"Please stand," Kingsley instructed, shuffling several parchments together as the courtroom settled once more into tense silence.
The scrape of chairs echoed sharply through the chamber as Harry, Hermione, and Sloane rose together.
Every eye in the courtroom immediately turned toward them.
Harry hated it instantly.
He could feel the weight of hundreds of stares pressing against him like something physical. Curious. Judging. Expectant.
Beside him, Hermione straightened her shoulders despite the obvious nerves tightening her expression.
Sloane, meanwhile, looked almost insultingly calm.
"Could the defence witnesses please state their names for Ministry records?"
A strange brass device rose from the stand in front of them — somewhere between a microphone and a megaphone — enchanted to project voices clearly around the entire courtroom.
Harry stepped forward first.
"Harry James Potter."
Murmurs rippled instantly around the benches.
Even now.
Even after everything.
Hermione stepped up beside him.
"Hermione Jean Granger."
More whispers.
More staring.
Then Sloane moved forward.
"Sloane Tabitha Sage."
The second her voice echoed through the courtroom, Draco looked up.
Properly looked up for the first time since entering the chamber.
And suddenly the rest of the courtroom vanished.
Because she was there.
Alive.
Standing only a few feet away.
Draco's breath caught painfully in his chest.
Sloane.
His mind had replayed her face so many times over the last several months that part of him had started believing he'd imagined her entirely. He'd seen her in nightmares. In dreams. In every quiet second inside his cell when sleep refused to come.
And now she stood before him looking heartbreakingly real.
Her hair was shorter than the last time he'd seen her.
Still brown.
Still wild enough around the edges to look untameable.
Her green eyes locked onto his immediately.
Draco felt something inside him twist violently.
She looked healthier.
Not happy — Merlin, none of them looked happy anymore — but alive.
He'd heard what happened to her family.
Everyone had.
Even Azkaban whispers travelled eventually.
And yet somehow she still stood there with her shoulders squared and her chin lifted defiantly toward the entire bloody Wizengamot.
Looking at him.
Not through him.
At him.
Draco couldn't look away.
YOU ARE READING
The Hollow Beneath Hogwarts
FantasyThe Hollow Beneath Hogwarts When the war ended, Hogwarts was supposed to be a place of healing. Instead, it became a place haunted by grief. Sloane Sage arrives at Hogwarts carrying scars no one can see. After losing her family in the war, she dedic...
