She had this mantra running through her head, that mostly consisted of 'You'll be leaving soon. You'll be leaving soon. You'll be leaving soon.' Unfortunately, another part of her brain was screaming 'NOT SOON ENOUGH', and the two voices yelling back and forth were giving her an extensive headache. She could feel it in her shoulders, and it had already settled at the base of her skull.

She looked up, sighing, one hand on her neck, when the doors to the lift opened with a 'ding'. She waited for the flurry of people getting off to pass before entering, surprised when she was the only person left. As the doors closed, she reached behind her and gripped the railing, letting her head fall. 'You'll be leaving soon. You'll be leaving soon.'

Neville was ready to go home and just fall onto a flat surface and crash. He had been here for 20 hours and was about to go mad. Although considering what he'd had to deal with today, that was probably a bad expression. There was a case of some sort of spreading insanity that had been admitted in the early hours of the day, just when he was about to leave. Now, after the problems had been solved, he was hungry and irritated.

He stepped up to the elevator and pushed the button to head to the cafeteria to eat the terrible food they served. As it stopped, he got a pleasant surprise inside.

"Ginny... how are you?"

Looking up in surprise, Ginny smiled what had to have been the first real one she'd had all day. "Neville!" She reached out and all but pulled him into the lift, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Please tell me you're getting lunch so I won't have to eat alone?" She pulled back and grinned up at him as the doors closed. She was still amazed by how tall he'd gotten in only a few years.

"I'd tell you I was getting lunch even if I wasn't, because you're just that convincing. But, yes, I am going to lunch. Hopefully after I'll be going to bed. I'm completely exhausted."

"Baby-man." She smiled before wrapping both hands around one of his. "I think this place does it to everyone. They suck your energy out and use it for nefarious purposes, I'm convinced." Now that she'd said it out loud, she was worried that it may have been true, which eluded to just how tired she was as well. "Going to sleep in the middle of the day? What would Gran say?"

Neville grinned. "For your information, Miss Weasley, I no longer reside at the Longbottom Estates, thank Merlin. I've got myself a little flat off of Diagon. It was too hard to floo from home to here, and the way people are, I don't think I've had a free day in weeks. I'm always on-call here, and it's always busy when I am here."

He leaned against the wall of the elevator tiredly. "Twice they've caught on my way out to leave and forced me back in here. It's frustrating. I have no social life."

"Yet another thing St. Mungo's steals from our cold, gloved hands." Ginny shook his hand in hers, "Well, you'll just have to come by sometime. Luna would love to chat. We'll get that social life of yours up and running in no time!" She didn't elaborate on the fact that helping him be social might spur herself into something of the sort. A date every other weekend was not a social life. It was a slow, torturous crawl towards social death.

"Even when I'm not here, I'm working it seems. I've actually been doing a few things on the side, but don't tell Mungo's. They'll never let me leave if they knew I had some sort of free time."

"I won't tell if you won't. I've been doing a few housecalls for some of my Gran's lady friends. They don't want to deal with the paperwork, and honestly, I don't mind. I enjoy that more than here, because it's much more personal."

The bell rang and the door opened.  Neville quickly walked out, seeing the amount of people wanting to get on. He grabbed Ginny's hand and pulled her along and down the crowded hallway, before leaning back to yell in Ginny's direction.

"This is another reason I like housecalls. No other people!"

Ginny let Neville lead her through the crowd, trying to keep from getting elbowed and jostled around. She hated crowds. Hated them with a fiery passion. When they finally made it to the cafeteria, the wave of people seemed to thin a bit, which wasn't surprising considering how abysmal the food was. If she didn't have to be back to work in 23 minutes, she would have gone somewhere else.

She smiled as they walked through the line, grabbing various pieces of food. Ginny grabbed some jello, which was a rather odd shade of purple, and an apple. Handing over a few coins, she found a table in the back, raising an eyebrow at Neville's selections.

"What? I'm still a growing man. I like food! You're the weirdo who got the surprise jello."

"Growing indeed. It's only been a few weeks, Nev, but you look like you've grown another 3 inches. You're going to make me feel absolutely tiny compared to you." As he sat down across from her, she reached out and took a piece of the roll he had on his tray. Smiling, she popped it in her mouth. "So, you have to be doing something else when you're not stuck in here. Let me live through you. Tell me a story."

"Alright then," Neville said. "Once upon a time, a boy work at St. Mungo's. When he left work, he went home and fell asleep. Not ten minutes later, he was called back to the hospital. The end." He grinned. "I told you I have no life. At least you have a roommate. I just have myself."

