The hospital wing felt far too small once the curtains were pulled back. Draconia sat upright in the bed, her skin pale against the starch of the white sheets, her body still aching from the way Harry had looked at her. He had not left the side of her bed for hours, even after Madam Pomfrey had hummed her way through the final administration of a numbing draught. His presence was a constant, a heavy weight that she found herself leaning into despite her instinct to push him away. He looked exhausted, his hair more dishevelled than usual, but his eyes remained fixed on the jagged line of the fresh wound across her ribs.
"You should be sleeping," Harry said, his voice low and rough. He was sitting in a wooden chair that looked uncomfortable, his long legs cramped in the narrow space between the bed and the desk.
"I do not sleep well when someone is staring at me like a hungry owl," Draconia replied, though she did not move away when he reached out to touch the edge of her hand.
"I am not staring," he argued, but his fingers did indeed brush against her knuckles.
"You are. You look as though you expect me to fall apart if you blink."
"Maybe you will," he said, his expression darkening with a sudden, sharp intensity.
The tension between them had not dissipated since the hospital bed, since the moment she had spilled the truth of her old scars to ensure he could never use them to wound her spirit again. She had been crude and ungraceful in her vulnerability, a stark contrast to the poised, untouchable girl she pretended to be in the corridors of the castle. Now, the silence was not empty; it was a bridge she had built and then partially burned.
Greta entered the room a few minutes later, her footsteps sharp and purposeful on the stone floor. She did not wait for an invitation, which was a habit she had perfected over the years. She looked at Draconia with a mixture of irritation and a strange, fierce sort of loyalty that Draconia rarely understood. Greta did not do subtlety; she was a creature of direct strikes and loud declarations.
"You are an idiot, Draconia," Greta said, crossing her arms as she stood at the foot of the bed. She ignored Harry entirely, treating him as if he were merely a piece of furniture that had been misplaced.
"And you are loud," Draconia countered, though she felt a strange warmth at the sight of her friend.
"I am being practical. You took a hex that was meant to shatter a person's ribs, and you did it because you were too proud to move out of the way."
"I was not proud. I was fast."
"You were reckless," Greta corrected, her eyes flashing. She turned her gaze to Harry, her expression turning predatory. "And you, Potter, you look like you want to burn the school down because she got hurt. It is pathetic."
Harry stood up, his chair scraping harshly against the floor. "She took the hit for me. She didn't have to do it."
"Exactly," Greta snapped. "She did it because she is a martyr with a very bad sense of timing."
Draconia watched them, feeling the ache in her side pulse with a dull, rhythmic throb. The anger in the room was a familiar thing, a shield she often used to keep the world at bay, but seeing Greta weaponize it felt different today. Greta was not just venting; she was setting a stage.
"I heard what they were saying in the common room," Greta said, her voice dropping an octave. She stepped closer to the bed, her eyes narrowing as she looked Draconia in the face. "The girls are talking. They think you are playing a game. They think you are using him to get closer to the light."
"Is that what you think?" Draconia asked, her voice steady despite the flicker of fear in her chest.
"I think you are playing a game," Greta said, and then she turned her head to look at the doorway, where a group of younger girls had gathered, whispering in the shadows of the corridor. "But they are wrong. You aren't playing a game with him. You are playing a game with us."
Greta stepped toward the bed, her shadow falling over Draconia's white robes. She leaned in, her face inches from Draconia’s, her voice a sharp, serrated edge. "You think you can keep your secrets? You think you can keep him in your pocket while you bleed out for him? You are a fool, Draconia. You are a fool, and you are a coward."
The silence that followed was not peaceful; it was a battlefield. Harry moved to intervene, his hand reaching out as if to pull Greta back, but he stopped, his fingers hovering in the air. He looked at Draconia, waiting for her to strike back, to throw a cutting remark that would re-establish the distance.
"Greta," Harry warned, his voice a low growl. "That is enough."
"It is not enough!" Greta cried, her voice rising in a crescendo of frustration. She was not looking at Harry anymore; she was looking at the girl who had been her closest confidante, the girl who had suddenly become a stranger by choosing a different side of the war. "You think you can just exist in the middle? You think you can be a saint and a sinner at the same time?"
She leaned even closer, her eyes bright with a vengeful heat. "I will tell them all. I will tell them everything you've been hiding if you don't start being honest."
Draconia felt the breath hitch in her throat. She expected a hex, a stinging jinx, or a verbal barb that would leave her feeling small and exposed. She expected the confrontation to turn into a duel of wits, the way they had played in the courtyard years ago. She braced herself for the impact of Greta’s words, for the final blow to her carefully constructed mask.
"Greta, stop," Draconia whispered, her voice cracking.
Greta’s mouth opened to deliver the final, devastating sentence, the one that would strip Draconia of her remaining dignity in front of Harry and the onlookers. The air was taut, a string pulled to the point of snapping. But as Draconia looked up, seeing the frantic, hurt desperation in her friend's eyes, the sharpness in her own heart began to melt.
The rage in the room reached its peak, a crescendo of unsent and unsaid things, until Greta reached the precipice of a truly cruel remark. Draconia reached out, her hand trembling slightly as she caught Greta’s wrist, not to push her away, but to hold her steady. The harshness in Greta's expression softened, not because the argument was over, but because the tension broke under the weight of a sudden, unexpected softness.
Draconia stopped it, because gentleness was the one thing she has left to give.