PRETENDING TO LIVE~ {The Lestrange Daughter #2}

𝟑𝟔. Tiff

"I think my brain is melting." Leah groaned, pressing her face into the book.

"Mine's already pudding." Blaze rubbed at his eyes.

Valentine pretended not to hear their complaints, not looking up from her book. She sat straight in her chair, not leaning against the backrest. In the three days since Umbridge had doled out her new and improved method of punishment, Valentine had quickly learned there wasn't much she could do without pain or some discomfort.

Snape had healed the wounds as best as he could, but he was no Madam Pomfrey. It could take weeks to a month for the pain to finally go away and Valentine only used the Pain Relief Draught that he made her so that she actually had some chance at sleeping. Other than that, she didn't have the choice of taking it easy. There was no one she could go to who had the power to stop this. Umbridge had told the students in class that day that they'd be under threat of expulsion if they spoke about what happened and it worked. Valentine wasn't shocked to find that no one was losing sleep over a Lestrange, if anything it was a compliment to her facade.

She hadn't told her friends either and honestly, they would have been the last people she would have. When they asked what Umbridge did to her, she told them she'd written lines for five hours straight to explain why she came back to the common room so late. They'd believed her without question, just happy that she hadn't been expelled.

Now, on this wintry morning spent in the library, Leah and Blaze were slumped over the table, looking more dead than alive. They'd been there for over half an hour and we're yet to move past the second page. Usually, grades were the last thing on their minds, but with the O.W.Ls coming up later in the school year, even they were trying to put in some kind of effort.

"I don't know how you do it, Val." Leah whined.

"Do what?" Valentine still didn't glance up.

"Keep all this stuff in your head!" Leah exclaimed. "I feel like it just keeps falling out of mine."

"Oh, she wouldn't understand." Blaze scoffed, face half-buried in the tabletop. "She's going to get all Outstandings and leave us in the dust. The best we can hope for at this point is to just survive the actual testing."

"If this is living then I'm out." Leah looked down at the textbook with disgust.

"If I get all low grades, I just know my dad's going to give me that disappointed-but-I-still-love-you look. And then Beck will never shut up about it and Bridget will probably disown me! Why do I have to be the dumb sibling?"

"Oh, Blazie, you're not dumb. You're just unintelligent!"

"I'll forgive the nickname just this once because you're actually trying to be nice, but dumb and unintelligent are the same thing."

"See! You can't be dumb if you know that! Besides, I thought Beck hated exams and school altogether."

"He did, but he still got good grades, remember?" Blaze pouted. "He's an utter moron, but he's also deceptively smart. He hardly studied outside of classes and still graduated in the top ten of his year!"

"Draco's kind of like that." Leah muttered to herself. "He does no work and always passes."

Blaze tensed at the brief mention. It had been five days since Draco and Liam had announced themselves as members of Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad. Crabbe, Goyle, Parkinson and Philips had joined soon after.

Valentine, Leah and Blaze hadn't spoken a word to any of them and Valentine realised that this was the longest amount of time she'd spent without speaking to her cousin. Even when she'd been suspended in first year they'd written to each other. She supposed she'd have felt more alone if she didn't see him every day and if she hadn't had two idiots by her side the entire time, chattering in her ear.