Chapter Text
Spiky lead weighted down my limbs in one giant ache pierced by several specific spears of pain. My hip throbbed like a bright red gong. I kept my eyes closed, afraid I’d look down and see an elephant standing on top of me.
I gritted my teeth and squinted until the candlelit hospital wing came into focus. When I tried to look down at my body, my chin didn’t want to dip, and my sandbag muscles refused to lift lift my limbs.
Madam Pomfrey was rifling through the potions cupboard in the corner, but all the beds were empty. At the edge of my limited scope, I spotted my royal blue Quidditch robes hanging over a chair, splattered with mud.
Oh, that’s right. I fell.
No, not fell. I was shoved. Shoved by a cheating prick.
Scorpius. Damn. Malfoy.
I closed my eyes again, smothering a groan as I tried to recall the details. The match had gone into a second hour. I had the Quaffle, I was… going to score. I had a clear shot. I could remember winding up and throwing… and then there was a crash from behind. I pitched forward. A shrill whistle, but I was already falling, reaching up for my broom, but it wasn’t there.
Instead, there was his stupid blond head, glimmering above me as I plummeted. I didn’t remember hitting the ground.
Had I had scored?
I tried to sit up, but my whole right side twanged and throbbed with agony at the smallest attempt. My ribs stung and my shoulder felt like it was about to fall apart.
Don't throw up. I sucked in a few forceful breaths, trying to master myself.
Fucking Malfoy.
Maybe Al had already killed him. I hoped not. I wanted to do it myself.
I’d have to run him over with a tank to get justice for this. I was still trying not to throw up, and perhaps I was going into a form of shock as the reality sank in.
Physical maiming wasn’t usually Malfoy’s brand. For six years, he’d preferred to torment me in less scarring ways: daily taunts, sneered nicknames, the occasional hex. This was a new low.
He’d only put me in the hospital wing once before, in fourth year. He had invented a charm that made me sing every word I uttered, and it had taken Madam Pomfrey and Professor Flitwick three hours to undo it. Humiliating, not least because the charm hadn't the decency to cure my tone-deafness. But at least then, he was stuck in the hospital wing with me. They'd made him wait while the bursting blue boils I’d hexed him with had healed.
And where was he now? Off celebrating?
I squinted my eyes open again, trying to take stock of myself before Madam Pomfrey realized I was awake. I was wearing a hospital gown, and all my limbs seemed to be present, though how securely attached they were remained to be seen. My head felt like my brains might leak out of my ears. My right hip was full of shrapnel.
How could he do this to me?
He hated me, that was a given. But I could have died. He’d never risked killing me before.
Maiming me, maybe. That Bubotuber Pus incident in second year had been the closest. We were supposed to be diluting it in class, but something had gone wrong with his sample. How he'd managed to mess up Bubotuber Pus, I still didn't know. The pus had curdled like stinking yellow toffee in its bowl. I had laughed—more at his face, than anything. He’d laughed way harder at my pathetic first attempt at a Shrinking Charm the day before. The next thing I knew, he’d upended the mess over my head.
Professor Longbottom had given Malfoy detention every day for a month. No Scouring Charm nor potion would remove the sticky mess as it solidified into my hair. Roxy had spent three hours cutting it out and doing her best to style what little hair remained. That was probably the hardest I’d ever cried—not because it hurt, in fact, it didn’t hurt at all. Roxy had been very gentle despite my trembling and blubbering all over her. I cried because my Dragon Pox scars were fresh and stark on the side of my neck, and with no hair to cover them, they became the first thing everyone saw.
And what did Scorpius Malfoy do? He decided that my shorn head now matched the color and shape of the Quaffle, and dubbed me 'Quafflehead'. It was still among his favorite nicknames.
In retaliation for the loss of my hair, I’d dumped five times his weight in dragon manure fertilizer over his head. He'd bellowed and thrown handfuls of it back at me.
