They were all taken to St. Mungo's Hospital straight after the battle. While Eva had been hobbling half of the way, she eventually became too tired to move further and Hecate ended up having to carry her through the hospital to place her down on a bed.
Eva was annoyed to find out that she'd not only sprained her left ankle, but also her right wrist, although not as severely. She wasn't sure why she was always the one getting the worst injuries in these kinds of things, since the others had gotten away pretty much fine. At least they wouldn't have to use crutches for a few days.
She was glad that at least Umbridge was gone once they arrived back to school. Apparently she'd been sacked, and Dumbledore had been reinstated as headmaster.
The halls were relatively quiet when Eva and the others entered the school during the evening a week before the end of term. With her bag over her shoulder, Eva somehow managed to struggle her way to the Slytherin dungeons on crutches and let herself into the common room.
When she entered, she noticed most of the other Slytherins in her year sat around the sofas near the fireplace, but no Draco. Pansy glanced over at her and instantly began to giggle.
"As if the mudblood wasn't hideous as she was before, she's crippled too!" Pansy howled with laughter, high-fiving some of the other girls.
Eva rolled her eyes and made her way towards the stairs that led to the dormitories. "Not in the mood, Pansy. It's been a long week."
Even as she hopped up the stairs, she could hear the sound of the girls laughing in the distance, reverberating off the stone walls. Just a little longer and she would punch the pug-faced bitch. Eva began to wonder if she'd been too lenient with her recently.
Apparently she'd been pondering that thought deeper than she'd realised. She'd been so out-of-focus that she'd walked straight into someone and quickly glanced up to see who it was.
"Oh, Draco," she observed, feeling somewhat awkward after her confrontation with Lucius. "How . . . are you?" she asked slowly.
His cold expression unchanging with her presence, he combed his fingers through his hair, adjusted his suit jacket over his shoulders, and continued past her. "Fine," he answered dismissively.
Eva didn't quite know what to say. If anything, she expected it to be her who was dismissive to him, not the other way around. For goodness sake, it was his daddy who threatened to kill her and all of her friends after all.
"Draco?" she called after him, even more annoyed when he didn't respond. "Draco!"
"What?" he snapped, turning around sharply.
She threw her arms into the air exasperatedly. "What is with you? Why the fuck are you being like this all of a sudden?"
"Why am I being like this?" he repeated angrily as he approached her. "Why am I being like this?! Because you were one of the boneheads who got my father put into Azkaban!"
Eva'd had an argument lined up, but she was suddenly left lost for words. How could she have forgotten? Well, not forgotten, but overlooked? Somehow, the thought of just how much Draco idolised his father simply just hadn't crossed her mind. Lucius may've been an absolute asshole, but he was an asshole who was important to her boyfriend.
Before she had the chance to respond, Draco brushed past her rather harshly on the way back towards his dorm. His shoulder had hit hers with so much force and she had so little balance that she'd fallen sideways and had to struggle back up to her right foot while holding her crutches as well.
"Don't help your girlfriend up then, that's fine," Eva muttered.
He turned his head and glared at her. "What girlfriend?"
She didn't know what to say. "Why are you being so unreasonable?! I'm trying to have an adult conversation here, and you're just shutting me out?! Just let me explain!"
"I don't want to hear a single one of your excuses!" he snapped, his anger slowly dissolving and being replaced with sadness as he turned around and continued away.
"Draco!" No response. "Draco, I can't even keep up with you on these stupid crutches . . . DRACO!" she bellowed.
He suddenly jumped and turned around, his eyes slightly wide. Chances are even the neighbours in Hogsmeade heard that scream of hers, but she had to do what she had to do to get him to listen.
Exasperatedly, she threw her crutches to the side and tried to ignore the pain it caused when she walked straight up to him. "Listen to me before passing judgements, you idiot," she hissed. "Obviously I didn't know that your father would be there, and I had no idea that confrontation would occur, and I love you, and I wouldn't have done anything to hurt you intentionally, and fighting your father wasn't part of the original plan, and-"
She hadn't noticed, but Draco had stopped listening. "What did you just say?"
Eva paused for a moment. "Fighting your father wasn't part of the original plan?"
"Before that," he corrected shortly.
"I wouldn't have done anything to hurt you intentionally?" she guessed, although inside she knew what he was referring to.
"Eva," he groaned impatiently.
Eva sighed and glanced down at the floor by their feet when she repeated herself. "I love you."
She wasn't entirely sure how she'd been planning on him to react. She hadn't even planned to say it—it kind of just slipped out.
