Moon Dust | Mattheo Riddle

Chapter 4: Who are you, Really?

They stayed there for a little while just chatting whilst Mattheo smoked, he'd offered Nova a cigarette but she'd shaken her head profusely.

"So why start school now? If you've been home-schooled all this time, why volunteer to put yourself in a place like this?" he hummed judgementally.

Nova tilted her head with surprise. "You don't like this place?" she asked, but he gave her a pointed look, "I asked you a question first."

Nova chuckled and leaned back against the slabs of the window sill wall, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin onto them.

"Okay fine... my father got offered a job here, didn't want to leave me alone. He's been homeschooling me my whole life, so... where he goes I go," she smiled.

Mattheo flicked his cigarette out of the window and leaned closer to her, blowing out a final smoke-filled breath as he studied her face. "Didn't want to leave you alone? What about your mother? the Metamorphmagus? " he asked, emphasising the last word teasingly.

Nova rubbed her fingers across the rough marble stone wall, "she doesn't live with us. They're not together, never have been really. She's not exactly my father's type."

"He's not into half breeds then?" Mattheo hummed, pulling his feet up onto the windowsill and laying back against the wall across from the brunette.

Nova rolled her eyes, then kicked him in the shin slightly with her foot.

"I can see why he's not into half breeds," he scoffed, dodging the second kick that flew toward him with a smug laugh.

"No, he's not into women," Nova chuckled, kicking Mattheo's hands away as he tried to catch her ankle.

The Slytherin boy grinned and folded his legs over each other casually as he sat up to look at her.

"So you were an accident then?" he teased.

Nova leaned her head back onto the wall with a small laugh, shaking her head slightly as the boy shrugged his shoulders. "As far as I know, I was planned arsehole. My father asked Dora to be a surrogate... I guess somewhere down the line they decided to co-parent," Nova let out.

Mattheo leaned forward and pulled one knee up to his stomach to lean his arm on.

"Because of the Metamorphmagus traits? they probably didn't know it would be passed down, it's like that with most half-breeds. There's only the slightest probability that it can be passed down through genes and most of the time it doesn't... I guess you were lucky," he smiled.

Nova studied him for a second, trying to find the sarcasm behind his words, but there weren't any, he had meant that.

Most people wouldn't see it as a good thing to be a half-breed, especially someone who came from a pure blood family such as the Malfoys. So that little comment took Nova by surprise, he's still here, willing to talk to her even after knowing she isn't of full blood.

She wondered if he'd feel the same if he knew what else lurked in her genes.

Nova pushed that thought aside and shrugged her shoulders, "I answered your question, now answer mine, why don't you like this place?"

Mattheo smirked darkly and looked out towards the window. "They don't like me, why should I like them?" he huffed, staring intently at the dementors that flew around the school. Nova frowned and moved her legs down, hovering them over the windowsill, "so it's the people you don't like, not the place?"

"it's always the people, the people make the place... you either fit into it or you're labelled as an outcast," he hummed, still staring out of the window and leaning on his knee.