It had been such a long day, but she had promised that tonight they would cook something that could be warmed up the other nights as their shift patterns at St Mungo's could often make cooking a bit haphazard on late evenings.

So, hair tied up in a bun still from work, with a few stray black locks curling beside her ears, she moved from one thing to the next, washing the vegetables, a suitably large pan out already waiting to receive all the items for the winter stew which would do them for quite a few days.

A bottle of red wine was breathing on the kitchen table behind her, with two wine glasses. Soon enough, it was poured and with a flick of her wand, the vegetables danced back to the table to be peeled on the chopping board. Although she could probably chop them all with her wand if she tried, it was far easier to use a knife, especially since she spent much of the day doing similar with all manner of beetles and roots.

She raised one of the red wine glasses and toasted Arcturus politely before sipping from it. To hell if it went to her head before the stew was ready to eat, and bother if she had gone straight into cooking minutes after arriving in.

"So Joy was telling me you've all had a bit of a fun week already, and it's only Tuesday?" Elixa remarked, lining up the first vegetable to be sliced with well practiced precision beneath a large silver metal knife, wine glass still in hand for another sip. She raised her eyes again to the healer,

"Do I need to do a trip up there and do an emergency stock take?"

Arcturus was supposedly involved in the process as well, but Elixa seemed to have volunteered to do everything this time. He was impressed with the choice of wine, at least, even though he wasn't much a fan of wine. It seemed of good quality, and really he probably didn't need to ask for more than that.

"Is it all going to be vegetables?" he asked, an amused smile curling his lips at the sight of the variety of plants that was currently occupying the kitchen. Well, it was the kitchen table, but he'd been anal about it before Elixa could stop him and now everything had been arranged in cooking order. He was only thankful she found it funny rather than annoying.

"Fun week? Me?" Arcturus shook his head. "You should see my potions logbook. I only wish I could have a fun week, if it were because I get to watch various ingredients spontaneously combust and feel no smidgen of concern about it because I can just get more ingredients from you. With surprising ease, I might add." It had been a thought that niggled him a bit sometimes, when his mind had time to breathe between patients or paperwork. She was always so ready to hand him something at his behest, and always with a big smile as if she hadn't seen him in ten years.

"You'll be fine stock-wise, I think. Potions floor has never been very busy, but then again who knows, we all make potions just in case there's a sudden influx of accidental poisoning cases abound from all over the country." He picked up his knife, since they'd agreed to do the job at the same time and speed up the dicing and slicing job. Even though he didn't involve himself in the activity as much as Elixa did during her working hours, he'd cooked for himself since adolescence and he wasn't about to stop any time soon.

"No, course not, just thought we'd chop them first. The beef's in there." She tapped a brown paper package between them which was lightly frosted on the outside owing to a cooling charm.

She let him explain about his week at St Mungo's though, as she was genuinely interested. Any excuse to help out on that floor and she'd be up in a blink of an eye. Still not quite over the whole crush on the housemate, no not at all.

"Good, good," Elixa replied warmly, nodding as she said it, and gestured as usual with her hands, though one was holding a carrot and the other the knife.

"Though I'll be sure to pop up and do a check as usual though. Have to do the forecasting report next week, and don't want to under-order if you've increased consumption up there." She raised an eyebrow as if gently nagging the healer for his good work.

"Hope you aren't all making the trivial potions up there, you know we can whip those up for you, while you all look after the specialist stuff." She gestured again with the knife, while depositing the stub of the carrot previously gestured with over to one end of the chopping board.

"Otherwise I'll have to come and sort you all out!"

He didn't see her gesture with the knife, he had bent over the chopping board as he set to work on the potato resting on its surface. Potatoes involved some brainwork, and even then his talking was mostly to the aforesaid vegetable - well, technically it was a nut - since he wasn't intending to cut his fingers off.

"We're not making trivial potions up on the floor, how dare you suggest that," he said, his tone lighthearted and joking as the blade of his knife bit into the starchy not-technically-veg. "The day we stop asking you for easy potions is probably the day we all get automated cauldrons adding in potion ingredients, and you know it wouldn't ever happen."

He brushed the chunks of potato to one side and picked up another peeled one, inspecting for leftover unremoved eyes. "Out of interest, though - how's our floor been in terms of supplies? Have we emptied your stores mid-week, ever? Joy probably wouldn't be very pleased to find out if we did." Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the flash of silver from Elixa's knife.

