"He's all right, Kiara. Go get some sleep in the dorms. I promise I'll keep my eye on him."
"Who will keep their eye on you, then?"
There are a few other students curtained off who are recovering from stray firework burns. Someone broke their arm when they fell off the stadium stands. Another student was nearly trampled in the hysteria, and is recovering from a concussion. Kiara only knows because she listens, but she does not visit them. Nurse Abbott is too busy to watch Scorpius and Albus twenty-four-seven. So Kiara sits like a statue.
Albus chuckles low, but winces. Kiara stares even more intensely at him. The boy looks worse than the barely-alive Scorpius. He has a second degree burn going down from his chest and across his torso, and it twists and mottles his purpling skin. She just can't understand how he can be so light-hearted, like he doesn't have four broken ribs from the loose Bludger, and a healing gash across his cheek that continues to bleed if he smiles (which he insists on doing). The whites of his eyes are still red with blood. And the bruises from taking the fall cover his back and trim abdomen like spiderwebs that disappear under the waistband of white cotton pants.
Albus just doesn't look like someone who could ever get hurt. But he is.
Nurse Abbott says he will be completely recovered in five days, with noticeable progress each hour—but Kiara sits here watching him like waiting for water to boil.
"Should your ribs not be taped?" she asks, almost impatiently.
He shakes his head. "Nurse Abbott says I need to try to take deep breaths."
"OK."
"Hey, um . . . Would you . . . want to . . . talk about what's on your mind?"
She stares at him. "Nothing is on my mind."
Albus sucks in a cheek. "There's a lot going on. It's good to take things at your own pace, but I think it's really important to—"
"I would like to change the subject."
He hesitates, his cheeks turning pink.
"But—"
"Albus."
"OK, Kiara. I understand. Would you mind helping me sit up?"
She stands and steps beside him, waiting for instruction on how to assist. He asks her to support his back. He pushes himself up on one elbow, grimacing in pain, and Kiara gently places a palm between his shoulder blades and another against his bicep. Her heart beats just a bit faster, though she ignores it. She feels warm, hard muscles moving beneath her hands as he positions himself higher on the cot, then he waits for her to remove her touch and rests against the wall with his eyes closed.
She sits back down at the foot of Albus and Scorpius's cots. Albus's eyes flick open again, and he watches her watching him.
"Are your parents coming to visit?"
"My mom would be beside herself if she knew. No, I'm waiting until I've recovered to tell them. And I made my sister, and Hugo and Rose, swear not to tell."
A sick feeling has settled in her stomach since everything happened the yesterday, and she has yet to catch a wink of sleep. She has been sitting here, watching both boys, since Albus's family at Hogwarts had had to leave for classes. No one has insisted she attend her own, and most everyone has left her alone. Albus, though having remained conscious through his injuries, drifts in and out of sleep every few hours. Each time he wakes he jolts, as though he's forgotten where he is.
But it isn't comparable to the condition Scorpius is in. Scorpius is entirely unresponsive.
Nothing looks wrong on the pale boy's face. With the sheets pulled up over his shoulders, someone could assume he's only resting his eyes.
No one seems to know for sure what happened out there. Callie, who came to visit briefly, quietly told Kiara and Albus that Emmalee was in some hot water for knowing about the celebratory fireworks—but Emmalee wouldn't elaborate on who was responsible. It's assumed the fireworks were released much too early, and Scorpius had gone right over the first one that exploded. His broom erupted into dozens of sharp wooden splinters that could have killed him if they'd gone through a vital organ or artery.
Kiara saw Scorpius's body when Nurse Abbott pulled back the sheet to dress his wounds. The fireworks had cut up his skin with deep gouges that are already healing. Nurse Abbott says Scorpius is in a comatose state because of internal bleeding. She says that if the wood splinter that went savagely through his shoulder had been just two inches to the left, he would have bled to death before even hitting the ground.
Nurse Abbott says Scorpius will consider himself lucky.
But he isn't even conscious, yet.
-o-o-o-
Albus has finally been asleep for more than three hours.
He is still sitting up, appearing vigilant, but his head rests back against the wall. Some of his hair, even darker with dry sweat, sticks up and makes him appear boyish.
It's been another ten hours. Kiara, on the other hand, is wide awake.
There has been a few visitors. Kiara can't remember their faces. Someone touched her shoulder. She thinks it may have been Rose.
No one else but Albus knows why this is so difficult: To watch someone she cares about fall into a coma, and not know when they might wake up. Albus is nice enough not to mention it, though.
She feels like she is being punished for being so cold-hearted toward her family and friends. It's like Fate is giving her a taste of her own medicine.
She runs through the possibilities. Maybe nothing will be wrong. But maybe he will suffer permanent brain damage, like her, and have trouble remembering people's faces. Or lose whole pieces of his memory. Or maybe he'll never wake up.