Placing his hand under her chin, he tilted her head upwards and kissed her, gently at first, but slowly building in passion. To think that Lucius didn't approve of this . . .
When Draco's hand slid behind her head to cup the back of her neck, Eva quickly pulled away and winced slightly. "Careful of my neck," she warned him.
Moving her hair to the side, he glanced at the faint but still present bruises from her little run-in with Lucius. "Who did this to you?" Draco asked.
Eva shook her head. "Draco, it doesn't matter."
"No secrets," he reminded her.
She sighed, hoping that he wouldn't blab on too much about the confidential information she was about to disclose to him. "Mr. Lucius Malfoy. He threatened to have us all killed to get to Harry."
"My father?" he questioned, slightly confused. "Are you certain?"
"Um, pretty certain, unless it's someone with the same name, evil voice, and specific disliking of me," she snarked. "Oh, and he also pulled out a small chunk of my hair, but it's fine. I have my mum's thick locks in anyway so it's impossible to notice."
It seemed that Draco didn't exactly know what to say, so she cut off his thoughts with another brief kiss. "And no, I would never hold you accountable for your father's actions. He may be a twat, but I love you."
With what sounded like a sigh of relief, he pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin. "I love you too," he muttered slightly uncomfortably. "The opposite to 'I hate you', I mean."
By the time the actual end of the school year arrived, Eva was finally off her crutches, and the only visible injury she had left was a splint on her wrist which she could remove in only a few days time. Oh, how her mother would be livid . . .
With her prefect badge on, Eva helped a few first years pack up their belongings onto the train while Draco simply watched. No surprise that some things simply wouldn't ever change, although at least he wasn't bullying them mercilessly.
They found an empty compartment on the train as usual, but were eventually joined by Crabbe and Goyle. The pair of idiots were apparently still bitter about the Puking Pastilles, taking any opportunity to insult the Weasley family over it.
"So, Voldemort's return has been confirmed," Eva noted as she watched the comparatively calm countryside rolling past the window. "Told you you'd be apologising that you didn't listen when you had the chance. And you know what I'm going to say? I told you so."
Draco smirked slightly at her while she leaned comfortably into his side. "I knew."
She gasped but, rather than having a positive reaction, she slapped him across the arm. "And you told me I was crazy!"
"Whoa," he held his hands up in mock surrender, "I said several things, but I did not call you crazy. All I said was that you're . . . weird, but you're always like that."
"What? Because I'm right?" she asked. "Well, it doesn't matter, I still have this."
She rummaged into her pocket and pulled out her Dumbledore's Army coin that Hermione had made using some type of branding spell. Each member had one— it was kind of a little symbol of whose side they belonged to. Eva liked to compare it to a kids' version of the Order of the Phoenix.
"What's that?" Crabbe asked dumbly with his mouth full from a bunch of snacks he'd bought from the snack trolley.
"That," she mimicked his voice, "is something you'll never own."
Goyle still seemed confused, licking the icing from his slice of chocolate cake from his fingers. "Why don't I have one?"
Draco rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Hopeless, absolutely hopeless," he muttered. "Because you didn't join Potter's secret club, Goyle. Merlin, if you were going any slower, you'd be going backwards."
"I want to join," Crabbe decided.
Eva laughed. "No you don't, and I doubt you'd want to be in the same group as Harry, Hermione, the Weasleys, and all of their friends."
He sneered and stuffed another pumpkin pasty into his mouth. "I guess not."
They rode in silence for most of the remaining train journey. There wasn't much to say between them anyway, and Crabbe and Goyle were so stupid that they were contented as long as they had food. For a while, Eva had even fallen asleep against Draco's shoulder, only being jolted awake when the train shook slightly.
About half an hour before they were due to arrive back, Draco stood up without explanation, and Crabbe and Goyle automatically joined like the personal bodyguards they were.
"Where are you off to then?" Eva asked him.
He seemed tense and annoyed, but it wasn't aimed at her. "Toilet."
With that, he left, followed by the other two. The compartment was now completely empty, allowing her to relax. Outside the window, the sky had already grown dark, but it was so warm and comfortable inside the train. That was why she loved travelling at night, just the setting of the faint silhouettes of trees on the horizon and the only true lighting being the faint lamp hanging above her head.
She still hadn't quite gotten around the fact that Sirius was gone. He'd kind of been like a weird uncle to her, and to be honest, other than Harry, Eva'd probably been the closest to him out of all the children of the Order. Harry had taken it hard, understandably, but she wasn't entirely surprised at all.
