Marlene McKinnon was asleep across a couple chairs shoved together in the waiting room on the 4th floor of St. Mungo's. She'd not been allowed to stay in with Emma after visiting hours had ended, but she had also refused to leave the hospital. She clutched her wand and pulled Emma's jumper close around, and was pleased as the exact scent of amortentia filled her senses.

"Maaaaaaarleneeeee my LOVE!"

She stirred and opened her eyes, finding Sirius Black prancing into the room. She ran her hands over her tired eyelids, making sure to get the remnants of tears from her cheeks as well. "What are you doing? Is someone else hurt? Oh no - it isn't Remus, is it?"

Sirius threw himself down beside Marlene, gathering her feet up onto his lap and leaning back in the chair. "No, darling, Moony is perfectly fine, rather, it seems Evans was a bit bruised up and we're here to check on her and Prongs."

Marlene sat up, worry on her face, "Lily? What's happened to Lily?"

Before Sirius could do more than open his mouth to reply, Remus came into the room. "Bleeding boggarts, Sirius, you've got to be looked at."

"You are looking at me!" Sirius replied, "And so is Marlene. Aren't you looking at me, Marly-dear?"

Marlene raised an eyebrow, "I doubt whether me looking at you is the way which Remus means you need to be looked at, Siri-Bear."

Remus crossed the room and shoved his hands in his pockets, stressed from having been dealing with this wildly uninhibited version of Sirius. He'd been pinging about like a pinball, and Remus was worried that the spell that had knocked him down had done some sort of damage. Even now, hours and hours later, Sirius's eyes still had something funny in them that Remus didn't recognize.

"I mean by a mediwitch," Remus said, confirming Marlene's doubt.

"What happened to him?" Marlene asked.

"Hit with a spell," Remus replied, "And he's been a bit off since."

Sirius laughed, "I'm always a bit off."

Remus replied, "More than usual."

Sirius laughed again, but didn't make any indication of getting up to go along with Remus to see the mediwitches.

"How is Em?" Remus asked Marlene.

"They've given her skelegro and put her to sleep so she doesn't feel the pain. They said her knee may not reconstruct quite the way it was so she'll be a bit stiff in that leg..." Marlene frowned. "Emma's going to bloody hate that."

"My knee's buggered up, too," Remus said, "Just have patience with her. It'll be worse some days than others."

Marlene nodded.

"Like around the MOOOON!" Sirius aaid, dragging out the OOO in moon in a bovine fashion.

Remus glared at him.

Marlene looked at Sirius and said, "You mad man. Go and see the mediwitches."

Suddenly the door opened and one of them came in, carrying a chart.

"Well look at that. I see one," Sirius grinned.

"Are one of you Marlene?"

"Me. I am." Marlene sat up quickly, taking her feet away from Sirius's lap and getting off the couch. "Is Emmaline alright?"

"She's woken up and is asking for you," the Mediwitch replied.

Marlene frantically gathered her things and followed the mediwitch away, so caught up she forgot to do more than wave at the boys as she hurried out the door.

Remus and Sirius were left in the silence of the waiting room. Sirius looked at the stern, expectant expression on Remus's face. Defiantly, he flopped onto his side and stretched out across the couch.

Remus sighed. "It could be serious."

"It can't. I'm Sirius."

"Sirius."

"Remus." Sirius matched Remus's irritated tone, then laughed, "Oi we sound like Potty and Lilith."

"Another one I need to see and talk into seeing a mediwizard..." Remus murmured.

"Who, Lilith?" Sirius asked, attention caught. "What's wrong with Evans?"

Remus stared at Sirius with a question in his eye. "You know perfectly well why we're here Sirius."

"Yes - so that you might try your hand at getting me tricked into being seen by a mediwizard when there isn't a thing wrong with me!"

"And to see Lily and James!" Remus reminded him.

Sirius was confused. "See Lily and James? At the hospital? Whatever for?"

"Well - as I've already told you, only an hour ago - Lily's had a fall when Dumbledore set off a detonus charm on the square."

Sirius stared at Remus with a look of horror on his face.

"James took her here, once I did some healing charms," Remus continued, "But there's something the matter with Prongs, too, and he didn't give me time to check on him before he left with Lily."

"Prongs is hurt?" Sirius's eyes flashed.

"Yes, it looked as though he was fighting Greyback," Remus said, shuddering, "Though Fenrir looked worse for wear when I saw him last. Edgar Bones and Gideon Prewett were arresting him."

"I'll tear him apart myself for hurting Prongs."

"Alright, but first you need to be seen!" Remus demanded as Sirius fluttered toward the doorway.

"Whatever for, love, I'm perfectly fine!" Sirius replied over his shoulder as he hurried out the door.

Remus scowled, but trudged after Sirius. Really, what else was he supposed to do?

The muggle man from the square sat in a hospital bed in Mungo's, rather dazed and very much confused by the things he was seeing happen all about him. They'd explained to him that they were healing his lycanthropic wound, that they were trying to reverse any potential infection of the werewolf venom. They'd performed magic, and they had promised him that he was not mad, and not to worry for they would simply erase his memory of this whole thing once they'd fixed him up all nice.

