aFireFist
A Life at Hogwarts
Chapter 16 - Part 1
Hospital wing smelled like clean linen and bitter draught when the first light hit the windows.
Pomfrey had already been through twice. The second time she had stood over Ron's bed with her arms folded and told him if he tried to put weight on that leg before she said so, she would glue him to the mattress until September. Ron had believed her. Then he had asked, in the same breath, whether the house-elves were sending pudding up for the feast.
"You're not going to the feast if I have to grow that bone again," Pomfrey said.
"That's not a no on the pudding though," Ron said.
Harry did not laugh. He was sitting up against the pillows, hair flattened on one side, staring at the white ceiling like it had said something to him and then stopped. Dumbledore's visit from the afternoon before was still sitting on him. He had not told them what the Headmaster had said. Hermione had not asked. She had learned, in the last twenty-four hours, that some silences were load-bearing.
She had slept in the chair for an hour before dawn, collar pulled high, chin tucked. The silver choker sat warm against her throat the whole time. When she woke, Harry was watching her.
"You can go back to the tower," he said. "We're fine."
"I'm staying until Pomfrey kicks me out."
"She's going to kick you out."
"Then I'll stay until then."
Ron lifted his head. "If you're staying, make yourself useful and convince her about the pudding."
Hermione stood, smoothed her skirt, and checked her collar with two fingers the way she had been checking it since yesterday morning. The metal was still there. Hidden. Hers. She poured water for both of them, set Harry's glass where he could reach it without sitting up too fast, and sat back down.
Her body had not forgotten the pitch.
Every time she shifted in the chair, the ache between her legs reminded her what Roland had done to her in front of a crowd that was not real. She could still feel how wide she had been split, how the cold air had hit her when he yanked her skirt up, how her own voice had gone thin when the illusory stands roared. She crossed her ankles and kept her face neutral. Harry did not need that on top of everything else.
Pomfrey came back at seven with a tray and a look that ended the argument. Hermione was discharged. Ron was not. Harry was allowed to walk as far as the Great Hall if he did not do anything stupid.
"Define stupid," Harry said.
"Anything you would do with Weasley," Pomfrey said.
Hermione squeezed Harry's wrist once, promised she would save them seats, and left before her collar could slip.
She did not go looking for Roland.
He already knew they were alive.
He walked the upper corridor after breakfast with his hands in his pockets and did not slow when he passed the ward. The choice from two nights ago was still the choice. He had felt the old magic rise off the third floor, felt it break, felt it leave. He had stood in a dark classroom and waited until Minerva and Dumbledore started moving. That was the whole of it.
The third-floor corridor was still sealed. Students had already built three different stories about Quirrell and were arguing over which one made them sound informed. He fled. He was sacked. He was never a real professor, just a hat and a stutter. Filch had taken the rumours personally and was handing out detentions for standing too close to the rope.
The house-point hourglasses in the entrance hall were ugly with it. Slytherin green sat heavy in the glass, weeks of lead piled up where everyone could see. First-years pointed. Seventh-years did the maths out loud. Daphne Greengrass walked past them without looking up. She did not need the glass. She had been counting since Easter.
Roland went to the staff room because that was what you did when the year was dying and the Headmaster wanted bodies in chairs.
Minerva was already there. Tea. Stack of parchment she was not reading. She had her hair up the way she always did for long staff days, grey-black pulled tight enough that it pulled at the corners of her eyes. The cut of her robes did not hide her. Full tits under dark green wool. A waist that still went in. An ass that filled the chair and then some when she sat back. She looked at him over the rim of her cup and did not say good morning.
"Minerva."
"Professor Greengrass."
That was the temperature. Dumbledore sat at the end of the table with the Prophet folded into a neat rectangle, as if the front page had anything useful on it. Quirrell's absence had not made the paper yet. It would. After the feast. After the train. After it was safe to print a version that did not panic anyone.
"The feast will put certain things back in their proper order," Dumbledore said, almost to the teapot.
No one asked what order.
Minerva's mouth thinned. She poured. The pot clicked against the china.
"You felt it," she said, not looking at Roland, which meant she was talking to him.
"I did."
"And you stayed where you were."
"I did."
Dumbledore smiled at his cup like the two of them were discussing the weather in a language he enjoyed.
Minerva set the pot down harder than she needed to. "We will speak later."
"We will," Roland said.
Aurora came in then, dark and unbothered, and the conversation died the way staff-room conversations died when a third person entered. Snape followed, took one look at the hourglass report Flitwick had left on the table, and sat as if the numbers had insulted his mother. Roland drank his tea and did not add anything. There was nothing to add that would survive daylight.
