⎯ ✴︎ Ana laughed before she shrugged. She liked the idea of messing with Goyle as he’d been doing to everyone else. It seemed only fair and right after all this time. If he didn’t end up in a prison when all of this was over. “You wouldn’t have to drink it, but maybe keep asking for them to keep him busy. We’ll just get rid of them as we get them.”
She hated that she was basically leading him to private to ask about his family. Part of her just thought not to do it. She’d come up with a convincing lie. They would believe anything about golden Alistair Cattermole hating his brother along with the others. Even if Ana suspected the truth. And if she was right, she wanted to be there for him. She was sure he had to feel lonely being with it alone.
“If you insist,” she said taking his hand. She had an excited smile on her face no matter what all her intentions were. She’d wanted to to him to this place one way or another eventually and it just recently became the perfect place to be alone. She lead him down to a quiet area of the alley with a lot of shops closed and empty. She stopped at one of them before she let go of his hand and forced one open.
Waving him after her she stepped inside and smiled sadly at the sight of the place. It wasn’t because it was a mess, no, the only thing out of the usual for it was the lack of shop keeper and new layers of dust. In the windows and above their heads colored glass just dangled gracefully, catching some light. Scattered across the shelves were various other things made out of glass ranging from window placements to animal figurines. The little light the shop got through the front two windows and open door made everything glitter.
“Sara Merryweather made anything she could think of out of glass. Her work was beautiful… what’s left still is. I had a mission two weeks ago to bring her in, but she was informed by someone earlier in the day that I was coming and left her shop and all of this behind.”
▵ — Alastair smiled as Ana took his hand and began leading him through Diagon Alley, wondering how she managed this so often. Even on his best days he didn’t spend much of them smiling unless Antonidas and a lot of alcohol was involved. Even that didn’t do much for him lately, and it was getting harder and harder to keep himself together, both as a rebel and as a Death Eater. He was getting sloppy. He was receding, but she was alive, she was always alive.
Al half-expected her to lead him to a quiet coffee shop or somewhere of the like, something public with little to no ears, where they were least likely to be spotted by Goyle or any of his piece of shit cronies. But then she turned down a small alley that he vaguely recognized, and it started coming back to him as she forced the door open to one of the shops. He’d never been inside, but he’d seen the file on this place. A rebel lived here.
But when he stepped inside, all the files were forgotten.
The light shining through the stained windows scattered colour everywhere, turning the shop into its own piece of art. When he touched one hanging glass piece the colours around them shifted, the red moving up and the yellow moving left and the blue moving right, all the rays of light dancing together in a silent waltz. Al looked to Ana with an unrepressed, childlike smile, and his eyes traced the colours of light that curved over her features, and he thought she never looked so beautiful. He lightly touched another piece above his head and the colours danced across her face, over the curve of her nose and over her lips.
“ This place is beautiful, ” he said.
