A Birth day

"That's fine so long as we don't lose them," Kate said. Fresh air is good for them. She can go back with me. So you know, I've asked Abbey and Molly not to take them off their tree in the house, not until the girls are a bit older so they're able to be more responsible in keeping track of them. I'd like us not to actually run one through the laundry. We've just been lucky that hasn't actually happened yet. I don't mind, of course, if one of us takes them somewhere." She turned around to go back in the house and saw Robert stepping up onto the front porch of the duplex.

"I'm gonna kill him," Kate sighed. "I told him to rest. Is he doing that? Of course not. I'm gonna hurt him. Come on, Lolly. Let's go home. With a little luck, he'll dose off over there and stop fussing for a bit."  She took Lolly and went back into the main house.

"How did you slip by your jailer?" Angus asked.

"She went out to see some of her critters in the barn," Robert said. "She didn't see me leave."

"She's going to have a few choice words for you when you get back, you know," Angus said. 

"Actually, that isn't what Angus said," Marcus said. "He actually said Kate was going to hang you by your gonads."

"Very likely, yes. And if Michael went around me and summoned Nigel, Nigel might just help her do that," Robert said dryly. "I am, though, old enough to make my own choices. I've been eighteen for a day or two now. So, let me see that shoulder."

"I'll give him a hand," Marcus said. Marcus helped him slip his shirt off, and Robert took off the dressing that Marcus had put on.

"Jesus. What a mess," Robert sighed. "Who hit you with that? That's some of the worst sectumsempra casting I've ever seen in my life."

"Suzanne, believe it or not," Angus said.

"I believe it. It's not a clean, straight slash at all. This is a jagged, crooked skin tear. She didn't slash. She effed up her spell, and she ripped the skin open. I've only seen a sow mess like this once before. What happens is they get just a wee bit of the spell under the skin, and then, they screw up the wrist motion and it acts just like a letter opener. The spell tears the skin in a line from the inside out. Next time she ends up in St. Mungos, I swear to Merlin I'm gonna make her a squib. She doesn't deserve to cast a single spell. Ruby and Marcus, you are going to have to watch this. If he starts to seep through the dressings, I need to know straight away. I don't know if this is going to heal properly. I want to keep a close eye on it. And, if you don't care, I'd like to show this to Jess the next time she has a chance to look at it This happens so rarely, I bet she hasn't seen anything like it, but she needs to know what it looks like and how to deal with it." He worked quite awhile, trying to cast a spell that would encourage the torn layers of skin to knit together properly. "If this doesn't work, I can do a bit of surgery to realign it properly. That really is the right way to heal it, but I'll give this a try first. Don't be surprised if it doesn't work, though. Ruby, your mother is indeed a complete ignoramus."

"That will not strike anyone in this house as news," Angus told him.

"You're right about that," Kate said. "I do see his point, though. He's done enough repairs on that shoulder that he says he knows exactly where the damaged bits still are and which ones have healed. He does not particularly want anyone else doing any sort of invasive surgery there except himself, so I suppose, as much as I don't like it, I do understand it."

"Certainly," Marcus said to Ruby. 

"Magical accidents happen, Ru," Angus said. "And it had to be an accident because she wouldn't know how to actually do that type of damage on purpose," Angus said.

"Point taken, Angus," Marcus said, 'but Ruby doesn't have to like it, and I certainly don't like it either. 

"Why don't you both go run while I'm here?" Robert said. "I'll stay a bit."

"You sure?" Marcus asked.

"I'm sure," Robert said. "I am not particularly in a hurry to have to hear Kate's temper tantrum, so I'll stay a bit and give her some distance."

"Edward has three spare rooms if you want to use one," Angus teased.

"Cheeky," Robert laughed, as he wrote a quick note to Jess to tell her he wanted her to see something most unusual about Angus's wound and then sent it off to her. In the meantime, Marcus transfigured his clothes to running clothes.

"Let's go. I think they should be safe enough for a little. We've given Suzanne enough other things to worry about for the moment, I think, that I doubt she'll be bothering with us this evening," Marcus told Ruby. "You can finish cooking supper when you get back. It'll hold that long."

"I do think that is part of Suzanne's strategy," Kate told Jack. "I think since she has never been successful in direct assault on him, she believes if she just keeps hammering away at him in every way she can think of that will wear him down or cause him some sort of harm, hoping she can stack enough up to either kill him or drive him crazy--literally. Somehow she just hasnt' gotten the point yet that we're not about to let that happen."

"Yes," Marcus agreed with Ruby. "Believe me, if I got my hands on her, I do believe I could get my point across to her. I do want to see how Tom reacts to all this, though, because, in essence, he's going to have to make a choice. Elliot is his only adult child that we know of, and I don't believe we know of any other children except for Diamond. So, he has a clear interest in making sure Elliot survives, but if he helps Elliot, then he can only do so by turning his back in some form on Suzanne. And if he doesn't help Elliot, then it does beg the question of why he'd let his only heir be executed in order to support Suzanne. If that's the case, then, I really would want to know what Suzanne's hold is on him."

