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Chapter Text

"How long, Severus?" Dumbledore asked.

Snape was silent for a long time. Then he said, "Half a year, perhaps a few months longer. But half a year is all I can guarantee, and that only if you follow my instructions faithfully."

"Half a year," Dumbledore echoed with no inflection whatsoever. "That's not very long, I'm afraid."

"You were lucky to survive at all," Snape said, looking pointedly at Dumbledore's blackened ruin of a hand.

"I know, Severus, I know. But I fear we need more than half a year, if we're to beat Voldemort at his game. Is there nothing you can do? I don't care how painful it is."

Snape shook his head. "The coming half year will be painful regardless of what I do, Headmaster. We can alleviate the pain to some extent, but once the curse hits vital organs … ."

"Six months is too short a time to prepare the boy for his task," Dumbledore murmured. "We have to extend the time somehow." He turned to the window overlooking the lake and looked out pensively. "Perhaps, Severus, it's time to think outside the box. Arthur once told me that there's a Muggle hospital in the USA that specialises in uncommon ailments. I think an injury caused by a cursed artefact counts as an 'uncommon' ailment, don't you?"

Snape didn't respond, but from one of the portraits of former headmasters on the wall came the unmistakeable sound of a cackle. "Muggle hospital?" the portrait of Phineas Nigellus said. "What has this school come to, that the headmaster seeks help from Muggles? Does the magical world not have a long and proud tradition of healers and potion makers?"

"Yes, indeed, Phineas, it does, but the magical world has no antidote for the black magic of as mighty a wizard as Voldemort," Dumbledore said with a faint note of reproof. "The healers at St. Mungo's have done what they can, and they have informed me that I've been a very imprudent old man. Severus and Madame Pomfrey are doing their best, but I fear that their best isn't good enough."

"Then perhaps it is time for a new headmaster, someone who is more prudent and not so prone to poking his long nose where it doesn't belong," Nigellus rejoined.

"Tsk-tsk, are you mocking my nose?" Dumbledore asked mildly. "There will undoubtedly be a new headmaster or headmistress here soon, but I'd like to die knowing that I won't have lost my life unnecessarily. If I need to enlist Muggle aid to do so, then so be it. Unlike other wizards, Phineas, I do not believe that Muggle lifestyle or customs are inferior to ours. They are merely different. There's no reason why we shouldn't profit from them, or they from us for that matter."

"Headmaster," Snape said. "Regardless of whether Muggle medicine is inferior to ours or not, there is the question of whether Muggle doctors are competent to deal with this. They don't even deal with common spells, jinxes, hexes, or charms. How are they to cope with black art such as this?"

"Have I anything to lose?"

"Possibly a few of the six months that still remain," Snape said.

Dumbledore awkwardly opened a casket on his desk with his healthy hand and made a show of choosing a lozenge from its contents. "You too, Severus?" he asked.

Snape shook his head.

"You should try these some time. They are truly excellent," Dumbledore said, popping the lozenge he'd chosen into his mouth. "Do you know that Muggle card game called poker? The players bet money on the chance that they'll have the best set of cards in the round. When a player bets all his money on his hand, he is said to go 'all in'. I think, Severus, that's what we'll do: we'll go all in."

Chapter Text

"Dr House," the chairman of the board said. "Your last cases have proven that a man of your talent is wasted dealing with STDs and common colds. I have no idea why this hospital ties down such a valuable resource with mundane tasks that any doctor could accomplish. Dr Cuddy?"

Cuddy was visibly flustered. "It's hospital policy that all doctors do clinic duty, and Dr House's contract specifically states that … ."

"Then I suggest we change the policy," the chairman interrupted Cuddy with a genial smile. "Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest we waive Dr House's clinic duty hours. All in favour of the motion please raise your hands."

All around the table hands rose – all except for one. Cuddy, looking as though she'd bitten into a lemon, kept her hands tightly clasped in front of her.

"Dr Cuddy?" the chairman asked with deceptive gentleness.

Gritting her teeth, Cuddy …

… pulled the magazine off his face.

"House, wake up!"

Rubbing a hand across his face, he struggled to sit up on the examination table, one hand automatically feeling around for his cane. Before he could locate it, Cuddy pushed it into his chest, hard.

"Need you in my office." She stalked out, leaving the door wide ajar.

"What about my clinic hours?"

"You can sleep some other time," she called over her shoulder.

By the time he reached her office, she was seated behind her desk with something that looked suspiciously like a patient file in front of her.

"Close the door," she ordered.

"And the blinds?" he asked with a suggestive leer.

"You wish! Got a patient for you."

He sat down opposite her and held out his hand. She tossed him the file and watched him while he opened it randomly. The first thing that caught his eye was a large photograph of a hand. Or more accurately, of something that had once been a hand. Now it was a black, shrivelled mess.

"Ewww!" he exclaimed. "Someone didn't heed the warning about not putting gasoline on the barbecue. And … someone else did a really bad job of getting a patient history. This guy is heavy competition for Methuselah, if the patient history is to be believed. Or am I supposed to save corpses now?"

"He's certainly old, but he's still very much alive. The patient history is admittedly sketchy and, uh, inaccurate in places, but there's enough to work with," Cuddy said.

"Send him to surgery," House advised. "They'll have to amputate the hand, but … ."

"You're taking him."

"Hand gangrenous, hand gone. Very sad." He pulled a piteous face.

"The patient is refusing amputation."

"Sad and stupid. You could, I don't know, put him out for a while, get his medical proxy's permission, and amputate the hand. But dang, you'd never do that, would you, it's so unethical!"

Cuddy's lips narrowed. "He's refusing amputation for reasons connected to his beliefs," she said in a pressed voice. "He is convinced that the hand is cursed."

That caught House's interest for a moment, but then he tipped his head and said, "Still stupid, and still not a case for Diagnostics. Psych wing's on the fifth floor."

Cuddy gave him her I'm the boss of you smile. "It is, if I say it is."

"The earth isn't an apple pie just because you say it is," House pointed out.

"No," Cuddy said in measured tones, "because it doesn't get paid to be one. You, however, get paid to take the cases I assign to you."

"Within reason. Cases within reason. This one isn't." He brandished the patient file at her. "Someone called 'Albus Dumbledore'? Seriously? Has the guy in Admissions been drinking again?"

"Professor Dumbledore wants you, and he's paying very seriously, so he's getting you."

"Look, I don't care whether he's paying his weight in gold. I'm not taking a case of barbeque-itis."

"It isn't a burn, he doesn't have vascular disease. Give me credit for checking for the obvious before assigning him to you. And he's paying more than his weight in gold." Cuddy nodded to a chest standing by her desk, a big antique-looking affair that he'd noticed when entering the room, but had brushed aside as another example of her inexplicable tendency to drift into kitschy when decorating her office. "I'll open it."

She got up and pulled the heavy lid up.

"Wow!" he said. The chest was filled to the brim with big golden coins.

"Understatement of the year," Cuddy remarked, moving aside to give him access to the chest.

He crouched awkwardly in front of it and picked up one of the coins. It was heavy in his hand, stamped with insignia that he'd never seen before. He bit into it experimentally.

"Can you really test gold like that?" Cuddy asked.

"No idea," he admitted, "but that's how they do it in movies. This could be one big scam. You realise that, don't you?"

"I picked out a random sample and had it tested," Cuddy said. "That gold is very real. Do you have any idea what currency it is? They call them 'galleons'."

He wondered who 'they' were. "Never heard of galleons. No country has gold currency like that. Can't the patient pay with a credit card like everyone else?"

"I'm not about to complain. That is our new paediatric oncology wing."

"Oh, goody, then you won't have to sleep with all the donors at the next fund raiser, which means you'll have more time for me."

"More time to make sure you're doing your job. Let me introduce you to your patient."

He pulled a face. "My minions can run a few tests – and get a decent patient history, starting with his name. I'll stay here and protect your gold for you."

Cuddy smiled. "And if someone comes to steal it, you'll scare them away with your cane. Forget it and come with me."

It wasn't his problem, but if the gold disappeared, Cuddy would be pissed, which would make his life difficult, and she'd be royally screwed, which would cost him his job in the long run. If she got fired for costing the hospital a fortune, he'd be the first person her successor fired.

"Cuddy, I don't think this is the time to indulge in your belief that humanity is essentially good and incapable of heinous crimes. The security at this hospital sucks. Call in a private security company and have them guard the chest until you manage to transfer the contents to a bank. And don't leave it unattended until then."

"The guy who delivered it assured me that the lid of the chest was charmed and that I was the only one who could open it." She slammed the lid shut and motioned to him to try to open it, giving him an infuriatingly superior smile.

Cuddy wasn't your street con artist; she was as transparent as a shop window. As far as he could make out, she hadn't manipulated the chest, so wiping that smile off her face shouldn't pose a major problem. He bent down to lift the lid again, but it wouldn't budge. He moved back a step, eyeing the chest. Cuddy hadn't touched the lower part of the chest, so she must have released a mechanism by pressing something or other on the lid. He felt all around the edges, tugged, rapped, shook and rattled with all his might, but the chest remained closed.

After watching him for about ten minutes, Cuddy waved him aside, bent down and opened the lid in one fluid motion.

He couldn't help feeling frustrated as he walked around the chest, thinking aloud. "Some sort of fingerprint lock, I figure. That won't stop anyone from walking in here, taking it out, and dynamiting it once they're outta here."

"For that, they'd have to know that the contents are worth the bother. It's not like I usually keep treasure chests in my office. Besides, the owners don't seem worried about theft or organised crime. They seem to have some sort of security system of their own," Cuddy continued, "so I'm not unduly worried." Nevertheless, she took a throw from the couch and covered the chest with it.

"Or maybe they aren't worried about organised crime because they are organised crime," House surmised, falling into step beside her as she left the office and made her way to the elevators. "Where are we going? I need to page my team and inform them."

