I do not remember who first told me to go back to the dungeons.
McGonagall said something. Snape was there too. Quirrell was probably leaning against the doorframe, pale as chalk and just as pleasant to look at. Potter, Weasley, and Granger were still breathing, so apparently the most important part had already been taken care of. The rest blurred somewhere between the bathroom and the corridor.
Only fragments remained.
Wet tiles.
The smell of dirt and old dampness.
The heavy pounding of the troll, suddenly cut short in mid-motion.
Blood.
I only noticed that last part when I reached the stairs.
Not immediately. First, something dried against my skin, pulling lightly at the corner of my left eye every time I blinked. I wiped my face with my sleeve, more out of reflex than need, and only then saw the dark stain on the fabric.
I looked at it for a moment.
Then I hid my hand behind my back and kept walking.
The corridor seemed longer than usual. I was not dizzy, at least not enough to make me sit down against the wall like some first-year after flying too fast on a broom. Everything was simply a little bit not where it should have been. The torches burned normally, but their light seemed unwilling to touch the walls. Footsteps echoed with a fraction of a delay. The stone beneath my hand was cold, only as though through a layer of fabric, even though I was touching it with bare skin.
I passed two Hufflepuffs. One was speaking quickly, the other nodding with the expression of someone who wanted to burst into tears but had decided that doing so in front of people would be improper. When they saw me, they lowered their voices. The older one looked at my face, then slightly lower, and looked away.
Good.
I had no desire to answer questions.
Especially the sensible ones.
At the entrance to the Slytherin common room, I had to repeat the password. The first time, my voice came out too quiet, as if it had stayed somewhere deeper and had not made it to my mouth in time. The stone gave way with a reluctant grind, and warmth hit me from inside.
Usually I liked that place in the evening. Dim light. Water behind the windows. Silence, once everyone finally stopped pretending to be more interesting than they really were.
That evening there were too many people there.
Too many voices.
Too many versions of the same story.
Someone was talking about the troll in the dungeons. Someone else corrected him, saying it was not in the dungeons, only somewhere higher up. Quirrell had apparently fainted three times already, depending on who was telling it. Flint sat by the fireplace with one leg over the other, as though he had personally thrown the beast out of the castle and now ought not to look affected. Several first-years were crowding closer to the fire than usual.
For a moment, no one noticed me.
Then Malfoy looked up from his armchair.
He did not stand. He did not need to.
It was enough that he looked.
- Where were you?
I did not answer right away. I closed the entrance behind me, more slowly than necessary, and only then turned to face him.
- In the corridor.
Malfoy frowned.
- Everyone was in the corridors.
That, at least, was true. Crabbe and Goyle, spread out beside him like badly placed furniture, looked at me with slight delay. Zabini cast a brief glance over the top of his book, then returned to reading, which in his case meant roughly that he was listening more closely than the others.
I shrugged.
- I got lost in the confusion.
It sounded flat enough to be ignored.
Malfoy almost ignored it.
Almost.
His gaze stopped on my face. I did not have to guess where.
- You have blood on your face.
I lifted my hand to my left eye, even though I had felt it since the stairs. My fingertips touched the skin just at the corner. Damp.
Not good.
- I must have scratched myself.
Crabbe made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh.
- With what? The troll's claw?
- The troll did not have claws.
The words came out too quickly.
Nothing in the common room changed. The fire still crackled. Someone was still talking too loudly. And yet, for a fraction of a second, I had the impression it had grown quieter, as though the nearest few people had instinctively stopped breathing.
Malfoy leaned back slightly.
It was not retreat yet. At most, an adjustment of posture.
- You saw it? - he asked.
I should have said no.
No.
One word and done.
Instead, the image came back to me of the heavy body sinking to its knees. Not the crash. Not the roar. Only the movement. Too sudden to look natural. As if something inside had snapped half a second too early.
My left eye pulsed harder.
- Yes,- I said.
Goyle stopped chewing. That in itself was an achievement.
Malfoy lifted his chin a little higher.
- And?
And nothing, I should have answered.
Nothing special. The teachers came in. The end.
