Noyade | Rabastan Lestrange [2] ✔︎

52 | PHOTOGRAPH

Since Sirius had been disowned by their mother, Phoenix had always known deep down that they'd end up fighting on opposing sides. It hadn't shocked her when the list of members of the resistance group they had discovered so far contained his name alongside his friends'. One might say that she had been prepared for the news and still the thought of her older brother being hunted down like an animal made her stomach turn.

And she would be the one finding the trail for the hunt.

Of course, her friends would pick up on her signs of discomfort because of the situation, while her parents simply blamed it on her being shaken up by the sheer number of recent events, and Rabastan, who was closest to her as she still lived at Lestrange Manor with both of them hiding, had asked her to take one afternoon off from her search for the members of the resistance.

"Where are we going? I've had this blindfold on for at least ten minutes, Rabastan," Phoenix said.

She rose the arm Rabastan wasn't guiding her with to take off the blindfold but he quickly swatted her hand away. "Patience, woman."

Groaning, Phoenix allowed him to pull her along. She had felt how they had apparated but she had no clue where they were. The only thing indicating anything about their location was the soft wind brushing through her hair and the grass brushing her ankles, which were bare due to her light dress, but that could have been any place. Normally she would have liked a surprise but with them still being on the run she felt rather vulnerable with one of her senses taken away from her by the blindfold.

Finally, Rabastan ordered her to stop. She heard some shuffling as he placed something on the ground before returning to her. The light was too bright when he removed her blindfold and she had to squint and let her eyes adjust.

But then she gasped, "Are we at... Salazar's beard, this is even more beautiful than I had imagined."

They stood a few steps away from a giant cliff, which stretched out for miles and miles toward both their sides. What she had mistaken for a river before was actually the waves crashing against the bright grey stone of the cliffs far down. She turned on the spot. There was no city or even just a house visible anywhere in the distance. They were completely alone - nature and them.

She drew in a breath of salty air that she hadn't noticed before and closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them again she smiled brightly at Rabastan.

The young wizard smiled in return, "The famous cliffs of Ireland."

"You remembered," Phoenix breathed and before she could stop herself she had engulfed him in a tight hug, which made him chuckle.

"Of course I did."

She had once told him about how she had read about the cliffs when he had asked her where she wanted to go if there was only one place she could visit before she died. The books had given her an image of pure nature and cliffs so high you could barely see the ocean at the bottom. The cliffs weren't as high as she had expected but the sight was more than satisfying. In fact, she believed it was perfect.

They pulled away slightly and stared at each other, both of them unsure what to do. Being so close felt strange. She had been the fiancée of a man who Rabastan had basically called his brother and getting close again felt like a betrayal of Jack but they just couldn't help the pull towards one another. They had even kissed but neither of them had been able to look the other in the eyes with the guilt welling up in their hearts.

Would things ever go back to normal?

Eventually, Rabastan pulled away fully and walked backwards to the bag he had placed in the grass little ways away from them. He announced, "There's something I meant to give to you."

He rummaged through the bag, peeking inside to see where the thing he wanted to give to her was. Finally, he pulled out a sappily wrapped, brown package and smiled at her, motioning her to come over.

"We missed your birthday because of everything that's been going on but I still wanted you to have this," the blonde boy explained.

He almost looked shy when he handed her the package as if the thing inside the wrapping paper made him vulnerable. Phoenix tilted her head and said, "I didn't get you anything for your birthday."

Rabastan's birthday had been in April, only shortly after him being admitted to St. Mungo's. In all the turmoil about his suicide attempt, his birthday had completely slipped everybody's mind.

"Then it's not a birthday gift. It's whatever you like best," Rabastan replied, gesturing for her to open the package. "It's the least I can do to thank you for what you did... for what you did when you found me in the bathroom at Hogwarts. You could have died trying to save me and I never properly thanked you."

Carefully Phoenix unwrapped the gift. As soon as it laid bare what was inside, the young witch gasped. With her eyes big she lifted her head to look at Rabastan, "You got me a Muggle camera?"

Softly, Rabastan shook his head and smiled, "It's a camera enchanted to create wizard photographs. I'll show you how it works."

He took the camera and pointed at a small thing at the top. "That's where you look through to see what you're taking a picture of. Then here you can change the focus of the camera and there the lens. And if you're happy with what you see, you push this button and it takes a photo."

With every new thing he showed her, he pointed at what he was describing. Phoenix didn't feel like telling him that she had used Dawn's camera before because it simply seemed too normal how he explained how to take a picture. She could do with a few moments of normality.

Without a warning, Rabastan stepped back and took a picture of her. Phoenix couldn't help but laugh and wait excitedly as the camera produced the photograph, printing it instantly. At first, the thing coming out at the bottom of the camera was completely blank but as Rabastan held it out into the air to dry it started to show colours. Eventually, it showed her pushing her hair behind her ear and smiling at the camera. She actually looked happy.

"Now let me try," Phoenix exclaimed, taking the camera from him and stepping back.

In the next half hour, they took at least twenty pictures of each other, the fields and the cliffs. At one point Rabastan sat down in the grass, pulling a sketchbook out of his bag along with a quill and started to draw her as she took a picture of their surroundings from every angle. Within a few minutes, he had drawn a beautiful sketch of her with her hair flying in the soft wind, as she stood near the cliffs.

With a big smile on her face, Phoenix sat down next to Rabastan. "I don't think I have been this happy in months. Thank you, Rabastan."

He softly placed a hand on her cheek but immediately pulled it back with a horrified look. "Oh no, now I got ink on your cheek."

Phoenix couldn't hold back her laughter. It felt like all her worries had faded away. He had managed to build a wall around her and that was the best present he could have made. It was just like roughly a year earlier when they had been something like a couple.

Maybe they could go back to how things between them had once been.