But the muggle peddler was sure he was mad, sure that the things he was seeing and hearing were distant from the truth and any moment he would awaken to find he'd had a knock to his head in an entirely natural and plausible situation and he'd guffaw and tell his mates at the pub all about the ridiculous idea of magic and werewolves he had cooked up while unconscious. Or perhaps he wouldn't tell anyone, lest they think him still mad, rather than just imagining things, and lock him away in that mad house in the next town over. Some real loonies lived in that place, and he certainly did not wish to end up among them.

Suddenly the door to his room was pushed open and a man in dark purple robes stepped into the room, his beard flapping about his waist and his half moon spectacles slightly disheveled by his haste to get inside. He was closely followed by another, sterner looking man, in a pinstriped suit whose pinched face appeared skeptical and quite annoyed.

"Here he is, Mr. Crouch!" Dumbledore said, "This is the muggle man who Greyback bit and infected."

Mr. Crouch had a monocle on a string, which he now lifted from his chest pocket and used to examine the peddler. He frowned and hummed as he looked him over.

"Woss the meanin' of this?" the peddler asked.

"You, sir, claim to have been bitten by the infamously nefarious werewolf, Fenrir Greyback?" Mr. Crouch demanded, looking into the peddler's eyes.

"I don't claim --" the muggle man began, but Crouch cut him off.

"Have you had a lycanthropic experience?"

"'Ave I had a wott?" the peddler asked, confused.

"Merlin's beard, do keep up with me!" Crouch said crossly.

Dumbledore cleared his throat, "He doesn't understand what you're asking him, Barty - he's a muggle!"

"Have. You. Changed. Into. A. Werewolf. Yet?" Mr. Crouch asked very slowly and deliberately.

"N-no!" stammered the bewildered peddler. His eyes were wide with panic now, and confusion registered quite plainly upon his face.

"Barty -" Dumbledore began, but he was cut off as Mr. Crouch went on -

"I have never once heard of a man being bitten by a werewolf, Albus, and not immediately making the turn." He turned to Dumbledore, his moustache twitching. "Bonkers, the lot of you. I've tried to tell you several times that the Resistance is not a good idea --"

"The Resistance is no more," Dumbledore replied calmly - and semi-truthfully. "What happened tonight was not Resistance work."

Barty Crouch glowered at him, then hissed, "This man was not bitten by a werewolf, Dumbledore, for Merlin's sake - it isn't even the full moon, there ARE no werewolves at present, and unless you think it's so possible that a man can make the change, as though he were an animagus --"

"I've told you they've got the venom," Dumbledore intoned.

"Horsefeathers!" Crouch snapped, "You're mad, Dumbledore, positively mad, and one day I will find a way to prove it. There is quite enough going on at the Ministry without YOU getting in the way and distracting all my top men from their duties! We could've used Gideon Prewett and Alastor Moody tonight, could've benefitted well from having Edgar Bones and Benji Fenwick and Frank Longbottom available - but none of them could be found. They were all in bleedin' Bakewell with you, clearly drinking some sort of mind altering substance, coming up with this tosh about Greyback and people being bitten by werewolves! When the moon isn't even half!"

The peddler was looking from Crouch to Dumbledore now, his eyes wide with interest and confusion.

"If you would simply unclog your ears from the copious amount of wax that must be stuffing them shut," Dumbledore said coldly, "Then perhaps you would be able to listen to me when I say that it does not need to be a full moon if the venom of the werewolf is injected in the victim. When the army that Voldemort -"

"GAAHH! You-Know-Who, Dumbledore!" Crouch hissed, looking around as though speaking the name might cause one to be attacked instantly.

"- has procured and produced such a volume of werewolf venom that they needn't worry about the moon when they intend to change a man -"

"YOU SPEAK NONSENSE!" Crouch cried.

"I speak truth!" Dumbledore replied.

Crouch drew a long, deep breath through his nose, which wheezed ever so slightly as he did it, puffing up his chest and glaring resolutely at Dumbledore. Then he turned on his heel and started toward the door, nearly running down a small young mediwitch in the process. "Excuse me madam," he muttered.

Dumbledore glanced at the peddler, "I am sorry for the interruption, and I do wish you a speedy recovery." Then he turned and charged after Barty Crouch.

The peddler stared after them, still wide-eyed and confused. 

The small mediwitch smiled approaching the bedside and drawing her wand. She stared after the two as they departed a moment, then, with a flick of her wrist, she closed the door. Turning to the peddler, she studied him a moment. She stepped closer and lifted his bandage carefully, inspecting his wound, then looked up at him. 

"I am sorry, sir," she said quietly. The peddler started to reply, but before he could, the mediwitch had raised her wand to his chest. "You've simply seen too much, dear," she said quietly, "And the Dark Lord does not wish for his plans to be known just yet." 

"The - the Dark Lord?" the peddler stammered.

The mediwitch nodded, then leaned closer so that her mouth was barely an inch from his ear. "Yes, muggle filth, the Dark Lord... Voldemort." And with that, she jabbed the wand but one and a silent spell sent green sparks directly into the heart of the muggle peddler.