"No team," Cuddy said. "Your patient insists on absolute secrecy." She pressed the button to the fifth floor. The isolation wing was up there, where they kept patients with highly contagious and dangerous diseases, and the psych ward.

"No team, no tests," House sing-songed.

"Discuss it with him," Cuddy advised, "but keep in mind that if your patient decides to go to another hospital taking that chest with him, then I will be very unhappy. And I mean 'ball-busting' unhappy." With that she nodded to the security guard, swiped her ID card through the scanner at the entrance of the isolation ward and led him in.

As far as House could make out, the ward wasn't staffed. The nurses' station was empty, the computer screens blank. Nor were any of the rooms hermetically sealed off, as was the custom when a contagious patient had been admitted. Only the first room was lit, but the doors to the room were wide open and the bed was empty. Two people were in the room; one was sitting in a chair while the other lounged uneasily against a wall.

"Where's the patient?" House asked Cuddy in a half whisper.

"The one who's sitting in the chair," she said, not bothering to whisper.

He pulled her away from the room towards the nurses' station. "He should be half dead, with a hand in that condition. Given his birth date, he should be entirely dead."

"Tell him, not me. Believe it or not, he walked into the hospital on his own two feet. It was all we could do to make him take a wheelchair to come up here, and even then I think he was humouring us."

House straightened his shoulders, tucked the file under his arm and entered the patient room.

"Good morning!" he said with false cheer. "I'm Dr Gregory House. I believe you are my new patient."

The seated man rose, and in the light of the neon ward lamps, House could see that he was indeed old. He had long white hair and a beard worthy of a patriarch; he wore a robe of biblical cut whose gravity was marred somewhat by a garish moon and star pattern. He kept his right hand tucked into his sleeve, but he politely extended his left one, his eyes above his half-moon glasses smiling at House.

House ignored the hand, focusing instead on the clothes. "Oh, I didn't know it was Halloween already."

The old man withdrew his hand, smiling without any sign of having taken umbrage. He said, with an unmistakeable British accent, "Good morning, Dr House. It's very kind of you to take the time to see an old man like me. Excuse my get-up; I didn't have the energy to organise more suitable garments." He waved a deprecating hand at his clothes.

Now that House was close enough to get a good look, he could see that the cloth of the old man's robe was of thick, soft wool, well-worn, but undoubtedly of the highest quality. No Halloween costume, that. The other man in the room, a tall stooped man of about House's age, was dressed in normal clothes: an ill-fitting black suit, a dark green shirt, and a green-and-silver striped tie. His black hair was unfashionably long, falling about his sallow face in greasy tendrils, and his posture was stooped. Unlike his aged companion, he looked anything but at his ease, and he appeared as miserable as House felt.

House perched on the empty bed, took out his reading glasses, and made a show of perusing the patient history. "You are … Albus Dumbledore, born in Surrey, England?"

"I am indeed," the old man said cheerfully. "And this is my companion, Professor Severus Snape." The man introduced as Snape gave the slightest of nods.

House looked down at the patient file again. "Born in 1881?"

"Is this necessary?" Professor Snape asked.

"I'm sure it is, Severus," Dumbledore said quietly. Then, in reply to House's question, "Yes, that's correct."

"Do you have papers to prove it?"

"None that you'd accept," Dumbledore said with a hint of regret in his voice. "I believe you require a passport or a birth certificate issued by government officials."

"I'll take a driver's licence at a pinch," House said without much hope.

Dumbledore and Snape looked at each other, shaking their heads.

"Well, at your age it's probably better that you don't drive anymore," House said. "But one hundred and something seems … ," he scrunched up his face, "… just a little unlikely."

"You can put down eighty if you prefer," Dumbledore offered.

"Eighty it is," House said, scratching out the original date of birth in the patient file and putting down the new one with a dramatic flourish.

Snape prowled around the room like a caged panther. "Headmaster, this is ridiculous. If these people don't believe minor matters such as your age, how will they believe the rest?"

"Headmaster?" House asked. "What of?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Dumbledore said without blinking.

House tapped his pen on the patient file and looked at Dumbledore over the top of his glasses. So this Dumbledore fellow was the head of some obscure sect that surfed the occult wave that was sweeping over the western world. "You teach what exactly at your school?" he asked, just to be sure.

"Magic," Dumbledore said calmly. "Magic in all its manifestations, though we draw the line at Black Magic."

"I see. Would you care to demonstrate?" He gave Dumbledore his 'eager young boy scout' look.

"I would love to, but unfortunately there are strict laws against performing magic in front of non-magical witnesses unless life and limb are at stake."

"How terribly convenient!" House said. "Oops, sorry, I meant 'inconvenient', of course." A charlatan, no doubt, and that image of his hand was probably photoshopped. Later, he'd crucify the Admissions Office for allowing an unverified picture to be placed in the patient file.

"House!" Cuddy, who had been completely silent till now, admonished.

"Headmaster, I think we're wasting our time. We should leave," Snape said.

"Oh, I think not," Dumbledore said with unremitting good humour. "In his place I'd be suspicious too. In fact, I'd be more inclined to leave if he weren't suspicious."

"It would be a pity to leave before I've had a look at that hand of yours," House said. If this guy was a fraud, he'd be happy to expose him to Cuddy. It wouldn't prevent the chest of gold from leaving her clutches, but she'd have to live with it if he proved that Mr Oz was a fraud.

Dumbledore pulled up the right sleeve of his robe with his left hand. The right hand was wrapped in a bandage. Snape stepped forward and started to unwind it.

"We didn't want to upset people while travelling here," Dumbledore explained as Snape peeled off layer after layer, "but the hand is neither contagious nor sensitive to touch, so I normally don't cover it. Thank you, Severus."

Snape, having completing his task, stepped back and House barely stopped himself from gasping. If anything, the hand was in a worse state than what he'd seen in the patient file. It was completely blackened, as though it had spent too much time on a barbecue (maybe his BBQ Accident theory wasn't too far off) and in some places, muscle and skin were so far damaged that white bone shone through. The hand was curled inward, which was hardly surprising given the extent of the damage. House rose and stretched out his hand. Snape stepped forward protectively, but Dumbledore waved him away, extending his injured extremity for House's inspection. House grasped it well above the wrist, where the flesh seemed healthy, and carefully turned it one way and another, inspecting the damage and also making sure that he wasn't being presented with a skillfully prepared prosthesis. But there was no doubt: this was the real thing. The hand, though mutilated almost beyond recognition, was real and still alive.

Dumbledore showed no outer signs of discomfort other than taking a hissing breath when House tried to uncurl the digits with the help of a pencil.

"The muscles have been foreshortened by the damage," Snape said. "He can't straighten the fingers."

"I can see that," House said testily. "When did you have first symptoms?"

"Two months ago. In August. And this," Dumbledore waved his healthy hand over the afflicted one, "was the first symptom. The hand was like this from the start, possibly even slightly worse before Severus's initial measures took hold."

Dry gangrene with instant onset – who'd ever heard of that? "And what caused this?" he asked next.

Dumbledore hesitated for the first time. "A … curse. A stronger, darker version of the spell that is on the chest in Dr Cuddy's office."

"Oh-kay," House said. "It would help if you were slightly more informative about this. What kind of a 'curse'?"

"It's nothing you'd know about or understand," Snape said condescendingly.

"Oh-kay. But if I forced the lid of the chest downstairs, I'd … ?"

"You'd end with your arm in the same state as your leg," Snape snapped.

"Severus!" Dumbledore reprimanded his sidekick. "Dr House is trying to get the general picture."

He turned to House. "Yes, you'd injure your arms and hands gravely, but not irreparably. Our spell, while powerful, is benign. Unfortunately, the spell that hit me is killing me."

"You look pretty alive to me, despite your hand. It's dry gangrene: if we amputate it, you'll probably be fine." Whether that was true was anyone's guess, but unless he provoked these people, they'd keep hedging.

"The curse is being contained in my hand by a strong spell that Severus has put on it. During amputation the curse would be released from its containment, spreading through my body within seconds and resulting in my death. If that weren't the case, we'd have amputated immediately."

House pursed his lips in thought. If these people were to be believed, he wasn't dealing with ischemia, but with an infection or a poison that had entered the body via a wound. Definitely batty, these people. But interesting, nonetheless. There had to be a reason why someone as astute as this old man chose to believe in a whole load of mumbo jumbo that had somehow or other led to such a grave condition. Even more interesting to know would be how that guy Snape was keeping his boss on his legs despite the immeasurable pain that the old man had to be in. Maybe these New Age madcaps had access to Good Stuff, the sort of Good Stuff that was so good that access wasn't merely restricted, it wasn't even available via your normal pharmaceutical channels. That definitely called for a triple background check.

"Okay, I'll take you on. I need full information on prior medical conditions, probable cause of injury, and treatment so far." He fixed Snape with a basilisk stare. "I need a list of everything you gave him, no matter how small the quantity or how insignificant the ingredients. And my team needs to run some tests."

"Can't you run the tests?" Snape asked in a demanding tone. House didn't doubt that in a moment he'd refer to the chest of gold and point out to Cuddy that they were paying enough to justify having House clean the toilets if they so desired.

"I can't run anything or anywhere," House said with a pointed look at his leg. "This will be a lot faster if my little elves are allowed to do their jobs."

"Dr House's team is the soul of discretion. You can be sure that nothing of what passes here will leave this room," Cuddy said smoothly.

Snape's eyes glittered. "Dr Cuddy, so far nothing has happened that is inclined to increase my confidence in this institution. I find that the doctor who is meant to cure my superior from a dangerous and extremely strong curse can't even cure his own leg."

