The hospital wing was eerily quiet after being fussed by professors and a couple of students, too busy to notice a girl whose robes were wet in toilet water and blood. Her tear-streaked face looked scared as she watched Madam Pomfrey check for any other injuries on the blond boy, scared to hear that he had passed away right before her eyes.
Sat down beside the boy on a wooden stool, holding his hand, caressing it to make sure the unconscious boy knows that she was there and had no intention of leaving. Some Slytherins visited but had not stuck around as much, Pansy came in and brought her something to eat as she was too stubborn to leave Draco's side. Blaise tried to convince her to return to the dungeons with him but couldn't, Theo was nowhere to be seen.
Finley would be lying if she said that she wasn't traumatized by what she just saw, her boyfriend laying on the flooded floor bleeding by the use of her own brother's wand. What luck she has, clearly someone hates her and cursed her to suffer this much. And she thought dying the first time was traumatic enough.
"Finley."
"Finley—" she snapped her face towards the person calling her, facing the hospital wing entrance was Harry. In now dry clothes, she could tell that his jaw was clenched as he stared intensely at her hand that held Draco's warming one.
"You have the gall to face me, after what you did?" She venomously says, glaring daggers his way. If looks could kill, Harry would be a mangled mess of what used to be his body.
"I didn't mean to," he quietly says, still staring at Draco's body that laid motionlessly on the bed.
"Didn't mean to?" Finley scoffed, looking down at her hands that were clasped on Draco's. Praying to whoever was willing to listen in the sky to forgive her for whatever she might do to her brother if he ever tried to say something to her. "Harry, you almost killed someone."
"I, I saw the spell in a book," Harry tries to explain, he was starting to stutter even but he continued. "I saw it in a potion book, and it's gone now, I don't know where it is and neither does anyone else."
"So what do you want me to say?" She humourlessly asked, "Good work? That book can never harm anyone again? Was the book possessed by Tom Riddle? Did he control you like what he did to Ginny?"
"No, That wasn't the point—"
"What do you mean that wasn't the point, Harry?" She frowns at him, "don't you see him laying here?"
"He was scared for his life, for his mother's, and his father's lives. He did what was asked of him, but because you don't think with that organ in your skull you might've just earned yourself a cell in Azkaban if Snape hadn't intervened," she gritted her teeth at him.
"Why is it always him? Why him?" Harry snapped at her, looking more and more crossed by the minute. "I'm your brother, we're family. Why do you care more when it comes to him than you care about me?"
She clenched her jaw, speechless most likely but she was angry about it.
"Have you ever tried to ask yourself why I turn away from you and towards them?" She asked him, letting go of Draco's hand before crossing her arms over her chest loosely. A simple frown was etched on her face as she looked at Harry who was glaring at her still, she could tell that he was upset that she was mad ad him for almost killing someone. That someone is his arch-nemesis, Draco.
"Have you ever given a thought to what drove me to them?" She asked again, standing up from the stool and walking towards him. "What have you done to earn my loyalty to you Harry? Because frankly, I've given you multiple chances to gain it and you haven't done one thing."
"We're family, we stick together—"
"How fucking naive of you," she scowled at him. "Family by blood, sure. I've done my end of the bargain and kept you safe, even lost my life once because of it too. And the one thing I asked you to do was protect us, including us, you promised us that you would help us as we help you," she grits her words, poking Harry's chest with each emphasis on the 'us' as her anger surges above.
"So tell me to my face, Harry Potter. What have you done so far to earn my loyalty? My house's loyalty?"
Harry fell silent, this time he couldn't meet her gaze, it felt like she was burning a hole in his face. For sure that if he looked up now he would be facing the red-eyed Finley who would rip his face in half if he ever tried to say something completely wrong.
"What would you have done if you were in his position?" Harry pursed his lips at her, knowing that this would be the last question he has for her before he leaves with Dumbledore. He doesn't know when he would be coming back, he just wants to talk to his sister, wanting to let her know that he didn't mean for any of this to happen. "What would you have done if you were Malfoy?"
"I would kill if it meant that it would keep you safe, Harry," she tells him, her gaze hard with a sense of anger in disappointment for him and yet held determination for what she just said. "That's the type of loyalty I have for you that I don't think you deserve."
