Chapter Text
Dennis Whitaker arrives in Pittsburgh by boot.
Which is to say: violently, illegally, and with enough magical turbulence to make him throw up behind a dumpster beside a Denny’s Diner at three in the morning. The international portkey drops him into an abandoned service alley somewhere behind downtown, the old boot glowing dull blue for half a second before crumbling into ash in his hand.
Dennis braces one palm against wet brick and dry heaves with the dignity of a man who attended one of the most prestigious magical institutions in Europe.
“Fucking transatlantic travel,” he croaks.
Pittsburgh smells like rain and petrol and hot concrete cooling after summer heat.
No magic. Or almost none. Tiny traces cling to old places if you know how to look. Residue left behind by wizarding communities that existed centuries ago before the American magical governments cracked down harder than Britain ever did. Dennis can feel faint wardlines under parts of the city, ancient and sleeping. But mostly? There’s electricity. Muggle life buzzing loud enough to scrape against his teeth.
Dennis stands there with two suitcases, a forged immigration portfolio approved by the Ministry, and a wand holstered against the inside of his wrist beneath the sleeve of his hoodie and thinks: Well. This is either an action of true love or an eight year psychotic episode. Possibly both.
At seventeen, the soulmate potion had tasted like rosemary and smoke.
Only available to Advanced NEWT alchemy students only. Highly regulated, technically banned in several countries after one incident in Prague involving blood magic and a parliament member spontaneously divorcing three people.
The potion worked by revealing the deepest tether attached to your magic and unfortunately, most people got vague things.
Anna. London.
Josephine. Wales.
One girl in Dennis’s year got DO NOT PURSUE THIS PERSON and immediately burst into tears.
Dennis got: Michael Robinavitch. Pittsburgh, USA.
And that was that. Life split neatly down the middle afterward. Before. After.
Because before, Dennis Whitaker had spent his entire childhood being strange in ways nobody could explain. Accidental magic. Nightmares that predicted things, emotions too large for his body. Teachers unsettled by him before they could articulate why.
Then a letter had arrived in Broken Bow via owl when he was eleven and suddenly there were explanations for everything. For the strange things that happened around him when he got upset. For the lights exploding, for the impossible dreams that later came true.
For why adults always looked faintly unsettled after speaking to him too long, like some primitive part of them sensed wrongness without understanding magic enough to name it.
His mother had gone white opening the letter. His father had accused him of forging it.
Then, three days later, a witch from the school arrived directly into their living room by Floo powder and informed them, very politely, that Dennis Whitaker was a wizard.
Apparently there had once been a great-aunt, a distant one, his grandmother’s sister or cousin or something equally vague and forgotten. A woman named Eleanor Whitaker who had disappeared to “a special boarding school” in the forties and returned strange enough that eventually nobody mentioned her anymore.
She never married, never stayed anywhere long, died sometime in the seventies. And that was it. One crack of magic generations ago buried under decades of aggressively normal people. Muggles, Dennis later learned the word was. Non-magical.
The witch from the school, ‘Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry’, had explained that magical children sometimes appeared seemingly at random in non-magical families. Old bloodlines resurfacing. Dormant magic reawakening, ancient ancestry behaving unpredictably.
Dennis remembered sitting there clutching his letter while his parents listened with expressions that looked horribly close to relief. Like someone had finally arrived to collect the strange thing living in their house. By the end of the week his mother was already buying trunks. By the end of the month his father had stopped asking questions entirely. And when the end of August arrived, they put him on a plane from Oklahoma to London with an energy that felt unmistakably like: Thank God.
Hogwarts had swallowed him whole. Stone corridors, floating candles, ghosts drifting through walls. Moving staircases and enchanted ceilings and children performing impossible things before breakfast.
Dennis fell in love with magic instantly and catastrophically.
But loneliness remained stubbornly untouched. Because every summer the other students cried on the train platform while parents promised to write. And every summer Dennis’s family looked quietly grateful to hand him back over.
No long letters. No Christmas desperation asking when he’d come home. Sometimes months passed without hearing from them at all.
Dennis learned very quickly that Hogwarts wasn’t just school. It was the place his parents preferred him to be, which hurt in a way magic couldn’t fix.
***
Then came the parchment.
Michael Robinavitch. Pittsburgh, USA.
A soulmate somewhere across an ocean. And Dennis, bright and obsessive and a little bit unhinged even then, looked at that tiny slip of paper and quietly decided: Fine. I’ll come find you myself.
So he did. He learned how to exist again in muggle spaces without looking feral. Learned what FAFSA forms were. Learned how to fake educational records well enough to satisfy both magical and non-magical authorities.
Changed his career trajectory entirely. Healer training became pre-med, potions became organic chemistry and diagnostic spells became anatomy labs and sleep deprivation and student debt.
