I idled the rest of my month away dutifully going to classes, taking breakfast and supper in the Great Hall, then returning to Ravenclaw Tower to do homework in seclusion. Rinse. Repeat. It was now the latter half of March, my brother still comatose, and I pretended the future I once envisioned for myself and Thomas wasn't slipping through my fingers, because if I didn't think about it, then maybe it wasn't true.
No headway had been made in further identifying his attacker, not that anyone besides me thought he'd been attacked at all. "He lost his footing on the stairs and fell backwards over the railing," they said, blind to the sheer level of coincidence that would need to be involved, blind to the height of the banister and the comparative height of my brother.
I needed to try harder. No excuses. I no longer had any task-related clues to work through. All there was left to do was wait for the third task, come what may, but at least it gave me a brief respite to turn my attention on uncovering any links between my (or potentially Frey's?) poisoning and Thomas's incident. Although I intended to investigate every angle, I would be lying if I claimed I wasn't positive it was Mr Malfoy's doing.
Still, there were other things to worry about, too.
"How's Damon doing?" I asked, glancing at Lyra sidelong while stirring our shared cauldron in careful thrice clockwise, twice counterclockwise strokes.
She didn't lift her dark brown eyes from chopping our pickled bat spleen to answer. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"
I sighed. "I know I haven't been around to see him. I've been—"
"Busy?" Now she did look up, sharply. "Too busy for us still? I was giving you a pass because you had the second task to prepare for, but you've overextended that excuse. The task was ages ago and you still take no action to reach out when Damon's mom died?" Her words came out in a low hiss, meant only for me and masked beneath the bubbling cauldrons and distracted chatter of our fellow classmates. "I love you, Alice, some part of me always will, but tell me the truth: are we even your friends at this point?"
When she didn't continue, I knew the question wasn't rhetorical and she actually expected a response.
"Of course we're friends! What type of question is that?" My stirring turned haphazard, the direction to spin in alternating cycles completely abandoned. "But it sounds like you really don't want to be."
"I don't want to be?" He chopping similarly took an aggressive edge, and was not at all even. "I'm not the one who barely hangs around anymore. If it weren't for classes, I don't think I would have seen you at all lately, and you only sleep a few minutes walk away from where I do! You aren't putting any effort into our friendship — ANY of our friendships — and you know what? You haven't been for long before Damon's mom passed."
Our voices were no longer hushed, and I was too caught up in our own little world to notice the hush that descended everywhere else.
"Have you been poisoned recently, Lyra? Is your brother comatose with no signs of waking up? Have you ever been put in an arena with a cockatrice and seen your life flash before your eyes, or had your deepest fears played out for hundreds of people to judge? Have you ever been faced with the reality that you are magically obligated to continue putting yourself in situations where you might die for no good reason?" I was so incensed that my filter utterly dissolved, and I couldn't stop to think what facts I had been keeping from her and what she already knew. "Have you lived amongst muggles who would hang you if they discover exactly what you are, but still be persecuted by your own government if you get caught defending yourself? Have you ever worried that your blood-purist family wants to purge the bloodline of any mixed blood by shedding your blood? No, you wouldn't have, because you're pureblood, and you have parents, ones that actually care, surrounded by centuries of luxury, so you never have to worry about your future or safety." I stood up, breathless, the harsh screech of my bench dragging across the stone floor slicing through the shocked silence following my brutal dressing down. Then, I smiled without my eyes. "But no, tell me exactly how I am a bad friend. Obviously, my priorities need adjusting to suit you, of all people. Obviously, your entitlement to my time is more important than any of my own issues."
I left in a cold fury, as opposed to a hot one. My steps out the door and into the corridor were measured and unrushed. Maybe I would regret my candor later, but as I was at that moment my heart felt like a frozen, shriveled thing, and I meant every word.
"Alice Lovett, you are not permitted to leave for another twenty minutes," Professor Aragon called sternly after my retreating back. "I'll be forced to give you detention!"
"I'll see you at seven in your office, sir. Same time as always," I said, not breaking my stride, because anywhere was better than that room at that exact moment. I didn't want to see her face for at least a few days.
My steps weren't the only ones echoing down the empty corridor. Under normal circumstances, my paranoia might have forced my hand to investigate, except I almost welcomed an attack. At least it would allow me to let off some steam.
"Alice."
The unexpectedness of that next voice actually slowed me in my tracks, though not surprising enough to halt me completely. "Yes? What do you want? Head back to class."
