CHAPTER 21

Just do it, Charlotte. Just say it. Just open your mouth and let the words come out. Stop wasting time. Just spit it out. SAY IT, now is your chance. If you do it now, he might forgive you. If you wait too long, it might be too late. Taking one final moment to brace myself, I whisper, "Draco, there's something—"

Loud knocking on the door cuts me off. Draco huffs and says over his shoulder, "Come in."

Narcissa pushes the door open. "I hate to interrupt"—I sincerely doubt that—"but Cosmo just came down and told me that Charlotte has her hand in a bowl of Murtlap Essence." Does she sound worried? Probably just putting on a show for Draco . . .

"Yeah," Draco says, glancing down at the bowl where my hand is submerged. "I got it from Snape. She needed it."

Narcissa comes over to the bed and takes a seat beside me. "Would you mind?" She motions to my hand, and I shrug, though I would prefer her not touch me at all. She doesn't trust me, and the feeling is certainly mutual, making it very difficult to believe even for a second that she won't harm me further once my injured hand is at her mercy. Unfortunately, the expectant look on her face prods me to surrender my hand to her. After receiving a small nod from me, she lifts my hand from the bowl, then takes out her wand and waves it over the wound. When nothing happens, an annoyed noise comes from the back of her throat. "I must not tell lies." She lowers my hand back into the bowl. "How did this happen?"

I look away from her for a moment and bite my inner cheek.

"Charlotte, you can tell me," she says.

Why do I want to trust her? Why does a part of me say that she cares when I know from experience that she cares nothing about me or my well-being? And why do I so desperately wish she truly did care for me?

The words fly from my mouth despite how bad of an idea it is to share anything with her. "Dolores Umbridge. She made me use some type of quill that writes in the blood of the person writing."

"The Black Quill?" she asks, her voice almost an octave higher than usual, and that tone is what finally forces me to meet her eyes. "She's using the Black Quill?"

"I don't know what it's called." My tone comes across a little more defensively than I had planned, but she doesn't seem to catch it. Either that or she doesn't care.

"I didn't think it'd ever be put to use," she says quietly. "When she invented it . . . Not at Hogwarts . . . You're only children! Do others use this as well?"

I nod, tears pricking my eyes. Don't fall prey to the delusion that she cares for you, I tell myself. She's just pretending to care, and you know it.

"I must not tell lies," she repeats. "What's that about?"

Again, I look away from her, this time taking a deep breath. "I lied to her," I answer vaguely.

"Well, yes, I gathered that much."

"Something happened the night before term ended," I begin with a sigh. "Draco and I had left the common room to go spend time together without all those others watching us." She clenches her teeth but says nothing. The story begins spilling out of me, and though her caring façade is so obviously fake, talking to an adult figure, one looking down at me with a compassion not directed at me in over five years, feels so calming and peaceful that almost nothing can or will stop me from sharing this with her. Narcissa just holds my hand, listening intently to what I have to say, but she's not gripping my hand harshly. It almost feels like she is trying to comfort me. But why? Does she think being kind to me will put her in good standing with Voldemort? Aren't the Malfoys already in good standing with him? Or was I correct that being close to Draco makes her care for me? Could my selfish plan have worked? Do I actually have not only the love of the boy beside me but also the affection of Narcissa as well? Could my life actually be working out for me right now? "Of course . . . when we got back to the dungeon and Umbridge that it had all been a lie . . ." I just shrug and look down at where she holds my hand still.

"She gave us both detention," Draco says. Narcissa's eyes flutter to his hands as if searching for a mark on him as well. "But Charlotte convinced her that I had nothing to do with it, and Umbridge seemed satisfied with giving just Charlotte detention and not me, so that's what she did. She kept her there, carving up her hand for almost five hours!"

Narcissa remains quiet for a moment, her eyes fluttering between me and Draco, before asking in a weak voice, "You took the detention for Draco?"

"Of course," I say automatically. "Well, I didn't actually take his because—"

Narcissa wraps her arms around me. "You stopped him from having to go suffer like that." Then she whispers in my ear, "I can't approve of you two, but . . . thank you."

I close my eyes and return her embrace, feeling, for the first time in years, a mother's arms holding me closely, and for a moment, I let myself enjoy it. "If there's anything Lucius and I can do to help you, let us know." She releases me and gets off the bed. "And the elves are here as well if you can't find us."

I nod at her, and she leaves.

