Bet
"What're you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing? Don't suppose you know how to read do you?" the girl blurted. Damn. Of course her loud mouth just had to insult her partner right after leaving him in the dust just last week! "Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare," she answered quietly as she angled her reading material to display the worn cover.
"Never heard of it. Must not be a very good writer," muttered Malfoy, striding to the dusty table.
"I don't think he's very well known among purebloods and wizards."
"Why not?"
Y/N knew where the conversation was leading. No way in Azkaban would Draco Malfoy, the epitome of a pureblood supremacist, sit and listen to some half-blood fawn over a muggle book. She stuck a bookmark onto her page and shut it gently. This edition was the first and last copy to ever grace the Hogwarts library and mustn't be damaged at all costs. To Y/N at least. If a boy like Draco Malfoy ever got their hands on a copy this precious, there would be a significantly less amount of muggle literature in the library.
"Because he's not popular," she lied, finding her hand around the nape of her neck again in that nervous habit of hers. The girl realized her eyes had been darting at every other direction except in Malfoy's. Somehow she'd broken rule one of lying: make eye contact. What a horrible liar Y/N was. "Right anyways, we can't exactly brew in the library or Madam Pince will tear the mickey out of us. Have you got any ideas?"
"Fourth floor, third classroom to the left. No one uses it," Malfoy stated.
"I don't think we should go there.."
"I don't take advice from half-breeds," he retorted. Y/N pressed her lips into a thin line and furrowed her brows. Well alright then. If Malfoy wanted to play that game, then she had plenty of time to spare.
"Fine, I need to get my cauldron and ingredients though," she asserted.
"Five minutes. Don't be late."
Of course the prick was being completely unreasonable again. Five minutes to sprint down one corridor, then up several flights of stairs, then grab her supplies and cauldron and then sprint back down three flights of stairs. Why couldn't she ever walk for once? Stupid Malfoy.
In an obvious hurry, Y/N snatched her textbooks and dashed out of the library with nothing but a scolding librarian to bid her goodbye. An array of curses left the girl's mouth as she scurried down the mostly empty hallways and up the grand stair case.
The girl nearly gave the Fat Lady a heart attack when her body tumbled into a halt a mere inch away from the painting. The lady's loud outcry was overshadowed by the huffing and puffing that escaped from the young girl's chapped lips.
"Wattlebird," Y/N wheezed, wondering if her lungs would ever be the same again.
The young L/N was ever so grateful when the portrait swung open, and promptly ignored the fat lady's reminder against running in the halls. The common room with its seemingly never ending fire was much too warm for Y/N's liking. With one arm, the girl shrugged off her school robes as she hurried past her fellow students.
In a jiffy, the winded girl was scrounging through her room in search of her supplies. "Peppermint, lavender..." she muttered under her short breaths, recounting the items. Then they were hastily shoved into her book bag along with her textbooks, notes, and...She was missing something.
What was it? Something she had earlier. Y/N swore it was in her hands. Something hard. Oh no, oh no, oh no no no! Her book! Oh gosh. Oh Merlin! It was in the library still. But how much time did she have left? A minute or so?
And so on her whirlwind of a journey to the library in the matter of seconds, Y/N just managed to hear Ron tell his partner he had never seen her run so fast in her life. And he was damn right! Yet, the library wasn't the answer. Y/N felt her heart drop at the loss. The beautiful work of literature was nowhere to be seen. With another deep huff, Y/N sped off to her next destination.
The arrogant blonde was leaning against the rather uncomfortable looking wall of the fourth floor corridor when Y/N saw him again. It took a few very confused seconds for the girl to realize what lay in his hands.
"What are you doing?!" She hissed, stomping up to the boy.
"What does it look like I'm doing? Don't suppose you know how to read do you?" he threw back at her smugly.
Y/N grit her teeth to the point where she expected it to disintegrate into millions of tiny little shards in her mouth. "No I mean why do you have my book?"
"Left it at the library. Wanted to see what all the fuss was about. A pair of star crossed lovers? Didn't know you were into such rubbish."
The girl flexed her hand more times than she would have liked to admit, especially for a wizard. Why punch when you can hex? But that wasn't the answer today. "Okay thanks, now give it back," she demanded, grabbing at the book.
"Uh uh uh," he mouthed as he lifted it above Y/N's reach. Immediately, she began to jump for her precious possession. "What are you going to do for it?" he taunted.
The girl stopped. "Are you bloody serious?" For Merlin's sake, Draco Malfoy was enjoying his power a bit too much.
"What's the magic word?" the bully continued.
"Avada Kedav-" And magically, despite accio being just the magic word, Y/N had her prized possession shoved roughly into her hands. The blonde looked less than pleased, but at least he still had his life in tact. "Careful, this is worth more than your life," she asserted.
With a scowl on his pretty face, Malfoy pushed past Y/N, knocking brutally into her shoulder. 'brat' she thought. Though she chased after the boy like a puppy, trying to keep up with his long strides. "I seriously wouldn't recommend going in there.." she tried to warn.
