The aftermath of the Room of Requirement always felt hollow, as if the air had been sucked out of the stone walls. Harry had left her with the weight of her own voice, leaving her to sit amongst the discarded velvet chairs and the stacks of old books. She stayed on the floor for a long time, her skin still tingling from the friction of his skin and the blunt reality of his cock. The silence of the storehouse was not a heavy thing, but a flat, empty space that waited for her to fill it. She felt as though she had finally reached into her own throat and pulled out a knot of silk, leaving her raw and exposed.
Greta found her there, sitting near a pile of crates that held several old, broken desks. The girl did not look surprised to see her in the middle of the room. Greta moved with a quiet precision, stepping over a pile of loose parchment to reach the corner where she had been sitting. She sat down on the floor beside her, her robes spreading out on the stone. There was no judgement in the way Greta looked at her, only a calm, steady presence.
"You look like you have been through a war," Greta said.
"It felt like one," Harry replied, rubbing her palms against the fabric of her skirts.
"Was it good?"
"It was exactly what it was," she said, her voice lacking its usual sharp edge.
She thought of the way his hands had felt on her hips, and the way his voice had sounded when he finally called her by her name in the heat of the moment. She had spent years being a name, a title, or a person to be moved around the board, but in that room, she had been a person who wanted. The word *want* felt heavy in her mouth, a thing she was still learning to carry without dropping it.
"I think I might be different now," she said, looking at a stack of old books.
"You are always different," Greta remarked, pulling a stray thread from her sleeve.
"Not like this. Not in the way the words felt."
Greta reached out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. The movement was simple and devoid of any grand gesture. They sat in the quiet for a minute, the stillness of the room wrapping around them. Harry wondered if she could see the smudge of dirt on her cheek or the way her hair was matted from his fingers. She felt unpolished, stripped of the armour she usually wore in the corridors.
"You always do this," Greta said, her voice low.
"Do what?"
"You act as if everything is a battle to be won or a debt to be paid."
"It is a way to survive," she said, and she meant it.
"It is a lonely way to survive," Greta countered.
She watched Greta’s profile, noting the way the girl did not look away when the silence grew long. Most people in Slytherin looked away when a moment became too real, or too quiet, or too stagnant. Greta was the only one who seemed to have the stamina to actually look at things. She did not look at Harry as a piece of the scenery, or as a person to be used for information. She just looked.
"I told him to ask properly," she said, the words escaping before she could check them.
Greta nodded, as if she had expected this specific confession. "He is not a very subtle man, Harry."
"He is not subtle at all. He is just... there. He is always there."
"He is loyal," Greta said.
"Loyalty is a difficult thing to hold onto when you are trying to be a person."
"You are a person. You have always been a person."
The simplicity of the statement stung more than a clever insult would have. Harry looked down at her hands, noticing the way they shook slightly. She had spent so long being the girl who watched the boys, the girl who was watched by the boys, and now she was the woman who had named her desire. It was a terrifying transition to make.
"Do you think they will stay?" she asked, her voice small.
"They are not going anywhere," Greta said. "They are part of the architecture now."
"That is a depressing way to put it."
"It is a safe way to put it."
"I don't want to be safe anymore," she said, and the truth of it made her chest ache.
Greta turned her head to look her directly in the eyes. There was a strange sort of kinship in the way they sat there, two women who had spent their entire lives in the shadow of larger-than-life men and louder, more violent reputations. Greta was not a girl of grand declarations or sweeping movements; she was a woman of quiet observations.
"You were never meant to be a statue," Greta said.
"I was meant to be a statue," she replied.
"Then you have done a very good job of breaking yourself."
"It doesn't feel like breaking. It feels like opening."
"It looks like a lot of work," Greta noted.
"It is exhausting," she admitted, leaning her head back against the stone wall.
She thought about the way the school reacted to the sight of the two boys flanking her in the corridors. She thought about the way Pansy’s eyes had narrowed when she saw her sitting in the stands. All of it felt distant now, a secondary concern to the heat that was still pulsing beneath her skin. She wanted to live in the heat, even if the heat eventually burned her.
"You don't have to do it all at once," Greta said.
"I have waited long enough."
"Then do it. Whatever it is you are doing."
"I am trying to exist," she said.
Greta reached out and took her hand, her grip firm and warm. It was a small, grounding sensation that pulled her back from the edges of her own thoughts. They sat together in the middle of the room, surrounded by the things she could not have in the open, and for the first time, the things she had hidden felt like they belonged to her.
"You're doing fine," Greta said, and she meant it.
"I don't know if you're right," she said.
"You're doing fine," Greta repeated, her voice certain.
"It's not about Harry, is it?" she asked, the question hanging in the air.
Greta squeezed her hand once, her expression softening into something profoundly kind.
"It is never about Harry," Greta said, and she was the only one who had ever said it.