Eight years. Eight fucking years. All leading here.
Four days later, Dennis stands inside Pittsburgh Medical Trauma Centre wearing navy scrubs and trying not to visibly vibrate apart at the molecular level. The ER is already alive, phones are ringing, monitors beeping. Overhead pages cracking through distorted speakers.
A trauma alert sounding somewhere deeper in the department while nurses move around the central station with terrifying speed, weaving between stretchers and computers and half finished cups of coffee.
Dennis stops short for half a second just taking it in. Because St. Mungo’s had chaos too. But magical hospitals were different. Stranger. Quieter in some ways, more…hidden.
This is fluorescent and loud and brutally human. The nurses station sits in the centre of everything like the heart of the ER itself, curved desks crowded with charts and computers and trauma binders while doctors orbit around it in rapid clipped conversations.
And there, leaning against the counter holding a coffee and a patient file, is Michael Robinavitch.
Dennis’s soulmate.
Seeing someone in theory and seeing them here are entirely different things. Dennis has spent eight years imagining Michael Robinavitch, the parchment had given him a name and location, nothing else. So Dennis had built the rest from scraps. Published trauma papers, a grainy hospital faculty photo. Research citations. Every tiny detail hoarded obsessively over years until Michael Robinavitch became less a person and more a gravitational force Dennis organised his life around.
None of that prepared him for reality.
Robby laughs at something one of the nurses says and the sound hits Dennis directly in the sternum. The soulmate tether reacts so violently Dennis’s skin goes hot beneath his scrub top, ancient magic stirring awake after years of distance.
Home, something deep inside him whispers immediately.
Which would be lovely if Dennis wasn’t also one panic attack away from vomiting directly onto the ER floor.
Robby looks up as the new arrivals approach. “As you can see,” Robby says to the group gathered around the station, “we’ve got some new faces this morning.”
His voice cuts cleanly through the noise of the department. Nearby, a paramedic wheels a patient past trailing blood droplets across the linoleum. Robby gestures toward the woman standing beside him.
“Starting with second year resident Doctor Melissa King, fresh from the V.A.”
“Everybody calls me Mel,” she says easily. “Super happy to be here.”
Robby nods once. “And one new intern, two med students.”
Silence. The nurses nearby continue typing without interest, somewhere behind Dennis a patient starts yelling about pudding.
Robby stares at them over the rim of his coffee cup. “This is generally the part where you say your names.”
“Trinity Santos,” says the woman beside Dennis finally. “Intern.”
“Victoria Javadi,” says an impossibly tiny woman. “M.S. Three.”
Then Robby’s eyes land on Dennis.
Merlin. Dennis had not prepared adequately for eye contact. Dark eyes seemingly tired enough to feel ancient and focused entirely on him now with the kind of attention trauma surgeons probably use before deciding whether someone lives or dies.
Dennis becomes acutely aware of every atom in his body.
“Uh, Dennis Whitaker,” he says. “M.S. Four.”
Robby stills. It’s tiny, a barely visible stutter in movement, but Dennis catches it instantly. That strange flicker, like recognition arriving without explanation. The soulmate tether pulling taut between them hard enough Dennis’s ribs ache. Because Robby may not know magic exists, but soulmate enchantments predate modern magical law by centuries. They thread through souls regardless. Instinctive. Involuntary.
Robby repeats quietly, “Whitaker.”
Dennis feels dizzy. For one unbearable second it feels like the entire world narrowed to the space beside the nurses station where Robby is looking at him like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. Then the moment breaks.
“Right,” Robby barks, straightening away from the nurses station, balancing his coffee against a stack of patient charts while the entire ER continues detonating around them in controlled chaos.
“Most of our department,” he says, “is clogged with boarders.”
He gestures vaguely toward the curtained rooms lining the hall.
“Those are admitted patients waiting for beds upstairs. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for days.”
A nurse walking past says, without slowing, “Already happening.”
Robby points at her with his coffee cup. “See? Teamwork.”
A few people laugh. Dennis remains catastrophically focused on the fact that his soulmate is apparently funny.
Robby continues pacing slowly in front of the central station while interns and med students cluster around him trying not to look terrified. “Beds are a precious commodity, so your workups need to be fast and efficient. Half your patients are getting discharged from chairs, not rooms. Don’t waste space.”
Dennis watches the way Robby moves through the department with effortless authority. Nobody questions him because nobody needs to, the entire ER seems to bend subtly around him like gravity. A trauma surgeon, Dennis thinks suddenly, is not entirely unlike a war mage. Different tools, same exhaustion, same impossible responsibility.
Robby keeps talking. “While we treat the sicker patients back here, you keep an eye on the waiting room. I don’t care how buried you are. Somebody looking fine can crash in thirty seconds. Let’s rock and roll.”
