Daughter of Black

Chapter 60- Reward and Punishment

V was eager to get into her old routine after realizing that doing nothing all day was no distraction from everything that had happened. V started her work at St Mungo's again, working harder than ever which had become quite therapeutic. She found helping people helped her, and Barnabas seemed to recognize this too, giving her plenty of healing tasks.

However, V had encountered a new problem when she started her excessive amounts of healing work. Even though she thought of Sirius less and less, she ended up thinking about everything else that happened at the ministry more and more.

As she healed one of her patients who had gotten a severe cut on their arm, she found herself slightly shaky at the sight of the cut. As soon as she had laid eyes on the patient's wound her mind flashed back to the final damning slash that she had casted on Roldolphus. It didn't help that the patient had the same dark hair with grey specks that Roldolphus had. V froze at the sight of the poor woman, thinking about how Roldolphus looked at her just before he fell to the ground. Sure, the man had tormented and killed many, but in that moment where he had looked up at her, he had the eyes of a human.

"Is it that bad?" The patient asked with a perturbed look in her eyes.

V snapped back to reality, giving her a sympathetic smile and a shake of the head. "Oh no it really isn't that bad at all. Sorry to stall, I'm an apprentice, so I was just trying to remember how to approach cuts like these. I remember now though, it's an easy fix." V reassured and got immediately back to work.

Incidents like these happened a fair bit, but it was nothing alarming enough to make V consider taking more time off, so she soldiered on.

Towards the end of the day V found herself tidying up the hospital room of an old witch who was reading the daily prophet. V then noticed her father's face on the cover with the caption Sirius Black Declared Innocent Days After Death at Ministry. V maintained her composure despite so, until she noticed the lady continuously look back and forth from V to the paper.

V was about to leave the room when the lady called her over. "Excuse me miss, do you think you could come here for me?" The lady asked.

V nodded, slowly making her way over, just knowing it couldn't be anything good. "This lass here looks an awful lot like you." She commented pointing to a grainy photo on the fourth page of the Daily Prophet. V peered over and noticed it was indeed her. It was a picture of V with blood stains all over her face and clothes, looking absolutely shocked as she glanced around. There was a big long article dedicated to her which was entitled The Redemption of the Black Family.

"Is it you?" The lady persisted.

"No, but she does indeed look like me." V replied with a convincing smile.

She left the room before any more questions could be asked and made her way towards Barnabas' office. But before she got there, he spotted her in the hallway, running over to her.

"V," He began. "I was just looking for you, some ministry workers are here to see you."

"Oh." V replied, going through all the reasons in her head for why there were ministry workers at her work to see her.

"Well come along then, they're in my office." Barnabas said ushering her along. V followed, hoping she wasn't in trouble.

When she entered, she found Percy sitting in the corner and gave him a side eye, but he barely looked up when she entered the room. There was another man who stood in her more direct vision who had a fiercely stern look on his face. He seemed very tight lipped but gave her an amiable smile when he saw her.