Harry Potter: Glory Bows to Me

"What's wrong with Draco?" Amanta, having caught the key words, looked up and asked Blaise calmly.

Blaise shrugged, leaning lazily against the fireplace, his tone excessively lighthearted: "It was just a game of Wizard Chess, and I almost lost my underwear to him."

As soon as he finished speaking, his gaze turned meaningfully to Harry.

“He didn’t say why,” Braxton paused, his tone half-serious, half-guessing, “but…I think Harry, as his roommate, should know better than I do, right?”

Harry seemed to have a nerve touched, and he shuddered slightly. He unconsciously scratched his messy black hair and looked at Amanta with a somewhat flustered expression, as if he wanted to explain something.

But Amanta gently raised her hand to interrupt.

That was a clear signal—

Let's end this topic.

Harry immediately fell silent.

He knew, of course, that the atmosphere between them had recently become almost icy. He understood Amanta, and he understood Draco—truly understood.

But he couldn't help but feel a little resentful that was out of place.

He thought Draco had done something wrong.

In Harry's world, Draco and Amanta are equally important figures. He would do anything for them; he has already done so much. But Draco... did nothing.

He tried to comfort himself, saying that Draco might be carrying too much and too heavy a burden, but deep down, a voice still gently reproached him:

Why couldn't Draco be braver?

He irritably tugged at his hair with his knuckles, then lowered his head and stopped talking.

Yes, he knew that Draco was a typical Slytherin.

Not Gryffindor, not an impulsive, reckless, instinct-driven knight, but a cunning fox who assesses the situation and weighs the pros and cons.

but--

They are not labels. They are themselves.

He vaguely realized that Amanta was never incapable of understanding Draco's choices.

She was too smart; she probably understood better than anyone why Draco retreated and why he avoided the situation.

But it is precisely because I understand that I cannot forgive.

Even after Blaise left, the firelight still flickered gently in the fireplace.

Amanta tugged at Harry's robe sleeve.

“Harry, it’s not that I don’t care about Draco.”

Her tone was relaxed, even deliberately joking, in an attempt to break the oppressive silence that had just been building.

Harry was clearly still lost in his own thoughts and was startled by her sudden confession: "W-what?"

"I just--"

She paused, as if carefully choosing her words, "I can't forgive him yet."

“Then…” Harry hesitated for a moment, like a child afraid of saying the wrong thing, “then what can I do to get you to forgive him?”

She glanced at him.

The firelight from the fireplace reflected directly into her eyes, burning with a soft, shimmering glow.

Amanta gently shook her head: "I don't know."

She looked up at the crackling, leaping green flames.

The fireplace flames at Hogwarts don't just burn with firewood; they are kept burning by magic that has kept them burning for centuries.

Magic operates silently, sustaining this ancient castle day and night.

Perhaps the same applies to her relationship with Draco.

On the surface, it appears warm and vibrant, but in reality, it has long since deviated from the laws of nature. It relies not on emotions, but on willpower.

Since she came into this world, she has been maintaining the connection between them, but she has never thought about whether such a connection is reasonable.

She just does whatever comes to mind, blindly doing whatever comes to mind.

It's as if as long as you have perseverance and hard work, you can shake everything.

Letters, heartfelt greetings, and repeated attempts to get closer...

She is too confident.

This ballroom incident caught her off guard and brought her into a sudden and unexpected reality.

A reality she has always refused to face.

Draco is no longer the little boy he was three years ago, who would blush to the tips of his ears at a compliment and fall in the snow trying to make her laugh.

Neither of them are.

She and Harry were orphans. They had no ties, no one to rely on. In their world, their friends were their only home.

But Draco is different. He has a real family behind him, a clan with whom he shares an unbreakable bloodline.

For him, the weight of family ties is always heavier than that of friendship.

Perhaps they shouldn't be compared, but if we have to put them on a scale to measure them...

They were ultimately a bit too light.

That wasn't what she found most difficult to accept.

