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There was a throng of students crowding around the fountain in the central hall when Sasha and Mirabel exited the greenhouses.
Sasha would have just ignored them, honestly. She was starving, and they were probably just admiring some smuggled-in, technically forbidden prank article she didn’t particularly feel like confiscating. Mirabel, however, was more responsible than that, and so Sasha followed her with a sigh as she strode towards the crowd, shouldering her way through the students.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Mirabel asked loudly. “What…?”
Sasha stopped listening. The students weren’t looking at a fanged frisbee or an extra-strong dungbomb. They were looking at a body, slumped motionlessly against the fountain – a body that she knew entirely too well.
She shoved the students roughly aside, panic closing around her heart like an icy fist, and fell to her knees next to Aesop, hands shaking uncontrollably as she reached for him. He wasn’t dead, she realized after several endless, horrifying seconds, swallowing the sickening sense of déjà-vu, but he was deathly pale, his face a grimace of pain, and his breath was coming in gasping, ragged bursts, one hand clutching at his bad leg as he clearly fought to stay conscious. “Aesop.” she said, horrified. “What’s wrong? What the hell happened?”
He groaned in pain, and it took him several moments to manage to speak. “Trip… jinx.” he rasped.
Fury reared up in Sasha’s chest like a flame. She whirled on the students, wand already in hand, barely keeping herself from jinxing them, from tearing into their minds to find out who had done this. “Speak.” she snarled. “Right fucking now.”
She must have looked scary enough, because after several seconds a pale, dark-haired boy in Gryffindor robes that she vaguely remembered from her classes stepped forward. “It was me.” he said, his voice thin and tremulous. “I just wanted… I didn’t mean to…”
Sasha didn’t let him finish, because she knew that if she had to look at him a second longer she would hex him into oblivion. “My office.” she said coldly. “Right now. The rest of you – leave.”
The students scrambled to obey, and Sasha turned her attention back to Aesop, barely aware of Mirabel hovering uncertainly behind her. He was still white as a sheet, his breathing too fast and too shallow, and she reached helplessly for him, squeezing his hand. “Tell me what you need.” she said in a low voice, wishing desperately that she could just take the pain away. “I don’t have any Abdoleo on me, but I can get some, I…”
Aesop interrupted her. “Pain potion.” he ground out through gritted teeth. “My pocket.”
Sasha bent over him and retrieved the vial from his jacket pocket, uncorking it and handing it to him. He took it from her with trembling hands, downing it in one gulp, though it didn’t seem to bring him much relief; he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, taking deep, tightly controlled breaths.
Sasha’s mind was running a mile a minute. They couldn’t stay here – the position in which Aesop had collapsed looked less than comfortable, and she knew he wouldn’t want anyone else to see him like that – but he didn’t look like he’d be able to walk, not even with the potion.
“Mirabel?” she said over her shoulder.
“Yes?” Mirabel, looking pale and worried, moved to her side.
“There’s a wheelchair up in our rooms, behind the bedroom door.” Sasha said. “Can you go get it and bring it down here?”
Aesop reacted before Mirabel could. “No, you… don’t.” he choked out, trying and failing to shift himself into a more upright position. “I can walk, I just need a moment, I…”
He broke off in a pained groan, his face twisting, and Sasha felt a wave of overwhelming sympathy for him. The wheelchair had stood in his rooms for as long as she’d known him, collecting dust and never mentioned or acknowledged, and she understood that he hated the thought of having to use it, that it would throw him right back in time to those first months after he’d been injured, a period of time he had still told her very little about, but she also knew that he was lying to himself and to her. He would not be able to walk, not anytime soon at least, even if she went and got him some Abdoleo.
“Aesop.” she said very softly, lowering her voice so Mirabel would not hear. “I know you don’t want this, love. But you can’t stay here. We need to get you up and to our rooms. The wheelchair is the fastest way to do that, and the one that is going to hurt you the least.”
A muscle clenched in Aesop’s jaw. There was a terrible expression in his eyes, a mixture of shame and frustration and helplessness, and Sasha wished she could take away his pain, could fix this for him, could strangle the piece-of-shit student who’d put him into this position in the first place. “Sasha.” he rasped, sounding heartbreakingly young and in pain and desperate. “Anything but this. Please.”
