Taste of Youth

Lena’s office was all clean lines and organized. She had a simple white desk with a large glass covered bookshelf behind it. The carpet was a simple gray, tiled all around the fireplace that I had tumbled out of. There wasn’t any photos of her family or friends, just stacks of papers and every book on Healing one could find. Lena had me sitting in one of her over-sized cushion-y chairs while she dished out paper after paper for me to sign.

I had already gone through signing away my ability to speak about my training, where I had lived, who I had lived with, gave my wand information, height, weight, OWL’s passed, everything. I should have just wrote a memoir and given it to her. She took me out along the quad -a wide open space full of trainee’s- everyone a few years older than me, seemed to be the whole trainee’s for the Auror department. They looked up as we passed as Lena showed me the whole place, they were curious looks as though they were wondering what someone so young was doing there.

“Rein, this is Ebenezar Liddel. Liddel this is Luciana Rein. You two will be partners from here on out.” Lena looked up when someone called her name and turned to me, “You’ll be called into training with the others. We’ll go over the rest of the paperwork when they let you out. Play nice.”

I watched her leave for a moment and smiled warily at the boy. Ebenezar was head and shoulders taller than me and lanky his muscles unimpressive underneath his long-sleeved shirt. He was an unimpressive kind of handsome with faded denim eyes and a head of wild blond hair that he kept pushing away from his face. My new partner didn’t say a word keeping his head down and shuffled his feet for a few minutes before he lifted his head and removed his hand from his pocket to extend it to me.

“Nice to meet you.” Ebenezar said with a nervous crooked smile and a thick Scottish accent.

“Nice to meet you too.” I took his hand and shook it, “Are you training to be in the Healer Auror department?”

He shook his head his hair spilling into his face again, “No, just an Auror. I have no knack for Healing. I take it that’s the branch you’re going into.”

I nodded, “Yeah.”

My partner made an odd expression, “I’m sorry if you find this rude but how old are you?”

“I turn sixteen this December.” I held out both my hands at his startled expression, “Young, I know. I have no idea why they let me do this but I’m here and going to school too.”

“You’re only a sixth year then,” He shook his head, “that must be awful.”

I shrugged, “It’s fine.”

We chatted easily about the house rivalries within Hogwarts and about his father being a Auror before him. We talked about everything we could get to before Lena and a large group of other people who seemed to be verified Auror’s walked out to the trainee’s in the quad. The group split off into two parts, a small group of four people who stood along with Lena so I assumed them to be Heads within the Auror department and a larger group of those who would have been the people who made up the entire department.

They talked about the three years we would be undergoing training at the end of which we would go through examinations that we were expected to complete in order to become Auror’s within the Ministry. They told us everything that would be expected of us and various other things that we needed to know. The Auror’s behind them were to be our mentors and after the Head of the whole department had finished speaking the group behind them moved out with an amazing amount of precision flowing out through us stationing them before pair after pair, almost like hawks searching for prey. One man stopped before Ebenezar and I a strict air about him that only belonged to people from the front lines of a war.

“The names Moody. I’ll be your mentor from here on out.” He narrowed his brown eyes at us, “Your names and departments.”

Ebenezar shuffled awkwardly straightening his back and speaking with the utmost politeness, “Ebenezar Liddel. Auror department, sir.”

Moody grunted and looked him over, “Right.”

When the man turned his eyes to me I felt supremely nervous, “Luciana Rein. Healer branch of the department, sir.”

“Rein and a Healer.” His eyes narrowed farther, “I knew your brother girl. Aren’t you a bit young for this job?”

I coughed a little, “No one is young in this kind of time, sir.”

His bushy eyebrows went up, “This kind of time, what kind of time would that be?”

I shrugged, “It depends on who you ask, sir.”

“I’m asking you.”

“War time, sir.”

Moody nodded once and motioned for us to follow. He took us around the training grounds and set us on running schedules. He worked us even harder than Professor Cormack had and I was aching from every point in my body within moments. Ebenezar was wheezing a few feet behind me and nearly bowled over on our sixth lap. On our twelfth, Moody finally let us stop running and set us to work on our wand precision. We were aiming at moving targets our legs and arms like jelly with Moody critiquing our every miss. He wasn’t exactly mean about it but he wasn’t nice either. It was like he smashed our hands in a door in oder to me a point.

When Lena finally came to collect me for Healing work I was half-dead. Lena was even worse than Moody, she pushed my magic as far as it could go. I was preforming spells that I could never had imagined using before. Spells that I didn’t even know existed were flying out of my wand, some of them were little sparks only half formed spells and others were blinding jets of magnificent light. Lena worked me until every last spell that she told me were those blinding jets. She worked me until everything started spinning and twirling, lights that weren’t spells were swirling round.

“Rein? Rein!”