Freddie joined the other competitors at the table. Madame Garnier was sitting at the other table by herself with a small suitcase in front of her. She noticed an emblem on the case – a wand with a snake twisted around it, and the words L'hôpital de Fontaine underneath.
A medkit, Freddie thought as she sat down beside Akinyi. I wonder what sort of things she's prepared for. What kind of injuries could happen during a Potions contest?
"So," Dimitri said. "Who wants to bet the child sends up sparks and needs to be rescued?"
"Shut your face, Dimitri!" she snapped at him.
"She probably will not make it through the first trial," Andrei said haughtily. Freddie wanted to reach across the table and throttle him.
"She's smarter than the both of you put together," she said hotly. "And you know it, Andrei."
"She is pretty smart, but I am not sure she will make it all the way through," Akinyi said and Freddie stared at her incredulously. They'd been getting along so well last night. "I am sorry Freddie, but it is true. She should not even be here, she is too young."
"I can't believe you!" Freddie said. She could feel her anger getting the better of her and she stood up from the table. "I bet you ten Galleons she makes it through all three trials and comes through that door in less than two hours."
"I will take your bet," Dimitri said smugly.
"Fine," she said and she went to sit at the other table with Madame Garnier, but she turned back to them first. "Ada is one of us, she has as much right to be here as any of us, and she's going to prove that!"
She sat down with a huff, turning her back on the other competitors. She put her bag on the table in front of her and started taking her books out.
"She does seem awfully young, cherie," Madame Garnier said to her. "And this competition can be very challenging. ...But you are right. If her Potion Master thinks she is skilled enough to compete, then she deserves to be here."
Freddie grunted and opened one of her books to read, but she was thinking about what the woman had just said. She wasn't so sure she trusted Lady Karen's judgment, what if she had made a mistake in thinking Ada could compete at this level?
No, she deserves to be here, she told herself. After all Karen seems certain she can win. Karen might say and do all the wrong things, but she seems as proud of Ada as Severus is of me. She glanced at the door her friend had disappeared through and sighed softly. Ada please don't prove me wrong. Do well in there. Show the others they're wrong about you.
For the better part of the next hour Freddie flipped through her textbooks, trying to concentrate, but really she was worrying about Ada. She was more worried about her friend than she was about her own challenge. She tried to distract herself by talking to Madame Garnier. She learned a little bit about L'hôpital de Fontaine and she told the old woman about St Mungo's and how she was going to work there this summer.
She couldn't stop looking at her watch though. It had been almost an hour since Ada had entered the Garden when all of a sudden one of the doors opened and she came out. Freddie jumped up from the table and ran across the courtyard to her.
"Ada! Are you okay?"
Her face and uniform were smudged with dirt and she was holding her left arm with her right hand.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. I did it, Freddie. I made it all the way through," she said, grinning broadly.
"Congratulations!" she said, throwing her arms around her. "I knew you could do it! I told you!"
"Ow, watch my arm," she said and Freddie immediately pulled back.
"What is it, what's wrong?"
"It's nothing, just a little burn. It's not bad," she insisted, but she was still covering it with her hand.
"Let me see," she said. Ada hesitated, then moved her hand revealing a large burn across her forearm, about 4 inches long. It had burned straight through the sleeve of her uniform and blistered the skin beneath. "How did it happen?"
"I'll tell you about it later," Ada muttered as Akinyi came towards them.
"You made it!" Akinyi said brightly. "How did you do?"
Freddie felt a flicker of annoyance, but she wasn't going to tell Ada that Akinyi hadn't thought she was going to make it. She seemed so happy right now, in spite of her injury, and telling her would only bring her down.
"I did really well I think," she said, still grinning. "But there is no way to know for sure until the end."
"So you did not see the judges at all? What-" Akinyi was interrupted by the ringing of the bell and she froze as the door on the end opened.
"I think that's your door," Freddie said to her coolly.
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. Okay. Wish me luck."
"Good luck!" Ada called as Akinyi walked away, but Freddie said nothing. She wasn't about to wish her luck, not after what she'd said about Ada.
"Come on, Ada," Freddie said as Akinyi disappeared through her door. "Let's go get your arm fixed."
