if one of them is dead.

chapter two.

Lilith.

There's a small knock on the door before it opens slightly.

The others look over at the door and raise a brow at me. Dad never knocks, he always says, "I'm coming in, you little shits."

Mattheo opens and door and walks in, closing the door behind him. He looks around at the others, then back at me. He raises a brow.

"Mattheo, hey," I say, standing up.

"Oh, this is the one and only?" Alrik asks with a raised brow, and I flip him off.

"Holy shit, Lil. You fucking won," Fynn says, laughing from the ground. He messes up the pillow bed and groans. "Raine, come and help me, you fucker."

"Fuck off, dumbass," Raine says, throwing a pillow at Fynn.

I walk over to Mattheo and lock the door, kissing his cheek. "Would you like to meet my friends?" I ask. "They want to meet you. But, if not, you can go downstairs and have a nice conversation with my father."

"I'll meet the friends," Mattheo says without any hesitation. He grabs my hand and pulls me towards him. "Your dad is—"

"Scary?" I put in.

"Don't talk about Sev that way, you fuckface!" Fynn says loudly, throwing a pillow at Raine. The two of them start hitting each other with all the different pillows they can find.

I shake my head and chuckle, looking back at Mattheo.

"No," he says, shaking his head, "it's just awkward sometimes. You know, the whole sleeping together rumors and then we started dating and the whole first dinner with him." He leans down and kisses my cheek, pulling me closer to him. "The hoodie smells familiar."

"I may have used a spell," I whisper.

"Lilith, I swear to fucking God in the damn sky, if you start making out with him, I will burn your Beetlejuice movie," Fynn says. Him and Raine stopped fighting, and Raine is eating the rest of Aven's popcorn. Fynn gestures to Alrik, who tosses him my Beetlejuice movie.

I pull away from Mattheo and grab a pillow, throwing it at Fynn. "I will burn you with a goddam cigarette, you slutbag." Fynn gasps, putting a hand over his heart and one on his forehead. He starts fake crying, rolling around on the pillows on the ground.

"Fuck you, you whore!" he shouts back at me.

"Kiss my ass, O'Conner."

He gasps again.

I grab his arm and haul him to stand. He bows, handing me the movie. "Why thank you, m'lady."

I roll my eyes and push him onto my bed next to Raine and Darcy.

"All right, fuckers, calm yourselves." They all start to calm down and I grab Mattheo's hand. He looks at me weirdly as I lead him in front of the others. "Okay, this is Mattheo, my boyfriend." He looks at me weirdly again. "Mattheo, this is Darcy, Aven, Raine, Fynn, and Alrik."

Darcy waves, Aven finger guns Mattheo (he's very confused), Raine salutes him, Fynn waves to him even though his elbows are on the bed behind him, and Alrik nods in acknowledgement.

This will be fun.

☯︎︎

At the moment, the five of us are throwing random (unbreakable) shit at each other in my father's living room. How we got to throwing things at each other you may ask?

Well, Fynn threw a pillow at me, and I threw a pillow at him, and he went to throw one at me but it hit Alrik instead. So, now we're here.

I believe Alrik's words when Fynn hit him were "you motherfucker."

Dad went to back to Hogwarts that morning after we went back out to look for Darcy's box. We found it, thank god. But none of us have let her go back home. In fact, I haven't let any of them go home. I've forced the four of them to stay here with me before I have to go back to Hogwarts.

We've been jumping fences for the whole summer, and we did it again last night. We have cuts all over us from running down alleys and jumping fences and running from the police. It was just something small, so the police really didn't give a shit. Lucky us.

We spent all night cleaning our small wounds and making sure they weren't going to get infected. I'm going to miss them more this year than I did last year. But hey, if the excitement goes according to plan, I might get to see them again.

We stop abruptly when there's a knock on the door. I sigh and walk over to it, looking through the peep hole. When I see who it is, I open the door and let Mattheo in. I hold up my finger to tell him I need a minute. The others sigh and come over to me.

We get in one big group hug saying things like 'you fuckers are gonna be miserable without me' and 'you'll miss us, you fuckhead.' Don't worry, we really do love each other.

We say our goodbyes outside the house, and I tell them that if anything at home happens to any of them, they need to write me as soon as possible, and then we go our separate ways.

☯︎︎

When we get on the train, we walk to the compartment where all the other Slytherins are. Blaise insists we sit next to them even though Parkinson is there. Draco moves out of the seat, and I go in first. Mattheo sits down after me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders when Draco sits back down.

"So, you're dating now?" Parkinson asks, tilting her head.

"No," I deadpan, turning my head to kiss Mattheo's cheek. "We're just friends."

Blaise and Mattheo start snickering, Blaise isn't trying to hide it at all. The look on Parkinson's face is amazing.

Her face gets even better when Mattheo notices that Nott is looking at us and he starts kissing me. I push him away and hit his arm lightly, chuckling. He glares at me.

We got really close over the summer.

I think he thinks I'm going to break up with him or something, because he's been acting cautious.

So I do kiss him with the others watching. Not because I want them to know we're dating, because I do, but because I know it'll reassure him that I'm not going to break up with him any time soon.

But I wouldn't blame him for thinking that I was going to break up with him.

I've been telling him for two weeks that I'm not in the mood for having sex.

But I just don't want to hurt him.