Chapter 2
The Slytherin common room was colder than normal. Even with the fireplace blazing and the magic heating the room, the windows were still frosting over slightly, causing the merpeople to shutter away into a different part of the black lake.
Draco held his nose with one hand and waved off Pansy with the other.
“What happened?” The dark-haired girl demanded.
Theo was laughing on the black leather sofa opposite of Draco. “Weasley’s girlfriend walloped him,” he snickered.
“You were hit by a mudblood?” Pansy scurried away quickly. “You should see Madam Pomfrey, make sure you didn’t catch anything.”
Draco could tell she was joking, sort of.
Pucey walked in then. A year older but not necessarily better. “It’ll scar if you don’t fix it,” he said. It was the casualness of the comment that caught Draco off guard.
“As if Granger could scar me.”
Pucey just laughed and walked out of the common room, shooting one final look at the blond boy. There was frost gathering around him slowly on the leather sofa, but it must have just been the cold.
“I’ll be fine,” Draco told his friends. Pansy did not look convinced and even looked a little disgusted. Theo looked amused at everything like he always did when they were at school.
Third year was a few days from being over. Draco would go home and see his parents and practice flying and not have to worry about a bushy-haired know-it-all and her dumb orange boyfriend and their poncy Potter.
The common room door opened and an out of breath Blaise Zabini ran through the door. “They’ve captured Sirius Black!” He announced to the room.
All eyes fell on Draco. For a moment he forgot about his face. Sirius Black. His cousin by all rights. The Daily Prophet says that he supported You Know Who and helped kill Potter’s parents and killed a bunch of muggles. Yet his mother never spoke his name. Narcissa Malfoy nee Black never spoke of three people in her family. Sirius Black, Andromeda Tonks, and Bellatrix Lestrange. It just wasn’t done.
But she did talk about Regulus. She told Draco stories of the youngest boy in the Noble House of Black. How when his older brother left he became the unofficial heir. How You Know Who asked him to do something. How he died too young in service to him. And sometimes, very quietly, and only after she shielded his mind in ice, did his mother tell him that it was all a mistake, and he would never meet the same fate as long as she lived.
“That’s probably a good thing,” Theo mused, though it sounded more like a question. “Murderers should stay in Azkaban.”
Pansy shook her head and scoffed. “All of our parents would be in Azkaban if that were true.”
“Not mine,” Blaise commented joyously. “Mum’s been acquitted.”
“All our parents have been acquitted num nuts,” Theo quipped.
“Doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.” Pansy picked at her nails and looked off into the black lake like she was trying to figure out where the giant squid might be.
Draco rose to his feet. “We should head to dinner if you all are done being boring and morbid.”
As they made their way to the Great Hall, Draco could have sworn he saw Hermione Granger flying on the back of a Hippogriff out one of the windows. But that was impossible. The mudblood had a fear of flying.