The staff at Saint Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was accustomed to strange cases coming into their facility in need of saving. With magic there was no telling the kind of predicaments the average witch or wizard could find themselves in... there were even more ways for a magical person to hurt himself or herself than a muggle, if truth be told, and the staff at Saint Mungo's saw it all. But even still, when the main fireplace used for extreme medical emergencies belched green flames and spat forth its travelers, the nurses and doctors gave a squawk at the entourage that spilled forward.

One of their mediwizards, a young man who had been fetched to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by a rambling redhead before anyone could get a straight answer from him (the particular mediwizard that had been drafted as paramedic had been chosen for the simple fact he was closest to the young redheaded boy when he burst into the hospital), was the first to emerge from the fire... or rather, the first human. Levitating before him was what looked at first to be little more than an enormous ball of brown hair and matted blood. It took a few seconds for the staff to make out the shape of an unconscious lion floating in the air.

Directly on the mediwizard's heels, arriving at the same instant like two components of a single military unit, was a matronly if somewhat tousled woman and the biggest witch's familiar of a cat anyone had ever seen. Next to step from the fireplace was the boy, the wet, disheveled redhead who had absconded with one of their doctors without even bothering to provide a coherent account as to the nature of the emergency that had justified the kidnapping of one of their healers. Lucky for the young man, a frantic wizard flooing in and right back out again with a healer in tow was not too terribly unusual, and it had not caused a panic. Those who healer-nicked tended to return soon enough with the same healer they'd nabbed, as was the case with the rambling redhead and his added crew.

To the Saint Mungo's staff's credit, they took the circus in stride... it was par for the course at a magical hospital.

"Fetch Doctor Manmalis immediately!" the mediwizard commanding the motionless lion called out to his colleagues, "Haste, haste! We have a critically wounded animagus!"

A tendency for stating the obvious was another hallmark of Saint Mungo's, really any hospital. The blood dripping on the tile floor of the lobby from the hovering cat's limp body would suggest it was no mere nap the lion was taking. Also, it would stand to reason that the healer currently wielding his wand in order to hold his patient aloft would not bring a true lion to a witch and wizard's hospital. 'Critically wounded' and 'animagus' declared itself.

But all the obvious aside, action was immediate.

One nurse behind the counter disapparated in an instant to track down the requested specialist.

Another nurse hurried over to the ragged band of fire-bound arrivals. She paid attention first and foremost to her coworker and his injured person-turned-animal. "This way, Doctor, room one-thirteen is open." As the wizard doctor nodded curtly and hurried to maneuver his patient down the hall, the nurse stepped in the path of those who had come through the floo with the lion and healer... for they had all moved, as one, to follow the mediwizard and his feline charge into the bowels of the hospital. "I'm sorry," she said sternly in a kind voice, "but the rest of you will have to wait out here."

The black cat revealed menacing teeth and spat.

The worse-for-wear older woman who had come through the fire settled an unwavering, steely gaze on the nurse standing in their way. She managed to look a hundred times more dignified than the scrape on her face, the torn and bloodied state of her robes, or the unmanaged mess of her hair would have seemed to permit to be possible. In spite of her vagabond appearance, she was a force with which to be reckoned. Much like her bearing, her voice was firm and commanding. "Young lady, Voldemort is dead, killed by Harry Potter."

The nurse's jaw dropped.

The formidable woman pointed at the snarling, bristling panther at her side. "That is Harry Potter."

The nurse continued to gape.

"Stand aside," McGonagall said plainly in a tone that brooked no argument.

Dumbstruck, the nurse could only stammer mutely a moment before taking a step meekly to the left. Without sparing another second, Knight rushed past the nurse and down the hall to catch up with the healer who had left with Sagehunter. He was oblivious to the stir he caused when he charged through on his single-minded mission to reach Sagehunter. Ambulatory patients on walkabouts and healers making their rounds sidled out of the way and pressed against the walls as the black jaguar bowled headlong through the corridor. But the patients themselves were magical folk, the healers part of the desensitized staff of Saint Mungo's, and anything fantastic was taken with a grain of salt, even a loose panther in a hospital hallway.

