Location: Medi-Centre, Potter Estate
Time: 19th of November, early, early morning (20th)
Status: Closed, for: @dearborncaradoc
Now there was but waiting.
All that should’ve never have happened, had happened. All that was bound to happen, had happened. All that needed to happen, had happened.
The illness had come -- some assuming it to have come from the werewolves --, had forced them to spend all resources on medical attention and urgent care of the infected, and had positively robbed all of them off their sleep until that young Mister Snape had been brought in. Though, for those of the Inner-Circle, sleep hadn’t come, not even then. The interrogation had lasted for hours, but it had felt like days. At first Edgar had worried it could’ve taken too long, wasted precious time, but those who had taken the potion seemed on their way to recovery already now. Tomorrow would show if the potion had side effects or if all was indeed as fine as some wanted to believe.
Now it was late at night and there was nothing left to do but to wait. To hope.
Edgar had been hovering by the grand staircase for a while, watching people carry their weary limbs in and out of the makeshift hospital wing with their last efforts to help. It was unnecessary now. The mess -- the blood, the cloths, the memories -- could be cleaned up tomorrow all the same. Now it was best to let at least a superficial feeling of peace settle in the Potter Estate. Maybe that was why Edgar had turned to find a bed somewhere. Maybe that was why he couldn’t make himself go just yet.
It wasn’t his own sense of uselessness which caused his hesitation to finally retrieve, though.
He firmly believed that everyone had its own, important place in the Order, and each helping hand was of worth. No matter how clumsy, how shy, or how wild, it was a good hand. Useful. A hand which didn’t belong to the wrong side. Therefore it was below him to pity himself for how little he had been able to do during the last week... Incapable of serving with actual medical help, Caradoc had sent him out to find anyone who’d know what kind of illness they were facing. Anyone who might know a cure. He’d been gone for days, travelling to the continent, even, almost as far as Russia, but nothing, no one, seemed to give concrete answers. His letters back home to the Order were plenty and frantic, hoping that at least one of the suggestions made by those old healers he sought out could help. In the end, a letter had come back telling him to come, quickly. A certain Mister Snape had brought in a potion. And he was a Death Eater...
No, what made Edgar hesitate, was the worry that Caradoc was the one who would feel useless if he were to retrieve to bed now, therefore keeping himself up on his feet, in this way of how Caradoc just was.
Upon returning from the continent, Edgar had not said a word when finding Caradoc on the steps to the Estate, only needing a glance into his face to understand the situation. He had merely put a hand on his shoulder and nodded, then followed him inside. It was with the same gesture with which he approached Caradoc now; redirecting his friend’s gaze from over-looking all that had been done and all that couldn’t be done anymore, not now, not anymore, not on this night of the 19th, which perhaps had already long turned into the morning of the 20th. “We are barefoot, my friend,” he said, softly. “There are no more shoes to drop.”