"Trust me, you shouldn't want anyone like me on your back."
"Maybe I don't want anyone like you on my back," His eyes darkened as he stepped closer, confining me tighter into barely any space as my back pressed against the wall.
"Maybe I want you. U...
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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
"QU'EST-CE QUI VIENT DE SE PASSER?"ELIAS Dupont's voice echoed in the silent Hogwarts hallway, his words audible enough alongside the tapping of my feet and the rushing of my breath as I ran down the empty corridor, my heart pounding in my ears as the granite floor beneath my feet lay hard and unrelenting.
"Dominique, you must give me something!" The Beauxbatons boy had desperation etched in his tone as he followed behind, his own footfalls precise in my periphery. "That was—Mon Dieu, you were—I'm sorry but that was all uncharacteristically psychotic!"
"I promise I'll tell you everything," I managed through the deafening pounding in my ears, "We do not have time right now."
"Fuck time," The boy yelled, "I was fucking held at wand point by Voldemort himself, you think I give a shit about anything else right now?"
I halted mid corridor, my breathing coming in hard as my chest ached with the force of it. I turned to face him, shaken by his choice of words and his anger. Elias Dupont rarely cursed more than once in a spoken sentence. There wasn't a boy more collective and composed than Elias Dupont in all of Beauxbatons. At present, I needed him to be all of that again. I needed someone to be sure of something in my presence, and somehow it was only Elias Dupont I could expect it definitively from. I didn't know what I would do were he to not measure up suddenly when I needed him to.
Elias stopped too, hands on his knees as he grappled for air, his brown irises pinned on me as a fresh glean of perspiration shone on his brow.
"Je suis désolé," I spoke then, the words cracking as they came out of my mouth. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have asked Angus to bring you. Now he's seen you and you're not safe. I should've sent both you and Angus away when I had had the chance. And now I don't know where he is. I only meant to take the wand—"
I broke off, fighting back the sharp ache in my eyes. This was no time to break down. The sudden disappearance of Angus was more unnerving to me than Voldemort's presence or Albus Dumbledore's condition. Acutely, it was only the presences of Angus and Elias that had rattled me. If I hadn't had either of the two present, could I have built the nerve to use The Elder Wand on Voldemort then and there? The former Credence Barebone would have had no need to sacrifice for me—if that was what he had believed he had done. Words seemed to just tumble out from between my lips in disarray, my true meaning concealed.