"Well, that makes you sound rather pathetic, and you are not pathetic, Neville. You should just take some time off! Get out of this place for a while. There's nothing keeping you here, is there? You could take a little holiday if you wanted." She dug her spoon into the gelatin, looking at it questionably before eating it. She chewed it thoughtfully before pointing her spoon at Neville. "So in these last 3 or 4 weeks, you mean to tell me nothing of note happened?"

Neville took a bite of some sort of chicken, at least that's what he thought it was, and chewed slowly. "Sadly, no. Nothing has happened. I'm hardly ever home. It got to the point where I had to give some of my plants to a neighbor of mine with a garden because they were dying. I could never water them. I tried a watering charm once but for some reason it watered too much and nearly flooded the things. Oh! I learned a new recipe for a wonderful tomato basil soup."

He made a sour face. "Is it sad that the only exciting thing that's happened in my life in a month is I learned how to make soup? Now that is pathetic."

"Well, the most exciting thing to date for me is that Draco bleeding Malfoy came in here for a checkup on Wednesday. Wizarding VD. Honestly." She shook her head, still not understanding why she'd agreed to heal him. It was stupid. Her place wasn't open yet, she didn't know him, his dad had tried to kill her, had tried to kill her brother, and Harry, and Hermione, he was a git... There were so many reasons why it was a stupid, idiotic idea, but her mind kept flashing back to that mound of scar tissue on his arm. He said it didn't bother him really, but it just... no. She really didn't have a reason why it bothered her. It shouldn't, but it did, and that was the problem.

She took another bite of the jello.

"Malfoy, you say?" Neville said, surprised. "What's that little ferret doing back?"

He started snickering. "And he seriously thought there was a thing as Wizarding VD? And he claims to be pureblooded."

"Maybe it's a new pureblood disease that we don't know about because we don't inbreed." She laughed, smiling at Neville. She'd always felt very comfortable with him, ever since he'd asked her to the Yule Ball. If she didn't like him so much, she'd have snatched him up long ago. "I don't know what he's doing back, just that he's back." She sucked a piece of jello off the spoon, looking up at him thoughtfully. If she could talk to anyone about her plan and trust that they'd tell her the truth, it'd be Nev.

"So, I've been thinking about starting my own practice. I actually met with a potions master on Monday. Tell me I'm not an idiot. Tell me there's room for a clinic to work alongside St. Mungo's. Tell me I'm not crazy."

Neville paused.

"I don't think you're crazy at all. It's a good idea. If you have a potions master in the works as well, then I think you should go for it. Like I said, clinics are more personal and everything, so families are going to like them more. Older couples will appreciate it more as well. You'd make a great business woman and an even greater personal healer."

She smiled at him, shaking her head. It felt good, coming from him, knowing he didn't think it was a rash decision. "Well, the only reason I'm a good healer is because I had a person I aspired to be as good as. Competition can do that to someone." She smirked at him. She'd heard the rumors flying around the halls, how he was a brilliant man and would soon be making great strides in healing. She was proud of him, but not sure how to say it.

He smiled. "If you Weasleys know one thing, it's competitiveness."

"You're so right. We find the competition and smash them into little, tiny, miniscule pieces." She dug her spoon into the jello and sat back, looking over his shoulder at the clock on the wall. She only had 2 minutes until she needed to be back downstairs. "You should come over and see me and Luna. I'm sure she'd love to see you."

"I might do that sometime," Neville said. "It's not like I have anything else to do."

He paused and and looked at her for a few moments.

"Your break is over, isn't it? I can tell by the way you keep glancing over my shoulder."

She sighed. "It is, but I don't wanna go back downstairs. I'd much rather stay up here and watch you eat everything in sight. Anyway you could write me a slip that says that you, as my personal healer, think it'd be better for me to abstain from work for the rest of the day?" She batted her eyelashes at him.

Neville laughed. "Yeah, right. And risk having your supervisors bring their hell down on me? I don't think so. You'll live."

"You say that now, but when you're identifying my body from the mass of goo on the ground, you're going to be kicking yourself." She pushed her left over jello towards him, standing. She reached over and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, sighing against his hair. "Don't be a stranger. Being off in Africa and what not is no excuse for not owling."

"Of course it is," Neville said finishing off her jello in a few short bites. "You just didn't get that memo."

She snorted before punching him in the shoulder. "Shut up." Reaching up to ruffle his hair, she left the cafeteria, tossing one glance smile over her shoulder before stepping out of sight.

Neville grinned back at her before digging back into his food. "God, this stuff still sucks."

 

Summary: Ginny runs into Neville and they talk over lunch. (Or, what could be considered lunch by St. Mungo's standards...)