Breaking Loki

Acknowledgment: To Sarah, the girl who makes me write, even when I don't want to.

A/N: "Breaking Loki" is hopefully, an alternative to the years between that epilogue. It will be mostly slash with some icky het bits to watch out for.

Prologue: A Wulf, A Wulf

"O rose, thou art sick" -William Blake, The Sick Rose

The rain was incessant outside of St. Ottery-Catchpole Public. An unassuming place with unassuming people inside.

The hospital itself was old and plain, its interiors thoroughly gutted for cold marble floors and room upon room of the shiniest and newest in medical technology. The walls were painted an uninspiring mint hue and decorated with the occasional glossy framed painting in splashes of colour even less inspiring. The reception was littered with scant furniture, tacky plastic chairs and the steady drone of the sick and impatient.

If perhaps, just one of those people -the heavily powdered woman whose eyes occasionally strayed from her tatty pulp novel, or the teenaged girl at her side who stared vacantly at the ceiling in her boredom, even the elderly man whose crinkled features looked with amusement on each new arrival to the area- if just one of them was not so self-involved, so numb from the constant ring of phones, the click clack of shoes and keyboards, then perhaps they would notice certain peculiarities amongst their company. For example, the woman, looking up from her preloved fiction, may have laid eyes upon the pair of lilac clad nurses, old friends who, chatting, just so happened to mention their annoyance at being forced to work an extra shift on the seventh floor -an oddity, considering that St. Ottery-Catchpole had only three floors. The teenaged girl, gum cracking noisily as she waited for her latest immunisation, might think more on the cheerful stranger beside her, the rather rotund fellow being proudly decked out in his summer finest: a neon purple raincoat and a pair of fishnet gloves. And of course, if the elderly man was not so secretly nervous about the results of his wife's MRI, he may have overheard Luna Lovegood chatting amiably with the stucco frieze on the wall beside him.

As it was, nobody noticed a thing.

'They're waiting for you in the Panlynn and Poe Ward as we speak,' Farfarello finished saying, bending to scratch his minute goat legs as discreetly as possible. 'It's definitely not a good day.'

To anybody who really knew her, a number which she could count on one hand, Luna's face was uncharacteristically serious, an expression given only by the lack of creases in the corner of her intelligent, oftentimes dreamy, blue eyes. She gave an acknowledging sigh and politely bid the satyr-receptionist a good day before checking her slate. Surely enough, two names in intricately curling chalk-script surfaced at the top of the flat stone. Brow furrowing, Luna waited until she was in the reasonable solitude of the elevator before she shook the message board with the accuracy designed to give her the correlating patient results. Out of habit she pressed the Disillusioned button for the third floor, eyes still glued to her slate as she scanned hungrily for further information.

After the War of Hogwarts and the short-lived Death Eater Assault, terms had been negotiated between the muggle prime minister and the latest Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shackelbolt, in increasing the availability of wizarding health care. As a result of this, like many hospitals and surgeries around Britain, St. Ottery-Catchpole Public had been magically remodelled to accommodate another five floors for the use of -and only of, the muggle prime minister had been quick to assert- the local wizarding community in Devon.

The doors to the lift opened with a pleasant "ping" and she was immediately greeted by a flock of charmed notices, paper wings knocking together in their various levels of urgency and competition to be read.

Henry, her apprentice, greeted her with a fresh mug of steaming radish juice and a change of lime green Healer's robes. He trotted after her eagerly as she headed for her office. 'They're in-'

'Yes, it's alright Henry. I already know. Farfarello informed me at reception. How long?'

'About an hour madam,' Henry supplied, shaking his head. 'I told them you weren't in until nine, but they refused a later appointment. Chadwick offered to see them but-'

'No, they won't want to see anybody else,' Luna interrupted softly. She could feel a headache starting at the tips of her toes and made a mental note to owl her father for some more of his special Anti-Migraine syrup. Definitely a bad day. 'Henry, is Poe in?'

'Taking the children skiing in Switzerland.'

Luna took a sip of her tea, careful not to burn her tongue on the sweet liquid. 'Did he leave any documents for me?' Henry pushed open the heavy curtain to her office and she nodded her thanks before entering.