"There has been an attack on Hogwarts," McGonagall said pointedly to the nurse. When she had the nurse's attention once again, the professor said, "there are wounded students and teachers in dire need of medical attention. Summon as many healers as you can, all the hospital can spare, and see that they're tended to at once."

'Finally', a clinical part of the nurse's mind thought amid the shocking news of Voldemort's reported demise, 'a picture of what was going on to warrant such an uproar as all this'... and an ugly picture it was indeed. A school attacked by Voldemort, children hurt... the audacity of it, the very definition of wickedness and evil. The nurse paused for a fraction of a second to be horrified, but no more. There was work to be done.

She whirled at once to face her coworkers and barked, "You heard her! You Know Who's gone and attacked children! Quick, pull together as many healers as we can for a team to leave for Hogwarts right away! Move it!"

Everyone jumped and moved, until everyone was moving at once... a furious, frantic, and yet well-choreographed and efficient flurry of activity as the hospital went into high gear.

Watching over it all, like a wolf den mother attending a litter of puppies at play, McGonagall edged over to the wall to get out of the way. She stepped aside to let the experts do their job. She tried to tug Ron along with her, to keep him from impeding the healers and their work, but the fifth year balked and looked up at her imploringly. "Professor... please, I need to go back and see how my sister's doing."

She could hardly fault him worrying about the youngest of the Weasley clan; Ginerva would be among those students receiving medical treatment.

McGonagall gave a consenting nod that sent the banged-up student darting back to the fireplace connecting the hospital to Hogwarts, and soon enough McGonagall alone still stood somber sentry, an observant, statuesque figure on the edge of diligent anarchy.

When she began to believe that, truly, her students would be properly cared for, that she could relinquish their well-beings into better suited hands, she allowed herself the fissure in the armor of leaning back against the wall and letting it take some of her weight. With the lives of so many children on her shoulders in the headmaster's absence, it had been a hefty burden to bear.

Her thoughts turned to easily her two most exceptional students in all her years of teaching. She wondered and worried and waited against the wall of the magical hospital lobby while chaos reined around her for the second time that day.

In room one-thirteen, the mediwizard who had been levitating the wounded lioness hastily lowered Sagehunter on to the bed that dominated the center of the room with one end like the other and the head only given such a label for it abutted against the wall. Sagehunter came to rest on the crisp white sheets and lay still, not even a twitch to indicate she was even aware she had been moved. Knight pushed his way through into the hospital room when the door gave half a notion to close on him. He didn't spare even a backward flick of his ear to find out if he had offended the door. The healer shot a glance at Knight as the panther stormed into the room with him and his patient... all highly irregular, to say the least. Knight stood with feet firmly planted on the floor and looked back challengingly at the mediwizard, his body language screaming that it would take a small military force to budge him from the room. And it would not be done without bloodshed.

The mediwizard was not a soldier, nor did he fancy getting his arm ripped clean off to cater to his sense of professional propriety that demanded medicine be conducted without an audience, so he let the panther be. He'd seen the carnage of the school grounds where he'd been taken to retrieve his current patient, he'd taken in the bodies and their state with a practiced eye even in his hurry... he had not failed to notice the blood on both cats that had not all come from wounds, at least not wounds they themselves had sustained. If the panther would keep to the outskirts and out of the way... well, the mediwizard concluded an unobtrusive spectator was hardly worth risking life and limb.

The healer had other lives and limbs to worry about at the moment.

Mediwizard, panther, and lioness had been alone in the hospital room only a matter of seconds before the door burst open and a portly man with a fringe of white hair that frizzed out like a cob-webbed halo around his head came striding in. "What's the emergency, Will? Louise practically pulled me right off the commode going on about how I was desperately needed, right away and all that, and I do believe she nicked my Witch Weekly when I-! Merlin's beard!" the healer had just spotted Knight in the room, standing back from the thick of things but watching every move the doctor made with keen acuity.

