Galton was alone in a room in London that he may or may not remember entering. The effects of the candy that he had consumed stubbornly remained in his system for several weeks making Galton a ranting lunatic with dangerous tenancies. He was like a dangerous wild animal and therefore he was treated like one. The door was locked less an observation portal. There was an opening in which food could be distributed. There was the evidence of restraints, many of which had been broken, gnawed through from the looks of things.  

It would be two months before the boy regained his faculties. Two months before the delusions of a saccharine kingdom would melt away revealing the bleak and drab existence that was Galton Lansdale here in St. Mungo's Hospital. Had Galton's family been there? Perhaps. Jurgen Hess found his way there during Christmas break. Headmaster Plott had been there weekly as well, communing with the Ministry of Magic regarding the dire state of Hogwarts. 

There would be a knock on the door. 

It was a man this time. On the other side of the locked door he would converse with the staff. "That will not be necessary, I am very much capable of taking care of this myself," he claimed. 

There was a reticent sigh, "you don't... understand. The boy is just a... boy, but he is dangerous and unpredictable."

"I know," he assured them as he opened the door and a pair of white coats would step away. "Just lock the door after I enter, I will let you know when it is time to leave." He smiled in a warm manner, the sort of smile that made one think that they were safe.

He would enter the room, wearing a pair of tan trousers and a white button-down shirt. A wool jacket in a dark, almost rust color was draped over his shoulder. While casually attired, the warm, earthy hues seemed to ground him. In his other hand, rather than a wand which was actually in his pocket he was holding a small satchel bag. "Hey there son," no he was not the boy's father "I have heard that you have had a bad time... I-- uh, brought you some candy." He moved slowly, with caution. It was well known that the boy had an obsession with candy as well as some sort of delusion that everyone was made of candy. He did not sit although he made his way to a chair. There were some teeth marks in it. He cringed a bit and then frowned. "Do you mind telling me what happened on Halloween?"

Galton the Glorious was no more. Reduced to a a mere peasant, he’d been kept trapped in this dungeon. Userped and entrapped for the crime of being to great. His captors would come to try and harm him further periodically. The candy men and women wouldn’t fool him. He would have his revenge on each and everyone of them. He would devour even their boring, gingerbread flesh to reclaim his crown.

Or he had thought. Slowly, day after day, things began to become more... normal? The candy captors became less and less candy and more and more human. In the end only the rare eye or shirt button would reflec that candy induced delirium. He’d want it, the candy, so bad. They’d given him none. He felt like he would explode. Every time his vision relapsed he’d have to fight tooth and nail not to attack the candy-looking person. And sometimes he wouldn’t win.

Days didn’t mean much anymore. Life was a grey exsistance, sleep being Galton’s only respite from the boring dungeon. He just wanted to go back to school. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t. Even if things were strange sometimes, there had to be magic to fix it. There was always magic. Why wasn’t there magic for this?

When his cell door opened he jolted upright. People hadn’t come in for... awhile. The man addressed him. As a kid. Galton was a kid. He was. He wanted to be a kid so bad. The man even offered candy. Gears ground in Galton’s head at the thought of sugar. For a second he swore he saw the man’s hair turn to licorice. He lurched forward.

A question. Focus on the question. “NO!” He screamed at the man. “GET THE CANDY OUT OF HERE!” He screamed louder and louder. “IT’LL- I’ll-“ he began to slam down. “No, I want the candy, I just.” He was at a loss for words. How could Galton not want candy. What was going on.

Focus on the question. “I don’t know.” He hugged his legs, pulling them in close. His gown was cold, the exposer all the more apparent to him with a stranger in the room. “I do... I just was looking for candy. In the woods.” He frowned, he remembered the taste of the candy that had begun all of this. It was so good.

“Some kids said, said... said you could get the best candy ever their. So I went, like duh!” Galton almost laughed and smiled. For a second it seemed normal. But it wasn’t, so he didn’t. “And a man gave me that... it was the best. And then, I was king.” His frown returned. Tears almost welling up in his eyes. He wanted to go home, where he was king of stocking the candy shelves. Where he could fall asleep with Toad and not some scrapped blanket.

