The infirmary was somewhat quiet in the early weeks of the new Hogwarts term, but Leah was still kept very busy with her other duties. The new order system seemed to work well after a few frustrating days of sorting out misunderstandings from staff members who were far slower to catch on than Professor Snape. Leah was a conscientious worker, and took her job very seriously. She got along quite well with Madam Pomfrey because, although both could be strict about things, Leah responded well to an authoritative figure, and learned how to fulfill the various requirements of her job quite thoroughly. Before long, she was feeling quite at home at Hogwarts, rather than simply a giddy and nostalgic returnee.
She had just been about the castle replenishing all known supplies of bezoars, when she returned to find Madam Pomfrey giving a patient a dose of something, while telling off another boy.
"Well, I hope you've learned your lesson, Mr. Vale! No more of this nonsense, please! You're a sixth year, after all!"
Leah found Madam Pomfrey chuckling to herself after they had gone.
"So, what happened there?" she asked as she adjusted her tasks chart for the day, and brushed her long, dirty-blond hair out of her face. They had already had a polyjuice potion incident the previous week, and a few broken bones to mend from flying lessons and Quidditch practices.
"Oh, well, I think that's a record. First love potion for the term. Made it all the way to November! I really can't believe nothing like this happened before the first Hogsmeade weekend."
"Oh dear!" said Leah. "I detest love potions! I had to deal with so many instances of that as a prefect. Infatuated 14-year-old girls suddenly have a boy chasing them everywhere. I learned the signs after a while."
"Yes, only this situation was a bit more unusual," she chuckled again. "It seems, that a particular student, who is certainly old enough to know better, I might add, tried to give a love potion to a particular girl he is smitten with. However," Madam Pomfrey was full-on laughing now, her shoulders heaving, "apparently his best friend got ahold of it first, by accident! His best friend is another boy, of course."
"Oh Merlin!" Leah let out a guffaw. "That's just... wow. Awkward! I wonder if they'll still speak to each other after that."
"I'm sure they'll get over it. But that's one of the huge risks you take with any kind of secret potion. Sometimes they end up in the wrong hands."
"Indeed. A good lesson for us all. Well, thanks for my laugh today, Madam Pomfrey."
"Now Leah, I keep telling you - it's Poppy."
"I know," sighed Leah. "I've had several professors tell me the same thing. I'll try, I really will, it's just so... hard! Even Professor McGonagall was all like 'Call me Minerva.' Really? I just can't imagine calling her by her first name... it seems so rude. Funny, I don't think I even knew what her first name was until my third year."
Madam Pomfrey smiled. "It is a transition we all must make. You just have to accept that we're colleagues now."
"I suppose I will get used to it."
Madam Pomfrey was busy unpacking a box into a large upper cabinet, but kept up the conversation while Leah was filling out order forms.
"So how has your transition been? Do you feel at home here?"
"Oh yes, I really love it. The only thing... is that I feel like I'm very much in the middle of a generation gap. There are many students around who are younger than me, and most of my colleagues" she emphasized the word in a very professional-sounding way "are older than me, so I'm somewhat in the middle."
"Yes, I can imagine you'd want company from more than just old hags like me."
"That is NOT what I said," Leah put her hand on her hip and glared teasingly at Madam Pomfrey, whom she knew was joking.
"I know, but I understand. So," she said, with a bit of a pause, "do you have anyone... special, in your life?"
"No. I really haven't dated much, honestly. Most men my age are... well, not really ready for... I don't know, I guess I'm just more serious-minded than most of them. I'm ready for something serious, but they're not. So, maybe it's better that I'm in a gap here. I do tend to get along better with people older than me."
"Just remember, Hogwarts tends to be a bastion of singleness. I think there are only two or three teachers who are married. Oh well... I'm sure you'll find someone, if that's what you're looking for."
"Thanks. I'm not worried about it."
Madam Pomfrey had taken a small package out of one of her boxes and stared at it for a few moments. "I haven't had these for so long, I don't remember where I last kept them."
"What is it?" asked Leah. She watched as Madam Pomfrey unwrapped a bag of small items that looked almost like plastic twist-ties, with short spikes on their ends.
"These," she said solemnly, "Are life-giving bracelets."
"Oh," Leah pondered for a moment. "I remember hearing about those in school. They aren't used very often, are they?"
"No, not at all. In fact, I don't know that this is the place for them. They're really more of a personal item."
"Now... what they do is, they transfer healing power from one person to another?"
"Right. Not something a healer would use, because they'd be dead by the time they finished with all their patients. But in a situation where you really cared about someone, you could tie it up like so," she demonstrated the positioning of the joint bracelets, "and it could save someone's life."
"But at quite a cost to the giver, I'm sure."
"Yes. Though if they're healthy enough to begin with, they usually recover. But it's a risk. I mean, if you used this on your 90-year-old grandmother having heart failure it would probably kill you. If you used it on a child, you'd almost certainly live. I've never actually seen one used. They don't work for chronic diseases and such-just medical emergencies. Usually no one carries one with them, and trying to explain it in the middle of a trauma doesn't always work. Well," she said, plopping them down in a drawer, "they're here if any family member happens to ask for them in an emergency. Not sure what else we'd do with them."
Leah was soon off to the greenhouses to check in with Professor Sprout, and by the end of the day, was quite exhausted. She entered her small, private chamber down the hall from the infirmary, and plopped down for a few moments to rest her back and feet.
She couldn't help but ponder her conversation with Madam Pomfrey, er, Poppy. She was telling the truth that she was generally fine with being single. In fact, sometimes she was proud of it. She knew that love was a sacrifice, and was sometimes painful - something she had experienced before. But there were times when she just wished that she had someone to talk to at the end of the day. Even going down to Hogsmeade for a drink felt strange without anyone with her, though she didn't mind at all when staff members invited her down on their little excursions. But those seemed few and far between.
She remembered her initial job interview, and Madam Pomfrey had mentioned that Hogwarts was not usually the first choice for young witches like her. Usually a ministry position, or something at Saint Mungo's was more where the younger, fresh-out-of-school candidates went, and then turned up at Hogwarts years down the road when they wanted something more out-of-the way or community-based. But here she was. She really did love it. But there was still that ache inside her that questioned whether she had thrown her prospects out the window by accepting this position.