Robert saw it was beginning. There was a panicked rush of people bringing in elderly wounded—walking wounded, wounded in wheelchairs, and wounded on stretchers. Healers and nurses raced to immediately start to triage the patients to try to prioritize them. They came in so fast that the treatment rooms filled up immediately and other victims started lining the halls. This wasn’t the first Robert had seen this sort of thing, but there was great deal of blood and gore from what he’d been told was a dangerously malfunctioning portkey, clearly not made by a licensed portkey creator.
“It is unusual. Bloody black market portkeys. I swear I'll put them all out of business. Senior citizens group--all splinched somehow by a cut-rate portkey. Be careful--pace yourself, Zabini, because this is going to get a little phrenetic,” Robert told him in a steady, calm tone, heading towards what looked like the worst of the patients. He did not want the young man being any more panicked than necessary. “We do magic, not miracles. Stay close if you wish…”
“Life! Life!” Someone was screeching something sounding nonsensical, and Robert didn’t really pay any attention to it, not exactly. It happened in situations like this where people were so desperate and suffering from panic and shock. There was a din of screaming and moaning, and he had numbed himself to be able to see who needed help first. They all wanted help, but he was obligated to serve the worst first. He was passing a very old woman on a gurney when she reached out and snagged onto his hand, clutching onto him like an iron vice. In a fraction of a second, he felt his own energies being yanked out of him, and it completely blindsided him. He hadn’t been so completely out powered since he was a first year. Whoever this old witch was, she had dark energy working powers and abilities like he had never dreamed were possible. He had tried to shake loose, to fight her off, to…
He realized she wasn’t looking for healing—not like he believed in. She was convinced she was dying, and she was terrified and looking for self-preservation, regardless of who she had to hurt to make that happen. He could feel that much as her own energies started to race through his system, and she had begun trying to drain off his healthy life energies and offload her own pain and injuries onto him just to escape her own fate.
“Bloody hell—she’s transferring….no…. stop…it’s too much…” His mind was rebelling and trying to make it all stop. Transferring could easily be deadly. It was the one thing an energy worker never wanted to do, but faced with death, that was exactly what this old woman was desperate enough to try, and once she had realized he was also an energy worker, she had latched onto him like iron.
If he couldn’t stop her, her damage would soon start manifesting on him in a noticeable way. Bones would break, he would bleed, and his own physical systems would start to fail like hers were failing. He would die, and she would heal. He had not realized this might even be possible to this extent, but he was realizing quickly that there was far more to energy work than what little he knew. She was willing to kill him in order to save herself, and he was now sharply aware she was not going to let him simply disconnect. She had some sort of a magical hold on him that he could not disconnect from. He did not know anyone could simply lock on like she had, and he had no intention of not putting up a fight.
He had to offset her energies from his systems himself. It was the only way to stay alive and defend himself so he did not have to keep the terrible damage as his own. He needed the physical touch of another to bolster what strength he already did not have. Before he’d even realized it, he’d blindly reached out and clutched onto whoever he could find within his grasp.
Whoever he’d grabbed was not a trained energy worker, he could feel that. Young, healthier than he was now, …and, wait…he recognized who it was. Zabini. He knew magical signatures. That was part of what he needed to know as a healer to recognize what was normal and what was not for each particular patient, but this was not a patient. This was his apprentice—and an apprentice he was very fond of.
Zabini! Damn! It had been pure instinct and adrenalin to find a way to ground away the black parasitic energies like an out-of-control electrical current, but partnering with Zabini? That wasn’t okay. Still Apollo’s energies could serve as the merely a ground if Robert could direct it to simply run through him much like water running over him and off again. Regardless—whether Zabini knew it or not, Robert’s survival at the moment completely depended on young Zabini. Robert truly did not know if he would survive if Zabini shook off Robert’s grasp.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just give me a moment. I’ll work it out, I promise, he thought, wishing Zabini could hear him and understand even a modicum of this. I only need one little moment. God, I hope you trust me, Lad.
Ground her away from him. I can’t let it hurt him. The toxic energies needed to only pass through Zabini. They could not stay, not if Robert had anything to do with it. He wanted to focus to simply ground and not transfer the injuries in any way onto Zabini, and he knew he did not dare to make contact with the young apprentice for more than a few short seconds at best. If he let go too soon, Robert knew he would die, but if he did not let go in time, well…he would have to let go, regardless of the old witch’s intentions, and regardless if his own systems were responding properly again. No other option was acceptable.
