Darkness - Leyla & Mattheo

Chapter 1

„Why do we have to attend to this meeting again?", Enzo asks for the fifth time.
„Because", Draco lazily repeats himself, „the Dark Lord has asked us to join."
„You know what happened the last time he asked us to come, right?"

They know. Of course they know. Despite being Death Eaters for almost a decade now, the five friends Mattheo, Draco, Theo, Lorenzo and Blaise have been invited to these meetings only two times before today: The first one was two years ago, to announce the engagement between Daphne Greengrass and Blaise Zabini. The second one was six months ago, when the boys found out that Draco was going to marry Astoria Greengrass.
„At least there are no more Greengrass sisters left for you to be punished with", Blaise mumbles bitterly. While Draco seems really content with his father's choice for a wife, Blaise never really stopped complaining about Daphne.

„I wonder which one of us it will be." Mattheo notices a little bit of excitement in Theo's voice. His Italian friend has always been very passionate. Mattheo suspects that Nott secretly craves a hot wife, who he will make happy and with whom Nott will found the family he never got as a child. Well, everyone is dealing with childhood traume differently, obviously, because the only thing that Mattheo has learned about families in his childhood is that Riddle men are lousy fathers and shouldn't have children.
But each to his own, of course.

„I can't believe that we have to go out and marry some random purebloods just because Harry Potter couldn't be defeated in the battle of Hogwarts seven years ago."
That was true. Mattheo was there when his father killed Harry Potter in the forbidden forest on May 2nd, 1998. He was also there to see Harry Potter standing up again and being more alive than ever. After that, Harry Potter disappeared. He was never seen again. The battle lasted days, but at the end, both sides had to accept that they couldn't win. At least for now. Since then, there had been this hybrid form of living together, tolerating each other on the outside, but plotting each other's death on the inside. Harry Potter has become kind of a legend, some people started to even doubt his existence. But there were whisperd on the street.. whispers saying that one day Harry would come back and end what he began.

In the meantime, the pureblood families decided to arrange marriages between themselves to form strong allies. The Greengrass sisters were high on the market, hence they were the only ones not married and not too young, so no matter what Blaise might be saying, he was lucky to ger Daphne. Mattheo nows he will be the last one to be married - his father didn't need him to win an ally. He just hopes that Theo or Enzo won't get engaged to a 14 years old baby in the sheer desperatiom of finding a pureblood girl.

Mattheo happens to be the last one to enter the room - which is ridculous, because he is going to take the seat left to his father anyway. He always does. In contrary to his friends Theo and Enzo, Mattheo is attending these gatherings more frequently. Draco and Blaise are asked to attend every single time, now that they're married men.

„It's always refreshing to see these young souls among us, isn't it?"  His father starts his monologue. „And look, they seem to be thrilled to be here, too!" Which is a lie. None of them is happy to be here. „I would love to always have you guys around, but we have decided that to enter these holy rows, a boy should be old and wise enough to found his own family." Again, Mattheo thinks this is really pathetic, coming from a leader who never married, but who is he to judge? He is getting more and more nervous though. No matter how hard he tried, his father didn't tell him which one of his friend had been bethrothed.

„As you all might be already suspecting, we have all gathered here today, to celebrate the bond of two powerful, ancient, traditional pureblood families", he makes a dramatic pause, „but our possibilities are limited and they will stay limited if we focus on only our people. So, to make us even stronger, we decided to let you three marry some foreign purebloods, so that we can have some families all around the world." Well that is new. Mattheo smirks at his friends. When there was one word to describe Enzo's type of women, it's definitely „exotic."