Liz has always refused to become like her family. Even though the blood of the Black family flows in her veins. Adopted by Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange after the death of her father Regulus - in hopes of "setting her on the right path" , she st...
The sun was already pushing brightly through the tiny gap between the heavy velvet curtains when Liz finally regained consciousness. The impressions of the past day crawled over her skin like a thousand spiders and she had to shake herself violently.
"Good morning," laughed Mattheo, whom Liz had completely forgotten for a tiny moment.
He was sitting upright next to her in bed, leafing through a book. For a while, they just looked at each other in silence. Neither of them had made any effort to make the wounds disappear, and so a lush bruise blossomed on the bridge of Mattheo's nose.
"I'm not going to apologize for that," Liz grumbled as she felt the twinge of a guilty conscience and pointed to her own nose.
Mattheo let out a surprised snort. "Didn't expect you to, either. In fact, I still owe you a clash or two." Liz knew what he was eyeing so ruefully now. She could feel the scab on her cheek when she turned to her other side.
Liz wasn't going to lie. She had been scared. Deathly afraid. But it had made her realize once again that she could never live without fear. Any day could be her last. Bellatrix knew where she was now, and even if Mattheo was serious about his promise, in a fight between the two of them, Liz would bet on Bellatrix for better or worse. She simply had more experience.
"Do you want to sleep with me?"
"What?" Mattheo's face flushed pink.
"I've been thinking about it. Yesterday in the shower."
Now he let out a forced laugh and slammed the book shut in his lap. "You thought about sleeping with me in the shower?" Amused, but still with red ears, he rolled over to Liz. "Tell me more."
But Liz didn't immediately understand his innuendo and continued unapologetically. "I made a list of things I want to do before Bellatrix catches me."
"She won't catch you. Not as long as I'm alive," Mattheo interjected seriously, but Liz brushed past him again.
"I don't want to die a virgin. So?"
"You're a virgin?"
It puzzled Liz that Mattheo was confused by this fact. "Yeah, why?"
Unsure, he put a little more distance between them again. "I don't know. You've been very - very confident with your body around me." She could almost see the young man inwardly congratulating himself for that phrasing.
"That's the thing. I don't have to be ashamed in front of you. You have enough scars of your own. I can't even go swimming in the summer - ah! Good point. I want to learn how to swim!"
"You can't swim either?"
Seconds passed in which the two just stared at each other in irritation, silently communicating their confusion.
"I don't think you have any idea what normal everyday life is like for normal girls. If I show just one of those scars, there's going to be a big drama right away. But all of them? I would have been the talk of all of Hogwarts within seconds. Well, and you know the Lestrange estate. Not exactly the Ritz Carlton with a pool in the basement."
"Okay, learn to swim. We can do that. What else?"
"I've never been drunk partying before."
"Liz." He smacked his chest dramatically. "There are chasms opening up here."
"How could you have done all this? Drunk, you're way too vulnerable, and in a group full of people in the dark? Who knows who might suddenly appear behind you!"
Mildly, Mattheo raised an eyebrow. "You're quite right. Mattheo Riddle can't afford to do something like that. But there was a time before I was a Riddle. Before your family tracked me down."
That was true. Liz had almost forgotten about it. Mattheo hadn't grown up as the Dark Lord's son.
"What was it like then?"
"Hard," Mattheo groaned with a bitter laugh. "But different hard than it is now."
"Tell me about it." Liz rolled onto her stomach and immediately regretted it as the throbbing in her foot returned. She tried not to let on, but she could tell by the way the pain ebbed that Mattheo was using their pact.
"I came into the world a little early." A harmless euphemism for the cruel truth. "Which is why I was a wimpy little kid. The other children first made fun of me for not having a father, and later, in the home, of my mother for giving me up so late."
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"My name was Mattheo Gilmore at the time. But I had no less trouble." He pointed to the scar on his face. "Another boy wasn't happy about me being invited to a special school."
"Hogwarts?"
Mattheo nodded. "Of course, you couldn't tell the Muggles what kind of school it was, so one of the sisters decided to call it a private school. Well, like I said. I was always small and frail, but ever since I got that letter, everything in my life had changed. A light at the end of the tunnel or something."
"I think they use that comparison for near-death experiences," Liz interjected.
"That night wasn't that far from it, either. Shawn, an older and stronger boy had something against me since my first day at the home, and then to hear that skinny Mattheo, of all people, was going to have a better future ahead of him - it escalated."
"You were what, ten, eleven?" Liz could hardly imagine that children could be so cruel to each other. At least no one, outside of her family.
"It doesn't mean anything." Mattheo smiled, but something about it made Liz immensely sad. "Shawn didn't have an easy childhood. Today I understand his situation, but when you are ten, it was a very different story. I was really scared for my life when he came at me with a knife that night."
"How did you survive?"
Mattheo licked the cut on his lip and averted his eyes. "Liz." He hesitated and grimaced.
"What?"
"What do you think?" Pain distorted his features and Liz had to sit up to face him.
A stone had formed in her stomach. "You fought back?" she suggested hesitantly.
Finally, he looked her in the eye again. "I killed him."
Liz knew the rumors. She had heard people talking behind closed doors that he was a murderer. That he was supposed to have killed his mother. And, of course, countless muggles. But somehow she hadn't really expected him to have actually killed anyone anymore.
"I'm so sorry."
If Mattheo kept looking so disbelieving, he would definitely get wrinkles from it. "Don't be sorry for me. I'm still alive, after all," he quickly fought back all sympathy, but the insecurity that was on his face this time was different than before. Where before he was confused by Liz, now he seemed to not understand something within himself. At least that's how Liz interpreted it, because Mattheo was rubbing his chest as if he had heartburn. But maybe he really did just have heartburn. Killing a human could certainly make you sick to your stomach.
"Enough of that. You'll have to put off the physical activities for a while until I find a spell to restore your foot. What else is on your list?" He had pulled out the book again and showed Liz the title. An old book on healing spells and magical medicine that he must have found in the Blacks' library.
