Hierarchy of Need [t.r]

Chapter Thirty Six

The smell of nicotine greeted her as she woke up the next morning. Delilah attempted to get out of the stiff bed, but her leg was incredibly sore. Rubbing at her eyes, her vision blurred for a moment until she saw Tom standing across the room at a desk. A cigarette hung from his lips as he flipped through a book.

Though when he noticed she was up, he snapped the pages shut and walked over to the foot of the bed. "How's the leg?"

"Sore," she yawned. A few moments of stale silence passed, all the while Delilah watched the ash build up on the end of the cigarette. He kept running his hand through his hair, clearly wanting to say something. Rolling her eyes, Delilah sat up straight and threw a small pillow at him lightly. "Spit it out."

"Why did we end up here? You know we can't apparate on Hogwarts grounds."

Closing her eyes, Delilah wasn't in the mood to have this conversation. She couldn't very well tell him the truth, despite how much strain not doing so was causing. "I know that."

"Then why are we here?" He had a few theories, most notably two. The first was she retreated to the one place she knew well enough, and safe at, which was Hogwarts. She had no where else to go at the moment, and the castle was her first option. He wasn't so different, Hogwarts was his home, or at least the closest thing to it. However, why would she go through the trouble to apparate away from him? Why not just leave the room?

His second theory made a fire burn within him; she had left him to see Dumbledore. Tom knew Delilah and the old man were close, but the notion that she was so quick to depart from him to see the man he despised threatened to make him furious.

Tom watched as she squeezed her eyes shut, contemplating how she would answer- or if she would answer at all and he bit the inside of his cheek. Letting out a long breath, Tom walked away to stub out the cigarette and rubbed the back of his neck. "Seeing as I won't get a response out of you concerning this, what about Harry Potter, hm?"

Her head snapped up and she looked at him, disbelief at how he was still latching onto this subject, "really?"

A scoff departed from his mouth as he gestured to her, "just because your leg got mangled doesn't mean I forgot. You have yet to give me a proper answer. What are you not telling me?"

"Tom honestly, drop it."

"Why?"

"Please."

He pulled back quickly from the desk, his hands tugging at his hair by the roots. Delilah frowned as she saw his jaw strain, he appeared to be shaking with anger. Her brows furrowed as she watched him, he was pacing but his movements were jerky and erratic, like he was trying to control himself.

"For Merlin's sake, why does it matter?"

"Fucking hell, Delilah-" his shout was punctuated with sound of his fist slamming into the wall. "Because if he has one of the Deathly Hallows, I can take it!"

Delilah hated that she flinched.

"I can pull the cloak right from under Grindelwald's nose, putting me one step ahead of him and death itself." His voice was a thunderous roar, the shock of it making the windows almost shutter in their frames. Or perhaps that was just her imagination, her head was spinning.

"What do you mean, 'death itself,' Tom... you cant be serious?"

His chest was rising and falling heavily, black eyes boring into hers with a strained expression. In the silence, everything seemed to scream. The draft of air, wailing of floorboards, flicker of a flame, a bird outside, the rustle of fabric, even their own breathing.