SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 044 ] all for the game

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
all for the game

SAWYER BIT DOWN ON A PAINED HISS as Madam Pomfrey held an ice pack to Sawyer's bruised and battered face, the cold bite of the cloth searing against her skin like a rebuke. Closing her eyes, she thought about a lost time when what happened was that she was a girl once and bruiselessp. She'd refused the mirror not because she didn't want to confront the familiar creature she slipped back into, but because she knew what she looked like. Had already claimed it as hers. Behind the curtain that Madam Pomfrey had drawn around them, her friends were gathered by Rio's cot. Before Oliver had piloted Sawyer to the infirmary, kicking and screaming, Jeremy and Marcus must have explained the events leading up to Rio's overdose—that's what Madam Pomfrey had called it, anyway. An overdose. Taking too much of a drug resulting in the person suspended in critical conditions with no certainty of the outcome. Madam Pomfrey had asked them if it was accidental or intentional. None of them knew how to answer that.

"Do I even want to know?" Madam Pomfrey asked, her lips cinched in that disapproving stare she always gave Sawyer whenever she wound up here after a particularly brutal match or a brawl that might've given her a concussion. Madam Pomfrey always carried out her business with the efficiency of a nurse in service during a war, patching up an endless flow of soldiers bringing their varying injuries to the table. But all these war wounds that Sawyer dumped at her doorstep, she couldn't understand. And because it wasn't her job to understand, she never judged. Only warned Sawyer of what might become of her if she didn't stop.

"It was justified," Sawyer said, echoing Oliver's words. Then, she flashed Madam Pomfrey a dead man's grin despite the sharp bolt of paint shooting through her split bottom lip like lightning, despite the sutures holding it in place that pulled taut and tugged at her flesh in warning. "Will I be pretty again, Poppy?"

Expression deadpan, Madam Pomfrey pressed down harder on the ice pack. "You hold this here. Most of your bruises should go away after today, but the lip will take a day or two to completely heal up." She levelled Sawyer with a warning look. "Don't you dare pick another fight."

Between Rio's cot, which had been blockaded from view by a set of white curtains, there was another separating Sawyer from him and Marcus and Jeremy, who were posted by his bedside, having made an obstinate case against leaving. Unstoppable forces against Madam Pomfrey's immovable object. Still, Madam Pomfrey knew hers was a losing case, and so she'd pulled out two chairs for them before handing Marcus an ice pack of his own to ice the bruise blossoming like a dark rose under his eye, before snapping the curtain shut and hauling Sawyer away to tend to her injuries. Because he wasn't a common face in the infirmary and because Madam Pomfrey got the right sense that Oliver only wanted to stay for no reason other than to be with Sawyer, Oliver had been thrown out, though, despite his indignant protests, and forced to return to his next class. They had DADA, but Sawyer wouldn't be present. She'd been excused on account of feeling under the weather.

"She didn't," Jeremy said, poking his head around the white sheet, a weary smile tugging at his lips. "He swung at Marcus first."

Dismayed, Madam Pomfrey pushed Jeremy's face out of view. "You're not supposed to tell me these things! Now I'll have to report this."

"Not if you just... don't," Marcus said, snidely, not bothering to pull back the curtain. "It's not a crime to omit a part of the truth if they don't ever find out."

Sawyer smirked, and fiddled with a loose seam on her yellow tie.

"All of you be quiet before I make you go to class," Madam Pomfrey said, exasperatedly as she dabbed some ointment over Sawyer's bloody lip that stung as bad as a slap to the mouth. The stitches held, but already, the scab had begun to crack and the metallic tang of blood began to flood her tastebuds.