"Some things, Professor Snape, can't be cured. I'm sure that in your … religious community you also have people with untreatable ailments. Dr House is missing a chunk of leg muscle; you can't just replace that, you know," Cuddy said.

Dumbledore glanced at Snape, who was staring at House and Cuddy with unmasked contempt.

"Oh, I'm not so sure," Dumbledore said with a little chuckle. "We could give it a try, couldn't we, Severus?" Snape looked as though he had no intention of trying.

"Let's fix your hand first," House suggested. The last thing he needed was hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo and chicken blood mixed with tadpoles smeared all over his leg.

"It's a deal," Dumbledore said with almost childish enthusiasm. "You fix my hand and I'll fix your leg, young man."

"Great!" House said. "I'll call my team."

He turned away to message them, but caught with half an ear what Snape said to Dumbledore. "The more people who are in the know, the more of them we'll have to subject to memory charms afterwards. If he needs someone's help, we should restrict it to one doctor at the most."

"Oh, I don't think we should use Obliviate on any of the doctors," Dumbledore answered quietly. "It would be very awkward for them to have to explain how they used their time and hospital equipment if they can't remember the patient."

"What's 'Obliviate'?" House asked, tapping the screen of his phone. It sounded suspiciously like the Daleks' 'Exterminate!'.

"It's a memory charm," Dumbledore said easily, looking up. "It wipes out memories; applied correctly it doesn't do any damage."

"And of course you and Professor Snape can apply it absolutely correctly."

Dumbledore was seemingly immune to sarcasm. "I'm sure we can, although I believe that other than the unfortunate Gilderoy Lockhart, Arthur Weasley is the best practitioner of the spell at present. Should it prove necessary, we'll call him in. The times being what they are, it is well possible that cases like this," he looked ruefully at his hand, "may appear more frequently, not only in our world, but also in yours. In that case it would be useful if you had some memories of handling this case. But if we practice discretion, I see no reason why we should resort to any memory-altering processes."

"I appreciate your spirit of compromise," House said, torn between amusement and annoyance.

Snape's eyes flashed angrily at his boss. "You're risking the discovery of the magical world by Muggles. You would risk that for the sake of getting adequate treatment for a few Muggles who get hit by random spells gone astray?" he asked incredulously.

Dumbledore's air of mildness and inanity left him for a moment. "We are not talking of 'random' spells, Severus. We have reached a point where Voldemort is deliberately targeting the Muggle world. It's only a matter of time before curses and jinxes become a common endangerment for non-magical people. We'd be selfish to leave them at the mercy of Voldemort and his henchmen, solely from a desire to retain an anonymity that has, I fear, lost its value."

He turned back to House. "That's an interesting device, Dr House. Is it similar to the one you call a 'telephone'? The last one I saw had little plastic protuberances called 'keys', if I remember correctly, but this one seems – sleeker, more pristine."

House proffered his phone for examination. "Smartphone," he said succinctly. "All functions are integrated in the touch screen." He had no idea why he was humouring this old man with his air of innocence that undoubtedly masked a shrewd, business-like approach to ripping off the unfortunate followers of his weird cult. The chest of gold in Cuddy's office was clear proof that this man was a crook of the highest order. It would be interesting to know in what areas this cult dabbled on the side: drugs, large-scale prostitution, arms sales, industrial espionage – who knew?

Dumbledore turned the phone around and examined it from all sides. "It has a camera too, doesn't it?" He tapped an icon on the screen and gave a little squeal of joy when an app opened on it. "Look at that, Severus! It even mimics sweets. Arthur would love this."

"Fascinating," Snape drawled, looking anything but charmed. "But I think we have more pressing problems than sweets and cameras."

"Don't you see, Severus," Dumbledore asked, "that this device is like several spells stored within one outer shell? It's truly innovative."

"Exactly!" Severus said mockingly. "Now where might I have seen something like that before? Let me think. What about … a wand?" He drew a long, thin object from his pocket. "A device that allows me to cast any number of spells, all encased within the same device. And it's been around for close on five thousand years. What powers of innovation these Muggles have!"

"May I?" House asked, holding out his hand for Snape's wand. Snape instinctively withdrew it. House smiled knowingly. That stick was nothing more than a polished twig.

Dumbledore, noticing the exchange, handed the phone back to House. When he'd taken it, Dumbledore awkwardly dug in a pocket of his robe with his left hand and drew out a similar stick which he held out to House. House weighed it in his hand and examined it. It was of greyish wood, about fifteen inches long, highly polished and well worn, with a few nice carvings at one end, but other than that completely unimpressive. He gave it a few experimental flourishes, but nothing happened.

"Lame," he muttered in Snape's direction. "What was that spell called, the memory one? Obliviate?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Dumbledore said, holding out his hand, but House ignored him.

He twirled the wand to and fro, threw it in the air like a baton and caught it again behind his head, gave the wand a good swing that terminated with the end pointing towards a sour-faced Snape and proclaimed loudly, "Obliviate!"

"House!" Cuddy's voice reverberated through the room.

The wand jerked in his hand, generating a recoil that was several dimensions larger than what that skimpy piece of wood should have been able to generate, even if it had been filled with gunpowder. As he fought for his balance, the wand, with a final wriggle as though it was alive, sent sparks through the air towards Snape. Snape ducked and crouched, hastily drawing out his own wand again. Dumbledore, moving swifter than House would have expected from someone his age and with his level of injury, knocked House's hand aside and tweaked the wand out of it. Cuddy stomped on a stray spark and looked around the room for damage.

"Well, that was unexpected," Dumbledore said, stepping back and recovering his sang-froid.

"Interesting," Snape drawled, slowly moving out of his crouch and pocketing his wand again, and for once he seemed to mean it.

"Professor Dumbledore, I must ask you not to bring pyrotechnical devices into this hospital," Cuddy said.

"I'll just keep my toys away from Dr House, shall I?" Dumbledore said with a smile that indicated that he had no intention whatsoever of relinquishing his wand. "Are you all right, Severus?"

"I'm fine. Dr House is luckily a bumbling and inept amateur, but keeping wands out of his reach sounds like an excellent idea, Headmaster."

Dumbledore stroked his beard with his left hand. "It's a pity that magical education is still in its infancy in the US. Now if we'd had him at Hogwarts as a student, … ."

"The mind boggles," Snape said, and it wasn't quite clear whether this was meant as a compliment or an insult.

Dumbledore sighed. "You're probably right. The abilities of a Minerva McGonagall, coupled with the temperament of the Weasley twins – a very volatile mix indeed. But interesting, definitely interesting."

House straightened – he'd been leaning on the bed all this time, recovering his balance and his breath, and feeling decidedly off-kilter – and shook his head to clear it.

"Well," he said, "I think I'll leave the preliminaries to my team. Professor Dumbledore, Professor Snape." And with a tip of his head he limped out of the room.

Chapter Text

2. Preliminary Examinations

"Who is this weirdo and why are we treating him?" Chase asked, barging into House's office.

"What makes you think he's a weirdo?" House had ensconced himself comfortably behind his desk armed with coffee, a few muffins, and a book on herbal medicine.

"Look at how he's dressed! And he talks about magic and incantations like it's everyday stuff."

"Good point. We shouldn't treat guys who run around in drag and believe in supernatural powers. Wait, didn't you nearly join that club of men in drag who believe in invisible powers, miracles and inexplicable healings?"

Chase drew upright with a mixture of indignation and amusement. "Are you comparing the Catholic Church to this bunch of impostors?"

House tipped his head to one side. "I'm saying that I don't have a ranking system for delusions. If these folks want to believe in curses and spells and witchcraft, that's their headache, but they get treated, same as any other patient with religious delusions. Did you get a decent patient history and previous treatment details from them?"

Chase tossed the patient file onto the desk. "As far as that was possible. Why'd I have to do it? Couldn't Cameron or Foreman …?"

"I thought your British accent and preppy look might relax them and get them to open up," House said, resting his chin on the palm of his hand and batting his eyelashes at Chase.

"I'm Australian; there's a world of difference."

"You say 'zed' instead of 'zee' and don't drop the 'h' in 'herb'. We don't want to misunderstand them when they talk about magic mushrooms, do we?"

"Actually, they did talk about magic mushrooms," Chase said, looking at House slyly.

"Shrooms? Goody!" House said, opening the file.

"Jumping toadstools," Chase clarified. "I have no idea what they are, but they aren't a species of psilocybin mushrooms."

House leaned back. "And you're sure about that because?"

"Because I checked. I knew the question would come up." Chase's grin was a tad smug.

"Okay," House said, rising and tossing the file back to Chase. "Make three copies of this."

He limped into the conference room where Foreman and Cameron were sorting through old files, cataloguing them and placing them into boxes.

"Playtime's over. Time for serious work." He picked up a black marker and stood in front of the whiteboard. "Patient, male, between eighty and roughly one hundred and twenty years old, presents with … ."

"What do you mean, between eighty and one hundred and twenty?" Foreman asked, irritation emanating off him already.

"Age is unclear."

Cameron immediately looked concerned. "Is he a John Doe?"

"Nope, just an old guy with reality issues." House taped the picture of Dumbledore's hand onto the whiteboard.

"Is that … gangrene?" Cameron asked.

"Yes, that is gangrene!" House barked. "Common causes?"

Foreman looked more than pissed. "Why are we treating a patient with gangrene? It's boring."

"Because," House said, "the patient's delusions about the cause of his gangrene are interesting."

"That explains your interest – you like crazy – but it doesn't explain why Cuddy would give you the case after making a point of telling us that we have to get our old paperwork filed and down to the archives stat."

"Cuddy's interest was piqued by the patient's financial possibilities. Causes of gangrene?"

"Peripheral vascular disease," Cameron said automatically. "Often caused by diabetes, smoking, atherosclerosis, … ."

"Sudden onset," House interrupted.

"Infection," Foreman said. "But dry gangrene and sudden onset don't go together."

