Chapter 29: Madam Turner is really bad at detentions
4 September 1940
Hermione arrived in the Hospital Wing for her detention promptly at eight. Madam Turner was somewhat surprised that the girl had remembered she was supposed to come: she had been nearly asleep on her feet when she arrived the previous evening, and had passed out thoroughly before being sent home.
The Healer reminded the girl of the task she had half-completed the previous night, and returned to her office. Hermione set to finishing the inventory verification and rotating the potions stores so that the oldest would be used before the new stock. She finished in just under fifteen minutes. The healer had clearly judged the amount of time the task would take when Hermione was completely exhausted.
The girl followed the Healer to her office to ask if there was anything else for her to do, and when the Healer said no, asked if she might then spend the remainder of the hour reading one of the reference texts on basic healing.
Madam Turner, who had once been a Teaching Healer at St. Mungo's (and rather missed the good old days sometimes), considered that there were many potentially dangerous healing spells that could be found in books, with none of the appropriate warnings. She also considered that this was the girl who was in detention for dangerous unsupervised transfiguration experiments, who had apparently somehow managed to befriend Tom Riddle of all people, and who had done something with a Cheering Charm which had apparently warranted being dueled into magical exhaustion. After a moment, Kitty said that she would do the young witch one better and give her a lesson. But first…
"Remind me why you're in detention again?"
"Because Tom and I wanted to try a two-to-one mass-changing transfiguration with a vanishment and a Humbold's and Professor Dumbledore thought we were going to blow up the transfiguration wing."
"It is rather a valid concern, though I'm sure he didn't explain it to you, the ponce." Hermione smiled slightly at this. "Improperly applied energy captures can increase the power you're trying to capture by orders of magnitude, and if it were to fail suddenly… you'd be lucky to fill a matchbox when they were done trying to scrape you off the rubble. We're talking magical backlash that could easily destroy every nerve in your body, and physical energy release that could level half the school, if you were to set it off in the wrong place. The Slytherin dorms, in case you were wondering, would be just such a wrong place, so you'd best not be thinking you're going to try that spell on your own time. I will put you under the same restrictions as I have Mr. Riddle, if I think you're likely to destroy the Great Hall and the Hufflepuff dorms, as well as half of your own."
The girl frowned for a long moment, considering her options. "What if we use light-dispersion containment wards so that there would be no physical explosion?"
"And to counteract the radiation?"
"You can tune the one I'm thinking of to only visible-spectrum light. No radiation."
Kitty frowned at the girl. "Well, I suppose the worst you could do, then, would be blinding yourselves, and I really can't stop you. Though if you do show up here with your retinas burnt out, I won't be re-growing them for you."
"Yes ma'am." The girl looked slightly cowed.
"Fine. Anyway, healing spells. To properly understand healing, one must thoroughly understand the body. You are muggleborn, I think?" she began.
Hermione nodded, then remembered, "Well, halfblood."
Madam Turner raised an eyebrow at this. This girl was supposed to be a Slytherin? Clearly not for her skills at keeping secrets. "But you would have taken biology, at least some biology, before you came to Hogwarts? I can only assume, since you know about the light spectrum and radiation that you've some idea of the natural sciences."
"I know about germs and cells and a little about how the circulatory and pulmonary systems work, but that's it." Hermione knew just enough about muggle sciences to have some idea of how much she didn't know, and feel bad about it.
"Ah, more than most witches, at any rate. Well, do ask questions, if you have them."
Hermione nodded again.
"The first thing you need to know about healing spells," she said, recalling the days when she used to lecture to new Healers-in-Training, "is that Healing Spells as a class are much more similar to curses than to any other class of magic.
"A healing spell may look like transfiguration. It's not. It's permanent. If you heal a gash in someone's leg, it won't start bleeding again an hour later. A healing spell may look like a charm. It's not. It's irreversible. If you use a charm or jinx to deaden the nerves in someone's tongue, as with the Tongue-Tying Jinx, the effect is temporary, and can be cancelled with a strong Finite or the counterjinx. If you create the same effect with a healing spell, you have cut the nerve, as effectively as if you had used a scalpel. A healing spell may look like a countercurse. It's not. A counter is specific to a certain curse. A healing spell forces the body to reverse the effects of the curse, both of which are permanent actions.
"This is important, because Healing Spells, like all magic, are tools, and can be used for good or ill. There is a reason Healers take an Oath. Healing Spells are among the most dangerous of all magic, because of their permanency and irreversibility, and because of the way they interact specifically with the body and, sometimes, the mind.
"Healing Spells induce the cells and tissues of the body to undergo specific actions: To grow, to die, to come together or part. If you use a healing spell to cause a bruise to fade, you are stimulating the body's own methods of bruise reduction, forcing the subcutaneous scab to be eaten by macrophages and the tissues to grow back to a mature and uninjured state.
"You do not need to know any of the specifics to make the spells work, and I suspect that you really only want to know basic first aid, and so on, yes?"
"Well, we do only have half an hour," said Hermione.
"Quite. Well, you don't need to know advanced biology to make a healing spell work any more than you need to know the anatomy of a hedgehog to turn it into a pincushion through transfiguration, at least using the incantation. If you were using the Basics… but I digress.