The both of them fell into an intense silence, Finley glaring straight at Harry while the latter did his best to avoid it. Knowing well that she was angry, she could only see red, her eyes would be red. But it only made him feel worse when he looked at his sister for a brief moment to see identical green eyes staring back at him with pure disappointment and sadness.
"I came here to apologize," he said, clenching and unclenching his fists whilst looking down on the floor as if he had done something incredibly cruel. He did do something cruel, he almost killed his sister's boyfriend whom he didn't like but that wasn't an excuse. "If I had known what that spell could do, I wouldn't have used it," he adds, looking up at his sister who did not even try to look back at him anymore.
"Leave." The only thing Finley had left to say to him, as she didn't want to see her brother and hear him talk or she'd snap. Possibly strangle him herself for how stupid he was for using a spell that he didn't know what it was for, but she couldn't blame him for reacting the way that he did. She felt hurt that he didn't trust her, and as a result Draco almost lost his life.
'When did it all go wrong?'
One day she was sneaking around for answers for her curse, a way to see if maybe the Runespoor in the black lake could help her. Find out why the hell Dumbledore's compass lead her to her first death, nothing made sense and she was determined to find her answer all on her own without risking anyone else. Maybe it was her pride that lead her into this situation, maybe it was because she refused to ask for help. Or maybe, just maybe, it was because she wanted nothing to do with anything that concerned the war.
"Normally it would be me laying on this hospital bed," she said as she brings one of her hands to brush the stray hair out of Draco's pale face. "Now I know how you feel when you find me here."
She never heard a reply, only silence in the hospital wing that taunted her with its eerieness. It was a loud type of silence that it was hard to ignore on how much it was poking fun at her and her marvelous thoughts, by now she would think her 'other self' would start talking to her, but the reflection hasn't done her witty bits whenever she looked at a mirror. Then again, she steered away from any reflective surface she could find, determined that her life was easier if that red-eyed nagging reflection of hers was maimed.
"Is it always like this?" She sighed. "Holding my hand, people coming in and asking if you woke up yet or if you said anything much less moved an inch on your own? Is this what you had to go through whenever I end up here?"
"I'd be mortified if Peeves finds me here talking to you while you slept," she humourlessly laughed at herself. "I knew we should've just ran away the first chance we got," she bites her lip, stopping herself from ever shedding another tear thinking that her tear ducts couldn't handle another round of her waterworks.
She has imagined her life with him before. They would live far away from the busy streets of wherever, in a field near a lake, they'd try their best to live as muggles. Though Draco would protest to it he would still pull in some effort just for her to be happy, no one will know who they were. He wouldn't be Draco Malfoy, and she wouldn't be Finley Potter, no one would care who they were as they would only be known as the runaway pair.
Finley frowns at her thoughts, that was the coward's way out.
"Did you make Liquid Luck?"
Finley froze, slowly turning towards the person who asked. Coming in face to face with a familiar person, the traitor himself who claimed that he was on the good side though his actions prove otherwise. Sebastian stood at the foot of the bed that Draco laid on, hands shoved in his coat while his appearance looked sickly and haggard. She hasn't seen him since Slughorn's party, and for all, she knew he died and she wouldn't be sad about it.
"What's it to you?"
"Just tell me if you brewed Liquid Luck or not?"
She scoffed, "I hardly find how that is any of your business," she glared at him.
"Who did you brew it with then?" Sebastian asks her again, his foot started tapping into a rhythm that echoed in the room. He looked impatient even.
"Why?" Finley asks him, skeptical of what his purpose was in asking her these questions. She didn't have any intention of giving him an answer. "How did you get here, Sebastian?"
"You don't need to ask me that, Finley," he tells her, walking up and holding her by the shoulders surprising her. "Where did you brew that potion and with whom?"
The look on Sebastian's eyes said something. It was a mixture of panic and fear. Two things that already gave her an idea of what was going to happen next now that he was here. She's known Sebastian enough to know that panic was not a common emotion for him, neither was fear and she's only seen it twice on him.
"I don't remember."
Because this arc is ending soon.
Love,
Rayah.