A/N: This is a touch medically graphic in places. If that's not your scene, I'd skip this one.

Green
nineteen years old

Sofia's gown had been destroyed; the potion having eaten through the silks in several places. She had never been so grateful for the excessive number of petticoats she wore that had inadvertently protected her from the acidic splashes. Cedric, however, had been less fortunate. He was sitting beside her on the ground, unknowingly pressing his shoulder against hers with his hand atop her skirts in her lap. The accidentally-made acid had eaten into his protective gloves, melding the fabric into his skin in several places with an unpleasant tinge of green.

The tower was mostly unharmed. The potion seemed to only eat away at fabric so the only other victim of its explosion was a large rug that had, until just recently, warmed the stone floor. The smell of burnt hair thickly filled the air, sourced from the destroyed clothes and rug. The scent mingled with the strangely sweet, metallic smell of blood emanating from Cedric's injured hand.

A large pair of tweezers in one hand, Sofia held Cedric's wrist firmly with her other hand to keep him still. She admonished the injury with a "tsk" of her tongue. Cedric answered by sucking in air through his teeth as the tweezers latched onto a strip of fabric. In a slow, practiced motion, it was pulled away, divorcing the unnatural marriage of fabric and skin. Sofia could feel Cedric tensing beside her, trying to hide how much pain he was feeling.

"Merlin, woman…" he said through gritted teeth. He stared at the strip of his glove that now dangled in the air, a sickening line of his skin clearly evident on one side of the leather. The smell and the sight was horrible, but both magic practitioners kept firm hold over their stomachs. The ingredients for potions over the years had brought them to see (and smell) worse. The pain, however, was something Cedric couldn't have practiced for. His undamaged hand pressed down against the floor and then moved to grip around the fabric of his pants in an effort, and failure, to find the best coping mechanism for the pain. "Can't you just use magic and be done with it?"

Sofia's expression didn't change, though her grip on his wrist tightened.

"You know I have to remove any foreign objects from the field before I can heal you," she responded in a voice distracted by her task. Cedric released a curse that would cause his mother to make him wash his mouth out with soap, even now, as another strip of fabric was removed. Sofia quirked an eyebrow, mentally making a note of the curse to subtly drop it in conversation with James later on to see how he'd react.

This went on for nearly an hour; Sofia working diligently while Cedric writhed from the elbow up in pain, shouting expletives when it got to be too much. When she was finished, Sofia put down the tweezers and let out a long exhale. She sat there quietly, feeling the weight of Cedric pressing against her while his hand, a raw and exposed thing missing several layers of skin, rested in his lap. She sat there, so still and quiet, for so long that Cedric eventually sat up enough to look at her and ask, in a voice timidly balanced between expectation and confusion:

"Are you going to heal my hand?"

"I haven't decided yet." Her voice was terse.

"What do y-"

"How could you do that!" A fire was alight in her eyes, her voice a power that belied her stature as she raged at him.

Cedric opened his mouth to respond but was immediately cut off.

"No, you don't speak. You listen. How could you be so careless with your work?! What if I hadn't been down the hall? What if you hadn't brought your hand to block your face at just the right moment? You have to be more careful. You cannot, cannot be this careless now. You're supposed to have all of this experience and be this Master Potioner, right?"

Cedric raised his eyebrows at her expectantly.

"...you can speak." Some of her fire faded away, the wick of her anger quickly burning out.

"What do you mean by "now," love?"

Sofia kept her face tellingly still. "We should call your mother," she said, standing abruptly which elicited a pained groan from Cedric as his exposed hand shifted with her movement. "I've healed burns from flame like this but never from acid. I don't want to get it wrong." Her feet moved her quickly across the tower, out of his sightline, and to the portrait of Cedric's parents. Cedric tried to get to his feet, but even the slightest jostling of his hand caused him intense agony. So instead he called after Sofia.

"What are you hiding?"

"Can't hear you! I'm calling your mother!" Sofia's head popped back around to meet Cedric's eyes. He tried to lock eyes with her, to stare into her soul through her gaze. But she was looking pointedly at his forehead instead of his eyes. "And if you're good, I won't tell her all the curses you shouted."

Her mischief was clear as she skipped back over to the portrait. Cedric stared after her, uncertain, and waited to feel his mother's presence enter the room.