Emerald (Lazuli Book #2) Harry Potter Fan Fiction (Draco Malfoy)

Chapter Nineteen - Only each other

Damon was there the moment I fell through the fireplace in the Leaky Cauldron, collapsing into a sobbing heap on the flagstone floor. I barely noticed the improvements that had been made to the previously dingy pub through my tears, rocking and shaking now that my parents weren't there to see.

How dare they lie to me?

After all these years, making me believe that I was one of them, and then they sprung something like this on me? The truth that I should have always known resulting from my mother's spite and hatred.

And I thought it was only Slytherin's that were supposed to be cruel.

"Juliet?" Damon said, jumping over the bar and nearly knocking over an elderly wizard who'd been staring at me in fascination. I don't know why I thought of the Leaky Cauldron - I knew that I couldn't go to Draco, and that I wasn't sure whether I could trust this information in Honey or Sophia. Damon was the only other person I could trust.

Damon was by my side in an instant, his muscular arms around me as he rocked and hushed me. "It's ok, Juliet, I've got you. You're safe now."

Somehow, he picked me up and, still sobbing uncontrollably, I allowed him to carry me out of the main tavern and up to the rooms upstairs. My trunk disappeared with a flick of Damon's wand, and he barked for one of the other bar tenders to watch the bar whilst he sorted me out. I allowed him to carry me and find me an empty room, saying nothing as he laid me down on the bed - complete with new mattresses and furnishings since the last time I'd stayed here. It looked cleaner, fresher, and altogether newer. But I didn't say anything now - I could barely talk.

Damon called for the maid to run me a bath and I didn't object as a young witch came into the room and ran it for me, before helping me out of my clothes and down to my underwear. She helped me hobble towards the bath and left me alone in the bathroom to get in.

The water was hot but not scalding. Although the bath was relatively small, I could fit inside it perfectly and the soft white bubbles that smelled of peppermint and strawberries cleared my nose. I cried and cried until my eyes dried up and I couldn't force any more water out of them. By that time, the water in the bath was luke warm and uncomfortable, and so reluctantly I climbed out.

The maid had left a fluffy bath robe on the hook on the back of the door, which I wrapped around myself before shuffling back into the bedroom. I was hardly surprised to see Damon sat on the chair in the corner, standing up when I entered the room and giving me a gentle hug. "What on earth has happened, Li?"

I couldn't cry any more, and I needed somebody to know. So I told him. I told him about how my parents had revealed that I was adopted, and that I couldn't bear to stay in that house with them for a moment longer. That the walls of the Burrow felt as if they were suffocating me, that I didn't belong there. I didn't tell him about my true identity, and that my real father was Regulus Black. He was the only friend I knew I could trust right now, and I wasn't going to jeopardize that.

Damon left me for a few moments so I could change into some pyjamas and so that he could get me a hot dinner and some butter beer from the kitchen. He returned moments later, bearing a tray full of my favourite treats, and we laid on the floor together eating them. It was something that I would have done with Cedric, who I so desperately needed right now. Cedric always knew what to do, what to say. It didn't matter what the situation, he'd always be able to calm me down.

I listened as Damon tried to divert the topic off my family trouble and he told me about how he'd been redecorating the pub. They'd gotten rid of a Knargle infestation (apparently the creatures that Luna always talked about were real, and incredibly pestilent) and had been working to redecorate the incredibly dated rooms so that people were more willing to come and stay. He'd hired new bar workers, including a young man called Firenzo that he found particularly attractive (I learned in one of his previous letters that Damon was, unfortunately for all the female's out there, gay.)