Divine Intervention?

Emalyn Terrymouth was walking down the hallway.

Now, she walked down hallways quite frequently. It was an everyday occurrence for her--in fact, it was something she did more than once a day. She walked down the hallway several times a day, maybe even more.

She was also used to hearing voices when she walked down the hallway. See, it was often an everyday occurrence for other people to be walking down the hallways, and people had an odd habit of making noise. Rather a lot of it, in fact.

However, it WAS an odd occurrence for noises to be coming from abandoned hallways, ones in which it was not an everyday occurrence for people to traverse through. Often, there was no sound coming from those hallways, save the occasional shrieking of a ghost, and the occasional sound of a lost first year.

However, Emy was hearing lots of noises coming from the hallway! None of them sounded like first years. In fact, several of the voices sounded familiar, and due to the fact that the hallway was near the dungeons, it was not unlikely that the people in the hallway were fellow Slytherin House members.

She would have to investigate.

Nate slumped against the wall, disinterested. Hadn't he heard all of this before? Despite Slytherin house being notorious for its cunning, most of its members seemed hard-pressed to spout an insult that he hadn't been hearing daily since first year. "You don't even belong here, Mudblood scum." "Whose magic did you steal, you little thief?" It wasn't like any of it bothered him....at least anymore. He simply sat back and let them talk themselves silly until they realized he wasn't going to do anything about it.

"I bet you're just spying for the Muggles. A man on the inside, right?" one of the smaller boys asked, his head tilted back so that he could look down his slightly crooked nose at Nate. Unable to stop himself, he gave an incredulous laugh at the younger boy trying to intimidate him. That was apparently a bad idea.

Now, Nate had been hit, kicked, pinched, and spit on pretty much everywhere on his body that was reachable. He was pretty sure there was a spot behind his hear which was relatively untouched, and his nose hadn't been completely broken yet, although his septum was deviated. This was the product of satyagraha, which was a fancy way of saying that he wouldn't hit back, and eventually a professor would come around or whoever was venting their frustrations on him would find themselves placated. Having seen this happen countless times, Nate could almost hear the fists that would be flying, most likely, any moment now.

Emy walked down the hallway, the noise getting louder and louder as she got closer. Eventually she recognized the familiar sound--it was the sound of some unfortunate soul getting beaten to a pulp. Emy sighed, realizing that it would fall upon her shoulders to stop the incident before someone died. She had no qualms against severe beatings, but deaths were unacceptable. Death is far too easy, much more serious, and much more difficult to escape unpunished.

The closer she got, the more distinctive the voices became. She recognized all of the voices, which was odd--usually, there was at least one unfamiliar voice, the one of the victim. Emy sped up, slightly concerned that the person may be dead already.

She turned the corner to see that the person was in fact alive. There was a group of six or seven Slytherins, all Pure-Bloods like herself, beating up an unfamiliar student. He was in Slytherin, obviously, but from the insults being shouted between the familiar crunching sounds of bones giving out, he was obviously muggleborn.

The odd thing was, though, that he did not do anything back. He did not fight, he did not scream, he did not shout insults back. He numbly took the beating, despite the blood leaking from his nose and the bruises that were already starting to form. Emy watched for a minute before finally deciding to step in.

"So, what do we have here?" she asked with a cold, indifferent drawl. The students temporarily stopped, looking up at Emalyn. She looked each and every person in the eyes, but not one of them answered her. She gestured for them to move out of the way, and she walked up to the muggleborn. She nudged him with the toe of her shoe to make sure that he was not unconscious--since she had stopped the beatings, he had not moved. "What's your name, kid?" she asked, her voice condescending, but her brain not holding the same malice or superiority. She was putting on an act, although a very convincing one.

Nate tried to make himself as small as possible on the floor. It was harder for them to get in hits that really counted that way, but he could hear the tell-tale sounds of his body's fragility, anyway. He could almost feel the blooming of blood across his body in a perverse map of the places where their fists collided with his flesh, which gave way and shot stars before his eyes. The pain began to call him even further away from the reality of the situation, and if it weren't for the voice, he would have drifted away as easily as all the other times, falling into the black that would then fade to grey and, finally, to the shock whites of the hospital wing.