Dennis’s magic prickles instinctively under his skin. At Hogwarts they taught diagnostic spells for circulatory collapse in his seventh year. At St. Mungo’s, healers learned to spot cursed deterioration by scent alone. And now, Dennis is standing in a muggle emergency department realising medicine, magical or not, ultimately comes down to the same thing: Notice who is dying before it’s too late.
Robby glances back toward him suddenly.
“You,” he says, pointing vaguely with his coffee cup. “Whitaker.”
Dennis nearly chokes an inhale. “Yep?”
“You ever worked a trauma floor before?”
St. Mungo’s curse ward after a dragon-related structural collapse probably didn’t count here.
“Not exactly,” Dennis admits carefully.
“Hm.” Robby studies him for another long second. Dennis can practically feel the soulmate magic pacing restlessly between them. “Great. You’re with me today.”
Several nearby residents make audible sympathy noises. Apparently, this is bad? Dennis, meanwhile, is moments from ascending into a higher plane.
“Cool,” he says immediately.
Robby raises an eyebrow. Dennis simply hears himself continue helplessly.
“I mean medically cool. Not like, injury cool. Obviously severe trauma is upsetting. Huge fan though.”
A beat of silence rings through the space and Santos physically covers her face, one of the nurses laughs out loud. Dennis considers walking out the sliding doors and directly into traffic.
Robby stares at him for one long unreadable second. Then, slowly, one corner of his mouth twitches upward. “Fantastic,” he mutters into his coffee. “I’ve caught a weird one. Let’s move.”
***
The first thing Dennis does wrong is stare at the trauma board too long. Not because he’s confused, but because magical diagnostics have permanently ruined his perception of medicine.
At St. Mungo’s, patients glowed faintly under certain spells. Internal bleeding shimmered dark blue beneath the skin. Curses left residue. Infection carried colour and heat and magical signatures.
Here there are only names. Vitals. Numbers. Tiny coloured boxes on screens. Human beings reduced to rows of data.
Dennis is still trying to process the sheer volume of it all when Robby appears beside him out of nowhere.
“You look lost, kid.”
Dennis nearly jolts out of his skin.
“You’ve been staring at the board for four minutes, we don’t have that sort of time to waste down here.”
Dennis opens his mouth. Closes it again. Ancient wizarding medicine relied heavily on intuition and magical assessment. This whole system feels simultaneously brilliant and barbaric.
“You’ll adjust,” Robby says suddenly. Then he moves away again before Dennis can respond. Leaving behind the warm terrifying scent of coffee and cedar soap and soulmate magic curling invisibly through the air like smoke.
Dennis’s first patient is a man with gallstones.
This shouldn’t necessarily be exciting. Unfortunately, Dennis has the temperament of a Victorian scientist who would absolutely electrocute himself in pursuit of knowledge. So, by the time Princess finds him in South 20, he’s fully locked in. Portable ultrasound balanced awkwardly against the bed, gel everywhere.
“And this hurts here?” Dennis asks, pressing carefully against the right upper quadrant.
“Only when somebody pokes me like they’re searching for buried treasure.”
Dennis brightens immediately when the gallstone appears on screen.
“There we are,” he says triumphantly.
His magic hums instinctively beneath his skin, wanting to reach toward the pain automatically.
Wizard healers learned diagnostic touch before anything else. Dennis could probably identify liver inflammation blindfolded with one hand on the patient and a detection charm. Instead he has to do this the muggle way.
“You might manage this with diet changes,” Dennis explains. “Less fatty food. Follow up imaging. Surgery if it worsens.”
The patient sighs heavily. “My wife’s gonna kill me. She already says steak’s trying to murder me.”
“Your wife may be medically correct.”
Princess snorts. Then, as they step back into the corridor, she says, “You missed the EKG.”
Dennis blinks. “What?”
“Upper abdominal pain can present cardiac.”
Right. Right. Of course. Wizard medicine and muggle medicine try to overlap neatly in his mind. In his world, potions fixed cholesterol in months. Dennis feels briefly stupid.
“Good catch, thanks,” he admits.
Princess gives him a sideways look. “You actually listen when nurses talk. Weird.”
Dennis frowns. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Now she looks confused. “Huh,” she says finally. “Maybe Robby’s right. You are the weird one.”
***
The first time Robby touches him, Dennis almost drops a tray of blood tubes.
The elderly woman from the train platform screams in a language nobody understands while Collins and Langdon reduce her ankle. Javadi passes out beside him and Dennis, turning too quickly, nearly collides directly into Robby.
A hand catches automatically against Dennis’s waist to steady him and the soulmate tether detonates. Dennis feels it all the way down to his bones, heat, recognition. Ancient magic snapping awake like a struck match. For one horrifying second Dennis thinks sparks actually flew from his skin.
Robby freezes too, his hand still against Dennis’s side eyes narrowing slightly.
