He had a tendency of firing nearly every intern to ever step near him. Because of this, there were too few to help, and they cycled so frequently that they had to be retrained every other week. There were truly only six other competent Healers in the ward, but she would be lucky to have even two of them assigned the same shift as her.

"It is progressing terribly, Sir," Reva declared, her mind spinning.

He looked over his shoulder, as though expecting her to continue.

"We need more hands. It seems as though the number of cases is increasing exponentially, yet I only have three other Healers with me on each shift. One of them will be an intern, but Healer Crow fires the interns so often, I have to simultaneously train them while keeping track of stacking cases. The second will be another trained Healer like myself, but even if we divide the work, that is still approximately fifteen very demanding spattergroit patients along with the regular cases. The third is..."

She hesitated softly, but her heart was thundering with the satisfaction of voicing her complaints, so she continued. "The third is Healer Crow himself, Sir. He is an intelligent, accomplished man, certainly, but he hurts more than he helps. I don't mean to be rude or out of place, but I find him sleeping in his office for half the shift. The other half of the shift, he is so inconsiderate to the patients that they become stressed out, which only worsens their conditions. Not to mention his absolute refusal to call this what it is: Cerebrumous Spattergroit. I understand his reluctance. If this is the truth, then we have a very grievous occurrence on our hands. But if this is the truth, we must determine that immediately so we can take appropriate action. I strongly believe we are dealing with Cerebrumous Spattergroit here, Sir, which may not make it more contagious, but certainly more dangerous. I have already seen early signs of memory loss and severe confusion, but Crow quite literally cannot seem to wake up and realize the same."

Leveret turned around to face her. She could not see his face in the dark of the room, so her mind assigned him one of shock.

Reva inhaled deeply. "I apologize. I understand you were asking me about the spattergroit cases, not about Healer Crow. It is only that —"

"It is only that he is exacerbating an already alarming issue," Leveret interjected. He walked around his desk, picking up a small paperweight from the top of it.

She tilted her head, wondering if she heard him correctly. Was he... agreeing?

"I called Crow into this office at the end of the day yesterday. When I asked him the same question, I was not given the same honesty. He told me that it was 'all under control' and 'could not possibly be Cerebrumous.' I thank you, Healer Vora," Leveret sighed.

He walked up to her with his hand out. Reva put hers in his, giving him the firmest handshake she could muster while fully aware of the shock written all over her tired face.

"And I agree." He pulled his hand away. "I agree with all that you have said. I am tired of letting this spattergroit get the best of St. Mungo's. The press has already had a field day reporting about it, and I do not want word of the severity to get out before we take action to control it. This is why I am assembling a Contagious Ailment Response Team. CART, if you will."

Reva raised her brows. CART didn't exactly have a grandiose impact, but it was certainly sufficient.

"I will be leading it myself, but I should need someone trustworthy to help do so. As the chief, I have several other responsibilities, such as managing the day-to-day of the hospital. I cannot dedicate every day to this. I was hoping you could, however."

"Join the team? Certainly, Sir, but I must ask what the team will be doing differently than the ward."

"Forget the ward. Spattergroit is your only concern now until it is completely eradicated from the walls of this hospital. I will hire as many new Healers as it takes to replace your presence and care for all our other patients, and I will hire as many Healers as necessary for the response team. I want a cure. This is not a pandemic by any means, but we have seen throughout history what this illness does unchecked. To find a cure would mean doing our duty to help our patients, but it would also mean tremendous things for the hospital. I have always wanted St. Mungo's to be a center for innovation and discovery." Leveret leaned against the side of his desk. The light from his lamp reflected softly on his shaved head. "This could mean everything for your career, Vora."

Reva's breath hitched.

"I cannot fire Crow. He is practically as much of an institution as the hospital himself. But I can coax him into retirement, and when that occurs, he will need a replacement. He has spoken highly of you."

Really? He doesn't even know my name.

"As have several other Healers, whether they be interns or department heads. You are young, but you are impressive. Impress me even further with the Cerebrumous Spattergroit, and you may find yourself the Head of the Magical Bugs Ward. That is, of course, if you are willing."

Was she willing?

It was a potential promotion of insane magnitude. She would likely be the youngest witch or wizard to hold a department head position in the hospital's history. It would come with stable, self-picked hours, and a beautiful, lovely raise. She could quit her job at the bar. She could have more than four hours of sleep a night.

"I am. I am willing."

"Good. I will be speaking to one of your colleagues, Healer Magnier, later today for the same purpose. I have already spoken to several other experts and Healers as well. One such healer from St. Mungo's sister hospital in Argentina will be arriving shortly, several others from both around the globe and locally. There is one adept potionmaker — he is a freelance worker, and he has created many cures and remedies for the hospital. I am still communicating with him, but I hope to hear positive news soon."

Reva's eyes widened, her jaw dropping slightly. "Do you mean... him?"

The man did not have a name, but rumors about him were whispered around the hospital. Very few had ever seen him, and she suspected that some of those who claimed to have were either lying or mistaken. But he was something short of a legend: a potionmaker with the ability to create ingenious salves, elixirs, and concoctions to aid the most aggravating illnesses and ailments.

She had experienced the wonder of one of his such potions once in her nine years at the ward. She had a patient who had been struggling with the most curious illness. The woman would cry silver tears which would burn tracks across her face. After nearly a month, Crow came from Leveret's office with a small antidote that fixed her up immediately.

For Reva, it would be nothing short of a dream to have the opportunity to work with a medical genius.