He felt a toe at his side; not a kick, but a gentle prod that nonetheless made him gasp as it connected with a particularly tender spot. He opened his eyes and blinked hard to get rid of the blood that had trickled there, probably from his nose. It had been bad this time; he could tell, even though he usually distanced himself from the whole ordeal. He heard the voice that asked him for his name, but it sounded far away and indistinct, so he couldn't tell if it was familiar or not. The girl's face, though, he could recognize, although placing a name with it might have been beyond him even if he weren't staring through blood-filled eyes from the floor.

"Nate," he choked out through a through that was full of blood as well, which he hadn't noticed before. It was definitely the nose, then. If it was broken this time, he'd have to have it reset and that would hurt more than the breaking. "Nate Clarke," he clarified as he swallowed down the blood, knowing he'd be sick later, retching the thick, dark liquid into the porcelain bowl, if he was lucky, and onto the floor if he was not.

The boy was in poor shape, and Emy inwardly cringed looking at him. However, on the outside she could not flinch, could not sigh, could not betray the cold, calculating reputation she had developed, especially where muggleborns were concerned. Even when she heard the boy's weak, tremulous voice, she kept her face stoic, displaying no emotion save a minor disgust, visible on the harsh curl of her cruel lips.

"Nate," he said, his voice barely audible, but the pain clearly evident in the harshness of his tones. His voice was rough, but sounded almost stuffy, due to what appeared to be a bleeding, possibly broken, nose. "Nate Clarke," he continued, looking as if he might pass out.

Emy turned to the group of Slytherins, who looked as if they were about to high-five each other. They thought they had done something great that day, which pushed Emy over the edge. "What happened? I want details, quotes, everything." Her voice was brisk and sharp, and her tone made the broad smiles of the aggressors slip away almost instantaneously. All of them knew that tone meant trouble. It reminded them that Emalyn was not to be trifled with.

"It was his fault!" the youngest started, and he was instantly silenced by a piercing glare from Emy. She did not wait for the rest of an explanation.

"Every single last one of you should have known to stop. You can beat up the worthless, muggleborn filth all you want, and I would support the cause. However, THIS is not acceptable. THIS will get us caught. THIS will make people ask questions, and when questions are asked, fingers are pointed. THIS could get us all expelled. You all know the rules, and THIS is a definite breach. Do you know what you were doing? YOU ALMOST KILLED HIM. Look at him. Tell me honestly that this is excusable." She stopped, looking around at the faces which had been openly smug only a moment ago.

Someone tried to cut in and explain what had happened, to try to prove that the beating they delivered had been just, but by this point, Emy was too far gone. Her voice got progressively louder as she spoke, her anger flooding into her speech. She was not to blame for Nate's terrible state, but she was very closely tied. She knew that if those who were to blame were caught, she would go down with them. However, hidden behind the selfish "you could have gotten me caught" facade was the anger that they had almost killed a human being because of who his parents were. This did not seem right, despite the many years she had been told it was. This was not right. It could not be.

The others stared, gaping at the sudden outburst. Emalyn had yelled at them before for taking things too far, but never had her outrage been displayed so openly, so... terrifyingly. "What do you have to say for yourselves?" Emy asked, her voice dropping to a normal volume, but the harsh, cold tone not fading from her words.

Not waiting for a response that would never come, she turned back to deal with Nate.

Keeping his eyes open required a great amount of effort, and when Nate finally realized that the girl was more concerned with his attackers, he let them slip closed. His attempt to drift peacefully into the fog in his brain was interrupted, however, by the staccato rhythm of the girl’s voice returning, this time filled with a cold rage. For a moment, he felt a bleary sort of hope that he didn’t understand, but luckily that was killed by the content of her speech. He felt as if he were fading in and out, as the beginnings and ends of her sentences didn’t match up. He knew he was close to the point where he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Swimming in the haze, he heard again that word, directed at him. “Filth.” His brain spastically connected the word with a disconnected picture of himself on the floor. Perhaps it was what he looked now, or what he looked like all of the times before. It didn’t really matter which, as they were all the same to him. He forced his eyes open to look around again when everything went suspiciously quiet (it wasn’t his hearing, as no one had gotten a shot to his ear this time; he knew what that felt like by now and the chronic ringing in his ears was proof of that) and was less than surprised to find his vision lessening to a pinpoint of light. He drew in a last ragged breath, the blood frothing and foaming in the back of his throat as if it were the tide rolling in, and let himself slip into the dark. The pain didn’t ease but at least he didn’t need to hear or try to see the same old aftermath.