“You good?” Robby asks quietly.
“Yeah. Yep.” Too fast. Too breathless.
“You look pale.”
“I watched a woman’s foot get unfolded like origami.”
“Mm. That’ll do it.”
But Robby keeps looking at him. Long enough that Dennis starts wondering whether soulmate magic can somehow be physically perceived even by muggles.
***
Wizarding medicine is so much cleaner. Not clean, exactly. St. Mungo’s saw plenty of horrific things. Magical injuries could get extraordinarily disgusting extraordinarily quickly. But healers used cleaning charms constantly, blood vanished with a flick of a wands, contaminants disappeared instantly. Dennis spent years learning medicine in an environment where bodily fluids could be erased from existence in under three seconds.
Now he’s standing in a muggle trauma bay with somebody else’s blood drying against his chest while everyone acts like this is normal. Which, horrifyingly, it apparently is.
“You okay?” Mel asks while peeling off bloody gloves.
“Yeah,” Dennis says faintly.
The second things calm down enough for nobody to notice, Dennis slips away down the corridor toward the staff bathrooms with his heart hammering. Not because of the blood, because of the wand concealed against the inside of his forearm.
This is stupid. Reckless. Technically illegal under several workplace concealment advisories from the Ministry. But Dennis is exhausted and overstimulated and deeply unwilling to change scrubs for the third time today.
The bathroom is thankfully empty. There’s blood across the shoulder of his scrub top, more down the sleeve and tiny flecks near the collar. He exhales slowly as he finally slides his wand free into his palm. Relief hits instantly. Thank Merlin. There’s something indescribably comforting about holding it after hours spent pretending this entire half of himself doesn’t exist.
Warm wood settles against his skin like muscle memory. Eleven inches. Walnut. Dragon heartstring. Slightly temperamental.
He points it toward the bloodstains.
“Scourgify.”
The magic ripples soft and silver across the fabric. Blood vanishes instantly and Dennis closes his eyes briefly in pure gratitude. Wizarding civilisation may have many flaws but cleaning charms alone justify its existence.
The bathroom door handle rattles violently and Dennis nearly has an aneurysm.
“Occupied!” Dennis shoves the wand up his sleeve so fast he almost drops it into the sink. “One second!”
“You dyin’ in there?” It’s Dana. The charge nurse.
“No!”
“You’re either crying or throwing up, those are first day rites of passage.”
Dennis scrubs a hand over his face, trying to look like a normal muggle instead of somebody actively violating international magical secrecy laws in a hospital bathroom.
When he opens the door, Dana eyes him immediately, then looks down at the now perfectly clean scrubs.
“Didn’t you have blood all over you two minutes ago, kid?”
Dennis’s soul leaves his body. “It’s uh…”
Dana waits.
Dennis invents nonsense desperately. “Antimicrobial fabric?”
Dana stares at him with the exhausted expression of a nurse who has worked emergency medicine too long to tolerate bullshit. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is in England.”
“...you English, Whitaker?”
Dennis smiles weakly. “No, no I uh- I went to boarding school there. And university.”
For one horrifying second he genuinely wonders if she somehow knows. Not about magic specifically maybe, but enough to recognise something deeply off about him.
Then, finally, “Huh,” Dana mutters. “Robby was right.”
Dennis goes cold. “About what?”
“That you’re a weird little thing.”
And then she walks away before he can recover, already in search of another free staff bathroom.
He looks at himself once more in the mirror, clean scrubs, exhausted eyes, wand hidden beneath his sleeve. Soulmate somewhere fifty feet away in the ER completely unaware magic exists. Dennis suddenly understands with absolute clarity that this entire situation is going to become a disaster of historic proportions.
***
Dennis finds Robby in Peds by accident. Or, maybe not accident. Maybe soulmate magic is just a terrifying invasive thing that keeps steering Dennis exactly where he’s supposed to be.
The pediatric room is quieter than the rest of the ER, though quieter in emergency medicine during a MCI still means monitors chirping through walls and distant crying and the constant squeak of shoes against polished floors. Bright murals cover the walls, cartoon giraffes, painted jungles. Smiling clouds trying desperately to convince frightened children this place is safe.
Dennis hates it instantly.
Because suffering lingers in places. Magic teaches you that early. Strong emotion leaves impressions behind like fingerprints pressed into wax. Some rooms in St. Mungo’s practically vibrated with old grief.
Ghosts gather around hospitals naturally. Dennis had learned to live with that years ago, most magical people did eventually. Spirits drawn to unfinished things, attachments too stubborn to loosen cleanly.
PMTC has them everywhere. Old men watching television no one else can see. A nurse from sometime in the seventies occasionally passing through walls near triage carrying invisible charts. A teenage boy sitting cross-legged above the ambulance bay doors swinging translucent sneakers through the air.
