without losing a piece of me [sienna]

[Deleted]

january 23, 2025

Jamie shook the snow out of her hair as she stepped through the threshold of the apothecary. She had gotten up early in an attempt to beat the snow, but that hadn't worked out quite the way she planned. She was surprised the light in the back room, where she and her coworker worked on their potions, was already on. Sienna always was there when Jamie got in each morning, but she hadn't realized just how early the other woman was at the apothecary. Jamie unwound her scarf from around her neck, stomping her boots on the door mat one last time before making her way to the back. The potion she had put in stasis the night previous was still there, waiting to be resumed.

"Good morning," she greeted, hanging her winter clothes in the corner. It hadn't been long since Jamie had joined the apothecary's team, and she still wasn't sure how best to interact with her coworkers. To make matters worse, Sienna hadn't even gone to Hogwarts, so they didn't have that common ground. "What are you working on this morning?" Politeness was always the best way to start, but Jamie was hoping eventually she'd be able to go beyond pleasantries with her coworker. Patience, Jamie reminded herself. It would happen if it was meant to happen.

Sienna Aurélie Linslee

[Sienna Aurélie Linslee]

It was perhaps too early in the morning for Sienna to find herself hunched over her work area crushing snake fangs in her mortar, but it was all part of her system. Certain potion ingredients could sometimes only be harvested in low-light conditions, and some of Si’s best brewing occurred in the mornings when she could work uninterrupted. She’d also been struggling to fall asleep lately, wondering if she was wasting her time brewing large batches of Cure for Boils instead of pursuing her real dream…but that was neither here nor there.

She’d been diligently crushing the fangs, so she startled a little when she heard her coworker settle into the back room of the apothecary. Si’s eyes whipped up to meet Jamie’s before she slowly exhaled and set the mortar and pestle down. Jamie seemed a little uncertain (it probably didn’t help that Sienna had jumped as if a ghost had walked right through her) so Si smiled and chirped back, “good morning!” She peered through the front of the shop to watch the snow flurry through the air. “Oh no, did it start snowing? I forgot my scarf at home…”

Sienna shook her head as she settled back into her chair and began to heat the cauldron. “Nothing interesting,” she said with a small roll of her eyes, “just replenishing our stock of cosmetic potions. Cure for Boils.” It was an elementary potion, one that had been taught in her first year of school, but it was amazing how few people were inclined to brew their own. More business for them, she supposed. She turned away so she could better study her coworker. Jamie was fairly new to the apothecary and came from a radically different background than Si. The two had been polite with each other, but they’d never had a real conversation – the type where you could almost see into the other person’s soul. Sienna usually avoided anything that required total honesty…but it could be isolating. Sometimes the best rewards in life came from small choices that require real courage.

“Come over here for a moment and I can show you something,” Si offered, gesturing to a table in her work area that she always kept covered, save for when she was alone.

@jamie

[Deleted]

Sienna didn’t ignore her greeting, which was a good step. Not that the other woman had made a habit of ignoring Jamie, but it still helped soothe her nerves a little. “Yeah, it started on my walk here. Doesn’t look like it’s too bad yet, but the forecast says it’s going to continue all day.” Jamie felt like a bona fide adult, talking about the weather with a coworker. She’d finally made it. “You can borrow mine, if you’d like? I run pretty warm; I don’t normally need one…” It was why she had stripped it off almost as soon as she got inside – scarves could be a little suffocating for her.

Her coworker said she had spent the morning doing nothing interesting, and Jamie made a sympathetic face. The monotony of brewing some potions was absolutely awful. Complicated potions could be a headache, but at least they required some level of thought. “Isn’t that what you got into potioneering for? Cosmetic cures?” Jamie asked, just a hint of teasing slipping into her voice. She actually knew so little about Sienna that it could’ve well been the reason her coworker decided to work there. Not likely, since Sienna had expressed disinterest in the subject, but who was Jamie to judge?

Sienna said to come over to a table on her side of the room, and Jamie shuffled forward hesitantly. She hadn’t ever seen the table uncovered. Jamie wasn’t nosy enough that she’d ever questioned why she’d never seen that particular table used, but now that there was a potential for answers, curiosity was getting the better of her. “Private project?” Jamie guessed, hoping the question was open enough to encourage an explanation from Sienna.