Emy went over to talk to Nate. She would not have apologized, because she was not the one who beat him up. However, she did feel responsible, in a way, for not stepping in sooner. There had to have been something she could have done.

Seeing Nate's eyes closed and his muscles relaxed, Emy started to get worried. She prodded Nate with her index finger. "Are you still there?" She was met with no response. She tried again, and he did not stir.

A string of vivid, colorful words escaped Emy's mouth. At this point, she was beyond angry. She was livid. HOW COULD THEY BE SUCH IDIOTS? Did they not have BRAINS, COMMON SENSE, or SOME SENSE OF SELF-PRESERVATION? What made Emy even more angry was that she was normally unshakable. Emy did not get scared, Emy did not freak out, and Emy always knew what to do.

Emy was absolutely petrified.

She could not go get Madame Pomfrey, since she would ask questions about how he got into such a terrible state. She could not send for any of the teachers, for that reason. The other Slytherins were useless, sitting there like bumps on a log, with their mouths hanging open.

"DO SOMETHING!" Emy snapped, at the end of her rope. The Slytherins scattered, but Emy did not care where they were off to. She realized she really only had one option.

She moved the hair out of her eyes, and pulled out her wand. She knew some about healing--she always used to watch her governess work, and she had picked up random bits and pieces through her years at Hogwarts. Nate was in such poor shape, though, and Emy knew she was in way over her head. However, that was not going to stop her from trying.

Emalyn took a deep breath and got to work. She started with the cuts, focusing on the words she knew, using them to seal the gashes that covered his body. Such little cuts drained so much energy from her, but she kept on going. She fixed Nate's broken nose, the bleeding finally stopping. She worked at the major bruises, trying to stop the internal bleeding, although with her level of expertise, there was little she could do. She was lucky that she was a pure blood, raised among magic, because otherwise, she would not have stood a change, and neither would Nate.

Stop the bleeding. Stop the swelling in his head. Keep him alive. That was all Emy was focused on. She was caught up in her work, being extremely careful to make sure she did everything correctly. She had seen magic gone wrong, and she did not want to make things worse for Nate. She barely noticed when one of the Slytherins came back, one of the younger boys, with a washbasin and a towel. She kept working, until she finally could do no more.

Nate still looked in bad shape, but not nearly as bad as before. He was no longer bleeding excessively, and nothing was broken anymore. However, there was still a new layer of fresh bruises, bright spots of blue and purple ink beneath the layer of his skin. His head no longer looked like a blue balloon, inflated by his swollen, bruised skin, but his breathing was still ragged (thank goodness he was still breathing) and shallow. When he woke up, he would be bruised and sore, but at least now there was the possibility that he would wake up.

That slim possibility kept Emy clinging to hope.

The fangs split his flesh again and again, but without pain, and he stopped swatting the serpents to watch them attack. They were identical to each other, the same scaly patterns running up and down their backs in glittering diamonds that shifted in emerald tones as they hesitated, but crashed like silver lightning as they struck. He watched as they pulled back the flesh and ivory bone was blinding beneath. His brain began to warily alert him that there was something strange about the snakes, something familiar, but as soon as he was really able to concentrate, they were gone, fading into a dark corridor.

He was running, running from something that he couldn't see, and somehow that wasn't funny, even though he could call up dozens of horror movies that should've made this cliche. His legs were whole again, but they were tired and holding him back. He could feel himself slowing and although he couldn't see behind him, something in his bones told him that whatever was behind was moving faster as it gained on him. He tried to scream at he didn't know what, and he turned a corner only to find that the pit of snakes had returned, venom dripping and bodies coiled in waiting. His whole body tensed as he turned to run again, but found solid marble wall, and then, the hand on his shoulder --

The face that bore down on him was the face of a snake -- the endless depth of the slit pupils glared into him, sharper than its bared fangs, more threatening than the venom that now ran crimson like blood. His breath caught in his chest as he waited for the strike, and this time he knew it would hurt, and this time he would die, and this time he could scream at the top of his lungs for something, anything, to stop the fear and the pain and then...and then....

