Three-Robert Moore, Healer
We must all learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.
BLAISE PASCAL
It was just getting dark as Cho wobbled off the Knight Bus. The conductor person was very keen to get rid of her (she’d been sick three times all over the place). She lugged her cases into an unusually quiet King’s Cross Station. It was so eyrie inside, with practically no people. Cho dumped her luggage onto a trolley and wheeled it to Platform Nine and three-quarters. The only noises were her footsteps and the ‘click, click, click’ of her trolley. It seemed like she was the only person on Earth. She walked as fast as she could to the ticket barrier.
Normally the place around Platforms Nine and Ten were swarming with Muggles so it was difficult to go without being noticed. Now there was no one to see. It seemed like an empty shell without all the people. Like her. She was a ghost of the happy, laughing girl who had pushed her trolley to this spot almost a year ago. Then she was giggling with Ellie looking forward to a bright new term. Not knowing in a year’s time she would have been asked out by two Champions. Not suspecting she would have kissed kind, honest Cedric Diggory. And definitely not guessing a year later You-Know-Who would be back, Hogwarts would be closed, and she’d be running away to join the Order of the Phoenix. Cho felt so empty as she steered her trolley and took a deep breath.
She gripped it tightly and ran towards the barrier. When she was two feet away she closed her eyes, and only opened them again when she was on the other side. There was no Hogwarts Express, no students, no anxious parents. Only a dingy thing which looked quite like a Muggle Cash Machine stood against the brick wall. Cho fumbled in her jeans pocket until she found her card, and slotted it into the reader. The blank screen popped into life, with yellow lettering appearing on a purple background.
“Are you Miss Cho Chang?” she read out loud.
She pressed the silver ‘yes’ button.
A few questions came up about her House, favourite subjects and Quidditch position. She supposed it was to make sure she was Cho Chang.
“Location predetermined: Hogwarts castle. Have a pleasant journey,” she read out and grabbed her bags before she disappeared in a flash of electric blue light.
***
Cho slammed down onto the grass outside Hogwarts. She gasped. This Particle Debit machine certainly knew how to make it feel like you’d been ripped apart and hastily glued back together again. She definitely preferred Floo Powder. Cho picked herself, and her bags, up and walked unsteadily towards the front door of Hogwarts.
Now her journey was almost at an end, she was starting to get so nervous her stomach twisted itself into complex knots. What if they’d made a mistake? Or the Order didn’t want her? The whole idea of having to go back to her parents and grovel to be forgiven was unbearable. She’d rather live on the streets.
Not sure what to do, Cho knocked on the front door. She put her suitcase down and waited. After a few minutes, she heard footsteps in the Entrance Hall, and the door was yanked open. A girl with bushy brown hair pulled back into a messy bun stuck her head out.
“Oh, hi Cho.”
“Erm-hello, Hermione. I’ve come-”
“- to join the Order. Yes, I know.”
She bent down to pick up her bags.
“Don’t worry about those. You go in and get some food.”
“Wow, is dinner still on, then?” Cho asked eagerly. She suddenly felt really hungry.
“Yep. Some members arrive quite late.”
She almost ran across the marble floor and into the Great Hall. Cho gasped. She was so used to seeing four long House tables that the room without them seemed empty. There was just a single rectangular one with an odd assortment of chairs. It wasn’t as though there were only a few people, but compared to the thousand who sat there, it was a big difference. Everyone became silent as she walked in, peering to get a good look at her. It was like being on stage. Cho tried to speed past everyone as fast as she could.
She passed her Transfiguration teacher, in conversation with a fairly young black-haired man. Next to them the Patil twins were giggling with Lavender Brown. Fred and George, and several other boys, were throwing iced cakes at each other. Ron Weasley pointed at her as she passed, which made her feel even more embarrassed. And when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, as soon as Harry saw her he spilt pumpkin juice all over himself. She finally sank down, feeling very relieved, into an empty chair opposite a red-head whose name she’d forgotten.
“Hermione was sitting there,” she objected loudly.
Cho jumped as though she’d been electrocuted, “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Ginny,” said the girl herself, who was standing behind her. She summoned another chair and sat down next to Cho.
“We’ve got a new recruit,” Hermione said brightly to the person on Ginny’s right.
“Is that so?” growled Mad-Eye Moody as he took a swig from his hipflask.
Cho didn’t like being stared at by that creepy blue eye, so she began to pile food onto her plate, “Yes, Professor.”
“What’s your name, then?”
It felt so weird to introduce yourself to someone who she thought she’d been taught by for a year, and then turned out to be the nutty son of a respected Ministry official, “Cho Chang.”
