Healing the Healer

(perhaps someday we should let Apollo know that Robert has always had an equally impressive potions lab in the sub basement of his farmhouse. he based the remodeling of the st mungo's lab, when he first got the chief of staff job, on the lab he had at home. i'm not opposed to Apollo sometime accompanying Robert there if we ever have the need to do that.)

Robert skimmed the recipe again to double check the procedure. There was something ringing a bell that it merited extreme caution. Oh. There it was. It was the addition of the Sulphur. Not only did it cause a bit of a foul odor at first, but if it were not done precisely right, the Sulphur could make the whole business explode. In this potion, it was tricky business and was easy to buggar.

"Take your time, Zabini," he coached the lad gently. "You're doing very well, but don't rush it. Don't ever rush a potion. Just keep a steady hand and take your time so that you can be confident in your work.

"Me, I enjoy potions. There is the skill of potions making, simply putting them together so that they work. However, there is also the art to potions making. For the ones who are good at it, they enjoy the puzzle of it and the thrill of creating new kinds of magic. And, then again, I'm sure we both know plenty of wizards who find potions to be a gigantic pain in the arse."

He was distracted by movement in a shadowy corner near the shelf of bug jars. He had only one shelf of bug jars here--only what was necessary to make potions. The bug jars at home were a different matter.

"Continue," he told Zabini. He drew his wand, lit it, and went over to the corner. He looked down at the floor. The jar of fire ants had apparently broken at some point, and the corner was alive with fire ants. He groaned. "Ants," he uttered. "Someone let the ants out." He got a new bug jar and put a scoop of sand in it and a food enchantment and put it temporarily on the floor. "Get back in the jar, you lot," he flicked his wand at the ants.

The light of his wand pointed out to him that some of the rarer ingredients were not as fresh as they could be, and some of the shelves had dust and were starting to grow cobwebs. Ugh. Well, that meant he was going to have to get busy and clean and order new ingredients. He usually did that job alone because few people liked spending several of their shifts in the lab.  

"Stop before you add the Sulphur," he said, returning to the work table. "We will do that business together because that is where most potion makers muck this one up," he said. "In this combination of ingredients, the reaction when you add the Sulphur can be a little volatile if it is not done carefully.

"One of my not-so-brilliant classmates was desperately failing potions and he thought he could do this one in his fifth year, to impress the professor to give him extra credit. Did the worst job on a potion I have ever seen in my entire life, and nearly took out the entire potions lab. Professor Slughorn was not pleased. The moral of the story? Never eat anything made of treacle while studying potions because it looks like ink on your page." While he waited for the fire ants to comply, he took a seat on one the wooden work stools a couple of steps away so to avoid making Zabini feel like Robert was hovering. This was exceptional pressure for an apprentice, he realized.

"Well, I can see where I'm going to be spending this week," Robert sighed. "I'm going to be refreshing lab ingredient stores. Some of the ingredients are things I will need to go and get. Not all of these are just routinely delivered. If you get bored, you can always come along with me to obtain some of the strange bits--if your headmaster does not mind you doing a bit of travelling with me. Your Defense Against the Dark Arts spells are up to par, aren't they?"

Apollo was always what one might call 'anal' about his potion-making, but his desire to impress someone with the Minister's talent, power and title had made his pulse race and his movements a bit too rushed. But he got to the Sulphur step just in time to turn and listen to Lupin's story. It brought a slight smile to the Slytherin's face, but that was nothing compared to the expression he wore after the Minister continued.

Eyebrows lifted, Apollo merely stared for a moment before nodding firmly. "Our professor is a bit strange, but she knows her stuff, that's for sure." It didn't quite answer the question, but if he had shown anything in the past half hour or so, it was that he actually did have some capacity for excitement.

"In truth, I'm not even sure who I was meant to work with, considering I couldn't find Healer Fox. She was meant to assign me to someone, I think." Apollo shrugged. "Seems it's been an odd day all around, so perhaps I just missed them. But, either way, I can't say I'd mind helping as needed."

But, for the time being, he needed to help finish this potion, and to see how the salve had been doing on the Minister's hand. So he gestured vaguely towards the cauldron as he reached for the Sulphur in question, and waited for Robert to come back over so they could get through the tough part.

"Good," Robert said. "Who is teaching potions there now? I don't always get a chance to meet the professors there like I used to. But, Fox's loss looks to me like it is my gain. I might well recruit you myself, then. Fox is a good healer, but she isn't particularly fond of potions. That isn't a criticism. It's mere fact. She admits it herself.

