Harry Potter
Harry woke up and he groaned, feeling his back burn like fire. His back felt like someone had stretched the skin two sizes too small and then asked him to lie on it for three days straight, which, he supposed, was more or less exactly what had happened.
He cracked one eye open. The Hospital Wing was washed in the pale grey of early morning, sunlight filtering weakly through the high windows. Three mornings now, he'd woken to this same view. He was beginning to recognize the particular angle the light came through at this hour, which Harry felt was not a thing a person should have time to learn about a hospital ceiling. Cedric's bed was empty, sheets folded at the foot, his father's chair pushed neatly back against the wall. Discharged yesterday afternoon, with much fanfare from Amos and much eye-rolling from Cedric when his father wasn't looking. Krum had been gone since the first morning, sheets pulled tight, like he'd never been there at all. Harry wasn't surprised. Krum struck him as the sort who'd rather crawl out of a hospital bed on broken bones than spend an extra minute being looked after.
Fleur's blue curtain was still drawn. Through the gap, Harry could see her father in the chair beside her bed, his silver-blond head bent over a battered paperback. The man had been here every morning, in the same chair, with what looked like the same book, though he must have made progress through it by now. Harry squinted. The cover showed a man in a coat standing in the rain. The title looked French and the binding looked Muggle, and something about that, a French aristocrat with a creased Muggle novel propped on his knee while his daughter recovered from a dragon attack, made Harry's chest do something complicated. A father reading to his daughter...it must feel nice.
He shifted, and the shifting was a mistake. A sharp pull ran from his right shoulder blade down to the small of his back, and Harry sucked air through his teeth.
"Don't," said Madam Pomfrey, appearing at his bedside like she'd been waiting for the cue. "Slowly. We talked about this."
"I don't remember talking about anything," Harry said. "I remember being unconscious."
"Then we'll consider this our first conversation on the subject. Slowly, Mr. Potter."
Harry eased himself upright by inches. The world held still, which he counted as a victory. Pomfrey watched him like a hawk.
"Sirius?" Harry asked, because he could see the dark shape slumped in the chair next to his bed, and his godfather's hair was doing something genuinely concerning.
"Has been there since last night," Pomfrey said. "Refused tea. Refused supper. Refused to leave. I gave up trying around two in the morning. Third night running. I'm beginning to think he lives here now."
Sirius's head was tipped to one shoulder, his mouth slightly open, one leg stretched out and the other tucked under him. He was going to have an absolute monster of a crick in his neck when he woke up.
"He's going to feel terrible when he gets up," Harry said quietly.
"He's going to feel worse if I have to hex him into a proper bed," Pomfrey said. She produced a small vial of something pale blue and pressed it into Harry's palm. "Every six hours. Not before, not after. If you take it more often than that, it stops working, and if you take it less, you'll know about it. I want you to set a watch by it."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Don't 'yes ma'am' me, Potter, I've heard you 'yes ma'am' me before."
"Yes, ma'am, but with more sincerity this time."
Her mouth twitched. She covered it by frowning harder.
"Two days, no classes. Five days, no strenuous magic. That includes anything you're doing in that classroom on the fourth floor that you think I don't know about."
Harry tried to look innocent. He wasn't sure his face cooperated.
"I get reports," Pomfrey said. "From portraits. From a ghost or two. From a very chatty house-elf who thinks I worry too much. Two days. Five Days. Are we clear?"
"Crystal."
"Hm." She tucked the vial into his hand and closed his fingers around it. "If your back stiffens up, warm compresses. If the skin starts itching badly enough to scratch, you come straight back to me. Itching is the body trying to heal, which is good, but you tear that skin open and we start over, which is not."
"Got it."
"You did a brave and stupid thing three days ago, Mr. Potter."
Harry blinked. "Thank you?"
"It wasn't a compliment."
"Right. Noted."
She tutted. She moved off toward Fleur's bed, and Harry heard a quiet exchange of French and Pomfrey's brisk tones overlapping each other through the curtain. Five days, she'd said. The second round of the Duelling Race was in four. Harry did the maths and decided Madam Pomfrey would simply have to be lied to about something.