His breath ran out and the face above him was, thank God, the face of a girl. His eyes burned in their sockets as if they hadn't been opened in a thousand years, and the dull ache in his body was a pleasant surprise compared to the full-being terror that he'd escaped from. He opened his mouth to speak and found himself coughing, his throat dry and obviously strained from his screaming. He didn't know if that had been real or dream but either way he felt raw and each cough was like a scratching of claws. "What the hell?" he finally pushed out, looking up at the girl above him, whose worried face confused him even further.

Emalyn was near her breaking point.

She had been waiting for over twenty minutes for something to happen. Anything. She needed some sign that he would wake up. She had continuously tried everything she could think of, but she was paralyzed. She could not do anything. At this point, her thin layer of hope was cracking, exposing her to the harsh reality that Nate might not survive. Her once fragile faith was morphing, turning to desperation. She had to do something, but she did not know what she COULD do.

The situation was compounded by the personal crisis it created. Emy was the one who always knew what to do. She was always on top of things. She always had the answers, and she was never scared.

She was absolutely petrified, her brain frozen from shock. Her burst of adrenaline had long since faded, her energy sapped. She just wanted to curl into a ball and fall asleep, to forget that anything had ever happened. It was only her determination that kept her awake, waiting anxiously.

That was when the screaming started.

It started out as a quiet whimpering, which Emy took as a good sign. It meant that he was alive, at least. This sentiment did not last long, though, as the volume gradually began to increase. Soon, Nate was emitting blood-curdling shrieks, his voice becoming raw and rough. Emy had never heard such a horrible sound in her entire life. She tried shaking Nate awake, for lack of a better plan, but his shouts only became louder.

Emy was close to abandoning all hope when she noticed the screams lessening in volume and frequency. His breathing was less shallow.

Emy moved over to check his breathing when he started to cough loudly, and finally cracked his eyes open. He tried to shout something, but it came out garbled.

"Well, it's about time you decided to come back to the land of the living. I was about to call in the reinforcements, so when you mounted an Inferi attack, we'd be prepared. By the way, you scream really loudly for an unconscious person. I think you've successfully managed to drive away every bird on the campus, even Hagrid's mutant ones. You should be proud, that is quite the accomplishment."

Emy's mouth was running a million miles a minute from relief, but her tone was as sarcastic as ever.

Nate worked his mouth, silently, feeling the ache in the hinges of his jaw that meant the girl was telling the truth. It was strange that he would scream, or even could scream.... He could only remember making very much noise once in his entire life. He and Peggy had been rough-housing in the tree house and one thing had led to another. When he saw the bone jutting in an odd direction, he had let out a single, deafening wail and passed out. He woke up to the disapproving stare of his mother standing over him in his hospital bed. He had been six years old.

Now, though, the face above him was certainly not his mother's, yet it was, after all, the face of a snake. She was talking at him, he knew, but he wasn't sure why. His body felt like one giant, fresh bruise, so he figured that had something to do with it. But really, did that even make sense? He couldn't place a name, but he'd long since had a mental catalogue of the faces of the people who looked at him as a separate species, and this was public enemy number one on the nonviolent list. He was too exhausted to try to figure it out for himself.

"What happened?" he asked, feeling his throat scratch raw and desperate. He felt a little redundant, actually asking, since the outline of it all was the same each time. But it was worth it, possibly, to find out why Miss Pureblood Priss of the Class of '77 was hovering over him like a nursemaid, albeit an unpleasant one.

Nate groaned, and Emy was concerned. "What happened?" he said, his voice barely audible. Emy sent a Slytherin to go get some water for him. She could have easily conjured something up any other day, but not that day--she was drained from her healing attempts. Emy seriously doubted that Nate would be able to sit up yet, and she decided that she would have to figure out a way to get the water down his throat without spilling it all over the place.