At his protests, she laughed and smiled sweetly, making short work of the next carrot.

"You're generally quite consistent in use, though I make it a personal mission not to let you get short, you know." She winked at him across the table. "Don't blame me for playing favourites."

Her lips twisted into a smirk and her eyes flashed a moment, doing nothing to hide her implication that he was her favourite.

There were more subtle things.

…. Sledgehammers…

"You've certainly given us a run for our money in emptying it mid-week, but I think someone got a bit over excited about brewing a remedy for rehydration that had worked marvellously on a family the previous week. The ones that had mistaken that laxative potion for cough mixture, remember?"

She referred to a family of five who had been admitted, coughing and losing control of one's backside wasn't the best of news for anyone!

"Poor sods," she remarked, though couldn't help but find their plight mildly amusing. "I guess they were lucky they didn't mix up something more volatile or poisonous, otherwise it wouldn't have just been sudden dehydration." Tearing the skin off an onion she continued, "Not to worry though, as I know the remedy well enough now to brew it whenever. Junior healers eh? All excited about simple potions."

She blushed a moment herself as she realised what she'd implied,
"If I take up training again, I'll try not to do that too. I know he meant well…"

"Oh, that incident." He had certainly seen the effects, and he hadn't been particularly fond of what had happened. "Yes. Well, overexcitement happens, or the occasional misjudging on the amount of ingredients needed. I remember I used to do that by accident sometimes. It's not a hard mistake to make, you just normally need a lot of practice at it before you get a grasp on how much you really need."

He dumped the potato chunks into a bowl and picked up a carrot. "Training will teach you as well, but it'll only be for the easy potions - stuff you already know how to make anyway. I guess for you training might go much faster given that you've already got the potion-making sense down." He looked up at her and waggled the carrot, giving her a smile. "Unless you need to go back to the basics...which I doubt you would need to, given your impressive work ethic."

The healer put the knife down before he dropped it and inspected said carrot before putting it down on the chopping board. "If you need help, sure, I can work with you on it. I'd be ashamed if I couldn't teach someone else about my job, not when this has been my life since coming out of school."

She nodded along to his explanation, smiling. She blushed at his description of her impressive work ethic.

"You're too kind, Arcturus, and sweet." Elixa replied softly, bashful. "I have good role models." She winked.

"I'll probably have to revise the basics just to make sure I've not forgotten too much from the Institute. It has been almost a decade, I don't doubt there's been progress."

She'd explained a little of things to Arcturus a while back, that she had followed her parents into healing at the Frolich Institute of Wizarding Medicine back in Sweden. Her reasons for leaving had been less distinct in explanation though.

"Hopefully I'll be in on the September intake with the new Hogwarts graduates, but no harm in doing a little prep beforehand so I can get ahead and sit my assessments. But gosh - yes, some heads up on things would be absolutely fantastic. I promise I'd be a most attentive student."

She sniffed, eyes beginning to water - the onions she was chopping were getting to her. In her talk she'd not thought to use a little magic to stop the fumes.

"Eugh, even if I forget onions make your eyes sting." The witch blinked hard,

"I'll be chopping my own fingers off next," she explained, "or worse, yours." She gestured playfully with the knife towards him, like it was a sword, and grinned, enjoying her time with him.

"Good job this is cooking and not amputation, though," she patted her eyes on her sleeve and blinked again, eyes better, "one of my strongest memories is a patient we had to lop the legs off from after he'd been partially eaten by a werewolf. You have to really use some force of magic to get through it all…" she continued to explain with the knife in her hand, and with action. Getting carried away, she leaned over and landed the knife with a heavy bang through a carrot waiting on the healer's chopping board to illustrate.

It wasn't the bang so much as the flash of silver in the corner of his eye that stirred the dormant room of shadows in which a particular beast of memory slumbered. It did not matter that the room was locked - if there was something that would awaken it, it would break the door down whether Arcturus liked it or not.

And it did just then, with that sliver of light. The memories flooded into his head, the flashes of light, the screams and shouts...and the sensation of temperature dropping and pain. With it came a sinking feeling in his head, as if something was rapidly draining out into the rest of his body. He took a step back from the table, feeling light-headed. It was a feeling that had lain quiet for years, but even now was still familiar to him. The next stage was not too far off...

