Chapter Nine: Lives Like a Cat's

"Soooooooosan."

Susan halted, one foot on the first step. She didn't turn around. "Yes, Muriel."

Muriel bustled up beside her. "When I got this absolutely enormous pile of paperwork this morning, I was dreadfully confused. You're to be given a trainee, but I thought it must mean that you were being transferred to a different department again. Poor thing, always a replacement, never tenured." She paused to give Susan a patronizing smile.

"Yes, Muriel," Susan said again. She grasped the railing and turned to go on up the stairs.

"It's almost unheard of for an untenured Healer to have a trainee."

Susan took a deep, calming breath. Muriel was studying her lacquered nails closely.

"Yes, Muriel, but most Healers with my experience have been tenured in a specialty already. So it's not a matter of rank, it's a matter of skill."

"Hrm. Well, anyway, here is the paperwork you'll need for the evaluations. Be sure to fill everything out correctly, because if you don't, I won't feel comfortable forwarding it to Smethwyck for his signature." Muriel handed over a thick stack of parchment. "This came for you--oh, a week or so ago--as well," she said, handing over an envelope of more standard proportions. "And Smethwyck wants to see you."

"When?" Susan asked.

Muriel glanced at her wristwatch. "Immediately."

Susan Apparated up to Creature-Induced Injuries to get away from Muriel. It was a quiet morning on the ward. Most of the beds were empty, she discovered, and the patients in the occupied ones were well on the mend. A pair of nurses gossiped quietly at their station while Goyle napped in a corner.

In an office that had been converted from an old supply closet, Susan had a desk and chair. She very rarely found a moment to sit down, and took most of her paperwork back to her flat to finish rather than spend time in the cramped, claustrophobic room.

She tossed the heavy envelope on top of a pile of charts that needed to go back to the records room. Those could be Banished later. Then, she closed the door deliberately--Can't remember the last time I did that on purpose, she thought--and picked up the smaller of the two envelopes Muriel had given her.

At first, she couldn't bear to look at it. She'd avoided it all the way upstairs, and the moment she looked, she'd know. For certain. She wasn't convinced she wanted to know because the disappointment would be awful if her guess was wrong.

If it wasn't a letter from Neville... It had to be from Neville. He was the only one who sent her letters at work, not trusting the owls to find her flat on the basis that he could never find her flat. She ran her fingers along the folded edges of parchment and over the seal on the back. Was that an 'L'?

Holding her breath, Susan closed her eyes and extracted the letter by touch. She smoothed it out on top of her desk carefully gave in to the temptation to peek. In the top right-hand corner was a month-old date in a familiar scrawl.

Dear Susan, it began.

How have you been? I've been well except for a few stomach upsets
when I drank the water. You and Gran both told me not to, so it's no
one's fault but my own that I forgot to use an Anti-Parasitical Charm.

Brazil is really warm and muggy. It's hard to keep my clothes dry,
and cloth tends to rot quite quickly here. I think I've found the
solution, which is to wear as little clothing as possible. Even out in
the middle of the jungle, Hogwarts is a useful connection to have; I've
run into fellow alumni and joined with one for research and study.

Yesterday I found a stand of Harmony Palm. I've got its location
mapped, so future trips need not be so long. I think it will take about
a month to harvest enough to see us through the year. That is, if I don't
get distracted any more than I already have been. There are so many new
and interesting magical plants here that I don't think anyone has ever
catalogued, so some of my free time is given over to that.

I've also been collecting salamander blood. Something tells me that
St. Mungo's is going to need to have a lot of it on hand. I'll let you
know more about that when I get back if Smethwyck agrees.

Also, Susan, when I get back, we need to talk. I've been thinking about
you a lot while I've been away, and there are some things that need to be
said between us face to face. I have really big news. You mean a lot to me,
and I want to do the right thing by you.

Love,

Neville

Susan mashed her fingers against her mouth to stifle a shout of glee and wiggled in her seat. He was going to get down on his knee this time instead of simply asking her to wait for him until he came back. There were going to be butterflies and flowers and bunnies and bouquets and veils and bridesmaids, as many as she could handle. Perhaps even a flock of flower girls.

And Neville was fine, fine and dandy. If he'd written this a month ago, he could be back any day. Any minute. Any second.

She ran her fingers through her hair after tucking the letter inside her pocket and pinched her cheeks for color. Then, she sprinted for Smethwyck's office.