It was then that Emy realized that she could not keep up her unconcerned, uncaring facade up for much longer, so she sent away the Slytherins with a single barking command. They were eager to get out, and Emy needed the privacy, and the security of being alone with Nate. She did not like witnesses when she let out that side of her that was warm, instead of the cold, indifferent image she usually projected.

Also, she did not like to show uncertainty, and she had no idea what she was doing. She would figure it out as she went along, she knew, but still.

Once the hallway had cleared out, Emy assessed the situation. They were near the wall, so she could attempt to prop him up into a sitting position. "This might hurt," she warned, and she began to shift his body, trying to avoid the bruises that still remained. While she moved him, she started to talk. She tried to keep her tone even and emotionless, but even she heard her concern leak through.

"Basically, those idiots beat you to a pulp. Someone had to stop them before they killed you, so I did. You were in bad shape, so I tried some things to make it better. You were unconscious for a while when you started screaming. That continued for a while, and then you woke up."

Emy gave the cliff-notes version, not wanting to get overly complicated, and not wanting to go too far into her role in the mess. She did not want to develop a reputation as a softie, especially in the way of mudbloods, and the fewer people that knew the story, the better. Very few of the Slytherins stuck around for the whole catastrophe, so she was safe on that front.

Once she had successfully propped Nate up, she grabbed the goblet of water. It had obviously come from the Great Hall--it was not from the Slytherin common room, the Pure Bloods clearly deeming him unworthy. This annoyed Emy--the Great Hall was much further away than the Slytherin common room.

"How do you feel? Do you think you can manage this on your own? I don't know how bad it is now."

Nate made sure to grit his teeth hard as the girl shifted him upright. It kept him from making any noise besides the sigh of relief he gave as soon as he was vertical again, which he considered okay. As far as he could tell, the story sounded legit, up until the point where someone had come to his rescue -- a Pureblood, nonetheless. That part made very little sense, but he'd let it pass, since she seemed to be helping instead of hurting still. He was still very wary of the water goblet that he was being offered, though, not sure how far his trust could stretch. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his left arm and forced it, shaking, to grasp the stem of the goblet. In one jerky movement he brought it back to rest against his chest, frowning. It shouldn't have hurt this much to move. It had obviously never been this bad before, even with whatever handiwork had been performed on him while he was out.

"I'm fine," he tried to say, before realizing that he was fairly near unintelligible with the current state of his throat. He would have to drink the water out of necessity, it seemed, no matter that he didn't have it in him to check to see if it was poisoned or charmed in some horrendous way. He had not discovered, if there were any, the lower limits of just how far a bully would sink to hurt someone of his blood status. He lifted the glass to his lips and made sure to take a good sniff first, although he wasn't sure just how much he could smell through the blood caked in his nostrils. Finally, he decided it couldn't get much worse than it already was and took a decent-sized gulp, swishing it around in his mouth to clean the metallic taste of his blood away. It stung a little going down his throat, and it was warm, for some reason, but it eased up the ache a bit. He dropped his arm back to his chest when the last drops trickled onto his tongue.

Exhausted from even just the little he had done, Nate reconsidered lying and saying that he was fine. If he didn't tell the truth, he'd spend the rest of the day and most likely the night here in the hall, unable to move. Then again, admitting his weakness would put him in a bad position when alone with the enemy, even if she was a girl. Weighing his options, he decided to go ahead with his first plan of action. "I'm fine," he repeated, much more clearly this time, and looked up into the girl's face. She seemed mildly concerned, which meant she was a better actress than most.

Emy waited for a response, worried that he was still in extreme pain. She knew that her skill in healing was so limited, and she knew that she did not really do much of anything for Nate. She watched as Nate eyed the water she gave him warily. She wanted to tell him that it was safe to drink, and the only spell on it was to ease pain, and that she wouldn't hurt him, but the words couldn't come out. He looked so frightened, so in pain, so disoriented. He tried to respond to her questions, but all that came out was a mumbled, garbled mess of syllables, as if his words were trapped in his throat, wanting to burst out, but unable make it through the barrier. He sounded absolutely horrid.