Harry looked at Sirius. He thought about waking him gently. He thought about letting him sleep. He was still deciding when the doors at the far end of the Wing opened, and Andromeda Tonks swept in.
She stopped at the foot of his bed, took in the state of her cousin, took in the state of Harry, and lifted one elegant eyebrow.
"He hasn't moved in hours, has he," she said.
"Not that I've seen," Harry said. "But to be fair, I was asleep for most of it."
"Mm." She bent over Sirius and put a hand on his shoulder, light at first, then firmer. "Sirius. Up."
Sirius made a noise that wasn't a word.
"Sirius Orion Black, if you do not open your eyes in the next ten seconds I will conjure cold water and I will not be sorry."
Sirius opened his eyes. They were red around the edges and unfocused for the first half-second. Then they snapped to Harry, and everything else in his face rearranged.
"You're awake," Sirius said. His voice came out cracked.
"I have been for a few minutes," Harry said. "How was your nap?"
"It wasn't a nap."
"You were drooling a bit."
"I was not."
"Slightly."
Sirius scrubbed a hand down his face and then immediately leaned forward, his whole attention on Harry. "How's the back? Pain level. One to ten. Honest answer, I'll know if you lie."
"Four. Maybe five if I move wrong."
"Pomfrey come round?"
"Just left. I have a vial. Every six hours. No magic for five days, no classes for two days, no scratching, no fourth-floor classroom, she knows about the fourth-floor classroom, by the way."
"How does she know about the fourth-floor classroom?"
"Portraits, apparently. And a ghost."
"Bloody portraits," Sirius muttered.
Andromeda was looking at her cousin with exasperation. "Sirius. Bed. A real one. You have a guest room arranged at the school, in case you've forgotten."
"In a minute."
"Now."
"In a minute, Andy."
Andromeda sighed and turned to Harry. She bent and kissed the top of his head briefly, the way she might kiss one of her own.
"You did very well three days ago," she said quietly. "And you scared the life out of all of us. Both of those things are still true, even after seventy-two hours of repeating them at each other."
"That tracks," Harry said.
"Yes. It does." She straightened, businesslike again. "Dora sent something. She had to leave at dawn, an early shift. She said she'd come by tomorrow."
She produced a folded piece of parchment from her sleeve and handed it over. Harry unfolded it.
The page was a riot of moving ink. A stick-figure Harry in the middle, wand raised. A stick-figure dragon on the left, with crosses for eyes. Another stick-figure dragon on the right, also with crosses for eyes. A third on the bottom, on fire, somehow, by its own doing. A fourth at the top, frozen solid with little snowflakes drifting from it. Across the top, in Tonks's familiar scrawl, ringed by tiny bouncing hearts:
ONE DOWN, TWO TO GO, YOU MAGNIFICENT DISASTER. STOP SCARING ME. LOVE, NYM. (DO NOT CALL ME NYM.)
Harry laughed and immediately regretted it as his back complained. He held the parchment up so Sirius could see, and Sirius looked at it and snorted.
"She's worse than I am," Sirius said.
"You set the bar," Andromeda said. "Up, Sirius. Now. Harry needs to walk himself back to his tower and he doesn't need an audience for it. Especially not one that looks like you do at the moment."
Sirius dragged himself upright. He was unsteady for a beat. Sirius came round the side of the bed and put his hand, very carefully, on the side of Harry's head, the way he'd been doing since the summer when he wanted to make sure Harry was real.
"You scared me half to death three days ago," Sirius said. "And the day after that. And the day after that, for good measure."
"I know."
"I want you to know I am proud of you."
"I know that too."
"I also want you to know that if you ever, ever, fly into superheated dragon vapor on purpose again, I am going to personally lock you in a Gringotts vault and slide your meals under the door."
"They don't have that." Harry muttered with a smile, and Sirius snorted.
Sirius's hand stayed where it was for a moment longer. Then he stepped back. He squared his shoulders, ran a hand through his already messy hair, and let Andromeda steer him toward the door.
"I'll come find you this evening," Sirius called over his shoulder.
"After you've slept," Andromeda corrected, without looking back.
"After I've slept," Sirius amended. "Probably. Unlikely. We'll see."
The doors closed behind them. The Hospital Wing settled.
