Merlin looked back at Zacharias as he was turned to do, uncomfortable but worn enough that he obeyed without thinking. His fingers fretted at each other as he worried over what Zach would think, what he'd think of him, what he'd be able to guess from the scant information that Merlin had given over.
His immediate instinct was to disbelieve what Zach said as over optimistic advice - okay, maybe not everyone was out to hurt him, but people who showed any interest in him usually were. How could Zach know? Zach didn't act like anyone had ever pulled down almost every sense of privacy he had, how could he know how it felt to have eyes on you everywhere you were?
A bolt of anger ran through him, and he was about to do something about it, to fire it out in Zach's direction when the former Hufflepuff regained the intimacy between them that Merlin had broken to do again to him what only Zach had ever done - his kiss back was barely that, their lips touched and then Merlin's quick, soft, anxious breaths escaped out. He couldn't do much more than wait to see what would happen next, if this was his vision about to come true.