When the Party's Over Open toBlossomball Closed

Trying to Snag the Attention of Professor @Cypresse Lian

Willow had passed out basically as soon as Flash had picked her up at the Blossom Ball. She was on her way to safety, and the amount of blood loss and the amount of excruciating pain she was in from the venom filled wounds in her leg was enough to make any twelve year old briefly pass out for a moment of escape. The darkness welcomed her for some time, keeping her safe within it's clutches as her forever knight carried her to a place of healing.

She stirred once more by the jostling of being let down onto a cot. Her homemade tourniquet of Flash's bowtie was still loosely tied around her blood soaked leg. It clearly didn't do the job that she had intended for it to do. So much for her parents pounding of survival skills throughout her life. Although, in her defense she had never had to practice the survival skills in an actual moment of dire survival.

Everything was chaotic in the Hospital Wing and her mind was still swirling. Her body ached from the energy spent of her furious and rapid fire casts, of trying to make sure Flash was okay through it all. From her place on the ground of the ball she wasn't even able to do much. Her eyes frantically watched Flash get pulled away and put in a cot so his injuries could be taken care of. Nurses were flitting between beds and helping where they were needed. But her safety blanket of Flash was taken away and now she was searching for a different safety blanket in a familiar face, voice, person, a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, anyone. She didn't expect her Head of House to bust down the door to help his badgers this time, especially since they had all broken the rules and supported a ball that was cancelled for a reason.

Eventually her eyes landed on Professor Lian who arrived just a few moments after Willow. Her voice, still croaky and crackly from the smoke inhalation attempted to call out to her. "Professor Lian! It's Willow Andreson." Willow had no clue how to guide the Professor to her through the chaotic bustling of the Hospital Wing except for just to keep talking. "I'm to your left. I was stung in the leg. Uh, it burns. It really hurts. It's like the worst bee sting imaginable." Her voice cracked as the waves of pain started to flood her once more. The adrenaline was gone, now it was all she could think about. Small choked sobs came out erratically. "Spring used to be my favorite season, but this April sucked. Everything is scary. I shouldn't have gone... I knew I shouldn't have and I still did. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Professor."

Between the Hufflepuff fire and now, the thing Willow wanted more than anything in the world was for the pain to stop and for restful sleep to come easy once again.

She'd been noticed very quickly, and it was a good thing that whoever it was kept talking. Cy was suited to chaos, but that was the chaos of battle, and the battle here, to heal all the children, was much more confusing. Most of the nurses seemed to have their hands full, and she followed the student's voice to the left, smoothing her hands over the edge of the cot until she her elbow met the wall. "Hey, Willow," she smiled, propping her cane on the table.

Mosps were deadly. She hadn't had too many personal run-ins with them herself, but for an insect that was half a demon from hell and half a harmless annoyance, the math seemed to get twisted along the way and it ended up with twice the demonic and half the harmless. They weren't so dangerous as a lethifold or a hag, but most of these children never stood a chance against the mosps, especially those who had been left to fend for themselves, and the younger ones. She'd heard enough in the Quidditch Pitch to know that they'd done some damage, along with the peculiar fire, and the scuffle between some of the students that she hadn't really touched.

Cy reached a hand out towards Willow. "I know it hurts, hon, but I need you to just hold on for a little longer, okay?" She tapped the closest part of skin that she could find. "Reparifors." If Willow's wound had been deemed serious enough for her to take up a cot in the Hospital Wing, a single reparifors wouldn't be enough to heal the whole wound, but it might be enough to neutralize the magical venom, which might help with the burning. Then they could worry about blood loss - the size of mosps' stingers meant that the wound itself was a problem even without an injection of venom, especially if it hit the wrong place.

"Okay, Willow," she told her. "I need you to guide my hand to... whichever leg it is. How big is the puncture, and have you done anything else about it yet? How much have you bled?" If Willow was still conscious, she probably wasn't about to bleed out, but it was still best to be sure.

As Willow started to ramble, Cy felt a sigh leave her lungs. As stupid as the idea had been, she could see why they'd done it. The announcement of the cancelling had been sudden, and the children had been excited for a break from all the stress - only for the break to turn into another source of danger. Children were children, and consequences came with chance. "You weren't the only one who went, Willow," Cy reassured her. "You guys wanted to have some fun, but you understand why we cancelled the ball now. Right now we have to focus on getting you better, okay?"

