Chapter 8
The First Sign of Disease

Cassie Lovegood, studying to be an auror as well, (Ron had asked her the day before and she had eventually admitted that she was related to Luna Lovegood, she was her cousin apparently) was looking perfectly normal indeed as she struggled to crush her beetle eyes into fine powder, as the book said, and accidentally elbowed Harry (she was working next to him.) Hermione was already stirring her potion vigorously while Ron was struggling to understand why his antidote was turning a deep, menacing brown. Harry was attempting to un-clump his porcupine quills without poking himself. As Cassie finished crushing her beetle eyes into powder, she dumped it into her cauldron and stirred the contents around twelve times counter-clockwise —or at least, that was what she was supposed to do. Instead, Harry watched cautiously, in case she accidentally elbowed him again, as Cassie wobbly dumped half-crushed beetle eyes onto the table top (only a tiny bit managed to make it into the intended goal, the cauldron.)

"Er— eh— Cassie?" asked Harry uncertainly.

"Yeah?" replied Cassie weakly, as if she had no energy to answer properly.

"You're... um... supposed to dump most of your finely powdered beetle eyes into the cauldron," said Harry, emphasizing the parts she needed to correct.

Confused, Cassie looked from the mess she had made to the book and said, "But it is all in the cauldron."

"Oh, sorry, I saw wrong, sorry Cassie," said Harry, hiding his confusion. He turned back to his cauldron and pretended to notice no more as Cassie spilled her porcupine quills all over the floor and did somehow did not realize. Hermione looked up from her vigorous stirring and spared a glance at Cassie's mess of a work area before raising her eyebrows and returning to her stirring. Ron did likewise, except when he was done raising his eyebrows, he went back to checking the book instead of stirring.

Fifteen minutes later, it was plainly obvious that something was wrong with Cassie. Her entire face had taken on a slightly reddish look and she seemed rather feverish. Despite the fact her work area was covered in spilled ingredients and giant messes, she seemed not to realize, although usually she liked to have an immaculate work spot. Only a small portion of the class had noticed however, and that was only because they had stepped on some ingredient Cassie had dropped. Professor Emeraldz, who was busy correcting their essays, did not see anything out of the ordinary at all, for he did not look towards where Cassie was stationed.

A few minutes later, Harry was about ready to march up to the front desk and report Cassie's strange behavior to Professor Emeraldz, no longer caring about drawing attention to himself, because Cassie's eyesight and ability to target items seemed to have dropped severely over the past few minutes. She kept dumping her ingredients onto Harry instead of into her cauldron by accident and lit her own robes on fire.

According to their books, once they were done a certain part, they were to clean up and let it brew until their next lesson. Afterwards their job would be to read up on some more antidotes, Professor Emeraldz had told them cheerfully. Cassie, having probably decided her potion was ready to sit and brew until next lesson, began to clean her stuff up. She still took no notice to the quills and potion ingredients scattered over the table top, the floor, her own robes, or Harry's robes. Harry's eyes watered as Cassie picked up her bag to put her stuff away in and, what must have seemed carefully to her, placed her stuff inside. Harry breathed a sigh of relief as most of Cassie's scattered belongings made it into the bag, but he soon clamped his mouth shut and regretted even thinking any amount of relief; Cassie's book had slipped out and thudded on Harry's foot. Eyes watering, he gingerly bent down, picked the book off the floor, and quietly slipped it into Cassie's bag when she wasn't looking.

Cassie saw nothing and fetched a book from within the contents of her bag. She pulled over a chair and crashed into several table tops before stopping next to Harry, climbing on to the chair, and opening the book to chapter 2. Harry watched her in silence for a few moments as he finished his potion, tidied up his work area, and attempted to clear up some of Cassie's mess. He debated on whether or not he should go up to Professor Emeraldz and report Cassie's strange behavior, but decided against it at last, dragged a stool over, and also popped open his book to chapter 2. Harry sat there reading in silence for a while until...