“Good to meet you,” he shook her hand, “I hope you can hold up better than Ambrina Wardo. She-”
“Thank you, Professor Moody,” said Hermione sharply.
Cho tried to eat more jacket potato, but it felt like mud in her mouth. What had happened to the girl he had mentioned? Had she been killed? Tortured? Forced to see her loved ones die? Was that what was going to happen to her? Maybe she hadn’t thought enough about what joining the Order meant.
Hermione saw Cho wasn’t finding Moody’s company encouraging.
“So, shall I show you to the dormitory?” she scraped her chair back.
“Dormitory?”
“Yes. Gryffindor and Slytherin are for the boys. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are for the girls. There’s a spare bed in mine.”
Cho followed Hermione up the stairs on the very familiar path to the Ravenclaw Common Room. They went into what used to be the first-year girl’s dormitory. Hermione showed her the empty bed, which had her bags dumped by it.
“Tomorrow you can go and speak to Professor McGonagall. She’ll tell you what work you have to do.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
***
After wolfing down some breakfast the next day, Cho sprinted to her ex-Transfiguration teacher’s office and knocked. She really hoped she’d be doing some fighting. It wasn’t that she wanted to be killing people, but the thought of the Death Eaters who murdered Cedric walking freely made her grind her teeth.
“Enter,” came a muffled voice from the office.
Cho opened the door. Professor McGonagall was seated at a desk with a large, dog-eared file open on the table-top. She hastily stuffed the folder into one of the drawers. Cho sat down on the straight-backed chair facing the teacher.
“Let me start by congratulating you, Miss Chang, on your excellent set of OWL results.”
“Thank you.”
“Your Transfiguration mark was well-deserved.”
Cho felt her cheeks grow hot, “Erm, yeah I-”
“I suppose you’re wondering what we want you to do for the Order.”
She nodded, relieved Professor McGonagall had brought the subject up for her.
“Well, we’re desperate to get a new nurse for our hospital, after Miss Bundy left. And Moore won’t take anyone who hasn’t got their OWLs, which is fair enough, I suppose. But it doesn’t leave us with much choice.”
Panic flooded through Cho’s veins like icy water, “You want me to work in a hospital?”
“Why, yes. We’re fighting a war, people get hurt.”
“But I ran away from my parents so I wouldn’t have to do medicine!”
“You ran away?” asked Professor McGonagall sharply.
Cho cursed herself inside her head. Why did she have to shoot her mouth off the whole time? “Yes I-” she hesitated, “they wanted me to become a Healer.”
“So you’re not getting any money, apart from your salary at the Order.”
She hadn’t really thought about that. “Yes,” said Cho impatiently, “I suppose so. It doesn’t really matter. I mean I’ve got somewhere to live and food to eat here, haven’t I?”
Professor McGonagall hesitated, “I am begging you, Miss Chang, do this job for us. You’re not a killer, you couldn’t do it. I’ve taught you for five years, and I know that, deep down, you’d rather be saving lives than taking them.”
“But-”
“The Order would be very grateful if you took this post.”
“I-ok, then.”
“Excellent!” beamed Professor McGonagall. “I’ll send you to Moore right away then.”
Cho pushed the chair back and was about to get up.
“But, before you go, I have to ask you one thing.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“I want you to promise you’ll try not to talk to Moore, except for work.”
“I’ll do my best, but…why?”
“Because he is a unmarried, and he’s a young man,” said Professor McGonagall severely.
Cho wanted to ask what she was talking about. Was she worried they’d distract each other, or something?
“He’s not for you,” her teacher added more gently.
“What are you-”
Professor McGonagall clasped and unclasped her hands, “He has…family matters, and I hope you’ll understand.” She stood up, and began to walk up and down the room. “Don’t dream for an instant that he could ever…well…just don’t fall in love with him, that’s all.”
“Err-I’ll do my best,” Cho did her best not to raise an eyebrow. Did McGonagall think she fancied a new guy every week? Or that she couldn’t handle this mysterious ‘Moore’? Maybe he was already in love with someone else, but then why didn’t she say he was?
The Professor sat down again. She took an eagle quill out of a pot on the desk, and dipped it in some ink. She began to write on a fresh piece of parchment, and talked as she did so, “I think you’ll find him quite a challenge. He is often frowning, but like many men things have happened in his life to make him like that. He’s a genius, but he’s also a devil.”
Did she think I only love mad, bad people?
“He works himself almost to death, and his nurses too.”
Encouraging. Very encouraging.
“But don’t become offended at anything he might say to you. He’s not very…tactful. He always just speaks his mind,” she folded up the parchment.