But alas, her words of wisdom fell to deaf ears for the stubborn boy had already thrown open the creaky old door. Oh the poor eyes of Y/N L/N needed a serious cleaning spell. The girl shifted around awkwardly in her spot, avoiding eye contact at all times.
The two red handed students in the classroom stopped dead in their tracts with the most deer caught in headlights expression the young girl had ever seen. It would only make it worse to acknowledge the crime scene.
Meanwhile, Malfoy Malfoy Malfoy. That bossy boy merely deepened his scowl at the canoodling couple. "Out," he ordered.
"What?" the unknown student asked.
"Out or my father will hear about this," he threatened.
Y/N, who had been viciously harassing the floor with her pupils, could only assume that the two students had fled their precarious make out spot and that she was free to enter their stolen territory. Malfoy strolled in like he owned the place, which if his father paid enough, he probably could.
"Well hurry up. We don't have all day," he snapped.
The girl rolled her eyes and began setting up her cauldron on one of the abandoned desks. "D'you know whose class this used to belong to?" she asked in a half-assed attempt to filled the silence.
"How would I know?"
"I mean you chose the spot."
Unfortunately, their short lived conversation lasted about a whole of three seconds as each began to work on their individual potions. The blonde was working much quicker than the girl, who slowed down the process to make sure she was preparing the ingredients accurately and according to the book. Bless her soul, Y/N was basically triple checking the peppermint by the time Malfoy had tossed all his items into the cauldron.
Her cold hands began to tremor slightly as she felt the weight of his steely gaze upon her work. A few seconds in and the boy was already storming up to her desk. "You twit, are you trying to poison me!?"
Well that option wasn't entirely off the table, but Y/N really had no idea what she was doing wrong. "No. I'm TRYING my best. But I can't do anything with you staring at me like that!" Yeah brilliant comeback Y/N. That was definitely the reason she would be thrown to Azkaban for poisoning some rich prat.
"You don't cut the peppermint leaves into sixths and put in five pieces." The much more knowledgeable wizard corrected.
"I don't? Why not?"
He sighed like she was the dumbest child in the world. And maybe she was, but that was none of Malfoy's business. "The entire leaf won't be put in, and you'll get the proportions all wrong," he scolded. "Don't you ever listen in class. Only an oaf would mess up something so easy."
Oh an oaf indeed. Seamus Finnigan would hear a mouthful when Y/N got back to the common rooms. It was a no wonder he was constantly blowing up his potions,, and it was a huge miracle Y/N wasn't literally poisoning her partner.
With a heavy sigh Y/N pushed her useless peppermint leaf aside and took out another. Hesitantly, the girl gripped her blade and brought it towards the leaf. She bit her lip in concentration as she evaluated the tiny ingredient.
"Are you kidding me?" Malfoy cried.
Y/N had suddenly frozen like a statue. What was it now? "No?"
The blonde shoved the girl aside and snatched the knife from her hands. With the blade, he made quick work of slicing up the peppermint leaf into tiny fifths. "What's next?" she asked curiously as she glanced at the paper she had written notes on.
"Crocodile heart. Just the left ventricle."
"Oh, right!" Y/N was somehow hanging onto Draco Malfoy's every word yet drifting from reality at the same time. Really, it was a vicious cycle of aweing over the assignment and then fawning over the blonde's fluid ability to brew at the same time.
Then, when the boy rolled up his sleeves to handle the heart, Y/N found it extremely hard to focus. Her wandering eyes just couldn't seem to stop coming back to how good they looked. She had no clue WHY it looked so attractive to her. It just did.
In a flash, the Slytherin had dropped the heart into the cauldron, which fizzled into a dark greenish hue. Strange. Wasn't it supposed to be light turquoise? Y/N then directed her attention back to Draco, wondering if she should question his authority or not.
"Take a picture, It'll last longer," he snarked.
"What? No shut up. Why doesn't it look like this in the book?" She questioned suspiciously.
"You stupid Gryffindors can't even wait an hour?" He snapped as he stepped away from the girl's potion and towards his own across the classroom.
'An hour?!' the girl screamed internally. Her hands were very much on a mission now, flipping through the textbook with vigor until they finally found their desired page. For once, the girl was reading through the lines word for word, letter by letter rather than scanning through it and saving the words as a problem for later.
Well damn. Could Y/N even survive an hour alone with the Slytherin Prince of pride and arrogance?
It seemed that Draco had a much different plan than the girl for he had already settled on a chair, intent on ignoring Y/N again. At least that meant she wouldn't need to talk to him for an hour, and that was the best thing anyone could ever ask of a Malfoy (Aside from his entire trust fund and inheritance).
And so the foolish girl took to reading her silly muggle books written by her silly muggle author. Though without a muggle English professor to guide her through the intricacies of old Shakespearean English, Y/N struggled to comprehend the work.
For the next ten minutes or so, neither partner talked, creating an unusual air of comfortability yet hostility at the same time. Y/N however, was too immersed in her classic to really realize the Malfoy had begun sneaking glances at her just like how she had been stealing mini glances at a certain Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain a week ago.