Harry let out a breath. He stared at the ceiling. Then he stared at Tonks's drawing again. A small warm thing moved under his ribs, the way it always did when he thought about the four of them, Sirius, Andy, Ted, Dora. Family, his brain offered, and he didn't argue with it this time.
He folded the parchment carefully and tucked it into the pocket of the dressing gown someone had put over his nightshirt.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Slowly. Pomfrey had said slowly and Pomfrey, in Harry's considered opinion, was a witch one obeyed.
His feet found the cold flagstones. He stood. The room kept its dimensions, which he counted as a second victory. He bent to reach for his school robes, which someone had folded on the chair, and a fresh line of fire drew itself across his shoulder blades. He hissed.
He got dressed in tiny careful increments. Shirt over head, slowly. Arms through sleeves, slowly. Trousers, easier. Socks, easier still. Robe last, because the robe touched his back along its entire length and Harry needed three goes at it before he found an angle that didn't make him swear.
When he was finally upright and clothed and only slightly clammy with the effort, he picked up the vial of pale blue potion and slipped it into his inner pocket next to Tonks's drawing. He was just about to take the first step toward the door when the blue curtain across the wing slid back on its rings.
Fleur stepped out.
She was dressed, properly dressed, in a clean set of Beauxbatons robes that someone, probably her father, had brought from the carriage. Her hair was pulled into a loose braid over one shoulder, and her father stood just behind her with a hand resting between her shoulder blades, as if he were prepared to catch her if she swayed. She wasn't swaying. She stood the way she always stood, like she was a princess.
She saw him. He saw her seeing him. Three days of not quite looking at each other, and now there was nowhere to look but here.
Her father murmured something in French. Fleur answered, also in French, without turning her head. Whatever she said made the man's mouth tilt slightly. He stepped back, picked up his coat and his battered Muggle paperback from the chair, and inclined his head toward Harry from across the wing.
Fleur crossed the few steps between her bed and his. Her boots made very little sound on the flagstones.
"So, you leave also today, zen," she said.
"Looks like it," Harry said. "How's your back?"
"'Ealed. Madame Pomfrey, she says I am free to go." She paused, her eyes lingering on the bandages just visible at his collar. "And yours?"
"Less healed. But she's letting me out anyway. I think she wants the bed back."
"Mm." Fleur's eyes moved over his face once, the way a healer might check for fever, and Harry felt his cheeks burning up a little. "You are walking wizout 'elp?"
"Walking, yes. Unaided, mostly. The walls and I have an understanding."
A small breath escaped her, the closest thing to a laugh he'd heard from her in weeks. It went away as quickly as it came, tucked back behind whatever polished expression she kept for public consumption.
"Ze second round," she said, "eet ees in four days."
"I'm aware."
"You weel compete?"
"Yes."
"I 'ad assumed zat you would," she said. "I weeshed only to be certain."
"And you?"
"But of course." She lifted her chin slightly, which was a familiar gesture. "I deed not survive un dragon to seet out a round of duelling because of a bruise."
"A bruise," Harry repeated.
"A leetle bruise."
"A small bruise that broke your spine."
"Eet was not broken. Eet was only fractured. Madame Pomfrey, she was very clear on zis distinction."
"Right. My mistake. Hardly worth mentioning, really."
The corner of her mouth moved. Across the ward, her father had drifted to the doors and was waiting.
Fleur glanced at him, then back at Harry. Something in her shoulders eased, just slightly, and the polish slipped a fraction.
"Potter."
"Delacour."
"I 'ave not yet said to you zank you. Properly."
"You said it in the hospital wing."
"I said eet lying down. Wiz a fever. While drugged. Eet does not count, zis."
"I think it counts."
"Eet does not." She drew herself up half an inch, and her accent thickened the way it did when she was trying to be precise. "Zree days ago, you caught me. I would not 'ave remembered you doing eet, except zat I deed. I remember your voice. I remember zat you 'ave said to me I was safe. So." She paused, and for once, Fleur Delacour seemed to be looking for a word. Her eyes stayed on his. "Zank you. Properly."
Harry felt his ears go warm. He wished, briefly and intensely, that he had taken the pain potion before this conversation, on the grounds that it might have anaesthetized whatever was happening in his face.
