He watched the twitch of her lips with the subtlest feeling of triumph, his own smile sharpening with mischief, eyes twinkling.
Who would have thought their encounter would end like this?
Coming to Hogsmeade, Mateo’s conviction that this job had any chance of working had been hovering somewhere near zero. A girl still at Hogwarts was hardly accessable to the extend he’d need her to be. Locked away inside that castle for most of the year, with only Hogsmeade weekends offering any real opportunity to get near her. One shot, if he was lucky.
And yet, it had worked.
He had no way of knowing just how bad her relationship to her parents had to be for her to go along with this so readily. Part of him felt for her—faintly guilty for pulling her strings on orders of men she had likely never met and never would. She was a means to and end, a tool for him and Goodman to make extra money with, nudged along whatever path they needed her to take.
The other part of him drowned that concern beneath a layer of distant, numbed apathy.
She was an adult. This was her choice, too.
Mateo watched her finish the rest of her wine, his expression revealing none of the flicker of conflict inside his chest.
“Where, and what time?”
She sounded almost excited. He let that blunt what little unease remained. “The bench under the oak tree,” he said with an easy smile. “Nine.”
Good thing he hadn’t had anything planned for tonight anyway.
Who would have thought their encounter would end like this?
Coming to Hogsmeade, Mateo’s conviction that this job had any chance of working had been hovering somewhere near zero. A girl still at Hogwarts was hardly accessable to the extend he’d need her to be. Locked away inside that castle for most of the year, with only Hogsmeade weekends offering any real opportunity to get near her. One shot, if he was lucky.
And yet, it had worked.
He had no way of knowing just how bad her relationship to her parents had to be for her to go along with this so readily. Part of him felt for her—faintly guilty for pulling her strings on orders of men she had likely never met and never would. She was a means to and end, a tool for him and Goodman to make extra money with, nudged along whatever path they needed her to take.
The other part of him drowned that concern beneath a layer of distant, numbed apathy.
She was an adult. This was her choice, too.
Mateo watched her finish the rest of her wine, his expression revealing none of the flicker of conflict inside his chest.
“Where, and what time?”
She sounded almost excited. He let that blunt what little unease remained. “The bench under the oak tree,” he said with an easy smile. “Nine.”
Good thing he hadn’t had anything planned for tonight anyway.
