Wolves Without Teeth ── theodore nott ¹ ( UNDER EDITING )

chapter forty three

            She believes she is royally fucked now.

Winnie spends most of the night staring up at her bedpost, head pillowed by the maroon pillow case as her small pygmy puff, Toto, sleeps in a little fluffy ball beside her hair that makes a halo against her pillow. Her fingers tap in a constant rhythm against the quilted blankets, and while she knows she will pay for her lack of sleep in the morning, she can't seem to bring herself to silence her mind long enough to actually sleep.

It's Cordelia who takes up most of her time and space tonight.

She thinks of Harry, Harry telling her with his little hiccups about how her cousin kissed Blaise Zabini. While Winnie would be a blind idiot if she didn't say the male wasn't fit, she couldn't see why Cordelia was into him.

Perhaps she wasn't at all, perhaps they were using each other and she just kissed him to hurt Harry.

But instead of feeling pity, she feels the reigns of guilt pull on her stomach. It tugs and creates little balls of despair in the bits of her stomach as she lays in the darkness.

Winnie doesn't understand how it happened, ever since the start of their friendship, Harry has always been someone she has been close to. If she were to be honest, he was probably her first real friend. He knew about her nightmares and instead of trying to eclipse them, he held her hand in the dark until she could see the light again.

Winnie Buldstrode could say that she thought of Harry Potter as her best friend, but you don't kiss your best friend. And she certainly doesn't wish to do it again, she could say that perhaps in another life that she would have felt that way for him.

But there was Theo and Cordelia. Theo with his cheeky smile and sweet whispered words. Theo who she spent so long hating, only to realise that he may just be the cure she needs to heal her wounds. Theo who could never be hers because he belongs to someone else.

But it's Cordelia she feels the most guilty for. Winnie isn't blind to the way Cordelia looks at Harry, like he's everything good in the world full of terror and death. Harry is probably the first good thing in Cordelia's life since the death of her brother Max and Winnie doesn't know how to sit and tell her that they kissed without feeling like the world was pushing down upon her.

She knows she has to tell her, she had come to the decision around the time she had found herself walking tirelessly in the dungeons where her Wolfsbane potion was brewing that next morning. The steam cools down to a gentle shimmer as she sits with her hair pulled back by silver pins, a clear bottle sat unclipped beside her, fingers slightly running along the smooth curve as she awaits for the cauldron to come to a halt. Slughorn had been checking on it when she first entered, causing her to come to a sudden stop and freeze momentarily. She believed he had been tampering with it at first, but then she kicked herself mentally in the brain for thinking so. Slughorn seemed harmless besides for his thirst for the talented and popular, other than that, she didn't believe he could hurt a fly.

Winnie almost thought about skipping breakfast altogether and instead headed to Defence right away, only she couldn't. With the upcoming full moon, her energy was depleting faster, meaning if she missed out on any meals, there was a high chance she would faint by the end of the day. So Winnie would face Harry and try to act like everything was normal, except, everything was falling apart at the seams and she wasn't even sure how to look at Harry without flushing or feeling the awful bite of guilt eat away at her.

It was Cordelia, however, she was most nervous to see. They didn't share a class together until the end of the day, double hours of Potions where she would sit at the same table and wonder if now was the right time to tell her or not. ( She doesn't think telling Cordelia that she kissed the guy she loves is the right move in front of boiling water. )