She led the younger girl back to the tent where Madame Garnier was waiting with her medical supplies. Neither Dimitri or Andrei said anything as they walked past their table, but Dimitri looked just as surly and sour-faced as Andrei. Freddie felt smug but she didn't say anything to them either, just waited while Madame Garnier inspected the burn on Ada's arm.
"It's a superficial burn. Some Burn Cream and you will be fine in no time," the Healer said, opening her medkit.
"I'll do it," Freddie said, snatching the jar from the old witch's hand. "Let me do it."
The Healer had had her doubts about Ada's abilities too and Freddie didn't want her touching her friend. Sure Freddie had made conversation with her, and she seemed nice enough, but that had just been to distract herself. Ada sat down at the table and Freddie sat sideways on the bench, facing her.
"I'm going to roll up your sleeve, okay?" she said, putting the Burn Cream down. "It might hurt but it'll let me spread the medicine on better and it'll heal quicker."
"It's fine, Freddie," Ada said, holding out her arm. "I trust you."
She rolled up the sleeve of Ada's pale blue dress carefully and the girl didn't even flinch when the fabric stuck to the wound slightly, even though some of her skin came off with it. She was still smiling as Freddie started to spread the Burn Cream over the wound, under the watchful eye of Madame Garnier.
"I am so glad that is over," Ada told her. "I feel so relieved. You were right, going first was a good thing."
"I'm happy for you," Freddie said, smiling.
She screwed the cap back on the jar of medicine and handed it to Madame Garnier, who returned it to her medkit and wordlessly passed a roll of bandages back to her. Freddie wound the bandages loosely around the wound and secured it.
"There," she said. "Good as new."
"Thank you, Freddie. Madame Garnier?" Ada asked softly. "Do we have to sit here or is it okay if we walk around the courtyard?"
"Oui, cherie, c'est bon. As long as you don't try to go through any of the doors or back out through the gate."
"Merci, Madame. Come on Freddie."
Freddie quickly put her books away and slung her bag over her shoulder before following Ada away from the tables. They walked along the wall and she waited until they were out of earshot of the boys before saying anything.
"So? What was it like?" she asked eagerly. "And how did you get burned?"
"It was...way different than anything I have ever done before. I knew that the judges were all watching me, even though I could not see them anywhere, and that made me nervous. I made a few mistakes, but I still think I did well."
"What kind of mistakes?"
"Well in part of the first challenge I had to harvest leaves off of a Venomous Tentacula plant and I got bitten three times. I was able to heal it with Dittany and draw the venom from the wound with a poultice of murtlap tentacles – I found murtlaps in a deep pool of water in the same arena, so maybe they expected me to get bitten? I do not know. I had to retrieve a key that was in the bottom of the pool to pass on to the next room – it was too deep to swim down to it and I couldn't summon it out because they took my wand before that challenge, so I figured out I was supposed to brew a Gilly Draught so I could breathe underwater."
"That's why you needed the tentacula leaves," Freddie said with a nod.
"Yeah. I found the murtlaps when I went down to retrieve the key and brought one to the surface with me. Once I had the key a man appeared and he reversed the effects of the Gilly Draught so I could go on to the next level."
"One of the judges?"
"No, he was wearing yellow robes like Madame Garnier, I think he must have been another Healer. He was there when I first walked in, too, to take my wand. He gave it back when he came to reverse the Gilly Draught."
"Oo. What was the next challenge?" she asked as they walked past the gate, continuing their trek along the stone wall surrounding the courtyard.
"The next one was really weird! I walked through the door and found myself in a pasture, like on a farm. There were cows and goats grazing and chickens everywhere. It was a huge space, it looked too big to be on this island, but I guess that is part of the Enchantment. I did not see a door anywhere and I was still looking for it, trying to figure out what to do, when a group of cows moved and I saw there was a girl lying on the ground! I ran over to her and she wasn't moving. Her breathing was really shallow and I could not wake her – I figured she must have been poisoned. So I started looking for herbs to brew an antidote, but the only plant I could find in the whole pasture was some Ipecacuanha that was growing by the fence."
