Why, oh why, had she and her sisters decided to use real swords for their Three Musketeer costumes? Merlin, she'd never felt pain as bad as this, even when she'd fallen from that broom and nearly broken her whole body. Not even when she was a child and exploded half her alchemy set on herself.

She groaned as she awoke on Sunday morning. The night before had been chaotic and the nurse and Felicity Taylor both worked to knock her and Aimee out before they even got to talking, and she was pretty sure they'd stitched Ace up and sent her away as soon as the other two were asleep. Now, however, she was waking and she was hurting just below her breastbone where the tip of the sword had sliced easily through her costume and into her tender tummy.

It had nearly gone all the way through her, but then hers had done much the same to Me, if only a bit lower. She was pretty sure she'd heard Taylor say something about piercing one of Aimee's kidneys, but then she'd passed out, so she couldn't be positive.

One thing she was sure about, however, was that Aubrey was glad both her sisters were still alive. She'd been on sore terms with them ever since the flying incident, and she'd almost backed out of their costume idea that they'd had since the start of the year. In the end, though, she couldn't disappoint her sisters, and she was glad for it. It meant they were all together for the worst of things, and that they knew in their hearts that all of them would forever get along.

"I? Is that you? Oooh, I feel like some sort of kabob or something. Circe's swollen mamaries..." She groaned again, rolling away from the blurry blob that she was pretty sure was her Hufflepuff sister and looking at a drawn curtain. Well, that was dull. She rolled back over again and saw a clearer vision of her sister, and a bit of red hair poking out from beneath a white sheet on the bed behind Ace.

Aubrey's eyes went wide and she shot up in bed with a yelp, both of pain and fear. "Oh my god, tell me Aimee isn't dead under that sheet!" she screamed, one hand clutching her middle while the other pointed frantically at the girl in the bed. She noticed shifting beneath the sheet and sighed in relief while glaring in annoyance all the same. "Merlin, Me, you're gonna give me a heart attack over here! Ow... I think I reopened my wound..."

Her voice turned into a whine as she lay back in her bed, feeling the full pain of the wound in her stomach. "Are you doing alright, Ace? Got any updates for us stab victims?"

This was easily the worst year of Aimee’s school career so far. She was spectacularly failing Potions, to the point that she was fairly certain she had heard the new professor enquiring of the greasy old one to be sure that she had indeed passed all of her yearly exams in addition to getting a sufficient OWL in the class. Myself was barely speaking to her and I was too busy to be around for her. She had finally developed a love life, and it was going terribly.

She had been reasonably certain going into the ball that things couldn’t get worse, and then it had been attacked by giant spiders. She had always assumed that Potter and Ron’s stories about second year had exaggerated their size, and she had been wrong. Still, they were making the best of it, and while I had been mildly injured, all in all Aimee was glad that they had decided to use real swords and that Myself had agreed to go along with them despite their sibling fight.

Then it had all gone so very, very wrong. For once it wasn’t even Aimee’s fault. They had been fighting well, effectively hacking spiders to pieces. Then someone had killed the spider both Me and Myself were working on, causing it to fall when they weren’t expecting it and had made mighty thrusts with their swords. Soon Aimee’s world was filled with pain, Myself’s screams, and very little else.

The next thing she knew was a lot of bright white light and too many voices, causing her to pull the sheets up over her head. If the white light meant that she was dead, the afterlife would be there whenever she was ready to face it, and if it meant the hospital, then she just really didn’t want to deal with it. Based on the fact that most of her insides still hurt like they were on fire, she was betting on the option with less harps and more fun.

The shriek of Myself made Me reconsider and groan, then slowly lower the sheet so that she could adjust to the light properly. “Sorry for scaring you, Myself,” she said, trying to make it sound like she really was sorry this time, which she was. She was also so, so tired of the fighting. She just wanted her sister back now. “Oh, and for the stabbing. Sorry for stabbing you through.”

With that, she turned her attention to the sister that was capable of such complex actions as standing, walking around, and hopefully gathering news. “Yeah, Aye Aye. What’s going on in the world outside of bed? Are we gonna live long enough to get out of here and find out what kind of damage those stupid spiders did?”

Acelynn hadn't expected much from attending that Halloween Ball, aside from hopefully managing to patch things up with her sisters, and between them, and maybe prodding a person or two with her very real sword. The teen didn't really dance. Or know how. Ace's idea of dancing was jumping around and starting a mosh pit. Which might have been even more dangerous than the spiders that ended up attacking, when one factored in the fact that the redhead was a giant accident waiting to happen, and had an actual sword in hand. There was a very real chance that a good few amount of eyes might have been lost. Whatever the case was, giant arachnids had definitely been unexpected.

Unsurprisingly, her and her sisters had jumped into the fray of those fighting the overgrown insects, not ones to be left out of the action. Even more unsurprising was that instead of using their wands like normal witches, the three had chosen to stab and hack the things with their swords. It was surprisingly more fun than it should have been, all things considered, and the three had taken to shouting 'All for one and one for all' much like the musketeers they were portraying that night. Nothing like complete catastrophic events unfolding to bring them back together so fully again. It made sense. For the McGregor triplets anyways.

And then....everything had gone pear shaped faster than you could grab a liquorice wand from a baby. Not that Acelynn had ever tried that before, but you know, one can imagine. First, the Hufflepuff had managed to get herself in direct line with a nasty cutting hex someone had sent, which had ripped right across her left side. Fortunately for the redhead, the mass amount of adrenaline pumping in her meant that aside from the initial shock of the gash, she hadn't felt it til much later. It wasn't even a concern really, especially considering what happened next.

