Know-It All

Draco naively thought that the return back to school would be smooth and that he would answer any question about him and Maeve nonchalantly. He even practiced off-handed confirmations of any dating rumor: casual head nods and shrugging to let people know he was serious about Maeve but not that serious, though in his head, he was completely taken over. Over the last few weeks of winter holiday, the two wrote back and forth to each other about mundane things such as how their day had gone and how they celebrated the new year. Maeve wrote about spending most of her break over at the Weasleys and she was kind enough to leave Harry Potter out of her letters. Draco loved that every letter of hers was like an essay, but it made him feel self-conscious about spending the holiday alone. He wrote to her about how his family visited muggle London just to get to Diagon Alley and he shipped her a new scarf that was subtly green tipped for her to wear when she sent the scarf she stole during the Christmas party back.

On the first day back for the spring semester, Draco joined the rest of the giddy students in King’s Cross station and looked around anxiously for Maeve. He was quickly joined by his other friends, who joked about how disappointed he looked to see him.

“Ah, we shouldn’t take it personally. He’s only looking for his girlfriend now,” Blaise elbowed Draco in the ribs. Even Theo managed a slight chuckle. 

“Joke all you want. Get on the train before me, I’ll meet up with the lot of you later,” Draco rolled his eyes, still looking for Maeve. He did not think it would be that hard to spot a redheaded girl in such a crowd. Draco’s friends teased him again, but left Draco on the platform. He considered walking back down towards the front of the car when he felt a pair of arms snake around his waist. He turned out with a startled exclaim, only to soften when it turned out to be Maeve.

“PDA already?” Draco wrapped his arms tightly around Maeve. He could see the students that were already on the train looking in awe and whispering through the windows. Those still on the platform did not display such discretion. Draco… and Maeve…? I totally knew it. You’re full of rubbish.

“What? I missed you,” Maeve shrugged. Her sweet words left her mouth so easily, but it made Draco turn beet red. She intertwined her hand into his and started to pull him towards the train entrance. “C’mon, Draco! I want to sit with your friends. I need to talk to Pansy.”

—

Draco had forgotten how affectionate Maeve was through her lingering touches and if he thought it was persistent before, she now felt comfortable to lay her hands over him at every opportunity. She would grab his arm while she laughed, smack him on the shoulder to make a point, and she sat close to him so that their legs touched. Though Draco had never experienced such a thing before, Maeve made it look effortless. She laughed and played with Pansy the same way, but it didn’t make Draco feel any less important. He just had to figure out how to stop blushing whenever she touched him because he felt his face starting to get sore after staying heated since London. Pansy did not look a bit surprised that the two were dating, which made Draco playfully suspicious that she had known something about Maeve this entire time. It made him a bit embarrassed that he ever divulged such feelings to Pansy, but it worked in his favor. The boys were silent for most of the trip, having just seen each other a few days prior. 

During the winter holiday, Draco’s father was holding more and more meetings that he shut his son out of. Draco asked his dad to attend one of the meetings a few days ago, feeling rather silly that he was trying so hard in a new suit and freshly combed hair, and he was sufficiently shocked when he saw his other Slytherin housemates there. It didn’t matter what Draco wore or how much gel he put in his hair because he did not understand a single thing at the meeting. They all spoke in coded language that rolled off their tongues easily. Draco did not want to disappoint his father by looking confused, so he stored the conversations he heard to his long term memory and tried to work out each of the codes he heard them speak. End of the maze… The mad switch… Arrival on the third…

Draco didn’t want to ask his friends because he felt like they were in the know. During the meeting, none of them looked phased; in fact, he thought Goyle looked bored, like he had heard this “plan” spoken many times. Draco tried to make himself feel less idiotic by realizing that Goyle always had a bored look on his face, such as in that moment on the train back to school.

For the first month of school, the fascination with Draco and Maeve’s relationship rocked the school. Nobody could believe that Maeve had melted Draco’s heart of stone, which was a direct quote he had heard from Ron Weasley’s mouth. Draco was more entranced by how much time Maeve actually spent with him. She would invite him to come read with her in the library while excitedly telling him how she managed to snag the two couches in front of the fireplace. She had even snuck him into the Ravenclaw common room once while she asked him to wait up for her to grab a scarf before they were supposed to head to Hogsmeade. The Ravenclaw’s common space was wide and open, with tall windows that let in sunlight for students to read sprawled on the ground or to illuminate an intense match of Wizard’s Chess. It was true to the House’s values: open, curious, inviting. 

After the first month, however, the news of Draco and Maeve were quickly replaced with the news of the second Triwizard Tournament task. Once February began, Draco saw less of Maeve which was a shock to how much time they had been spending together since the beginning of school. Instead of doing homework together at night, Maeve dismissed herself with a kiss on his cheek - which only gave him temporary relief - and then ran off to study with Potter to help him with his second task. Draco thought that the Gryffindor was trying to make a move on Maeve, but he didn’t want to seem overly controlling and make Maeve upset. Ever since dating him, she spent markedly less time with the trio she usually hung out with, so Draco tried to be amicable about losing Maeve during the evenings. She always made up for it by spending an entire Sunday with him, lazily reading or drinking butterbeer at Hogsmeade. He was starting to finally feel comfortable with being a “boyfriend” that the talk of the other students meant nothing to him. Maeve had been hanging around with her Gryffindor friends for too long to develop any feelings of self-consciousness or embarrassment, which Draco envied. 

While Maeve showed her affection through her touches, Draco only knew how to reciprocate in gifts. He would wait until she complained that her bag straps were starting to wear or that she ran out of her favorite ink before scouting Hogsmeade for what she needed. Maeve did not seem used to being showered in gifts, which only encouraged Draco more. When February came, he didn’t worry about the second task; he worried about Valentine's Day. Maeve had held Draco’s face and made him swear not to buy her anything and while he promised, he thought to himself that his pledge did not apply if he had already bought something for her. He was excited to smugly tell Maeve that he didn’t get anything after he promised her, swear it on Merlin’s beard. However, Draco was worried still that with the task about three weeks out, Maeve would find less and less time for him. Now in the second week of February, Maeve apologetically skipped their lunch together so she could sit with Granger, Weasley, and Potter. She had invited Draco to sit with them, but he knew he would never hear the end of it from his friends. To appease her, he did try once to sit at the Gryffindor table when his previous class held him over into the lunch break for so long he only had ten minutes to eat and used most of the time to complain to Maeve. Weasley and Potter could not swallow their contempt for Draco and he didn’t expect them to. He was surprised that Granger was the nicest out of the three of them, despite him having the worst history with her. He figured she was doing it to appease Maeve as well. The more Draco had to look across the Great Hall at his girlfriend giggling at whatever stupid joke Potter made, the more he prayed and wished that there was a time acceleration spell so that the second task would finally be over with. Unfortunately, he could only wait.