Author's note: Hey guys, sorry for the delay. This chapter was hard to birth. It also certainly lacks editing but it's 1:30AM where I am right now and I'll just upload it before I go to bed so please, ignore the mistakes. Thanks a lot for the support again, you're the best! Next update some time next week. Love you!
November 1943 - Friends?
"Will you tell me once again
How we're gonna be just friends?
If you're for real and not pretend
Then I guess you can hang with me"
- Robyn
"On the page that contains the symbols, on the left, the figure that shows hieroglyphs? This one up, wedja in its anglicised form - the eye of Horus - means to be intact" she stated.
The Ravenclaw was lying in the Slytherin's apartments, her body limp on the leather sofa. Just like every Saturday for the last two months, she had an appointment with the prefect, to rework on that translation she had promised him. They always gathered at the same time and place, and Annabel enjoyed the consistency of their meetings. It reminded her of their time in the woods, when she used to teach him about the Dark Arts. Only they had traded the humid air of the school's forest for the warmth of the young man's bedroom.
"And second page, first paragraph, the use of the word 'كائن' in Arabic, which I first translated as entity, in the sense of organism, can also mean 'object'" she pursued.
"So an object could function as a receptacle for the soul?" interjected the young man before he stood up, as if gripped by the sudden urge to move. He pensively walked back and forth behind the couch on which Annabel was sprawled.
"Well, Egyptians believed that the body was meant to carry the soul to the other world. Thus the mummification process" she announced as she watched the young man move as if he was patrolling his own bedroom.
"That one part hints at the use of 'inanimate beings' that you said was confusing. I initially thought the terms referred to the dead body but looking at it more closely, it appears that it could be referring to some object as well…" she added, all the while reaching for one parchment on the coffee table. She lifted it in the air for the prefect's attention.
As she raised her arm, Annabel wondered if it was inappropriate of her to loll in such a way in the young man's bedroom. At home, she would always sit at the dinner table with one knee up, or lay on her stomach right on the bare floor to read, things that particularly irked her mother. "Be more ladylike" the latter used to say, repeating her scolding countlessly.
Tom, though, did not seem to mind her boyish attitude.
She liked that, about him. She always felt like he was surprisingly free of any form of social convention, and so despite his own correctness.
"Does the text specify what type of objects?" asked the prefect as he gently took away the piece of parchment from her hand. He had stopped pacing, his svelte body now towering over her. Annabel could watch his piercing glance moving left and right as he scoured the document.
"Anything long-lasting I suppose" she hypothesised as her glance settled on Tom's hand. She gazed at the jewellery on his index finger, acknowledging the dark stone embed in a golden ring.
It was not the first time that she saw it.
She knew where it came from, that ring. She had been meaning to ask him a few times how it had ended up in the young man's possession but the right moment never presented itself.
Her eyes casted on the stone, memories from last summer resurfaced. The girl remembered the contact of the precious metal against the skin of her neck as the brute's digits had been digging into the flesh. Annabel shivered as she suddenly remembered the feeling of the man's callous palms against her throat, of her own fingers combing the earth in the search for a makeshift weapon.
Her tremor did not go unnoticed, and she soon realised that Tom was looking at her.
"Are you cold?" he asked, and like every time since the summer holidays, she was surprised by his affability.
Not that he was being indifferent to her before, in fact, he always proved to be rather thoughtful, she thought as she remembered the flowers the prefect had gifted her the first time the two of them had met. But there had been a distance, some aloofness in his behaviour that made him so cryptic.
Yet, ever since that summer, some things had changed. She could not explain where it came from, for such alteration was so subtle. It manifested in the most mundane things. Perhaps was it in the way he praised her for her hard work after each meeting, before he saw her back to her dorm. Perhaps was it in the way he walked next to her in the empty corridors all the way to the Ravenclaw tower, his body so close to hers that their hands often brushed.
Souvenirs of a few weeks back came back to her mind as she remembered how Tom had been waiting for her on the sixth floor, saying that his presence was required in the Headmaster's office. She had been ready to turn around, come back later but Tom had simply unlocked the door of his room, held it opened. "What kind of friend would that make me if I sent you away now? Make yourself comfortable, it won't take long" he had said, granting her access to his apartments.
