when we go crashing down

WE COME BACK EVERY TIME

'Cause we never go out of style

It had gotten him. The sickness that had taken so much from so many--It had finally come for him. Right in the middle of the match against Hufflepuff... The wizard had been going for a block, when his broom just started dropping. He had known what was happening once he started to fall. Time slowed down--passing at a crawl, as it tended to do in life's most horrible moments.

Emanuel had not been feeling well all week, but he had refused to think the worst. It was cold and flu season. People came into the Ministry all the time sniffling and sneezing. The headache was just his sinuses, he had told himself. He got them this time of year ever year. It was nothing serious. Until it was...

Lady Greengrass had tended to the worst of his injuries. She had healed his broken bones and given him more potions than he ever wanted to drink again. The injuries from his fall could be tended. The symptoms from his sickness were not so easily addressed. Nothing fixed this. He knew that already. He had followed the outbreak. He was in the Ministry and out and about enough to know that nothing was better. No one knew anything and now he was going to be just like everyone else hit by this Epidemic. He was going to lose his magic.

It was still fluctuating for now. He could cast things sometimes. Not always--and nothing really complicated... but every so often when he would try, wand in hand, incantation in his mind, he could conjure up a bit of light at the end of his wand. Sometimes it would flash bright, other times it was dim and flickering...other times still, it did not come at all. Those times brought a wave of sadness over him. He had known there as a chance this would happen. He had even tried to plan for it. He would fine with his schooling after Hogwarts--he was going to a muggle university anyway. But what about his NEWTs? Was he just going to fail them all now? That thought made him sick. 

The wizard had not been allowed any student visitors the night before and most of Sunday--but in the afternoon and evening hours until curfew, he was permitted one at a time. His mother had come and spent the night at his bedside, but had eventually gone home after it was clear he was going to recover. There would be no more quidditch for him. But he would be okay. He wasn't dead...and he really could have been. Whatever happened now, it was much better than the alternative.

Another disgusting healing potion down and his first visitor was shown into his little curtained off area. Emanuel gave a weak, but concerned smile to the Ravenclaw. "What are you doing here, Ly?" The lion asked. He was happy she had come, but he did not want to get her sick. Of course, it wasn't as if they had been keeping any sort of distance from one another over the last week. If he was contagious, the sickness had already been spread to her.

@lyla • 525 • hospital gown

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

we go crashing down

we come back every time

'Cause we never go out of style

Lyla never missed a quidditch match, and she particular liked to watch Gryffindor play. Her best friend was the captain, and she could admit that this time around she was paying just a little bit more attention to Delaney than she had been in the past. Playing against him, she knew his tell. She knew that she could fake him out. But watching him she hadn’t been ready for the constriction in her chest when he had started to fall. Lyla hadn’t known how to react. She had reached for her wand faster than she had even thought to act, but she wasn’t close enough to catch him.

She knew that she wasn’t, and she had been moving before he had even hit the ground. Slipping through the stands she was running. All she could see was him dead, on the ground, in her mind. And she couldn’t bring herself to look back over her shoulder as people screamed. She had headed for the ground. For the pitch. The locker rooms. It would open for her, she was the Ravenclaw captain, and she pushed past everyone that had been underneath. Not caring who she knocked into, and not offering any sort of explanation for why she was running like a fool.

Crashing through the door she had realized that there were already people all around him. The rest of the team. The Headmistress was coming from the other direction. She didn’t care, and if anyone had tried to stop her, she didn’t hear them. She hadn’t listened. He had fallen out of the sky.

Lyla had been watching quidditch for her entire life. She wouldn’t have been surprised to ask her mum and find out that she had gone into labor with her, at the Tornados pitch. It wouldn’t have surprised anyone. But Lyla truly didn’t think that she had ever seen someone fall out of the sky like that. Not until last summer anyway… And even then, she hadn’t seen it. She had just heard about it. The Magpies seeker had fallen out of the sky… The illness. The Epidemic. They weren’t safe from it just because it had run its course. Of course, they were, what kind of weapon would that be?

Not that it was a weapon, she didn’t know it was a weapon. It just felt like one. This was what biowarfare was. And she didn’t think that she liked it. Lyla was pretty sure that no one liked it. But she was going to Oxford, and she was going to study it. She was going to study the laws, and the humanities, and she was going to study what it meant to be a humanitarian, what it was going to take to save them. To give voice to them. And perhaps that wasn’t the quidditch future that she always talked about, but Lyla thought that she could do that too. That she could come back to magic for that later on.

Right now, her first priority was talking the matron into letting her in to see him. If she was going to catch it right now, from him, she already had it. And while she hadn’t gone so far as to explain that to Lady Greengrass, she thought that she would if she didn’t let her in there to see him. Perhaps she was a bit of a bully about it, but she was, in every way, Olivia Graves’s daughter, and before too long she had gotten herself behind the curtain.

“Making sure you’re okay, of course.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked him over carefully. She had watched her brother and her father go through this from afar. From her mother’s letters. She had been banned from going to see them. She had been banned from being there at all. She’d be damned if he was going to try and send her away too.

@ the boy giving me heart attacks • 655 • lyla's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

when we go crashing down

WE COME BACK EVERY TIME

'Cause we never go out of style

His head was pounding. The boy wasn't sure if it was from the concussion or the squib flu. Pressure was so intense at his temples that he would have sworn some invisible vice grip was doing its very best to crush his skull in. The pain was good for one thing only: distracting him from the fact that he was losing his magic. It wasn't the end of the world. But it was still pretty devastating. He couldn't play Quidditch anymore. He couldn't do all the things he normally did that required magic. But his life plan wasn't completely off track. He could still go to college. He was going to a muggle university in the fall. So, he wasn't going to be able to cast magic there anyway. 