What is that? A sudden deep internal anguish began to sweep all through him. It isn’t mine—it’s her! You cheeky old biddy! Who do you think you are? He’d never seen or heard for himself any sort of that freaky seer’s stuff that Kate or Khaat did, and straight off, he didn’t want to. He hated seeing or feeling anything that wasn’t his own, but he saw a flash for a fraction of a second. The black market portkey was an old, moth-eaten wool cartwheel hat, and the group had all chipped in on the cost, expecting a portkey made in the legal way. The witch had bought the discounted portkey in order to keep the difference to put into her own pocket, deliberately deceiving and robbing her friends and putting everyone’s lives at risk, and now she was paying the price and was afraid.
So that’s it, is it? Did this to yourself. Robbed your friends with no thought to their lives and now you want to rob me of mine too? I have no pity for you. I won’t accept your broken bones or your bleeding. You might have gotten past your friends, but you won’t get past me.
The flash of the faded milk chocolate colored hat was intruded upon and overloaded with a flash of an old memory of his own. He was six again. Remus was five, and they shared a bedroom in the little cottage his family had. One night, he’d been awakened by a noise, and he’d seen an enormous hulking figure creeping in the window. He remembered trying to hide by pressing himself tight against the wall, making himself as small as possible. He remembered Remus’s terrified, painful screams as the monster saw only Remus, attacked only Remus, drawing in their father. He remembered shaking in panic and peeking out from under the blanket and witnessing the fierce battle his father waged, without any thought to his own life, to drive the demon away. It was, singularly, the bravest thing Robert’d ever seen—even now--but the damage had been done.
They never looked for me. They never looked to see if the monster got me too or if I was even there. No one missed me. He remembered how desperate it had all been, how frightened his mother was for Remus, how overwhelmed his father had been with guilt. Nothing moved without tears, no words uttered without pain, no food prepared, no light through the drapes. Life, as the Lupins had known it, would never be again, and in the days that passed, despite being too young to comprehend it all, Robert had seen hours of anguished adult conversations at his injured brother’s bedside between his mother and father, his father saying that he’d failed, that he’d failed as a father, failed as a man, because protecting the ones he loved was all that mattered—it was the only thing. Lyall had believed he had bungled everything that irreparably. It was not permissible to show it, but Robert knew the burden had never diminished.
It was what Robert had learned mattered. It had labeled Remus, him and his parents as “that” family, the animals, the monsters. His parents never dared to take Remus to St. Mungos, even as serious as the wound was because of greater fear of where Remus might end up being taken to. He didn’t remember when it had dawned on them that Robert yet lived, or if it had just been a foregone conclusion. Robert had sunken himself into any book he could find in the house as soon as he could read. Lyall had never blamed Robert for not protecting Remus, not that Robert had ever heard, but Lyall repeated the lesson to him often enough, until it was indelible in his brain. A successful man did not ever give a jot about the cost to himself so long as he protected of the ones he loved.
I will never let my children forget they are loved, not ever, he’d repeated to himself when he was small, not necessarily parroting his father, but rather to parent himself. He’d stuck to that, and he had done his best to convey that to Khaat, Brian, and every other youngster he’d taken underwing—including the young apprentice upon whom his life energies were depending. And at the moment, Zabini would be at risk if Robert did not pull himself out of the negative energy’s effects and put his all into separating himself now from Zabini. He had only one idea left, and he had to make it count.
“Return!” Robert bellowed, commanding the old witch’s ill-intentioned magic to spin back and fire from him back upon her. He wanted to startle her into stopping the drain to keep anything from leeching over to the boy. Then, his only other thought left was to try to use all of whatever he had left to make a complete severing of himself from Zabini. His family, he believed, would understand
“Let go, you old cow!” he heard the charge nurse suddenly bellow, inadvertently interrupting Robert’s best intentions and striking the old woman’s hand, doing what Robert had been unable to do for himself--knocking Robert free from the old crone. The force of it threw him unintentionally away from Zabini too, and his last thought before he lost his grip on the boy was his own desperation to try to insure that Apollo’s safety. He fell, momentarily stunned. Zabini—where was Zabini?
by 
