The Florence Nightingale Effect

Rowena was never one to let an opportunity pass her by and even at her young age, she already had a vast amount of experience in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. It was with this in mind that she formed her second plan seduce her beloved Salazar.

If Rowena had been born in modern times she'd have heard of the Florence Nightingale Effect but that particular nurse had yet to be born. That didn't mean that Rowena had never heard of patients falling in love with their Healers.

It was something that sprang to her mind the moment she took a close look at the Healer who had been summoned to attend to Salazar. The Healer was blonde, buxom and pushy…and that was Rowena being generous.

"You can just leave the potions on the desk and I'll take things from here," Rowena ordered with a smile as fake as the Healer's hair colour.

"I really should stay and watch over him for the next twenty four hours," the Healer advised with a nervous glance around the room.

Yes, note the door and use it, Rowena thought to herself as the Healer seemed to think twice about sticking around. Rowena wondered whether circumstances would warrant a tiny little nudge with the imperious curse before the green-eyed monster that seemed to have taken up residence in her body was brought firmly under control.

"Would you like me to leave notes for you, or check in tomorrow?" the Healer asked, some sense of self-preservation apparently having kicked in.

"Notes will be fine," Rowena assured her. The Healer turned quickly to the desk and hurriedly scrawled out the relevant instructions on a spare piece of parchment.

"Call me if there are any problems," muttered the Healer, more out of habit than anything else. Rowena nodded in agreement as she practically pushed her out of the door.

Rowena shut the door with a sigh of relief. If Salazar was going to be falling for his Healer it was damn well going to be her and not some floozy flaunting her magically enhanced assets in his face.

"You don't think you were a little harsh on her?" Salazar asked weakly from the bed.

"I can take care of you myself," Rowena purred as she rushed to his side.

"Do you know anything about healing potions?" Salazar asked. Rowena bit her lip, knowing, as did Salazar, that what she knew about any kind of potions could be written on the back of a knut.

"I didn't like her," Rowena muttered.

"Clearly."

"Her hands were all dirty."

"She's just been cutting up potion ingredients."

"She was ogling you."

"Examining me," Salazar corrected.

"I didn't want you to suddenly fall for her and forget about me," Rowena whispered with a pout that she hoped looked endearing but suspected simply looked childish.

Salazar smiled weakly and stretched out his hand towards her. Rowena rushed across the room and took his hand in her own.

"I'm sorry," she apologised. "I'll go get her back if you want. I don't mean to get so jealous."

"That's all right." Salazar gave her hand a squeeze. "She was heavy handed with the herbs anyway. I can manage."

"You need rest and time to recover from…"

"From your attempt to kill me off?" Salazar teased.

"I didn't mean to," Rowena sobbed. "I just wanted to make you a nice meal."

"I'm just teasing you," Salazar assured her with another squeeze of the hand.

"I'm so sorry," Rowena sobbed.

"Stop apologising," Salazar ordered sternly.

"But it's all gone wrong," Rowena wailed.

"Don't worry about it," Salazar chided. "So I get to spend a few days relaxing in bed instead of travelling round in this downpour. It'll give Zeus time to find wherever it is that Godric's disappeared to as well."

"You've been writing to Godric?" Rowena was startled out of her miserable recollections by this news. Godric was always good fun and one of Salazar's closest friends. She'd met both of them on the same day and had been delighted to find that Godric was as unconventional as she herself was. If she still hadn't managed to persuade Salazar to loosen up then Godric was the perfect person to assist her in her plotting.

"I thought we'd go pay him a visit," Salazar replied. "There's something I wanted to speak with him about."

"What's that?" Rowena asked curiously.

"Just stuff," Salazar hedged. "Nothing important. Now be a sweetheart and help me across to the desk so that I can finish the healing potion in time for the next dose."

"I can do it," Rowena insisted as she pushed Salazar, who was struggling to sit up, back onto the bed. His head connected with the wall with a loud thump and he groaned in pain.

"I can help you with the potion," Rowena said as she scurried towards the desk, the small pewter cauldron toppling to the floor, the half-finished potion spilling out across the floor. "Bugger!"

"Rowena, I don't need you to take care of me."

"But I want to take care of you."

"And I appreciate the thought," Salazar assured her. "But please can you let me handle the potions myself."

"But then I won't be healing you and you won't fall for me and…" Her voice trailed off as she felt her face reddening.

"Rowena," Salazar sounded hesitant and somewhat confused. He sat up again as he tried to lean round to look Rowena in the eye. "In case it's escaped your notice, I've already fallen for you. That would be why I'm defying convention by travelling round the country with you, without a chaperone."

Rowena snorted.

"What?" he asked.

"Chaperone," Rowena muttered with a shake of the head. Salazar was worse than a dozen chaperones with his sense of gentlemanly decency. That she'd managed to get him this far was nothing short of a miracle and largely due to the fact that she'd bribed Helga's maid to return home two days into their journey.

"I'll look into hiring a respectable young witch to act as your maid as soon as I'm well. I've already written to a few of the prominent wizarding families in the area to ask whether they have anyone who might be interested in the position."

"You have?"

"Of course," Salazar assured her. "I wrote to Helga as well. She really ought to be more careful about just what sort of people she hires."

Rowena made a mental note to write to Helga as soon as Salazar was asleep to tell her what had happened so the maid wasn't punished for being susceptible to Rowena's bribes.

"You don't have to hire anyone else," Rowena mumbled, wondering if she had enough magical trinkets to bribe another maid into leaving Salazar's generous employment.

"Let's talk about it later," Salazar suggested tiredly as he sank back onto the bed once more.

Rowena nodded and pulled the thin blanket over Salazar, smiling when she realised he was fast asleep already. She hoped he recovered his strength soon and felt another twinge of guilt at the position she had put him in.

She cleaned up the mess she'd made with the potion and settled down to write to Helga before he woke again. She wondered if Helga had any ideas on how to seduce the man who was sleeping just a few feet away from her and quickly inked a postscript onto her letter before she sent it.

Between her own sharp mind, Helga's dedication and Godric's unconventional ideas, Salazar Slytherin didn't stand a chance.