The Job

Chapter Two...The Job

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.

"The Heal-all behave badly today?" asked James as Neville entered the lunch room.

"What?"

"You look like you're under quite a cloud." James laughed and nudged him. "Come on. Cheer up. I'm sure if you only talk to them, they'll come to see your point of view." Laughing again, he walked off with his lunch tray and sat down next to Derwent.

Neville's fondness for talking to his plants was another thing that had quickly spread among his fellow healers and another thing that had made him the object of much gentle teasing. Once he recognised it for what it was...curiosity and awe for his Herbology skills, hidden behind a mocking façade...he felt no discomfort at the constant small jibes, and now he gave as good as he got.

Today, he felt more annoyed than usual, but knew that the fault lay not with his friend but with his own bad temper.

He left his case and his damp outer robes in the locker room, grabbed his lunch box and went back to the kitchen to heat his food.

"Ooh," said Saida, looking over his shoulder, "that looks delicious."

Neville shrugged. "It's just risotto," he said.

"Just risotto, he says... you know, some of us wouldn't know how to boil an egg without lengthy instructions, and here you come, eating the most horribly complicated dishes day after day..."

"No, honestly!" Neville laughed, his good humour restored. "I promise it's very simple. I'll show you some day."

"Thank you, but no thank you. Really." Saida waved her hands emphatically. "I've tried Muggle cooking. My kitchen's never been the same. Even using magic I have a tendency to make my prospective dinner either explode or turn into something unpleasant... No, household chores...not my thing. I'll make do with what the canteen has to offer, thank you."

"You know that what the canteen has to offer is not representative of Muggle cooking, I hope."

"How could I not with you reminding me every lunch," Saida laughed. "Oh, don't blush...I think it's sweet."

"There you go. My home-cooked and rather delicious lunch is ready." Neville smiled, lifting the pot off the cooking fire and reaching for a plate. "Care to join me?"

"Thank you, no, I have patients I should be getting to, or they'll start gnawing on their beds again, the poor dears. That reminds me...would you mind brewing me some Calming Draught when you're done with lunch? A new lot of charges arrived last week, and they're not used to the rhythm here yet; there's one that keeps escaping and wandering around the floor."

"I'll see to it. I'm going down to the lab anyway," said Neville, giving her a peck on the cheek as he left.

Mention of the mental ward didn't seem to strike at him quite as hard as it used to. He had never thought he'd one day be able to actually work in St Mungo's...yet here he was now, even helping Saida out now and again. It no longer hurt quite as much.

"Longbottooom!" Richard Blackgate pounced suddenly on him, throwing an arm around his neck and ruffling his hair roughly. "What do you think you're doing, you little devil?"

"Ow... Dick! Get off! What do you think you're doing? Watch my lunch!"

Richard laughed, letting him go and steadying his tray at the same time. "Don't think I didn't see you cuddling my fiancée just now," he said, waving a finger in playful admonishment. "Punishment will be swift and merciless!"

"Yes, yes. Of course. Have you had lunch?"

"Yeah, but I'm planning on shamelessly helping myself to yours, anyway." Richard sat down at the nearest table and waited for Neville to seat himself opposite. "You could do with someone relieving you of that monstrous amount of food if you don't want to be getting fat."

"Excuse me?" Neville looked at him, raising his eyebrows. "Do you know how much weight I've lost since starting this godforsaken job?"

"I'm very aware," said Richard, laughing...he laughed at just about everything. "I'm being an ass. So, how are the babies coming along?"

"The Mandrakes? Oh, they're doing great. In their teens now, most of them. And I'm having great success with this new experiment of mine...I'm making them take a part-time job weeding the other plants. It does seem to make them grow up a little faster, and I've saved hours of weeding time."

"Good for you." Richard conjured up a fork for himself and grabbed a bite from Neville's plate, shoving it into his mouth before Neville had the time to protest. "Hey, this is great!" he said with his mouth full, ignoring Neville's wince. "You think you could teach me?"

"I've already offered to do as much for your fiancée but she rudely refused," sighed Neville with the air of a tormented and misunderstood genius. "It has hurt my sensitive artist feelings...because cooking is an art, I tell you! No! Say no more. It is one offer per household only. You forfeited your chance."

"Sure. So Saturday, our place, that okay for you?"

"Of course." Neville grinned. "Do you know anything about the results in Glasgow, by the way?"

"Glasgow?"

"The Dragons were going to be attacking a forest troll camp last I heard. If so, we'd best be prepping for a new swamping of the emergency rooms. No matter how it goes, there's bound to be injured, and rather a lot of them."

"Good thinking," said Richard, nodding thoughtfully, then rose. "I'll talk to the Master Healer about it now. I'm meeting her anyway. I'll send you a message about what potions she thinks we need to stock up on, yeah?"

"I can guess most of them, but it'd be good with some pointers," Neville agreed.

"Good, then I'll catch you later."

"See you, Dick."

Alexander Imptsikovich was already in the lab when Neville arrived down, bent over a cauldron in deep concentration. Knowing how engrossed the man could become in his research...and how easily annoyed he was if he felt that anyone was sneaking up on him...Neville closed the door with a rather louder bang than necessary and called out to him, "Hi, Imp, how's the research?"

"Doing quite well," answered Imptsikovich, peevishly. "It's Imptsikovich, by the way, as you well know."

