Midmorning

xii. four days

It was a renowned fact that Hogwarts didn't care if your brain had been crushed up, cut to ribbons, all damage paid in full by the boys and the girls and the trauma. They didn't care. If it wasn't outwardly immobilising, it wasn't there. Mental illness only mattered if you were saying your dead father's name backwards sixteen times a minute, rocking on your lone space on the floor.

             'Weren't you staying there for a few more days?'

             Wren. Beside me. I felt the need to grip her arm to make sure she was real. 'No.'

             'They let you go?'

             'I'm well.'

             Slughorn started talking and my mind was zipping between them both and the limbo in my head.

             'And then you must add—'

             'That's the last thing I would call you,' said Wren, not to spite me, but not to comfort, either.

             '—then once you've got the root—'

             'You need more rest.'

             'To do what?' I said, 'To think about an alternative way of—'

             'Don't say it.'

             I nearly did but she was going to cry.

             '—it's very important that you slice—'

             'They're talking about you, you know.'

             'I can imagine.'

             'You and Riddle, I mean.'

             'What about us?'

             But I glanced at Tom and he glanced back and I knew exactly what she meant.

             Her kid-smile pattered like rain. 'You've been very close.'

             I shook my head. 'It's nothing.'

             Her voice bloomed. '"Nothing?"'

             'Exactly, Wren, you mustn't do a thing once you've added bat wing.' Slughorn smiled because he loved the fruit cake Wren left in his office every Christmas, an instant ticket to lait et miel.

             For half a second every eye was on Wren before flicking back to me, then at Slughorn. If someone dropped something, they turned, looked at me, picked it up, looked at me, turned back. The scene played out with nearly everyone in the room, constant rounds of inspection as if I'd planned to kill myself in front of them, maybe let a blade dance on my neck and serenade on theirs. I wondered if they had a timetable between them all, an allocated slot to check if I was on my deathbed or not. My rage made me bold enough to stab them all in the front.

             When the lesson ended, I watched Tom amass all the praise he could get from Slughorn, gold stars all over. The second he looked over at me, the pleasant pretence dissolved.

             'He's very attached to you,' I smiled when he walked over, stifling the shelves with half-empty jars. 'I don't know how he'll cope when you're gone.'

             Tom moved back to look at me. 'I could say the same about you,' he said, both of us glancing at Wren, who was far too busy talking to strangers across the room. But he pretended we didn't mean the same thing. 'Slughorn didn't invite you to the party for nothing.'