open RP for the Hospital Wing

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

(( OOC: Snape is head of the Hospital Wing. Hook was made his assistant a while back. This post has been posted with Snape-mun's permission. ))

Hook had been spending much more time in the Hospital Wing than anywhere else. He was a sociable guy, but explaining his nickname to people got old fast. Anyway there was a lot to do here. Not so much in regard to actual patients, sadly. One of Hook's nonmedical professional specialties was finding things that were going to waste, then reallocating them to parts of the hospital where they were needed. Here at Hogwarts, the hospital itself was small, and the school as a whole was the institution. Taken within that broader view, circumstances were much as at the Kingdom. The Sorting Hat's excesses meant piles of things ordered and forgotten.

Snape had given Hook quite a free hand when it came to Muggle medicines, machines, preparations. Snape's purview was Potions, and Hook didn't have access to Snape's stores where that was concerned, but since Hook hadn't actually learned much about Potions beyond what a couple of wizarding textbooks could tell him, that wasn't a huge loss to him. While hanging out with the former potions master was not Hook's idea of a roaring good time, lately Snape had been finding other things to do, which left Hook alone in the Hospital Wing more often.

Today was one of those days. Hook was sitting on a hospital bed, propped against a pile of pillows, legs crossed and shoes off, leafing through Acta Neurologica Scandinavica vol. 118, issue 3.

He'd treat anyone who came by, of course. If they didn't need any treatment, he'd chat with them, maybe offer them coffee. He'd welcome some company.

Comments

[woocha.livejournal.com]

Wishbone had two reasons to go to the hospital wing. One, to talk to Professor Snape about Animagi. And two, to make sure he isn't remiss in his duties as reader.

So he ran in full speed.

Hi, Hook....whoa! Too fast in fact. He skidded and ended up under a bed. I'm okay!

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

Accustomed to the enthusiastic little terrier by now, Hook only looked up and adjusted his reading glasses. "Whoa there," he said mildly. "What's got you so excited?"

[woocha.livejournal.com]

Well, making sure I'm doing my job too, but I also wanted to talk to Professor Snape about Animagi!

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

"Snape isn't here right now," said Hook, not unkindly. "You'll have to come back later, or stick around if you like. There aren't any patients for you to attend at the moment."

[woocha.livejournal.com]

Awwww...oh well. You're here anyway. Want me to read to you?

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

"Sure. Give it a go."

Politely he laid his Acta Neurologica Scandinavica in front of Wishbone. He wasn't sure how the little dog managed to keep from destroying books in the course of reading, but so far other books had survived unscathed, so he wasn't worried Wishbone would shred a peer-reviewed journal.

"I've already read the first article, Kostulas et al on ischemic cerebrovascular disease. You can have a stab at the next one (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120119517/abstract), how's that?"

[woocha.livejournal.com]

That's because he's very careful. The worst that's happened is bite marks.

Wishbone struggled a bit, cause this was unfamiliar to him (and truth be told a bit boring), but he read it to Hook all the same.)

[omg-sunflora.livejournal.com]

It was starting to get a bit chilly, so Sunflora had put on a scarf before continuing her exploration.

The idea of a hospital was a bit foreign to her, but she did understand enough about being sick and people/Pokemon helping the sick one to get better.

She pattered around a bit before finding Hook.

"Oh! Hi."

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

Hook eyed the walking talking flower with mild wariness.

"Hej (http://www.cs.aaue.dk/~ja/medialogi/Danlesson1.htm). I'm Doctor Hook. How can I help you?"

He wouldn't refer her to the herbology professor right away. (He thought of the flower as female because she had a feminine voice. He didn't want to draw any hasty conclusions, however.)

[omg-sunflora.livejournal.com]

"I'm exploring! This is a new and strange place to me, and I'm an explorer, so I'm doing my job! Plus, I think I still need to get used to humans."

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

"Is that so? I'm a human," said Hook. "Do you have a name?"

[omg-sunflora.livejournal.com]

"I'm Sunflora!" Yay, she's meeting new people.

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

"Pleasure to meet you, Sunflora. How can I help you get used to humans?"

[do-me-a-solid.livejournal.com]

Antubis hadn't been around the other denizens of Hogwarts lately. He had taken to some of the darker passageways of the school that didn't seem to be used all that much. Truth be told, though, he had found much more in a few of those dark hallways than he was expecting, but that was for another time.