Interacting with @Cypresse Lian

The relief that flooded Willow when she not only caught the Professor's attention, but she actually started walking over, couldn't be explained. She was going to be okay, everything was going to be okay. All of the professors at Hogwarts had become like parents away from home. She knew that she could trust them and go to them, even ones that she didn't take a class from yet. Or the ones that weren't her Head of House. It was obvious how much they cared about them as students, and they had gone and turned their backs on them by disobeying them. While the relief was there, that pit in her stomach of betraying authority figures was nestled uncomfortably.

Her head fell back onto the pillow as a different kind of relief overtook her, a relief of the burning sensation racking her leg quickly fading away with the tapping of a wand and a spell incantation. Magic was so cool, thank goodness for magic. Muggle technology, while there wouldn't be giant mosps attacking them in the first place to heal, would've taken forever to make the pain go away. Her head nodded at the request of staying up for a little longer before remembering that Professor Lian couldn't see her reactions. "O-Okay. I can. I can stay up." Despite the exhaustion seeping and settling into every fiber of her being, she wouldn't disobey a professor this time. She would stay up.

Shakily she sat back up and gently wiped as much of the remaining blood off of her hand as she could on her dress before taking Cy's hand and putting it at the beginning of the puncture wound, then gently moving it again to the bottom. "B-Both stingers. Got me." She looked at her blood covered leg, her hands that had quickly become slick with her own blood as she had tried to stop the bleeding on the dance floor. The dress that once looked frilly and made her feel like some sort of princess, now had become a nightmare looking Halloween costume with her hand prints dragged across the tulle. The wand, that laid beside her tinted red at the base from her hand clutching it for dear life as she attempted to cast it to a crisp. "So... so much blood. I tried to make a t-tourniquet out of Flash's bowtie, but I couldn't.. I couldn't get it tight enough because it was just.. so much. I'm so tired."

She had passed out on Flash's back on the way there, but it had just felt like she had quickly fallen asleep. Willow didn't know what passing out felt like. "What were they Professor? They, they looked like giant bees. But they're not like cute bumbling ones. They had two stingers, why do they have two stingers?" She wouldn't take Care of Magical Creatures for another few years, and she had no reference point for what had attacked her besides one of her favorite honey-creating muggle creatures that she suddenly wanted nowhere near her.

"Reparifors," Cy murmured again, wand spinning in a circle. She didn't know how many of these it would take to get rid of all the venom - Mosps were deadly if they were angered, especially the red kind, and even more if they got both stingers in you - but each wash of weak magic would soothe the wound, until she'd neutralized enough of the toxin to start using a different spell. Her fingers felt the hot skin right next to the puncture, and she twirled her wand again, repeating the spell.

"Hey, hey, stay with me," Cy said, maybe a little sharply. People who started talking about blood usually started going into hypovolemic shock pretty soon, although it had been a fair while since the wound had been inflicted, and from the looks of it, Willow had lost quite a bit of blood. "Don't think about it right now." She felt around gently for the makeshift tourniquet, careful to avoid the wounded area, fingers already getting sticky with dried blood.

Healing magic hadn't really been her strong suit, quit the opposite, up until she'd graduated from Hogwarts. She'd leaned towards theoretical before that - and that got her past her classes, past her N.E.W.T.s, past everything else academic. But then she'd landed a job as a Cursebreaker, the best option for her at a location next to MIT, and she'd gone through a different kind of education: learning on the job, literally. Her theory was worth nothing if she didn't know how to apply it, and that was when Untransfiguration came into play. She wasn't strong enough to lead a team into something, wasn't cautious enough to watch out, and wasn't patient enough to hang back as support, but she'd been perfect somewhere in the middle of all that, and that meant she knew how to heal when she needed to, though no more than that.

As for potions... well, she'd had to stuff a bezoar down someone's throat before, makeshift potions materials given individually for an emergency, but making them? No thank you, she left that to someone else. Administering them, though, she could do. "Calming draught, blood-replenishing potion, and wound-cleaning potion, in that order," she rattled off quickly, catching the arm of a passing wizard, and when she felt potions being deposited - one, two, then three - into her arms, she set the last on the table, holding the other two smaller vials out to Willow.

"Drink these," she said. "The Calming Draught first, I think it's supposed to be blue or green, don't remember. Then the other one, it should look like blood, that's a Blood-Replenishing Potion. Quickly." Before she bleeds any more. Cy uncorked the larger bottle she'd set down, feeling the pressure being released with cold smoke on her fingertips.

The problem with all antiseptics was that they hurt. Including magical ones, which really sucked, but that was how you knew it was working. "They were Mosps," she said softly, taking hold of the leg with one hand. "Cross between moths and wasps. There are two types, red and purple, and they usually stay in the Forbidden Forest, but they must've been attracted by the smell of the flowers. That's why we always put protective charms over the site of the party when we hold them."