"What does the patient say?" Cameron asked.

"He says it was a curse," House said matter-of-factly.

"Okay, then we need to put psych symptoms on that board, unless our patient has already been diagnosed with dementia, schizophrenia or the like," Foreman said, making notes on the pad in front of him.

"Dementia doesn't cause shrivelling," House pointed out.

"It does, if the patient can't assess dangers anymore," Foreman countered. "Or stick to a decent diet if he's diabetic."

Chase returned with four files that he fanned out on the table. Foreman and Cameron picked up their copies and started reading.

Cameron soon looked up, a puzzled expression on her face. "There's no record of any mental illness."

Foreman rolled his eyes. "This guy hasn't gotten a very dangerous condition adequately treated. That's kinda the definition of insane."

Chase shook his head. "No. He believes he's getting his condition treated. That's medical ignorance, not insanity."

"This guy," Foreman said, tapping the file, "is eighty or older. He's senile, which is why he believes that waving wands over his arm while muttering mumbo jumbo and drinking green smoothies is a viable cure."

"Isn't that how it's done where you come from, Dr Mandingo?" House asked. "Course, it might work better if they added a voodoo doll or two to the mix." He tapped the end of the marker against his lower teeth. "Seems to be having some effect, though. If he's in pain, he's hiding it well."

"His condition has been stable for two months," Chase said.

"Says the patient. Patients lie," Foreman retorted. "What's the treatment anyway?"

"He was treated with … ." Chase turned a page in the file. "Potions containing valerian, mandrake, thyme, aconite, belladonna, bubotuber, salamander blood, sopophorous beans, and a bezoar."

Cameron peeked at Chase's file, and then opened hers to the same page. "I haven't even heard of half of these ingredients. What is … bubotuber?"

House raised an eyebrow at Chase, who said, "It's a … a slug-like plant that squirms and exudes a pus-like, smelly substance, according to Professor Snape. That's the guy accompanying our patient," he explained for Foreman and Cameron's benefit. "Looks like an overgrown bat."

"Did Batwizard also say what sane people call this plant?" House asked. "The question is, are Dumbledore's delusions the reason why he's consenting to this insane treatment or is the treatment the cause of his delusions?"

He turned back to the whiteboard, where he'd listed symptoms and potential causes on the left side. He drew a line down the middle and wrote 'Treatment' over the right-hand column. Then he noted down all the potion ingredients that Chase had mentioned. "Okay, let's strike off every ingredient that we know can't be causing delusions."

"Isn't a bezoar a ball of hair?" Cameron asked, disgust turning down the corners of her mouth.

"Yep," House said, "from the stomach of animals."

"Gross!"

"Yes, again. Thyme doesn't cause delusions, paranoia, or hallucinations." House struck 'thyme' off the whiteboard.

"Suppose this sect uses their own names for plants; then it's possible that the names that seem known to us refer to completely different plants," Chase said thoughtfully. "'Thyme' may not refer to the plant of that name that we know, while 'sopophorous beans' might be something we'd grow under a different name."

"Good point." House scratched his forehead. "Okay, everything stays on the list. I need tests. Cameron, test for diabetes, atherosclerosis, and any other -osis that could cause peripheral vascular disease. Get X-rays of the hand and of anything else that looks odd. Foreman, get swabs and test for infections that could cause gangrene. Chase, find out what those ingredients are and organise samples."

"Where from?" Chase said, looking put upon.

"From Severus Snape. He fed this stuff to his boss, so it's his stash that we want to look at. And while you're at it, find out who benefits from Dumbledore's death."

Chase grinned. "Oh, I can tell you that: a dark wizard named Voldemort. He practices black magic, and apparently he's trying to take over the magical world. According to Snape, Dumbledore is the only one who can stop him."

"Now that's just racist," House whined, "equating the colour 'black' with nefarious doings."

"Yeah," Foreman deadpanned, "let's call it 'pink' magic instead. Meanwhile, let's look around for other beneficiaries – within Dumbledore's inner circle. This Snape, is he Dumbledore's second in command? We need to know how their organisation is structured. What does the title 'Professor' mean in the context of this sect?"

"They're all teachers at a school in Scotland," Chase said. "They take kids from all over Great Britain."

"A school? There are people who send their children to a school run by these madmen?" Cameron looked flabbergasted.

Chase shrugged. "Yeah, and it isn't only cult members who send their children there. Apparently some Muggles – that's what they call non-believers – also send their children there."

"Muggles?" Foreman repeated. "They call us Muggles? That's … ."

"Rude," Cameron supplied.

"Yeah, it's just wrong to call people who have other beliefs names, isn't it – like, 'heathen' or 'goy' or 'gentile'?" House remarked. "Or just plain 'weirdos' or 'madmen'."

"Hey, you called them that too!" Foreman pointed out.

"Ah, but I don't object to being called names. I even answer to 'Jerk' and 'Ass'."

–––––––––––––––––

"When do I get the test results?" Dumbledore asked the pretty young doctor who was drawing blood from his healthy arm.

"Well," she said, loosening the constriction around his arm, "the blood tests take about a day. Maybe I can get the lab to do them by this evening. I'm taking you down to Radiology next; the X-rays will be ready immediately."

"So I can leave tomorrow."

Her head snapped up. "Oh, no! My colleague is starting cultures in the lab from the swabs that we got from the wound. Those'll take a few days. And once we've figured out what's causing this, we still have to treat it."

"A Corruptus curse is not treatable!" Snape who had re-entered the room, said. He pointed through the glass wall at the Australian doctor, who was writing up notes with an expression reminiscent of Neville Longbottom after double Potions. "Professor, that inept bungler wants samples of every ingredient I ever used on you. At Hogwarts he wouldn't pass First Year Potions; he doesn't even know the commonest remedial herbs, let alone more sophisticated ingredients or potion-brewing techniques."

Dumbledore couldn't help feeling sorry for the young man. "Oh dear," he said. "But Severus, you are acquainted with non-magical life and customs. This can't be so surprising to you."

"No, indeed, it isn't. And I'll remind you that it wasn't my idea to come here. My point is that it would be unwise to place potentially lethal potions ingredients, such as moonseed, into inexperienced and, in my opinion, careless hands."

"Dr Chase is not inexperienced," the woman said. "He's very conscientious and … ."

"And you are?" Snape said, raising his eyebrows and looking down his nose at her.

"Allison Cameron. I'm one of Dr House's fellows. My speciality is immunology," she said, visibly flustered.

"Very interesting," Snape said, "though completely irrelevant to our problem. Next they'll be sending us gynaecologists – doctors specialising in women's ailments," he added, probably for Dumbledore's benefit.

"It could be an autoimmune problem," Dr Cameron said, flushing. "The body responding to something that it perceives as a threat by turning on itself."

Snape's smile was thin. "A likely story: the body attacking itself! And you think we're crazy!"

"I never said … ."

"I think we should concentrate on how to get potion ingredients from your storeroom to Princeton, Severus," Dumbledore interposed to stop Snape from reducing the young lady to tears.

"You think we should fulfil their demands," Snape said, his disapproval clearly visible.

"Yes, I do. If I understood Dr Cameron correctly, their method consists of narrowing down causes by excluding potential candidates in a process of elimination. Did I get that right, Dr Cameron?"

Her colour subsiding to a healthier pink again, Dr Cameron nodded and gave him a grateful smile. "Radiology has a slot in half an hour. I'll come and pick you up, shall I?"

Dumbledore beamed at her. "That would be lovely, my dear."

She was a pleasant young thing, even if the tests she was carrying out were a complete waste of time. Magical healing methodology and procedures might differ from Muggle ones, but he was pretty sure that he'd been subjected to equivalent tests at St Mungo's not so long ago, with no promising results.

When she was out of earshot Dumbledore said to Snape, "Don't take your frustration out on her. It isn't her fault."

"The doctors here are a bunch of incompetents," Snape muttered.

"Those two are young. I believe they are being trained, in the same way we train young healers, aurors, obfuscators – and teachers. If I were well, you'd be more charitable towards them."

"If you were well, we wouldn't be here!" Snape was prowling around the room again. "They said you needed to stay for a week at the very least. They indicated that they assume your stay will be considerably longer."

"A week? Oh dear!" Dumbledore said. Dr Cameron had indicated something similar, but he preferred not to think about the consequences. "We'll have to send for the potions ingredients."

"I don't want that oaf Hagrid or Filch rooting around in my supplies!" Snape said.

"They shan't. I'll ask Minerva to collect what is needed, shall I?" He waited for Snape's nod of assent, then he took a bottle of ink and a quill out of the large carpet bag standing in a corner of the room. "Will you write the list please, Severus? The handwriting that my left hand produces still leaves a little something to be desired, and I think that using my self-writing quill here might cause unwanted attention." He glanced out to where Dr Chase sat, typing his notes into the computer at the nurses' station with a mixture of puzzlement and disbelief on his face. "You didn't tell that young man out there any tall tales, Severus, did you?"

Snape's expression was bland. "Would I do that, Headmaster?"

Dumbledore's lips twitched. "No, of course not. Just make sure that you don't ask Minerva to pack any Alihotsy. I'd hate to send the whole hospital into hysteria."

While Severus wrote, Dumbledore, watching Chase, remarked, "Those devices they have, computers, aren't such a bad thing. I could work one with one hand."

"Why use a self-writing quill when you could have daily battles with operating systems, malfunctioning hardware, and computer viruses?" Snape asked, scribbling studiously.

"Sorry?"

Snape put the quill down. "Headmaster, Muggle devices rely on Muggle technology, and Muggle technology is subject to all kinds of malfunction. It isn't necessarily the skill of the user that determines the results, but the developer's abilities, the quality of the materials, the age of the device, and last but not least, the idiocy of previous users. Have you never wondered why those of us who are Muggle-born or part Muggle choose to come to Hogwarts instead of staying in the Muggle world? The Muggle world is very, very – annoying."

