XIV
I kept messing pretty much everything up from that very moment on. Slughorn's Christmas party.. got caught and dragged out and scolded by Professor Snape. Put a bird in the cabinet, it died, I cried. Tried to approach y/n, got ignored.
Put in an essay on Bezoar potion.. got an A. I never get A's, I always got O's and have had like maybe three E's before but never anything lower. This had been the lowest grade I'd ever achieved. Just a pass. On an essay about a simple antidote potion.
And the worst part is I corrected and helped someone else whilst actively fucking my own work up. And now it was the night before Christmas break, everyone was packing up including myself to go home.
I didn't want to, truly, I really did not want to but I've only ever spent two breaks here. Second year Christmas, and half term just gone. So it was decided that it wasn't worth rousing suspicion.
I don't know if death eaters get Christmas off from serving The Dark Lord but I suppose I'll get to find out.
It was only once Goyle had left the dorm room to go out to the common room with the others did Blaise discreetly ask me what was wrong. "It's Christmas mate, you not excited?"
"Yeah 'course I am. Bit of a random thing to ask?"
"Well.. not being funny Draco but you've been sat there for like an hour blankly staring at your suitcase," he murmured, folding and pressing more things in to his own. I just used magic to ram all of my stuff in; I'm usually as precise as Blaise about my things being in neat but I just didn't care anymore. "Just tired that's all and a bit worried."
His face changed, because I know he suspects something of me and I know he thinks I'm about to confess. But it's just gonna be more fucking lies. "About that A in potions, my mum is not going to be happy. We don't do 'A's' in my family. Thank Merlin my father is in Azkaban because he'd be even more pissed off."
Biggest load of bullshit ever, my dad might of gotten a little cranky but it wouldn't of lasted long. My mum would be proud of me no matter what as long as I put in my best effort. But I had to lie, to my best friend, again, simple.
"It's not that big of a deal though is it truthfully? You still passed?"
"Wasn't invited in to the Slug club though was I?"
The easiest way out of this conversation is to start an argument. So I snapped at him.
He just snickered and continued folding his things. "You really think that's as fun and as glamorous as it's made out to be? Fucking Belby got in mate so it's not that exclusive and it's also a bit weird. Like why is a fully grown man inviting seventeen and eighteen year olds to dinners and parties? It gives pedo vibes to be honest but the food was good so that's why I went."
I laughed so hard I threw myself back and actually fell head first off the other side of my bed.
"You could literally be getting groomed but as long as the food is amazing it's all good?!?!" I shouted up and over the bedframe, my sides aching from being unable to regulate my hysterical breaths.
"Fuck yeah! I'm a slut for a good bit of expensive cheese! But you, well.. you're just a slut full stop.."
Eventually I managed to get myself up and rub away the tears of laughter with the back of my hands that had started to dry in to the nooks of my nose, another chuckle still escaping me every now and then. "Fuck sake man," I huffed and sighed. "I might be a slut but at least it's not just for a slab of Cheddar.."
I started to lose it again, my shoulders bouncing as I locked the laugh in to my chest. "Well it makes sense to be a slut for something that you like? For me it's cheese.... and for you it's y/n."
I snapped from a laugh to a stone cold stare so fast I almost resurrected Salazar himself. I was caught so off guard that I felt the walls of Hogwarts literally crumble around me loudly with smashing thuds and brain crushing rumbles. That was until Blaise called me loudly from my disassociation.
"Fuck, I'm right aren't I?"
"About what?"
"You caught feelings and now she's your one that got away..."
My mouth opened to speak, but silence is all that fell from my lips. "I've seen the way you look at her mate. You look at her like she moves your whole soul just by the way she breathes."
"Shut the fuck up Blaise, ever since you read Shakespeare in muggle studies you've started to come out with the cringiest shit I've ever heard in my life."
He just smirked at me and arched a brow. "And yet you didn't even deny it."
Fuck, I didn't, Did I?