She didn't know until now that maybe she'd chosen the wrong way to cope with her trauma. She didn't know that there was a wrong way to choose to cope her trauma. And she didn't know she chose. It all simply came to be.
Kiara, the heartless girl, and curious to a fault: The girl who would rather look upon stars than make any meaningful friendships. The girl who looks at others like she's trying to solve an equation. The girl who appears as though she thinks herself better than everyone else.
There was no play-by-play for her to understand what had happened to her life, or how to process the consequences healthily.
There was no book, written by Muggle or wizard, that outlines how to handle when a family member dies, but doesn't actually die.
Maybe she should have taken those therapy sessions that her doctor had advised.
Now it feels too late.
She has reached a state of delirium where just breathing oxygen makes her feel high.
Kiara, sitting practically alone in the dim candlelight, begins to hallucinate.
At first she hears a child's laughter outside the curtain. She peeks her head out and sees nothing in the darkness. The child must have run down the corridor and is waiting for her by the door. She can hear the knob turning.
"Kiara?"
Startled, she turns back to Albus and squints to make out his concerned expression. She felt herself jump out of her skin. . . . This alarms her: She has never been nervous like this before.
"Yes?"
Albus raises his eyebrows and gives her a strange look. Then he says, "You need to get some sleep." It sounds peculiar in her ears, like he's forming his words differently, but she understands him anyway. Maybe he's even more injured than it seems.
"I am not leaving."
"You can't sit there forever." He speaks slower than usual.
"Do you think it will be forever until Scorpius wakes up?"
Albus's face falls. "Oh, Kiara," he whispers. "He's going to be OK."
"I am not naïve, Albus."
"I know you aren't."
"Then why would you say something you do not know for fact? Just to make us feel better?"
He holds his gaze steady with her, but says nothing. Finally, Kiara looks away. Then she hears it again. Soft laughter, almost jovial, and young. Kiara, angry, turns to Albus again.
"Why are you laughing?" she asks him, accusatory.
Albus has not looked away from her. His face is emotionless.
"It's been two days. You need sleep, Kiara."
It has been much longer than two days since Kiara has gotten meaningful rest.
She doesn't tell him this.
-o-o-o-
When Henry walks in, he begins to sob. Kiara barely recognizes this happening, having to exert energy just to acknowledge him.
Albus stirs from his slumber. He had slept for another two hours before this disturbance. His dark green eyes are back to normal, and the bruises on his body have already begun to fade around the edges. Nurse Abbott came in an hour ago and told Kiara that, with the help of magic, his ribs are actively on the mend. They will take only a week or two to fully heal, she tells her. Otherwise, Albus will be out of the infirmary in just a few days.
When Kiara asked Nurse Abbott about when Scorpius will wake up, she had pressed her lips into a thin line and said she didn't understand what she was asking, but that she should go to the dorms and get rest.
Kiara feels as though her body is floating high above them. She watches from faraway as Henry falls to his knees beside Scorpius's bed and buries his face in the sheets.
"Cory, I'm so sorry," he splutters through his tears.
"What are you talking about?" Albus asks him sleepily, rubbing his eyes with one hand as he comes to.
"I can't keep it in any longer." Henry hiccups twice. "I can't. Cory is going to die and it's going to come back on me, anyway."
"Henry," Albus says cautiously, sounding normal again. "What do you mean?"
"His broom." Henry has to stop talking as he begins to wail.
"What about his broom, Henry?"
"Emma. Emmalee, she told me how to curse his broom to blow up when he got close to the Snitch. She just wanted to give him a scare at the match. Then I set the fireworks off too soon and no one could help him with magic. Thank god you were there, Albus, thank god. I didn't know how hurt he'd get. I didn't know—"
Albus stands, with great effort, and Henry seems to bow before him. Albus's face is twisted up in pain, but he doesn't slow. He pulls Henry up to his feet and grabs his tie in his white-knuckled fist, tightening it around the boy's throat. Henry scrambles desperately to regain balance, clawing at Albus's arm.
"Please, you can't tell anyone!" Henry shouts, breathing sparsely as his lips turn blue. "I'll be expelled! My career will be ruined! Scorpius is my friend! I never meant to hurt him! You couldn't do that to me and Emmalee, Albus! She loves me! She won't love me if I'm ruined! It will ruin her, too! Please! Emmalee is all I have, Albus she's—!"
Albus tightens his fist until Henry gasps into complete silence. He pulls the boy to his face, and Henry's toes drag across the floor.
"Tell Headmistress McGonagall what's happened," Albus says, dead calm, into Henry's ear. "Or I'll make sure you regret it."
Kiara forces herself back into her body.
"Albus," she says quietly. She almost doesn't want him to hear her, as Henry's eyes begin to bulge—but he does.
When he lets Henry go, the boy takes off so quickly it's like he was never here. Albus clutches his side and leans his hand into Scorpius's bed. Kiara takes control of her legs as she steps closer to him.