"Elixa," he began, trying to keep himself upright as a wave of nausea overtook him, the second stage. With any luck he would have gone horizontal before he threw up - or, if he hadn't blacked out yet, had backed off far enough that when he would miss the table in both throwing up and passing out. "Do me a favour, will you? Make sure I don't hit the floor."

He didn't remember anything else after that.

In her excitement of discussing amputation over the creation of their dinner, Elixa barely noticed Arcturus stepping back away from the table the other side, presuming it was in reaction to her invading his board with vigour.

When he spoke her name, her face snapped up, his voice was different, and his eyes looked unfocused, middle-distance. Her brain made a snap assumption that she had grossed out the steely healer with her description of hacking limbs off,

"... Make sure I don't hit the floor-"

Her wand was beside her chopping board, amongst onions which scattered onto the floor, impeding her path, as she dropped her knife with a clatter amongst the pieces of carrot on his board, and seized it, diving across the corner of the table to aim as his form slid from vertical with a sagging of the knees and a floppy neck. Merlin, she'd have a bruise from meeting the corner of the table with her hip, but as she balanced on one foot, the other waggling in the air with the reach, at least Arcturus was an inch off the ground, as she grimaced.

She released the spell, and he gave a little bump as he did make it to the floor, but at least not with the speed and disgrace that he had attempted moments before. Another wave of the wand as she stumbled over the onions, sent the kitchen table and a chair away from where her housemate had landed, and she approached with some caution, dipping to her knees on the floor.

"Arc?" Elixa asked with surprise, and shook his shoulder, before putting a hand to his face and brushing back his hair to see his features better. He'd drained of colour swiftly, and was out for the count. A glance and a check about him saw no visible wound nor damage to him, so she was only to presume the amputation story really had been too much during cooking.

She rearranged his limbs while trying not to let the thought that this was the closest she'd been to her housemate in the weeks they'd lived and worked together invade her mind for any opportunistic reasons. But, my, he smelled good, and his hair was in surprisingly good condition given he didn't seem overly interested in keeping up a very styled appearance. Like any unconscious form, he was staggeringly heavy, even though he was a slighter man than many she knew. Without the conscious body's muscle tension it all turned to meat, and she regretted her subject choice more.

On his side, and a little less awkwardly positioned, she brandished her wand properly again, her other hand resting on his shoulder, still knelt on the floor before him. She could leave him to come round on his own, the body would bring him round as it reached stability again, or she could try to wake him. He might not thank her for leaving him prone on the floor, and staring at him... The spell would bring most round unless they were magically asleep.

"Arcturus? Hollingbury, easy now, you with me?" She called in a firm, but caring tone, which defied her by reflecting her shock at seeing the healer she idolised and aspired to mimic when she got to practice plummet to the ground over dinner preparations and casual healing discussion. The Swede squeezed the shoulder of her patient gently, and patted. Gosh, he better not be properly ill, she thought, she might have to provide soup and tend to him... travesty...

"Think I got you before you hit anything, but how you doing down there?"

Arcturus heard Elixa very fuzzily as he came back to consciousness. His head felt oddly light and his hands cold, but he was used to this. He lay and waited, keeping his eyes closed, until his head recovered a little.

When he opened his eyes, Elixa was looking concernedly at his face. His eyelids still felt heavy, and the feeling of nausea was still lingering somewhere in the bottom of his throat. Stage three was beginning too, by the feel of it - the ache and throb of a familiar spot around his ribs. But otherwise everything seemed to be in order, and his body didn't feel like he had hit the floor hard. He was impressed.

"Well done," he said. "Just...let me lie down here for a little more, I'd rather not sit up until my head's stopped feeling like someone drained my brain out of it."

And with that he curled up a little more, wrapping his arm around his torso and shutting his eyes as he attempted to will the old ache away. He could still see a few after-images, especially the deep rich red of blood--

Zeus, no, this wasn't the time. He forced his mind to blank out. There was nothing that he wanted right now to be reminded.

Goodness, at least he was alive, and able to speak. Excellent. Enough to deliver a possibly sarcastic comment about not letting him the floor, anyway.

