The next morning I woke up, early enough that Daphne would still be sleeping soundly, and penned a letter to Fred. I'd hardly had a wink of sleep all night because the uncomfortable pit in my stomach hadn't gone away and this felt like the only way to stop it. Through bleary sleep-deprived eyes, I stared at the blank page, trying to make the words come out. There was no use sending off some well worded essay or a thought out note, it had to come naturally.
Summoning the courage, I poured everything I had to say into it. That I missed him, that I was just as scared for myself as he was, before finishing it with the sentiment that I was only putting myself through this to find answers. I folded the letter neatly into its envelope, writing out the address to 12 Grimmauld Place on its front and pulled my coat on over my thick pyjamas to take it to the Owlery before breakfast.
I trudged the grounds with the tall, stone tower in my sights. Atherol, my family owl, was already waiting on one of the many perches that lined the tower's walls when I wrenched the heavy door open. He gripped the letter in his beak before speeding off with it. I hated coming to the Owlery, it smelt heavily of the birds that inhabited it and there was always a strangely eerie feeling in there. Getting out as soon as I could, I pushed the door back open and began to make my way to the castle, hoping I'd be able to get back to my dorm before anybody noticed I was gone.
I'd reached the courtyard leading into the school when a loud screech tore through the silence. Atherol was back already. He had the letter still clutched in the mouth, before dropping it into my hands and perching on my shoulder.
"You were meant to deliver it you stupid bird" I muttered. Atherol was anything but happy about this and snapped sharply at my ear with his beak. I shooed him off me and opened the letter up to see why he'd brought it back.
Underneath everything I had written there was a short sentence that had been penned distinctively in different coloured ink, that read:
Are you sure that's why you're doing this?
- Fred
My eyes narrowed on the messy red words on the page. I could hardly believe that's all he had to say. Feeling my anger take over I placed the letter on the ground and pointed my wand at it, shouting out "Incendio"
The letter set ablaze for a moment, then quickly burnt down to a crisp and disappearing, not catching fire to anything else around that hadn't had the spell cast on it. My eyes transfixed on the ashes as they scattered into the wind, before I was startled by a voice behind me.
"Trying to set fire to the school, are we?" came Snape's low, drawling voice. I turned slowly to see the head of my house staring down at me with an eyebrow raised, his long-sleeved arms crossed over his chest.
"No sir, just practicing on a useless bit of paper" I lied, feebly.
"Alright well run along, breakfast will be starting shortly" Snape replied, as I began to turn away, "oh and Miss Reading..."
"Yes, sir?" I responded, turning back to him.
"You've been spending a lot of time with Mr. Malfoy, I'd advise against it" he answered flatly. Snape had never shown any interest in me, not even being one of the top students in our house, so it seemed rather odd for him to be commenting on my social life.
"Why's that sir?" I questioned, looking back at him in utter confusion.
"He can not be distracted, you see"
"Distracted?" I repeated.
"Yes" he paused, "from his studies"
The answer was somewhat unconvincing and there was clearly more to it than that, but I gave him a nod to show that I understood and scurried back into the castle, narrowly avoiding other early rising students as they made their way to breakfast.
The rest of my morning went along quite as normal. Daphne had woken up just in time for me to slip into the bathroom for a shower and come out as though I had been there the whole time. I hadn't seen Draco at breakfast, though he had rarely been coming to meals at all and it was starting to show, as he'd been getting thinner and thinner as the term went on. My next opportunity to see him would be Potions, my third lesson of the day.
Managing to get to our table before him, I already started busying myself, reading through the chapter we'd be covering in today's lesson, so there wouldn't be an unbearable silence between us. He eventually sat down beside me, the last to arrive as usual. Looking especially stressed today, his breathing was heavy and hard to ignore.
"Why are you breathing like that?" I muttered, not looking up from the page.
"I'm stressed, alright?" he snapped, taking off his long robes to get more comfortable.
"Alright" I said, still not looking at him.
"I don't appreciate the attitude, Reading" he sneered, slamming his textbook down on the table and opening it to the same page. There was definitely something biting at him but he was far too proud to say what it was.
We worked the rest of the lesson in silence, completing our potions separately and not letting the other intervene. When the lesson finally drew to a close with the sound of the school's clock chimes, he scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could and gathered his belongings. I thought he was going to dash out without even a goodbye when he suddenly leaned close next to my ear.
"Room of Requirements, lunchtime" he demanded, before giving me a look from his hooded eyes that told me there would be hell to pay if I didn't come.
Muggle Studies passed in a blur, my mind was preoccupied with getting to the Seventh floor promptly as soon as this lesson was over. Not even Dean's humorous anecdotes about growing up in a muggle family could bring me out of my trance and they were usually quite entertaining. I finally resurfaced when Professor Burbage dismissed us and I could leave at last to find Draco.
The entrance to the Room of Requirements appeared before me and I slipped through the door, shutting it silently behind me. I heard the low rumble of Draco, whispering an incantation I didn't recognise. His voice came from deep with the room and I tiptoed through, trying not to bring any attention to myself so I might catch a glimpse of what he was working on.
