The classroom showed signs of inhabitation, but no inhabitant.
A small fire burned beneath Trelawney's cluttered mantel, casting flickering shadows over the room's dense furnishings. The copper kettle was off its hook, placed haphazardly on the hearth, stripping the room of its usual fog of incense. No lamps were lit. Darkness shrouded the corners of the room too far for the fire's glow to reach, but there was light enough to see.
Quietly as he could, Seamus pulled himself through the trapdoor and onto the classroom's carpet. Without so much as a deep breath to betray his presence, he got to his feet and scanned the room for its resident. She saw him before he saw her.
From the farthest corner, deep in shadow, came a thick voice. "Go away."
Seamus turned on the nearest lamp, an old gas model draped in a thick red scarf. It didn't help. The flame barely illuminated his fingers on the knob. Wand firmly in hand, he muttered, "Lumos."
Yellow light flooded the dark room. One of the dozen or so chintz armchairs had been pulled from its spindly little table to the room's only bare window. Its occupant sat with her forehead pressed against the frosty glass, long blonde hair obscuring the rest of her features. A crystal ball lay discarded on the floor.
"Daphne?" he whispered.
"I said go away." The curtain of hair fluttered with each word. "Tell your friends to go away, too, before someone finds them."
Every shred of common sense he possessed screaming at him not to, Seamus followed her instructions. At least in part. Dimmed wand safe on a little round table, he kneeled beside the trapdoor. A circle of wide-eyed faces stared back up at him. Colin Creevey looked liable to faint. Neville wasn't far behind.
"Is everything all right?" he called up.
"Find somewhere else," Seamus whispered back. "There's… just find somewhere else, yeah?"
Neville grimaced, but he didn't ask any questions. Ginny did. "Who's up there?" she demanded, wrapping a hand around the stepladder's base.
"Ginny? Go argue with someone else."
With a sharp yank on the puff-painted handle, the trapdoor swung shut – but not before Ginny threw an obscene gesture his way. In part to reassure himself that her presence was more than just a cruel invention of his imagination and in part to wipe Ginny's glare from his mind's eye, Seamus turned back to Daphne.
She was still there in the armchair, face pressed against the icy glass. "You were supposed to go, too," she said, voice echoing oddly off the windowpane.
"What are you doing here?" Seamus asked. The story of her dropping Divination had stuck with him; it seemed strange that she would voluntarily spend time in Trelawney's classroom after being told so unceremoniously that she didn't belong. Not to mention the castle-wide curfew that had gone into effect two-and-a-half hours before.
"Patrolling," she answered.
Steps muffled by the downy red carpet, he crossed the room. "Patrolling what? That window?"
"Blaise promised to cover my route."
"That's nice of him. Head Boy, running about for his mot." He reached the armchair, and the girl on it. Ignoring the protests of his bruised hip, he hunkered down beside her. "Daphne, look at me."
"I don't want to," she insisted, ragged breaths shaking her shoulders. But she did.
Up close, her injuries were no worse than he'd seen in the mirror. With her nose back where it was supposed to be, the only sign that it had been broken was the delicate purple of her twin black eyes. The blood was all gone, painstakingly wiped away. A few cuts and scrapes remained, but they weren't what made it hard to look. It was the pain in her eyes, clear as day in the dim light from the fire.
"How did they find out?" he asked.
Her nose screwed up at the question. Tears fell from the tips of her lashes, freed from suspension by the movement. "What are you talking about?"
"How did the Carrows find out about our, ehm… conversation?" he elaborated.
Laughter erupted from her like a shot from a gun. The smile that followed the sound transformed her back into the Daphne he knew, if only for a second. "This," she said, tracing the pad of her thumb over a nasty, half-healed cut, "has nothing to do with you."
"Oh," said Seamus. He sunk back onto his heels and tried to make sense of her response. "Then what… who– why?"
For a girl who was halfway through wiping tear tracks from a puffy black eye, her answer was awfully flippant. "Would you like to ask me where and when, too?"