He picked up the quill again. "Sopophorous beans," he muttered. "Salamander blood, mandrake. Did we ever try essence of comfrey? Yes, we did."

Dumbledore was silent for a moment. "Now, who can bring us the ingredients? I don't think it would be wise to let Hagrid travel to and fro again. He draws entirely too much attention to himself. Besides, Hogwarts is already weakened by our absence. We can't afford to draw more staff members away from there. That would provoke the attack that I'm hoping to avoid."

"I could return and …," Snape offered reluctantly.

"No, I'm afraid you can't," Dumbledore said with a glance at his arm. "The journey has tired me to the extent that I'm afraid I shall require your continued presence to keep the curse in check. It'll have to be someone who won't be missed that much, someone whose abilities at Defence against the Dark Arts are limited. Pomona, perhaps?"

"I can think of someone who is absolutely useless," Snape said, a grim smile playing on his lips …

Chapter Text

House, entering the conference room, froze. The blinds were lowered, scarves and shawls were draped over the desk lamps, and scented candles on the conference table provided a flickering ambience. Some sort of New Age music, sitars and percussion, provided a backdrop against which a female voice droned, “Empty your minds and open yourselves to the Inner Eye.”

“What the fuck!”

A cup clattered onto a saucer. “You, sir,” said the voice indignantly, “have ruined the aura. I cannot concentrate if any Tom, Dick or Harry can march in here and cloud the Inner Eye.”

A spectre in flowing green robes rose before House, a stick-like apparition with frizzy brown locks and green eyes ridiculously magnified by the ugliest glasses he’d ever seen.

“Sir, I must ask you to leave at once. I can sense that you are not endowed with the Sight; there isn’t the hint of an aura about you. Oh, and please close the door behind you.” The spectre waved a dismissing hand at him.

“Who. Are. You?”

“Sybill Trelawney, Professor of Divination at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft … .”

“And Wizardry.” House took a deep breath.

“Oh, you know Hogwarts?” Myopic eyes peered up at him in approval. “Still, you definitely do not have the Sight, so I must ask you to leave my studio and return to your workplace. With a lot of hard work, it may still be possible to salvage this session.”

“This is my workplace. This is my office and my conference room.”

Trelawney took a step back. “Oh, indeed? Then you must be Dr House. I am so pleased to meet you.” She clasped her bony, ringed hands with delight. “Your young student shows a remarkable aptitude for the art of divination, an aptitude not granted to everyone. And such open-mindedness!”

Chase, seated on the other side of the conference table, gave House a sardonic grin. “The tea leaves say that my oppression shall end shortly and that great opportunities await me once I free myself from the fetters of slavery.”

“Nice!” House growled. “And what do they say about me?”

“Do close that door,” Trelawney repeated. “Let me see.”

She poured tea from a garish green and pink teapot into a cup, held it out to House and said, “Drink, please.”

“Not great at divining irony, is she?” Foreman remarked from the corner of the room where he was seated, ostensibly reading up on rare infections.

House glared at Trelawney, upon which she asked, “You don’t like tea? Never mind. It’s more difficult this way, but it can be done. It’s not a process that I would recommend for beginners, but for a seer of my experience and ability it is possible to read the leaves by proxy.” She drained the cup, swirled it around, drank it, and then decanted the dregs into the saucer. Peering down at the dregs, she tipped the saucer this way and that and mumbled mistily, “Dr House … let me see.”

After a suitably long pause she uttered in a dramatic whisper, “I see disaster: sickness, a long struggle, a gruesome death. Someone will die. Soon! I fear there will be a death soon in these halls.”

“This is a hospital,” Cameron said. “There are bound to be deaths in a hospital.”

Trelawney’s head jerked up. “I fear,” she said with markedly frosty accents, “that the Sight isn’t strong in you either, my dear. You take your tone from your master, and that, let me tell you, is a bad choice. You’d do much better to follow the example of this young man, if you want to cultivate the little aura that you have.”

“Never mind about deaths,” Chase interposed. “What I really need to know is who Markham will fire next. Can you tell me that?”

“Markham from Gastroenterology?” Foreman asked. “Have you got a pool going on that?”

“Sure,” Chase said. “And a pool on which of the surgery rotation students will be the first to faint or upchuck. But the Markham pool is the bigger one. So, Sybill, … ?”

“My dear boy,” Trelawney said with a fond smile. “You still have a lot to learn. Tea leaves can’t tell you anything about absent people. For that, you need a crystal ball. Now where have I got my travelling ball?”

House strode over to the closest window and pulled up the blinds in a few quick moves. Then he tore a scarf off the nearest desk lamp.

“Enough!” he yelled, knocking a few candles off the conference table with his cane.

Chase nearly tipped backwards off his chair in surprise, while Cameron jumped up to extinguish the fallen candles. One of the candles had fallen into the box of files for the archive, setting fire to it. Cameron hastily smothered the flames.

“House, you’ll set the place on fire!” she scolded as she pulled the top files out of the box to assess the damage.

House pulled a face at her. “This isn’t a ren fair. Get back to work, all of you.”

“There’s nothing to do until the test results come in,” Chase grumbled.

“What about those case files that you’re supposed to get ready for the archives?” House asked.

Chase rolled his eyes. “As if you care about those!”

“Get down to those or your liberation from bondage will be sooner than you thought,” House warned him. “And you,” he said, pointing a finger at Trelawney, who was huddled in a corner staring at him fearfully over the top of her glasses. “What are you doing here?”

“P-Professor Dumbledore …,” she stuttered.

“One floor up, tell the security guard that I sent you.”

“ … asked me to bring you these potion ingredients.” She dug around in a voluminous batik handbag, finally drawing out a package wrapped in brown paper. “Let me see.” Adjusting her glasses, she read the label dangling from the package. “Sopophorous beans.”

She laid the package on the table and rummaged in the bag once more, a frown of concentration on her face. In a faint, tired voice she said, “I’m always happy to oblige Professor Dumbledore, who is a wonderful man, a truly great-hearted man, but having to drop everything – my classes, my Divination workshop, my other obligations – to play messenger boy for that man Snape is a severe trial for me. His note asking me to bring him his potions ingredients was not polite, not polite at all!”

She put another package onto the table with a limp hand. “Root of mandrake. If I weren’t so worried about Professor Dumbledore’s health, I’d have refused, refused point-blank, because this is not what someone of my ancestry and credentials, not to mention talents, should have to put up with. Now where is that vial of salamander blood? I’m sure I packed it.”

Her rummaging became more frantic. “I don’t doubt that Potions has its justification as a subject on the curriculum of Hogwarts, but the way that man preens himself! Now I don’t wish to criticise Professor Dumbledore in any way, but I don’t see why Potions should be a mandatory subject while Divination is optional.”

“What is Potions?” Chase, who seemed to be the only one listening to Trelawney’s rant, asked.

“The preparation of tinctures, salves and elixirs that have mind or body altering properties. It’s a skill, but not – ah, there’s the vial! – not an art, like divination. Anyone with a minuscule amount of sense and the ability to read can prepare a potion – oh, no, it isn’t, that’s flobberworm mucus – but it requires true dedication and a certain Something to practice the art of divination, a something that Severus Snape does not possess!” She looked around with the air of someone expecting confirmation or applause.

“Finding anything in that bag of yours also requires a certain something,” House said. “A something that you don’t seem to possess.”

He grabbed the bag. As House raised the bag as high as his arms would reach, Trelawney, hanging on for dear life, was lifted an inch or two off the floor. There was a resounding rip, and then Trelawney was back on the ground, screeching like a banshee and clutching one half of her bag. Any number of objects tumbled out of the torn bag, including a round glass ball that landed on the table with a crack before rolling off it, a wand, a number of vials and packages, and a packet of tea that split open when it hit the table, the tea leaves drifting through the air like confetti. House dropped the half of the bag that remained in his grasp in order to examine the things on the table, while Trelawney crawled under it to retrieve the glass ball.

“Was that really necessary?” Foreman asked while Cameron helped Trelawney to gather her belongings.

“You tore my bag!” Trelawney sniffed. “I hope you’re satisfied!”

House, sorting through the packages and flasks, said carelessly, “I’m sure you can ‘magic’ it together again.”

“Well, yes, but it’s very upsetting, and it unsettles me to have to do mundane tasks that could well be avoided,” Trelawney said with a show of dignity. “You could at least apologise.”

“Oh, poop!” House said, sticking out his tongue.

Trelawney, muttering something about barbarians and people with no finer sensibilities, laid the bag halves on top of each other and picked up her wand.

“Reparo!" she said with a casual flick of her wrist, sniffing offendedly.

The two halves of the bag moved against each other as a silvery green thread fluttered in and out of the seam, tightening as it progressed. Cameron dropped the dish into which she’d been scooping tea leaves, undoing her work of the past three minutes. Chase tipped his chair forward and inched to its edge, his elbows propped onto the table, while Foreman rose from the corner where he’d been sitting all this while and stepped closer. House froze with a vial in each hand. In a minute the bag was in its original state.

The silence in the room could have been cut with a knife.

“There!” Trelawney said, oblivious to the stares of amazement and disbelief to which she was being subjected. “You’ve upset me so much that I chose the wrong colour for the thread. It should have been purple.” Her gaze, magnified through her lenses, was accusing. “It looks awful, doesn’t it?” she asked the stunned fellows in a faint voice.

“I … think it looks lovely,” Cameron said, picking up the bag and examining the seam. “The green thread gives it a special, uh, note.”

“Thank you, dear. Perhaps I was wrong about you; there’s hope for you yet.”

