a rose by any other name

chapter twenty-six ❃ the birds

I woke up the next morning and went down to breakfast where I met Draco and Pansy, they both looked pretty tired as always and to be honest so I was I, I always felt tired recently, exhausted, I felt like I hadn't slept properly in months when really, I had slept way more than usual. I was still curious about Cedric, but he was at breakfast today. Again, I looked at him, but he didn't look up at me, he looked more tired today and he wasn't even talking to his friends. He was just sat there with his head resting on one of his hands looking down at the table playing with his cornflakes, the bowl was still full it looked like he hadn't even touched it. I was confused but I stopped looking before anyone could notice, Draco and I planned to start trying to fix the cabinet today. I had done a lot of research and hoped the process wouldn't be too bad, I had been in touch with Borgin – the man who actually made the cabinets, he wasn't a Death Eater, purely because Voldemort only gave the Dark Mark to his closest followers, lucky me. No Borgin wasn't a true follower, he just supported Voldemort enough to let him and his group use his shop and not tell the Ministry. Borgin had insisted that the easiest way to fix the cabinets was to have him look at them, however when I ran this by Snape he just flat out said no, I asked no further questions and told Borgin that it wasn't an option. He was annoyed but he wouldn't argue with Voldemort, and therefor he wouldn't argue with me, meaning I was kind of back at square one. He gave me some instructions he thought might help, but he couldn't be sure.

After breakfast, we all left for our lessons, Pansy wasn't in our lessons as she took different subjects this year, she was in Cedric's lessons. Me and Draco purposely took the same things, but Draco didn't really care about school, he was okay with missing lessons that Snape had managed to excuse us from to give us time to fix the cabinet, I on the other hand was not okay with it. "This is ridiculous, why do we have to miss lessons to do this." Draco rolled his eyes, "Ris, honestly stop being such a try hard for two minutes we can't let him down again." I didn't say anything I just scoffed and followed Draco as we looked for the Room of Requirement. When we saw the door forming, we quickly looked around before sneaking In and closing the door, it disappeared on the other side and we started searching for the cabinet. The room was huge and full of random things, Draco and I split up to look for it. After about half an hour I turned a corner created by a stack of tables and came face to face with the cabinet, it looked exactly the same as the one in Borgin and Burkes it was just dirtier. I called Draco and he apparated to me, there was no way he would have been able to find me in there without doing it. "So, where do we start?" Draco asked me, "I suppose we need something to test it on first, and then just start saying the incantation." I replied and Draco looked around, "Accio bird." Draco said and chuckled when a cage flew towards him, "This place has everything." He said as he took the small white bird out of the cage, I couldn't look at the bird, this was too cruel. Draco opened the cabinet and placed the small bird inside, he closed the door and then looked at me, "What now?" I sighed "Draco have you not done any reading at all, open the cabinet and put the bird in, close it and then open it again, if the bird is there, which it won't be, its working normally. But if it isn't then its broken, very broken if the bird is dead." Draco did what I said and when he opened the cabinet for the second time there where he had left it, was a limp white bird. It wasn't moving and it was no longer making little chirping noises. Draco looked at me before picking up the small bird. "Oh." Draco said and he actually looked quite sad, "He was quite cute." I took the bird from his hands before finding a box in the things next to us and placing it inside. "We can bury them when were done." Draco looked at me "Them? How many are we going to need? As many as it takes, I suppose." Draco answered himself. Draco sighed now before holding up his wand again. "Accio Birds!" All of a sudden what looked like hundreds of cages flew towards us and landed on the floor, all the cages had small white birds in them chirping away happily. I felt so guilty; this was murder. Draco patted my shoulder and smiled at me, "Sooner we get it done, we might not even need them all." He said trying to comfort me, I weakly smiled back at him and pulled out my wand. "Okay, I'll show you what to do and then we can just take it in turns." I told Draco before gently grabbing a bird from one of the cages and walking towards the cabinet. I stood in front and placed the small bird inside of the cabinet before closing the door and holding up my wand. "Harmonia Nectere Passus." I spoke clearly before waiting a few seconds, the cabinet groaned and shook slightly. I gulped and opened the door again. There laid the small white bird, motionless and silent. I sighed and picked it up before putting it in the box with the other one. "And then we just do that over and over until the bird flies back out." I told Draco turning around to face him. "Right." He said, Draco gulped before picking up a bird and doing the same. The bird, like mine, didn't make it and Draco sighed, picking up the bird and putting it in the box. He looked down into the box at the now three, dead birds. "This is wrong Parisa, they're all going to die." I went to stand next to him. "Well, we don't really have a choice, we need something that's living and unless you want to volunteer." Draco shook his head before laughing, I looked at him confused, "What?" Draco chuckled, "Maybe we should put Voldemort in there." I laughed at this, I also noticed how he called him Voldemort and not The Dark Lord and this actually comforted me, I wasn't alone in this, I had Draco and he finally felt the same way about this as I did. Neither of us said anything else we just got on with the task.