"I thought you said your mother was dead!" Delphi cried. "You said you were an orphan!"
"I'm as good as one," Rowan said, looking very small and broken. "Aunt Candice, she says that my mother as she knew her is gone. My dad's dead-I know that for a fact. Besides, I'd rather be known as an orphan than a son of a Dark Lady, grandson of a Dark Lord. Wouldn't you?"
"I never got that liberty," Delphi said stiffly. Now she really wasn't sure whether she was crying for empathy or pain. "My mother-she was Lord Voldemort's right hand. My father's a lifetime inmate in Azkaban. I-I know what you feel."
"We are alike, aren't we?" Rowan said, looking as if some light had sprung back. "Does it hurt? The glass?"
"What do you think?" she demanded as tears of pain blinded her vision. In a moment of compassion, he took her hand, letting her squeeze it to relieve her pain as the last shards of glass were picked out.
"That's it, that's the last of it," the pukwudgie said soothingly. "Let's get that bandaged up-Mr. Kostidanova, if you could turn around for a moment. . ."
His serious gray eyes widened and he turned around as the pukwudgie removed Delphi's shirt and cloak to heal up the cuts and check for any in any other places. Once the pukwudgie was certain that she'd healed up any other spots, she had Delphi put her shirt back on, and took the robe, promising that she'd clean and fix it.
Delphi thanked the pukwudgie for her aid and hopped one bed forward to sit next to Rowan. The two sat in a contemplative silence as pukwudgies rushed about nervously.
"A constellation already went out! Lupus was called from the sky!" one shrieked hysterically.
"More stars are going to disappear!" the one who'd treated Delphi cried.
"They shouldn't have let the Starkiller boy in-he claims it's an accident, but who's to say he didn't push his friend in the cabinet-didn't want his dear old mum free?"
Delphi felt his hand grip hers like she was an anchor.
"I tried so hard," he said, his voice heavy, as if he was trying not to cry. "I try so hard to be better than my mother, my grandfather, but it's never enough."
"It's not your fault," Delphi said quietly.
He looked up and she realized that he was crying and he was somehow muffling his own cries, like boys were taught to do, according to Euphemia.
"They don't think that, do they?" he said with a nod at the pukwudgies across the hospital wing. "They think I'm guilty, despite the fact that you say I didn't do it."
He sighed. "I just hope that the physical force might be enough to do it."
"Do what?" Delphi asked.
"Keep her imprisoned," Rowan said.
"I thought I freed her!" Delphi cried.
"You only freed her voice," Rowan explained. "Her voice is her source of power. What my mother and aunts can do-they can control the stars with their voices."
"What?" Delphi's eyebrows shot up. "No way!"
"Yes," Rowan said."And they say that my grandfather had the power too. . . And that I have it."
"Have you ever tried?" Delphi asked excitedly.
"It's a question I don't want answered," he said.
"Oh," Delphi said. "So are the stars actually dying?"
"No," Rowan said. "She's summoning constellations to her aid. Lupus, the wolf. Perseus, the warrior. The twins, Gemini. Several like that. Star creatures."
"Wow," Delphi whispered. "So that's why. . ."
"Yes, that's why," Rowan answered, whispering as well.
They waited again in silence until Dean Goldstein, followed by Headmistress Clary and Dean Calderon Boot, barged into the hospital wing.
"You caused a lot of trouble for us," Dean Calderon Boot snarled. "Do you know what you've done, Miss Lestrange? If you don't, let me spell it out for you-you released one of the greatest dark witches in the past two generations, loyal to Rowan Starkiller! And in case you in England haven't heard of him, he almost burned MACUSA to the ground in the fifties. You're lucky that they've locked down her security. It will take another year to do that very same spell that trapped her voice in the first place."
"I'm sorry," Delphi said, not knowing what else there really was to say.
"Sorry isn't going to cut it," Clary said. "Both of you are in detention until Christmas break. Consider yourselves lucky it's not for the whole school year and that I don't suspend or expel you both!"
"Punish me, not him!" Delphi cried. "It's not his fault, it's all mine, I was clumsy-"
"Delphini, don't make this harder than it already is," Goldstein said with a sigh. "Everyone believes that you two did it on purpose, including some of the staff."
"Joshua!" Clary and Calderon Boot chorused.
"They deserve to at least know why they're being punished-you and I both know it's not because someone stumbled into one of those cabinets," Goldstein said fiercely. "You've been saying it yourself for years, Mafalda!"
"It's not suitable for children to know," Calderon Boot hissed.
"What? The truth?" Goldstein shook his head. "You've come a long way, Mafalda."
"Yes, well, things change when some clumsy accident results in-"
"Keep it in the teachers' lounge, Joshua, Mafalda," Clary said coolly. "Not in front of students. But the punishment does still stand. You may go back to your dormitories."
The two began walking towards the Thunderbird dormitories, not sure what the next day would bring.