Finally, he went to drink. He sniffed it cautiously, and Emy bit her lip. He really didn't trust her. Why should she blame him? If she were in his shoes, she wouldn't trust her either. The other Slytherin kids, who were often associated with her, just beat him to a pulp. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that she would help him, after that. He raised the goblet to his lips, swishing the water around his mouth before swallowing.

Nate waited for a few seconds before finally answering her question, his voice still hoarse, but better than it was before. "I'm fine," he said, but Emy did not believe it for a second. She knew what state he was in--every movement he made caused a pained expression, and he could barely speak. He clearly was not "fine," but he didn't trust her, and Emy believed the reason was that he didn't want to show that he could be taken advantage of because of his condition. Emy wanted to reach out and hug him--she had dropped all pretenses of not caring, with the halls around her completely empty--but she knew that he would not take it well, and it didn't make sense even to her. He was in pretty bad pain, and trying to hug him might make it worse, also.

"You certainly don't sound fine," she muttered out loud, just loudly enough that he might hear her, but not loudly enough that he would for certain. She continued on, in a louder voice, designed for him to hear. "We need to get you up to the hospital wing. There's no way that you can go like that, though, you don't look like you could stand on your own, let alone walk." She paused, deciding to go for the full truth. "I am taking a risk by doing this, because they will be able to trace everything that happened back to the Slytherin bullies. I'd ask you to keep quiet, but I think we both know that speaking up would be really stupid. It's not that I'd get in trouble--I could easily worm my way out of that, since I never hurt you. It's just that... well, the other Slytherins aren't exactly under my complete control, and they don't like being ratted out. It'd be bad for you, I'll say that much. I don't know how we are going to get you up there, though..." she trailed off, waiting for some sort of reaction, but not quite meeting his face.

Nate might have been beat up pretty well, but his hearing was fine, and he didn't appreciate the mumbled, "You don't look fine," from the girl. Of course he didn't look fine! Her flunkies had just tried to make hamburger meat out of him and had very nearly succeeded. If anyone had ever looked fine after that, he'd like to meet them and ask them their secret. It would certainly come in handy in the life that he'd been living these past years at school.

His train of thought was interrupted, though, by a bad case of verbal diarrhea. All at once, the girl seemed to be threatening and attempting to help him, or at least trying to appear to help out. The hospital wing was surely where he would've ended up anyway, so that part didn't surprise him much. But a sudden display of kindness from a Pureblood who'd never given him a second look? His disbelief was again extended. It was bad enough that she had tried to heal him and witnessed his weakness. Now she was sneaking behind the backs of her own little vipers, trying to help him? He must really look pathetic, slumped against the wall with not one ounce of strength to be found in him. He'd actually broken down the barriers of one of a hundred heartless trolls who usually would've laughed at the sight of his blood running everywhere.

Coughing hard, Nate attempted to clear the rest of the dried blood from his throat before he spoke. "Look. Send...some little first year to get the nurse. Leave. No one will know you were here." It was the easiest way out for both of them: he would be found alone instead of being with this rogue aristocrat, and she wouldn't have to worry about her precious reputation. He could be levitated to the hospital wing easily and there would be no harm beyond the permanent damage he no doubt had sustained to his organs. Something told him that this time was not like the others....he wasn't going to be (excuse the pun) magically all better, with no lasting consequences. Something wasn't right with his body, and yet he would still not say a word about how he had gotten this way. All he had to do was put up and shut up a little while longer to make it through.

"Look. Send...some little first year to get the nurse. Leave. No one will know you were here."

The words themselves were so simple. The idea was so easy, and would work best for both of them. However, Emy could not help but feel that it wasn't the right solution. She didn't want to leave Nate with a first year; she didn't completely trust the magic of most first years, first of all, and something bad could happen. However, more importantly, she did not want to leave because she felt a responsibility for the matter, and although leaving someone else to clean up the problem sounded like a solution she would usually support, she could not help but feel that this time, it wouldn't cut it. She could not help but feel a bit thrown off-balance. She was changing in ways she could not even begin to fathom, and it bothered her a bit. She hadn't cared about what happened to a muggle-born so much her entire life. However, the concern for Nate was so overwhelming that she managed to push the nagging voice to the back of her head.

