Pain Is The Price Of Love || Everett ||

The hospital had been quiet for a while now, aside from a single bed where a first year Ravenclaw was groaning about the taste of the medicine he’d been given. “Come on, it’s not that bad-” Everett picked up the miniature glass where the medicine had measured itself out at the command of his wand. He gave it a sniff in attempt to show it wouldn’t be too bad, but he was wrong. “Well, you can have some chocolate afterwards if you manage to keep it down, anyway.” The boy turned his nose up as he lifted the medicine to his lips. “There ya go.” Everett headed towards his office to fetch the promised chocolate. Upon his return he saw that there was another student present, so he gave the Ravenclaw his chocolate and headed over to inspect his latest patient.

This wasn’t the first time Beatrice Greengrass had come into the hospital wing looking like she’d lost a fight with a bludger, but it was the first time she looked as though she’d taken on twenty bludgers all at once. “Fall down the stairs again?” Everett asked flippantly, then mentally punched himself for taking the tone with a child. It wasn’t her fault, whatever was going on here. He wasn’t completely sure of the situation, though he’d asked her head of house to look into it in the past and written home to her parents regarding her apparent clumsiness. After all her visits, it was hard to believe the stories she came in with. She lied about as well as he kissed women. “Come on,” he said more gently, nodding his head in the direction of a cot toward the back of the room. “Tell me what happened.”

The girl sat herself on an empty cot and promptly spat blood into the available sick bowl. Everett watched without flinching. In his time as a healer, he had seen some pretty heinous accidents and dealt with plenty of disturbing incidents. People thought because he worked at a school that he was perhaps sheltered from the traumas other healers would experience, but not at Hogwarts. Not during war. This wasn’t the work of Death Eaters, though, and it wasn’t a fall down the stairs. The bruising over her left eye, the hand-shaped markings around her neck; it all pointed to an altercation but there was time later to attempt to flush the truth out of her. She complained of difficulties breathing. He nodded. “Can you lay back? I want to check your ribs.” Pomfrey had mended the girl’s ribs once before and after Beatrice had made her third visit on Everett’s watch, he decided to read up on the girl’s file. It was grim. Gentle hands pressed against the teen’s stomach, leaning forward near the bed. Yep. Just as he had thought; it was broken. Everett righted himself and stuck his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “I’ll be right back.”

He stepped away to fetch a bone-mending potion and some pain killers for her. Inside his office, Everett set his quick-quotes quill to work as he pulled open the doors to the elixir cupboard. “Patient is complaining of trouble breathing. Physical examination shows L-7 rib fracture. Visual examination shows bruising around throat, left eye, and stomach. Bleeding in mouth. Possible internal bleeding.” He pulled three bottles from the cupboard and shut the doors. He sighed. “Patient: Beatrice Greengrass. Again.”

Levitating the potions to the table at the side of her bed, Everett also brought her a washcloth and a small bowl of warm water. “Your rib is broken,” he said quietly. “Though I suspect you knew that, being as smart as you are.” Not smart enough to not get into these messes, but perhaps she was attacked unprovoked. A rival witch? Were they fighting over a boy? Had it been a boy? Crowley was going to have to get Dumbledore involved this time. Her parents and Head of House hadn’t managed to stop this nonsense. “Drink this. The whole thing. It’s not a pleasant taste but it should help with the breathing.” It was also going to be a painful next several hours for her, but she would have remembered that. The other two potions, one for pain and one for sleep, would be next. Then a salve for her eye and the markings on her neck. She was due to spend the next several nights in the hospital wing, and maybe he’d manage the hear what actually happened to her.

There wasn’t any protest from his young patient. By now she was a pro at all of this. Such a sad thought. Everett watched as she swallowed down the first potion and pulled a face. He banished the empty bottle as soon as Beatrice had set it down. He liked a clear work space. “The blue one’s for the pain, I suggest you take that now. I’ll give you more in a few hours if you’re still awake.” As he spoke, Everett dipped the washcloth into the warm water. “And you’ll want to wash away that blood,” he said, offering her the towel and then conjuring a hand mirror for her which fell gently on the foot of her bed. “Unless you’d rather not look.”

The second bottle emptied, Everett banished it to the backroom as well. There was only one potion left, but first he would need to apply the healing salve to the hand-shaped bruises around her neck and the ones on her face. Everett waited patiently for the student to finish cleaning herself up, turning his eyes to the floor as he saw the welling of liquid in her eyes. When she was done, he took the washcloth from her and set into the water bowl. Pulling the mirror from her hand, he lifted the water bowl and placed the mirror on the bedside table, then sat the bowl on top. Beatrice didn’t need to look at her injuries again tonight. He banished the whole pile at once. “This might tickle a little,” he warned her, unscrewing the lid of the little jar and revealing a mucus-colored paste. There was a faint smell of cucumbers, added to mask the natural aroma which was none too pleasing. He had purposely given her the pain potion first, because without it the salve would have stung and the girl didn’t need anymore anguish for the evening. He gestured for her to raise her chin, then slathered a generous helping of the paste onto her skin wherever he saw discoloration. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, spreading the salve more carefully so as not to inadvertently blind her.

There was nothing more he could do for her physical injuries tonight. Everett hid a frown as he looked her over, making sure he’d covered all of the bruising with the healing salve. The discoloration would improve tremendously by morning, and by tomorrow evening her bruises might be gone completely. The emotional scarring, however, was something else entirely. It was part of his training to work with emotional trauma, but only a small portion of his education really covered it. He’d focused his studies on healing the body, not the mind, but he wasn’t completely void of empathy for this young girl. There was only one potion left, a sleeping draught, but if he could get her to open up about her injuries even just a little before she slept, he’d have more information to provide Dumbledore with when he made his report. “Feeling better at all yet?” he asked, looking down at her from a standing position near her bed. “You won’t feel 100% just yet, but it should be helping a bit by now. It should be easier to talk.” If she wanted to. If history was anything to go by, Miss Greengrass would stay mum. Everett sat on the neighboring bed, a sympathetic expression on his face. “You know, if there’s someone here that you’re having trouble with, I could help. Even just to listen, if you need an ear.”

“Right, well if you should think of something.” Everett knew it was a long shot to get her to talk, and he’d not exactly reacted sympathetically toward her upon her arrival tonight. That was his mistake. He uncorked the final potion and offered it to her. “This will help you sleep.” He waited to ensure she drank the whole thing, then said goodnight and headed to his office. Finishing up the last of his paperwork, he pushed his files aside and scribbled a messy note to Professor Dumbledore, folded it up like a paper airplane, and sent it flying out of the hospital wing. Someone needed to look into this Beatrice Greengrass business.