Dennis has gotten used to avoiding eye contact. That’s the important rule he’s made for himself. Don’t acknowledge them unless you absolutely have to. Most ghosts fade eventually if ignored long enough.
But the child ghosts are harder.
Small figures lingering near doors. Tiny sneakered feet kicking slowly beneath chairs. One little girl in a hospital gown is standing beside the doors holding a stuffed rabbit missing one button eye. Dennis keeps his gaze firmly forward as he enters the room. Ghosts know when they’ve been seen, and once they know, they follow. He cannot emotionally survive becoming spiritually adopted by dead children during his first shift.
So he keeps his eyes down and rounds the curtain.
Dr. Robby is sitting on the floor, breathing unevenly. Just sitting with his back against the wall beneath a painted giraffe, forearm braced over one knee while his other hand presses hard against his eyes.
The room around him is empty except for the little ghost girl, who has gone very still watching Robby.
For one horrible second he thinks Robby is physically hurt. Then he feels it: Exhaustion, grief. His soulmate is sitting with his back against the wall, his face wrecked open with grief. And praying. Quietly. Brokenly.
“Sh’ma Yisra’eil…” Robby whispers. “Adonai…”
“Dr. Robby?” he says carefully.
Robby startles hard enough to look briefly furious at himself for it.
“Eloheinu,” he whispers anyway, voice rough and fraying at the edges. “Adonai echad.”
An older ghost is suddenly sitting beside Robby against the wall close enough their shoulders almost touch. Bald. Kind-eyed. White coat hanging open over dark scrubs, stethoscope still looped around his neck like habit survived death intact.
Not residual magic, definitely not an imprint. A real ghost. Dennis recognises the type immediately. Hospital ghosts tended to fall into two categories: the frightened and the devoted.
This one is devoted.
The ghost looks at Robby with deep exhausted fondness. Then he sighs softly and says, “Oh Michael.”
Robby obviously doesn’t hear him. But something strange happens anyway, Robby’s breathing steadies a fraction.
The man continues quietly, voice warm as old velvet. “You’re too tired, kid. You always did carry too much.” A small fond smile. “Thought if you just tried hard enough nobody would die.”
Robby scrubs hard at his face again, still unaware of the figure beside him.
“I can’t,” he whispers aloud. “Eloheinu Adonai echad…”
The ghost reaches out instinctively like he wants to touch Robby’s shoulder, but his hand passes through fabric and air alike, something unbearably sad flickers across his face before smoothing away again.
Then his eyes lift suddenly to Dennis. Sharp, knowing, and not surprised in the slightest that somebody can see him. For one brief terrifying second Dennis thinks he’s about to speak directly to him. Then he looks back toward Robby with endless affection while Dennis’s heart stumbles painfully inside his chest.
“Dr. Robby, you okay?”
Robby laughs once under his breath like the question itself is absurd. “Barukh sheim k’vod malhkuto…” he murmurs automatically. Then he presses the heel of his hand hard against his eyes and says hoarsely, “You have to go.”
Dennis blinks. “They need you out there.”
Dennis glances once toward the corridor behind him, the ghost girl still watches silently from beside the cart.
“We need you out there,” he says quietly.
Robby shakes his head immediately. “I can’t.”
He reaches forward before really thinking about it. “Okay,” he says softly. “Come on. Give me your hand.”
Robby looks at him then, really looks at him. Eyes exhausted and bloodshot and unbearably open for one terrible second. The tether hums violently between them. Dennis can practically feel his own magic straining beneath his skin wanting to comfort, wanting to heal, wanting to fix.
Robby stares at the offered hand like he doesn’t understand why it’s there.
“I can’t,” he says again, quieter this time.
Dennis’s chest tightens painfully. “You have to,” he says. “Because if you don’t, we’re fucked.”
Robby laughs, wet and exhausted and slightly hysterical around the edges, but real. The sound feels like oxygen returning to the room.
Finally, slowly, Robby reaches up. Their hands touch and heat flashes sharp and bright beneath his skin, ancient magic surging awake violently. Dennis steps back first before he does something catastrophically stupid like touch him again.
“See you out there, Captain,” he says lightly.
Robby stares at him for one long unreadable second.
When Dennis first portkeyed into Pittsburgh, half delirious from magical jetlag and clutching two suitcases in a rain soaked alley behind a Denny’s, one of the first things he did was conduct reconnaissance on the hospital.
Which mostly involved Disillusionment Charms, lockpicking spells, and an ethically questionable amount of wandering around restricted areas at two in the morning.
Pittsburgh Medical Trauma Centre turned out to be wonderfully easy to infiltrate.
Muggles relied almost entirely on keycards and confidence, Dennis possessed both.
