Meals had become solemn events at the Gryffindor table, following the incident in the hallway. Oliver had effectively shut himself off from all communication with anyone about anything other than Quidditch, and would appear for only short periods of time to sit and brood silently over his plate at the far end of the group. The twins initially made efforts at cheering him up, but gave up after he threatened to sentence them to extra practice time.
This was a more dangerous threat than it sounded, as the entire Gryffindor Quidditch team was already visibly exhausted from the products of Oliver's complete devotion to the sport. It seemed that in order to distract himself from the person he refused to wholesale admit was on his mind, it was necessary to completely immerse himself in Quidditch in a way that reportedly surpassed anything in the past, despite the blatant hints from Dumbledore that certain Quidditch captains should consider taking it easy.
Dani and Aimee experienced the spectacle of the exhausted players with Hermione and Ginny, who were veterans at seeing this happen from the sidelines. Even they were affected, as they ended up having to help the tired players cope with their sleep-deprivation. The twins were a notch short of their usual exuberance, Angelina had passed out in her oatmeal one morning, and Katie Bell was so beyond dazed at all times that someone had to escort her to classes to make sure she got there in one piece.
It was the worst for Harry though, as he was not only trying to keep up with his schoolwork but practice with Hermione for the third task. The stress of being pulled by so many worries at once had clearly become detrimental to his health. Ron and Hermione teamed up to keep him awake during classes, but it took all of Gryffindor to keep him unscathed in between. He had taken to wandering off when no one was looking, and was prone to running into statues and columns that he seemed not to be alert enough to notice.
At dinner one night, everyone seemed so completely worn out that even the sky of the Great Hall was a flat dark grey. Dani took her seat across from Aimee, who for once was tired herself. The two of them had been up all night trying to remove the side effects of Aimee's latest experiment. With Lynn dragged off to help Fleur study by order of Madame, it had taken three hours to clear the small girl of the holiday lights that had somehow ended up framing her entire body.
Hermione sat to Aimee's right, a book to one side of her plate and a hand held out to prop Harry up on the other, who seemed to be swaying dangerously over his dinner. She looked up with a grimace as Dani sat down.
"It's been a long day," she said simply.
There was a thud as Seamus crashed in to sit next to Dani, his whole body falling clumsily against hers. She was so tired she just sat wordlessly and waited for him to re-situate himself.
"Long day for you too?"
He looked at her blearily.
"Just finished dragging George up to the dormitory," he said, tiredly pulling food onto a plate. "Poor bloke made it halfway there by himself and then just collapsed."
Dani grimaced, and Hermione looked concerned as she adjusted Harry so that he was no longer falling into the pudding of the girl on his other side.
"I wish Lynn were here," the bushy-haired girl said exasperatedly. "She's the only one with a chance at keeping Oliver from this madness."
Seamus smiled dully but dutifully remained silent. Dani frowned. She was still angry at Lynn. She could understand her usually compliance with Madame's punishments, seeing as the girl was scared stiff of authority, but going along with this latest Pierre bullocks was inexcusable. Oliver's dark expression in the hallway against the practiced indifference of the girls in blue had struck her as a little too familiar. Lynn had always been a little more like the "ideal" then she or Aimee, built of the right stock for it. Maybe the attention had been just enough to pull her to the center of gravity she'd always been meant to occupy.
She'd just seemed so...passive.
"Oh don't!" Aimee said, throwing her fork straight into the table (where it bouncing limply and stayed - even she was exhausted).
Dani stared. Aimee rarely got angry, and her dark brows and light hair could combine into a fearful combination, the rearrangement of her features unfurling a whole different person.
"It's not her bloody fault!" Aimee said to Dani, as though everyone knew what she was talking about and she wasn't screaming in the middle of dinner, with such an air of annoyance that she looked rather like Hermione explaining Potions to Ron.
She leaned forward across the table, doe eyes narrowed at her friend as Dani recovered from the prickles of shock.
"Do you really think Lynn could ever act like that when it would hurt someone she cared about?" She said. "The girl's barely comfortable using sarcasm."
Seamus snorted.
"We should be more worried about what convinced her to cooperate with Pierre and Madame's cocked up scheme."
Dani was still recovering from the shock of Aimee, of all people, scolding her, so it was Hermione who leaned in, intrigued.
"They must have done something," she said, so intent in her realization that she didn't notice Harry slip off her hand and into his potatoes.
Seamus wearily pulled Harry's plate away from his head. He seemed too worn out to do much more, leaving Harry to drip potatoes onto the table.
"Of course," came a voice to Dani's left, where Ginny had been sitting all the while, and she'd just been too tired to notice. "That explains it."
"What?" Dani asked.
"Well," Ginny looked thoughtful, "Roslyn told me that she saw Pierre pull Lynn aside that morning, as they were entering the castle. She reckons he didn't know she was there, but she saw him talking to Lynn and grabbing her arm. She said Lynn looked terrified, more than usual, like she was looking death in the face."
Dani felt the muscles in her face go lax. Lynn may have known more than she about what was going on at the school, but Dani knew enough to know what Pierre had probably threatened her with, and it was nothing to be laughed at. The Executive Advisor to the school, Mr. Wench, was a shadowy figure in their lives but well-known to be a man of power enough to ruin anyone's life, and few enough morals to do so without hesitation.