"I couldn't begin to pronounce it," said Neville easily, pulling on the now dry outer robes he had taken the precaution of bringing. "Good God, it's cold down here. How do you stand it?"

Imp didn't bother to answer this, and Neville shrugged before making his way over to his own bench. "I had a silver dagger here, do you know where it went?" he asked, flicking his wand to revive the fire under one of the largest cauldrons.

"By the earwigs," Imp answered absently, scribbling on a piece of parchment. "You needn't worry...I washed it."

"Of course, thank you. Duck." Neville summoned the dagger (Imp avoided it nimbly as it zoomed past) and pulled his herb jars towards him. First the Calming Draught...for that he needed chamomile, Mooncalf wheat, honey....

For a while after that the underground lab was very peaceful, the silence punctuated only by the soft sound of the two Healers muttering ingredients and measurements to themselves and the occasional hiss from one of Imp's many cauldrons.

Strangely, Neville had found that he had an unguessed-at aptitude for some potions, once he stopped trying to follow complicated instructions and just saw it as another day in the kitchen, making soup. When he had first arrived at St Mungo's and been told to make his first Painkilling Potion, he could still remember how he had paled and muttered something about a narrowly-scraped A in his Potions OWL. The Healer to whom he was attached as a trainee had just looked at him blankly, in a manner which told him she had no idea what he was talking about.

"They tell me you're good with Herbology," she had said, eventually.

Neville had replied modestly that he did know a little bit about plants.

"So tell me, then, what would you use for a Painkilling Potion?"

His confused stammers that he wasn't good with potions, at all, truly, hadn't he said so? had been cut off by a stern "Use your noggin, lad, it's not there for decoration!"

So Neville had said hesitantly that maybe Frogsleaf and Nicotiana Magica, and perhaps Stormsnest and Harefoot on account of their calming properties. He had suggested a half-dozen or so more ingredients and then stopped.

"And?" she had prompted, seeing that he was hesitating about whether to continue.

"And maybe menthe. Because that would neutralise the Stormsnest's bitterness and probably make the potion more pleasant to drink."

"Sounds as good as any potion to me," the Healer had said, grinning at him. "If you can grow a plant, of course you can bloody well stew it, too! Potion-making is basically fancy cooking, after all...throw in the ingredients you know will do the trick, add a couple more if you want your patient to drink it without gagging. You see, we don't care so much here for the formalities of the making. Stir this anti-clockwise and add that at this moment...that's mostly to avoid the side effects. For us in Emergency, the side effects are negligible so long as we keep the poor bastards alive."

She had exaggerated, of course. Many potions were more difficult than she suggested and required rather different ingredients than those that grew in the hospital garden. As soon as there was something non-growing to be chucked into the pot Neville still needed instructions to lean on, and if those instructions were longer than a roll of parchment he invariably messed up somewhere along the line. When it was about plants, however, he could use his own judgement to determine how much of each ingredient was needed. For the herbal potions there was no one better, and for mass producing Calming Draught or Oblivion, Neville was always the Master Healer's choice. You could count on him to do a conscientious and careful job.

"I saw an old friend of mine today," said Neville.

Imp grunted, irritably. He hated talk at work.

"She really didn't look too well."

There was a world of things left unsaid in that sentence. Neville was quite worried. Of course, she had always been strange, but....

"I'm rather worried," he said.

"You're always worried," snorted Imp. "Throw me that plait of unicorn hair."

Neville sighed. Trying to talk seriously with Imp about something that wasn't bubbling was a lost cause from the start.

"Is that anything you can't leave for a minute?" he asked, nodding towards the cauldron into which Imp was now carefully lowering one unicorn hair at a time.

"Why?" asked Imp suspiciously, looking up at him.

"We need stocking up on potions, and we're low on at least three of the most important antidotes. And you know how I am with antidotes."

Imp grunted again, this time with a tone of surprise. "Have you been using unicorn hair lately?"

"What?" Neville frowned, distracted from the trouble of antidotes. "No, I rarely use it. You know that. Why?"

Imp looked up at him and frowned, then shook his head slightly and returned to what he was doing. "No matter. I was just certain that this plait was thicker when I used it last. But maybe I was mistaken."

This was sufficiently unlike Imp to make Neville take notice. Imp never admitted error, especially not concerning potions and their ingredients, and he had an expert's eye for measures and doses.

"You, be mistaken?" Neville smiled, making light of it. "Not possible. But the ingredients cupboard is open to all, yeah? I'm sure someone just took a little bit and forgot to write it down since it was a small amount or something. We use it up in Emergency now for closing difficult wounds...you know that Muggle thing, stitches? Turns out it works for some wounds if you use unicorn hair."

Imp nodded vaguely, but he still looked worried.

"You're not satisfied," said Neville.

Imp hesitated for a second but then relented. "I'm concerned that someone might be stealing out of the ingredients cupboard. It's just tiny amounts, but things have been disappearing steadily for a while now. It has to be someone..." He stopped there and waved a hand impatiently. "Never mind. Forget what I was saying. I'm probably just paranoid anyway. What antidotes did you want?"

And that was when Neville realised that if someone was indeed removing small amounts of ingredients on an almost daily basis, he was the most obvious suspect.

Author's Note: The quote in the beginning of this chapter is an Indian Proverb.

Thank you to AmyLouise for wonderful betaing!