February 27th, 1888 - Hospital Wing; Hogwarts

Seneca was on a streak of bad luck. That same evening after her incident at the bathrooms, she'd gotten high fever. The raise of her bodily temperature was so sudden that there was no doubt it was a magical illness we were talking about. Her suffering was too great for her to sleep in the common room, so a female prefect escorted her to the Hospital Wing in the middle of the night.

The next morning, Holly Scrimgeour joined her, with similar symptoms. Over the course of the day, other sick students also filled the beds around them. It appeared to be an epidemic, with Seneca being the first to cotract it, or show symptoms, at least.

The sickness itself involved high fevers, terrible headaches and frequent changes of the patient's skin colour. At first, the nurse assumed it was Seneca's metamorphic powers that caused those changes. However, Holly and the others began to turn blue and green and purple, so it became apparent this was an illness side effect.

It was night now and everyone was sleeping. Seneca didn't feel her bed raise from the ground, nor its short flight towards Holly's bed. She only woke up with she was violently thrown on top of her friend, like a sack of potatoes! Her own bed landed clumsily back to its place and Peeves' laughter boomed in the room.

  

Holly had witnessed the death and subsequent funeral of her elder siblings at the hand of then laughing plague back in 1884, so it was safe to say that she'd somewhat acquired a fear of magical bugs and illnesses. She hated the idea of getting sick with something that could not only make her feel awful, but humiliate her with awful side-effects.

She'd requested a quick sleeping tonic upon being brought the the hospital wing, knowing that being awake would mean being paranoid about her untimely death. Ugh.

Luckily, it had put her out of her anxiety before she had time to fixated on it. Unluckily, she had been awoken to a weight being tossed on her!

"What—" she screeched, immediately trying to sit up. "Miss... Miss Lestrange! Why are you—?" she asked with a gasp.

  

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— set by MJ <3 —

Holly's slumber had been so deep that she hadn't noticed any of it. She spoke to Sen with a tone full of accusation. It offended Seneca somewhat.

"Peeves, Miss Scrimgeour," Seneca replied in a harsh whisper. She rolled off of Holly on the empty piece of the bed next to her. She didn't want to wake anyone up. It was a miracle that nobody was up, given what had happened. Peeves usually made more noise when he did stuff like that.

"Don't you worry, I wasn't trying to snuggle with you or anything!"

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   Bella Scrimgeour

Flustered and disoriented, Holly could only respond with a scoff and a sneeze that turned her blonde hair bright green. She still had little clue why Peeves had anything to do with why Miss Lestrange was in her bed—at least until her blurry eyes cleared enough for her to realize they were floating!

"Ugh, I hate Peeves. Such a nasty old spirit, that one," she grumbled, trying to smooth out her nightgown and sheets.

"You wouldn't happen to know a spell that could, you know, get us down?" she questioned, leaning to peek over the mattress' edge.

  

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— set by MJ <3 —

"If only I had my wand on me," Seneca replied. Her wand was in a drawer next to her bed. It was sort of impossible to reach it when they were floating above the rest of the beds.

"Let's just wake up the nurse," Seneca suddenly said irritably. Her previous apprehension about waking the others up was gone. Nobody could fault her and Holly for the ordeal Peeves was putting them through!

Peeves, however, didn't seem to like the idea of his prank being spoiled. Suddenly, the bed began spinning. The force of it sent Seneca off the bed and she had to grasp at its frame not to be shot across the room. "Stop it!" Seneca yelled at the poltergeist. Was it her idea, or was the bed spinning faster with every passing second?

  

Holly let out a loud squeal, not from fear, but rather the bed's sudden decision to spin around. She didn't have a stomach virus, but she would going to feel like it in a minute if it didn't stop! She instinctively clutched Miss Lestrange's wrist in a somewhat half-assed attempt to keep her from falling all the way off, as she seemed more concerned with her own stability as she too grasped the frame.

With her free hand, she scrambled to grab one of the pillows to toss towards one of the nearby students who seemed so deep into their sleep that even the yelling of the two girls couldn't wake them. She hoped that, if they woke up, they could run to get help.

"Do you have leverage to get back on?" she asked, trying to more firmly grasp Miss Lestrange's wrist.

  

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— set by MJ <3 —

Having spent most of the previous night sweating through her bedclothes Trixie had admitted defeat and removed herself to the Hospital Wing in the hopes that she would at least get some relief by way of a potion. She could have made one herself - her mother had taught her how to numb most ailments - but access to the potions laboratory in her current state was perhaps not the wisest move, however the nurse's efforts were decidedly sub-par.

As such her slumber was not an especially deep one and moments after the ruckus began she began to stir awake, a process that was made much quicker by the pillow unceremoniously thrown in her face. Huffing she pushed it aside and sat up, glancing up at the floating bed and letting out a snort at the sight of Seneca Lestrange clinging to the side.

"I would have thought getting off was a higher priority," she replied, though the question had not been asked of her, tilting her head and smirking at the flailing legs underneath a nightdress.

  

If Seneca wasn't busy trying to keep herself from being shot across the room, she would have given Miss Scrimgeour a dead-pan look for her question. With her legs hanging and the bed spinning as it was, there was no way to do what Miss Scrimgeour suggested.