For now he just felt like being around people again, and figured that something resembling his last place of residence would be a good place to start. He lumbered into the room Hook was occupying, and nodded his large shaggy head in his direction.

"Well hey there doc," he said in his typically cool fluid voice, "A little light reading I see?"

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

Hook took off his reading glasses and swung his long legs over the side of the bed to face the anteater.

"Hej (http://www.cs.aaue.dk/~ja/medialogi/Danlesson1.htm), Antubis." It was a friendly hej. He loved how the translation enchantment didn't pick up on it, being so like the English hey. "I've been able to keep up on developments in the field," he waved his copy of Acta Neurologica before setting it beside him on the hospital bed. "They don't get to me as fast as they'd get to an outside address. I understand so-called Muggle subscriptions have to come through a sympathetic London bookstore."

The address label read Friends of Neurotheological Research. Stig Helmer would have had a field day with the idea of Hook receiving mail so addressed. (So would Dr. Stegman, Stig's American counterpart, if he'd known this Dr. Hook. It was safe to say they wouldn't have liked one another any more than Steg liked the American counterpart of Dr. Hook, who was really named Hook.)

"How've you been? Find any 'ants'?"

[do-me-a-solid.livejournal.com]

"Unfortunately not too many. There seem to be certain powers at work here to keep this pad pretty clean. Lucky for me though some of the children have taken a liking to me, and they are more than happy to give me their bug flavored jelly beans."

Antubis' smile was undoubtfully more menacing than jolly, but it still got the point across.

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

An anteater really shouldn't have teeth like that. Needle-sharp, needle-thin, a vicious row of scimitars curving down the creature's jaw. Hook thought if he were a child he might have thrown a blanket over his head in the hope when he peeped out again Antubis would turn out to have been imaginary.

Or maybe not. There was something calming about the anteater's presence too. Menace and calm, side by side, in the animal's solidity: it had the power to protect, to defend, in the same strength that would enable it to deliver a devastating attack.

Hook had always liked Antubis. He didn't question the feeling. Some things were good and some things were evil. The Kingdom had given him a sense for that, or developed the sense he already had.

"Children like Mary?" Ghosts? "I met one. His name's Santi. I gave him marbles. There didn't seem much else to be done for him."

Hook regarded the giant anteater. His Kingdom's Mary Jensen had a dog, not an anteater, but the presence felt ... similar, in a way. "Do you ever get groomed, or would you take a fellow's hand off if he tried?"

[do-me-a-solid.livejournal.com]

Antubis nodded. "I met Santi as well. One of the most timid souls I've seen in a long time. I'm happy he was able to warm up to me."

His voice took on a richer tone when talking about the child. For whatever reason the creature had lately felt very close to children. He couldn't exactly put his finger, or claw in this case, on why,

Antubis knew with a though he could probably straighten out his hair, but where was the fun, or scratches, in that? "What self respecting anteater could turn down a grooming?"

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

Hook grinned. From a cabinet drawer he took a large stiff-bristled brush, kept for the grooming of humans who'd been transfigured into animals. "Wouldn't want you to get shabby. You might scare the ghosts."

He knelt beside the huge anteater and set to work. Without admitting it, he was looking for skin parasites that might afflict the animal. Who knew what skin parasites on a paranormal anteater might signify? Of course he didn't find any. "I haven't been able to explore this castle the way I'd like. The Kingdom had subterranean passages and secret corridors, and I knew them all. Here, there's always a moving staircase blocking my way, or something of that kind."

[whosneverbeen.livejournal.com]

Luna had been thwarted when she'd owled Professor Snape asking for birth control. (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1655930.html#cutid3) However, she wasn't so easily daunted, and figured they probably had a ready supply of condoms she could go steal without having to talk to Professor Snape about her sex life. Because, though very few things fazed Luna, that most certainly did.

She wandered into the hospital wing on silent feet and was relieved to see that Snape wasn't around. Relieved, she cleared her throat. "Erm, excuse me," she said. It then occurred to her that maybe discussing this with a stranger might be equally embarrassing, so she kept talking. "I was hoping I could get some condoms. I--I need to feed them to my pet because it--well--it likes latex." She should probably just shut up now.

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

Hook had been known to humor patients who had ulterior motives. (See: Sigurd Drusse.) This one, he assumed, wanted the condoms for herself, and couldn't bring herself to say so.

