Serpent and Stag

The train rattled north through countryside gone gray with November, and I had the compartment to myself until the door slid open and she stood there, backlit by the corridor light, snow melting in her white-blonde hair.

"Every other car is full," she said, like this was my fault.

I didn't look up from my book. "Then sit somewhere else."

She sat across from me anyway. Of course she did. Astoria Greengrass had a talent for doing exactly what you told her not to, and she'd been doing it to me since we were eleven. Eleven years old, first year, both of us sorted into Slytherin within five minutes of each other, and she'd turned to me on the bench and said, "Well, at least I'm not alone." I'd hated her for that. For presuming we were the same. For being right.

Now she pulled off her gloves, finger by finger, and set them on the seat beside her. The wool was damp and dark. Her hands were red from the cold.

"You're bleeding," she said.

I looked down. My knuckles had split again, same as they did every time I practiced the curse too long. The blood was drying in thin lines across my skin.

"It's nothing."

"You should wrap it."

"I don't need you to tell me what to do with my hands, Greengrass."

She smiled at that. Not the polite smile she used at parties, the one that made her look like a porcelain doll. The other one. The real one, crooked at the left corner, that made her look like she knew something you didn't.

"You've been practicing the Cruciatus again," she said.

The train lurched. My book slid off my knee and hit the floor, and neither of us moved to pick it up.

"Don't say that word so loud."

"No one's listening." She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and I caught the smell of her, something clean and cold, like pine and snow. "You're going to get yourself caught, Draco. Or worse."

"I'm not going to get caught."

"No. You're going to get yourself killed, and then what?"

"Then I won't have to take my exams."

She didn't laugh. That was the thing about Astoria. She never laughed at the wrong time. She just watched me with those gray eyes, the color of the sky before a storm, and I felt like she could see every crack in me, every place I was coming apart.

"You're not sleeping," she said.

"I'm fine."

"You have circles under your eyes. You've lost weight. You're snapping at everyone."

"I'm always snapping at everyone."

"More than usual."

I stood up. The compartment felt too small, the air too thick. "Why do you care?"

She didn't answer right away. Outside, the countryside blurred past, hedgerows and stone walls and sheep huddled against the cold. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet.

"Because I know what it's like to be trapped."

I turned back to her. She was still sitting, still looking up at me, and for a moment I saw it. The same thing I saw in the mirror every morning. The exhaustion. The fear. The careful mask.

"You don't know anything about me," I said.

"I know you're not the person everyone thinks you are."

"You don't know that."

"I know you." She stood, and we were close now, close enough that I could see the tiny scar on her chin from when she fell off her broom in fourth year. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her skin. "I've known you since we were children, Draco. I've watched you become this." She gestured at me, at the blood on my knuckles, at the hollows under my eyes. "And I've watched you hate every minute of it."

I should have walked away. I should have pushed past her and found another compartment and spent the rest of the ride staring at the wall and planning how to save my family and my life and what was left of my soul. That's what I should have done.

Instead I said, "What do you want from me?"

She reached up and touched my face. Just her fingertips, light against my cheekbone, and I stopped breathing.

"I want you to let me help you."

"You can't."

"Let me try."

The train whistle blew. We were close to Hogsmeade now, close to the castle and the war and everything waiting for us there. Close to the end of whatever this was, this quiet moment in a rattling compartment, snow melting in her hair.

"Why?" I asked. "Why would you risk anything for me?"

She pulled her hand back. For a second I thought she wouldn't answer. Then she said, "Because when I look at you, I see someone worth saving."

The door slid open. A first-year stood there, wide-eyed, holding a toad.

"Sorry," he squeaked, and slammed the door shut.

We both laughed. It surprised me, the sound of it, rusty and strange in my throat. I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed.

Astoria sat back down. I sat across from her. The countryside rolled past, gray and cold, and somewhere ahead the castle waited with all its ghosts.

"I'm not going to stop," I said. "You know that. I can't stop."

"I know."

"And I'm probably going to get myself killed."

"Probably."

"And you're still here."

She smiled again. That crooked smile. "I'm still here."

I looked at her, at the snow drying in her hair, at the way she held herself, straight-backed and steady, like she'd already decided something. Like she'd made a choice and wasn't going to unmake it, no matter what I did.

"You're insane," I said.

"Maybe." She pulled her gloves back on, finger by finger, and settled into her seat. "But I'm also the only person on this train who knows what you're going through, and you're the only person who knows what I'm going through, so I think we're stuck with each other."

I didn't argue. I didn't have the energy, and even if I did, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

The train rattled on. The snow fell harder. And for the first time in months, I felt something other than fear.

I felt hope. Small and stupid and probably doomed, but there it was, sitting across from me with wet gloves and gray eyes and a crooked smile.

I picked up my book. She pulled out hers. We read in silence as the countryside turned to mountains, and the mountains turned to castle, and somewhere behind us the life I'd known was ending and something else was beginning.

I didn't know what it was yet. I didn't know if it would save me or destroy me.

But I knew I wasn't alone anymore.

And that, I was learning, was the most dangerous thing of all.