The hospital wing smelled of dried herbs and the sharp, medicinal tang of antiseptic. Draconia sat on the edge of a narrow cot, her fingers tracing the hem of her robes where the silk was slightly frayed. A frantic energy occupied the room, a chaotic swirl of movement that made her head ache. Pansy Parkinson was hovering near the doorway, her face pinched with a distress that seemed far too loud for the situation. Madam Pomfrey moved with a grim, efficient speed between the beds, her wand flick로ing in precise, rhythmic motions.
"It was so sudden, Draconia," Pansy said, her voice rising in pitch as she watched the healers work. "One moment the bird was bowing, and the next, there was just... blood."
Draconia did not answer immediately because she was watching the way the light hit the floorboards. She felt a strange, hollow sensation in her chest, a vacuum where her composure should have been. Everyone was talking about the boy, about Harry, about the way the creature had lashed out. The fuss was deafening, a cacophul of whispered-to-loud observations about the sheer violence of the accident.
"He is stable, but the wound is deep," a voice called out from the far end of the ward.
It was a boy's voice, strained and breathless, which meant the commotion was not just about the injury itself. The fury of the moment had already begun to dissipate into a low, simmering tension. Draconia watched a group of older students standing by the windows; they looked agitated, their mouths moving in rapid, hushed-up sentences. The boy was the centre of the storm, a boy who had been struck by a creature that was supposed to be tame.
"Do you think it was his fault?" Pansy asked, turning her wide eyes toward Draconia. "That he didn't bow correctly?"
"It is difficult to say," Draconia replied, her voice sounding remarkably steady to her own ears.
She felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to stand up and walk out of the room, away from the stifling air and the heavy, medicinal scents. The fuss around the bed where the boy lay was relentless. People were weeping, or at least making the sounds of weeping, and the fury of the accident was being debated as if it were a matter of precedence or law. It was not a matter of the blood on the grass; it was a matter of the social standing of the person who had been hurt.
"The Hippogriff was insulted," someone muttered from a nearby chair.
"It was a mistake, nothing more," another voice added, sounding defensive.
Draconia listened to the murmurs, feeling the disconnect grow. The fury in the room was not directed at the bird, nor was it directed at the boy. It was directed at the unpredictability of the moment, the way a single movement could strip away the veneer of a perfect afternoon. She watched a healer wrap a bandage around a limb, the white cloth quickly staining pink as the liquid seeped through.
"He looks so small in that bed," Pansy whispered, leaning closer to Draconia. "He looks far too small for the trouble he has caused."
"He is not the only one who has caused trouble this term," Draconia said, though she was not sure why she said it.
The hospital wing felt smaller than usual, the ceiling appearing to sag under the weight of the heavy, unspoken things. Draconia felt a prickle of irritation at the sheer volume of the conversation. She was not the one who was hurt, and yet she felt as though she had been bruised by the very air in the room. The boy's pain was a distant, sharp thing, a point of light in the middle of a vast, dark sea.
"Is he going to be alright?" Pansy asked, her voice trembling with a performative sort of grief.
"He will be fine, Pansy," Draconia told her, her tone clipped.
She watched the way the healers moved, their hands sure and their faces blank. There was a certain grace in their movements that Draconia envied, a way of dealing with the mess of a body without becoming part of the mess. The fury of the event had turned into a spectacle, and she hated the way the spectacle made her feel so incredibly isolated. She was a spectator to a tragedy that was supposed to be profound, but felt instead like a tedious complication.
"The blood was everywhere," a girl said, her voice cracking. "On the grass, on the boots... it was so red."
"It is quite a lot of blood for a simple accident," a boy added, his tone almost clinical.
Draconia stood up, the movement causing her skirt to rustle against the wooden frame of the cot. She needed to move, to find a corridor that was not filled with the scent of peppermint and bruised flesh. The fuss was beginning to grate on her nerves, the way the students dissected the event as if it were a piece of gossip rather than a moment of genuine trauma.
"Are you leaving?" Pansy asked, looking up at her with a confused expression.
"I need some air," Draconia said, her eyes fixed on the door.
"The Headmaster will likely have words about the incident," Pansy remarked, as if the thought were a significant one.
"As will everyone else, no doubt," Draconia replied, her voice trailing off as she walked toward the exit.
She passed a group of sixth-years who were debating the temperament of the Hippogriff, their voices a low drone in the back of her mind. The hospital wing was a place of healing, but to her, it felt like a place of judgment. Every person who entered or left seemed to be carrying a piece of the story, a fragment of the fury that had erupted in the paddock.
The walk back to the dormitory was long and quiet, the corridors of the castle feeling unusually cavernous. Draconia moved through the shadows, her footsteps muffled by the stone floors. She thought of the blood on the grass, the vivid, startling red of it, and how it had looked against the green of the paddock. It had been a striking image, one that stayed in her mind like a stain.
When she reached her room, the silence was a relief. She sat at her desk, the quill in her hand feeling heavy and awkward. The inkpot was a dark, circular pool of liquid that seemed to swallow the light. She thought of her father, of the way he would react to news of a messy, public accident involving a magical creature.
"It was a disgrace," she whispered to the empty room.
She began to write, the scratching of the quill the only sound in the dormitory. She did not write about the blood, or the terror of the bird's descent, or the way the boy had gasped when the claw struck. She did not write about the fury of the onlookers or the frantic, clumsy-handedness of the healers. Instead, she wrote of the weather, and the quality of the tea, and the stillness of the afternoon.
She wrote a letter that was polite, structured, and entirely devoid of the visceral reality of the afternoon. She stripped the emotion from the words, leaving only the skeleton of a report. She made sure the ink was neat and the script was elegant, a perfect reflection of the person she was expected to be.
The letter was a masterpiece of composure, a way to present a version of herself that was untouched by the chaos of the paddock. She folded the parchment with practiced precision, ensuring the edges were straight and the seal was unbroken. She felt a strange sense of accomplishment as she tucked it into an envelope, a feeling of control in a world that had felt suddenly, violently unpredictable.
The night was still young when she finally laid down to sleep, her mind still racing with the image of the red blood on the green grass. She knew that she had not told the truth, and she knew that the truth was often much uglier than