"Even if that was true.. which it isn't may I add! It wouldn't be worth it, she hasn't even looked at me since that situation with Higgs."
"Well I don't blame her, not going to lie. That would be the second time you accidentally acted a massive dickhead in front of and about her.. but.. It's probably not pointless.."
"And why would that be then oh wise one?" I responded sarcastically, readying myself to just put him to sleep with a stupefy. But his response was something way beyond anything I ever could of expected to hear.
"If it's something you might think about to cast a Patronus, right now.. then it's not pointless is it? So, if dementors flooded the castle right now, for whatever reason, what would you think of?"
I remained silent. In fact I'd never been so quiet in my entire life, this mother fucker had me wrapped up in knots because he was right and I had no way to deny it. He's observant, and he already knows the fucking answer. He just wants me to recognise that I already knew the answer too.
I hate best friends sometimes. They care too much.
"Okay.. let me better re-phrase my question.."
He stalled for a short minute as a few footsteps and thuds came and went beyond the dormitory door. Once sure we were still by ourselves quietly, he continued.
"If dementors flooded the castle right now, for whatever reason, yet we were safe down here in the dungeons but everyone else wasn't.. Would you go to anyone to protect them? If the answer is yes, then who would that person be? Her?"
I turned the crested ring on my finger exactly five and a half times, I know that because I actually counted like a freak. "Yeah," I replied weakly, throat dipping as my voice dried up to nothing. "So then why are you still stood here talking to me?"
"Because there isn't any dementors descending the castle?" I mockingly braced out my arms. "There is literally no threat right now."
Yet, of course.
"Time can be a threat, and distance. And there's about to be quite a bit of that between you both come tomorrow."
"That's pathetic fallacy at its best Zabini. It makes zero difference because there's nothing for it to come between."
"Well not if you keep being a puss about it."
"I've tried to apologise mate what else do you expect me to do?!"
Anger brimmed and boiled inside my stomach now, he's pushing and prodding and pulling a rope that ties to nothing. A whole load of absolute nothing.
"Alright, suit yourself. All I'm saying is that if you really are sorry and kind of in to her then you would at least try and find a way to build a bridge before it's too rotten to re-build. Because someone else will come along and communicate with her. And then it'll be too late. So either stand there or go and do something about it, either way it makes no odds to me."
His suitcase clipped shut loudly sending an annoying shiver right through me before he huffed, patted it, stowed it below his bed and got right up and walked out. Leaving me alone with my thoughts and his words.
The parchment and pot of ink stared just as intensely at me as I did to it. The quill upon my desk just sitting there like it had something to prove, like it dared me to run away and be a coward again. The spine and feathers pointed straight at me from the splintered oak, being sure that I knew it was me that it was beckoning.
"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!" I scorned myself as I found my knuckles wrapping around the quill with the ink spelling out my address beneath a lousy 'I'm so sorry.'
And I tore the parchment angrily, folding it once.. then twice before placing it inside my trouser pocket and stomping my way out of the dorms after throwing the door open loudly. A few of the young kids were playing absolute fuckery in the common room so I pushed through them without much regard.
Blaise just looked up from his book, sat on the couch with a smirk that would rival even mine. He knew where I was off to. Congratulations, prick.
If the silver wristwatch wrapped against my skin is correct, I've got exactly twenty five minutes to get from down here, across the castle; and somehow actually get to her to attempt to give her a piece of parchment she almost certainly isn't going to want before prefects start patrol and it's lights out.
Impossible probably. But I suppose I'm going to have to make it happen.
The flames that hung on the walls begin to dim themselves the closer to the hour it got, but my sight was set firmly ahead of me. I knew where I needed to be and I was going to get there.
Nobody dared to try and stop me, since I must of looked unapproachable as I hiked through the castle like I was hunting something. I considered apparating a few times but the last thing I need is extra trouble to contend with if I'm going to keep my family safe and get the vanishing cabinet finished.
