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Merlin, not again-
Theseus nearly doubled over as he coughed, reaching out to brace a hand on the edge of Graves’s desk. The fit was quite violent and lasted for over a minute; towards the end of it, he’d lost just enough air to start getting a little frightened that he might fall over or pass out.
Please end, please end, please end-
And then it was over.
Thank God, it was over.
Theseus drew in a slow, shaky breath, worried he might trigger another fit if he inhaled too strongly and too quickly. He straightened up carefully and found Graves staring at him, eyebrows high on his forehead. “Damn,” The older man drawled. “Are you sick again, Scamander?”
Theseus nodded weakly. “Again,” he ventured, relieved when the words provoked only a light cough. “Ever since the Flu.”
Graves leaned back in his chair, eyes rolling shut. “Right. I’d forgotten you’d had that. You ended up in a Muggle hospital in London, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Did you see a healer after you got out?”
“I did.” Better to keep the answers short and sweet for now. The less air he needed, the better.
“They weren’t able to do anything for it?”
Theseus shook his head, feeling some of the heaviness come back to his lungs and worrying that another fit was around the corner.
“Huh. Well, maybe we’ve found the one thing that magic can’t fix,” Graves remarked, sarcasm bleeding into every word. Theseus had never interrogated him at length about it, but Graves was somewhat cynical about how ridiculously reliant most wizards were on magic. “If you need magic to wipe your own ass, then Christ help you if you ever lose your damn wand, because you’ll be dead within the hour,” He’d growled once after a particular incident involving one of his own Aurors (Theseus hadn’t asked then, either; he wasn’t sure he’d wanted to know).
Graves was a curious beast: He always seemed to be invested in learning more about Muggle culture and technology, even used ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’ instead of ‘Merlin’, ‘Merlin’s Beard’ or (the American counterpart) ‘Mercy Lewis’; this, despite being Pureblood. It wasn’t a cute little hobby, either: Theseus was confident that if Graves ever found himself in Muggle society for a prolonged period of time without a wand that he could function among them quite easily.
As it was, the Spanish Flu hadn’t penetrated the magical community quite the way it had the Muggle community, largely because the two were physically separated; there was not much socialization between Wizards and Muggles, and that had almost certainly contributed to why so many in the magical community had survived and even outright avoided the flu that had wiped out swaths of the non-magical community.
All things considered, Theseus was lucky.
“It’ll pass,” He rasped, before grimacing and embarking on another coughing fit. This time Graves got up and forced him into his chair, giving him a couple of whacks on the back.
“That sounds painful,” Graves remarked when it was just about done.
“It is,” Theseus wheezed.
“You should see a doctor.”
Theseus hesitated- Graves sometimes used the words ‘doctor’ and ‘healer’ interchangeably. When he actually had the lung-power to do so, he would have to inquire more about how it was that Graves had gotten so deep into the Muggle community that he’d even started using their words. “A doctor.”
“Yes. I know one that could take a look at you.”
“You mean a Muggle?”
Graves gave a small, innocent shrug. “Guess that would depend on what you consider a Muggle.”
Theseus cocked an eyebrow at him.
“He might be a Vampire.”
“Seriously?”
“Alright, he’s definitely a Vampire.”
“A Vampire Doctor?”
“Well, he was a doctor pre-Vampirism, and he’s in New York right now- he’s British, so you’ll love him.” Graves gave another shrug. “You got anything to lose?”
Theseus’s eyes slid shut. “No, not really.”
“Great: Get up, then.”
“Wait, now?” As if on cue, Theseus started coughing again. When he recovered, Graves had gotten his coat on and crossed his arms, looking at Theseus pointedly.
“Yeah, now would be good.”
Theseus sighed and hauled himself up, wavering a little from the dizziness. “I expect you to tell me all about how you met this Vampire Doctor.”
“Not much to tell,” Graves said as he held the office door open. “Reid’s a Vet, just like us, and I guess there was this whole Thing in London before the end of the war, something to do with the Vampire community- I don’t know all the details, I just know he’s a thousand percent less insufferable than the healers at St. Mungo’s and I liked him just fine.”
“Of course you would.”
Graves was going to be answering a lot of questions later.
-End