It still made him feel kind of sad. Losing his magic was still losing part of himself. He was sure there would be all sorts of little things that he would find himself going to his wand to do or fix and then remember he couldn't. No more cooling charms. No more warming charms. No apparating. No more unlocking doors without keys. No more magically drying and styling his hair. His lifestyle was going to change in ways he had not even realized yet. He wasn't looking forward to it. It felt like the blows of sadness and frustration that this illness brought were going to just keep coming days and days into the future. 

He hoped that Lyla did not have to experiences those blows, too. If she was going to get sick, he had certainly already spread the sickness to her. He wasn't sure when he would get to see her again. He was quarantined off from the rest of the patients in the hospital wing. Bubble head charms were used by the Matron when she came to treat him. He expected it to be Lady Greengrass pulling back the curtain to his little corner of the Hospital Wing, but when he saw the Ravenclaw there instead, he was hit by some feelings he didn't easily comprehend. Lyla had come to see him. Not only had she come, but she was the very first to do so. Had she just timed it out to be allowed back? That didn't seem likely. She must have waited--or nagged--or both. She had to have put some effort in...and that gave him some butterflies in his stomach. 

She still looked cute, even with the bubble head charm on---even with his head pounding---even with him being sad over magic. She still made him happier to be near. There was something special about Miss Lyla Graves. 

He asked her why she had come and she gave a sweet answer in response. He shrugged and pinched the bridge of his nose for a brief moment, trying to alleviate the pain in his head. "I am not dead--so there is that." He could have been--and could have been more seriously injured than he was. "Concussion, few broken bones...but those will heal." He dropped his gave from hers to his lap. "Magic is going, though," he admitted in a very defeated tone. He really did not know what that would mean for him, particularly in respect to his NEWTs. What if he lost points for not being able to complete the practical...what if it dropped his grades and he lost his admission to Oxford? Surely one of the most prestigious schools in the world wouldn't let him enroll in the fall if he failed all his classes this term. Yes, he had already been accepted. And yes, he had already paid his admission deposit. But there had to be some kind of expectation for him to do well this term, like he had every other term in his Hogwarts career. 

@ you are cute when you worry • 625 • hospital gown

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

we go crashing down

we come back every time

'Cause we never go out of style

Roxy had told her afterwards that she had stopped people from trying to get in Lyla’s way. She had made them let her through when they had gotten to the ground, and she didn’t know if she was grateful for that, or a little embarrassed by it. But either way, she hadn’t really known what she was doing at all. She had just known that she had been terrified. That the moment that he had started falling, she had been terrified of what was going to happen when he hit the ground. And she didn’t know how he had survived. She didn’t know if someone had caught him with enough magic to slow him down. She didn’t know if he had rolled just the right way.

All she knew was that he was alive, and that was what she cared about more than just about anything else in the world. She cared that he was alive. And she cared that he wasn’t laying here with broken bones, and head trauma, and whatever else came from falling so far out of the sky. Because she had watched the play. He had been going for the block. He had been diving, and that momentum had been a part of what had pulled him down… She had never expected her heart to pound that fast. She had never expected to be that worried. But she was.

There was something about him that she was rather fond of. And she knew that she was just going to worry until Lady Greengrass had let her in here. They had taken him away from the pitch, and she hadn’t quite remembered how she had gotten back to Ravenclaw Tower. She had no idea if someone had taken her there. If they had called for some of her own teammates, or her friends. If they had shuffled her upstairs. But she knew that as soon as she had wrapped her head around everything, she was coming down here.

She had wanted in here. She wanted to see him. She wanted to see for herself if he was okay. And she knew that it had been an argument. She knew that Lady Greengrass hadn’t thought that it was necessary for her to come in here at all. To expose herself to this. But she was already exposed. If she was going to catch this from Em, she would have it already. She was going to get it if she was going to get it, and there was nothing that any of them could do about it.

Lyla thought that she would have explained exactly how she knew how she was exposed to Lady Greengrass if it meant that she could get in here, but luckily that hadn’t been necessary. She had finally given in, and Lyla didn’t even much care if it was just because she wanted her to stop asking and nagging about it. If that was what it took, then that was what she was going to do. She had been determined to get in here, and once she put her mind to something, there was very little that Lyla Graves could not accomplish.

Still, surveying him from her spot on the edge of his bed, she could admit that his color worried her a little bit. That she was concerned about his head. And about whether or not he was going to be able to rest properly in here. The hospital wing was drafty, and cold, and it was February for Merlin’s sake. She couldn’t help but worry about him. “There is that.” She was worried, but she didn’t think that she had to say that. Everyone had been worried. “You nearly gave me a heart attack…” She had run through the stands like a fool, after all.

She doubted that anyone had bothered to tell him that story yet. That wasn’t exactly going to be on the top of Lady Greengrasses, bedside chat conversation list. Or at least Lyla doubted that it was. She sighed a little bit when he said that his magic was fading. “I assumed as much when you fell. I’m so sorry, Em…” She didn’t know what she could have done to prevent it. If she had somehow exposed him to it. Her medical knowledge was not very extensive. She knew the difference in bacteria and a virus, and that was about as advanced as it got. “Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need blankets? Or headache potions? Or… Me to quit talking…”

The corner of her mouth curled up in a tiny smile as that last one fell past her lips. She knew that his head had to hurt if he had a concussion. Her rambling at him probably wasn’t going to help anything. The last thing that she wanted to do was make it worse on him.

@ calling you out on that heart attack • 813 • lyla's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0