House placed the vials he was holding carefully on the table. “Okay, folks, we have a patient and we have work. Foreman, take these samples to the lab; Chase, start researching these names.” He gestured at the Treatment column on the whiteboard. “Cameron, take this woman and … . What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Trelawney had taken an image out of one of the files from the archives box and was staring at it with delighted recognition. “That’s a heart, isn’t it?”

“Put it back!” House said.

“Oh, my goodness, that image is so clear! This is wonderful; so much better than reading entrails. Animal entrails will only get you so far, while this … . Oh, dear, not a happy heart.”

“No, Happy Hearts don’t end up in the Diagnostic Department,” House said, reaching out to take the image from her. “Really sick people – and those are the only kind that I treat – tend to be unhappy.”

Trelawney sidestepped with surprising agility and moved over to the window to examine the ultrasound image in the light, putting the table and the whiteboard between herself and House in the process. “See that line? It shows stress; and over here’s self-hatred. That poor woman: so young and yet so wounded!” After a pause: “That heart doesn’t look … good. This shadow – it shouldn’t be here!”

Cameron peered over Trelawney’s shoulder to where her finger traced over the scan. “No; the heart’s damaged.”

Trelawney looked up from the scan at Cameron, all delight wiped off her features. “She died, didn’t she, poor girl! That heart is so badly damaged. Oh you poor thing, having to watch your patients die like that!” She put a commiserating hand on Cameron’s arm.

Cameron glanced at the name on the scan. “Carli? No, she survived. She got a heart transplant. Do you have medical training?”

“Am I a healer? Oh no, no! Healing is a very respectable profession, to be sure, but as you may have noticed, I have special abilities, a gift, you might say. Reading one of your stunning – yes, I admit that this is truly stunning – inner portraits or whatever you call them, is no different from reading other augurs.” Trelawney gazed at the ultrasound image again. “In fact, this is easier, because the reading is direct. Mostly, we seers depend on indirect readings, like the tea leaves, the ball, tarot cards or even entrails, but the accuracy of such readings depends on how strongly the aura of the person or the event that’s to be read can influence the object that we read. Now, the ball or tarot cards are very open to influence, but that’s no comparison to reading the actual object’s heart or even … . I suppose you don’t have a picture of that young woman’s entrails, do you?”

“You mean, like her intestines?” Chase said, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t think so. We did an angio of her legs, though.”

“Legs? I don’t think so,” Trelawney said. She drifted back to the files and selected another one, pulling out a scan and holding it up to the light. This time her moan was ecstatic. “Oh my goodness, are these thoughts?”

She was looking at the scan of a brain.

“It’s a brain, yes,” House said. “As any sixth grader could tell you.”

“It’s art!” Trelawney breathed, but without her customary frail air. “He’s … . Do you have more of these?”

She dug through the file, pulling out more scans and holding them to the light. “Art! He’s seeing things, beautiful things. See those spots there? That’s rhapsody, the mind moving in higher spheres. … No, I’m wrong: he’s hearing them. It’s music, oh my goodness, it’s music!”

“Which of you,” asked House, looking around at his team, “is trying to screw with my head?”

Cameron looked confused, Chase did his, ‘Who, me???’ thing, while Foreman smiled superciliously.

“How are we supposed to be messing with you?” Cameron asked.

House tipped his head towards Trelawney, who was holding about ten scans fanned out in her hand and moving them against the light. “One of you told her about our musical savant,” he said, “and how we made him play the piano on his leg during the brain MRI.”

“Now if I could get them to move, I’d be able to see what he’s hearing,” Trelawney muttered. “Or, if I hung them up in the right order and walked along them?”

“And we’d mess with you because?” Foreman asked House.

House widened his eyes. “Because you can?” he surmised.

“And the torn bag?” Chase asked. “We did that, how exactly?”

“I don’t know – yet. But I’ll find out,” House said in ominous tones, grabbing the offending object and examining it.

“Yeah, because we knew you’d rip it,” Chase said in miffed tones.

Trelawney tapped his shoulder. “May I spellotape these to the window?” She waved the scans at him.

“Actually,” Chase said, “I’m more interested in Markham. Is he going to fire … ?”

“Never mind Markham!” Trelawney said briskly. “This is much more interesting.”

“We’ve got the scans on disc,” Chase offered in an attempt to humour her. “You can look at them on the computer.” He took the disc from the file and inserted it into the computer drive. “In a moment a window will open, and then you can scroll through the scans in one fluid motion like … like a film, you know?”

“What happened to HIPAA and patient confidentiality?” House groused, still turning the bag over and peering at the seam.

Everyone ignored him: Trelawney, watching the scans morph in front of her eyes, with coloured areas appearing, growing and shrinking again, was jiggling up and down on her chair squealing with delight, her thin fingers balled into fists.

“Oh, lovely!” she said with no hint of faintness or frailty in her voice. “Can we do that again?”

Chase obligingly surfed through the scans again and then a third time. “Here, you move the mouse like this,” he instructed, guiding her hand.

“Perhaps we should show these scans in the paediatric ward,” Cameron said as Trelawney zipped through the scans again and again with an air of religious devotion. “Keep the kids busy.”

“Kids have higher demands than this lady,” Foreman pointed out. “Coloured spots on a brain won’t interest them.”

“Where’s the rest?” Trelawney asked, swinging around in the chair.

“The rest?” Chase asked.

“That can’t be all; he’s in the middle of the tune when the pictures end,” Trelawney said.

“We stopped the MRI,” Foreman said shrugging. “We had all the images we needed.”

“You. Stopped. The. Music?” Trelawney asked, stiff with indignation.

“Not the music; we just stopped taking pictures of it,” Chase hastened to explain.

“But … why would you do that? The music is beautiful!”

“Because, my good woman, we don’t do scans in order to listen to music. We do it to diagnose the patient!” House shouted.

“Actually, we did stop the music,” Foreman said to no one in particular. “We did a right hemisphere lobotomy on Patrick.”

Trelawney’s face fell. “That means … I’ll never hear the rest of the tune? It’s so beautiful!” She hummed something under her breath as she turned back to the scan and ran through it again. And yet again, but this time her humming was louder. And again.

“Someone, pull the plug!” House ordered.

“I have to learn the tune off by heart,” Trelawney said. “La-laaa, la-la-la-la-la. Yes, that’s right.” Her voice was thin and reedy, the tune barely recognisable as such. “And down below there’s a ripple like water.” She mimicked a ripple with her hand as she leaned back and sang the tune again, this time louder and with more confidence.

“Very good; now how does it continue?” She peered at the screen, clumsily moving the mouse to scroll ahead through the MRI images.

Foreman looked ready to shoot himself, Cameron tried to hide a smile, Chase grinned openly. Only House looked intrigued.

“Sing that again!” he commanded.

“House!” Foreman said.

House waved a hand at him to shush him. “Sing that again. Please,” he added as an afterthought.

Trelawney stared up at him. “La-laaa, la-la-la-la-la?” she sang. “Like that?”

“Yes. Again!” House said impatiently. “The whole thing this time.”

Trelawney hummed and sang her way through roughly sixteen bars of music, and then stopped. “That’s all there is.”

“It’s enough,” House said. “Is this it?” He whistled the same sixteen bars.

“Yes, excellent!” Trelawney said, as though he was a precocious student. “Very well done!”

“Are we supposed to be impressed by your musical memory?” Foreman asked.

House ignored him. “Anyone recognise the tune?” he asked, looking around expectantly.

“House,” Foreman said with the air of someone practicing extreme forbearance, “even if we did recognise the tune, what would it prove? Only that this eccentric woman knows a tune that we also know, maybe from the radio, maybe from television.”

“I think it’s Beethoven,” House said, frowning.

“So? She can hum Beethoven,” Chase said. “So can I.” He whistled the opening bars of the Ode to Joy.

“No, that’s wrong. That’s not the tune that the young man is playing. Was playing.” Trelawney’s tone was accusatory.

House ignored both of them. “Piano sonata,” he said, tapping the tune on an imaginary piano. “But which one? Chase, get me the programme of Patrick’s last concert.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Foreman said. “And ours.”

Chase rolled his eyes, but moved to the computer. “What was his last name?”

“Obyedkov,” Cameron said, looking at the file.

Chase worked over Trelawney’s shoulder, pulling up a browser window. A few moments later he read aloud, “Mozart: Sonata No. 10 in C-major, Beethoven: Sonata No. 21, Brahms: Three Intermezzi.”

“You think it’s that one?” Cameron asked.

“Pretty sure it is. Chase!”

“Huh?” Chase asked.

“Do I have to spell it out? YouTube. Twenty-one is Waldstein, isn’t it?”

“Wald-what?” Cameron asked.

“Waldstein. Name of Beethoven’s patron. Beethoven dedicated the sonata to him. Let’s hear it.”

Chase pulled YouTube up on the browser and ran a search. “Yeah, it’s Waldstein. Any preference: Barenboim, Rubinstein or Brendel?” he asked.

“Brendel,” House decreed. Foreman rolled his eyes for the umpteenth time.

Pounding bass chords reverberated through the room.

“That … isn’t it,” Cameron said, while Foreman looked smug and Chase disappointed.

House leaned back and scratched his eyebrow. “Beethoven’s right though, and Waldstein rings a bell. … Try the third movement.”

Chase typed some more and then hit the play button. A second later a light, airy tune pearled from the speakers; House grinned triumphantly, Foreman lost his blasé look, and Cameron looked dumbfounded.

It was Trelawney’s reaction, however, that topped it all. She jumped up and down like a bouncy ball, clapping her hands ecstatically and squealing, “Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeeees! That’s it! Oh my goodness, you’ve found it!”

House leered at Foreman. “Wouldn’t you like a woman to scream that way for you?”

“How’d she do that?” Foreman asked.

