August 23, 1890 - St. Mungo’s Lunch Room

Even St. Mungo’s was not immune to gossip and the World Quidditch Cup had become the subject of every witch and wizard in Great Britain, including the healers and mediwizards of St. Mungo’s. Marie-Louise had already had to scold several of her nurses about gossiping in the corridors rather than tending to patients and by the time lunch had arrived she was completely ready to simply sit and eat her lunch in silence. That was until Rosamund joined her.

At some point since Rosamund had started at St. Mungo’s the two had become friends, their daily lunches when they both worked the same days were a treat to the shy and quiet healer.

“Did you attend yesterday?” It was fair to assume that everyone had, even Marie-Louise who had no interest in quidditch had found herself in attendance. There would be no avoiding the subject as it was so she might as well get it out of their systems now.


Rosamund Bones

  

---

In hindsight, she rather wished she hadn’t. “All my family were there, never mind the friends,” Rosamund said with a brief smile, as she picked absently at her sandwich, “so I scarcely had much choice.” Not only would Ginny have never let her miss it, the Longbottoms had had to be there to support Beckett! To think she had not dreamed that quidditch could get any more violent than the last.

“You went too?” She returned with a swift glance to discern how Marie-Louise had found it. Surely she had been there - although hopefully nowhere near the box that had been hit. “Oh, wasn’t it awful?” She hadn’t even seen the scene, but from what she had heard about the state of Mrs. Turnbull from the rest of the hospital, it had been gruesome even for those most used to injury.

---

  

---

Having no choice was something Malou understood all too well. Because of her mother’s set of friends and her parents places in life Malou was often expected at a myriad of things she’d rather not attend: balls, teas, and apparently now quidditch matches.

“I had little choice as well.” She admitted thinking of her godmother’s constant pestering until she had finally bought Malou a ticket and sent a letter saying she would attend no matter what. It hadn’t helped that Malou’s day off happened to coincide with the event.

Thank God the box had been rather far off from Malou. She hadn’t seen much of what happened, but the rumors were enough. “Most awful. I can’t believe the stands weren’t charmed.” Malou agreed, it seemed such a simple thing, but she didn’t believe it had ever been done before.

  

---

Rommy grimaced at the memory of it, too fresh in everyone’s mind to be forgotten. Leaving her lunch entirely for the moment, she nodded emphatically at the other healer’s remark. “I know! I had always assumed they were -” not that she knew a great deal about quidditch, or had paid attention to school matches either; if the bludgers had bounced into the stands before, she hadn’t known it. “Though I suppose even if they were there is always a chance the protection charms could be faulty.” There would always be a risk of injuries as long as bludgers were in the game.

Stupid game that it was.

“My uncle was a beater in the match,” Rosamund said, more quietly. It was hardly a secret - Beckett Longbottom was a household name - but it gave the whole thing a more concerning sheen, and she didn’t want people in passing to think him responsible for the accident, either. “He wasn’t the one who hit the bludger, but -” She breathed out. “Imagine being the one who had.”

---

  

---

“I suppose I did as well.” Malou agree with a nod of her head. Faulty charms were definitely something that Malou saw as well in her line of work, they happened much more frequently then one supposed outside of the hospital walls. “I wonder if they did. I’ve seen quite a few faulty charms these days then I care to admit.”

Malou might not follow quidditch herself, but Fallon had enthused enough of the players that Malou had been left with the distinct impression that they were all young. Being someone who had so few relatives it was hard to imagine that Rosamund’s uncle might be as young as a quidditch player, but she had seen enough families in the hospital that it really ought not to surprise her as much as it did. “Oh.” Malou could hardly imagine. “I suspect he must feel terribly guilty about it all, I wonder if the whole team does.” It was after all a team sport.

  

---

“They must do, it was brutal,” Rommy said, wincing at how it must have felt from a broom’s eye view. She hadn’t the faintest idea what was going to happen with the game, whether it would continue or begin again or perhaps just get cancelled for good? “I don’t think I could go watch another match, after that.”

She cocked her head at the other healer, seeing a distraction from the quidditch horrorshow in something she had said. “Yes, but when don’t you see faulty charms? They’re practically your every day!” Artifacts were one thing, but spells were even less predictable.

---

  

---

“I don’t think I could either.” Then again Malou didn’t really need another reason to avoid quidditch, she had never really seen the point in it either. Fallon did, however, and it had been the reason that Malou had tolerated more than her fair share of school games.

Malou couldn’t help the soft chuckle at Rosamund’s words. “They are my every day. It does feel as if there have been more than normal of late. As if the world has gotten careless.” She sighed. Carelessness was next to recklessness in her book.

  

---

Rommy hummed in half-amusement, half-agreement, interested at that hypothesis of increased carelessness. “I wonder why that is. I can’t say I understand it.” There was probably nothing in it - patients came in waves and chaos, in no strict pattern or order - and quidditch could not be to blame for everything. That it was summer, perhaps?

She smiled before she took another bite of food, chewing carefully. It was probably why she and Marie-Louise got on well, that neither of them were particularly inclined to negligence or risk-taking. One could not afford to be very rash, as a healer, but even by a healer’s standards Rommy found some comfort in the other woman’s character. To that end, she added teasingly, guessing the answer would be the same as her own: “But then have you ever done anything careless in your life?”

---

  

---

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Malou commented brushing further suppositions. Doubtless it was a small degree of her annoyance that plagued her. While she loved assisting those who had been injured of late she had felt many of the injuries could have been avoided if only one had focusing on practicing the spell correctly.

Malou chuckled, “Unless you count becoming a healer rather than a socialite as careless I don’t believe I have.” She often left that to Fallon. But Rosamund was cut of the same cloth as herself and could relate to such things. They had both shunned the life of a debutante for a higher cause, one which Malou’s godmother classified as the most careless option Malou could have taken.

