Weeks later, Halley was overjoyed to find herself with all of the necessary NEWTs to go into the St Mungos training programme. The training would take a year and a half, and then she would be a fully qualified healer. To James's delight he was accepted into the Auror training.
"Okay everyone," a man who looked around the age of Halley's Uncle Percy had walked into the room where the ten new hopeful healers were waiting, "I'm Healer Ethan Edgar and I will be overseeing your-Venus?" His eyes had widened in shock when he saw Halley.
"No," Halley glanced behind her, as if expecting to see her mother standing there, "I'm Halley." She said when she realised he was talking to her.
"Sorry," he said, "you just reminded me of someone. Like I was saying. I will be overseeing your training for the next year and a half. You will be learning on the job, because the best experience that you can get is hands on, especially with healing."
Halley glanced around the room. All of the other witches and wizards there looked older than her, none of her Hogwarts classmates had decided to become healers, so there were no familiar faces there.
"Each of you will be assigned to a healer who you will be shadowing. We have tried to assign you to the wards that you requested," Healer Edgar continued, he began to rattle off a list of who everyone was assigned to, "and finally, Halley Longbottom will be with me on the Creature Induced Injuries Ward."
Everyone began to leave to find their healers, whilst Halley made her way to Ethan.
"Why did you call me Venus? Do you know my mum?" Halley asked.
"What?"
"Venus Longbottom."
"That's why you look so much like her," he tucked his clipboard under his arm.
"So you do know her?"
"We've met."
"Okay, that's um... great." Halley shrugged.
"So," Ethan began walking away, gesturing for Halley to follow him, "we will be working with a whole variety of creature induced injuries. Do you have any experience with this?"
"Well I took Care Of Magical Creatures up to OWL, I helped out in the hospital wing at school a bit and I've been working on this..." Halley trailed off when she realised that she had just been about to tell someone who she hardly knew all about the potion to cure lycanthropy that she had managed to keep a secret for two years.
"You've been working on what?" Ethan frowned.
"Nothing, it doesn't matter." Halley shook it off, "but I've helped my mum out after full moons before, so I guess that kind of counts as experience with Creature Induced Injuries."
"Well, you got superb NEWT results, and you seem better equipped for this than most new recruits, I think that you will do just fine here." Ethan smiled.
"So what kind of stuff are we looking at today?" Halley asked interestedly.
"We've got several Salamander burns and a man who was savaged by a manticore."
"Sounds like fun!"