The Darkest Hearts || REGULUS BLACK

Chapter Nine

Diana did not leave her dormitory once that weekend, not even for the Halloween feast held the night after her last session with Regulus, feigning ill to her concerned friends and confining herself to bed.

She felt terrible lying to her friends, especially when they were so sympathetic and going so far as to smuggle meals to her out of the Great Hall, but she couldn't bring herself to explain the true reason she did not want to leave the safety of her four-poster bed or the walls of their dormitory.

The night of her session with Regulus, she hadn't slept at all. She'd kept tossing and turning, shedding her bed coverings when she began to sweat and her heart would pound, only to draw them back to her chin moments later when chills wracked her body and her gut tightened with nausea.

It hadn't been real, she kept thinking. There could be no way she had actually seen Regulus with a Dark Mark. The fumes from their concoction had surely gone to her head and toyed with it, making her see things that weren't actually there.

But then she pictured that ghastly grinning skull, the black ribbon of the inked serpent coiled around it, in it, so clearly that she knew within her heart what it was, what it meant.

Regulus Black was a Death Eater.

Saturday, the day of Halloween, she'd simply remained motionless in her bed, her eyes staring, unseeing, at the soft golden fairy lights she'd strung between her bedposts, mulling over what she should do.

Go to Professor Sprout, or Professor Dumbledore was the obvious answer. Informing her Head of House and the headmaster that there was a Death Eater—and possibly more, she realized with a flare of panic—in the school was in everyone's best interests, to keep the students safe. Death Eaters were more than a fringe pro-blood-purity group. They were a Dark and criminal movement helmed by what the whispers suggested was the most powerful Dark wizard since Grindelwald and bound to surpass him. They were an army, waging war on the Wizarding and Muggle worlds alike. She would be foolish not to tell anyone. But she remained in her bed that day, occasionally brushing her fingers over the skin on the inside of her left forearm.

Her time was running out on Sunday. Her excuses to her friends about why she wouldn't go to the hospital wing were beginning to sound unconvincing even to her own ears, and she couldn't just ignore the problem any longer. Regulus was sure to have put the pieces together by then, and for the first time since they'd met, she was scared of what he might do to her now that she knew about him.

She examined the hand that Nott had torn through with his purposeful spell. It was perfectly healed—not even a scar remained thanks to Madam Pomfrey and her copious ointments and potions. She wondered if Nott was a Death Eater, too. She wondered if Regulus had told him about her discovery. She wondered what they were planning to do with her. That was all she did as she laid in her bed and stared at the yellow canopy and lights above her—just wondered.

Regulus had told her that he wouldn't hurt her that night on the dungeon steps. For some reason, she had believed him at the time. But that had been before she knew he was a Death Eater.

Death Eater.

The words soured her stomach and made her hands fist in the bedsheets. Just when she thought that maybe he could be decent underneath all that pure-blood bravado, that perhaps they could be—

Her thoughts halted abruptly. Thought they could be what? Friends? She scoffed aloud to herself in the empty dorm, the sound thick with scorn.

Regulus Black was not her friend, nor would he ever be. He was cold, and proud, and dangerous, and a liar. A child soldier in the service of the Dark Lord.