He found the abandoned eighth floor on his second night in the city. Technically it had once been a surgical overflow ward years ago before funding cuts and restructuring gutted half the building. Now it mostly sat dark and forgotten above the active hospital floors, sealed off behind heavy fire doors and dusty signage nobody paid attention to anymore.
Dennis had stood in the middle of the empty corridor listening to the building hum around him and felt something unclench for the first time since arriving back in America.
The old ward became his almost immediately. A few privacy wards, muggle-repelling charms layered subtly into the stairwell entrances and only needing restrengthening once a day. Temperature regulation runes hidden beneath radiators and one illegally modified extension charm stitched carefully into an old supply closet. Nothing dramatic enough to trigger Ministry detection systems. Just enough.
Which was why, at the end of his first shift, Dennis was shirtless in an abandoned hospital ward dancing with AirPods in.
The shower room down the hall still steamed faintly behind him. His damp curls dripped occasionally against the back of his neck as he moved barefoot across cracked linoleum in loose tracksuit bottoms slung low on his hips.
The magical world had never fully caught up to muggle technology in some areas. Portable music especially remained deeply underappreciated. Wizarding wireless sets were bulky inconvenient things prone to exploding if enchanted badly. Meanwhile muggles had somehow invented tiny invisible devices capable of delivering music directly into Dennis’s brain while he moisturised.
Dennis spins badly across the room mouthing lyrics dramatically to himself, towel abandoned around his shoulders.
His clothes drift lazily through the air beside him. Scrub top floating itself neatly toward the chair, socks folding together midair. His jacket hovering obediently near the radiator while wandless magic threads everything automatically into place.
So, when he spun around dramatically on a top note, and found Michael Robinavitch standing frozen in the doorway, Dennis’s soul fully exited his body.
He shrieks, a genuine high pitched noise of pure mortal terror. The levitating scrubs drop instantly out of the air, one sock hitting him directly in the face. And for one endless catastrophic second, neither of them move.
Dennis’s brain processed approximately twelve things simultaneously.
- Dr. Robby was here.
- Robby was staring.
- Dennis was shirtless.
- He had absolutely been dancing.
- There was currently a shirt hovering halfway across the fucking room because panic had disrupted the spell mid cast.
- His wand was on the table.
- He’d forgotten to reinforce the concealment wards this morning before his shift because he’d been too busy having a metaphysical crisis about meeting his soulmate soon.
- Michael Robinavitch was a muggle.
- This was, from a magical law perspective, potentially prison worthy.
And ten through twelve were all variations of: Oh my fucking God.
Robby stands perfectly still in the doorway, jaw visibly dropped. He looks less like an attending trauma surgeon and more like a man who has accidentally walked into a biblical event.
Dennis reacts instinctively, which unfortunately for him means magic.
The hovering scrub top shoots violently across the room straight into Dennis’s hands.
The door slams shut behind Robby with a bang.
Every loose object in the room rattles from the surge of accidental power.
And then silence. Dead absolute silence.
Robby stares at him and Dennis stares back in horror, clutching his scrub shirt against his chest, one of the AirPods is still in his ear. Robby blinks once, then looks toward the pile of clothing that has very definitely just fallen out of the air by itself. Then toward the still quivering door. Then finally back at Dennis.
“…What,” he says carefully, “the fuck.”
Dennis opens his mouth and nothing comes out, as if he’s been hit with an incredibly strong Confundus charm. Somewhere behind him, his jeans attempt to continue folding themselves before abruptly collapsing onto the floor.
“Okay,” Robby says breathlessly, voice teeming with panic and growing confusion. “What the fuck, I’m either having a stroke or you just made pants fly.”
Robby suddenly bends forward sharply, planting both hands on his knees like his body can no longer support the weight of whatever the fuck is happening right now. “Okaaay,” he says again, louder this time. “Okay, nope, nope, absolutely not, what the fuck.”
He looks up at Dennis wildly. “You made the door slam.”
Dennis squeaks faintly.
“You made clothes float. Ohhh no, this is it. This is the nervous breakdown. It’s finally happening.”
“Dr. Robby, I can explain.”
Robby straightens abruptly, then immediately bends back over again like gravity itself has become emotionally overwhelming.
“Oh my God,” he says into his hands. “Oh my God, this is a psychotic break. This is it. This is how I finally lose it.”
Dennis’s horror spikes instantly, “No! No, you’re not losing it.”
Robby points at him violently without looking up. “There’s a FLOATING KETTLE, Whitaker.”
The kettle, traitorous bastard that it is, continues rotating gently in midair. Dennis flicks his fingers desperately and the kettle drops straight onto the counter with a loud clunk.
Robby flinches so hard he almost stumbles sideways. “Ohhhhh, what the FUCK.”
The soulmate tether between them is vibrating so hard Dennis feels mildly ill. Robby drags both hands over his face and finally looks up towards Dennis.