"The magic will take care of the details, shaped by your intent. There are really only five healing spells that are taught as emergency first-aid or battlefield healing."
Hermione raised a hand.
"Yes, child?"
"May I have parchment and quill to take notes?"
The Healer handed the girl the requested supplies from her desk and continued.
"Of the five spells, one is simply essential, and the other four were selected for their versatility. There are dozens of more specific, narrowly focused spells which can achieve the same results more effectively or more elegantly, but in a life-or-death situation, it is better to know four spells perfectly that will solve your immediate problem than to know twenty spells that don't do quite what you need. So.
"The first of the five, the essential spell with a single, narrow purpose, is expurgate, the Cleansing Spell. It is used as a general disinfectant for all wounds before you close them, lest you seal bacteria or particulates directly into the tissue. Always, always, always expurgate. If you have any question whatsoever as to whether you should use it, the answer is yes. Cleansing can be dangerous, if it is used internally, on the intestines, for example, but that is reversible given enough patience, and the cases in which it is necessary so heavily outweigh the cases where you could do damage that the answer is still always to expurgate.
"Second is confervetur, the Wound-Sealing Spell. It means let it be grown together. It can be used for all abrasions to the skin, cuts, puncture wounds, burns, even broken bones, if you know the anatomy well enough. It is highly versatile, and its effects depend almost entirely on the will of the caster. It will serve well for surface wounds, but it is inadvisable for novices to use it on anything more than skin deep, as undirected it may result in different tissues growing together, and it is, like all healing spells, irreversible. I have also seen the Wound Sealing Spell used to close orifices that are not meant to be closed – the mouth, eyelids, sphincter, every pore on a girl's face – it can be terrifying if used improperly, and can only be reversed through physical means.
"The third is theto, the Greek Setting Spell. It is used on broken bones, twisted ankles, sprains, strains and so on, and is more versatile than the Splinting Spell as it can be used to immobilize a broken rib, neck, or spine as thoroughly as a limb. The core idea of the Setting Spell is immobilization, at every level. It does not facilitate healing in and of itself, so it is technically a Charm. If you know what you're doing the Setting Spell may be used to arrange the pieces of a bone for healing, but that is a matter of knowledge and intent, and should be avoided by novices.
"The fourth first-aid spell is iremo, another Greek spell. This one's the Calming Spell. It induces the chemical reactions in the brain and body to facilitate any number of effects. You can reduce sensations of pain, slow breathing, calm fevers, lower the heart rate and blood pressure and so on, again, all a matter of intent. The effects wear off as the body processes the chemical reactions produced. There is some debate over whether this should be taught at all as first aid, because, though it has certain effects that are very useful in many situations, it can also be dangerous if it is used in certain situations where the body is already dealing with pain or trauma with essentially the opposite chemical reaction."
Hermione raised her hand again. "Is that like the Emotive Charms?"
"In what way?"
"You don't need to be able to think of a calm thought or anything like that, do you, in order to cast it properly?"
"No, dear me, that would never work in most battlefield situations. No, you only need to know the physical effects you want to achieve.
"Finally, there is dorme, the Sleeping Spell. You may learn a slightly different version as the Napping Spell. This spell is used when trauma is too extreme for first-aid to deal with, and you must find or wait for help. Its effects can range from sleep, to a sort of coma or hibernation, to nearly complete stasis when the patient is on the verge of death. The Sleeping Spell is also the Mercy Spell. If the patient is at that point and wants to die, the spell will take them across the veil without pain. If the patient wants to live, they will reach stasis, and may be revived after their wounds have been healed. If you should, Powers forbid, ever find yourself in a situation where you cast the Sleeping Spell and your patient does not wake up, know that you did everything you could for him."
Hermione thought that the Healer looked rather sad, and wondered what her life had been like before Hogwarts. Surely one didn't need to know anything about battlefields if one spent one's life working at a secondary school.
"What time is it, now?"
Hermione cast a tempus. It was ten minutes to nine.
"Right then, child. We've just time for me to show you the wand movements for each of the five, I should think. You can look them up again later, if you need to."
She demonstrated each of the spells, and Hermione copied her movements and intonation, successfully managing to cast each, though without a target it was difficult to tell if they had been done properly.
A few minutes past nine, Madam Turner dismissed the girl with a final warning. "Healing is a dangerous art. If you use any of these spells deliberately inappropriately inside this castle, I will find out about it, and I will return your actions three-fold. Do feel free to pass that warning on to your troublemaking friend Mr. Riddle, if you share the spells." There was a glint in the Healer's eye that suggested that if Tom and Hermione were to misuse the Healing Arts, the Healer would take them apart and put them back together inside out.
"Yes, ma'am," said Hermione rather guiltily, considering that she had just been thinking that she should see if the Calming Spell worked on Tom, and if he could cast it, or if they could modify it to simulate other emotions. She hurried back to the Slytherin dorm unsettled by the alternative uses of the healing spells Madam Turner had mentioned, and the fact that her immediate thought had been to wonder if healing texts were available in the library.
She rather thought she wouldn't teach Tom confervetur. She could just imagine waking up one morning with webbed fingers or something equally awful, but not technically harmful.