Friends Kiss Too | F. Weasley

Chapter 51 - The First War

Arthur had stayed true to his word, not letting Milena join any more Order meetings or be sent out of any more missions. Lee had to continue the radio show without her from that point, which was rather disappointing, but not surprising. She may as well have been just told that she was on house arrest and it would have felt like the same thing.

It was often Fred who would update her on the latest news from the Order - who had gone missing, who had died, or the movements of the Death Eaters - but overall there didn't seem to be much for him to tell her. Sometimes Fred would return with a new book for her, something he thought might be of interest for her since she had nearly run out of Muriel's books already. He had managed to snag a few healing books, one on healing properties of certain magical plants and another on more advanced healing charms and spells, and a few other random assortments of stories that might keep her entertained.

By early February, Milena was keeping herself busy by practising new healing magic that she'd read in the books, but eventually this had grown boring too. So she had moved onto practising potions and recipes that she had read about - at least the ones she had the ingredients around for - and eventually this somehow spiraled into testing potions and experimenting with them, seeing what else she could come up with, even trying some muggle remedies mixed with the magical ones just to see what the outcome would be.

She had accidentally taken over the kitchen, which Muriel and Molly were displeased by, and had spread out all of her ingredients, failed potion attempts, and assortment of textbooks around the counters. The first potion she had been making originally when all of this had started was a potion similar to Skele-Gro. Skele-Gro potions were notoriously disgusting to drink which had her wondering if she could change anything in it to taste a little better. Then, she wondered if she could make it work faster, but if it worked faster it would need to be painless, which Skele-Gro unfortunately was not.

Next thing she knew, she was spending hours of the day, working on trying to improve the quality of potions and practising a type of magic which she had never really had much of an interest in before. But when you're locked up in a house by yourself for hours each day, anything could become entertainment she supposed.

Working on these potions all day reminded her of working on the products for the joke shop when they were back in Hogwarts as just new witches and wizards. When the only worries they had were perfecting the canary creams and making sure Molly didn't find the fireworks.

Oh how she missed the shop. She would give anything to be back there right now, playing with the pygmy puffs, listening to the sounds of laughter between friends, smelling the chocolate and faint firework smoke in the air. Now, here she was, feeling imprisoned in another person's house for a stupid decision she had made, trying relentlessly to improve potions without seeing a bit of improvement and reminiscing about the good ol' days at nearly 20 years old. How was it possible to feel so old while still being so young?

Having given up on yet another attempt to make Skele-Gro taste better, she tossed aside her stirring rod and waved her wand over the cauldron, vanishing the sickly green, bubbling liquid that reeked of old compost. She assumed sooner or later she'd be back working on the potions again, so rather than put everything away, she had claimed a section of the counter in the corner where she gathered everything and left it to surely be used again.

She left the kitchen, tossing the old, white apron she had been wearing onto the counter and threw herself onto the living room couch in defeat for the day. The house was quiet when she was the only one there. Everyone had gone to the Order meeting for that day and Muriel had gone out to the shops for some "me time" as she called it.

Milena stretched herself out along the couch, staring up at the tall, wooden ceiling and let out a deep sigh. She laid there, simply staring at the ceiling for a while thinking of anything she could do to distract herself, but nothing seemed to come to mind. Instead, her own thoughts began to pool into her mind again, reminding her over and over again that she had done this to herself. She could be out there right now, taking on tasks for the Order, helping them with what little they had left, but she wasn't. Sure, she was still one of their healers, but no one seemed to need her healing. Either they would be dead, missing, or out of the action entirely and those that did need healing, Molly tended to get to first since she would be at the meetings.