"So, I may recruit you to help me with the inventory before we go out to get ingredients. Some of the wizards that have access to some of the things we need are a bit difficult to get on with and they don't live in the most hospitable places. If you choose to go with me, you'll need to be at your best with your wand."

Robert liked the trips to buy ingredients, particularly in the spring. There was often a chance to stay overnight either at a little rural inn or at the home of an old friend. It often depended on weather and on the moods of the hermit-like wizards he had to deal with for a couple of the exceedingly rare things. Hiking was always a part of the trip, and sometimes a run in with some sort of magical creature. It wasn't unfair to consider that the trips might provide Zabini with an opportunity for some unforeseen extra credit in more than one of his classes.

"Ah, the Sulphur," he said. He did not want Zabini to be afraid of this formula, but it was one of those things that was in the restricted section for very good reason.  "Now, this formula calls for a third of an ounce. That's ten grams, but here's where people muck it up. In this particular formula you can't just whack off a hunk of sulphur and pulverize it in your mortar. It'll explode when you chuck it into your cauldron if you do that. Here's the bit the book doesn't tell you. Sulphur comes in a conglomeration of soft cloudy stuff and crystals. You cannot use those cloudy, bubbly looking bits of rock in this formula. It's too touchy for that."

He opened a drawer and got out a thin curved little scalpel and laid it on the work table. "If you haven't used one of these, be very careful with it. It's a number 12 blade and it is ridiculously sharp. Use that tiny tip there to harvest a few of just the crystals. We can use the cloudy bits for some of the more common potions. Then, take those crystals and bash those up to harvest your 10 grams."

"Here's how this works," he said. "In this particular potion, you're taking the ingredients' innate structures and disassembling them. Then, as you mix them together and heat them, they become unstable. The incantation you use with force them to bind together in a different way, and then you add the measurement of burdock root at the end to seal that magical restructuring that you're doing--if that makes any sort of sense.

"You do it right and it'll go all ugly brown, and it'll stink until you cast the incantation and toss in the burdock. Then it should settle in at a lovely clear reddish orange and it'll stop smelling..." like the south end of a northbound dog---no, you can't say that to the lad, he told himself. "so foul. That's when you know you have it right."

Apollo stilled slightly when the conversation turned towards Lily. But he just shrugged as he said, "Professor Potter, this year. Seems to be doing rather well."

Okay, so he could have done without complimenting her, but it was practically second nature at this point. Probably a good sign, he decided. But then the word recruit really made him stop. He had only ever expected to be forced into joining the Death Eaters. Recruited, as they probably still called it. But this was very different, and in fact bafflingly positive. He didn't have any real room to complain. Apollo knew that, in his heart. But at the same time... He knew his fate and had once resigned himself to it. He had. But then things started to change and he started to comprehend the actual meaning of the word Hope.

This was more than he'd dared to dream. The thing with Lily didn't count, considering she was the one who'd woken him up to begin with.

"Potions," he began slowly, "and Curative Magic -- those are my best subjects, predictably. But.. my father ensured that I began studying theory from an early age. So while I struggle with some courses, I'm pretty decent at Defense and such. I'm still working on mastering Charms, though, to be fair."

And that was probably about as honest as the Slytherin was going to get. He saw no reason to basically report his father for what had happened. Surely if he mentioned it to Lupin, something would come of it? He didn't think he wanted it to. That would only make things even worse. Having support from someone besides Lily was definitely a relief, though.

Taking in the Minister's instructions, Apollo nodded and - despite a moment of hesitation - set to work on picking out the right bits of the sulphur. It felt strange to work in silence if someone else was there - especially when that someone was so important and the one waiting for the work to be completed. So he said the first thing that came to mind.

"Did you always want to be Minister?"

What sorts of people went for something like that? It was the sort of position Apollo would never feel qualified for, no matter how many people he helped, lives he saved or accomplishments he made. And the people had chosen Robert. It was, probably, hard to choose any politician, much less one who would run the Ministry until their death. He couldn't imagine trusting anybody to run the United Kingdom's Wizarding community for that long. But, then again, he realized that he had never actually had anything against Lupin himself, so maybe that wasn't true. Either way, it was the sort of position that one of his friends would suggest to him one day - years and years after he started as a Healer. After Christian came back and Apollo got back to normal. Post-marrying and -adopting and everything else. When he'd finally made a good name for the family. And still he would not feel right about it.

Was Lupin overly-confident? Or just incredibly determined?

"Me?" Robert asked. "No. No way. My idea of idyllic was a quiet place in the country, and it was something of a necessity while my brother was alive. It provided him a safe place to land, especially when he was hunted or ostracized. I was fairly happy with working in an apothecary making potions and working my own farm.

