Correlation isn't causation

Though the boy constantly told himself their former headmaster's sudden disappearance wasn't proof of anything, it was definitely hard for him to remain unbiased as he looked for any information pointing to something similar in the past.

As he searched through the history books, he found his eyes drawn to the name Grindelwald wherever it appeared. This was not going well. Monroe slammed the most recent one shut, rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye and then opened it to start again.

This was getting ridiculous. The outbreaks of this mystery illness were incredible, some had already died from this thing, and Yumi wasn't about to let anymore die. A cure had to be found quickly, and she intended to try in any and every way possible to find it. The library seemed like a good place to start, so that was where she went.

As she entered, Yumi found that a rather familiar Ravenclaw boy was there already and she smiled. "Hey." she said casually, as she walked over to him. "Monroe right?" she asked him. "You trying to find a cure or something for this thing too?" she assumed she was right, as everyone was getting awfully irritated by the illness now.

Monroe looked up at the sound of his name. The girl standing in front of him was Yumi Zante, Louis Weasley's girlfriend. She was in the same house as Destrey, but being the Weasley boy's girlfriend was much nicer.

It bothered him how easily she'd guessed his motives for being here today. Of course it was a guess, nobody in Slytherin was clever enough to deduce anything. Well, nobody except Destrey or Shylock.

Monroe gestured the girl closer. He couldn't do everything by himself, and the way she said 'looking for a cure for this thing too' indicated that she was here for the same reason he was. It only made sense to collaborate.

"I don't believe it's a matter of finding a cure," he told her, voice low. "Are you aware of the concept of sympathetic magic, Yumi?"

Now that everyone knew her as Louis's girlfriend, Yumi knew that most people expected her to be nicer, even if she was a Slytherin. To be honest, she didn't even know how she got into that house, she wasn't like the other Slytherins who were mean or valued the pureblood traditions a lot. She was completely different, but she supposed it had been her hatred for James that got her into that house. That didn't matter though, she was there for a specific reason, and had no time to be thinking about why she was in the house she was in.

"True. But it doesn't hurt to try." she said passively, waving her hand leisurely. She stepped closer to the boy and took a seat across from him as he said something about sympathetic magic. "Yes, I've heard of it. Why?" she asked him. She'd of that concept, but she hadn't ever really been interested in it. Then again, most things didn't really interest her, unless they affected her in some way.

Monroe smiled enthusiastically.

Destrey was right when she said she couldn't help it that everyone was stupid, but she could help the way she reacted to it. She could pretend she didn't think everyone was stupid, for starters.

"Good! Tell me about it," he asked her.

Well... really it was an order, but people didn't like being ordered about, so Monroe had learnt to tone down his tone in recent years.

Yumi put her index finger to her lips as she thought about what sympathetic magic was. The definition of it escaped her memory, but she knew it had to do with imitations or something. She made a 'hm" sound as she thought, them she looked back at Monroe.

"Sympathetic magic is also known as imitative magic." she started. "It's based on imitation or correspondence ... or something like that." she told him. That was pretty much all she knew on the subject. Again, that hadn't ever really been interested in it, so it was obvious she wouldn't know that much about it.

Plus, she wasn't a brainiac either. If she was, she would've been in Ravenclaw not in Slytherin. Of course, not all brainiacs were in Ravenclaw but the majority of them were, or else Ravenclaw wouldn't be known as the house where the smartest students were. She gave Monroe a slight shrug, indicating that she knew nothing more.

Like a lightbulb, Monroe's enthusiasm was switched off.

On the one hand, it was good that he was so much cleverer than his peers - that would give him an advantage in the real world. On the other, although Monroe knew he was a little more intelligent than most people, he didn't believe he was any particular genius or savant. Mostly, it seemed to him that the average person simply couldn't be bothered to think.

The way she parroted off the information like she'd learned it by rote? Disappointing.

"Ye-es, something like that," he agreed.

"Technically, polyjuice potion is a type of sympathetic magic," he added. "It made me think twice about this disease. I suppose you haven't noticed how many more Slytherins have it than any of the other houses?"

Yumi nodded at him, as if she actually understood what he was talking about. Well ... she did, she wasn't completely stupid, but learning was hard for her, especially if she was just listening to things being said. She learned much better by just doing these things, not listening or looking at them. She sighed softly.

Suddenly he touched a topic that was important to her. "I have noticed." she told him. "The sickness seems to be affecting Slytherins the most because most of them are purebloods, and there are some halfbloods who have been affected as well. But it's been mostly purebloods." she said immediately, something in her mind going off like an alarm.

She shook her head quickly. "But why is that really important?" she asked the stupid question and mentally slapped herself. She was almost going to physically slap herself, but she forced her arm to stay down.

"Short answer? Yes. That's exactly what's important. If we theorise that there really is a magical gene and that this disease is the result of some type of curse rather than being a genuine illness," Monroe replied. "There is, of course, another possibility."

He walked back towards the table, where there were no books about what he was thinking because it was only Yumi's presence that had made him think of the possibility. Now, in retrospect, and here in the library surrounded by gas lamps instead of flickering fluorescent lights, it was obvious.

"You're studying to become a healer or something, right?" he quizzed the girl. "I suppose you'd know what's involved with diagnosis and curing people by now?"

"O ... kay." Yumi said slowly, as she tried to process what he was saying. People were right when they called her stupid. That was probably why she never got that mad when they insulted her, a few times she had even thanked them for calling her stupid. Only because during those days, she had been called much worse things. Still she never took those kinds of things to heart, just cause she knew she was stupid in most things.

"A healer, yeah." she nodded at him, throwing her hair over her shoulder letting it fall down her back. She nodded at him again, giving a dismissive wave of her hand. "Yeah. I've learned about that stuff." she held back a yawn.

Yumi grabbed a piece of her hair that hadn't been thrown back over her shoulder, and she twirled it around her finger somewhat pensively, thinking about what she had learned so far in her internship.