Harry knocked on Andromeda Tonks' front door. He waited for the usual shout of, "It's open, Harry", before opening the door and stepping over the threshold.
"Really, Harry, I don't know why you bother knocking. I've told you a thousand times, you are family!" Andromeda exclaimed, as she strode down the hall to greet him with a kiss on the cheek.
"I would never want to come in uninvited, Andy. I'd hate to interrupt anything or be a nuisance…"
"Nonsense. The wards give me plenty of notice that you're approaching. If I didn't want you to come in, I'd the lock the doors, wouldn't I?" she winked.
"So how's Teddy doing now? Is he feeling –"
"UNCLE HARRY!"
"Hello, Teddy. How are you?"
"I'b good, Uncle Harry. Are we go-id out to play dow?"
"Are you sure? You sound a little snotty"
"I'b FIDE!"
Harry looked doubtfully at Andromeda.
"Oh, he's much improved. The developments in potions recently are just amazing. There's nothing to completely get rid of the congestion, not yet, but there are things that ease it and his fever is completely under control now! A little fresh air wouldn't do him any harm, if you wouldn't mind, as long as he takes it easy. Just give him a dose of his potion at noon." She handed him a bottle. "It might be an idea to get some for your own cabinet especially as you are having Teddy over more and more. Tamell is a miracle-worker!"
"Tamell?"
"The maker of the potion"
"Right. OK, then. Come on, Teddy. Let's have us a little walk out, shall we?" He nodded to Andromeda. "See you later, Andy."
Harry stopped off in Diagon Alley on his way home. Andromeda was probably right, he mused. He was having Teddy over more and more these days. He should really have a healing potions cabinet, for Teddy at the very least. Andy hadn't been impressed that he didn't have the basics even for himself. "Really, Harry," she had scolded him, "Given your track record, I'd have thought you would keep some healing potions in reserve. So you have to drag yourself out to an apothecary? Or, knowing you and your stubborn streak, you don't seek help at all." When he rather sheepishly admitted that any time he was hurt, or unwell, he went to Hermione, she'd shook her head. "Where would you be without that girl? At least she has some common sense, although I'd expect nothing less from a Healer. And it's better than not asking for assistance when you need it."
Andy was right about that, too. He would be lost without Hermione. It had taken a particularly bad bout of flu to break his fierce need to be fine, at all times. He had been delirious. Hermione had come round, and upon realising the state he was in, immediately set to work to get him well again. She had cared for him, administering potions, feeding him soup and stroking his hair until he fell asleep. After he had recovered a little, Hermione had thoroughly chastised him for his refusal to seek help and made him swear – at wandpoint, no less – that he would come to her next time he was ill. He had seen the damage an angry Hermione could inflict with her wand, and so he had allowed that wall to come down, before she could demand an Unbreakable Vow. This gradually spilled over into his mental scars, and many times he sat with her in the early hours of the morning, unable to stop the tears from falling, wracked by the guilt and trauma of not only the war, but his childhood, allowing her to comfort him with a cup of tea, a handkerchief and unwavering support.
Shaking himself out of his reverie, he looked at the shelf of children's healing potions. Which was the one Andromeda had mentioned? Perhaps he should get some others, too.
Healer Helga's Cough and Cold Relief Balm. Professor Enn's Inflammation Reducer. Sue Doe's Skin Healing Salve. Parris E. Tamell's Pain and Fever Relieving Potion.
Tamell's, he thought. That was it. Hang on, Parris E. Tamell? No way, he thought. It can't be what I think it is…
He grabbed the bottle from the shelf and looked at the label. Parris E. Tamell's Potion has been created following extensive experimentation, starting from old apothecary records, to create potions designed especially for children's well-being. If you require further information, contact can be made through Owl Post Box 197, Diagon Alley. He frowned, putting the bottle in his basket. No, he told himself, I'm being ridiculous. It's just a coincidence. He picked up a few of the other bottles, paid for them and apparated home.
