A corner of the white curtain in the Hospital Wing was lifted by the wind, only to settle heavily back into place.
Draco lay on a hospital bed, his left elbow wrapped in thick ointment bandages.
The bitter smell of Skele-Gro hung thick in the air.
Madam Pomfrey tightened the cap on a potion bottle and placed his arm back onto the cushion.
“Your ribs are fine, and your left wrist is just a sprain—merely soft tissue contusions.
You’re lucky that haystack saved you!”
“I was knocked out of the sky from twenty feet up by a ball, and you’re telling me I’m lucky?” Draco’s face turned thunderous.
(ꐦ≖ᗝ≖;)
“Mr.
Longbottom broke his wrist while you only sprained yours.
By comparison, you are indeed lucky!”
Madam Pomfrey drew her wand and traced a circle above his wrist.
A warm yellow light enveloped the joint, and the dull, aching pain began to recede.
“Lie still for an hour, and do not remove the bandages.
Ring the bell at your bedside if you need anything!”
The curtains snapped shut, and her footsteps faded into the distance.
Draco stared at the ceiling, where the stone brick patterns intersected and crossed.
The lines looked strikingly similar to the arc the Remembrall had taken when it flew back at him.
He closed his eyes, but his mind remained filled with that exact scene.
Evelyn, riding a broken broom on the verge of falling apart, holding a baseball bat with one hand.
Her body had been tilted sideways, nearly slipping off the broom altogether.
The aluminum had sliced a white line through the sunlight.
*CLANG!*
That sound had been impossibly crisp and clean, and it was still echoing in his ears even now.
He couldn’t figure out how an eleven-year-old girl could accurately hit a glass sphere at a height of just three feet.
She had even calculated the ricochet angle, sending the ball flying straight back up twenty feet into the air to strike him dead center in the chest.
Draco gritted his teeth and struggled to sit up.
He pulled parchment, a quill, and ink from the bedside nightstand, hovering the nib above the paper.
*Dear Father,*
After writing those two words, he paused.
What was he supposed to write next?
Was he really going to put down: *A Hufflepuff girl knocked your son out of the sky in Flying Class using a Muggle metal stick?*
He pictured Lucius Malfoy’s expression upon receiving such a letter.
Draco: (⊙ㅂ⊙;)
No!
If he sent this letter, there would only be two possible outcomes.
First, his father would decide that the sole heir of the Malfoy family was a pathetic disgrace who had been thoroughly humiliated by a Hufflepuff Muggle-born.
Second, his father would bring it up to Snape.
His godfather would then stare at him with those dark eyes without saying a single word—a silence far worse than any scolding.
Draco crumpled the parchment into a ball and jammed it under his pillow.
He pulled out a fresh sheet.
*Dear Father, I performed exceptionally well in Flying Class today.
Madam Hooch spoke very highly of my flying skills.*
The quill stopped again.
Like hell he performed exceptionally well!
He had fallen twenty feet into a haystack in front of the entire school.
When Parkinson ran over to help him, his head was covered in straw.
Crabbe and Goyle had stood there like two wooden posts.
Meanwhile, Evelyn Valentine had stood before him with her baseball bat resting casually on her shoulder, not even out of breath.
“Ball caught.
Now we can give it back to Neville,” she had said, her tone as nonchalant as if she were commenting on the dining hall’s pudding.
Draco crumpled the second letter as well.
Now two paper balls bulged beneath his pillow, pressing uncomfortably against the back of his head.
The curtain was pulled aside, and Parkinson stepped in carrying a bowl of pumpkin soup, her face full of concern.
“Draco!
I brought you some soup!”
“Put it down.”
“Does your wrist still hurt?
That crazy woman went way too far using a Muggle stick to hit people!
I’m going to tell Professor Snape!”
“No need,” Draco interrupted coldly.
Parkinson blinked, stunned.
“What?”
“I said there’s no need to snitch, Parkinson.” Draco: (Ծ‸Ծ??)
“But you fell off your broom!”
It had nothing to do with her.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Draco felt something was wrong.
*Nothing to do with her?* She had hit the ball right back into his chest with a bat—how could it have nothing to do with her?
Yet his mouth had moved faster than his brain.
Parkinson set the bowl down and hesitated before stepping backward out of the cubicle.
Before the curtain closed completely, she shot Draco a complex look.
Draco picked up the bowl and took a sip.
It scalded his tongue!
He set the bowl back down and stared blankly at the pumpkin soup.
The orange color of the soup was a far cry from the red smoke inside the Remembrall.
The sound of the ball rebounding off the aluminum bat echoed in his mind once again.
*CLANG!* Clean, crisp, without a single trace of excess vibration.
He had heard the house-elves ring bells at Malfoy Manor, and even those hadn’t sounded this pleasing.
Draco set the bowl aside and buried his face in his blanket.
Draco: (ᗒᗣᗕ;)
His thoughts drifted back to the robe shop.
Evelyn had bound him up like a swaddled package with a measuring tape while his godfather stood nearby, watching the entire thing without intervening.
That had been the first time he looked at her face from up close.
Her expression had been no different from someone tying up a clothesline pole.
There was no malice, but there was no respect either.
She simply didn’t care whose son he was.
Every guest who visited the manor bowed to the Malfoy name.
At his mother’s tea parties, the ladies always praised his hair, asked how old he was, and declared he would grow up to be extraordinary.
Yet Evelyn looked at him as if he were just a piece of furniture.