Henry's eyes shot upwards over his glittery spectacles, racking his brain. With a gasp, he hurried down the hall towards the head Healer's pigeonhole. Blushing, he passed her a large slate, crammed with Poe's encoded, yet distinct scrawl. Luna gestured to her nervous understudy to give her some peace, fingers already itching with anxiety. The second the curtain to her office was pulled she began to shuffle through various draws and compartments occasionally detouring to open one of the memos when it fluttered down from her ceiling to nudge her hand.

A stranger in Luna's office would probably find the thousands of folders stacked from carpet to ceiling rather daunting. More so, the shelves and shelves dedicated to parchment rolls and drying herbs, and the boxes overflowing with books. Luna merely muttered to herself as she rifled through the precarious tower of paper on her desk, casually flinging delicate instruments over her shoulder. Eventually she found the shallow basin as a result of pure luck, stubbing her toe on the hard surface and contemplating how it was she forgot where a container full of water had been placed. Without ceremony, she dumped the slate in the thin pool and charmed the reflective pigments to illuminate in legible writing in front of her, the glowing words appearing like that distorted by ripples.

Luna prided herself on being fairly aloof and well-meaning. To her, the world she had been born into was interesting and very seldom she could call her life unlucky. But when she determined Healer Poe's indifferent analysis, she could only surmise that the gods had been very, very cruel. Had she been anyone else, she might have even cursed aloud. She decided, instead, to find a kinder answer.

In her haste, her rummaging and rattling disturbed a neatly framed picture that graced the only clean space on the shelf beneath her window. As her eyes alighted on it, hands ready to steady the wobbling object, a surge of hope filled her, despite the grim overcast to her morning. Bizarrely still in the rectangular photograph, Harry Potter, the Chosen One, sat happily amongst his friends, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. Next to it sat the muggle camera she had used to take it.

If the photograph had been a normal, moving one, the viewer might have seen the soft gleam of peace in Harry's eyes, or the twitch to his best friend's lips as he struggled to contain a beam of pride. If the photograph had been moving it might have captured the embarrassing moment after the shutter clicked when Hermione leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It might even have captured Luna herself, running to get into the frame before it was explained to her how the muggle variant of a camera worked. Every day that she did not see them in her hospital, Luna hoped that that was a day that they lived well.

She took a long, calming sip of her radish brew.

She knew for a fact that Hermione was doing particularly well penning her House-Elf Liberation memoirs in India, away from her house of red-headed children and her husband.

Ron and Harry probably still met every Friday after work for a pint.

Almost without her conscious action, her fingers lit upon a fraying velum, one she'd kept for a day just such as this. She checked her slate which informed her that her patients had been waiting for nearly an hour and fifteen minutes now. Pushing away the guilt she felt at their (no-doubt mounting) anxiety, Luna reiterated in her mind why it was important that she be absolutely certain. It would not help if she could only give them half-answers.

She reached over and extracted a particularly powerful divining instrument from her shelf. After a few moments her frown deepened, the weight of the situation just beginning to hit her, Luna shook her way out of the lumpy cardigan she had been wearing and charmed her clasp to hold her green robes securely about her shoulders.

She held her breath all the way down to the ward.

On her desk, the lucky eight ball sat ominously.

Outlook not so good.

...

The windows in the Panlynn and Poe ward were charmed to filter banners of dusky sunlight all day long. Each private room was decorated in the softest shade of lavender, the walls ornamented only by the long stemmed flowers which spilled their lush petals open and permeated the air with a light perfume.

The woman sitting with perfect poise on the day bed could easily be described as relaxed. Her pale features, touched only with the most delectable hue of rose, were composed, as were the slender hands arranged on top of her embroidery. The enhanced sunlight, which caught at myriad strands of flaxen hair and turned them molten, also warmed her fathomless blue eyes and cast a long shadow from her waif-like form to the bed on which her husband rested.

'Bill.'

The man spread across the clean linen sheets raised his head, eyes slightly unfocused as he surfaced from whatever dream he'd fallen into. He rubbed at the traces of coffee residue on his lips before answering.

'Sorry hon, I guess I drifted off.'

Fleur smiled slightly at him. Bill Weasley was roguishly handsome, his unruly hair escaping the tie she'd lovingly bound it with that morning. His face could in no way we described as fine featured, but there was a masculine beauty to his widely spaced eyes and the beginnings of smile-grooves around his mouth.

