wheresmytoad in nocturne_alley @ 2004-06-25 23:28:00

Current mood:

exhausted

Still no news about Dumbledore. Professor McGonagall looks more tight-lipped than I've ever seen her.

I finally managed to sleep a little last night, thanks to that sedative. I think if I'm smart, I'll take another dose tonight. It's been so dreadfully quiet all day. Eating has been haphazard for everyone, although they've had tables of sandwiches set up in all the common rooms. Nobody seems to have much of an appetite. I understand most people have been either in the library or walking rather aimlessly around the grounds. The weather, at least, has been rather fine. Perfect for Quidditch, although no one, of course, would dream of playing.

I spent the morning in one of the greenhouses harvesting and grinding up the blood root and blood vine that St. Mungo's had sent in by owl shipment. Madam Pomfrey's supply had been totally exhausted by midnight the night after the attack. My hands and shoulders ache from all that work grinding, and my fingers stink from that putrid-smelling sap, but I don't mind at all, none of us do, because it's working. No further deaths since yesterday morning, which I know is more than they'd dared hoped for: they were dreadfully worried for Orla Quirke and Marley Cedar in particular. Seamus is certain we've turned the corner for sure now. Families have claimed over half the bodies in the Classroom 11 morgue, so there are only six or seven students' bodies left there now.

I'm not sure if they've taken Remus away yet, and I didn't like to ask. Haven't seen Harry or Sirius all day.

They are allowing a few visitors in to the wards, but the St. Mungo's staffers sent by the Ministry have insisted on taking over tending the injured who are still recuperating--reasoning, I guess, that even though there are students eager to help, we shouldn't be subjected to the trauma of seeing all those healing injuries. (As if we hadn't our fill of trauma the first fifteen minutes after those thestrals burst through the ceiling.) Seamus, of course, simply acts as if this stricture doesn't apply to him, and I guess it doesn't. Dean must have bullied him into coming away from the ward to eat sometime during the morning, though, but otherwise he was back and working tirelessly all afternoon.

One of the healers that I know well did ask me specially to sit with the students with the worst of the Cruciatus injuries, the most agitated ones. (She's the one that recommended me for that job with the pharmacology department at St. Mungo's.) They know I have a knacky sort of way of talking to Cruciatus patients that soothes them, calms them down. (Lots of experience, I guess.) I sat and talked to with Prunella Palushock the longest, and she did seem to be resting easier by nightfall.

It's rather too soon to tell whether any of those Cruciatus injuries will be permanent.

I hope not.

There's other things I've been thinking about, but I'm not ready to talk about them yet. So that's all for now.

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