"You're welcome," he said. "Properly."
She held his eyes for another moment, long enough for him to notice the flecks of grey-blue in hers, and then she gave him a small nod. She turned and walked back across the wing to her father without looking back. Monsieur Delacour offered her his arm, and she took it. The doors of the Hospital Wing opened and closed behind them with a soft, solid thud, and the wing was quiet again, with only the distant rattle of Madam Pomfrey doing something with vials in the far cupboard.
Harry stood very still for a count of three.
Right, he thought. Walking. The plan was walking.
He walked.
He kept his pace even, and he kept his pace slow. His ribs complained with every step, so he didn't push too hard. Halfway to the door, he fished the small vial out of his pocket, looked at the pale amber liquid inside it, considered, decided he didn't need it yet, and put it back.
The doors of the Hospital Wing opened with their usual heavy creak, and Harry stepped out into the corridor expecting it to be empty.
It was not empty.
There were students. A lot of students. For seven in the morning, three days after the First Task, on a day when most people should have been at breakfast or still in bed, the corridor outside the Hospital Wing looked uncomfortably like the entrance to a Quidditch match. There were Hufflepuffs. There were Ravenclaws whispering behind their hands. There were a pair of Slytherin fifth-years leaning against the wall.
Harry stopped in the doorway for half a second. Several heads turned. A ripple went through the crowd.
Wonderful, Harry thought. Just what I wanted. An audience.
He started walking.
"It's him."
"He's up. I told you he'd be up today."
"Bloody hell, look at him, he's walking."
He kept his pace even. He kept his shoulders relaxed, because the alternative was holding them in a way that pulled at the burn down his back, and he had no intention of giving anyone in this corridor the satisfaction of watching him wince. His back, for its part, was making a strong case that this was an unfair burden to place on it. Harry told his back it could file a complaint later.
A group of third-year Ravenclaws had clustered near the suit of armour by the south stairwell. As Harry drew level with them, one of them, a small boy with a freckle on his cheek the size of a Knut, started clapping. The girl beside him joined in half a beat later, and then the rest of them, and for a second the corridor was full of the bright, slightly off-tempo applause of children who had decided they were doing something meaningful.
Harry walked past without looking at them. The applause faltered, then fell off entirely.
Behind him, someone whispered, "Maybe he didn't see us."
"He saw you," another voice murmured. "He's just tired, probably."
I'm not tired, Harry thought. I'm just not interested.
A few yards further on, a knot of older students were pretending to be deep in. Patricia Stimpson stood at the centre of them, sixth-year, prefect, the long dark hair she was always tossing currently arranged over one shoulder. Harry remembered Patricia clearly. He remembered her in this exact corridor, two weeks ago, telling a group of first-years that "we" needed to stop making excuses for Harry Potter, that "we" couldn't keep pretending he hadn't humiliated the house, that "people like him" were the reason Ravenclaw had become a joke.
Now her face broke open into a smile when she saw him.
"Harry," she said, stepping forward. "Oh, Harry, you were absolutely brilliant. The whole house has been so worried about you."
Harry stopped walking. He looked at her. He took in the careful smile.
He didn't smile. He didn't say anything. He held her gaze for a count of two, and then he started walking again.
Patricia's smile stayed fixed for a moment after he'd passed. Then it dropped. He heard one of her friends, a thin voice trying for an apology Harry hadn't asked for, "Patty, I don't think he,-" and then another voice cutting across it, sharper, low. He kept walking.
Two corridors and a staircase to go. The staircase was going to be the worst part. Stairs and a back full of healing skin were not a combination he was looking forward to.
"Harry."
A voice at his shoulder. Anthony Goldstein had fallen into step beside him, somewhere out of the crowd. Anthony, who Harry had shared a dormitory with for three and a half years. Anthony, who had moved his trunk further from Harry's bed the night after the Goblet spat his name out, like Harry's bad luck might be contagious. The same one who wore those ridiculous badges that Malfoy had made, he noticed the badge was gone now.
"How're you feeling?" Anthony said. He was talking fast. "You look better than I thought. Honestly, mate, when they brought you out of that tent I thought, that's it, that's. Bloody hell. Can I carry something? Have you got a bag or anything?"