Some people merely noticed the angry gashes that marred him and averted their gaze.

Birds were chirping somewhere, outside of their cosy room. Their lilting song helped to ground her as she was submerged in her own memory.

Her shoes were expensive, imported, chosen by her sister, and they tapped noisily as she walked, as fast as dignity would allow. She wanted to run. Each blood spattered, exhausted face she saw, each joyfully weeping family that huddled in the shadows made her heart beat a little faster, a seed of doubt beginning to blossom in her mind. There was a body, maybe dead, maybe unconscious, death eater or child she did not know but she knew from the curves of its back that it wasn't him, so she stepped over it, barely even spared it a glance. Strangely, she could only seem to think on how important it was that she be a lady about the whole situation. Her mother's strict childhood lessen jostled around each other in her skull. Back straight, head up, shoulders back, don't run don't run runrunrunrun...

When the call came for her, up ahead, she very nearly turned to walk away. Only her fierce breeding and her morbid curiosity kept her face smooth as she approached the cluster of men and women huddled over the bloody bundle that was her fiancé.

Fleur remembered every agonizing moment spent in the makeshift infirmary at Hogwarts after the first assault on the castle. Dishes and trays full of blood, blood on cotton, on sheets, on skin, and blood on her taffeta sleeves. Bill's face was a sickly comical ball of gauze. It was a snowman head, round and pitted with two holes for eyes. It perched on top of his neck like a ridiculous costume accessory, his boneless body, completely unblemished. With all the gentleness she possessed she stripped away that gauze at night while he slept, too drugged to wake, too pained to want to. She remembered keenly, the tinkling noises of her jewellery against metal as she wiped the scissors clean, as she dropped bandage after bandage, pin after pin, into the bin at her feet.

Pomfrey bustled and fussed and asked questions, but nothing really touched them. It was just Bill and Fleur and countless moments in which her heart was beating for the two of them.

Fleur surreptitiously eyed the most critical wound, a scratch from his right ear that bisected one of his eyelids and cut up over his forehead. She could make out its sinister pattern, oozing out from under the many layers of sterilized bandage. On her wedding night, she'd traced her fingers over those vicious scars and sighed. There was no monster lurking behind Bill's warm eyes. Only love. Bill was healed, but the scars remained and each year they became more gruesome, angrier and open to infection. If the dormant virus emerged...

'It won't be anything serious,' he said reassuringly. Fleur held his stare and then turned back to her work, violets springing up under her diligent needle. She simply could not wait another moment for the results. If they had to go back to the Dai Llewellyn Ward on the second floor of St. Mungo's, if Bill had to suffer the humiliation of being handled like a dangerous animal once more...

She shuddered.

She would never forget the braces they used there, padded but unbreakable, twitching with menace as they waited eagerly to chain him to the bed.

'Mrs Weasley? Mr Weasley?'

Luna Lovegood looked breathless in their doorway. The startlingly lime green robes of a healer suited her abstract expressions and complimented her willowy frame. A large and ugly nut shaped charm adorned her chest. Her waist length straggle of blond hair was soothingly familiar but the set of uncharacteristic gravity to her round eyes, was not.

Without asking, she took a seat at the end of Bill's bed and began sifting through a file she had brought with her. Fleur's eyes met her husband's and then she looked away, out the window, wondering what the morning would look like in Paris today.

'You can call me Bill, Luna,' she head Bill say.

Outside, muggle children were playing with a black and white checked ball on the flattened drought-brown grass of the rehabilitation garden.

Luna's voice was as determined as its dreamy quality would allow. 'The tests were negative.' Without realising he'd come to sit by her, she felt Bill's fingers wipe a stray tear from her cheek.

Negative. Nothing.

'Bill has no unstable occurrences of the lycanthropy virus,' Luna continued as Fleur bowed her head to her husband's shoulder, letting her tears stream silently into the warm cloth of his shirt. 'The blood test showed no active components. Everything is just as dormant as it was when Healer Smethwyck gave you your first analysis.'

Fleur turned happy eyes on the healer. 'What about the scratches? Why are they getting worse?'

Bill nodded his agreement. 'Are they infected?'

Luna shook her head. 'The wounds you sustained five years ago at the battle are susceptible to mutation when exposed to certain stimulants.'

Fleur cocked her head in confusion. 'He is allergic?'

