"If you keep glaring at me like that, I'm seriously leaving, Matti. I'm not here to be your personal punching bag," Ariana snapped. But there was far more frustration than fear in her voice.
I didn't react.
Not the first time.
Not the second.
We were in the dorm room I shared with Draco. Ariana kept pacing between the window and my bed while I leaned against my desk.
How the hell were we even related when she couldn't stand still for a single bloody second?
As if she'd heard the thought, she frowned and shoved a loose curl behind her ear with a sharp flick.
"You know what, Mattheo..." She pointed at me like I was a problem the universe had been trying to get rid of for years. "This." She gestured in my direction. "I'm sick of putting up with this. And you should know better than to keep starting fights."
I slowly inspected my fingernails, as though her speech was just another item on a very long list of things I couldn't care less about.
"Why do you even care, Ariana?" I smirked. "You've never exactly been interested in what I do."
"Did you know Snape came to see me?"
That made me pause.
I frowned.
"Why would Snape come to see you?"
She scoffed.
"If you'd actually listened to me, you'd know. But no. You've been far too distracted by that Gryffindor girl." Her voice sharpened. "And by the fact she made you wait in the library."
I rolled my eyes.
"That has nothing to do with it."
"It has everything to do with her."
"Matti, I don't know if you've realised it yet, but she's Harry Potter's friend. Harry Potter. The one who's got Dumbledore wrapped around his little finger."
"Dumbledore isn't going to do anything to us."
"How can you possibly be so bloody sure?"
"Because he's terrified we'll end up becoming our parents."
Silence.
Ariana looked at me with the same expression I'd only ever seen once before.
The day everyone in first year heard Potter had faced our father.
I bit the inside of my cheek.
I should've known better than to bring him up.
"Ari..."
My voice softened before I could stop it.
"Why did you have to slam her into a wall?"
Even though I knew it hadn't exactly been my brightest idea, I still couldn't see what the big deal was.
I'd done worse.
Much worse.
So why was this one any different?
Why was Ariana making such a massive issue out of it?
It's not like I'd actually hurt her.
"You've never lost it like that with anyone from Potter's lot," she went on. "And it's not the first time someone's taken a shot at our father. So what the hell was different this time?"
What was different?
I'd like to know that myself.
Normally I would've come up with some excuse.
This time...
I couldn't even be bothered trying.
I pushed myself out of her chair and headed for the door.
I stopped with my hand on the handle.
Because for once...
I genuinely didn't have an answer.
And somehow, that irritated me more than everything she'd said put together.
"You know what, Mattheo?" she snapped. "Go to hell. This is so typical of you. The second you can't control the situation, you just walk away."
Something soft smacked into the back of my head.
A pillow.
"The fuck is wrong with you, Ariana?" I snapped, turning around.
A silver pillow embroidered with a green serpent lay at my feet.
She smirked.
„ Runs in the family, doesn't it?"
I bent down, picked it up and tossed it back in one smooth motion.
She caught it effortlessly.
Pretending not to notice how close it'd come to clipping the bedside table behind her.
All of her attention stayed fixed on me.
More specifically...
On my stubbornness.
"Mattheo Riddle." She raised her middle finger and pointed it directly between my eyes. "I am not letting you ruin my future education just because you can't handle your bruised ego."
"My ego has nothing to do with her," I shot back.
Sure.
I was fascinated by how much she dared.
Like she didn't possess the slightest survival instinct.
But that was it.
The beginning...
And the end.
As far as she concerned me.
Ariana, however, clearly didn't believe a word of it. Ariana clearly didn't believe a word of it.
"You literally slammed her into a wall just because she made a joke about our father."
The insult sitting on the tip of my tongue died before it ever reached my mouth.
It wasn't because of him.
Not entirely.
How was I supposed to explain that the moment Black opened her mouth, I hadn't heard our father at all?
I'd heard our mother.
And that was my own fault.
All because I'd been stupid enough, back in first year, to tell her things that should've stayed buried.
I barely remembered my mother.
Just a handful of blurred memories.
Dark hair.
Gentle hands.
A voice I wasn't even sure I remembered correctly anymore.
Whenever I asked Aunt Narcissa about her, I always got the same answer.
"Darling, your mother had to disappear. If she hadn't, she'd have ended up in Azkaban beside my dear sister."
Nothing more.
Never why.
Never where.
Never whether she was even alive.
She should've meant nothing to me.
I hadn't even known her.