"Your pet likes latex? How fortunate. We have far too many condoms for our own use. It would be fantastic if your pet could help us dispose of them!"

This was all a lie, except for the fact that the Hospital Wing now indeed stock condoms. Hook had been appalled by the wizarding community's seeming reliance on birth control potions. Hadn't they ever heard of HIV?

[whosneverbeen.livejournal.com]

Luna smiled, relieved. "Thank you," she said. "I appreciate the concern for the dietary needs that you all show to the animals kept at this school."

She gave Hook a cheerful smile as she waited for him to dispense the condoms. She really, really wanted to ask how they were supposed to work, but didn't think she was up to having that conversation just now, especially since it would mean acknowledging that she did not, in fact, have a latex-eating pet.

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

Hook was one step ahead of Luna there, so to speak. He'd been performing an unspoken assessment of the patient from the moment she opened her mouth. Young girl, maybe somewhere between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, inexperienced enough to be embarrassed at asking for condoms. Hook had no idea what the wizarding world might offer by way of sex education classes. It was entirely possible this girl had been taught babies grew in cabbage patches, or some such silliness, for all Hook knew. All he knew was that she had heard of condoms and could ask for them.

That didn't mean she'd know what to do with one.

"So," he said, conversationally, as he went to a cabinet and brought down from a high shelf a large cardboard box marked with the logo Kondom Kungen, a rakish yellow crown printed as though perched upon the second o in Kondom. "Does your pet eat these on their own, or with vegetables and fruits?"

[whosneverbeen.livejournal.com]

Actually, Xenophilius Lovegood *had* told Luna babies came from cabbage patches. They were brought there by magical thestrals until they were ready to be claimed by human parents. Luna hadn't believed him, and her real sex education had come about from reading romance novels, the kinds with titles like, The Austrian Quidditch Player's Blackmailed Secretary Bride. So she sort of knew how this was supposed to work. Which didn't mean this conversation was easy.

"Vegetables," she said after a momentary pause that seemed to last exactly too long. "Right. Definitely vegetables."

[doctor-hook.livejournal.com]

She would have to say vegetables, wouldn't she? Hook wasn't in the habit of eating cucumbers and zucchini whole. The only suitable food item he had in his lunch bag was a banana, which was not a vegetable.

He'd have to make do.

He retrieved the lunch bag (brown, nondescript, with BIOHAZARD. DO NOT OPEN written on the outside as a defense against theft) and brought out the banana. "I know this is a fruit," he said, "but let's pretend it's a vegetable for the sake of argument, all right?" He tucked the lunch bag back into the cabinet, laid the banana aside briefly, and opened the huge cardboard box o' condoms with his handy pocket knife. (The real reason he carried the pocket knife: it had a corkscrew tucked in among its many extensions and bits).

The box proved to be full of small packets that looked highly similar to one another (http://www.kondomkongen.dk/wpt/view/worlds-best-29853/). They were very familiar to Hook, but to a non-Danish person the packaging and art might seem unexciting, an unlikely design for condom packets. No outlines of couples, no fancy lettering, just cheerful swashes of color with the condom's variety printed above in a no-nonsense sans-serif font. Hook chose a packet marked Kontakt Cream-Special (http://www.kondomkongen.dk/wpt/view/worlds-best/kontakt-special-29874/) and tore it open neatly. He made sure to keep his hands in view, so that Luna would be able to see how the package had a little notch in the side for easy tearing.

Inside, the latex was rolled into a shape like that of a coin.

"You're used to seeing these, right?" Since they were chow for her fictional pet's fictional latex diet. "Well, you can unroll them, you know. If your pet eats vegetables, then that's convenient, no?"

What a weird, weird pretext for condom use. But he'd humor her. Actually it entertained him, even as he found himself disbelieving his own role in this charade. Ah, Judith, if you could only see me now. Playing school nurse.

"You unroll it like this. Make sure to leave room at the tip," and how was he going to explain the reason for that, since a banana couldn't ejaculate? Well, best not to overthink this too much. He pinched the tip between thumb and forefinger, and with his other hand unrolled the condom down the length of the banana. "See, it's really very capacious. You could blow it up like a balloon if you want to. Don't let me catch you using these for water balloons, mind! That's a waste of hospital funding."