Prompt Fills Vol. 19

[troublewillfindme]

But to give them her work, to hand over the kind of secrets she has striven to keep, is unthinkable.

(AN: I grew up in the Potter fandom and, as such, have some overly developed headcanons about how things work — complete with a slapdash of influence from Wheel of Time. That all seeps in here. If you read something and are left going ???, it’s probably from a headcanon.)

 

She hadn’t considered the consequences when she’d selected her specialty. She’d simply let the whims and curiosities of her own insatiable need for answers guide her choice. Cognitive magic was intricate and complex; it required a certain kind of tenacity, a willingness to venture into the more theoretical aspects of healing magic.

It was not for those faint of heart.

But the results could be incredible. Memory charms undone; damage reversed. If she’d meant to heal, then returning people to themselves was the truest application of the art form.

People didn’t often think of Slytherins as healers; they heard cunning and ambition, and found them incompatible with nurture and care. They fell easily into the trap of failing to see past the stereotype, failing to understand that it took ambition to solve daunting challenges, that it took cunning to work your way past otherwise impassable blocks. It was about power, yes, but the power to know, to do, to reverse the unthinkable.

Idealism was a fantastic blinder; passion was, perhaps, an even better one.

The trick in reversing the magic lay in understanding the fundamentals of the damage and its cause, in knowing how to rip the threads of curses and charms from a mind without causing harm in the process.

Of course, the corollary was that her knowledge of just how to inflict that damage, how to manipulate a mind through magic, how to bend and break, was substantial. In finding new ways to heal, she’d come up with new ways to harm.

New, very effective ways.

She reads over the letter once more, a summons from within the Department of Mysteries. She’s never had much detail on their work; even the few times she and their agents have crossed paths, securing any information about the work was virtually impossible — even if it would have made a difference in treating one of their own.

A notice of recruitment does not fill her with confidence. She sinks into her chair and scrubs a hand over her face.

She’ll need to think through this carefully.

She could report as ordered, learn the secrets of the Department and finally get some answers. She dismisses the possibility almost immediately; she won’t stand by and watch her work be misappropriated, let alone participate in its perversion.

Not reporting, of course, presents its own challenges. She doesn’t relish the idea of running; she suspects they’d find her eventually, and drag her back. She’d be left at their mercy, and out of options.

Unless…

The idea is madness. She didn’t work this long and this hard to simply cede her healer’s license. She did not spend an apprenticeship in agony to simply give up.

But to give them her work, to hand over the kind of secrets she has striven to keep, is unthinkable.

If she does this, she will have nothing. Yes, she could find work in a shop somewhere, brew potions for an apothecary, or oversee the rarer editions in some shop, but she knows there will be questions, whispers, implications that her own work had backfired upon her, stories only inflamed by the Ministry.

Still, she can find no other option.