It was true. Robert had always believed, despite only being a year older than Remus, that he had had the responsibility of trying to protect him. There was no protecting him from himself, though, much as Robert wanted to. He hadn't had the money to get the ingredients to make the wolfbane potion that Remus had needed to give him a semblance of a normal existence. The best Robert could do was the farm.

And that, in itself, had its own assets and drawbacks both. It had nearly destroyed not only him, his wife and his daughter in the process, and that had been stretched beyond what Robert had believed any of them could survive when Remus was killed. Robert had not intended to not be there for Teddy. It hadn't been his plan. By the time he'd gotten word, the Potters had taken Teddy, and Robert had had no desire to interfere.

So here he was, still doing what he believed in--trying his best to keep a balance between the healer's belief to "do no harm," and the responsibilities as a government official to "do what's right." As much as they sounded like they should have always been indelibly linked, Robert had learned the hard way that those beliefs could collide and not appear to function in the same universe. He still hoped that younger generations, like Zabini's would not have to find the world to be such a cynical place. He had a feeling any delusions of perfection had already been driven away from this young man long ago. He had no proof. He only had his own gut instincts that there was more than what was on the surface.

"My daughter got me working here as a healer and potions maker, called me out of an early retirement to do it. I thought I would do that for a year or two to appease her and then go back to the country and be done with it.

"That lasted until I found myself knee deep with my friends in standing up for what I believed in. Sounded like a good idea. Still does--enough that I don't have it in my DNA to do otherwise. Well, when they first proposed that I try the Minister's job, it rather sounded like they only liked the notion because I can look like the biggest git they knew when I need it. Frankly, it comes in handy more often than I'd like, but that's politics."

He took time out to watch Zabini address the Sulphur. "Nicely done," Robert said. "Controlled and precise. That's the ticket. You've almost got it complete. We'll use what we need and bottle the extra to use for some other occasion.

"If you like curative magic, we'll have to expose you to some energy work. There are only a few of us here that diagnose or heal by touch, but for those who can polish the skill, it can help a healer be a great deal more precise in both diagnosing and healing. I prefer it, really. And then there's, of course, the whole magical surgery thing, for those who want to venture that far."

Apollo slipped a comment in between the political commentary and the Minister's praise. One that he wasn't sure he had any right to say, but that still felt true enough that he did it anyway.

"From what I understand, honor and bravery runs in your family.." He glanced Lupin's way. Then back at the cauldron. "It doesn't, in mine."

But he was entirely open to moving on and completing the necessary potion - dangerous or otherwise. It wasn't as though he could leave the Minister of Magic with a ruined hand. The encouragement, Apollo supposed, might have been offered in part to make sure the young man didn't hesitate or give up. Apollo wouldn't have, granted, but the acknowledgement was still appreciated.

Lupin's new train of thought was one Apollo had never considered. He'd always assumed it was something inherited or restricted to those with incredible amounts of experience. Perhaps they just hadn't discussed that in class, yet. If he hadn't offended Teddy during their meeting, which was possible, then perhaps Apollo could ask him about it later that week.

Surgery sounded intimidating, but the Slytherin had no intention to shy away from it. "No one could really be a master at their craft unless they learn all sides of it. Venturing or not, I don't think I'll want to leave any options open. Not without trying at least. It probably sounds over-ambitious," he decided after hearing his words back, "but I may as well give it a try."

"That came from my parents," he said. The thought of his parents made him smile. "Love makes us do we don't normally believe we're capable of, and people believe we're brave. To some extent, bravery is pretty much about being scared out of your wits and deciding to follow through anyway. Don't judge your family for not ending up with a famous history or whatever. First of all, it isn't all its cracked up to be, and, from what I see, you have amazing potential to accomplish anything you want from your life.

He had always considered both of his parents honorable and brave both. They'd died relatively young for wizards, largely due to the suffering that they'd gone through in their efforts to protect Remus at a time when werewolves were seen as purely evil, with no redeeming qualities in them.

Remus, so far as Robert was concerned, had reframed his family's way of thinking. Remus's mind had never given up what was decent and kind in him. Robert believed that some werewolves were the victim both of the curse itself and the environment that had so sharply rejected them that in order to survive they had become entirely self absorbed to the point where humanity had no value anymore. From his own point of view, Robert believed his family had merely fought for survival, and if he'd had the choice, he'd never chosen for his family to have had any other life than quiet anonymity.

He set out a four bottles for storing the potion, four corks, and got out four labels and laid them on the work table with pen.