“I went to my castle, and my people spoke to me. They said I’d be usurped, and betrayed. Guess they were right.” He looked down into his gown, inches from his face due to being wrapped over his legs. He just stared down. Not sure what to do.

The boy had been described as feral by some of his caregivers. He could see it for just a moment, the glint in his eyes and the change in his carriage suggested that the boy was still quite unwell. For a moment the man hesitated before he pulled out a sheet of folded paper from his pocket. "I was told that you were transferred to St. Mungos on November 1^st by a Mr. VanCleaf..." he furrowed his brows as he read the name. How odd. "Ahem, that you were attacking your fellow students." He cleared his throat as he continued but never took a seat. 

He let the boy explain his predicament, rather poorly. "Ah, I see," he would respond as he backed away without turning his back to young Galton he would make his way to the door and wrap on the glass peephole with his knuckles. "Excuse me!" He would call out. "What did the toxicology reports say was in this boy's system?" He suspected that the boy was poisoned, it was such a simple, linear observation.

"There was nothing found. The only abnormalities that were found were noted in a muggle chemistry panel one of the half-bloods insisted we obtain," a voice called back through a door. "Something about an Eh-one-see being incredibly high as well as a severe sodium and potassium imbalance," the explained. The "eh-one-see" was a hemoglobin A1C, a test that identified consistently high levels of sugar in the boy's body systems. It is a test that is used to test how well diabetes is managed over a multi-month period. A test such as that would do nothing to identify the cause of an acute delirium. However, it did provide a clue. Just one that August would not catch. The other, here electrolyte disturbances. Seemingly minor issues. Something muggles have to deal with usually. Wizards have ways of dealing with almost every ailment, making structures such as St. Mungo's only necessary to deal with the hubris that accompanies wizarding endeavors.

"So, nothing..." the Auror concluded. Even nothing was something, that also means that if the boy was under the influence of some sort of potion or at least the popular components involved in potion-making. "Thanks." His gaze back on the kid. "So you took some great candy from a stranger and then you became a king?" It sounds like he was poisoned but the evidence was lacking. He let out a sigh. "The woods?" Another point the boy made. "You got the candy from the woods? Can you describe the person that gave you the candy, the candy or anything about that night that might be of help?"

Whatever facade the man had put on for the first few minutes had already dropped. He sounded annoyed to be dealing with Galton. Annoyed to be dealing with a royal! How dare a mere servant, nay, slave to magic, raise such a tone with him. He would have his-

He looked up at the man. He was still a man. No licorice hair, no physical feature resembling candy. Nothing out of the normal. Galton just needed to calm down. Considering this was the first person to talk to him in weeks, Galton needed to make the most of it. Maybe he’d stay longer if he knew the whole story. Even a few minutes more with company, before he returned to the loneliness would be worth it.

So Galton did his best to recall as much as he could. He remembered the candies that’s for sure, Galton never forgot candy. “The man was just a man in a coat, you know? Like a adult who would normally be mad to find you in the forest at night.” As he hugged his legs and stared at the man he wanted to smile again, the candy coming to his mind. “But he gave me six candies. Three pastries wrapped in some paper, then a red, green and blue harder candies.” He still could feel the sensation of biting into the monster candywich he’d made.

“Then! Then I ate all of them at once!” Excitement came back to his voice, like he was telling Jürgen about a crazy adventure. “He said I could have more if I let him into the castle. But I didn’t need more after those.” He suprised himself there, not needing candy was near blasphemy for the 2nd year, he really must have been crazy.

“He said he wanted to give other kids candy, and like, surprise the headmaster. Just Halloween stuff I think. But I didn’t really wanna share the candy with my classmates!” His hands unwrapped from his legs, letting the legs plop down until the boy was sitting in a butterfly position. Caught up in telling his little story. It felt good to talk to someone.

