OBSIDIAN HEART 2 (Draco Malfoy)

F I V E

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•The Dungeons, Hogwarts,•

"You know, this place is much bigger than I thought it'd be," Ezekiel mused as he walked the corridor of Hogwarts beside Draco and Lavinia, right past the kitchens. "Wouldn't want to clean it," Draco scoffed at that and Lavinia ignored them both as she led the way of corridors she knew so well.

The female warrior kept three torches lit at all times, the one nearest, the one in front and the one behind. As they moved, the torches lit and extinguished in tandem-- she wasn't sure if they knew it was her doing but it did not really matter. Hogwarts was eerily abandoned over Summer but she had once lived there all summer long, every single year and there was a comfort in the echoing of her footsteps. One could never gain this sort of comfort in the Hufflepuff Tunnels or the light camp.

"So you just don't go to school?" Draco asked Ezekiel, already knowing the answer-- he was likely opening them up to another bout of teasing. It was all the two of them seemed to do, line after line of teasing one another; Zeke would laugh at Draco's princely manners and then Draco would call him a barbarian because he had the tendency to eat parts of his dinner with his fingers-- eventually, they'd give up with that back and forth and one of them would tackle the other. To begin with, Ezekiel had bested him every single time but Draco was getting stronger.

Children, indeed.

"We have no reason to go to school, there is nothing we cannot be taught by the elders," he glanced around the tunnels. "And as we are never registered at birth, we have no trace," he flickered his eyes to Draco's golden vambraces that he wore everywhere, every day-- even though it did not matter if he did magic on Hogwarts grounds. "Do you intend to go back to school in September?" Ezekiel asked Draco the question Lavinia hadn't had the courage to inquire.

"What do you mean? Why wouldn't I?" Draco frowned and Lavinia resisted a sigh. "We live right outside, I may as well learn all that I can before the war hits us. Besides, it will be a much easier year without Umbridge skulking around the halls," he decided and Lavinia led them past the closed Great Hall. For a moment, she was reminded of her death dream with Elentiya but usually, she refrained from thinking about her temporary bout with the afterlife. It surely did not help her sleep at night to dwell on it.

"I just thought you'd be less likely to go back without Lavinia," the girl in question shot him a glance and Ezekiel winked back at her. How had he fathomed that? Perhaps he'd seen the way she stopped eating her breakfast every morning when somebody deposited the Daily Prophet on the table beside her-- that singular image of her that the Ministry somehow had, repeated for weeks and months and told the world that she was no ordinary student at all.

"What are you talking about?" Draco glared at him before speeding up to walk beside Lavinia. "What is he talking about?"

"Ooh, trouble in paradise," Zeke chuckled.

"Shut up Ezekiel or I shall throw you off the moving stairs," she warned and he just cackled back at her as though she'd said a marvellous joke. She supposed that in a way, she had considering she had absolutely no intention of killing the chiefs son who she'd shortly be bonded to-- that was just another thing on her endless list of thoughts and concerns that she chose to persistently ignore until it became urgent.

"Nia," Draco urged and she gently took his hand, never halting as she led them through familiar corridors.

"I am not sure what to do," she confessed finally, chancing a glance at his ash-coloured eyes and feeling her heart gutter. "I am not Lavinia Matthews, Draco, I cannot sit in Transfiguration class and pretend not to know how to turn toads into goblets, not anymore. My face is plastered across every newspaper and I cannot go anywhere without the entire world noticing. Your mother went to Gringotts in my stead and earned a full-page article. All she did was walk down the street, smile at some people and walk back. They wrote about what she was wearing and all the clothing stores in Diagon Alley were sold out of black fabric within three hours. They've-- turned me into a local celebrity... and I hate it. I did not know that it could be so terrible. I believed that being feared was the worst possible conclusion but this is worse-- I --"