CHAPTER V.

Zelda owled her in application to St. Mungo's College of Magical Medicine at the dawn of November, having written in the "apprenticeship" section that she was presently serving one under the Hogwarts matron, and would be done just as the school year would end. It was, she considered as she made the trek from the Owlery to the Great Hall, a great deal more satisfying than she had anticipated.

Glancing down at her watch, Zelda grimaced when she saw it was already nine in the morning — she had finished sorting antidotes for Madam Pomfrey at eight, double and triple-checked her application, and sent it off before even having had a spot of coffee or anything at all to eat.

"Bancroft! Hey — Bancroft!"

Zelda turned around to see a tall blond red-haired running towards her, his black and yellow scarf trailing behind him like a banner. She stopped, quirking an eyebrow at him as he skidded to a halt.

"Carter, was it?" she asked, hoping desperately she was right. "From the Slug Club?"

"Yeah, that's me," he said, and held out a hand as though they had not shared many dinners at the same table. "First name's Graham."

Zelda simply stared unblinkingly at his outstretched hand before he withdrew it awkwardly. "Okay then," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Er — I was just wondering, since I don't have a date to Slughorn's party at Christmas, if you'd like to go with me?"

He looked, if Zelda was in a flattering mood, rather nervous. She decided to take pity on him, if not for convenience's sake than for the fact that he was really very attractive. "Alright," she said. "Meet me outside my common room before the party starts."

"Sure, sounds good," Graham said quickly, and he took on the expression of a child who'd just been handed his favourite sweet.

Zelda didn't stay to savour it, though, because at that moment her stomach gave a pinch of hunger and she excused herself, wondering vaguely what her pureblood parents who didn't exist might say if they knew she would be going to a party with a Hufflepuff. She knew what her Muggle dad (who did, in fact, exist) might say — but that didn't matter.

She couldn't date Graham, of course. It would, for one, cause more gossip surrounding her than she would like — but it would also mean having to keep up her colossal lie with someone she was in a relationship with, and that was something Zelda simply could not do.

She had a rule with herself, which was not to date anyone at Hogwarts, and to turn down anyone who might pursue a second date after the first (the rule used to be to turn down anyone who asked for a first, but then Jonathan Davies from Ravenclaw had asked her to Hogsmeade in fifth year, and she hadn't had the heart to turn him down. She had, however, had the heart to end it before he asked for a second). After all, what would happen if things got serious? Didn't people in serious relationships introduce each other to their parents, bring them into their homes?

No. Zelda could not do that with someone who was already under the impression that she had a very different family than the one she really had — and so she resolved, as she walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, to break poor Graham Carter' heart after the Christmas party. She did need a date, after all, and here was one, ready-made.

"Hello," Dorcas said brightly as Zelda sat down beside her at the Slytherin table. "Toast?"

"Thank you," said Zelda wearily.

"Beginning to regret packing your schedule to the brim, I see," came Pandora's prim voice from across the table.

Zelda looked up, startled, into the serenely expressionless face of her friend. Pandora was as pale and wispy, yet just as elegant, as ever. Zelda sighed tiredly. "Merlin — I'm so tired I didn't even see you there. . ."

"Zel, what's this I hear about you going to Sluggy's party at Christmas with a Hufflepuff?" Dorcas asked, though she didn't sound angry, only mildly curious.

Choking on the toast Dorcas had handed her, Zelda coughed and said, "He asked me five minutes ago, Dorcas. How —"

"She saw it," Pandora supplied, ignoring the affronted glare Dorcas cast her.

"Oh," Zelda said. She frowned. "Well, he just cornered me and asked so I supposed I'd say yes. I didn't feel like asking someone else who wasn't invited just in case they were horrible, and he already had an invite, so Slughorn will approve."

Dorcas only shrugged; Pandora gave no reply.

Zelda bit into the toast she was holding in one hand and while pouring herself a mug of black coffee in the other, but instantly stopped when a loud roaring noise made her jump again; scanning the hall, Zelda scowled when she saw that the source of the racket was the Gryffindor table. "What's up with them?"

Pandora rolled her eyes as James Potter stood up on a bench directly behind her and, using his wand, began to conduct his housemates in a bellowing chorus of "Happy Birthday."

"Black's birthday," Dorcas said, as though this somehow explained the jubilation; the Gryffindors were acting as though they had just one the House Cup by a single point. "He's come of age."

"The Potters got him presents," Pandora said, though it wasn't in a sneer. She just seemed mildly interested.

Zelda stared. Pandora bristled at her. "What?"

Shaking her head, Zelda replied, "Nothing. . . you just seem —"

"Nicer," Dorcas supplied.

Furrowing her pale eyebrows, Pandora eyed them both as if they had each grown an extra head. "Whatever do you mean?"

