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Such Names


Lydia McGregor had not moved from her spot beside Dougal’s bed, where she sat, clutching a wood rosary, worrying the beads through her fingers without really saying much of a prayer. Somehow the simple act of moving them through her hands felt like prayer enough - if the God she prayed to heard her, he already knew her inquiry, she reckoned, and so she simply stared at Dougal and worried. Dougal’s eyes had not yet opened, his skin pale, his lips a funny shade - almost blue. Lydia shivered from cold and fear.

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the hallway outside the room and Lydia looked up and saw several nurses rush by and, far off, she heard the sound of a barking dog.

A dog? In a hospital!? She thought, I never!

Another nurse ran past the door as the dog’s barking got louder…. And louder…. And then a flash of unruly black fur and a wagging tail went past the room, followed by now four… no, five... nurses.

Lydia stood up and went to the door to investigate, her rosary hanging about her wrist, where she’d tangled it like an overlarge bracelet. She stuck her head into the hall and looked after the way the dog had gone.

“Hullo Mrs. McGregor.”

She turned and saw the presbyterian reverend coming up behind her - Malcolm McGonagall. She quickly stowed her rosary into her pocket. “Reverend,” she greeted him, and she smiled as Halley McGonagall, the reverend’s wife, stepped ‘round him, their three year old daughter on her hip. “Mrs. McGonagall,” she added, nodding to her.

Halley smiled, “Morning, Mrs. McGregor,” she replied.

Malcolm hugged Lydia gently, patting her back, and murmured, “I can as soon as I heard. How is he?”

Lydia had no idea that the reverend had any part at all in getting Dougal to the Caithness hospital. “They think it was some sort of… of gang or something… a mugging, they’re saying… said he was drinking at the pub again.” She wiped her eyes, “He’d been clean so long but… something made him start again a couple months ago and he’s been hitting it hard since.” She looked down, “They say he cannot be healed.”

Down the hall, the dog’s barking continued and the nurse’s station stood unoccupied.

Halley McGonagall wrapped her arms about Lydia’s shoulder as the woman began to cry.

The Reverend looked toward the bed in the room and he suggested, “P’haps you’d like to have a moment of prayer… Halley, could you take our dear Lydia to the chapel room to pray together? He said, turning to his wife.

Lydia looked nervous, “Oh… I… I don’t know, I don’t want him to be alone… if he wakes up… and…”

“I’ll sit with him,” Malcolm promised.

Lydia looked rather as though she were unsure what she’d just agreed to - but she followed Halley away down the hall and as they went, Malcolm heard her ask, “Did you see that dog that’s gone by just now?”

He waited until Halley had gotten Lydia ‘round the bend at the end of the long corridor, then he turned ‘round and called, “Min!”

Minerva McGonagall stepped out from the waiting room off the hall that she had been waiting in and walked down the hallway toward Malcolm, her heart in her throat. The muggle hospital smelled of soap and illness and she fretted, rubbing her hands together, hating the dismal feeling in the place. St. Mungo’s had enchanted that sort of traditional hospital smell away, and it always felt more hopeful than muggle establishments felt.

“Right through here,” Malcolm said and he moved to lead Minerva into the room, but she stayed him with a touch of her palm.

“Let me go alone,” she instructed.

He hesitated, “Are yeh sure, Min?”

She nodded firmly.

“Alright. I’ll stay here and keep a look out for you.”

Minerva nodded again because she was afraid she could not speak without her voice cracking.

Gathering up her strength, Minerva stepped through the door of the hospital room, pausing a moment before closing the door behind her, and then continued on into the room.




The werewolf leaped through the air, his teeth bared, and his claws clamped onto one of the haunches of the stag… the stag bellowed loudly, and he turned, scooping the wolf with his antlers and tossing the wolf across the room so that the canine slammed into the wall with a yelp as he fell to the floor on his side. The stag turned, brandishing his antlers at the wolf as he got up and tried to corner him and the wolf swept his claws through the air, catching the stag in the jaw and the stag grunted as he took the impact, angling his antlers more until the wolf finally cowered down into the corner… the stag moved insistently at the wolf, until the wolf tucked his tail between his legs and lay, realizing the stag’s great antlers could easily spear it if needed… vastly outnumbered, the wolf lay in the corner, back to the wall, whimpering, wishing for his alpha to come and rescue him from the stag.




But the werewolf’s alpha was no where near the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade. The werewolf’s alpha was many kilometers north, in the halls of the hospital of Caithness, running, barking through the corridors, being chased by no less than six nurses and two doctors in their white lab coats and brightly coloured scrubs.

Snuffles was just wondering how he would get out of this when he heard the ding of an elevator, saw a girl climbing aboard ahead of him, and the door beginning to close and he ran as hard as he could, only just barely slipping through the doors before they closed - the nurses and doctors frantically trying to hit the button as the two heavy doors clamped shut.

The girl in the elevator let out a shriek of surprise at seeing the dog, backed up against the far wall of the elevator car. Snuffles stared up at her, panting, and then, alarming her even further (as it should have), he burst into a human being. Sirius shook out his long black hair as he stood up from here he’d appeared, on all fours, and he dusted off his knees and jacket sleeves calmly, glancing over at her.

“So sorry to alarm you, darling, but you had some barking good timing with the elevator car.”

The girl’s eyes went all crossed and her body went sort of limp as she passed out and Sirius scrambled to catch her before she could hit the floor and he said, “I know I’m good looking, sweetheart, but really this is a bit much.”

When the elevator dinged again, Sirius lifted her and carried her out into the corridor, located another doctor and said, “Found her in the elevator. Seemed a bit peaky and passed out.” He handed her over. “Got to run.” And without waiting for a response from the bewildered doctor, who blinked at the girl as she blinked awake in his arms, Sirius ran off down the corridor, his boots squeaking on the clean tile, and found actual stairs to climb back up to the floor he’d left behind.

