Chapter Text
Sarah Fawley’s father is sitting at the kitchen table with the Daily Prophet spread out in front of him and a teacup at his elbow. It’s afternoon, and sunlight shines in through the window behind him, glinting off the thin gold frames of his reading glasses.
“Look at that, Noreen,” he says. Sarah’s mother leans in and skims the paper while she pours his tea one-handed, the other resting on his shoulder. “They’re killing each other again.”
Mother hums and pours tea into Sarah’s cup, too.
“Muggles,” Father says under his breath, and twirls his wand slowly over his tea. He turns the page.
The next day, two German Zeppelins drop bombs over London. Sarah’s father shakes his head.
***
The younger Trainee Healers all stop their rounds and gather to watch the induction ceremony in the atrium. Sarah can’t see the face of the Healer in Charge because someone’s head is in the way, but she has a clear view of the inductees, standing in their brand new Healer robes and ready to rush back to their patients as soon as the ceremony ends. The Healer in Charge has already given her speech, and all that’s left now is the swearing of the oath.
In order to become a Healer, every Trainee must swear an oath to protect and preserve life to the best of their abilities.
They also must swear to abide by the Statute of Secrecy.
They’re lined up in front of the Healer in Charge, who tells them to raise their wand hands and recite the words spelled out in ribbon, spilling from the tip of her wand like smoke. It’s called the Pangere Oath, after Alexander Pangere, who wrote it.
Mary Darby, who is Muggleborn, calls it the Hypocritic Oath.
When the ceremony ends, Sarah leaves the atrium with Mary. Her brother in the war has no magic to speak of, but she doesn’t talk about it much. She’s quiet, usually. She does her job.
“All those people,” she says to Sarah while they’re doing their rounds, “we should be helping them.”
“We can’t,” Sarah says, pushing her way into the “Dangerous” Dai Llewellyn Ward and holding the door for Mary. On the bed nearest them, someone is groaning. The white bandages that cover his chest from sternum to navel are stained with three long, thin stripes of bright blood. Sarah goes to him, wand already in hand.
“No,” says Mary, checking a woman’s vital signs in the next bed over. “We won’t.”
When Sarah looks up Mary is staring at her, the eerie blue glow of a spell lighting up her face. Sarah tries, but she can’t look away.
***
During the Battle of Somme, a young Muggleborn man is Apparated into St. Mungo’s with one leg blown raggedly away and shrapnel wounds to the chest and face, the blood like a garish, dark red mask. The Healers work on him all night to restore the blood he lost and close the wounds. Sarah hovers nearby and helps where she can, and when she can’t she stares at his face, at the bloody rags that were once his clothes, at the place where his leg used to be.
Once his wounds are sealed the Healers vanish his bloody uniform and dress him in a hospital gown. The Healer in Charge looks tired, but she’s smiling slightly, waving her wand to siphon the blood off her hands.
With Muggle technology, no man could have hoped to survive.
Sarah casts several cleaning charms over her clothes before Apparating home. Her parents greet her as they always do, more cordial than caring, and ask her how her day was without really wanting to know. In this huge, echoing house, it’s as though nothing has happened.
That night Sarah packs her bags, and in the morning she goes off to war.