Hermione was already thigh-deep in conversation with Ginny, the two of them trying to piece together what this could mean. Dani caught Aimee's eye from across the table, and neither of them smiled. Lynn was in trouble.
They had been sitting in silence all morning, the still air broken only by the soft splash of raindrops on the roof on the ground outside, and the steady drum of it on the roof. After mulling over in her guilt, Dani decided enough time had passed. She set aside the Herbology essay she had been distractedly working at, and got up from her cot. Lynn looked up as she neared.
The older girl hadn't been herself for a long while, her face losing all of the cheerful glow it had emitted only weeks earlier, instead settling into a kind of gaunt sadness that scared her friends. Dani knew this face, it was the face of resignation. She sighed as she looked at her friend.
"I'm sorry," Dani said, ashamed in a way that was unusual for her. "I guess I can't tell which way is up anymore."
Lynn gave her a small smile, having already forgiven her but still left with the rest of a crappy situation. Dani climbed up to sit next to her on the bed, and the two of them stared together out of the carriage window on the opposite wall. It was dark outside, even though it had not yet reached evening. The weather seemed to uncannily reflect the gloom within the carriage.
Today was the day of the second Quidditch match, and all of Beauxbatons was restricted to the carriage. Madame had so far been successful in her flowery excuses to Dumbledore as to why her school was not in attendance at the games. For the first match, days before, she had claimed concern for their academic performance, insisting that on a weekday they should have nothing else on their minds but completing school assignments. They had yet to hear of what excuse she had deterred him with this time.
"I wonder who's winning," Lynn said hollowly, although a flicker of amusement danced across her face at the thought.
Dani smirked, thinking of their friends, who were no doubt decked out in red and gold and waving from the stands of the Quidditch pitch, umbrellas swaying above in the wind. She may not have been as entirely entranced by the sport itself as Aimee was, but she would give anything to be amongst the crowd again instead of stuck in the carriage listening to the rain.
Across from where she and Lynn sat, Aimee was sitting cross-legged on Dani's bed, staring into a small mirror in her hands. She had told them earlier that the twins had experimented with a Looking Glass Charm, so that she could try and see the game, but after an hour of staring at the ordinary hand mirror, it seemed that their brilliant plan had failed. Even her usually boundless determination was beginning to falter, and she alternated between gazing at the mirror hopefully and flipping through Quidditch Through the Ages.
"Gryffindor should be very well-prepared," Aimee noted with an air of professionalism that made Dani scoff.
Aimee glanced at the other girl but otherwise seemed undisturbed, only continuing to stare at the mirror.
"Should be," Dani said. "Oliver's been drilling them to death, you know."
Lynn nodded and almost smiled. News of Oliver's Quidditch mania had reached even the carriage. The Beauxbatons girls came back whispering about the early morning training sessions and insane all-weather practices that they heard about from their Hogwarts friends, and it was impossible to miss the exhausted faces of the team at mealtimes.
It wasn't only Oliver though; as Aimee had so knowledgably informed them, the Slytherin team was doing the best they could to monopolize practice time on the pitch. Nonetheless, Oliver was unmatched in the absurd vigor with which he trained his team. From what Lynn had heard, it was the only thing he could be spoken with about these days. It worried her, knowing that he was pushing himself even farther into his obsession than normal, but there was nothing she could do.
Dani sighed and tilted her head back against the wall.
"I tried to talk to him for you," she told the older girl beside her, at which Lynn turned curiously. "You know, about how you had no choice. But it was so strange…"
Lynn could barely look at her.
"It was like he already knew—"
"Reckon he does," Aimee said simply.
Dani shot her a look but continued, the rain a dramatic backdrop to the conversation.
"Like he already knew, but it just made him that much angrier," Dani said.
Lynn frowned. She knew that he was angry because there was nothing they could do. She was angry for the same reason, tangled in infinite others.
The trio lapsed back into silence at this, all deep in different pools of thought. Lynn wasn't really surprised. Oliver wasn't an idiot and he paid closer attention to her than anything she'd ever experienced. It wasn't possible that he had any detailed idea of the wall they were really up against, but she knew that he could recognize her despair when he saw it.
She felt a perk at the thought of him jealous of her hanging on to somebody else all day. Truly though, she hated Pierre. Just walking in between classes with him as he nudged not-so-subtly closer to her at every opportunity had become torturous. He was a slimeball and he smirked every time he grasped some part of her when no one was looking.
She'd learned to block it out, keen on giving him no satisfaction from her discomfort. But the thought that somebody could hate the boy for being near her was a thrilling staple of happiness she was glad to cling to.
Sitting there in the dark carriage with her two oldest friends, listening to the rain dribble down the windows in streaks, she decided that she didn't care that this was selfish. Only the smallest joys were left to her, and she cradled them close greedily.
There would be no escape down the path Madame and Wench had her travelling. She would live, sure, probably, but she would not be free. For now, her imprisonment was laughably minor compared to what she knew might lay down the road. She would never be safe again. Though she had no way of knowing for certain, she instinctively felt that the moment she left the Hogwarts campus would be her last as a free witch.
She knew what she had seen in the forest at school...the thought of it sent a flare of panic through her stomach.
Amid the nerves dancing in her intestines she felt herself draw the threads of a conclusion before she could think of it entirely in words.
If there could be no happy, peaceful ending by behaving well, then she would not behave.