KNOW SOMETHING TODAY

[Nathaniel Winters]

Nathaniel Winters had been on the job for eight hours already and the end was not in sight. He was, in laymen's terms, a workaholic, and he spent most of his week at Hogsmeade Hospital as it's director, and he loved every minute of it. Working there was his salvation. The place held an ironic peace about it, with the smell of cleanliness everywhere, the clicking of nurses' heels, and the pressed white linens on all the beds. Yes, there was always sickness and gore, but there was also the hope for saving lives. That was quite a wonderful accomplishment. Nathan had wanted to be a healer for a long time, and was skilled enough throughout his schooling to do a good job. He was fairly young still for such a prestigious position, but he ran the hospital with the utmost care and precision. He was very good at garnering investment and charity in the hospital's name, making sure everything ran as efficiently as possible, and carrying out healing duties whenever there were not other healers available. On this particular evening, Nathaniel had just set a broken bone on an elderly wizard who was quite distressed about the monetary compensation needed for the favor. Nathaniel had very curtly told him not to worry about it, and then paid for it himself. He liked to help the lower class, but made a point not to tell anyone as much. He liked to be perceived as proper.

Looking out the window of his office, Nathaniel watched a couple laughing as they crossed the street. He wondered why he wasn't happy. Nathaniel had been married to Emelina for nine years now she had left him. He was quite proper, and believed in the rules of etiquette. She, by comparison, ran wild, and didn't understand his more serious decisions. It made him sad, for he had once know a deep love, and now in his early thirties he was confined to a life of no love. Nathan wasn't heartless, but he often felt cold in this situation. It hurt him to think that there was no hope for a woman's affection in his future. His wife was forever away, and certainly did not plan on coming back.

Sighing, Nathaniel looked up when a nurse came in. She was short of breath, no doubt from running down the hall. Women did not have it easy when it came to the heaviness of their skirts and the tightness of their corsets. Nathaniel did not believe such burdens were conducive to a hospital environment, but they were the proper attire for a lady and who was he to argue with such things? She asked him to come quickly, for his assistance was needed. There was no healer to attend to an incoming patient. Nodding, Nathan stood, leaving his thoughts at his seat, and briskly following the nurse out the door.

  

[Captain Darcy Potter]

• He was bleeding. That, in and of itself, was enough to place him in a foul mood; interns weren't supposed to bleed, they were supposed to push papers and prance eagerly off on jobs with their superiors. He never signed up for bowtrucklesùthe bastards weren't even in his department! But no improper use of magic had gotten wind of faulty wands, and so had sent out an investigator with Darcy in tow. Where there are wands there are wand trees, and where there are wand trees, there were, so the wizard had learned, bowtruckles. Darcy Potter was not in the least impressed. The gash now running the length of his forearm, his superior had informed him, was his own fault; he should have been more careful, should have expected bowtruckles. It had taken all of the wizard's self control to bite his tongue, to stop from giving his superior an earfulùshouldn't someone from Regulation of Magical Creatures have been brought along if they had expected bowtruckles?
  
  He had been lucky not to lose an eye with the way he had marched through the grove of trees, his supervisor had informed him. Darcy had remained mercifully silent, stewing in his irritation over the mission as a whole. They hadn't even been able to arrest the damn wand-peddler; the wizard had disapparated the moment the Ministry officials had set foot on his land. No, the best they had been able to do was confiscate the treesùbowtruckle bastards and allùand re-pot them for transit to the Ministry (Darcy was not a gardener!) and leave the perpetrator a note of warning. And now Darcy was bleeding for his efforts. This was not, by any stretch, his favourite of the handful of cases in which he had been instructed to partake.
  
  Mercifully, his superior had shooed him off when they had returned to the Ministry, instructing him to get the arm looked at before it festered. Until that moment, the wizardùwho was generally quite good with blood, pain, gross things... he was a Gryffindor. He might have been rich, might have had a desk job, but that much was still trueùhadn't even thought of his wound as serious, just a nuisance. Darcy was then concerned. With a sigh, he apparated to the village; he didn't need to fill out silly employee liability claims if he did not go through the Ministry healers, and in releasing him from work for what little was left of the day, the investigator had also released him from responsibility where the case report was concerned. Darcy would acquire a copy later; he always did.
  