Abiel hesitated a few steps behind me in that echoing stone corridor, too quiet, now that the door to Potions had swung closed. I could sense his indecision: to follow, or to let me be. He just needed a little push.
"Go on," I urged quietly. "I don't need a partner with me in detention."
When I didn't hear any further movement behind me as I continued on my path through the castle, I was almost... disappointed. I think I wanted someone to care enough to chase after me, but why would they, when all I was good for was chasing others away and lashing out at people for things that had nothing to do with them.
My list of friends grew increasingly thin.
And a destructive part of me wanted to continue wiping that slate clean, or to destroy it entirely.
If I had no one else to care for, no one else to mind, I could be as cut-throat as I needed to survive. I wouldn't have to hang out for hours in other people's common rooms when all I really wanted was to be alone for awhile, I wouldn't have to be considerate of the state of their lives, when I could barely bring myself to think of my own without feeling like Atlas, the titan slowly crushed by the weight of holding up the entire world.
I wanted so desperately not to feel so alone, while simultaneously cutting every thread of friendship I ever had, because in the fragile balancing act of life, friendship was the only thing I had left to drop without causing irreparable harm to myself or my brother.
I didn't know what to do anymore.
I slumped against the wall, and slowly, slid to the floor, where I stayed, minutes passing into hours. The corridor was a remote one, suffering few, if any, travelers a day, so although it lacked in comfort, I couldn't think anywhere else I'd rather be, unable to manifest any more remote locations I could reach without first running into people. For now, it had to do.
When somebody came looking, my dormitory would be the first place they searched, then the library, by the lake, and up in the astronomy tower.
If anyone came looking at all. I wasn't entirely sure they would. I hoped they might, and I also didn't. At worst, I was hypocritical; at best, I was chocked full of multitudes.
6:45 came too soon. My joints stiff from disuse, I climbed achingly to my feet and made off for my promised detention. The door to the professor's office was only barely peaked ajar as I approached. I knocked twice before pushing it the rest of the way open, lingering in the doorway for Professor Aragon to take notice.
He sat at his desk facing me, grading papers by candlelight, pointedly not looking up upon my entry. His quill scratched across some poor student's homework, sketching through words and making notes in the margins. I watched him dissect the essay in silence, minutes ticking by slowly, candle wax dripping ever so gradually lower around the wick. His criticisms seemed especially harsh today, from what I could tell. More often than not, he usually gave full credit for turning something in so long as it was both legible and on topic.
Finally, after what must have been over a half hour of waiting, eyes unwavering from a different student's handiwork, he asked, "What is going on, Miss Lovett?"
"I'm here for my detention, sir."
"That's not what I'm asking." He slid the paper away and folded his arms across his chest. "Sit."
It didn't sound like a request, so I acquiesced.
"You are obviously distressed," he said.
That was a rather silly assessment, given I doubted a single person in his classroom had missed a moment of my nervous breakdown against Lyra. It didn't take a genius potions prodigy like him to figure that much out.
"I'm fine." I matched his posture. "Can't you see? I've never been better."
"Right."
We lapsed back into silence. He evidently hoped to make me uncomfortable enough to elaborate, but, little did he know, I loved a good awkward silence, and wouldn't be the first to break. I'd ride out this whole detention in silence if I had to.
Anyway, what was there left to say? I'd bared everything out for Lyra and everyone around us to hear. He heard it, too. What more did he want from me?
After an impressive pause, his sigh shattered our tense quite, and I tried not to look too pleased at my win.
"I am only trying to help you," he said, "but you are trying your best not to be helped."
I'd resolved myself to putting on a brave face, to maintaining a stiff upper lip, and letting the detention pass around me without interacting. Even being able to anticipate this interrogation ahead of time failed to prevent me from openly scoffing at his statement.
"What can you do to help me?" Although I was outwardly laughing, as cutting a laugh as it was, one of my hands curled into a fist from where it was tucked beneath the opposing arm. "You have never been around when I needed you. Nobody has."
"Never?" There was something in his tone I hadn't heard before, like standing at the precipice before a fall to anger, made all the more daunting due to the fact that I couldn't recall a time I had ever seen him angry. Now that he was, and because of me, I wasn't sure if I was alarmed or pleased to see something beyond his usual mild persona. "So you would have been fine if I let you break your neck during the first task? Or if I hadn't produced a cure to that poison during the Yule Ball? I suppose devoting every minute of my personal time to developing a potion for the second task that would minimise danger to the students involved doesn't count as helping you, does it?"
"You were creating that potion anyway. That had nothing to do with me."
