I wasn't sure if I could post this now. But, by a lot of coincidence, I managed it! Hallelujah! Lol.
Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them
-Dalai Lama-
Heather smirked while she listened to the rising argument in the corner where Hermione was cataloguing scrolls and Draco was pre-slicing ingredients.
"I bloody will!" Hermione was shrieking.
Heather felt her eyebrows rising. Hermione had resorted to foul language, which meant curses will be traded if no one interfered soon. Luna must have guessed the same thing because she stopped grooming Fenny.
"If you really want to know, Hermione, you can always ask feather," she said. It was said quietly but it still caught both of their attention. Heather always wondered how she did it.
That shut both of them up.
"Err, feather? Can you?" Hermione asked tentatively.
Just to make her sweat, Heather feigned ignorance. "Can I what, Hermione?" Behind her, Heather could see Draco grinning.
"Can you be a good friend and tell me when I will get my apprentice?" Hermione ground out.
Heather coughed to hide her laughter. "Certainly, Hermione. Your hand, please?" she requested even as she removed the long gloves she always wore to shield her skin.
Upon contact, she was immediately assaulted by disjointed images of Hermione's future. After some disorientation, she quickly sorted through it, skimming across the images quickly. Flick-flick-flick! And then a picture of a small girl with large brown eyes was staring at the book Hermione had used as a selection.
She surfaced with a shudder, shaking herself like a wet dog to clear her mind.
"Well?" Hermione demanded.
Luna frowned and Draco kicked Hermione in the shins for her. Hermione then realized her mistake and winced. "Sorry feather. Take your time," she said contritely.
A deep breath cleared the small headache. "Well," Heather said. "You definitely will have an apprentice. And she's quite small."
"When?" she asked.
A brief bout of concentration brought her the answer. "Err, within another two years, I suppose. It's in that time frame."
Hermione groaned and tossed Draco a gold coin. He laughed as he pocketed it. Heather laughed too, because while the argument was loud, only the last part was loud enough for all of them to hear. To know that it was about a bet again clarified things.
"Mione, you should stop betting with Draco," Luna said. "If you don't, you'll eventually bet something you will regret."
That made Hermione scowl but she nodded. Hermione tended to listen to Luna's advices.
"What are the three of you doing here anyway?" she demanded. "I'm duplicating scrolls and need the privacy, but what about you three?"
Hermione's question was valid. It was rare for all four of them to be in the Sanctuary at the same time and rarer still to leave Kreacher in the town with strict instructions to fetch them in case of an emergency.
"I'm escaping from my apprentices, at the moment," Luna said bluntly. "I am teaching them patience."
Heather could relate to that and sympathize since Luna's apprentices were twin boys. One of them had an acidic tongue, and the other had an apathetic attitude towards people. But let them see a sick person and suddenly, they were all business.
"A practical lesson?" Draco asked.
Luna nodded. "I am letting them hem and stitch all the apprentice robes in the hospital. It's the first step to sewing human skin."
Draco turned green and seemed to be regretting his question. Heather wasn't squeamish and laughed at his face.
"And you?" Hermione asked Draco. "You can't be escaping from your apprentice too."
Silence means yes, apparently, since Draco smirked at the affronted look on Hermione's face.
"And what are you letting her do?" Heather asked, thoroughly entertained by the line of questioning that was going on. She was only slightly guilty since Meiran, Draco's apprentice, was a gentle thing that used to break down crying at Draco's every snarl at her mistakes. It only took two weeks for the girl to start snarling back. It made Heather's heart warm, thinking about it.
"I have her memorizing all the ingredients per color, texture and scent," he said. "She has until tomorrow to finish it."
Merlin! Even Luna looked concerned at that.
"Draco, isn't that taking it a bit far?" Hermione asked.
He rolled his eyes, used to the fact that his sisters had a soft spot for his demon of an apprentice. "She started two days ago. She only started whining about it to me today, so I came here."