Dragon dung wasn’t going to cut it this time, and nor would a tub of freezing water dangled over his bed--revenge for the time he’d put a bundle of Stinging Nettle on my chair in third year. Despite the stinging, I’d felt bad for him at the time, and gone easy on my retaliation because his mother had just died. But, still, the whole class laughed, so I'd had to do something.
No excuse now. I wondered where I could get a military tank. Or a wrecking ball. Maybe Uncle Charlie would lend me a dragon and I could land the beast on Malfoy’s face.
I tried to sit up again, failing to bite down a pitiful moan.
“Miss Weasley, you’re awake!” Madam Pomfrey bustled over.
“What was the score?” My voice came out sounding like I was squeezing air through a brittle straw.
Madam Pomfrey sighed and clicked her teeth together as she measured out an indigo potion into a vial.
“Ravenclaw won. I don’t know the score. The match has been over for hours. Your teammates were hanging about in the hallway, but I sent them off. It took quite a while to set all your bones, dear.”
“How bad?”
Madam Pomfrey shook herself, then took a deep breath. She pointed her finger along my right side as she listed, “Fractured skull. Your collarbone was broken in two places, your shoulder dislocated, three broken ribs, cracked femur, and your hip…” she sighed. “Your hip took an hour all on its own. Dislocated and shattered. Never seen the like.”
“Feels like it,” I muttered.
She checked the measuring lines on the potion vial again and then lowered it to my lips.
“Here you are, Numbing Potion.”
I swallowed it down. It tasted icy and sickly sweet, like the muggle blue-raspberry slushies Hugo had gotten addicted to three summers ago.
“What’s in it?” I pinched my nostrils as the wave of cold spread through my limbs, tingling my fingertips and toes.
Madam Pomfrey knew me well enough not to take my question as a complaint, but as an academic curiosity. “A microdose of Puffapod Pollen, Gurdyroot, and Bundimun Secretion, with the usual modifiers.”
I nodded and shuddered, but the icy numb did at least banish the pain.
Madam Pomfrey measured out a dose of Skelegrow, but I didn’t bother repeating the question. I’d written a whole potions paper on this one, and I knew to swallow it fast.
“Can I have a Sleeping Draught until then?” I felt like a coward for asking, but I wanted to disappear until my body no longer felt like a crumbling mess.
“It doesn’t mix well with the Numbing Potion, I’m afraid.” Madam Pomfrey fluffed my pillows, her mouth a tight line.
My injuries must have been bad to make the old matron look upset. She’d seen everything.
“Thank you for setting my bones.”
She huffed, lifting my shoulders with the pillows. “Your hip will still have scarring.”
A mercy I couldn’t see it yet. I swallowed, then put on the cheeriest voice I could manage. “What’s one more scar?”
She shook her head, giving my pillows one last fluff and tugging up my bedsheets. “No doubt your parents will be here in the morning, or sooner, once they get the owl.”
I sighed. The one match dad missed, and I nearly died. Thank god, though. If he’d been here, dad would have murdered Malfoy already and I wouldn’t get to see it happen.
Madam Pomfrey glanced at the ward’s main doors, her voice stiff.
“Mister Malfoy has been waiting in the corridor.”
“What?” I tried to turn my head, but cringed and shut my eyes again as the jerking motion threatened to jumble my brains.
“That was why I sent your team off to bed. When he arrived, they threatened to jinx him into next week.”
"Did they?"
"No," she snapped. "This is a hospital wing, I won't have it."
"But Malfoy's still out there?" I urged, prying my eyes open.
She flicked her long nose at the door. "And he won't leave."
“He won’t?”
Her nostrils flared and she flattened the edge of her white cap onto her iron curls. “If the boy wants to sit on the floor all night, I won’t stop him.”
I almost smiled at that. Almost.
“Would you let him in? Please?”
She narrowed her gaze on me for a long moment. “You are not to over-exert yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You are not even to under-exert yourself. You will lay here and do nothing.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I blinked at her and ducked my chin, the picture of sweetness.
I knew I was lying. She knew I was lying. But for some reason, she sniffed and strode to the end of the hall. Watching her made my head spin again, so I fixed my stare on the ceiling until I heard two sets of footsteps returning.