So why did my chest tighten every time someone so much as mentioned her?
My eyes drifted down to my hands.
They were shaking.
Bloody hell.
They were shaking.
I forced myself to calm down.
Forced a smile onto my face.
Out of everything I could've been thinking about...
Black found her way back into my head.
Along with the image of her leaving me waiting in the library.
Ariana must've noticed I'd gone quiet.
Instead of throwing it back in my face and proudly announcing she'd finally won the argument, she simply walked over and awkwardly punched my arm.
"Don't let her get under your skin again. I don't know what's going on with you, but you need to stop making her life miserable."
I stared at her in confusion.
"What are you even talking about? I'm not making her life miserable. I just slammed her into a wall and made her wait."
She blinked.
"Do you even hear yourself?"
Both her hands shot into the air in complete disbelief.
"Unbelievable," she muttered under her breath. "Absolutely unbelievable."
I frowned.
"Why do you even care how I treat her? She's just another Gryffindor."
"No, she isn't. Not to you." She folded her arms. "Do you even realise you treat her worse than Potter? And you're supposed to hate Potter on principle."
She let out another disbelieving scoff before wandering over to my desk, absent-mindedly spinning one of my quills between her fingers.
"She's just Black."
I sounded more defensive than I'd intended.
"Then why have you spent the last ten minutes talking about her?"
"You started this conversation."
The frustration was practically dripping from my voice.
Ariana cut me off.
"I found Father's letter."
I froze.
Thoughts crashed into each other inside my head.
How?
No.
She couldn't have.
Shit.
She wasn't supposed to read it.
Had she?
"W... what are you talking about?"
She rolled her eyes.
"Don't play dumb. I know what he ordered you to do."
Her voice softened.
"And I'm not saying you shouldn't obey him. We both know exactly what would happen if you didn't."
She hesitated.
"But..."
Her black eyes locked onto mine.
She bit her lip.
"You know what? Never mind."
She looked away.
"You won't listen anyway."
She shoved past me and headed for the door.
A second later it slammed shut hard enough to shake the room.
"Night, sis," I muttered to the empty room.
Silence settled over everything.
I looked around the room before dragging a hand through my curls.
Okay...
Now what the hell am I supposed to do?
My gaze landed on the desk.
The letter was still there. Hidden beneath a pile of parchment.
Every word written across it had been burned into my memory.
"Shit..."
The whisper barely left my lips.
Outside, dusk had already swallowed the castle.
Curfew started in five minutes.
And I knew there wasn't a chance I'd survive another minute inside this room.
I pulled on my shoes, grabbed my sketchbook, and slipped quietly out of the Slytherin dormitory.
The castle corridors were almost empty.
The few patrols that still wandered around followed the same routes they always did.
Thanks to Dumbledore and his unwavering faith in people's better nature, they hardly ever changed.
A few minutes later, I reached the top of the Astronomy Tower unnoticed.
I came here whenever breathing inside the dormitory became impossible.
From up here, you could see almost the entire Hogwarts grounds.
It was the closest place to the stars.
And the furthest away from everyone else.
I sat down beside the stone railing, letting my legs dangle over the endless drop below, and opened my sketchbook.
I flipped through the pages until I found the last blank one.
The rest were filled with random things.
Trees.
Hogwarts.
Snakes.
Meaningless sketches I'd never thought twice about.
It's not like I drew that often.
I'd just owned the sketchbook since I was ten.
Aunt Narcissa had taught me.
She used to say that if I kept my hands busy, I'd stop feeling the urge to break everything around me.
It worked.
Most of the time.
And it was one of the very few things I'd never admit to.
Not even under Veritaserum.
I rested the sketchbook on my knees.
The pencil found the paper before I'd even decided what I wanted to draw.
It moved almost on its own while my thoughts kept circling back to the argument with Ariana.
She knew about Father's letter.
Which meant...
She knew about my assignment.
She knew exactly what Father expected from me.
And yet she hadn't asked me a single time whether I was actually going to do it.
Instead...
She'd spent the whole conversation talking about Black.
Sometimes I honestly had no idea whose side she was on.
A cold autumn wind slipped beneath my black hoodie.
Somewhere down by the Black Lake, an owl called into the darkness.
Only after I finally lowered the pencil did I actually look at what I'd drawn.
I frowned.
What the fuck...
My eyes lingered on the drawing.
On the eyes.
I knew them.
Maybe...
Far too well.