Dennis just waves and mutters a weak, “Hi.” He clutches the scrub top tighter against his chest, still shirtless, still one accidental nipple away from making this situation even more devastating.
Robby stops pacing long enough to stare at him again. Then around the room. Then back at him.
“I don’t know what…I was just checking on you. Saw you head up here…was gonna…,” he mutters faintly.
Robby abruptly bends over again, hands braced on his knees, laughing once in pure overwhelmed disbelief. “Ohhhh my God,” he breathes. “Okay. Okay. Need you to talk Whitaker.”
Dennis immediately wishes he physically couldn’t. Because that’s the problem, there are rules for this. Strict, ancient ones. The Statute of Secrecy is not treated casually by magical governments. Entire departments exist solely to contain accidental exposure. Memory modification specialists. Legal enforcement divisions.
Muggles are not supposed to know. Ever.
And now Michael Robinavitch is standing in an illegally expanded hidden wizard apartment inside his own hospital after witnessing autonomous laundry.
Dennis presses both hands hard against his face. “Ohhhh, I don’t even know what I can say.”
Robby straightens slightly. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Dennis says hysterically through his fingers, “the very fact you’ve seen this is catastrophically illegal.”
Robby stares. “Illegal to fucking who?”
Dennis makes a strangled noise. “I’m so fucked if anyone finds out.”
“Finds out what?”
Dennis drops his hands and looks around wildly like the walls themselves might arrest him. “Oh God,” Dennis mutters. “Okay. Okay. Right. Fine. Fine. In for a knut, in for a galleon I guess.”
Robby blinks. “In for-, what?”
“Wizard money. Doesn’t matter.”
Dennis starts pacing now because if he stands still he might actually combust.
“I’m magic,” he blurts abruptly.
Robby just stares.
“I know that sounds insane. It is insane. I appreciate how insane this sounds. Believe me, I’m currently experiencing the full psychological impact.”
“Yeah, you’re handling it fucking poorly.”
“Yes, thank you, Michael.”
Robby visibly startles at the name.
Dennis points at him wildly. “See, yeah, fuck, that’s another thing! I know your first name because of soul magic which is ALSO insane.”
Robby opens his mouth like a fish out of water. Dennis barrels onward before he can speak.
“I’m a wizard. An actual one. Like legally and educationally. Went to wizard boarding school in Scotland. There’s a hidden magical government. Dragons exist but they’re very regulated. Ghosts are real, by the way, you have several in the ER, one of them follows you around sometimes, he’s bald? Very kind eyes?”
Robby has gone deathly pale. Dennis idly wonders if he’s going to have to cast a Rennervate on the man.
“There’s a whole magical world hidden alongside yours. Ha! Ahh fuck. Shit. We have hospitals and laws and prisons and deeply incompetent politicians same as everybody else. The reason I’m weird is because I grew up in a castle.”
“A castle.”
“Yes.” Dennis says impatiently, as if Robby isn’t grasping this quick enough. “And you are making this so fucking difficult because I’m trying to explain a massive international conspiracy while you look like that.”
“Like WHAT?”
Dennis gestures helplessly. “Like my soulmate!”
“…My what,” Robby says faintly. “Seriously Whitaker, please call a code I think I’m actually in serious danger.”
Dennis laughs once in pure panic. Too late, way too late. “Oh excellent, yes, that’s apparently the part that finally breaks you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Dennis starts pacing harder. Groans. “There’s ancient magic involved, alright? Deeply old magic. Some people are tied together. Not everyone! It’s rare. Usually there are marks involved and magical recognition and—”
“Marks?”
Dennis points violently at Robby’s ribs. “The D!”
Robby’s face goes almost transparent and Dennis watches the exact moment Robby raises his hand low against his ribs to rest at the mark he’s had his entire life.
Robby slowly points at Dennis, shirtless with terrifying calm. “Holy fucking shit.”
Dennis closes his eyes briefly. “Yes.”
“Oh my God. You’re telling me,” Robby says, voice climbing, “that you came to Pittsburgh because of this?”
“Well, I preferred to think of it as romantic perseverance.”
“Oh fuck, you’re insane. This is a case for psych. Both of us need to see psych immediately. Oh god, I’ve completely lost my mind. No no no.” Robby drags both hands through his curls, then laughs. Hysterically laughs until he’s bent over again, but this time he’s clutching at his stomach. “You’re a wizard.”
“Yes.”
“My soulmate.”
“Yes.”
“You ma- made shit fly.” Robby hiccups through his laughter.
Dennis sighs heavily. “Yes, alright, apparently that’s the sticking point.”
Very suddenly, Dennis stops pacing.
“Oh fuck. What the hell have I done? Ohhh shit. Shit shit shit.”
