Elixa had woken at an ungodly hour of the morning, excited and keen to get started. She was a little nervous, truth be told, but she was amongst friends, and the hospital was now very familiar after ten months of running around it. She would perhaps miss the slower life of the apothecary, of only having to deal with the occasional strange question, and re-explain how to administer a salve four times to a very deaf wizard with an ear trumpet. She was a decade older, though perhaps not a decade wiser, than she had been when she had left training in Sweden. This time would be different.

Wearing fresh trainee healer robes, she had been surprised to be summoned to Head Healer Elliot's office first thing. As she sat waiting for the Head of St Mungo's to arrive, her mind wandered. Perhaps it was just a formality as she was joining the training at an unusual time of the year. She'd have missed the very inspiring keynote speech delivered to fresh faced graduates from Hogwarts and such.

It had always been the plan, when she had written to Elliot's predecessor, Foley, she had explained how she wanted to establish herself in Britain after admiring the hospital on a business visit, keen to help with her knowledge, and increase it after a few months. But she'd pushed the date back over summer, the apothecary work had been more than enough to make her feel as if she were contributing. And perhaps it had been because she worried about it.

Time was ticking on, and much as she realised the Head Healer could be delayed for life threatening purposes, she was growing impatient to get started on the third floor.

When at last the Head Healer appeared, Elixa got to her feet immediately, respectful to greet Miranda, even if she felt the witch cut people down far too easily.

"Good morning Head Healer." She greeted politely, dipping her head, hands clasped behind her back.

Much like every morning in St Mungo’s, it had been a busy one with far too much to do. For five months now, Miranda had been working with the victims of dementor attacks up on the fourth floor. It was vital, she felt, not to lose touch with the job she’d spent nearly 30 years doing. Having an office to herself on the ground floor and a staff to command didn’t need to mean that she should lose touch with the patients and the hospital itself.

Unfortunately, being the Head Healer and roaming the hospital in the emerald and golden robes meant that the staff she’d once worked beside were on their guard. Word had gotten around the hospital what exactly Miranda expected from her staff and what she did when they didn’t succeed in providing that. Changes were steadily being implemented and reflected around the building but her healers, trainees and other staff still feared her. Fear wasn’t what she wanted. She was working for respect accompanied with the knowledge not to cross her. It hadn’t occurred to the healer that she might have been approaching it in the wrong manner for such a reaction.

But the changes were being made around the hospital and she was starting to see some serious changes and developments with her own set of patients on the fourth floor. This is what had kept her from the witch she’d quite forgotten she had called into her office upon arrival. Miranda had been at St Mungo’s since six that morning and the time had run away with her.

As the door to her office came open at her touch, Miranda pulled her emerald robes off and flung them at the sofa without casting a glance that way. Instead she stepped around her desk and reached over it to grab a quill and make a scribble on the paperwork regarding the patient she’d just seen.

In the silence, Miranda sensed another person in the room and glanced up from the desk to the sofas to the left of the office door. She suddenly looked somewhat perturbed to find a visitor already waiting for her, Head Healer’s robes thrown over her body.

“Ah…Miss…” She didn’t know the name; she brushed it off, “Can I help you?” Over her thickly rimmed glasses, dark eyes studied the witch suitably old to be sporting a pair of healer in training robes.

No sooner had she opened her mouth to greet Miranda Elliot, but the outer robes of the Head Healer slid from the older woman's shoulders and hurtled through the air. Elixa's hands sprung forward from the small of her back to grasp at them, not at all sure why she had suddenly been thrown the green and gold robes.

She bundled them off her face and shoulder to look over the top of them, looking a little alarmed at this greeting.

"Can I help you?"

Elixa swallowed down the mild irritation that Head Healer Elliot had summoned her there and now had no idea what she was in her office for, besides throwing her robes at the trainee healer.

"Yes Madam." Elixa replied, her hands finding the back of the neck of the robes, untangling them so she could drape them over the back of Miranda's office chair in absence of anywhere else in immediate view to hang them.

