Noyade | Rabastan Lestrange [2] ✔︎

18 | ABYSS

Rabastan hadn't expected his nose to connect with Jack's fist as soon as he entered his office. The force of the punch sent him stumbling backwards and hold his nose with a grunt.

"Do you want to knock me unconscious again? I just woke up ten minutes ago, you know?" he sneered, throwing the door shut behind him as soon as he entered the room again.

With long strides of his legs he walked past Jack and Regulus, who both followed him with their eyes, and stood in front of the window. Through the half-transparent glass, he was able to see how a few groups of student were still chatting in the white landscape. After the weather they had experienced during the game it looked so peaceful, much unlike his insides. There were so many feelings battling inside of him that he had no idea which one to hold on to, which left him with a big void of nothing.

"Looks like you prefer to take care of that yourself," Jack pointed out, uneasiness lacing his voice.

Rabastan heard shuffling behind him and he was yanked backwards by the collar of his shirt. He was surprised to be met with Regulus' angered facial expression. "You could have bloody died."

He simply stared at him for a second before a careless smirk made its way onto his lips. He couldn't prevent himself from laughing cheerlessly, answering, "So?"

Regulus pushed him back against the wall, stepping a few feet away from him. "So? Do you really value your life that little?"

"Who cares?" Rabastan said, straightening his shirt. They wouldn't understand anyway.

While Jack simply watched the two boys, Regulus pulled on his shoulder long hair and groaned, "Ido. Do you really think I want to attend my best friend's funeral? Will's was already bad enough. Maybe this is beyond selfish, but I can't go through this a second time. I'd be devastated." He paused, pointing a finger at Rabastan. "Also have you ever thought about how Nix would feel?"

The sound of her name made the blonde boy's attention immediately snap to the slightly shorter boy. He had believed it to be his favourite sound in the world – maybe simply because it made the image of her face pop up in his mind – but now he only connected it with agony. There was this longing inside of him that wanted to be selfish and fight for the right to hold her, kiss her and just be with her, but he knew it was wrong. Jack was like a brother to him and stealing his fiancé would destroy his reputation among other pure-bloods. It left Rabastan to go day by day with an empty feeling in his stomach whenever he saw her or heard her name, seeing himself as utterly pathetic for being unable to shake those emotions that connected her with him.

How much easier would it be, if he could simply forget about her by kissing Cara – which had proven to be useless.

Rabastan gestured towards Jack. "Why should she care? She's his fiancé, isn't she?"

"Does that mean she can't care about you? You're her friend and just because that thing you had ended badly doesn't mean you can act like a jerk. I told you I was fine with you dating her, as long as you wouldn't willingly hurt her. I trusted you, but you don't even care that she didn't think twice about saving you today. She was in the Hospital Wing because of you – and not for the first time. Do you really think she doesn't care just because your little romance is over?" Regulus' voice grew louder with every sentence until he was almost screaming at Rabastan.

The latter's face had been drained of all its colour. He was right. All he had done to Phoenix was hurt her. She could have been happy with Jack if it wasn't for him, and so could Regulus and Jack have been. He was not only an issue in his family's life but in theirs as well.

Still he couldn't help but defend himself, "I didn't mean for her to end up there. I don't even know howshe ended up there."

"Yeah, just keep telling yourself that. I really hope you can come back to who you once were because I really hate this version of you." Regulus' words thrown at him stung like acid and he could only watch wordlessly as his best friend walked towards the door and pulled it open before looking back at him with fury in his eyes. "And by the way, until further notice you're out."

Rabastan flinched as the door was thrown shut. He had really done it. Regulus had thrown him out of Slytherin's Quidditch team. He turned towards Jack and asked with his voice void off all emotion, "Do you want to yell at me as well?"

"I'd like to bang your head against the wall for what you pulled through, yeah, but I'd also like to know what you were thinking," the young man answered, lowering himself into a chair and looking at him expectantly. "Then I'll decide whether I still want to bang your head against the wall."

The blonde boy rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "There's nothing to tell."

"I'm pretty sure there is, considering I had to explain to all the other teachers why you would do anything like that in order for them not to send you to St. Mungo's psych ward for suicidal tendencies," Jack pointed out.

It struck Rabastan then that Regulus had yet to tell him about his suicide attempt nearly two years prior to that moment. He had made his best friend swear never to tell a single soul and apparently he hadn't even told Jack, although he had advised Rabastan several times to get help from somebody he trusted and who might know how to go about his problems. However, this time he was actually telling the truth. "Well, I can tell you how I lowered the tip of my broom and how I was suddenly yanked back into the air by Phoenix' spell, but in-between those events there's nothing. Just darkness."

Jack nodded, mustering him and obviously considering what he had just said. "Has this been happening more often again?"

"No," Rabastan answered firmly, shaking his head. "And if you suggest going back to the temples, I won't. It happens every now and then, but it's not unmanageable."

"It is unmanageable if it means that you get seriously injured every time it happens."

The younger boy shrugged his shoulders. "It's still my decision."

"Unfortunately it is, but if it happens again I'll get you to the temples whether you like it or not," Jack informed him, sounding more like a teacher than his friend than he usually did.

As promised, here's the new chapter!

So, I know a lot of you might think 'what the hell are the temples?' Well, I can't tell you right now, but I assure you that you will find out as the story goes on. I don't completely stick to the world J.K Rowling created, but add a few of my own ideas into it. 

I wanted to remind you that I don't always agree with what the characters do or say, especially when it comes to the topic of mental illness. But what I meant to show with Regulus's reaction is that it is usually hard for us to know how actually to react. (This doesn't mean it's the person's fault who's actually dealing with the illness.) 

Let me know what you think.

Love, Enya