Little Bird

Chapter Thirty

Eve

            Draco was angry with me.

            I knew it now—it was about to be a full month into summer, and he hadn't written me back once. I'd owled him just days after we'd arrived back in London, because I wanted to know how he was doing and if he'd made it home okay, but he'd never responded. At the time, I hadn't worried; after all, it hadn't been that long since we'd last seen each other, and he probably needed a little space.

            But then another week had gone by, and Draco still hadn't tried to contact me. So I thought that maybe my letter hadn't made it to him, and I sent another. Another two weeks went by without an answer, so I owled him for the last time, asking him if everything was okay, if I had done something wrong.

            It was now well into July, and there was still nothing from him.

            At first, I hadn't even been annoyed. I'd thought something really was wrong, because he'd been so upset over something for the last month of school—but I'd been too afraid to ask him about it, so I still had no idea why. And now he wasn't responding to any of my letters, and I was sure he was angry with me.

            I wasn't exactly proud of it, but I'd spent the majority of the past week rethinking our last minutes together and wondering what I had done wrong. I'd laid up at night, thinking about what I could have possibly done to make Draco ignore me.

            But as time went on, I stopped wondering about what I did—instead, I started to get a little annoyed. How could he just ignore me like this, after he'd told me he would write as often as he could? And it wasn't like it was easy for me to get a letter out to him; I had to sneak into my aunt's room while she was at work and give it to her owl, and then when she realized it was missing I had to lie and tell her I was owling Ginny. I'd even taken the time to think up a way for us to meet in Hogsmeade, but if he couldn't even take the time to write me a quick letter, what was the point?

            So on that dreary Saturday morning when I finally received a letter from him, I wasn't really sure how to feel about it.

            My aunt was at work and I was alone in the sitting room, flipping through channels on the Muggle television she'd gotten as a gift from a friend, when I heard the owl tapping at the bay window.

            I lazily looked over the back of the couch, not recognizing whose owl it was—and not automatically thinking it might belong to Draco. I got up when the tapping increased, switching off the television and walking over to open the window. The black barn owl offered up its leg to me, so I carefully undid the clasp and accepted the letter from it. As soon as I moved my hands away, the owl took off again into the air, its wings narrowly brushing against my cheeks. Blinking, I shut the window and turned the letter over to see who had addressed it, and my heart leapt into my throat when I recognized Draco's untidy scrawl from where he had written my name.

            I tore open the envelope as fast as I could, pulling out the letter quickly and forgetting that I was supposed to be annoyed with him. Because as I opened the parchment and held it up to the gloomy sunlight so I could read it, all I really cared about was making sure he was okay.

            The letter simply read,

Eve,

            I'm sorry about not writing sooner, but I need to see you. Come to the manor tomorrow as soon as you can. Please.