"I'm sorry if that scared you."
"It did not," she tells him honestly.
He grimaces hard as Kiara helps him to his bed. Albus sits and leans his head back so he can stare straight up at the ceiling. After a moment, with his head nodding up and down, he falls back asleep with his chin against his chest.
-o-o-o-
Kiara doesn't stand a chance when Professor Longbottom and Headmistress McGonagall come to visit. No matter how much she resisted, they made her leave the infirmary. They didn't seem to understand anything she was saying, and it took Albus speaking for her for them to hear what she's been saying. When she tried to sneak back in, Professor Longbottom personally walked her back to the Ravenclaw common room and ordered the Headgirl not to let Kiara leave the dorms until she's gotten some sleep.
She checks on Basil, but her snake still sleeps as he digests his last meal from two days ago—from right before the last match. Although it would be deeply comforting to hold his warm body around her shoulders, she would never do anything to disrespect or harm the gentle creature.
So she waits.
Every time she blinks, her head spins. To say she's exhausted is a drastic understatement, yet the idea of sleeping terrifies her more than anything else in this moment. It terrifies her even more than the detached, bodiless child's laughter that she hears over and over from every dark corner of the Ravenclaw tower.
Kiara thinks that if she falls asleep, she will wake up in the hospital bed and find out she's really been comatose for six years. Suddenly Hogwarts and magic and being a witch sounds absolutely insane. She finds it rather possible that this could be the case. With a head injury as bad as she had, she could have been dreaming half her life away, building a world around her that has barely kept her alive in her deep sleep.
Losing her childhood was bad enough. If she is to lose this life as well, she won't be able to convince herself to go for a third round.
This thought is so frightening, her blood runs cold and she can't stop shivering. Every part of her trembles. Her hands shake. Her lips quiver. She shudders so severely that her teeth chatter together, and she vaguely remembers a toy she had cherished as a little girl.
Her toy. She'd kept it on her nightstand, next to the glass of water her mother would put out for her each night. It was a gag gift her father had brought home from London, because she would always make him almost late to work when they spoke on the phone every morning, dazzling him with her thoughts and endless ideas. He said the chattering teeth was to remind her to never stop telling stories.
More pieces of her memory.
They've been coming back slowly ever since Hogsmeade, when Kiara stopped in front of Gladrags with an intense feeling of deja-vu. Scorpius had told her it was possible she had seen one in Paris. That is, if Scorpius is real; or Gladrags, or Hogwarts, or any of this.
She's thankful to be by herself in the dorms while everyone eats dinner in the Great Hall, because she pulls her knees up to her chest and begins to sob.
But she's not alone.
A little girl that looks very familiar tugs on her pinky. There's something wrong with the way she carries herself, like she's not quite all there—but not a ghost, either. Kiara, having seen many strange things at Hogwarts, is too tired to question her presence. With everything going through her head, at this point it hardly matters if this little girl is a magical creature or simply a figment of her imagination. Right now, the two possibilities feel indistinguishable.
The little girl laughs, and it's the same one she's been hearing for hours.
She begins to pull at Kiara's hand, and Kiara finds herself standing to follow her. The little girl wants to go on a walk. She wants to look at the stars.
"Come on, daddy," the little girl giggles. "Mommy says we have time to learn more constellations before bedtime."
"Ouais," Kiara responds automatically in French.
"It's the last night we can see the scorpion, before he's chased away by the hunter. Do you remember?"
"Uh-huh."
The little girl looks back and pouts. Kiara is not going fast enough.
"Daddy." She frowns. "We don't have much time before you go back to work. I don't want to miss a shooting star!"
"Ne jamais fais un souhait—" Kiara starts to say.
"I know," the little girl interrupts. "The stars aren't for my wishes."
Kiara, dumbstruck, recalls a time when she had told Scorpius something similar in the library: Never pin your dreams on the stars. They do not fall for you.
"It's too late," the little girl huffs, her arms crossed and her expression melancholy. "That's Orion, the hunter. The scorpion is already gone, daddy."
She looks up, surprised to see the starry sky above her. She can't remember how she got out here, or what path she took. Surprisingly, she feels calm as her eyes fall upon Orion's belt—three stars that look as though they are in a line, with the same amount of distance between each other. At home, her father would call them Alnitak, Anilam, and Mintaka. Kiara thinks she may have called them her Three Kings when she was young.
The little girl is suddenly gone.
In the distance, along the woods, Kiara spots two Thestrals staring at her. She had seen one only once before, back when she hadn't had a clue what they were, or what they meant. Back when Scorpius had love in his heart, and he had asked her what she was doing.
They seem to wait for her now.
The cool evening breeze coaxes her into a dream-like state. She feels like she's floating toward the Thestrals, as they disappear back into the depths of the Forbidden Forest.
Kiara follows from a distance.