Finally, someone was awoken by the noise. Seneca was beginning to suspect the others' potions had been spiked with a sleeping-draught, for there was no way one could sleep through the mayhem Peeves was making! Miss Borgin wasn't very helpful, however, even if her comment was one Seneca might have made if their roles were reversed.

"Perhaps you'd care to catch me?" Seneca returned to the Ravenclaw in an irritable tone.

  

Laughing, all thoughts of her fever temporarily forgotten, Trixie threw back the covers and got off her bed less she too end up in an awkward position, hissing as her feet met the cold flagstones. She had no strong opinion about the smaller girl but she had always been fascinated with Seneca Lestrange, though she knew the other girl would forever be out of her social reach. Well, she needed her now didn't she?

"Not a chance, you'd squash me," she returned, reaching into the robes she had hung up next to her bed earlier and, producing her wand, cast a hover charm in the blonde's direction. "You can probably let go now."

  

It seemed like no one was in a good mood. Holly rolled her eyes as the two older girls had their snarky exchange, all the while waiting for Miss Lestrange to get down so she could find her way down. Hopefully the girl—Holly didn't even know who she was—would be kind enough to let her down, too.

"Please just hurry up!" she complained, allowing her free hand to grasp the bed frame as well. "I'm going to be sick—and I'm already sick enough!"

  

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— set by MJ <3 —

Squash her? Seneca was bemusedly offended. She hardly had the build to squash anybody! She wasn't a petite girl, but she wasn't large either. She wouldn't play beater anytime soon, that was for sure!

In any case, being 'caught' by a hovering charm was a preferable method of rescue to letting go and hoping Miss Borgin caught her without both of them ending up on the floor. Seneca was about to let go when Holly urged her to do so, an unacceptable thing to do because Seneca hated being told to do something she was already planning on doing. Holly could be such an unsufferable baby at times, Seneca wondered how they were friends in the first place.

She let go of the bed post, hovered inches above the ground for a few seconds before her bare feet touched the floor. Normally, she would go about saving Holly, but she had annoyed her so Seneca would take her time, unless Miss Borgin wanted to be the hero of the evening.

"I wouldn't squash you," Seneca told the Ravenclaw with a bemused smile. "Thanks."

  

The thought of a Lestrange being even slightly indebted to her gave Trix a thrill that could not be bettered and she smiled smugly up at the younger girl, trying not to make it too obvious to Seneca. A Scrimgeour was nothing to be sniffed at either, even if the older sister had become notorious of late, so she could hardly just let the other girl flail about int he air no matter how much the thought might appeal.

"Hold still," she called up, waving her wand again to pluck Miss Scrimgeour out of the air and carefully lowering her towards the ground. Unfortunately the ailment that had been her reason for coming to the ward in the first place was not quite done with her and quite suddenly she felt a spell of dizziness and her hand weakened on the wand, dropping the girl four feet from the ground and turning to rest a hand on her own bed, head down, feeling weak and unable to regain her focus.

  

Holly was quick to allow the older girl to help her down, despite the lack of trust she had for the Ravenclaw. Beggars couldn't be choosers, right? Sadly, it would become apparent that she might have been better off waiting for the professional nurse to help her. She was suddenly dropped from the position she was being held in, causing her to let out a shrilly scream that was bound to wake up all the patients that had somehow gone undisturbed previously.

Scrambling back to her feet and violently smoothing out the folded fabric of her nightgown, she shot the coughing Ravenclaw a nasty look. "Maybe you'd be better bald than with bright blue hair," she threatened, though it came out more like a huffy pout. She was sleepy and she was grumpy, and on top of that, she too continued sneezing. It seemed that other parts of their bodies than just skin were now shifting shades!

  

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— set by MJ <3 —

Seneca, who was already annoyed with Holly from before, didn't much like the way she'd spoken to Miss Borgin. For the night, at least, she liked the older girl better.

"Oh stop it, Holly," Seneca told the younger girl with a grimace. "Miss Borgin is the reason you're no longer spinning on that bed and she helped you in spite of her condition - the least you could do is thank her. Are you alright, Miss Borgin?"

Seneca didn't move to touch her in some sort but sufficed in giving her a semi-concerned look. She'd seemed about to collapse a few moments ago.

  

It felt, quite suddenly, as though someone was pushing on the back of her head, making it heavier than it ought to be and Trixie couldn't even begin to think of lifting it. She felt minutes away from being sick and the only solution was to lie down again - which would be simple if her legs hadn't decided now was the time to go from underneath her.

She felt the cold stone on her face before she even realised she had fallen and, quite apart from feeling distinctly ill, Trixie was coherent enough to also feel irritated: she might have made an ally of a Lestrange but for her own stupid body, she might have-

Whatever else she might have done, she didn't, because soon blackness took her and Trixie knew nothing but much-needed sleep.

  

Holly grimaced only slightly when the Ravenclaw tumbled, only looking away from the girl to speak to Seneca momentarily. "Well perhaps we should call the nurse," she sighed, pondering on the difficulty it would take to lift the taller girl. Seneca, the taller of the two Slytherins, was probably more likely to have success with that, and anyways, Holly had no desire to touch the icky, sickly Ravenclaw girl. She too was sleepy and just needed to sleep.

  

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— set by MJ <3 —