Order Only: Minerva, All?

[alt_poppy]

I feel that it's very important to re-educate our students, staff, and parents about the very real dangers of ill health and injury in view of present circumstances, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to frame an announcement that will avoid communicating the truth that current shortages, import restrictions, and Protectorate policies have placed us all in peril.

Here is my current draft, but it's clearly still in dangerous territory:

Magical creature injuries are very, very serious. If anyone, for whatever reason, finds herself or himself injured as a result of contact with such a creature -- or has contact with a magical creature whilst suffering from an open wound -- that person ought to seek medical attention immediately.

Recent events have made me consider that those of us who have reached a certain age may have an unfortunately cavalier attitude about the seriousness of illness and injuries. We grew up in a different time. It is our duty now to instruct our young people that severe injuries and contagious ailments require quick attention lest they result in permanent damage.

Certain of our young people have recently had a very close call with a dragon, and while I trust that there will be no further occasions for any of us to find ourselves confronted with dragons, there is no shortage of dangerous wildlife in the environs of this school (or, of course, in the world at large). In this most recent instance, we have been very fortunate: only one child was injured, the bite was not as severe as it might easily have been, and the child was brought to me very quickly in the aftermath of the episode. Even so, the medicinals currently available meant that it was less than certain that the infection could be stopped -- and, although it did respond to my efforts, it is likely that the child will carry scars of her encounter for the rest of her life. And, while the child in this case was a Mudblood servant, it could as easily have been student -- it usually is a student when such things happen, as they will do, given the nature of children and the dangers of our magical world.

I fear that I cannot emphasize strongly enough how important it is that we set aside our comfortable notions that all injuries can be healed with a quick dose of the right restorative or application of All-Heal. Parents: please remind your children that quick treatment wards against a life time of regret. Teachers and Heads of Houses: please underscore to your students and servants that immediate care is crucial. (Here at Hogwarts, the issue often goes beyond the patient's own recovery, but in the case of contagious infections, quick action is our only hope of preventing widespread illness.)

We cannot afford for old assumptions to blind us to our danger.

Poppy Pomfrey, Hogwarts

Can you suggest what must be differently put? Or must I abandon the notion altogether? I've been pecking away at this draft every spare moment, but I'm no closer to having it right.
 

Comments

Order only

[alt_sirius]

I've been giving it a mull, Poppy, and I think it's best probably not to refer to our Hermione at all. Certainly not as a child, don't you think?

Re: Order only

[alt_poppy]

Oh, bother. I knew one of you would tell me that. I know it myself, but I hate it.

What I want to say, of course, is that it could have been either the Marvolo or the Malfoy boy, and it could have been fatal or maiming, and I don't have the medicines needed to treat such things...

...and it's all the Protector's fault.


But I can't say any of it, so we'll probably all die of Thestral Croup when those two undisciplined scoff-rules bring it back from one of their 'adventures'.

Re: Order only

[alt_sirius]

Oi, that's still my godson you're talking about, there.

I think the problem (and I don't even believe I'm saying this - me!) is that you're being entirely too reasonable. What I recollect about you lot when we were students was that announcements were more, erm, imperious. There's no need to justify your admonition, d'you see?

Just remind everyone that magical creatures are dangerous and warn them that your larder has little to spare, and leave the dragon out of it - if I know Hogwarts, the rumour's already doing more to spread what happened than you saying anything.

Not sure if Minerva would agree, but I remember mostly being ordered about by our professors, not appealed to.

Re: Order only

[alt_poppy]

I'm sure you are quite right. Perhaps the only thing I can do is issue an edict to the students.

The trouble, however, is their elders, who persist in thinking that it's all right for children to go larking about here at school, that children will be children, and they can always be patched up by Madam Pomfrey. Well, Madam Pomfrey hasn't got the resources she once did to remove extra ears from off children's foreheads or to replenish the blood in their bodies or to stop poison before it kills.

It could quite well be your godson walking about with a nasty scar for the rest of his life, Sirius. Or Malfoy's son. And until Malfoy and Macnair and the rest of the teachers and all of the parents and even you realise this -- get this firmly planted in your heads -- this situation will persist. If we can't be supplied with the things we need for healing, then there must be new rules for governing student behavior. They can't be allowed the freedom they've had in the past to learn by getting in and out of their own scrapes.

Re: Order only

[alt_mcgonagall]

It ought to be all right, honestly, Poppy; I doubt that anyone higher up would take irritation on your part as anything more than reasonable care for your students; you are, after all, quite important to Mr Marvolo's well-being and almost beyond reproach, I think.

Re: Order only

[alt_poppy]

I keep thinking that these journals could be made useful, and it does seem that so long as I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of dignity by presenting myself as a fussy old bird, it's possible to move certain audiences in a positive direction. (I am, after all, a bit of a fussy old bird in truth.)

I've been talking with some colleagues at St Mungo's, and we've all agreed that something must be done to put pressure on the Ministry to allow in all of the Medicinals we require. Some are more hopeful than others -- than I -- that anything short of an out and out calamity will bring about real change.

We simply must continue to try all avenues and angles, and I intend to do what I can.


I do appreciate your support, Minerva. I know that this is only one of the headaches you must endure.