"You summoned me to your office, first thing. Elixa Mordent, Healer in Training with the third floor." She paused, watching Miranda's expression as she relinquished the Head Healer's robes to the chair the other side of the desk.

"I've worked as an apothecary here since January, Head Healer..."

Through the entire explanation from a perhaps quite irked healer in training, Miranda stared, trying to place the face, the name and the position. Even after the witch’s words faded and her own robes had been hooked over a chair, Mira was no closer to placing her, to remembering why she would summon Elixa Mordent to her office as soon as she arrived. In reality, Mira’s brain was still full of the mess she’d encountered riffling through a damaged brain. It always took at least half an hour to completely recover and resume normal thinking processes.

“Apothecar…” Her voice was low as she looked down at the desk, considering, before a look of realisation crossed her expression and dark eyes once more fell on Miss Mordent.
“Of course! The second chancer! How could I forget?” Lips twisted into a perhaps tepid smile and Mira moved back around the desk, pushing her glasses back onto the top of her head and waving a hand at the sofa.

“Please excuse my lack of memory. I’ve just been kissing dementors…” The Head Healer frowned and lowered herself onto one of the sofas, leaning forward to start pouring tea into each saucer. “And if I were being entirely honest, I wasn’t expecting you to show up this morning.” People that dropped out of training rarely had the guts to recommence a decade later.

“Tea?”

That was about right, Elixa thought, nobody remembered the support staff. Then again, Miranda had only been there a few months, and was the Head Healer. Elixa couldn't expect her to know everyone, but she had figured she might remember people she'd summoned.

"… the second chancer!"

Elixa outwardly winced at this description. It appeared Miranda Elliot did remember who she was after all, and none too positively.

Suddenly she was gesturing to the sofa for them to sit down. Elixa found it hard to read whether Elliot was pleased at her being here, or not. She wasn't even sure if she was pleased to be in Elliot's office herself!

The Head Healer appeared to be having a bit of a morning, quickly imparting she had been kissing dementors. Elixa was quite sure this must be an expression, it was unlikely Elliot had actually kissed a dementor, or the rumours of her not having a soul that had come of her approach to some of the staff was true.

Elixa watched, baffled, as Elliot poured tea into saucers[1] and mentioned that she hadn't expected Elixa to show up as she did.

"Er, thank you." Elixa replied, lifting a saucer to pour it into the cup. "Head Healer, are you feeling quite yourself? One normally pours cups rather than saucers, and when you say dementors, have you just encountered one? Should I fetch chocolate?" She reached for the other saucer and poured it into the other cup before serving them both a cup of tea, glancing more often at her boss than what she was doing, worried.

"Why did you think I wouldn't turn up?" She added, baffled.

1.	Confirmed with Mel!

"Head Healer, are you feeling quite yourself?” Mordent questioned Elliot and the Head Healer blinked, staring down at the saucers overflowing with tea. She blinked again, expecting the image before her eyes to change. Her sight wasn’t that bad was it? She knew that she needed to wear glasses, but only for close up things surely; for reading. She could see a damned teacup when it was on a coffee table in front of her!

Words continued to spill from the overaged trainee’s mouth and Miranda watched as she poured tea from the saucers into cups and finished the drinks.
“You need only call me Elliot,” Mira was still looking down at the coffee table quizzically, “or Healer Elliot. Head Healer is a bit formal.” She still seemed somewhat distracted as she took the teacup and sat back on the sofa.

“No real dementors, at least for me. I do a lot of work with patients on the fourth floor; those who’ve suffered in the dementor attacks. That’s why I was waylaid this morning.” It was no secret in the hospital that Elliot was a talented legilimens. She’d written books, she’d headed the Fourth Floor herself before. If Mordent had done her research she would be able to put two and two together. “It does leave your brain feeling…fuzzy.”

