So many of the boys she had gone to school with had felt themselves destined for the Ministry of Magic, for careers pushing papers, enforcing laws, and maintaining laws. But Marie-Louise, if she were to be entirely honest, had never really felt the appeal of such a job. "Do you mind, if I ask why you knew you were headed to the Ministry?" She had never dared to ask her classmates such a question, but it seemed a terribly dull job when compared to the practicality of healing. Then again, there were plenty like Fallon, who had found an exciting career as aurors and she supposed she could see the excitement in that. But many of the Ministry's jobs lacked the appeal. Surely they couldn't all have desired to be an auror only to not meet the requirements to do so?

It seemed that Mr. Hatchitt was just one of those men who would prove that not everyone wanted to be an auror. Malou's lips pressed into a quiet smile at that, glad to see she wasn't entirely misguided in that thought. She chuckled as he continued his explanation. "It does seem a good fit." She agreed, for the little she knew of Mr. Hatchitt. "I'm not sure my parents would say the same of my own career." She admitted, surprised to find herself saying as much to someone who wasn't Fallon, who hadn't felt the depth of her own insecurities. But there was something about Mr. Hatchitt and his personality that seemed to impress on Malou that she could share such a thing, or perhaps it was the quiet of the evening and the fact that her company was someone she knew not just professionally anymore given her ties with Fallon and Mr. Hatchitt's ties to Fallon.

Nights on the ward could be lonely, leaving too much time for reflection if one's thoughts tended that way. It sometimes left Malou wondering what her life would have been like if she had fallen her mother's wishes for her. If she had debuted and found a match. She might have settled down by now with a respectable British gentleman, minding a house of her own. Her conversations might be with the staff instead of her patients and nurses. She might have found herself raising money for the hospital through fundraising events that she would loath and talking to a small circle of women she had nothing in common with and who would only whisper behind her back of the oddity of her accent. In all those envisionings she could not see herself being happy. Perhaps when a child or two came around she might give them her love and affection but she suspected a part of her would always have regretted the choice not to follow her dreams and plans, to merely settle down as if there wasn't a greater good she could have contributed to. But her parents would look down at her from Heaven and they would be happy with her decisions. She could never be sure of that now. Even if she had done as they wished would she even be sure of that they would be happy with those decisions either?