Sienna Aurélie Linslee

[Sienna Aurélie Linslee]

Even if the morning had been monotonous thus far, Si couldn’t help the smile that came to her face. She truly detested working in silence, and she usually didn’t have to. The shop was always bustling with activity, and Sienna was rarely alone in the back when she brewed. Even before Jamie’s arrival, her previous coworkers would at least make conversation (even if Sienna couldn’t quite remember their names, but that was besides the point). The shop was at its dimmest before the morning rush, however, and sometimes the atmosphere could feel heavy.

Si wasn’t used to feeling down, but it’d been happening an awful lot lately. In that way, Jamie was a real breath of fresh air. She seemed friendly, and as Sienna was discovering, easy enough to joke with. She gave a grateful hum in response to Jamie’s offer, and a small snort escaped as she turned to consider the covered table. “Oh, is that a dig at my looks? You don’t think this face could happen by itself?” Sienna looked back slightly to give Jamie a playful wink before returning to her primary focus.

Rounding the table only took another moment so that she could consider it from the other side and let Jamie take her earlier place. It felt like an important moment, even if the contents were nothing spectacular. It could be a pain sometimes, how private Si chose to be, but this felt like the right time to consider another perspective on the issue. She removed the tablecloth to reveal a small station featuring an empty cauldron, a mortar, and a pile of octopus tentacles. “I’ve been studying the effects of octopus powder in potions,” Si explained, her eyes fixed on the abundance of purple powder she’d left in the mortar. “It seems to increase the potency of a potion, but it reacts badly with certain ingredients. I’ve never seen it used outside of simple healing brews.”

She leaned forward to rest her hands on the table and consider her little project, a serious look settling on her face. “The real reason I got into potioneering,” Si explained, “…we understand so little about the field. I can’t help but wonder how much more we could accomplish if people paid less attention to the magic and more to the chemistry.”

@jamie

[Deleted]

Fear seized Jamie when Si asked if Jamie thought her face couldn’t be natural. She was just about to stutter out a reply about how she was sure Sienna was naturally beautiful (and it was true, the other woman was pretty, and Jamie wouldn’t bother denying it) when her coworker gave her a playful wink. Jamie flushed slightly. She probably should have realized that was a joke from the start. The heat slowly faded from her face when their attention returned to the mysterious table and its contents.

Sienna revealed a mortar, cauldron, and… Jamie took a deep breath. Yup, those were definitely octopus tentacles. Si said she had been studying the effect of octopus powder, and Jamie furrowed her brow. It wasn’t a common potion ingredient by any stretch of the imagination, and she couldn’t help but wonder why Sienna had chosen that particular ingredient to tinker with. “Do you have a list of the ingredients it reacts poorly with? I bet there’s a pattern there.” Potion ingredients interacted with each other in specific ways for particular reasons – there was a science to potions, which was what a lot of people who disliked it failed to understand. Jamie appreciated the methodology of it all, the ability to predict what was happening.

When her coworker said the real reason she got into potioneering was because they knew so little, Jamie nodded. There was a method to the madness, and they understood some of it, but not all. “It is kind of strange that there are potions that haven’t been changed for hundreds of years when they still have a lot of side effects. I mean, Wolfsbane is ineffective if something as common as sugar is added, and -” Jamie cut herself off. “Sorry,” she muttered. Sienna didn’t need to know about Jamie’s own baggage, even if her surname made it pretty obvious why she cared about the Wolfsbane Potion in particular.

Sienna Aurélie Linslee

[Sienna Aurélie Linslee]

Now that they were moving away from social niceties (usually dangerous territory) and into pure potioneering, Sienna felt more in control. She’d been working with potions professionally for 6 years but it had also been the only subject in school that she’d excelled at. It was…unusual for her to feel in her element in the wizarding world, not just because of the occasional odd reference to a book or person she didn’t know, but also in how people fundamentally thought. Magic wasn’t second-nature to her, and there were assumptions made by those raised in this world that didn’t occur to her. But…here, with potions, she could feel comfortable. It was the closest thing she’d found to science, and it required reasoning and patience that you couldn’t cheat with magic to get.