House rose with a pained grimace. He took his bottle of Vicodin out and popped two pills, then he said, “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

He went to Trelawney, took the mouse out of her hand, and closed all the windows on the desktop. “Let’s go read some fresh pictures,” he said to her, taking her elbow and guiding her to the door. There, he jerked his head at Foreman. “Come, we’re going to Radiology. Let’s see how good she is at simultaneous translation. Chase, take the samples to the lab.”

“Why me?” Chase protested. “Why don’t I get to go to Radiology? I was the one who discovered her talents.”

“And that makes me suspicious,” House said, “which is why Foreman comes with me while you go to the lab. Cameron!” He pointed to the scans and files scattered around the room. “Tidy up the mess!”

Chapter Text

A sharp rap at the door of the conference room roused Cameron from her contemplation of Patrick’s scans. She hastily put them down as two men entered without waiting to be asked in.

“Good afternoon. Dr House, we presume?” one of them asked.

Cameron scrutinised them. They looked like a parody of Men in Black: both wore dark suits and white shirts and had a slightly sinister air, but one wore a bow tie with green polka dots while the other sported pink sunglasses with round lenses. This was probably one of House’s practical jokes on Wilson.

She gave them a distant smile. They were young and physically fit, so it could be that they were male strippers. Maybe House was pranking Cuddy, not Wilson, in which case she should try to defuse the situation before Cuddy threw a fit and punished House with extra clinic hours that he’d pass on to his fellows. 

“Dr House isn’t here at the moment, but maybe I can help you. I’m one of his fellows.”

The two men looked at each other. “We’re from the Agency for, um, National Health Security,” the one with the pink sunglasses said with a Texan twang. “We’re looking into an incident that took place at,” he checked a large old-fashioned watch that he took out of his pants pocket, “15:47 hours. It involved the wand of one Sybill Trelawney, licensed to her by the British Wand Association on … .”

“I don’t think that Dr House’s fellow is interested in the intricacies of wand licensing,” his colleague interrupted smoothly. “Were you here in the office when the incident happened?” he asked.

“I …,” Cameron stammered, wondering what the best way might be to get these guys neutralised before Cuddy got a hint that they were in the house. She figured she’d be best off playing along until she grasped their intentions. How had House gotten hold of them so quickly? He had left the office with Trelawney and Foreman barely half hour ago! Besides, judging by his reaction to Trelawney reading Patrick’s scans, he’d been as much impressed as amused. That he was turning the incident into a prank at this stage was – odd.

“Yes, I was here,” she said, deciding that staying in the conversation was the best way to get at information.

The two men exchanged glances again, as far as that was possible from behind sunglasses. Then the one with the bow tie said, “Then I’m afraid we’ll have to do something about that.” He extricated a wand from his pocket.

This time it was the guy with the pink sunglasses who interrupted. “Wait,” he said. “She isn’t the only witness, and we need to find Trelawney first.” He turned to Cameron saying, “Please take us to Sybill Trelawney.”

Two male strippers in Radiology, messing up the schedule there? No way! Radiology hated Diagnostics as it was; given half a chance they’d run to Cuddy whining about delays and blocked machines and billing issues, and then there’d be even more clinic hours. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t possible. She is … consulting on an important case at the moment. You’ll have to wait till she comes back. I can offer you a cup of coffee though.”

As she turned to the coffee machine to brew more coffee, she heard the word, “Imperius!” and all of a sudden everything went misty, blurred around the edges. She felt calm in a way that she hadn’t done since she started working for House; her adrenaline level dropped to normal (or below) for the first time in three years, the need to strive, to prove her own worth suddenly seemed ridiculous, childish, in view of the futility of it all. Why not just be, exist, enjoy?

“You’re taking us to Sybill Trelawney,” the man with the bow tie said.

Sure, why not? Why deny these men their wish? To do so would be churlish when she was feeling so good, so relaxed, so in synch with the world. She felt a need to be in harmony with them and to do their bidding, so as not to upset them. She led the way out of the conference room and turned right towards the elevators, the two men flanking her. 

They were passing Wilson’s office when someone called her. Was she supposed to respond or continue looking for House? She looked at the man to the left of her. He nodded, so she turned around and waited for the caller to catch up with them. It was Professor Dumbledore’s companion, that Snape man. He must have come down the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Maybe his lot didn’t believe in modern technology, like the Amish.

“Dr Cameron,” he said urgently. “Professor Dumbledore’s condition is worsening. I don’t know how much longer I can … .”

She tuned out what he was saying because she was getting a message from the men. They didn’t want her to linger here with Snape; they wanted to continue on their way, so she should get rid of Snape quickly. She had no idea how she was so sure she knew what they wanted, but she did. And doing what they wanted was important, very important. She couldn’t imagine flouting them.

Smiling politely at Snape she said, “I was just on my way to find Dr House. I’ll give him your message as soon as I find him.”

“I’ll come with you,” Snape said.

Oh dear, she could sense that the two men from the Agency didn’t like that at all. Get rid of him!

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she said to Snape. “Dr House is in a restricted area of the hospital. Only medical staff are allowed there.”

“Dr Cameron, Professor Dumbledore is paying this hospital vast sums of money … .” Snape stopped in mid-sentence, eyeing her suspiciously. Then he looked at the two men in sudden realisation. “She’s under the Imperius curse,” he said.

The men’s agitation and nervousness flooded over her like a wave. Deny it!

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said to Snape, smiling coolly.

“I’m sure you don’t,” he said, putting his hand in his pocket.

And with that, as quickly as it had fallen on her, the fog of content lifted from her again, leaving her feeling cold and bereft, and then, as realisation hit her, terrified. She sank into a crouch, shivering, with her arms clasped around her body. What had happened to her? How had those men gotten her to behave like a puppet with no will of its own?

“You have no right to do that!” Sunglasses hissed at Snape. “I don’t know who you are, but here you are under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Wizardry. You have no right to interfere with officers of the Federal Bureau of Muggle Control.”

“I’m Professor Severus Snape from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Great Britain. Can you identify yourselves?” 

They drew badges similar to police badges from their pockets. Snape looked at them with a supercilious sneer. “That still doesn’t explain why you placed this woman under the Imperius curse. It was banned in 1947 by the Copenhagen Convention.”

“Oh, he knows his magical history!” Bow Tie mocked. “The US Department of Wizardry never ratified the Copenhagen Convention. The Imperius curse is a proven method when dealing with insurgents, terrorists, or organised crime.”

“I see. And to which category does Dr Cameron belong?” Snape asked.

“She’s an important witness involving acts of wizardry in front of Muggles,” Sunglasses said, folding his arms. “One Sybill Trelawney performed the Reparo charm in front of four Muggles this afternoon. That is a severe breach of security!”

One of Snape’s eyebrows rose. “And you know that because?”

“We tracked her wand,” Bow Tie said.

“You tracked her wand,” Snape repeated ominously. “You have a warrant to track Sybill Trelawney’s wand, I assume?”

The men looked at each other once again.

“No? I suppose I needn’t tell you that tracking wands without a warrant is banned under the Transatlantic Wizardry Pact of 1990, a pact that your State Department did sign.” Snape waited until they gave him reluctant nods of affirmation. “Let me summarise: You put someone under the Imperius curse for committing the heinous crime of witnessing a magical spell. I find it difficult to believe that your Department permits the use of an Unforgivable Curse except in situations of extreme danger, and I fail to see how Dr Cameron, or Sybill Trelawney for that matter, are a danger to anyone. Furthermore, you placed a perfectly respectable, albeit stupid, witch under wand surveillance without reasonable suspicion. I believe, gentlemen, that you have far exceeded your authority.”

Bow Tie looked at Sunglasses. “He’s very well-informed, isn’t he? Maybe we should take him in for questioning.”

“Do, by all means,” Snape said smoothly. “I’m sure your superiors would love to hear from me how you used an Unforgivable Curse merely to facilitate your investigations and lengthen your coffee break. If you arrest me or Professor Trelawney or Professor Dumbledore of Hogwarts – I assume you have heard of Hogwarts?”

Judging by their sheepish looks they had.

Snape continued inexorably, “If you arrest any of us, I can assure you that there will be an international incident with a lot of bad blood, and undoubtedly heads will roll.” It didn’t take much imagination to figure out whose heads Snape had in mind. “I suggest that you return to your offices, take everyone – and when I say ‘everyone’, I mean it – from Hogwarts off wand surveillance, and get back to whatever you are supposed to be doing: fighting Dark Magic, for instance.”

Sunglasses suddenly drew his wand. Snape, without actually withdrawing his wand from his pocket or uttering a word, must have done something, because before Sunglasses could say anything he was lifted bodily off his feet and flung towards the elevators. When he hit the ground, he slid along the polished floor on his ass until he thudded into the elevator doors.

Snape’s lips moved without a sound, and a moment later the elevator door behind the befuddled wizardry officer opened, so that he more or less fell inside. “I suggest you go with him,” Snape said to his companion, who took one look at Snape’s expression before turning around and joining Sunglasses at a trot.

Snape kept a close eye on them until the elevator doors closed behind them, then he bent down. “I apologise, Dr Cameron. I’m afraid our presence has caused you some inconvenience.”

Feeling decidedly disoriented, Cameron rose with the help of Snape’s arm. “Why … What was that?”

Snape looked discomfited. “US Wizardry law enforcement officers. Cowboys!” he said disdainfully. “Our American friends have a tendency to jinx first and think afterwards.”

“But why?”

“It seems that Sybill did magic in front of you. What did that foolish woman do, try to impress you with her divination skills?”

“She … .” Cameron tried to remember what had happened. “She read tea leaves. And then she mended her purse after Dr House, uh, tore it.”

“With her wand?”

Cameron nodded.

Snape frowned, exuding disapproval. “We have been careful to be discreet, and now that woman comes and puts her foot in it within an hour! She deserves to have her wand broken.”