"They'll be expecting you every day this week. However, this doesn't exempt you from getting your trainee acquainted with our facility, so I've come up with a modified schedule. You'll go to the Ministry first thing, then come back here for rounds and training in addition to supervised Healing."

Susan looked over the schedule Smethwyck had drawn up. "First of all, I thought Potter wasn't going to continue, and second, when am I supposed to sleep?"

Smethwyck dismissed the last with a wave of his hand. "You're a Healer. You don't need to sleep. Also, why would you think Potter wouldn't continue?" He lowered his voice. "He has to go back to work. I signed his release papers myself."

"He's supposed to be resting and not..." Susan checked to be sure the office door was closed. She lowered her voice. "He's not to banish You-Know-Who until his strength returns. You'll kill him!"

"Isn't that the point?" Smethwyck asked, tilting his head to one side. Susan hated, more than ever, the thick lenses that obscured his eyes. If he was shifty, she wanted to be able to see it outright. "Potter believes his death will finish--

"No," she answered. "The point is to keep him alive. Or at least, I won't see him harmed further."

The chief of staff leaned back in his chair and set it swaying from side to side. He chewed absently on the end of a pen. Susan found this discomfiting not for the action, but because Smethwyck was one of the few wizards she knew who eschewed quills. It made him look even creepier than normal.

"Miss Bones." Smethwyck removed the pen and leaned forward. "Yes, your job as a Healer is to treat the injured and cure the sick. But it also means that you attend the dying and ease the pain of their passing. When death is inevitable, we are not to interfere. Did you learn nothing from your Muggle Medicine courses? How they torture the soul long after the body has gone beyond because they can?"

Susan swallowed. She'd gone with her classmates to hospitals to see people, withered and frail, breathing and eating because strange mechanisms forced them to go on even through they were no longer alive. "Sometimes people have to believe in miracles," she whispered.

Smethwyck snorted and stood up, Susan's cue that the meeting was finished. He shook his head as he ushered her out. "There's no such thing as a miracle," he said firmly, and then he shut the door against protest.

Muriel bent over the Welcome Desk, tucking her arms in close to push her cleavage into the best angle for viewing. "Oh dear! I've dropped my quill!" She put a hand to her blushing cheek. "How clumsy I am. Would you be so kind?" she asked the godlike figure before her.

The new Creature-Induced Injuries trainee was the very best thing she'd seen since the invention of the Eighteen-Hour Charm. Muriel surreptitiously straightened her collar as she watched the back of the trainee's trousers tighten lovingly across his adorable tush when he bent to retrieve her quill.

"Here you are, madam," he said, bowing gallantly and flourishing the quill. Muriel felt her pulse quicken at the way his white teeth flashed when he smiled and the way his bronzed chest was visible because he left the top button of his linen shirt open beneath his Muggle lab coat. His mahogany-colored hair shone in the florescent-charmed light of the reception area.

Muriel accepted the quill with a delicate hand. "You must be our new trainee.... Yet, I could swear I've seen you somewhere before." She licked her lips in preparation for the coming falsehood. "Were we at Hogwarts together?"

The trainee leaned a hip against the side of her desk. "I'm wracking my brain, really, but I didn't get to know all of the younger girls when I was there." He cocked his head and grinned. "I'm sure I'd remember you if we had. A face like yours is simply unforgettable."

Oh yes. I will have to remember to tip the stylist for getting all the gray out. "We must have missed one another, because we would certainly remember meeting," she agreed.

He glanced from side to side and crooked a finger so that Muriel would lean closer and spoke in an undertone. "Also, the family doesn't like to talk about it much right now, because of the one...upstairs...but I've got some Lockhart blood on my mum's side."

"Perfect!" Muriel clapped her hands in glee. She'd always wanted to marry a Lockhart. Or move up to work in an administrator's office. Either would do. "I should have seen it. Still, you're one of a kind." She sat down and rummaged through her inbox for the paperwork she needed. "Here we are... Your name badge, training schedule, a map of the hospital... Now," she said, crossing her fingers beneath her desk, "it's tradition for the Welcome Witch to get you tea for your first week, so any chance you find, come down and bother me."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," he said and gave her a kiss on the back of her hand.

"Oh!" Muriel gasped. Luckily, the very person she wanted to see (but not really) came along, and she could cover up her outburst. "Susan! This is your new trainee."

Susan, sour-faced as always and with extraordinarily messy hair (not to mention too much rouge) for the workplace, halted on her way through the reception area and stuck out her hand. "Susan Bones."

