It was quiet in the hour that He-Who-Must-Not-Be named gave for the students, staff, and allies of Hogwarts to heal their wounded. Madam Pomfrey ran around busily, trying to heal as many as possible, save as many of the dying as she could, but she knew that it was not feasible for her to save all of them. It would never be enough, she had realized. Already, children had died at the hands of the Death Eaters and occasionally other children. Poppy glanced in a basin of water and happened to catch her reflection. All that she'd seen had shown in every new wrinkle on her face, every new grey hair.
You-Know-Who's reign showed on her terribly. After all, it wasn't just the Battle of Hogwarts where she had seen this level of carnage. It had increasingly appeared into her life when the Carrows came.
It started with a little boy from Slytherin, only a first-year. If Poppy had remembered correctly, during the Sorting Ceremony, the Carrows had roped him off with the other muggle-borns to eat awful food and watch those deemed worthy eat much better proportions and quality. It was also to be noted that several Slytherins had called the boy a "traitor" because he dared be muggle-born in Slytherin.
She had gasped as the little boy had stumbled into the room, bleeding heavily and severely bruised. He was out of breath, running as if some horrible monster had been chasing him.
"Come here, little one," Poppy crooned as she ushered the boy towards an empty bed. Without Harry Potter and company, the hospital wing had been surprisingly empty at the start of the year. She tried to put on a mask to hide how disturbed she was by these grievous wounds afflicted on only a child, one of the youngest Hogwarts had to offer!
"What happened?" She asked as he took his shirt off so she could get a better look at the damage.
The boy had looked around, full of paranoia. "They did it," he said. "They did it, and they're coming for me. They did it and they're coming for me!"
"Sh," Poppy admonished as she tried to calm the boy. "Who did this to you?"
The boy bit his trembling, bleeding lip.
"Come on," she said firmly as her hands framed the boy's face so he would look at her. "You have to tell me so I can stop it from happening."
The boy shook his head. "You can't stop this."
"Of course I can," she said, confused. "I'll go to Headmaster Snape, and he will help you."
"No, he won't," the boy said, his voice rising higher with panic. "The Carrows did this. On orders from You-Know-Who."
Poppy stumbled backwards and gasped in horror. While Fillch liked to reminisce over the days in which Hogwarts had tortured students, and Umbridge had almost let that happen during her reign as headmistress, Poppy had never thought the day would come when Hogwarts would actually resort to violence against the students!
"What did you do?" She asked as she fetched bandages and poultices from the cabinet at the bedside.
"They did this because I have filthy blood," the boy said in a hollow voice as he stared down at his feet. "Because according to them, I stole magic from someone. But miss, I didn't! I've never stolen from anyone! How can you steal magic?"
"It's a lie they spread because they serve You-Know-Who," Poppy explained quietly as she began applying the poultices gently. "It's not true. They'll tell you that it is, but you've got to believe that it's not, or else that's when they win. When they crawl underneath your skin, poison your mind, and stay in your heart. You're a Slytherin, aren't you?"
"Don't remind me," he said. "All I keep hearing is how mudbloods don't go into Slytherin."
"Don't use that derogatory term," Poppy scolded. "I don't want to hear you refer to yourself as that again, Mr. Wayland. And for your information, the greatest Slytherin of all time, Merlin? He was a muggle-born son of a Welsh princess. He rose to great heights beyond the Slytherin prejudice because of his ambition, which you must have a lot of. And don't you dare forget that!"
It was silent after Poppy's little speech as she finished applying the bandages. "Do you want me to keep you overnight so you don't have to face the Carrows again?"
Right on cue, the twin terrors marched into the hospital wing, wands raised and bloodlust in their eyes.
Poppy stood in front of the boy, promising to guard him. "You will not touch my ward," she declared more bravely than she felt. Alecto Carrow just raised her wand in response, and she knew what was coming.
"NO!" She had shouted as Alecto cried, "Crucio!"
Madam Pomfrey sighed. She'd seen children get tortured, indoctrined, and killed over the course of the year. She'd been forced to watch in the most excruciating detail of all of the staff what had happened in such a short period of time. She'd had to hold the Wayland boy in her arms as he died due to even more gruesome injuries four months later, his last words full of self-hatred for something he could not help.
She tried to tend to the wounded with her own cracked heart, not sure how much more she could take. She would only hope that the war would end tonight and there would be no more of this fighting, this torture, this bloodshed among children.