She almost burst into tears then. “I’m sorry.” she whispered, squeezing his hand as if she could make anything better that way. “I can’t think of any other way.”
For a moment that felt like an eternity his gaze held hers. Then a shadow of resignation passed over his face, and his eyes fluttered shut, his expression morphing into one of practiced, strained calmness. “Fine.” he breathed. “Fine. Just… get it over with.”
No one spoke much after that.
Aesop would not look either of them in the eye when they helped him into the wheelchair, did not make the slightest noise when Sasha wheeled him to their rooms, levitating the chair up the countless stairs that led there, and she couldn’t think of anything to say either, nothing that would make any of this easier. He chugged a vial of Abdoleo as soon as they had made it to their rooms and sprawled on the bed, looking pale and drawn and exhausted, while Sasha hovered uncertainly in the doorway, feeling oddly like she should apologize but unable to think of words that would not fall flat.
“I… I have to go deal with… the student.” she said after a long moment of silence.
Aesop didn’t even open his eyes. “Go, then.” he said tightly.
Sasha flinched. She wanted to go over and wrap herself around him, to tell him over and over again that she loved him, that none of this even remotely changed how she felt about him, but he wouldn’t even look at her, had clearly shut her out, and so she did what was probably, in retrospect, the worst thing she could’ve done.
She just left.
The boy was waiting for her in her office.
Sasha breezed past him without looking at him, dropping down into her desk chair, and then fixed him with a piercing glare. “Name.” she said coldly.
He looked like he might cry. “Edward Fawley.” he replied, his voice trembling.
Sasha ignored his obvious distress. Fury, at least, was something to focus on, something that didn’t bring that hurt, desperate, helpless expression Aesop had worn back to the forefront of her mind. “Do you have anything to say in your defense, Mr. Fawley?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him!” the boy exclaimed, the words bursting out of him like he’d been holding onto them for a long time. “I thought… he’s given me so many bad grades, and I thought it would be funny, it was supposed to be just a prank, I…”
Sasha interrupted him. “Funny.” she repeated, her voice dangerously, icily calm. “You thought it would be funny, hurting someone who’s clearly already injured. Did I get that right?”
Edward Fawley shrunk in his seat. “I… I’m sorry.” he practically whimpered. “I just… I thought… I’m so sorry.”
Sasha forced herself to breathe, to swallow down the helpless, all-consuming fury in her chest. He was a boy, she reminded herself. A stupid, thoughtless, callous boy, yes, but still just a boy, no matter how much she wanted to punish him for hurting Aesop, for reducing the man she loved to someone she knew he’d never wanted to be again. Fuck. She felt the sudden, violent urge to punch a wall.
“One-hundred-and-fifty points from Gryffindor.” she said, pleased to find that her voice sounded only coolly furious, betraying nothing of her inner turmoil. “You will report to me for detention every night after dinner for as long as I deem necessary. And I expect a handwritten letter of apology on Professor Sharp’s desk by tomorrow morning. Two rolls of parchment or more. Is that understood?”
Fawley at least had the good sense not to argue. “Yes, Professor.” he muttered.
Sasha let out a slow, tightly controlled breath. “Good.” she said. “Now leave.”
He didn’t hesitate.
Sasha barely slept that night.
Aesop was asleep when she returned to their rooms, knocked out by the Abdoleo, but she tossed and turned, feeling oddly lonely even though he was right next to her. The sun was only just beginning to rise when she got up, leaving Aesop still asleep, and went to get some food from the kitchen, knowing that neither of them would likely feel up to going down to the great hall for breakfast.
He was awake when she got back.
Sasha stepped slowly into the bedroom, her gaze travelling over his face. He seemed dazed, the Abdoleo’s effect visibly lingering, but had clearly gotten up at some point; he was pale, the tell-tale signs of pain marking his face, and his cane was leaning against the edge of the bed, indicating that he’d needed it even for the few short steps to the bathroom. She felt another wave of sadness for him, trying not to let it show on her face.
“Hi.” she said softly.
His Adam’s apple jumped. “Good morning.” he replied flatly. He still would not quite meet her gaze, and something ached in her chest.
She took another step towards him. “How are you feeling?”
Aesop made a noise somewhere between a joyless laugh and a scoff. “How do you think?” he asked. “It fucking hurts.”