Harry kept walking.
"Genuinely, mate, if you need a hand. The stairs to the tower, especially, that's a lot, with your back. I can take your robes if you want, or."
"I think I can manage," Harry said.
Anthony nodded, eager. "Right, no, of course, I just,—"
"I've been managing for weeks, actually." Harry didn't look at him. He picked a point on the corridor wall ahead and kept his eyes on it. "Funny how that works."
There was a small, terrible silence. Anthony's face, in Harry's peripheral vision, went the same red Hermione Granger went when Snape called on her unprepared. Harry kept walking. After three more steps Anthony stopped following. Harry heard him retreat back into the .
The whispers behind him changed pitch. He'd taught them something. They'd learn it or they wouldn't.
The climb was a study in small humiliations. Every step pulled at his back. By the third turn of the spiral he was breathing through his nose, slow and deliberate, the way Tonks had taught him to breathe through pain in their Room of Requirement sessions. In through the nose for four. Hold for two. Out for six. The trick is to bore your nervous system into giving up. It worked. It did work. It just worked very slowly when you were also climbing a hundred-odd steps of medieval stonework with no handrail.
He stopped twice. He told himself it was to look at the view. He didn't fool himself for a second.
When he reached the landing outside Ravenclaw Tower he stood for a moment getting his breath back. The bronze eagle knocker watched him with its head tilted slightly to one side, the way it did when it was thinking up a riddle that pleased itself.
"Mr. Potter," the eagle said, in its dry, considered voice. "I believe you are owed a softer one this morning. Try this. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?"
"A person," Harry said. He rested his forehead against the cool wood of the door for a second. "Crawls as a baby, walks as an adult, uses a stick when they're old."
"Correct."
"Was that really the softer one?"
"It is one of the oldest riddles in the world," the eagle said serenely. "There is dignity in tradition."
"Right. Thanks."
The door swung open.
Harry's expectations, going through it, had been modest. Luna, possibly, if she was in. A few quiet greetings from people who weren't sure what they were supposed to say to him. A clear shot to the dormitory stairs and a chance to lie down on his stomach for an hour and pretend the world had stopped moving.
What he got instead was a wall of sound.
The common room erupted. Like in a Quidditch match when someone caught the Snitch, a great surging cheer that bounced off the high vaulted ceiling and the curved blue walls and came back at him twice. Students were on their feet. Students were on chairs. Someone, somewhere, was banging on a tabletop in rhythm.
Harry stopped one pace inside the door.
There were banners. Two of them, hung from the rafters by what looked like a Sticking Charm that had been done in a hurry. One read RAVENCLAW'S CHAMPION in bronze paint that had run slightly down the cloth. The other read BRAINS OVER BRAWN, with a small, hopeful eagle drawn in the corner. They had not been there three days ago. They had certainly not been there a month ago, when half the people now cheering had been actively distancing themselves from him in this very room.
The cheering started to falter when people realized Harry hadn't moved or smiled.
Harry let his eyes travel slowly around the room.
Roger Davies was conspicuously absent. Harry hadn't expected him; Roger had been ghosting around the edges of Ravenclaw life ever since Hogsmeade, and his loss to Harry in the first round of the Duelling Race had not improved matters. Roger now apparently took his meals at strange hours and slept somewhere other than his dormitory. Harry felt fairly sure he was sleeping in the library. Madam Pince would either have noticed and not cared, or noticed and put up a very small sign.
The rest of them were here, though. Padma Patil, halfway across the room. Terry Boot, by the fire. Michael Corner. Mandy Brocklehurst. Stephen Cornfoot. A whole pack of fifth- and sixth-years he'd had Charms with, who had spent the last four weeks finding new and interesting ways to sit at different tables from him in the Great Hall.
Padma was the first one to move.
"Harry," she said, and her smile was so wide it was nearly a wound. "Oh, Harry, you have no idea. We were so worried about you. We were beside ourselves, honestly. Of course we knew you'd be brilliant, but,—"
"Of course you did," Harry said.
Padma blinked. The smile stayed on, frozen.
"Funny how that certainty arrived," Harry said, "right around the time I survived a dragon."