She felt the train beginning to slowly but surely slow down. They were approaching the station, which would make sense considering the time, but Draco and his goons were still nowhere to be seen. Surely he didn't need almost an hour just to use the toilet.
With a roll of her eyes, she stretched out her limbs and stood up. Either way, she was a prefect, and thus was expected to assist in getting everyone safely off the train.
Once she stepped out of her compartment with her bag, she was instantly met by the Head Boy, but she honestly couldn't remember his name. He had short black hair which was perfectly combed backwards, and was much taller than her, just like every other guy she knew.
"Eva, good, we need to begin to alert everyone on this train to pack up their things . . ."
Eva zoned out for the rest of his ramblings and started off in the direction Draco had gone in. "Sure, sure."
Unsure of where they'd gotten to, she checked inside every compartment she walked past and, whenever anyone asked, she flashed her prefect badge at them and continued down the carriages. It was getting to the point where the train had pulled up to King's Cross station and students were climbing out, but Draco was still nowhere to be seen.
Finally, she reached the end carriage and glanced around the first compartment. "Draco?"
She heard a noise and glanced up, unsure of how to react. Draco, as well as Crabbe and Goyle, had clearly been hexed by someone, but whatever hexes they'd used weren't friendly in the slightest. The best was to describe it was that they resembled basically giant slugs in clothes.
Quickly fumbling for her wand, Eva pointed it at the slug with blonde hair. "Finite Incantatem."
The spell had immediate effect, Draco returning back to his usual size. Ignoring Crabbe and Goyle for the time being, she helped him down from the luggage rack where he'd been hauled up.
She felt Hecate appear momentarily and a bucket being thrusted into her hands. "Hecate, what do I need this-"
Without warning, Draco leant his head over the bucket and began puking violently, the sound of him retching only echoed by the metal bucket. Eva crouched down to the ground, sitting him down beside her, and rubbed his back soothingly.
"Better out than in," she encouraged as he continued to throw up the contents of his stomach. "Who did this to you?"
He stopped vomiting for a moment and raised his head only slightly while a trickle of what looked like some kind of green slime ran down his chin. "I don't know," he lied.
"Draco," she warned with an eyebrow raised.
He coughed and spat into the bucket. "Potter and that stupid club you joined."
"Dumbledore's Army?" she verified, to which he nodded before throwing up again.
Rolling her eyes, she waved her wand lazily at Crabbe and Goyle. "Finite Incantatem. Now, what did you say to them to make them hex you? And don't bother lying to me," she said as Crabbe and Goyle climbed down behind her and scrambled towards the bathroom, though from the sounds of things they hadn't made it on time.
He half-sobbed, half-retched into the bucket. "I wanted to kill that boy," he gritted through his clenched teeth while she stroked his hair back. "It's all his fault, everything with my father—Potter deserves to pay for what he did to my family."
"And so you thought 3 against 30 was a wise idea?" she asked sceptically.
"I didn't see them there," he admitted as he vomited up another load of slime. "Stupid Potter, stupid Weasleys, stupid Dumbledore, stupid-"
"I get the idea," she humoured.
Once Draco had finished getting the slime out of his system a few minutes later, they left the full bucket on the train and stepped out onto the considerably cooler platform. Draco's clothes as well as Eva's had little splatters of the stuff on them, his skin looked almost green, and his hair was a mess.
She leant in to kiss him but then quickly pulled back. "You have slime all over your mouth, we're skipping this part."
"I suppose you don't truly know someone until you're covered in their slimy puke," he replied sarcastically, turning his nose up at the state of himself. "Remember to write."
Even though she didn't kiss him, she hugged him in anyway, gaining even more mess on her previously clean clothes. "Like I could forget," she muttered against his shoulder. "Stay safe and don't do anything stupid."
"I should be saying that to you," he retorted as she left to join her family.
Once Eva was standing in front of her mother, she braced herself for the scolding she was about to receive, but it surprised her when that didn't happen. Instead, she lifted her injured wrist to examine it, took one look at her slightly bruised neck and stained clothes, and sighed heavily.
"He's back then, hm?" she asked. "It's the beginning of the end."
Eva winced and nodded. "It's a long story."
⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰
Author's note: I've had a lot of time to write these past few days, but I doubt it'll last, so enjoy daily chapters while you can. I feel like this was a nice way to end the Order of the Phoenix arc, and as you can see I even referenced the book ending with Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle getting hexed into oozing slugs. Even the 'it's a long story' at the end of each year is getting darker.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading, stay safe, and ily lots!
