Marmoris | Rabastan Lestrange [1] ✔︎

04 | CONFUSION

"There was a reason
I collided into you."

★

WHILE SPENDING NEARLY an hour of her train journey with Sirius, Phoenix had realised something. She had tried to push him away and pretend not to care, just like the rest of her family, but that wasn't her. Although she had always looked up to her older cousin, Bellatrix, who was the perfect image of a young woman with Pure-blood values, her stomach turned at the thought of becoming somebody that other people described as evil. No matter how much she admired her cousin, she knew how the young woman had been among those students who had undoubtedly redefined the stereotype of the Slytherin house and made the other students summarise their attributes as wicked, and that wasn't something that Phoenix wanted to strive for.

Sure, she had always tried to fulfil her parents' expectations of a Pure-blood daughter, while her friends had known about her hesitation when it came to the treatment of people with other blood statuses, but casting out her brother, her blood, to keep that image up went too far. She wasn't heartless and neither did she want to pretend that she was. Emotions were what made her human.

Back in Hogwarts everything went back to normal with high speed. Phoenix hardly ever talked to Sirius, although she still cared. Either it was because there was always one of her friends with her, if she met him in the hallways, or because she was busy doing homework. Already in the first weeks there were tons of it and Phoenix was good with it. It kept her mind off of Regulus behaviour, which was the only thing that didn't go back to how it used to be. On the contrary, it got stranger within every day. She wasn't sure whether it was associated with the fact that he still had the urge to prove to their parents that he was better than their older brother or if there was a completely different reason. However, she had given up to find out after the moment when he had insulted her for her curiosity.

So, she sat in the Great Hall one morning, a book placed on the table next to her bowl with cereal. It was early and most students were still in their dorms, but Phoenix had woken up after another night filled with weird dreams, of which she couldn't quite grasp the meaning, and an inability do go back to sleep. After fifteen minutes of staring at the ceiling and listening to Maureen snore slightly, she had given up and made her way down to have an early breakfast. But actually she appreciated the silence that filled the Great Hall. At least until somebody snapped her book from the table. She let out a startled shriek and looked up to see Rabastan Lestrange's face, who was chuckling lightly.

"Pride and Prejudice, what should that be?" he asked as he sat down next to her, the Muggle book she had got from her brother for Christmas the year prior still in his hand.

"A book?" she told him, staring at him completely puzzled.

She had expected anybody but him. Firstly, he wasn't easy to get out of bed in the morning – as Regulus had complained various occasions – and secondly, in all their years of knowing each other they had hardly ever been just the two of them alone. Somehow it made Phoenix feel rather uncomfortable, although she didn't know why. The fact that he wasn't teasing her for once made the complete situation even more confusing.

"Oh, I would never have guessed," the boy with white curls replied sarcastically. "I mean what is it about? Is it one of those cheesy romances all the girls read to imagine their perfect little love story?"

Phoenix blinked at him and took back her favourite piece of literature. "Exactly, which means you don't need it since you don't care about any girl's feelings."

"Ouch, that hurt, love," Rabastan stated with a false expression of pain on his face as he put a hand on his chest, where his heart was beating underneath. But the amused glimmer in his icy blue eyes gave the truth away; he wasn't taking this conversation seriously at all. Still, Phoenix started to feel a little sorry for what she had just said. Sure, the way he acted around girls mostly wasn't fair, but he was something like her friend.

She wanted to apologise, when he suddenly leaned closer to her and his eyes locked with hers, which made her freeze. 

"Actually I really was interested in your reading preferences, Miss Black," he told her before once again picking the book off of the table next to her bowl and leaning back. His behaviour got more irritating with every second that passed.

"You do reading without being forced?"

"Yes, but barely anything of this corny stuff. Too much wining about one's emotions."

"It's not corny at all, not even close. It's about a force which gives people more strength and unity than anything else in the world. Love gets them to stand together and fight side by side. It's actually the most beautiful thing I could imagine."

"Only a girl could say such a thing. All the drama before they finally agree to be that kind of a team, not really my thing." He shrugged, turning the book around to read what was written on the back. "Besides, these sort of things only happen in books. Have you ever seen love in real life? I mean look around you. Love only gets people to be weak and then they get hurt."

"But that's exactly the point. Those books can show us what there would be, if we acted the right way."

"I'm more into 'War and Peace' by Tolstoy or other books that have things of real importance in them, like wars."

"The masculine stuff, right?" she said with a little hint of sarcasm lacing her voice. "You like to read about people, who kill one another, for joy?"

Rabastan didn't answer, his eyes scanning over the text and then looking back up at her. "Sounds awfully dull to me. Where's the magic in this one?"

Not sure what his reaction would be, if she told him that it was Muggle literature, she turned her head and focused on her cereal. The silence from her side, however, was enough of an answer to him. "Do you think I would call you out for reading a book written by a Muggle?"

Phoenix shrugged hesitantly. "I don't know. Would you?"

She slowly turned back around to face him. To her surprise there was no sign of condemnation on his face. She even believed to see a trace of interest in his icy blue eyes as he shook his head. "I'm not in the position to do anything like that, am I? Besides, why should I do such a thing? I read them myself."

Being taken aback, the only thing that came up in her mind to say was not exactly the most educated answer. "Really?"

She eyed him suspiciously. He had to be fooling around. He wasn't the type to be expected reading or doing anything that made sense to Phoenix, and neither would she have described him as tolerant towards Muggles. Usually he was that arrogant guy, who kept teasing her whenever they met and gloated about people's faces when he hexed them in the hallways. He might have been called many things, but not a serious person tolerating others and doing useful things like reading.

"Yes, but I could actually call you out for reading the wrong kind of books. You need to get to know the good stuff."

Not convinced by his words, she took her book, which he was holding in his outstretched hand. "And you are the one who knows which those are?"

"Exactly, and that's why you need to meet me after Transfiguration. I have to show you something."

With that he got up, grabbed an apple from the table and left the Great Hall without another glance back at her. Phoenix still sat on the bench, staring after her brother's best friend.

What had just happened?