Draco flashes me a broad smile. "I told you she likes you!"

"It's quite a relief," I laugh, an odd feeling in my chest that I can't quite place.

The moment for telling the truth is gone, and I don't know how to steer the conversation back to my duty, mostly because I no longer want to. I want to sit in the moment forever, this moment when Draco is rejoicing because his mother seemed nice, this moment right after I have experienced a mother's embrace for the first time in years. I don't want to stain this moment with betrayal and heartbreak. This moment needs to stay perfect, so I can always look back on it and say: that was the happiest moment in my life.

"Now we just have to convince your father to like me."

Draco smiles. "He'll come around. He likes to know who I'm romantically interested in so he can keep an eye on the type of person who might inherit his fortune someday. He wants to make sure the Malfoy name stays strong."

"And so I have to prove that I can do that?" That'll never happen, not while Voldemort still has plans for me. Lucius Malfoy will never trust me, and my name will forever be tarnished because of Voldemort. Not to mention the fact that I killed few Death Eaters over the years. I'll never get his approval to be with Draco. Like it matters.

But really, do I even deserve it after everything I've done, everything I'm hoping to do?

"What's wrong?"

I sidestep the question and say, "My hand is feeling much better now—why don't we go do something? We were trapped in Hogwarts, and I'd rather not be trapped in this room for the duration of my stay."

He smiles and stands. "I'll show you the gardens." He glances over his shoulder and lowers his voice, "Then we can go to the basement, and you can see Bellatrix's room so you have an idea of what she'll be like."

My stomach flutters uncomfortably at the thought of seeing her room, an uneasiness settling on my chest, replacing whatever feeling Narcissa had left, but a jolt of excitement runs through me as well. To see how Voldemort's most loyal Death Eater lives . . . it intrigues me. "Sounds like a plan."

He rolls off the bed and offers his hand. "Then come along."

We leave the room behind us, and I wave my wand, a scarf and a coat flying after me. "I don't want to freeze outside," I explain.

Draco smiles and does the same. "Most of the flowers will probably be dead, but it's still a beautiful place to see, especially with the snow." We walk silently, hand-in-hand, to the gardens outside. "If you're not careful, you could get lost. The gardens are set up to be a bit of a maze"—he motions to the manor behind us—"and if someone is standing in one of the windows, they can direct you. But I've got it memorized—more or less—so we should be fine. The middle is the best part." And with that, he leads me into a giant maze of hedges nearly twice my height. "Here's a tip from me though, if you find yourself lost, put one hand on the side and follow the wall until you're free."

"Are you planning on abandoning me?"

"Not yet."

I can't get lost in the maze before the first night at Malfoy Manor; that would be embarrassing. Despite my being suddenly nervous again, a smile comes to my face. "I could always just follow our footprints back," I say, motioning to the obvious trail in the snow.

"Where's the fun in that?"

I shrug but lose my voice when we come to an opening in the maze. "The middle," he says quietly.

We've stepped into a large, circular area. Around the edges of this opening are bushes with no flowers, to which Draco says, "They'll be back in the spring of course. Yellow, purple, and pink." In the very center sits a marble statue of a dragon, one that reaches above the hedges that create the maze. It's at least fifteen feet tall. "It's a Hungarian Horntail." The dragon stands on all fours, slightly raised in the air by a marble slab a foot off the ground, its wings extended, its mouth open in a silent roar. Coming from its mouth, instead of fire, is a steady stream of water nearly as wide around as my head. The water spews into a marble pool full of crystal-clear water, the bottom of which is decorated with the Malfoy family crest. In front of this pool sits an iron bench. "Magic keeps the water from freezing." Around the marble slab on which the dragon stands and around the pool of water, there are more bushes. "Rose bushes. It's gorgeous when they bloom."

"It's gorgeous now."

"I come out here a lot, even when it's cold. I find it relaxing." He smirks at me. "But, now that you've seen it—" Instead of finishing whatever he was planning to say, he takes off running, dodging around the dragon statue and running straight ahead, into the maze.

"Wait!" I sprint after him. "Don't leave me!"

Laughter is his only response.

When I reach the first dead end where a decision must be made to go either left or right, I yell out his name, hoping to hear something and have an idea of which direction he went, but he makes no noise. With a huff, I turn right.

"Good choice!" he calls.

"Can you see me?"

No answer.

