"Well, you can't get what you want, but you can get me/So let's set up and see…

'Cause you are my medicine/ When you're close to me .

When you're close to me…"

(GORILLAZ Melancholy Hill)

If anyone was to be found out of bed scuttling about upstairs at Overblow Castle, the poor girl in question would have probably stuffed her ears with cotton wool so there would be no point shouting at her to get back to bed. And she wouldn't be the only one. All the poorly things were sick to death of the continuous headache causing sound of nauseous wheezing coughing sniffling moaning groaning and even a little bit of dry wrenching and oozing sounds filling the dorms ; a total contrast then to where as downstairs, the usual hive of activity encased in classrooms, was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Or a deputy head quietly muttering to herself.

Miss Hardbroom wasn't going crazy... well, as of yet. Far from it she liked to think herself as the most sensible member of staff; she just currently had no one to complain aloud to, as they all upstairs. So left alone to her own devices in the lab, Constance let a something between a sigh and a snort of annoyance that would have earned a pupil a hundred lines of "I must not make inappropriate inpatient and impenitent noises in class." Potions, as she taught and believed, required the right ingredients and a large helping of patience. But she was fairly quickly running out of both.

"I'm sure I had more Bramble root left over then that." she complained quietly putting the jar away. She returned to the thick volume where she'd been quadruple checking the recipe of a cure all potion she'd known off by heart since her adolescence and looked back up to the benches where five large cauldrons bubbled away, each at different stages of the same said potion. Four of them would be total useless until tomorrow or very late this evening if she was lucky, depending on how long it took cool in colder conditions and what time Hogs&Harrocks managed to bother delivering. With everything at the castle coming to a standstill practically overnight, HB hadn't had a chance to fully replenish the potion stock herself or enough time to gather and dry honey suckle leafs or bramble roots, which would be quite a while given dank state of the castle and its woodlands. and it didn't help with Miss Bat wasting ingredients with her own remedies, mostly made from her grandmothers recipes rather than a standardised book of potions.

It also didn't help it's was still raining in bucketing gloomy down pour for a sixth day on the trot, months after Sir Walter's wet week. It made the castle seem even colder and draftier then normal. HB didn't notice the small difference really but to her pupils it felt like the beginning of January not the end of April, the especially those unfortunates who'd been out in rain cross countrying when the bad weather hit.

"So much for fresh air and sport being good for your health" she grumbled to no one. Then again with everything going on, if Imogen hadn't also been out in the rain and wasn't sick Constance doubted she'd have a chance to see her honestly- -arn't-I-a-bit-old-to-be-called-your-"girl"friend at all. Miss Drill had kept complaining they'd both been so rushed off their feet as late. Well, she'd sort of gotten her wish for some time for themselves. It didn't mean either of them had to be grateful.