Darkest Desire - English

25

Liz was pretty sure she had just leaned her head against Mattheo's shoulder as she dozed off. But when she came to now, Mattheo had pulled her onto his lap. Her head rested against his chest, listening to the steady breath and heartbeat.

"You know this is wrong, don't you?" murmured Liz, not resisting the strong arms he still held around her.

"Is it?" he mumbled back just as sleepily, making no effort to move.

On any other day, at any other time, Liz might have kept her mouth shut. Would have just pretended to sleep for a while longer. Safe and carefree in these arms, at this chest. Would have listened to his heart for a while longer, soaking up the smell of the fireplace and a little whiskey.

But the ache under her rib grew stronger as the time approached for the Djinn to finish his task. The black lightning had been spreading since Hogwarts and was now tightening around her entire ribcage.

"I reject everything your father stands for." Liz heard Mattheo's heartbeat become irregular for two beats.

"You know what's weird?" asked Mattheo into her hair. "How come nobody ever asks me how I feel about my father?"

Slowly, the meaning of his words crept into Liz's consciousness. With a hand against his chest, she pushed herself far enough away to look into his somber eyes. He must have stoked the fire in the fireplace after she had already fallen asleep, but Liz still felt a biting chill as soon as she put distance between them.

"How - how do you feel about your father?" she whispered, unsure if she wanted to hear the answer.

Mattheo let his hands slide down Liz's back as she rose from his arms. Everything about him was always too dark and threatening. The way he looked at you, the silence. Everything about him made Liz tremble. And yet.

In that moment, there was something she didn't fear at all. At least not in that way.

"I hate him," Mattheo growled, his whole body shaking under the words. "You asked me if I killed my mother - I didn't. He did. He killed my mother before I was even born."

Liz tried to make sense of his words. Before he was born? What? How was that possible?

He must have seen the confusion, because when Mattheo looked back down at her, he had to close his eyes for a moment to collect himself. "She didn't tell him about her pregnancy until she was already nine months along. He didn't take that news too well. They had to cut me out of my mother's body to save my life."

Liz had barely noticed her hands clenching into fists. It was the most horrible thing she'd heard in a long time - and with her family, the bar was pretty high.
"He couldn't use a condom and he punished her for it?" That was.... Liz had never thought much of Lord Voldemort, but for something so... so trivial to happen somehow didn't fit her image of him. Just the fact that he was with a woman - .

"That's not what happened." Mattheo sighed softly. "We'll make a deal. If we both survive this, I'll tell you the whole story. Deal?"

"Deal," Liz nodded, and immediately the stone returned to her stomach. They didn't have much time before the Djinn would come for them. Where the hell was Malfoy?

As if her words had summoned him, the fire flared brightly - Liz jumped down from Mattheo's lap - and Draco came stumbling into the tiny room, coughing, dirty, and plenty battered.

"I. Got. It." He gasped after each word.

With one hand he propped himself up on his knee, with the other he held a round, nondescript clay jug with a large, round cork.

Liz scrambled to her feet and blinked a few more times against the sudden light. "This is... kind of not what I was expecting." It looked like one of those old sugar jars you often still found at Muggle grandparents' houses.
She picked up the jar and turned it back and forth. "Are you sure?"

"Do you really think I'd look like this if I wasn't?" hissed Draco, pointing at his singed hair and dirty shirt. "Now we just need to find something that the Djinn wants more than whatever Bellatrix promised him."

Liz was still cradling the jar in her hands. "I'm pretty sure I know what he was promised." She'd had that feeling since the moment she'd seen the Djinn in Mattheo's eyes. There was a reason the Djinn hadn't killed her right away. He had seen something in her in that forest that he had not seen in Bellatrix.

"What do you mean?" wanted Draco to know, fixing his clothes with his wand.

"I think he deliberately gave me that chance."

"The Djinn?" asked Mattheo, now standing up as well.

"Yes. He has...." Liz hesitated. How could she explain to them both what had happened? "I think he sensed a connection between me and him. Or maybe made it. I don't know the order. I just know I sensed it." Once again she sighed heavily. "What I'm saying is that this Djinn and I have the same desire. The one thing that drives us."

"Stop talking in riddles," Malfoy growled, finally finishing his beauty treatment.

"Freedom. What this Djinn wants above all else is freedom. If we can free him before he kills me, he might let me live."

"How sure are you of that?" asked Mattheo, taking the jar from her.

"I'd bet my life on it."

With a raised eyebrow, Mattheo looked up at Liz. "Isn't that what you did last time? Didn't turn out so well..." But after a few seconds of tense silence, one corner of his mouth finally pulled up. "I'm just playing with you. Do either of you have any ideas on how to break the spell that's binding the Djinn to this?"

Liz swallowed and looked back and forth between the two young men. "So," she began uncertainly. "Will you laugh if I say it's the same plan as last time?"

Mattheo looked to her again and Draco seemed confused, but remained silent. How much had Mattheo told him?

"Veri. My Augurey."