A random branch of the maze juts off to my left, and just as I turn to go down it, a force rams into my back and throws me face-first into the snow. I roll over to see Draco lying in the snow next to me, hardly able to breathe through his laughter. "You could have broken my leg!"

"Couldn't resist!" He stands and helps me to my feet, then brushes some of the clumps of snow off of me while I try to get some of it off of him. "Come on, I'll show you where you're going to learn to fly." I thread my fingers through his and hold on tightly so he can't get away.

"Abandon me again, Draco, and I will hunt you down."

"Yeah, because you did a fine job of finding me moments ago."

We come to the other end of the maze to find another clearing almost twice the size of the Great Hall at Hogwarts. The clearing backs up to the frozen lake. "This is where Father taught me to fly."

I turn around to see the manor looming behind me. The maze takes up less than a fourth of the space behind the large home. The Malfoys have so much money I doubt they truly know what to do with it. A snowball whacks my thigh and interrupts my thoughts, and Draco releases my hand and runs again, charming snowballs to pelt me. I follow his lead and begin charming snowballs to hit him as well.

Then he stops running away and starts running toward me. I dart away in the other direction, but Draco is faster than me and soon begins to catch up. I keep glancing over my shoulder, and then I see him—he is within an arm's reach, smiling wickedly at me just before he lunges. I dodge to the side and watch as he lands face-first in the snow. I've just bent down to help him up when the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Is someone watching us? As discreetly as possible, I look up at the manor, a movement in one of the highest windows catching my eye.

Draco takes my hand, but instead of letting me help him up, he pulls me down. We lie there catching our breath for a few minutes.

Finally, I say, "It's freezing."

He shivers a bit. "I don't know what you're talking about." I grin at him, and stare pointedly at his chattering teeth. "But we can go inside if you'd like. Warm up a bit. We have the rest of the holiday to come outside." We stand and start back to the manor, this time avoiding the maze. When we step inside, we take off our coats and scarves and hats. "Cosmo!" The house-elf appears with a loud crack! "Take these for us and return them to our rooms. Dry them and put them up." The elf nods and disappears. "To the basement."

Draco and I make our way to Bellatrix's room, despite the queasiness re-emerging in my stomach. "I haven't actually been down here since she arrived, so I don't know what you should expect. Just . . . don't move anything if you don't know exactly where to put it back."

He opens the door, and I am surprised to find that this Death Eater's room is warmer than the rest of the house, even without a fire burning in the fireplace. I'd actually expected something like crossbones and paintings of people being tortured. Maybe some glass jars full of blood. Not this . . . kind of welcoming room. I almost want to stay down here for a while, not leave until I have to.

The bed is quite like the one in my borrowed room, but it is completely black. Even the furniture is black, from the bedroom suit to the bookshelf to the sofa and lone armchair in front of the fire. The only color in the room, aside from a few pictures on her bedside table, is a Slytherin green and silver blanket folded on the foot of the bed. That and a pale green blanket the size of a pillow thrown over the back of arm chair.

I go to look at the small blanket and run my hand over the silk material until I reach the plush Slytherin symbol and have to pull myself away from it—it sets my heart into rapid motion, my breathing ragged. Someone knows I'm here, that I'm looking at this.

Looking at this blanket, touching this blanket, makes me more uneasy than actually being in the room itself, and I quickly walk away from it, over to her bedside table and look at one of her pictures, one of Bellatrix, Narcissa, and a baby Draco, Bellatrix holding his tiny form. I'm glad he no longer has light brown hair. It doesn't suit him. The Bellatrix in the picture kisses the top of his head and says something to him, then makes him wave at the camera. If she still cares about him as much as she seemed to in this photo, then I doubt there's any chance she will hurt me so long as I am with him. I step away quickly, turning away from the picture completely. "You think she always keeps it this warm?"

Draco seems to consider this question for a moment. "Azkaban is freezing. The dementors chill you to your core. She was there for so long . . . perhaps she's never able to be warm anymore?"

Azkaban is a nightmare. So let's make sure we never go there. "I want to get out of here," I whisper. This room has given me no insights as to who Bellatrix is, but being in here feels wrong somehow.

Draco nods and we leave without a word.

Just like he promised, when night comes around, Draco opens the bedroom door, his silhouette motioning me to him. I crawl out of the bed and follow him to his room. "You're sure this is all right?" I whisper to him as we walk through the hallway. Why is it so much colder now than it was before? My feet feel like small ice blocks.

"It's fine. Don't worry about it. I'd hate for her to find you and hurt you."

