INDIGO
"I sent an owl to your mother once," Madame Zabini began, her knitting needles clicking against one another as she worked. "We've written to each other on more than one occasion, but I recall this one in particular. She said you were attending a muggle children's school."
I nodded and swallowed my sip of tea, holding the cup with both hands in my lap. "Yes, I did."
"Really?" she asked, sounding utterly fascinated. "What was it like?"
I thought for a moment.
It wasn't just the two of us in the parlor. Beside me, sat Blaise, but Theo was laying on the carpet, throwing and catching a ball, and Draco was in the nearby armchair, his eyes fixed on the burning fireplace. Blaise was the only one actively paying attention but I knew they were all listening, and she wouldn't ask anything super intrusive while they were around—nor had she thus far—but I was still hyper-aware of their presence as I continued.
"It was... interesting," I said. "None of them could do magic and I had to learn how to control mine so no one would see anything. Of course, I had a few... incidents but, for the most part, I did a decent job. For a five-year-old, that is."
"'Incidents'?" Blaise asked.
I shrugged. "Oh, you know..." I said. "Accidentally freeing the class pet, giving some girl a tear in her stockings when she made fun of me. I froze that same girl's juice box solid, the one time. It was so cold, her fingers stuck to it and the teachers had to pour warm water over her hands to melt it."
Theo snorted a laugh and gave me a proud sideways glance.
Madame Zabini grinned and looked up from her knitting, curious even though she continued to work. Click! Click! Click! "Why did she make fun of you?"
I shrugged again, this time choosing my words carefully. "I used to fall asleep in class a lot," I said. "I... don't sleep well."
"Madame Zabini, did you smell the third floor?!" Theo exclaimed, sounding genuinely horrified. "She's made the entire thing smell like her insomnia tea!"
Madame Zabini laughed. Click! Click! Click! "I was wondering what smelled so lovely," she said. "Considering I am on the same floor as three teenaged boys."
"Gran," Blaise said, looking at her as if he couldn't believe she would accuse him of bad hygiene.
She laughed again. "Oh, of course I don't mean you, dear," she said, a mischievous twinkle in her eye that made me smirk. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who enjoyed messing with my brother. "But I suppose that means sleeplessness must run in the family. I don't sleep well either. Never have, when I think about it."
I smiled understandingly at her and she returned to her knitting.
Madame Zabini was not at all what I expected.
Of course, I couldn't trust everything she said and did but, for the most part, she was just an old woman, whose memory and body were failing her. The regalness she was so well known for, I concluded, was largely due to the way she carried herself. I had never seen a cane like hers before. It came all the way up to her hip and was more like a tree branch than anything else, with swirls had been carved into it from the neck down and a jet black stone cut like a diamond at the top. Perhaps it was the cane's height that allowed her to move so elegantly, her back straight as a pin, shoulders down and head high. Then again, I imagine she'd had her share of etiquette training in her youth, as the future matriarch of such an old family.
She spoke often of the Zabini family. She told me about my late grandfather, and my great-grandparents, but, most of all, she spoke of my aunts—my father's two sisters—who lived in France. As her memory wasn't the best, she repeated things often, but nothing compared to how often she talked about them, and there was always something so sad about her when she did. Of course, I wasn't a parent, but I suspected that they had done something to disappoint her.
YOU ARE READING
In My Dreams [Draco Malfoy]
Fiksi PenggemarIndigo Costa-Zabini is a lot of things but she is, above all else, a seer, plagued with terrible dreams of people dying that would always come true, whether that be after ten minutes, ten days or ten months. Until the summer of her fourteenth year...