Only that was not true. The worst part of the whole evening was not that the troll had nearly crushed someone's skull. The worst part was that when I closed my eyes, the exact same moment came back. Not fear. Not screaming. Not even blood.
It was how easy it would be to return to it in thought one more time.
I cleared my throat.
- Noise. Chaos. Nothing interesting.
Malfoy watched me longer than I would have liked. Then he shrugged, but did it a little too carefully, as if deciding it was not worth digging deeper in front of other people.
- You look awful, - he said.
- You look like that every day.
Crabbe laughed at once. Goyle joined in a second later, though he did not look as if he knew what at. Good. Laughter was shallow. Shallow things were easier to carry.
- I am going to sleep, I said.
No one stopped me.
The dormitory was dark. Not completely, because a greenish glow pushed through the windows from the lake, but enough for the beds and curtains to look like the still shadows of larger things. I closed the door and for a moment leaned against it with my back.
It was quieter.
Still not enough.
I went to the sink. The mirror showed me nothing new. A face like any other. A little paler. Hair in disorder. A streak of dried blood by the left eye.
Nothing that could not be explained away as ordinary bad luck.
I turned on the water and bent lower. The cold hit my skin harder than it should have. I washed my face once, then again. The water in the basin turned pink, then slowly paled.
When I straightened, the mirror still looked wrong.
Not because it showed anything new.
Quite the opposite.
Too little.
The right eye looked tired. The left too awake. The redness was only part of the problem. Worse was the fact that I could not stop looking at it, as if trying to find on the surface the mark of something that had happened deeper down.
I looked away first.
The towel scraped the skin at the corner harshly. It hurt. Briefly. Properly. Good.
I sat down on the bed.
Then lay down.
Then sat up again.
The canopy curtains drew shut heavily, cutting off the rest of the dormitory. Usually I liked that small dark space. It gave the impression of order. Everything outside it could be postponed.
That evening it did not work.
I closed my eyes.
The bathroom came back at once.
Not all of it. Isolated things.
A cracked sink.
Wet stone floor.
The troll's enormous hand.
And that one place in memory that opened like a wound every time I tried to look more closely at it.
I looked.
The thread.
The pressure.
Then only movement.
I opened my eyes.
I was breathing normally. I thought. My heart was beating as it should, though a little higher than usual. I rubbed my face with both hands and looked into the dark of the curtains, as if the fabric might tell me whether that was enough for one night.
It was not.
I reached into my bag before I had time to think that it was a stupid idea. Parchment, quill, ink. I heard something move in the dormitory beyond the curtain, but no one spoke or got up.
In the middle of the sheet, I wrote the date.
Below it, I hesitated for a moment.
Then:
Troll.
The ink still shone wetly. I looked at the word longer than necessary.
I should have left the page blank.
Instead, I added below it:
Stronger reaction than with people. Faster.
I stopped.
The tip of the quill hovered over the parchment. Somewhere on the other side of the curtain, someone turned in sleep. Water behind the windows thudded heavily against the glass.
I added two more words.
Not muscles.
That was not enough either.
I scratched out the full stop I had not even written, and for a moment stared at my own handwriting with growing irritation. That was not it. It was too flat, too small for what I remembered.
I tried again.
Closer to instinct.
This time I left it.
Not because I was sure. More because it sounded good enough not to touch further what I could not yet name anyway.
For a while I sat without moving.
I should have put the quill away.
Instead, I added at the very bottom, in smaller writing:
Check later.
It looked bad.
Not the sentence itself. Things like that could still be explained away by reason. If something had worked by accident, it was natural to want to know why. Anyone with a little sense would do the same.
What was worse was that my hand had not hesitated even once.
I folded the parchment and slipped it between the pages of my transfiguration textbook. I did not need to read it again. I remembered every word anyway.
When I lay down on the bed again, exhaustion came suddenly, heavy and sticky. I closed my eyes.
The sleep was not deep.
I dreamed of Hogwarts corridors, empty and too long. Every turn looked almost familiar, until I reached it. Thin dark lines ran across the stone, as if someone had drawn a blade along the walls. Whenever I tried to follow them, they vanished. Whenever I looked away, they returned at another angle.
