Rowan walked quickly down the curving cobbled path that was Diagon Alley. He had gotten an owl quite randomly while at work; it had come up and tapped on the window of his office on the fourth floor quite insistantly, until it had attracted his attention from within the Spell Damage ward itself. Owls often picked up on the emotions of the people who sent messages through them, so when he popped his head into his office to investigate the source of the noise, Rowan took the owl's urgency rather seriously.
He took it even more seriously when he read the hastily scribbled and mildly cryptic message. He would have ignored it, except that he remembered the face associated with the siganture at the bottom.
Audriana Swan. Oh, yes. He remembered Ms. Swan. She had come into the Hospital Wing periodically through her first to third years - those years she spent at Hogwarts, that Rowan had attended as well. He had gotten to know her rather well in his last year at Hogwarts - her third - when she had started playing Quidditch with her friends. Both Audriana and her friends had come into the Hospital Wing with rather alarming frequency (especially at first) and since it was just broken bones and the like, Rowan as the student intern, had dealt with them directly.
He had almost forgotten about Audriana - a memory of younger, more innocent times, pushed to the back of his mind. But those memories came back when he got her owl - he was honestly astonished that she remembered him after all that time. He figured that if she was sending him an owl to meet her on a street corner somewhere, then she was probably injured. And, if she was sending him an owl instead of comning to St. Mungo's...then she was probably injured in the course of doing something she shouldn't.
He remembered that about her, too. Audriana always seemed to have a knack for getting into situations that others would have otherwise avoided. That, too, often sent her to the Hospital Wing with unusual frequency... Usually because of charms, jinxes, and the likes, Rowan recalled.
By sheer luck, the owl happened along just as he was finishing his shift. So, Rowan grabbed his mediwizard pack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked briskly out the doors the second he was instructing his next shift replacement. He didn't even stop to grab his umbrella - he walked straight out into the rain and toward the corner where Audriana had asked to meet him.
His haste slowed, however, when he came up to the corner and saw no one there. Puzzled, Rowan stopped just underneath a street lamp that had just flickered to light and tried to peer through the drizzle and the dim afternoon light.
"Audri?" He whispered, not wanting to be too loud, in case she didn't want attention called to herself. "Hello?"
by Simon Marek Tue Jul 23, 2013 8:17 pm