When no clever answer made itself clear, Seamus busied himself with finding a more comfortable way to sit. After an awkward shuffle and a knock of his knee against the leg of Daphne's armchair, he ended up cross-legged on the floor. For a long moment after, the two of them sat in silence: she in her pretty pink armchair and he on the dense, dusty carpet, waiting to see who would break first.
It was Daphne. Just as Seamus considered repeating his question, her steely countenance cracked, replaced by a flood of words.
"Astoria has been saying some… not-so-polite things about Headmaster Snape and the Professors Carrow, and they thought the best way to stop her was to hurt someone close to her," she admitted, arms wrapped tight around her folded legs. "You might have been an inspiration to her, actually. 'Pigs' was getting thrown around quite a lot."
Heat flooded into Seamus's cheeks. "Sorry about that."
"Apology accepted," she mumbled, the words catching on the bare skin of her knee. "But it isn't your fault. She should know better."
"I should know better," he countered, louder than was strictly necessary. "Your sister isn't out at twenty-three hundred trying to incite a revolution."
The line appeared between her eyebrows. Voice muffled now by the crook of her elbow, she said, "You shouldn't tell me things like that."
He could have laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. There they were, huddled together in a dimly-lit classroom hours after curfew – both with faces like beat-up fruit – and she was worried about knowing too much. If it weren't for her knowing too much, Seamus would have waltzed into more trouble than he knew how to handle weeks ago. Carrow 1 and 2 would have made short work of him. But they hadn't. Sure, they'd belted him a little, but that he could handle. Daphne Greengrass was his saviour, and he wanted her to know it.
"If I could, I would tell you everything," he said, only barely in control of what was coming out of his mouth, and took one of her hands in his.
She burst into tears. Ugly, unhinged tears.
"Fuck," said Seamus before realizing that swearing at her probably wouldn't stop the wrenching sobs wracking her thin form. He considered letting go of her hand, but didn't. Instead, he grabbed hold of the other one, too. Her crying intensified. "Oh, fuck. I mean– shite, I don't know what I mean. Please stop crying."
She didn't stop. If anything, her sobs got louder.
Panicking and squeezing her hands so hard his own bones began to rub together obviously was not working. So he switched tactics. "Sit with me," he said.
"W-what?"
"Sit with me," he said again, and let go of one of her hands to pat the carpet beside him. Without a word, she slipped from the armchair to the floor. Even while crying – crying hysterically, crying so hard it hurt just to listen – she moved with more grace than he could quite wrap his head around. Gently as possible, the fear that he would break her never far from the front of his mind, he took her in his arms. A dark, wet spot spread down the front of his uniform shirt from where she laid her head. He didn't mind.
"I'm sorry," she choked out. Her breath was hot against the growing damp spot. "I don't– I don't usually cry this much. Or e-ever, when I'm not with you. But I just… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Shh," he said, resting his chin against the top of her head. Her hair was soft beneath his fingers. "It's okay."
Slowly, very slowly, the sobbing stopped. Her body relaxed against him. If it weren't for the hiccups that came every few breaths, he would have thought she'd fallen asleep. "It's all going to be okay," he whispered.
They sat for what felt like hours before either spoke again, Seamus afraid to do anything more than stroke her hair and breathe. The fire was no more than embers when Daphne whispered, "You should go."
"I don't want to," he answered, voice hoarse from disuse.
"You have to." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Blaise is coming to get me at sunrise. I don't–"
"I don't care," Seamus declared.
She continued, unabated by the interruption. "I don't want you to get into any more trouble on my behalf. You saw him at dinner, didn't you? Blaise means well, but he only stands up for me when it doesn't compromise his own position. If he sees you here, he'll take you straight to the Carrows."
"I don't care," he repeated. "I've already had me head beat in. What worse could they do?"
"They'll kill you," she answered. Before Seamus had a chance to respond, before he could finish processing the full implication of those three little words, her lips were on his, soft and warm and entirely unexpected. They were gone just as quickly, off with the rest of her to the chintz armchair. Safely tucked away in its floral cushions, she commanded, "Now get out."
Light-headed and tingling, Seamus obeyed.