Rather, Draco never explicitly stated that he held a scale in his hand; he hesitated, remained ambiguous, yielded, and evaded...

Those glances, those silences, were far too ambiguous.

The weights and measures swayed back and forth, just like his indecisive determination.

She thought that perhaps this was the one thing she truly couldn't forgive.

*

The winters at Hogwarts are absolutely freezing.

Harry and Luna had run off somewhere again, apparently exploring the Stone Circle ruins on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Amanta was left alone in the common room, curled up on the sofa by the fireplace, her breath steaming in the cold air, writing furiously by the frosty window.

She is writing a history of magic paper entitled "A Study on the Burning of Witches in the Middle Ages".

The books on the table were piled up like a small castle. They were materials she had collected from the library long ago: thick parchment documents, thread-bound records of black magic, trial records copied with viscous ink...

She sat there, carefully sifting through the passages, searching for examples that could be inserted into her paper. Her fingertips turned the dry pages, the quill whirring on the parchment.

It was a quill pen that Harry gave her for Christmas.

The pen tip is flexible and light to hold, and the handwriting it produces is so beautiful that even Hermione praised it, saying, "It looks like it was printed."

But after writing for a long time, my fingers still feel a bit stiff.

Amanta rubbed her hands together, breathed on her palms, and sneezed slightly. Her nose was red from the cold, like the raspberry jam on a walnut pie.

As if by some strange twist of fate, she suddenly closed her book, got up, put on a thick wool robe, tightened her scarf, and decided to build a snowman.

She had been studying at Hogwarts for four years, and she had never stayed for Christmas.

This year marks the first time I've spent the Christmas holidays in a castle.

The festive decorations had not yet been taken down; red and green ribbons hung from the ceiling, and candy-colored origami and stars floated in mid-air, gently swirling with the air currents.

Although there weren't many students staying on campus, Hogwarts was a bit more lively than usual this year because of the Triwizard Tournament. The corridors were no longer deserted; there were always whispers and hurried footsteps passing by.

But overall, the castle still seemed much deserted.

Fortunately, the exquisite and wonderful holiday decorations managed to salvage some of the atmosphere.

Amanta looked up at a magical paper cat in the corner, which wobbled and leaped into the air, only to knock down a five-pointed star hanging beside it.

She chuckled, clapped her hands lightly, and muttered to herself:

"Then I'll pile you up, fat cat."

Stepping out of the auditorium, the courtyard was covered in thick snow. The heavy snow had been falling for a long time, and the ground was covered in layers of solid, silvery white.

Few people build snowmen here anymore; only a few scattered figures are still having snowball fights in the distance, their laughter faintly audible.

Amanta walked past the snowmen that were already half-melted, but her attention was gradually drawn to their appearance.

Some were wizards riding brooms, some were ghosts wearing skull hats, and one looked like a horned monster with short limbs like a fat toad; I don't know whose pet it was.

She walked around them and went to an open space.

The snow was still thick; you could sink halfway into it with your feet, making it the perfect time to get things done.

She squatted down, cupped the snow in her hands, kneaded it into a ball, rolled it into a round shape, and then slowly rolled it on the ground to form a large snowball at the bottom, while patting the snow surface firmly with her palms to secure it.

Soon, the basic shape of a chubby snowman was completed.

Amanta stood there for a moment, then bent down again and began to carve out ears, a small nose, chubby paws... She even took out a tattered piece of chocolate wrapper from her pocket, folded it into a curved three-lobed cat mouth, and stuck it on.

Yes, a cat snowman.

She looked at it with satisfaction, feeling that this might be the most relaxed moment she had experienced recently.

If you don't think about those annoying three-way battles.

"I didn't expect to see you here."

A voice came faintly from behind her.

Amanta instinctively turned her head, and a familiar platinum gold color immediately caught her eye.

She was stunned.

He seemed to have lost a lot of weight in just a few days. His face was paler than before, his cheeks were thinner, and even his lips had lost their usual pinkish color, leaving only a cold, almost transparent white.

