She's not quite sure how it happened.
One minute, she's staring into the fire and waiting for Pig to come back with Fred's letter (they'd been talking all day) and the next second she's punching Draco in the face. He'd been sitting in the corner with his goons and Pansy, proclaiming to anyone who would listen about how the dark lord's return was a good thing for them, how the natural order of things would be returned, muggles and mudbloods would be put in their rightful place. Audra had seen his face the night before, heard the crack in his voice, and she knows that this is all just false bravdo to hide how worried he really is. But he sees her little eye roll, and even though she hunches over the letter she's writing to her parents, Draco decides that she's going to be the next target that he's going to spew venom at. "Sit on the sidelines if you want, but I'm joining the winning side while I can. And if I manage to kill your precious bloodtraitor boyfriend or one of his friends while I'm at it," He stands up, walks toward her with his trademark smirk on his face, and she feels Emmeline tense beside her, watching the two of them with worried eyes. "Then all the better."
It's not a decision to stand up, really, but she's in motion anyways. The parchment flutters to the floor, and the ink well fall to the ground, a puddle spreading slowly over the ground. It's red, like blood. Draco looks frightened when she turns her wand on him, but not nearly as much as he should be. She's having trouble deciding which curse to use, she's not sure that there's one bad enough for him, but she advances on him anyways, screaming curses. The whole room is paying attention now.
He gets off a lucky disarming jinx, and had a second to look proud of himself before he realizes that she's going to hurt him, wand or not. Audra flies at him with hands outstretched, and they both career backwards into the wall, stumble. They hit the ground, and his wand rolls underneath the sofa, leaving him defenseless.
It's so much better to hit than to curse, she thinks, as she hits him again and again. He was crying, but she doesn't care, he wants him to cry, to send a message to everyone that threats on the people she loves will not be tolerated, to teach him that no matter what place he thinks he deserves in life, he will always finish last. It's so much better to actually feel it, the skin on skin, bone on bone.
He gives up on trying to fight soon and works on sheilding his face instead. His nose is broken, and when he opens his mouth to yell, he spits blood into her face. His head is already swelling from where she slammed it into the wall, bruises forming on his cheeks. Audra wouldn't be surprised if she had broken his jaw, but she still kept going until Emmeline grabs her around the waist and pulls her away. Audra still gets in a few good kicks to his ribs before he's out of her reach.
"Audra, stop! Stop!" Ariel is there now, helping to keep her away, and someone else is hovering over Draco, casting spells to stop the bleeding. "Jesus, you're going to kill him, stop it!"
"He's going to be healed in a minute," She snarls, fighting. "He'll heal, and I can break him again."
"Stop this." The voice sounded from the doorway, the only one that could have made Audra stop fighting. Snape sweeps into the room, robes spread out behind him, and kneels beside Draco. In an instant, Draco was fine, but he still was lying curled up on the ground, gasping for air and staring at her, wide eyed. The blood was drying on his face. "Ms. Black, take Ms. Stanton to the hospital wing."
Audra only felt the pain when it was brought to her attention. Her lip was bleeding and her eye was going to bruise, she knew, but it was her hand that was screaming. She was sure she had broken every bone that she had, and the skin had split. Blood was streaming from her clenched hand, pouring from her knuckles. It made a puddle below her. "Come on," Emmeline hissed, pushing her forward. Her lip was bleeding, too. "Let's go."
But Audra paused, fighting against her one last time. She twisted to face Draco, knowing that he would pay attention to every word. "Threaten any of the Weasley's again, and you'll find out exactly how much I share with my aunt."
Madame Pomfrey mended her hand in an instant, but she left the lip and the eye to heal the muggle way, as punishment. Emmeline left her there, a little angry, probably because Audra had elbowed her in the face sometime during the fight. Audra had decided to stay and visit Harry.
"How you doing?"
He doesn't answer her, not that she blames him. Instead, pokes at her hand, which was still crusted in blood. "How'd you break your hand?"