She picked up an octopus tentacle to examine it for a moment before letting it rest on the table again. Jamie’s reaction made her grin a little. “Work here for a year and nothing will faze you anymore.” The other girl’s question made her pause – where had she put her notes on the powder? During her time in Beauxbatons, Sienna would write her observations on potions in the books themselves, but getting caught by a professor followed by a thorough punishment had discouraged that practice. Now she maintained separate notebooks. She shrugged and responded, “it’s hard to say. Octopus powder seems to work well with ingredients that have purification properties. Dragon blood, unicorn horn…”

If she had brewed it before, Si could discuss potions thoroughly, as if it were an item of business but with an intensity that hinted at her passion for the subject. At the mention of the Wolfsbane Potion, Si could only pause before nodding slowly. She knew…very little, but she could grasp why the conversation with Jamie felt so much more important now. “We don’t stock Wolfsbane here, so I’ve never brewed it before, but…I understand the frustration.” It had taken so much research to find a partial ingredients list for the potion, and even then she could only guess what the brewing process involved. She’d filled 4 whole pages of one of her notebooks with increasingly wild speculations on the necessary harvesting conditions for potential ingredients of the very mysterious potion. That had been back when she’d been somewhat close friends with the only werewolf she’d ever met, but…it’d been years since she’d really thought about it.

Still, she couldn’t help but break her all-business demeanor to laugh a little. “It’s funny how life throws people together,” she commented dryly. “The most common use of octopus powder is to combine it with wolfsbane and unicorn horn as a way to strengthen your everyday Wiggenweld Potion. Sometimes you get the most interesting results when you pay attention to the mundane details, hm?”

@jamie

[Deleted]

Sienna made a comment about the octopus tentacles not fazing her anymore, and Jamie flushed slightly. “It’s not the tentacle, just the smell.” She wrinkled her nose. “I have a good nose, and it’s – well, annoying sometimes.” Most potion ingredients weren’t known for their pleasant fragrances, and that combined with Jamie’s sense of smell (which had, to her memory, always been above average) made an apothecary a challenging environment sometimes. She was able to keep her nose under control most times, but when faced with a new potion ingredient it could be a struggle. Sienna seemed to be looking for something, and Jamie stepped back a half-step to give the other woman more room to look. She began talking about ingredients with purification properties, and Jamie nodded along. Sienna definitely knew a lot, and Jamie regretted she hadn’t thought to ask her coworker about her Potions expertise before. Jamie knew what she had learned in school – gotten an O on her N.E.W.T. to prove it – but there was so much more beyond formal schooling.

“I’ve never brewed it, either. Too complicated.” There were too many steps that required precise timing, and it wasn’t like she could go running out of the apothecary and random times just to tend to a personal project. Unless she tried to brew it in the apothecary, which she hadn’t considered before. Jamie chewed her lip, pondering that. Maybe she’d ask Sienna for her advice when they weren’t in the middle of a different conversation. “Still, you’d think by now someone would’ve found a way to make it simpler.” It was a service to society – werewolves who didn’t take the potion were dangerous, even Jamie knew that. She swallowed hard, not wanting to think about that too long.

Jamie managed a small smile when Sienna mentioned it was funny how life threw people together. This wasn’t as random of a meeting as some – Jamie had met a lot of people who were important to her entirely on accident – but it was still serendipitous, to say the least. “Speaking of mundane details,” Jamie really didn’t have a better transition into this, “you do know why I care about Wolfsbane Potion, right?” Obviously, her surname, but Jamie wasn’t sure her coworker knew Jamie was herself a werewolf. If she had paid attention to Jamie’s general health as the full moon came and went it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out, but Jamie wasn’t sure whether Sienna’s observant nature extended to anything beyond potions.

Sienna Aurélie Linslee

[Sienna Aurélie Linslee]

Sienna took approximately one more moment to shift a stack of parchment to look for her notes before she remembered that she was a witch and could therefore use magic to expedite the search. Her wand had been left on the counter – its usual job was lighting flames and locating ingredients – and Sienna tapped it idly on the table for a moment before giving a resolute flick. She could think of maybe three books that would contain relevant information on the Wolfsbane Potion (beyond her own notes of course) and within the course of a minute had neatly stacked all three and a rather worn personal notebook on top.

Jamie’s comments made her hum thoughtfully, but her attention had drifted elsewhere now as she thought back to what the Potions Master of Beauxbatons had shared about this potion. Her lack of response was also meant to be tactful – the conversation was tip-toing around sensitive subjects. While Sienna was usually not adverse to listening to other people talk and share intimate details, it was not in her own habit of saying out loud what was implicitly understood. That’s probably what embarrassed Sienna the most about Jamie’s straightforward question – that it needed to be said out loud at all. Si flushed, her face and ears turning a dark red, as she considered how direct she was willing to be.