Elliot had ignored the question for a short while; she was quite adept at ignoring questions. It had felt more important to show that she didn’t actually belong as a resident on the fourth floor after the mistake with the tea pouring.
“People who require second chances don’t tend to take them up. There’s a reason they require a second chance.”

"So I understand." Elixa nodded, still wondering if her boss was quite alright. This was already the longest conversation they had exchanged in all the time they had both worked at the hospital. She blew gently on her cup of tea and took a tentative sip before putting it back down into the slightly damp saucer.

"Require's the wrong word, with respect, Healer Elliot." Elixa replied, trying her level best to keep her voice steady. Elliot liked to be mean to people as far as Elixa was concerned, and all she had to do was make it through the meeting without letting herself get visibly riled.

"I could have decided to remain an apothecary for the rest of my career, but I haven't. If I were in my early twenties resitting my anatomy exam after nine months' study here, then I might agree; but I'm here to train with an education from an entirely different hospital. It was always my intention when I wrote to your predecessor to apply for a post." She went to lift her teacup and added, "But I won't split hairs, if you don't."

There was a flash of something behind her eyes as she raised her teacup to take a more substantial sip, hoping she had not offended, and fully content to mention the saucer incident to her new colleagues if Elliot did get her claws out.

It would appear that Miss Mordent, perhaps a decade older than a regularly healer in training, had the ability to speak her mind. It was with too much of a politeness for Elliot to berate her on respect for her superiors but she’d had the audacity to correct her boss quite boldly. Elliot’s lips pursed tightly as she regarded the foreign witch over her teacup.

“I have read your letter.” Mira’s voice was cold now, less distracted than when she’d entered. She was mentally reacquainting herself with the details of Mordent’s situation. In Elliot’s opinion, her predecessor had been somewhat lackadaisical in most of her approach to the hospital. Staff had been surprised by the change in leadership style when Miranda had taken over. Would she have been less inclined to accept such a request as Elixa had presented the former Head Healer? What seemed clear was that the witch was skilled with potions. That would make her an asset to the floor, not that she needed to know right now.

“Regardless of the hospital you commenced your training, the fact remains, Mordent, that you gave up on your training. Whatever way you look at this situation, this is a second chance for you.” And Elliot wasn’t going to let her forget it. Second changes were given out with a great deal of thought, third chances were never given.

“I’ve been healing for a long time,” The teacup was placed on the still wet saucer and Mira crossed her legs comfortably. She decided not to give details of years; that would be giving away her age. Elliot was decidedly young for a Head Healer, perhaps the youngest in the history of the hospital, but she didn’t want to age herself further. Growing older wasn’t fun. “I always knew I wanted to be a healer and have never doubted. The difficulty of the work had only pushed me further to reach this point and where I am now.” She leaned farther forward, resting an elbow on her knee.

“So what made you give up?”

Elixa tried not to let her initial victory of correcting Elliot distract her from the polite but efficient nitpicking. Elliot turned it back though, insisting. The boss was always right, even when wrong.

"… never doubted… what made you give up?"

There were two routes from this question. One was honesty, the other was a revised truth. Which she chose now would reflect on how Miranda Elliot saw her in future. For all Elixa knew, the other witch could be bluffing, and certainly it would have been worth her time to have her assistant to follow up on records at the Frolich Institute of Wizarding Medicine.

The truth will out, they said.

"I believed I would be a catastrophic healer." Elixa replied bluntly, frowning. "I lost two patients in quick succession, and on scrutinising my actions, held myself entirely responsible. I lost complete confidence in my judgement." She lifted her teacup from the saucer slightly, "But I was twenty three, needed to grow up and grow a pair - not literally." Her hand gently swilled the tea in the cup as she continued, glancing down into it, "Hence becoming an apothecary, not to put my education entirely to waste."

"I'm not proud of what happened, Healer Elliot, and I'm not here to make the same mistakes." She lifted her teacup to her lips and drank it dry.

