human again / hp.

Chapter 127

I couldn't sleep.

The fire in the Gryffindor common room had burned down to embers, but I still sat there, fingers curled tight around a teacup I hadn't touched in over an hour.

Everything felt quieter now. The castle had taken a breath it couldn't release. I'd watched Katie Bell nearly die. Watched her body lifted like a puppet cut loose, her fingers clawing at the necklace she had never meant to carry. And the worst part, the part that made my skin feel too tight, was that I had known it might happen.

And I had let it.

It wasn't even supposed to be her. She was never meant to be the one. It had all been wrong.

I should have stopped it.

But if I had, we'd be dead.

I stood quickly, grabbing my cloak, my silver jewelry cold against my collarbones. I wrapped the fabric around me like it might keep the guilt from spilling out. It didn't. Nothing could.

Draco had detention. That had been the excuse. The built-in alibi. Clever, actually. I had heard Harry talking earlier, just around the corner by the Charms corridor. I hadn't meant to follow them, but my feet moved before I could stop them.

„Harry, Malfoy wasn't in Hogsmeade!" said Hermione, actually stamping her foot in frustration.

„He must have used an accomplice, then," said Harry.

„Crabbe or Goyle — or, come to think of it, another Death Eater, he'll have loads better cronies than Crabbe and Goyle now he's joined up."

Hermione had said nothing. Ron just grunted. The silence between them said more than words could. They were thinking it too.

Harry was getting too close.

I turned a corner sharply, nearly knocking over a suit of armor. Its elbow creaked as it steadied itself, but I didn't stop. My boots clicked against the cold stone, echoing back at me like accusations.

He was in the Room of Hidden Things. He had to be.

When I reached the blank stretch of wall, I stopped, heart drumming.

I closed my eyes and thought what I always thought when I needed that room.

Somewhere I can be with him. Somewhere no one else will see. Somewhere I can fall apart.

The door appeared.

Inside, it smelled like dust and varnish. Like secrets soaked into old wood. The piles of broken furniture and abandoned objects looked like forgotten ghosts, cast off by the castle itself. And in the middle of it all, bent over the cabinet like it held the answers to every impossible question, was Draco.

He didn't hear me come in. His wand was pressed to the edge of the cabinet, and his lips moved silently, muttering incantations too low to catch.

"It didn't work." I said finally. My voice barely made it past the rows of discarded things, but he heard me anyway.

He turned. His expression was tight, pale under the poor light, jaw clenched. There was a tension in him I recognized in myself.

"The necklace didn't reach him," I said. "She never got near Dumbledore. It triggered before that."

"I know." His voice was low, brittle. "Potter was there. Of course he was. He's always bloody there."

I walked around a pile of collapsed shelves and stopped at the cabinet.

"He suspects you."

"He's always suspected me."

I shook my head. "No. It's more than that now. He knows something's off. He's been piecing it together since the beginning of the year, Draco."