Electing to let the boy come to her rather than initiate and close the distance herself, Valerie spent these precious seconds keeping herself in check. Her suspicions had skyrocketed which meant if she wished to attempt that spell again she would have to do so through deceptive means. A gentle hug and then cast into his back? Perhaps. Valerie was not above such methods if it meant proving herself correct and Scarpin's Revealspell would bring no harm to the child. But the caution to his step, like walking across the frozen lake near her home in late February, she was well aware she was on thin ice.

“I will,” she assured him, continuing her role as a regal fairy and placing one of her porcelain hands gently, but assertively, on his shoulder. His words pulled at her heart uncomfortably and tore her briefly out of the competition to a hospital room where she held Ryan fiercely in her arms while standing beside a vacant hospital bed…

Freeing herself from yet another nightmarish daydream, she refocused her golden owl eyes on the No-Maj boy. “Tell me...where is home?” she asked gently. Already compiling a visual in her head and using her question as a means to not only collect more useful information but to lull Joey into a place of comfort, her imagination paused with the rest of what Joey was saying. Forget. The emphasis on that word was unnerving and something Valerie was confident she could not deliver on. At least not entirely. Memory Charms were a branch of magic she had purposefully avoided any form of in depth study of for fear of performing them on herself. She understood the theory inside and out (that much was easily grasped from textbooks and discussions with the Charms professor) but she had never once attempted one herself, let alone one on another person. She was anything but keen to make now her first attempt at a practical application and risk irreparable damage.

There was also the Confundus Charm she could attempt (and would be her backup plan, she concluded) but her annoyance still had her blood at a steady simmer and Joey recklessness caused pause to believe that said charm could impact his mind to the point he would endanger himself from his confusion. He had already proven he would do stupid things without being enabled by bewitched confusion, so no. Not a first choice option. There was also the risk of a Confundus’d Joey trying her patience further in him doing the complete opposite of what she instructed even more than was considering normal for pre-teen rebellion.

The Wampus therefore elected to readminister her Daydream Charm as she assumed the previous one had worn off by now given the lack of a dazed look in his eyes and lack of drool. She had calculated that her charm would have been a little more effective than the reality was proving to be (how remarkably infuriating). But at least with a Daydream Charm there was the guarantee of mobility afterwards, dazed and slow as Joey may be while lost in the illusion she would paid, he would still be capable of a free range movement that the other two spells could not promise. She had dealt with cousin’s sleepwalking and gentle guiding of him back to bed without waking so this would be no different and come with considerably less risk. Particularly if she completely botched up a Memory Charm and turned the boy’s brain to a consistency resembling scrambled eggs.

She should have just done this from the start, she had come to realize, rather than the bare bones of a Daydream Charm to simply provide the illusion of chocolate and temporary shift in mood. A more potent one was an inkling she had opted not to act upon thinking that it would be too much too soon for someone so young who had just been traumatized by the presence and influence of a dementor. She could recall not wanting to leave from under the table when the firefighter had pulled her free from the rubble of her home, biting him in protest. Perhaps she had been projecting too much of herself on to this task? Her emotions were proving to be her weakness once again, it seemed. Something she would need to rectify before the next round of competition.

“First I will take you away from this place,” she said, swallowing and returning her thoughts to the image her imagination had been previously painting. “To somewhere safe with no darkness and then home.” Her wand began slowly circling above Joey’s head as she whispered the incantation for the Daydream Charm (Sentio Somnium) once again. Her mind was focused and calm, painting as vivid a scene as she could as the familiar purple string of light dripped forth from her wand and on to the No-Maj’s head.

The menacing forest of knotted trees and mangled madness would give way to a lush field of green grass that had a golden twinkle to it as each blade swayed in the breeze nestled in the safety of a valley. His feet would be standing on a white cobblestone path beside her own, leading onward towards a beautiful white stone castle that can be nothing else but the fairy castle, sanctuary. A truly picturesque scene with no doubt that evil things did not come into that valley.

Watching in silence, Valerie waited for the charm to take effect. Perhaps she should transfigure a bib out of a leaf to catch the drool that would surely dribble from his mouth this time. “It is beautiful, is it not?” she questioned with added whimsical air to her voice, testing the depths of waters of the illusion she had created as she did.