if one of them is dead.

chapter thirty-seven.

Lilith.

"You got a lighter?"

"Obviously," I mutter, my voice muffled from the half of a lit cigarette in my mouth while not turning around to face Mattheo. I know he wants to sigh, I can feel it.

But he doesn't. He walks up next to me, taking his hands out of his pockets. I grab a lighter from my pocket and hand it over to him. Yeah, I'm still mad at him, but it's a lighter. And I know that he's mad about me betraying him, and I understand why. It was my fault; I knew what I was getting myself into when I did it. And I knew that Mattheo wasn't going to exactly be happy with it.

He hands my back the lighter and I shove it back in my pocket with one hand. He rests his wrists on the railing like I am, and he looks up at the stars with me. We haven't done this in a while, and it's more tense than ever.

And it's completely silent.

"Look, Lilith—"

"If you try and tell me that I need to watch what I do, I don't want to hear it, Mattheo," I interrupt, taking the cigarette out of my mouth.

He takes a drag, moving his wrist a little. He looks down, then back up. "I don't want to talk," he says, "Not now. Just sit here, looking at the stars."

I nod, look down, and put the cigarette back in my mouth. And, no matter how much I admire the stars, I don't look at them. I look at him, and he knows it.

He smirks against the cigarette. It's faint, but it's there.

Cocky bitch.

"Now that's just rude," he says, the smirk most evident in his muffled voice. He glanced over at me as I look away and scowl. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth and chuckles, the smoke coming out as he does.

His laugh.

I shake my head. "I forgot you were good at that."

"Your father is good at it," he says, raising his brows. "But you seem to be doing just fine with shutting him out. I'm just waiting for you to do the same thing to the rest of us. Again."

"Oh, great," I say, nodding as I look back down at the ground below us. "So, you didn't come up here to tell me I should watch who I talk to, but you came up here to tell me about how I shut people out. Wonderful." I look over at him. "You know, Mattheo, no matter how much I care about you, I will never understand you. No matter how much I will always try to know you more, I won't ever understand you. One minute you're mad at me because I went against your wishes, the next we're fine, then you're mad at me because I'm talking to a few harmless Gryffindors, then we sit here like we used to, and then we go back to the fighting thing."

He looks over at me, taking a drag on his cigarette. He looks down at the cigarette in his hand, then to me. "And I'll never understand you, Lilith. We're the same when it comes to whatever the hell this is. You fight with me one minute, say that you get why I'm mad, and ignore me." He shakes his head.

"When are we going to go at least a little bit back to normal?" I ask. "Mattheo, I understand it all. Why you're mad and everything. I really do, and even the parts I don't, I try to understand them. I don't blame you for any of them," I nod my head to the side a little, flicking my cigarette in my fingers, "I know I screwed up, okay? And I know you hate me for it, even if you say you don't. There's still a little part of you that hates me for it. I screwed up really bad, but I don't regret it," I shake my head a little, "A part of the reason I did it is because I love you. I think you already knew that, but just in case you didn't."

He doesn't say anything for a long time. He glances down at his hands, puts his cigarette back in his mouth, and takes another drag. "I love you, Lilith. I never stopped. I just really wish that I didn't."

"Yeah," I nod, taking a drag. I shake my head and put my cigarette out with the palm of my hand before dropping it on the cold stone at my feet. Burns like a bitch. I start walking backwards. "The feeling is mutual."

And I leave.

☯︎︎

"I swear, if the Daily Prophet comes out with another article about—"

"Seriously?" I ask, grabbing Draco's copy of the Daily Prophet from his hands. He puts his hands out in a what-the-hell way. Pansy unfolds her copy with her fork still in her mouth. I try flipping through the pages of the paper, trying to find where the hell Skeeter decided to put her interview on me.

"Page four," Draco mumbles, sticking his eggs aggressively with his fork before shoving them in his mouth.

Pansy gasps, her fork dropping from her mouth and clattering on her plate. "Paragraph two."

"That bitch," Blaise mutters from my left, glaring at the ink on his newspaper. He scoffs at them, his eyes moving fast across the words.

I move the paper around in my hands because, apparently, it was upside down.

"'Lilith Snape, age sixteen—'"

"Go down a few lines," Draco says, leaning over Pansy's shoulder to read her paper.

"'There is a rumor, that is quite possibly true, about Lilith being pregnant-' What the fuck?" I look up at Pansy, and she's shaking her head. "I told her clearly I was not pregnant."

"Yeah, the bitch doesn't like to listen," Mattheo mumbles right next to my ear. I don't even glance at him as he hovers over my shoulder to read the paper.

"'Lilith denies this rumor. But there are possibilities that her boyfriend, Mattheo Riddle, had done something to her that caused her to run away. She does state that it was her idea to run away. But now that she is back, alive, and healthy, things have been tense with her and her friends. She has been so drained of emotion, that the lives of the people are her are being sucked out—' That bitch," I say in disbelief, tossing the paper on the table.

"I will march into that building and kill her myself," Mattheo says lowly, going back to his normal position.

"Oh, so the two of you are back on protective terms?" Draco asks, pointing between the two of us with his fork.

Blaise swallows and nods to us. "Yeah, I would like to know how the astronomy tower meeting went last night."

"For one, we've always been on protective terms," I say, nodding to Draco. I turn to Blaise. "And two, there's nothing to tell."

"Can't two people just look at the stars while smoking?" Mattheo asks. "Is it a crime now?"

"For the two of you?" Pansy asks, then nods. "Yeah, probably."

Blaise leans forward to whisper to the two of them, as if we can't hear him. "Maybe if we shove them in his bedroom and lock the door. After they fight it out they might make up, or make out."

"Fuck off, Blaise," we both say at the same time.