  

---

“Come now,” Rommy said, clicking her teeth in jest, “there was nothing careless in that decision, I’m sure. I should call it very calculated an escape.” (From debuting, from the social scene; of course in truth it had been more that that - she could not have given herself to a profession she hadn’t cared about intensely - but whether a successful evasion or a calling, she suspected Marie-Louise’s decision to pursue it had been as well-considered as her own had been.)

“Though perhaps it will take its toll on us eventually, and in another twenty years we’ll both have become entirely reckless even within the hospital walls,” she mused, picturing a far-flung future where all their reason had turned to madness, and giggling idly at the thought. “You might have started being rude to disagreeable patients to their faces, and I might accidentally be dosing people with doxycide instead of sleeping draughts by then!”

---

@"Marie-Louise Skovgaard"

  

---

Rosamund was right, of course, there had been absolutely nothing careless in that decision. It had been carefully planned from the inception of the idea. Marie-Louise had carefully expressed her interest in her studies from the day she determined she wanted to help people more than just through the charity work her mother would have suggested, but through her studies and her magical abilities. She had made sure to pen such thoughts to her parents in her letters home in those early days. When the time had come to start the campaign to stay past her fifth year she had made sure to press the issue to her father rather than her mother. Her father had relented with good humor, brushing aside his wife's concerns. What harm could two more years of schooling do for their bright young daughter, he had assured his wife. As it turned out - everything. Intent on her plan Marie-Louise had picked an ambitious load of NEWT level courses that would get her to her goal. She had studied as much as possible in those years and when her final year had come and she knew she'd need to press the issue on her parents she had planned out every argument in favor of her career to explain to her parents when she saw them again. But she had never seen them again, instead she had to retire from her first season and go into mourning. From there the decision had become more complicated but even in those days Malou had knew exactly what she had wanted and had pressed the advantage. The lack of income, the need to help people, the practicality of such a move instead of waiting around for a season. So yes, Rosamund was entirely right there had been nothing careless in her decision. "I would agree with you." Malou admitted with a smile, "Although my godmother would adamantly disagree." Mrs. Bagshot's loyalty to Marie-Louise's departed mother and her wishes often colored her own opinions, despite the fact that the woman had agreed with the pragmaticism in Malou's plan in those days.

The thought of their futures spread out as such made Malou laugh. "Who knows, I might even try to alter a charm or two myself and need one of your potions to fix me." Doubtful, even Malou would have to agree, but it was nice to laugh over such things. To pretend they both wouldn't ever dare to harm their professional careers in such a manner. "Or I might start lecturing old coots on how to remain safe at home. Perhaps even try to add to Hogwarts's lesson plans for safety. I would become the most annoying healer and adherent to the rules then." That seemed more likely, already she could see the students rolling their eyes as her fifty year old self, graying and wrinkled, as she came to guest lecture them on the safety of not trying to change a charm.

  

---

“And by then I shall probably be half-blind as well as batty, and not notice if there were anything wrong with you even if your skin was green,” Rommy chuckled, between munching. Truthfully, by that point they would have both been ousted by the hospital as old wanine retirees, too set in their sensible old ways to keep up with new healing advances. Or, the alternative, as Malou described -

“My, you would make just the perfect Hogwarts nurse one day, wouldn’t you?” she added, joking. “When you have quite tired of the workload and find yourself needing new people to grumble at. I was always terrified of ending up in the Hospital Wing.” But that was only half the school nurses’ fault, and again Rommy’s allergies towards carelessness or carefree-ness, whichever it was. It was only in joking about these weary possibilities of their future, in which she would begin to dislike her career - one of the dearest things in both their lives, clearly - that Rosamund started to wonder whether it was a mistake not to be searching for the chance to settle with a husband and have a family. (She wondered whether her mother had not been very clever to secure the family first when she was young and eligible and continue with her healing after; Rommy supposed her prospects would be more declined than they already were when she was a strict spinster of fifty-five.)

She quieted a little. Saying that out loud would make this a very depressing lunch.

---

@"Marie-Louise Skovgaard"

  

---

For as silly as it was, it was nice to joke about the future. There were days when Malou wasn't so sure how life would turn out. But to consider it with a tinge of humor was nice, especially when mortality had been what began their conversation.

"That's a terrifying prospect!" Malou could remember her own trepidation of the school nurse when she had been young. "I was as well - well until I began absolutely fascinated with healing. But when I had just started school...." She had struggled in those days, her shyness and timidity often overshadowing even the simplest of conversations let alone one when she had been ill.

"If I do end up in such a role, I should hope the students don't fear me too much." She admitted truthfully.

  

---

Rosamund nodded fervently, thinking it funny that she had been just the same. Perhaps it was having her mother a healer, too, making her feel, quite irrationally, that being chided by the school nurse was being a family disappointment.

Her smile softened at that admission, turned to truthfulness again. “Oh, no, you would be much too fair to them for them to ever hate you,” Rommy insisted seriously, and then grinned, “fearsome as you may be when your patients don’t listen to you.”

Speaking of, she was overdue to do her rounds of the ward, and see who in Artifact Incidents had not been taking the prescribed advice today.

---

  

---

Malou chuckled, her friend was definitely right. "On that note, I suppose I should see to my current patients. They brought Mr. Periwinkle in again." Malou sighed, the elderly man refused to listen to advice and managed to end up in the hospital on a biweekly basis rotating through the wards as he seemed content to cause magical incidents on a wide variety of issues. "I hope you enjoy the rest of your day." Malou added as she stood up. Jokes and futures aside she did very much love her current work.

  

---