Sasha winced. “Look, I… I know you didn’t want to use the wheelchair.” she said before she could stop herself, the feelings she’d tried hard to bottle up yesterday bursting out of her. “But I honestly don’t get why you’re pissed at me. I was only trying to help you, you know. I know you’re angry, and I know you’re hurting, but you’re not being fair by directing all that anger at me.”
His jaw tensed. “I’m not angry at you, Sasha.” he said tightly.
She barked out an incredulous laugh. “Then why won’t you look at me?”
“Because – fuck!”
His brief burst of anger vanished as quickly as it had come. For a moment he slumped forward, barely appearing able to stay upright, before he finally, finally, did meet her eyes – and he looked so heartbreakingly ashamed and hurt and exhausted her chest ached with it. “Because, Sasha, I know what I’ll see if I look.” he said in a hollow, hopeless voice. “I know what you must think of me now. Reduced to uselessness by a simple fucking trip jinx, I…” He broke off, swallowing visibly. “I can’t bear it.” he finished in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t… you won’t… you know now. And I know that you’ll… that you’ll…”
Sasha had heard enough. She crossed the distance between them with three large steps and wrapped her arms around him, tried to pull him as close as humanly possible, to make him feel how much she loved him, how what he believed was the furthest thing from the truth. “Aesop.” she whispered, barely aware of what she was saying, barely aware that she was crying. “Aesop, that’s not… I don’t… I love you. I love you so much, I would never… nothing’s ever going to change that. Especially not something that you have absolutely no control over. I love you. I love you. You know that. You have to know that. Why would you… why do you still think your disability makes any fucking difference?”
For a single, long second, Aesop was tense in her arms. Then he slumped against her, burying his face into the crook of her neck, a noise wrenching itself from his throat that she’d never heard from him. “It’s just a wheelchair.” she whispered into his hair. “It’s a tool. Needing to use it occasionally says nothing about you as a person.”
He made that noise again. “You don’t know what it was like, Sasha.” he said, his voice choked. “Right after, when… when I…”
She held him even closer, kissed the top of his head. “Because you’ve hardly told me about any of it, darling.” she said very softly. “I know the bare bones of what happened at Scarborough, but that’s it. Tell me or don’t, but I promise I won’t judge you for any of it. You know that, right?”
She felt him let out a shuddering breath. “Yes.” he whispered after several moments that felt like an eternity, in a tone that sounded suspiciously like a lie. “I know.”
Aesop started to talk out of nowhere later that day, after they’d had breakfast and he’d chugged another pain potion. He was sprawled half on top of her, his head resting on her chest and his arm thrown across her stomach; she had never known him to be this touch-starved, but suspected he’d been holding himself back, because he seemed like he wanted to be as close to her as humanly possible, letting out a soft humming noise when she started to run her hand through his hair.
“I… I don’t remember how I got away.” he said hoarsely, his voice muffled against her skin. “I remember green light, Cassius’ face, so much pain, and… next thing I know I was waking up at St. Mungo’s.”
Sasha didn’t say anything, just held him closer as she felt his shuddering exhale. “It… the pain was worse than anything I’d ever felt before, Sasha.” he rasped. “Even with the potions they kept me on, I was begging them to just cut it off, to let me die. And even when… even when that got more bearable, I… I didn’t think I’d ever be able to walk again. They told me I’d never be able to walk again.”
Aesop swallowed, his hand on her waist twitching. “I… the wheelchair, it… I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in it, and I… I hated it.” he muttered. “I hated the way people looked at me. I hated how it had taken everything from me. And I know, rationally, that it’s not… that the chair itself is not the problem, but… using it makes me feel like I did back then. And I never want to feel that way ever again. I never… I never wanted you to see me like that, to… to realize that I’m… that I’m...”
He trailed off, taking shaky breaths against her skin, and Sasha kissed the top of his head, her chest aching with sympathy for him. “Oh, Aesop.” she sighed. “I… darling. It’s never been like that for me, ever. I don’t look at you when you’re in pain and think that you’re somehow less, or a cripple, or someone to be pitied. I just want you to feel better. The wheelchair… all I think about when I look at it is that it means you have to suffer less. I promise, Aesop.”
He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a badly stifled sob. “I… I love you, Sasha.” he choked out. “I love you so much.”
She buried her face into his hair, breathed in his familiar scent, and wondered how she had ever ended up here. “I love you too.”