One Fate Leads To Another

Chapter 8: Confession

His eccentric behaviour lasted for a week. If time was what he needed to clear his head, he should have had enough. I asked Lily for opinions, but she was just as puzzled as I was.

I was not well acquainted with friends of Severus like Avery, so I went to Lucius Malfoy. I have deliberately avoided befriending Malfoy from the very beginning, not that he would like to befriend me anyway, but because between him and his future son, I would prefer Draco.

"I'll have to speak with you for just a second. It's about Severus." I found Malfoy in the Slytherin common room. There wasn't anyone else there this late.

"Then shouldn't you be talking to him, Miss Dumaine?" He said in contempt, nonchalantly, sitting in his chair.

"Well, provided that he would talk to me at all..."

He threw me a quick glance. "He's possibly busy then. Serving the Dark Lord is no easy task."

"He's what?" I exclaimed. I knew that he inclined towards the dark side in his school years, but I didn't expect it to happen this soon.

After all these times, I thought Severus and I were close enough to discuss important matters. How could he not have said anything?

"He didn't tell you, did he?" Malfoy asked with a perfunctory smile. A faint sneer of satisfaction crossed his face. "Perhaps you weren't so important... a Slytherin with an unknown origin is not just disgrace, but very much useless."

This type of bloodline-related hierarchical relationship between Slytherin students had been going on since before day I first entered this house. I had grown to be used to this type of disrespectful tone.

"Thanks for telling me," I replied dryly and left. Why would Severus not even tell me he's going to join the death eaters? He used to talk to me about decisions in his life... that he wanted to be in Slytherin, that he aimed to specialise in potion-making, that he had a strong interest in dark arts and its defence... why didn't he tell me? Should I confront him?

At the potion class the next day, I pretended to accidentally knock off Severus' notebook and slipped a note that says, '8 o'clock, ask the wall for a room to confront your best friend'. I waited in the Room of the Requirement since half-past seven that night, planning what I'll say to him.

1. Ask him if he had joined those death eaters

2. Ask him NICELY why he never told me about this

3. Tell him not to worry, that I don't like his decision but won't stop him if it is what he firmly believes he should be doing.

4. Tell him not to avoid me anymore. WE ARE FRIENDS.

He was punctual, as usual. Severus walked in with the coldest look I'd ever seen. Did he encounter something bothering him on his way here?

"Peeves," he murmured to answer my question before I could even ask anything. Sometimes I wonder how it was possible, that he just knew exactly what was on my mind. Was I that easy to read?

Anyway, I put that thought aside and prepared to ask him the first question on my list.

"I came today for it will be the last time we stand and talk as such," His utterance ruined my plan and took me completely by shock. The last time? Why?

"I don't want to explain anything," he continued.

"I'm not a toy that you can just throw away, Severus. I demand a better explanation."

He turned around, his back facing me. I couldn't see his face anymore.

"I'll take it if we gradually grow apart, but that's not what it is, right? A week before, we were just having a breakthrough, and since then you've been shutting me out for no goddamn reason. It's just, so unnatural." My plan was disrupted, so I just asked him whatever popped out of my mind. "Is it something that I do wrong?"