"At the least, you aren't letting her taste it, right?" Luna asked. She was in her healer mode, silvery grey eyes focused on Draco seriously.
"Oh, hell no!" Draco assured her. "I am only letting her taste it when I'm around. The idiot might actually try out the more poisonous ingredients."
That made Heather snicker, thinking that it was something Meiran would do. The girl was extremely literal and followed instructions to the letter.
Hermione interrupted Heathers amusement. "What about you, feather? You actually like Guiomer, so you can't be escaping him too."
Heather grinned. "Oh, no. I'm here to do absolutely nothing for a day. Guiomer took my place in the border patrol. The brat was eager to do it."
That made the three of them give her dirty looks tinged with a small bit of envy. Her apprentice was the only one that was easy to get along with.
"Buggering Potter luck!" Draco muttered.
Heather laughed at him again. "Meiran's bitchiness is your fault. If you didn't keep barking at her, none of this would be happening."
"Right, because I would have murdered her! Mean is better than weepy," he replied. "She could give Parkinson a run for her money."
They spent most of the day helping Hermione in increasing the scrolls and books. Heather did the Transfiguration, Luna the Duplication and Draco the extra tweaks that made the books and scrolls more beautiful. Hermione placed the charms that protected it from fire, dust and water.
When they finished early and were wondering what else to do, Luna spoke up.
"I'm thinking of making an Order of Healing," she said.
Hermione produced parchment while Heather tossed her the pot and quill. "Yeah?" Draco asked.
"There are places where there are no healers. And some places where healing is a commodity," Luna explained. "Out of all of you, I have travelled through Arda the most. I want to make an Order whose oath is to serve and heal everyone they can."
Heather could see a ton of problems that would crop up with that, and so could Hermione, by the way the quill was racing across the parchment.
"They'll need to learn fighting," Heather said.
"Feather – "
"No, Luna!" she said firmly. "You can't imagine the difficulties your healers will have if they don't know how to protect themselves."
She acquiesced reluctantly.
"They'll have to be literate," Hermione butt in. "Have a proficiency in self-defense and healing. Looks like we'll have to be working on this."
"They'll have to know potions too," Draco muttered. "They can't rely on the brewers. If they're travelling the continent, then they'll have to be self-sufficient."
"This'll take years!" Hermione remarked. "Four or five years."
Hermione tossed Heather and Draco sheaves of parchment. She left Luna out of it since Luna was really atrocious at organizing things. All of them knew that, really.
Heather started on the people she would pick out to teach self-defense. They would have to be stern with an underlying compassion to offset that. Luna's healers tended to be really soft marshmallows. The list was surprisingly small and Heather then had to fill in the vacant positions they left with other people. She felt like she was doing a minor round robin with her men. Then, she had to create the schedules for those she had selected.
She calculated the number of months it would take and added in the lessons the Dúnedain had taught her (which she would personally teach since no one had asked for those lessons and as such, no one else could teach it but her). It would take eight months, give or take.
"How long is your program?" she asked Draco.
He was scowling at the parchment. "I'm condensing it as much as possible. This is really going to take a long time. The potions course itself would be a year."
Hermione then stopped writing, a troubled expression on her face. "Oh! This Order thing. Are we going to do this in the hospital or make a new building?"
That made all of them stop writing. Luna returned from the kitchen carrying cider and pie, just in time to hear Hermione's comment.
"That's going to be troubling," Luna said as she set down the tray on the table. "Would that mean the healers we have in the hospital will be discriminated against? Or will that cause dissent in their ranks?"
Luna's words caused Heather's foresight to activate and she saw a divided town, if they separated the hospital from the Order. The vision was quick enough that none of her siblings noticed it.
"We won't separate it," Heather said quickly. "We might have to expand the hospital but that's just to add the extra teaching rooms. You'll have to emphasize to them though that the only difference will be the potions requirement and the constant travelling."
"Why not make potions a requirement, though?" Draco cut in. "Potter did it, making literacy a requirement for teaching. Let's make potions a requirement for healing."
