Salazar's Angel

XXVII

"Who else?" Dahlia finally asks, tearing her eyes away from his arm.

Nott shakes his head. "It's not my place to tell you."

"You know, for a group of people so fucking dedicated to their leader you are all incredibly secretive amongst your own selves," Dahlia spits.

Nott drops his chin to his chest and stares at his feet. "What happened between you and Draco last weekend?"

"Ha! Wouldn't you like to know?" Dahlia crosses her arms.

"I know his father walked in on you two about to sleep together," Nott says this so casually that the subtle undertones of darkness in his voice are almost intangible. Almost.

"What I have I told you about speaking of me in that context, Theodore? I will hex you so hard that-" Dahlia starts off her threat but is interrupted.

Nott throws his hands up in mock surrender. "I'm not judging you Dahlia. I don't care that you were going to sleep with him. What I do care about is that Lucius saw the two of you and now Draco is MIA."

"MIA? I thought you said you knew where he was. Stop fucking with me Nott." Dahlia forces her eyes into the worst glare she can manage.

Nott scrubs over his face with both of his hands. "I do...and I don't. I have a pretty good idea of what he's doing but I don't know for sure and I don't know where."

"Spit it out then." Dahlia cocks her eyebrow up and continues to glare at him. 

"Dahlia I'm really not-" Nott begins.

Dahlia yanks her own shirt sleeve up her arm this time and shoves her arm up towards his face. "Nott. Get a grip and start speaking. I know."

He stares at her arm, eyes wide. Then, after a solid few seconds of complete silence, he turns and pours himself another drink which he downs in one go.

Dahlia rolls her eyes. "Oh please. Don't act like you didn't suspect. If you know Malfoy as well as you claim, you know he wouldn't be hooking up with a girl who wasn't a death eater."

Nott swallows hard. "I suspected. But I didn't want to believe it was true."

"Well, it is. So get yourself together and let's get on with it." Dahlia motions with her hand for him to continue speaking.

"Dahlia. If that mark on your arm is real, you know as well as I do that I can't tell you." Nott focuses his gaze on hers like he is pleading her to understand.

"Wait. You took the vow of secrecy?" Dahlia has to physically force her mouth not to drop open.

Nott nods, and casts his eyes downward once more. If Voldemort asked him to take the vow, then whatever he isn't allowed to tell her is certainly above her pay grade. Dahlia was never once asked to take it, meaning either he trusted her that much or, more likely, she was never told of anything this important. If Nott were to speak on something he vowed not to, the mark would quite literally blow his arm off his body.

"Even if I could tell you where he was, it wouldn't make a difference. You couldn't just show up," Nott says. "Why are you in such a big hurry to get to him, anyways?"

"He was acting so weird Sunday morning when I woke up. Mean, actually. And everything went so well Saturday night at the dinner, so I just want to understand," Dahlia explains. "I am so sick of feeling like I'm leading three different lives at once, I want to just pick one and live it fully."

"What do you mean three?" Theodore asks.

"My old muggle life, a regular Hogwarts student, and Salazar's fucking Angel."

Nott sighs and reaches out for her arm, bringing it up in between the two of them. "Dahlia. I think we both know that you can't just be a regular student here."

His thumb traces over the mark on her arm, and where Draco is all icy and cold, Nott is strictly heat. He causes the fire in her arm to blaze even hotter, the heat surging all throughout her body.  

"Nott..." Dahlia attempts to say, but it comes out more as a whisper.

His eyes lift up from her arm and meet hers, big and warm and brown. "Dahlia," Nott replies, his tone soft and his mouth quirking up on one side.

She's all kinds of too warm. It feels wrong. It is wrong. She knows this. Yet she can't find it in her to resist when he slides the hand holding her arm around her back and pulls her into him. The heat from his body combined with the residual heat from the fire whiskey has her seeing spots at the edge of her vision. Everywhere that Draco is hard, clean cut lines, Nott is smooth and inviting. 

On instinct, Dahlia feels herself tilt her chin up as he tilts his down. Their lips are only millimeters away from each other when the door to the boys bedroom slams open against the wall. 

And there stands Draco, an expression splaying itself out on his face that Dahlia couldn't even begin to read if she had wanted to in front of their very eyes.