"You are one student, Miss Lovett, amongst hundreds that I teach every year," he said, voice rising, and with it, he himself rose to his feet, palms placed flat at either end of his desk. "I cannot give anyone special treatment, even you. Did you expect me to help you cheat on the task? It would not be fair."
"You don't think I know that?" I spat, though his words stung more than I cared to admit.
I could know something with strict certainty and still be affected by it, hurt by it. For someone without any steady adult figure present through the vast majority of my life, I'd unwittingly latched onto the first one in a long time that had showed me any genuine kindness. I vividly remembered the day he visited the orphanage with my first letter from Hogwarts; thick paper, a wax seal emblazoned with a large H, the subtle smell of must mixed with something else I later came to recognise as Valerian Root. Apparently, he'd been brewing a potion earlier that had seeped its scent into his clothes. To this day, I still associated that smell with the kindly professor.
His smile was gentle when he'd introduced himself. I'd never met a professor before. What could someone so smart, a member of the higher class, want to do with an eleven year old girl like me?
Moving on, he explained Hogwarts and his role there within, told me I was a witch after soundproofing the room from the eavesdroppers who also wanted to know what a gentleman would want with an orphaned girl. When I refused to believe him, certain it was a trick instigated by one of the older boys, he conjured sparkling little bluebirds that flew around my head before vanishing in a flash of colourful fireworks.
That day, without compare, was the best of my life, especially the magically hours where we journeyed through Diagon Alley to collect my school things. Then, not long after, I somehow wound up sorted into his House. At the time, it seemed fated to happen. Under his guidance, I adjusted quickly to life in the wizarding world, almost wholly shielded from the general distrust many magical folk held against those raised amongst the muggles who, mostly unsuccessfully, hunted our kind, assuming they believed we existed at all.
In the end, I wanted to believe I might hold a special place in the person's heart who held such an irreplaceable place in mine.
I didn't.
It didn't come as a shock. I expected as much, but that didn't prevent the bitter taste swelling in the back of my throat.
"I know I'm just like every other student, and I'm not entitled to more of your time than any other Ravenclaw," I agreed, still sitting, now having to crane my neck to look up at him, after I regained my composure. "That's the reason why I haven't bothered asking you for help, obviously. I'm already enough of a burden."
"I didn't say you were a burden," he began, not easing in his anger.
I cut him off. "You didn't have to. I'm too self aware for that to be necessary, and you wouldn't use those words anyway. You're usually too polite... sir."
I tacked on that courtesy at the end, realising the liberties I'd been taking throughout the conversation. It was on thing to argue with a professor, it was quite another to abandon all pretence of respect.
"You are putting words into my mouth," Professor Aragon asserted, sounding simultaneously stern and reproachful. "It is my job to aid where I can, but I must first be aware there is a problem in order to do so!"
"So is it your job to aid, or are you too busy dealing with all the other students? I must admit I'm having trouble reconciling those two points."
"Alice..." he said lowly, a warning.
"Miss Lovett," I corrected. "My friends call me Alice, and I must admit those are becoming few and far between."
Against all odds, I was actually enjoying myself immensely. I needed a proper fight, and Lyra had done little to assuage that urge. She'd given up too easily, been shocked into silence. The professor before me stood little chance of doing that, not because he liked arguing, but because his pride wouldn't allow him to back down, and also because he thought he wanted to help.
Again, what could he do?
"You will have detention — with me —every evening until you are willing to talk about this in a mature fashion." His fingers tapped a swift thrum atop his desk, matching the fast whirl of his thoughts.
"Fine." I ran the numbers in my head. "Three months? I've had detention for far longer than that. That's no issue at all."
"No, not three months,. Until you opt to speak to me, which could be tomorrow, or after you head home for summer. Then, we'll start all over in September."
"First of all, I'm speaking to you right now," I pointed out. "Secondly, while I admire your stubborn tenacity, I am not heading home. That would require a home to begin with, nor will I be coming back."
His eyes narrowed. "Elaborate."
My lips curved into a satisfied smile, knowing I revealed just enough of my plans to bother him. "What time did you say my detention ends for the night?"
Something in his jaw ticked. "I didn't. Elaborate."
"Hmm." I tugged over the pile of essays he'd been working on and took over correcting them, quill scratching across thin parchment. I could feel the heat of his tense focus pouring into me, waiting. He'd be waiting a damn long time if he expected me to answer. "I suppose we'll be here for awhile."
"Yes." A sigh, and his chair screeched across the ground as he sat back down, tucking back into his desk to continue working. "I suppose we will."