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— goodnight! —
"A mass breakout from Azkaban?" I frown, confused. "That wasn't in my copy of TheDaily Prophet."
"No," Father says with a slight sneer, scanning his own copy over once or twice before folding it with a flick of his wrist and setting it down beside his black tea, "nor is it in mine. You won't be able to find it in any copy of TheProphet, not until tomorrow."
"What's going on?" I furrow my eyebrows, gripping the back of the chair, seeing my knuckles turn white as my pulse thumps loudly in my throat.
"Sit. It's time I explain."
He doesn't look at me. He sips his black tea, eyes focused on TheDaily Prophet watching a picture of the Minister behind a podium move about. Slowly, I drag the chair back, wincing at the noise it makes scraping against the floor, before sitting down in front of him.
"Have you had dinner?" he asks.
"No."
"Have something to eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"I'm not asking," he says simply, setting his tea down and lifting his sharp eyes up to look at me, an unimpressed and bored gleam in them.
I open my mouth, hesitate, and close it before leaning over to the center of the table to pluck an apple from the bowl. It's red, but it'll make do. He watches me take a bite out of it before speaking again.
"The Dark Lord has asked me to retrieve something from the Department of Mysteries," he says simply, bored eyes looking at me carefully before dropping back down to the picture of the Minister. "Do you know much about the Department of Mysteries, Draco?"
"No, sir," I say calmly, my brows tightly furrowed.
"No, I expect you wouldn't," he muses, a thoughtful expression on his face. "It's the most secretive department, older than the Ministry itself. Even the Minister himself doesn't know what goes on there. Only the Unspeakables do."
Unspeakables. I remember hearing that word several times when Celeste and I were eavesdropping a week ago.
"Are Unspeakables—"
"They work at the department, yes," he interrupts calmly, stirring his teabag a few times. "Their work is rather confidential...Celeste's parents are Unspeakables, did you know that?"
I bite my lip before shaking my head. It's not really a lie—I didn't know, at least not until last week.
"Most Unspeakables don't have much family," Father sighs slightly, an odd gleam in his eyes as he smirks just a bit. "Their work is time-consuming, beyond important, so they don't have the ability to have families. I suppose the Zabinis are the sole exception to this."
