I wasn't spying.

I told myself that twice while I stood behind a curtain of hanging vines in the herbology greenhouse, close enough to smell damp soil and dried lavender and the faint, suppressed thread of Val's scent underneath all of it.

I'd come to find her. That was all. She'd missed the first ten minutes of the window I'd blocked for conditioning work, and I didn't like when schedules slipped.

Then I heard her voice and I stopped moving.

"I don't know how long I can do this."

She said ...