Now Ace wasn't quite sure exactly how her sisters had managed to stick each other with their swords, and she was still contemplating the ridiculousness of the situation as she sat nearly fully healed between their beds, but somehow they had managed to spear each other. It was almost like something one saw on a movie, and couldn't help but laugh at the stupidity of it, except it hadn't been funny at all. Ace could honestly say she had never been so afraid in her entire life than she had at that moment, when the thought that her sisters might have just accidentally offer each other flashed in her mind. Aubrey's stint with the broom was a close second.

It might be surprising, considering all three were practically walking talking catastrophes waiting to happen. Acelynn herself was like Murphy's Law in human form. Whatever could go wrong, would go wrong. But this...this was different. This was...like dying. Their pain was her pain. Their suffering was hers. And it shook the teen to her core.

Everything after that was a blur, and even now, the redhead had no real clue how or when the three had managed to get to the hospital wing. Getting herself healed had been the last thing on her mind, her main concern her two sisters who had been easily and promptly knocked out by the healer and her gang of helpers. Only once she was assured that her sisters would be ok and make a full recovery did Ace leave. Well, it was that and the fact that Felicity seemed about ready to spell her head off for continuing to undo her stitches. The Hufflepuff felt she had a good enough excuse. She needed something to take her mind off her sisters' near deaths, and poking at her own injury repeatedly seemed a good enough idea at the time.

By the time she had gotten around to a shower, Acelynn wished she could say that was the worst of it. But the things she had seen and learned while in the infirmary only made her certain that the attack had been far worse than her mind had first been able to wrap around. Lots of friends had been hurt. Several were now dead. Myself's Head of House was dead. The Headmaster was dead. No one she knew (that she had managed to talk to) had any explanation for what happened and why, and she herself couldn't draw any conclusions.

But that wasn't exactly what she were known for now was it? The Hufflepuff wasn't the great thinker. She were the epitome of crazy, stupid fun. Hardly ever taken serious, and almost never serious. All she really knew for sure was that maybe it were time to grow up some. Because apparently one couldn't survive for long these days joking through life. And that was a hard pill to swallow for Ace. But she had to, because for one, she found herself having to shoulder the responsibility of dealing with her parents in the aftermath of the attack, and notifying them of her sisters' predicaments and reassuring them that everything was as alright as it could be. Of course, that wasn't very reassuring to her parents, and their latest letter only confirmed that.

The letter was pocketed in her the dickies she currently wore as she say between the two beds her sisters currently were laid up in, and the redhead was so anxious her foot tapped against the floor as her knee bounced, barely restraining herself from jumping up and...well she wasn't quite sure what she could do to rid herself of the anxious energy coursing through her. The gum in her mouth popped every five seconds or so as her eyes flashed between Aimee and Aubrey, willing one or both to wake. The moment the Ravenclaw third of the triplet force groaned out, Ace was out of her seat and at her sister's side, looking both relieved and concerned.

She was unable, however, to stop the chuckle from passing her lips at her sister's words, though it was a bit shaky, as were her hands, which she stuffed into her pants pockets lest she manage to hurt her sister further or open an existing wound by beat hugging the identical redhead. "Yup, yup, yup. It's I. Ya shouldn't be moving 'round too much Myself. That's what Taylor said. She also said that if I don't keep ya from moving 'round too much that I won't get any candy, ya see, so keep still." The Hufflepuff explained humorously, especially considering she was on her fifth attempt of trying to get what she referred to as 'Good Patient' candy from Felicity. In that single visit.

Her thoughts on sweets and such were interrupted when her newly woken sister screamed in a terrified sort of way, startling the Huffelpuff of the trio, who jumped and stumbled back, the heel of her foot getting caught on the leg of the chair she had just been occupying. As could be expected, this did not bode well for the redhead staying on her two feet, and her arms flapped in air in a windmill fashion as she stumbled back further as she tipped backwards, crashing into the chair on her way down.

"Bloody hells and bells Myself!! What ya gotta go 'round screaming for eh? Bloody nearly got a chair leg plunged up my arse there..." Acelynn grumbled humorously again, trailing off as she pushed herself up off the ground where she had landed. The teen stood between her two sisters' beds, dusting herself off and shaking her head before proceeding to give each one a hug, in which she squeezed each of them probably a little tighter than was necessary or helpful to their painful injuries. "Merlin's beard am I glad you two are awake!! Ya could've died, ya know that? And being a triplet don't work so well when there's only one of ya, ya see. But yea, Me, ya gonna live a good long time. So long as ya don't go shishkabobbing each other again."

The Hufflepuff beamed at her two sisters, just so relieved to see their eyes open. It wasn't like she hadn't known they would live. Felicity had said as much. But still. It was more believable when she could see them awake and talking. But her smile quickly faded and her face turned down to the floor, an oddity for the odd girl. Then again, it could all be perfectly normal for the girl to act as such, given the circumstances and everything. Considering Ace have never been so directly involved or anything in stuff like this, there was no telling what exactly normal behavior for her was under these circumstances. But she had to tell them what she could. "Ya lost a Weasley, Me. Granger and Finnigan still haven't woken up.  And Myself, Flitwick's gone. Chang and Edgecomb too. The Headmaster too. And a few others..." Again, the teen trailed off, at a loss for words, even as her parents' letter seemed to weigh more heavily in her pocket. She would need to share it with her sisters, but first it would probably be best to let them come to terms with the losses their houses had suffered.