Little Bird

Chapter Forty-Four

Draco

            Three months passed much too quickly.

            Eve and I laid low, only working on the cabinet occasionally and trying to take as much time as we could with it—but we could only slack off for so long. I hadn't tried to say anything about it to Eve yet, but the cabinet was close to being finished. It was spring now, and the school year would be ending in just a few months; we couldn't put off the task for much longer.

            As much as it made me feel sick to my stomach, there was no way I could pretend that the cabinet was still broken.

            Eve and I met up in the Room of Requirement after classes on Friday, because we'd been testing the cabinet lately by sending through objects to its twin at Borgin and Burkes. It had been Eve's idea, because she'd nearly had a panic attack when I suggested that I go inside the cabinet and see if it worked myself. The apple hadn't worked, as it had come back with a giant chunk scooped out of the side—I'd pretended not to have noticed how pale Eve went when we'd seen it—and the white bird had been a disaster that Eve was still upset about.

            To put it lightly, I was incredibly grateful she was helping me with this; otherwise, I probably would have tested out the cabinet on my own and ended up dead.

            "Where did you get it?" Eve asked carefully when I showed her the black-feathered bird I'd hidden under my coat the whole way there.

            "Same place as the first one," I told her, holding the bird gently in my hands as we walked through the aisles of junk toward the cabinet. "Near the Astronomy tower."

            She was quiet for a minute, but when we reached the cabinet half-covered by the tarp, she nervously voiced what she'd probably been worrying about all afternoon. "Are you sure it'll work this time? I just...I don't want the bird to die again."

            "I'm positive," I said firmly, even though I wasn't. I turned to hand the bird over to her, and she automatically reached for it with careful fingers. "Here, hold it for me so I can get the tarp. It shouldn't peck you."

            "I'm not scared to hold a bird," Eve snapped indignantly, making me grin and hide a laugh with the back of my hand.

            "Yeah, yeah, I know." I tugged the grey cover to the ground and kept my back to her so she couldn't see that I was still trying not to laugh. Tossing the tarp to the side, I opened the door to the cabinet and left it slightly ajar.

            When I turned back around, Eve was standing awkwardly with the black bird clasped gently in her tiny hands, and she was looking down at it with so much concern that I felt like I had to ask her if she wanted to keep it. But she reluctantly held it out for me, and I took it from her slowly. Eve looked incredibly nervous as the bird left her hands, so I told her, "Don't worry, okay? I won't let the bird die."

            "Okay," Eve said after a moment, and I could feel her eyes on me as I placed the bird on the smooth wood flooring of the cabinet. I shut the door quickly so it couldn't try to fly back out, and then I stepped back to pull out my wand.

            I'd memorized the spell after having attempted it so many times, so we hadn't needed to bring the book with us again. I muttered the words quickly because I could practically feel the anxiousness radiating off of Eve behind me, and I broke off when I heard the tiny crack come from the inside of the cabinet, the quiet singing of the bird ending immediately.