"Well, on a normal day," Dorcas said, waving her fork emphatically, "were Potter and his cronies having choir practice at the table behind us at nine in the morning, you'd be cursing them out and calling them names under your breath." She shoved a hunk of scrambled eggs in her mouth, then spoke with her mouth full. "Dishishnot a normal day."

"Table manners, Dor," Zelda chided playfully.

Dorcas gave a great swallow. "I said," she implored, "that today is not —"

"We heard what you said," Pandora snapped.

Zelda snorted. "There she is."

Admittedly, Pandora had been acting stranger than usual; she was constantly ditching Zelda and Dorcas to study in the library, and was quieter more often than not. Zelda, although she planned to keep it to herself, had a feeling it had to do with Pandora's new tutor, a sixth year Ravenclaw with his own student publication. Pandora would never admit it, of course, but Zelda thought it was high time someone nicer influenced her friend's behavior — and character.

"Did I tell you?" Dorcas asked suddenly, setting aside the Daily Prophet she'd been reading (Zelda caught a glimpse of the headline and her heart jumped into her throat; something about Muggle-born disappearances), "Ambrose Nott asked me to Slughorn's Christmas party. I hadn't had any way to get in beforehand — now we'll be able to shmooze over caviar cauldrons or whatever it is Slughorn serves at those things."

Zelda stifled a laugh and said, "That's great, Dorcas. And they're just plain caviar puffs." However, try as she might, she could not help noticing that Pandora had suddenly gone slightly pink.

Dorcas, however, noticed it first. She raised her eyebrows. "Don't tell me you already had a date before the both of us and didn't think to mention it. . ."

"Well," Pandora said, clearly trying (and failing) to appear haughty, "if you must know —"

Dorcas rolled her eyes. "Yes, we must —"

"Xenophilius has asked me to the Christmas party."

Both Zelda and Dorcas stared blankly at her for a moment until Zelda said, ". . .Who?"

Pandora's blush deepened. "Xenophilius," she said impatiently. When the silence stretched on, she gave a short, huffy sigh. "Lovegood? You know — Ravenclaw? Blond? My Transfiguration tutor?"

"Oh!" Dorcas exclaimed, then frowned. "Hang on. . . he's not a member of the Slug Club, he wouldn't have an invitation. . . unless —"

Zelda realized before Dorcas finished her sentence. "You asked him."

Though it seemed impossible, Pandora's cheeks grew pinker still, and she glared furiously down at the table. "We're friends, really, and he is quite brilliant," she said, clearly mortified at being caught associating with someone not in Slytherin, "and we've been talking about spellcraft — you know, experimental spells, creating incantations, that sort of thing — and I was saying how I haven't got a clue who to take to the dance, and he just — he just offered, said it might save me the trouble!"

"Seems like you've worked yourself into a fright about it," Dorcas pointed out, "so I dunno about saving you trouble, exactly. . ."

"Well —" Pandora straightened indignantly. "Well, it's not like Daddy cares much who I go out with, does he, so long as I marry a respectable pureblood. And Lucius already married into the Black family so it's not like I have that much pressure on me anyway."

But even as she said it, Zelda knew this was a lie. But neither she nor Dorcas, it seemed, could bring themselves to tell this to Pandora, for she clearly already knew — so they simply changed topics, leaving Zelda to ponder Abraxas Malfoy's wrath, and how terrible it might be.

━━

A reply to her St. Mungo's application came promptly on the seventh of November, and Zelda stood breathlessly in the Owlery reading the reply, eyes skimming over it as her breath formed tiny clouds in front of her.

You have been moved forward in the application process and are henceforth invited to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries for a screening interview, read the letter somewhere in the middle, and Zelda didn't bother to read the rest, for she was already jumping for joy, letting out a shout of jubilation — for here she was, on the path to becoming a Healer, at last —

"Oh," said a voice. "Hello."

She spun around and came face-to-face with a bemused looking Remus Lupin.

Zelda's cheeks immediately grew hot. She shoved the letter in her pocket and stared determinedly at the ground. "Sorry," she muttered. "I was just reading a reply —"

"To the Owlery?" Remus asked, sounding puzzled as he walked to the side of the room and tied a letter to a screech owl's leg. "Why didn't it come directly to the Great Hall?"

Zelda did not dare mention to Remus that she had listed her return address as the Owlery of Hogwarts specifically so that she could open the letter in private, without anyone to perform for. She only stayed silent, then stalked out of the room, Remus's voice from their last interaction echoing in her head: You would've been better in Ravenclaw.

━━

In considering the invitation to an interview while lying in bed that night, Zelda's mind's eye inexplicably conjured up an image of her mother, of the way she might smile if she were still alive to hear this wondrous news. An interview — even the embarrassing interaction with Remus Lupin was now forgotten, because Zelda would be able to take a step into the future. Into her future.