"I broke Draco's face." He smiles, and she shrugs, pleased to make him happy even for a second. "Makes me feel better to punch things sometimes, but it's always awful after."
"I'm fine, actually. I could leave if I wanted. It's just that, not that I don't want to be around Ron and Hermione, it's just too exhausting sometimes." She doesn't comment on it, because she gets its, really, and he seems to like that better than if she had spoken. He lets her pick through the candy that had been left for him, and tells her about how he saved Ginny in his second year, as if he could convince himself that that victory would make up for the time he lost.
"I better go, Harry." She rests her hand on his shoulder. "But if you need anything, you come find me, alright?"
The time for her help came a few days later. She had been sitting with Ron and Hermione, telling them the story of how she broke Draco's nose, teeth, cheekbone, jaw, and lower ribs in one go, when Fred skidded around the corner. "Girls are scary," Ron said, awestruck. "Brilliant, all of you, but you're bloody terrifying."
"Audra?" Fred comes up behind them. "Can I talk to you?"
"Yeah." She knows right away that something is wrong, can tell that the smile on his face is wrong and his shoulders are too tense. The worry coiled up in her stomach, wondering what could have happened. "What's wrong?"
"It's Harry. He, well, he broke his hand and he needs someone to fix it."
"He what?" She had been jogging to keep up with him, but now they were running towards the statue of the humpbacked witch. It was the one that led to Honeydukes, where apparenltly Harry and George were waiting. "Why didn't he go to Madame Pomfrey?"
"He broke it himself." They were whispering, slowing to a walk as the statue came into sight. "Me and George found him, just standing by the lake hitting this tree, over and over. His hand was a mess, bleeding and everything, and I think he broke all his fingers. I told him you could fix it, mended us enough times." The statue slid over, revealing George and Harry. Harry was clutching his arm to his chest, and George was hugging Harry like he sometimes hugs Ron. The sight made her chest hurt.
"Hey, Harry." She crawled in beside them. "Heard you lost to a tree."
"Yeah." He laughed, but the sound cut off in a choke. "You know how you said that you feel better after you punch things? It didn't work."
"Well, to be fair," She took his hand in hers, unbent the fingers, ignored the blood that was smearing her skin. "The thing I punched was an annoying prat. I can probably find him somewhere if you want to take a turn."
He laughs, then gives a strangled cry as she made his hand go flat. She rapped it with her wand, starting at the wrist and moving up. It hurts to have a bone mended like this, each break that gets healed a tiny flash of heat and pain. Audra had once reduced George to tears when she mended his leg in four different places, but Harry didn't look concerned. The skin takes a few passes to knit back together, but when she's done, it looks like he didn't do anything. "There." She helped him make a fist, then straighten back out. "It'll be stiff for a while, but it should be okay."
"thanks, Audra." Harry sniffed, thanked Fred and George, then dissappeared out into the corridor.
"Jesus." George said, staring after where he disappeared. "Poor bloke."
"Can't imagine." Fred said. "He's going to be a nutter by the end of this, isn't he?"
"What are you talking about?" Audra's voice was sharp.
"I mean, he's watched Cedric get blasted away like he's nothing," George said, using his robes to wipe the blood of his hands. "Met you-know-who in the flesh three times now. How many more of us do you think he's going to watch die before this is over?"
"No one in this bloody tunnel is dying!" She yells, and then she bursts into tears. It's an action that shocks her as much as it shocks them, and George looks horrified.
"Aw, Audra, no, don't do that." He rubbed at her arm.
"We're going to be fine." Fred pulled her into a hug, staring pointedly at his brother. "The three of us are going to get out of this just fine, you'll see. Nothing seems able to hurt us, you know that."
And she did know that, had watched them walk away unharmed from things that should have killed them ten times over. Still, it didn't do anything to warm the icy fear that seemed to swell in her chest as she thought about the coming days. Yet, it's hard to think that two people as alive as the twins could ever die. It seemed silly to even consider.
"Yeah. Yeah, I know." She stares down at her hands, the ones that were stained in blood. "Just, poor Harry."
And, yeah. Poor Harry.