The Detective Club | Blaise Zabini

XXVII

When Antheia got home, she was greeted by silence. It was the first time she was truly alone at home. She had grown used to Calyce not being home to greet her, but this time was different. Not only was Anastasios not there to welcome her home and offer a snack, which she had expected, but Andreas wasn't there acting like she didn't exist. She had taken comfort in the idea of having a little more time before she was truly alone, but it had come sooner than she thought.

Her home always felt cold and uninviting and the solitude didn't help. She opened her bedroom. It was untouched from the last time she had been there. She left her trunk near the door as she ventured inside and opened her closet. She grabbed a bag from the bottom of her closet and entered Andreas' room that was right next door. Everything was in its place. He definitely did not plan ahead. She glanced behind her, hoping she had enough time before her father returned. She left the bag on his bed before she walked over to his closet. The layout of their room was nearly identical. She looked through his clothes. She couldn't take all of them without alerting her father, so she only took a few and threw them onto his bed. She moved his clothes to the side and looked through his storage boxes at the bottom. Most of them had shoes, which she picked out the two pairs she noticed he wore the most. If it wasn't shoes, it was little trinkets. She didn't know the significance of anything, but she couldn't take everything if she didn't want her father to notice anything off.

She tried to distinguish what meant the most to him, throwing it on his bed. She moved onto the top of his closet, using her wand to lower the boxes. There were a few journals, most of which were new and sealed. She left those and moved onto the next box. It was stationary. She put it back and moved onto the last box in his closet. It was empty. She returned everything in his closet and moved onto his bookshelf. She threw his photo album onto the bed, looking through all his books for anything that might be of any importance to him. She found a safe disguised as a book like the one Blaise had and threw it onto the bed, along with a few of his books he liked to read. She decided her father wouldn't notice if all of Andreas' jewelry was gone, so she took all of it and put it on his bed. She went through his nightstand, doing the same thing she did to everything else. She checked under his bed and any other place he might be able to store his things. Once she had a little bit of everything, she shoved it all inside the bag, which she then shoved into his trunk. She carried his trunk out of the room and slid it under her bed.

She returned to his room to make sure it looked untouched and once she was satisfied, she walked down the hall to Anastasios' room. She hesitated to open it. The last time she had, her brother was seated at his desk. He had looked up and smiled, welcoming her inside. However, this time there would be no Anastasios to welcome her. She inhaled sharply before she pushed the door open. His room wasn't empty like Calyce's now was, but it wasn't untouched either. It was trashed, with everything out of place and thrown around the room. She doubted Anastasios was responsible, her father must've been looking for something after he left. She walked in, picking up the pieces that remained from what used to be his desk. His stationary was sprawled out of the floor, the ink he had last used had stained the floor. When she touched it, it was dry and didn't transfer.

His bedsheets and blankets were on the floor, torn. He didn't have a mattress anymore. Only Merlin knew what Mr. Artino had done to it. His bookshelf was in pieces and his books were ruined. She may not care a lot about books, but it pained her to see the books Anastasios cared so much about in such horrible condition. She tried to sit om the corner of his bed frame, but it gave out underneath her.

"Bloody hell," she said as she dusted herself off. She looked at the room one last time before she left, the door closed behind her.

She returned to her own room and fell onto her bed. She laid on it for a few minutes before she pushed herself off and contemplated writing to Emil. She decided not to and she'd speak to him at Hogwarts. As she thought about what to do until her father returned home, her eyes fell onto her bookshelf that was a lot smaller than the one in either of her brothers' rooms. She knelt down in front of it and pulled out the untitled book. It was one of the books Mrs. Zabini had given her from Alfie Vaughan. It was just a compilation of silly fairytales that she remembered him telling her. Her eyebrows furrowed as she thought about the other book. It wasn't in her bookshelf, which meant she put it somewhere else.