Later, after dinner, Harry fixed a little wooden cupboard to the bathroom wall, and filled it with his stock of potions. As he picked up the bottle of Enn's Inflammation Reducer, he caught sight of the blurb and read the first line: I be Prof. Enn. Harry stopped short. Surely this couldn't be coincidence. He checked for a contact address, only to find OP Box 197 again. He picked up the other potions and salves, on every one seeing OP Box 197. Abandoning his cabinet for the moment, he grabbed his muggle jacket and ran down the muggle pharmacy around the corner.
Casting a Notice-Me-Not charm over himself, he slipped into the Owl Post Office at the stroke of 9am. He located the Owl Post Boxes and studied them on the intently until he found number 197. Settling himself in the corner of the Owl Post Office, he recast the Notice-Me-Not and waited, his eyes firmly on the box.
Several hours passed, with no one approaching 197. He slipped out when they closed at lunchtime, but returned as soon as they reopened. The Office would shortly be closing for the day. Harry was definitely beginning to feel that this was a stupid plan, and that he should have asked Hermione to help him instead, Merlin knows he was not the brains of the "Golden Trio", when a small cloaked figure entered and quietly approached the box in question, drawing out a key. It wasn't until the figure turned, scrolls in hand that he caught sight of a very familiar face, chewing her bottom lip as she glanced about the room as if to check for anyone watching. Harry's mouth flapped open. His brain caught up with his eyes a few seconds later and, still under the charm, he caught the figure by the arm as she passed him towards the door.
"Hermione!" he hissed. "You? You're the one…behind all of them?"
Hermione jumped, startled, and gaped at Harry. One look in his eyes told her he suspected what she was up to. "Erm…Well, yes, but…Look, I can explain" she said. She glanced around the room. "Can we move this conversation to somewhere a little more private?"
Harry regarded her with narrowed eyes, before nodding and heading out of the Owl Post Office door. He threw a questioning glance at Hermione, who nodded and took his hand, before he apparated them both to the living room of his London flat. Harry flung his cloak over the back of the sofa and walked to the kitchen. He made two mugs of tea, adding a generous spoon of sugar to his own, before returning to living room, where Hermione stood twisting her hands in a slightly guilty manner.
Harry placed Hermione's mug on the coffee table, smiling inwardly as Hermione immediately picked it up to put a coaster underneath, and sat on the sofa, looking at her expectantly. Hermione sat in the armchair and smoothed her skirt, but said nothing.
"Well, go on then" he prompted.
"Look, I'm sorry I never told you any of this, but I couldn't risk any of it becoming public knowledge, and you know if Ron ever caught wind of it the whole world wouldn't be too far behind, and that could end my Healing career, it's just too important to let silly prejudices get in the way, not that the traditional magicals would see it that way…"
Although he didn't want to admit it, he could see why she would keep something that could threaten her career from Ron. After the war, they had agreed between themselves not to mention the Horcruxes, hoping that the lack of knowledge about them, coupled with the fact that they believed they had collected and destroyed all the written information about them, would mean that they would never be used again. Unfortunately, they had not counted on Ron's inferiority complex. While the Wizarding World fawned over Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived and the man-who-triumphed, Ron's and Hermione's parts in the victory were largely glossed over by the press. Though they stood together in interviews and press photographs, and despite Harry's efforts to balance the story, most of the attention focussed on Harry.
Hermione did not care for seeing her name in the papers, always wanting to earn respect through merit and not fame, and sympathised with Harry over the constant stares and autograph requests. Ron, conversely, felt jealousy rear its head again, as it had during their Hogwarts career and the hunt. In the months that followed the war, Ron had gradually leaked the fact of their existence and his part in destroying them to far too many people, often using his boasting to win the attentions of attractive witches in bars as Harry and Hermione had returned to Hogwarts, leaving him at the Burrow. Though he was not able to divulge the mechanics of the process, the existence of the Horcrux was becoming common knowledge.
This led to the most serious fight the trio had ever had, and they nearly parted ways for good. Again, Ron fumed over Hermione betraying him by standing with Harry, extinguishing any hope Hermione had of rekindling their romance once they could be together again. Although now, they had forgiven him and agreed to be friends once more, Harry could not forget, and their friendship had never quite recovered the ease of their earlier years. Harry drew himself back to the present and raised a hand to Hermione.