Of course, Jamie’s family name gave enough context by itself, but Sienna had naturally noticed the little clues the other girl had been dropping (she was a private person, not a deaf one). “You need to take it every month. So it goes for werewolves,” Sienna responded, her tone a bit clipped. She would rather not continue down this path of conversation (she was a little nervous at the thought that maybe now Jamie would want her to share something) so she re-focused on what had been said earlier. “Simpler can mean lots of things…more potency, perhaps, which would require fewer doses…more accessible ingredients, that aren’t as costly…” Si pulled the bottom book out from the pile – one of her old potions textbooks – and flipped through to the woefully small entry on Wolfsbane. She gave a frustrated huff. “It’s so difficult to learn about this potion. It’s already taken me years to puzzle out ingredients, and Merlin knows how it’s actually brewed.”

A thought occurred to her as she looked back up at Jamie. “You must have a rather unique perspective on this one…”

[Deleted]

Jamie watched as Sienna flushed deep crimson, but for once didn’t blush herself. She felt a little bad about making the other woman feel… what? Nervous, embarrassed? Either way, she felt bad because she knew how unpleasant blushing in front of someone could be, but the question she had asked was still a valid one, and Jamie wasn’t quite sure why it had elicited such a strong reaction from her coworker. Unless she found werewolves embarrassing? That didn’t quite make sense, because Sienna’s behavior hadn’t changed towards Jamie even though the younger woman had practically stamped on her forehead ‘I am a werewolf’, but… it was confusing.

She nodded when Sienna said Jamie needed to take the potion every month. “My one gift from dear old dad,” Jamie said, dry humor edging her voice. It wasn’t a gift, and she certainly wasn’t going to go thanking her father for it, but she assumed most people were curious as to how she had come to be a werewolf, especially since she had grown up in a Muggle neighborhood. Well, there was the answer if Sienna wanted to know it.

“Mungo’s has the Wolfsbane Clinic,” Jamie said slowly, “So making it cheaper to brew would probably help them, so the clinic doesn’t rely so much on donations.” Getting Wolfsbane every month from the hospital was a godsend for her and for a lot of other werewolves, specifically because the potion in question was so tricky in so many different ways – financially, skill-wise, and else. “Honestly,” Jamie said when Sienna mentioned her unique perspective, “I would just like it not to taste like crap.” Drinking it every month because she knew she would turn into a mindless monster was motivation enough for Jamie, but the experience didn’t need to be so downright unpleasant.

Sienna Aurélie Linslee

[Sienna Aurélie Linslee]

Sienna could feel that her reaction hadn’t necessarily been the right one. The balance that she had to strike between friendly and cautious frustrated her to no end – particularly because she hadn’t quite figured out how the balance should work yet. She wanted to be more trusting, able to provide the sincerity that many people seemed to look for. But it just wasn’t safe. It was perhaps unlike her, but Si had to let caution rule this time.

Still, she wanted to say…something. “I…don’t want you to think this is a problem for me. I know what it’s like to be judged for who you are,” Si offered hesitantly. She barely knew Jamie, something that would likely change as they worked together for more time, but she knew enough about the marginalization of certain communities. She’d certainly read enough – opening the Daily Prophet to read about the latest attacks on Muggleborns was becoming a daunting experience, particularly if she ever cared to remember about some of the abuse she’d suffered in school.

Jamie’s scattered comments on Wolfsbane were enough to stop Sienna from wandering down an unpleasant avenue of memory lane. She exhaled slowly as she considered both Jamie and the small stack of books with references to Wolfsbane Potion (too few references). “I wonder which ingredient is neutralized with the addition of sugar,” Si wondered out-loud, opening her own notebook next to find her speculations on the potion. She wrote the question down, it seemed worth looking into. “Not the wolfsbane itself, surely…we would need to research a complete list of ingredients. Might be worth interviewing a Healer at the clinic.” Si began to mumble to herself as she wrote these thoughts down before stopping suddenly. It hadn’t registered in her mind that she had said ‘we’ until she’d been about to say it again. That thought…struck her in an odd way.

“Er…you might also find it useful to consult books in Herbology and Magical Creatures. Potential ingredients can come from anywhere.” Changing to ‘you’ didn’t feel right, either, but…what else was there?