Muriel's newest hero shook hands with aplomb and she shuffled the parchment on her desk, feeling a thrill of anticipation go up her spine. This was going to be just what the doctor ordered.

"Thessalus Smethwyck."

Muriel was overjoyed by Susan's reaction. She'd never seen skin turn quite that shade of green before.

"Weasley!"

Ron held up a quill. "Jus' sec. Don't interrupt when I'm doing dosage figures." He continued to mutter a string of numbers, jotting down notes on a bit of parchment, and only stopped when he realized Susan's breathing was almost as audible as when patients came in with that athem, aserm...Muggle lung thing. "Getting a cold, Susan?"

Susan's chest was heaving alarmingly. "I need to go," she said with clenched teeth. "Harry duty--and I need a favor. I'll do what ever it takes to repay you--"

"What duty?" Ron broke in. "Is he back in hospital?"

"Er, no..." Susan wrung her hands and bit her lip. "Er, it's code for 'treating the Minister of Magic's hemorrhoids.' You see, we're not supposed to tell that around, and your brother's fairly--"

"Stop stop stop stop stop!" Ron covered his ears with both hands. "If you'll stop, I'll do whatever you want. Only, please, no more talk about Percy's bum."

Susan grinned weakly. "I'm supposed to give the new trainee a tour of the building but, like I said, I have to go out. It needs to be finished this morning. Could you do it?"

Ron felt his lip curl in disgust. So, Susan wasn't getting her six-month certificate again. As a nurse, he himself enjoyed moving from ward to ward every shift. It made for interesting variety. He'd hate to be a Healer, committed to one specialty at a time...

I'd hate to be a Healer.

The thought nearly bowled Ron over. He liked his job. He might like others more, sure--if the Cannons came knocking, he'd drop everything and make a break for it--but he liked his job. He was competent at it. Maybe even good at it.

"All right, then. I'm off duty in two minutes, and I'll show the"--he glanced at the man in the Muggle lab coat, who lingered just out of earshot--"bloke around."

"I owe you, Weasley." Susan took off at a clip.

Ron scratched behind his ear with his quill and scribbled his name at the bottom of the chart before approaching the trainee Healer. "'Lo. I'm Ron Weasley, and I'll take you around the wards until Susan comes back. You're..."

The other man smiled in a way designed to disarm both genders. It didn't work on Ron; he thought it made the fellow look like his second least favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. "Thessalus Smethwyck at St. Mungo's service."

"Smethwyck, like Hippocrates Smethwyck?" Ron felt a frisson of something akin to bad snails writhe in his gut.

"Why, yes!" Thessalus ran a hand through his coffee-colored curls. "He's my father."

Ron decided it was very lucky that he was off-duty at the moment, or else he'd have to re-evaluate his love for his job.

He flipped on the light switch. "This is where we keep extra robes and such, because sooner or later a patient's going to get something all over yours. Inevitable if you're going to be working in Potion and Plant Poisoning, and occasional in the other wards too."

Thessalus fingered the robes hanging on a makeshift rack. "These certainly aren't the finest of linen, are they?"

"They'll do in a pinch." Ron rolled his eyes behind Thessalus's back. "Now, just down the hall is the Emergency Floo." He led the way back toward the reception area. "You'll be spending a half day there as part of your introduction to the hospital."

"Oh, I'm sure I won't need to do that." Thessalus shuddered gracefully next to him. "Could be dangerous. And hazardous to one's social career! What if someone died while you were treating them? You'd never be invited to tea again."

"Er, that's why people come to the Emergency Floo. They're dying. Some of them are going to die no matter what you do for them," Ron said, trying his best not to punch Thessalus in the nose. Half an hour and he'd never met someone who needed punching more, except maybe Malfoy. "You'd better get used to it."

"Are you threatening me?" Thessalus asked with a deceptively pleasant smile.

I must not murder the chief-of-staff's son. "Just stating the facts."

Muriel waved to them as they passed by. "Are you in the mood for some tea, dear?"

Ron breathed a sigh of relief when he realized Muriel wasn't addressing him, but his unfortunate charge. "Go on, then," he said, though neither was listening.

"I'd love a cuppa, my dear." Thessalus tucked Muriel's hand under his arm. "Ta, Wellesley."