History was the last useful hour of the year.
Hermione came in on time, books stacked, collar pinned. She sat in her usual seat. The apprentice announcement was still a fact in the room. A few people glanced at her neck as if they could see through fabric if they stared hard enough. They could not.
Daphne sat two rows over and to the left. She had a perfect view of Hermione's throat when Hermione turned a page.
Roland taught the hour like it was any other hour. Dates. Treaties. A messy divorce in 1612 that had started a duelling statute still on the books. He did not look at Hermione more than he looked at anyone. He did not look at Daphne at all.
"Miss Granger," he said near the end, as if he had just remembered. "The summer list is on my desk. Restricted sources. You'll want to copy it before you leave tonight. If you intend to keep the apprentice work through July, send an owl when you've finished the first two titles. Not before."
"Yes, Professor."
Her voice came out even. Under the desk her thighs were pressed together hard enough to shake. The choker had warmed when he said her name. She hated that it was that simple. She also did not take it off.
She came up after the room emptied. Daphne did not leave with the others. She took a long time packing a bag that had been packed when she sat down.
Roland slid the list across the desk. His handwriting was sharp. Three titles she had never seen in the library. One of them was in French.
"Don't try to get the third out of Madam Pince," he said. "She'll say no and then she'll ask why you asked. Wait for the owl."
"I can handle Pince."
"I know you can. That's not the problem."
Hermione glanced at the door. Daphne was still there, pretending the strap on her bag was broken.
"Is there anything else, Professor?"
"No."
She wanted there to be. She wanted his hand on the back of her neck and his mouth against the choker and the desk cleared with one sweep the way he had done it before. She wanted to tell him she had sat in the hospital wing all night with his silver on her throat and Harry breathing on one side and Ron snoring on the other, and that she had still been wet from yesterday morning when Pomfrey took her pulse. She said none of that.
"Have a good feast," she said.
"You too."
She left. The corridor outside was already loud with people who had decided History was over whether the bell had gone or not. She put her back to the stone for a second and breathed through her mouth. The list in her hand was shaking. She flattened it against her thigh, felt the heat there, and walked.
A pair of Ravenclaws passed her talking about the feast. One of them glanced at her neck and then away. Hermione kept walking.
Daphne waited until the door shut.
"Uncle."
"Daphne."
She set the bag down properly. Up close she looked like the rest of their family in miniature: pale, composed, mouth set in a line that could turn into a smile if someone paid for it. Her school robes were cut close enough to show the shape of her. High, firm tits under white cotton. A narrow waist. An ass that filled the skirt when she stood still and did more than that when she walked. She knew all of it. She used all of it. She did not use it now. This was not the hour.
"You named her in front of the whole year," Daphne said.
"I did."
"Greengrass runes on a Mudblood's throat."
"They're my runes. I put them where I want them."
Daphne's jaw flexed once. "The cup is still ours."
"Until tonight."
"You think he'll do it."
"I think Dumbledore likes a last page."
She looked at him for a long second, grey eyes flat. "If you call her up again in the Hall, I will not sit there and clap."
"I won't call her up. He might."
Daphne picked up the bag. "Then I hope she chokes on it."
She left smelling like cold air and the perfume she wore when she wanted to be her mother. Roland stacked the remaining lists, locked the drawer, and did not follow either of them.
The castle spent the afternoon pretending it was organised.
Trunks jammed the corridors. Prefects shouted themselves hoarse. Someone's owl got loose on the fourth floor and shit on a suit of armour. House-elves moved in and out of the Great Hall with the doors shut, which meant the decorations were already going up in Slytherin green and silver, because that was what the hourglasses said and house-elves did not argue with glass.
Daphne heard it in the common room from a fifth-year who thought he was being kind.
"If it stays green, they'll say your name," he said. "Greengrass. Family seats near the front."
She smiled the smile she had learned at dinner tables. "How nice."
She went to her dorm and folded robes she had already folded. Astoria's letters from home sat on the nightstand unopened. She did not open them. She sat on the edge of the bed, put her hand between her legs over her skirt, and pressed once, hard, thinking about Hermione's collar. Then she took her hand away, washed it, and pinned her hair up for the feast.
Hermione sat on her own bed in Gryffindor tower with a piece of parchment and a quill and wrote Dear Mum and Dad and then stopped. There was no version of the last two days that belonged in a letter. There was no version of the choker that belonged there either. She folded the blank sheet, put it in her trunk, and changed her collar pin so the silver sat lower, fully covered.
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