No—worse than furniture.
She had at least built a cat tree for Professor McGonagall!
Heavy, slow footsteps sounded outside the curtain, which was then pulled aside.
Snape stood beside the bed, his black robes still carrying a faint scent of roses.
His hair remained extraordinarily silky, gleaming with a strange sheen under the hospital lights.
Draco sat up straight.
“Godfather.”
“Your wrist?”
“Just a sprain, nothing serious.
Madam Pomfrey said an hour of rest will be enough.”
Snape glanced at the bulging paper balls beneath the pillow.
“Writing a letter?”
“No!” Draco flattened the pillow by an inch.
“Just practicing my penmanship!”
Snape reached out and pulled the pillow away.
Two crumpled balls of parchment rolled out onto the bedsheet.
He picked one up, unfolded it, and scanned the page.
“Dear Father,” he read aloud in a flat tone.
Draco wished he could shove his head straight into the seam of the mattress!
“You wrote two letters and sent neither,” Snape noted.
“The paper got dirty, so I planned to rewrite it.”
“Not planning to tell Lucius?”
“Godfather!”
“You were knocked off your broom from a height of twenty feet, yet instead of writing a complaint, you’re hiding ruined drafts.
You even told Parkinson it had nothing to do with her?”
Draco: (ᗒ﹏ᗕ;)
His godfather’s information network moved faster than the Owl Post!
“Madam Pomfrey’s hearth is connected to my fireplace.
I am aware of everything that happens in the Hospital Wing.”
“Godfather, I didn’t…”
“Draco.” Snape placed the crumpled parchment back on the nightstand.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anyone!
I am a Malfoy!”
“You are afraid your father will learn that you were defeated by a Hufflepuff girl.”
Draco opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Snape stood at the foot of the bed for a few seconds before turning to walk toward the door.
He paused at the curtain.
“She will be attending Potions class tomorrow.” Get faster updates on g.com.
“I know!”
“What do you plan to do?”
“I’ll show her that Malfoys aren’t to be messed with!”
“You said that last time, and you ended up spitting straw in a haystack.”
Draco: (annoyed expression)
…
Snape departed, leaving the curtain swaying gently as a faint trace of rose fragrance drifted through the air.
Draco fished out one of the crumpled pieces of paper from under his blanket and flattened it out.
Below *Dear Father*, there was a scratched-out line of small handwriting.
He scraped at it with his fingernail until he could faintly make out the words: *angle of impact.*
He had written *angle of impact* in his letter.
Draco flipped the parchment over and picked up his uncapped quill.
On the back of the paper, he drew an arcing line.
The starting point was at three feet, and the end point was at twenty feet.
The trajectory was straight and unbending.
He stared at the line for ten seconds before scribbling a single question beside it: *How did she do it?*
The instant he finished writing, he realized what he was doing.
He crumpled the parchment into a third ball and tried to shove it under his pillow.
There was no more room left beneath the pillow, however, and the third paper ball rolled out and dropped onto the floor.
He leaned over the edge of the bed to pick it up.
Through the gap in the curtains of the opposite bed, a yellow tie dangled into view.
Neville Longbottom was sitting there with his wrist wrapped in bandages, holding a cup of Skele-Gro.
His large eyes were staring straight at Draco.
Neville: (⊙△⊙;)
“Was that line you just drew the arc from when Evelyn hit the ball?”
“Shut up, Longbottom!”
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone!” Neville shrank his neck back slightly.
“But she really is amazing, isn’t she?
She helped me get my Remembrall back.”
“She used a baseball bat to knock me down!”
“She hit the ball.”
“The ball hit me!”
“But on the train, she also used her baseball bat to hit away that Chocolate Frog.
That was to help clear your face, too.”
“That Chocolate Frog slammed right into my face!!”
Neville took a large gulp of the Skele-Gro, his face twisting in disgust at the terrible taste.
“Malfoy, I think she pays a lot of attention to you.” Neville: (˘ω˘)
“Attention?
She hit me!
You call that paying attention?”
“She built a cat tree for Professor McGonagall and made chicken wings for Hermione.
The amount of time she’s spent hitting you is more time than she’s given anyone else!”
Draco’s face turned from pale white to bright red, and finally to a dark, livid green.
He slammed the paper ball under his pillow, turned his back to Neville, and pulled the blanket completely over his head.
Underneath the blanket, his hand was still tightly clutching the paper with the drawn arc.
The image of the aluminum bat gleaming in the sunlight flashed through his mind once more.
*CLANG!*
Draco pulled the blanket up over the very top of his head.
From the far end of the corridor, the sound of leather boots echoed in the hallway.
Two sets of footsteps moved in perfect, synchronized rhythm.
Fred’s voice carried through the curtains and floated straight into the Hospital Wing: “Did you hear, George?
Our Hufflepuff girl hit a home run!”
George followed up immediately, “Hit what?”
“A Remembrall.”
“Knocked down who?”
“The Malfoy family’s young master!”
Laughter echoed down the corridor, drawing closer and closer.
Fred lowered his voice, but the echo delivered every single word clearly into the room.
“George, we’ve got to talk to her.
Those Muggle gadgets of hers are ten times more fun than anything at Zonko’s Joke Shop!”
“Instinct for business, Fred.
That young lady smells like Gold Galleons.”
The footsteps gradually drifted away.
Beneath the blanket, Draco kept his eyes wide open, clutching the crumpled paper ball tightly in his hand as he listened to the pounding of his own heart.