The Survivors

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

As Daphne and Susan went arm and arm towards the gathering of people they approached Hannah Abbott, Hermione Granger, and Cho Chang. As the two arrived Susan said, "Good evening ladies. If you haven't been introduced, or haven't spoken to this lovely lady in a while this is Healer Daphne Greengrass. She works at St. Mungos in the spell damage ward."

Hannah and Cho both said fairly quiet hellos while Hermione greeted her with a hug that Daphne wasn't expecting, "I am glad you are here! Harry told us he was going to invite you, but the boys guessed you weren't going to come. I am glad you proved them wrong."

Before Daphne could reply Hannah asked in a conspirtal whisper, "So I saw two glasses of Firewhiskey come out back to back pretty fast. Harry doesn't usually bring it out until later in the evening when the other Professors arrive. What's up there?"

Susan grinned, "Well the first one he pulled out a firewhiskey from the year all of us were born, and declared that he hoped he was going to get lucky with all three of us, and then toasted to the fallen."

The girls all gasped and Hermione shook her head in exasperation, "He didn't really say that did he?"

Susan just slyly smiled, "Sorry girls you were all over here gossiping while Daphne and I were in on the real action. Right Daphne?"

The girls all looked at her, and the looks on their faces were hilarious so she humored Susan, "He certainly implied it."

Cho and Hannah giggled, while Hermione groaned, "Whatever happened to the boy from the cupboard who could barely form words around you Cho."

Cho merely looked out towards Harry who was laughing with Tracey about something, "He grew into something pretty special. Good thing for all of us too, where the hell would we be without him? I should've locked that man down ten years ago when I had him desperate for my attention."

Hermione and Susan rolled their eyes while Daphne could tell Hannah was fighting back a snort, but it was hard to disagree with her that he had turned into something special. Then however she looked at Hermione strangely as she finally processed her comment about the cupboard. What had she meant by that?

Susan then asked, "So Cho how is Michael Corner these days I noticed he isn't here? I half expected you to finally show up with a ring on that finger."

Cho scoffed, "He ran off with some professional quidditch player on the Brazillian National Team he met while working the World Cup a few years back. I think they were sleeping together for a while before he called off things with me. I am actually trying to see a Muggle man right now. He is interesting, and I think I quite like him."

Hermione beamed at this, "Wow Cho that's awesome what does he do?"

The girls chatted about Cho's new boyfriend who was a pilot for some big American Company, and how kind he had been to her over the last few months. Daphne wasn't very interested in the girl's love life, but politely listened in. Her eyes mostly kept going back to Tracey and Harry who seemed to be sampling all the food and having a great time. This made Daphne smile glad Tracey was having a good time. She herself was just enjoying having a civilized conversation with other females that didn't have to be about scandals, or politics. This was just friends catching up with each other, and Daphne was happy Hermione and Susan were quick to include her in the group.

The conversation turned shortly though and Hannah was asking her a question about what it was like being a healer claiming to have interest in one day joining the field of healing, "Well it's dreadfully boring working on the Graveyard shift most nights. No visitors are obviously allowed by the time I come in, and most of the patients are asleep until about an hour or two before my shift ends. So sometimes I will check on patients while they eat breakfast but for three quarters of my shift I just keep an eye on things with Tracey. There are supposed to be two healers on duty for the floor, but we have been so short handed that rarely happens. I serve as the emergency room healer basically when trauma victims come in, and if I was desperate for help the healer in charge of the whole hospital could step in to help.."