Correlation isn't causation

He looked up at her from where he'd been absent-mindedly sorting through the books.

"I don't know much about those things," he prompted. "What happens when someone turns up ill to the hospital wing?"

Monroe wasn't usually one to lie outright, although he wasn't so naive to pretend he didn't lie by omission. In this case, however, it might be worthwhile to take a trip to the hospital wing himself, to see first hand how his case was handled.

Yumi stretched a bit and sighed as she thought of how she would explain what happened when someone came into the Hospital Wing when they were sick.

"Well, it isn't that complicated." she started. "When someone comes in a nurse or someone asks them what they need. Of course if it's a situation, like some that have occurred already because of the sickness, where the person isn't able to tell you because they can't speak of they are unconscious, the first thing you do is bring them out of that unconscious state, and stabilize them." she told him.

"After you do that, you have to give them medicine, or whatever it is they need." she said. "It really just depends on what the situation is." she finished. Yumi couldn't help but feel like she was over explaining something. And that something was missing from her explanation, but she got the basics about what happened, so it was fine.

Yumi was good at explaining, especially since, as she got to the end Monroe realised he hadn't been very specific and that meant she assumed he was still talking about the curse. Disease. Plague.

"Interesting," he mused.

"What if I came in with something like spattergroit, though?" he asked.

"Spattergroit?" she said softly. "Um ... well for that a possible cure, and the only one I've actually heard of, is to take the liver of a toad and bind it about your throat." she stopped for a moment trying to think of the rest. "And to stand naked on the full moon in a barrel of eel's eyes."

She stiffled back a giggle. It was the only cure she'd heard of, but she's never seen anyone actually try to do it. It was completely ridiculous anyways, but who knew it could actually work. "But we don't know if it actually works." she shrugged. Although she would want to see someone try it, and if it didn't work, make a complete fool of themselves.

Monroe's eyebrows raised in amusement.

"Really?" he asked. "And how did they come across that cure?"

Because of course, it wasn't one. At least, Monroe sincerely hoped not. Someone had been having the little apprentice healer on, more's the pity.

"In fact, how do healers come across any cure? A lot of it seems very hit and miss. Do they treat symptoms or illnesses? I wonder if I could get to St Mungo's next Hogsmeade weekend?" by now he was talking more to himself than to Yumi.

Monroe's attention abruptly snapped back to her.

"I know the Lupin woman technically runs St Mungo's, but who's really in charge?" he quizzed her. "Who's the person you'd have to get approval from if a patient wanted assisted death, for example?"

By now, Monroe had picked up that although Yumi wasn't precisely stupid, she had a habit of taking things very literally. He wondered how that would serve her as a healer, where she would doubtless hear innuendos from embarrassed patients quite a bit.