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Order Only: Bearer of Bad News
Nov. 14th, 2014 03:42 amI regret to inform that as of a few minutes ago, Miss Meadows has lost her struggle with the curse she was fighting.
Poppy had one final idea to try: a treatment that would cleanse Miss Meadows' system at the micro-level in the hopes it would clear out the curse. We had saved it for the last item on the list, as it would, by its nature, remove the protection offered by Cinnabaris vitalis, which had been what kept Miss Meadows alive through the evening. It was an all or nothing attempt, and although she did gain several lucid and pain-free hours out of it, I am sorry to say that the curse rebounded with a vengeance.
Poppy did at least endeavour to make her passing as peaceful as possible. Her last wishes were threefold: that we celebrate her life rather than mourning her death, that when we have won our struggle we should endow a scholarship at Hogwarts for a promising Muggleborn student in her name, and that — and here I quote — we "give them hell for me". I assured her we would do all three.
I am sorry. We did all that we could.
She did provide me with as many personal impressions as possible, to facilitate the development of a counter-curse, even though by that point it was obvious it would not be in time for her. Of note: she said she was unusually magically fatigued last night, and indeed had to be side-alonged back to Sherwood. We agreed that — comparing the progression of the curse to that of previous victims — the time from onset of symptoms to death has been shortened, but to compensate, the time between application of curse and onset of symptoms has been extended and an extra component had been added to disrupt the target's magic. (Likely to incapacitate someone magically upon the field of battle, rather than physically.) If any of you are in a battle and feel unusually fatigued afterwards, do not chalk it up to simple exhaustion: have yourself checked as soon as possible. I do not know that more time to attack the problem would have helped, and we will of course never know, but when dealing with an unknown curse like this, more time is always better.
Poppy had one final idea to try: a treatment that would cleanse Miss Meadows' system at the micro-level in the hopes it would clear out the curse. We had saved it for the last item on the list, as it would, by its nature, remove the protection offered by Cinnabaris vitalis, which had been what kept Miss Meadows alive through the evening. It was an all or nothing attempt, and although she did gain several lucid and pain-free hours out of it, I am sorry to say that the curse rebounded with a vengeance.
Poppy did at least endeavour to make her passing as peaceful as possible. Her last wishes were threefold: that we celebrate her life rather than mourning her death, that when we have won our struggle we should endow a scholarship at Hogwarts for a promising Muggleborn student in her name, and that — and here I quote — we "give them hell for me". I assured her we would do all three.
I am sorry. We did all that we could.
She did provide me with as many personal impressions as possible, to facilitate the development of a counter-curse, even though by that point it was obvious it would not be in time for her. Of note: she said she was unusually magically fatigued last night, and indeed had to be side-alonged back to Sherwood. We agreed that — comparing the progression of the curse to that of previous victims — the time from onset of symptoms to death has been shortened, but to compensate, the time between application of curse and onset of symptoms has been extended and an extra component had been added to disrupt the target's magic. (Likely to incapacitate someone magically upon the field of battle, rather than physically.) If any of you are in a battle and feel unusually fatigued afterwards, do not chalk it up to simple exhaustion: have yourself checked as soon as possible. I do not know that more time to attack the problem would have helped, and we will of course never know, but when dealing with an unknown curse like this, more time is always better.