"What's so good about that mangy old book?" The blonde finally asked.
Y/N's head snapped up from the words and looked at the boy sitting directly in front of her give or take 15 feet. The words just didn't seem to want to come to mind. Why did she like this book? Well she didn't really like it that much at the moment, but it was sort of precious to her in a way.
"Plot..Plot's good," she muttered.
"If it's star crossed lovers" he mocked, "how good can it be?"
"Everyone dies?" she commented, wondering if her major spoiler was a good enough plot point for her to part with.
"Well that's a rubbish story," he scoffed.
"Well I'm the one reading it so mind your own business Malfoy," she retorted before ignoring the boy's existence altogether and delving back into her tiny fictional world of 15th century fair Verona.
It was another ten minutes until Malfoy opened his mouth again. "Prove it," he challenged, his voice bouncing off of the empty walls of the classroom.
Y/N who had heard the request loud and clear, tore her eyes away from the pages to look at the pretty blonde again. "What?"
Malfoy abandoned his chair in favor of traipsing up to the girl's table. "Prove it. Prove your bloody book isn't absolute rubbish."
"I don't have to prove anything to you. I don't even know how you want me to pRoVe it. If you don't like it then you don't like it. It's not my problem," she stated furiously, clutching the book closer to her body in the likely chance that the Slytherin would try to snatch it up for himself.
But then again....Maybe Y/N could use this to her advantage. If she played her cards right, then she could stand to gain something out of the whole ordeal. Slowly, the bookworm shut her precious piece of literature and approached the practically opaque window. A thousand scenarios of how wrong her plan could go swirled through her mind like a devil whispering of danger into her ears.
As her eyes traced the designs that adorned the dusty pane, she thought. What would Fred and George do? Well probably hurl the Slytherin out of this very window and watch him fall hundreds of meters into the gorge.
Then what would Harry do? Duel his mortal enemy. Right.
What would Hermione do? Pros and Cons. So Y/N employed her wise witch friend's mindset. Pro, she gets to pass her class without bothering her friends. Con, she may lose her beloved copy forever. To be fair, it wasn't like the book was completely unattainable. But there were ways to protect her property wasn't there?
At some point, the girl had begun to run her fingers furiously through her locks where they occasionally got stuck on a knot or two. Oh what to do, what to do?
With that ferocity that Draco had first fallen victim to during the Quidditch World Cup, Y/N spun around to face the boy. "Let's make a bet."
Draco Malfoy was interested. Sure, he had only been half-heartedly curious of the contents of that silly muggle book Y/N venerated so dearly, but he wasn't exactly expecting anything other than to piss off the girl for the sake of it.
They boy who had been slouching against his chair visibly stiffened, catching the observant eyes of the L/N. The young girl had no idea whether she was practically tossing away her book or if Malfoy was falling into the irresistible trap of curiosity.
As confidently as she could, the girl on a mission advanced to the blonde. Tiny dust particles flitted into the air as the girl waved her leather-bound masterpiece in the boy's face. "You want to read this don't you?" she tempted.
The boy scoffed, crossing his his arms and scanning the cover up and down. "Nobody said I wanted to read that rubbish," he scoffed. "That might work on Potter, but I'm no nimrod."
The girl grit her teeth for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. Y/N was fighting a losing battle wasn't she? She supposed it wasn't a big deal really,so the girl retreated. "Up to you."
"I want a favor," the boy stated, a tinge of arrogance staining his audacious words. Was this really worth it?
"Nothing that will hurt my friends."
"Fine with me. What are your terms?"
She paused. Now that Y/N thought about it, was she really okay with selling her soul for a little extra help in potions? Yes. "If you read Romeo and Juliet," she started slowly. "And you like it. At all. Any scene, act, line, or character. You tutor me for the rest of the year."
A dissatisfied look presented itself on the boy's sharp face before a confident one replaced it. "And if I think it should burn in a fiendfyre?"
"You get one favor from me. Anything that won't harm my friends," she asserted, convinced of her victory. Did the sly little snake think he could lie his way through this one? Oh poor Draco had no idea what was going to happen.
Being the twins' partner in crime meant an easy access to Professor Snape's legendary storage, including his fabled Veritaserum.
Cheerily, the girl stuck out her hand. Her potions partner on the other hand, presented his hand with much less enthusiasm. Though this was no unbreakable vow, in each youngling's flaming heart, it felt like a promise that they would be seeing much more of each other no matter the outcome. And it scared them both that they really didn't mind.
Impatiently, Malfoy reached for the book with his freshly shaken hand. The ever cautious Gryffindor kept it away from reach, eying the boy. "You get this starting next week. I expect to see it back the week after. Unless you're a slow reader."
"I'm not like Potter," he spat, offended.
Y/N rolled her pretty (E/C) eyes and shrugged. "It's been an hour," she noted softly, gesturing to the light blue brew bubbling in their cauldrons. "Shall we?"
Wordlessly, the blonde headed straight to the potions to check up upon them. Meanwhile, Y/N made a mental note to cast a protection charm upon her property lest she lose it to the unforgiving hands of Draco Malfoy.