A huge thank you to BittersweetSummer, tat1312, Material Girl, SB, and Elizabeth-nightwatchman for reviewing! Here is Midnight, Part Two!
Midnight, Part Two
by Shu of the Wind
***
She hadn't known that the human body held so much blood.
Astoria Greengrass tightened her grip on her arm, feeling the warm copper liquid slip over her fingers, hating the feel of it. Her head felt like stars were exploding inside it, her mouth much worse; her skin felt swollen, tender, nerveless. Arms and legs stung and burned and ached as though laced with wounds – oh – wait – they were – her ankle throbbed fiercely, she could barely walk, but there was just one thing pounding through her mind.
Get back to the common room.
Get back to the common room.
Get back, get back, get back.
To hell with the fact that every honest Slytherin in there would be able to tell that she was the traitor, and probably hex her into oblivion. To hell with the fact that she could have gone to the hospital wing, had Pomfrey fuss over her like a baby. To hell with all of that. She was not going to let those gnomes realize how close they had come to breaking her.
Get back to the common room, get back, get back, get back.
She squeezed her arm even harder, trying to press the edges of the wound together. She hadn't realized that Alecto had gone from the Cruciatus Curse to Sectumsempra until she had tasted blood in her mouth from the gouge on her forehead, and then it had been too late to stop any of it. She scowled, and winced; her jaw hurt. How had Alecto managed to do that?
I hope the Patils are all right. She grimaced. Damn me.
This was Ravenclaw. This was her Ravenclaw self, Ravenclaw all over. That had been the reason for her idiocy, for her stupid nobility. That and the Gryffindor spirit rubbing off on her. What could she have expected, after working with them for months now? What else could she have done? She didn't want to turn into Malfoy, preaching one thing and then running from trouble the first chance she had. But she didn't want this pain, either; she didn't think any of them wanted this pain.
Well, except perhaps the Weasley runt. But she was the runt – completely insane on all accounts.
What else could she have done, though? What else?
Her mind remained stubbornly silent on that point.
Astoria paused at the top of the stairs, leaning her shoulder against the wall, panting. She couldn't take any of this. She'd been a fool to think she could handle it. She'd never felt such pain, never screamed so long, never even dreamed that the human body could take so much. Maybe that was how she should see it – a study of the human body. The endurance of pain. How long it took until both muscles and mind snapped like wet bone.
I'm such an idiot, she thought, and began to stumble down the stairs.
***
It was long past midnight, and everyone else had gone to bed, when Greengrass staggered into the common room.
Pale face. Blood soaking her cloak. A strange limp to her step. She looked horrible, and that was being kind. Her face was bruised; her sleeve was wet with blood from shoulder to wrist; there were more dark streaks on her trousers; and she looked like she could barely stay on her feet. It was a miracle she'd managed to get to the dungeons; it looked like she'd ignored the blood for a while, judging by the pale tinge to her skin under the bruises.
Draco didn't stand up as she came in; instead, he just waited for her to stumble forward and sit on the edge of the table in the middle of the common room, simply watching him with those grey-blue javelin eyes.
"What are you doing here?" She said, in a hoarse voice. "You should be in bed, Malfoy."
He ignored her sarcasm and grimaced. "What happened to you?"
"Don't be a bloody fool." Greengrass winced at the word; blood dripped off her fingertips onto the carpet. "You're not honestly out here to help me, are you? You're more of an idiot than I thought you were."
The insult stung, but without any real feeling. She was talking out of her wounded pride, and the pain. He knew that. But there must have been a great deal of it to make her want to needle him like this.
He scowled. Why should that matter to him, anyway? Why did it make him angry?
"You didn't tell them." She said, after studying him for a moment, and Draco shook his head.
"I didn't make them think you're a traitor, if that's what you mean."
"I wondered." She pulled the cloak closer around herself, ignoring the trickle of blood down her hands. "They said they had evidence. I wondered if you'd…"
Draco didn't answer. Instead, he yanked the cloak away, ignoring the fact that it made her suck in a gasp, and studied her arm.
He hadn't seen worse, but he'd seen an equivalent on one of the rebellious Gryffindors before the Carrows had banned Madam Pomfrey from treating them. Both of Greengrass's arms seemed to have been sliced open, from just under her shoulder to the middle of her forearm, as though with a razor sharp blade; the cut was at least a half a foot long, shallow enough to be painful and deep enough to be dangerous, and blood was pouring down, soaking everything until she simply looked like a crimson rag. He studied it for a moment, then pulled back, slightly revolted.