He chuckled to himself as he passed a couple of the nurses that had been following him on the stairwell, frantically racing downstairs, and he smirked as he pushed his way into the corridor and arrived at Malcolm McGonagall’s side outside of Dougal McGregor’s room.

Malcolm looked over at him. “Where in the world did you get a dog?” he asked, “Did you transfigure something?”

“Yeah,” Sirius nodded, “Transfiguration’s grand inn’it?” he smiled brightly, and, before Malcolm could ask anymore questions, he asked, “Has Minnie gone in, then?”

Malcolm nodded.

Sirius stared at the closed door, his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath. He turned to Malcolm after several moments of silence had passed and he asked, “So… so what’s the story here? Who is he?”

Malcolm continued to stare at the door as Sirius went and leaned against the wall, one leg bent so his boot pressed to the wall, the other stretched out before him. Malcolm sighed and replied, “They were best friends so long as I can recall - always together. She loved him more than she ever admitted growing up. There were other boys - boys that came to call from her life in the wizarding world, boy who fancied her something fierce. She was gorgeous, Min was, in a timeless sort of way. But she never wanted those boys. I mean she courted several, of course, as girls do, but it was always Dougal in the end. After school, when she got a job offer in London, working for the Ministry of Magic, she told Dougal and he begged her to stay… He even gave her a reason to, asked her to marry him, didn’t he? With his mother’s ring and all. And Minnie thought on it. But she said no.”

Sirius’s face was sad. “Why would she say no? If she loved him…?”

“Muggle, Dougal is... She couldn’t tell him about more’n half her life without breaking the Statute of Secrecy.”

“Wizards marry muggles all the time,” Sirius argued.

“Not in those days, Sirius. It wasn’t as accepted as it is today, for a witch or wizard to be marrying a muggle.” Malcolm shook his head, “Bloody foolish, it is… And our mam, she’d done it, and lived a… a miserable life, never tellin’ our dad ‘til she couldn’t hide it any longer, and it nearly wrecked him. Destroyed the trust between’em.”

Sirius frowned.

“So Min moved away, and Dougal McGregor waited for her to come back - for ten years he waited for her to come back… and she never did. This is the first time that Minerva McGonagall has set foot in Faere Dhu since the day she gave Dougal McGregor back his mother’s ring.”

Sirius’s fingers found the ring in his pocket, slipping it onto the first knuckle of his thumb and off again, turning it over and over in his palm. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.

Malcolm nodded.




Minerva stood across the room from the bed for several long minutes, just staring at him laying there - much older than he’d be the last time she’d seen him. Nobody knew she’d been there at his wedding to Lydia Williamson, because nobody notices stray tabby cats lurking in shadows of dusty old churches… But she’d been there. He’d looked older then, too, but now he looked old beyond his years, the whiskey and hard work in the sun and the effects of a failing heart making him pallid and broken looking... Gone was the strong jaw and the determined gleam of his eyes, his freckles long since faded away.

She could barely stand it.

Finally, she steeled herself and walked across the room to his side. She sat in Lydia’s chair and reached for Dougal McGregor’s hand, staring down at it, at the hair from his arm that came down over the top of the hand, at the brown spots - liver spots - that marked the skin, the wrinkles, the lines… And on his finger, the gold band that united him to Lydia Williamson. She clapped her hands around his and looked up to his face. A stray bit of hair hung over his forehead, plastered there from the sweat that made him glisten in the horrid lights of the hospital room.

After a moment, she reached into her robes and she drew her wand and she whispered, “Ennervate,” as she pressed her wand to his chest.

Dougal McGregor woke, stirring, his eyes blinking to life, searching the peripherals to orient himself to where he was exactly… and then focusing enough to realize that the woman holding his hand at his side was not his Lydia… and he locked upon her.

“Dou… it’s me,” she whispered, “Minerva McGonagall.”

“Minnie,” his voice cracked.

She still held her wand with one hand, his hand with the other, and she squeezed his hand gently. “Yes, Dou, it’s Minnie.”

His lips twitched into a sad smile, “I must be dyin’ then… or dead already… to have ye at my side again.”

She didn’t answer. Insead, she brought his hand to her mouth and she kissed it.

“Ye’ve been gone longer than I knew ye, Minnie,” he croaked the words, staring up at her, “And there still t’were not a day that I dinna think of yeh and wish yeh’d come back.”

Tears poured over her cheeks.

“And now ye’ve come… just in time fer me to go?”

She put down her wand, laid it on his chest and he looked down at it for a moment, his brows furrowing in question at it, then up to her as she brought her palm to his cheek and stroked it softly, their eyes met, searching through one another’s gaze, and she said, “I couldn’t stay.”

Dougal shook his head and his eyes rolled away from hers. “Rubbish,” he whispered, “And ye know it, Minnie. Ye loved yer freedom more than ye loved me, that’s what it t’was that sent yeh away.”

“Dougal McGregor, you heathen,” she whispered, “I’ve loved yeh, Dougal, all this time I’ve loved yeh.”

“If ye loved me, ye would have stayed,” he said.

Minerva leaned closer. “I’m a witch, Dougal.”

“Don’t call ye-self such names.”

Tears filled her eyes.

Even after all these years, she still couldn’t tell him.

And probably it was best this way, if he never knew.

More than anything she wished she had obliviated herself from his memory before she’d left twenty-some-odd years ago.

She kissed his hand again. “I’m sorry Dougal. For everything.”

“I’m not sorry for it,” he whispered. “I only wish ye’d come back sooner.”

“Aye, well - I’m here now.”

“Aye… That yeh are.”