Noyade | Rabastan Lestrange [2] ✔︎

29 | SELFISH

They weren't allowed to see Jack until late in the evening. Slughorn had managed to excuse them from all their remaining classes and had been kind enough – no doubt due to the fact that they were both part of his infamous Slug-Club – to convince Dumbledore to let them stay until after curfew, under the one condition that Louis Avery would later accompany the two seventh years back to their common room.

Jack didn't look any better than he'd looked in the classroom. His usually tanned looking face was almost as white as the sheets covering his body. There were dark patches under his eyes, still and his skin and brown hair was damp with feverish sweat. They had put a tube into his nose to help him breathe and strapped his legs and arms to the bed. The restraints had shocked Phoenix greatly until he had started to move and trash his legs and arms. Then she had realised that they were only there for his own safety.

Upon entering she had asked Louis, "What's wrong with him?"

Her dark-haired soon-to-be brother-in-law had only shaken his head in a sad manner and she'd sat down next to Rabastan, who had buried his head in his hands.

"I don't think I can remember the last time this happened," he murmured, his voice thick with exhaustion and worry.

Phoenix had never learned how to comfort and reassure people. Her brothers had never been too keen on sharing their feelings and her parents – or at least her mother – had always viewed emotion as an equal to weakness. Over and over she had told her three children how feelings like affection meant that one opened oneself up to somebody and offered them a platform to stick an imaginary knife right into one's heart, and on top of all that, emotions clouded one's judgement. Phoenix had always wondered if she had been right and she had found herself supporting her mother's opinion after she and Rabastan had been forced to split up. However, where would humankind be without empathy or love? Maybe they would neither care totally irrationally for other people nor get hurt by their words or actions, but they'd also be alone. And was that really something to strive towards?

"This happened before?" Phoenix inquired, unable to think of anything more sensible to say.

Rabastan didn't look at her, but nodded, "Yes, not too often, but it still did. Usually he would be bedridden for a few weeks before we could convince him to go to St. Mungos, where he'd have to stay for about another week or so." He sighed, looking at Jack. There was something raw about the moment. It was like Phoenix saw yet another side of him, which she had never seen before. "He's never collapsed like this, though, or had hallucinations that controlled his body as well, not just his mind."

Phoenix simply watched the blonde boy for a long moment. There was a rare kind of beauty in him showing his true emotions in the candlelight. It looked like something a painter from the ancient times – like Michelangelo – would have deemed worth painting.

"Do you have any idea what's wrong with him?"

Rabastan glanced at her, as if wondering if she was worth being told. "Has he told you about what he did after his wife's death?"

"About the demon blood addiction? Yes, he has, but he said – wait a second. Did you just say his wife?" Phoenix stared at him in astonishment.

"So he told you about his addiction, but failed to explain that he had married Lyria in secret?" he asked, shaking his head in amusement. "Sometimes I just can't fathom what's going through his weird brain."

"You and me both, then," Phoenix whispered under her breath.

So, the husband her parents had deemed perfect was even less flawless than she had thought after all. He had simply ignored his parents' wishes and wed another – one that wasn't quite seen as suitable in his parents' eyes, Phoenix assumed, as they had to keep their marriage a secret. She was marrying a widower with an addiction.