“Yeah, I won’t.”
“Good.” Said Professor McGonagall. She stood up and gave Cho the note, “Give this to him, will you, please?”
Then she pulled her from the room down a stony corridor. “I’ll take you to see him now, shall I?”
Cho followed her past tapestries, paintings and suits of armor to the Hospital Wing. At first, she thought it looked exactly the same, only with different people in the beds. The white tables stacked with potion bottles and ‘Get Well Soon’ cards. The fresh white linen which seemed to be like sheets of fine parchment. The green blankets, faded from too many washes. But then she noticed a corner curtained off.
“That’s for surgery. Moore might need you to assist him there.”
Cho didn’t trust her voice, so she just nodded. The idea of standing around while people got dissected wasn’t very appealing to her. Professor McGonagall opened a door into a small study, “Wait there. He’ll be along in a bit.”
It was very cramped inside, and obviously belonged to a man. There was little in the way of feminine comfort. The walls were lined with shelves stacked with books. And not just medical ones. There were books on Philosophy, on poetry and on history. There were books written in French, and about Defense Against the Dark Arts. And there were a couple which looked like they were written in Latin. There were also several grey filing cabinets, with all the compartments labeled in spiky, uneven handwriting. He had a desk, too, made from a light wood, with chips and scratches taken out in places. The only things on it were a black quill, some parchment, a bottle of ink and a photo in a plain brown frame. It showed a severe-looking man and woman and two boys, one fair-haired and one dark.
Cho paced the room turning the note over and over in her hands. She felt like a butterfly which had been trapped all its life. Then one day its cage had been left open and it flew out and escaped, only to be recaptured the nest day by someone else. Why had she listened to Professor McGonagall? Why hadn’t she just sat there and refused to move until she’d changed her mind? She leant against one of the only bits of free wall and put her knuckles to her eyes and tried to stop herself from crying.
“Hello, I suppose you’re my new nurse,” came a voice from behind her.
Cho whipped round. A man was leaning against the doorframe. His hands were in his pockets and he was half-smiling in an amused sort of way. When McGonagall said he was ‘young’, Cho presumed she meant by McGonagall’s standards, so he’d be about thirty-five, or something. But he looked only a couple of years out of school.
“Yes, I’m Cho Chang.”
“Robert Moore,” he said, offering her his hand which she tentatively shook.
He seemed a lot taller than he actually was, because he looked like her knew everything worth knowing. He didn’t look like he spent much time on his appearance. Maybe if he did he would be quite handsome. His hair was black and slightly tousled, and he had clear blue-grey eyes. He looked serious, even when he was smiling. Cho wasn’t quite sure if it was because of his long, straight nose or slightly sallow skin.
He took a hand out of his white overall he had on over his clothes, “Do you have any experience with hospitals?”
Cho could tell he wasn’t taking her seriously at all. She drew herself up as high as she could, “Yes. My mother and father are Healers-in-charge of the Spell Damage and Artifact Accident wards at St Mungo’s.”
He raised one of his eyebrows, “Ooh, this girl’s got her fair share of pride.”
Cho tossed her silky hair away from her face and tried to ignore him. “Professor McGonagall told me to give you this,” she thrust the folded piece of parchment at him.
Moore opened it, his whole face darkening as he read it. He crumpled the note up and surveyed Cho for a minute, then snorted and threw it in the bin standing next to his desk.
“So, you’ll be starting tomorrow. I’ll go into everything in detail then, and show you what to do. I won’t need you all the time, so if you’re free you can come in here. But you need to be on your toes, because you never know what might happen here.”
He seemed to have a very slight French accent, though he was obviously English.
Cho nodded, “Uh-huh.”
“And I always need you to arrive on-time. It’s very important to keep things running smoothly.”
“When do you want me too come?”
“Six. Am, that is. Not pm.”
“Six?” Cho echoed.
How was she meant to get up that early every day? Marietta always spoken about her as ‘not a morning person’ which didn’t even begin to describe it. She liked to be able to stay up really late at night and then sleep in the next day, not have to get up at anti-social hours of the morning.
“What do you expect? You’re not a school-girl anymore.”
“I know that, but-”
“And if there’s an emergency in the night I’ll send someone up to get you. So, tomorrow at six, then?”
He thought she wouldn’t be able to, but she’d prove him wrong, “I’ll be there.”
Roses and Thorns by Phoebe Gruzelier
Chapter Notes: Not so long or so troublesome of chapter two, thankfully.
As always, nothing of this belongs for me, it belongs to JKR. Except for Robert Moore, but I have no claim on him. He's his own man through and through.