'Yes, Fleur. Bill suffers from a very rare allergy that irritates the wounds on his face. You must understand that the degradation of his scars are purely superficial. No amount of allergic reaction or infection will trigger the dormant particles of the virus to become active. Bill, you are in no way now, and never will be, any closer to becoming a werewolf. Your virus is completely stable and completely limited.'

Bill's hand tightened around hers and he kissed her cheek. She could feel the tension leaving his body. To never worry, ever again about a regression... Their wildest hopes had been met. She thanked all the gods she knew as Luna discussed an antibiotic salve for treating the nastier of Bill's wounds.

Bill asked, 'What's causing the irritation though? Is it something I'm wearing? Fleur wears this perfume-.'

'No. It's a little more complex than that.' Luna looked once more at the files on her lap and Fleur noticed a thick, ancient looking vellum on top of the pile.

'How complex? Must there be more tests to find out?'

'No. My superior, Healer Poe has done some research in this area and would like to express an interest in continuing to document your case in the future, when he returns from a family holiday.'

'That rare, huh?' Bill said, but for all his casual attention, Fleur felt herself tensing along with him, uneasiness creeping into their hearts.

Luna fingered a corner of the vellum, searching for words. 'The allergen is quite specific. The cuts on your face are irritated only by contact with another werewolf.'

There was a long silence in the room. Luna, for all her pity, did not look away. Her sympathetic eyes found Fleur's. She released Bill's hand.

'Contact with another werewolf? That can't be. Bill-.' Fleur started but Luna interrupted her, voice soft and eyes kind.

'I'm sorry. It's not a mistake. Bill has had contact with a very, very specific allergen. A werewolf. Or an untransformed werewolf.

Bill stood up, anger burning in his eyes. 'I haven't seen a werewolf since...since Fenrir- no! Since Remus Lupin! Merlin rest him, he's been dead for too long to be-.'

'Yes, and although it's highly likely that his presence further irritated your wounds, the extent of your infection as we see it now is the result of prolonged exposure to your allergen.'

A coldness washed over Fleur as realisation hit her. Before she could voice her fears, Luna did them for her.

'Bill?' she asked somberly. 'I only ask you this because it's your last hope. You have to believe me when I say that it is essential that you tell the truth.'

Bill nodded, anger fading.

Luna took a breath. 'Are you having an affair?'

Bill's response was explosive. 'No! Never! You think-? No! I would never cheat on Fleur. I love her! We love each other. Fleur,' he turned to his wife, eyes desperate and hurt, 'I would never do that to you. Never!' He turned back to Luna, accusatory tone not quite hidden. 'You think I would...would have relations with a werewolf?'

Luna stood her ground. 'It is possible for a woman carrying a dormant virus to be an allergic stimulus. It is also possible that she did not inform you that she was a werewolf and you, seeing her only in her untransformed state did not assume to ask her.'

Fleur swallowed down the urge to cry, a realisation even more terrible beginning to overwhelm her. Bill was still fuming.

'Absolutely not, I love my wife. I have never even considered-.' He broke off, to angry for words. Fleur smiled sadly and put a hand on his arm to calm him.

'Bill. It's alright. I believe you.'

Bill turned teary eyes to her. 'Never' he said again, brushing a kiss on her fingertips. His calloused palms were warm on either side of her hand.

Luna gave them a moment of privacy before continuing.

'I apologise. You must understand, Bill, I had hoped that it would be an affair. The alternative...' she looked down at the vellum.

'Then, I am a werewolf?' Fleur asked dejectedly and felt Bill freeze in utter shock beside her.

Luna sighed and Fleur was taken aback by the sadness and focus in her normally distracted eyes.

'No.'

Fleur stilled. In confusion, she turned to Bill. Her husband was still obviously suffering the shock of considering that his wife might carry some form of the lycan virus. Fleur turned her questioning glance to Luna looked at her with deepest sympathy.

'You are not a werewolf Fleur,' she paused, considering the weight of what she was about to say.

Bill heaved a sigh of relief, his heart still thudding in his ears.

'Your baby is.'

A/N:

Just a note on Fleur: The accent was too campy and I can't keep it consistent so that's a no go.

Please stay tuned for the next instalment (coming soon), recs and reviews are always appreciated

xxx

Muraki