And when I arrived at my location, I beat at the door behind the stone statue like a madman, knowing that no spell would have it open from my previous attempt. But I received no responses.
So I paced back and forth, eventually kicking the wall out of frustration and really hurting my foot. But I was too distracted to acknowledge the pain.
Then again, more heavy knocking. I was getting desperate now.
I kept going, and going and going, until eventually the corridor fell in to darkness as the flame lamps outed. But it must of been the day for a miracle because just as that happened the door creaked open with what seemed to look like a little third year looking at me shyly.
"Okay I know this is weird but is y/n in?"
I knew damn well she was, what a stupid question?
"Um, wait a minute-" The little voice said meekly. "No-hang on.."
Bollocks, the door shut again and I was left stood like a moron as I fidgeted with anxiety and cast a Lumos. Then the door re-opened. "She said go away-sorry."
This poor little kid looked so embarrassed to say that to somebody they didn't know. And so the door started to slowly close again until I stuck my already sore foot right between it and the door frame, startling the younger student as they jumped back. So an older male student stepped to try and shove me back out. "Dude, just go away. Why all the dramatics? She said she doesn't wanna talk to you?"
"Well where is she?"
"Literally sat about four foot away on a beanbag listening to you being a psycho. Just leave yeah?"
"Y/n! Look I know this is weird, but I just wanna give you a note that's all and then I'll go. We don't have to talk!"
The older boy glared at me as I shouted over him, I don't know what his problem is or why he's acting like some sort of chivalrous knight in shining armour but he was getting pretty damn close to a punch up with me.
Then the door wrenched all the way open, lighting me up like a silhouette in the dark, y/n stood there looking livid. "It's fine Oscar, I can deal with him. Go on."
She shooed him away gently before stepping out and in to the halls. "Did I not make myself blatantly clear or were you dropped on your head as a baby?"
Fuck, alright chill.
"No you made yourself clear but I was a dick and it was just my ego squaring up to Higgs. And I am sorry."
"Okay, you're sorry? But what the hell do you want me to do with sorry? If you threw a mug against the wall and broke it would saying sorry glue it back together?"
I normally detest metaphors, but this one made utter sense. I could only remain crestfallen and keep protesting my case. "No. But you're not a mug. You're a girl, a really cool one actually."
I'd never used the word 'cool' in that context in my life, it made my entire body burn with a slight cringe. And I held out the note to which she snatched angrily from me, unfolding it to scan over the shitty apology and address.
"Look, I was a dick. So if there's anything I can do to make it up to you somehow, well, let me know?" I said nodding to my address to suggest her writing to me.
Y/n folded the paper back up and pressed it on to my chest. "Don't want it, so take it and burn it for all I care."
Instinctively my hand came up to press on top of hers against my chest, my heart hammering against her palm. Her breathing was really fast now too, and I watched her swallow hard as our eyes locked without blinking.
"Please? Just think about it? My heart is racing because I've just ran all the way over here terrified that if I didn't at least try and fix my mistake then I'd regret it for a really long time."
And so I curled her fingers back around the note against my chest and softly let her hand fall back down between us. I'd gotten what I needed to get off my chest, pretty fucking literally.
And said all that I could. She gazed at me strangely, but I could see the internal battle she was fighting inside of herself. She wanted to punch me and close that door, yet she stood silently.
My walk was much calmer after I thinly smiled at her and left back down the hall; only once at the end and about to turn a corner did I glance back to surprisingly still find her watching me.
That was until she dropped her shoulders in to a heavy sigh, and stuffed the note down her shirt and in to her bra before turning on her heel and slamming the door shut again.
Once out of sight I leant against the nearest wall as my head fell back in relief against the cool stone and I swept the sweat from my face with my sleeve; allowing myself to smile a little.
And just before I lifted myself away from the wall to return to my dorms, I quietly whispered outwards with a slight laugh. "Fuck you Blaise, fuck you."