The room was stacked high with objects of all shapes and sizes, so it was hard to find him amongst the mess. After searching a few minutes, I saw his icy hair, as he stood in front of a large black cabinet. I'm sure it had once been displayed in a hallway but now it was no longer in use it must have been dragged up here to perish with all the other disused items. I stood staring at him for sometime, just listening to the babble of enchantments as he wove his wand through the air in front of it. I moved closer to get a better look but knocked a metal telescope in my path, which came clattering to floor, making him jump around.
"Celeste, what are you doing here?" he barked, looking at me angrily, but attention was quickly brought back to the cabinet, as though he'd forgotten it was there. Frantically, he picked up a large sheet and covered the cabinet over with it. Is this really what he'd been working on all this time? A dusty old cabinet?
"You asked me to meet you, remember?" I explained, backing away as he came steaming towards me.
"It's lunchtime already?" he mumbled, looking down at the watch on his wrist. He raised his eyebrows, he must have realised quite how long he'd been up here.
"What are you doing with that thing?" I asked, pointing to the covered cabinet.
"Nothing" he snapped. As though he was trying to draw my attention somewhere else, he slipped a hand into my hair and pulled me in to meet his lips. They moved together momentarily until I remembered where I'd first seen the cabinet before and I pulled away.
"That's the vanishing cabinet!" I exclaimed, "The one that Fred and George pushed Montague into last year, you have to admit that was quite funny, but what's it doing up here?"
Draco didn't look quite as amused as I did and he stared at me blankly before grabbing as my hair a little tighter.
"You don't tell anybody that it's up here, got it?" he seethed, yanking harshly on my hair and making me wail out in pain.
"Draco, you're hurting me" I squealed, and he dropped my hair at once. His face contorted in confusion and upset, but he quickly tried to press his lips against mine again, sending my stumbling back.
"No!" I squeaked, pulling myself away from him.
Instead, he tried to bury himself into my neck and clutched at the tights on my legs to pull me into him. Though pressure started to build in the space between my thighs, I wasn't in any mood for this and broke away abruptly, my tights ripping as they scraped out from between his fingers.
"Please Celeste, I need this" he whined, putting his hand delicately on my arm. I jerked it off and stared him down coldly. Usually I was happy to help, usually I wanted this just as much as he did but I couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't telling me something. There was no denying that he looked particularly burdened today but it couldn't always be my job to fix that for him.
My body began to shake with fury and hurt as I looked at him. Why couldn't he just tell me what he was doing? It was clear I'd finally caught him with whatever sinister thing he'd been skipping lessons for, but I just couldn't quite wrap my head around what he'd want with a battered old vanishing cabinet. Montague has broken it beyond repair, I thought everybody had known that, so why was he wasting his time?
I let the momentum of my anger carry my feet out of the room as I heard him call my name after me. I still had most of my lunchtime left before I had to be in Charms with Professor Flitwick and I needed to tell somebody about this. Maybe Hermione could make sense of it all and I knew exactly where to find her.
Buried in one of the library's aisles, I spotted Hermione's bushy curls hidden slightly behind a Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook. I'd clearly interrupted a deep thought as I tapped her on the shoulder, because she looked up at me crossly before realising who I was and letting her features soften.
"Celeste, what's the- your tights?" she gasped, pointing down at the large ladder that now ran in the black polyester from my knee up to the hem of my skirt.
"Never mind," I mumbled, shrugging it off, "I have something I need to share with you"
"Well, go on" she nodded.
"I just went to see Draco, in the Room of Requirements, we- umm... study up there sometimes" I explained, but Hermione's gave a suspecting look back down at my tights, "and he was doing all these enchantments, ones I had never heard, on that old vanishing cabinet, you know the one that the twins pushed that Slytherin boy into last year"
Hermione sat in silence for a moment and I could practically hear the cogs turning over in her brain. All of a sudden, she jumped to her feet, mumbling "that's it!", before quickly disappearing from the aisle. I chased after as she sped towards the metal gates that separated the Restricted Section from the rest of library.
"What is it, Hermione?" I asked, trying to keep up with her as she hurried towards that Artefacts section.
"It's gone! I knew it would be" she said, a triumphant grin spreading across her face:
"Hermione!" I whispered, "Spit it out"
"You said you saw him in here, yes? Taking a book from the Artefacts section, well I've had nearly every book memorised in this library since second year," she boasted, "and it's not here! The book about vanishing cabinets isn't here. It's got everything you'd need to know, how to use them, maintain them and it's got an extensive section on how to repair them"
I glanced at her, quite dumbfounded. It wasn't that I didn't follow, it just still didn't explain why he was bothering to try and fix it all. All the cabinet did was make the user disappear for a few hours if you needed to, what would he want with that?
"But it doesn't explain why he's even trying to repair it in the first place?" I whispered and Hermione's excited expression dropped too.
"You're right" she pondered. She began hurtling back to where she'd been sat down before and pulled a chair for me to sit beside her.
"I'm going to have to talk to Harry about this but this is good Celeste! Now we know what he's doing, at least we can figure out what the purpose is" she whispered eagerly, with a glint in her eye again.