✓ | RECKLESS AND BRAVE | Draco Malfoy

69 | QUATERVOIS

QUATERVOIS
(n.) a crossroads; a critical decision or turning point in one's life

TESSA DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER WALKING AWAY FROM THE CROWD. One minute she was on her knees bawling her eyes out, and the second she found herself walking next to Sebastian who had his arm around her to support her weight. He was talking — but she didn't even hear him until a moment later.

"Teressa, can you hear me?" he asked for the umpteenth time as they made their way up the castle steps.

"Yes," she mumbled, suddenly losing all emotions and feelings — leaving her empty and hollow inside.

"I'm taking you to the hospital wing right now," he said in a clear voice. "You need to have Madam Pomfrey heal your cuts."

"Did — did anyone else . . . ?"

"No," he said, shaking his head as his messy brown hair tumbled over his forehead. He pushed it back impatiently, the small action greatly reminding her of Philip — yet she couldn't find it in her to feel hope and relief. She felt nothing but emptiness.

Sebastian faltered as they neared the hospital wing, and Tessa glanced at him curiously.

"There's — someone got hurt," Sebastian started. "But I think he'll be okay — just that he won't look the same anymore . . . "

Tessa furrowed her eyebrows. "What are you talking about?"

Sebastian simply gestured her to go inside the infirmary and see for herself. The two entered and found Neville asleep on a bed near the door, and Ron, Hermione, Luna, Tonks, Remus, and her mother gathered around another bed at the end of the ward. Harry and Ginny were standing over there as well — they looked as though they had just arrived.

Tessa strode over to see who had gotten hurt, halting on her steps upon reaching the foot of the bed. The barely recognizable face Bill Weasley laid there — his face so badly slashed that it seemed as though he'd been mauled by a bear.

Tessa's knees buckled and she would've crashed down to the floor again were it not for Catherine and Sebastian who caught her.

"Can't you fix them with a charm or something?" Harry asked the matron who was applying green ointment on Bill's face.

"No charm will work on these," Madam Pomfrey said. "I've tried everything I know, but there is no cure for werewolf bites."

"I — I can help him," Tessa said at once, reaching for her wand and slicing her hand open.

"It doesn't work that way," Sebastian said in a quiet voice.

"No," Tessa stammered, "I fixed Draco before, I can do it again with Bill — " Her eyebrows drew together as she gritted her teeth in desperation as she hovered her bleeding hand over Bill's cuts. "W-Why is it not healing?"

Catherine gently pulled her daughter away as Madam Pomfrey cleaned Bill's face of her blood. "Tessa, you can stop now — it's okay." She grabbed a gauze and wrapped it around her hand.

"Draco was your mate, that's why it worked," Sebastian explained. "You can't heal anybody and everybody just because you have the blood of a dragon — it doesn't work that way. And he was bitten by a werewolf as well . . . "

"But he wasn't bitten at the full moon," Ron pointed out quietly. "Greyback hadn't transformed, so surely Bill won't be a — a real — ?"

"No, I don't think that Bill will be a true werewolf," Remus said, "but that does not mean that there won't be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. They are unlikely ever to heal fully, and — and Bill might have some wolfish characteristics from now on."