Emy knew Nate would prefer that she just left him alone--she wondered what exactly he thought of her. She could not imagine that his image of her was incredibly positive, due to what she perceived as an incredibly cynical personality. The other Slytherins, who she was closely tied to by the general population of Hogwarts, had just beat him to a pulp. Even after she had put all her magic into healing him, she knew that some of the damage would be irreparable. If she had not stopped the others, there was no doubt in her mind that Nate would currently be dead. Thus, it was incredibly likely that Nate thought she was just using this to hurt him even worse, or that she was going temporarily insane. She thought of things from his point of view, and she realized that she would probably be sickened by what SHE would view as false concern. The thought made her sad.

However, he really did need to get to the hospital wing. Emy was going to do something rash, she decided. She was going to get him there herself. She was going to be very careful--instead of levitating him the whole way just by himself, which would hurt his many injuries, she was going to levitate him on the rug he was right by. However, she would need to figure out a way to get him there--she might have to levitate him after all, if only for a second.

"I think I'm going to take care of this," she said, quickly. "I'm going to have to levitate you for a second. I'm sorry." She said the last part more quietly.

Nate tried to shake his head but all that brought was a spark of pain that didn't want to recede even after he'd frozen in place to stop it. With a shaky breath, he worked through it and, through darkened eyes, looked up at the witch in front of him. "Why are you doing this? You could just...you need to just leave me alone. I don't need your help."

Honestly, her words were nothing to him right now. From anyone else, he would've appreciated the help, but probably still turned them away. It wasn't part of him, part of the way he'd made himself live, to accept help from peers. The adults, they were fine, impartial usually and less likely to make a fuss since they knew what they were doing. But drawing other students into the matter....well, his whole body shrank away from the girl at the thought of the explanations that either of them could be put through.

He immediately felt sick with the contraction of his muscles and he fought the urge to retch, bile burning his raw throat. "Oh, god, fine, I don't care anymore," he rasped, too tired and finally hurting enough to give up what little of a charade he'd been capable of putting on. His whole body slumped and defeat was clear on his face. "Do what you need to do," he muttered, letting his eyes wander in the opposite direction so that he wouldn't have to witness his own humiliation.

"Do what you need to do."

Those simple words hit Emy like a ton of bricks. Nate had given up trying to be strong. That meant that things must be really, really bad. He had to be in serious pain, or have something seriously wrong. That made Emy even more frantic, and more guilty. It was all her fault. As much as she wanted to dissociate herself from the incident, in the end, it was all her fault. She should have done something, said sometihng--anything to get them to stop sooner. She should have known something like this would happen, and how he was dying or something, and she was scared, and the world was just crashing down. Emy knew that Nate did not want her help. That much was obvious. However, he was in bad enough shape that he was letting her do something.

She had to do it quickly, as he clearly did not have much time left.

As quickly as she could, she set things up. She purposely ignored the look of pained resignation on Nate's face, deliberately overlooking the expression in his eyes which spelled out humiliation. She worked quickly and efficiently, moving him as little as possible, but managing to get him onto the rug. From that point on, the magic was not actually touching him. She was not sure how else to get him there, though, and it was the first thing that came to mind. From then, they were on the move, Emy moving quickly and praying that the stairs were in a good mood. She desperately needed a quick path to the hospital wing. She went the quickest way she possibly could--she was lucky that it was an odd time for people to be around, and the hallways were mostly empty. Those who were watching pretended not to--Emy had a reputation, and they would not speak of whatever they saw.

"How are you doing?" she asked Nate, not expecting a positive response, but knowing that she needed to hear his voice for her own mental health. It meant that he was still alive. It meant that he was still hanging on. It meant she was not responsible for his death, or his being unconscious, or him being... Emy did not let her mind wander in that direction, as it was a dark path to go down. She had to quit thinking of what could be going wrong, and put her energy into making sure that he came out of this in one piece. That was what was important, she reminded herself. She was Emy. She was strong. She did not fall apart. She could do this.

She could do this.

She just hoped Nate could, too.