Ink and Parchment ~ blood and bone

63

“Here” Draco said and tossed some clothes in Eliza’s direction and gestured to the en-suite “Go get changed while I grab us some drinks”

Eliza dutifully took the clothes and smiled slightly. She had some ridiculously fluffy pants from a past sleep over and Draco had seemingly sacrificed another one of his Quidditch Jerseys to the cause of cheering her up. He had sworn she couldn’t have anymore since she had gotten blood on the last one.

Merlin the Quidditch world cup felt like a life-time ago.

By the time Draco returned Eliza had settled onto his bed, wrapping herself in a fluffy silver blanket after realising just how cold she was from staying in damp clothes the whole time.

“Time to get cosy bitch” Draco proclaimed as he burst back into the room, carrying two steaming mugs of hot-chocolate “Now tell me what happened”

And Eliza broke.

“I bumped into Tom yesterday” she said slowly, and the hurt she had been repressing reared its head “And he-

He what? Confessed? Rejected her?

“He was a wanker”

“He’s perpetually a wanker Eliza, what did he do?”

And so Eliza told him everything, the confession, the argument, the hopeless miscommunication and by the end their hot-chocolates have been drank and Draco was fuming beside her.

“What are you doing?” she asked warily as Draco angrily scribbled out a letter.

“I’m telling mother to give him a stern talking too”

“No” Eliza yelped, scrambling to confiscate Draco’s quill “You can’t set your mother on the bloody dark lord”

“Not much of a dark lord anymore is he?” Draco said airily “Bit tame really”

“Are you forgetting the time we eviscerated the entire order in cold blood?”

“That was ages ago” he flippantly replied.

“He’s trying to secretly assassinate Lady Abbot as we speak”

“Well that’s just for the public good”

“Draco”

“Eliza”

She shifted into her fox form and pounced on him, sending them both flying back into the mountain of pillows he had on his bed. Draco let out a few protesting shouts as they play-fought before eventually they settled down. Eliza curled up between the pillows and Draco flopped down beside her.

She couldn’t deny that he had certainly made her feel better. Draco was right, maybe he did know a few things.

~

She stopped cathartically exploding things a week later. She had no time to deal with Tom’s melodramatics when she was busy with other things.

Jormy was ill.

Of course she couldn’t know that for certain. There was no handbook on how to keep a healthy basilisk. The only journals she had were Salazar’s and the man had looked after Jormy when the basilisk had been nothing more than an infant. Any other books on the matter just detailed how dangerous and scary basilisks were, and how they were ancient creatures.

It was that what caught Eliza’s attention. Because Jormy was old, he really was. The lifespan of a basilisk was long anyway but as far as she knew Jormy was really getting up there now. But she wouldn’t think about that, refused to. He was just a bit under the weather.