“I’m being black-balled!” Tim looked suitably shocked, though the thought through his head had gone from being kicked in the nuts hard to then the real meaning of the term. “… he won’t sponsor any apprentice unless they have an Order of Merlin…”

“Whaaaat?” Tim was confused. People their age didn’t just get given Orders of Merlin. It was for truly tremendous stuff!

“They’re right… to be pursuing a real cure.” Frank spoke on ELF. “Our Ministry certainly isn’t,” Tim tilted his head barely perceptively and gave a hm.

“St Mungo’s isn’t”
  “Ah...”
“I don’t think a cure is some kind of attack on werewolf culture, we need a remedy to a curse, a dangerous curse.”
  “I suppose.” Tim motioned as if weighing it up physically.

“… can’t be … with those people doing awful things…”

“I guess there’s always the risk that fanatics join a cause and take it too far, or use it as a platform for more extreme views.” Tim agreed. “When you put it that way it does sound more reasonable, mate. I can’t speak for creature injuries as to whether they are working on something, but I feel like we’re often forced to focus on treatment rather than eradicating a disease altogether.” Was it a disease? He’d probably picked the wrong word.

“Are you going to offer your skills in finding a cure then?”

"Yeah, I dunno, actually. It seems incredibly difficult," Frank replied with a light laugh. "And what if a potion's not the thing? If it's anything to do with a wand or a rune, I'm useless. I mean, it makes sense. There's only so many healers in the world and there's always a new emergency to attend to."

"There's a short course coming up in the summer on the Belby Wolfsbane, so I was going to try and get a spot. I really hope they get around to releasing the Gamp formula, but in the meantime, it seems foundational to at least understand the original."

Frank might have been implying he didn't already know how it was done; of course, the curious and studious son of an apothecary had read the formula front to back and had been hands-on with preparing all the reagents many times over. And though his dad had a strong knack at brewing anything he needed to, the kind of mastery he could learn from at Knareswick was nothing to sniff at.

“… wand or a rune. I’m useless…”
  “No mate…” Tim frowned and shook his head at the ‘useless’. Frank wasn’t useless. Never had been, never would be.

“Sounds like a plan.” He confirmed to the more positive notion of attending a short course on Belby Wolfsbane. “Got to know the original before you can make a decent variation.” It had always been the case. Learning spell roots in charms, transfiguration and such while studious Ravenclaws, memorising base potions that you could then build upon.

“I envy you sometimes,” Tim explained. “I miss the joy of learning things. Not that I don’t as a healer, but since I qualified it’s not really been about lectures so much. I get a nostalgia about a classroom. It’s odd.” Hopefully Frank would remind him it came with copious assignments, reading and dodgy teachers like true reality. No rosy-tinted lenses even at the comparatively new halls of Knareswick.

"Do not envy me," Frank said, offering only the solace of his dour demeanor that Tim Pepper should be happy where he was.

"It's learning but the competition takes all the joy out of it, actually. I miss when everyone was friends, and we saw each other every day." It was Franks turn at the nostalgia. His mother had warned him off it before, nostalgia; she said that you couldn't live off Penseive soup or something like that.  The past was never as good or as bad as you remembered it being and you could never truly go back. Wash your hands for dinner.

Frank downed a significant amount of his glass in that fortifying way he'd seen people do, when they needed to make a decision.

"We should go out," Frank declared. "Let loose. Go a little mad. Fuck it."

This sounded awkward coming from Frank who oozed about as much crazed sexuality as a freshly frocked monk. He always ended up being the parent when they went out, if chatting over glasses of beer in a pub was anymore wild than doing the same at their flat.

“I can understand that.” Tim agreed to the thoughts on competition. Those sorts of intellectual competitions amongst Ravenclaws could be mighty tiring and didn’t bring out the best in them.

“We should go out, let loose. Go a little mad. Fuck it.”

“Alright.” Tim replied, intrigued. “It is Saturday after all.” He wasn’t going to squash Frank’s sudden need to be social “Where’s good round here?”

Whereas a muggle might call it early on a Saturday night, wix kind had places where time didn’t seem to exist and it was always about 11pm inside the enchantments. He’d thought of suggesting they owl for some company, but Frank had seemed a little prickly over bringing up Ascella, Frank’s housemate.

“Don’t worry about accommodating my need to pick up girls, either.” He shot Frank a knowing look. Tim barely had time for friends in his healer life, let alone a commitment to a girl.

Tim Pepper didn't attempt to talk Frank out of the impulse so they were hopelessly trapped.

"It's settled then," Frank said. "We'll caper. But I reckon I need to stop home and clean up first, actually."

Tim might not be keen to pull, but Frank kept thinking he should give it a go. His brother did it easily enough and he was a dullard. "I can ask around where the good places to go are. I'll consider it a success if we don't end up at the library."

With plans made, the boys finished up their drinks and headed out to make ready for an attempt at what seemed like normalcy to the outside observer, which they seemed to be.

Fin