Draconia walked through the corridors with her chin lifted, feeling the residue of the hex still humming beneath her skin. The red magic had been violent and bright, a jagged streak of fury that had left the stone wall scorched and the boy gasping on the floor. She could still see the way the sparks had danced in the air before they died. It was a messy sort of magic, not the precise, controlled casting her father expected from a Malfoy. Still, the silence of the hallway-goers was the most insulting part of the entire affair. No one had stepped forward to report the commotion, and no one had even offered to help the boy up.
Harry Potter was waiting for her near the entrance to the Great Hall. He was leaning against a stone pillar, his expression unreadable and his green eyes fixed on her as she approached. He looked far too calm for someone who had just witnessed a girl nearly tear the air apart with a curse. Draconia did not slow her pace until she was standing directly in front of him. She felt the heat of her own temper simmering, a slow burn that refused to dissipate.
"You look like you are still looking for a fight," Harry said, his voice low.
"I am not looking for a fight, Potter," Draconia replied, smoothing the front of her robes with a sharp, practiced motion. "I am merely carrying the aftermath of one."
"It was a brutal hex," Harry said. He pushed himself off the pillar and took a step closer to her. "The boy deserved it, but you didn't have to be so loud about it."
"I did not do it for the volume of it," she snapped. She hated how easily he could read the tension in her shoulders. "It was a calculated strike."
Harry let out a short, dry laugh that made her want to reach for her wand. "Calculated. That is a very Malfoy way of saying you were angry."
"You think you know everything about my motivations," Draconia said. She looked up at him, refusing to let her gaze waver. "You think because you saw the spell, you understand why it happened. You are mistaken."
"Then tell me," Harry said. He did not move back, and he did not look intimidated by the sharp edge in her voice. "Why did you do it? It wasn't just for the sake of being a terror."
"It had nothing to do with you," she said, the words coming out more clipped than she intended. "It had absolutely nothing to do with you, or the DA, or the way people are looking at us lately."
"It felt like it was about a lot of things," Harry said. He searched her face, his eyes narrowing slightly. "It felt like you were trying to prove something."
"I was proving that a Malfoy does not need a reason to strike," Drাconia said. She felt the frustration rising in her throat, a knot of heat that she could not swallow. "Everything with you is a favour, isn't it, Potter? You do things for people, and you expect them to owe you for the trouble of being kind."
"I didn't say it was a favour," Harry said. He sounded amused, which was the worst possible reaction to her anger. "But you act as if you are constantly keeping a ledger."
"Because life is a ledger," Draconia said. "We owe things. People owe things. It is the only way to keep track of who is actually useful and who is just taking up space."
"Is that what this was?" Harry asked. "A way to settle a debt?"
"It was a way to settle a moment," she said. She stepped around him, her robes brushing against his arm. The contact was brief, but it sent a jolt through her that she tried to hide. "Do not pretend you understood the intent behind the magic. You saw the red, but you did not see the reason."
"The reason is always the same with you," Harry said. He followed her as she moved toward the heavy doors of the Great Hall. "You do something spectacular, and then you pretend it was just a casual occurrence."
"You are incredibly annoying when you are observant," Draconia said. She turned back to face him, her eyes bright with a sudden, fierce energy. "You think because you are the centre of attention, everyone else's actions are meant to be a tribute to you. They aren't. The hex was for the boy. The boy was in the way. It is that simple."
"It wasn't that simple," Harry said. He stopped walking, forcing her to stop as well. "You didn't look like you were just clearing a path. You looked like you were trying to burn the whole corridor down."
"Maybe the corridor needed to burn," Draconia said. She felt the weight of his stare, a heavy thing that pinned her in place. "Maybe the air was too stagnant and needed a bit of heat to move it along."
"You are a terrible liar, Draconia," Harry said. He used her name without the formal prefix, and the sound of it made her heart stutter. "You do things with a purpose, and you hate it when people actually notice the purpose."
"I hate it when people assume they know the purpose without asking," she countered. She crossed her arms, her fingers digging into the silk of her sleeves. "You act as if my magic is a gift to the school. It wasn't a gift. It was a debt, and it is a debt that was long overdue."
"A debt to whom?" Harry asked. "The boy? Or yourself?"
"It doesn't matter who the debt was to," Draconia said. She felt the heat in her cheeks, a flush of embarrassment that she disguised as indignation. "A debt is a debt. It is a transaction. It is not a grand gesture of heroism or a moment of lashing out. It is just an accounting of what is owed."
"You make it sound so cold," Harry said. He took a step closer, closing the gap between them until she could see the flecks of gold in his eyes. "Everything you do is so precise, yet you act like it's all just math."
"It is math," Draconia said. She reached out and poked a finger into his chest, feeling the solid warmth of him through his robes. "It is a very strict kind of arithmetic. You wouldn't understand it because you live in the clouds, Potter. You just exist and let the world react to you."
"I think I understand better than you think," Harry said. His voice had dropped an octave, becoming something smoother and more dangerous. "I think you are just afraid of being seen as something other than perfect."
"I am not afraid of being seen," Draconia said, her voice trembling slightly. "I am afraid of being misunderstood. There is a difference."
"Is there?" Harry asked. He didn' a move away, and he didn't look like he was going to let her go easily. He looked at her with a sort of quiet, stubborn intensity that made her want to scream.
"There is a massive difference," Draconia said. She felt the urge to pull her hand back, but she held it there, her finger still pressed against his chest. "You see the result, but you never see the work. You see the red magic, but you don't see the intention."
"I see you," Harry said. It was a simple statement, one that lacked any of his usual bravado. "And you're a terrible liar."
Draconia felt a surge of irrational, white-hot irritation. She wanted to hex him, to see if his skin would turn the same shade of red as her magic. She wanted to shake him until he understood that her life was not a series of grand, poetic moments, but a series of obligations