His features were still sharp, but he had lost some of his vitality, and he looked like a ghost version that had stepped out of a portrait painting.

For a moment, she didn't know how to respond, and simply replied with a faint, "Mm."

He took a few steps closer, bent his knees, and half-squatted down beside her, his gaze falling on the snowman on the ground.

"This is...a cat?"

"Ah."

"I didn't expect you to be such a good cook." His tone was casual, yet it carried a rare hint of genuine praise.

"Thank you for the compliment."

The conversation remained awkwardly suspended in the air. Amanta lowered her head, but her mind was no longer on the snowman.

She glanced sideways at him.

The boy lowered his eyelashes, his pale gray pupils focused intently on the unformed snowman, his lips were thin and pale, and an inscrutable shadow floated in his eyes.

The emotions in his eyes were faint, yet they could not conceal the lingering sorrow and silence.

She almost spoke for a moment, but she held back.

Noticing her gaze, Draco looked up and met her eyes.

"what happened?"

"fine."

She spoke softly, but her tone was somewhat strained.

It's impossible for her not to be moved; she was just enduring it and forcing herself to be.

I forced myself not to forgive him so easily.

An awkward silence fell between the two.

Neither of them spoke. Snowflakes fell silently from the vast gray expanse, landing on their shoulders, their hair, and in the unreachable void between them.

"sorry."

Draco suddenly spoke.

"……Um?"

The apology came so suddenly that Amanta was taken aback.

She had thought he wouldn't tell.

But the next moment, she quickly suppressed the inappropriate flutter in her heart.

"Some things can't be resolved with an apology."

She paused, hardened her heart, and finally uttered the words she had thought about for a long time but had never been able to bring herself to say.

"Maybe it's more appropriate for us to just be friends."

After saying that, she even felt a sense of relief, as if all of her energy had been drained away.

It's not liberation, but rather understanding that something has finally reached its limit, and it's impossible to return to the ease it once was.

After all, they still have to participate in the entire three-way battle for supremacy.

She had to stay calm. No matter how angry she was, she had to ensure his safety and couldn't isolate him from their team. She couldn't act impulsively and get into a tug-of-war of emotions.

"If this is what you want..."

Draco's face paled even more, his lips tightened, and he gritted his teeth as he said, "Then I promise you."

"That's it then."

She lowered her eyelashes and looked again at the unfinished snowman.

A barely audible sigh.

A gust of wind blew, and a piece of snow gently fell from the snowman's body, revealing its uneven surface.

Some things are indeed beautiful.

Before it takes shape, it will always be a blur.

As for their relationship, she no longer wanted to pursue who was right and who was wrong.

She has many more important things to do and cannot stop here.

Having lost her enthusiasm for building a snowman, she patted the snow off her hands and stood up straight.

"Tomorrow night, at the Room of Requirement." She spoke calmly, as if announcing a schedule, "The SO team's regular meeting. We just unlocked the secret of the golden egg, and this time we'll discuss the second round of projects and response strategies."

She stated the content in a calm and unassuming manner, just like the other members of the group.

Draco also stood up, his movements slightly slow.

Just as she turned to leave, he suddenly called out to her.

"Amanta".

She turned around, and the sunlight pierced through the clouds, falling on his shoulder. His platinum blonde hair shimmered slightly in the light, making his overly pale face appear somewhat brighter.

She raised one eyebrow, looked at him subtly, and waited for him to speak.

He looked at her, his voice low, but each word clear:

"I will try my best to achieve everything you expect."

"I promise you that."

In that instant, the dejection in the boy's eyes seemed to lighten, as if a kind of vitality was bursting forth. A deeply buried seed, finally finding a crack in the cold wind, was gathering strength to sprout.

Amanta lowered her eyelashes and nodded slightly.

Then he turned around and walked forward.

The snow crunched as the figure gradually disappeared into the distance.

Some things, though they may never return to their original state, do not mean they are over.