@jamie

[Deleted]

Sienna said Jamie being a werewolf wasn’t a problem for her, and relief flooded Jamie. She hadn’t thought so, but sometimes rejection came from the strangest of places. It was easier for everyone involved if they were on the same foot. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I know my father… wasn’t a good person. Isn’t a good person, if he’s still around. But I appreciate you not holding him against me.” It was strange, not even knowing if her father was alive, but Jamie would rather be ignorant than be obsessed with hunting him down, as she once had been. At the end of the day, she was only a werewolf because of her father, too, so being told she was wrong or bad for being one – that was like blaming her for being born at all, which wasn’t fair. (Then again, no one had ever said life had to be fair. Jamie knew that well enough by now.)

“It’ll be hard to figure out which ingredient is neutralized when we don’t even know all the ingredients,” Jamie agreed when Sienna began speculating about the sugar. Someone had to have an entire recipe, didn’t they? “I can probably get an interview. They know me by now, I think.” Jamie had been going to the clinic since her graduation from Hogwarts to get the potion, and though she was assisted by different Healers, she was fairly certain all of them at least knew her face.

Sienna abruptly changed pronouns – from we to you, and Jamie hesitated. “I’d… like it to be a we, if you want to?” She asked, tentative. Sienna obviously knew much more about methodology than she did, and having someone to bounce ideas off of always made creative endeavors more worthwhile. It would decrease the amount of time they both had to spend researching, as well – many hands made light loads. “Not that you have to, of course,” Jamie added in a rush. “But… I wouldn’t mind if we worked together.”

Sienna Aurélie Linslee

[Sienna Aurélie Linslee]

It was odd, how two people could barely know each other but there could be enough in a conversation to make you think they already knew enough. At the very least, Sienna was starting to understand how important backgrounds were to identify why someone…well, was. How they chose their career, formed their outlook on life, interacted with people. And having a father who was famous in all the wrong ways, and was responsible for one of the core components of your being…Si could get an idea of what Jamie carried around with her. It was hard for Si to find a way to communicate everything in her mind, however…there was too much in her own history that made her too uncomfortable to get personal.

Jamie’s question caused a little bit of panic to flutter in Sienna’s chest, but the taste of opportunity and possibilities was also tangible in the air. How many times had Si sat on the same stool in the same room, brewing the same mundane potions and asking herself if this was all life was going to be? How many times was she going to let other people scare her into depriving herself of everything that was possible in the wizarding world because of their own twisted beliefs? Sienna cleared her throat.

“I’d…like that too,” Sienna responded haltingly. “I have a hard time with this type of thing. Opening up, I mean,” Si clarified. “I’ve always had trouble thinking of this as my world too. But I still want to help. And if that means making this potion better, and figuring out how to add sugar, then I’m in.” Admitting this to her father or to Gus always felt easy enough, but it was amazing how much it drained her to admit it to a stranger. It had honestly only barely scraped the beginning of Sienna’s emotional baggage, but she’d said what she needed to.

She sat down on her favorite stool and opened to a fresh page of her notebook. “Alright, let’s brainstorm how to puzzle out Monsieur Belby’s secrets and improve them.”

@jamie

[Deleted]

Sienna was silent for what felt like forever, but was probably only a few seconds. Jamie wondered what was going on inside her head, but if Si wasn’t talking it was probably for a reason. They were getting friendly, but definitely not friendly enough that Jamie was willing to pry in what her coworker (friend? Were they friends now?) was thinking about during the silence. It ended when Sienna cleared her throat, and Jamie snapped to attention. It felt like a victory when Sienna said she would like them to be partners, too – and getting an explanation for why she had been so quiet was a plus, too. “Luckily for you, I am a chronic over-sharer.” It had worked for her in the past – being open with people had the fortunate side-effect of making them want to share, too, especially when it was done without expectation.

Jamie grimaced slightly when Sienna said she had a hard time of thinking of this as her world. “I won’t say I get it, because I’m sure we have different stories, but.” She ended the sentence with a half-shrug. Jamie was going to be there if Sienna wanted to talk – not just because this was her place of work and Jamie had to be there to make money, but because there was a seed of fondness for her coworker buried in her gut now, and Jamie was good at nurturing kindness.

“Let’s get to it.” She snagged her own piece of parchment and a quill, ready to, as Sienna put it, get to the bottom of the secrets of the potion.

Sienna Aurélie Linslee
(End Jamie!)