"Hermione, stop babbling. Start from the beginning. First of all, is this", he pulled a bottle of the Parris E. Tamell potion from his discarded cloak pocket and held it up, "what I think it is?"
"I…Yes, I imagine it is."
"You're selling muggle paracetamol? To magicals?"
"Not exactly"
"Really? Because it looks exactly like that to me."
"I am marketing it, yes, but it's for the sake of the children"
"What do you mean?"
"Harry, the magical world separated from the muggle world centuries ago. And while certain advances, such as the wireless, photography, and motor vehicles, have been picked up to some extent, the magical world is generally completely ignorant of the majority of scientific and technological advances."
"So?"
"Including advances in medicine. When the worlds separated, non-magical medicine was largely guesswork, superstition, and really pretty risky."
"OK, but isn't magical medicine better anyway? I mean, just of the top of my head, the Episkey spell, blood replenishing potions, numbing charms…even Skele-Grow" he added with a shudder.
"Well, yes, in many ways magical medicine has the edge. But there are areas where muggle medicine is just as good, if not superior."
"Which areas?"
"Surgery, for one. Magicals don't do surgery. And they believe the non-magical version is butchery, whereas in reality although all surgery does have risks, many surgeries are comparatively safe, routine procedures, completed under anaesthetic in sterile conditions. I can't prove it would have worked, but perhaps if Professor Dumbledore had had his hand amputated, it might have stopped the curse from spreading entirely."
"Mad-Eye Moody-"
"-lost his leg in battle. It wasn't amputated. They couldn't reattach it so they magically cauterised his thigh. There's no magical equivalent of a number of types of scan, or biopsies, so if you were to develop, say a cancerous tumour, the magical world would be unable to diagnose or treat it.
"Antibiotics, also, are not used in the magical world. Admittedly, cleaning spells used on wounds are effective enough to generally prevent them from becoming infected, and magicals are quite resistant to a number of non-magical illnesses as our magic helps our bodies to fight infections naturally…"
"I still don't get what this has to do with children"
"Do you know why magical education doesn't start until age 11?"
"Um…no" replied Harry, momentarily flummoxed by the change in topic. "I've never really thought about it, to be honest."
"It's because that is the age by which almost all magical children's magic has manifested and stabilised, although it most commonly happens somewhere between the ages of 7 and 10. Until a child's magic is stable, they can't really learn to control it. And while a child's magic is unstable, they cannot be treated with magical medicine, nor can it be relied upon to help the child resist non magical illness."
Harry frowned. "That can't be true. I know for a fact Andromeda healed Teddy's arm with magic when he fell out of that tree."
"That's different. Healing spells can be used on anyone, magical or not, because the magic comes from the caster, not the recipient. I'm talking about medicinal potions. Potions and magical salves use the recipient's magic to work, so they cannot be safely used on muggles, squibs, or those with unstable magic. Depending on the potion, it can have disastrous effects. It's not worth risking a child's life like that.
"As a result, many magical babies and young children who become ill end up much worse because magicals will not look into muggle methods to treat them. Some even die. The infant mortality rate among magicals used to be lower than that of the non-magical population, but since the worlds separated, it has remained almost the same, whereas the non-magical rate has dropped significantly. They had no methods of pain relief, fever reduction, no antibiotics, nothing."
"Until now."
"Until now. When I trained to be a Healer, I thought I would be able to help people. When I found out they had no way of treating or relieving what are relatively minor ailments in the non-magical world, I was shocked. I tried to convince others at St Mungo's to try even basic non-magical medicines, but they were all horrified. I mean, you remember Mrs Weasley's reaction to stitches, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Well, it was much worse than that. They just don't trust anything non-magical, and refuse to even study it, just to see if it would merit a trial. It's ridiculous, this wilful ignorance at the expense of their children's health…"
Hermione trailed off for a moment, her head in her hands, before looking up at Harry with an expression that Harry had previously associated with her determined efforts with SPEW. "I knew I had to do something."
"But, Hermione, surely you're breaking the law, selling someone else's products under a different name?"
"I'm not."
"Sorry?"
"I'm not selling other people's products. I've been having them manufactured myself."
"What? How?"