"Probably for the best then," she agreed, and peered more closely at his head. "No, brains seem to not be seeping from your ears, so probably just the blood instead." She rocked backwards and put her heels down on the floor again, smelling of onions and raw vegetables.

"I mean, the blood going back to your head, not that there's blood coming out your ears, sorry." She apologised and pushed her own hair out of her face with the back of her hand as he curled into a ball.

She gave a little sigh and looked around herself, contemplating how long to let him lie on their kitchen floor.

"You not well or something, or was it what I was talking about?" The Swede asked, suspicious. She didn't really know Arcturus to be ill, but they had known each other a month or two. "Or is this something normal you just haven't mentioned?"

He took deep breaths, trying to keep his mind blank and not focus on whatever dark memory was trying to catch his attention. Eventually the dull ache would go away. He listened to Elixa chattering away in the meantime, waiting for the moment when she would as--

"You not well or something, or was it what I was talking about? Or is this something normal you just haven't mentioned?"

Aaaaand there it was. Arcturus considered telling the whole truth. How long had he known Elixa? Not very long. Two months? Apart from the occasional conversation in the living room, he hadn't exactly paid much attention to his housemate. She didn't know much about his life. He didn't know much about hers. There was a lot to risk if he didn't pick carefully.

"Old injuries, bad memories. That's all." His hands, hidden by most of his clothes and body, laid to rest on where he knew a long line of raised, healed flesh interrupted his skin. "Just don't point a knife at me where I can see it. Sorry for not letting you know earlier."

Although his head was starting to feel a bit better, he still didn't want to get up. The ache was fading, and soon enough his muscles would relax. Then he could get up like a normal person and resume cooking. It would pass. Everything would pass.

Hopefully Elixa didn't ask anymore questions about this...

"Crap, sorry Arcturus," Elixa responded swiftly after the explanation. "There was me raving about amputation and mucking about with the silverware without giving any notice. I'm an idiot, forgive me." One hand went to her lips, the fingertips and well trimmed nails covering the curve of her lips which had formed a worried frown.

"Really sorry, not your fault at all, I mean, not like I make a habit of waving sharp things around under your nose. You must think I'm some kind of maniac…" A deep pit of guilt was forming like a block of ice in her stomach, and she made to get to her feet, overbalanced slightly in her haste and grabbed the corner of the table with one hand to pull herself up again.

"Why don't you sit down and I'll sort dinner?" She asked, and sent the onions in their paper skins back up onto the edge of the table out of harm's way.

"Here," She reached down a hand to help him up, "Is there anything I can do? You know…" she offered awkwardly, though not in her usual enthusiastic and overbearing tone, "a cup of tea, an ear… a hug?"

He was at least grateful for her hand. When he had got to his feet, his head was still spinning slightly; he leaned against the table until the dizziness went away.

"No need to apologise," he said, holding a hand up. "And thank you for the offer, but I'll be happy with a glass of water. I'll go and sit down meanwhile, I don't think I could keep working on dinner." His hands were still cold and a bit shaky. A knife would be hardly the best thing to hold right now when his fingers felt so numb.

Arcturus sat down in one of the chairs, possibly the one she had shoved away, and continued breathing deeply. He'd taught himself to cope with this. It was something he just couldn't help, an involuntary defensive mechanism perhaps. Either way, he had learned to live with it.

At least, for once, Elixa didn't sound too overexcited. He wondered if she ever got tired from acting so...over the top. It was refreshing to see her tuned down a little. Though he was sure he wasn't going to act out of his personality just to see her be calmer for once.

Arcturus seized her hand and she leaned back to help counter his weight and hep him up from the kitchen floor. As they let go, she took a step back to steady her weight and let him lean against the table.

She kept one eye on him as he lowered himself onto a kitchen chair. She backed away and went to fetch a glass of water as requested.

"Here." She offered calmly, voice softer than its usual bright tone. The glass was held between her fingertips to give room for the wizard's hand to wrap around it. As he reached for it, she brought the other up to gently ensure he had wrapped his fingers around it sufficiently before she let it go.

Quietly, she sank into the chair almost opposite, and put her hands into her lap, eyes still fixed on him, curls that had wriggled free framed her face, softening the lines.

"Did…" She began to ask, then pressed her lips together, reconsidering until her curiosity got the better of her, before asking softly, in the voice she would address patients who caused her concern,
"What happened?"