"There's a kit." Greengrass said, through gritted teeth; she had squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her jaw, and was now taking deep breaths through her nose, making a strange whistling noise. "Under the couch. Bandages."
Without a word, Draco Summoned the kit and opened it, removing a roll of bandages from inside. Greengrass held up a hand, stopping him.
"Disinfect it first. There's a charm pasted on the lid."
"And you know this charm how?" Draco asked, raising an eyebrow. She snarled at him.
"Just do it."
Irritated – after all, he was (albeit grudgingly) helping her with this – Draco studied the note for a moment, trying to translate her handwriting; it was cramped and somehow angry. Then he muttered the spell.
Greengrass took a great hissing breath as the skin inside the wound flashed with white light, and bit her lip so hard that blood rose around her teeth. She said nothing.
Once he had sealed it, bandaged it, and she had begun work on her legs (which looked the same as her arm, though even shallower, bleeding less) Draco retreated to lean against the arm of the couch, watching the practiced process with disgust. It was ridiculous that he should have her blood on his hands, ridiculous and nauseating. He had no business being out here, just as she had no business acting so weak, like a child more than the thing that had ruined everything for him.
Greengrass removed a small flask from the kit, uncorking it and swallowing half of it in one go. From the smell, Draco knew it was a blood restorative. She swallowed again, kept her eyes closed for a long moment; color flooded her face, making her look almost normal. Then she lifted her head, eyes glassy with pain, and stared at him.
"I'm not staying here tonight." She said. "The other Slytherins will murder me if they find me. And I'm scheduled to go to another detention tomorrow evening."
Draco said nothing. He simply stared at her. After all, it wasn't his problem.
Was it?
She opened her mouth, as though to say more, and then slowly closed it again. Clearly, the same thought she had been accusing him of all year had struck her once more. And even slower, she shook her head, a grim, cynical smile flashing across her face.
"Not that you care." She added, almost too low to be heard.
Draco neither confirmed nor denied this point of view, and after a moment, Greengrass stood, knocking back the last of the blood restorative. She ended up Vanishing the ruined robes, the sleeves she'd had to Sever from her shirt. She looked like an absolute ragamuffin: one sock stripped off, her trouser leg still soaked through with blood, her sleeves gone. Her face was sticky with the stuff, the cut on her forehead only partially closed due to her shoddy Healing as she hadn't been able to steal some Dittany. Her arms were pale, crisscrossed with bandaging, and clearly muscled, though not overly so. She didn't look mannish, anyway, and most certainly not lazy. She would have been attractive, if she hadn't been dressed like she was and pale as a krait.
Why was this fact disturbing?
"You can consider those lessons of ours canceled." She said, after she'd replaced the empty flask and closed the medical kit. "I'm not going to be attending class for a while."
He didn't ask the obvious questions – where are you going to go? What will you do? How long do you think you can hide from these people? Instead, he simply watched her collect everything, and dart back down into the girl's dormitory to find the things she was going to need.
Her traitor friends will take care of her now.
Why did that hurt, ever so slightly?
The moment Greengrass reappeared, in different clothes, still limping but not quite so badly, Draco had that inexplicable urge to touch her again, to ask her questions. He wanted to know her, rather than hate her; understand her, refute her beliefs. Convince her that she was wrong. Prevent her from looking like this again. The single thing he'd found in this hellhole that could finally create a calm bubble around him, if only for an hour here and there; the single thing he trusted here, even if he hated her, was leaving.
Why?
"What is it?" Greengrass said, her eyebrows arching in a question. "Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not telling you anything about this, Malfoy."
"Read my mind." Draco challenged, narrowing his eyes at her. "Can't you even do that?"
"I'd rather stay out of your filthy mind if I have the choice, thank you." She said, hoisting her book bag further up her shoulder. She winced, and spat a swearword under her breath. "Salazar, that hurts."
His hand moved before he realized it, fingertips ever so slightly brushing against the hair hanging over her face. It felt silky against his fingers.
Greengrass's lips parted for a moment. Then her eyes widened, and she stepped back, out of his reach, real fear flashing over her face. Draco's hand remained in the air, and he stared back her, just as shocked as she was. He hadn't even intended to touch her; it had been automatic, and far more intimate than when she'd offered her hands to him in consolation in the library, and on the Quidditch pitch, because it hadn't been for any sort of comfort.
She bent her head, hiding her face with her bangs, and ran as best she could, and only when the door to the common room slid smoothly shut again did he finally lower his hand. And even then, he couldn't understand why.