Chapter Text
Ten interns stood in the spellwork suite. White tiled walls stretched high, reflecting harsh candlelight from the ceiling. Cabinets lined the walls, labelled phials were stacked with precise symmetry, instruments sat ready, all arranged with deliberate care. The smell of sterilising charms filled Draco’s nose, not unfamiliar, but still unpleasant. Clean. Metallic. Faintly sour.
He had met Head Healer Smethwyck, who stood in the centre of the room, only last week. Convincing him to accept Draco into the residency programme had not been an easy task. His scores in the Healing and Medical Research Mastery programme at Université de Beauxbâtons had been near perfect, but Draco had avoided the British press for years and had underestimated the persistence of prejudice at home.
Still, the acceptance owl had arrived hours later.
Smethwyck cleared his throat. “Each of you have come here for a reason. To help, to heal, to learn, to become brilliant. A month ago, you were just students - no responsibility for wizarding lives on your shoulders, your mistakes trivial, guided and corrected by Healers. Now, you are the Healers. You have the responsibility of keeping patients happy, of keeping them alive.”
Draco had held such responsibility for far longer than he would ever admit out loud - a responsibility left at Malfoy Manor now, cared for by Whimsy and Willow. It had been that way for years.
He tried not to worry.
But she was getting worse. Soon, Whimsy and Willow wouldn’t be enough.
“The years you spend here may well be the best of your lives - although likely not the worst, given what many of you went through this past decade.” Smethwyck’s gaze settled, briefly, on Draco.
Fingering the cuff of his sleeve, Draco held Smethwyck’s look. He would not balk, he would not show his nerves. He would be confident, calm, measured. He would prove Smethwyck right about accepting his application.
Smith gave a short, disbelieving laugh from across the room. “Went through?” he muttered lowly, nudging Macmillan in the ribs.
Macmillan rolled his eyes. “Don’t start.”
Smethwyck ignored the Hufflepuffs, gaze still fixed on Draco. “Look around you. Look at the competition.” He tore his eyes away, glancing at each of them in turn.
Draco scanned the room. Some he recognised from Hogwarts, despite his time out of the country and the decidedly non-linear path that had led him here. He’d noticed Smith, Macmillan, and one of the Patil twins already.
Smith was still unbearable. Macmillan was still looking friendly, eager to please - predictably decent. Patil was still pretty, though her composure seemed studied rather than shy. A few others had been in the years below them. They hadn’t changed much in the eight years since he had last seen them. Or perhaps they had, and he simply hadn’t been there to notice.
He was the only Slytherin in the room.
Many claimed it didn’t matter anymore, that houses perpetuated prejudice, that they were childish relics best left behind. Draco disagreed. It wasn’t house unity; it was house obliteration.
How many Slytherins his age even remained?
Pansy was a society wife who occasionally wrote rubbish for the American edition of Witch Weekly. Blaise did something vague and artistic in Europe - fashion, Draco thought. Daphne had remained in Britain, working for the DMLE.
That was the list.
The rest were dead, imprisoned, or otherwise gone.
Yet Draco endured.
“Some of you will fail. Some of you will leave. Some of you will go to research, or brewing, or teaching. Those aren’t bad careers. But they aren’t Healing. This is your starting line. How far you get, that’s on you.”
Smethwyck circled the room, passing a titanium band to each of them in turn. Draco’s was the last pulled from Smethwyck’s pocket. “All Healing interns answer to the Chief Resident. He will assign your cases, judge your performance, test your skills, reprimand you where necessary, and help you when you are in over your heads. His call-code is seven - if you forget everything else, know that.”
The interns clasped the bands around their wrists, and the metal sat cool against Draco’s skin. Smethwyck pressed the tip of his wand to his own band. Draco’s wrist warmed and vibrated faintly.
He glanced down. A number appeared: one. Beneath it, the word test. Sensible. A way to call for help, and a way to be called. He wondered if it had other functions. He wondered if maybe his, specifically, did.
“Shouldn’t he be here now?” Smith asked.
Before Smethwyck could reply, his band seemed to vibrate again as he looked down at it. “There’s an incoming emergency - let’s see how you handle it.”
They followed Smethwyck back through the hospital, down a maze of stairs and corridors, until they arrived back at admissions, where the Floo flared and a Healer was transferring a patient onto a trolley.
The Healer glanced toward them, and Draco recognised her after a moment - Gemma Farley. A Slytherin Prefect from back when he had been small enough to look up at her in the Common Room.
At least he wasn’t entirely alone.
If he proved himself useful, she might be inclined to help him. The Chief Resident was unlikely to be a Slytherin. And Draco had learned, years ago, the value of anticipating opposition.
Focus, Draco reminded himself and looked back to the trolley.
The patient thrashed on its bed. Light burst from her hands and struck out across the room, lashing and whipping anything in its path while her long hair floated above her head, lifting into the air. Her limbs twisted and contorted, muscles twitched and stretched, visible under her robes that were falling open and exposing her legs.
Patil stepped forward and cast a charm over the patient which covered her legs, preserving her privacy. She started casting over the patient, healing the small slashes that were appearing on the parts of her skin still exposed, casting again, and again, but the slashes kept coming - there was just not enough time to keep up. The patient seized again, this time limbs flailing, one arm striking Patil across the face.
Draco smoothed his expression into something clinically neutral as Patil stumbled back, crashing into Macmillan who caught her and muttered a quick Episkeyto her now-bleeding nose.
“Help me restrain her,” Farley called out.
Draco glanced back to Smethwyck, who only stood there. Farley wasn’t speaking to the Head Healer, she was speaking to the interns.
He looked to the patient again, whose hands were blistered and burning, cuts forming across her torso from the lashing of their own magic. Nobody else moved. He hesitated, a fraction too long, and the patient shrieked, seizing as red bloomed across her pale robes. Draco stepped forward, wand already raised, and cast a restraint charm. At least she would not be able to strike them again.
Farley’s face relaxed slightly, motioned her head toward the patient, and Draco stepped closer. “Let’s start by getting her to a treatment room,” she huffed. “Somebody band code seven to trauma room three!”
Patil, one hand holding a handkerchief to her nose, wiping away blood, slid her wand into her other hand and banded code seven. “Done. That’s the Chief Resident, right? Is his specialty trauma?”
“Yes, but now’s not the time, just clear the way and let us move,” Farley said, and motioned for Draco to help her move the trolley. “Regardless of pathology, the patient is self-inducing trauma with her seizures, so we’ll start there.”
Farley and Draco pushed the patient down the hallway, the other interns following behind while Smethwyck kept a careful distance.
Smith opened the door to a patient room, and they followed. The room was cold, tiled, and bright. They couldn’t all fit inside. Macmillan and Patil had managed to push themselves to the front and Smith, having opened the door, was already in the room. None of them stood beside Draco.
The other interns crowded the doorway, watching. Spectators. Not very useful, the lot of them.
Macmillan turned to the patient. “Can you tell us what happened? Can you tell us your name?”
The patient tried to speak, but all that came out of her mouth was a gurgle as she fought against the restraint charm Draco had placed on her.
“Get out of my way!”
A voice from the hallway - short, sharp, unmistakable - pushing past the interns into the room.
Draco knew that voice.
His grip tightened around his wand; his jaw set before he could stop it.
“You banded for trauma?”
Not him.
Not now.
Not when Draco finally had something of his own.
Not when he had earned it.
Fucking Potter.
Of course.