We reach his bedroom and enter, Draco closing the door behind us. "What side of the bed do you sleep on?" I ask him. "I don't want to take it from you."

"It doesn't matter. I'm not a picky person."

I tiptoe over to the side furthest from the door, hopping in the bed and quickly throwing the fleece blankets over me, and lean against the headboard. It's not until Draco begins laughing that I realize how loud I must have been. "I'm cold," I tell him, trying to explain why I had caused such a commotion while covering my freezing legs and feet.

He wriggles himself under the blankets and slides over to me. "Do you want me to start a fire?" he asks, motioning to the fireplace in his room that I had not noticed the first time I'd been in here.

"That . . . would actually be really nice, yeah." He slides out of the bed and walks toward the fireplace. "You're not going to call Cosmo or one of the others to start the fire for you?"

"That would be easier, yeah, but even though my parents like you, I fear they won't be too pleased about you staying in my room. They'll make it into a thing, and I would just rather not have to deal with all the lectures about how 'this is their house and therefore you will not have your girlfriend sleep in the same bed as you.'"

I doubt this being their house would be their biggest concerns about Draco sharing a bed with me, but I say, "I guess you have a point."

A few minutes later, the fire is blazing, filling the room with a pleasant warmth that pools over me and saps the chill from my body. "Is that better?" he asks as he crawls into the bed.

"It's perfect, thanks." Draco laces his fingers through mine. We don't speak for a few minutes, simply sitting next to each other in companionable silence.

I rest my head against his chest, throwing my arm over his stomach. He puts his arm around me. I fall asleep listening to the steady beating of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest my only comfort in the darkness.

Throughout the next day, Draco constantly tries to reassure me that Bellatrix won't hurt me (I've been panicking). I don't want to meet more Death Eaters, especially not ones that spent nearly fifteen years in Azkaban for heinous crimes. To keep my mind off things, Draco gave me a tour of the manor and the grounds again, but I don't remember any of it. Nothing could distract me from my inevitable meeting with Bellatrix Lestrange and planning how I must act around her. If she knows about my duty, I must not seem apprehensive lest I offend her in some way. The chance of her knowing, though, seems slim since she was in Azkaban already by the time any of those decisions had been made.

Now Draco and I sit next to each other in the large dining room, waiting for dinner. It's the first time since I've been here that we've all sat down together (me, Draco, Narcissa, and Lucius) to spend any time together.

"Lucius," I say finally, breaking the silence that has been looming over us for nearly ten minutes. He looks up, and I show him the necklace Draco gave me (I discovered earlier that it had been Lucius's idea to let Draco give it to me). "You have great taste in jewelry."

"Oh, yes, well," he mutters, "Narcissa had a voice in sending Draco that particular piece."

I smile at their changing story. "It's beautiful. Where did you find it?"

"My mother. It was hers. Of course," he adds, a distinct hint of judgment in his voice, "I had known Narcissa longer than four months when I gave it to her, and she had met my family." He looks between me and Draco. "Tell me about your family, Charlotte."

"Well . . ." I proceed to share with him the lies about my life, more to let him know what to go along with and what Draco knows than to actually share the truth. That's probably why he asked me anyway. He wants to know what he's allowed to say in front of Draco.

"Did you inherit anything from your great-uncle?" This question comes from Narcissa. "Anything by which you can remember him, or your family?"

"Nothing much, really. "He had been disowned from his family, so most of his fortune had been lost. I found a bag of gold and a pocket watch." I am ashamed of how pathetic that sounds. The Malfoys have never lacked anything, and here I am with basically nothing to my name.

"Do you know your family heritage?" Lucius asks.

"No. The pocket watch had a family crest on it, but I can't read what it says."

"Would you like to know?" Narcissa asks. "Our family is well-connected in the Wizarding World. We might recognize something about the emblem."

Joy floods through me. I might actually find out about my family! "Yes," I breathe, unable to stop the wide smile from spreading across my face, "yes, please!"

Draco reaches into his pocket and pulls out the item in question. "Oh," Lucius comments quite smugly, "I see you, too, give away precious family heirlooms to someone you hardly know."

"Lucius," Narcissa scolds quietly. The warmth in my face betrays how uncomfortable I am. Draco hands over the pocket watch, his face redder than usual, too. Before she even looks at it, a loud pop! echoes through the room, and a woman appears beside the table. I look up at her and find myself making eye contact with Bellatrix Lestrange.