Little Bird

Chapter Twenty-Five

Eve

            That evening, after the Quidditch match, I curled up on my dormitory bed with the curtains drawn shut around me and silently cursed myself for what I had told Draco.

            I wanted to strangle myself for spilling the one and only secret my aunt and I had kept safe for my whole life—the fact that my parents worked for the Dark Lord right up until the moment they died. And now, thanks to me, the son of two well-known, entirely loyal Death Eaters knew it.

            If my aunt knew what had just happened, she would make me pack my things and move to Romania in an instant.

            I tugged my pillow against my body and wrapped my arms around it, digging my nails into my arms. With Millicent's snores filling the air and my still-wet hair pressing against my cheek, I wondered if I should owl my aunt to let her know what I'd done. This was the first time anything like this had happened; all my life I had always heard the words, 'Keep it a secret. Don't let anyone find out who you really are.' Now that someone besides my aunt and uncle finally knew who my parents were, I couldn't ignore how scared I was. What if I had just ruined everything my aunt had done to keep me safe?

            The worst part was that I had known something like this would happen when Draco had first told me that he liked me; I tried to make myself stay away from him, because there was no way I could get attached to someone whose parents were Death Eaters. But I went ahead and fell for him anyway, and now look what happened.

            Now he knew everything.

            As I laid there in the bed, I tried to picture Draco telling his parents about my secret and failed. I couldn't even imagine him doing something like that after I made him promise not to tell anyone, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't see Draco betraying me like that. A nasty voice in the back of my mind reminded me that he was a Slytherin at heart and probably didn't care much about me at all, but I ignored it. As much as a part of me tried to convince myself otherwise, I honestly didn't think Draco would tell anyone the truth about my dead parents.

            Maybe I was just fooling myself, but it seemed like Draco actually did care about me. It was odd, but I couldn't think of anyone else at this school who I would rather have find out about my parents—not even Ginny. And as much as I hated myself for telling him, it was almost like a huge weight had been lifted from my chest. It was a secret I'd kept buried for my entire life, and I didn't think I'd ever actually said the words, "My parents were Death Eaters", out loud before. In a way, I was almost relieved now that Draco knew who I really was.

            I rolled over in bed, pulling the sheets over my head and finally letting out the breath I felt I'd been holding all night.

            Maybe I was just trying to make myself feel better about telling Draco the truth about my parents, but I just hoped this all wouldn't blow back up in my face later on.

            Because staying hidden from the Dark Lord would always be the one thing I had to do—no matter what. 

~*~

            Just two weeks after the Quidditch match, everything changed.

            I was sitting at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall early Saturday morning, poking the spoon at my oatmeal sleepily, when Draco burst in and hurried over to me. It was so early in the morning that not many people were in the room, but I still jumped when he reached me and said breathlessly, "Eve, you're never going to believe what just happened—"