This Christmas Eve was barren. Many students had returned home from the tyranny that had been imposed at Hogwarts. Madam Pomfrey sat alone in her office, musing about how even if the Hospital Wing was empty at the moment, the students, whether present or not, were hurting from the wounds inflicted by those Death Eaters. As she thought about the presence of those villainous murderers here in her beloved school as well as home, her hands tightened their grip on the edges of her desk.
Unable to just sit there and do nothing, she quickly returned to the Hospital Wing and began to organize the bottles of medical remedies. She was unable to escape from thoughts of the regime at Hogwarts because the dwindling supplied just pointed it out in starker detail. Pain-relieving and dreamless sleep potions were the ones that she had to begin to ration, which went against her basic instincts about how to treat her patients.
The Hospital Wing was clean, nearly spotless, as it was necessary for it to be, but Madam Pomfrey felt that no matter how hard she or the house elves scrubbed, it would not be completely again ever again. The fact that she had healed vicious injuries and then sent those students back out just to be injured again had tainted her place of work, but it was her duty to keep cycling around and around.
Madam sighed and then almost wished that she had a patient to pull her out of these thoughts.