Order Only: St Mungo's
Dec. 29th, 2009 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_poppyWell. That's confirmation, then. There is a secret ward where they have taken sick halfbloods and are keeping them hidden even from their relations.
I've just finished talking with Antigone Cantwell, my closest, most reliable contact at St Mungo's, and she's terrified. She's convinced that she is going to be taken in for questioning today, and she does have reason to be fearful: several of her co-workers were apparently arrested as they arrived for work this morning. She's had to stay on for an extra shift because of their absence. All of them worked with the woman--Healer Fitzpatrick, I think she's called--who went missing just before Sirius's Grim Truth in November.
Healer Cantwell was fairly beside herself with exhaustion and anxiety, so it was difficult to sort some of what she said. She was afraid she might have only a few minutes to speak with me safely. More than anything, what she wanted to do was alert me to the fact that she might be taken away and that she, like others before her, might 'disappear'. She's been at St Mungo's long enough to know what becomes of many poor souls who suffer interrogation at the hands of this regime: they disappear permanently into the closed ward kept for victims of irreparable torture damage.
In the midst of telling me her worries about facing arrest, and quite without meaning to, she alluded to another locked ward they've established--for halfbloods ill with this 'scourge'. She was detailing the questions she believes she'll face when she's taken in: When did she learn of her colleague's disappearance? When did she realise that sensitive data had gone missing with the woman? Did she report this information directly and to whom and how was the matter dealt with? Has she or anyone in her department knowingly had contact with staff from The Prophet? or with the traitor, Sirius Black? How can she explain the information he clearly gathered from insiders in her department? What does she make of the timing of the most recent reports? Does she have any idea how The Prophet came to hear rumours of the locked, halfblood ward?
And there it was.
She stopped and stared out of the fire at me, completely horrified that she'd mentioned the verboten subject. 'Oh, Poppy!' she whispered. 'I oughtn't to have said that. Now I've involved you! If they question me...' She looked at me again and thought for a silent moment. I saw her raise her wand to her own temple then, and, as I watched, she Obliviated herself. I closed the connection before she came to herself again; it's surely best if she forgets the conversation altogether.
I've just finished talking with Antigone Cantwell, my closest, most reliable contact at St Mungo's, and she's terrified. She's convinced that she is going to be taken in for questioning today, and she does have reason to be fearful: several of her co-workers were apparently arrested as they arrived for work this morning. She's had to stay on for an extra shift because of their absence. All of them worked with the woman--Healer Fitzpatrick, I think she's called--who went missing just before Sirius's Grim Truth in November.
Healer Cantwell was fairly beside herself with exhaustion and anxiety, so it was difficult to sort some of what she said. She was afraid she might have only a few minutes to speak with me safely. More than anything, what she wanted to do was alert me to the fact that she might be taken away and that she, like others before her, might 'disappear'. She's been at St Mungo's long enough to know what becomes of many poor souls who suffer interrogation at the hands of this regime: they disappear permanently into the closed ward kept for victims of irreparable torture damage.
In the midst of telling me her worries about facing arrest, and quite without meaning to, she alluded to another locked ward they've established--for halfbloods ill with this 'scourge'. She was detailing the questions she believes she'll face when she's taken in: When did she learn of her colleague's disappearance? When did she realise that sensitive data had gone missing with the woman? Did she report this information directly and to whom and how was the matter dealt with? Has she or anyone in her department knowingly had contact with staff from The Prophet? or with the traitor, Sirius Black? How can she explain the information he clearly gathered from insiders in her department? What does she make of the timing of the most recent reports? Does she have any idea how The Prophet came to hear rumours of the locked, halfblood ward?
And there it was.
She stopped and stared out of the fire at me, completely horrified that she'd mentioned the verboten subject. 'Oh, Poppy!' she whispered. 'I oughtn't to have said that. Now I've involved you! If they question me...' She looked at me again and thought for a silent moment. I saw her raise her wand to her own temple then, and, as I watched, she Obliviated herself. I closed the connection before she came to herself again; it's surely best if she forgets the conversation altogether.