With a sudden sickly splashing noise that sounded like someone vomiting, Harry looked up just in time to see Cassie turning greener and opening her mouth to let out another long stream of sick. Alarmed, everyone in the class (even Professor Emeraldz) looked up from what they were doing to watch Cassie finish retching. Then her face changed from its green-ish tone into a pale color. Harry thought Cassie's new complexion looked remarkably similar to that of a ghost, or perhaps a muggle who had seen a ghost... His thoughts were soon interrupted as a loud gasp came from the class and he came back to reality in time to see Cassie sway on her stool and her book fall out of her hands into the puddle of regurgitated food. A heartbeat later, Cassie swayed even more and her eyes finally fell close. In another second, the time it took for Harry to blink, she had fainted and fallen off her stool.

The stunned silence that had held the class finally broke and all chaos broke out as most kids struggled to get away from Cassie. Professor Emeraldz could be seen hurrying about, trying to silence everyone and restore order to his class, but the kids were not helping him in the least. Eventually, the class calmed down and Professor Emeraldz had cleaned up the mess with his wand. Cassie lay unconscious on the cold, checkerboard tiles of their classroom. She was breathing quite heavily and her face was very flushed.

"Potter, please take Ms. Lovegood to the hospital wing, and Granger and Weasley, you two, please accompany him in case anything happens," ordered Professor Emeraldz quite seriously once order was restored. "Leave your bags, since you are all done I will have one of your classmates clean up for you if you do not return in time."

Harry nodded and with a stupendous effort, he lifted Cassie up while Hermione and Ron trailed behind him as he left the classroom.

"Blimey mate, the sound she made when she lost her lunch! You'd have thought she bought one of George's puking pastels, the way it sounded so rehearsed like the movies do," said Ron once they had left, happy to skip a few minutes of lessons.

"Ronald Weasley, don't be rude, the poor girl is sick, she did not buy one of Fred and George's merchandise to get out of class," Hermione scolded Ron sternly.

"Yeah, I reckon her lunch-losing was the real deal," Harry chimed in hesitantly.

They arrived at the hospital wing quite quickly. Madam Yeal was N.E.X.T.'s form of Madam Pomfrey, Harry had come to realize, so if anyone was hurt, injured, or sick, they went to her.

"Goodness, what happened?" asked Madam Yeal when she spotted Cassie's limp form in Harry's arm.

The three of them recounted what had happened in class, and Madam Yeal nodded in understanding.

"I've never quite heard of those symptoms, but thank you for bringing her here. You three may go back to class now and I will attend to her, you may visit her tomorrow afternoon, when classes are over," said Madam Yeal in a tone that made the three of them know that they were to go. "However, Ms. Granger, will you help me tend to her for a few moments?"

Hermione nodded and Harry and Ron left.

The pair hurried back to class only to find there were two minutes remaining and their bags were all neatly packed. Professor Emeraldz let them linger around and chat until they were dismissed.

"Come on, let's go to the boy's dormitory and wait for Hermione," said Ron.

"That's right, we're not allowed into the girl's dormitories," said Harry, remembering the day they had tried unsuccessfully to do so.

"Yeah," Ron replied. "Wait, I've got a better idea, the day's really nice today. So let's go outside."

"Sure, great idea mate," agreed Harry.

They finished a four-page long essay before Hermione finally came back exactly an hour later.

"What were you doing there?" asked Ron.

"Oh, I was just helping Madam Yeal with Cassie. I'm planning to do some research on Cassie's symptoms as soon as I can," replied Hermione briskly.

"With this homework load?" asked Ron incredulously.

"Hermione wants to do it, I think, she and Cassie have been real friendly lately," said Harry.

"Yeah, we're sort of friends now, I guess," agreed Hermione.

"Well then, if you want to do that researching of yours," said Harry, "Then you'll need to get a start on your homework. Standing around idly will do you no good."

Hermione laughed and sat down to do homework with them.