I woke before dawn.
For a few seconds, I did not know why. Then I felt the pain by my left eye and the dryness in my throat. That was enough.
I sat up slowly. Behind the curtain, someone was breathing heavily in sleep. Someone else muttered something indistinct and turned over. Everything sounded ordinary.
I did not.
There was no point trying to sleep again. I got up, dressed quietly, and before the rest of the dormitory had time to wake, I was already sitting at the small table by the wall, my hands clasped around an empty cup that I did not even remember anyone bringing there the evening before.
Breakfast came too quickly.
The Great Hall was alive with only one subject. The troll had grown a good two feet overnight, Quirrell had fainted more dramatically, Potter and Weasley had already become idiots to half the school and heroes to the other half. Granger appeared in those stories and disappeared, depending on who was telling them.
I sat at the Slytherin table and regretted it at once.
Too much movement.
Too much light reflected off the plates.
Too many voices at once.
It did not hurt. It was simply that after a few minutes, everything seemed a little too clear and at the same time somehow distant. I reached for tea, more to give my hands something to do than out of thirst.
At the teachers' table, McGonagall sat straight as a spear. Flitwick was saying something quickly to Sprout. Snape looked as if the night had been yet another personal insult from the world.
And Quirrell...
I looked only for a moment.
My left eye stung violently.
I looked away at once. My heart struck harder, for no obvious reason. For a second, the noise of the Great Hall flattened into one thin layer, as though someone had covered it with glass.
I took a sip of tea. Too hot. Good.
Simple things helped.
I should not have looked a second time.
I did.
More briefly.
The same thing. A sting. Tension under the skin. Nothing more, and yet enough for me to tighten my fingers around the handle of the cup.
Quirrell looked as he always did: pale, nervous, slightly hunched, as if every sentence had to be shaken out of him. Except that around him, something always rang false. I could not put it into proper words. It was simply that whenever I looked at him, I had the impression I was hitting a place where the castle had failed to close properly.
I set the cup down a little too hard. Tea spilled into the saucer.
Malfoy glanced at me from the side.
- Everything alright?
- Yes.
- You do not look it.
- It is very touching that you noticed.
He grimaced slightly, but did not push further. Good. Beneath the table, I clenched my fingers in the fabric of my robe until it pulled taut under my hand.
- It is nothing, I thought.
Just too little sleep.
Just too much yesterday.
Just Quirrell being strange.
That last thought was not reassuring at all.
I should not have wanted to check it again.
I did.
Before I had time to decide that this thought was a problem, I heard footsteps behind me. Not heavy, not quick. Three different rhythms. One surer, one a little more nervous, the third even, as if each step were being placed after consideration.
I did not turn immediately.
I did not have to.
Harry caught up with me first, just by the exit from the Great Hall.
- Oliver.
I stopped only when I would have stopped anyway. I turned my head. Harry stood one step away, Ron a little behind and more to the side, as though he was not yet certain he wanted to be there, and Hermione was looking at me in that uniquely uncomfortable way of hers, as if trying to arrange a person into a logical whole and getting annoyed when pieces were missing.
- Yes? I asked.
Harry glanced quickly at Ron, then at Hermione, as if hoping one of them would take over the conversation. Neither did.
- We just wanted... he trailed off. - You know. Yesterday.
- Yesterday lasted unusually long, I said.
Ron gave a quiet snort.
- You know what he means.
- That saves me the trouble of guessing.
Hermione narrowed her eyes slightly, but Harry did not look discouraged. More like someone who had already grown used to the fact that people could be more difficult than they needed to be.
- You were in that bathroom, he said. - When we went in... and then you were there too.
- It would have been a rather remarkable coincidence if I had not been.
Ron grimaced.
- You could at least try answering normally.
I looked at him.
- I could. You could too.
For a second he looked as if he wanted to snap back, but Harry cut in before he could.
- That is not the point. We just... he hesitated. - We wanted to know if you are alright.
That, at least, was honest. Simple. Almost disarming.
Almost.
- Do I look like I am not? I asked.