Leveret smiled slightly. "I do. The work will officially begin Monday. Thank you, Vora."

—

Reva was still buzzing with excitement at the end of her ten hour shift. She happily stepped into the containment room and stripped to her undergarments to allow another female witch to cast the disinfecting spells and charms on her. She Apparated back to her apartment and fell onto her bed with a happy sigh. She spent the two hours she had finishing up chores around her place, but she did so with a smile and perhaps even a kick in her step.

At 4:45 PM, when it was time to leave for the bar, that dragging feel of dread was at least slightly subdued. Even once she was at the bar itself, Reva poured each drink with a newfound sense of generosity. Mayura watched her in awe as she filled a customer's whiskey all the way to the brim. Reva did not even truly mind cleaning up the vomit on the side of the front door. She simply pinched her nose and flourished her wand to get the job done. And, at 10:48 PM, near the end of her shift, the rage that filled her when another coworker informed her that Foggs wanted to speak to her was only half as much as it should have been.

"Ah, there you are!" the stodgy man exclaimed as she closed the door behind her.

He was holding his wand in his hand lazily, using it to pour firewhiskey from a decanter. His skin was looking especially red that night, making her wonder exactly how many drinks he'd had. Foggs's eyes raked up and down her body. Reva cleared her throat, pulling the hem of her short skirt down a bit and straightening a wrinkle in her white blouse.

"Can I help you, Foggs?" Reva sighed, feeling slightly polite that night.

"Yes! You can. Ask me how, doll."

He took a long sip from his whiskey, his drunk blue eyes decidedly trained on her chest.

"How, doll?"

Foggs blinked blankly. He set his glass down, spilling a little bit on his shirt in the process. Then his eyebrows shot up.

"Hah. Hah! I see what you did there." He cleared his throat, continuing, "You can help me by working tomorrow."

Reva's eye twitched. "I am working tomorrow."

"Yes. A half shift. Right, I need you to work the full shift, doll. You understand."

"I don't understand, actually."

Foggs squinted. He stood up slowly, pressing two fingers into his desk. "What's not to understand? I pay you, so you do what I say. I say you're coming in for the full shift."

Reva did not even have the energy to be angry. She could not even find it in herself to be shocked. If anything, Adrian Foggs could not have been acting more predictably. Perhaps she could not even blame him. The knob was doing all that he knew how to do: being a knob.

"I have a different idea. I think I just won't come in at all."

His eyebrows furrowed. "What? You —"

She did not hear the rest, for she simply left the office and stormed down the stairs in her three-inch heels. She didn't bother closing the door behind her either, hoping that the drunk oaf enjoyed the blaring music blasting into his office.

Reva wormed through the sea of drunk bodies to get behind the bar. She swung her purse over her arm and turned around to leave, feeling the delayed rage catching up to her. She heard Mayura try to ask her something, but she could not hear it over the music, and she certainly could not hear it over the blood rushing in her ears. No, Reva simply left the bar, even with ten minutes left on her shift, and walked off into the cold of the night with a fuming resolve. She realized a couple minutes into her walk that she had left her coat behind, but she did not care. She had her purse for her money and phone, she had her wand to protect her, and she had her temper to keep her warm.

She could hear the music from the party from the opposite end of the hallway, but her mind was spinning too fast to care about potential noise complaints.

When she walked in, she noticed a few teenagers give her strange looks before realizing that she must be their friend's older sister. A couple of them panicked, likely worried that she would notice that they were all far drunker than Roshan promised they would be, but even that did not snap Reva out of her stupor.

She stormed into her bedroom. Some girl was in the corner throwing up into her potted plant. It was a good thing that the plant was not real.

Reva found herself in front of her dustbin. A few crumpled balls of paper sat in there.

She had had enough of Foggs and the bar. If everything went as she hoped it did, she would not need that job anymore. It would take months, maybe years for that to be true, though, and she worried about her sanity. She could not do even a week more of this —

A week more of little to no sleep, a week more of insolent bosses, a week more of drunk, groping men, a week more of constant stress even in her sleep, a week more of working herself to the bone yet hardly making enough money to cover the electric bill, a week more of fearing an upcoming eviction day should she not catch up on the last two rent bills, a week more of repeatedly letting her brother down, a week more of doing everything she possibly can and finding no reward or satisfaction anywhere.

Reva Vora, a woman used to doing everything as wisely and rationally as she could, a woman who prided herself on her ethics and moral code, a woman who always tried to take the high road, found herself stooping as low as she possibly could.

The world felt so cold and unforgiving at that moment. It felt as though everything she wanted was right in front of her, but it was just out of her grasp. As though she would lose her ability to breathe if she kept going as she was. Suddenly, it felt as though the biggest monsters in her life were time and money. Suddenly, it felt as though no vampire and no attacker could ever be as fearsome as an hourglass burying her with sand, or as a forever empty bank vault at Gringotts, or as the chasm she worried would slowly form between herself and Roshan.

Reva glanced over her shoulder. The sick girl had disappeared. She grabbed her wand and flicked it, the door to her room immediately slamming shut.

Then she knelt to the floor and dumped the contents of the dustbin on the floor. Frantically, with the energy of a feral animal, she pushed all the useless bits and scraps out of the way, scrambling to find the torn pieces of that blue paper.

She found most of them, enough to make out the address. Reva frequented a hair salon only a five minute walk away from that street.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm down a little. She allowed her muscles to relax as she imagined the front door of that small salon. She took a deep breath in, and then she Apparated away.