M for language

As a child growing up you were told that honesty was the best policy. Never lie, always tell the truth. When you got older and navigated the minefield of life, work and relationships, you quickly learned that honesty was rarely ever going to save your skin and help you progress with whatever it was you were doing. Honestly would only slur the judgement on you and people would never forget it.

Elixa Mordent went with her parent’s teachings as a child and Elliot’s judgement didn’t become slurred. Elliot took a good few moments to watch Mordent, her own expression softening. Here honesty was working because Elliot wasn’t considering scolding her employee. Instead she was internally praising her.

“My dear girl,” perhaps girl wasn’t the right word considering there was only just over a decade between them. “I am not sure I can name a healer who hasn’t been in a similar situation.” Elliot appeared slightly sad but appraising as her dark eyes didn’t once leave Mordent.

“People make mistakes in every line of work. A professor forgets to mark an assignment, an auror bounds recklessly into a hostile situation and a healer fucks up. A professor can mark them another time and an auror can fight their way through a myriad of situations. When we mess up, it’s someone’s life. It’s an innumerable amount of pressure on a person, especially a trainee without a healer’s licence yet.

“I lose confidence in my judgement at least once a month. I second guess things I know to be correct and that I’ve done a million times before. You’re a human. Humans make mistakes. If we didn’t, we’d have a pretty empty hospital.”

The teacup and damp sauced returned to Elliot's coffee table once she finished it. It rattled ever so slightly as she did, indicating the nerves on explaining that.

Elliot referring to her as girl was more than a little odd. She had anticipated her new role would make people assume she was younger than she was until they got a better look at her, but the Head Healer could both see her clearly at this close distance and knew her age. It was belittling terminology.

She did her best to hold her senior's gaze.
"And an emptier one if healers made mistakes." Elixa agreed, her comment following on hastily muttered.

"Thank you though. I'd like to put it all behind me and focus on retraining and qualifying to better contribute to the work of this hospital. I'm sure things will be very different, for the better." Her hands moved gently to straighten her robes. They felt a little odd with it being her first day wearing them instead of the apothecary garb.

"Is there anything else, Healer Elliot?" She asked tentatively, itching to get on with learning and practice.

There was a pattern. People in meetings with Miranda Elliot were always eager to escape them. Hollingbury had tried to practically run from his little office after he’d made the mistake of answering back somewhat harshly and now Mordent couldn’t seem to get away fast enough after having owned up to a treacherous mistake during her previous attempt at Healer training. Miranda hadn’t yet been harsh to the latter, she’d not yet felt a need to put her in her place and remind her of the status quo. Apparently her reputation now preceded her after several months of being back at St Mungo’s.

“There is.” Miranda’s cup was half finished as she lowered it onto the damp saucer and looked over the coffee table to her subordinate.
“I give second chances. Nearly everyone deserves one. I am certain you do.” The words were presently kind but her eyes bore into the other witch’s. “But if you have any doubts about your position here or your abilities; you speak to me first. I give second chances, Miss Mordent; never third.”

Elliot rested her elbows on her thighs as she leant forward.
“If you leave this hospital and abandon your training before you’ve allowed us to do what we can to support you to become a great healer, your name will be ruined. I don’t write favourable references for third chancers.”

As if she’d said nothing of any threat or significance, a tight smile tugged at Elliot’s lips and she rose from the chair, heading for her desk.
“Well let me not keep you any longer than necessary, Healer. I am sure you have a busy shift ahead of you.”

"Yes Healer." Elixa uttered quietly, keen to express she was very aware she should be thankful for a second chance. Elliot kept mentioning it, and as much as she combined it with the fact that Mordent deserved it. She wasn't sure if it was genuine of a backhanded compliment.

"Thank you." She spoke, trying to raise her voice and sound assured, but in reality she now felt as if the carpet beneath her feet was being pulled. Elixa stood a beat after her boss, smoothing her robes for non-existent creases.

End