There was no way for August to know the whole story. For him to know that there were hags in the woods and that they were using sweets to lure children into their clutches. That they were trying to infiltrate the castle. That another coven already had. But he did know two things from the story:

First, that the child had been poisoned. By what, well that could have been anyone's guess. But pastries and candy together was quite odd. It was uncommon for a bakery to also serve as a candy shop. Not that the boy was sold these candies, but rather it was unlikely that the man who gave him this candy had casually acquired such thing. A little earlier Galton said that a man gave me that... it was the best. And then, I was king. He took a deep breath and muttered, "why would anyone taint candy. Sick --" There was a kid in the room, he shook his head. 

The boy described two types of candy plus a pastry and he wondered what would have happened ha the boy taken each separately. What sort of sensation or delusion would he have felt? Had it been an older woman that had given him the candy, the Auror would have known straight away what was likely going on here. 

Second, that there was more of this candy. That this man as Galton had simply described him, was trying to enter Hogwarts to get closer to the students and give other children this incredibly dangerous candy. Why was it Hogwarts yet again? This never happened in Beauxbatons. When the boy finished his brief account of the time before he was king, the Auror would commend him. "You have just saved your classmates," not that he did so out of any valiant effort but rather greed, he was not going to split hairs. "Whatever poison they used on you," it was queer really, over two months. "Lasted a very very long time. Had it gotten into the hands of your friends. Had you shared," he looked down at his own hands as he made a pair of fists. "It would have been a blood bath."

Imagine if a doze children were afflicted like Galton was. It would have been terrible.

He stood up and approached the door to knock on it. He had another question. Someone would peer in through a narrow window slit. "Yes?"

"Has anyone been visiting the boy?" He did not use Galton's name, there was a sense of detachment.

"A few people, his parents. A Mr. Lazarus Plott rather frequently. Also one of his classmates, a  Jürgen Hess," the person on the other side of the door answered.

"And he has gotten better, not worse?"

"Well, he has periods of agitation but he has progressively improved... slowly since he has been admitted."

"Is it in any way associated with visitation?"

"No."

Dammit, that would have been too easy. "Well, thank you." He looked back over at Galton, the gears in his head turning. Muggle science was just not his thing. Was this a muggle thing? No, muggle things do not last this long. A few days maybe, but this was well in excess. Nor would potions. A few hours perhaps. "I think it is time to bring you back to Hogwarts," the Auror announced "...with me." 

Galton studied the man’s face as he spoke. He talked almost around Galton. Like the boy was an observer watching the man work, and Galton just happened to be there. But he was happy he was there. The man had a calming voice. Or Galton thought it was, not that Galton had been hearing man voices recently, which probably played a part in that.

Whether Galton thought his actions were good or bad had become a complex labyrinth within his mind. Memories of the night twisted and crossed with reality and the sweet. Galton found himself going to that maze as the man spoke to the door. The twists and turn drew Galton in, and images of candy eyeballs tasting of salty sweat and tears assisted his senses. Fear took hold of the boy and he tried his best to focus back on the room he was in. And the man in it. It was real, he was real, that was not.

The few seconds the man talked with the door were all it took for the assault on Galton’s head and subsequent recollection. If the man was looking he would have seen Galton’s smile twist into a horrified look, only to snap back to a smile a few seconds later, but he hadn’t, so Galton seemed like nothing had happened. And it really was nothing, nothing Galton couldn’t handle. What 13 year old didn’t deal with psychological trauma on a daily basis?

Then Galton heard it, the news he’d been waiting for. The return of the king to... the return of a student to his studies. He never thought homework and potions sounded like a better pastime.

Galton shot to his feat. Wobbling a little from the lacking strength. “Okay! Let me just pack!” He laughed at that. He didn’t have anything to pack. He approached the man and took ahold of the man’s jacket corner, as if to base himself in the material world, or to aid him in standing up. One or the other.

Galton was ready to go.