"It's Weasley." Ron watched them go, shaking his head. He checked to be sure that his status was correct and noted that the words at Ministry of Magic were next to Susan's name. Another reason to be glad he was a nurse and not a Healer, and another reason to be glad he was related to Percy. Luckily, Percy was uptight enough to avoid asking his family members for help when it related to anything involving any parts hidden by his robes.

Turning to go, Ron caught sight of Hermione coming in through the Purge and Dowse Ltd. entrance. He straightened his robes and hoped she wouldn't notice the grindylow bile stain on the hem. "Hermione! I thought I was supposed to meet you after--"

"I didn't want to wait," she said rather irritably.

"I knew it," he crowed. Ron twined his fingers through Hermione's and dragged her to the robe room. I am irresistible. He ignored her exasperated cry of "Ron" and pulled her inside the closet, locking the door with his wand before dropping it on the floor with a clatter and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. "I knew you wanted me like I wanted you. I haven't been able to think of anything else all day." He slid a trail of hot kisses down her neck. "Tell me what you want me to do."

Hermione stuck her elbow in his ribs. "I want you to stop it and listen to me."

Ron backed off a step and rubbed his side. "What did you do that for?"

"I can't--I can't think straight when you do that!" Hermione sputtered.

"Good." Ron felt his face get warm and his lips twist into smile. "Thinking is overrated, Hermione." He put his hands on her waist and pulled her close again. Her mouth was delicious. She'd been eating some sort of strawberry-flavored sweet, and her lips were smooth as silk.

"No." She turned her face away.

"Later?" Ron asked, hoping it wouldn't be much.

"We have to find Harry," Hermione said. She took a deep, hitching breath.

Ron swallowed hard. "Er, he's my best friend and all, but I don't think I'm quite that adventurous."

Hermione shook her head. "There's something wrong with him. He hasn't been answering our letters and he's supposed to be resting, but is he at his flat? No. He's been going to work. His neighbors haven't seen him in a week. I'm worried, Ron."

"Well," he said, reaching up and fingering a bushy curl absentmindedly, "when he finishes today we'll tell him off and make him stay in bed for a while."

This wasn't enough for Hermione. "I have a better idea. I want you to go straight to Percy and tell him to give Harry a holiday."

"Percy does what he wants to do. If Harry wanted to, he could ask for himself."

"But he won't." Hermione pushed him away. "He's depressed and throwing himself into his work because he doesn't want us to notice and see how awful he's feeling. You're the only one who can step in. You're his best friend, and you're the Minister's brother. Please?"

Hermione had never pulled such a miserable trick on him before. She probably thought that her argument was saving the day, but it was the tears welling up in her eyes that did him in. "Fine," he said, throwing his hands into the air and wondering why Bill or Charlie couldn't have been Minister instead.

"I'll hold that," Ginny said, taking the wastebin in one hand. "I have some motion-sickness pills in my desk. Muggle stuff, but effective." She whispered to Harry in an undertone and rubbed his back.

Susan let Ginny take over and Percy moved out of the way as well. Harry had only made it halfway across the outer office before starting to projectile vomit, and the commotion had brought Percy out of his private meeting in a hurry to set a Silencing Charm around the area. He'd followed it up by locking the Australian Minister in.

She held up a bottle of pills. "The problem is going to be getting them in." Susan read the directions on the side and twisted the top. "Not to mention opening the stuff."

"Push down and turn," Ginny replied and used her wand to clean up Harry's robes and the mess on the carpet.

As she finished, the doors to the corridor swung open and Ron and Hermione marched in. "Now see here, Percy, you're to let Harry take a holiday before you kill him," Ron proclaimed.

The pair stopped in their tracks. "What's happened? What's wrong with Harry?" Hermione demanded.

Susan fumbled for an answer while Percy hurried to close and lock the outer door. She wasn't good at coming up with lies on the spot. "You remember those fruit flies we had such a problem with in Diagon Alley? They're gone now, and a few wizards have the fruit flu."

Ron glared around the room, finally stopping on Susan. "What you said earlier about Ministry duty. You didn't care about Percy's bum at all. You were talking about Harry."

Harry spit into the wastebin. "So you told them about Voldemort. What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?"

"And what's this about my bum?" Percy put in.

Susan cringed. "Oops."

"And what's this about Voldemort?" Ron wanted to know. He and Hermione exchanged worried glances.

Susan raised her hands defensively and turned to Harry. "I didn't say anything about that to anyone."

This time, Harry grimaced. "Oops."