Angus got up and finished cooking the supper Ruby had started since Jess obviously wasn't coming. Robert sat back in the silence and drank his Irish coffee, glad for the peace and quiet

"This house is so much quieter than the main house," Robert sighed.

"Not really. We usually are chockablock with people and Fae, and it sometimes gets downright deafening. Enjoy it while we have it because it is a rare thing to be able to hear yourself think here," Angus told him, putting a couple lids on supper and turning the heat down just to keep it warm.

"I agree with you," Marcus told Ruby.

"I can't say I wouldn't be tempted to act against her myself," Kate told Jack, "because I know I would. However, realistically, that would just be a waste of good werewolf energy on your part because she doesn't have enough IQ points to understand your message, I'm afraid." She glanced at her watch. "Jack it's a quarter til five. I know it's a few minutes early, but you've put in a lot of extra work today. Wrap it up and call it quits for one day. I'll see you inside for supper in a bit." She turned and went back inside the main house.

"No problem," Robert told Jess. "I'm glad you could come. I know things were rushed today, but there is an oddity about Angus wound that we don't see hardly ever. In fact, I've only seen it once myself.  The reason we don't see more of it, I believe, is because it is a very specific error in spellcasting. It takes someone who is attempting to cast a sectumsempra, starts the spell and then buggars it iat just the right moment n the midst of casting it.  

"I don't think we'll see it in students," Robert continued, "because the Hogwarts students arent taught a sectumsempra until somewhere in the last two years--and only if they have mastered enough wand technique to be able to understand it and cast it with some proficiency. And since the sectumsempra spell was created by Severus Snape, only student who had him as a professor would have knowledge of it at all. We teach it in auror training and in our organization's training because I believe our fighters need to have the knowledge, but, clearly, the one who wields it best amongst us is Angus, our little swashbuckler here. 

"What I believe happened today is that Suzanne attempted it and really loused it up. Look here." Robert said. "And you'll have to look close to see it, but it matters. It definitely matters." He took the dressing off Angus's shoulder. "Look. Here is the top edge of the wound, at the top of his shoulder. Look closely at the skin edges. The very edges show that the cut was made from the outside, penetraiting the lower layers. It's exactly what we'd expect to see with a standard slash wound. This is what I'm sure you see on a regular basis. But, follow the skin edges as the wound progresses down diagonally across his chest. Look here at this point here where it looks like almost a little knot in the skin, and look very closely. It isn't a knot at all. What you're seeing is a highly rare wound where the skin is torn from the inside out. Not only that but it's crooked and jagged as hell, rather like a dog's hindleg. Here's how I think she did it. I think she started the spell correctly, buggared up her wrist movement, and it caused the spell to twist, causing the slash to go underneath the skin and pull up and out. It's the exact same movement we do when we take a paper knife to open an envelope. We go under the flap and pull up with the blade on the paper knife. That's, in esssence what she's done with her lousy wand movement. She's ripped the skin open from the inside out. Definitely would have hurt like hell. And it isn't' going to be easy to mend either. The place where the skin is twisted isn't going to respond to a normal healing spell. It's going to resist knitting together, and it's going to tend to want to keep hemorrhaging. The only proper way to heal this is surgery, but I am going to risk trying some advanced healing spells to see what happens. I've warned him already that it might not work, and we might have to be doing some very fine, delicate surgery to put the skin edges back to rights."

"Certainly," Angus said. "Go ahead."

"Now, here's the real reason I'm dragging my feet on the surgery," Robert told Jess. "Aside from the first repair I did on Angus's shoulder, which I did as an outpatient procedure, the only other time in the last several years he's been a patient at St. Mungo's was when his magical system was poisoned, and if you and Brian hadn't been there, we'd have lost him. Understandably, it does cause him some exceptionally high anxiety. I am not willing to put him through any more there unless I have absolutely no other choice. That's why I'm willing to try to try some other things first. If you told your students that I was going way around the barn to mend this, then you'd be doing your nurses a disservice. They need to know that this wound will keep hemorrhaging without surgery to stop the bleeding. The skin edges need to either be untwisted, or both those edges at that spot need to be cut away and drawn together. Most surgeons are going to do the latter because they're not taught how to actually untwist the skin edges. That takes some very meticulous microsurgery to do, and most surgeons, even if they knew how, wouldn't bother trying it. Tell them what we know will fix it, not what I hope is going to fix it. If I have to repair it surgically, I will be doing it right, and not in any sort of time saving procedure."

Robert waited until Jess finished with her sketch and then he put a dressing back on it.