They all settled down again, the only sound was of quills scratching on parchment. Heather finished ahead of all of them and was polishing off her pie, when she suddenly said, "Blue robes."
Draco flinched at the sudden sound and poked a hole through the parchment. "Damn it, Potter," he swore.
Hermione only threw a spare parchment at him and looked to Heather with interest. "Yes, feather?"
"I mean, think about it," Heather started. "The Death Eaters had the Dark Mark as their insignia and Nagini as their mascot."
Draco crushed his quill and said a very naughty word that made Heather blush and Hermione gasp. Luna cocked her head to the side and said, "Draco, if you're upset, don't say that. It gives women the wrong impression."
Heather groaned and buried her head in her hands, topic completely forgotten. Her embarrassment was very strong because only Luna can take naughty swear words at face value. Hermione was in the same position, the ink of the quill dripping from her fingers to her mass of ringlets.
The girls couldn't see Draco take Luna to the side and lecture her strictly about swear words, general naughtiness and the human body. When the embarrassment receded, Heather and Hermione looked up to see Draco calmly polishing off his own pie and sipping his cider like a damn pureblood. Luna was sitting to his side looking shell-shocked and a bit scarred.
"What did you do to Luna?" Hermione asked.
"I just told her about the human body," Draco said with a serene smile that had Heather very suspicious. Years of rivalry had rendered her very familiar with Draco's smiles and this one was the smile he got when he had successfully destroyed someone's day…or week.
"Draco," Hermione stated slowly, because she had no idea what was going on, unlike Heather. "Luna is a healer. She probably knows about the human body. Maybe more than you do."
Heather wanted to groan at sweet, naïve Hermione. She was only giving Draco more ammunition. Heather knew he hadn't baited anyone in a month.
"Oh, she doesn't," Draco said. "She knows about the male body but she doesn't know what we do with our – "
Heather couldn't help it and dived across the table, narrowly missing the cider and the pies and squashing Hermione's piles of parchment to clap a hand over Draco's mouth. Hermione was blushing, having realized too late what the topic really was about and Luna was shuddering.
"Stop it, please," Heather pleaded. "I need to scourgify my brain!"
Draco winked at her and Heather realized that this was revenge for bringing up the Death Eaters.
Heather shuddered. "I'm sorry for bringing up the Death Eaters, okay? I'll use a different example. Buggering figs!"
It took a while to regain her composure. By then she had completely forgotten what had made her bring up the Death Eaters.
"Matches and jerks," Heather sighed. "What in the world was I talking about anyway?"
Hermione screwed up her face, nose scrunched up in concentration. "Something about organizations, mascots and insignia's"
That triggered it. Heather really loved Hermione's newly improved memory. It was like having a handy recorder.
"Of course! I mean, the order of the Phoenix had Fawkes as a symbol or something. Most organizations have something to represent them and some kind of uniform that makes the world identify them easily."
Luna held up a parchment. "Like this?" she asked.
It was an owl in flight with two crossed swords under it. It was ringed by evergreen leaves. The owl looked a lot like Hafny. There was also a remarkable depiction of Fenny the Fox outside the evergreen. It looked like a doodle, which was understandable since it was a spare bit of parchment, but since this was Luna, Heather had to be sure.
"Err, Luna?" Heather said tentatively. "I agree with that, but can we not add in Fenny? He kinda unnerves most people so it would be detrimental to healing."
Luna pouted but crossed out Fenny. Heather felt ridiculous when relief flooded through her.
This chapter made me so amused. There was a lot of factors that contributed to this, mainly the fact that I was as sleepy as anything and was on a minor sugar rush just to stay awake.
Oh, to the one who asked: Yep, it was the Battle of the Five Armies that happened last chapter.
Bugger. Gotta go. My bed is calling. Questions will be answered next time, coz I ain't in the fit state to be doing it now.
~Hallen
P.S. Anybody has suggestions on their uniform? My brain seems to settle on blue robes, really.