She traced the wounded area gently, getting a feel for the size and position of the area, and twisted back to pick up the bottle and the accompanying gauze. "Eyes on the ceiling for me now, just listen. Mosps are classified as XXX or XXXX, don't remember which, by the Ministry, but there was some trouble there because they couldn't decide which to classify them as, isn't that interesting? Because the purple mosp only attacks when provoked, but the red mosp is a lot more aggressive and will chase you for pretty much no reason." With no warning at all, she began to clean the wound, curls of cold purple smoke rising into the air. "Mosps have a special kind of poison that's similar to the poison in an actual wasp, but the two stingers are a purely magical thing. Some people use mosp poison in potions, too, but it's not a very stable ingredient, so there aren't too many potions that use it." In a second she was done, lifting away the gauze. "Okay, that's it. Deep breath, calm down."

Interacting with @Cypresse Lian

A brief thought swirled through her head as to why first years didn't learn any healing spells. They were taught attack after attack spell but nothing to heal after what they've done. The Blossom Ball felt like that. A night that was supposed to be all fun and swell, a night to dance with friends and confess to your crush maybe. Swirling in ballroom gowns and avoiding spilling food on a dress that your parents spent too much money on to help make your school ball the best it could possibly be. No one could've predicted this, well... no one but the professors. Hindsight was 20/20, and although Willow's physical vision was hazy she sure as hell wished she had never set foot in that ball, especially with Ruka. She seriously needed to learn how to pick better dates. He ditched her immediately and didn't come back to help her at all, the person she arrived with. No, her brother had to come save her. He had to ditch his own date to help a small girl screaming in the dark.

The dark had never quite felt so suffocating and dangerous. Willow was never one to be scared of monsters under her bed, rather, her mom helped her befriend them as a kid. She saw them as protectors rather than monsters. But what she saw lurking in the dark that one night in the basements, lashing out at her friends, making her become slick in Jack's blood as she attempted to support him was not a protector. In the dark she could almost feel the shady darkness floating around her. It's what made sleeping so hard as of late, it was the main reason why she didn't even want to fall asleep in the hospital. The places that felt safe in Hogwarts were becoming less and less. But right now with Professor Lian, she could almost feel a bit protected and taken care of. She was letting herself sink into that feeling, remembering what is was like to not suspect every shadow. "W-When do we learn reparefor?" Her enunciation was off, she knew it was, but she could barely stay awake let alone talk.

Another nod at the command, stay awake. Stay with Professor Lian. She could do that. Of all the things she did that night, she could do this one thing. Perhaps her life depended on it, she didn't know. "You know my mom..." She spoke through occasional winces and grunts of pain. "She kind of makes herbal remedies at home. She's like a medicine witch, but a muggle kind." A deep breath. "While sometimes I would have to get anti... uh.. I don't remember what it's called. Like special doctor medicine, sometimes she would make this soup." Oh Gods, what she would do to have that soup right now. "She'd make a soup, that felt like it could heal anything. Maybe it didn't actually help, but it always felt like it did." Her head leaned back into the pillow, she needed to relax. She needed to let her body relax, just a little bit. "I feel like moms have their own special magic. Even before Hogwarts, I felt that magic from her." Talking would keep her up. Remembering her mom, thinking about her by her bedside holding her hand.

Her head lazily rolled back over towards the Professor when she stopped a wizard to get certain potions. Blood-replenishing? What kind of magic was being hidden from muggles? How many lives would it save. Not the time for those thoughts. Dutifully she took the potions in her hands, laying the red one next to her to first to uncap and down the blue potion first, a strong peppermint taste... lavender maybe.. there was something else. Not the time. She put the empty vial on the side table and quickly took the red one, it almost made her feel as if she was drinking blood. The taste was indiscernible for this one. That one was also quickly placed on the side table. She felt the Professor's hands on her leg as she talked about the Mosp. Willow was trying to pay attention to her words rather than the feeling. She didn't get to learn about as many magical creatures as she wanted to. "I can't... I can't remember what color the one that stung me..." A flash of memory, not of her red blood, but of a red bug. "N-No it was red. They were red." Was that worse or better than purple? It had to be worse, red was usually a warning color in nature to stay away.

She felt like this cleaning thing was about to hurt real bad, cleaning wounds was always the worst part of her scrapes from the forests when she would come home and her mom or dad would take care of her. Her eyes hesitantly left her leg, and gazed up at the ceiling. XXX... those are usually... pretty bad. She made a small noise of affirmation when the Professor asked if it was interesting. Anticipation, she didn't want to open her mouth. Red mosp was more aggressive, that checked out. It would've attacked no matter wh-Suddenly a hot flash of pain as she began the cleaning process, a small jerk of the leg and a hiss of pain. Tears pricked up at her eyes that were now glued to the ceiling, although she saw the purple smoke out of the corner of her eyes. Magic healing was so weird. A couple small whimpers of pain escaped past her lips despite how much she tried to control it.