"Ipecac," Freddie said with a nod. "So you made an Emetic Draught?"
"Exactly. I thought I was supposed to use it on the girl," she said with a groan. "She almost choked on her vomit, it was really messy, and she still did not wake up! I started to freak out a little bit when a goat wandered over and started chewing on my cape. I shooed him off of me and then it hit me – a bezoar! I was supposed to get a bezoar! I had to make three different goats drink the vomit-inducing potion before one finally coughed one up. It was disgusting."
"Ew, that's a lot of vomit," she said, wrinkling her nose.
"I know, right? So I cleaned the bezoar off with my wand – I used that spell you showed me in the boat when you cleaned my shoes – and shoved it down the girl's throat. She was just starting to come around when a door materialized in the middle of the pasture. I was going to stay and make sure the girl was okay, you know? But when I turned back around she was gone. So I just went on through to the next challenge," Ada said then she groaned again. "Freddie I made that poor girl vomit for no reason. She could have aspirated! It should have been so obvious that I was looking for a bezoar, why else would I be standing in the middle of a field of goats? I am sure I lost points for that. Merde."
"It's a totally understandable mistake," Freddie assured her. "Plenty of accidental poisonings can be reversed with an emetic."
She didn't point out that emetics were only effective if taken almost immediately after ingesting a poison. By the time someone is unconscious it is usually too late for that as it means the poison has already reached their bloodstream.
"Really?" Ada asked doubtfully. "Would you have made the same mistake?"
"Well..." Freddie said hesitantly. She didn't want to lie. "No, probably not. But I might have slaughtered the goat to get the bezoar and that probably would have gotten points taken from me as well. It's a potion-brewing competition, after all, and you brewed the right potion for that situation."
"I guess," she sighed. "At least I got through it. I need to sit down, that whole thing was trés fatiguant."
"Exhausting?" Freddie guessed at the word as Ada sank down in the grass with her back to the wall.
"Yes. Extremely. Especially since I barely slept last night," she said and stifled a yawn. Freddie dropped her bag on the ground and sat down cross-legged next to her. "Mon dieu I am glad that is over. I am so tired I almost do not care what happens next."
"Blame Karen for keeping you up all night studying."
"Mm," she said, stretching her legs out in front of her.
"What about the last challenge?" Freddie asked curiously. "What did you have to brew?"
"Regermination Potion," she said, yawning again, and she laid her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. "For a...bed of plants that were dead..."
"Hey," she said, nudging her slightly. "Don't fall asleep yet – you didn't tell me how you burned your arm."
"Hm? Oh," she said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "It was so stupid."
"What happened?" she prompted.
"It was during the last challenge. I was adding dragon dung to the cauldron – there was a huge pile of it in that arena, it smelled répugnante. I dropped some into the flames beneath the cauldron on accident and it popped up and landed right on my arm."
"So you got burned by flaming dung?" she said, trying not to smile.
"Yes. It's not funny, Freddie," Ada said, smacking her leg lightly. "It was embarrassing and it smelled even worse when it was on fire! I knew the judges were watching so I just washed it off as quick as I could and got back to the task at hand."
"Didn't it hurt?"
"I have a high tolerance for pain," she said with a shrug. She yawned for a third time, not even bothering to try and stifle it. She blinked her green eyes sleepily and she suddenly looked very young and vulnerable to Freddie. Freddie used the sleeve of her robes to wipe the dirt from Ada's face tenderly.
"You can nap if you want to. I'll look after you," she promised, feeling a deep affection for the sleepy girl. "Here, lay your head on my shoulder."
"Are you sure? You have to go next, don't you?"
"Yeah, but it hasn't been that long since Akinyi went in. I can study while you get some rest," she said and pulled Identifying Brews out of her bag as Ada leaned against her. Ada was over a foot shorter than she was, the perfect height to rest her head comfortably against her shoulder. Freddie smiled as the girl sighed contentedly.
"Dors bien, Adalene," she whispered and Ada's face scrunched up.
"Don't call me Adalene," she said without opening her eyes. Freddie chuckled softly and opened her textbook to study until it was time for her challenge.