Hermione spoke for the first time since stopping me.
- A little, yes.
Her voice was matter-of-fact, without malice. That was exactly why it worked better.
- Yesterday you had blood by your eye, she added. - And now you look... different.
That last part was not precise, but it was enough. She was not looking directly into my eyes for long, no sensible person would, but she still noticed more than the others.
I lifted my hand reflexively to the left side of my face. Dry. This time, no blood.
- I am tired, I said.
Ron folded his arms.
- People who are tired usually do not look as if they are about to faint.
- Thank you. That is very encouraging.
Harry ignored both of us with a skill that suggested he practiced it more often than he should.
- When you came in, he said more quietly, the troll had already... sort of backed away.
I did not answer at once.
The memory came back too easily. Too smoothly. The weight of the body. The tremor of instinct. That one moment when something huge and stupid understood that it did not want to move forward anymore, even though only a second earlier it had wanted nothing but to crush.
My left eye stung faintly.
Not enough to show. Enough for me to dislike it very much.
- The teachers came in a moment later, I said.
That was an answer. Not the one he had asked for, but still.
Hermione tilted her head.
- That was not a question about the teachers.
- I know.
- So?
I looked at her a little longer than was proper. Not deliberately. Simply out of habit, out of that nasty reflex that had lately started trying to move one step ahead of me.
Something in my left eye twitched.
I looked away before the tension had time to complete itself.
- So there was a troll, I said. - Big, ugly, and less sociable than the situation suggested.
Ron blew air out through his nose.
- Brilliant. He is going to do that again.
And you are going to listen like that again, Hermione shot back, without taking her eyes off me. - Harry is asking about something specific.
- I know what Harry is asking, I said. - I just do not have an answer that would sound good.
That stopped them for a moment.
I had not planned to say anything that honest. It just came out on its own.
Harry nodded first, as if that was enough far more than it should have been.
- Alright, he said. - Then... thanks anyway.
Ron glanced at him briefly, then at me.
- Yeah. Right. Thanks.
That "thanks" had resistance in it, but it was real. With him, that made a difference.
Hermione did not say anything at once. Instead, she frowned slightly.
- You said you do not have an answer that would sound good, she pointed out. - That does not sound like someone who just "heard noise and went in."
I wanted to sigh. I did not.
- It sounds like someone who would rather not discuss a troll before first lesson, I answered.
- So there is something.
- Hermione, Harry said under his breath.
- What? she replied at once. - It is obvious.
- Yes, but maybe you do not have to say it like you are interrogating him.
- And maybe he does not have to answer like he is writing a very bad book about himself, she muttered.
That almost made me laugh.
Almost.
- That is particularly interesting, considering I am speaking to someone who looks as though she corrects other people's sentences in her sleep, I said.
Ron barked a laugh so quickly he seemed surprised by it himself. Harry pressed his lips together, clearly trying not to do the same. Hermione looked at me coldly, but something new appeared in her expression. Not fondness. Something closer to respect that did not want to admit it had just appeared.
- That was not an insult, she said after a moment. - It was an observation.
- Then we are both having a fortunate day for observations.
A bell somewhere farther down the corridor rang dully, reminding all of us that the castle had no intention of waiting until we had finished solving each other's personalities.
Harry stepped back half a step.
- We have Potions.
- So do I, I replied.
Ron was already turning away, but Hermione stayed a second longer.
- If there really is something wrong with that eye, tell Pomfrey, she said. - Not everything can be ignored until it starts bleeding.
I looked at her.
- That is a rather oddly specific threshold.
- And yet a sensible one.
This time I did not have a good answer ready. Something in her tone did not fit ordinary curiosity. It sounded more like annoyance that someone could ignore something so obvious.
Harry called to her. She went after him without another word.
I remained for a moment alone in the middle of the corridor, among students who went around me with that ordinary school indifference under which there is sometimes more sense than people like to admit.
I should have felt relief that they were gone.
I did not.
Instead, what was left was something worse. That small, unpleasant feeling that Hermione had been right, not where she spoke loudest, but where she had not even tried.
Not everything can be ignored.