"Doctor Manmalis," the younger mediwizard said at once, for the moment dismissing the man's surprise concerning their audience. "It is an emergency; forget your Witch Weekly a sodding second."

"What do we have, then?"

"Just brought this one in. It was a Death Eater attack on an animagus, I think. There had been some kind of battle."

Manmalis gave Knight a wary eye then gave him nary another look as he rushed to the bedside of the unconscious lioness. He bent down and studied the large gash on her back. "Oh, that is a right nasty piece of work. Any notion if this beasty is on our side or theirs?" the healer asked, even as he pulled out his wand and began to clean the wound with a modified scourgify, revealing that the affiliation of the current patient was more an academic question than a basis upon which to provide treatment.

Will shook his head. "Not really... probably ours, since a Death Eater wouldn't have sent for help at Saint Mungo's, and the lad that grabbed me and pulled me through the floo was hardly Death Eater material."

"Hmmm..." Manmalis breathed in distraction as he scowled at the wound on Sagehunter's back. "Well, from the looks of this I'd say it was cast by a Death Eater. Frightful amount of black magic in this cut. It's eating away at the skin as we speak. A two-tier, if I were to guess. Vile, vicious curse; I don't want to think one of ours could do it."

While the two doctors conferred, nurses began to scuttle into the room to assist. Each gave a jump and a squeak when they first spotted Knight standing watch from near the far wall, but soon enough their own professional proclivities put the panther in the backs of their minds. Soon there was a veritable flurry of activity around Sagehunter's bed, Sagehunter oblivious to it and Knight a distance away fretful and anxious for it.

"What do you think, Doctor?" Will asked his elder, and in many respects mentor, as they both examined the injury. Manmalis waved his wand and spoke a few spells... by Knight's observations, he seemed to invoke the same incantations three times before they took to the doctor's satisfaction. But even then, the mediwizard gave a displeased scowl and shook his head.

"No good. I've stopped the corrosion of her flesh, but it won't do much for healing her. I can't properly treat her magic as she is. We'll have to turn her."

Knight gave a plaintive, involuntary, worried mewling sound in the back of his throat at the decree. The gravity behind the healer's words, the tone of his voice when he spoke the last, revealed what manner of 'turn' he meant, and it was certainly cause for alarm.

Both healers spared half a glance at the panther for his concerned vocalization, as did all the nurses and attendants in the room. When one is in the same room as a panther, every sound it makes is noted.

"Any idea as to who the dark stranger is?" Manmalis asked off-handedly, giving the impression for all the world that he was not overly concerned, or even concerned in the slightest, about the large predator's presence in the room with them (his first expletive when entering the room notwithstanding).

Will gave a helpless shrug and shake of his head. "I know very little of what's going on when it comes down to it. I was yanked into this whole affair and have been jerked hither and yon since. The attack was on Hogwarts, so... a professor, maybe?"

One of the nurses put in gently but pointedly, "Whoever he is, he's obviously worried about her," she ticked her head down at Sagehunter.

"Indeed... I don't suppose there's chance of clearing him out of here?" Manmalis asked.

Knight's stare at the doctor turned lethal, practically daring him to try.

"Thought not, well, then go on, the lot of you, and set up the monitoring charms to keep an eye on the patient when things start getting... dodgy. I'll have a word with our proctor before he thinks to use those dreadfully impressive claws."

Manmalis left his colleagues to prep Sagehunter while he crossed the room and knelt, with creaking knees, on the floor before Knight. Knight watched the doctor with desperation and question in his eyes. The man looked like an odd combination of Dumbledore and Flitwick... if only that dual resemblance to two adept wizards could be construed to speak to his own power and competency.