As quickly as it started, the care was over. Her body slowly unclenched and relaxed once more. She still didn't dare look down, she didn't want to see what it looked like, if it was even still there. The calming draught seemed to slowly be working it's way through her veins as it became easier and easier to catch her breath and breathe. "Magic healing is so weird Professor. I feel like in a muggle hospital I would've had to get stitches. Do I need stitches? O-Or did that seal it? I don't want to look." She let her eyes close for a moment before opening back up, not to look at the ceiling or her wound. But just to look at the Professor sat before her. Taking care of her, protecting her.

As Cy set down the bottle of potion and pushed the cork back in with only a little fumbling, she waved again, hearing a set of nurse's footsteps pass by. "Antidote to Uncommon Poisons and Murtlap Essence, if you please," she requested, then turned back to consider Willow's slightly slurring words. Hmm. "And just a little Wideye Potion, there should be some in the back if nobody's taken it out yet." Moments later, two thumps met with the table as bottles were placed down.

She frowned. "Where's the third?"

"Sorry, Miss, but we're out of Antidote to Uncommon Poisons," the unnamed person said apologetically. "We're barely keeping up as it is."

Well, that didn't sound good. Judging from the sounds around the Hospital Wing, though, she couldn't say she was surprised - she could tell that the beds were closer together than usual, probably to make room for new beds. "There should be bezoars in the back, tell the ones that are worse off to grind them into powder - the unconscious kids don't have another hour to wait. Otherwise you'll just have to reparifors everyone, I guess."

Which was fine, of course. One more would get rid of everything in Willow's leg, and she twirled her wand again - it was the others she was worried about. After all, Cy was one person, she couldn't give everyone in bad condition reparifors seven times until all the venom had been banished. "Re-pah-ri-fors," she corrected gently. "Emphasize the s at the end. It's a third year spell. I can't teach it to you in first or second year because you haven't learned the -fors spells yet and you're not ready to work with living subjects - those are the hardest to fix if you mess up. I'm an example."

Well, she had been barely past ten. She hadn't known what she was doing. She hadn't known at all, actually, until she showed up at St. Mungo's, beaming with joy at the prospect of getting her sight back. There had been a flash of color, seeing light in front of her for the first time in over two years, and then it was gone - and they explained that there were things magic couldn't fix: magic that had been screwed up. Everything had seemed hopeless, then. But she'd had more to do after that, and so did Willow.

"Antibiotics?" she suggested, feeling around the bottle's label for the text "Wideye" etched into the side. Not as efficient as braille, but not everything had braille printed on it, after all. She poured just a drop of potion into a cup of water, shaking it gently to make sure it mixed, and held it out. "To keep you awake," she clarified. "There's barely any in there, it's like a cup of coffee. Just need you to stay up a little longer, and then we can give you some potion for dreamless sleep - just need a few more minutes."

At the mention of a parent, Cy listened almost fondly, though her heart panged a little. Years ago it would have been much more than a twinge, but she hadn't seen her parents in... what, was it ten, eleven years now? Truthfully, she barely remembered their faces anymore. But Evangeline and Aoi had been more motherly than anyone back in Taiwan, and memories of Aoi's chawanmushi filled her mind pleasantly. She'd sent them an owl just a few days ago, warning them of the happenings in Hogwarts, though she omitted several details, lest they fly to the castle and physically drag her away. "Mothers do have their own kind of magic, don't they?" she hummed, setting the Wideye Potion back and uncapping the other bottle. "I'll tell you a secret. Magic's not just about turning goblets into birds or cauldrons into cats, or about healing things with a flick or your wrist or making things float above your head. It's about balance, just like everything else. So really, it's not only us witches and wizards who can do magic - we just do it in a different way."

Indeed, homeostasis and equilibrium were concepts that had long woven through muggle history as well as magic. Magic was simply alien because the muggles never had it. "Even those mosps - well, things get scary sometimes, but they're just another animal." She nodded. "Red mosps are really aggressive - that's how they stay alive. The Forbidden Forest is dangerous, yes, but the reason is because all of those animals are dangerous to each other, so they have to become even more dangerous so they can survive, themselves. If you ever see a purple mosp in the bushes, don't bother it, and it won't bother you. Eyes on the ceiling again for me - this won't hurt as much, but it might sting just a tiny bit."