  Waiting on the bench was a tedious process, and Darcy raised a dark eyebrow when the receptionist informed him that the hospital was momentarily short on healers. She, unlike his superior, did not seem concerned that the wound would fester whilst he waitedùthis was the only reason that he didn't complain about waiting. Nonetheless, he was relieved when he was finally to be seen, ambling down the corridor to an examination room. The nurse assured him she would æonly be a mo,' and she was good to her word. With a man Darcy could only assume knew what he was doing in tow, the witch returned promptly, leaving the two. "I seem to be bleeding a bit," Darcy informed the healer dryly.

  

[Nathaniel Winters]

Nathaniel watched the woman's heels click in front of him. Scowling, he briskly walked in front of the woman. There was really no place for such fragile creatures in a hospital. They only caused more problems, as they were too delicate to walk quickly, and they were too delicate to get their hands dirty. Nathaniel was beginning to question his staff, frankly, and believed that he would do better getting people who were not at high social statuses given the problems with employing ladies. This was a huge concession coming from Nathaniel of all people, who generally only tolerated people of the upper class. It was easier that way, for upper class people didn't have to be schooled in the rules of etiquette, which were essential.

Nathaniel rounded the corner of the hall and entered the room with the patient. It was not often that Nathaniel saw ministry members, to be honest, unless it was for personal procedures. Injuries attained during work hours were generally handled directly by the MoM's healers, who were very skilled. Nathaniel had profound respect for the Ministry, considering it one of the most important establishment in Hogsmeade. That is why he had gotten Melina a job there (at her request), before she had run off. It had been rather embarrassing on his part explaining to the officials there that his wife had left him for an uncertain amount of time. He felt rather ashamed.

The man sitting in the Hospital room had a large gash running the length of his arm. Nathaniel knew the wound to be easily fixed, but then Nathaniel was very good at his job and knew the correct spell for most maladies that people faced. While the cut did not look like it was pleasant, it was not the worst thing Nathaniel had seen. The thirty-two year old had seen many medical problems in his day, and this was a flick on the ear compared to the types of pain he had witness.

Nathaniel smirked a little bit at the man's humor. Nathaniel was admittedly cynical, and appreciated that type of commentary. "I hadn't noticed," the man said wryly. Melina had never understood that type of humor, considering it standoffish and aggressive. One more thing that they did not have in common. "Unfortunately I can't do anything for your arm until you first describe to me the nature of how you procured this wound," he said. It wouldn't do to heal him if there were fragments of a tree splintering the wound, for example. Nathaniel took a seat across from the younger man, and pulled out his wand, muttering a numbing spell so that the man would not be able to feel the arm wound.

  

[Captain Darcy Potter]

• "Bowtruckles."
  
  Darcy very much doubted the word had ever been said with such venom before and, in fairness, the creatures in question were not the sole cause for his displeasure with the entire situation. Matthew Poole, ministry employee extraordinaireùif you, like Darcy, thought that hiring the most incapable brownnoser known to wizard kind made for good company hiring practiceùhad been the worker leading the case and, as such, was in that moment the bane of Potter's existence. The entire case had been so shabbily constructed that the intern now wished he'd stayed behind the desk all day; this was a wish that had never before graced his thoughts. Darcy was well aware, too, that the report would be less than stellar with regards to his own career, which did not exactly endear Poole to him.
  
  It took a moment for the wizard to realize that one word probably was not as detailed as the healer might require. "I was working," Darcy elaborated, keeping his explanation as impartial and to-the-point as he could muster. "My superior instructed that I should obtain some particular trees and, well, bowtruckles." He strongly doubted he would ever desire to retell the story again; for the lack of real detail the question required, he was grateful. It was nothing like the interrogation the forms at the Ministry would have required of him, and given the severityùor lack thereofùof his condition, the quicker he was tended to and sent home, the happier he suspected he would be. "It's not a bad injuryù" æas I imagine you could tell as soon as you walked in, so I am not certain why I feel the need to inform you' "ùbut stings a bit. My supervisor insisted I have a healer see to it; I suppose he thinks that it might kill me if I do not." Only a deaf infant trying to eavesdrop on their conversation from the Americas might have missed the sarcasm in the intern's tone.
  
  He extended his arm to the other wizard, wincing slightly as his wound protested the movement of his flesh. It was not even one of the more exciting injuries he had obtained over the yearsùpaper cuts had probably caused more lasting irritation. Still, workplace injuries were something of an embarrassment: yes, the bowtruckle had had a go with his arm and won the round, but the little bastard had also given a quick kick to his pride and pleasant mood as well.