“But you also did magic just now,” Cameron pointed out.

Snape smiled thinly. “What exactly did you see me doing?” he asked.

Cameron paused. “That man, the one with the sunglasses, I saw him … .”

“You didn’t see me do or say anything,” Snape said looking at her down his nose, “did you?”

Cameron looked at him with a hint of appreciation. This man was House – without the adolescent humour and sexy aura. Without any humour at all, actually, but after an overdose and addiction, total abstinence wasn’t a bad thing.

“How did you do that?” she asked.

“Telling you that, Dr Cameron, would completely defeat the purpose. Now will you take me to Dr House, please?”

“I’ll page him.”

“Page him?”

“I’d explain, but that would defeat the purpose,” Cameron said with a toss of her head.

Snape’s thin smile widened to a shark’s grin.

Chapter Text

House strode ahead in his usual manner. “Symptoms?” he threw back at Snape.

Snape caught up with him with two quick steps. “Fever, diarrhoea. He collapsed when he tried to get up.”

“Dizziness,” House said. “What changed?”

“He’s dying!” Snape snapped. “Isn’t that enough of a change?”

House stopped short at the door of the isolation unit. “I mean, what explains these new symptoms?”

“You treating him,” Snape said through pressed lips.

“We haven’t started treating him yet,” Cameron pointed out from behind them.

“Are we going to look at Professor Dumbledore’s scans now?” Trelawney said enthusiastically.

“Sorry, we’re going to do some real doctoring now,” House said. “If you’re really, really good and keep your mouth shut, maybe I’ll let Foreman take you to Radiology for an hour’s playtime after dinner.” He swiped his card through the reader to open the door of the ward.

Dumbledore was lying in the bed, not sitting like on other visits, his face pale and his eyes closed. His breaths came in deep rasps loud enough to be heard over the beeping of the monitoring equipment. An ICU nurse hovered over him adjusting an IV drip. For the first time it seemed as though his claim that he was 120 years old might hold some truth.

House looked down at Dumbledore, a frown on his face. “First he had something, then he had nothing for a long while, and now he has something again.”

Dumbledore’s eyes opened. “The ring … horcrux,” he said faintly. “The boy … needs to know.”

“Delirium,” House noted. He picked up Dumbledore’s wrist, feeling the faint pulse and noting the papery quality of the skin. “Fever’s spiking at 105 degrees. If we don’t find the cause for this, he’ll be dead in less than a week. Given his age, I’ll correct my estimate to two or three days. The patient history says he had headache, nausea and fever as initial symptoms along with the damage to his hand. Any other initial symptoms that you can remember? Confusion, dizziness?”

Snape made a visible effort to get his act together. “He was definitely confused, but what he did was so – so unlike him that I don’t think it was a symptom; it was the cause. If he had been thinking clearly at that moment, he’d never have put on the ring.”

House dropped Dumbledore’s wrist. “Ring? What ring?”

“He was subjected to the curse when he put on the ring that he subsequently destroyed,” Snape said carefully.

House took the patient file from the end of the bed. “The patient history says he was destroying the ring with a sword. Nowhere does it say that he wore it before destroying it.”

“He preferred to keep that foolishness private; he knew it was a black magic artefact, so he should never have touched it, let alone worn it. I don’t see what difference it makes, considering that you don’t even believe in curses,” Snape said, but with a hint of uncertainty.

“Idiots!” House yelled. “Morons! And they allow you to teach?”

He turned to his team. “Chelation with DTPA.”

“You think it’s radiation poisoning?” Foreman said, looking down at the inert old man. “And the hand?”

“Cutaneous radiation injury where the radioactive source touched his skin. God, what an idiot!”

“If the hand injury is from radiation, then he should be dead,” Cameron pointed out. “Only a lethal dose could have produced so much damage.”

“Could, should, would,” House mimicked. “Acute radiation syndrome fits. Skin injuries where direct contact took place. Initial symptoms that subside, only to return after a latency period. He must have absorbed some of the radioactive material, and we need to get that out of his system.”

“Judging by his symptoms the dose exceeded ten gray,” Foreman said heavily. “He’s dead.”

“If the absorbed dose exceeded ten gray – and given the symptoms, I’ll grant you that – he’s still spectacularly alive after a prolonged period of time. Normally, patients die within two weeks. The fact that he’s still alive is interesting.”

“Or – he doesn’t have radiation sickness,” Foreman said.

“Do you have a better idea?” House looked around challengingly. No one replied. “We’re treating him for radiation sickness. Foreman, start chelation. Take turns to monitor his condition. Let me know if anything changes.” He nodded to Snape and left the unit.

“What are you doing?” Snape asked Foreman.

“We’re treating him with DTPA via a drip. It has a high affinity for radioactive particles, binding to them so that they can be passed out with his urine. It’s very effective, so if the damage isn’t irreversible yet, he stands a good chance of leaving here alive,” Cameron explained. “He could still die of the long-term effects of radiation, but given his age, that’s a minor issue, I’d say.”

“You say that this will cure him?” Snape asked, waving a hand at the drip that was hanging from the IV pole, not even trying to mask his disbelief.

“Something fairly similar, yes,” Cameron said. “To speak in your language, the DTPA contains the curse and neutralises it.”

“And his hand?”

Foreman sighed. “There’s nothing we can do about that. But nowadays there are excellent prosthetics. As soon as he’s stabilised, we’ll amputate, and then Ortho can fit him with a prosthetic. Quality of life can be excellent with a good … .”

“It’s his wand hand,” Snape said.

Foreman rolled his eyes as he took the chelation drip from the nurse. “He’s lucky to be alive.”

“Without his wand hand he’ll be in grave danger. He won’t be able to defend himself adequately. You may not realise it here on your Muggle island of blissful ignorance, but the magical world is at war, and Dumbledore is at the very centre of that war!”

“Then,” Cameron said, “he’ll have to ask for help.”

 Wilson sat down on the visitor’s chair in House’s office and leaned back. “I hear you cured the Big Chief of the Way of Whacko, making Cuddy very happy. The whole department let off clinic duty for four weeks!” He shook his head at so much unmerited bounty.

“Whacko donated enough to keep the clinic up and running for the next millennium, so I consider myself cheated,” House said, looking up from the file he was reading and taking off his glasses. He folded them, slipped them into his shirt pocket and rose, stretching.

“You made a good deal: rumour has it that Cuddy by-passed the board in order to assign another team member to Diagnostics.”

“Don’t believe rumours unless you started them,” House said, casting a look into the conference room where someone was still sitting in front of the computer despite the late hour. “She’s a volunteer. She isn’t costing Cuddy a cent. And she has no formal training.”

“She seems very dedicated,” Wilson said, squinting through the glass door separating the rooms.

“Yeah, we lock her up in the conference room at night and release her in the morning. Saves caging costs,” House said. “Chase feeds her every now and then and takes her for walks to Radiology.”

He went to the door of the conference room. “Trelawney, I’m leaving,” he said.

“Good night, Dr House,” she said vaguely. “I’ll be done soon, too. There’s this wonderful angio, I think you call it, of a baby that I still want to interpret.”

“You know the rules?” House asked.

Trelawney sighed. “Rule 1: Don’t talk to the patient!” she parroted. “Rule 2: Don’t talk to patients’ families!”

“Those are Cuddy’s rules. I don’t care whom you talk to, but if you touch any of the bottles in my desk, you’ll join that innocent infant in the nether world.”

“Dr House, I’d never … !”

House shut the door on her indignation. Ignoring Wilson’s quizzical stare, he picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. “She told a patient, an eight year old, that he was terminal. Cuddy freaked. She was not pacified by Trelawney’s dramatic style of delivery or her diagnostic accuracy.”

“Odd,” Wilson said. “You’d think that Cuddy would be delighted to have another one of you upsetting patients and causing law suits. Who is this weird bird and why are you keeping her?”

House shrugged. “Her previous owners didn’t seem to want her. She’s amusing. And she’s right … mostly, that is.”

“Another endearing quality that Cuddy undoubtedly loves.” Wilson took a last look at Trelawney as they walked past the conference room towards the elevators. “Odd sense of style.”

House smiled to himself. “She doesn’t like lab coats.”

“I’m beginning to sense what attracts you,” Wilson said. “Someone with authority issues whose mode of rebellion includes painful honesty and a total disregard for dress codes.”

“You wrong her,” House said. “She has no idea of the havoc she’s wreaking; she sincerely believes that she’s doing society a favour by opening the eyes of the ignorant and refusing to bow to the strictures of fashion.”

“Which was my point,” Wilson said.

As they walked through the lobby, Cuddy intercepted them, holding out an envelope. “House, I need you to look at something.”

“I’m off the clock,” House said. “My patient is being released tomorrow, I’m told.”

“Just open it.”

“First class ticket to Scotland,” House said, staring at the ticket as though it could bite.

Cuddy simpered. “They’ve invited you to visit them. You have no patient, no clinic duty.”

“Oh, clinic duty would definitely stop me!” House said.

“Just – go! You’ll enjoy it.” She patted his arm before disappearing into the clinic area again.

House slid the ticket back into the envelope and, after a moment’s hesitation, put it into his backpack.

“You’ll go?” Wilson asked as they headed through the doors.

House hesitated. “I might.”

“You’re going to stay with a bunch of people who believe in an alternate reality for which there is no scientific proof whatsoever?”

“They have great wands,” House said. “And by ‘wands’ I mean … .”

“Do you really believe that these people can do magic?” Wilson asked point blank. “Do you think that guy was cursed?”

“No, he definitely had acute radiation syndrome, and chelation cured him, not those potions made of glibber and greens. But … .” House’s jaw worked. “I still don’t know how Snape contained the symptoms for so long and why Dumbledore survived at all.”

“Besides,” he said as he limped out into the dark, “I need one of those pretty little wands.”