"I looked into non-magical medicine manufacturing. I've had a little help, mainly from people who are somewhat disenchanted with the magical world. Some people who are Squibs, and one who is a werewolf. I picked a couple of medicines to start with – common ones, for relatively minor stuff. The balm first, then the salve, before the potions. Of course, I had to name them appropriately for the Wizarding World." She smiled. "I had a little fun with them…"
"Surely others will have noticed the names, Hermione…I mean Parris E. Tamell? Even I got that. The Prof. Enn one I didn't get straight away, but then I saw the blurb…At least the salve and the balm are less obvious. What about the other muggle-borns?"
"Well, the balm wasn't named after anything in particular, I couldn't think of a good play on vapour rub. Did you not get the salve? Sue Doe?"
"Eh?"
"Sudocrem"
"Oh. Right. But seriously, surely someone else will notice the names?"
"Well, only you, so far as I know. Magical people can be surprisingly unobservant. Even those with non-magical background tend to get sucked in and forget about any other way of life. Those that do involve themselves in the non-magical side tend to stay out of the magical. The cross over is limited, you see."
Hermione looked almost apologetic. Harry sighed. "But why not use your own name? Get some recognition for your work?"
"Too risky. I'd been pushing so hard to get St Mungo's to try paracetamol and the like – they knew I wasn't trying to come up with my own magical versions."
"Don't you have to list the ingredients anywhere? Like the strength of the medicine or something?"
"Not in the magical world. Ever wondered why Sleekeasy owns the market on haircare potions? The generic recipes for potions are often widely available – in textbooks for example – but people sell modified recipes as well. Potions masters don't want to give away all their secrets, and so to keep their skills or products in demand they keep their recipes a secret and charge a premium. I do put very stark warnings on the bottles regarding dosages though."
Harry looked at Hermione in disbelief. "I just…I don't get how you've managed to set this whole thing up, with no one any the wiser. What are you going to do next? Will you go into it full time?"
"Oh, no. I've been selling pretty much to break even with costs. I have enough money from my work. I've been donating the profits to the War Orphans' Fund. Anonymously, of course. The goblins have been pretty helpful. Respect goes a long way with them. That, and they're helping to pull the wool over the eyes of wizards, I suppose…"
She sighed. "I admit, now, it probably wasn't the best plan, because I don't know where to go from here – I want to expand to antibiotics and the like, but we would need to use non-magical diagnostics, and I can't figure out how to get people to accept that.
"If the traditional magicals realised they were using muggle medicines, they'd all go spare, insist either that they didn't work or the muggle-borns were trying to poison them or something. And then we are back to square one and the children are unnecessarily at risk."
She ran her hands through her unruly hair, before sinking to the floor and dropping her head on the coffee table.
Harry looked at Hermione, askance. For all the time Hermione spent comforting him in his times of need, he could only really remember doing the same once: after their last falling out with Ron. He couldn't say he provided her with much comfort on her many spats with the youngest Weasley male whilst at Hogwarts– something he felt rather ashamed of in hindsight. He placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Couldn't you just…arrange a leak of some sort? You know, once everyone's happy these things work, it wouldn't matter, they'd know they weren't being poisoned or anything" he offered. Hermione didn't move for a few moments. He began to stroke her hair, pulling the curls gently away from her face.
"Oh Harry," she said, her eyes shining with the beginnings of tears. "I wish that was true. Sometimes, it feels like everything we achieved in the war was for nothing."
"Mione, you don't mean that…" he started.
"No, you're right. I don't really mean that. I mean, things are much, much better now than they were. It's just, there's still such a prejudice against the non-magical world, and non-human magical beings…I know change takes time, and it's only been a few years…" Her breath hitched and the tears began to fall. "I was just so impatient and I've got myself in a mess that could ruin my career, and worsen the prejudices I was trying to right."
"Oh Mione," he sighed. "come here." He opened his arms and she buried her head against his chest. "We'll think of something. The sorting hat definitely put you in the right place though – charging ahead selflessly!"
Hermione managed a watery smile, before snuggling back to his chest. He dropped a kiss on her head and held her tightly, until the warmth and steady sound of the other's heart beat lulled them both to sleep.