Another piece of gauze in her hands, she began dabbing Murtlap Essence around the wound. "You definitely would've had to get stitches," she agreed. "Actually, the magical world still uses some muggle techniques sometimes. Potions are great and all, but ingredients are really expensive and they take forever to make, plus you can't always carry every single potion for every purpose with you. And spells - most people only know spells to cure small injuries, like how I had to use Reparifors so many times, because healing magic is really easy to screw up, and once you do you can ruin someone's limb forever. Sometimes muggle methods can actually be safer, especially when you aren't in a hospital setting." After all, they still used splints, at least until someone could get to a professional setting. Healing spells were often fickle, as every body was different - you couldn't regrow a lost limb for a reason, and many of the principles of attaching a prosthetic were largely the same. There was no connecting the arm directly to the stump, you had to bypass the nerve endings straight to the mind.

Now she pressed a roll of bandages into Willow's hands. "It should be mostly healed - Murtlap Essence works fast - but you might want to keep it covered. We might be magical people, but our bodies are still mortal, and infections are annoying to deal with. Meanwhile... let's just have you stay up a little longer just in case, okay? I know you're tired." She didn't want to send Willow off before an actual nurse or someone with training was free to check on her. "I could tell you a story," she offered - that helped sometimes. "About how I used to be a Cursebreaker, if you're interested in healing magic. That's where I learned."

Interacting with @Cypresse Lian

In and out of her swirly borderline unconscious thoughts she could still hear the professor. "P-Poison? I'm poisoned?" She knew that the Professor mentioned the that they were venomous, but the confirmation that she was poisoned scared her. Then another thought popped into her head, her eyes widening in fear. "This isn't the curse right? I don't have the curse? S-Some people in Hufflepuff, earlier this month... I-" Fear was coursing through her veins. Who knew what could curse them at this point. The shadows in the basement were able to, who was she to doubt that magical bees could do it too? Tears pricked up into her eyes, this time not from pain but just from being scared. If she knew this would happen, she would've stayed home. But it was too late. Luckily her new panicked thoughts protected her from hearing that there was a significant lack of the antidote so that would be a future problem.

The young badger tried desperately to cling onto the words the Professor was saying, knowledge about the incantation and why she couldn't know it. "A-A result of someone not knowing the spell? How?" If Willow was in her right mind she would never ask a Professor such a personal question, but desperate times call for desperate clings to consciousness.

She had a thought about someday being like Professor Lian, cool and calm in the face of Willow being in absolute panic and destress. She always had a hard time keeping her emotions in check. Her brother, Flash, always seemed to be pretty good at that too. Despite being in pain himself after the ball, he still took care of her. She was grateful for people like them to help her. The nagging fear that she wouldn't be capable of the same if it was needed of her was one that would linger for awhile. "Antibiotics, that's what they're called yeah. I don't even know what a biotic is... for something to be anti..." Quietly she took the cup and drank it. "Professor Kibitzer told me that coffee would stunt my growth so I shouldn't drink it. I like tea any way." She smiled weakly, feeling a lot more awake which made her feel a relief where she didn't have to fight as hard for consciousness.

Professor Lian was letting her on all sorts of secrets this night, the spell that she was using to help heal her, and now a secret about magic. Balance. "My family, we talk a lot about keeping a balance when we practice muggle witchcraft stuff. We can't fiddle tpo much with the natural order. Or people's free wills." She found comfort in finding another way that the witchcraft's were the same, a way to keep her family magic close while practicing the new type of magic was always something that she struggled with. The part about the mosps... being just like regular animals trying to survive. Now she felt bad for killing one. She looked back up to the ceiling as instructed. "I killed one. I burnt it. I incendio'd until I couldn't incendio anymore. I let it burn to death." There was an ache in her heart about what she had done.

There was a sharp intake of breath at the slight pain, but it wasn't worse than the cleaning step. "Muggles and wizards aren't as different as people like to believe, are they?" If Wizards used muggle methods, why were they so separated. What was they purpose of keeping the two worlds so intensely apart when they could both learn together. It was something that she couldn't, and possibly would never be able to understand. Especially since her parents were now missing out on a huge part of her life, unlike the wizard born students.

Willow took the bandages dutifully in her hand, nodding with her eyebrows scrunched together as a show of how intense she was listening to the instructions to help her heal and not lose part of her leg forever. But the look of intensity faded, and a sparkle reappeared in her eyes when Professor Lian offered a story. "Flash tells me stories a lot, I like them a lot." Willow saw herself as a library of spoken stories, especially with all the folklore her parents would tell her about from a very young age. She kept them locked tight within her heart and mind to someday retell to others.