Two Old Friends

Chapter 10

"Such fond memories we have," I say, sipping my tea.

"I enjoyed being roomies with you, actually. It was like being at school again without the classes," Adriana informed me.

"And house rivalries."

"Pshaw. You constantly compared everyone to Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs even out of school," she says with a scoff of annoyance.

"Metaphors, Adriana. I was using metaphors," I correct.

"The only other house you seemed to have any tolerance for aside from your own was Ravenclaw..." she states pensively. I shrug.

"They had two brain cells to rub together and were relatively civilised. And I was considered for Ravenclaw, but that's beside the point." She snorts derisively at me.

"What, are you insinuating I'm not clever enough to be in Ravenclaw?" I demand.

"No. You're not nice enough to be in Ravenclaw," she says simply.

"Excuse me, but there were some right bastards in Ravenclaw, believe you me."

"Are you saying that you'd rather be in Ravenclaw than Slytherin?"

"Of course not. I'm simply saying that I have enough talents for both houses." She nods to humour me and looks upward pensively, scratching her chin.

"Of course, you're happy you were in Slytherin, otherwise you and I would never have what we did."

"Whether that was a good thing or bad, that's yet to be seen," I say dryly, sipping the last of my tea. She chuckles throatily.

~*~

A few days went by peacefully, the idea of my mother far from my mind. I occasionally caught Adriana staring at me contemplatively, which irked me. Another letter was sent to me by my mother's friend, telling me that she sends her condolences and expects to see me at the funeral and left hints of what possessions she would like if anything is left out of the will. I scoffed and threw it in the fire.

And then, one fateful day, Adriana managed to rope me into going shopping with her via the Knight Bus. I took my seat and let her pay and we were speeding off to places unknown. As I was thanking the gods that I remembered to bring a vial of Motion Sickness Potion, the bus came to a stop before a manor that looked painfully familiar.

"Goddammit, Adriana, I told you I didn't want to come here!" I hissed.

"This isn't about you, you egotistical bat," she snapped. "I have memories here, too, you know. I want to see what became of the basement..." she lied.

"It's a place for storage, no doubt," I snapped. She dragged me off the bus despite my argument.

Adriana brought me to the doorstep of the house that I had spent my childhood in. She stepped in, and reluctantly I followed. The journey through my past was a silent one as memories flashed before my eyes as I looked at certain corners or different spots of the floor. Neither of us said a word. And then we went into the basement. I wasn't surprised to learn that all my things had been taken out and it was used as a place for storage but the atmosphere was still very much alive. I felt like I was going to cry at any moment. Adriana had sensed it and she held my hand. I sunk to the floor, my eyes itching with depression and loneliness. Adriana placed a maternal hand on my shoulder and soon I found myself bawling into my hands. Adriana knelt to my level and embraced me.

At that moment our romance began.

There was something about Adriana and I. The fact that Adriana had seen me cry for the first time somehow fire- started our melodramatic romantic lives together. That day consisted of almost no speaking whatsoever and yet we both knew of the new intimacy there was between the two of us and we both knew how to act on it. There was never a word of question about it or question if the other party knew of the aura. After my ridiculous sobbing, we just looked into each other's eyes and ... I want to say electricity, but that doesn't quite fit what I felt. There is now way to delineate what there was, just a list of adjectives comes to mind and they all relate to subtle and thick. There was no passionate kiss or heat filled sex scene - she was in her third month of pregnancy. It was just that that after that day we didn't treat each other the same again.

Our first kiss did occur a few days later though.

"When are you going small-child shopping?" I asked from the kitchen, looking for food.

"Sometime soon. I need to finish a test at school and I'll be done with studying for at least a week, so sometime next week. Why do you ask?" Adriana replied, peeling an apple, sitting on the counter behind me.

"I just wanted to know when I should be ready to see my lovely home destroyed by ankle-biter décor," I said, turning around with a handful of crackers.

"Would you like to come?" she offered, looking at me from taking a sliver from her apple.

"As thrilling as it sounds, I really wouldn't," I said, heading back to the sad attempt at a dining room we had. It was a table by the kitchen window with two chairs--Lucius's home warming gift. I had started to read the book I had left for the crackers when Adriana started speaking.

"Come here, Severus," she said softly. I looked up and could tell by the odd look in her eye that a sarcastic remark wasn't needed. I did as she requested. And without another word she drew me closer and placed her mouth on mine. It wasn't passionate, it wasn't heated. It was what it was, but it was an important addition to our implicit romance.

For a while, Adriana seemed quite distracted. She constantly looked in the mirror and felt her stomach. I think she was worried about her pregnancy showing. Every now and then, she'd rattle off about schooling complications or show me, much to my horror, pictures of women during child labour. She'd harass me at odd hours of the day, asking me if she looked fat. This alarmed me and I quickly busied myself with something, muttering something about being occupied at the moment and please ask me another time.

Eventually, after coming home from a rather uncomfortable Death Eater meeting, I found her in the living room looking rather hysterical. I was curious as to how she got home before I did if she wasn't Apparating, but I quickly ushered that worry out of my head when I saw her expression. She looked close to tears. She looked up at me, she was stark pale and her eyes were large and round.

"Lupe... Lupe's dead," she informed me rather hollowly.

"Really? How come?" Very sensitive of me, I know.

"The--the Dark Lord..."

"Ah. What did Lupe do to offend him?" Adriana didn't answer.

"She's dead..."

"But you hated her."

"Yea, but... but sisters are supposed to stick together, aren't they? Sisters are supposed to be friends with each other..."

"You're manic. We're going out tomorrow night. Right now you need to take a bath and go to bed." She made an odd gurgling noise of consent as I pulled her up and took her upstairs.