The old man jumped right into it. "Good sir... I know what you're thinking, and you're absolutely right. It isvery dangerous to force an animagus transformation on someone, either the change to animal or the change back to human, and especially so in a weakened physical state such as your friend's. I won't lie to you on that count. But I'm afraid your friend is in no fit condition to change herself, and this is not a veterinary clinic. This is a hospital. The best chance your lady friend has is to be treated as a witch. We can't properly take care of a lion here; no one in Saint Mungo's has been a healer apprentice or so much as summer interned at a zoo."

Knight shuffled nervously on his feet, ears back and neck muscles tight to express his disquiet with the proposed course of action all the same, despite the practical reasons for doing it. His anxiety and worry made the hair on the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades bristle and rise.

"I can assure you that I am the foremost specialist in Britain in treating animagi. I've forced the change on many and more patients, and the vast majority pull through. Short of carrying your presently feline friend off to a zoo to let an experienced animal keeper tend to her, you'll find no better doctor to treat her.

"Of course, taking her to a zoo is an option... but I can't speak to her chances of surviving the trip."

"Doctor," Will called, "the monitoring charms are in place; we're ready."

Manmalis looked directly at Knight. "I'm going to force her change now so I can try to save her life. I'd be much obliged if I didn't get a fang in the neck for my trouble." With that, Manmalis stood and returned to the bedside. He went with a self-assured air; he would either get on with his work or be mauled, but he wouldn't let the odds of either against the other weaken his resolve. Knight watched him leave and gave no indication he meant to intercede, despite his worry.

"All right," Manmalis said when he'd rejoined his comrades, "brace her, take care, watch her back, I don't want her rolling over on to that wound when she's changed."

Hands came to rest upon Sagehunter's body, like a mystic healing ritual right from an era past, and Manmalis produced his wand and traced a pattern in the air over the lioness's body. He recited one of the most complex spells Knight had ever heard; Pomfrey had never uttered a tenth of the words that spilled from Manmalis's mouth with precision and ease. Knight would have needed Hermione to have any hope of comprehending the layman's language for most of what the mediwizard chanted.

Everyone tensed in expectation and waited.

The transformation the healer's wand and spell work forced was not normal. In a typical change, when Sagehunter willingly and purposely reverted to Hermione, it happened in the span of a couple of seconds. As Knight watched the doctor cast the spell to force her change, it was slow. It almost seemed to resist the process being imposed by an outside force. Sagehunter sank back to Hermione like a hapless wanderer slipping into quicksand, agonizingly slow and nerve-wracking to witness. The nurses watched with bodies taut and jaws clenched. Knight was not breathing as he waited.

The creature on the bed was not Sagehunter and it was not Hermione, it was some hybrid beast of both, a human shape with claws and fur and tail.

The monitoring charms keeping vigil over the being that was once Sagehunter and which was not rightly Hermione either began to sound all manner of alarms.

Manmalis looked up at them briefly, took in the information they provided with practiced swiftness, but did not stop his spell work.

Finally, the last vestiges of the cat faded away from the bedridden figure's form and the hospital staff stood ringed around a human girl. The nurses held her immobile on her side when she might have been inclined to roll forward or backward in her new shape; for the lioness lying on her side was natural, but that was not true now for the witch.

"Merlin!" Will hissed when he got a proper look at his patient for the first time, "she's just a kid!"

Hermione was entirely herself again, but made halfway a stranger for the blood that seemed to cover every inch of her. She was horribly pale, skin chalky and frightfully cadaverous to the eye. Her clothes were in shambles and dirty and stained. Her hair was an even greater mess than usual. She didn't look asleep so much as she looked dead, and that fact was a lance of agony in the attending panther's chest.

Knight perked up to see Hermione fully herself again. He was agitated by the sight she presented. He was alert and restless, and he wished that the noises and lights from the monitoring charms could tell him something about Hermione's condition. As it was, it was only senseless and distressing sounds and colors.