Because underneath the panic, underneath the soulmate bond thrumming painfully between them, underneath the hysterical absurdity of all this…There’s still the law. And he knows exactly what comes next. The realisation settles visibly into his posture. His shoulders drop and the fight drains out of him all at once.
“I could go to prison for a very long time for telling you all of that.”
Robby goes still. Finally.
“And that,” Dennis says with exhausted devastation, “is why I have to do this.”
Understanding flashes instantly across Robby’s face. “No no no, don’t do some fucking vulcan mind meld on me, Whitaker.”
Dennis looks genuinely miserable now. “Fuck,” he whispers. “I really don’t want to fucking do this.”
He reaches slowly toward the table and picks up his wand.
Robby recoils instinctively. “Whitaker—”
“I’m so, so sorry, Michael.”
The soulmate tether feels like it’s tearing straight through Dennis’s chest.
Robby takes one step toward him anyway. “Wait, no no no, wait just a se—”
Dennis lifts the wand with shaking fingers and his voice breaks slightly around the spell.
“Obliviate.”
Dennis Whitaker arrived in Pittsburgh by boot.
And now, for the life of him, he can’t manage to figure out how exactly he got here. Sitting in Robby’s spare room, a sole bag of belongings resting beside him on the bed, Dennis feels like somebody has scooped out his internal organs and replaced them with wet cement.
The room is small. Books stacked haphazardly against one wall. An old Pirates sweatshirt hanging from the back of the door. Soft yellow lamp light instead of harsh fluorescents.
Two hours ago Dennis had been standing in his hidden magical apartment watching his soulmate look at him with devastation while memory charms gathered at the tip of his wand. Robby had staggered slightly when the Obliviate hit him. Not dramatically. Just confusion washing suddenly across his face as the last several minutes unravelled cleanly from his mind.
The magic had worked perfectly. It always did. Dennis hated himself immediately for being so good at it.
One second Robby knew about magic and soulbonds and hidden worlds. The next, he was just standing in an abandoned unused hospital ward staring at Dennis in bewilderment.
No extension charm, no floating kettle. No magical wards humming in the walls. Dennis had torn everything down in seconds while Robby reeled through the confusion. The hidden room collapsed neatly back into a dusty abandoned floor, the runes scrubbed from the walls. Every trace of magic gone. By the time Robby properly focused again, Dennis Whitaker was simply standing shirtless in a condemned hospital room with a duffel bag and nowhere to go.
Robby had blinked at him, looked around once slowly. Then frowned.
“…Whitaker?”
Dennis had barely managed to speak. “I can explain Dr. Robby.”
“Are you living up here?”
Dennis froze. Of course the obliviation would force reality to reassemble itself around the missing memories. The human brain hated gaps. Magic compensated instinctively.
So now, instead of secret magical housing hidden inside the hospital, Robby apparently believed Dennis had simply been squatting illegally on the abandoned eighth floor.
“I—”
“Jesus Christ,” Robby had interrupted, horrified realisation dawning instantly. “Are you unhoused?”
Dennis made a strangled noise somewhere between panic and despair.
Which Robby, naturally, interpreted as confirmation. “Oh, absolutely not.”
“Dr. Robby—”
“Nope. No. Not happening, kid.”
Robby had already slipped fully into Attending Voice by then. The tone of a man used to making impossible situations obey him through sheer exhaustion fueled authority.
“Nobody on my team is sleeping in an abandoned hospital ward.”
“It’s genuinely not that bad—”
“There’s exposed wiring, Whitaker.”
Dennis had shut up automatically. Robby scrubbed both hands over his face, visibly exhausted to the molecular level. Then pointed toward Dennis’s single duffel bag. “Pack your stuff.”
Dennis stared blankly. “…What?”
“You’re staying at my place until we figure something out.”
The soulmate mark beneath Dennis’s ribs had throbbed so hard it nearly hurt. Even now, hours later, sitting alone in Robby’s spare bedroom, it still pulses faintly beneath his skin like the magic itself is distressed. Because this is unbearable. His soulmate now thinks Dennis is a homeless, weird medical student with questionable judgment and a need to be rescued.
Dennis drops backward slowly onto the mattress and stares at the ceiling.
Beyond the wall he can hear Robby moving around the apartment. Cabinet doors opening. Running water. The quiet domestic sounds of another person existing nearby.
So close. Closer than Dennis ever imagined he’d get and yet somehow infinitely further away now. Robby had known. Even for a few brief catastrophic minutes, he knew everything. Magic. Soulbonds. The truth of Dennis carved open and handed over in shaking terrified pieces.
And now it’s gone.
Only Dennis remembers. Only Dennis knows what it felt like to hear Robby say my soulmate? like the universe had thrown up just a glimmer of hope to a weathered, tired man.
Dennis presses both hands over his face with a muffled groan.
“This,” he whispers to the empty room, “is a disaster.”