The Mark of a Death Eater : Sequel

Chapter Twenty Five

I woke after a few hours with a burning throat. Alia had warned me that Jasmine's tonics made one thirsty. I tried to sit up, meaning to get water from the kitchen and found myself stuck against Zayn's chest. I tried to push myself away, but he had a good grip. Zayn Osman, the cuddler. He'd slept with a stuffed dragon in his arms until he'd gone to Hogwarts. I was willing to bet anything that he still had it hidden in his cupboards.

I knew what he looked like when sleeping without having to turn and look at him. He would be laying on his side, one leg hitched way up above the other, an arm thrown over his eyes. Even though his legs now stretched out nearly to the end of the bed, he always looked smaller when asleep.

I crawled out from under his arm. Heavy. I didn't want to wake him. I wriggled out the sheets and rolled onto the floor, landing on hands.

As I tiptoed down the stairs, I contemplated over the large amount of light shining through every window and wondered where it was coming from. It must've been a full moon out. My mind almost immediately began calculating how long I'd been away from the Manor, and I pushed the ugly thought away.

As I passed Jasmine and Alia's room, I saw the glow of candlelight under the door. Probably Jasmine. She always studied up on potions at night. Alia said it was because Jasmine could concentrate better without any noise, but we all knew that Jasmine had a hard time sleeping at all.

In the kitchen, I drank a tall glass of water, and then another, and then another. Surprised by how thirsty I was, and a little concerned about it, I filled another tall glass with water and made my way back up the stairs. I sped up by Jasmine and Alia's room this time, because I could hear footsteps coming my way. I didn't need to be on Jasmine's dark side any more than I already was. It wasn't that I was afraid of her or that I thought she didn't like me, it was simply that she had all the misgivings about me that Alia did with none of the niceness to dilute it. I ducked into a spare room as I heard her door creak open. Glass bottles clinked softly as she moved. I didn't hear her footsteps, but I did hear the back door opening and closing lightly. I moved to the next room and looked through the window overlooking the yard. Jasmine, her glittering boots visible beneath her dark robes, used her wand to open the shed door and disappear into it. As I watched, a blue light flared inside, illuminating the windows. I waited until it had dulled and then turned away. It wasn't out of character for Jasmine to spend her nights in the shed, where she could bubble and burn potions to her heart's content. Arianne's map was hidden in the shed, however, along with some camping gear I'd stolen from Mr. Osman and hidden. The shed was a big place. I hoped I'd hidden it all well enough.

My eyes were heavy by the time I made my way to Zayn's bed. I gulped down the water I'd brought and settled the glass on his overflowing bedside cabinet.

I brushed the hair off Zayn's cheek. He looked so small when he was asleep. Too small.

"They're just children, Lucius. Brought up on something much bigger than themselves. They're too young to be fighting a war," the memory of Narcissa's voice hissed in my ear.

To my surprise, I found myself wiping a tear from my cheek. Narcissa. If anything bad had happened to her... it couldn't have.

I stared up at the stars and willed my eyes to shut, Narcissa Malfoy the only person on my mind.

-

Zayn was gone by the time I opened my eyes the next morning, but a tiny bouquet - really no bigger than the palm of my hand - of yellow and pink and purple flowers had been laid on his pillow. I touched the paper-thin petals and smiled. Wildflowers. They grew at the precipice of the cliff at the end of the Osman estate and then all the way down, a waterfall of colour, as if a giant had blown them off and they'd suddenly multiplied as they scattered. If you looked down from the cliff on the morning of a good spring sunrise, you could see thousands of flowers waking up and turning east to greet the sunlight.

"Greetings," Zayn said brightly from the doorway. I looked up from the flowers to smile at him. He was wearing a paint-splattered t-shirt and a rough pair of pants. Working clothes.

"I was helping my father in the shed this morning," he explained. "Jasmine may have set a wall on fire last night and it needed a bit of patching before the rain comes."

"We're expecting rain?"

"We are hoping for it," he corrected.

"You should have woken me." I sat, climbing out of the bed. "I might have helped." I used to love helping out with Mr Osman's repairs as a child.

"I did want to, honest," he said, "but Sophia gave me a near-death glare when I suggested it. Said you needed all the extra sleep you could get."

He abandoned the doorway and began humming a song as he walked around the room, picking up bits of this and that that we'd neglected.

He wasn't wrong, I thought, about the sleep. But as I stretch experimentally I realized I hadn't felt that good in ages.

"I felt fine," I said. "Better than fine. Jasmine is a genius."

Zayn smiled proudly at the compliment to his sister. "Did I tell you St Mungo's wants her next year?" he asked, excitement lighting up his features. "They want her to join their experimental trials for a study on a werewolf cure." He held out the glass I'd brought up last night.

"Trying to create something better than wolfsbane?" I asked, setting the flowers in the glass.

"I think so." He set the flowers on the table. "It would be excellent, wouldn't it? If she found a cure?"

"Truly," I said. And I meant it.

This. This was what home felt like. Late mornings with Zayn standing in the doorway of a bedroom, asking my opinion on the new head of the department of mysteries, or on the new course of healing burns at St Mungo's. How easily we'd slipped into old routines.

I found myself staring up at him, matching smiles on both our faces as if he too had realized the familiarity and was basking in it.

Zayn wrapped his arms around me and buried his head in the crook of my shoulder. It was such a sudden gesture, such an unexpected show of the quietness that he usually carried alone that I grasped his shoulders and let out a deep sigh. It felt like some of the extra weight I'd been carrying had sunk into the earth. If I stayed in his arms forever, I would be able to float.

He had started humming again and was swaying gently on the spot. I laughed softly. He was awfully adorable when he wasn't being self-conscious.

He pulled away from me and sort of smiled. Just the right side of his mouth, pulled up a tiny bit. Affection in his eyes. Not really a smile, but a promise of one. He was sad, I realized, and he didn't even know why yet.

He would find out soon enough when he woke up one morning to find me gone.

"Breakfast," I said brightly, pulling away. Because if I thought any more about it I would start crying, and nothing would ruin the perfection that this morning had gifted me.

"Mom made pancakes," he said, smiling for real.

I took his hand and grinned. "Pancakes it is."