Haunted

19 | liminal space

They made plans to meet the following night for their first one-on-one training session. Hazel left the library immediately after the discussion, suddenly too anxious and feeling too odd to stay there in Malfoy's company, at his table. She bid him a quick farewell, trying to ignore the still-present fluttering in her chest, and when she slipped through the doors and back out into the hallway, she found herself giddy. Giddy!

She physically shook her head, trying to rid herself of her incomprehensible reaction to their conversation and its outcome, and then set off and up the stairs. This was good news. He'd agreed to the extra training, just as she'd hoped, and if his behavior when he obliged was any indication, the training wouldn't be like pulling teeth.

He'd been warm. Teasing. Funny. He'd been more like the version of himself that she'd witnessed at the dinner with his mother than the version of himself that had once sprayed her with water for no reason during training and told her to expect the unexpected, or the version that told her that the way she moved while defending herself made him want to throw up. She was still nervous to let her guard down around him, worried that the moment she did, the cruel Malfoy would strike out like a vicious dog baring its canines. But weirdly enough, she wanted to let down her guard. She wasn't yet standing on solid ground with him— at the most, it was a frozen pond that had her wondering if the ice would crack, but it was better than the tumbling cliffside she'd been stuck on before.

Progress. It was progress.

She made her way up the stairs and to the hall where the soldiers' bedrooms were. She intended to go back to her own room, but her feet carried her elsewhere, her fingers curling into a fist, and her hand knocking at Red's door before she even knew what she was doing. Would Red even be here?

There was no time to ruminate on the question because then the door was dramatically pulled open and Blue was beaming at her from inside as though she'd been expecting Hazel. The girl pounced forward and wrapped Hazel into a bear hug, burying her face into Hazel's neck so that she could feel the warmth of Blue's cheek under her jaw. "I'm so glad you made up," Blue exclaimed, the words muffled from Hazel's hair.

Blue started to pull out of the hug but then Red was there, arms wrapping around them, and the three were standing in the doorway in a tangle of arms and hair and laughter. Hazel wasn't sure when she'd started laughing, when the other girls had started laughing, but the mass of their bodies shook as a single unit.

They finally separated, Hazel wiping a stray tear from her cheek that she hadn't realized she'd shed, and then the three huddled on Red's bed, just like they had before their time apart. Together, Red and Hazel caught Blue up on all of information about the library and the Occlumency and Malfoy, and then Hazel excitedly relayed the only just-finished conversation she'd had with Malfoy.

"So he agreed to train me!" she finished, grinning, that childlike giddiness she'd felt seeping through her tone like a patch of sunlight in a dim room. Blue and Red exchanged a glance. Her smile faltered. "What?"

Red sighed and spoke first. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Hazel's eyes darted between her two friends, both sitting on opposite ends of the bed while Hazel lingered between them, her back pressed to the wall, knees pulled up to her chest, and arms clutching each other around them. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Malfoy's a little bit... unpredictable," Red said, and the way she uttered the word made it clear that she was holding back. "Don't you remember how he's treated you? Is working one-on-one with him when there's no Zabini to interfere really the best idea?"

Hazel opened her mouth to protest, but then stopped. All the times that they'd gotten into disagreements in training sessions, Zabini had always been there to step between them and push either Malfoy, Hazel, or both of them back. She hadn't considered this. But then she remembered how Malfoy had promised not to laugh at her, how he'd wrapped his pinky finger around hers, how he'd seemed almost nervous that she'd say no when he offered to teach her outside of training sessions. He was so wildly different now than he had been.