"On that pleasant note, I think we should... hmm. Joey, I'm going to be conducting your intake examination early. Usually we'd do this in your second week, but I've got you here anyway and you clearly need some potion regimens. Other kid, you can go back to class if you want or you can stick around, I don't particularly care."

"Joey, d'you want me here?"

"Yes please."

"I'll stay then."

"Fine by me."

She turns to her desk and grabs some chalk. She crouches down and starts marking up the floor around Joey's feet. "This'll take a couple of minutes, I want to do a detailed inventory of what's wrong with you."

"Your bedside manner isn't great."

"Yeah, but I'm the only healer who'll come anywhere near this Godforsaken castle. Stay still and I'll get it over with quickly."

She finishes chalking the runes and waves her wand, causing them all to glow. Her eyes glow with them. "Hmm... okay. Mild scoliosis, latent stomach and skin problems, low blood pressure, we can take care of those, I'll run up some potions. Weak eyesight - figure out if you want glasses or potions for that. That's all easy. Your brain, meanwhile, is a mess. Half of the damn thing is flooding itself out trying to make up for the other half not working. I want to take this thing out and study it."

"Please don't?"

"If you insist. Anyway, I can work out something to do about that, it'll just be more involved. Bigger problem, your nerves are shot to hell. Without intervention, your wand hand is going to shake like a leaf, and the ideal intervention would've been five years ago. We can still manage something, don't worry - it's just going to suck."

"...okay. So I'm going to be drinking a bunch of potions - I'd rather drink a potion than wear glasses - and... what's going to suck about fixing my tremor?"

"Eight-month potion regimen. With side effects. Sorry."

Joey winces. "What kind of side effects?"

"Muscle weakness, dizziness, exhaustion, random aches and pains... there's a lot of potential side effects, and none of them are fun. But it'll rewire your nerves so you can use a wand properly. You'll be able to stop shaking if you concentrate on it, at first, and then it'll take less and less concentration until it's automatic, and eventually you'll be steady even under stress. And no, you can't stop once it seems like you're doing fine, that'll just make you relapse three years later."

"Okay. Well. Any of these potions I can take right now?"

"Sure thing. Sadly we can't just give you a cocktail of everything you'll need; for one thing it'd be about a liter of fluid, for another thing potions interact and it isn't pretty. So you'll get a different potion every day for a couple of weeks, breakfast and dinner. Don't worry, they all taste foul. Today's lucky potion is..." She summons a tall bottle labeled SKIN, pours a tot of liquid into the cap, and hands it over. "Drink up."

Joey swallows the SKIN. It tastes exactly as foul as advertised. He makes a deeply unhappy face.

Felicity hands over a bottle of butterbeer wordlessly.

Joey drinks it down. "Thanks," he says when the taste is out of his mouth.

"Oh, thank me when you're done. You're not going to like me very much for the next eight months."

"We'll see. What about the nerve potion?"

"Brave little thing, aren't you."

She summons another tall potion bottle, pours out a generous shot and hands it over. "Here you go."

Joey drinks it.

This one actually tastes kind of nice, weirdly enough. It's not nice enough that he'd drink it recreationally, even if it wasn't a strange medicinal potion, but it doesn't make him recoil in horror like the first one did.

"Is that all?" he asks. "Or did you have something else you wanted me to do?"

"Nah, you can go. I'll have the elves send the potions with your meals, and examine you again after two weeks, see if we've fixed those problems or not. Till then, no flying and no dueling. Let me write you a couple of notes about those, hang on a tick -"

She scrawls notes on some prewritten waivers, excusing Joey from any and all dueling and flight. "I'll send these to Dean and Stephen. Doubt you'll be getting into many duels as a first-year, but it's best to be sure. Now you can go."

"Thanks again. Uh, for - the potions. I know you said not to thank you but it's kind of reflexive."

And he leaves the Hospital Wing.

Leo trails behind him. "Medical potions! Exciting stuff. I'm excited to learn about potions, I've made a couple but I don't know how good I actually am because I only have my mum's feedback."