Madam Pomfrey's steps faded into her office, but Malfoy's slowed as he neared the foot of my bed.
Even the cadence of his steps was arrogant.
Pompous prat.
“Weasley.” His windswept, platinum-blond head entered my limited view. He was tall enough that I couldn’t avoid him even when I was focusing on the ceiling. Sometime last year, he’d grown taller than me, and he still had that stretched-out look to him. He was still wearing his green quidditch robes, but they weren’t covered in dirt as mine were.
The set of his chin was tighter than usual, his mouth thinner, and dark circles ringed his eyes. How late was it?
“What was the score?” I asked, watching him for the inevitable cringe. And… there.
“Two-sixty to eighty. But only because Al couldn’t focus on the Snitch after you fell.”
“After I was pushed.”
He looked away, scanning the row of empty beds, his shoulders stiff. “Anyway, I… er, I wanted to make sure you were… alright.”
“Oh, I’m just about as alright as one can be when one has recently been shoved off of a broomstick.” I glowered. His pale silver gaze flickered to mine again. “Tell me, Malfoy, would you like me to transfigure you into an eel, or would you rather I feed you to Hagrid’s Manticor?”
Malfoy cocked his chin. “If I pick the eel, will you do it near the lake? Or do I suffocate?”
“Get out.” I closed my eyes. The sickening swirl of the numbness in my gut was ruining any sense of justice in taunting him.
“I…” His boots scuffed the stone floor as he shifted. “I caught your broom. Al has it.”
“Why are you still here?” I addressed the ceiling. “Are you hiding from Al?”
Malfoy shuffled his feet nearer to my bedside so I had to look at him. “He held off murdering me so I could apologize.”
“This is you apologizing?”
He gritted his teeth. “I didn’t mean for you to fall.”
“I did not fall, I had a clear shot and you clocked me in the head from behind!”
“I wasn’t aiming for your head—”
“If you say you were aiming for the Quaffle, I will kill you. I will kill you right now.”
He pressed his lips together, and the silence grated.
Rage boiled in my chest, blinding out the slushy numbness, and I shoved myself onto my forearms.
“I am going to strangle you—you foul, cheating flobberworm!” I glanced around the bed, my vision spinning as pins and needles pricked all over my body. “Where is my wand?”
Malfoy held his hands up in front of him. “Weasley—”
I heaved myself onto my feet, lunging for his robes, but I immediately tipped forward. I would have planted my face into the next bed, but Malfoy caught me around the middle and dropped me back onto my own bed as my knees collapsed.
“Get off me!” I made a wild swing for his head. I couldn’t feel a thing through a blanket of numb, cold pinpricks. The weak slap as my loose hand hit his jaw wasn’t nearly satisfying enough.
He shook his head and pushed my shoulders back down.
“Weasley—”
“I will bury you! Prick! ”
“You can’t even stand up,” he whispered. One hand held my shoulder down as he glanced anxiously at Madam Pomfrey’s office door.
“Where’s my wand?” I asked again. I patted down my sides, but I might as well have been waving my arms in the air for all that I could feel it. And anyway, I was wearing a hospital gown. My wand was likely still in the changing rooms, unless Al fetched it for me.
I gave up and gnashed my teeth as I made another pathetic swat for his head, but I missed. I plopped my head back down onto my skewed pillows, breathing hard and gulping back nausea. My mouth tasted hot, a contrast to my ice-cold body. I closed my eyes, fighting not to vomit.
“Look, I’m sorry, alright?” he grumbled. “I shoved you. They called the foul and your boys scored 30 points off it.”
“That makes it better?” Eighty percent chance that I would throw up in the next fifteen seconds. “Just get out,” I groaned.
“Well, it helps, doesn’t it?”
“No, it bloody doesn’t.” My tongue felt sweaty. My gut churned with blue-raspberry chunks.
“Mister Malfoy!” cried Madam Pomfrey. “That will do, now, out!”
“But—”
“Out! ”
She shuffled him away just in time for me to keel over the side of the bed and hurl.