auction - poppy pomfrey
couple appreciation - no characters under 50
305 words, by google docs
"Who's that?"
As soon as her doors open, Poppy is in Nurse Mode. She doesn't have any time to hesitate. She needs to act right away. There are lives in her hands.
Her heart stops when she sees the body, though. Minerva. Her body is limp on the stretcher. She can't be –
No, she's not. But still.
Poppy shakes herself out of it, though; she needs to get to work.
She takes Minerva's pulse, which is, thankfully, still beating. She then checks her vitals, hurrying around the bed.
"What happened?" she asks, her voice a whisper. She doesn't even check to see who brought her in. That's not her concern. Her concern is that Minerva's heartbeat if slowing down and that can't happen.
"Four stunning spells to the heart," Poppy hears.
"Four stunning spells –" Poppy repeats. She focuses more on Minerva's heartbeat because she can't just leave.
Minerva has been working at Hogwarts for ages. Minerva has survived everything. She survived the Weasley twins, and the Marauders before that, and the Prewetts before that. She survived a war. She survived Albus' friendship. She can't be taken away.
Death can't take her yet, Poppy decides. It's not her time.
It's up to her to make sure that Death doesn't take her.
What really scares Poppy, what scares her every time she ever needs to save someone's lives, is that maybe she can't do it. She's only lost a handful of patients in all of her years of being a Healer, but she's always scared that the next time she needs to save someone, she'll mess up.
She can't let those thoughts in, though. She tries to focus herself on just Minerva. There's no room for doubt. She needs to save Minerva, not just for Minerva herself, but for Hogwarts. For the students.
For Poppy.