"Friends"
Is it what they were? After all, friends trust each other, didn't they? And didn't it take a great deal of trust to let someone unattended in one's bedroom?
Annabel glanced back at the prefect, noticing that he was waiting for her answer. She shook her head, professing she was only tired.
Tom peeked at his watch, announced that he would bring her back to her dorm.
His eyes grazed at the document once more before he walked over to his desk and discarded the parchment on the wooden surface. Grabbing his tie and jacket, he turned around and watched her readying herself to leave.
"You did an amazing job today" he stated, his voice warm like honey and she smiled, letting the cheer sink in.
—
The school's corridors were very quiet, the thick silence only disturbed by their footsteps. The two young folks' voices were echoing in the darkness as they reached the fifth floor, and Annabel's delicate laugh resonated against the walls. They were chatting about this and that, nothing of importance until the girl grew quiet.
"What is that secret club Nott keeps boasting about?" she asked, unexpectedly, as she shot the prefect a sideway look.
Tom knew that tone. It was the one she used whenever she was trying to extract confessions from him. He had already noticed how her voice was going slightly high-pitch as she asked him personal questions. It was entertaining, to see her try to make him spill his secrets.
"What are you talking about?" he asked with a feigned curiosity, determined to make her work a bit harder.
He would grand her what she wanted anyway, would he not? For some reason he could not fathom, Tom found himself way more often than he wished indulging in the girl's queries. He had learned to sleep through it, though, which had proved to be much easier ever since he had put her to the test.
Because he could not assess the girl's devotion so easily, Tom believed he needed to find a way to try her trust. He knew enough about her already to be certain that he could have the upper hand whether she would decide to betray him... With all the compromising things he now knew about her family, he could easily blackmail her until the end of times. Yet, the way she had peeked at his ring a few times had planted seeds of doubt in his mind, and just like that time in June, he had felt the need to make sure that she was trustworthy.
Learning about that new spell that allowed for someone to track another person's each and every move in a delimited area had given him ideas. He had only needed pretexting that he was awaited by Dippet to give her access to his room. Unattended.
Oh, what a relief it had been to find that the girl had gone straight to the sofa without lingering among his things… She had begun to work, like the dutiful busy bee she was…
The look the girl gave him brought him back to the here and now as she insisted with a raised eyebrow.
"So? You know what this is about, don't you?"
"Did Elena ask you to fish out some information?"
"Well…"
She paused, biting her lip and Tom already had his answer. Their collaboration was no longer a secret ever since one Sixth Year caught the two of them hanging out at the library. They were only searching for a decent Arabic dictionary, but it had been enough to add fuel to the fire. Soon enough, gossips had it that the prefect was seeing Annabel Selwyn in his bedroom once a week. To clarify the situation, Tom had conjured up their necessary cooperation for their herbarium project. If it had partly tamed the rumours, Annabel had told him that her dorm-mates remained entirely curious of their association.
"Elena is worried because… He's covered in bruises ever since he joined that club"
"I see" he simply answered with an amused smile.
Annabel stopped walking, her voice pressing as her eyes searched his.
"Are you also attending? That private club or whatever it is"
"Darling, I'm leading that club" he wanted to reply but he knew better. There were things he could share, like the main purpose of this club. And there were things he would not, like him initiating an underground fighting club in school… Regardless or not whether she had not been searching his bedroom.
Tom locked his eyes to Annabel's, spotted the pressing question in her eyes.
"It's a duelling club" he finally whispered and her lips moved to form a perfect "O".
"You could join us if you like" he found himself adding with an ounce of provocation.
Something inside him longed for her to say yes.
The young man sometimes contemplated bringing her to their weekly encounters, have her fight him. He knew she would defeat most of the others in no time at all, probably even kicked Nott's ass in just a few seconds. Yet, Tom had never measured herself against her. And part of him longed to know what she had in her guts…
"Elena said it's a boys only club" she whispered with a frown and Tom let out a sarcastic chuckle.
"Leonus only claims that because he does not want her to join"
She raised her eyebrows.
"Why not?"
"Because we fight dirty"