Lucy and Wilbur sound out the nurse
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It doesn't take long to find the nurse's office. Lucy knocks on the door. 

"Hi, are you the new nurse? Our condolences."

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She's okay. She has to be okay. Time to pull herself together. 

Marian's inner clock is telling her it's four in the morning and has been for hours. She has no idea what time this stupid school thinks it is. Do they even have days and nights, here? 

Oh, that was a knock. Marian sighs and hauls herself up from the floor and goes to open the door. 

"Hey. I, uh, think I owe you condolences too," she says dully. "Who'd've thought, magic is real but turns out it's horrible." 

...That came out way more bitter and cynical-sounding than she meant it, oops, she's supposed to be reassuring and stuff. 

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"That's about the size of it, but honestly, you have it way worse than we do. Give your condolences to the muggleborns, if you see 'em." Sigh. "I'm Lucy and this is my brother Wilbur. What's your name?" this woman is So Extremely Doomed but she deserves for someone to remember her, and maybe track down her loved ones on the outside and let them know, not exactly the truth of what had happened to her, but as close as was practical.

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"I'm Marian. I was an ICU nurse in Canada, before, uh. This happened." 

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"If you tell me your full name and where in Canada I'll try to let your people know what happened to you if I survive graduation."

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Wow, answering that question requires way more admitting what's in her future than Marian would prefer. "Ummm, last name is Daly. My folks are from Ottawa. I worked at the Montfort Hospital." 

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"Okay, got it. --Uh, the real reason we came here is that we have spider familiars and are planning on selling a lot of enchanted silk, and we wanted to sound you out about buying bandages."

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"Huh! So familiars are a thing here? How does that work?" 

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"You feed an animal mana and it gets smarter and starts doing what you want, or at least things that are good for you. They're useful, but most people who take familiars take larger things, like cats or birds, so people don't bring them into the Scholomance much, since they're expensive in terms of weight limit and to feed. But our spiders are so little and we can feed them mal grubs, so they're a practical choice."

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"Neat!" Marian does not ask what kinds of things a spider familiar can even DO because that's a digression. "Uh, are spiderweb bandages especially good? How much do you want for them - sounds like a lot of work, I'm guessing you'd have to, uh, hand-weave them or something...?" 

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"The spiders do most of the actual weaving! But, like--I vaguely heard something somewhere about spiderwebs being good to put on wounds but I don't know anything about that, mostly it's that we can enchant the bandages."

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"I think I've read that too! ...Uh, in fantasy novels. But I guess I seem to have ended up in one of those, so." 

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"The place I read it was definitely not a fantasy novel but I don't actually remember a ton about it. I probably should have but I was cramming Spanish at the time so it sorta fell by the wayside."

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"I guess I could ask the void for a book about it, at some point?" Marian gives the void wall a very dubious look. 

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"It's worth a try, I don't think the nurse has to use everything like students do with spellbooks; asking might be useless but it won't be worse." On a whim: "Pretty please be nice to her!" she calls to the void wall. 

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"...I guess I should try it...?" 

Marian looks dubiously at the wall. But - fuck it, she has to stop being a COWARD at some point if she wants to help any of these kids before she inevitably gets eaten by a monster and hopefully wakes up back in her own bed or at least in a psych ward no she's going to ignore that hopeful fantasy too. 

She crosses over to the wall and sticks out her hand. "I would like a book about, uh, medicinal use of spiderwebs for, uh, dressing wounds." She waits. 

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....After a pause, the wall spits out what looks like a....printout of an academic paper

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".....Huh!" She skims the abstract. "Apparently there's actually a bunch of recent research on how spider silk has antibiotic properties? Cool!" 

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"...Aw, hell yeah, that's awesome," Lucy says, peering over her shoulder. "Anyway, we don't have a ton of spare spidersilk yet, but we would be thrilled to sell you some when we do, possibly for a price including I get to read that when you're done with it."

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"- Uh, I - kind of feel bad about making you pay in fancy spider silk for something that's probably in the public domain? I...guess I need to get used to trading like that, if I want to - not die right away, here - but still." 

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"--It may be in the public domain but that doesn't mean we can get it in here. Value is really different in the Scholomance. Every student only has seventy kilos of weight allowance including their own body."

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"Mmm." Marian folds up the printout and shoves it into a pocket, then fidgets. "You should, uh, do whatever helps you not die first, obviously, but - I'll try to do some more research, and I'd probably be interested in trading for bandages later on?"

If she's still alive. Marian is getting REALLY SICK of having to append that sentence to everything she says or thinks. 

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"Yeah. See you later. Good luck."

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