You're On Your Own, Kid (Amy)

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

Mid-February 2029

Working at St. Mungo's in Creature-Induced Injuries, the cases Max saw were frequently life-changing for the patients who survived. Loss of function in—or the outright loss of—some part of the body did occur despite their having some of the best Healers available. Though some might have assumed that their patients were mostly Magizoologists who had gotten too close to something known to be dangerous or those who simply didn't think before disturbing some sort of magical beast, the reality was that the patients they treated were of all different ages and from all walks of life.

Max couldn't pretend, however, that there weren't some patients whose cases were particularly jarring. From what she had heard from her colleagues who had been working there for decades, it was rarer for someone to come in with a werewolf bite than it once was, but it was always a challenge to explain to a patient that their life was going to change forever regardless of what the Healers did. The best-case scenario for the new werewolves was that they would understand and accept their new limitations—and that they would recognize that healing magic was making constant advances to ensure that lycanthropy was not a death sentence.

For the young woman seated before her who was originally from the States and back at St. Mungo's for a follow-up appointment after treatment for a werewolf bite, it wasn't the best-case scenario. More than anyone, Max knew from experience not to stereotype werewolves, but she couldn't picture her going somewhere such as Claustrum de Lupus—for services beyond those offered by St. Mungo's, as she had just referred her—comfortably. Many of the werewolves who tended to need the assistance of the social workers there just so happened to fit the stereotypes: older, more masculine, and haggard. Amy, meanwhile, did not. She was small and thin and looked almost as though she could have been part Veela.

"…What questions do you have for me, Amy?" Max checked after she had finished her spiel about Claustrum de Lupus and the services that St. Mungo's could and couldn't provide her going forward. It was a lot of information, but Max had her end of it down to a science.

AMY ESMA ASTOR-SHAW

[AMY ESMA ASTOR-SHAW]

The first transformation had been unbearable. Amy never wanted to do it again. She couldn't imagine how painful it would have been without the slew of potions she'd ingested per the healers direction. It had been like her bones were breaking and reforming, and though she'd managed to keep her human mind, she hated the way it made her conscious to the pain. Perhaps it would have been better to give herself to the wolf fully. Thoughts swirled around in Amy's head, each more confused and urgent than the last. But they quieted when she approached the welcome desk at St Mungo's.

Healer Garnet had referred Amy to St Mungo's for a check up after her first transition. Amy hadn't wanted to involve anyone else in her care, but Esther had insisted that the healers at St Mungo's were better equipped to deal with her condition. So they'd made an appointment for the middle of February for Amy to visit. She checked in, and once she was in the room, Amy was slightly disturbed to find that the nurse was in fact, someone else she'd recognised.

Max and Amy hadn't spoken much at all, nor had their paths crossed very much during Amy's year at Hogwarts during the rebuild, or Max's final year at LIFE. In fact, Amy couldn't recall a time they'd ever spoken. While inter-house relations were better than they'd once been, she'd had no reason to engage Max. It only made sense that Amy was quite distracted as Max went on and on about the variety of services available to her, and how her life would change but also be manageable. "Um, what?" asked Amy, blinking at Max. "Oh um... I don't know. Like, will every transformation be that painful? I took aware wolf and everything but... it was still not great."

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

Mid-February 2029

At first, Amy seemed as though she must have zoned out at some point during her explanation. "Um, what?" she asked, in response to which Max was just about to repeat her question before she continued her response. It had just taken her a moment to process what she'd heard. "Like, will every transformation be that painful? I took Aware Wolf and everything, but…" Even Aware Wolf didn't make full moons perfectly smooth. "It was still not great."

"Well," Max began, using her same professional voice, "some patients have told us that they've adjusted to the pain over time, and others have described it as the most painful thing they've ever experienced, even after years of being a werewolf." It was a wide range, and Max guessed that some of it had to do with patients' tolerance of pain to begin with. As a non-werewolf, she had no way to describe it other than what she had been told. That made it harder to be genuinely reassuring, but she had to go with the information that was available to her, whether that was what had been communicated to her firsthand or published as research in healing magic.

"You could try taking a potion for the pain in advance of the full moon, whatever you would normally take," Max recommended. "The effects wouldn't last an entire transformation," she noted—not a full night, anyway—"but it might make transforming more tolerable for you."

From what she had experienced with her werewolf half-siblings, the symptoms of illness that they experienced around the full moon were often a source of frustration, too. The element of chronic illness beyond just turning into a potentially violent wolf at each full moon made the condition that much harder to navigate—and that was without the potential for discrimination on top of it all.

"Most of our werewolf patients prefer to sleep after they have transformed," Max continued, "and data have suggested that maintaining regular sleep schedules could be beneficial for werewolves." It was limited data, of course, because the Healers who had conducted the study had run into challenges recruiting werewolves for it. "I'd advise against any sleep potions for safety reasons, however."

AMY ESMA ASTOR-SHAW