The smile cracked. Padma's mouth opened, very slightly, and closed again, and she did not seem to have anywhere to put her hands. There was silence in the room now.
Terry Boot stepped forward. Terry, to his small credit, looked like he had been working up to this and had practised the opening line in his head. "Harry. Look. About everything before,—"
"About everything before what, exactly?"
His words made him stop in his tracks.
"You've known me for three and a half years, Terry. Three and a half. We've shared a dormitory. We've shared meals. You've watched me work, you've copied my Charms notes when Flitwick assigned that essay on Sympathetic Magic, you've sat next to me in every Defence class since first year." Harry let his eyes travel along the line of faces. "Three and a half years, and the moment the Goblet spat my name out, every single one of you decided I was the kind of person who'd cheat his way into a tournament that's killed champions before. Not 'wait and see.' Not 'something doesn't add up.' Just, straight to guilty."
A long pause. He let it stretch.
"Ravenclaw's supposed to be the house of wit. The house of reason. The house that's meant to think. And every single one of you became a sheep the second the rest of the school started bleating. You followed the crowd. You took the easiest reading of the evidence and ran with it because it was simpler than putting on the work that maybe your housemate is not wrong."
Several people had gone very still. Mandy Brocklehurst was looking at her shoes. Stephen Cornfoot had folded his arms, and a few looked annoyed with Harry, as if his words had soiled the festive mood in the common room or that he was being unfair.
"And now what?" Harry said. "Now I've come out of a tent with a golden egg and burns down my back, so suddenly you're all clapping. Banners up. Smiles on. But not one of you, not one, has actually said the words. You're acting like the last month never happened, so you can all sit at the same table you sat at before and pretend you were never wrong in the first place."
A long quiet. The fire spat once in the grate.
Then Terry Boot said, in a voice that had gone unsteady, "I'm sorry."
Harry looked at him. Terry's face was still beetroot, but he was looking at Harry now instead of at the floor, which was something.
"It's not much," Terry said. "I know it isn't. I should have known better. I did know better, honestly, and I went along with it anyway because it was easier than not, and that's the worst part of it. I'm not asking you to forgive me. I just, you should hear it said properly. I'm sorry, Harry. I was wrong, and you were right, and I should have known better."
Harry hadn't expected Terry, of all people, to find the courage to say it first.
"Me too," said Mandy, from the windowsill. Her voice was small. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have listened to,—I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."
Stephen Cornfoot unfolded his arms with a visible effort and said, to the carpet at first and then to Harry, "Yeah. I'm sorry, mate. I was a coward about it. I knew I was being a coward at the time. That's. Yeah. I'm sorry."
Anthony Goldstein opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "I should have said it in the corridor downstairs," he said finally. "I'm sorry, Harry. Properly."
Padma was still standing where she'd planted herself in the middle of the room, hands hanging at her sides now, and Harry could see her composing the sentence on her face before she said it. "I'm sorry," she said. The brightness had gone out of her entirely. "I am. I'm really sorry."
He drew a slow breath.
"All right," he said.
He did not say I forgive you. He did not say it's fine. He said all right, in the voice of a person making a note in a ledger.
"I'm going to bed."
Padma stepped sideways out of his path without being asked. People moved out of his way the rest of the way, the crowd parting in small jerky steps. The banner reading RAVENCLAW'S CHAMPION drifted a little in the draft from the door.
Harry reached the staircase that led up to the boys' dormitories. He put his hand on the banister. He went up.
The dormitory door closed behind him with a soft click.
Harry stood in the middle of the room he'd shared for three and a half years with four other boys, looked at his own bed, and let his shoulders drop for the first time that morning.
His back screamed at him.
Slowly, he lay on his stomach, resting his head on the pillow, and tried to close his eyes and rest a little.
"Zank you. Properly."
Harry heard her voice and wondered if she would ever apologize for being wrong, or act like it never happened, or maybe she didn't care enough to do either. In a way, Harry could understand that. Fleur would leave at the end of the year, and most likely never see his face again, so why bother apologizing? But he still remembered her shocked face when it was announced that the first task was dragons, and he felt that she would not let this one slide if her mind changed about him.
Yet, would it even matter? Whatever this...whatever this was between them...it wouldn't last long even if it felt real.