She lay awake under her four-poster bed with its emerald and silver drapings, cheeks flushed with happiness, and the endless waterfall of grief for her mother that flowed within her chest could not even begin to put out the fire that bloomed in Zelda's mind.

━━

Two weeks passed, and soon Zelda was granted permission by her Head of House to take the Floo to St. Mungo's for her interview. She sat now in a rigid wooden chair, back straight as a board, and sitting at an antique mahogany desk was a middle-aged Mediwitch in like green robes who had introduced herself as Healer Cruptick.

"Alright, just one more question before you go. Why do you wish to become a Healer, Miss —" Cruptick glanced down at the file on her desk "— Miss Bancroft?"

Zelda hesitated, and thought inexplicably of her mother, of the time she'd been sick — of how she'd withered away, gray and frail, voice softening to a whisper as she lay dying day by day, wasted away by the cancerous tumour which eventually killed her. She thought of the day she'd received her Hogwarts letter, given to her by a kind but stern Professor McGonagall, and Zelda remembered thinking she didn't want to go to this Hogwarts place because she simply must tell her mother about this miraculous new world, except she couldn't, because her mother was dead — and so why should Zelda bother going at all?

"Well," Zelda said, and then suddenly a surge of impulse overcame her, "Well — my mum was a Muggle. She was sick. When. . . when I was younger. And I knew I could do things, but I didn't know it was magic until after she'd died, and when I learned about Hogwarts, I thought surely there must be magic to heal. And —" at Cruptick's raised eyebrow, she flushed, but pushed onward "— and there was. So. . . here I am."

Blast. Why, when the truth decided to show its face for once, could she not be more eloquent? Why was it that only lies sounded perfect and flawless and carefully crafted, like prose? Zelda clenched her jaw, but remained silent as Cruptick used a quill to jot down some notes on her parchment file.

"Thank you for that, Miss Bancroft," she said at last. "Keep in mind that if you wish to start Healer training directly after you graduate — this coming August, that is — you must make sure to go to your apprenticeship every single weekday. That those three hundred hours be exact is essential." As Cruptick stood, Zelda thought of Pomfrey, and a dull thud of anger beat in her chest alongside her heart. "We will be in touch with you sometime before Christmas to let you know if you have been accepted to next year's program."

Taking this as her cue to leave, Zelda let Healer Cruptick lead her to a fireplace in some other office (they passed several open rooms on the way, and at one door Cruptick explained that some poor middle-aged man had recently been bitten by a werewolf and had left the hospital before they could observe his first transformation. Zelda could only feel pity as they passed the empty but chaotically messy room).

With one last goodbye to Cruptick, Zelda stepped into the huge fireplace and let the Healer press a handful of Floo powder in her open hand — she dropped it into the grate, shouting, "Professor Slughorn's office!" — and suddenly she was at Hogwarts.

"Ah, my dear girl, there you are! Held up, I take it, by the excellent questions?" Slughorn exclaimed as soon as Zelda stepped out of the fireplace, brushing soot off her cloak (she had elected to wear slightly dressier robes than her Hogwarts uniform, but Wizarding robes nonetheless). He did not wait for an answer before asking, "How was the interview?"

"Horrible," Zelda groaned, and left.

But she could not collapse into bed yet — having promised Madam Pomfrey she would let her know how the interview went, Zelda trudged out of the dungeons (in the opposite direction of the Slytherin common room) and up to the first floor where lay the Hospital Wing.

Miraculously, the doors were open, and though it was already dark, nobody seemed to be slumbering in the beds. Curious, Zelda made her way to the office at the back of the vaulted room, but it was empty. On the wall opposite her was a large wooden door which Zelda knew led from the Hospital wing to the east side of the castle grounds.

The door was slightly ajar, and a harsh, sharp sliver of moonlight was cast across the stone floor of the matron's office.

Zelda wanted, strangely, to follow it — why was Madam Pomfrey out on the grounds at this time of night? But she knew she couldn't, namely because she didn't have her prefect's badge, which was the only thing allowing her to be out and about after curfew. Letting out a small sigh, Zelda turned on her heel and left, resolving to speak to Madam Pomfrey in the morning.

She made her way, slowly and tiredly, from the Hospiral Wing down the grand staircase to the dungeons. When Zelda passed the very last window that showed a view of the grounds before the castle's walls continued underground, she caught a glimpse of the full moon, in its middle-phase between waxing and waning, a bright white circle illuminating the grounds.

In the distance, a howl sounded — Zelda shivered, hurrying down the stairs to the common room where she could be comforted by the knowledge that the creatures of the Great Lake were most likely far better than whatever the Forbidden Forest hid.

She did not hear, far behind her, Madam Pomfrey return to her office, brew herself a cup of tea, and settle down in an armchair to wait until the full moon set once more.