"You're ready to store that now," he said, "and I will be quite glad to get rid of this humiliating purple goo and finish up this job. The vigoratus effrego spell sets bones but it does not heal instantly. Still, but tomorrow, as small as these bones are, hopefully I can make arrangements for you and I to go buy potions ingredients and you may be able to assist me with some minor surgeries and learn about using energy work to heal."

Lupin was right. But love made things worse as often as it made them better, in his experience. And he had the feeling his brother would agree. And their long-lost sibling. The one whose name Blaise spat and the one whose pronouns were often mixed up when their parents fought and thought Apollo wasn't around. All he knew was that jealously tripped along behind love more often than it needed to, and he couldn't have been more grateful for someone like Lily. Even if he wasn't so sure about his own parents.

"I don't need them to be famous," he replied, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of his voice. "I just would prefer that the family name didn't cause people literal nightmares."

And, unfortunately, he knew that it did. For war victims and kids told about those victims. But also for Christian, if Apollo had understood him fully. Questions about what their parents, ancestors and cousins might have done to other people.. they were enough to keep the sons up at night. Christian had shared his fears, surprisingly: that their grandparents might have been involved in the torture of Neville Longbottom's parents - or those like them.

But he shook his head fervently as he tried to knock away that thought completely. Luckily, a new task had presented itself. Bottling the potion that would be left over after applying some on Lupin's wound. First things first, he turned to the Minister and held a hand out. Once Robert offered his hand in return, Apollo carefully unwrapped the salve to check it.

Thank Merlin for Lily Potter. It had worked, drawing out shards of whatever Muggle guns used. His nose scrunched up a little at the sight but more because he never wanted to know what they felt like, rather than an inability to handle uncomfortable sights. So he carefully removed them, setting each piece on a piece of parchment on the table.

And now that the potion hadn't exploded or anything worse, it was time to test the stuff out. Uncertain what to expect, he drew out the stirring spoon he'd been using and collected a bit of the potion before glancing up at Lupin.

"Let's see how this goes, then."

Because what else could he say, really? Gee, Minister, I hope this doesn't destroy your hand. Right. Not happening.

Apollo tilted the spoon, and then the potion was pouring down onto the injury. And all he could do, now, was wait.

"I understand that too," Robert said. The Lupin name was not always welcome either. Some still had the erroneous belief that surely Robert must be a werewolf since Remus had been. Idiots. Not to mention that there were those who just simply didn't like the Lupin family.

He watched as Zabini poured the new potion over his hand. It was both cooling and soothing. That only told Robert that it was working. Often times, with his energy working skills, dark or convoluted magic felt like an odd sort of black heat to him. He watched the foul looking purple color fade and finally disappear.

"Well done, Zabini," Robert smiled. "Difficult as that potion was, it works just fine. Congratulations. I shall be able to return to my duties, and my wife might not sell my new handguns."

While Zabini's attentions were devoted to his hand, Robert opened a drawer and took out a ledger bound in royal blue linen. It was the inventory of potions ingredients.

"When we finish, you're welcome to take a look at the inventory list. The rare ingredients are on page ten. Those are the ones I am most concerned that we have adequate stores of because we're not going to be able to simply go to Diagon Alley to get them. The others, we can acquire through a more conventional supplier.

"If you decide to come with me, you should pack a backpack or something with a change of clothes and a jacket for yourself in case we need to be gone longer than we anticipate. If you don't have a hiking stick, I'll bring one for you, and you will definitely need good walking shoes."

Apollo tried to cover the bemused look on his face. Lupin wanted to keep the things that had done this to his hand? Interesting. Whatever they were, they must've had some sort of significance for him, the Slytherin determined. Absentmindedly, he wiped at his forehead with the back of his arm.

His gaze instinctively turned towards the proffered list, but the qualification that he could check it out once they'd finished up stopped him from actually reaching for it. So he tried to figure whether or not the Headmaster would let him go on extended trips. Certainly he could do so once the end of the year came, and that day was fast approaching.

Thank Merlin.

"I, uh- My family isn't very outdoors-y. But I'll figure it out," he promised, hoping that made his intention clear enough.

Never had he imagined himself qualified in some way to occupy the time of someone like the Minister for Magic. After all, he'd only ever taken up his father's time when he'd done something wrong, or hadn't been good enough in whatever new and undoubtedly infuriating way. Somewhere along the way, he'd apparently picked up some skills that were relevant to someone, and although he had bragged about his potions skills for years, the truth of the matter was that he acted cocky around his classmates to cover up his discomfort.

He hadn't really believed he was on the right track until today.

"Is there anything else you need today? Or.. I guess I could start looking through the inventory and checking these off if your hand is sorted out."